The Birdcage, Law explained, was one of the most cruel, merciless, and selfish techniques in Doflamingo's arsenal.
Strings launched across a vast range, enough to enclose an entire city or even an entire island, forming a literal Birdcage that trapped everyone inside.
Once sealed by the strings, all communication between inside and outside was severed, including Den Den Mushi signal waves. Relaying the situation to anyone beyond became impossible. The strings could cut like blades on contact, and their strength was such that even Armament Haki couldn't destroy them, making escape virtually impossible.
That alone was terrifying enough, but the Birdcage also shrank over time, contracting, growing narrower. Anyone touched by the approaching strings would be sliced apart. Once the ever-contracting Birdcage closed completely, everyone inside would be slaughtered.
In other words, this technique was deployed with the express intent of killing every single person inside without exception, save for Doflamingo's Family, whom he would presumably spare.
"You could say he's really pulling the strings."
"Miss Alice, shut up."
The two of them had just parted ways after agreeing to "split up for a bit," but Alice had finished her errand so quickly that they'd already regrouped.
"Sorry, sorry. But anyway, that means... right now, with Doflamingo up there running his mouth so flashily, it's all just misdirection to trick the citizens and pirates into tripping each other up as much as possible, right?"
"That's about the size of it. From the start, that guy never intended to let a single person on this island leave. Citizens, pirates, Marines... us included."
Looking up, there it was: projected onto the sky sealed by the Birdcage, a massive screen displaying Doflamingo's face in close-up. The Doflamingo on screen was declaring that if all these Criminals were captured or killed, he would release the Birdcage and even hand out rewards.
Projected on the screen as Bounty Targets were those who had managed to anger Doflamingo during this whole affair. Leading the list was "God" Usopp, the very person who had knocked Sugar unconscious. Alongside him, designated as Three Stars ringleaders of each faction, were Luffy, Law, King Riku, Sabo, and even Alice. Below them, their subordinates were listed as bounties worth one to two hundred million Berry each, totaling over a dozen Criminals in all.
On top of that, Doflamingo used Parasite Strings to create puppets from citizens and Marines alike, forcing them to attack and destroy indiscriminately across the country, accelerating the chaos.
People wept as they hurt their own families and friends, screaming for someone to stop them, to kill them. Others couldn't bring themselves to harm those they loved and were hurt instead. Still others choked back sobs while pinning the victims down, somehow restraining their movements.
To end this chaos quickly, there were only two options: defeat Doflamingo, or capture all the Criminals. Choosing the former meant taking on the entire Donquixote Family, over two thousand strong, including Supreme Executives and Executive Class officers. What's more, the Family had fortified themselves atop the high ground that Pica had created by reshaping the terrain, making it no easy task just to reach them.
And so the majority concluded that capturing the Criminals was the only way to end the turmoil. Some rationalized it, saying there was no need to kill or even injure anyone, that all they had to do was temporarily restrain them. Others, even in these circumstances, were blinded by the bounties Doflamingo had posted.
Luffy and the others, setting aside the pirates blinded by Greed, charged forward with a ragtag Alliance Army full of eccentric personalities, determined to storm King's Plateau and take down Doflamingo so the citizens wouldn't have to be harmed.
What stood in their path as they swept aside the pirates and pressed toward the Royal Castle was one of the Supreme Executives: Pica. Having assimilated the surrounding terrain, Pica moved within a stone colossus enormous enough to crush an entire town, bearing down on the Criminals to smash them all in one blow.
Even when Luffy and Chinjao shattered pieces of it, Pica immediately replenished the stone from elsewhere, regenerating fists and launching the next attack. But then one figure came running through the air toward him.
"Wait, is that... Zoro?! Since when can that guy fly?!"
"Z-Zoro-zenbaaiii?!"
"Yo, Soprano Boy... we meet again. You up and vanished on me earlier... what, were you in the john?"
'Roronoa Zoro...! An eyesore of an insect... Have you come to die before me?'
Pica's enormous eyeballs rolled with a glare, fixing on Zoro as he closed in through the air with swords in both hands and a third clenched between his teeth. Fueled by the situation and the irritation of having his high-pitched voice mocked, a sore point for him, Pica raised a massive stone fist to bring it crashing down.
But Zoro kicked off the air even faster and, strange as it was to describe it this way, dove straight into the stone Pica's chest.
The next instant, Pica heard something from Zoro, who had come right up to his ear, so to speak. A small but uncanny sound.
A roar, like flames burning with fierce intensity. The sound was coming from Zoro's mouth. His breathing.
At the same time, all three of Zoro's swords blazed to life, wreathed in flame.
"Huh?! Zoro, what's going on?! Your swords are on fire?!"
"Flaming swords... Did you have some kind of gimmick built into them?"
"Is that what it is, Usopp?"
"N-No, I never built anything like that... Franky, what about you?!"
"Not me either. Besides, that guy hates that kind of gizmo."
Usopp and Franky both shook their heads. Franky, for his part, had just finished his battle over the Factory against the man he would one day call a "sworn brother," Señor Pink, and was battered and receiving first aid.
"...They're not actually on fire. Same goes for the breathing sounds. It's a technique, so it just 'looks' that way."
"Torao! Thank goodness, you're okay!"
"...You know something about that technique, Torao?"
"Yeah. That's..."
'Did you think some circus trick could defeat me?! King Riku, you vermin, running wild in Doffy's country... Be crushed in one blow!'
"Circus trick or not... find out for yourself...!!"
Pica raised both arms, palms facing each other, adopting a pose like swatting a flying mosquito between his hands. From both sides, hands of devastating size closed in.
Amid the cries of worry and screams from allies below, at the very instant Zoro was about to be caught and crushed, his swords flashed.
"Three-Sword Style..."
"Blazing Sun Great Dragon Twister!!"
Erupting flames accompanied the slashes that ravaged Pica's surroundings like a tornado, carving apart both of his hands. Cheers erupted at Zoro's spectacular escape from certain death, but then, immediately after, something unexpected happened.
'Guh... GWAAAAAGH?!'
Pica, whose stone arms had been shredded and crumbled away, suddenly let out a cry of agony, his expression twisting into anguish across that face made of massive boulders.
'My hands are burning... on fire... What is this?!'
"P-Pica-sama?! Why does he look like he's in pain...?"
"Attacks on his stone body shouldn't cause any damage to Pica-sama himself..."
Even though the body he inhabited through assimilation was separate from his actual body, so that no matter how much it was shattered or slashed, Pica himself should feel no pain. And yet right now, a searing, slashing agony was unmistakably shooting through his hands. No one was more bewildered by this than Pica himself.
'Pirate Hunter... What did you... What kind of trick did you use...?!'
"Beats me... Maybe you just haven't trained hard enough?"
Zoro said it with a fearless grin, taunting, but the truth was, what he'd just said was actually correct. Physical aspects aside, the reason Pica was feeling pain in hands that shouldn't actually be cut or burned was because Pica was losing to Zoro in Haki and Spirit.
During his two years of training, at one point, on Suzu's recommendation, Zoro had encountered one of Sue's works. That particular story, adapted not from the original novel text but into a Picture Story, was admittedly nothing more than fiction. Still, it served as a reference for one style of combat available to a swordsman, a seed from which ideas could grow.
That encounter, refined through two years of training, had borne fruit in Zoro's hands as an array of new cards to play. Weapons plucked from a world of imagination that Zoro had stolen and forged into his own sword techniques.
Right now, Zoro's swords were not actually on fire, nor had his breathing truly become the sound of roaring combustion. It was simply that Zoro's own Spirit and the completeness of his swordsmanship were such that those who witnessed the sight perceived a vivid, realistic image of him wreathed in flame.
And that effect manifested not only visually but also as pain inflicted upon those he cut.
As stated, the swords were not truly burning. What's more, Pica's main body had not been cut at all. What had been slashed was nothing more than the stone body, which should have been meaningless to damage.
Despite that, Pica felt the agony of both hands being seared and sliced as though by flaming blades. Worse still, when he tried to flow stone into the colossus to regenerate its arms, even that wouldn't work properly. As if he'd lost control over his Powers, the areas that had just been slashed became brittle whenever he regenerated them, cracking and crumbling apart. The slightest movement caused them to shatter under their own weight.
Put simply, Pica was losing to Zoro in sheer Spirit. Pica's body was gripped by fear, perceiving phantom wounds as real pain, because that single strike had been so powerful, so deeply carved into his consciousness. Pica was suffering from wounds that existed nowhere but in his own mind, wounds he couldn't even recognize as illusions.
'Don't... get cocky!'
Unable to suppress the irritation born of pain and humiliation, Pica swung his arm wide from the shoulder in a massive lariat-style sweep. That arm was studded with countless stone spikes, designed to skewer anything it struck.
But even faced with such a weapon, not a single bead of sweat formed on Zoro's brow.
"Sloppy technique, fighting half-heartedly, winning up till now just 'cause of your size... I can see right through you. In a way, I almost feel sorry for you."
Zoro took his three-sword stance again. The flames surged. Pica flinched for an instant at the sight, but he made his arm larger, his spikes bigger and sharper, using that to shake off the unwanted emotion, and swung through with pure murderous intent.
"Three-Sword Style... Scorching Sun Tiger Hunt."
Three strikes, their trajectories traced in crimson through the air with such force they floated visibly, tore into Pica, severing his arm clean from the shoulder. The Shockwave sent a Flying Slash into part of his face as well, carving a deep, crack-like wound.
And then, a beat later, those wounds began to radiate heat.
'GWAAAAAAAAGH!! Ro... Roronoaaaa!!'
Pica tried to clutch at his severed shoulder and wounded face, but the hand he would have used had already crumbled, so he pressed the remnant of his other arm against the wounds instead, writhing in agony.
Because the stone colossus was thrashing in pain, even a single stumble trampled the ground beneath with thunderous impacts, triggering an earthquake across the entire area. Fortunately, the terrain changes meant no one was directly underfoot, but the violent shaking alone was terrifying enough for the citizens. Those in Central Town, which had been displaced by the shifting landscape, screamed and fled in panic.
"I'm the one who did this, so maybe I shouldn't talk, but a grown man shrieking over wounds that don't even exist. Pathetic. Between you and that thug king of yours, your whole crew's nothing but a bunch who can't do anything except cause trouble for others."
'Shut up... Shut uuuup!! You insects, trashing Doffy's... our country...! This country is already ours...'
"Then... No, forget it. There's nothing more to be gained from talking to you."
Zoro nimbly dodged the massive stone arm swung at him in desperation, twisting through the air. The debris that shattered and scattered from the force of the swing alone, he shot down with Flying Slashes to keep them from falling on the city below, then turned back to face Pica. He kicked off the sky, soaring higher and higher, all the way up beyond the height of Pica's towering form.
"Your anger's making your 'voice' leak everywhere... There you are...!"
From that height, Zoro dove. His target: just below Pica's face, around the nape, where Pica's main body was hiding.
Pica noticed the dive, but the instant he looked up, the sunlight behind Zoro blinded him, and he flinched.
That single instant was fatal.
"Hinokami Three-Sword Style...!!"
Three swords blazed with the largest, fiercest flames yet. The fire they generated swirled around Zoro's entire body like a vortex, and the phantom pain at Pica's illusory wounds, illuminated by that blaze, slowed his movements even further.
The last thing Pica saw through the stone colossus's eyes was the Sun at Zoro's back, and the flames that burned on, undiminished, unwavering. From within that inferno, a blade descended, hurtling straight toward him.
"King Fire Demon Slash!!!!"
In that instant, the stone colossus's face, and far more than just the face, everything down to the crotch was cleaved in two. The entire body fell apart, crumbling to pieces. From the wounds, those who witnessed the moment saw phantom flames erupting upward with the force of a geyser.
Amid the rubble, Zoro's blade had found the real Pica hidden within the stone, catching him, cutting through him.
Assaulted by both the phantom agony of being seared and slashed across his hands, shoulders, face, and now his entire body from this final strike, and the very real pain of being directly cut, Pica sprayed blood as he finally lost consciousness, unable to endure any more. Without moving again, he fell toward the ground far below, mingling with the deluge of raining debris.
The "game" Doflamingo had proclaimed had barely begun.
This turbulent opening act, with a Supreme Executive knocked out of commission right from the start, drew enormous cheers from Central Town where the citizens were gathered, while screams of despair echoed across King's Plateau where the Family had assembled.
To be continued...