The New World wasn't kind, but it sure was loud.
The gunfire outside was nothing short of a full-blown symphony of chaos—Marine rifles cracking, warehouse goons screaming, and the occasional "Your mother was a Sea King!" ringing out like it was part of regulation protocol.
Somewhere, someone was definitely using a cannon indoors, which wasn't just dangerous—it was disrespectful to acoustics.
But Vice Admiral Vergo barely noticed.
His boots clicked evenly on the concrete floor as he walked, hands folded neatly behind his back. His coat billowed slightly with each step, and the faint smell of gunpowder in the air didn't so much as make him blink.
Not even the fried egg stuck to his left cheek dared to move. It was almost impressive how it clung to him with the resolve of a man who files his taxes early.
Even more so, the fact that Vergo didn't notice it.
Vergo reached the rusted metal door of the warehouse office and, without ceremony or warning, lifted one leg and kicked.
The door didn't creak or crack—it launched. The hinges gave up on life as it flew inward, crashing against the opposite wall like a bowling pin strike. Somewhere in the distance, a scream of "That was a perfectly good door!" echoed uselessly.
Inside sat a single man: rotund, hunched over, and wearing a flashy maroon pinstripe suit that had no business being that tight or that loud. Gold rings decorated every sausage finger. His eyes widened for just a second at Vergo's entrance—just long enough to make the classic mistake.
He reached for his flintlock pistol.
Vergo's observation haki flared before the man even moved. His brow twitched, and a small patch at the center of his forehead shimmered black as armament haki hardened it like steel.
Crack!
The bullet hit his head and bounced off with a dull clang, rolling harmlessly to the floor.
"That was incredibly stupid," Vergo said calmly. The egg didn't even budge. His sunglasses glinted coldly as he stared straight at the man before him.
The man lowered his still-smoking pistol, not even flinching when it clicked empty. He looked Vergo up and down, sneering.
"You think I'm scared of you, Marine?" he spat, tossing the flintlock aside like it had personally betrayed him.
It clattered uselessly to the floor.
"You're a dead man walking, you hear me?" He flopped backward into a squeaky chair like a king on his throne, smugly adjusting the gold chain on his gut.
"Do you even know who you're messing with?" he sneered. "Do you have any idea who's got my back?"
Vergo said nothing.
He simply stared. Silently. Menacingly. Fried egg: unwavering.
The man pointed at him, jabbing a sausage-thick finger toward Vergo with all the grace of a drunkard trying to win an argument in a tavern. His words slurred with venom.
"You're at the wrong end of the New World. You think you can just walk in here and do as you please just because you wear that coat? That bedsheet doesn't make you untouchable!"
Spittle flew as he snarled, leaning forward in his chair. "I've got underworld connections. Brokers. Families. You name it, I've got it. And they'll bury you before you even—"
Vergo blinked once beneath his shades. Nothing more.
Then he started forward.
Slow. Deliberate.
Each step was a steady thunk on the concrete floor, echoing like a metronome counting down to something inevitable and very, very bad.
The man in the chair stiffened, but his mouth kept running—like he couldn't stop himself. "I'm telling you—! You lay one finger on me and powerful men will set their hounds on you! You hear me? You don't know who you're dealing with! The Joker himself is behind this little operation. I'm just the man keeping things running for him. You touch me—"
Vergo stopped. Right in front of him.
The silence hung for a beat.
"You talk too much."
That was all he said.
The man's mouth opened—maybe to curse, maybe to plead—but that's as far as he got before Vergo's knee rocketed upward and smashed into the side of his face like a freight train.
CRACK!
The chair flipped violently, wood splintering as the man went spinning through the air. He crashed into the desk, shattering it into two halves, papers fluttering down like surrender flags.
He lay wheezing, groaning, and—judging by the panicked whites of his eyes—finally realizing he had made a lifelong career out of the wrong decisions.
"Wh… why…" he rasped, clutching at his side as his gold rings clicked against the floor. "Why are you… doing this…? We had... we had an arrangement... with the... marines..."
Vergo tilted his head slightly, the egg on his cheek still perfectly intact, and said evenly:
"I already told you. You talk too much."
The man blinked rapidly, confused, terrified, trying to push himself up. His voice cracked as he stammered:
"What… the hell… are—"
CRUNCH!
Vergo's boot came down hard on his neck. The sound was sharp, final.
The man went still.
For a moment, the office was quiet—except for the distant chorus of gunshots and screams still echoing from outside.
The truth was simple.
After what had gone down at Sabaody, every pair of eyes in the underworld had turned toward Donquixote Doflamingo and his sprawling operations.
His enemies were emboldened, sniffing for weakness. His so-called allies—never trustworthy to begin with—were growing restless.
A man with a mouth as big as this one might've been tolerated before. He might've even been useful, with all his bragging and bluster filling bars and backrooms with fear of "the Joker's reach."
But now?
Now, when he made it his nightly ritual to get drunk and crow to anyone who would listen about how he "worked for Joker"?
No.
Now he was nothing more than a liability.
And liabilities didn't get to keep talking.
Vergo brushed a fleck of dust off his coat sleeve, ready to turn on his heel and leave the wreckage of the office behind. Job done, body cooling, mess for someone else to sweep up.
He didn't even get one step before a brrrriiinng echoed from the inner pocket of his coat.
The transponder snail.
He froze. Not out of surprise—Vergo never did surprise—but out of irritation. They had an arrangement.
With a small exhale through his nose, he pulled it free, flipped it open, and spoke flatly:
"I thought we agreed I'd be the one to make contact."
On the other end, the snail's features warped into a familiar smirk, the slow drawl of Donquixote Doflamingo spilling out.
"Sorry about that, Vergo. This is… urgent."
Calm voice, but Vergo knew better. Doffy was a man who thrived in control, who laughed in the face of chaos—so when his tone slipped even a little, it meant the strings were pulling tighter than usual.
"If it's about that loud-mouthed idiot," Vergo replied, glancing down at the corpse splayed half-through the desk, "I'm already standing over his body."
The snail mirrored Doflamingo's chuckle, low and amused.
"Efficient, as always."
Vergo adjusted his shades, expression unreadable.
It was, in truth, a remarkably convenient arrangement. His Marine uniform gave him license—legitimacy. Information fed one way, orders trickling back the other. Rivals, nuisances, loudmouths, they all fell under the same bamboo stick of "justice."
If Doflamingo sent one of his own men to clean house, tongues wagged. Allies began to second-guess their place in the family, wondering if the Joker's favor might one day sour on them.
But if a Vice Admiral of the Marines just happened to stamp out a "criminal" in the line of duty?
Then it was nothing but justice served.
A perfect scapegoat. A perfect shield.
And Vergo wore both without complaint.
But the next words through the snail made him pause.
"I'm calling for something else…"
There was a shift in Doflamingo's tone now, like piano wire pulled taut.
"There's a young Marine captain by the name of… Harlow Gale."
Vergo's frown deepened just a fraction, a rare crack in the mask. His hand tightened around the snail, knuckles whitening against the black leather of his gloves.
"I know of him," he said at last, voice flat as stone. "The one who supposedly arrested Diamante."
A faint sneer slipped into his words, though his face stayed blank. "What about him?"
The snail's grin widened into that unmistakable slash of teeth, and Doflamingo's voice oozed through, low and amused:
"After everything that happened, Sengoku's not stupid. He'll want his little golden rookie as far away from Mary Geoise and the Celestial Dragons as possible…"
He paused deliberately, like he was dangling bait on the end of a string.
"…I have a feeling the brat will be transferred soon. When that happens—I want you to do everything you can to have him reassigned under you."
Vergo's jaw twitched. A flicker of something—irritation, resistance—passed beneath the mask of calm. Normally, he followed orders without hesitation.
If Doflamingo said to play Marine, he wore the ridiculous white coat and endured the company of G-5's rejects.
If Doflamingo said to butcher rivals under the pretense of "justice," he did it.
But this was different.
"Need I remind you," Vergo said slowly, evenly, "how useful my current position is to the family?" He adjusted his shades, the black glass flashing in the dim light. "Jeopardizing that for the sake of revenge… would not serve us in any meaningful way. Please—mind the time and place… Joker."
The word was edged like a blade. A subtle warning.
Doflamingo didn't bristle. He laughed. That strange, grating fufufufu that stretched too long, too thin, like a puppet string pulled taut.
"As expected," he said, amusement dripping through the snail's warped mouth, "you've got a good head on your shoulders, Vergo. Always thinking three steps ahead."
The chuckle tapered off, and his voice dropped into something sharper, colder.
"But this isn't about revenge. As much as I'd like to rip that brat to shreds with my own hands…"
The silence after that admission was long enough that Vergo's hand, still steady as stone, tightened ever so slightly on the receiver.
"Then what," he asked blankly, "is it about?"
Doflamingo's answer came without hesitation, like he'd been rehearsing it in his mind ever since the thought had sunk its claws into him.
"I just had the… displeasure of meeting him." His voice twisted the word, made it sound like poison. "And call it a hunch, if you will… but I think that brat is more involved in Shepherd's death than anyone else realizes."
Vergo hummed low, the sound deep in his chest, like the faint rumble before a landslide.
"And this hunch of yours," he asked, calm as still water, "is it worth the risk of exposing our arrangement? Especially under these circumstances…"
For a moment, there was only the faint crackle of the snail's receiver.
Then, Doflamingo's chuckle seeped through, dry and humorless.
"No. Not yet. But I've got people digging into him." The snail's lips pulled back in a distorted grin. "Sooner or later, I'll have the truth in my hands."
The snail's glasses tilted under the warehouse lamplight, the reflection catching just so—like the cold gleam of an apex predator stalking prey.
"That said," Doflamingo went on, voice dropping into that unnerving singsong lilt, "the investigation will take time. Time enough for us to lose the chance of having him under your thumb."
Vergo's pause stretched, a heavy silence thick with calculation. He weighed the cost. He weighed the convenience. He weighed the risk.
Finally, he spoke.
"So… I'll keep him close. If your hunch proves correct, he won't escape me. If not—" he adjusted his collar with slow precision "—we leave things as they are. Until the heat dies down."
The faintest nod tilted his head, unseen by anyone but his reflection in the broken glass on the floor.
"I'll see what I can do."
The snail grinned wider. Doflamingo's laugh rattled through the line, a high, jagged sound that seemed to pull at the very air of the room.
"Fufufufufu… I knew I could count on you, Vergo."
Vergo clicked the receiver shut without ceremony, sliding the snail back into his coat pocket.
The warehouse was silent now. Silent except for the faint groans of a dying building, half-collapsed after the earlier chaos, and the creak of the chair where the corpse of the braggart still slumped.
Vergo adjusted his shades, expression unreadable, egg still stuck stubbornly to his cheek like a ridiculous badge of office.
Business concluded.
He stepped out of the office, his coat catching the draft, and let the sound of distant gunfire and screaming sailors wash over him as though it were nothing more than background noise to another day's work.
...
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