(Bellamy POV)

Even as I ducked under Sarquiss’ haymaker, I was momentarily wracked by indecision. Was the right decision to try and subdue my first mate, or would I look back upon this moment in regret for not gunning for the puppet master instead? If knocking Sarquiss out were to release him from Doffy's control, I would punch my friend without hesitation, but as far as I knew the Warlord didn't require his victims to be conscious in order to pull their strings.

That all being said, my chances of actually forcing Doffy to release Sarquiss were depressingly low. Even though he was ridiculed by Kaido for being too weak, it didn't change the objective fact, that my former boss was one of the stronger warlords who possessed great expertise in haki, plenty of combat experience and an awakened devil fruit. Did I mention haki? The mysterious power I didn't have yet?

Sidestepping a straight, I attempted to trap my friend with a grapple, only for Sarquiss' body to contort in a really unnatural way to escape my grasp. The pained gasp from my first mate completed the picture, especially as there had been no need for such a manoeuvre as a simple backstep would have been sufficient. The feathered bastard wasn't going to let me grab my friend so easily (nor painlessly on his part), essentially goading me to come after him. We both knew that I wasn't ready.

Luffy hadn't been ready.

By the time he'd stepped foot on Dressrosa, the lad had two years of personal tutelage from Rayleigh under his belt, the assistance of a beefed-up Trafalgar Law and a much greater mastery over his fruit, as showcased by the introduction of Gear 4. And despite all that, Luffy barely came out on top by the skin of his teeth with a healthy dose of plot armor on top.

I had a grand total of six months experience in using my fruit, no haki and one beaten up pre-timeskip Trafalgar Law of questionable neurological status. Suffice to say, the situation looked rather grim.

“I’m sorry, Bellamy! I can’t stop this! My body just won’t listen to me!” Sarquiss tearfully cried as his hand tried to stab me with a knife.

The one silver lining to this situation, if you could even call it that, consisted of the fact that Doffy knew this as well. Hence, he was not taking me seriously at all and dismissing me as a threat entirely. Something that became quite obvious in how the man wasn’t even attacking me directly, choosing to force Sarquiss to do it for him instead. Like a cat playing with a mouse, he was enjoying the emotional torment he inflicted by forcing crew mates into an impossible choice. It was the same expression of his cruelty as he had displayed in the canon timeline when he did something quite similar to the original Bellamy-Sarquiss pair, and more recently to Commander Atmos of the Whitebeard Pirates.

“Come on, Bellamy-kun. Aren’t you going to fight back? Just a little tap, I know you can do it. I believe in you.” He mocked, as my first mate danced a little jig. “Do you need help deciding? The jaw is always such a nice and easy target to break.”

With another small twitch of his hand, Sarquiss’s chin was sent racing towards the fist I was holding up in a guard position. I jerked out of the way before he slammed into it, but Doflamingo was nothing if not persistent and the next minute or so consisted of Sarquiss’ head trying to strike my fists wherever it could.

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”

Throughout it all, I slowly maneuvered myself away, not only putting some distance between Doflamingo and myself, but more importantly, between Doflamingo and Sarquiss. Some more careful footwork positioned me between Doffy and his victim, which became the signal for me to spring into action.

“Spring shave!” An instant later I was a hundred meters away, swinging my spring powered fist at Doflamingo’s grinning face…or at least I had been, before it was replaced by Sarquiss’ crying visage. A cut opened up on my friend’s cheek as my fist whistled past, my brain having successfully turned the trajectory at the last moment to avoid fracturing his skull. “I’m not done yet!”

"Fufufufu, then show me, Bellamy-kun!"

It had been something I had been working on for months. A way to manipulate my springs to create joints mid-flight. A way to change the direction of my punch after I had thrown it. A way to hit unwary enemies from behind if they dodged my initial blow. “Spring ricochet!”

My other arm grabbed hold of Sarquiss, throwing him physically out of the way to prevent Doflamingo from using him as a human shield again as my right fist raced back towards us with all the force of a small cannon. The warlord didn't take his eyes off me as he casually interposed the unconscious Law between himself and my fist. My peer jerked from the impact but didn't wake, an ugly bruise beginning to form on his chest. By the time my arm had snapped back to its original position, Sarquiss had placed me in a chokehold.

“Naughty, naughty, naughty, Bellamy-kun. That wasn’t nice of you, punching poor Law like that.” Doflamingo scolded me while wagging a finger in my face. “Then again, you’re attacking a defenseless target. I wholeheartedly approve.”

Sarquiss’ arms tightened, slowly constricting the bloodflow to my head. Normally, he wouldn't be strong enough to do this to me, even with his fruit, but I suspected that Doflamingo was pulling out all the potential my friend had, forcing Sarquiss’ body to forego the protective restrictions it had imposed on itself.

“J-jackass!” I gasped out, wrenching the arm from my neck and breaking free. Mentally apologizing to my first mate, I threw him over my shoulder and pinned him to the ground. Not least because Doflamingo let me do it, casually lounging on a random body while giving me an indulgent smile. Much like one would give a child. “Coil Chassis!”

When I launched myself at him again, Law was floating in my way once again with Sarquiss close behind but this time I was ready. A quick push opened a small gap between them through which I dived, ducked and rolled, only to spring back up with hardly any delay, my hand speeding towards Doflaming’s chin from underneath. I was not expecting to hit him and I did not, the jerk swaying back just enough to dodge my fist by mere millimetres.

Thing is, he forgot I was a spring man or didn't put enough thought into what that actually meant. With a single thought, my arm elongated, filling the final few millimetres and breaking the sound barrier along the way. My target? His sunglasses.

Beady pink eyes slowly blinked in surprise at the sudden brightness before narrowing in annoyance when I crushed his glasses beneath my foot.

“You shouldn’t have done that.” He growled at me, “I liked those. They had sentimental value.”

In lieu of replying, I whipped out two flash dials, closed my eyes and pressed the buttons. As soon as my ears picked up a pained grunt, my legs propelled me forwards, one arm outstretched and holding out my reject dial. When my eyelids lifted the curtain, it was to the sight of Doflamingo covering his eyes with both hands, an instinctive response of the human species and one not even someone of Doflamingo's caliber could ignore.

The reject dial made contact…and I froze. Steel-wire-like strings enveloped me, cutting into my body and restricting my every movement from my neck down to my toes. I couldn't as much as twitch my finger to activate my dial, only my head remaining somewhat free to move about. I guess I should felt some pride for having forced him to pull this little trick on me, but well...fuck. There went plan A for what to do when Doflamingo turned up. If I knew he was going to be here and I knew he might have beef with me, it would have been stupid of me not to plan for the eventuality. I wasn’t completely bonkers. I had plans. The first one just didn’t work.

“I will admit, I’m slightly impressed.” Doflamingo glared down at me, not moving away from his position and even leaning slightly into my hand in a demonstration of both his arrogance and his control. “You would have made a useful bug, but then you had to be annoying.”

Time for plan B.

“AAAAAIIIIIISSSSAAAA!!!!!” My voice, trained by routines of a captain's life, easily carried my words above the dint of the battlefield, across the icy bay towards my ship, where the most powerful member of my crew was waiting in the wings.

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“Aisa?” Doffy cocked his head, his brain not making the connection quickly enough to escape what was coming.

“El Thor!” went the distant response before I was bathed in lightning. It was not as powerful as the Enel’s version, my crew mascot just not having the same output yet. But what she lacked in raw power, Aisa more than made up for in pure, unrivalled speed. In focusing her all into striking me, and pointedly not Doffy, she bypassed his haki’s ability to sense hostile intent. This was of course, because she had no hostile intent against him, as she was arguably gunning for me, similarly to how Luffy had managed to overcome his opponent’s observation haki by having no intent at all behind his movements.

Originally, the plan had been for her electricity to travel through me, through his strings towards Doflamingo, forcing him to either release the strings or get electrocuted. For that matter, it was irrelevant whether his strings were conductive or not, as Aisa and I were both confident that she had enough juice to force the issue.

With the warlord pressed against me like he was? He was ground zero of the blast.

Still, for someone who'd been caught with his proverbial pants down, Doflamingo’s response was near instantaneous. He dropped everything, including myself and his two puppets, focusing wholly on forming his strings into a makeshift shield. And it worked as intended, successfully staving off Aisa’s "divine" smite and sending lightning cascading down all around us like a bird cage. But…

“REJECT!!”

…he should not have forgotten about me. My reminder hit him like a freight train, doubling him over and breaking his concentration and his shield. Millions and millions of volts ran through his systems, turning his feather cloak to ashes and releasing the acrid stench of burning feathers into the air. But even with all that, Doflamingo remained standing by the time Aisa’s attack came to an end. Unfortunately, that one blast had also been everything Aisa had in the tank, so she wouldn’t be doing that again for at least a few days.

Plan C it was.

Taking advantage of the small window of time I had before he could immobilise me agin, I whipped out my arms to toss ten breath dials into a ring around us, triggering the dials as I released them. Accordingly, the dials activated in sequence, releasing their contents into the air one after another, the signal travelling in a circle. As a result, plumes of smoke spilled out to engulf a hundred square meters in a sickly purple fog, so thick one could hardly see one’s hand before their own eyes.

Back when we had discovered Sarquiss was in the possession a deadly neurotoxin, my first thought had been something responsible like “Let’s not make more work for Muret.” But my second had been “How can we make this deadlier?”

What happened if you took a venomous liquid, removed as much water as possible from the equation to concentrate it before turning it into gas? Poisonous gas. Simple right? But if one now compressed that gas until it was right at the point of turning back into liquid and stuffed it into a breath dial...then repeated the process. Again. And again until even the physically impossible storage volume of a breath dial was filled. What did you think would happen if I released all that gas at once? Times ten?

Doffy was about to find out.

For his part, the Warlord probably had no idea what it was that I'd just done, but he obviously knew he didn't want to be caught in it. But even as he turned to escape the cloud, it became obvious that Doffy was not at his best right now. His earlier fight against Marco, his scuffle with Namur, Aisa’s lightning and my reject dial were starting to add up and it showed. He was slightly more sluggish, his instincts just a little more muddled and his mind a touch panicked.

Meaning, he couldn’t stop one arm from shooting out of the fog to snatch up his ankle.

“Counter Shock!” There was a difference between getting hit by a bolt of lightning and having electricity applied directly to a nerve. As any Naruto fan could tell you, for a skilled medic it was but child's play to scramble your nervous system with a mere touch, something Law did his best to demonstrate.

Reaching the duo, I kicked Law out of the cloud, trusting in his ability to deal with the poison flowing through his systems, while I did my best to use the opening Law had provided and place my seastone cuffs on Doflamingo. Sadly, it didn't go that well, because the warlord recovered quickly enough that all I managed to do was hold tight in a desperate effort to prolong his exposure to the toxin.

I was completely metal right now, not having released my Coil Chassis state and Sarquiss was immune to his own toxin. Doflamingo wasn't either of these things and with every second, he got a little weaker even as his movements became more and more coordinated. Eventually, I couldn't stop myself from being flung off of him like a limp rag doll. And when Doflamingo used his powers to create some wind, the poison cloud dispersed to reveal the full extent of my handiwork. He didn't look too good. His clothing was burnt to almost nothing, his eyes were bloodshot, his skin had a sickly blue tint to it. And his smile was gone, replaced by a look of utter rage.

“Now it’s personal.” He hissed, rushing at me with his still considerable speed before I could react, his fingers reaching for my throat. I tried to backpedal but I tripped over Law and was sent sprawling in a heap, though thankfully and against all odds, I did not die.

“Doflamingo!” Haruta came flying in out of nowhere, batting away Doflamingo’s arm before starting to really lay into him. “How dare you do that to Namur! How dare you! HOW DARE YOU!!”

It had been stated before that all of Whitebeard’s division commanders were monsters in their own right, even if Atmos had been toyed with by Doflamingo in the show. Objectively, Doflamingo was probably stronger than the vast majority of the commanders, but that only held true if both were at their respective best. And as I had noted earlier, Doflamingo was not at his best for a number of reasons nor did he seem particularly eager to be here anymore. Haruta, on the other hand, was precisely where he wanted to be.

Haruta was fury incarnate, moving faster than I had been at my peak, pinning his target in place before the man could escape. Special focus was paid to keeping Doflamingo’s hands busy, not giving him a chance to deploy his strings, something that had the Warlord grimacing every time he failed to do just that.

A flurry of blows forced the Warlord onto the defensive, Haruta seemingly attacking everywhere at once, cutting and thrusting, cutting and thrusting. Soon enough little nicks started appearing on Doflamingo’s body but despite his visible exhaustion, the Warlord was successful in warding off any major injury. Which of course prompted Haruta to put even more effort into it, increasingly neglecting all defense in a reckless pursuit of his goal of gutting the warlord. It was working somewhat, Doflamingo unable to launch a counter and forced into parry after parry after parry without rest. The whole situation was a fine balancing act with an unclear ending, but one I was not going to stick around to find out.

“Sarquiss, can you fly? Yes? Good. Take him,” I pointed towards an awake but limp Trafalgar Law, “and bring him to his ship. Then return to the Black Pearl and tell them to set sail the moment Aisa detects Doflamingo coming after them. I’ll contact you later via den den mushi.”

“Bellamy, about earli…” Sarquiss began but I cut him off. We didn't have time for this and I wasn't sure how long Haruta could keep Doflamingo occupied. Though chances were that the bastard was just going to up and leave after this. After all, Doffy wasn't the type of man who stayed in a fight he could not win or even had a significant chance of losing, unless he absolutely had to. With how tired and damaged he was? If he ever did manage to disengage from Haruta, he was far more likely to spend some time recuperating before doing anything else.

“Later. Go!” My words were short and to the point, but it got my point across.

“Aye, captain. Don’t die!” My first mate gave me a brief hug before flying off, with his passenger held in a bridal carry. I wasn’t risking Doflamingo going after my crew without me around, but I was equally unwilling to just leave. Maybe it was stupid. Maybe it was not.

But seeing as I had gotten this far...

...I was getting a few things done.