"Chopper, relax. You're not helping anyone by freaking out," I said as I lit a new cigarette.
"B-b-but what about the others! What are we going to do?" Chopped cried, pulling at his pink hat nervously. The poor guy was a mess of tears, and I felt a little bad. But crying really wasn't going to solve this little problem we'd found ourselves in. "Aaahhh! What are we going to do?"
After an argument in the middle of the desert between Luffy and Vivi, we'd had a change of plans. It was decided that chasing after the rebels wasn't actually going to help the situation much. Defeating Crocodile was the most direct route to a real and lasting peace. It took some convincing but eventually Luffy made Vivi admit to that, and we came to Rain Dinners where Crocodile had set up a casino for his base. Problem was, after getting separated, Chopper and I were the only ones that had apparently avoided getting caught by the Shichibukai.
I sighed some and rubbed my temples. "Hold on a minute, Chopper. Just let me think," I told him. I leaned back on the barrel I was sitting on and glanced down the alley. Rain Dinners was easily visible from here. The multistory pyramid shaped casino looked almost like a castle sitting in the middle of the rather large lake. I hadn't expected to see so much water here in Alabasta, but that thing was pretty expansive and looked deep. It was that nice dark blue that only happened when a span of water went uninterrupted for quite a ways. Swimming across it would attract attention and Chopper couldn't swim anyway.
We'd have to take the bridge, but I somehow doubted I'd be able to just waltz into the front door go find the crew and get them out without a problem. Especially, with that Crocodile asshole in there somewhere. I could take on a lot, but I wasn't so stupid to think I could take him on as well as whatever guards and marines might be wandering about. We would need a diversion and some way to keep Crocodile out of the way.
The easiest way to do that would be to keep Crocodile from getting back inside once we got him outside. The only way I could see to do that was to destroy the bridge since he also couldn't swim as a Devil Fruit user. But that would take even me several kicks, which I doubt he'd give me. I brought my cigarette up to take another drag as I glanced at the bridge. Maybe I could take out one of the supports? Eh, that would still take too many kicks, plus I'd then be stuck down there without a way back up. Damn it. If only there were more than just Chopper and I. That would make this a hell of a lot easier.
I puzzled over the different options for a moment before sighing. I could really only think of one way to get this done without possibly killing myself. "Come on, Chopper," I said pushing off the barrel to stand up properly.
Chopper stopped crying abruptly and looked over at me. "Huh?"
"We've got some shopping to do," I said tilting my head to the side. I figured we were pretty safe to wander around the market. Chopper hadn't been on the crew long enough to be identified and that okama weirdo hadn't seen me when he was on the ship. There were definitely worse people to be stuck out here with.
"What do you mean shopping? We don't have time for shopping! We've got to save the others!" Chopper said even as he followed me out of the alley and towards the market.
"That's what we're going to do, Chopper, but we need some things before we can do that," I told him. It didn't take too long to get to the market thankfully. Rain Dinners was well situated near the market, exactly where I would put a restaurant though I supposed technically Rain Dinners wasn't just a restaurant. It had food in it, though, so it counted. "We're going to have a lot of stuff to carry, Chopper," I warned as I started looking for the kind of vendor I needed. I didn't know how Usopp blew things up, with gunpowder I assumed, but in order to make the supports go off, I'd need a big explosion, and I somehow doubted that anyone here would sell some random person on the street that much gunpowder. Luckily I knew that done right, lots of things in a kitchen could blow up.
"What are we looking for, Sonya?" Chopper asked as he hurried beside me to the vendor.
"You'll see," I said before turning to the vendor, a man who looked a little freaked out. I wasn't sure if it was because Chopper was talking or someone dressed as a dancer was stopping at a place that sold raw ingredients. "How much flour do you have?" I asked him.
The vendor blinked some. "U-uh… four barrels," he said.
I frowned some. Well, that wouldn't be enough. I'd have to see if anyone else had some, but until then four would do for a start. "I'll take those then," I told him before dropping the money for it down on the counter. I quickly gathered up the flour and Chopper changed forms to carry them as I made my way to some other vendors to look for more. "Why do we need so much flour, Sonya?" Chopper asked.
"It's a surprise," I replied as I wiped out another vendor of their flour supply. I knew that this flour would be wasted in this plan of mine, but I didn't have many other choices. I needed to save the others. It was killing me a bit inside, but I would grit my teeth and bear it. I was a pirate after all. We tended to do things that we didn't actually like doing. Like wasting perfectly good ingredients to save your idiot friends from certain doom. And besides, when it came right down to it, their lives were more important than being insanely frugal with supplies.
After wiping out several vendors of all their flour supply, I led Chopper back to the alley where we first hid out in. "Alright Chopper, that was the easy part," I told him as I helped unload the barrels of flour. I'd gathered ten in total. That should be more than enough.
"Sonya… I don't get it. How is flour going to help us?" Chopper asked as he hopped up onto one of the barrels.
"We're going to use it to blow up the bridge," I told him.
His eyes nearly popped out of his skull. "W-what!? But it's only flour!" he nearly screeched.
"Yep. And if you spread it out a bit in the air and heat it'll explode. Just like gunpowder does. We'll just have to find a way to get it in the air long enough for it to ignite and then set a fire under it. It might take a few minutes to kick off but it will," I told him as I ripped open one barrel. I'd bought the cheapest quality I could find so that I would hopefully not feel as bad about wasting it. We'd have to do a little more work to get it to explode, but it made me feel marginally better. Not a whole lot, but I would take what I could get. Zeff would be skinning my hide if he saw what I was planning to do.
"Are you serious!? Flour explodes!?" Chopper exclaimed.
I chuckled some. "Yep. Flour mills sometimes explode when they catch fire and all the flour in the air goes boom," I explained. "We'll need a bunch of empty barrels now that we have all this flour," I added as I put the lid back on the flour barrel.
Chopper still looked skeptical but helped me go find empty barrels and find a small boat. "Are you sure this is going to work?" he asked as we slowly paddled out to the support I was planning to take out.
"Of course I'm sure," I told him. "You can't be a good cook if you don't know what all the things you're working with are capable of. Knowing flour can explode if there's too much air means that you have to store it in airtight boxes to be sure it doesn't do that. Usually, barrels are good enough but if you've used a lot of the flour from one it's safer to move it into a different container," I explained as we bumped up against the base of the support.
Luckily, there was plenty of room on this thing to set my little bomb up. It wasn't the most efficient way to make a bomb to be sure but I didn't know how to make one with chemicals and all that. I knew food. Not chemicals or weird shit like that. Heck, I wouldn't even know how much of that sort of stuff I would need to do what I wanted.
"Alright Chopper, help me set this stuff up over here," I said grabbing on of the empty barrels. I wasn't sure if my little setup was going to work. I was mostly winging it. I figured if worse came to worse it would end up burning the bridge down instead of blowing it up. Which, probably would still work. Kind of. Maybe. Hopefully.
With Chopper's help, it didn't take as long as I was afraid it would to set up the little bomb. The barrels full of flour were at the top and the empty ones at the bottom and middle. The flour would slowly fall through the barrels and get into the air, which is when they were the most dangerous. All that was needed was a spark. I pulled out a jar of grease that I had asked for from one of the vendors that was cleaning his grill and poured it on the outside of the barrels and on the ground. "What's that?" Chopper asked, looking over my shoulder at it.
"Grease. Grease fires are some of the most dangerous kind out there. They don't go out with water, and they burn pretty hot and easily. "Since I have to start the fire and get the heck out of the way I'm going to start it from up there," I said pointing up to the bridge. "With this down here to help it should only take dropping a match onto the grease to set this baby off."
"Wow! How did you figure this out, Sonya?" Chopper asked with wide eyes.
I smirked some and carefully climbed back into the boat. "I was taught to use my brain. Smarter not harder, Chopper," I told him as we started moving back to the shore. "Now we just gotta get Croco-bastard out here."
"How are we going to do that?"
"Live bait," I said. I got a bit of twisted amusement when his eyes widened, and his jaw dropped, correctly realizing who was going to play that part. "Oh, come on, Chopper. I promise he won't get a chance to do anything to you." And plus, you know, he did it to me before on Drum. Turnabout being fair play and all that.
"B-b-but!"
I grabbed his hoof and jumped out of the boat and onto the shore. "Listen, Chopper. I just need you to be in that big form of yours. You'll tell Crocodile you caught me and he'll think you're one of his men. Then I'll go inside and hide. When he comes out you'll already be running and in the city, you just have to lose him long enough to turn back into this form, and he'll never know what he was chasing. Much less find you," I explained.
He blinked and calmed down some. "I-I don't know… what if he sees me?"
I sighed a little and crouched down beside him. "Chopper, I know you can do this. You're not just a reindeer from Drum Island. You're a Strawhat Pirate now. You can do anything," I told him. I was sure he could do this; he just needed to have a bit more confidence in himself.
He stared at me for a minute before gritting his teeth and giving a short nod. "Right! I'll do it!"
I smiled some. "Great. Now come on, we need to get those idiots out of trouble before they end up lunchmeat."
Chopper nodded before he suddenly looked worried. "Ah! But, Sonya, how are we going to tell Crocodile to come outside?" he asked. "He'll know he's being tricked if he sees us!"
I grinned and took a drag from my cigarette. "Easy. We've just gotta beat all his shitty millions or whatever they're called," I told the little doctor. Chopper's eyes bulged again. I laughed a bit. "Don't worry, Chopper. If they were tough there wouldn't be so many of them. It'll be as easy as pie." Chopper still didn't look totally convinced, but he nodded anyway. "I bet they won't even be as tough as that bite-bite asshole."
"Bite-Bite?" Chopper echoed in confusion. "You mean Wapol?"
"Yeah that shitty bastard," I replied absently. "He had a Devil Fruit and these guys won't. Don't worry so much. Just channel your inner Sea-Witch Kureha and pretend they're patients trying to escape treatment," I offered casually.
"Sonya!"
"What!? The Hag was a menace!" I defended. It was true after all. She kicked me and then sat on me. Doctors weren't supposed to do that kind of shit! I pushed the thought and slight amount of bitterness to the side. At least I got a fixed back out of the ordeal. "Come on, Chopper. We've got some shitty sailors to beat."
"Uh… right!"
Chopper and I got to the front of Rain Dinners within only a few minutes. I scoffed some at how many pirates or whatever that were there. I lit a fresh cigarette and tapped my shoe against the ground behind me. These weren't my favorite shoes to fight in. They left my feet a bit more exposed than I was used to, but they would do. They still had closed toes and heels, and that was really all I needed. I could even fight barefoot in a pinch though I doubted I'd need to at any point.
I made my way towards the nearest group of them; they didn't even seem to notice me. They didn't even look like they were actively guarding anything. They were just there. But then Vivi had said something about Baroque Works not even knowing who their boss was. So maybe they didn't know they were on guard. Well, that would just make things that much easier. The poor bastard I first got to didn't even know what hit him when I swung my leg around and slammed my heel into his jaw. He screamed as blood spurted and he went flying into a group of his friends who instantly reached for weapons. They didn't have a chance to fight back though as I was already springing forward towards them.
My feet slammed their heads into the ground before I finished the somersault. A quick and low kick took another down before I spun and sent him flying off the bridge and into the lake below. At that point, the other idiots finally managed to try and fight back. They were shit, though. They were slow and sloppy. It took almost no effort at all to dodge their attacks and slam my feet into them. Each of them went down with just one kick. It was actually a little pathetic.
Since they were so weak and there weren't even close to a million of them like their name suggested it only took a few minutes to mop up the floor with them. I glanced over at Chopper as I straightened. He was in his bigger form and tossing the last of the men he was fighting into a stack of crates. The man didn't get back up, so I assumed Chopped had realized how weak these guys were too. I smirked at him. "Told ya it'd be easy," I said before exhaling a long stream of smoke.
He grinned. "Yeah, that wasn't so bad!"
"Now we just gotta see if one of these bastards has one of those snail phone things," I said as I started searching through the men's pockets. Hopefully, we'd catch a lucky break. If we didn't we'd have to hunt down more of these weak assholes. That would suck. It wouldn't be hard but it would be frustrating and time consuming. "Help me look, Chopper."
He nodded a bit and came over to help me go through all their pockets. We ended up going through quite a few before we found one. "Ah, great. Now let's just get us some attention. I'll give you a signal when you're supposed to come in. Just act like you're one of these idiots and you'll be fine," I told Chopper before looking to see how to use the damn thing. It was one thing to talk to one that was already working but how did you start the damn thing?
Was there like a button? Did you just tell the snail what to do? "The hell does this thing work?" I muttered as I turned it over in my hands some. "Shitty ass snail… call Crocodile or whatever. Jeeze. This is such crap. Why can't they give some damn instructions-" Suddenly there was ringing and I blinked. Had… had I done it?
"What?" a woman's voice asked abruptly.
"Hello?" I couldn't help but ask back, turning the snail over again. What the crap had I done!? Why weren't there any instructions!?
"Hello?" the woman said back.
"Can you hear me?" I couldn't help but ask it. I mean I was still not sure how the hell I'd turned the damn thing on!
"Yes, I can. You're the 'Millions' aren't you?"
Oh good, she could hear me. But I wasn't feeling particularly charitable so I decided to screw around a bit. "Hey is this gettin' through? I ain't never used one of these Baby Phone Snails before. Hello?"
"What is it?" Ooh, the girl sounded a bit pissed now.
"Oh. Okay... I'll just talk like this," I said holding the snail up a bit more while moving over to one of the men we'd beaten down.
"Hey spit it out already!" a somewhat familiar voice snapped. "What happened?" It was the voice from Little Garden. Which meant I was now talking to Croco-bastard himself. Oh, the honor.
"Oh, That voice...I've heard that voice before...Welcome Sir, This is the Shitty Restaurant."
"Shitty Restaurant..." Crocodile repeated. I was pretty sure from his tone he remembered how I'd answered his last phone call back on Little Garden.
"Nice... you remembered. I'm so happy..."
"Hey did you hear that?" a very faint voice that sounded rather like Usopp said.
"'Shitty Resturant' Sounds like..." and that would be Nami's annoying voice.
Luffy's voice came through a moment later. "Son-fa uh!" Sounded like someone shut him up. That was good. That would have caused some serious problems if he'd gotten to finish.
"Who the hell are you?" Crocodile demanded.
"Me? I am..." Oh shit, come up with a name. Fast! "Lady Baroness." Ah, damn. That hadn't sounded as cool as I thought it was going to sound. But damn it, what the hell was I supposed to say!? The only other thing that had come into my head was 'Princess', and that just sounded stupid out loud. I didn't want to sound all weak and damsel-y.
"I see Ms. Baroness. And where are you?" Crocodile asked maintaining an almost pleasant conversational tone.
"Can't tell ya. If I do, you'll come to kill me won't ya? Well whether you can or not remains to be seen. I don't give out lots of info easily. And I'm not an idiot like you Mr. Zero."
"Baroness! Save us!" Nami shouted. I was somewhat surprised she was going with the crappy name I'd come up with on the fly, but I supposed that was a good thing. Though if she was screaming at me for help things had to be bad.
"We've been captured! We don't have much time left!" Usopp added.
Oh, that didn't sound good at all. "Hahah! You know who that sounds like? My crew! Very well I'll just be..." I deliberately dropped the snail phone and stomped on the man that was lying nearby to make him give a few good grunts of pain loud enough for the phone to pick up. After a moment, I gestured for Chopper to pick up the phone.
He looked apprehensive but did as I motioned. "Hehe Pesky bastard..." I nodded some. He had apparently embraced the whole pirate vocabulary, at least for the moment. I'd ignore him calling me names considering the circumstances.
"Huh!?"
"Hello? Hahahah! What should we do with this weirdo?"
"Where are you? Spit it out," Crocodile demanded all kind pretenses had evaporated.
"Yes sir... at the front gate of the casino called 'Rain Dinners', in Rainbase." There was a click of the phone being hung up. "Uh… did I do alright?" Chopper asked, glancing at me.
I gave him a grin and a thumbs up. "Perfect, Chopper. Now, just wait out here and when you see Crocodile take off running. Lose him and wait nearby while I get the losers from inside. I'm going to hide out on the other side of the bridge," I told him as I started towards the front entrance.
"U-uh, right!"
As I passed by the support that had the bomb down beneath it, I lit a match and tossed it down to land on the grease. I saw it catch fire and hurried inside. I knew it would take a few minutes to properly start up, so I wasn't worried about Crocodile not getting out in time to be trapped. I found a seat at a slot machine just inside the door and sat down just as a man in what looked like a fur coat came rushing out. Why the hell was he wearing fur in this heat!? A few moments later I smirked when I heard the explosion. "Now to find those losers," I murmured as I got up from my seat where I had been pretending to play.
