On the outside, he was cackling like the madman people usually saw him as. But on the inside, he was just as angry as the molten red magma that replaced Akainu's arm.

He used to wonder where he went wrong. Why did he disappear? Why did he act as though nothing was wrong? Why did he pretend to be his trustworthy second in command when he was just some underling to someone he wouldn't - would never - admit was stronger than him?

Was it not enough that he went through all of these things to make a better life for them? He never asked him to do much; he took over most of the diabolical and cruel things. He knew his brother wouldn't have the heart to do a tenth of what he was doing. He was too kind for it, though, he never really held that against him. Not until the end, at least…

He was seeking revenge for what happened to them as children. Being tortured at the hands and feelings of those dirty, dirty commoners was the lowest point in his life. Not even being refused by the Celestial Dragons (his own people), small child fingers laced in his dead father's hair, brought him to that rock bottom point. Those frequent nightmares of being burned and stabbed and held up like a rotten piece of meat, those nightmares he refuses to admit to even his closest executives, attested to that fact.

He was seeking revenge against the world who had done them in and forced them to eat from garbage like diseased rats, who had left their mother to die in some rancid, ran down shack, who refused to see the blood in their veins as the one with highest order. What was so wrong about that?

He watched from his perch, laughing evilly as the two D. brothers escaped Sengoku's grasp in a vortex of fire. They weren't even blood related and look at them! Fighting for each other as though they were the only things that mattered in this world. They were brothers; that's all that mattered.

Some brats half his age - not even! - and with less credits to their names, and they had what he never did.

His anger was as hot and as red as Akainu's magma arm.

Well, at least he did have the consolation prize of watching that troublesome kid Portgas die.

Now that straw hat wearing kid was experiencing the same loss as him…