Chapter 186: Hobby-Hobby Fruit! Doflamingo's Auction
Wano Country, Onigashima.
Kai did not waste time. He went straight to King, who was working through a stack of documents, to ask about progress on the surveillance of Doflamingo.
It was time to fulfill his promise to Law.
Strangely, when Kai raised the question, King reacted like someone snapping out of a dream.
"Surveillance on Doflamingo? I think I… forgot to assign anyone to that?"
A rare flicker of confusion crossed his sharp eyes.
Huh?
Forgot?
That was not who King was.
Kai's brows knit at once.
He did not for a second believe King would deliberately drag his feet or pretend to obey while ignoring orders. Nor did he believe King could be this careless.
If his memory was really that bad, there was no way he could have kept the Beasts Pirates running this tightly.
Wait.
Something tugged at the back of Kai's mind.
This felt familiar.
Eliminate all impossibilities, and whatever is left, no matter how absurd, has to be the truth.
Someone had erased every trace of the people King had sent after Doflamingo, and along with them, everyone's memories of those agents.
Kai's mouth curved.
Most people would call that impossible, but he knew better. Out on this sea, there was a Devil Fruit ability broken enough to pull it off.
The Hobby-Hobby Fruit.
You almost slipped that one past, Doflamingo.
What a ridiculous rules-type power.
Sit at home, wake up with amnesia.
Watching Kai's expression, King put it together. "So that was Doflamingo's doing?"
"Most likely," Kai said. "Some Devil Fruit at work."
He nodded once. "Leave this one to me. I will handle Doflamingo."
King did not argue, only added, "Clean up properly afterward."
"Relax," Kai said, waving a hand as he turned to go.
He went straight back to his quarters and gathered his core crew.
"Yamato. I have a job for you," he said.
He intended to put her in charge.
A small-time group like the Donquixote Family no longer warranted his personal attention.
"What job?" Her white-haired head snapped up, eyes instantly bright.
"Head to Dressrosa and bring back the Donquixote Family's core members. Alive if you can. If not, kill them."
"Got it, got it!" Yamato said, practically bouncing, fists clenched in excitement.
Kai thought for a moment, then added, "Kuma, Enel, Viola. You three go with her."
In a straight fight, the entire Donquixote Family tied together probably could not stop Yamato anymore.
In terms of brains, though, ten Yamatos might not match one Doflamingo.
Better to have the steady old revolutionary along.
Add Enel for top-tier mobility and Viola for top-tier recon, and the team going to clear the Dressrosa "side quest" should, on paper, be unbreakable.
Put bluntly: even if something truly extreme happened, once they decided to retreat, almost no one would be able to stop them.
He turned to Law, who was breathing a little faster at the edge of the group. "Are you going with them, or staying here and waiting for news?"
Law barely hesitated. "I am going."
With his enemy right in front of him, he had no patience left for waiting.
"Good. You are in," Kai said.
Then he laid out the objective. "Doflamingo and Umit have been secretly hunting merfolk behind our backs to curry favor with the Celestial Dragons. That is what you are going to settle."
"Understood. Leave it to me," Yamato said, thumping her chest.
Soon, the five of them were heading for the harbor to take a ship to Dressrosa.
"Kuma, I am counting on you," Kai said.
Yamato might be the nominal leader, but Kuma was still the real anchor.
He had been with the Revolutionary Army for years. Rescuing slaves was his specialty.
"Do not worry, Kai," Kuma said solemnly. "I will bring them all back safely."
"Good. And remember, your first priority is to find the little girl named Sugar and knock her out. Do not give her even the slightest chance to touch any of you."
Given Yamato and Kuma's level of Haki, Sugar's Hobby-Hobby Fruit might or might not be able to turn them into toys on contact.
But "might not" was not good enough.
"Got it. You said that three, four times now," Enel muttered.
Chewing his apple, he flicked a finger in his ear. Lightning flashed over his body, and he simply turned into thunder and jumped to the ship ahead of the others.
"We are off, Kai!" Yamato yelled, waving wildly, glowing with mission hype.
After they all boarded, Kuma walked to the stern and pressed his paw to the hull in a casual-looking tap.
Boom.
A strange force erupted. A transparent, paw-shaped bubble wrapped the entire ship.
In the next instant, before the stunned onlookers at the harbor, the vessel shot skyward like a stone from a giant's sling and vanished toward the horizon in the blink of an eye.
Kai stood on the dock for a long moment, watching the empty sky.
Hope everything goes smoothly.
…
At the same time.
Dressrosa, royal palace on the King's Plateau.
A secret, lavish "special" auction was underway.
Serving as auctioneer was the master of the place himself: Warlord of the Sea and underworld titan Doflamingo.
With him holding the hammer, the status of the guests needed no explanation.
In the center of the room was not a normal display stand, but a massive glass tank full of seawater.
Inside, the only "item" was a beautiful young mermaid, eyes swollen with tears.
A slave collar bit into her neck. She cowered in the corner of the tank, arms wrapped around her gleaming tail, trying to suck some tiny scrap of safety from the cold glass.
Her fragile, trembling, tear-streaked face stirred not pity but the opposite.
It sharpened the sadism and possessiveness lurking in the hearts of these "distinguished" guests.
"Hurry it up, Doflamingo," a voice crackled impatiently through a Den Den Mushi, tinged with cruel excitement. "I can't wait to see my new slave race fight a shark and find out which one lives."
"Letting a delicate mermaid play such bloody games is a waste, Thatcher boy," another voice said, oily and amused. "A treasure like that should be thoroughly enjoyed first, don't you think? Keh keh keh…"
Several of the Den Den Mushi around the table started cackling in chorus, the sound low and revolting.
Doflamingo smiled and waited.
Only when the laughter died down did he spread his arms and raise his voice. "Welcome, honored guests, to the First Special Mermaid Slave Auction."
"The first item is a sixteen-year-old female eel mermaid. Starting bid: 100 million Berries. You may begin."
The moment he finished, all forty-five Den Den Mushi lay out before him, each representing a different Celestial Dragon, exploded into bidding.
"One hundred fifty million!"
"Two hundred twenty million!"
The number climbed at a staggering pace, blowing past five hundred million in moments.
"Six hundred million!"
One voice suddenly jumped the price, thick with arrogance. "Anyone bids against me, and you are making an enemy of House Manmaya."
The threat meant nothing here.
The opponents were also "gods."
Hardly had he finished when a new voice spoke with open mockery. "You do not speak for House Manmaya. Six hundred million… and one Berry."
Round two of even fiercer bids ignited at once.
In the end, the very first young mermaid sold for a shocking seven hundred million Berries.
In the corner, Umit's grin was so wide it looked like his face might tear.
In the old days, a mermaid of this quality might fetch three hundred million at most.
Now the price had more than doubled.
The most profitable business in the world would always be a monopoly.
As the prices rose and fell like a storm, and Berries might as well have been numbers on a page, one tearful mermaid girl after another was tagged and sold, destined to become new "collectibles" in Celestial Dragon vaults.
Here, the money that cost common people sweat and blood was as cheap as scrap paper, burned without thought by the "gods" above the clouds.
Umit stared at the astronomical figures in his ledger, almost dizzy with happiness. It was getting hard to breathe.
Let the Berry storm blow harder.
Boom.
A sudden crash thundered from one of the walls.
Umit jerked, his ledger almost slipping from his hands.
The blast cut the auction off. All forty-five Den Den Mushi erupted into overlapping complaints and curses.
"What is going on, Doflamingo?"
"Useless. You cannot even keep order?"
"Do the job or get out of the way. There are plenty who will run our business properly."
Veins stood out on Doflamingo's forehead as he listened to the stream of abuse.
He shoved his rage down and forced a thin smile for the snails. "Fuffuffu. Please, honored guests, remain calm. Just a minor disturbance. I will handle it—"
He did not finish.
A black shape crashed through the broken stretch of wall and smashed into the far side of the room.
Boom.
Stone shattered, leaving a spiderweb crater and a rain of dust.
"Diamante!"
When Doflamingo saw the blood-soaked figure embedded in the rubble, his pupils shrank.
He lunged to his officer's side.
Diamante's flamboyant clothes were in tatters, drenched red. His chest was caved in, breath flickering.
He was already half gone.
Looking up at Doflamingo's twisted, desperate face, Diamante dragged his last breath together. His lips moved, the sound barely a whisper, but full of terror.
"Young master… run…"
His head lolled. The light in his eyes went out.
His body slumped into the broken stone and did not move again.
"Diamante!"
Doflamingo's face went black.
He had just watched a man who was more family than subordinate die at his feet.
Emotion slammed through him.
Black and red Conqueror's Haki began to leak from his body in sharp, jagged waves.
The air turned thick and suffocating.
"I swear… I will avenge you," he said.
His voice sounded like it was crawling up from hell, saturated with violence.
He rose slowly, gaze like killing frost behind his red lenses, locked on the direction Diamante had flown from.
Crash.
The hole in the wall blew wider.
"This place is a maze. Viola, why did your ancestors build the palace like this?" a white-haired girl grumbled as she stomped in, kanabo propped on her shoulder.
When he saw who it was, Doflamingo clenched his teeth. His brows drew down until his face looked like a demon mask.
The instant he recognized Yamato, he understood.
The plan he had hidden so carefully… was finished.
He had been so cautious.
He had even used the Hobby-Hobby Fruit to scrub the trail.
So why—
Why had they still found him?
He did not have time for that thought now.
"There you are, Doflamingo. You are coming back with us to face Kai's judgment," Yamato said, eyes lighting up.
She leveled her club at him with a big grin. "Told you. Smashing straight through walls is the fastest way to find people."
"Doffy!"
At that moment, Trebol staggered in, scuffed and battered, with the rest of the Donquixote officers on his heels.
"They attacked as soon as they arrived," Trebol said, voice thick with guilt. "They never gave us a chance to stall. We did not manage to warn you in time."
His face was grim.
Kai had banned them from touching Fish-Men and merfolk.
They had jumped that line without looking back.
Only an idiot would expect a gentle outcome.
Doflamingo did not waste breath blaming him.
They were too far in now. Yelling at his own men was pointless. Handling the crisis was all that mattered.
"Sis…" a small voice sniffled.
A little girl in a spotted dress, with a lone monocle over her left eye and a bowl-cut fringe, stepped out from a side room.
She wiped at her tears and put on her purest, most innocent look as she edged toward Yamato.
"Big sis, are you here to defeat the demon Doflamingo?" she asked timidly.
Almost. Just a little closer.
As the gap between herself and the simple-looking white-haired woman shrank, Sugar's heart leapt.
All she had to do was reach her.
The entire battle would turn over in an instant.
Then—
Crack.
A bolt of lightning slammed down in front of her, blocking the path she needed to take to reach Yamato.
The bolt contracted and solidified into a man with golden drums on his back and cold eyes.
Enel raised his right hand and pointed with one finger.
Zap.
A spear of lightning shot from his fingertip like a bullet.
Under everyone's shocked gaze, it plunged into the "harmless little girl's" body.
"Gaaah!"
Sugar had no combat ability at all.
The current wrapped her in an instant. Her small frame convulsed wildly.
Seconds later, the light faded.
Her skin was charred black, thin wisps of smoke curling from her nose and mouth, and she toppled face-first to the floor, completely unconscious.
The room went dead silent.
No one understood why Enel had struck a child.
Only the Donquixote officers truly grasped how important Sugar's ability was to them.
Her power was the biggest reason they had dared run this operation in the dark at all.
And now their most carefully guarded secret lay smoking on the ground.
"Sugar!" Doflamingo roared, watching yet another family member fall.
At the same moment, memories he had lost came crashing back.
He remembered.
Kai had sent people to watch his dealings with Umit.
He had believed that turning those spies into toys would hide everything from Kai's eyes.
He had been wrong.
With Sugar's collapse, the power of the Hobby-Hobby Fruit shattered.
All of Dressrosa fell into chaos.
On the streets, in factories, in homes—everywhere, people who had lived as toys suddenly turned back into humans before their neighbors' eyes.
At the same time, their families, friends, and lovers all remembered them.
All the missing days, all the empty holes in their lives, flooded back at once.
Doflamingo had turned their loved ones into toys.
Into pets.
Into unpaid workers.
Unforgivable.
Shock, rage, the humiliation of being lied to—all of it roared through the kingdom like wildfire, racing from heart to heart.
Back in the palace.
Doflamingo knew all his work had just been wiped out.
He had watched his family die one after another.
Whatever sanity he had left cracked.
He snapped.