Doflamingo almost lunged forward to grab Finn.
He didn't make it in time. The darkness swallowed Finn whole before he could cross the yard, collapsing inward with startling speed until nothing remained but a small black dot the size of a coin, hanging in the afternoon air.
Doflamingo stopped. Breathed. Forced himself to think.
An admiral didn't commit suicide. He was three days from seizing the top of the world. It was impossible.
The logic settled him. He stood still and watched the black dot with something closer to curiosity than alarm.
What on earth is that?
Before the thought fully formed, the dot expanded. The darkness bloomed outward, and Finn was deposited back into the world like something the sea had decided to return.
"Huh..." Finn let out a long, slow breath and steadied himself.
Doflamingo crossed the yard quickly. "Admiral. What was that?"
Finn rolled his shoulders and said, "New ability development. I mentioned I'd go in person to get proof of Lord Im's existence, didn't I? I want to see how long I can stay concealed inside the darkness before it becomes a problem."
It wasn't the first time he'd gone in. He'd been running these tests for days.
Doflamingo gave a short nod. "And?"
"Not ideal." Finn shook his head.
On paper, it sounded simple enough. The darkness of the Dark-Dark Fruit was like a private pocket of nothing. Step in, wait, step out. Easy.
In practice, it was anything but.
The darkness wasn't just the absence of light. The moment Finn entered it, everything went dark, including his thoughts, his sense of time, and every signal his body was sending him. There was a quality to it that could best be described as sealing. The same fundamental nature that suppressed other Devil Fruit users on contact, the same mechanism that stripped those abilities away, turned inward when he submerged himself completely, pressing against his consciousness like a hand trying to close over a flame.
He'd thought, in that first session, that if he stayed too long, his brain might decide he was dead.
And then cooperate with that conclusion.
He'd adapted since. Several days of back-and-forth had given him some tolerance for it. The direction was right; he was certain of that. Given enough time, he could condition himself to operate inside the darkness indefinitely, or at least neutralize its effects on his own mind. But time was exactly what he didn't have.
So he'd shifted focus: instead of building long-term immunity, minimize the side effects fast enough to make it usable now.
He'd made real progress. At this point, he could hold the darkness for about half an hour before the contamination started to bite. If Doflamingo hadn't walked into the yard just now, he could have stayed in longer.
Half an hour was probably enough.
The plan was straightforward. Get into Pangaea Castle early. Find the Void Throne hall and wait. Im and the Five Elders weren't going to be there when he arrived, so there was no reason to hide the moment he entered; he'd just move normally until the time came. When they showed up, he'd step into the darkness, keep still, and get the photograph before slipping back out.
He honestly doubted the Five Elders were going to kneel before Lord Im for a full thirty minutes. That was more than enough window.
Finn glanced at Doflamingo's expression, which had tightened noticeably at the words "not ideal," and allowed himself a small smile.
"But it'll do."
Doflamingo exhaled, the tension leaving his shoulders. "Good."
Finn set the ability work aside for the moment. He turned to look at Doflamingo properly for the first time since he'd landed and said, "How does it feel? Being back in Mary Geoise?"
"Fufufufufufu." The laugh came out easy, but Doflamingo's eyes didn't match it. He tilted his head back slightly, looking up at the white towers above them. "Good. But the closer I get to this place, the sharper the hatred gets. Like something's burning from the inside."
Finn looked at him for a moment, then said quietly, "Hold on a little longer. We're talking days now."
Three days. The World Conference would open on schedule regardless of who attended, and by every indication, everyone was coming.
Later, they moved inside and sat down together to go over the Mary Geoise operation one more time. The chairs were comfortable; a pot of tea sat untouched between them.
"After I release the Birdcage," Doflamingo said, "what happens?"
Finn gave him a level look. "What do you want to happen?"
Doflamingo's grin was slow and deliberate, with nothing hidden behind it. "The way I see it, there are three combat priorities. Lord Im is the first. The Five Elders are the second. The Celestial Dragons in the God's Abode are the third." He paused. "Is that right?"
"That's right."
Those were the three targets. The Marine needed all three neutralized.
The Five Elders and the Celestial Dragons were, frankly, the less complicated problem. The Five Elders possessed real strength; intelligence gathered through Kong had confirmed they each carried genuine combat ability they'd never bothered to display publicly. One of them, the one who never went anywhere without his sword, was almost certainly a master swordsman. He carried the first-generation Kitetsu, and a man who kept a demon blade close enough to have tamed it wasn't carrying it as decoration.
The other four were probably comparable.
None of that worried Finn much.
The gap between having the strength of an admiral and being an admiral who had survived decades of real combat was not a small one. These were men who had spent their lives behind closed doors in the highest seat of power, insulated from everything, never once fighting someone who genuinely wanted to kill them. It didn't matter how much raw ability they had accumulated. Borsalino and Gion could handle them. That wasn't arrogance; it was a straightforward calculation.
The Celestial Dragons were similar. Most of them were useless. A few of the stronger ones floated around without known combat records, but the same logic applied. The only real complication was the guard force they commanded inside the God's Abode, and more specifically, the ancient castle at the compound's core. Dragon had broken into the God's Abode years ago during his Mary Geoise raid and hadn't been able to breach it, though that had as much to do with time pressure as raw defense.
Either way, based on Doflamingo's intelligence and the Marine's own analysis, Uranus was almost certainly housed inside that castle. Sengoku and Sakazuki would lead that strike directly. Finn wasn't worried about their ability to get through.
Lord Im was the different problem.
Whether Im was actually Saint Donquixote Claudius, the ancestor of Doflamingo's line who had ruled the world over two hundred years ago, or simply another figure who had conspired to occupy that throne since the world's founding eight hundred years back, the uncertainty alone carried weight. Longevity implied experience. Experience implied ability. And with no public record of combat, there was no clean assessment of what Im could actually do.
If it really was Claudius, Finn acknowledged to himself, the psychological pressure was real. A man who had genuinely ruled the world by force at the height of his power couldn't have done it on reputation alone.
Still. Pressure was just pressure.
With two fruits in hand, Finn had no meaningful gaps in his capability. He'd stopped believing he could lose a long time ago.
Doflamingo leaned forward slightly, elbows on his knees. "For the attack on the God's Abode, I want to be in that sequence."
Finn had been expecting this. He would have been more surprised if Doflamingo hadn't brought it up.
"You want to handle the Celestial Dragons yourself?"
"Obviously." Doflamingo's voice was flat and certain.
After a beat, something quieter came into his expression. "Give me this. I've been waiting a long time."
Finn didn't refuse. This had been part of the arrangement from the beginning.
"The Marine keeps its promises," Finn said. "The Celestial Dragons are yours to deal with."
Doflamingo settled back into his chair. He was quiet for a moment.
There had always been a small concern at the back of his mind, one he hadn't fully voiced even to himself. The Celestial Dragons held the key to Uranus. If Finn or the Marine had any real interest in acquiring the ancient weapon, keeping those bloodlines alive might have become a strategic priority, and Doflamingo's revenge would have been reduced to something he could perform only after they'd finished using their leverage.
He'd been watching for signs of that.
He hadn't found any. Finn knew about Uranus, the Marine knew about Uranus, and neither of them seemed particularly interested in having it for themselves. Finn had said as much to Borsalino on that rooftop, and the decision to hand it to Vegapunk for research rather than deploy it told the same story.
It was strange. If Doflamingo were in that position, he wasn't confident he'd be so indifferent.
But that was Finn's business. What mattered was that the question was settled.
He would be inside the God's Abode when this happened. He would be standing in the place that had rejected him at eight years old, in the place where he'd knelt in the dirt with his father's head and been turned away.
And he was going to make every single one of them pay for it.
Doflamingo didn't stay long after that. They'd covered what needed covering, and they both had things to attend to. He left with the same unhurried confidence he'd arrived with, the feather coat settling behind him as he went.
The next three days passed without incident.
Finn had made all his preparations. Everything that could be arranged had been arranged.
Throughout the period, Kong had maintained continuous observation of the Five Elders' movements and had found nothing to suggest they'd made any trip to Pangaea Castle. No audience with Lord Im, not during these final days before the Conference.
Which meant, in all likelihood, that the audience was coming. The Five Elders would present themselves before the Conference opened, as custom demanded.
If nothing unexpected changed, that moment was close.