Finn and Doflamingo found a corner away from the main crowd. As they sat, darkness spread around them in a subtle sphere, visible if you knew what to look for but easy to miss if you weren't paying attention. The effect was simple: sound entered the sphere but didn't leave it. Anyone watching could see their mouths moving, but no words carried beyond the barrier.
It was deliberate. Finn wanted it to be visible that they were having a private conversation, but he didn't want the content to leak. The Dark-Dark Fruit made that straightforward.
A few people in the crowd noticed. Most of them had the good sense not to stare. An Admiral and a Warlord having a private discussion at a neutral zone opening was unusual but not scandalous. They were technically on the same side, broadly speaking, and this was exactly the kind of venue where that kind of conversation would happen.
The fact that Finn had also been seen talking openly with Dragon a few minutes earlier was more eyebrow-raising, but even that fell within the bounds of what Gran Tesoro's neutral zone provisions allowed. If people wanted to draw conclusions, they could. Finn didn't particularly care.
Inside the sphere, Doflamingo leaned forward slightly. "Vergo mentioned that you might act during the World Conference."
"We're ready," Finn said. "We've been ready for some time. What we need is the moment that makes it defensible."
Doflamingo nodded slowly. He understood the distinction. The Marine wasn't in the business of coups for their own sake. They needed grounds, justification, the appearance of responding to circumstances rather than manufacturing them. Hypocrisy, perhaps, but necessary hypocrisy. Even revolutions needed to present themselves as righteous if they wanted to survive their opening act.
"I know a great deal about Mary Geoise," Doflamingo said. "Things that aren't public. Things that would damage them if they became public."
"I'm listening."
"I promised you before that I'd share everything I knew about Mary Geoise's secrets." Doflamingo glanced around the sphere, confirming that the darkness was holding. "This isn't ideal for that conversation, but we may not have another chance before the Conference."
"Nothing you say here leaves this barrier," Finn said.
Doflamingo studied him for a moment, then nodded. "Mary Geoise has a great many skeletons. The slavery is well-known. Everyone pretends to be shocked when it's mentioned, but it's an open secret. That won't help you."
"Agreed. What else?"
What followed was a litany of corruption, abuse, and petty tyranny distributed across various Celestial Dragon families and World Government offices. Finn listened. Some of it was genuinely appalling. Some of it was predictable. None of it was quite what he needed.
The problem was context. Many of the worst incidents were decades old, and Finn couldn't guarantee that the Marine hadn't been involved in enabling them at the time. Using those as justification for independence risked exposing the Marine's own complicity. The more recent material was damaging but not existential: evidence of bad behavior by people everyone already knew behaved badly.
"This won't work," Finn said, when Doflamingo paused. "It hurts them, but it doesn't give us the moral high ground we need. Do you have anything that strikes at the foundation of their authority?"
Doflamingo was quiet for a moment.
Then: "This involves something I was planning to tell you later. But if you need it now..." He looked at Finn directly. "The Five Elders are not the highest authority in Mary Geoise."
Finn had been raising his glass. He stopped.
Not because the information was new. He knew about Im. He'd known about Im since before he arrived in this world, carried forward from the knowledge of how the story was supposed to go.
What surprised him was that Doflamingo knew.
Sengoku didn't know, not with certainty. Kong had heard rumors but couldn't confirm them. Both of them were men who had spent decades at the highest levels of the World Government's military structure, and neither of them had managed to penetrate that particular secret.
Doflamingo had left Mary Geoise when he was less than eight years old.
How?
Doflamingo watched Finn's expression and seemed to take the shock as confirmation that this was, indeed, significant information. "It's true," he said. "The Five Elders hold the formal authority. They're presented as the highest power. But they answer to someone."
Finn set his glass down carefully. "Who?"
"They call him Lord Im." Doflamingo's voice was very quiet now, even inside the sphere. "It's a title, not a name. There's no Im among the Twenty Kings' descendants. But the position exists."
"The Void Throne," Finn said.
"You've seen it?"
"I attended a World Conference once. I've seen the throne." Finn leaned back slightly. "The symbol of equality. No one sits on it."
"That's the fiction," Doflamingo said. "The reality is that Lord Im sits on it. He's called the King of the World, though the title isn't public. The Five Elders are his administrators. His watchdogs, if you want to be blunt about it."
Finn considered this. The information itself wasn't useful without proof, but if it could be proven, the implications were considerable. The entire structure of the World Government rested on the premise that the member states were equal partners governed through collective decision-making at the World Conference. If there was a secret king making decisions above the Five Elders, the entire legal and moral framework of the organization was a lie.
"How do you prove it?" Finn asked.
Doflamingo had clearly been thinking about this for some time. "Lord Im appears occasionally during World Conferences. He sits on the Void Throne, and the Five Elders go to him. This Conference is the largest in nearly a century. One hundred member-state royal families attending. The first Conference since Mary Geoise was rebuilt. If he's going to appear, it will be now." He paused. "If we can get a photograph of the Five Elders kneeling to someone on the Void Throne, that's your proof."
Finn thought about it.
A photograph of someone sitting on the throne could be explained away. The World Government could claim it was Dragon, or a break-in, or poor security. But a photograph of the Five Elders, all five of them, kneeling in formal submission to a figure on the Void Throne?
That couldn't be explained. That couldn't be dismissed.
The plan was simple. It was also genuinely dangerous, because it required getting someone into Pangaea Castle during the Conference with photography equipment, which was not a trivial operational challenge. But if it could be done, the payoff was exactly what Finn had been looking for: moral high ground built on the World Government's own foundational lie.
"This could work," Finn said slowly.
"It's the best option I have," Doflamingo said. "Everything else is noise compared to this."
Finn looked at him. "How do you know about Im?"