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Seeing Doflamingo again filled Luffy with the same visceral rage he'd felt during their last encounter. The man in the flamingo-pink coat represented everything wrong with piracy—everything Luffy had spent years fighting against.
Throughout his journey across the seas, Luffy had met countless pirates. Some were honorable. Some were funny. Some were tragic figures driven to crime by circumstance. Even enemies often possessed recognizable human virtues—loyalty to crew, love for family, dreams worth pursuing.
But Doflamingo? He was different. Fundamentally, irredeemably bad. He didn't even bother pretending to be anything else—wore his cruelty like a badge of honor, committed atrocities with that horrible laugh, and walked the path of absolute immorality without a single backward glance. He stood at the opposite extreme from his martyred brother Corazon, as if to prove that bloodline meant nothing compared to choice.
"Doflamingo!" Luffy's voice carried across the Founding Titan's spine. "Your opponent is ME! Let Law go!"
Trafalgar Law lay crushed beneath Doflamingo's foot—unconscious, bloodied, defeated. His chest rose and fell with shallow breaths, proving life still lingered. The only reason he wasn't already dead was because Doflamingo was savoring his victory, prolonging the suffering.
The Heavenly Yaksha's grin widened. "Law? Oh, you mean this traitor?"
He reached down and grabbed Law by the hair, yanking the unconscious surgeon upright with casual cruelty. Blood had dried on Law's face in dark streaks, making him look like a corpse already prepared for burial.
"Law betrayed me just like my brother did," Doflamingo said conversationally, as though discussing weather rather than murder. "But unlike Corazon, Law owes me everything. Without my protection, he never would have escaped Flevance. Without my guidance, he'd have died nameless and forgotten. What an ungrateful wretch."
His expression shifted—false friendliness replaced by genuine contempt. "And to think I wasted the Ope Ope no Mi (Op-Op Fruit) on this failure. Such a shame."
Then, without warning or further preamble, Doflamingo thrust his free hand directly through Law's chest.
SQUELCH.
The sound of flesh parting, ribs breaking, organs rupturing—all compressed into a single wet noise that echoed across the battlefield. Doflamingo's arm disappeared up to the elbow in Law's torso, blood gushing around the entry point to coat his forearm in crimson.
Law's eyes snapped open for one terrible moment—wide, aware, experiencing every microsecond of his heart being crushed in an enemy's fist. Then the light faded, his body went limp, and Trafalgar Law stopped breathing forever.
"LAW!" Luffy's scream tore from his throat raw and anguished. "LAW! NO!"
Training and strategy evaporated, replaced by pure instinct. Luffy stretched his arm toward Doflamingo, desperate to grab Law's body, to pull him away, to somehow undo what had just happened if he could just reach him—
Doflamingo caught the extended limb mid-flight, his grin never faltering. "How touching. Since you care so much, why don't you join him?"
His free hand rose, fingers spreading. "Goshikito (Five Color Strings)!"
Five threads emerged from his fingertips—each one a different color, each one impossibly sharp despite being thinner than hair. They drove into Luffy's outstretched arm like surgical needles, piercing through muscle, severing blood ships, scraping against bone. The threads found Luffy's radius and ulna, drilling through the hardest parts of his skeleton to leave five perfect holes.
The pain was excruciating. Unimaginable. Every nerve in Luffy's arm screamed in united protest.
But Luffy didn't let go.
His teeth ground together, jaw muscles bulging with the effort of staying silent. Tears streamed from his eyes—involuntary physical response to trauma—but he refused to scream. Refused to give Doflamingo the satisfaction.
His gaze locked onto the Heavenly Yaksha's face, hatred burning with such intensity it was almost visible. The last person to receive this level of pure murderous intent had been Admiral Sakazuki, the man who'd killed Ace. Now Doflamingo joined that exclusive list.
I'm going to kill you, Luffy thought with absolute certainty. No matter what it takes. No matter what I have to sacrifice. You're dead.
Doflamingo, having extracted sufficient entertainment from his victim's suffering, released Law's corpse with theatrical indifference. The surgeon's body tumbled through empty air, falling toward the ocean far below.
Luffy's rubber arm retracted immediately, catching Law before he could fall beyond reach. He cradled the body carefully despite the agony in his punctured limb, pressing fingers against Law's throat to check for a pulse that wasn't there, holding his hand near Law's mouth to feel breath that would never come.
Nothing. Trafalgar Law was gone.
If I'd been faster, Luffy thought, guilt crushing his chest worse than physical pain. If I'd stopped Doflamingo earlier, if I hadn't let myself get kicked away, if I'd been stronger—Law would still be alive. Another person dead because I wasn't good enough.
Ace's death had forced Luffy to grow up overnight—to understand that people could actually die, that the ocean wasn't a playground, that weakness had consequences beyond just losing fights. He'd trained for two years to ensure he'd never experience that helplessness again.
But here he was. Holding another friend's corpse. Failing again.
No, he corrected himself, feeling something crystallize inside his chest. I didn't fail yet. Law died, but his sister is still alive. Lami is still on the Sunny. I can protect her. I can make sure Law's sacrifice wasn't for nothing.
"I'll take care of your sister," Luffy promised the corpse quietly. "Lami will be safe. You can rest now, Law."
He set the body down gently on the Founding Titan's spine, arranging Law's limbs with respect, then stood. When he looked at Doflamingo again, the grief had been locked away—replaced by cold, focused battle-fury.
His punctured arm had stopped bleeding, adrenaline constricting blood ships while his accelerated metabolism began immediate repairs. The pain faded to background noise, ignorable in the face of what needed to be done.
Doflamingo clapped slowly, mockingly. "What a touching scene! Though tell me, Straw Hat—are you still getting chased around like a dog by Admiral Sakazuki? That was quite the performance five years ago at Marineford. So many people died protecting you, and you couldn't even return the favor."
His grin took on a sharper edge. "But at least you had help back then. Whitebeard's crew. Your brother. Various unexpected allies. Today, you've only got one backup—" He nodded toward Admiral Gin. "—so please, please don't disappoint me. I'm expecting a spectacular show."
Doflamingo had recognized Gin immediately despite the five-year gap. The blue-haired insomniac with perpetually tired eyes, now wearing an Admiral's coat, standing beside a pirate like they were comrades rather than enemies. The sight was philosophically fascinating.
Artoria Pendragon, Doflamingo thought with grudging respect. You've accomplished the impossible—uniting factions that historically despised each other under a single banner of reformed justice. I've never met you, woman, but I acknowledge your political genius.
The New Marines' strengthened control over the seas had devastated Doflamingo's underground operations. Arms shipments to the Four Blues now required ten times the effort and risk. Bribery costs had skyrocketed. Former allies had abandoned contracts rather than face Marine scrutiny.
I miss Sengoku's administration, Doflamingo mused. That old fool was so easy to manipulate. My Celestial Dragon heritage opened every door. Now? Artoria doesn't care about bloodlines or inherited privilege. She judges based on results and threat assessment. Much harder to game that system.
If only the actual Celestial Dragons possessed half her competence. If they'd learned basic conflict management—how to divert public anger, how to maintain the illusion of benevolence—they wouldn't be universally despised. Even the Five Elders, for all their centuries of experience, were fundamentally mediocre administrators coasting on institutional inertia.
They're going to fall eventually, Doflamingo concluded. And when they do, I'll be there to profit from the chaos.
Luffy raised his arm to his mouth, his expression shifting from grief-stricken to determinedly focused. "Gin," he said to the Admiral beside him. "Please don't interfere. I want to avenge Law myself. Five years later, I can't be the same weakling I was five years ago. I need to prove that all my training meant something."
Without waiting for acknowledgment, he bit down on his Armament Haki-coated arm and blew.
Air rushed from his lungs into his rubber body, but this wasn't the simple inflation of Gear Third. This was controlled, targeted, revolutionary. His muscles expanded rapidly as compressed air filled the spaces between cells, transforming ordinary flesh into something more resilient than steel. His entire physiology shifted—heart rate doubling, metabolism accelerating to superhuman levels, power output multiplying exponentially.
"Gear Fourth..." Luffy's voice deepened as transformation completed. "Boundman: Blood Muscle Man!"
His skin turned crimson—not painted red but actually suffused with blood as his circulatory system went into overdrive, pumping plasma through capillaries at twice normal speed. Tribal flame patterns of darker red spiraled across his torso and limbs, marking the flow of Haki through his enhanced form. His legs swelled to tree-trunk proportions, muscles bulging with compressed power. His height increased dramatically, bringing him nearly eye-to-eye with Doflamingo's imposing frame.
He looked like a miniature red giant—swollen with power, radiating menace, no longer the scrawny teenager who'd been kicked away so easily.
"Interesting!" Doflamingo's grin widened with genuine excitement. "So you really did learn something during those five years! Show me what you've—"
Luffy disappeared.
Not through speed alone but through the perfect fusion of rubber elasticity and Gear Fourth's enhanced physiology. He compressed like a spring, released like a missile, and appeared in Doflamingo's face before the sentence could finish.
His fists had already been drawn back, compressed into his torso to store kinetic energy like a wound-up mechanism. Now they exploded forward with force that made the air scream.
"Gomu Gomu no Kong Gun (Gum-Gum Kong Gun)!"
Both fists, wrapped in jet-black Armament Haki, erupted from Luffy's compressed body in a double-strike that carried all the momentum of his spring-loaded approach. They struck Doflamingo's hastily raised guard with impact that created visible shockwaves, the collision of opposing Haki generating lightning-like discharges of dark energy.
For a moment, they were locked—Doflamingo's defense versus Luffy's offense, both pouring Haki into the clash. Then the balance tipped. Luffy's superior power and momentum drove through the guard, his fists connecting with Doflamingo's chest despite the defensive posture.
WHAM!
Doflamingo flew backward, his heels carving trenches in the Founding Titan's bone as he skidded several meters before regaining balance. His expression showed surprise for the first time—genuine shock that the Straw Hat boy had actually hurt him.
Luffy didn't give him time to recover. His Gear Fourth form granted him bouncing mobility through inflated legs that used elasticity for propulsion. He leaped high, compressed both legs inward against his body, and descended like a meteor.
"Gomu Gomu no Rhino Schneider (Gum-Gum Rhino Howitzer)!"
His legs, augmented by Kensei's Chikara Chikara no Mi (Strength-Strength Fruit) gravity manipulation, carried the force of a thousand-pound hammer. The kick struck Doflamingo's face with pinpoint accuracy—not a glancing blow but a perfect connection that transferred all momentum directly into his skull.
CRACK!
The Heavenly Yaksha flew. His body ragdolled across the Founding Titan's spine, bouncing twice before momentum carried him several hundred meters away in an undignified tumble. He left a trail of displaced bone fragments marking his passage.
Luffy landed in Gear Fourth's distinctive crouched stance, confusion evident on his face despite the battle-fury still burning in his eyes. "That's... it?" he said aloud, genuinely puzzled. "Is Doflamingo really this weak? Or did I get way stronger than I thought?"
Two attacks. Just two exchanges. And the man who'd seemed invincible—who'd kicked Luffy around like a toy just an hour ago—had been sent flying without mounting effective resistance.