Author's note:
There is a rather important decision for me to make regarding the coming chapters, so I'd appreciate it a lot if you guys could weigh in.
Details are at the bottom.
Enjoy!
(Bellamy POV)
Even as I duck under Sarquiss' haymaker, I am momentarily wracked by indecision. Do I try to subdue my first mate, or do I ignore him and go for the puppet master instead? If knocking him out would release him from Doffy's control I would punch my friend without hesitation, but I don't think Doffy requires his victims to be conscious in order to pull their strings.
That said, my chances of actually forcing Doflamingo to release Sarquiss were depressingly low. Even though he was ridiculed by Kaido for being too weak, Doffy was one of the stronger warlords with great expertise in haki, plenty of combat experience and an awakened devil fruit. Did I mention haki? The mysterious power I don't have yet?
Sidestepping a straight, I try and go for a hold, only for Sarquiss's body contorts in a really unnatural way to escape my grasp. The pained gasp from my first mate completes the picture, especially as there had been no need for such a manoeuvre. A simple backstop would have done. Bastard isn't going to let me grab my friend so easily (nor painlessly on his part), essentially goading me to come for him. I wasn't ready. Luffy hadn't been ready.
And that was despite the fact, that by the time he'd stepped foot on Dressrosa Luffy had two years of personal tutelage from Rayleigh under his belt, the assistance of a beefed-up Trafalgar Law and much greater mastery over his fruit as showcased by the introduction of Gear 4. And despite all that, Luffy scraped by by the skin of his teeth with a healthy dose of plot armor on top.
I had a grand total of six months experience with my fruit, no haki and one beaten up pre-timeskip Trafalgar Law of questionable neurological status. Suffice to say, the situation looked grim.
"I'm sorry, Bellamy! I can't stop this! My body just won't listen to me!"
The one silver lining to this situation, if you could even call it that, consisted in the fact that Doffy knew this as well. Hence, he was not taking me seriously at all, dismissing me as a threat entirely.
In fact, the man wasn't attacking me directly, choosing instead to let Sarquiss do it for him. Like a cat playing with a mouse, he's enjoying the emotional torment he inflicts by forcing crewmates into an impossible choice. Much like he had done in the canon timeline both to the original Bellamy-Sarquiss pair, but more recently to Commander Atmos.
"Come on, Bellamy-kun. Aren't you going to fight back? Just a little tap, I know you can do it. I believe in you." He mocks, as my first mate dances a little jig. "Do you need help deciding? The jaw is always nice and easy to break."
With another small twitch of his hand, Sarquiss's chin is racing towards the fist I was holding up in a guard position and I jerk out of the way before he slams into it. But Doflamingo is persistent and the next minute or so consists of Sarquiss' head trying to strike me wherever he can reach me.
"I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I'm sorry!"
Throughout it all, I slowly maneuver myself away, putting some distance between myself and more importantly, between Sarquiss and Doflamingo. Some more careful footwork positions me between Doffy and his victim which is a signal for me to spring into action.
"Spring shave!" An instant later I'm a hundred meters away, swinging my spring powered fist at Doflamingo's grinning face…or at least I was before it's replaced by Sarquiss' crying visage. A cut opens on my friend's cheek as my fist whistles past, me having successfully turned the trajectory at the last moment. "I'm not done yet!"
It had been something I had been working on for months. A way to manipulate my springs to create joints midflight, changing the direction of my punch after I had already thrown it. A way to hit unwary enemies from behind if they dodged my initial blow. "Spring ricochet!"
My other arm grabs hold of Sarquiss, throwing him physically out of the way to prevent Doflamingo from using him as a human shield again as my fist races back towards us with all the force of a small cannon.
The warlord doesn't take his eyes off me as he casually interposes the unconscious Law between himself and my fist, my peer jerking from the impact but he doesn't wake, an ugly bruise starting to form on his chest. And by the time my arm snaps back to its original position, Sarquiss has placed me in a chokehold.
"Naughty, naughty, naughty, Bellamy-kun. That wasn't nice of you, punching poor Law like that." Doflamingo scolds me, wagging a finger. "Then again, you're attacking a defenseless target. I wholeheartedly approve."
Sarquiss' arms tighten, slowly constricting the bloodflow to my head. Normally, he isn't strong enough to do this to me, even with the added strength from his fruit, but I suspect that Doflamingo is pulling out all the potential he has, forcing Sarquiss' body to forego the protective restrictions it imposes on itself.
"J-jackass!" I gasp out, wrenching the arm from my neck and breaking free. Mentally apologizing to my first mate, I throw him over my shoulder and pin him to the ground. Doflamingo lets me do it, casually lounging on a random body while giving me an indulgent smile, much like one would give a child. "Coil chassis!"
When I launch myself at him again, Law is floating in my way once again with Sarquiss close behind but this time I'm ready. A quick push opens a small gap between them through which I dive, duck and roll, only to spring back up with hardly any delay, my hand speeding towards Doflaming's chin from beneath. I'm not expecting to hit him, and I don't, the jerk swaying back just enough to dodge my fist by mere millimetres.
Thing is, he forgot I'm a spring man or didn't put enough thought into what that meant. With a single thought, my arm elongates, filling the final few millimetres and breaking the sound barrier on the way. My target? His sunglasses.
Beady pink eyes slowly blink in surprise at the sudden brightness before narrowing in annoyance when I crush his glasses beneath my foot.
"You shouldn't have done that." He growls at me, "I liked those. They had sentimental value."
In lieu of replying, I whip out two flash dials, close my eyes and press the button. As soon as my ears pick up a pained grunt, my legs propel me forwards arm outstretched and holding out my reject dial. Opening my eyes, I can see that Doflamingo is covering his eyes with both hands, an instinctive response of the human species, one not even someone of Doflamingo's caliber could ignore.
The dial makes contact with his bare skin…and I freeze before I can pull the trigger. Steel-wire-like strings envelop me, cutting into me and restricting my every movement from my neck down to my toes. I can't as much as twitch my finger to activate my dial, only my head being free. I guess I should be proud I forced him to pull this little trick on me, but well...fuck. There goes plan A for what to do when Doflamingo turns up. Look, if I know he's going to be here and I know he might have beef with me, I'd be stupid not to plan for the eventuality, right? I wasn't completely stupid, I had plans. The first one just didn't work.
"I will admit, I'm slightly impressed." Doflamingo glares down at me, not moving from his position, even leaning slightly into my hand as a demonstration of both his arrogance and his control. "You would have made a useful bug, but then you had to be annoying."
Time for plan B.
"AAAAAIIIIIISSSSAAAA!" My trained voice easily carries my words above the dint of the battlefield, across the icy bay towards my ship where the most powerful member of my crew is waiting in the wings.
"Aisa?"
"El Thor!" goes the distant response before I am bathed in lightning. It's not as powerful as the Enel's version, my crew mascot just not having the same output yet. But what she lacks in raw power, Aisa more than makes up for in pure, unrivalled speed.
In focusing her all into striking me, and pointedly not Doffy, she's bypassed his haki's ability to sense hostile intent. She had no hostile intent against him, as she was arguably gunning for me, similarly to how Luffy could overcome his opponent's observation haki by having not intent at all. Unless one was Katakuri but even then.
Originally, the plan had been for her electricity to travel through me, through his strings towards Doflamingo, forcing him to either release the strings or get electrocuted. It didn't matter whether his strings were conductive or not, as Aisa and I were both confident that she had enough juice to force the issue.
With the warlord pressed against me like he was? He was ground zero of the blast.
Still, for someone who's been caught with his proverbial pants down, Doflamingo's response is near instantaneous. He drops everything, including myself and his two puppets, focusing wholly on forming his strings into a makeshift shield. And it works, successfully staving off Aisa's "divine" smite and sending lightning cascading down all around us like a bird cage. But…
"REJECT!"
…he shouldn't have forgotten about me. My reminder hits him like a freight train, doubling him over and breaking his concentration and his shield. Millions and millions of volts run through his systems, turning his feather cloak to ashes in an instant and releasing the acrid stench of burning feathers. But even with all that, Doflamingo is standing when Aisa's attack comes to an end. Unfortunately, that one blast was everything Aisa had in her, so she wouldn't be doing that again for at least a few days. More's the pity.
Plan C it is.
Taking advantage of the small window of time I have before he can immobilise me agin, I whip out my arms to toss ten breath dials into a ring around us, triggering the dials as I release them. Accordingly, the dials activate in sequence, releasing their contents into the air one after another, the signal travelling in a circle. Plumes of smoke spill out to engulf a hundred square meters in a sickly purple fog, so thick that one could hardly see one's hand before their eyes.
Back when Sarquiss had discovered he had a deadly neurotoxin, my first thought had been something responsible like "Let's not make more work for Muret." But my second had been "How can we make this deadlier?"
What happens if you take a venomous liquid, remove as much water from the equation to concentrate it and turn it into gas? Poisonous gas. Simple right? But now compress that gas until it's right at the point of turning back into liquid and stuff it into a breath dial. And repeat. And repeat. And repeat until even the physically impossible storage volume of a breath dial is filled. What do you think will happen if I release all that at once? Times ten?
Doffy was about to find out.
He might not know what it is I've just done, but he knows he doesn't want to be caught in it. But even as he turns to escape the cloud, it's obvious that he's not at his best right now. His earlier fight against Marco, his scuffle with Namur, Aisa's lightning and my reject dial were starting to add up and it showed. He was slightly more sluggish, his instincts just a little muddled and his mind a touch panicked.
Meaning, he couldn't stop one arm shooting out of the fog to snatch up his ankle.
"Counter Shock!" There is a difference between getting hit by a bolt of lightning and having electricity applied directly to a nerve. And as any Naruto fan can tell you, a skilled medic can scramble your nervous system with a mere touch, something Law does his best to demonstrate.
Reaching the duo, I kick Law out of the cloud, trusting him to be able to deal with the poison flowing through his systems, while I do my best to use the opening Law had given me to get my seastone cuffs on Doflamingo. Sadly, it doesn't go that well as the warlord recovers fast enough that all I can manage to do is hold on tight in a desperate effort to prolong his exposure to the toxin.
I'm completely metal right now, not having released my coil chassis state and Sarquiss is immune to his own toxin. Doflamingo isn't either of these things. And with every second, he gets a little weaker even as his movements become more and more coordinated.
Eventually, I'm flung off him like a limp ragdoll, Doflamingo using his powers to create some wind and dispersing the poison cloud to reveal the full extent of my handiwork. He doesn't look too good. His clothing is burnt to almost nothing, his eyes are bloodshot, his skin has a sickly blue tint to it. And his smile is gone, replaced by a look of pure rage.
"Now it's personal." He hisses at me, rushing me with his still considerable speed before I can react, his fingers reaching for my throat. I try to backpedal but I trip over Law and go sprawling in a heap, though thankfully that doesn't mean the end for me.
"Doflamingo!" Haruta comes flying in out of nowhere, batting away Doflamingo's arm before starting to really lay into him. "How dare you do that to Namur! How dare you! HOW DARE YOU!"
It had been stated before that all of Whitebeard's division commanders were monsters in their own right, even if Atmos had been toyed with in the show. Objectively, Doflamingo was probably stronger than the vast majority of the commanders, but that was if both were at their respective best. And as I had noted earlier, Doflamingo was not at his best for a number of reasons, nor did he seem particularly eager to be here. Haruta on the other hand was precisely where he wanted to be.
Haruta was fury incarnate, moving faster than I had been at my peak, pinning his target in place before the man can escape. Special focus is paid to keeping Doflamingo's hands busy, not giving him a chance to deploy his strings, something that has the warlord grimacing everytime he fails to do just that.
A flurry blows forces the warlord onto the defensive, Haruta seemingly attacking everywhere at once, cutting and thrusting, cutting and thrusting. Soon enough little nicks start appearing on Doflamingo's body but despite his visible exhaustion, the warlord is successful in warding off any major injury. Which of course prompts Haruta to put even more effort into it, increasingly neglecting all defense in a reckless pursuit of his goal of gutting the warlord. And it's working somewhat, Doflamingo unable to launch a counter, forced into parry after parry after parry without rest. It's a fine balancing act with an unclear ending, but one I'm not going to stick around to find out.
"Sarquiss, can you fly? Yes? Good. Take him," I point towards an awake but limp Trafalgar Law, "and bring him to his ship. Then return to the Black Pearl and tell them to set sail the moment Aisa detects Doflamingo coming after them. I'll contact you later via den den mushi."
"Bellamy, about earli…" he starts but I cut him off. We don't have time for this and I'm not sure how long Haruta can keep Doflamingo occupied. Though chances are that he was just going to leave after this. Doffy isn't the type of man who stays in a fight he cannot win or even has a significant chance of loss unless he absolutely has to. With how tired and damaged he is? He'll likely spent some time recuperating before doing anything else, if he can disengage from Haruta.
"Later. Go!" Short and to the point, but it gets my point across.
"Aye, captain. Don't die!" My first mate gives me a brief hug before flying off with his passenger held in a bridal carry. I wasn't risking Doflamingo going after my crew without me around, but I was equally unwilling to just leave. I'd gotten this far; I was getting a few things done.
Author's note:
Bellamy survives! Mostly because Doffy played with his food and severely underestimated Bellamy (and because Haruta arrives) but he survives!
Hope it was enjoyable and somewhat plausible.
About that decision.
So this chapter takes place during the beginning phases of Ace's great escape. In my mind, an orderly retreat takes time, so technically I have the opportunity to have Bellamy get to one more encounter/battle before I need to get him over to Ace's location to try and stop his suicide-by-stupidity. (No guarantee for success).
Thing is, do you guys agree or do I send him over right away? (It's about the difference of two chapters)
Looking forward to hearing your opinions.