Teach held the dagger low and said nothing.
He knew exactly what goods Doflamingo was referring to. The knowledge sat in his chest alongside everything else from the previous night, compressed into the same dense, unpleasant mass. But knowing was different from admitting, and admitting was something he had no intention of doing.
"I don't know what you're talking about," he said. "The Donquixote Family's property doesn't come through our waters without our knowledge, and we don't touch what isn't worth the trouble."
"Then it was very much worth the trouble." Doflamingo's expression did not change. "There was a Devil Fruit in that caravan. I am prepared to be generous about everything else. The spices, the gold, the weapons. Keep them, my compliments. But the fruit comes back to me."
"You're saying that Devil Fruit was yours?"
Teach let the right amount of surprise into his eyes. Not too much. Just enough to be a man who has received unexpected information and is processing it honestly.
Doflamingo's eyes narrowed very slightly, reading him.
"That's right," he said. "The rest is a gift. The fruit is not negotiable."
"Then you've come a long way for nothing." Teach's voice hardened. "Because of that fruit, the captain of our Fourth Division is dead. And the fruit is gone. It's not on this ship and it's not in our hands." He let some of the genuine anger through. The anger was real, even if it was aimed at something other than what Doflamingo thought. "So if you want an explanation, find whoever took it."
Doflamingo was quiet for a moment.
He looked around the deck, at the crew members beginning to stir and recover from the Conqueror's Haki wave, at the overall condition of the fleet, intact and functional without any evidence of an outside attack.
"This fleet hasn't been hit," he said. "There are no breach marks, no fire damage, nothing that suggests an external assault. You want me to believe the captain of the Fourth Division is dead?" The smile came back, dangerous at its edges. "Get Thatch out here and let him tell me that himself."
He moved.
The hand came up fast, reaching for Teach's collar, and the string was already out before the hand arrived, a thread thin enough to be invisible until it was too late, wrapping and pulling in the same motion.
Teach slipped sideways. The footwork was clean and fast, the automatic response of someone whose reflexes have been running at a different level than his public performance suggests. The dagger came up and caught Doflamingo's wrist on the way in, the blade wrapped in Armament Haki, and the impact stopped the grab cold.
Doflamingo glanced at the blade. Then he looked at Teach.
He kicked.
The thread found Teach in the same moment, catching him through the ankle, and the tug was small but precisely timed to disrupt the pivot he needed to dodge cleanly. His movement hitched for half a second.
Half a second was enough for someone with Doflamingo's speed and leg reach.
The kick landed.
Teach took it on a crossed guard, both arms absorbing the force, and the deck cracked under him as the impact pushed him back two meters. He planted his feet and stopped.
Doflamingo lowered his leg slowly.
The expression on his face had changed. Not dramatically. A small adjustment, the kind that happens when something has not conformed to a prior assumption.
"That thread," he said, "should have held you for longer."
Teach rolled his shoulder, testing the arm. Functioning. He straightened and looked back at Doflamingo across the ten feet between them.
"Marionette line," he said flatly. "It works on people who haven't felt it before."
He did not explain how he had felt it before, or why a Second Division crewman with no official standing would know what Doflamingo's Parasite thread felt like and how to break the initial impulse before it rooted.
Doflamingo studied him.
"Teach," he said. "Marshall D. Teach." He said it slowly, in the way of a person assigning proper weight to newly relevant information. "I haven't heard that name connected to anything significant. And yet." A pause. "You carry the D."
Teach said nothing.
"The D tends to turn up attached to people who create problems," Doflamingo said, with the mild tone of a man making a professional observation. "So perhaps I will believe you about Thatch after all. Because an ordinary crewman doesn't block my techniques, and an ordinary crewman doesn't make me check my assumptions." He put his hands back in his coat pockets. "Tell me what actually happened."
Before Teach could answer, the Den Den Mushi at Doflamingo's hip crackled.
Doflamingo glanced at it without taking his eyes fully off Teach, then answered.
"Young Master." Monet's voice was quick and precise. "News from the Roland Sea. Thatch, captain of the Whitebeard Pirates' Fourth Division, is confirmed dead. The Whitebeard Pirates have issued a pursuit order. Ten billion berries. The bounty target is a man named Rob Lucci, charged with murdering Thatch and defecting from the crew."
Doflamingo let the silence acknowledge what she had just confirmed. "Rob Lucci," he repeated.
"Yes, sir. The intelligence sources are consistent. It appears he killed the captain and fled under cover of night."
"I am standing on the Fourth Division's flagship," Doflamingo said.
A short pause on the other end. "Shall I continue monitoring, sir?"
"Yes." He closed the line.
He looked at Teach with the expression of a man reassembling a sequence of events into a shape that makes sense.
"Seven hundred and twenty-six million berry bounty," he said. "Rob Lucci. Leopard Zoan. Best positioned to be the next captain of your Second Division." He tilted his head. "A man who already has a Devil Fruit ability. Why would he kill for another one?"
"Don't ask me," Teach said. "I've been asking myself the same thing."
He let the confusion into his voice, because the confusion was genuine. Not about Lucci's loyalty, which he now understood completely, but about the specific question of why a man with an established Zoan ability would spend years undercover to obtain the Dark-Dark Fruit. What did Finn know about that fruit that justified an eleven-year operation?
"The Dark-Dark Fruit." Doflamingo said the name deliberately, and watched Teach.
Teach's expression registered recognition of the bounty name with the timing of someone putting two things together for the first time. "That's what your family was looking for? The billion berry posting?"
"The same."
"So Lucci knew about the bounty. He knew what was in that caravan." Teach let the implication settle across his face naturally. "He used Thatch's fleet to intercept the caravan for him. And then he took the fruit and ran."
"That is approximately what I have concluded," Doflamingo said. He was quiet for a moment, looking past Teach at the open water. "The problem is that an assault ship with no flags and a head start in the dark is very difficult to locate. My network is extensive, but a single man who knows how to stay quiet can move through the New World without surfacing for months."
He looked back at Teach.
"You want Lucci dead. I want the fruit he's carrying. These goals do not conflict." He spread his hands slightly. "The Whitebeard Pirates' network covers more of the New World than anyone's. My intelligence channels in the underworld cover what the Whitebeard Pirates miss. Together, we have a realistic chance of finding him before he reaches wherever he's going."
Teach considered it.
The calculation was quick, because the math was not complicated. Doflamingo's underworld contacts were extensive in a way that even the Whitebeard Pirates' size could not replicate: different territory, different channels, different sources. If Lucci was moving through black market ports or dark exchange routes, Doflamingo would hear about it first. The combination gave the search genuine coverage.
And after they found Lucci.
After that, the arrangement was simple enough to revise.
Doflamingo wanted the Dark-Dark Fruit. He had said so plainly and had not shown any particular interest in eating it himself, which meant he was acquiring it for someone else. Someone whose identity was apparently worth keeping quiet about. Someone who had been willing to put a seven billion berry bounty on a single Devil Fruit and wait years for it to surface.
Teach was curious about who that was. He was also aware that after the Dark-Dark Fruit was in anyone's hands within arm's reach, the conversation about who kept it was a conversation that could be resolved through other means.
"One condition," Teach said. "Lucci doesn't die until I'm done with him."
"I said his life is yours," Doflamingo said. "I meant it. I have no interest in the man."
Teach nodded once. "Then we have a deal."
Doflamingo smiled. It was the smile of someone who does not trust the person he is smiling at and finds this entirely unremarkable. "Fufufufu. I'll have my people put the word out through the underground channels. You keep moving south. He had to make port somewhere within the last twelve hours if he was running on a small assault ship. Fuel and water."
"Agreed," Teach said.
He was already thinking about what happened next.
Tobacco City, New World.
The intelligence report was three pages, and Smoker had read all three of them twice by the time he set it down.
Ten billion berries. The full weight of the Whitebeard Pirates' pursuit apparatus, activated against a single man. The bounty listing had gone through every major underworld exchange in the New World within hours of issuance, which was how seriously Newgate's organization took someone who killed a Division captain.
Smoker leaned back in his chair and looked at the ceiling.
Rob Lucci.
He had heard Finn speaking to this name on the voyage to Jam Island, through a secured channel, in the specific shorthand of a senior officer communicating with an embedded asset. He had not been intended to overhear it and had chosen not to acknowledge that he had. But he had filed it, the way he filed everything that had operational significance.
So Lucci had been planted in the Whitebeard Pirates. And now Lucci had apparently done something significant enough to trigger a full pursuit order, which meant the operation had either concluded or been compromised, and either way Lucci was currently a man running through the New World with ten billion berries on his head and the entire Whitebeard network looking for him.
Smoker picked up the report again, looked at the description of Lucci's last known vessel and heading, and put it back down.
He called his adjutant.
"Spread the word to our people," he said. "There's a man named Rob Lucci running somewhere in the Roland Sea area with a Whitebeard bounty on him. Nobody touches him. If anyone spots him and he looks like he needs a hand, give it to him." He paused. "Quietly."
His adjutant's expression was carefully neutral. "Any particular reason, sir?"
"Because Whitebeard is having a bad week," Smoker said, "and I find that amusing. Consider it a philosophical position."
The adjutant accepted this explanation with the professionalism of someone who has learned not to press the White Hunter for more detail than he chooses to offer.
Smoker looked out the window at the harbor.
He did not examine too carefully whether his motivation was entirely the stated one. The Whitebeard Pirates and his own operation had been competitors in this stretch of the New World for long enough that causing them inconvenience was genuinely satisfying on its own merits.
That this particular inconvenience happened to benefit a Marine operative who was carrying something Admiral Finn apparently needed was a separate fact that did not require acknowledgment aloud.
The richest man in the New World, as his crew liked to remind each other, had no reason to chase a ten billion berry bounty.
He had every reason to make Whitebeard's life slightly more difficult.
Smoker reached for the next report on his desk and moved on.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Writing takes time, coffee, and a lot of love.If you'd like to support my work, join me at [email protected]/GoldenGaruda
You'll get early access to over 50 chapters, selection on new series, and the satisfaction of knowing your support directly fuels more stories.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~