The figure stepped fully into the light and immediately caught his foot on a loose stone and stumbled, catching himself on the wall with one hand. He straightened, adjusted his coat, and looked at Lucien and Idris with an expression that was trying very hard to be composed.
It wasn't quite getting there.
"Corazon," he said. "That's what they call me."
Idris kept the pistol up. Lucien looked at him. The makeup, the blonde hair, the jaw. Up close the resemblance to Doflamingo was harder to ignore.
"You're his brother," said Lucien.
Corazon didn't confirm or deny it. He reached into his coat, produced a folded piece of paper, and held it out. His hand was slightly unsteady. "The fruit. I need you to hand it over."
"It's gone," said Lucien.
"I can see you're injured and I'd rather not, I mean, I'm not, I don't want to." He stopped. Tried again. "Hand over the fruit, and everyone walks away."
Idris glanced at Lucien. Lucien looked at Corazon and said nothing. His legs were still wrong, and his arm was still bleeding, and the idea of another fight was genuinely bleak, but he didn't move.
Corazon took a breath, squared his shoulders, and reached for the weapon at his side.
Footsteps behind them.
Small ones.
Law came around the corner of the building with his arms still wrapped around his stomach, took one look at the three of them standing in a corridor with weapons half drawn, and stopped.
Corazon looked at him.
Law looked back.
Corazon's eyes moved across him slowly. The black hair. The pale skin. The white spots on the backs of his hands are visible even from here. His expression changed. Not dramatically, just a shift, something settling in behind his eyes that hadn't been there a moment ago.
He lowered his hand from his weapon.
"How old is he?" he said quietly. Not really a question.
"Seven," said Lucien.
Corazon looked at Law for another long moment. Law was looking back at him with the flat, measuring attention he gave most things, head slightly tilted, trying to work out what the man was.
Corazon put the piece of paper back in his coat.
"Go," he said.
Lucien didn't move immediately. "Just like that."
"The fruit is already eaten. There's nothing to collect." Corazon's voice had changed slightly, quieter, the composed performance mostly gone. "You need to go into hiding. All three of you. The Marines are already en route here and have the intelligence that you are also on this island, along with Doflamingo. So you'd better get going now, unless you want to face an army of marines along with a Lieutenant in that state."
"How do you know what the Marines are doing," said Idris.
Corazon looked at him. Then he smiled, just briefly, the corners of his mouth moving in a way that didn't quite reach the careful blankness of the rest of his face. Just enough of a glimpse to answer the question without answering it.
Lucien looked at him for a second longer, then turned and walked toward the pier. Idris fell in beside him. Law followed without being told, glancing back once at Corazon as they rounded the corner.
Corazon watched them go.
He waited until the sound of the boat had faded before he moved.
There was a narrow space between two buildings further down the road, away from the pier, away from where Doflamingo's crew had been. He walked to it, checked both directions, and stepped into the shadow. He reached into his coat and produced a small Den Den Mushi, its expression sleepy and unhurried.
He dialled.
It rang twice before it connected, the receiver's expression shifting to match the person on the other end.
"Report."
"Doflamingo did not acquire the fruit," said Corazon. His voice was flat now, all the warmth gone, something else underneath it entirely. "Someone else got there first. Lucien Vosgrave. Bounty hunter, North Blue, current bounty pending the royal family incident. The fruit has already been eaten by a third party."
A long pause on the other end.
Then the Den Den Mushi's expression changed, the receiver's face pulling into something tight and controlled, jaw setting in a way that carried clearly even through the snail's mimicry.
"Vosgrave."
The name came out slowly. No surprise. Recognition.
Sakazuki had woken up on a boat to Marine headquarters with no memory of getting on it.
One moment he'd been in Loguetown, two steps from putting his hands on members of the former Pirate King's crew. Then nothing. He'd come around below deck with Borsalino sitting across from him saying nothing useful as always.
The report he'd filed on arrival had been the worst thing he'd ever had to write.
Training under Zephyr had been something else entirely. Months of it, the kind that didn't ask how you were doing and didn't slow down when the answer was badly. He'd graduated at the top of his batch and Zephyr had handed him something for it without ceremony. Sakazuki had taken it and said nothing.
They'd sent him back to North Blue to clean it up. Rowdy seas, loose operations, nobody running it with any real discipline.
Then the reports started coming in. A white-haired bounty hunter named Lucien Vosgrave was causing problems across the region. Same one from Loguetown. The one who'd been standing next to Shanks and Buggy that day. Attacking a World Government-affiliated royal family had put a bounty on his head, which made him Sakazuki's problem officially.
He'd been waiting for a clean reason to move on him.
Now he had one.
Vosgrave was a loose end he had been waiting to close.
"The child who ate the fruit," he said. "Description."
Corazon gave it. Age, appearance, and the Amber Lead markings.
Another pause.
"Understood." The Den Den Mushi's expression went cold in a specific way, as if he was waiting. "I will find him. I will burn every island he sets foot on until there is nowhere left to run, and then I will burn him."
The line went dead.
Corazon looked at the Den Den Mushi for a moment. Then he put it back in his coat and stepped out of the shadow and walked slowly in the opposite direction from the pier, hands in his pockets, the warmth already finding its way back into his face like he was putting on a coat. He still had to look for his brother.
Behind him, somewhere on the water, a small boat was getting further away.
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