The golden sunset baked the flower-filled streets of Dressrosa with an illusory glow, hiding the network of shadows underneath its beauty. Cobblestone avenues wound through festive plazas, and laughter poured out of open taverns and puppet performances—but Solian Flare wasn't as innocent now.
This kingdom was a stage, and someone else was manipulating the strings.
He and Kael walked through a quieter ward to the meeting place. The city's noise trailed behind them as they turned into a narrow alley choked with vines and derelict posters. At the end of the alley, behind a rusty gate, a weathered fountain bubbled softly in a wild garden.
A man sat at the edge of the broken fountain.
He was ragged, unshaven, dressed in a sun-bleached coat that had originally been lined with symbols of the Revolution—now tattered, frayed, and repaired with patches. A black bandana obscured his eyes.
"Solian Flare?" the man croaked.
Solian nodded. "And you're the contact?"
"Name's Cyran. I was one of Dragon's warriors fifteen years ago. I stayed behind in Dressrosa when things went wrong. Thought I could do some good from the inside. but I was wrong."
Kael crossed his arms. "You said you knew something about Doflamingo. We're listening."
Cyran drew a trembling breath, then dug into his coat and spilled a handful of tiny, intricately carved figures on the floor. Toys.
"People around here just go and vanish. They're turned into these—living dolls. Forgotten by all those who loved them. It's not so much fear that makes people behave—it's control of memory. Doflamingo has a Devil Fruit user on his payroll, Sugar. The moment someone is turned into a doll, they're wiped from minds. Parents, brothers. girlfriends. Like they never existed."
Solian's eyebrows creased. "So if someone on our crew gets turned. the rest of the crew won't recall?
Cyran nodded grimly. "Exactly. That's how he's kept control for so long."
Kael looked at Solian. "We'll need countermeasures. Fast."
Beneath the City – Rock Lee and Vance's Discovery
Elsewhere, Rock Lee and Vance moved through the abandoned corridors beneath Dressrosa, following a map Kael had pieced together from scattered Revolutionary notes.
The beam of Vance's flashlight swept quiveringly over walls of rough stone, furrowed in strange scratchings—scranchings of a desperation. Rock Lee stopped at a rusty metal door and planted his ear upon it.
Sobbing slightly.
He kicked it open.
Beds of battered toys—toys crawling or not—pushed into cage-like containers in the manner of beasts. The rabbit face watched them through goggling button eyes.
"W-we were human," she gasped. "I was supposed to sing. M-my papa does not remember me."
Vance clenched his fists. "What kind of monster is this…"
Rock Lee dropped to his knees beside the girl and took her trembling face in a soft grip.
"I promise," he said, "we are going to fix this. No child must be fated to such a fate."
The promise sounded softly in the still, damp air—direct, unyielding. A promise from the heart.
A Gift from Doflamingo
That night, the Solar Rift Pirates reconvened at their rented inn. This secluded hideaway stood out on the city's fringes. Storm clouds had somehow followed them into the inn.
It was silent. Solian wrestled within himself. Each piece of information had built Doflamingo into something more monumental than a warlord or a pirate—he was an orchestrator of pain, a sinister production, veiled in silk and theater.
A knock on the door.
Jorin responded, to discover no one on the outside—merely a silver box on the step, wrapped in red ribbons.
Milo regarded it suspiciously. "It's not explosive. but something is amiss."
Solian hesitated before opening the box.
Inside was a tiny flower—a frail white one. Its center contained a tiny mechanical bird. It ticked, whirred, and emitted a cloud of pink smoke.
Then it laughed.
Doflamingo's voice emerged from it like a recording:
"You're in my house now. Dance well, little flames. I do so love a good show."
The box snapped shut on its own, as though taunting them.
Vance cursed. "He knows we're here."
Kael looked over at Solian. "What do we do?"
Solian stood up, eyes burning.
"We keep moving. We sever his strings. Piece by piece."
Preparation Begins
During that night, they strategized to infiltrate the palace. Kael spread on the ground an elaborate map of Dressrosa.
"We go in two cells. Solian, Milo, and I approach the palace. We'll act as nobility invited to Rose Festival—ready with fake IDs already.".
"Jorin, Lee, and I," Vance added, "will hit the factory district. We'll try to disrupt the toy transformation process and gather any victims still trapped down there."
Milo tapped a small rune-like device on the table. "I'll plant these—portable sigils for linked communication and Rift escape points. Just in case."
Rock Lee nodded. "We'll stay in touch. And if anyone vanishes, the rest of us remember."
Solian looked around at them all.
"This is no longer about us. It's about all of Dressrosa."
And while the moon rose high in the sky over the flower kingdom of pain, the members of the Solar Rift Pirates' crew took their first steps—as not vagrants, but as the ones that would set them free.
They were no longer sailing for power…
They were fighting for it.