Doflamingo rolled his neck once and took his hands out of his pockets.
Lucien went at him first.
He closed the distance fast and threw a straight right that Doflamingo slipped with minimal movement, just a tilt of the head, and returned with a left that caught Lucien across the cheek and sent him into the wall of the nearest building hard enough to crack the plaster.
'Guess this is going to be a long and painful one,' thought Lucien as he groaned and peeled himself off it before coming back. Doflamingo was already moving toward him.
They met in the middle of the road, and it quickly became dirty.
Doflamingo was strong in a way that didn't look like it from a distance. The man was probably 10 feet tall and very thin, at least thinner than himself after all the physical training. But every punch landed with a weight behind it that had nothing to do with size.
Lucien took one on the ribs that he felt in his back and answered with an elbow to the jaw that connected properly, snapping Doflamingo's head sideways. A thin line of blood appeared at the corner of his mouth.
Doflamingo touched it with one finger. Looked at it. Then looked at Lucien with something that wasn't quite surprise but was close to it.
Then he smiled and hit him again.
Lucien went through the wall this time.
He came out the other side into somebody's front room, rolled across the floor, and got his feet under him before he'd fully stopped moving. Doflamingo stepped through the hole after him. Lucien grabbed a chair on the way up and swung it hard across Doflamingo's face. The chair broke. Doflamingo's head snapped to the side, and he took a half step back, blood now coming from a cut above his eyebrow.
Lucien didn't wait. He drove forward and put three hard shots into the same ribs, felt Doflamingo's breath leave him, and shoved him backward through the far wall.
Doflamingo hit the alley on the other side in a cloud of plaster and came up fast, faster than someone who'd just gone through a wall had any right to. He grabbed Lucien by the front of his shirt as he came through after him and drove him down the alley with a kick that had everything behind it.
Lucien hit the ground, rolled, and came up at the far end.
He could hear Doflamingo behind him, shaking dust off his coat. The grin was still there, but there was something else in it now. He was paying attention in a way he hadn't been on the road.
Good.
Lucien went back at him before he'd fully reset. He feinted high, went low, caught Doflamingo across the knee with a hard kick, and followed it without pausing, two shots to the ribs and a third right to the cut above the eye. Doflamingo grunted and answered with a headbutt that Lucien didn't see coming, stars crossing his vision as he staggered back into the open ground at the edge of the village.
He blinked it clear. Reset his feet.
Doflamingo walked out of the alley after him, wiping blood from his eyebrow with the back of his hand. Coat torn at the shoulder. A bruise was forming along his jaw. The grin hadn't moved but his breathing had changed slightly.
They circled.
Lucien went for the knee again, same spot. Doflamingo read it and stepped into it, taking the hit on the shin, and brought his elbow down hard across Lucien's back. Lucien hit the dirt face-first. He rolled before the follow-up landed, felt it clip his shoulder, and came up on one knee.
Doflamingo closed. Lucien lunged from the knee and drove his shoulder into Doflamingo's midsection, running him backward across the open ground until they hit the wall of another building together. The impact shook dust from the roof. Lucien got his feet set and hit him twice more against the wall, hard and low. Doflamingo's head cracked back against the stone on the second one, and he bled a little more from the cut above his eye.
Doflamingo grabbed the back of Lucien's head and slammed it into the wall.
Lucien's vision went white. He pushed off the wall and threw an elbow backward into Doflamingo's face before he'd fully recovered. It connected with a sound that felt good. Doflamingo let go. Lucien turned and put a straight right into his nose.
Doflamingo's head snapped back. He took one step back and stopped himself. Touched his nose. Looked at the blood on his fingers with an expression that was harder to read than any of the ones before it.
Lucien spat and kept his hands up.
They went again.
It stopped being structured entirely. Lucien closed and opened distance constantly, never staying still, making Doflamingo adjust without rest. He landed a solid right hand that split Doflamingo's lip properly, a knee to the ribs that got another short exhale, got behind him once and locked an arm across his throat. Doflamingo drove them both backward into a wall hard enough to break the grip and turned and hit Lucien with a punch that had genuine anger behind it for the first time.
Lucien went sideways and hit the ground.
He got up. His eye was swelling, and something in his side had moved past protesting into a dull, settled pain. Across the open ground, Doflamingo was breathing harder than he had been, blood from the eyebrow cut tracking down the side of his face, lip swollen where the right hand had landed.
They looked at each other across the open ground.
Doflamingo raised one hand, almost casually, fingers extended.
Lucien noticed the twitch first. Small, deliberate, a controlled movement in the fingers that didn't match anything they'd been doing for the last ten minutes. His eyes moved off Doflamingo's face and tracked the air between them.
The light caught it for a fraction of a second. A thin line, nearly invisible, deflecting the sun at a low angle.
He was already moving when he felt it.
The string passed through the space his neck had been half a second earlier. He felt it anyway, a thin line of heat along the side of his neck, there and gone, and then he was clear, three steps back, one hand going to the cut.
Not deep. Clean edge. An inch to the right, and the conversation would have ended there.
Lucien straightened and took his hand away. A thin line of red across his fingers. He looked at it for a second, then looked up at Doflamingo across the open ground.
Doflamingo was bleeding from the eyebrow, from the lip, breathing harder than he'd started. None of it showed in his face. He looked at Lucien the way he'd looked at Trebol going down on the road, patient and unhurried, storing something away.
He reached up slowly and slid his sunglasses back up his nose.
The grin settled.
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1 Chapter For Every 50 Power Stones. Please Do Support.