The island of Little Garden was a steaming, prehistoric lung, exhaling heat and the scent of rotting ferns.
Dorian hated it immediately.
It wasn't the heat—he enjoyed sweating; it made the skin slick and sensitive. It wasn't the dinosaurs—giant lizards were simple beasts, predictable in their hunger.
It was the repetition.
He sat perched on the frond of a massive fern, eighty feet in the air, watching the volcano in the center of the island.
Boom.
The eruption. The signal.
Below him, the ground shook. From opposite sides of the jungle, two titans emerged. Dorry the Blue Ogre and Brogy the Red Ogre. They were magnificent mountains of muscle and pride, wielding weapons that had dulled over a century of use.
They clashed.
The sound was deafening, a shockwave that flattened trees and sent pterodactyls screeching into the sulfurous sky.
Dorian didn't blink. He watched with a flat, unimpressed expression as the giants exchanged blows they had exchanged ten thousand times before.
"Again," Dorian whispered, peeling a banana he'd plucked from a nearby branch. "The exact same parry. The exact same grunt. The exact same stalemate."
He took a bite. Mushy.
"It isn't a fight," he critiqued, speaking to the jungle air. "It's a ritual. It's a dance performed by ghosts who forgot they were supposed to die a long time ago. One hundred years of foreplay with no climax. Disgusting."
He dropped the banana peel. It landed on the snout of a T-Rex passing below. The beast roared, looking up. Dorian released a single chain, whipped the dinosaur across the nose with a supersonic crack, and the beast whimpered and fled.
"Boring," Dorian sighed. "Is there nothing here that spoils?"
He stood up on the fern, balancing effortlessly. He was about to return to the Gilded Cage and leave this museum of stagnant honor when he felt it.
A disturbance.
Not the thudding heaviness of the giants, but something smaller. Petty. Malicious.
It smelled like gunpowder and lemon.
Dorian smiled. He tilted his head, his mood instantly lifting.
"Tourists?"
Deep in the undergrowth, two figures were arguing.
"I am telling you, Mr. 5," said a woman in a lemon-print dress, floating slightly off the ground with the aid of her umbrella. "The boss said to wait for Mr. 3. We are not to engage the giants yet."
"Shut up, Miss Valentine," grumbled the man in the trench coat. He wore sunglasses and had hair that looked like an explosion frozen in time. "I'm bored. And I smell a ship. A small sloop docked on the western river."
"A pirate?"
"Maybe. A bonus." Mr. 5 dug a finger into his nose. "I need to blow something up."
"You have such charming habits," a voice purred from above.
Mr. 5 and Miss Valentine froze. They looked up.
Hanging upside down from a tree branch, suspended only by a chain wrapped loosely around one ankle, was Dorian. His coat hung towards the earth, defying gravity with elegance. He was smiling at them, his eyes crinkled in amusement.
"Baroque Works again?" Dorian asked, swinging slightly like a pendulum. "You pests really are everywhere. Like mold on bread."
"Who are you?" Mr. 5 demanded, flicking his finger. A microscopic booger flew toward Dorian.
Dorian didn't know what it was, but he knew intent when he saw it.
He hauled himself up the chain just as the booger struck the tree branch where his face had been.
BOOM.
The branch obliterated. Wood chips rained down.
Dorian landed softly on the jungle floor, dusting off his shoulder. He looked at the charred wood, then at Mr. 5.
"Explosive secretions," Dorian mused, his eyes widening. "Now that is grotesque. And utterly fascinating."
"I am Mr. 5," the agent announced, puffing out his chest. "I ate the Bomb-Bomb Fruit. My entire body is a weapon. Even my breath."
"And I," Miss Valentine giggled, floating higher, "am Miss Valentine. The Kilo-Kilo Fruit. I can be light as a feather..."
She suddenly plummeted, aiming her heels at Dorian's head.
"...or heavy as ten thousand kilos!"
Dorian sidestepped. He didn't jump away; he simply shifted his weight. Miss Valentine slammed into the earth, creating a crater three meters deep. The impact shook the nearby trees.
Dorian stood at the edge of the crater, looking down at her.
"Linear," he diagnosed. "You fall. That is your trick? You simply... fall?"
Miss Valentine growled, shifting her weight back to 1kg to float up, but a grey blur snapped around her waist.
The chain.
"Naughty," Dorian chided.
He yanked.
Miss Valentine was pulled out of the crater, but not toward him. Dorian spun, swinging her like a flail.
"Mr. 5!" she shrieked.
Mr. 5 panicked. He reached into his pocket for his revolver—a flintlock that fired explosive breath-bullets. He aimed at Dorian.
"Let her go!"
"If you insist," Dorian grinned.
He released the tension on the chain mid-swing.
Miss Valentine flew through the air—directly at Mr. 5.
"Change your weight!" Mr. 5 screamed.
"I can't! He's too fast!"
Smack.
The two agents collided in a heap of trench coat and lemon ruffles. They tumbled into the ferns, groaning.
Dorian walked toward them, the chain retracting into his sleeve with a snake-like hiss. He stopped five paces away. He looked at them, trembling in the dirt, their pride bruised more than their bodies.
They were weak. But they weren't boring. Their powers were chaotic. Explosions. Mass manipulation. There was potential for chaos here.
Mr. 5 scrambled up, blood trickling from his nose. "You... you'll pay for this! The Unluckies will report you! Mr. 3 will—"
"Mr. 3?" Dorian interrupted. "Is he stronger than you?"
"He's a master tactician!" Miss Valentine spat, rubbing her head. "He'll turn you into a wax statue!"
"Wax," Dorian rolled the word around his mouth. "Structure. Art. Hmm."
He considered killing them. It would be easy. A flick of the wrist. A crushed windpipe.
But then, he heard a sound from the coast.
Voices. Young, loud, stupidly optimistic voices.
"Whoaaa! Look at that dinosaur, Luffy!"
"Sanji! Make me a lunch box out of that lizard!"
"You idiots, we're going to die here!"
The Straw Hat Pirates.
Dorian's smile sharpened. The "raw" boy from the wanted posters. The one he had decided was off-limits because he was too green.
If Dorian stayed, he would have to engage them. If he engaged them now, he might break them before they had a chance to ripen.
He looked back at Mr. 5 and Miss Valentine.
"I'm leaving," Dorian announced abruptly.
The agents blinked, confused. "What?"
"You have guests arriving," Dorian gestured vaguely toward the coast. "A rubber boy. A swordsman. A navigator."
He stepped closer to Mr. 5, looming over him.
"You were humiliated today," Dorian whispered, his voice dripping with venomous encouragement. "It feels cold, doesn't it? Use that cold. When those pirates get here... don't be sloppy. Be vicious. Make them bleed."
He reached out and patted Mr. 5's cheek. The agent flinched, expecting an explosion, but felt only a cold, calloused palm.
"If I hear you failed to entertain them," Dorian said, his eyes darkening to black, "I will find you. And I will show you what a chain feels like when it's inside your lungs."
Dorian vanished into the treeline, moving with the silent grace of a phantom.
One Hour Later
Dorian stood on the deck of the Gilded Cage as it slipped out of the river mouth, hugging the fog bank to stay invisible.
Through his telescope, he watched the shore.
He saw the Going Merry dock. He saw the boy in the straw hat stretch his arms to impossible lengths and launch himself into the jungle.
He saw the intensity. The reckless abandonment of safety.
"Yes," Dorian murmured, lowering the telescope.
He had left the Baroque Works agents alive, angry, and desperate to redeem themselves. They would fight harder now. They would push the Straw Hats. They would force the rubber boy to evolve.
Dorian checked his Log Pose. It was pointing to the next island.
Alabasta.
"The Kingdom of Sand," Dorian said. "Where a Warlord plays King."
He thought of Crocodile. A man who had once challenged Whitebeard and lost. A man who sat in a desert, drying out, turning into a finished thing.
"Let's go stir the sand," Dorian said to the wind.
He didn't look back at Little Garden. He didn't need to see the end of the Giants' duel. He knew how it ended: with a draw.
But the story he was weaving around the edges? That was just beginning.
Effect on Canon:
Baroque Works Morale: Mr. 5 and Miss Valentine enter the arc not as arrogant predators, but as humiliated, desperate agents. They will fight Zoro, Luffy, and Usopp with increased ferocity to prove they aren't "weak," potentially making the Little Garden battles slightly more difficult for the Straw Hats.
The Hunter's Shadow: The Straw Hats are unaware of Dorian, but he has effectively "tenderized" their opponents for them.
Survival: Dorian resisted the urge to interfere with the Giants, preserving the canon timeline of their duel and the eventual arrival of Mr. 3.