Work Text:
It was supposed to be a momentous occasion- a new warlord coming into the fold and hopefully stopping the wanton rampage he had gleefully been embarking on across the north. Now, they would have one of the first Warlord meetings with the new addition.
And for once in his life it seemed that Donquixote Doflamingo was playing nice! He had shown up relatively on time, only harassed a few of his Marine escorts, and didn’t even throw a fit when they had to get a bigger chair to fit him at the table.
This was shaping up to be one of the better meetings, Marine intel even reported that he was in an extraordinarily good mood!
So Sengoku’s heart and budding optimism dropped to his feet when he stepped into the room to find the man of the hour waiting at the table with what appeared to be an extremely doped up child sitting on his lap.
A pause, to collect what little sanity and patience he had left. The child blinked up sleepily at him and idly fidgeted with one of the marine branded pens they provided at every meeting.
Doflamingo, that bastard, seemed to smile even wider. As if he could sense Sengoku’s will to live drain out of his body.
“Hello Fleet Admiral,” he said in that slimy gleeful way of his. “So good to see you again.”
God. Buddha. Whoever was listening. Please take him and this man he was talking to. He was ready, it’s their time.
“Warlord Doflamingo. What is that.” Maybe, if he was really in a good mood like they said, he would answer quickly and not cause a scene.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about Fleet Admiral~” oh this bastard. All hope just got sealed in a cement box and thrown off the side of the Red Line.
Nevertheless, there was a child involved, so he was obligated to press on. The other Warlords looked interested too at least, so maybe he could count on some unlikely backup from them in order to get Doflamingo to spill the beans.
“The child you decided to bring to a governmental meeting, Warlord Doflamingo.”
This got an even wider grin as the bastard covered the kid’s head with his giant hand, eclipsing the furry little hat the boy had on.
“This little darling is Law~” He picked up one of the boy’s small arms and made it wave at Sengoku. The kid, though his medicated haze, managed to pull a scrunched face of displeasure at the Marine.
He was a small little brat, with pale skin that looked a tad unhealthy. Dark hair could be seen sticking out from under his hat haphazardly. Pale yellow eyes stared a long way up at him and managed to portray a truly impressive amount of contempt for what looked to be a 7 year old who probably didn’t even know where he was right now.
When the kid didn’t react to the Fleet Admiral other than that impressive glare, Doflamingo chuckled and switched to stroking the kid’s head over his hat like he was some sort of cat.
“Sorry about him, you see, he hates Marines so much that if we didn’t take some measures to calm him down, he would have tried to attack somebody the moment we stepped in here.” Good to know, the kid was also probably a stab risk!
Doflamingo was entirely too pleased with himself as he continued, “But I decided that it was important that he sees what I do! He’ll need this knowledge to grow into a strong adult~ Teach by example~”
Oh SHIT was this Doflamingo’s kid ?? Like, heir to his throne, mental instability runs in the family kid? Rosi, we are going to have a long conversation after this!
…The kid didn’t look much like the Warlord at least. He was really small for one, and both Donquixote brothers were aggressively blonde, as were their parents. Whatever. He would worry about this later.
Sengoku grimaced, trying to project an image of reasonable concern . “This isn’t exactly an appropriate event for a child, maybe you could leave him with one of our officers until the meeting is over? I’m sure we could find some things for him to color with until we’re done here.”
Perfect! Appeal to whatever sensibilities this maniac may have left, once the child was removed from the room they could maybe take some hair and do a bit of genetic testing. Just to make sure this wasn’t going to turn into an incident with a bunch of angry Celestial Dragons. If this wasn’t his kid… Then without a blood claim they could probably find some way to take him out of Doflamingo’s grasp and rehome him.
Unfortunately, Doflamingo’s grin took on a strained, angry tilt and his grip on the kid got visibly tighter.
“I don’t think so. Law needs to learn how I conduct business. He’ll bite any Marine who comes close to him anyways.” Good to know!
There wasn’t really anything else Sengoku could do. The other Warlords, while interested, would get antsy if he continued to stall and it’s not like he could just reveal his hastily constructed rehoming plan. He would work on this later, when they had more information on the situation and maybe a little bit of blackmail on Doflamingo.
Sighing, Sengoku circled to the head of the table, signalling an aide to bring out the sorted meeting agendas and distribute them to the rest of the table. As always, most of them were just ignored. Why did they even keep printing these out! What a waste of resources.
Doflamingo actually picked his up for a moment to glance at it, before quickly losing interest and handing it to Law. The boy slowly took it, and intently started studying the paper. It was actually quite cute.
Sengoku cleared his throat.
“First on our agenda -”
-------
The typical Warlord meeting was allotted a three-hour time slot. Law was extremely well behaved for the first hour or so of it, intently watching the room from Doflamingo’s lap quietly. Granted, he was very obviously not quite all there, but it was still very good behavior from a kid who was in all likelihood raised by pirates. At some point he started doodling something on the back of the meeting agenda, using the same Marine brand pen he was playing with earlier.
Whenever Sengoku made even the briefest eye contact with him, the kid made an expression like he had just bit into a lemon. There was no doubt in his mind that Law would try to bite him if he came any closer.
Eventually though, the boy started getting restless and squirmy, something the rest of the table picked up on quickly. During a brief break in the meeting, Doflamingo gripped the top of Law’s head to keep him still and used his other long arm to start digging in a bag that was placed at his feet.
Mihawk, who had been observing Law with a detached interest throughout the meeting, raised an eyebrow in silent question. Doflamingo just cackled loudly in response and pulled out a smaller bag, this one with a spotted print and the name “Law” written on the front in truly some of the worst handwriting Sengoku had ever seen. It clinked ominously.
Handing the bag to Law, Doflamingo smiled indulgently as the boy visibly got excited seeing it.
“Moria, do you have any of your zombies with you?” Oh now this was interesting, what did this psychopath want with one of the creepiest warlord's undead army. Despite their best efforts, they couldn’t stop him from bringing one or two every meeting; the man liked to use them as manservants. They made everyone on base uncomfortable and were usually stored in a closet during meetings.
Also, hell no. Whatever Doflamingo was playing at, not in his meeting room.
Sengoku opened his mouth to shut down this line of conversation, and-
“Kishishishi! What do you want with it? “ Goddamnit. There was no stopping this now.
Doflamingo gestured to Law, who was happily rummaging through his bag. The metal clinking noises kept going and Sengoku could only hope that Doflamingo had not given this child a bag of knives.
“Little Law here is getting restless, he is quite young after all. I brought some of his toys but they work best if he has a playmate. Don’t give him anyone you mind losing.”
It was a bag of knives wasn’t it. The kid was going to start stabbing someone and they would most likely be unable to do anything about it because most of the people here would find that quite adorable. He hated this job.
Think happy thoughts Sengoku… Retiring to a nice sunny place… Rosi finding a nice wife and settling down far away from his brother… Garp falling into a big pit and getting stuck for a few days….
“Kishishishi! I’m interested! He can have one of my fodder!”
Now the whole room watched with interest as one of Gecko Moria’s horrible undead shambled into the room, released from whatever broom closet it had been stuffed in. This was probably a more recent one, it still looked pretty human shaped and retained a lot of its natural color.
Under the direction of both its master and Doflamingo, the zombie laid down on its back in one of the corners of the room, within sight of the table.
Given an approving nod and a little push from Doflamingo, Law slid off the lap he had been resting on and walked on wobbly legs over to the corpse. With the intensity and seriousness of a determined kid who was drugged to high heaven, Law began to methodically take out and organize the contents of his bag.
Well, Sengoku had been half right, there were some knives in there. Scalpels more specifically, as well as what looked like shears, a box of gloves, some forceps- what that a BONE SAW ?
Soon, the kid had a little operating theater assembled around him, all on the nice recently cleaned floor of Sengoku’s meeting room. At least it was tile and not carpet.
Suited up in a pair of gloves and a little mask, Law picked up the scalpel and pushed it into the zombie with impressively steady hands. There was little to no blood, probably because of how long the body had been dead. Or maybe it was whatever creepy magic Moria did to get the zombie up and running in the first place. Sengoku DID NOT want to be seeing this, no matter the case.
Forcing himself to turn away, he tried to get the attention of the others by loudly clearing his throat. It worked, kinda.
“Let’s continue with the meeting,” Please, let this be over with soon.
-------
Throughout the rest of the meeting, everyone was just a bit distracted. It was kind of hard to focus on government bureaucracy when there was a child playing back alley doctor with a suspiciously sourced corpse in the room. It was a small mercy that Law was very quiet while he worked, all the bone cutting and breaking equipment went unused. Probably because Law didn’t have the strength necessary to mess around with bones right now, or maybe he was just being polite.
Either way, he seemed more interested in the bones themselves, peeling back layers of skin in a way that made Sengoku queasy to stare at them intensely.
Eventually, everyone became desensitized enough that it was able to mostly fade into the background. Doflamindo never stopped grinning. Menace was probably using this partially as an intimidation tactic, to show the Marines that even this little kid was as insane as he was.
Shit, maybe this really was Doflamingo’s kid. He couldn’t see if law was grinning under the mask but the Fleet Admiral could see the kids' eyes were squinting in a way that suggested some degree of simile was going on.
Finally, they had covered the last important item on the agenda. Sweet release. Getting up, Sengoku gave his usual half send-off, half threat and moved to talk to the aide who had been taking notes the entire meeting.
He kept an eye on the Warlords as he did this, although most of them usually just left immediately. Law was already all packed up and waiting by Doflamingo’s leg as he talked to Gecko Moria. The kid looked extra tiny, barely making it to the big pink bastard's calf. It was almost hard to believe that he had just watched this kid poke around in a corpse for about 2 hours.
Doflamingo picked Law up by the middle, holding him up kinda close to chin level with Gecko Moria. Law slumped forward slightly in the Warlord’s grasp, his fuzzy hat staying on by some miracle.
“Now what do we say to people who lend us Zombies?” Asked the blond man.
For the first time this entire meeting, Law spoke.
“Thank you.” he mumbled softly, evidently struggling to stay awake. Sengoku watched as Doflamingo set him back down after Moria laughed delightedly and strode out of the room with his big stupid steps, Law struggling to keep up behind him on tiny legs.
----
Much later that night, Sengoku dialed a very confidential and familiar den-den mushi number.
A moment of ringing. A click as the other end of the line picked up.
“Cookies?” Comes one half of a code, said in a curious tone.
“Crackers.” he states back. No need to beat around the bush.
“Donquixote Rosinante. Did your brother have a kid you never told us about? Did YOU have a kid you never told ME about!?
A beat of silence.
“WHAT?-”