The White City

Inside the North Blue Spider Miles waste processing plant warehouse, a full Donquixote Family dinner scene unfolds under the note, "The Donquixote family of yesterday meets under one roof!" Doflamingo sits at the center, labeled "DONQUIXOTE PIRATES CAPTAIN DONQUIXOTE DOFLAMINGO," while Trebol, Diamante, Pica, Corazon, Baby 5, Buffalo, and others crowd the long table. Trebol teases young Law, "Behehe! Hey heey, Law~ It's been a week? Feelin' homesick yet? Corazon's really done a number on you." Another voice says children and grownups alike split the first chance they get, and someone asks how long a powerless little shit like Law will last. Pica warns, "No matter what happens, you must remember the 'edict of blood'! An affront to an executive of the family is tantamount to an affront to the family itself!" Baby 5 laughs that she once laughed at Lord Pica and nearly died during the torture afterward. Law stands bruised and filthy, labeled "BOY FROM THE WHITE CITY TRAFALGAR LAW (AGE: 10)," and says, "I ain't afraid of him... I've seen hell itself." When the family panics over "Amber Lead Sickness," Law growls while others shout, "This kid... his skin's white-iiin!" "That's the Amber Lead Sickness! I have no desire to catch that!" and "Whaaaat!? It's contagious!? Gross! You, get out of here right now dasuyan!" Doflamingo stops them cold: "But remember this! Corazon is my precious, little brother!! I will personally bring death to anyone that so much as touches a hair on his head!"

The Donquixote Family members argue about Law's disease. Diamante snaps, "Giolla! Don't repeat rumor as fact. That pisses me off," while Giolla says, "Look, Buffalo's gone and believed you. Amber Lead Sickness is a type of poisoning. It cannot be transmitted to others." A gunshot-like "BANG" and a scream, "GYAAAAAAH!!" erupt nearby, but the conversation continues around Law. Someone warns, "But just in case, you better not get close to me dasuyan! I ain't about to catch something like that dasuyan!" Law, still bruised, says he crossed the border "hidden in the mountains of corpses..." Doflamingo asks, "Are there any other survivors left in Flevance?" and Law answers, "I don't know. I barely managed to escape myself." When asked how he even got out, he explains only that he crossed the border. A masked or helmeted family member recoils with "Uchk! Oi, we're eating here!" and another asks, "What is it that you resent so?" The page makes Law's survival feel almost obscene to the people around him: they fear the illness, but his real horror is what he saw escaping the White City.

Law's face fills the top of the page as he says, "I no longer... believe in anything." Baby 5, near Corazon at the table, tells him, "Corazon, you better not get carried away with yourself. I ain't even scared of dying!" Law replies with a hard promise: "I promise you. I will have my revenge." Baby 5 scolds him for acting tough, saying, "Are you stupid or something? Weren't you listening? Stuff like that is what gets you tortured, idiot! You're gonna get the 'skewer torture!' Don't mess around with pirates!" She accuses him of thinking that because he is a kid he can cry, apologize, and pretend nothing ever happened. Law answers not with words but with a fierce "GLARE," staring at her while she flinches against a wall or doorway. The page sets Law apart from the other children: Baby 5 and Buffalo have survived the crew's abuse by understanding its rules, but Law's grief has already passed beyond fear of punishment.

The story shifts into explanation of Law's homeland. Baby 5 asks, "What is this 'White City' that he's from anyway?" and the narration answers, "All of the country of Flevance was known by that name." A memory of bright towers and pale streets appears while children and adults walk through a beautiful city. The narration says that straight out of the snow countries of fairy tales, the earth, trees, and grass were all pure white, and that its beauty was so spectacular it made people question whether it was real or not. Its people were all wealthy and the streets themselves seemed wealthy too. One day, a certain type of lead, "Amber Lead," was discovered beneath the kingdom, and it was determined to be the source of the wonderful nature of the land. From it, utensils, paints, sweets, makeup, and even weapons were made. The page presents Flevance as a dream city built on a mineral everyone admired before anyone understood the danger under that beauty.

The narration explains that customers from across the world flocked to purchase the high-quality goods made from Amber Lead, turning it into Flevance's primary export. The quick-to-notice World Government began transporting goods in and out of the city, its transportation industry boomed, and Amber Lead birthed Flevance's bottomless wealth. The city became the envy of the world; people were jealous, and a child says, "Wow... I wanna go there!" before being told, "Sadly... it no longer exists." The page then becomes quiet. In a small interior, someone lies back in a chair reading, wine and a bottle set by the window, and another panel isolates a pair of shoes on the floor, a calm emptiness after the grandeur. The contrast makes the loss feel heavier: Flevance was not merely poor or remote, but a glittering national treasure that vanished despite all its wealth.

About 100 years before the Amber Lead industry even began, the World Government conducted a study into the geology of the region and determined the true nature of the mineral. It was poison. While underground, the poison had little effect on anything or anyone, but once dug up and handled, it began to eat away at the human body. Doflamingo and the children listen as the explanation continues: blinded by the virtually limitless fortune at their fingertips, the government and the royal family kept this truth secret, and the unaware people of the country continued to mine the mineral. In the remembered streets, happy citizens celebrate with Amber Lead goods floating or being shown off around them, unaware of the toxin in their prosperity. The page's horror lies in the delay: the people of Flevance were not cursed by nature alone, but betrayed by authorities who knew the danger and let the country continue anyway.

The terrifying part of the Amber Lead incident, the narration says, was that the poison was present in only trace amounts. A person handling the mineral might not show the full damage immediately, but the lead accumulated in the body. If a single child had the lead begin to build up inside him, then the children of that child would inherit shortened life spans; their children would have even shorter lives, generation after generation. A chart labeled "NEGATIVE EFFECT ON FUTURE GENERATIONS" shows a descending line from "DIES AT 70" to "DIES AT 50," "DIES AT 30," "DIES AT 10," and finally "NO DESCENDANTS." Eventually, a generation like Law's, one that would die out before it could even come of age, would be born. By the time the world realized the toxicity of Amber Lead, it was far too late. The final street scene shows people moving through the once-beautiful city while the truth closes in around them, turning Flevance's wealth into an inherited death sentence.

The illness reaches everyone at once: senior citizens, adults, and children alike. People's skin and hair begin to go white right before their own eyes, and their entire bodies begin to ache. One hospital room shows a screaming patient while another white-patched patient sits up in bed, and the narration says that as a result of the offset in life spans, every generation broke out in illness around the same time. Eventually people began dropping dead one after another, and doctors were powerless to stop the progression. Baby 5 asks, "Is that how all the people of that kid's country died? How terrible!" But the explanation says, "The true tragedy is just beginning!" Flevance's neighboring countries, seeing people across the White City succumb to the exact same illness, mistook Amber Lead Sickness for an epidemic. They closed every passage out of the country and, in effect, quarantined the White City. A map of Flevance surrounded by arrows and blocked borders makes the trap visible.

The royal family takes aid from the World Government and escapes as quickly as it can, abandoning all their people in the process. The inhabitants of the White City, hoping for treatment and safe haven in other countries, are instead treated like monsters who have escaped from their cages; feared and misunderstood, they are shot and killed. The ugly truth of the world is covered up, and after all, the pain of an illness is not something outsiders can feel, no matter how utterly human the victims are. Flevance itself does not stay quiet for long. Ironically, the sick have more lead bullets than they could ever need, and countries armed with what they call just cause and retribution answer without mercy. Soldiers in masks and helmets advance through smoke with guns ready while people scream "SHOW NO MERCY!" So a war finally breaks out, born from panic, secrecy, and a sickness that neighboring nations refuse to understand.

In the chaos of Flevance's collapse, an adult calls, "Law, you too! Come!" and asks, "Are there no more children?" before saying the rest went about as one would imagine. A woman tells the children, "The soldiers said they'd let just the children escape!" Law refuses at first, crying, "Sister! My sister's about to die! I can't just leave now!" The woman answers, "Oh, Lamie is... that's right... Well, we'll just have you leave on the next evac ship! It'll come again." Other children beg Law to come with them: "Law! You're not coming!? Let's go together! You can have them save Lamie afterwards!" One child cries, "My daddy and mommy both died! But they told me to live on, so that's what I'm gonna do!" The woman tells Law, "See, Law? There is no such thing as despair in this world. A merciful hand will always reach out." The page is painfully hopeful, full of children believing adults and rescue ships while smoke and distant war sounds surround them.

The medical crisis in Flevance grows desperate. Outside a large hospital, people cry, "Doctor! Help us!" and "Doctor!" while exhausted doctors apologize, "I'm sorry, there's simply nothing we can do." Another voice says, "We don't have enough doctors here! Or blood for transfusions! Anything!" and a furious patient shouts, "There must be a way to eliminate Amber Lead from the body! The disease itself isn't even contagious! Why won't the government report this fact!?" Inside Law's home, his little sister lies in bed, suffering: "Uuuugh... brother... my body hurts... It's becoming white..." Law tries to comfort her, saying, "Hang in there just a little longer! Dad's the best doctor in the country! I just know he'll make you better!" Nearby, Law sees his father teaching or performing a procedure: "This particular surgery utilizes this blood vessel." Law responds, "Oh, I see!" But a girl outside pulls him toward normal childhood for one more moment: "Brother, let's go to the festival! Just for 30 minutes, okay? We've got a patient in right now."

Law's memory turns catastrophic. He races into a room and screams, "FATHER! MOTHER!" over the bodies of his parents, the panel shaking with huge black sound effects. A remembered invitation from his sister echoes beside it: "Law, let's go to the festival!" and a report-like voice says, "Two infected--exterminated." Another memory of his mother tells him, "See, Law? There is no such thing as despair in this world," while the next panel completes the phrase, "A merciful hand... will always reach out." But the visual truth below contradicts it: Law stands alone in a field of corpses as the city burns and someone screams "SIS-TEEEEER~~~!!!" Bodies lie scattered across the ground, and a dropped necklace or small object lies near the memory of a gentle hand. The page crushes the hopeful lesson from the previous page under the massacre itself. For Law, mercy does not arrive in time; the White City answers his family's kindness with death.

Law remembers smiling with other children who said, "Let's go together!" and his own determination, "I will live on!" But the memory snaps to the burning hospital, flames devouring the building while Law screams, "Lamie!" A captioned cry points to "THE HOSPITAL!!!" and Law's face twists in horror. The narration closes the tragedy: "The White City, Flevance... was destroyed." The final image shows the city swallowed by smoke and flame, with distant silhouettes and ruins where the beautiful white kingdom once stood. Law, still a small child, stares into the destruction and then screams wordlessly, the page filled with dark sound effects and smoke. The remembered smiles of children, the promise of an evac ship, and the idea of a merciful hand all collapse into the sight of the hospital burning with Lami still inside.

Back in Spider Miles, the story of Flevance leaves the room silent. Baby 5 sobs for Law, saying, "For a 10 year old kid to go through something like that..." while another voice adds, "Of course his personality's gonna get fucked up..." Doflamingo frames the conclusion coldly: "In the end... at the hands of humans." Law stands alone in a dark panel, his hat shadowing his eyes, while the image of his ruined country and Corazon's black silhouette hang behind him. He says nothing, but his memory continues: "My parents, my sister, everyone at the academy... they all died..." Then he notices, "There he is... Corazon..." A handler or family member starts to say, "I'm going to report this... to the young master!" but a sudden violent slash or strike explodes through the panel with huge sound effects. Buffalo cries, "He... he broke the edict of blood! It's the skewer torture for him dasuyan!" Another voice calls the act "an unbelievable transgression." The page ends with Corazon's violence erupting after Law's story, making the Donquixote Family's own rule system turn against the one person Doflamingo had warned everyone not to touch.

The aftermath of Corazon's attack fills the page with black splashes, shattered debris, and jagged impact marks. Corazon's dark, feathered shape looms amid the wreckage while shocked onlookers react with "!!!" Law stands in the foreground, stunned, and other family members stare from the edges of the panel. One figure mutters, "Shit... I was seen," suggesting the violent strike or secret action was not meant for witnesses. Buffalo, still alarmed, repeats the consequence: "He... he broke the edict of blood! It's the skewer torture for him dasuyan!" Someone else says, "I'm going to report this... to the young master!" while another voice calls out, "To the young master!" At the bottom, the chapter strip reads "ONE PIECE ...CH. 762 END." The page closes on the threat of internal punishment inside the Donquixote Family, with Law watching the dangerous, silent Corazon become even harder to understand.

No description for this page.