Chapter 7: Changing Tides
Over the span of two years, the organization flourished, growing in power and infamy, though not yet in size. This satisfied Pica at least, who now almost 12 years old, had worried for a while that if they took on goons or peons to fetch and carry heavy things that he might be pushed out. He’d voiced this worry once, when Doffy— who had started to go by Joker— and Trebol were discussing once again how to expand their business.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Pica,” Doffy reassured him, putting a hand on his shoulder. “If we brought on subordinates, you’d get to order them around!”
“Really?” Pica looked between Doffy and Trebol. He had been ordered around a lot in his life before the gang— at the orphanage, on the fishing boat— and never been the one giving the orders. The idea was more appealing than he expected it to be.
“Of course,” Trebol agreed with a chuckle. “We’re the ones who started all this, eh? No one here’s getting cut out.”
Doffy beamed his comforting smile. “What was the word you used? Executives, right?”
“That’s right, Doffy. You’re our leader, and we’re your executives.”
Pica smiled, and didn’t worry about the idea again. If Trebol, whom Pica thought privately was a little bit conceited, was willing to call Doffy their leader then his place was secure too. No matter what anybody else thought of him, Pica was positive that Doffy knew he was good for more than just carrying heavy things.
The potent idea of being an ‘executive’ took hold in his mind, and he decided that he didn’t mind if they did end up taking on more people.
They had cornered the smuggling and fencing market in the little northern archipelago, at least, and had a growing list of contacts with other gangs and criminal groups in the North Blue. The question on everyone’s mind was how they were going to expand from there. Diamante had sat in with his opinion while Trebol and Doffy tossed around ideas.
Staying local and expanding into new commodities was discussed; drugs or prostitution or slaves chiefly among them.
“The problem with that is eventually we run out of people to sell to,” Diamante pointed out, his arms crossed over the back of his chair. “And we’ve got our fingers in a dozen pies at once. Makes it hard to make a fist if a man’s got his fingers too far spread if you get what I mean.”
Also, Diamante didn’t want to be stuck in one place, especially up in the little archipelago not nearly far enough from the place that he was born. When he’d run off three years ago– before he’d bumped into Trebol— he’d been imagining running a lot farther than he’d gotten so far, and it was a little bit worrying to think that they were considering getting so comfy cozy here they’d be impossible to uproot.
“Fair point, fair point,” Trebol nodded. “You know I’m not particularly keen on any of those markets in particular, either. But it is an option.”
“It’s an option,” Dia agreed. “Like stabbing yourself in the palm with your own knife is an option.”
Doffy giggled at his comment, so at least there was that.
The conversation circled for a while. Should they move to one of the larger archipelagos to the South and work in a larger city? Diamante didn’t hate that idea.. On the other hand all three of them immediately dismissed the idea of cowing and absorbing some of the other gangs in the area— none of them wanted to work with people who might have divided loyalties, or stab them in the back.
Eventually they tabled the discussion and brought up other business. Diamante found himself checking out of the conversation and sipping on his flask while Trebol and Doffy discussed ship manifests. In his opinion, the gang was getting too paperwork and handshake focused— Dia’s skills were going to waste every minute that he wasn’t knocking heads around. Not that he was unhappy to sit around and drink and keep the riffraff away from the office. But it got boring after a while.
They got his attention again when Trebol mentioned there was devil fruit news.
“Unfortunately, it’s almost certainly out of our reach,” Tre grumbled.
That was unusual. Trebol always seemed to have an unstoppable ambition when it came to devil fruits.
“How come?” Doffy asked, echoing his own thoughts.
“Because it’s on a damned marine ship,” Trebol grumbled.
Oh, well that explained that. Dia swore under his breath. “Oh of course.”
Doffy leaned forward in his chair, thoughtful. “Could we attack the ship and take it?”
Diamante startled and felt himself smile involuntarily. He fucking loved Doffy. Doffy was not afraid to make waves. To make bold moves. Dia immediately backed him up.
“That;s not a half bad idea, Doffy,” he said, catching Trebol’s eye. “As long as it’s not a vice admiral or something doing the escort. We could certainly take a few marines, right, Tre?”
“No, no,” Trebol shook his head. “Just some captain, no high rankers on the ship. We could certainly take them. But there’s a reason we don’t just attack marines willy-nilly, Doffy.”
“What’s the reason?” Doffy asked curiously
“Simply put, because it puts us on the marines’ list, you know?” Trebol shook his head. “We start attacking marine ships, we’ll get noticed. They’ll call us pirates and put bounties on our heads. It’ll get harder to do business the way we have been.”
“Oh.” Doffy’s lips pulled at the corners. “That makes sense.”
“Unfortunately being on the marines’ shit list is a hell of a thing,” Dia admitted grudgingly. “As much as I’m itching for a fight, Tre has a point that they will come after us if we poke their little hornet’s nest. I’m not saying it’s a bad idea either— but…”
The idea of a bounty on his head was a little exciting, and a little nerve wracking. After all, he’d sort of been planning to be a bounty hunter once upon a time. He knew that once you had a bounty, you had to look over your shoulder.
On the other hand, a man with a bounty sure wouldn’t be getting comfy cozy up in nowhere-vill North Blue any time soon.
Food for thought. It was food for thought.
“Alright, I get it,” Doffy nodded. “When’s this marine ship due to come through?”
“A week from now, according to the transponder transcripts we paid for,” Trebol answered.
“Alright, well I guess that gives us a little time to think about it,” Doffy nodded. “What other merchandise is coming through? Anything worth bothering with?”
Dia checked out of the conversation again, but the idea of marines and bounties stayed on his mind while the chatter went on. He wondered if it stayed on Doffy’s too.
The thought of pirates did in fact stay on Doffy’s mind all day, as he finished talking with Trebol and Dia and drifted through the day. Pirates were always making the news. Rich, famous, and feared. Feared and hated, especially by the world government. More and more over the last couple of years, Doffy’s hatred of the world government had been sharpening into a finely honed edge.
And it seemed to him, that if you wanted to strike at the world government, being a famous pirate was probably a good way to do it.
“Hey, Doffy, you look a million miles away.” Diamante’s voice cut through his reverie and he realized that he’d stopped lingering on the edge of the doorway to the little kitchen in the offices. There, Dia was sprawled across his chair, feet up on the table and bottle in hand.
“A bit I guess,” Doffy admitted, somewhat abashed to be caught with his mind wandering.
Dia patted the table beside him. “C’mon and sit and tell me what’s on your mind if you want. Can I get ya anything? Drink? Smoke? Make some food?”
Of the five of them, Diamante was really the only one who cooked much, and he seemed to enjoy it. He wasn’t exactly a chef, but it was nice to have an option that wasn’t eating at the pub or from carts. Doffy made sure to compliment his cooking every time– no matter how much he protested.
He shook his head, but he came and hopped up on the chair next to Dia, crossing his legs over the wide seat of the large chair. “Maybe some wine. Vergo and I are gonna go have dinner and play cards later.”
“Oh yeah?” Dia grinned and passed him the bottle.”Have fun. Rob ’em blind.”
“Promise,” Doffy laughed. He took a long sip of the wine, tasting Dia’s lips along with the fruity acidity of the drink. He passed it back to him.
Dia leaned toward him, resting his chin on his hand. “So is that what’s on your mind, kid, or what?”
“It’s not that.”
Dia pointed a long finger at him. “I knew it. You’re still thinking about the marine ship, aren’t you?”
Doffy jolted, unexpectedly caught out again. “How’d you guess?”
He tapped his forehead and grinned at him. “Because you and me have a lot in common, Doffy. We’re trouble makers. Love Trebol, bless his black heart, but he’s a spider who wants to sit in his web. You and me like to shake things up a little more.”
The image of Trebol as a spider at the center of his sticky web came to mind easily, and Doffy chuckled a little at it. Dia wasn’t wrong. Trebol liked to take things slow. To plan. To let trouble come to him. Doffy liked that too— watching a plan come together was immensely satisfying. but sometimes, like Dia, Doffy liked to hit hard and fast.
“That’s true,” Doffy nodded. “I was thinking about pirates.”
Dia leaned even closer, until they were almost nose to nose. Doffy felt himself flush a little, pleased for the attention. “Pirates, eh? What about ;em?”
“Well, we’re trying to figure out how to expand, right?” Doffy said. He kept his voice low, almost conspiratorial between him and Dia.
“Right.”
“So, what if we became pirates?” Doffy suggested. “That basically solves all the problems we’ve been talking about.”
The smell of wine and cigarette smoke washed over Doffy’s face as Dia laughed. “What if we became pirates. Now there’s a fun idea, Doffy. Oh that’ll take a hell of a bid to sell to Trebol.”
“Yeah, I was pretty sure it would.” Doffy chewed on his lip. He scooted closer to Dia, but immediately gave up the pretense and scrambled into his lap instead.
Dia put a lazy arm around him. “Might take some doing, but he does love it when you have ideas, Doffy. You bring it up, I’ll back your play.”
Doffy leaned his head on Dia’s chest and grinned up at him. He wondered idly if he’d ever get as tall as Dia was. “I’ll look for the right time then.”
“Cheers!” Dia tipped back another long drink of wine, and passed it to Doffy.
“Cheers,” he agreed, taking another long sip. He felt the warmth of the drink inside him, and the warmth of Dia’s body against his. A surge of excitement moved through him. It might take a bit of time to get Trebol on board with the idea of being pirates, but he knew he could do it.
Trebol and Dia might get into little arguments all the time, but Trebol could never say no to him. Not when he really wanted something.
Doffy just had to find the right opportunity. And that, he knew, was a tactic Trebol would approve of too.
He wound one of his strings around Dia’s free hand and tugged it up to encourage him to pet his hair while they sat and drank together and schemed. Dia chuckled and obliged him, and Doffy’s smile grew even wider.
Having been in a lot of fights now over the past two years, Doflamingo had decided that he didn’t really like fair fights. They were messy, anxious, tiring events, and sometimes he was actually hurt afterward. He really hated getting hurt. He much preferred unfair fights– the kind that were a glorified massacre, or the kind that he got to sit back and watch. Those were a lot of fun.
Most of the fights that the gang got into were the deeply unfair kind. But it wasn’t possible to avoid every balanced fight, and unfortunately that was the kind that he and Vergo were stuck in. Even worse for Doffy’s mood, the fight had interrupted a perfectly good meal. They’d been having dinner and a couple of drinks at the pub, a local criminal establishment where the gang’s reputation made sure they were welcome and respected.
By the owner and the patrons, anyway. That respect didn’t extend to the kingdom soldier thugs who had crashed their way in with some stupid decree to shut the place down. Doffy had no idea what the fuck that was about– according to Trebol the local legal types were all well aware of the criminal doings and heavily bribed to look the other way, right up to the top.
But apparently something had changed, because here were the fucking kingdom soldiers ruining his nice evening, and some of them had haki. Enough to resist the first round of his own haki, which had toppled about half the soldiers, and most of the other bar patrons.
That left Doffy and Vergo dealing with the half dozen high rankers who were still up. They’d put two of them down fast, but the remaining four had encircled them, leaving him and Vergo back to back.
“This is bullshit, Corazon!” Doffy pouted.
If you asked Vergo, the Corazon of the Donquixote gang, he’d tell you that there was nobody in all four seas more annoying than kingdom guards and soldiers who decided it was time to get uppity with the things they’d claimed to tolerate.
Enemy gangs had a kind of integrity, even when they were lying and cheating and backstabbing. You could trust them to be dishonest.
He’d watched half of them go down in a heap after they’d ruined his meal with the ‘young master’. Ruined his enjoyment of good food and good company, mostly. The rest of them stood, save for two he and his partner in the dance of brutality had smacked out of the running.
Royal soldiers sometimes got to thinking they had a ‘code of ethics’ that they would up and decide to make your problem when you’re just pulling business as usual. His fists were coated in Haki as he stood back to back with Doflamingo, his eyes set on the biggest man in the room as a sharp smile crossed his face.
“Absolute bullshit, Doffy. Want me to kill ’em all or leave one alive to ask a few questions?”
“If you want,” Doffy snorted. “But don’t worry about it if they just die. Guys like this probably don’t even know anything.”
There was a gleam of silvery threads and chairs and tables jumped into the air and broke themselves against the backs of a couple of the attacking soldiers. Doffy’s devil fruit powers might not work on them directly due to their haki, but Vergo already knew he was more than crafty enough to find ways around it.
For Vergo it was more of a straightforward type of fight.
The kind of fight he always loved. He rushed forward and swung his haki-coated fist at the nearest guard with a jagged smile. The bread that had been stuck, stubbornly, to his face finally fell to the ground as he lunged.
It wasn’t a long fight. You never wanted to be in a long fight unless your opponent outclassed you. Long fights favored endurance over skill.
The fight was short, but it was brutal. The soldiers lay at their feet, broken, bloody, after Vergo hammered down on them with hardened fists and implements. He’d used anything he could get his hands on— hardened bottles, a table, a man’s face slammed into his friend’s as fast as Vergo could swing him.
Features were unrecognizable on that one.
“Damn. Dinner’s ruined.”
Doffy stood beside him, his chest rising and falling as he breathed heavily, face covered in someone else’s blood, and his glasses slightly askew. The bodies at his feet were just as mangled as the ones that Vergo had dealt with.
His lips and cheeks were pink from exertion, and his fine blond hair was askew and speckled with blood. His pale skin seemed to glow in the dim light of the wrecked pub.
“Yeah, it sure is.”
For just a moment, as Vergo took in the sight— of the pub, of the bodies, of Doffy standing there beside him— it felt for a moment like a panel out of an adventure story in the newspaper comics.
Doflamingo looked…not quite heroic, but striking. He found himself staring, transfixed for a long moment before he realized he hadn’t spoken.
He cleared his throat with a murmur of. “…but you did a pretty damn good job, Doffy.”
Doffy turned toward him, his red lenses flashing, and he smiled. “You too, Vergo. Ugh. What a mess…”
Vergo walked forward and pushed up his glasses for him, his fingers lingering on his cheek as he looked him over again.
His heart was pounding, not something he usually felt in the aftermath of a brawl. Not like this. But something about the way the light of the dim pub hit Doffy’s face had captivated him.
Enough that he was willing to do something crazy in the post-battle high. He leaned forward and pressed his lips to Doflamingo’s in a breathless gamble.
He felt Doffy’s body stiffen under him with surprise, and a soft noise escaped him, but he didn’t push Vergo away. Instead, his lips fumbled against his, kissing back for a moment. He felt the familiar tug of Doffy’s threads catching his wrists to pull him close.
The two of them were reflected infinitely for a moment in one another’s shades.
“Hey…”
Vergo was caught in his strings as he looked deeply into the crimson lenses. “…yeah?”
“You kissed me. Did you mean to do that?”
Vergo sputtered quietly before he regained composure. It was a fair question. Sometimes his brain just— skipped. Slipped into tracks he didn’t quite mean.
“Yeah, I did. Sorry if you didn’t like it, boss.”
“I liked it!” Doffy answered quickly. His cheeks were still pink. Maybe pinker now. He tugged his hand close. “Would you want to do it again?”
Vergo’s lips split into a broad smile, well aware of the cooling heat of the blood on his fists and his face as he drew closer to Doflamingo with a low chuckle.
“As much as you wanna, Doffy. You’re the boss, after all.”
There was no one conscious in the bar to see and make Doflamingo feel embarrassed or self conscious— though he wasn’t sure he’d feel that way even if there were.
He felt pleased. Excited, if a little bit off balance. He hadn’t expected Vergo to kiss him, but he hadn’t lied, he liked it. Kisses on the lips, he knew, were supposed to be for people you were in love with. He wondered what exactly was the difference between regular love and ‘in love’. Was there one?
“I think I might want to, a lot,” Doffy declared confidently. “If that’s alright with you. You love me, right?”
They all said they loved him. His whole little family. Vergo, Pica, Diamante, and Trebol. Reassured him again and again.
Vergo flushed, he could see the way the young man’s cheeks turned ruddy and flustered as he ducked his head with a low chuckle. In contrast to the usual way he said it, that confident murmur among the rest of the little family, he seemed a little off balance as he nodded once.
“Yeah, Doffy… I love you.”
The reassurance was all Doffy needed. He smiled even wider, deciding that he absolutely did want Vergo to kiss him more.
“I love you, too,” Doffy declared, rather imperiously. “Kiss me any time you like, and I’ll do the same.”
Vergo’s head was spinning—and not in the usual way it spun. It was a different type of vertigo as he put his hand on Doflamingo’s shoulder and leaned towards him again.
He’d loved him for a while now. Not just in the ‘we love you’ way to assure him that he was part of— the leader of— their outfit. But… something more like he’d read in the newspaper strips and 1 berry novels he’d stolen here and there over the years.
It was the only way to explain why he got flustered when he helped console Doffy after a nightmare, or let him lean all over him after a job.
“Mind if I go again now?”
Doffy didn’t answer– instead, he leaned in and kissed Vergo first, and with the kind of commanding enthusiasm that he brought to just about everything he did. He didn’t go for the kind of chaste newspaper comic kiss that had flashed through Vergo’s mind, but made what seemed to him an unpracticed attempt at something more like the kind of kisses they saw getting passed around by drunk people in bars and prostitutes on corners, open mouthed and with tongue.
Vergo felt that heat on his face only grow. He stumbled a little, unused to it and not entirely sure footed in this kind of thing, but he opened his mouth as they pressed together in an inexpert kiss, tongue brushing Doffy’s tentatively.
He was nervous about doing it wrong.
Doffy seemed mostly satisfied at least. When they were done, he was red faced and smiling. Though he said, “we’re going to have to do a lot of that if we want to get better at that.”
Vergo was pretty sure he sounded excited. He was honestly pretty excited himself as he flashed Doffy a wide and jagged grin.
“Practice makes per….” he trailed off, “cent. Percent, right?”
“Perfect, Corazon,” Doffy corrected. “Practice makes perfect. Now come on, let’s get out of here and tell Trebol what happened before everybody starts waking up.”
Vergo felt himself tugged by his wrist out of the wrecked bar, toward the street.
Vergo grabbed a bottle off a table for the road as the two of them wandered into the street. He caught up, looping an arm around Doffy with a low chuckle.
“I’ll get that right someday too, boss. Don’t you worry.”
They had a meeting the next day. The whole gang.
Vergo had expected this. An experienced criminal even at his young age, he knew when the status quo changed, it meant bad things for the crooks and the thieves. And the other day had been a change from the quo for sure.
So when Trebol called the meeting he knew it was bad news, but it was bad news he had to hear. WIthout hesitation he filed into the office room and sat in one of the circled chairs to listen..
“So let me guess, Tre,” Diamante said, leaning his arms on his knees. “You found out what was up with the little raid on the pub.”
“That’s right,” Trebol nodded. His face was drawn, and serious. “The answer is unfortunately even more serious than I thought it might be.”
“Are the bribes not workin’ anymore?” Vergo murmured.
Doffy was sitting close to him, half leaned on him while he played ‘cats cradle’ with his threads between his fingers. Despite that, Vergo knew he was paying even closer attention than he was.
“You could say that,” Trebol drawled, scowling. “It’s more like they’ve decided that they’d prefer to pay bribes to someone else.”
“The World Government, right?” Doffy said, without looking up. “They want to join.”
Trebol’s scowl broke momentarily with an impressed look at Doflamingo. “Hey, hey, good guess Doffy. Unfortunately, that’s exactly right. They want to sign onto the World Government and that means an effort to ‘clean up the trash’.”
“Well fuck,” Dia hissed, slapping the arm of his chair.
“And we’re the trash,” Vergo murmured. “…that’s not good. World government is powerful, and we don’t have enough guys to really stand against ’em yet.”
“Yeah we sure fucking don’t,” Dia agreed. He crossed, uncrossed and recrossed his legs, shifting in his chair with agitation. “Tell me we’re not going to stick around.”
“Absolutely not,” Trebol agreed. “The only question is our specific course of action.”
Doffy sat forward, pulling the threads between his fingers taut. “Trebol, when we talked a few days ago, you said if we took any action against navy ships, we’d be branded as pirates, right?”
“I did, yes.”
Vergo noticed Pica look up curiously. His eyes slid from him, to Doffy.
“Pirates have bounties, and ships” It wasn’t the most helpful thing to say, per say, but it was the first association that came to his mind.
Doffy smiled up over his threads, and actually seemed pleased by Vergo’s ‘unhelpful’ addition.
“Pirates have bounties because they’re powerful. And they have ships because it lets them go wherever they want to escape the marines. We were already talking about bringing more people into the gang— why not bring on sailors, and become pirates?”
Trebol immediately looked dubious. Diamante, on the other hand– Vergo caught the wide smile that he immediately tried to smother under a serious expression.
“I think that’s a fair point, Tre. A ship gives us a lot more flexibility. And I mean if we get bigger, we’re gonna attract attention, pirates or not.”
“Well…” Trebol stroked his chin, frowning.
Vergo nodded to Doflamingo. “I think Doffy’s right. Ship means freedom. Freedom means we can get away from this kinda shit. As long as it ain’t like that old fishing ship, I’m for it.”
Pica leaned over toward Vergo and softly said, “Doffy said if we have more people they’ll be our subordinates. And that means we’ll give the orders.”
Despite his quiet voice, Vergo could hear the enthusiasm in it, and serious Pica smiled with a pleased expression.
Vergo couldn’t help but smile with him “…that’s a good point. Then if Doffy wants to be a pirate, let’s be the best damn pirates on the sea.”
The fishing ship was still a miserable memory, but as pirates they’d be following Doffy across the seas. They’d be in charge. There’d be no beatings, no working to death, just them and the sea and their growing power.
“Big pirate crews command a hell of a lot more respect than even the most powerful local crimelords, Tre,” Dia said, with the kind of tone with which someone might offer you another slice of chocolate cake.
Trebol laughed, and shook his head. “Alright. Alright! We’ll be pirates then. This will take some planning, and organization, but we should be able to do it before this place becomes completely unbearable.”
Doffy’s bright smile widened into a huge grin. “The Donquixote Pirates!”
It had a ring to it. The Donquixote Pirates, the terrors of the sea.
Vergo laughed under his breath and pumped his fist with a half-grin of his own “The Donquixote Pirates. The sea won’t know what hit it.”
After the meeting broke up, Diamante was in a fantastic mood.
Pirates. That was a hell of a lot more exciting than sitting around the offices making deals. Not wanting to let the idea sit, he’d told Trebol he was going to head down to the docks and start sizing up ships and scoundrels for potential crewmen.
On the way out of the building he caught sight of something that amused him even further. Doffy and Vergo were making out awkwardly in the corner of the hall.
He chuckled and gave Doffy a thumbs up as he passed.
“Wondered when they were gonna get around to that.”