The "SOP Operation," carried out by Usopp, Robin, and the tiny warriors of the Tontatta Tribe, the little people they'd met on Green Bit.
Unabbreviated, that stood for the "S(Sugar) O(Oh my god) P(Panic) Operation," a name that left one at a loss for comment. But the operation had, in the end, succeeded, and with it, the Toy Curse that had eaten away at all of Dressrosa through Sugar's Hobi Hobi Fruit Powers was broken.
Pirates, Marines, Government officials, dignitaries from Affiliated Nations, citizens, wild beasts, soldiers of the former Dressrosa army, even participants in the current tournament. One after another, those Sugar had transformed into toys returned to their original forms, and simultaneously, memories of them came flooding back.
Some recovered long-lost memories of their families and wept with joy. Others learned they'd been deceived all along and burned with fury.
The Tin Soldier, who had fought alone for ten years, protecting his daughter in solitude, now raced toward the King, his own father-in-law, who truly grieved for this country, to reclaim the real Dressrosa.
In the midst of the panic engulfing all of Dressrosa...
"What is the meaning of this!? What were you thinking, doing something like this!? Answer me, Caesar!"
Furious shouting echoed through a certain room in the Royal Palace.
Pica, the source of the voice, warped his stone-merged, enormous face with rage as he swung his arm down, trying to pummel the man before him, Caesar, into the ground.
But Caesar didn't turn into gas and let it pass through him. He caught the blow with one hand.
Despite receiving a fist equivalent to a super-heavy rockfall, Caesar's fingers were, astonishingly, digging into the stone in reverse, cracking it.
Before the stunned Pica, who had thrown the punch, Caesar pulled some kind of Dial from inside his coat, absorbed the gas that spurted from it into his body, and then...
"Armor-Piercing Gas Bullet!!"
The condensed gas turned to liquid, then solid, and was launched with tremendous force. The projectiles flew like bullets and embedded themselves in Pica's boulder body. The next instant, they reverted to gas. Their volume expanded tens of thousands of times over, and unable to withstand the change, Pica's body exploded, a massive chunk gouged out.
No real damage. But the bewilderment was enormous.
'Impossible... Setting aside the gas-based attack, the one who caught my fist just now used... unmistakably, Armament Haki! I've never once heard of Caesar being able to use Haki. What is going on...!?'
While regenerating his body, Pica turned his gaze to Caesar and the large bag slung over his back.
Inside that bag was a mountain of documents stored in this castle: records of underworld deals, research and development materials related to SMILE and various other illicit projects, and every other sort of incriminating paperwork that absolutely could not see the light of day.
When the report came in that Caesar, who should have been cowering in his room, had suddenly escaped and begun plundering critical documents from throughout the castle, Pica had wondered what on earth was happening. But seeing this open defiance, there was no choice but to conclude the man had betrayed them.
'Interrogation comes later... First I capture him and drag him before Doffy for instructions... Simplest to just kill him, but as long as he's the only one who can produce SAD...'
That was when it happened.
"---ROOM!!"
By a hair's breadth, Pica moved at high speed through the stone, dodging the blade that had targeted his main body.
Almost simultaneously, the massive stone form was sliced to pieces.
"You... Law!? Why are you here!?"
"Why? What kind of why? We're enemies. What other reason do I need to come storming in?"
Spitting those words, Law walked straight toward Caesar.
Slung over his shoulder was a burlap sack large enough to fit a person. It was wriggling and squirming, suggesting that someone, or something, was indeed inside.
As Pica stared at this bizarre, even eerie sight in mounting confusion, Law set the sack down on the floor with conspicuous care.
Then he exchanged a glance with Caesar. They nodded at each other, and Law activated his power. Palm facing upward, he turned his hand in a spinning motion.
"Shambles!"
---Ba-dump!
In that instant, Caesar and the "someone" inside the cloth sack both jolted simultaneously.
And then,
"D-dammit... I'm finally back! My body! Ow ow ow ow! E-everything hurts, what the hell is this!? You did something reckless with my body, you little brat!"
Caesar's face was suddenly a mess of tears and snot, his expression pathetic, as he launched into a stream of screams and curses.
And at the same time, the burlap sack was ripped apart from the inside, and from within...
"Ahh! Nothing beats your own body! And with that, yours truly is re-vi-ved! Good work, Law!"
"Same to you. Good job on the infiltration, Miss Alice. Looks like things went swimmingly."
"You bet! Got a whole pile of incriminating documents... A huge, huge, huge haul! Operation: massive success!"
The person who emerged from the sack was someone no one could have predicted.
"What... You, 'Myriad Colors'... Why are you here!? What is the meaning of this!"
A beautiful girl with short golden hair and a slender yet well-trained, toned physique.
A member of the Golden Lion Pirates, one of the three Supreme Executives of the Retainers serving directly under the New Admiral: Myriad Colors Alice.
At first glance, she might look delicate and fragile, but her true strength was at a level where even pirates rampaging across the seas of the New World wouldn't stand a chance. A "person of extreme caution."
Even within the Donquixote Family, while she was technically an "ally" through the Alliance, she was recognized as a target of wariness.
For Law, she was the daughter of his direct superior, Pirate Literary Master Sue. Not in his direct chain of command, but in terms of standing, she was technically a superior officer.
And now, for some reason, Alice had emerged from a sack carried by Law, and from the way they were talking...
"Don't tell me, Law... You used your powers to swap her and Caesar!?"
"Sharp as ever. The Caesar you were talking to and fighting just now wasn't Caesar. To be precise, the body was Caesar's, but..."
"The one inside was me! Man, a gas human's body was pretty interesting."
"'Pretty interesting,' my ass, you little brat! How dare you do whatever you wanted with my body... My fingers and arms hurt like hell, what did you do, dammit!"
Several hours earlier, on Green Bit.
When the "deal" between Law and Doflamingo had fallen through due to Doflamingo's scheme, the operation had already begun.
The Caesar that Doflamingo's group recovered at that time was already Alice, her mind swapped in.
Pretending to be Caesar, she made it look as though "Doflamingo's plan had succeeded and Caesar had been rescued," successfully infiltrating the Royal Palace.
Then, watching for the moment when security grew lax, she slipped out and used the gas body to its fullest, ransacking the entire castle.
Slipping through the tiniest gaps to enter every location, knocking out soldiers with asphyxiation, seizing documents and everything else wholesale. And beyond just documents, she stole or spirited away anything that seemed useful.
Now, having rendezvoused with Law, she had returned to her original body.
"In other words, it was you lot who were caught in the trap. From the very start, we intended to use Caesar's body and Powers to dig through your secrets. We thought through various scenarios for the deal on Green Bit, assuming it would fail. The authority of a former Celestial Dragon, after all. There are plenty of ways to work with that."
"You're saying you already knew!? About Doffy's origins... How!? Among those who know that, no one would betray Doffy. Not since Corazon's death..."
"A certain someone told us. I suppose she didn't spend over a decade running around the world doing whatever she pleased for nothing. She casually drops bombshell intel every now and then, that person."
"Yeah, yeah. Where does she even dig up that kind of top-secret information?"
Impressed yet exasperated, Law and Alice simultaneously pictured the same person in their minds.
"And originally, we planned to use the gas Powers to knock Sugar unconscious too, but it seems somebody else beat us to it through a different route. Saved us the trouble."
Furthermore, the notion that Law was using the Golden Lion Pirates for his own revenge and acting behind Sue and the others' backs had been a lie from the start.
In truth, Law had been genuinely cooperating with Alice and Sue from the very beginning. In operations planned with Doflamingo as the assumed enemy.
Law had shared all information regarding Doflamingo, his past, and everything else with Sue and her people. His contact with Caesar on Punk Hazard hadn't been independent action either; Sue and the others had been aware of it and had even provided support as needed. The whole thing was coordinated.
And it wasn't just Sue's group. The Golden Lion faction under Shiki, whom Doflamingo had smugly claimed to be "connected with" and treated as allies, had also been connected through Sue. Just as Law's plan had originally intended, they were cooperating with Law to crush the Donquixote Family, motivated by the underworld market and other interests.
In short, the people Doflamingo believed had Law surrounded on all sides, cornered and helpless, were all on Law's side from the very start. Everyone except the Donquixote Family themselves. All the "pitiful ignorance" and "miscalculations" were coming right back to Doflamingo.
That said, there was one point where things hadn't gone exactly as planned: the timing of Law's move caught even Sue's group off guard.
Recently, when Law encountered Luffy and the others on Punk Hazard, he judged them capable fighters and potential allies beyond just Sue. Believing he shouldn't let this opportunity for contact slip away, he sprang into action.
Alice and the others, who hadn't been told about this in advance, were shocked. 'What is he doing all of a sudden!?' And to make matters worse, Sue had been absent at the time, operating under Kuzan's orders in her capacity as a Shichibukai. Alice scrambled to confirm Law's true intentions.
After arriving at Punk Hazard immediately, she took care of various business on the side, including recovering Monet, and then, just as Law was departing with Luffy's group, showed up as if to say, 'Oh, I just got here.'
At the time, Law knew Alice was on his side, so he hadn't been particularly worried about being purged or his life being in danger.
But Alice hadn't told Law she was coming, and she had been genuinely irritated to some degree, thinking 'That was unauthorized action, wasn't it?' So Law's cold sweat hadn't been entirely an act. He'd been quite seriously thinking, 'This might be bad.'
"You're saying the Caesar we've had this whole time was actually you, Myriad Colors!? Impossible... There's no way anyone could wield another person's Powers that well in a different body! Especially a Logia, which is already extremely difficult to control!?"
"And yet here we are! I'm kind of a genius in multiple fields, you know!"
An unrivaled talent in the domain of combat. That, too, was one of Alice's weapons.
But beyond even that, though Alice didn't put it into words, a certain "game" she played from time to time had cultivated that skill.
Within the Golden Lion Pirates, there was another Op-Op Fruit user.
Sou, the genius scientist who was Admiral Sue's biological mother and, by extension, Alice's grandmother by marriage. With her cooperation, Alice had made a regular habit of swapping minds with various people, just for fun.
Subordinates who could be trusted with knowledge of the power (mainly those under Alice's direct command, including various Ability Users).
Clone bodies that Sou had developed and enhanced through modifications. Human Weapon bodies created by further modifying those clones.
Slaves taken as prisoners from enemy ships, kept for "entertainment."
And going even further, not just humans, but even Homies created by her daughter Iris.
Among the Homies in particular, there were those like Ifijar, Pneuma, and Lyuphche whose bodies transformed into flame, water, and other elements, losing their original forms entirely, wielding powers comparable to Logia types.
As a result, Alice had acquired enough skill to handle another person's body and another person's Powers to a reasonable degree.
Using them at the same level as Caesar himself, the actual Ability User, was far beyond her reach. But transforming the body into gas and flying, or using Powers in ways similar to other Logia types, was child's play.
On top of that, her own Haki, the power of her will, added another layer, making it possible for her to endure and overcome Pica's attacks, if only for a short time.
Pica seethed at the smugly grinning Alice before him, but without saying another word, without even launching another attack, he withdrew behind the stone wall and vanished.
"Huh?" Alice tilted her head at the abrupt retreat.
"...He probably went to Doflamingo. The chaos from the Hobi Hobi Fruit's Powers being undone has already spread across all of Dressrosa. He must've decided that dealing with that takes priority."
"Hmm, I see... But I can't imagine they'd just let us run free either. If what's been happening here leaks to the outside, Doflamingo's finished as a Shichibukai, no question. Hey, Law. Is Doflamingo the type who could accept that kind of outcome, lay low, and bide his time to rebuild?"
"Not a chance. On the surface, he might admit to his mistakes or his poor judgment, show some remorse, maybe even forgive subordinates who fell short. But in the end, he'd shove the responsibility and burden of fixing things onto someone else. To protect his own interests, he'd abandon everyone else without a second thought."
"That whole business with Dressrosa ten years ago sounds exactly like that... Yeah, figures. But to pull that off in the current situation, he'd basically need to massacre every single citizen in the country..."
"...I can think of a method that could do it. Yeah, now that you mention it... He would. To keep what happened here from leaking outside, he'd slaughter every last person in Dressrosa. Every single one."
"Hey, stop ignoring me! Law! Give me back my Heart already! If the deal's meaningless now then I'm done being useful, right!? Give it back! Please!"
"What's with the sudden groveling? Even if I wanted to return it, it's not here. It's on the Straw Hat Crew's ship, which should be out at sea. Go get it yourself."
"Are you kidding me!? You want me to fight my way through this hellscape where Pirates, Marines, and Bounty Hunters and everyone else are going absolutely berserk!? What color is your blood!?"
"There's no other way. Don't worry, nobody gives a damn about you at this point. Everyone's going to be moving to crush Doflamingo, and Doflamingo's going to be moving to eliminate every witness. So get going. You should be able to break through the Birdcage."
They watched Caesar fly away, blubbering and muttering resentful curses all the while. Then. Right. Time to refocus.
"So, about what comes next... Miss Alice?"
"Well, Law, I'm gonna split off and act on my own for a bit."
"...Yeah, got it."
Law nodded without objection or even asking why.
He was about to see Alice off as she walked briskly away, but then,
"Miss Alice. I'm sure you already know, but... don't go overboard."
"Hmm... I can't make any guarantees."
Hearing that, Law let out a sigh and clutched his head.
"I saw this coming, so it's not like I'm gonna try to stop you. But please, just exercise some restraint. If you go on a rampage driven by anger, there'll be a mass slaughter worse than the Birdcage. Are you trying to wipe Dressrosa off the map?"
"...Hey, Law."
Without turning around, Alice spoke in a flat tone.
"You remember, right? The reason I, and Mom, and Grandpa decided to designate Doflamingo and his Family as a threat and fully support your plan?"
"Yeah. Seizing underworld market interests, eliminating the sabotage operations being conducted against us and Gran Tesoro from the shadows since we're in the same line of business. And... the disappearance of subordinates due to Sugar."
"Right. The Toy Curse of the Hobi Hobi Fruit erases memories along with the person, so it's hard to detect. But we routinely document and archive every detail about our subordinates' assignments and such. And among those records, recently, both Mom and I had noticed several names we had no memory of."
"Meaning... names that existed in the documents but not in your memories. You could deduce that those people were subordinates who'd been turned into toys by Sugar's Powers for some reason, their existence erased from memory."
"Exactly. For Mom and me, Sugar was obvious, but her Boss, Doflamingo, had already become far more than a hypothetical enemy. He was someone whose life absolutely needed to be ended. Even without the memories of those subordinates, the fact that someone had tampered with our memories like that was utterly unforgivable. And that was how we felt before the memories even came back. But then, just now, when the memories did return..."
At that, Alice spun around to face him.
Her expression was a smile, and yet the Spirit and killing intent radiating from it was enough to send a chill down even Law's spine, ally though he was.
The light had vanished from her eyes, replaced by a darkness as deep as an abyss. Boundless rage and hatred. An overwhelming, black, cold, yet explosive torrent of emotion, plain to see.
"...Among the ones whose memories were erased, there were girls and boys I was really fond of. They adored me, we had so much fun together... Tantal and Lupupu got along with them too... We spent such wonderful times together. Precious friends and comrades. And to think they were stolen from me all this time."
I mean, how could I not lose it?
"...At least, if you're gonna kill, keep it to the enemies. Unnecessary complications won't be good for your position either, Miss."
"I know that. But in return, I won't hold back one bit against the enemy. As for Sugar, I've already given Lupupu her orders, so she should be just about done collecting her by now."
"Same as always? Taking her back to add to the collection?"
"Nah... This time, even I'm not interested. I don't plan on letting her live, either."
"For you to say that about a girl... That's rare. Poor Sugar. Well, she's been doing whatever she pleased all this time. She can't complain about whatever's coming."
"...I should get going. Sounds like things outside are getting noisy."
Alice said this and strode away.
After watching her go, Law steeled himself. He too gripped his sword and set out, to bring an end, on this day, to the incident from thirteen years ago.
Dressrosa, freed from the Toy Curse and plunged into panic.
In what form it would come, no one could say, but the hour of its conclusion was drawing ever closer, moment by moment.
To be continued...