Chapter 1: Diamante & Trebol
Before they met Doflamingo, they were a gang, not really pirates. They had a ship, by sheer technicality, since you needed one to move even in between the islands in the little archipelago. They didn’t fly under any kind of flag, and they operated at a small scale.
Which was probably for the best, since they were still basically kids.
The young man who had recently come to be known as Trebol was the oldest, at 18, and he had big ideas which occasionally worried Diamante.
Diamante had been just about 14– he’d broken into a comparatively well-to-do clerk’s office looking to lay his hands on their cash and finance his way off of home island and off to somewhere more promising.
He’d been surprised to find a young apprentice, Trebol then barely 17, working through the night by candle light.
Diamante had put his knife to the apprentice clerk’s throat. “Show me where the money is.”
“Hey, hey there’s no need for that knife,” the clerk laughed nervously. “I’ll show you right where it is if you’ll get me out of here and split it with me.”
“What do you mean, if I get you out of here?” Diamante had narrowed his eyes.
There was a clinking sound from under the desk. “See for yourself.”
Diamante didn’t have to look to know the familiar sound of a chain, but he stepped backward, taking the knife away from the young man’s throat, and looked anyway. Sure enough, there was exactly what he had expected to see. A shackle around the leg chaining him to the desk he sat behind.
“You’re a slave,” Diamante said, feeling rather stupid immediately after it was out of his mouth. Beyond the shackle, another look at the man in the candle-light should have easily told him that he was a slave. Hunched shoulders, sallow, drawn face. Long black hair unkempt and heavy with soot and candle grease.
“Not for much longer, if you’ll help me out,” he said, smiling rather widely at Diamante, who was surprised by the man’s demeanor. He wasn’t begging– his spirit certainly wasn’t broken. “What are you planning to do with the money, anyway?”
“Get away from this fucking island for starters,” Diamante admitted. He didn’t have much in the way of plans after that. He had some ambition to turning mercenary, but he wasn’t sure what step two of that plan was.
The slave laughed again, deep from his chest, and coughed. “Excuse me. Well, getting away from this fucking island sounds great yes. Can you read?”
Diamante narrowed his eyes, unsure what he was getting at. “No. Why?”
The chained man gestured at all the books in front of him, where he’d been scratching away with his pen. “I can read. A man who knows how to read and a man who can handle a blade might make themselves well off in any number of ways.”
Diamante looked him over. He looked neither strong, nor well fed. He could be easily dispatched if he tried to turn against Diamante and betray him. But beyond that, he seemed like a planner. And Diamante was a man desperately in need of a plan.
“I’ll get you loose. Then show me where the money is.”
“I’ll show you. And tomorrow’s manifests. I thought I saw a shipment coming in that would be much more interesting in our hands than its owners.”
“I think I like you already.”
And that was how they’d begun as a gang. He’d cut him loose and they’d fled into the night with a modest box full of gold and a week’s worth of shipping paperwork.
“What’s your name, anyway?” Diamante asked as they fled into the night.
“Mostly slave, or clerk. Whatever my mother gave me they never bothered to write down. What about you?”
“It’s Diamante.” He’d never felt self conscious for having a name before.
“That’s a good name.”
He felt even more self conscious. “Nah, I mean, not really.”
The runaway slave laughed. “Whatever you say. Are you willing to take a gamble with me as a partner, Diamante?”
“Pretty sure I already have.”
“Fantastic. Then, if you don’t mind, if you’re Diamante, then I might as well be Trebol.”
“Good name,” Diamante chuckled.
“Yes, thank you.”
Three days later at dawn they were walking away from a merchant vessel, Diamante carrying a small chest in his arms.
He looked over his shoulder to make sure there was no one following them, and by some miracle, they were left unmolested.
“I can’t believe they just gave this to us and let us walk away with it.”
“That’s the miracle of paperwork, my friend. Paperwork makes the world go round. Now let’s get somewhere out of sight and open this up.”
They ducked into a disused alleyway, tucking themselves into the darkness beyond the crates and dirty boxes that filled it. Trebol held the box, while Diamante forced it open with his knife. There was a satisfying pop as the simple lock broke, and he pushed the top open.
“There’s fruit in here,” Diamante observed incredulously. His brow furrowed as he gave his new partner a look that demanded an answer. “You said there was treasure.”
“This is the treasure, my friend.”
To Diamante it just looked like fruit. But he was willing to believe that the former clerk knew something he didn’t.
“Alright, explain it to me.”
“They’re called Devil Fruits. There are a limited number of them in the world and each one fetches an unfathomable price. Ask me why, Diamante.” Trebol smiled thinly.
He hardly needed prompting. The idea naturally provoked curiosity. “Alright. Why?”
“Because they’re mystical. Cursed, even, some say,” Trebol chuckled, and coughed into his sleeve murmuring a ‘pardon me’ before he continued. Life as a slave had taken its toll on his health, Di had come to learn. “Each fruit grants the man who eats it some bizarre and wondrous power. It comes with a price of course, but all things considered, it’s relatively minor.”
Diamante didn’t hold much truck with magic powers or curses. They were the sort of things old people talked about after too many ales at the pub. The sort of thing on which one blamed simple injury and misfortune which was always widespread.
Still he asked, “What kind of curse?”
“It robs you of your ability to swim.”
Diamante glanced off down the alleyway in the direction of the port, off toward the vast and wide North Blue Sea.
“Oh is that all,” he drawled. “Well, if they’re as rare and magical as you say, then we ought to be able to sell them for an excellent price. Do you think it would be enough to get a decent boat and provisions to get to a larger island?”
Trebol grinned wider. “Many times over, I promise you. But we aren’t going to sell them. Not these ones anyway, we’re going to eat them.”
Diamante could have been knocked over by a feather.”You’re joking.”
“I’m not,” Trebol shook his head. “The people who’ve eaten fruits like these have shaped the history of our world, Diamante. The legends of their exploits echo through tales and history books. Devil Fruit eaters fill the ranks of our world’s powerful and elite. But if you’d rather have just money, well, I suppose we can sell yours.”
“Now hold on!”
Anger flashed through Diamante’s throat at Trebol’s condescending tone, and he snatched one of the fruits up without warning, holding it jealously. He understood the implication. If Diamante didn’t eat the fruit then Trebol would think he was a fool who’d trade a haul for an immediate pittance. He was not about to let that happen.
Besides, either Trebol was mistaken– or full of shit– and the fruit was essentially worthless anyway or he’d walk away from the experience with some kind of magical power.
Diamante liked the idea of power. He’d had so little of it in his life. Holding Trebol at knifepoint the other night had been just about the pinnacle of it in his life so far.
The thought that he could just wait for Trebol to eat his and see if it did anything didn’t cross his mind.
“I didn’t say I wouldn’t eat it,” Diamante said, lifting his chin, his grip on the fruit tightening further– just short of breaking its skin with his rough nails. “What kind of powers will they give us?”
Trebol was grinning widely now as he shook his head. “I have no idea. It’s a gamble.”
“That’s life then.” He lifted the fruit to his mouth. “Cheers.”
And that had been that. Trebol had later grudgingly admitted that his fruit hadn’t exactly been everything he was hoping for, but ‘power was power’ and it was a useful ability, if not glamorous.
“If I hadn’t eaten it we wouldn’t have been able to get any more, so it’s not like I could take my pick.”
Privately, Diamante didn’t think his own abilities were much to write home about either– not that he would write home if he had one– but he could never say as much to Trebol without receiving a stern look.
“Glue.” Diamante sometimes later caught Trebol muttering to himself. “Of all things. Glue.”
But glamorous or not their combined abilities were devastatingly effective.
Their last activities on that godforsaken island were to rob a clothing shop in what passed for the nice part of town and steal a small two man craft from the harbor.
Diamante adjusted his new hat on head with pride as the wind carried them toward the largest island in the archipelago. The hat— possibly meant for a lady, he wasn’t altogether up on fashions— along with the fine coat and the other clothes he’d stolen were probably the softest things that had been in contact with his body yet in his life. They were certainly the most expensive.
“Did you see the way the shopkeep fainted dead away when his gun went limp?” Already he was scheming clever new ways to use this weird new ability. If he’d sacrificed being able to swim, he was damned well going to make it count.
“Not a very bold one, was he?” Trebol chuckled along with him, thumbing the furred ruff of his own new coat, the largest and heaviest in the shop. “He wasn’t getting up again after he went down, either, was he?”
“Not after you got done with him!”
They laughed and crowed about the petty adventure all the way to the next island, already starting to get along like old friends.
“Alright, Trebol, explain to me why we’re robbing a fishing boat,” Diamante insisted, giving his partner an increasingly common dubious stare. “I’m not particularly interested in stealing fish.”
“Hey, we’re not going to steal any fish, Dia,” Trebol chuckled. “According to the ledgers in snuck a look at this ship’s been docked for three days, and getting ready to put to sea in three days more.”
“So?” Diamante knew he was going to continue explaining– Trebol loved explaining. But he also seemed to love when Diamante asked him what he was up to. “What does that matter?”
“It means the catch has been sold, and not yet banked. If the captain bothers with banking at all, he won’t have been able to until it’s open in the morning.”
“So what you’re saying is all the money from their last catch is on board.” Dia stroked his chin. “That is better than fish.”
“A hell of a lot better,” Trebol nodded, flashing him with a toothy grin. “It’s not just any fishing boat, that ship brings in hauls of North Sea Tuna. They fish up in the coldest part of the sea and only come back to port once every six months. Their captain will be loaded.”
“Well now!” Diamante’s own smile widened considerably. “How do you know all these very interesting things all the time, Tre?”
“Only by reading and listening. I’ve told you before, a man can do a lot with reading and listening. And a lot more if he’s got the power to back it up.”
Diamante very much found that he was beginning to agree.