The air in the plaza tasted of smoke and desperation. Nami's staff cracked against Buggy's chest, not with the force to wound, but with the fury of a lifetime's grief.
"You don't get it!" she shouted, her voice raw. "I steal from pirates. I lie to pirates. But I will *never* be one of you! Pirates took the most important person in my life. They left me with nothing but this hatred!"
Buggy skidded back, his painted smile never wavering. "Sentimentality! The heaviest chains of all, little thief!"
From the iron cage, a frantic, muffled chewing sound broke through the tension. Luffy, eyes wide with a primal urgency, was gnawing on the thick bars, his teeth screeching against the metal.
*Fssssssssssst…*
The sound was soft, deadly. Lami's eyes darted. A fuse, lit and burning with a hungry orange spark, snaked its way toward the stacked powder kegs beside the cage.
"Luffy!" she screamed.
"Mmf! M'workin' on it!" he grunted around a mouthful of iron, his jaw working furiously.
"Forget him! Get the girl!" Buggy barked, and his crew surged forward like a pack of wild dogs.
Nami's world narrowed to the arc of her staff, the grunts of men, the whistle of clubs through air. She was a dancer of desperation, parrying a cutlass here, cracking a kneecap there. Each breath was a prayer. *Just a little longer.*
*Clang. Clang. Clang.* Luffy's relentless chewing was a maddening metronome against the chaos.
Then, a new presence cut through the fray—a silence that was sharper than any blade.
He stood at the plaza's edge, three swords at his hip, his gaze a physical weight that settled over the battlefield. The fighting around Nami stuttered to a halt.
"Zoro!" Luffy yelled, spitting out a shard of metal.
Buggy's head swiveled, his grin stretching. "Well, well! The pirate hunter! Have you come for the great Buggy's head? Hoping my fame will polish your own dull reputation?"
Zoro didn't grace him with words. He moved. One moment he was twenty feet away, the next he was a green blur passing through Buggy's space. The air sang with the sound of drawn steel.
*Shick. Shick. Shick-shick-shick!*
Buggy the Clown came apart. Not in a spray of blood, but in clean, segmented pieces—torso, legs, arms, head—all tumbling to the cobblestones with a series of dull thuds.
Nami's breath caught. Luffy stopped chewing, stunned.
But from the Buggy Pirates came not cries of horror, but a rolling wave of laughter. Chuckles that built into howling guffaws.
"Why are they laughing?" Nami whispered, dread icing her veins.
Zoro wiped his blade, turning his back on the disassembled clown to stride toward Luffy's cage. "Let's get you out of this—"
The laughter peaked.
And a disembodied hand, gripping a dagger, shot from the pile of clown parts and plunged the knife deep into Zoro's side.
"Ghk!" Zoro's eyes blew wide. He staggered, grabbing at the wrist attached to the hand, but it wrenched the knife free and darted back, hovering in the air.
Buggy's floating head rose, then his torso, then his limbs, all reassembling mid-air behind the wounded swordsman. "Surprise!" he cackled. "The Bara Bara no Mi makes me *unstoppable*! I can split myself apart at will! Your swords are useless, pirate hunter!"
Nami's mind reeled. *Devil Fruit powers.*
"Zoro!" Luffy's voice was stripped of all its usual humor. He glared at the floating clown. "Hey! Big Nose! That was a dirty trick!"
"BIG NOSE?!" Buggy's face flushed crimson with rage. "You're dead! All of you!" His detached fist, still dripping with Zoro's blood, shot like a cannonball straight for Luffy's trapped face.
Time seemed to slow. Nami screamed.
*Chomp.*
Luffy caught the knife blade between his teeth, stopping it an inch from his eye. He glared over the steel, his expression terrifyingly calm. "I'm gonna kick your ass."
Buggy and his crew roared with fresh laughter. "From inside a cage? A comedian to the end!"
Luffy spat the knife and hand away. His eyes locked with Zoro's, who was clutching his bleeding side, pain etching his face. "Zoro," Luffy said, his voice low and clear. "Get out of the way."
Nami blinked. "What? What is he—?"
But Zoro understood. A grim, blood-streaked smile touched his lips. He gave a sharp nod.
As Zoro turned to move, Buggy snarled. "Oh no you don't! Bara Bara no Hou!" His segmented limbs flew apart again, a storm of fists and feet aiming to pummel the escaping swordsman.
Zoro didn't dodge toward safety. He lunged *toward* the danger—toward the loaded, unmanned cannon pointed at Luffy's cage. With a grunt of agony, he heaved its massive barrel around, aiming it point-blank at the heart of the Buggy Pirates.
"Nami!" Zoro roared. "The fuse!"
Instinct overrode terror. She snatched a fallen torch and touched it to the cannon's fresh fuse.
*FSSSSSSSS—*
**BOOM!**
The world dissolved into thunder and smoke. The cannonball tore through the plaza, scattering pirates like leaves in a hurricane.
As the acrid cloud began to clear, revealing Buggy's groaning crew, Zoro stumbled to the cage. Luffy's face was grim, determined. He'd stopped chewing. He simply looked at Zoro and then past him, at something over Zoro's shoulder.
"Hurry," Luffy said, his voice strangely flat.
Zoro grasped the cage door, ignoring the searing pain in his side, and pulled. The mangled bars, weakened by Luffy's teeth and the cannon's concussion, began to bend.
Nami rushed forward to help, her heart hammering against her ribs. It was over. They'd won.
A high, insane giggle cut through the settling dust.
From the smoke, Buggy's upper torso floated, his lower half still scrambling to reconnect across the plaza. In his hand was not a knife, but a single, round, black iron ball.
"A cannonball is impressive!" Buggy shrieked, his eyes manic. "But do you know what's better?"
He held the cannonball aloft. Then, with a flick of his wrist, he *split it* into a dozen perfectly segmented, smaller iron orbs.
"**A scatter shot!**"
The dozen mini-cannonballs hovered around him, each one aimed directly at the three of them—trapped at the cage, with nowhere to run.
Buggy's laugh was the only sound in the world. "Let's see you chew through *this*, rubber man!"
His fingers snapped.
And the deadly cloud of iron shot toward them.