Doflamingo accepted Finn's teasing about being an encyclopedia with a modesty that was thoroughly unconvincing. "I just happened to know," he said, waving it off.
Finn could see he was enjoying himself. For once, Doflamingo had information Finn didn't have, or at least information Finn couldn't verify independently. After years of being the subordinate in their arrangement, constantly aware that Finn knew more, planned further ahead, and held all the meaningful cards, Doflamingo was taking visible pleasure in finally having something to contribute that felt valuable.
Finn let him have it. The man had earned the moment.
"So," Finn said, changing direction. "What do you know about Mary Geoise's ancient weapon?"
The question was significant enough that it should have produced shock. It didn't. Doflamingo's expression shifted into something more serious, but not surprised.
The reason was simple: the rumor that Mary Geoise possessed Uranus, the ancient weapon known as the Heavenly King, was widespread enough to be common knowledge among anyone who operated at a certain level. Mary Geoise had never confirmed it. They'd also never denied it. They simply let the rumor exist, which was its own form of deterrence. The implication that they might have Uranus was as useful as actually having it, in some contexts.
Dragon, Finn knew, had been trying to verify this for years. The Mary Geoise arson incident had been partly motivated by the desire to investigate the strange castle structure in the God's Abode. He'd never gotten the confirmation he wanted.
For Finn, the question mattered for different reasons. If the Marine was going to move against Mary Geoise using Lord Im as justification, Mary Geoise would respond with everything they had. If "everything they had" included an ancient weapon capable of leveling Marineford from three days' sailing distance, that needed to be accounted for in the planning.
Doflamingo's expression became focused. "I can tell you definitively that Mary Geoise does possess Uranus. And Uranus is Mary Geoise itself."
Finn blinked. "That's impossible."
"Why?"
Finn hesitated, then decided that at this point, with this much already shared, there was no value in holding back. "I helped with the arson incident," he said quietly. "Not much. But enough to know that Dragon's people dug tunnels directly through the Red Line beneath Mary Geoise. If Uranus was Mary Geoise itself, they would have encountered it. They would have dug into the ancient weapon. And Mary Geoise burned. If it was Uranus, how did that happen?"
Doflamingo smiled slightly. "Your understanding of 'Mary Geoise' is different from mine. When I say Mary Geoise, I mean the God's Abode specifically. The home of the Celestial Dragons. Dragon never penetrated the deepest sections of that structure."
Finn thought about this. Dragon had gotten close, but he hadn't reached the core of the God's Abode before the fire forced him to retreat. If Uranus was buried somewhere in that structure, it was plausible that he'd missed it.
"What is Uranus?" Finn asked. "Among the ancient weapons, it's the most mysterious."
Doflamingo's interest sharpened. "Does that mean you know about the other two?"
"Pluton is in my possession. You know that. You were in Alabasta when I acquired it."
Doflamingo nodded. The Pluton cannon component was not widely known outside the people who'd been present when Crocodile deployed it. Finn had it stored in his Dark-Dark Fruit's dimensional space, which was about as secure as storage could get.
"And Poseidon?" Doflamingo asked.
"Poseidon has been born," Finn said. "The Sea King exists."
Doflamingo's eyes widened slightly. "Who controls it?"
"I don't collect ancient weapons," Finn said. "I'm not interested in having that kind of power. Too much risk of accidentally destroying the world." He looked at Doflamingo steadily. "Poseidon is on Fish-Man Island. That's all you need to know."
Doflamingo processed this, clearly baffled by the implications. If Fish-Man Island controlled an ancient weapon, their current position as a subordinate territory made no sense. But he didn't press it. Finn's tone had made it clear that line of questioning was closed.
"Uranus," Doflamingo said, returning to the subject, "is a spaceship."
Finn waited.
"Not like the ships that sail to the Sky Islands. A true spaceship. One that can travel to the moon and beyond."
Finn was quiet for a moment. "And its destructive capability?"
"That," Doflamingo said, with visible embarrassment, "I don't actually know. I know it's a spaceship. I know it's classified as an ancient weapon. But the specific mechanism of how it destroys things, or what kind of power it can deploy, I genuinely don't have information on."
Finn looked at him with an expression that communicated mild exasperation. You knew everything else, he thought. The one thing that actually matters operationally, and you don't know it.
He didn't say it. Doflamingo had provided far more than Finn had expected. Complaining about gaps in his knowledge would be both ungrateful and unreasonable.
"But," Doflamingo added, before Finn could respond, "it shouldn't matter in the immediate term."
"What does that mean?"
"Uranus can't be activated." Doflamingo leaned forward slightly. "After the war eight hundred years ago, the Twenty Kings restructured Uranus. I don't know if it was intentional design or if they modified it, but the current version requires the blood of all Twenty Kings' lines to function. The Nefertari family abandoned Mary Geoise. Their bloodline was lost to the system." He paused. "Mary Geoise only recently recovered Cobra. And one person's blood isn't enough to reconstitute an entire family line for the weapon's purposes. They'll need years to cultivate enough Nefertari genetics to make Uranus operational again."
Finn absorbed this. "How long?"
"At minimum, several years. Possibly longer, depending on how the bloodline training works. The low-level Celestial Dragons you see at events like this?" Doflamingo gestured vaguely toward the party beyond their sphere. "A significant portion of their purpose is serving as blood reserves for situations exactly like this. Mary Geoise has been breeding them deliberately to maintain genetic diversity across the Twenty Kings' lines."
Finn sat with this information. It recontextualized a great deal. He'd always wondered why Mary Geoise tolerated the existence of so many incompetent, embarrassing Celestial Dragons when they clearly understood that those individuals damaged the World Government's reputation. If they were strategic resources rather than simple descendants, the tolerance made more sense.
"You should have told me this before Alabasta," Finn said. "If I'd known, I wouldn't have let Spandine take Cobra. I would have found a reason to bury him in the desert and called it closed."
"I met with you first," Doflamingo said. "By the time I spoke to Spandine, the CP-9 operation was already in motion. And he was your asset, so I assumed you had a reason for allowing it." He paused. "Honestly, I didn't think about Uranus at the time. I knew Mary Geoise and the Nefertari family had bad blood. Cobra being captured seemed like normal political punishment. I only connected it to Uranus later, after I'd returned to Dressrosa and had time to think through the implications."
Fair enough. Finn let it go. "Anything else I should know?"
They continued for a while longer, but most of what Doflamingo had left was rumor without substance or minor scandals without strategic weight. Eventually, Finn ran out of questions worth asking.