One Piece: The Dragon All-Star - 189

Chapter 189: The End of the Donquixote Family

Wano Country, inside the Shogun’s castle.

“Tch. The Marines sure move fast,” Kai said.

He set down the latest issue of the World Economy News, voice tinged with pity. “Doffy, your Warlord title has already been revoked.”

“That was inevitable,” Robin answered lightly from his side. “The Marines have no use for a defeated, captured Warlord to decorate their roster.”

Kneeling below them, Doflamingo said nothing.

Heavy Sea Prism Stone shackles weighed on his wrists and ankles. He did not even bother to raise his head.

It was as if nothing in the outside world had anything to do with him anymore.

Seeing the supposed star of the show utterly unresponsive, Kai lost interest and folded the paper.

“Law. How do you want to deal with your enemy?” he asked.

“Me? I get to decide?” Law pointed at himself, stunned.

Kai nodded. “Whether you kill him or lock him up, it is your call.”

As for recruiting him?

Kai did not even consider it.

Three years ago, he might have put some effort into winning Doflamingo over.

Now?

Doflamingo simply was not strong enough anymore to be worth special treatment.

At that moment, the man who had been silent all this time finally stirred.

Doflamingo forced his head up.

Between his injuries and the Sea Prism Stone, he looked weak, but the eyes hidden behind his broken lenses were still sharp.

“Kai,” he rasped. “Is this your idea of a joke? Letting this brat decide my fate?”

Letting Trafalgar Law—the sick orphan the family had taken in, who had never even been a full member—decide the fate of Donquixote Doflamingo?

He refused to accept it.

“You are the one who has the wrong idea,” Kai said.

He leaned forward slightly, looking down at Doflamingo with an easy, cold curve to his lips.

“You are my prisoner. Prisoners do not get choices.”

He turned his gaze back to Law.

“Well? What is your decision?” he said.

All at once, the Donquixote officers turned to stare at Law.

Despair and pleading filled their eyes.

“Oi, Law, don’t kill the young master!” someone shouted.

“Have you forgotten who took you in when you were sick and homeless?” Baby 5 sobbed, voice cracking as she screamed at him, trying to claw up some lingering affection for the family, for their lord.

But she had no idea how much Rosinante meant to Law.

Her words did not soften him.

They froze his eyes to steel.

“I choose… to kill him,” Law said.

“Fine,” Kai replied. “Do it yourself.”

Law drew a long breath and stepped up to Doflamingo.

Kikoku slid slowly free, its pale edge catching the light.

“Any last words?” Law asked.

His voice was cold as ice.

“Last words, huh…” Doflamingo turned his head with effort, looking past Law at the officers bound and weeping behind him.

A strange, almost peaceful smile tugged at his mouth.

At last he looked back at Kai.

“Fuffuffuffu… If you’re willing… take in these foolish subordinates of mine,” he said.

“Young master!”

“Doffy!”

The officers broke down at once, cries ripping out of their throats.

Even with his life about to end, their lord was thinking of their safety.

“I will grant that,” Kai said.

He agreed without hesitation.

He did not care about most of them.

But he did have his eye on the Hobby-Hobby Fruit.

What he did not expect was that not a single one of them tried to seize the opening and pledge loyalty.

“Once we are Donquixote, we are Donquixote for life,” Pica said.

His shrill voice might sound comical, but his tone was solid as stone.

“That is right,” Dellinger snapped, boyish face full of resolve. “Even if we die, we will never betray our king.”

“Good. You have not shamed our family,” Trebol laughed, body of slime shaking with emotion.

“Very loyal,” Kai said.

He was not surprised.

Aside from Blackbeard’s crew, most of the “villain” pirate crews on this sea were tightly bound.

Even the loose Rocks Pirates had men like Whitebeard, who would still move for their captain in a pinch.

“Looks like I will not be lonely in hell,” Doflamingo said, drinking in the sight of his comrades’ faces.

He threw his head back and laughed freely.

“Do it,” he told Law. “Never thought I would end up dying to you.”

“You should have thought of that the day you killed Corazon—your own little brother,” Law said.

His voice did not ripple.

Cold light flashed.

A chill bloomed in Doflamingo’s chest.

Pain tore through him as his life bled away.

He used the last of his strength to sweep his gaze over the men who had followed him through so many battles.

Then he slowly closed his eyes.

“Young master!”

“Doffy!”

The officers’ tears poured like rain as they watched him fall.

Law pulled Kikoku free. Beads of blood rolled down the blade.

He looked over Trebol and the others, then up at Kai.

“What about them?” he asked.

With his great enemy finally dead, even his always-feral eyes held a faint softness.

“Send them down to join Doflamingo,” Kai said with a flick of his hand.

If they could not serve him, there was only one path left.

Trebol’s face twisted.

“Well then, we will see you in hell, Kai,” he snarled. “Our family will not forgive you.”

“Family?” Kai raised a brow.

“Thanks for reminding me. You still have an officer in the Marines, do you not? Vergo, the mole?”

Trebol’s face went rigid.

Sweat broke out along his hairline.

How did he know?

The Vergo operation was top secret. Only a handful of core members had ever been told.

Still…

So what if he knew?

Trebol’s mind raced.

If Kai killed Vergo, the clueless Marines would only see a “loyal” Vice Admiral cut down by a pirate.

Marineford would not take that lying down.

They might even go to full war with the Beasts Pirates.

The thought eased something in Trebol’s chest.

A mean sort of hope flickered to life.

Then Kai did something that stunned every prisoner present.

He reached into his coat, took out a Den Den Mushi, and dialed a number right in front of them.

Buru buru buru…

The line clicked open.

“Hello?” a steady, slightly weathered voice said.

The Den Den Mushi’s features shifted.

A Marine cap, a braided beard at the chin—the face it mimicked was unmistakable.

“Moshi moshi. Is this old man Sengoku?” Kai said cheerfully, as if greeting an old friend.

S-Sengoku.

They did not mean that Sengoku.

The Sengoku.

The Donquixote officers stared, eyes bulging.

A chill crawled up Trebol’s spine.

He could not seriously be…

Was a pirate really about to report another pirate to the Marines?

But the more he dreaded it, the more surely it unfolded.

“I am Kai,” he said. “Calling to report that you have a pirate mole in your ranks.”

He played the enthusiastic citizen while every prisoner watched in stunned silence.

“Vergo. They call him ‘Demon Bamboo.’ Nine years ago, he joined the Marines on Doflamingo’s orders as a plant. He should be a Vice Admiral by now, right?”

“You people really need to tighten up your background checks. A pirate mole climbed all the way to Vice Admiral and you never noticed. At this rate, how are you supposed to keep up with us pirates?”

Kai chuckled, voice light and teasing.

On the other end, Sengoku’s mood was anything but.

“How did you learn this?” he asked.

“Do not worry about that,” Kai said.

“I am just borrowing your knife. Believe me or do not. Your choice.”

His bluntness made the Den Den Mushi’s imitation of Sengoku’s face twitch visibly.

Borrowing the knife, is it?

Click.

The call cut off with a sharp sound.

“Tch. Still so hot-tempered at his age,” Kai said.

He glanced at the now-busy tone snail and shrugged.

Then he looked back down at the Donquixote officers, whose faces had gone ashen.

“Well. There goes your last bit of wishful thinking,” he said with a pleasant smile.

“Now you can head out with empty hands.”

He crooked a finger at Fukurokuju, standing at his side.

He was not planning to have Law swing the blade again.

A doctor did not need too much blood on his hands.

Fukurokuju bowed slightly and went to give the order.

The ninja under him dragged Trebol and the others out of the hall to be executed.

Only when rough hands seized him did Trebol seem to wake up.

“You damned Kai!” he screamed. “You call yourself a pirate? Colluding with the Marines? You will die a dog’s death—”

The other officers joined in, hurling curses twisted by despair.

They did not get many lines out.

The ninja moved fast, gagging them and cutting their voices down to muffled, hopeless sounds.

Kai ignored them.

Their words were gnats buzzing at the edge of hearing.

He lowered his head and picked up his pen, returning to the stack of documents awaiting his signature.

They were dead men. Let them rant.

The papers mattered more.

King Riku, who had handled much of this work for him, had already gone home to Dressrosa with his family.

With no one else to dump it on, Kai had to wrestle with the paperwork again.

Before long, the dull thuds of blades meeting flesh throbbed from beyond the doors, brief and dense.

The last of the muffled cries faded into silence.

Once the deaths were confirmed, the ninja dragged the bodies away.

Waiting maids filed in with buckets and cloths and scrubbed the floors with long-practiced efficiency.

In a matter of minutes, the hall was spotless again.

As if nothing at all had happened.

And the Donquixote Family, once feared in the underworld and notorious across the seas…

On this day, in this hour, it became dust in history.

Compared to the clean finality on Kai’s side, Marine Headquarters was chaos.

Sengoku’s face had gone almost black the moment he hung up.

He did not waste a second.

He summoned Vice Admiral Tsuru and relayed Kai’s call to her word-for-word.

“I remember this Vergo,” Sengoku said.

His fingers tapped the desk without thinking. “In his first year as a Marine, his performance stood out. Decisive, ruthless—almost to excess. I assumed at the time it was just his way of pursuing justice. In hindsight… his motives deserve a closer look.”

Tsuru listened in silence, frown deepening.

Eventually she let out a slow sigh.

“Having a pirate expose this makes us look like fools,” she said. “But Kai’s call does give a very tidy explanation for G-5’s… ‘unique’ methods.”

Like a controversial anecdote historians use to suddenly tie together a string of old riddles, the idea of Vergo as a plant slid into place as a missing puzzle piece.

All at once, things that had nagged at her for years lined up.

G-5’s pirate-like habits.

Its refusal to follow Headquarters’ orders.

The truly ugly behavior—like slaughtering defeated pirates.

Looking back, the change in atmosphere seemed to trace back to when Vergo had been sent to G-5 and slowly taken control.

“At this point, whether Kai’s motive is pure or not, whether he is lying or not, we have to conduct a full internal review of Vergo,” Tsuru said.

Her voice was cool and firm.

“I want you to handle this entirely,” Sengoku replied.

He met his old comrade’s eyes.

Trust shone there, and a touch of guilt.

He knew exactly what this assignment meant.

Still, he hardened his tone and spoke the words clearly.

“If… if Vergo really is what Kai claims, you will lead a special task force and carry out a complete investigation of the Marines from top to bottom.”

It would mean putting knives to countless entrenched interests.

It might tear open more hidden rot than they knew existed.

The shock would be immense.

“I understand,” Tsuru said.

She did not hesitate.

Her old, sharp eyes were clear and steady.

No one knew better than she did how many colleagues and factions she would offend by taking this on.

The trail might even lead upward to the World Government itself, maybe to the Celestial Dragons.

But for the future of the Marines, some abscesses had to be cut out.

“I am sorry, Tsuru,” Sengoku murmured, eyes dropping.

“Heh. For these old bones to still do some real good for the Marines at the end… sounds like the best use of my time to me,” she said with a small laugh.

“If the pushback gets too heavy, just fire this old woman.”

She waved a hand carelessly and turned to go.