"You're saying you saw a large blob of strange mucus float past you just now?" Bellamy asked, looking down at the two shivering interns he'd just fished out of the sea. He'd gotten a strange piece of intelligence while retrieving the two 'lucky' kids. At this point in the battle, a large blob of mucus drifting on the sea could only mean one thing.
"That damn Snot Monster isn't dead yet?" Bellamy had blown a hole clean through his chest cavity, right where his heart should be. How could he possibly still be alive? Did the idiot's heart grow offset to one side or something? Unlikely. What were the chances?
Taking the two children with him, Bellamy made a wide sweep of the chaotic sea area. Along the way, he casually smashed dozens more pirate ships to pieces and batted aside several attacking Sea Kings, finally managing to locate and retrieve all his crewmates.
"Drake," Bellamy ordered, "take the others, find a seaworthy vessel among this wreckage, and wait for me outside the main battle zone." He indicated the still-crippled but conscious Yonji. "Oh, right. Take this one with you too. Keep a close eye on him. Don't let him die just yet." He trusted Drake to handle the prisoner.
Muret and Mia had sustained some minor injuries in the chaos, but nothing serious. Ross, incredibly, seemed to have come through entirely unscathed, not even a hair out of place. Pure luck. As for the two interns, they'd swallowed a distressing amount of seawater but had, against the odds, survived their ordeal in the barrels.
With his crew's escape route secured, Bellamy casually picked up a sturdy-looking cutlass from the debris floating around him. Time to formally begin the slaughter.
"Now, where to begin?" Just then, a battered-looking pirate sloop drifted nearby, likely disoriented from the chaos. "Ah well. Might as well start with you lot."
Testing the weight of the cutlass, Bellamy made a short, spring-assisted leap onto the pirate ship's deck. "Single Sword Style: Springing Slash!" His body blurred, becoming several afterimages as he flashed across the deck in an instant. The pirates aboard barely had time to blink before they were all neatly sliced in half at the waist. Such was the speed of the cut that the ordinary steel blade remained pristine, unstained by even a single drop of blood. In the span of a single breath, dozens of lives were extinguished.
Sometimes, Bellamy reflected grimly, life truly wasn't much more substantial than dust in the wind. Perhaps it was this understanding that allowed him to view life and death with such growing detachment.
"Killing is certainly more efficient with a blade," he mused. Weapons were, after all, tools born for slaughter. Wielding a sword definitely increased his killing efficiency significantly. For a fleeting moment, Bellamy considered whether he should seriously pursue swordsmanship training. But his current training schedule was already packed to the brim; he simply didn't have the bandwidth to add another discipline right now. "Maybe later, if the opportunity arises."
With a final, powerful stomp, Bellamy shattered the pirate sloop beneath him, then launched himself back into the air, speeding towards his next target.
Once Bellamy began his systematic massacre, the chaos within the fractured Grand Fleet reached its apex. With the few genuine threats within the fleet either dead, incapacitated, or fleeing, there was essentially no one left capable of stopping him. Between Bellamy's ruthless efficiency and the continuing indiscriminate rampage of the enraged Sea Kings drawn by the Blood Bait, it wouldn't take even half a day to cleanse this entire section of the sea. That was even accounting for the few faster, more agile vessels that had already broken free and were fleeing frantically outwards.
Remembering the interns' report that Trebol might still be alive somewhere, Bellamy kept a part of his senses searching for the distinctive mucus user amidst the slaughter. Finally, when the cleanup was about halfway done, he spotted him—the disgusting Snot Monster, adrift on a small, commandeered skiff.
Bellamy landed lightly on the skiff. "How did you manage that? I blew a hole straight through your heart, yet you're still alive." Bellamy was genuinely curious about such a survival feat.
"Hyena! What do you want?!" Trebol shrieked the moment Bellamy appeared, sounding utterly panicked. His terrified demeanor bore no resemblance to a veteran pirate executive from the New World. He looked more like a common street punk who'd just been thoroughly beaten down.
"Pathetic." If not for the sheer luck of eating a powerful Devil Fruit, this creature probably wouldn't have even measured up to Kuro.
"You can't kill me! I'm a high-ranking executive of the Donquixote Family!" Trebol blubbered. Such weak, uninspired pleading only deepened Bellamy's contempt. Seeing the Snot Monster had completely lost his composure, Bellamy didn't hesitate. He swung the cutlass, reopening the grievous wound in Trebol's chest with a clean slash. Peering into the gaping wound, Bellamy saw it—a mass of rapidly pulsing, blood-red mucus filling the cavity where the heart should be.
So that's it. The bastard used his own mucus to crudely patch his shattered heart back together. "Even that's possible, huh?" Devil Fruits truly were bizarrely versatile. "Well, seems you've outlived your usefulness then. Please, feel free to die now."
Bellamy raised the cutlass to deliver the final blow, but Trebol suddenly thrust a Den Den Mushi desperately in front of him like a shield. "You can't kill me!" he shrieked into the snail. "Doffy! Doffy, help me!"
A uniquely sinister, drawling voice instantly responded from the other end. "Fuffuffuffu... It seems one of my executives has fallen into your hands, Hyena Bellamy!"
That voice, that distinctive laugh... unmistakable. Bellamy recognized it instantly. "So, Doflamingo."
"What price must I pay to ransom my subordinate?" Doflamingo asked coolly, apparently already aware of Trebol's situation. Mingo went straight to negotiation. Extorting something from Doflamingo could yield a prize easily comparable to the King Punch from the Vinsmokes.
But Bellamy had no intention of making a deal. Ever since he first took over this body and discovered the original Hyena's pathetic, groveling admiration for Doflamingo, Bellamy had harbored a deep-seated dislike for the Warlord. And hearing Trebol imply they intended to capture him and turn him into one of Doffy's 'dogs'? Utterly laughable.
"You don't need to pay a thing," Bellamy replied coldly into the Den Den Mushi. Then, with a swift backhand slash of the cutlass, he lopped off Trebol's head.
"I'll be hanging his head from my new Jolly Roger," Bellamy informed Doflamingo calmly. "If you want it back, you can come and get it yourself."
It was a blatant, undeniable declaration of war. With those words, any possibility of neutrality or negotiation between them was gone forever.
Doflamingo's voice on the other end instantly turned cold, dripping with menace. "Hyena... Do you have any idea what you've just done?"
"Come on then. Come and try to kill me," Bellamy replied, a thrill coursing through him. He'd actually been looking forward to this confrontation eventually. "Between you and me, Doflamingo, only one of us gets to survive." From the moment Trebol chose to confront him, this outcome—open war with the Donquixote Family—was likely inevitable.
Without further ceremony, Bellamy hung up the Den Den Mushi. Wiping some of the blood from his cutlass, he unceremoniously slung Trebol's severed head from his belt. He'd said he'd hang it from his flag, and he intended to keep his word. This head would adorn the mast of his new ship, once they acquired one.
"Hope the crew doesn't freak out too much when they hear about this," Bellamy thought with a grim smirk. Declaring war on one of the Seven Warlords of the Sea, just like that, with absolutely zero preparation... Anyone with a weak heart might just faint dead away from the shock.