Somewhere in the first half of the Grand Line…
Thousands of meters high in the sky, more than ten islands floated in a breathtaking, dream-like sight that no one below could witness.
Dr. Indigo was in his lab as usual, researching IQ. The only difference was that his captain, Golden Lion Shiki, had taken most of the troops, leaving the island's defenses somewhat sparse. But this was of no consequence, because at this altitude, no enemy could possibly invade. Well, unless the invader was a young monster who could fly like the one from last time. In that case, having more troops would be useless.
"Hmm?"
Dr. Indigo was mixing a liquid in a beaker when he suddenly noticed a slight ripple in it. The strange part was, he hadn't touched it.
Rumble... Rumble...
The ground began to tremble slightly, and the shaking grew more and more violent until the entire lab was swaying.
"What's happening?"
Suddenly, Dr. Indigo felt a sensation of weightlessness and was thrown to the floor. It was as if the lab was descending at an incredible speed. No, it was the entire island that was falling.
Dr. Indigo struggled to his feet, enduring the feeling of freefall as he stumbled out of the lab.
"No! We're falling!"
"Shiki-sama! What happened to Lord Shiki?!"
"Shiki-sama's ability has failed!"
"Merveille is falling! We're going to die! Damn it!"
As he got outside, Dr. Indigo saw that everything was in chaos. Many people were sprawled on the ground, while others, fighting the sensation of weightlessness, were scrambling about. Indeed, the entire island was plummeting.
A shocking thought flashed through his mind.
"No! Shiki-sama... did something happen to him?" Dr. Indigo was horrified. The power to keep the islands afloat belonged to Golden Lion Shiki alone, and he would never let his home base fall from the sky. For something like this to happen, it meant that something had gone wrong with him. If he wasn't dead, he was at least unconscious.
"No! It can't be!"
Dr. Indigo panicked. More importantly, if a dozen islands fell from a height of over a thousand meters, not only would it create a monstrous tsunami, but very few people on the islands themselves would survive. The fall of the Golden Lion Pirates' home base meant that the crew was... about to be wiped out!
Crack...
A fissure appeared in the ground and quickly spread.
BOOM!
A moment later, a section of the glass floor shattered, sending dozens of shards flying in all directions. Doflamingo slowly picked himself up, kneeling on the ground.
"Cough!"
With even a slight movement, he felt a wave of intense pain. Doflamingo coughed up blood, a bitter smile on his face. "I almost died. This feeling of intense pain... I get to experience it again!"
Doflamingo's clothes were in tatters, and his body was covered in scrapes and bruises. Who knows how many bones were broken; there was almost no part of him that was whole.
He sat down on the ground, clutching his stomach with a light chuckle. "Fuffuffuffu! How incredible. So many bones in my body are broken! I was so close, so very close to dying! Heheheh... Fuffuffuffu!" At the same time, a network of fine threads appeared within Doflamingo's internal organs, which had been injured by the glass. The threads began to stitch and repair his damaged insides.
On the other side...
"Cough... cough..."
A few drops of blood fell. Impaled by the sixteen thick white threads and hanging in the air, Caesar barely managed to open his eyes. His body was a sieve, and he had bled so much that he was probably on the verge of draining completely. But even so, he wasn't dead yet.
"To think... I'd... fail... It really... is... a terrifying..." Caesar whispered to himself, his voice so faint that it was barely audible. But before he could finish, he closed his eyes and breathed his last.
The next moment, the glass that had risen from the ground reverted back to a mix of soil and stone. Looking out, the landscape had completely changed. The grassy ground was gone, replaced by a battlefield of jagged pits and a several-hundred-meter-long hill of earth that resembled a mountain range. The ground was in a state of utter devastation.
"Hm?!"
Seeing this, Doflamingo's head snapped up. "That glass bastard... did he die?!"
Pop!
Suddenly, a figure appeared out of thin air next to Doflamingo.
"Doffy, you look like a total mess," a teasing voice said.
"You're... what kind of ability is this? Teleportation?" Doflamingo's body tensed up before he recognized the newcomer and relaxed.
THUD!
Aeridar simply smiled without a word, tossing the person he was holding onto the ground.
"That's... gasp... Shiki!"
Doflamingo drew a sharp breath as he saw the person on the ground. He was utterly horrified. "W-when did you get this strong?"
Indeed, the man Aeridar had thrown to the ground, though covered in blood, was recognizable by his long golden hair and the famous swords that served as his legs. This man was none other than the legendary Golden Lion Shiki.
How long had it been since he was almost killed by Redfield? Now he had defeated the even more famous Golden Lion. Had his strength improved so quickly? Or was Redfield stronger than Shiki? Or was Shiki's reputation not what it seemed?
"Hey, hey, Doffy, that's pretty embarrassing," Aeridar said, curling his lip in a mock sneer.
Before Doflamingo could respond, Aeridar continued, "Don't overestimate the current Golden Lion. While my strength has improved significantly since last time, I still have some ways to go compared to the real monsters."
"Are you saying..." Doflamingo's eyebrows shot up as he glanced at the unconscious Shiki. "An old injury?"
"Exactly. The Golden Lion at his peak is not someone we could have fought," Aeridar said, pointing at the ship's rudder lodged in Shiki's head and the swords replacing his legs. "With injuries like that, if he didn't have a monster's body, an ordinary person would have long ago died."
"You've got a point, Fuffuffuffu," Doflamingo agreed, no longer looking so shocked.
"During the Battle of Edd War with Pirate King Roger, a sudden storm sank Shiki's great fleet. He was accidentally pierced in the head by the ship's rudder. Pulling it out would be life-threatening, so it's been there ever since," Aeridar explained with a sigh. "But since the rudder is pressing on his brain, his Haki has significantly declined after all these years."
"Fuffuffuffu... What rotten luck for the great Sky Pirate, Golden Lion," Doflamingo's face was now a mask of mockery.
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