Chapter 4

He advanced half a step, the deck groaning under his boots. "But you lot... you haven't staged all this together to pocket the cargo, have you?"

The captain in aristocratic dress exchanged a glance with the bespectacled navigator beside him.

No words were needed; a certain understanding quickly formed as their eyes met.

Since it wasn't this brute... suspicion shifted elsewhere.

Their gazes slowly moved toward the other side of the ship-where a dozen or so passengers had been forcibly herded together.

Fear and indignation mingled on those faces, like a pile of powder kegs ready to explode.

The lower hold smelled of moldy timber and briny seawater.

Doflamingo pushed his slipping sunglasses back into place, his fingers trembling slightly with excitement.

"Did you hear that, Rossi?"

He lowered his voice and gripped his younger brother's thin shoulders. "The whole ship is like a taut string now-all it needs is a little disturbance."

He released him and made a cutting gesture. "Use your power to make the sound disappear.

"While they're busy suspecting each other, we..."

"Let them kill each other, then take everything?"

Leaning against a cargo crate, Rossi finished the sentence.

Doffy grinned and nodded emphatically.

Once again, he felt certain: brothers bound by blood even thought alike.

"I can't do that."

A brief silence followed.

The smile froze on Doflamingo's face.

He saw his brother shake his head, damp bangs clinging to his pale skin.

"I won't turn a blade on innocent people."

The boy hugged his knees, his voice soft, yet piercing the dim air like a nail. "But if someone points a blade at us... I won't just sit there and wait to die, either."

Those were words their long-dead parents had repeated to them again and again.

They were also principles most people took for granted in another, distant world.

When Doffy had pulled the trigger last night, Rossi hadn't stopped him.

The sight of that fat head cook charging at them with a boning knife was still seared into his eyes.

That had been something they had to do to survive.

But deliberately ignite a conflict? Turn the entire ship into a sea of blood? He refused.

"...Just as I thought."

Doflamingo suddenly smiled.

There was no disappointment; instead, he seemed to have confirmed something he had expected all along.

His little brother had always been like this, exactly like their naive parents.

The boy who had calmly wiped away blood last night seemed more like a fleeting illusion.

But he would never let the opportunity before him slip away.

Once the cook's corpse had been discovered, the balance aboard the entire ship had shattered.

The captain, navigator, and boatswain-three sides wary of one another, yet forced to maintain a semblance of cooperation.

The passengers had been roughly herded together, their resentment fermenting in silence.

All it needed was a single spark.

The eyes behind his sunglasses narrowed slightly.

He would make the commoners who had thrown stones at them pay, and make those arrogant Celestial Dragons kneel before him in repentance.

And all of that required bargaining chips: strength, money, followers.

This ship would be his first stepping stone.

"Did anyone see anything unusual?"

The aristocratic captain tapped the deck lightly with his jeweled cane, his gaze combing over every passenger's face.

Inside the captain's cabin, the three men who should have been on edge were instead seated around an oak table.

The aristocratic-looking man rested his chin against his interlaced fingers, the navigator unconsciously tapped the side of his glass, and the burly bald man stared absently at the liquid swaying in his cup-amber rum sat before each of them, but none had touched it.

"What would I know?"

The bald man suddenly slammed his cup onto the table, spilling a few drops. "That idiot Dika managed to get himself killed sneaking into the kitchen for food in the middle of the night."

He shuddered after speaking.

What if the person hiding in the shadows had chosen him instead? His throat slit in his sleep, without even a chance to struggle.

"The kitchen wasn't chosen at random."

The navigator's voice was soft, as if he were talking to himself. "Whoever did it knew Dika's routine.

"As for how they silenced Dika... that doesn't matter.

"What matters is that person is very likely breathing the same air as us right now."

He turned, his gaze settling on the bald man's gleaming scalp.

"Who among your men is the most suspicious?"

The bald man rubbed his scalp hard, his brows knotting together.

After a long while, his shoulders slumped in defeat.

"They all look suspicious to me, and none of them do."

He muttered, "Fighting's my thing. These guessing games... give me a break."

"What a coincidence. I haven't got much of a clue, either."

The navigator shrugged and leaned back in his chair. "My job is to chart our course, not chase shadows."

A faint sigh came from the end of the long table.

The aristocratic captain raised a hand in dismissal.

"That will be all for today.

"Stay alert when you go back."

The two rose and left, the sound of the wooden door closing particularly distinct in the silence.

Only when their footsteps had vanished completely down the corridor did the aristocratic captain draw out the right hand he had kept beneath the table-he held a flintlock pistol, its hammer already cocked.

His gaze swept over the three full glasses on the table, his eyes like a frozen lake.

Who exactly was watching from the darkness?

Only the flickering light and shadows cast by whale-oil lamps filled the corridor.

The navigator slowed, his fingertips unconsciously rubbing his chin.

The captain had no reason to turn on his own men.

That bald brute... no, perhaps the fact that everyone thought him simple-minded made the perfect disguise.

The corner of his mouth suddenly twitched.

Really, I should be the prime suspect.

That idiot Dika actually dared to muscle in on the deal and take a share that should have been mine.

Unfortunately-I wasn't the one who did it.

Officially, this ship carried specialty ore from the Grand Line, but something else lay hidden deep in the lower hold.

Those lead-sealed canisters held what the sailors privately called "Starburst"

powder.

Supposedly, a fingernail-sized amount of the undiluted original could send an entire ship to the bottom of the sea.

Of course, what had ended up aboard the "Pinta"

was inferior stock that had changed hands countless times, with only a fraction of its rumored power remaining.

Even so, people on the North Blue's black market were still willing to pay an astronomical price for it.

This was also the gamble on which Sir Krahorn had staked his entire fortune.

Completing this voyage would be enough to put a fallen family back on its feet.

The blood-sweet scent of tens of millions of Beli in the darkness was enough to make even the most loyal man grow fangs.

Split among several people, that money would keep them living extravagantly for a long time.

But what if one person took it all?

The wealth the captain had amassed could probably buy an entire street's worth of shops.

In other words-

Dika's accident might well have been the captain's own work.

The navigator stopped, a chill shooting up his spine.

Perhaps the captain had long planned to leave the sea after this voyage and return to the countryside as a wealthy gentleman.

"Sir."

A figure blocked his path.

Short blond hair gleamed dully in the dim passageway, and a pair of cracked sunglasses obscured the upper half of the boy's face.

"Could we talk? About Mr. Dika."

The dull thud of a bucket hitting the floor sent dirty water splashing, a few droplets landing on Rossi's cheek.

"Get this corridor clean before noon, or you'll be sorry."

The man who had dumped the bucket and mop swaggered away. Though only an apprentice sailor, he could always find a way to assert his status-

Even if it was only over a child.

The head cook's death had put the entire ship on edge, and even Rossi, who had been abandoned in the lower hold, had been hauled out to work, his pay half a piece of bread speckled with green mold.

This world had always been like this: the strong devoured the weak.

But-

With a slight shift of his intent, the Calm-Calm Fruit's power spread silently.

Thud!

The swaggering apprentice sailor had barely rounded the corner before he slammed squarely into a solid chest.

A hand with bulging veins clamped down on his head.

"Are you blind, you little shit? How dare you run into me?"

"I, I didn't-"

His explanation was cut short by the dull impacts of fists and feet striking flesh, his screams coming in broken bursts as though someone had gripped his throat.

Rossi picked up the mop, his shoulders relaxing almost imperceptibly.

He had erased the footsteps in the corridor just now, making the two collide right at the corner.

Among all the bizarre Devil Fruits, the Calm-Calm Fruit certainly wasn't powerful.

But to ordinary people, it was still an incomprehensible power.

Ever since discovering he had come to this pirate-infested world and swallowed this Devil Fruit, Rossi had been pondering how to use it.

Although the Devil Fruit could only block the transmission of sound, that didn't necessarily mean it couldn't be put to other uses.

If his thinking was right, even this power could give him a chance to reach the top-

Of course, that was a matter for later.

"Useless trash. Get lost!"

The boatswain who had delivered the beating spat and strode past Rossi, his gaze not lingering on the scrawny boy for even half a second.

The boatswain wasn't particularly bright, but the silent undercurrents aboard the ship had still reached his nose-the dangerous scent of rust mingled with brine.

That was why he had been unable to control his fists lately.

Rather than this gloom in which he couldn't even make out his opponent's shape, he would rather stand on deck, letting blades slice through his flesh and blood spill into the wind and waves.

You bastard hiding out there... you'd better not fall into my hands.

By the time the chores were finished, it was completely dark.

Rossi slipped into the lower hold, and Doffy's hand reached out from the shadows, a piece of bread resting in his palm.

No mold, no wormholes; he could even smell the faint aroma of baked wheat-in their memories, this almost counted as a feast.

"Who gave you this?"

Rossi took it, broke it in half, and handed one half back.

He kept his voice very low.

"The captain, or the navigator?"

"The navigator... how did you guess?"

Doffy's question made Rossi shake his head.

Food this clean could only have come from Doffy aligning himself with some faction aboard the ship; and with the beguiling power in Doffy's eyes, anyone he targeted would soon become a string in his hands.

"Doffy, we don't need to take risks right now."

Rossi leaned against the damp wooden wall, the chill seeping through his thin clothes.

"There are too many people aboard this ship who could crush us easily.

"That plan of yours is like walking along a rope in a storm."

He had carefully examined his body today: his wounds healed abnormally fast, and anything he ate rapidly turned into strength.

An ordinary child would have died long ago from the beatings, high fever, or festering flesh.

He had to admit-the blood of the so-called "Celestial Dragons"

really did harbor a certain stubborn resilience.

That Celestial Dragon at the Sabaody Archipelago, who had been punched through half an auction house, had actually been able to jump up afterward, shouting; the future Vivi had single-handedly taken down a crocodile over ten meters long... those images flashed through his mind.

Descendants of the Twenty Kings should never have been this gaunt and skeletal.

If not for years of hunger and cold, he and Doffy would never have been this short or this weak.

The Doflamingo in his memories would grow to three meters tall, while Rossi would approach four meters-

But that was in the future.

Right now, their two bodies, barely over a meter tall, were no different from newly weaned cubs before those sailors who had spent years wielding blades and guns.

Taking down the head cook with a single shot had only been a fluke; in a head-on clash, how many breaths could two children last?

"Once we reach the North Blue, we'll get our bodies healthy first, then take our time planning how to grow stronger."

Devil Fruits, the Six Powers, swordsmanship, Haki...

It might have been twenty years earlier, but the rules of the sea had never changed.

Rossi believed that, with his knowledge of this world, he would eventually find a place for himself; why stake his life at the gambling table now?