I. Robin and Crocodile
The test took three days.
Not because it was complicated — because Robin wanted it to be rigorous. She had insisted on this with Crocodile, who had accepted with the patience of a man who understood the value of method even when it cost him time. Each henchman summoned to the small room Robin had chosen for the occasion — neutral, windowless, with a mirror leaning against the wall that she would not use but that was there as a reference point — received the disc in hand and waited.
Robin observed.
Noted.
Returned the disc to the next one.
The majority of results were disappointing in their consistency — the disc stayed red in the hands of most henchmen. Ordinary men, with ordinary histories, whose pasts didn't seem to trigger much in the object.
Then on the fourth day, something changed.
A man in his forties — a former navigator that Baroque Works had recruited two years earlier, silent, efficient, the kind of person one didn't notice precisely because he did his work without noise. He took the disc in his left hand with the same neutral gesture as the others.
The disc turned blue.
Robin stopped writing.
Crocodile, leaning against the wall at the back of the room, straightened slightly.
The blue was deep — not the same shade as Crocodile's violet, not the ordinary red. A dense blue, almost black in places, with something in its texture that evoked something heavier than the other colors.
The man was looking at the disc in his hand with the expression of someone who didn't understand what they were seeing but who was waiting to be told what it meant.
— Set it down, said Robin.
The man set the disc on the table. The blue disappeared. The red returned.
Robin noted carefully in her notebook. She said nothing to the man. She made a discreet sign to Crocodile — this one, keep him — and called the next one.
The week passed that way.
Red for the majority. Violet for two people — including Crocodile, and a lieutenant Robin noted mentally with attention. Blue for the former navigator and one other. And then, on the last day, something she hadn't expected.
A young man — nineteen at most, recently recruited, no notable history — took the disc in his palm.
Orange.
The color was different from the others — not dark, not deep. Warm, almost golden, with a very slight vibration in the metal that Robin felt rather than saw. She looked at the boy with new attention — his age, his way of holding the object, his eyes looking at the disc with a curiosity entirely devoid of fear or worry, the pure curiosity of a child who finds something interesting.
She took back the disc.
Orange. Red. Orange. Red.
The result was consistent.
Robin noted the week's last entry in her notebook and looked at the table she had built. Four confirmed colors. Red for the majority. Violet for some. Blue for a few. Orange for this boy.
She had data.
But data without the interpretive key were only observations. She knew the colors changed depending on the person. She didn't yet know why — not with enough certainty to state it, not with enough precision to draw something useful from it.
Not yet.
— You have your theory, said Crocodile from the back of the room. I know you well enough to know you don't organize all this without an idea behind it.
— I have several theories, said Robin. None that I'm ready to present to you before having proof.
Crocodile looked at her for a second.
— How long?
— As long as it takes.
II. The Red World
Robin returned there alone.
Crocodile had his obligations — Alabasta, Baroque Works, the appearances to maintain of a Grand Corsair who managed his territory with the firm, visible hand expected of him. He couldn't disappear while his country burned with anxiety and his henchmen awaited orders.
Which suited Robin.
She preferred to explore alone. Crocodile was effective in combat, certainly — she had seen him hold his ground against a thirty-three meter creature for two hours without flinching, which was no small thing. But he took up space. He had objectives that were not hers. And he asked questions, some of which bothered her more than others.
Alone, she could look at her own pace.
She entered the red world through the mirror in her room.
The red disc. Her dimension. The uniform grey sky, the shadowless light, the ochre dust that rose slightly around her steps.
She oriented herself toward the city.
She knew it now — its avenues, its collapsed buildings, the church at the center whose ruins she had mapped in her notebook with the precision of an archaeologist who knew that plans were as important as objects. She knew where the documents had been preserved, where the symbols were most numerous, where the traces of human occupation were most recent.
She was looking for the texts she had not yet had time to read completely.
She worked for what must have been several hours on her side — an hour and something in reality, perhaps two, the time ratio was not yet perfectly established.
She cleared fragments she had not yet touched. Copied passages. Looked for recurrences she had not yet noticed, connections between texts that came from different buildings but seemed to belong to the same corpus, the same moment in this civilization's history.
And then, in a wall fragment she had never examined closely — wedged between two collapsed blocks, protected by their weight for centuries no doubt — she found something.
A text longer than the others.
Dense, tight, written with a regularity that suggested someone who had taken the time to write carefully rather than in haste. She gently cleared the surface with her brush.
She read.
She read slowly, stopping at each character she was not yet certain about, reconstructing the grammatical structures one by one, replacing the words she didn't yet know with provisional approximations she would note with a question mark in the margin.
And in this text, twice, three times, then regularly throughout the paragraphs — a pronoun.
Him.
Not the god. Not the judge. Not the guardian or the creator or any of the generic terms she would have expected in a religious text. Just him — with the strange familiarity of a term implying that the author knew exactly who they were talking about and expected the reader to know as well.
He saw us.
He looked at what we had done.
He did not speak. He simply looked. And in that gaze was everything there was to know.
Robin remained motionless before this fragment for a long moment, her brush suspended in her hand.
Him. A singular being. Not an abstract force, not an impersonal deity as many religions produced. A him — someone whose nature the author of this text apparently knew well enough to call them by that pronoun without further specification.
She noted everything. Word by word, character by character, taking care to preserve the exact order of the text and the annotations in the margins that seemed to have been added by a different hand — more recent perhaps, or simply different in style.
A second voice in the same text.
He will return.
Those two words in the margin, in a more hurried calligraphy than the rest, as though scrawled quickly. Not a certainty — a fear.
Robin stood up.
She looked at the city around her — its silent ruins, its sunless sky, its empty streets where even the wind did not blow.
He will return.
She put her notebook in her satchel and made her way back toward the mirror without hurrying, but without stopping either.
III. Doflamingo
The meeting room of Dressrosa's castle had a particular quality.
Not because of its architecture — it was functional, sober, without the ornaments Doflamingo reserved for public spaces. No. Its quality lay in what it represented when all its members occupied it at the same time : the family. Not in the sentimental sense — in the operational, precise sense, the sense of a network that functioned because each of its nodes knew its place and function.
They were all there.
Trebol, who occupied twice the space he needed with that way he had of sprawling. Diamante, arms crossed, with the look of someone who had prepared what he had to say and was waiting his turn. Pica, massive and silent in his corner, his physical presence alone enough to fill part of the room. Baby 5, upright in her chair, eyes moving from one to another with that vigilant attention she put into everything. Buffalo, his spinning hair at rest, watching Doflamingo with the focus of a dog awaiting a signal.
And a few other officers of the rank just below — those who deserved to be there, those trusted enough to hear what was going to be said.
Gladius was not there.
No one asked why. Not immediately.
Doflamingo was seated at the end of the table in his armchair — not a throne, he didn't need one, his usual armchair was enough to communicate what he wanted to communicate — elbows on the armrests, fingers crossed before his face, the pink glasses that hid nothing from those who knew him well enough to read what was behind them.
He let them settle. Let them feel the silence. Then he said :
— Gladius is in confinement.
That drew a reaction. Not spectacularly — no one in this room was the type to show agitation without reason — but the exchanged glances, the slight straightening of postures, the way Trebol opened his mouth then closed it again. That.
— Why? said Diamante.
— Because I bought something, said Doflamingo, and I poorly evaluated one of its side effects.
He let that hang in the air for a second, then continued.
— A few weeks ago, I was invited to an auction. The place is set apart — cut off from the rest, accessible only by invitation, impossible to locate by ordinary means. It is run by an organization called Marshall, Carter and Dark. They sell anomalous objects — things that exist nowhere else, with properties that no one in this world can reproduce.
— How did you get there? said Baby 5.
— By invitation, said Doflamingo. A letter that found me directly. Without intermediary. Without explanation of how they knew where I was.
He let that information do its work in the room — each family member had enough experience to understand what that implied in terms of surveillance capabilities.
— The auctioneer introduced himself under the name of Mister Voss, he continued. He represented the organization. The sale took place with several other buyers — masked, anonymous to one another. The lots were presented one by one. I bought a book. SCP-1425. Its effects on the reader are — let's say that the reader develops an absolute conviction about the nature of the universe and humanity's place within it. A conviction that renders them rather inoperational for our usual needs.
— Gladius read the book, said Baby 5.
— Gladius looked at a few pages while watching over a prisoner who had read the book in its entirety. That was enough for him.
The silence that followed was different from the previous one. Denser. With inside it something that Doflamingo recognized without needing to name it — the collective recalibration of a team that had just learned their environment contained a type of danger they had not anticipated.
— And the book? said Pica, in his strange, high-pitched voice.
— In a safe on level seven. Sealed. We do not open it.
— We destroy it, said Trebol.
— No.
— Why not? It put Gladius out of—
— Because I don't destroy something whose full range of uses I don't yet know, said Doflamingo with the calm of someone who didn't need to raise his voice for a subject to be closed.
Trebol fell silent.
— What you need to retain, Doflamingo continued, is that this organization — Marshall, Carter and Dark — exists. It has access to resources that no one in this world possesses. It operates with absolute discretion. Until recently, no one had ever heard of it.
He let that settle.
— I want information on everything connected to it. Any mention of the name, however indirect. Any object whose properties seem abnormal and whose origin is unknown. Any commercial transaction out of the ordinary in circles where unusual objects circulate. This is a priority.
— We seize what they sell at the next auction, said Trebol. If we know when it happens, we send someone, we—
— No, said Doflamingo.
— Doffy, listen, if their objects are as powerful as you—
— No, Doflamingo repeated. Same intonation. Final.
Trebol stopped.
— I don't know what protects their sales, said Doflamingo. I don't know what protects their guests during transactions. I know nothing of their structure, their defensive capabilities, what they're capable of doing to someone who tries to force their hand. — A pause. — We don't attack something we don't understand. We observe first. We understand next. We decide after.
It was Diamante who spoke next.
He had waited his moment with the patience of a man who had something to say and knew the conversation would naturally come around to him.
— I have information, he said.
Doflamingo looked at him.
— In Sabaody. Rumors that had been circulating for a few weeks, but that recently took on a more concrete form. A man who showed up there with papers belonging to a servant of a Celestial Dragon family. He requisitioned funds from the local marine base, had himself escorted throughout the day, and bought the entire stock of an auction house.
— The entire stock, said Doflamingo.
— Everything on offer that day. Without exception. And at the end of the sale, the objects disappeared — directly, according to witnesses. Not physically carried away. Disappeared.
Doflamingo remained silent for a moment.
— This Celestial servant, he said. What family does he work for?
— That's where it gets interesting, said Diamante. The papers bore the seal of a family that genuinely exists — one of the registered families at Marie Joise. But this family is known for being completely reclusive. They never go out. They never send representatives. Their members have lived within the Marie Joise enclosure for generations without ever leaving.
— So their papers were used by someone who doesn't belong to this family.
— Or by someone who obtained their authorization in a way no one yet understands.
— The name of this man.
— Voss, said Diamante. That's the name that came up. Mister Voss.
The silence that fell in the room was different from the previous ones.
Not the silence of people registering an unknown name. Doflamingo knew this name. He had heard it spoken in an amphitheater whose path he could no longer retrace, by a man in a black suit who had bowed before five masked silhouettes with the calm of a professional who knew exactly what he was doing.
Allow me to introduce myself. I am Mister Voss, auctioneer of this sale.
He thought of that voice — clear, steady, with that particular quality of voices one listened to before having decided to do so. He thought of the dark wood stage, the red curtains, the two hundred empty seats. He thought of the book in the level seven safe.
He thought of the fact that this man — this Voss — had the papers of a Celestial Dragon family and was buying entire auction lots on Sabaody.
What that meant was not difficult to interpret. The representative of Marshall, Carter and Dark was coming into this world to resupply. To find objects to resell during upcoming sessions. And he was doing it with resources — connections, authorizations — that were not improvised.
— Voss, Doflamingo repeated in a perfectly neutral voice. I know that name.
Diamante looked at him.
— He is the auctioneer, said Doflamingo. The one who ran the sale I attended. He introduced himself before beginning.
There was in the room a moment of collective recalibration — that way the family had of processing information that changed the nature of a situation without anyone needing to articulate it aloud.
— So he's the one who represents the organization in this world, said Diamante.
— Or one of its representatives, said Doflamingo. I have no information on this organization's internal structure. For now, Voss is the only concrete name I have.
He crossed his fingers before his face.
— Keep looking, he said to Diamante. I want to know who this man really is. Not what he represents — who he is. Where he comes from. What his past is.
He picked up his Den Den Mushi.
— I'm going to contact the informants I have on the Celestial side. This reclusive family — there must be someone who knows whether their papers were used with or without their agreement.
The days passed.
Doflamingo made three calls. Obtained two evasive responses and one that interested him more — a man who operated in the margins of Marie Joise's hierarchy, close enough to the top to know certain things and careful enough to make a trade of that knowledge.
The family in question. Its members. Their way of life.
The contact confirmed : reclusive, totally, for several generations. No representative sent anywhere for at least twenty years. If their papers had been used on Sabaody, it was not at their direct instruction.
— But they authorized someone, said Doflamingo.
— Authorized or were unaware their documents were circulating, said the contact. That's not necessarily the same thing.
Doflamingo hung up.
He thought about that. An organization operating with Celestial Dragon papers obtained from a family that never left Marie Joise. Not stolen — a family that reclusive would not have its documents in someone's pockets without there having been a transaction, an agreement, something.
Someone had negotiated with Celestial Dragons.
That detail told him something about Marshall, Carter and Dark that no other piece of information had yet told him so clearly — they had resources and connections that went far beyond the framework of a simple commercial organization.
The Den Den Mushi rang.
Diamante.
— I have something, he said. But it's not good news.
— Speak.
— The hotel where Voss bought his lots. It belongs to Gild Tesoro.
Doflamingo knew that name. Everyone in circles that counted knew that name — the king of casinos, the man who had transformed a talent for wealth accumulation into something that resembled sovereignty. Not an enemy. Not an ally. Someone powerful enough to merit being treated with the same precautions one reserved for dangerous people, even when they smiled.
— Tesoro is interested in Voss, said Diamante. He also noticed this young man who shows up with Celestial papers and buys his entire stock. He launched his own investigation.
— That's manageable, said Doflamingo. As long as his investigation doesn't cross ours, Tesoro will lose interest. A representative of an unknown organization, however mysterious, isn't worth a man like him's attention for long.
A pause.
— That's exactly the problem, said Diamante.
Doflamingo waited.
— Our investigation has leaked, said Diamante. Someone, somewhere in our network, let through the information that we were actively looking into Marshall, Carter and Dark. Gild Tesoro is now aware that we have an interest in this organization.
Doflamingo said nothing.
— And according to my sources, said Diamante, he has begun looking on his side. Actively. With the resources you know him to have.
The silence stretched.
— Who, said Doflamingo.
His voice was perfectly flat.
— I don't yet know who let the information through. I'm looking.
— Find them.
He hung up.
He remained seated in his office with the Dressrosa night behind the bay window and something in his face that was no longer quite the usual mask — something contracting around the eyes and mouth, hardening the lines of his face with the precision of an expression he didn't wear often because he didn't often need to.
Anger.
Not explosive anger, not the anger of someone losing control. The cold, contained anger of someone who had just realized that his tools were less reliable than he thought, and who was already calculating how to correct that.
He had a leak in his network.
He had Gild Tesoro looking for the same thing as him with just as many resources and fewer scruples about how to use them.
And he had an organization whose representative was named Voss, walked around with Celestial Dragon papers on Sabaody, and made physical objects disappear in front of witnesses as though the ordinary laws of this world did not concern him.
His men were incompetent.
End of Chapter 13