"How are you feeling now?"
Doflamingo scratched his chin as he stared at Aramaki, who now looked like some sort of Avatar knockoff.
After enduring the twisted experiments of Caesar and Judge, it had been a torturous, never-ending nightmare for him.
Especially that period where they kept digging into his brain tissue.
In the beginning, Aramaki would curse and scream.
But as time passed, even the cursing stopped. He could only scream in his mind, desperately crying out to the World Government and the Five Elders for help.
Eventually, he fell into a state of learned helplessness—he even gave up on the World Government and the Celestial Dragons.
In the end, all that remained was an endless spiral of self-denial. He didn't even care about the experiments being conducted on him anymore.
It was the perfect disintegration—and reconstruction—of a person's psyche.
"..."
After a long silence, Aramaki tugged at the seastone shackles wrapped around his body, making sure this wasn't just a dream.
It was real. With that realization came a deep, long sigh.
"It feels... good to be alive."
"Fuffuffuffuffu~"
With a grin, Doflamingo stepped forward, placing a foot on Aramaki's chest and leaning in.
"Do you want to live?"
"Yes!" Aramaki replied instantly, without the slightest hesitation.
To hell with the Celestial Dragons and the World Government.
If he could survive, he would give up anything.
Doflamingo lightly raised his leg and ground the sole of his shoe against Aramaki's face.
"Then you know what you have to do."
With devout sincerity, Aramaki pressed his thick lips to the bottom of Doflamingo's shoe and kissed it.
"I'll give everything I have."
"Fuffuffuffu~ Now that's the kind of resolve I like."
Doflamingo, clearly satisfied, crouched down and patted Aramaki's blue bald head like he was petting a dog.
"From now on, your name is Aramaki the Little Hound."
"Yes! I'm your loyal hunting hound, and nothing more!"
With the hope of survival rekindled, Aramaki gave a faithful, almost giddy smile.
Clink!
The chains binding his limbs were sliced apart by thin threads, though the seastone cuffs around his wrists and ankles remained.
"Come, Little Hound. Once you've proven your worth, I'll remove those cuffs myself."
Doflamingo turned and strode off confidently toward Caesar's lab.
As he walked, his thoughts churned.
"Guys like Aramaki—cowardly, power-worshiping oddballs—are rare in this sea of iron-headed lunatics. If every enemy were like him, my forces would've grown tenfold by now. But I'm no Sun God. I don't just smile and watch both allies and enemies kneel at my feet."
Aramaki scrambled to catch up, his atrophied limbs trembling like a vibrating wand. He was alive!
Truly, miraculously alive!
...
Outside Caesar's lab—
As Doflamingo approached, the cloned guards immediately stepped forward and saluted.
"Your Majesty, Doflamingo-sama!"
Waving them off, Doflamingo used Observation Haki to sense inside.
It had been months since Caesar last showed his face or delivered any new results. Time to see what the bastard was up to.
"Lily... this time I'll definitely succeed!"
"Mmm~ Everything you say is true, Caesar-sama."
"I'm coming, Lily!"
...
Doflamingo's face darkened with each passing second. Thin threads whipped out from his hand toward the lab door.
Had he been too soft lately? Or had Caesar's wings grown stiff from staying off Sky Island too long?
Now he wasn't even working? He'd shut himself inside just to mess around with women?
And not even human women... Caesar had him beat when it came to depravity.
Crash!
The lab doors exploded off their hinges.
"Lily...?!"
Caesar went limp on the spot, sliding out of the tree woman and turning into gas to hide his disgrace.
The tree woman lay limp in a massive potted plant at the center of the lab, eyes rolled back in unconscious ecstasy.
Small fruit hung from the branches on her head, swaying slightly.
From her synthetic body flowed a pale, viscous fluid—Lineage Factor.
Even Aramaki was left dumbstruck.
So this... was the correct use of Lily Carnation?
Doflamingo extended his hand.
With Haki-coated threads, he yanked Caesar out of his gas form and forced him back into a solid body.
Staring down at Caesar's panic-stricken face, Doflamingo growled.
"Caesar, if your research over the past few months amounted to screwing tree people, then say goodbye to your family jewels."
"Wha—no no no no! BOSS!"
Seeing Doflamingo's face black as ink—and feeling an icy chill between his legs—Caesar's eyes bulged. His tongue stiffened. His arms flailed as he scrambled to explain.
"Boss! Please spare the goods! I wasn't doing it just because I've never had a tree woman before!"
"I swear—it was all for science! For the sake of experimentation!"
"Boss, do you remember my Artificial Zoan Fruits?"
"Lily Carnation is the path forward I've chosen!"
Doflamingo could tell when Caesar was lying.
He glanced up at Lily Carnation's head, where a strange fruit resembling his artificial Zoan models had grown. His expression eased slightly.
Then—boom!—he decked Caesar so hard he burst into gas again.
"Then what the hell were you doing just now? Don't tell me that was 'for science' too."
Caesar hurriedly grabbed a lab coat to cover himself.
Ignoring the massive lump forming on his face, he shuffled over, plastering on a toady smile.
"Boss, it was for science!"
"Ever since you told me my original methods were flawed, I've been thinking non-stop. The problem was with the mother plant—it couldn't filter out the active Animal Lineage Factors in SAD."
"But Lily Carnation has consciousness! She can help me filter which genes are viable for cultivation—she's the perfect match!"
"So I transformed her into this form."
"And the first batch is nearly ripe, Boss!"
Doflamingo raised a fist again, face darkening once more.
"Caesar, you still haven't explained why you were screwing the tree. I don't like evasive answers."
Sweat beading on his forehead, Caesar shut his eyes and resigned himself to death.
"Zoan types rely on Animal Lineage Factors."
"And humans... are technically animals, right? Boss?"
"I wanted to try creating a Zoan Fruit based on Oni blood."
"So..."
Boom! Caesar was embedded in the floor, his defense cut short.
"Ow ow ow ow ow!!"
Clutching his stomach, Caesar howled in pain.
"One month," Doflamingo said coldly. "You've got one month to show me results. As a bonus, I'll give you 10% of the market price for each Zoan Fruit you create."
He withdrew his fist and left with a scowl.
He didn't understand the finer points of science, but he wasn't an idiot.
Creating a Zoan Fruit should just involve blood extraction and filtering Lineage Factors.
Why did Caesar have to "plant his seed" the real way?
This damn mutt just wanted to screw a tree.
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Fanfic is finished 527 chapters in total on p@treon/tambeerg