The Corrida Colosseum smelled of sweat, cheap beer, and iron. The roar of the crowd was deafening, bouncing off the massive stone walls and vibrating through the stadium seating. Down in the arena pit, gladiators clashed, kicking up clouds of dry dirt as swords met shields.
High up in the stands, sitting comfortably with a box of popcorn, were Nico Robin, Sunny, and Merry.
"Go! Hit him with a right hook!" Sunny yelled, throwing a fist into the air.
"Her footwork is highly efficient," Merry noted, her eyes tracking the fighters in the ring. She crunched on a pretzel. "She is conserving stamina by letting the larger opponents tire themselves out. Smart."
Down in the ring, a young woman with a long pink braid and a golden gladiator helmet dodged a massive battleaxe. She wore a chainmail bikini and carried a simple sword and shield. She moved like water, sidestepping the brute and tripping him, sending him tumbling out of the ring and into the surrounding water.
"Yeah! Pink lady wins!" Sunny cheered.
He was the only one.
The moment the pink-haired woman won her block, the entire Colosseum erupted into a chorus of aggressive boos. People threw trash, empty cups, and half-eaten food down into the arena.
"Boo! Get out of the ring!" a man in the row behind them screamed.
"We want blood, you coward!" a woman next to him yelled.
Sunny blinked, lowering his hand. He looked at Merry, who tilted her head in confusion. Robin crossed her legs, resting her chin on her hand. She turned to the angry man sitting to her right.
"Excuse me," Robin said, her voice polite but cutting clearly through the noise. "Why is everyone booing that girl? She won fairly."
The man stopped yelling. He looked at Robin, then scoffed. "You must be a tourist, lady. That girl is Rebecca. She is the granddaughter of King Riku, the former ruler of Dressrosa. He was a tyrant! He went mad ten years ago and burned the city down. He killed his own people."
"I see," Robin murmured.
"If it wasn't for Lord Doflamingo stepping in, we would all be dead," the man continued, crossing his arms. "Doflamingo is our savior. He is the hero of Dressrosa. That girl carries the tyrant's blood. We hate her."
Robin stared straight ahead at the arena. She took a slow sip of her drink. She wanted to laugh. It was a cynical urge, but she held it back. Doflamingo and savior did not belong in the same sentence. She had read the underworld reports. She knew exactly what Doflamingo was. If the citizens here believed a pirate Warlord was their hero, the entire history of this country was a fabricated lie.
"Auntie Robin?" Sunny asked quietly. "Why are they mean?"
"Because people believe what they are told, Sunny," Robin said gently, patting his straw hat. "Just keep watching the fights."
High above the stands, in the luxurious VIP monitoring room, Diamante sat with his boots propped up on a table. The elite officer of the Donquixote Family wore a red cape and face paint, looking every bit the flamboyant rockstar he believed himself to be.
He watched the monitors showing the different camera feeds of the arena.
The heavy wooden door to his room burst open. A subordinate ran in, out of breath and sweating through his suit. "Lord Diamante! We have a situation!"
"Speak," Diamante said lazily, picking his teeth with a knife.
"The Straw Hat Pirates have infiltrated the Colosseum! Nico Robin is sitting in Sector C with two children!"
Diamante stopped picking his teeth. He dropped his legs from the table. His eyes narrowed, staring at the wall of monitors. He pressed a button on the console, switching feed after feed until he saw it.
There she was. The Demon Child. Sitting comfortably, eating popcorn, acting like a normal tourist.
"She has some nerve," Diamante sneered. "Walking right into my domain. Doflamingo warned us they may come to the island. Close the gates."
The subordinate blinked. "Sir?"
"Close all the gates of the Colosseum!" Diamante shouted, slamming his fist on the table. "Lock the exits! Nobody steps out of this building until I give the order. Mobilize the guards. I will handle Nico Robin myself."
"Yes, sir!" the guard saluted, running out of the room.
Diamante grabbed his sword. He adjusted his cape. He walked out of the VIP room, making his way down the stone corridors toward the arena floor. This was his stage. He would make a public spectacle of the Demon Child.
Down in the pit, the announcer was busy hyping up the next round. "And now, for the winner of Block D—"
BZZZZT.
The loudspeakers squealed with feedback. The announcer jumped back as Diamante stepped out of the gladiator tunnel. He grabbed a microphone from the staff. He walked to the exact center of the arena.
The crowd went wild. They cheered for the Colosseum Hero.
"Listen to me, Dressrosa!" Diamante's voice boomed through the speakers. "We have a rat in our midst! We have a vile pirate who thinks she can—"
Diamante stopped talking.
A massive, invisible shockwave rippled through the Colosseum. It carried no wind. It made no sound. It was purely conceptual. It was the exact moment, deep underground, that Ben had knocked out Sugar.
Down in the arena, a toy bear holding a spear suddenly dropped its weapon. It fell to its knees. The cotton tore. The seams glowed with blinding light. In less than a second, the toy bear expanded, morphing rapidly into a hulking, scarred gladiator.
Up in the stands, a toy monkey sitting on a father's shoulders began to glow. Wood snapped. Metal gears popped. The monkey stretched, turning into a crying eight-year-old boy.
It happened everywhere. Instantly. Hundreds of toys across the Colosseum shifted back into their true, human forms.
For ten seconds, the stadium was dead silent. The cheers died in the throats of the audience. People stared at the strangers suddenly sitting beside them.
Then, the memories hit.
The dam broke. The curse of the Hobby-Hobby fruit dissolved. Ten years of stolen memories rushed back into the minds of every citizen in Dressrosa simultaneously.
The man sitting next to Robin dropped his beer. He looked at the woman sitting three rows down, who had just transformed from a tin soldier back into a human. Tears erupted from his eyes. "Maria? Maria! My wife! Where have you been?!"
The father who had been carrying the toy monkey grabbed the eight-year-old boy. He sobbed, burying his face in the child's neck. "My son! I forgot my own son!"
Absolute chaos gripped the stadium. People screamed. They cried. They hugged. Families reunited in the aisles, weeping openly as the horrific realization of what Doflamingo had done to them sank in.
Down in the arena, Rebecca dropped her sword. She fell to her knees in the dirt. She clutched her head, screaming as ten years of suppressed memories flooded her brain. The one-legged Toy Soldier who had raised her, protected her, and trained her... he was not a toy.
"Father," Rebecca cried, her tears hitting the dirt. "My father... where is my father?!"
In the stands, Robin watched the pandemonium unfold. She didn't look surprised. She looked at the crying families, then smiled warmly.
"Ben did it," Robin said simply.
"Papa did it!" Sunny cheered, clapping his hands.
"He neutralized the target," Merry nodded, running a quick scan of the crowd.
Down in the pit, Diamante looked around in utter shock. His microphone hung limply in his hand. The toys were humans. The secret was out. The family's entire ten-year empire was unraveling in a matter of seconds.
He looked up at the stands. He locked eyes with Nico Robin.
She was smiling.
Rage, hot and blinding, exploded in Diamante's chest. He pointed his sword directly at her section. "YOU! Straw Hats! You did this!"
The crowd's crying paused. They looked down at the arena.
"Silence!" Diamante roared into the microphone, his voice echoing off the stone. "Everyone shut up! Guards! Aim your weapons at the stands!"
Dozens of Donquixote Family guards ran out from the tunnels, lining the perimeter of the arena floor. They raised flintlocks and rifles, aiming them directly at the terrified, weeping citizens.
"If anyone makes another sound, you die!" Diamante screamed. He glared up at Robin. "You think this is a game? You think you can ruin the Young Master's plan and walk away? I will slaughter this entire crowd, and then I will kill you and those brats!"
The crowd gasped. The man next to Robin pulled his newly returned wife behind him, shaking in fear.
Robin sighed. She set her popcorn box down on the seat next to her. She didn't stand up. She didn't look intimidated. She just looked slightly annoyed that her date with the kids was interrupted.
"Kill them all!" Diamante ordered his men.
The guards placed their fingers on their triggers.
Robin crossed her arms in an 'X' over her chest.
"Cien Fleur: Clutch," Robin said calmly.
On the shoulders of all sixty armed guards ringing the arena floor, a pair of slender, elegant hands sprouted like blooming flowers. Before the guards could even register the extra weight, the hands grabbed their heads and twisted violently.
CRACK.
A synchronized chorus of snapping bone echoed through the Colosseum. All sixty guards went completely limp, their guns clattering to the floor as they collapsed into the dirt, instantly neutralized.
The crowd swallowed hard, taking a collective step backward from the woman in the white dress.
Diamante froze. He looked at his fallen men. "Devil Fruit powers... Fine! I will slice you to pieces myself!"
He swung his cape, preparing to use his Ripple-Ripple fruit to flatten his sword and launch a ranged attack.
"Mil Fleur: Rankyaku," Robin said.
All around Diamante, in a massive thirty-foot circle, slender human legs sprouted directly out of the arena dirt. There were dozens of them. Suddenly, in perfect unison, the sprouted legs kicked the air with blinding speed.
SWISH! SWISH! SWISH!
Dozens of compressed, crescent-shaped air blades shot from the sprouted legs, converging directly on Diamante.
Diamante's eyes bulged. He flattened his body like a flag, letting the first few air blades whistle past him, slicing deep gouges into the stone walls behind him. He danced and twisted, trying to dodge the barrage.
"She knows Navy techniques?!" Diamante yelled, sweating profusely.
"Keep dancing," Robin smiled. "Shigan."
From the dirt directly beneath Diamante's feet, four arms sprouted. They reached up and grabbed his ankles, locking him in place. Before he could flatten himself to escape, fifty more arms sprouted in the air surrounding him in a dome shape.
The hands curled their fingers, leaving only the index fingers extended. They thrust forward with the speed of fired bullets.
THWACK! THWACK! THWACK!
The Finger Pistol technique hammered into Diamante from every conceivable angle. The sheer force of the Shigan barrage punched physical holes through his cape and armor, bruising his ribs, cracking his sternum, and drawing blood.
Diamante screamed in pain, coughing up blood as the relentless barrage battered his body. He couldn't move. He couldn't dodge. He was trapped in a blender of martial arts and Devil Fruit mastery.
"And now, for the finale," Robin said softly.
High above the arena, directly over Diamante's head, the air shimmered with pink petals. A massive, giant-sized leg, as thick as a redwood tree trunk, materialized out of thin air.
"Gigantesco Mano," Robin murmured.
The giant leg dropped. But right before it made contact, the pale skin of the giant foot turned completely pitch-black, shining with a metallic luster.
Robin had coated the giant limb in pure Armament Haki.
Diamante looked up. The shadow of the massive, Haki-coated foot eclipsed the sun. He didn't even have time to scream.
BOOOOOOM.
The impact shook the entire Colosseum. The stone foundations cracked. A massive cloud of dust exploded outward, washing over the front rows of the audience. The shockwave rattled the teeth of everyone in the stands.
Slowly, the dust cleared.
The giant leg dissolved into pink petals, drifting away on the wind.
In the center of the arena floor was a crater ten feet deep. At the bottom of the crater lay Diamante. His cape was shredded. His face paint was ruined. His eyes were rolled completely back in his head, and he was out cold, twitching slightly in the dirt.
Total silence returned to the Colosseum.
Up in Sector C, Nico Robin uncrossed her arms. She picked her popcorn box back up, popped a kernel into her mouth, and took a sip of her drink. She had just annihilated a Donquixote Elite Officer, a man with a 99 million berry bounty, without ever leaving her seat.
Sunny beamed. "Wow! Auntie Robin is so strong!"
"Her combat efficiency rating is off the charts," Merry agreed, taking notes on a small holographic pad generated from her wrist.
The crowd stared at Robin in absolute, terrified awe. The man sitting next to her gulped loudly.
Down in the pit, Rebecca stared at the crater. She looked up at the stands, finding the woman in the white dress. Tears still streamed down Rebecca's face, but her expression shifted to overwhelming gratitude. She had just given her people their lives back.
But across the arena floor, leaning against the stone wall of Block B, another fighter was watching.
He had wild green hair, a ring through his nose, and a spiked jacket. Bartolomeo the Cannibal stared at the crater. Then he stared up at Nico Robin.
His jaw dropped. He fell to his knees. Tears shot out of his eyes like geysers. He gripped his heart, his face turning bright red as he let out a choked, hysterical sob.
"LUFFY-SENPAI'S CREW IS SO COOL!" Bartolomeo screamed, his voice echoing through the silent stadium. "NICO ROBIN-SENPAI! PLEASE STEP ON ME NEXT!"