"Take him away. Lock him inside one of the books afterward!"
Perospero looked down at the unconscious Kid and gave the order without the slightest hesitation.
Just like that, Eustass Kid had lost.
There had never really been much suspense to begin with.
Uta's current fighting style was absurdly difficult to deal with when almost nobody knew the real danger of her ability: one touch from that sword was enough to knock a person unconscious.
Worse still, falling unconscious wasn't necessarily the end of it.
Once someone had been dragged into the Uta World, their body could apparently be controlled and turned against their own allies, making them fight like some kind of possessed puppet.
"Wait a minute…"
Doflamingo suddenly stiffened as a bead of cold sweat slid down his forehead.
"This ability… why the hell does it feel so familiar?"
He narrowed his eyes at Uta as she walked away from the arena, suspicion rapidly gathering in his mind.
Back during the Summit War, Doflamingo had somehow ended up being dragged into the battle, somehow participated in all sorts of nonsense, and somehow emerged afterward with half the blame dumped on his head—despite having absolutely no memory of doing any of it.
He had even wondered whether someone had controlled him during that period.
Then again, maybe he really had been sleepwalking.
After all, considering how badly injured he had been at the time, what kind of person would manipulate him, use him for their own purposes, and then kindly heal his wounds afterward?
That would be far too considerate.
It made no sense.
Besides, he had never met this so-called Ado before, so why would the brat have any reason to control him?
Doflamingo eventually dismissed the thought.
Right now, he had something much more important to worry about—the man who had been brought into Totto Land.
His eyes drifted toward another part of the venue, where Kid was being carried toward the backstage area by chess soldiers while his crew shouted furiously and tried to rush forward to save their captain.
A slow grin spread across Doflamingo's face.
Wasn't that a perfectly good source of chaos just waiting to be used?
Without attracting anyone's attention, he flicked one finger.
An almost invisible string shot across the distance and quietly wrapped itself around Kid's ankle.
"Fuffuffuffuffu…"
"I'll be counting on you tonight."
…
The contestants' waiting area had descended into complete disorder.
The people Uta had defeated had already been released from her ability. Some were receiving treatment, while others were still wandering around in confusion, repeatedly asking what had happened to them.
Naturally, almost none of them were satisfied with the result.
They hadn't even understood how they lost before collapsing.
How were they supposed to accept that?
Before long, a large group of defeated contestants had gathered together, loudly demanding a rematch. The chess soldiers quickly blocked their path, and several members of the Charlotte family followed up by scolding them without mercy.
A loss was a loss.
Refusing to admit defeat only made them look pathetic.
If that was all the composure they possessed, then what made them think they deserved En-chan in the first place?
The criticism struck home so thoroughly that the entire group eventually fell silent in shame, unable to even raise their heads.
Uta, meanwhile, was nowhere to be seen.
She had already gone to find Cain.
At that moment, the two of them were curled together on a sofa in a private room, watching the live broadcasts through a Den Den Mushi.
Uta's cheeks were still slightly red as she looked at Cain with a serious expression.
"My En-chan, no matter what happens from here on, you're not allowed to interfere again. This is my battlefield."
She tightened her arms around him.
"Understand?"
"I understand…"
Cain pressed one hand against his chest and grimaced.
"But could you loosen your grip a little? This position is really uncomfortable."
He was still wearing the damaged dress from earlier, and the torn fabric offered only limited protection against Uta's increasingly shameless hands.
Naturally, Uta saw absolutely no reason to waste such a perfect opportunity to help En-chan "change clothes."
She immediately leaned in and pressed Cain back against the sofa.
Cain might have been at a disadvantage in their current forms, but that was mostly because he still wasn't used to the reversal. Personality-wise, he had never been remotely passive.
The moment Uta's hands wandered too far, Cain caught her wrists and twisted free. In the confusion, he instinctively launched a counterattack of his own, reaching downward—
and then remembered what sex both of them currently were.
His hand froze.
Uta froze.
Both of their faces turned scarlet at exactly the same time.
What followed was several seconds of frantic scrambling, until the two of them lost their balance and tumbled off the sofa together.
The pressure against Cain's chest dislodged something.
A small square box popped free and fell onto the floor.
Uta blinked.
"Cain, what's that?"
She reached toward it, but Cain moved even faster. He snatched the box away, shoved it back into the front of his dress, and wrapped both arms protectively across his chest.
"Nothing! It's nothing!"
Uta narrowed her eyes.
"Really?"
Before she could investigate further, a voice suddenly came from the nearby Den Den Mushi.
"Wow! What a surprise! It looks like contestant Ann has been surrounded the moment the battle started!"
That immediately pulled both Cain and Uta's attention back toward the broadcast.
Whole Cake Island's battlefield had started almost immediately because nobody needed to travel anywhere, while the matches on the outer islands naturally lagged behind.
And the "Ann" currently being discussed—
was Ace.
Calling it a situation where he had been surrounded was technically accurate, but somewhat misleading.
In reality, Ace had challenged every single one of the several hundred contestants on his island at the same time.
"Damn it! There are this many people in just one group?! Every single one of you came here trying to get your hands on En-chan?!"
Ace's anger, already fueled by the completely fabricated memories inside his head, had long since reached the breaking point.
He still hadn't managed to find that infuriating bearded old man who had ignored him after waving in his direction, so all the rage he had nowhere else to put was now being dumped onto the contestants surrounding him.
A violent wave of Conqueror's Haki erupted across the battlefield.
The next instant, Ace drew the sword at his waist.
Flames surged along the blade the moment it left its sheath, wrapping the weapon in roaring fire as Ace charged forward and unleashed a series of brutal slashes through the crowd.
Cain stared at the broadcast for several seconds before slowly covering his forehead.
"That's Ace, right?"
He sighed.
"That's definitely Ace."
"That idiot seriously thinks sticking on a mustache counts as a disguise?"
Cain's gaze lingered on the ridiculous white crescent beneath Ace's nose.
"If he dyed that thing black, he'd practically look like Roger with that stupid nose-hair mustache. Was disguising himself like that really necessary?"
He groaned.
"At this point, he might as well wear a sign saying, 'Yes, I'm Roger's son.'"
…
Once Ace's overwhelmingly one-sided battle became obvious, Cain and Uta started switching through the other live feeds to see how the remaining participants were doing.
Before long, another contestant caught Cain's attention.
Lucy.
Or rather—
Sabo.
Cain could just barely recognize him through the disguise, but he had to admit that Sabo had done a vastly better job than Ace.
If not for the familiar metal pipe and the lightning wrapped around his body, even Cain might have been fooled.
Sabo's situation wasn't particularly troublesome either.
Because he still needed to help Koala investigate what was happening in Totto Land, he couldn't afford to expose his real identity. At the same time, fighting several hundred contestants one by one would take far too long, and Sabo needed to return to Whole Cake Island as quickly as possible to continue the investigation.
So the battle had to end fast.
The problem was that the Rumble-Rumble Fruit was far too conspicuous.
The moment he unleashed its full power, thunder would explode across the entire island, which was practically the same as hanging a giant glowing sign above his head that said:
I AM THE REVOLUTIONARY ARMY'S NUMBER TWO.
Large-scale lightning attacks were completely out of the question.
Then Sabo realized something obvious.
If all he needed was to paralyze people and knock them unconscious, he didn't need much electricity at all.
He drew the lightning inward, compressing it tightly around his body until the massive electrical output had been reduced to a thin layer of restless yellow current clinging to his skin.
"Plasma Mode: Low Power."
Having Lilith around the Revolutionary Army had dramatically changed the way Sabo developed the Rumble-Rumble Fruit.
He had long since moved beyond the crude approach of simply throwing larger and larger lightning bolts at people. His control had become precise to an almost ridiculous degree.
Powerful opponents required one style of fighting.
Weak opponents required another.
And in a situation where he needed to hide his identity and keep collateral damage to a minimum, Plasma Mode was ideal.
The principle itself was simple.
Sabo retained the extreme speed provided by lightning, but gave up transforming his body into electricity. Instead, he fought entirely with his physical body, coating his fists and legs in tightly controlled electrical energy so that every strike carried both intense heat and a paralyzing shock.
To an outside observer, he would simply look like an exceptionally fast martial artist using some unusual electrical technique.
Nobody had any reason to immediately assume he was a Logia user.
After all, this was the New World.
There were plenty of people who could produce lightning in one way or another.
Sabo lowered his center of gravity and settled into a fighting stance.
Then he moved.
Countless streaks of yellow light seemed to explode into existence around the battlefield, though they were nothing more than the scorching afterimages left across everyone's vision as Sabo flashed past at terrifying speed.
"Sorry, but I need you to take a short nap."
His voice hadn't even finished traveling through the air before the first contestant collapsed.
Then another fell.
And another.
Some were knocked unconscious by clean physical strikes, while others simply stiffened and dropped when the electrical current running through Sabo's fists and feet overwhelmed their muscles.
Within moments, only a handful of contestants were still standing.
They were enormous men, each four or five meters tall, who had managed to endure the initial sweep through sheer physical toughness.
Sabo glanced toward them.
The lightning around his leg suddenly brightened.
He launched himself into the air, twisted smoothly at the waist, and drove a perfectly clean side kick into the nearest giant.
BOOM!
BZZZT!
The huge man crashed to the ground.
The others followed soon after.
Sabo landed lightly, straightened his clothes, and allowed the yellow current around his body to fade away.
"Done."