Faced with Crocodile's near-ultimatum—words that carried both threat and the offer of cooperation—Doflamingo's reaction was completely unexpected.
He did not grow angry.He did not panic.
Instead, as if he had just heard an outrageously hilarious joke, he suddenly threw his head back and burst into wild laughter.
"Fuffuffu… fuffuffuffuffu!!!"
He laughed so hard his body rocked back and forth, even slapping the armrest of the sofa in exaggerated fashion. The laughter echoed through the shabby reception room, saturated with mockery and a hint of madness.
Then—
The laughter stopped dead in the very next instant.
Doflamingo snapped his mouth shut. The grin vanished without a trace, replaced by an extreme, chilling ferocity. A cold glint flashed across the lenses of his sunglasses.
"You think…"His voice dropped to a terrifying low, filled with bone-deep frost."…that I wouldn't already know about things like this?!"
The moment the words fell—
Whoosh.
Five nearly invisible yet incomparably sharp transparent threads—Bullet Strings (Overheat)—shot out from Doflamingo's fingertips at a speed the naked eye could not track, instantly crossing through Crocodile's position!
Shrrrk!
With no chance to resist, Crocodile's body looked as though it had been sliced by the sharpest laser—cleanly severed into five perfectly aligned pieces!
Head.Chest.Waist.Legs.
Displaced. Separated.
Standing to the side like an iron tower, Mr. 1, Daz Bones, had his pupils shrink violently. Acting almost on instinct, his arms transformed into razor-sharp blades as he prepared to charge at Doflamingo—
"Stop, Daz."
A calm voice spoke.
Despite his body being cut into five pieces, Crocodile's split face still held that cold sneer around his cigar.He could even still speak.
Mr. 1 froze in place.
The next second, Crocodile's severed body parts suddenly disintegrated into countless grains of yellow sand.They poured onto the floor with a rustling sound, then swiftly gathered, reshaped, and reformed—
In a swirl of sand, Crocodile returned to normal, completely unharmed.
Unhurried, he separated the severed cigar from the sand, pinched it out between his fingers, and calmly pulled a fresh one from his coat pocket.
He lit it.
Taking a deep drag, he exhaled thick smoke and looked at Doflamingo with placid eyes, as though the deadly attack had never happened.
"The Vinsmoke Family, as the 'royal house' of the North Blue…"Crocodile began in a tone of flat, factual narration, his voice drifting through the smoke."Though they no longer possess fixed territory, their bloodline and status are still recognized by the World Government. They retain the right to attend the Reverie."
He paused, his gaze growing deeper—cold, almost bureaucratic.
"To put it another way…"
"As a Warlord of the Sea recruited by the World Government—someone who enjoys the legal privilege of plunder while also bearing a certain responsibility to 'maintain order' on the seas…"
"I, Sir Crocodile, am quite obligated to assist a 'legitimate royal family' when they make a reasonable request…to help them 'clean up' some… unstable elements."
When his words ended, the reception room fell into a deathly silence.
Doflamingo leaned forward slightly on the sofa, fingers interlaced beneath his chin, his sunglasses locked firmly on Crocodile.
Crocodile stood his ground, cigar clenched between his teeth, smoke curling freely as he returned the stare without retreat.
Between the two of them, the air seemed to solidify.Killing intent and ambition clashed soundlessly.
Fight?Peace?Or cooperation?
Every possibility fermented violently within the suffocating silence.
Mr. 1 held his breath, muscles taut, ready to react to anything.
Just as the tension grew so dense it felt ready to explode—
Trebol, who had been lurking behind Doflamingo like a puddle of slime, cautiously wriggled forward and whispered in his shrill, sticky voice:
"Doffy~ calm down, you gotta calm down~Now's not the time to tear things apart with a Warlord, hee-hee~"
Behind the sunglasses, Doflamingo's eyes flickered.
He wasn't stupid.
The strength Crocodile had just displayed—and the legitimacy backing him—made the balance of pros and cons instantly clear.
A confrontation with the Vinsmoke Family was already a massive, imminent risk.If he also offended a powerful Warlord with World Government backing at the same time…
The Donquixote Family would truly be erased from the North Blue.
"Fuffuffuffuffu…"
Doflamingo suddenly laughed again.
This time, the laughter no longer carried killing intent. It returned to that careless, mocking tone. His body relaxed as he leaned back against the sofa.
"That really scared me… Sir Crocodile.""Fine. You win."
He spread his hands in a gesture of concession.
"So let's be direct, then.The famous 'Desert Crocodile'—going through all this trouble to find me, even using the Vinsmokes to threaten me…"
"What exactly do you want from me?"
"Surely it's not truly for some vague 'Warlord duty,' right?"
Seeing Doflamingo yield, Crocodile showed a satisfied smile. He knew the other man had made the smart choice.
He stopped circling and stated his purpose plainly, his tone calm yet unquestionable:
"It's simple. I need you to supply a designated client of mine with a massive quantity of high-quality weapons—arms powerful enough to completely crush a conventional army."
"Oh?" Doflamingo's interest was piqued."Which client has pockets that deep—and managed to catch your eye?"
"The rebel forces of Alabasta," Crocodile said slowly, exhaling a smoke ring."I want you to ensure their firepower can utterly overwhelm the royal army."
Doflamingo was a Celestial Dragon—he understood immediately.
Alabasta.A member nation of the World Government. One of its founding countries.Crocodile's territory.
He had already heard whispers—civil war worsening year by year, droughts and famine spreading, resentment toward the royal family boiling over…
So this was the truth behind it all.
After suffering setbacks in the New World—his ambitions crushed by greater monsters(Whitebeard, Gern Reginald Sigmar, Douglas Bullet, and others)—
Crocodile had withdrawn from the New World's struggle and turned his gaze toward ancient legends.
He founded Baroque Works, embedded himself in Alabasta, and used the banned substance Dance Powder to steal rainwater—plunging the nation into three years of relentless drought.
Then, with exquisite manipulation, he shifted all blame onto King Nefertari Cobra.
Ignorant of the truth, the people—consumed by despair and rage—formed a rebel army, clashing with the royal forces in a brutal civil war.
Crocodile hid in the shadows.
He sold weapons to both sides, reaping immense profits from the war, all while waiting.
Waiting for the conflict to spiral completely out of control—
So that he could emerge as a "savior," end the war, and be hailed by the grateful populace as Alabasta's hero.
At that point, combined with his status as a Warlord of the Sea, he could naturally intervene in—and even seize control of—the country.
And from there, he would finally have the chance to slowly, thoroughly search for and decipher the ancient weapon sleeping somewhere beneath Alabasta—
Pluton, the Underworld King.
In other words—
He had become no different from Gecko Moria.
Once a supernova tyrant who sought dominion over the New World,now a fallen giant who placed his ambitions in the hands of external power rather than his own strength.