Thanks yet again to 18KmPerHour for your review :) I enjoy seeing you post!

This chapter will have a couple of brutal moments near the end but will get better in the next chapter

I do not own One Piece - that is property of Eiichiro Oda

Chapter 36: To Protect Alabasta

Crocodile's laughter rang through the large, opulent room sans the cage as he surveyed the people before him. The Straw Hat crew was appalled at the plan completely while the two Marines shared a silent understanding. Looking down at the princess, the Shichibukai sneered at her, "What do you think of this plan you helped with, Miss Wednesday? I bet you could hear the outrage of the citizens if you were outside and who do you think they actually would believe in: a lying king, a rebel leader promising release or the kind Shichibukai protecting them from all the above?"

Vivi clenched her heart as emotional pain was making her feel so hollow yet aflame at the same time. "Stop this… how can you be so awful when these people look to you for protection?"

Crocodile dismissed her words with a noncommittal shrug as he continued to gloat. "Love for one's country will be what destroys it in the end."

Zoro snorted at the man's attitude. "He fits the definition of 'depraved' to a T." The two Marines nodded in agreement as the words only fired up the Straw Hat captain more.

Standing next to but not touching the cage's bars, Luffy's rage was plain to see. "That heartless bastard. If it wasn't for this cage…"

The Shichibukai looked proud at the emotions rolling across the faces of his captives. "I remember this used to be a hassle. Collecting members, money and the supplies to make that Dance Powder… ah the memories! We had to stir up trouble to bring towns to the brink of destruction, teaching our employees had to commit false acts of government corruption, and slowly erode the trust in the royal family to meet our goal." Looking at the princess with a satisfied look adorning his face, he questioned her, "Miss Wednesday, do you know why I want to control Alabasta so badly?"

Vivi screamed at him in disgust, "How could I understand what goes on in your twisted, disgusting head?" Crocodile tutted at the royal before him like an adult disciplining a child while the Marines as well as his partner watched him in interest. Vivi was undeterred however and looked at him with conviction in her voice. "We can still make it if we go to Alubarna."

The Shichibukai smirked at her as he talked down to her, "What a coincidence! We were going to go straight to Alubarna to ask your father one question." He ignored Vivi's squawks about her father just to hold up a key and taunt her. Seeing the key, everyone's attention focused on it quickly just to have most of their hopes dashed when the man dropped it down a trapdoor. Turning around in confidence, the man grinned as he saw the princess's hopes drop. "You'd have to leave now to even have a small chance of stopping the fight. Or you could retrieve the key from the Bananadile's lair."

Looking to the side of the room, the crew saw quite the sight yet Luffy's vision was interesting. "Whoa! There's a crocodile growing out of that banana and they're enormous!"

Nami facepalmed at her captain's deduction. "No you dumb ass, the bananas are growing from the crocodiles."

Vivi's heart dropped as she looked into the pit and saw, to her horror, a bananadile eat the key. "That thing just ate the key…"

Luffy was not worried in the slightest. "Go down there and make it spit it out!"

The princess's eyes widened at Luffy's orders. "I can't do that! They are ferocious monsters and would eat me if I got close!"

Crocodile chuckled as he looked at the bananadiles outside of the room. "Oh I'm sorry," she cheerfully and sarcastically intoned, "They think anything I drop there is food and you won't be able to tell which one."

Nami starting muttering angrily under her breath about how much of a jerk Crocodile was when Zoro sighed as he realized something, "Dammit… Even if we get out of the cage, we still have to deal with those reptiles."

Andrea audibly groaned while Luffy surprisingly vocalized her thoughts. "We can't get out cause it ate the key you dummy!"

Turning to the pirates and Marines with a superior attitude, Crocodile nodded his head. "We'll be taking our leave now. Oh and the base will destroy itself in an hour as I have no more need of a secret base any longer. Water will flood into this room essentially making it a part of the lake." He looked at the caged people as if they were rats polluting his precious lake. "Make a choice: your country's innocent civilians and around a million of them or these four worthless pirates and two shoddy Marines. The chances of saving just one of them are slim so… are you in a gambling mood, Miss Wednesday?"

Miss All Sunday looked at her fingernails and muttered with a tone of boredom, "Even a princess can be powerless."

Chuckling, Crocodile felt the need to just make Vivi feel even lower. "So many idiots in this country such as those rebels or that old man digging pathetically in a dried up oasis," he paused when he noticed Luffy was getting riled up at just mentioning Yuba. Amused at finding a new punching bag, he continued, "What a stupid geezer who thinks he can truly overcome the sandstorms over and over. Tell me Straw Hat Luffy, do you think that 'sandstorms' can attack a single location like a town so successfully so many times?"

Andrea gasped in realization as her right palm began to twitch with pain. "That's why when I was helping him dig…"

Nami's eyes widened as tears pricked her eyes. "He didn't…"

Vivi looked at her fellow women and did not want to admit the possibility of what she was hearing being right. "What does that mean…?"

Laughing as he departed, he allowed a bit of his sand to swirl around the room and was satisfied to see that every single person understood immediately. It took only a minute for his footsteps to stop being heard as he and Miss All Sunday left the compound. Vivi sat there in despair when water started to spurt up from the floor. Usopp freaked out as he put together how bad of a situation they were in. "Water's coming in! We're going to be flooded in and the only people able to stop those gator are Devil Fruit users! Hurry Vivi! I don't want my life to end this way!"

Zoro sighed as he took the omission of his fighting abilities from the monologue as an insult. "Just shut up."

Retaliating in annoyance, the skinny man continued to shout, "Do you really want to die this way? That's what happens if we don't do anything!"

Vivi shakily got to her feet as her thoughts began to plague her mind. Spinning her Peacock Slasher, she lost the will to chase Crocodile as she looked at her friends in despair. Luffy knew he had to get to the princess somehow. "Vivi if we die now, who will stop him?"

It did not take long for a bananadile to enter the room via the path that Crocodile had walked down moments prior. Smiling softly, the female Marine looked at the shaken princess. "Oi Vivi-sama, get out from in front of the cage. I'd hate to see our efforts go to waste by you being in the crossfire."

The princess glanced at her in confusion before Andrea placed her hands on the cage curiously as if trying to see how strong they were. It did not take long for the bananadile to be in front of the cage and stare her down. Placing her right hand on the creature's snout, she chuckled softly as the crew behind her was bamboozled at why the woman was petting the creature. Nami, fear staining ever decibel of her voice, muttered, "What are you doing?"

Grinning wildly, even Luffy flinched when he saw a hard and intense look to his sister's eyes. "Finding the key." Focusing for a moment, a beam of light shot out of the bananadile's back and before she could warn them, the body exploded. The room, now showered with guts but no metallic key, now looked like a rather morbid tomb for the caged. Sighing at the lack of success, the Marine blew on her aching and bleeding palm before glancing at the princess who had endured the worst of the gut showering. "Vivi, lure more of those damn gators here."

The princess looked rather shaken as if she was about to puke and no one could blame her. Her voice quivered as she looked at Andrea, "I think I could go get help! There has to be a better way than to explode the bananadiles."

Snorting, the Marine waved a bloody hand towards where the two leaders of Baroque Works had departed. "Do you think they're that stupid? They won't make it possible for you go get help. Also in case you didn't realize, these creatures have no qualms about killing us so I won't have any for them."

A bananadile crashed into the staircase and damaged it severely but it gave Vivi hope despite the beam of light that shot past her head which impacted into the reptile causing it, like its counterpart, to explode. Fortunately or rather unfortunately for the crew, the other bananadiles had noticed the carnage and decided to leave rather than line up to die. Undeterred by the gore or the rubble of the staircase, she scrambled up it with a great determination to the crew's cheering. Smoker turned towards Andrea who had a small but noticeable smile on her face. "You have a bit of his brutal flair now, Andrea-san. Why can't you explode the bars?"

Tapping the bars with her finger, she sighed as she felt the true meaning of the Marine captain's words. "It's pure Seastone where as the room I was in, it was only a coating. Also as I'm not an actual Devil Fruit user, if I use the powers, they are much weaker than how they would be originally. So a stronger substance with a weaker power doesn't bode well for me."

Luffy quirked a strange grin on his face as he wiped some of the guts off of his hat. "Sis, look at what you did around here. Does that look like the work of a weak person?"

Andrea surveyed the situation as Smoker and Zoro gave an approving nod while Nami and Usopp had fear tinge their expressions. I fear I'll start to like operating like this, mused the brunette. Is that truly a bad thing if it gets the job done and protects the innocent?