The Same Bet

In front of a certain plateau in the royal palace, a sign announces that Dressrosa's final decisive battle is where everyone's expectations collide head-on. Koala calls through a Den Den Mushi, "Hello, can you hear me? Sabo-kun!!" and a shadowed voice answers, "I hear ya." Hack stands nearby, furious, demanding, "Are you planning to drag the Revolutionary Army into a war?! My little brother's in trouble, all that other shit doesn't concern me!!!" The view shifts to the battered palace ground where Luffy and Law face Doflamingo and Trebol amid broken stone and drifting dust. A voice snaps, "You're supposed to be maintaining your position!! You can't just up and go brawling with a marine admiral just because you feel like it!!" In the lower scene, Doflamingo's side rejects the idea that the Marines can be heroes in Dressrosa: "It so does!!!" and "OWW!!!" ring out as the argument continues, "We are all birds of a feather. Even the Marines in this country... can't become heroes... It's absurd...!!"

The conversation about Sabo turns into a grim gamble. Someone asks, "What if someone finds out that's what you really think?" and the answer comes back, "Well, I could tell them I've been... compromised..." A response says, "That's quite the gamble..." followed by a small "Hehe..." and another voice bitterly muttering, "Damnit!! The ones that everyone gets pissed at for your selfishness... are me and Hack!!" The scene returns to the former "King's Plateau," where frightened citizens stare across the vast platform and cry, "Whaaat?! Didn't you come here for our heads?!" and, "If we did that... we'd all lose!!!" Below, the crowd begins to understand the deception: by manipulating King Riku for just one night, Doflamingo turned the entire populace against him and kept that grudge burning for ten years. People repeat, "Praise the 'pirate king'..." and realize, "After realizing the truth... all we really want is to be saved from his ludicrous game!!!" Others are still lost and afraid, asking, "What's happened to this country...?" and "We don't even know what we're doing anymore!!!"

On the former King's Plateau, a huge mass of citizens and fighters turns toward King Riku. People shout, "SAVE US!!!" and "KING RIKU...!!" while another panicked voice asks, "What should we dooo...!?" Riku's scarred face is silent at first, and the crowd offers itself to his command: "If you tell us to fight... we'll pick up weapons and fight!!!" On the lower right, Cavendish suggests, "How about we try waiting just a bit longer?" and another fighter stammers, "...Eh? Wait...?" Kyros admits that at some point he too began to believe in Luffy-kun and his friends' victory, adding, "If you're choosing death... then you wouldn't miss out on anything by waiting a little while...!!" Fujitora stands with his sword and says, "I will not allow Dressrosa, once a symbol of peace, to go to war..." as people recognize him: "Ah! Marine Admiral Fujitora?!!" A helmeted man declares, "I'm going all-in on 'Straw Hat'..." Rebecca cries, "My lord, King Riku...!! I, too..." Finally Riku, his face heavy with resolve, answers, "Am making the same 'bet' as you..."

The battlefield locations are shown in sequence: "A CERTAIN ROYAL PALACE PLATEAU," "THE FOURTH LEVEL," and "ROYAL PALACE TOP FLOOR." Wind, rubble, and ominous motion marks carry the tension upward through Dressrosa's tiered palace. On the top floor itself, Luffy stands breathing hard with Law slung over his shoulder, both of them visibly battered after the earlier exchange. Across the broken stone floor, Doflamingo crouches with his feather coat and sunglasses, while Trebol's sticky, dripping body sags nearby, his long face gaping from the goo. Another wounded man stands off to the side, separated from the main confrontation. No one speaks for a long beat; the page holds on the silence, the huge black effect marks, and the fighters' exhausted "HAAH...!!" breaths. The arrangement makes the situation clear: Luffy is still moving, Law is injured but present, and Doflamingo and Trebol remain between them and any clean victory.

Luffy glares and shouts at Doflamingo, "How'd you like that one, you bastard!!!" Doflamingo spits back, "Peh!!" while Luffy warns, "Look!! We've yet to deal anything but superficial wounds!!" and another voice adds, "That plan just now isn't going to work a second time!!! Law~" Trebol, wobbling and splashing in his sticky body, reacts with "Huh?" and "Whaa?!" as Doflamingo explains the deeper danger: "I know everything about your ability!!! Because we originally wanted the 'Ope Ope no Mi'... and its power!!!" The page cuts to Law's severed arm and a hard explanation of the technique: "'Radio Knife' creates a different kind of incision than a normal amputation...!! In just a few minutes!! Regardless of any kind of measure or 'ability' you have at your disposal... you will be unable to reattach your body!!" The impact lands on Trebol, who panics, "Ehhh~!? Crap, I'm in trouble!!! My nooose is ruuunnning~!!!!"

Law seizes the opening and calls, "Injection," drawing his sword into a thrusting stance while Luffy rushes in from the other side. Trebol, still leaking and distorted, panics at Luffy: "Stooop!!! Have you forgotten how I used to take care of you?!" Luffy answers with a goofy but violent counter, "Eat this!! 'Hanamizu Shinken Shiraha-dori!!'" The attack is annotated by the translator as a snot-themed play on sword-catching, with the visible note, "T/N: Snot real sword blade grab." Law then drives the technique forward: "'Shot'!!!" The blade pierces through Trebol's sticky mass with a sharp "SUPAAN!" and Trebol screams, "UGYAAAH...!!! STAY BAAACK!!" In the lower panels, Law and Luffy press their advantage through a storm of speed lines and heavy Japanese sound effects. Law's eye narrows with focus, Luffy's face hardens, and Trebol's dripping body reels backward under the coordinated assault.

Law follows through with another named move, shouting "Full Bright" as his attack tears through Trebol's body. A translator's note across the page explains the wordplay: "TL: One of Oda's play on words. The kanji are pronounced 'Furu Bukuraito,' so the attack's name is 'Full Bright' or 'Full Blight' but it translates to 'Falling Villainous Threads.'" Trebol laughs through the damage with "Peh heh heh!!!" while Doflamingo calls out, "Trebol!!!" The cut does not behave like a normal wound: Trebol's sticky body peels, drips, and opens around the strike, his face stretching into a grotesque grin even as black droplets spray. The lower panel holds on Law kneeling with his sword planted and blood or dark fluid around him, reacting with "!!?" and "UGH!!!" while Trebol's huge, gooey face sprawls in the foreground. The page leaves the attack feeling successful but unsettling, because Trebol's body still looks alive and elastic despite being split.

Luffy sees Law's severed arm lying apart from him and yells, "Traffy!!!" The arm is shown alone, marked by a sharp sound effect, before the page explodes back into motion. Doflamingo rushes in with his feathered coat flaring and smashes Luffy with a heavy kick or string-driven strike, the impact bursting across Luffy's body as he cries "!!?" The blow sends Luffy flying through dense speed lines and debris. At the bottom, Doflamingo's hand reaches out with a curling "KYUUU" effect, and the command-like word "GRAB" appears as invisible strings seize Luffy. Luffy's body twists forward with his arms pulled and his face down, caught in the control. On the left edge, a smaller reaction panel shows the sudden restraint and another startled "!!?" The action makes Doflamingo's control over the battlefield visible again: even while Law's attack has harmed Trebol, Luffy cannot simply charge freely, and Law's separated arm remains an urgent problem.

Doflamingo forces the fight into a cruel choice. Bellamy, battered and still moving under Doflamingo's control, is thrown into Luffy's path while a voice shouts, "Run... Straw-Hat!!!" and "Please, dodge this...!!!" Luffy's eyes widen in horror and he starts to say, "Bella..." Law, watching from the side, calls out, "'Mugi-waraya'!!!" The manipulated Bellamy crashes into Luffy with a brutal impact, and Luffy is knocked back shouting, "GWAH!!!" More speed lines and impact marks swallow the page as Luffy is hit while unable to treat Bellamy simply as an enemy. Below, Doflamingo keeps speaking to Law, asking, "...! Do you remember the one thing that I hate the most, Law...!!" Trebol's grinning face appears beside the statement, and the answer follows: "It's being looked down upon...!!!" The page binds the physical violence to Doflamingo's pride, showing him punish both Luffy's compassion and Law's defiance through a hostage-like manipulation.

Doflamingo towers over the battered Law and Luffy, explaining the core of his rage. He calls them "a bunch of lowly scum like you" and says, "To be able to rise up and think for even an instant that you had a chance of winning is a disgrace I cannot bear!!!" He then declares, "For I... I am of the world's greatest and most noble bloodlines...!! I am a Tenryuubito!!!!" Law reacts with a shocked "!!?" while Luffy stares in disbelief, "Ehh!?" Doflamingo continues that greatness was not only his birthright, because he also acquired one of the rarest abilities in the world. His speech then turns into a flashback-like memory: "But...!! That prestige and stature that rightfully belonged to me... One day, my father abandoned all of it... and our family of four was brought down into this garbage dump of a world!!" The young Doflamingo grins viciously in the memory while cursing his father for wanting to "live like real humans." A small chapter strip at the bottom reads "ONE PIECE ...CH. 760 END," though the file sequence continues.

Doflamingo's childhood memory becomes explicit. As a young boy in sunglasses, he asks his father, "Father, where are the slaves? Let's go buy some!" In another panel he complains, "Father, a lowly commoner talked back to me! A Tenryuubito! I want you to lend me your gun." A shadowed scene by a sickbed follows: "Father... it's because we live in such a filthy place like this... that mother got sick and died." Present Doflamingo narrates the aftermath with cold fury: "Because of my stupid father, by the time I was 8 years old I had seen the heaven of this world and the hell of this world... and so I killed him... and I took his head back to Mariejois with me...!" He says the Tenryuubito labeled his family "a family of traitors" and refused to accept him back, and "that was when I swore" to destroy every last part of the world they control. His huge grinning face fills the bottom as he tells Law that a grown man like him has no time for "kiddy games," and that the life they have all led is nothing compared to what he has gone through. A side note reads, "His shocking past is revealed!!"

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