Doflamingo sent the next string before Lucien had fully processed the first one.
Lucien moved left and felt it pass through his sleeve, clean as a blade, leaving a thin line of exposed skin underneath. He checked the arm. Not cut. Close.
He pulled the sword and went at him.
It lasted about four seconds. Doflamingo's strings came in low and fast, and Lucien got the blade down in time to block the first one, felt the resistance, and then the sword came apart in two clean pieces. Not broken. Cut. The top half hit the dirt, and Lucien stood there holding a handle and eight inches of blade.
He looked at it for a second.
"Need a better sword," he muttered, and dropped it.
Doflamingo watched him drop it with visible amusement.
Then the strings came again, three at once from different angles, and Lucien stopped thinking about the sword entirely.
He moved. The strings were fast and nearly invisible, and he was reading them off Doflamingo's hands now, using haki, watching the fingers, catching the deflection of light when it was there. He avoided the first two and the third caught him across the forearm, opening a thin cut that stung badly and bled immediately. He got clear and put distance between them.
Doflamingo rolled his fingers and the strings spread wide, closing the space from multiple directions at once.
Lucien activated the fruit.
He pushed outward and felt the distortion settle into the air around them. Then he sent a sound from behind Doflamingo's left shoulder. Footsteps. Specific, close, deliberate.
Doflamingo's head moved. Just slightly, the involuntary check that even someone like him couldn't fully suppress. He thought Idris was back after dealing with all the members
The strings went left.
Lucien was already going right.
He closed the distance and hit him with a straight right that connected properly, snapping his head back. Followed it with a left to the ribs and drove a knee up into his midsection. Doflamingo grabbed his shoulder on the way down and they went to the dirt together.
Lucien felt the Haki come up as they hit the ground, deliberate this time, called up consciously. It settled into both fists slower than he wanted but it was there. He hit Doflamingo twice with it behind the punches and felt the difference in the impact immediately. Something landing harder than his body alone could manage.
Doflamingo's strings wrapped around his wrist and yanked him sideways before the third landed.
Lucien rolled with it and came up and the hardness was already gone, faded the moment the connection broke, and what replaced it was a hollow, sudden exhaustion that dropped into his legs like lead. His stomach clenched. Deep hunger, the specific kind that meant something had been used up.
He filed it and kept moving.
Doflamingo got to one knee. Worked his jaw. Spat blood onto the dirt. The strings spread outward again, wider this time, overlapping, cutting the open ground into sections.
Lucien watched them move and stayed still. Running into that without a plan was how you lost a hand.
Doflamingo stood fully and rolled his neck and came forward. He sent a sheet of strings low across the ground like a sweep, fast and wide. Lucien jumped it and the follow-up was already waiting at head height, two strings crossing in a V. He dropped under them and felt one graze his hair and came up inside Doflamingo's reach and drove an elbow into his ribs.
Doflamingo took it and hit him back with a straight right that had full weight behind it.
Lucien went sideways and caught himself on one hand. Got up. His vision swam briefly and settled.
He pushed the fruit again. This time he put a shape into Doflamingo's peripheral vision, fast movement coming in hard from the right, the kind the body reacts to before the brain catches up.
Doflamingo turned into it.
Lucien went left and got behind him and hit him across the back of the head, not hard enough, Doflamingo was already correcting, spinning, strings coming around with him like an extension of the movement. One caught Lucien across the shoulder and opened a clean cut through his jacket. Another wrapped his ankle briefly before he kicked free.
They separated and reset.
Lucien was breathing hard. Both cuts were bleeding, the forearm and the shoulder, and the fruit drain was pulling steadily at something behind his eyes. Doflamingo had blood on his jaw and his lip and a bruise forming under one eye from earlier. His coat was torn in two places. Neither of them looked good.
Doflamingo sent three strings in a tight cluster, aiming for the throat.
Lucien read the hand movement, ducked under all three, felt them pass through his hair, and came up already driving forward. He hit Doflamingo with a shoulder charge that moved him back three steps and followed it with a combination, left to the body, right to the jaw, left again to the same rib he'd been hitting since the road.
Doflamingo caught the last one and twisted, using the grip to throw Lucien past him. Lucien went with it instead of against it, used the momentum, spun, and came back around with a kick that caught Doflamingo square across the face.
Doflamingo stumbled back two full steps. First time all fight, he'd moved backward from a single strike.
He stopped himself. Touched his face. Looked at the blood on his fingers.
The grin came back slower this time.
The strings came fast and without warning, eight or nine of them from every angle, a full cage closing in. Lucien activated the fruit hard and sent two things at once, a sound from the left and a shape from the right, overlapping, competing. Doflamingo's body stuttered, caught between two signals, a half second of hesitation where neither hand knew which way to send the strings.
Lucien was already moving through the gap.
The well was nearly dry. He used what was left anyway and hit Doflamingo across the jaw with everything behind it. The sound was different. Something underneath the surface, connecting with the thing beneath the grin and the coat and all the rest of it.
Doflamingo's head snapped back hard. His legs went.
Lucien knew he was staying down on his own terms. That he could go another round if he wanted. Lucien also knew he absolutely could not.
He turned to see Idris standing on the roof of a nearby building and shook his head slowly. "You could have helped your captain fight that monster. Very irresponsible of you."
Idris jumped down and got under his arm to support him. "Would have helped if my captain were stronger. You can barely stand. That man could have gone another round easily."
He wasn't wrong. Lucien didn't say anything.
Idris had watched the whole thing from the moment they both activated their fruits. Too fast, too unpredictable. Every time he'd found an angle it had already changed. He'd kept his rifle on Doflamingo the entire time and hadn't fired once.
They walked in silence toward the pier.
Lucien stopped.
He turned toward a narrow corridor between two buildings and said, "Come out."
Idris had his pistol up before the words had finished. He didn't know what Lucien had sensed, but he pointed at the corridor and waited.
Nothing moved. No sound. Not even footsteps.
Then a figure stepped out of the dark, completely silent, not a sound from anywhere on him. He was young, face painted, blonde hair the same shade as Doflamingo's. The facial structure was similar too, same jaw, same bones, wearing it differently.
Lucien looked at him and said nothing.
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1 Chapter For Every 50 Power Stones. Please Do Support.