– Eddy –

When the captain had told them to pack up and get ready to sail, Eddy had initially thought very little of it. Perhaps they had another mission from the Revolutionaries, or the captain had picked up the trail of some long-lost treasure. By this point, neither would have surprised him very much.

However, when the captain declared that they were going to meet up with the famed Surgeon of Death to see if he could fix Eddy's lungs, he'd been struck speechless for a moment. Not least, because after Muret told him that there was nothing she could do for him anymore beyond continued physiotherapy, Eddy had somewhat resigned himself to his current fate. As a result, after managing to recover a significant portion of his pre-injury endurance – he no longer felt like dying after a short jog – Eddy had adapted and completely revamped his fighting style to account for his handicap.

The navigator would even go as far as to claim that he'd become far deadlier than he'd ever been prior to his injury, much of which he owed to Izou's swordsmanship training. So, Eddy had found his peace with the cards fate had dealt him and the very notion that his lungs could be restored had been pushed into the farthest corners of his mind. After all, why worry about the impossible?

Of course, the captain had to try and disprove Eddy's standards of impossibility again and dangle this new opportunity before his eyes. That the captain may have been playing a cruel joke was never considered a possibility, as Eddy knew Bellamy too well by now for him to ever believe that to be a possibility. This held true, even if his captain had gotten memories of a past life…somehow, but the fact remained: captain was the captain. The same captain with whom he'd shared the most life-shaking and formative adventures of his short life. So, for Eddy that was the end of the matter.

Thus, if this wasn't a joke, it meant that Bellamy truly believed that this Trafalgar Law fellow could help him and thus, Eddy had found hope re-kindling within him. The style of swordsmanship Izou was tutoring him in was incredibly effective at finishing a duel very quickly but required incredible stamina to truly master. With the removal of the greatest obstacle left in his way becoming a very real possibility, how could Eddy not get excited at the prospect?

Perhaps, that was why the entire journey had passed in a blur. While Eddy had carried out his duties well, his mind had always been miles away. He'd barely even noticed when they'd made landfall, being forcibly jerked out of thoughts by Bellamy and Muret physically dragging him off the ship to meet with the surgeon.

Even now, after the consultation, Eddy felt like he was in a daze with most of the medical jargon having gone over his head. All that had remained embedded in his memory were the warmth of Muret's hands in his own and three words.

"So, what did the doctor say?" Rivers asked expectantly as soon as Eddy stepped into the kitchen. "Can he fix your lung?"

It is possible.

"Yeah, the doctor said that he could do it." Eddy told his crew, who collectively let out a cheer. "The surgery itself won't even be that difficult, he said."

"Nice!" Ross said, pumping his fist. "In that case, when's the big day?"

"Muret was still discussing the logistics of it all when I left, but it will probably take a while yet."

"Why though?" Hewitt asked. "I thought captain Law…"

"I didn't understand most of it, but I think it's because he can't regrow my lung. If that were possible, Muret would have done it already." Eddy replied, interrupting Hewitt. "He's going to have to put a whole new lung into my chest or something."

"A new lung?" Rivers piped up, tilting his head quizzically to the side.

"Yeah. Apparently, they can't just use any old lung from a random hobo. It's got to be one that matches my blood type or something, plus it should be from someone whose lungs are already trained to my current level of strength. Well, either that or higher to account for the inevitable loss of function." Eddy answered the sniper before shrugging. "Not sure where he's going to get my new lung from, but he said he'd handle it."

"So, we just got to fucking wait, is that what you're saying?"

"More or less." Eddy said, shrugging again. "I've waited this long without hope. What's a little longer?"


– Bellamy –

Founder and captain of the Heart Pirates, wielder of the ope ope no mi and the holder of the medical knowledge to use it. A young genius with a tragic past and a lost family to avenge. A ruthless pirate who wouldn't hesitate to remove your still beating heart from your body. There were many ways to describe Trafalgar D. Water Law, but if I had to choose one, it would be the following.

A naive optimist.

Now, that was not to say that the man wasn't intelligent. In fact, if you lined up our peers in descending order of IQ, I would wager that one would find Law near the very top of the list. Unfortunately for our good doctor, he suffered from an ailment which preferentially afflicted individuals of above average academic ability. Namely the near unshakable confidence in their own intellectual prowess, as well as the flipside of the same coin, the belief that everybody around them wasn't nearly as smart as they themselves were.

In canon, the result of this had been Law's complex and convoluted plan to take down Doflamingo and weaken Kaido, with which he'd convinced Luffy to enter into an alliance with him. And while the current circumstances weren't the same as they had been in the story, the mastermind behind it was, leading to Law explaining a very similar idea to me when we met up.

Considering our shared vendetta against a feathered Warlord, an alliance against a common foe was agreed upon within the first minutes of our meeting. So in the interest of saving time, we decided to pool our limited resources and lay our cards out on the table. Much to my private amusement, Law had been unable to hide his surprise upon realizing I'd accomplished far more in six months than he'd done in an entire decade when it came to gathering strength and allies. After all, while Law had only his own crew - a talented bunch but only a single Paradise crew - I had managed to recruit Urouge, Byron as well as the Gecko Moria. If one also counted Bonney, who I was still hoping to convince eventually, the Revolutionary Army and Disco (and his spy network); I was the lynchpin of a rather powerful network. The Whitebeard Remnants were just the cherry on top.

Naturally, Law, who'd originally intended to form an alliance on an equal footing, was forced to face reality and accept that this wouldn't be the case. Regardless of our wishes, whether it be by contribution or by influence, I had inadvertently put myself into a position where I would dominate my peer by every metric. Urouge and the rest had allied with me not with Law and hence, would be far more likely to listen to my suggestions than they would Law's. The one way he could flip the board, so to speak, would be if his personal combat ability were to utterly dwarf mine, but as we were both supernovas this was unlikely to be the case.

Law hadn't seemed too disturbed by this situation, because the benefits of working with a well connected and, more importantly, a sane pirate far outweighed any misgivings he might have. However, Law wouldn't have been who he was if he'd been content to ride my coattails to victory, his pride demanding that he contribute as much as possible to balance the scales. Seeing as I had provided the brawn, the only possible conclusion a person confident in his own cleverness such as Law could reach, would have been to become the brains of the operation.

The above being the explanation for why I found myself sitting across from my fellow captain, who, after finishing his grand presentation, was giving me some very expectant looks.

"So, to summarize…" I began, drawing out the words while I gathered my thoughts. "Your plan is to cut out a hundred beating hearts of a hundred pirate captains and offer them as live sacrifices to the World Government in exchange for being appointed as one of the Seven Warlords to fill the holes left behind by Sir Crocodile, Teach and Moria."

"A morbid way to put it, but not incorrect." Law said, giving me a small nod.

"After which, you will use the access granted to you by merit of your new position to dig through secret government files in the hopes of unearthing some of the Joker's dirty secrets."

"It's not a hope. I know there is something. While I just don't know what it is, that can be solved easily enough once I am one of the seven." Law replied, relaxing into his seat. "Ideally, it would be something that could impede his relationship with Kaido."

"You will then use whatever blackmail you find to threaten him into relinquishing his own Warlord title, causing him to lose the protection he enjoyed from the Marines." I continued, staring into Law's smiling eyes. In response, he winked at me. "Once the deed is done, you would carry out your threat regardless, forcing Doflamingo to fail his obligations to Kaido."

"Kaido was never the most forgiving man nor the most understanding. It would be enough if he merely retracted his implied protection but it is far more likely that the two would go to war. Kaido for the alleged slight and the Joker to survive." he explained, before adding on "The Joker won't survive."

"And as the marines aren't going to be able to accept Kaido executing the ruler of Dressrosa, they'll be forced to retaliate, inflicting even more casualties upon Kaido's crew in addition to whatever damage Doflamingo managed to do."

"Mutual destruction at its finest." Law smirked, "Without the defender's advantage they enjoyed against Whitebeard, the Marines won't be able to finish the Emperor off, meaning our alliance can swoop in and take Kaido's head."

"So, according to your plan, we'd be able to take Doflamingo's life without lifting a finger, cripple the marines and hence help spread the fires of Revolution while also clearing an Emperor's throne in one fell swoop."

"Exactly. Everybody wins!" Law finished, looking mightily pleased with himself.

It was a fine plan, at least in theory and if everything worked out as intended, it would be an incredibly easy way to win. The problem was that plans, especially intricate ones, tended not to survive contact with the enemy. Something that Law and Luffy had found out in the canon timeline much to their detriment. As such, I had no intention of following a plan which had been proven to be faulty, though that still left the question of how to transmit this diplomatically.

"I have a few questions if you don't mind."

"Of course not. Let's hear them."

"How are you going to gather a hundred hearts of sufficient quality in time?" I asked, to which my conversation partner launched into another lengthy explanation.

Law's proposed solution had been to stir up an uprising in Hachinosu, which was perhaps the pirate hub in the New World and hence, filled with enough harvestable hearts to make the World Government salivate. Failing that, the power vacuum left by Whitebeard's death had destabilized the area so significantly, that there wasn't going to be a lack of ambitious elements eyeing up prime real estate anytime soon. Either way, he could use the chaos to ambush and individually pick off his targets before making a clean getaway.

My new ally's first choice had been Marshall D. Teach, who had more reasons than anybody to begin carving out a piece of territory for himself. After all, his little show at Marineford had all but been a declaration of his candidacy for Whitebeard's empty throne. Hachinosu would offer Teach not only a symbolic base but also a very large pool of recruits, as long as he could kick out the former owner.

"You do know I'm a known associate of the Whitebeard remnants, right? If you're going to be involving Teach, I'm not going to be able to help you." I told him. "I've got too much to lose by working alongside Blackbeard."

"It's fine. I can do this part by myself." He answered without a care in the world. In a way, he probably preferred to do this alone anyway, if only to increase his own contribution.

Which still left one rather glaring issue we needed to address.

"The success of this entire operation depends on the element of surprise. Doffy cannot find out that we're investigating his weaknesses, he cannot find out that we know about his weaknesses and he definitely cannot find out we control whatever his weakness is before we are in position." I said, listing things off with my fingers.

"Right you are."

"How are you going to stop him from finding out?"

"Originally, I was going to lie low and fly under the radar…but then you arrived." Law answered, gesturing in my direction. "Didn't you mention that Disco was capable of blinding the Joker's network to your movements?"

"For now, but it's already taking nearly everything he has to cover my tracks from Doffy's agents and that time is running out. According to Disco's estimates, he won't be able to keep this up for longer than a year and its already been a few months since he made that estimate." I pointed out, causing Law to frown. "Afterwards, we're going to have to assume that Doffy is going to be aware of our every move."

"Drats."

Still, because the problem we were facing was that Doffy had his eyes and ears everywhere in the criminal underground, the solution was relatively simplistic if a bit tricky to pull off. After all, if Doffy didn't have a vast network he could use to keep tabs on us, he couldn't keep tabs on us. Sadly, as neither of us had the time, the manpower or the skills necessary to root out the Joker's crime cartel root and stem, nor the ability to even properly damage it, we would need outside help. Which meant dealing with one of the other Crime Lords, who had a vested interest in seeing the Joker knocked down a peg or two.

In essence, we had three choices as to whom we could approach.

The first, was the illustrious Prof. Michael Orwell Riarty. A famed mathematician, star lecturer at the Imperial Collegium of Clearwater and a known philanthropist. A genius by all accounts, he had taken the academic world by storm when he published his first papers at the ripe old age of ten, solving a centuries old mathematical puzzle. If one believed the rumors, his intellect rivaled that of the world's greatest mind, Dr. Vegapunk.

That was about as much as the general public knew about the man, including most of the law enforcement. However, those in the know fearfully whispered his chosen epithet…the Criminal Consultant. The man was a master of playing the various gangs, pirates and crooks like a fiddle, offering great rewards for cooperation and swift retribution for betrayal. If the man made a suggestion in his role as a consultant, you probably wanted to listen lest a bounty be placed on everything you held dear...with suggestions on how one might go about collecting them.

The second was Gild Tesoro, also known as the Casino King. Not only was he the proprietor of the Gran Tesoro, the largest and most famous entertainment city-ship in the world, but he was also a veritable kingpin in the underworld with extensive dealings with the World Government. Most relevant to my purposes, he was a former enemy turned business partner of Doflamingo, though my canon knowledge told me that he wouldn't be too displeased if the Warlord were to be defeated. Sadly, going anywhere near his ship at my current level of strength was likely to result in Tesoro turning me into a gold-plated statue before turning me over to Doflamingo. Probably in a bid to lower the man's guard before betraying him, but still it wasn't a palatable option for me.

The last but not least amongst the illustrious trio, was the Bloody Countess, Elisabeth Bathory. No one knew for sure if the claim of nobility was legitimate but few dared to question her claims. Fewer still were those who were daring enough to mention the rumors of Bathory bathing in the blood of virgins and lived to tell the tale. As such, these tales were never verified, though they persisted in the form of folktales.

Elisabeth Bathory had first risen to prominence following the death of her husband several decades ago, showcasing an amazing business acumen to greatly increase her family fortune until she was able to literally purchase her home island from her king. Years later, when his heir tried to have her arrested on hundreds of murder charges, the crown prince found himself deposed in short order by popular (aristocratic) demand. In the years that followed, the Bloody Countess had turned the kingdom of her birth into her private domain, though unlike Doflamingo she seemed content to be pulling the strings from the shadows.

And it was with this lady that Disco had managed to arrange a meeting, the Bloody Countess having agreed to grant us an audience if we were to bring her a suitable gift.

"Did she mention what she wanted?"

"She did." I sighed.

"Not going to tell me what it is?" my new ally asked, crossing his arms.

"No, it's just a little unexpected, is all." I told Law, before taking a deep breath. "The Bloody Countess desires the Pure Gold."


Author's note:
I do apologise for the delay, but I'm currently in the process of throwing out and rewriting the next three chapters or so. Something about the way I wrote them - be it the plot, the dialogue, the style - just didn't feel right so I'm taking some time to reassess the situation.

As always, do please leave a like and a comment if you enjoyed. It really helps a lot.