The room had settled into the particular quiet of a warm Alabasta afternoon, the kind that pressed in through the shuttered windows and made everything feel slightly slower than it should. The ceiling fan turned with the unhurried commitment of something that had accepted its limitations.
Hina pushed through the door with a glass of juice in each hand, found Finn exactly where she had left him an hour ago, and set one glass on the table beside him.
He was on the sofa, the Dark-Dark Fruit resting in his open palm, studying it with the expression of a man trying to read a book written in a language he almost knew.
"Again?" she said.
"Hmm." He did not look up.
She sat down across from him, tucking one leg under herself. "You've been picking it up and putting it down for three days. What are you actually trying to figure out?"
Finn was quiet for a moment. He turned the fruit slowly in his hand, watching the light move across its dark surface.
"It's hard to explain," he said. "There's a feeling when I hold it. Not pain. Not discomfort. It's more like..." He searched for the word. "Like when something that was slightly misaligned finds the right position."
Hina looked at him carefully. "Assimilation?"
He raised his head. Something in his expression suggested the word had landed accurately. "Yes. Exactly that. The way a swordsman knows their blade. The way a marksman knows their gun. Some part of me is slowly recognizing this fruit as something it already understands." A short exhale through his nose, the sound of a man amused by his own situation. "Which is completely impossible, as far as I know."
"Impossible being a word that applies less and less to you with every passing year," Hina said.
"The strange hunger is quieting," Finn said. "The feeling I've had around certain Devil Fruits, the greedy pull, it's still there when I hold this one, but it's diminishing each time. As if something is being satisfied slowly."
Hina watched him for a moment, then looked at the fruit.
"It's not affecting you negatively?"
"No." A pause. He tilted his head. "Probably."
"What does 'probably' mean?"
"It means nothing is noticeably wrong." He glanced at her. "Which is almost the same as fine."
"It is absolutely not the same as fine," Hina said. "Put it down and drink your juice."
He set the fruit on the table. It sat there between them looking innocuous and faintly strange, a dark oval with swirling patterns that seemed slightly deeper than the surface they were on.
"Hancock is in Alabasta," Hina said, switching subjects with the practiced efficiency of someone who had learned that giving Finn a different track to run on was the fastest way to interrupt an unhealthy loop. "She contacted me this morning. She knows you're here and wanted to know if you'd like to meet."
Finn made a small sound. "Tell her not to worry about it. She's here for the Warlord business, and we'll probably cross paths naturally anyway. No need to schedule anything."
Hina looked at the ceiling for a moment. "She is the most beautiful woman in the world, and you are dismissing her like a scheduling conflict."
"That title seems to make someone I know rather unhappy, actually. Who was that again?"
"I am not unhappy about that title," Hina said, with the precise tone of someone who was absolutely not going to confirm the obvious. "Hancock and I have a perfectly amicable relationship, and I have no particular feelings about anything you just said."
"Mm."
"Stop smirking."
Finn straightened his expression. "Doflamingo should be arriving soon. A day or two at most. They were a few days behind Lucci."
"You said Teach isn't going to be useful for explaining the fruit situation?"
"Not anymore. Before, I thought there might be something in his physical constitution worth studying, the way he was able to handle multiple abilities. But what I'm experiencing isn't about that." He shook his head. "It doesn't matter right now. He's useful for other reasons. We'll find out what those are when he gets here."
Hina nodded slowly.
She looked at the Dark-Dark Fruit sitting on the table. Then she looked at Finn.
She had the feeling, not for the first time, that there was a conversation happening between him and that fruit that she was not entirely equipped to follow.
The gates of Alubarna were, in the full heat of the afternoon, a relief to pass through. The walls broke the worst of the desert wind, and the streets inside were narrower, the light parceled out in bands of shadow between the pale stone buildings. Even so, the air was dry enough to feel like it was considering your skin as a resource.
Doflamingo and Teach entered the city wrapped in the same loose linen layers that the locals favored, the desert having a way of instructing visitors on dress codes that no sign or pamphlet could match. The fabric was light colored, draped loosely, and still felt like too much.
Teach walked with his hands in his wrapped sleeves, looking around at the architecture with the expression of a man encountering genuine antiquity for the first time and finding it more impressive than he had anticipated.
"Alubarna," he said, half to himself. The royal palace rose above the roofline in the distance, its towers catching the late sun. "Oldest kingdom in the world."
"Oldest surviving one," Doflamingo said. "There's a distinction."
He navigated the streets with the familiarity of someone who had been here before, taking corners without consulting anything, moving through the busier market areas toward the accommodations district. Teach followed, noting with the consistent low-level attention he gave to everything that Doflamingo's sense of direction in unfamiliar places was better than most. Filed away.
The Oasis Hotel announced itself through its architecture before the sign, the kind of building that had been standing long enough to acquire a gravity that newer construction couldn't manufacture. Wide awnings. Stone columns worn smooth. A lobby visible through the entrance that suggested shade and the kind of quiet that money purchased.
Doflamingo pushed through the entrance and stopped.
The smile that had been sitting easily on his face shifted almost imperceptibly. Not disappearing. Adjusting.
Vergo was in the lobby.
This was unexpected, though not inexplicable. What was unexpected was the rest of it. Vergo, who had always carried himself with the contained, deliberate quality of a man operating under sustained professional pressure, was sitting on one of the lobby sofas in a light civilian shirt, a cocktail glass on the table in front of him, engaged in conversation with a young woman who had the bearing of someone from a family that expected good posture at all times. She was laughing at something he had said.
Vergo looked at ease.
Doflamingo regarded this for a moment with the interest of a man encountering evidence of a world he had not previously considered.
Then Vergo, who had the instincts of someone who had spent years surviving in environments where inattention was fatal, registered the new presence in the room. He looked back over his shoulder with the unhurried ease of a man who had sensed attention and was deciding how to receive it.
Their eyes met.
Vergo's expression registered the encounter, processed it in roughly half a second, and settled on neutral. He turned back to the young woman, said something brief, and she smiled and rose with the gracious self-possession of someone who understood when a conversation had reached its natural end.
"Mr. Vergo," she said pleasantly, and moved toward the corridor.
Vergo stood, nodded once in Doflamingo's direction with the obliqueness of a man communicating location without making it obvious, indicated a room number with one hand held briefly at his side, and walked toward the stairs.
Teach had not noticed any of this. He was looking around the lobby with the expression he had been wearing in the market streets, the slightly widened attention of someone finding an environment richer than expected.
"Good hotel," he said.
"Follow me," Doflamingo said.
The door on the indicated floor opened to Vergo, who had arrived ahead of them by taking the stairs at a pace that did not suggest hurry but covered ground efficiently.
"Vergo," Doflamingo said, stepping inside. There was something in his tone that was not quite warm but carried the particular quality of a man greeting someone he had shared a significant amount of complicated history with. "I heard you were on vacation."
"I am," Vergo said. He had a tea set on the side table and was already in the process of preparing cups. "With the Admiral."
Teach, following Doflamingo in, looked around the room with casual attention and then looked at Vergo with the unfocused recognition of someone who has seen a face before without context.
"Young Master," he said, sitting. "Who is this? He called you Young Master. Donquixote Family?"
"In a manner of speaking," Doflamingo said, taking the other sofa. "Wait a moment."
Vergo placed two cups of tea on the table in front of them. Teach wrapped both hands around his cup.
"This important person you mentioned," Teach said, looking up. "From Mary Geoise, you said?"
"I said you could say that."
Teach made a noise that indicated this was not a satisfying answer. "I hope whoever it is can actually help us find Lucci. We've been running after him for months." He took a sip of tea, smacked his lips once in approval, and settled into the sofa with the patient readiness of a man who had learned to treat waiting as neutral rather than wasteful.