Chapter 114: Infiltrating the Bullfighting Arena
"Alright! Let's get back to this SUPER battle plan!"
Franky's iron arms clanged together in a shower of sparks, his star-shaped nipples flashing with mechanical enthusiasm. The abrupt subject change was clearly intentional—a mercy to Usopp, whose face had taken on the color of spoiled milk during the previous discussion of optimal dismemberment techniques.
"But first," Franky continued, his head reconfiguring with a series of clicking gears into the shape of a cannon barrel, "I've discovered a serious problem."
"What kind of serious problem?" The toy soldier's tin hand tightened on his sword hilt.
Franky led the group out of the Riku Royal Army's underground headquarters, through a winding corridor, and into a side passage that branched toward their objective. He stopped at its entrance and gestured with one massive hand.
The passage was approximately half a meter wide.
Silence.
"With these dimensions," Franky said, his mechanical voice flat, "Usolando, Robinlando, and Itachilando should be able to crawl through. Barely."
Leo smacked his tiny forehead. "OH! I completely forgot about that! This tunnel was built for the Tontatta—it's sized for OUR bodies, not full-sized humans!"
"Which brings us to the serious problem." Franky gestured at his own massive frame—the steel shoulders, the armored torso, the arms that could punch through battleship hulls. "THIS guy isn't fitting through THAT hole. No matter how SUPER I am, I can't compress my chassis that far."
Usopp clapped him on the back with the breezy confidence of someone who had just been reminded that other people had problems too. "That's easy! Frankilando's a robot, right? Just take off your arms and legs and we'll carry you through in pieces!"
"Yes," Robin mused, tapping her chin with scholarly consideration. "If you can be dismantled into transportable components, Leo and the others could convey you through the passage section by section."
Franky recoiled as if they'd suggested setting him on fire. "Oh, what the—how could you two come up with such a SUPER terrible idea?! I'm not a jigsaw puzzle! I'm a MAN! A man with a man's pride! You can't just—" His voice cracked. "—take me APART!"
The toy soldier stepped forward, his tin boots clicking against the stone floor. "There is another way. You can enter through the Toy House's trading port."
"Toy House? Is that where the toys rest at night?"
"That's what it's called." The toy soldier's painted mouth twisted into something bitter. "But it's a cruel joke. The 'Toy House' doesn't have a single bed inside."
He told them the truth.
Every toy in Dressrosa—every transformed human being Sugar had created—operated under a contract enforced by her Devil Fruit power. By day, they wandered the streets, playing the roles of beloved mascots and helpful servants. But when night fell, the contract activated. Every toy in the kingdom was drawn inevitably to the Toy House.
Not to rest.
To work.
The Toy House sat directly above Doflamingo's underground trading port—the black market hub where weapons, slaves, and SMILE fruits changed hands beneath the notice of the World Government. The toys, along with the enslaved Tontatta, were the port's labor force. Night after night, they hauled cargo, operated machinery, and maintained the infrastructure of a criminal empire while the citizens who had once loved them slept peacefully above.
"So the toys wander around all day, smile for the children, play their parts... and then spend every night in forced labor?"
"Yes." The toy soldier's voice was hollow. "And so do the little ones who were taken from their homes."
Franky's eyes—even the mechanical one—brimmed with tears. "THAT'S how it is?! Those bastards... those absolute BASTARDS!"
His fist slammed into his palm with a clang of steel on steel.
"That settles it! I'm going in through the front! A direct assault on the trading port! I'll make so much noise and chaos that those Donquixote jerks won't know which way is up!"
He turned to Usopp and the Tontatta squad.
"While I'm raising hell at the front entrance, you guys sneak in through the secret passage. The guards will be too busy dealing with me to notice a bunch of tiny warriors infiltrating their base!"
"Such a plan is entirely feasible." Itachi nodded, his analytical mind already slotting the pieces together. "Franky's frontal assault creates a diversion. The Tontatta infiltrate during the confusion. Usopp and Robin neutralize Sugar before she can react."
"However." His Sharingan swept across the assembled faces. "I won't be participating in this phase."
Usopp's brief moment of confidence evaporated. "Brother Itachi isn't coming with us?!"
"No." Itachi's voice was calm—certain. "I trust Usopp and Robin to handle this."
Robin's lips curved in a small, knowing smile.
Usopp's legs began to tremble.
"I-I was thinking... with Brother Itachi here... the mission would go so smoothly..."
"Huh? Isn't it Usolando and Robinlando who are leading us?" Lan Lan tilted her head, her enormous eyes blinking with confusion. She and Kaka had been officially inducted into the Dongdong Tower Battle Squad by Leo—though only as a reserve unit, much to their vocal disappointment.
Itachi knelt down to meet the tiny warriors at eye level.
"Law is in danger right now. His life hangs in the balance." His crimson eyes hardened with quiet resolve. "I'm going to rescue him."
"Law? But that's where Doflamingo is! And the Admiral!"
"Then I'll kill them."
The words fell from his lips without bravado, without heat. Simple. Factual. The same tone he might use to announce the weather.
Usopp's eyeballs and tongue shot out in a classic expression of cartoon terror. "SO SCARY, BROTHER ITACHI! YOU CAN'T JUST SAY THINGS LIKE THAT!"
"Alright then!" Franky wiped the tears from his eyes with a massive forearm, his emotional moment already converted into mechanical determination. "Itachi joins Luffy's team for the rescue mission! The rest of us handle the factory and Sugar! That's a SUPER division of labor!"
He was already running toward the exit the toy soldier had indicated, his heavy footsteps echoing through the underground chamber.
"By the way, Itachi." Robin paused at the corridor's entrance, looking back over her shoulder. "If you're heading to the palace, you should find Luffy and the others first. Coordinate your approach."
She smiled—the gentle, slightly dangerous smile of someone stating the obvious.
"After all, you don't know the way."
Usopp leaned in beside her, his voice dropping to a stage whisper. "You do realize that between the idiot captain and the world's worst directionally challenged swordsman, neither of them knows the way either..."
"Ah."
Itachi inhaled slowly through his nose.
The toy soldier stepped forward before the silence could become uncomfortable. "Don't worry about navigation. I have a detailed map of Dressrosa."
He produced a rolled parchment from somewhere within his tin chassis—a document worn soft at the creases, marked with the accumulated annotations of years. "I've wandered every street in this kingdom. Every alley. Every rooftop. Even the Donquixote Family's palace—I've mapped every floor, every corridor, every guard post."
He spread the map on a crate, his tin finger tracing routes with practiced precision.
"This is the colosseum. Here's the quickest path from the arena to the palace. These are the Marine patrol patterns. These alleys have roof access if you need height. This courtyard connects to the palace's eastern service entrance..."
Itachi studied the map for perhaps ten seconds.
"Thank you. I've got it."
He rolled the parchment and tucked it into his cloak.
The toy soldier blinked. "Are you sure? I can go over the patrol routes in more detail, the guard rotations are—"
"I've memorized it."
"...The entire thing?"
"Yes."
The toy soldier stared at Itachi for a long moment. Then, slowly, he nodded. "You really are something else."
Itachi reached for his equipment. The black cloak settled over his shoulders, its fabric worn soft by years of use in two different worlds. The cat-face mask—ceramic white with painted crimson markings—hung at his belt, ready to be deployed. The tools of an ANBU captain, repurposed for a pirate's war.
"Oh—wait." The toy soldier's voice caught. "There's... one more thing."
Itachi paused.
"If it's not too much trouble... if it won't compromise your mission..." The tin hands wrung together with a squeak of metal on metal. "There's a girl in the colosseum. A gladiator. I need someone to bring her out safely. I don't want her getting caught in the crossfire."
"You mean Rebecca?"
Robin's voice was gentle—gentler than Usopp had ever heard it.
The toy soldier's tin shoulders sagged with something that might have been relief or might have been grief. "Yes. Rebecca. She's... she's important. More important than anything. If something happened to her..."
"Photo."
The toy soldier looked up.
"Do you have a photo of her?"
"Yes! Yes, right here—" The tin hands fumbled through internal compartments, producing a worn photograph. The edges were creased, the colors faded from years of handling. A young woman with pink hair and determined eyes stared up from the image, a practice sword gripped in both hands.
Itachi studied the photograph briefly, then slipped it into his cloak beside the map.
"I'll find her."
The toy soldier's entire body sagged with relief. "Thank you. Thank you. I can't—I don't have the words—"
"There's no need."
Itachi adjusted his mask.
"I understand."
Half an Hour Later — Acacia, Coastal District
The cat-face mask emerged from the shadows of a chimney pot.
Itachi crouched on the rooftop opposite the Corrida Colosseum, his black cloak blending into the late afternoon shadows that stretched across Acacia's coastal district. Below him, the streets that should have bustled with merchants and tourists stood eerily quiet. The Navy had established a perimeter.
He counted them systematically. Two hundred and twelve Marines. Multiple squads of riflemen positioned at all major exits. Observation posts on the surrounding rooftops—amateurs, by shinobi standards, their sight lines overlapping in predictable patterns. A command tent near the main entrance, staffed by officers coordinating the encirclement.
And at the center of it all, a towering figure with a shark-toothed blade across his back.
Vice Admiral Bastille. The same officer who had led the encirclement at the colosseum entrance while Doflamingo tormented Law. His presence confirmed what Itachi had already deduced—Fujitora had gone to the palace with Doflamingo, leaving his subordinate in charge of the arena siege.
Good.
Itachi had already neutralized the observation posts. Seven officers who had been positioned on the surrounding rooftops now lay unconscious in carefully concealed locations—their breathing steady, their injuries minimal, their radio equipment quietly confiscated. They would wake in a few hours with headaches and no memory of what had struck them.
The remaining Marines below had no idea their overwatch had been eliminated.
Itachi moved.
A Marine turned to scan the alley behind his position—and Itachi flowed past him in the exact moment his gaze shifted elsewhere. A second guard pivoted toward a sound that wasn't there—the whisper of a pebble Itachi had thrown seconds earlier, its landing calculated to draw attention at precisely the right instant. A third guard blinked, and in the space between his eyelids closing and opening, a shadow crossed the twenty meters of open ground behind him.
The colosseum's outer wall loomed ahead.
Itachi pressed himself against the stone beside an iron-barred window. The cage was one of several that lined the arena's lower levels—gladiator holding cells, from the look of them. Through the bars, he could see the fighting pit beyond, its sand stained dark with old blood.
He tested the bars.
Seastone.
Of course.
The same material as Luffy's cage. Impervious to Devil Fruit powers. Resistant to conventional force. Whatever gladiators were held in these cells, Doflamingo had ensured they stayed held.
Voices approached from around the corner.
Itachi's hands moved through seals.
"Earth Release: Mud Flow."
The stone beneath his palm softened, its molecular structure loosening from solid rock to viscous slurry. A technique developed by the shinobi of Iwagakure for infiltrating fortresses—chakra channeled into the earth itself, temporarily altering its composition at the most fundamental level.
The wall dissolved into mud around him.
Itachi slipped through.
The stone resolidified behind him, leaving no trace of his passage.
The Corrida Colosseum — Interior
Silence.
The corridor Itachi emerged into was empty—a service passage, rarely used during tournaments, connecting the outer holding cells to the arena's maintenance infrastructure. Dust coated the floor. The sounds of combat echoed distantly through the walls, muffled by layers of ancient stone.
He oriented himself against the mental image of the toy soldier's map. The service corridor ran north-south. The gladiator holding areas were three levels up. The main arena entrance—and Luffy's likely position—would be...
There.
He moved.
The colosseum's interior was a maze of interconnected passages, but the map had been thorough. Itachi ascended through maintenance shafts and forgotten stairwells, bypassing occupied corridors and Marine patrols with the practiced ease of a decade's infiltration work. The cat-face mask made him a phantom—a glimpse of white and red in peripheral vision, gone before the eye could focus.
He reached the holding area where Luffy had been imprisoned.
The Seastone cage stood empty.
Gone.
Itachi's Sharingan swept the area. Signs of struggle—minimal. Signs of escape—none through the cage itself. The Seastone was intact. The bars were unbent. Whatever had freed Luffy hadn't broken the cage.
Footprints in the dust. Multiple sets, leading toward a side passage.
He had help.
Itachi followed the trail.
Acacia — Back Alleys, Simultaneously
"Are we clear?"
Zoro's voice was muffled by the giant goldfish costume that encased his entire body.
"Yes! The Marines are looking the other way!" Kin'emon—currently disguised as a child's wind-up toy, his long samurai face painted with mechanical joints that fooled absolutely no one at close range—peered around the corner. "Make a run for it, Luffy-dono!"
Luffy, who had been crammed into a doll costume roughly three sizes too small, waddled forward with all the stealth of a wounded duck.
"Shishishi! This disguise stuff is actually pretty fun!"
"Keep your voice down!" Zoro's goldfish costume wobbled dangerously. "We're supposed to be TOYS. Toys don't talk!"
"The disguise ability is working perfectly," Kin'emon insisted, despite all evidence to the contrary. "My Devil Fruit power creates clothing that perfectly matches the wearer's intent!"
"Then what exactly were you intending when you made us look like THIS?!"
The three of them—a rubber captain in a ragged doll costume, a swordsman in a goldfish suit, and a samurai whose idea of "toy" involved realistic mechanical joints on a fully human face—scrambled through the alley, putting distance between themselves and the colosseum.
They had escaped through a secret passage provided by Sabo. The Revolutionary Army's network in Dressrosa had clearly been established long before the Straw Hats arrived. The passage had led them out of the arena, past the Marine perimeter, and into the winding backstreets of Acacia.
Now they just needed to figure out where to go next.
"Alright." Zoro's goldfish fin pointed decisively toward a random street. "The palace is this way."
"That's a dead end," Kin'emon said.
"How do you know?!"
"Because there's a WALL there, Zoro-dono!"
"The wall could have a door!"
"IT DOESN'T!"
Luffy ignored their bickering entirely, his attention caught by a food stall at the end of the alley. "Hey, do you guys smell meat?"
"FOCUS, LUFFY!"
The Colosseum — Empty Holding Cell
Itachi stood at the mouth of the secret passage.
The entrance was well-hidden—a false wall that slid aside on counterweighted hinges, its mechanism clearly of recent installation. The Revolutionary Army's work. And leading away from it, still fresh in the dust, were three sets of footprints.
Two adult-sized. One smaller.
Luffy. Zoro. Kin'emon.
They escaped through here. Minutes ago.
He was about to follow when a sound reached his ears.
Not from the passage.
From the arena above.
A roar. A scream. The clash of steel on steel, magnified by the colosseum's acoustics until it resonated through the very stone.
And beneath it, a voice he recognized.
"Don't think this is over! I'll never stop fighting! Never!"
Itachi's hand moved to his cloak. The photograph. The girl with pink hair and determined eyes.
Rebecca.
He looked toward the secret passage. Toward the trail that would lead him to Luffy.
Then he looked toward the arena.
I promised.
Itachi Uchiha turned away from the passage and began to climb.
End of Chapter
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