They turned onto the main road, and Lucien saw him immediately.
He was looking for Barrels.
Lucien glanced sideways. Idris had already clocked them and was reading the numbers without changing his expression. Law stood between them with one hand pressed against his stomach, fruit still settling.
Then Lucien caught the light off something thin above the rooftops. He looked up.
Strings. Running across the buildings, through the tree line, out over the water in every direction. Barely visible, catching the sun at a low angle. The island wasn't fully closed, but it was close.
Doflamingo walked like a man who had already decided how the conversation was going to end. He was tall, pink coat catching the light, sunglasses pushed up. Behind him came Trebol, shapeless and grinning, trailing resin along the planks. A crew of maybe fifteen fanned out behind them both, spreading across the road without being told.
Doflamingo's eyes moved across the three of them. Lucien. Idris. Then Law, pale and small, one hand on his stomach.
He stopped walking.
Something shifted in his expression. Not a surprise exactly, more like a calculation completing itself. He looked at Law for another second, then looked at the fruit that wasn't anywhere on them, and then he smiled.
"Hm."
He slid his hands into his pockets and turned his attention to Lucien properly.
"I recognise you. Newspapers have been very interesting lately." He tilted his head slightly. "Attacking a royal family. Killing them. The World Government doesn't forget that kind of thing. I'd know." A pause. "These things have a way of following a man."
Lucien didn't say anything.
"I'll be honest with you," Doflamingo continued, easy and unhurried, like they were having this conversation somewhere comfortable. "I came here for the fruit. That's gone now, clearly." His eyes moved to Law again briefly. "But I've been watching what you did to this island. Fifty men. Two of you. That kind of efficiency is hard to find." He spread his hands. "Join my crew. I'll make you an executive. The world is going to belong to people like us eventually. You might as well be on the right side of it."
Lucien looked at him for a moment.
Then he turned to Idris. "You hear something?"
Idris was already watching the fifteen men spreading across the place. "Wind, maybe."
Doflamingo laughed. It was a genuine laugh, loud and easy, the kind that meant he'd already moved past the answer and onto what came next.
"Whoever brings me the fruit eater gets a bonus," as he sent a look towards Trebol right beside him.
The street collapsed into movement all at once.
Idris stepped back and put his rifle up, and the first shot landed before most of the crew had covered half the distance. Lucien drew his sword and moved toward Trebol, which was the only logical choice and also the wrong one, as he found out immediately.
The resin came fast and wide. Lucien sidestepped the first wave and felt the edge of it catch his left forearm anyway, pulling at his sleeve, slowing the arm. He cut the sleeve free and kept moving. Trebol laughed, high and wet, and sent another sheet of it across the dock planks. Lucien jumped over it, closed the distance, and swung.
The blade went in and stopped. Not blocked, just absorbed, swallowed into the resin coating Trebol's body like it had hit deep water. Trebol looked down at the sword buried in his side with mild interest, then back at Lucien.
"Hurts a little," he said, and punched him.
It was less a fist than a mass of resin that hit like one. Lucien took it across his shoulder and went sideways, catching himself on the railing. His sword was still in Trebol somewhere. He let it go.
Trebol sent a column of resin at him, thick and fast. Lucien dropped under it and came up without the sword and with considerably fewer options. He tried the jaw next, a straight right that connected and did nothing. Tried the throat. Same. Tried the knee with a low kick and felt the resin grab his boot on contact. He pulled free and moved back.
Behind him, he could hear Idris working through the crew, shots regular and unhurried, but there were fifteen of them, and the area wasn't big enough to keep them all at range.
Trebol was moving toward him, grinning, taking his time about it.
Haki is a manifestation of raw will. The body already knows how. The problem is the mind getting in the way.
He'd managed it a handful of times in training. Brief, uncontrolled, more accident than technique. Once during the Virex fight, though he hadn't recognised it at the time.
He didn't have time to be careful about it now.
Trebol swung another heavy resin-coated fist. Lucien stepped into it instead of away, took it on the raised forearm, and felt the impact travel up to his shoulder. The resin grabbed. He let it, used the connection to pull Trebol slightly off balance, and reset his feet.
One moment. That's all it needs to be.
Everything he'd tried had been too careful. That was the problem. He'd been treating it like a puzzle when it wasn't one. Cael had said it plainly. Will, nothing more.
He stopped being careful.
He felt it come up the way it had in training, sudden and certain, a hardness that moved from somewhere central outward into his arm and settled in his fist.
He hit Trebol across the face with everything behind it.
The sound was different. Not the soft impact of flesh on resin but something that connected with the thing underneath. Trebol's head snapped sideways. His legs went. He hit the dock planks and didn't move.
Lucien stood over him and breathed. His fist ached. His forearm, where the resin had grabbed, was going to bruise badly. He opened and closed his hand once, feeling the Haki already fading, the brief window closing.
Noted, he thought, and turned around.
The place was considerably quieter. Idris was standing with his pistol out, the last of the crew on the ground around him, a cut along his cheek that was bleeding more than it probably was. He looked at Trebol, then at Lucien, and said nothing.
Lucien looked past him.
Doflamingo stood at the far end of the street, hands still in his pockets, coat shifting in the sea wind. He hadn't moved. He looked at Trebol on the ground for a moment, then back at Lucien, and slowly reached up and slid his sunglasses down his nose.
The grin didn't go anywhere. If anything, it widened.
He looked at Lucien with the patient, predatory attention of a man who had just seen something he intended to collect eventually, and was in absolutely no hurry about it.
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