Sasori of the Red Sands stalked across the strange island that he found himself on, his puppet's immense wooden shell lumbering along as he investigated his current target.

Someone else had been on-board their ship when they had descended from the sky.

Whether the rest of their group liked it or not, he felt a certain personal responsibility for their ship's condition. In many ways, the wooden vessel they had acquired had become very much like another puppet to him. Perhaps it was his largest one yet, but it was just one more shell between him and the outside world. It could even be said that he felt a bit possessive towards it.

That someone had snuck inside his new vessel without even announcing themselves in the one period that he had slackened his security to focus on repairs… it irked him. Whoever it was would pay for their presumption.

Taking advantage of the opportunity that this affront afforded him to avoid the ridiculous antics that Tobi was getting the rest of their group involved in, he had informed their leader of his thoughts and then left to hunt down this mysterious interloper.

Tobi had been difficult to read, as usual. Unlike the others, Sasori was convinced there was more behind Tobi's guileless expression than was immediately apparent. Just because he respected Tobi's power and knowledge didn't mean he trusted his goals. People always put on masks, after all.

So, now he was following a trail so faint that even a veteran tracker would have called it an impossible feat. Things had grown a bit easier once he realized that his target hadn't actually been bothering to hide his tracks at all; he simply appeared to be using a proxy to do his infiltration for him. An animal, a puppet, a creation of chakra, Sasori wasn't quite certain which it was yet, but whatever manner of creature had just left their ship it was so tiny that it felt little need to hide its tracks. It didn't matter. He would find it, and then he would use every trick of chakra in his arsenal to find the infiltrator's owner.

The island he was on was sparsely vegetated, populatedwith very long, or very tall, depending on how you looked at it, trees and animals. The… odd proportions of these creatures were unusual, but hardly so unusual as to unnerve a veteran like him. Regardless, the open ground left his target very little opportunity to evade him. Having extended numerous whisker-thin tools from underneath his tremendous scorpion-like Hiruko puppet, his new appendages brushed and flicked their way across the earth in search of every mark that his target left behind.

There. There was a disturbance in the ground. Carefully, he traced the surface with one of his fine instruments, feeling the delicate feedback through the chakra strings that vibrated with almost painful clarity.

Sasori only bothered smiling when someone was there to observe it. Nevertheless, he felt a surge of satisfaction pulse through his remaining organic parts. A man had been here. Moments before, that man had been something like a mouse. Not a creation at all, then, but a transformative ability so powerful that it could significantly reduce its user's size and yet retain full mobility. Interesting.

Sasori considered this carefully. A man who could transform into something the size of a rodent should have been a difficult opponent to track, but it appears that his target had made a mistake. Returning to human form while Akatsuki was still on the island was a truly absurd error, the height of overconfidence, and now Sasori had a solid trail to follow.

Chakra strings still reaching out to connect his nervous system to the numerous artificial eyes he had implanted along the Hiruko-puppet's body, he continued to track his prey, carefully watching the landscape. About an hour later he felt confident he was growing close. The man had stopped and waited for unknown reasons on a number of occasions, but now all of a sudden the mouse-man had made a connection with another person. A newcomer.

There was another set of footprints that had arrived from the south, walking alongside… a bicycle? Sasori spared a glance around at the uninhabited landscape. Strange environment for such a device. The newcomer's footprints showed smooth, impractical soles, but they had very large feet. Sasori wanted to say that from the depths of the imprints left behind the newcomer would be a thoroughly-muscled male, or perhaps merely obese, but he had seen enough strangely-shaped people out here that he was by no means confident of this assessment. Going only by footprint depth alone, the newcomer could, for example, also be a ten-foot tall man who was thin but athletically built. There was very little way to tell. The man was walking a bicycle, so his stride would be altered beyond its natural patterns.

After a moment, Sasori noticed something else. The ground was damp. There hadn't been rain recently, but it was as if the newcomer had been dripping wet at one point.

Two unknowns on the island, then. His target and the newcomer. After this point the two had split up, with the target leaving the area straight ahead and the other man…

The other man had left at a lazy walking pace back in the general direction that Sasori had come from, wheeling his bicycle alongside. Sasori tensed. Assuming that his target had informed the newcomer about Akatsuki's presence, that meant that the newcomer was aware that he was walking towards certain death.

Almost unconsciously, he readied his vast assortment of weapons. He hadn't seen anyone else while tracking his target, but if the newcomer had stayed hidden at a considerable distance then it was possible that Sasori's movement had been spotted on the way here. The tracker might have become the tracked.

Underneath the vast bulk of his robed Hiruko puppet body, Sasori himself dug into the earth with precise implements. Hiding a smaller body inside a larger puppet gave him certain advantages when it came to subterfuge, but the young-looking, red-haired doll that served as his 'true' body was really only a container for the small metal canister that contained the remainder of his brain and organs necessary for chakra production.

Silently, unobserved, he put his 'true' puppet body beneath the earth, leaving only his connections to the Hiruko doll and a couple of artificial eyes that he left partially embedded in the ground above him. Once that had been completed, he let his chakra strings continue to puppeteer the Hiruko doll remotely. In the end, his 'true' body was left buried beneath seemingly undisturbed earth, and the Hiruko body that any observer would have seen remained up above.

Apparently satisfied with what it had found, the red-and-black-robed Hiruko doll got back up and resumed lumbering along after its target.

As the doll continued its slow trudge out of sight, Sasori waited, letting some of his smaller puppets and mechanical devices dig away from his earthen cocoon. Each one was a deadly weapon in its own right, extending a network of controlled territory out from his hidden lair. After a few minutes of this effort, the entire landscape around him became like an extension of his own self. He sat like an antlion in its nest, and anyone entering his zone of control would be in his power.

Eventually, a man, tall and lanky, appeared on the horizon, having followed Sasori as he had been focused on tracking his target. There was no point to making his puppet smirk, so he didn't. Still, it always paid to be prepared, didn't it?

The instant the lanky man stepped in range, Sasori detonated the explosives.

Multiple explosive seals erupted from the ground underneath the man, and his environs turned into a firestorm that belched smoke and debris. Sasori could feel the patter of dirt and gravel hitting the ground all across the landscape he controlled. When the smoke finally cleared, the man had been disintegrated from the powerful blast, only a few chunks of his body remaining.

It was always better to be safe rather than sorry when you found out you had made a mistake that an opponent could capitalize on.

No… wait… the man wasn't dead… he wasn't dead at all… He was just-

-Grand Line-

-Going Merry-

The crew first became aware that their day was going to be unusual sometime after they were attacked by a gaggle of gigantic, mischievous sea-monkeys. Now, that kind of thing was really par for the course these days, but after they had been fended off Usopp noticed smoke billowing up from the distant horizon ahead of them. After a bit of worry and confusion, someone thought to ask Robin, who had been up in the crow's nest at the time, if there was something happening.

"Why, yes," she said, "We've been nearing an island for quite some time now."

This prompted a crew resolution to have either Usopp or Sasuke be the official lookouts for the near future, instead. All that aside, a new island meant new challenges. Since it was impossible for them to leave each island without the guidance of a Log Pose, it was also impossible to completely bypass that island, no matter how dangerous it might be. Regardless of what trouble lay ahead they would need to face it head on, or at the very least slink around until the Log Pose said they could leave.

So it was that the Going Merry weighed anchor at hell on earth.

The devastation was astounding. Bodies, some unconscious, some barely living, and some dead, littered the ground, and the water was dominated by the ruins of a tremendous ship. Flotsam obscured the ocean's surface, and debris caked the nearby shore. It looked like an entire festival had been torn violently to pieces, and its various huts and stands were still smoking. To make matters even less pleasant, it was terribly chilly and snow was beginning to fall all across the island.

"Whatever happened here," mused Zoro, watching a still-smoldering pile of debris, "It happened recently."

The rest of the crew could only agree. Everyone was on edge, and some were especially eager to find another spot to land. Eventually, they found a clue hidden among the charred wreckage of what looked to be a makeshift stadium, of sorts. It was a toppled billboard that must have once been thirty feet tall covered in hastily painted letters and markings. It read:

DAVY-BACK FIGHT: CMXXI

GRAND SLAM EDITION

FOXY PIRATES VS. AKATSUKI PIRATES

DONUT RACE

Porsche - Capote - Monda

VS.

Kisame - Tobi - Deidara

GROGGY RING

Pickles - Hamburg - Big Pan

VS.

Hidan - Orochimaru - Danzou

COMBAT ROUND

Kakuzu

VS.

Foxy The Great!

"Shit," muttered Sanji, as Usopp turned suddenly pale, "Well, now we know what happened here."

"I guess this was Akatsuki," said Nami, "But what in the world is a 'Davy-Back Fight?'"

"You mean you don't know?" replied Usopp.

"No, I don't. What's going on?"

It soon became clear that out of all those present only Sanji, Usopp, and Robin knew the particulars.

"According to legends," Robin lectured, "The Davy-Back Fight originated on an island known only as Pirate's Paradise, and it is a method of competing over human resources. Those who compete- and most pirates consider it mandatory- are forced into games, combat, and other competitions to 'steal' crew-members from another ship."

"Ugh," said Nami, "That's quite possibly the most useless thing I've ever heard of. Especially for a crew like us. You'd have to be a real bozo to agree to something like that." Frowning for a moment, she turned to Luffy, adding, "Luffy, if you ever enter us in one of those matches, I will make you pay."

"But, Nami! It sounds fun!"

"I hate to interrupt," said Sasuke, "but what if you don't want anyone the other team has? You can't just decline?"

Usopp spoke up next, "No, that's just it. There's always something to play for. If you lose a match and no one wants to steal any of your crew, they take your flag away from you. You can't ever use it again! If you refuse then everyone will think you're cowards. It's nothing but a cruel game played by stupid jerks!"

"That's… right!" interjected a wheezing, pained voice from a nearby pile of rubble, "-and we were the best at it..."

There was a person buried underneath piles of scattered timber. Skin blackened from smoke, bleeding from numerous small wounds, and with several broken bones, the oddly-shaped man had clearly had a rough day. At first glance it even looked as though his head itself had been split in two, but it soon became clear that it was actually a combination of a strangely-shaped skull and an even stranger haircut. As Chopper worked quickly to tend his wounds, the man told his story.

"The name's… Foxy… Captain of the Foxy Pirates… I've lost everything… Who knew that after only... nine-hundred and twenty measly Davy-Back challenges… I'd finally pick the wrong opponents?" He paused, taking a tortured breath, "They told me... that the man I fought... was their accountant!"

"Split-head! Split-head!" shouted Luffy, apparently in great distress, "Don't talk! You've got to conserve your strength!"

"I'm going to pretend… I didn't hear that comment about my head… *cough*... I survived by slowing my heart and lungs... so they thought I had died, but... now..." his arm shot up, and, with a gasp of agony he cried out, "You must avenge me! Kill Akatsuki, then get back my money, and then return it right here! To - uh- bury with me!" Then, Foxy's eyes closed, and his arm dropped lifelessly to his side, "Snow… why is it so cold now…? So cold… Blehhhhhh..."

"Split-head! Don't die! Split-head! SPLIT-HEAD!" Each time Luffy called his name, Foxy jerked on the ground, which was making Chopper's job as medic somewhat difficult.

"Luffy! He needs to stay still! He'll be fine! Just because he went 'bleh' doesn't mean he's dead!"

Naruto and Sasuke were watching this scene with puzzled expressions. "I've never seen anyone who looks that weird before…" Naruto muttered to his friend, "Do you think he's a mutant or something?"

"I guess… there are an awful lot of weird-looking people out here, though…"

"Damnit!" shouted Luffy, "I'm gonna beat the crap out of those jerks for what they did to him!"

Eventually, Chopper had helped the most wounded victims to his satisfaction and it came time for the Straw-Hats to make a decision. Wherever they were, Akatsuki was gone. Should they search the island to find them? Though the discussion went back and forth, eventually Sasuke made his position clear.

"It's not going to be pretty if we find them, true," he said, "But there are two things that I think are certain. First, this island is small, so if they are still here after all then we will run into them. Second, if they're the ones who find us rather than the other way around, it'll be painful to say the least. Still, I don't think they're here at all any more. We should have seen their ship if they were."

So, now they traveled in a group across the snow-dusted island, examining the strange flora and fauna with its rather unusual adaptations as they went. Despite the danger, the feeling of excitement from this new island permeated the air.

"Usopp! Chopper! Look at that stretched out goat! It must be fifteen feet long!" shouted Luffy.

"Whoa! You're right," shouted Usopp, "Look over there! Is that a deer? Its antlers are twice as tall as it is! Chopper, will yours get that big?"

"What? I don't know that! And I'm a reindeer, not a plain deer!" Frowning, Chopper paused to look around. Everything on this island seemed long or tall, somehow. The trees themselves were sparse, but extremely tall. Wasn't that strange? He'd thought trees grew tall to compete and get more sunlight.

Wait, something else was strange.

"Hey, everyone…" he asked, his voice tentative, "I know I'm not really the right person to ask about trees that aren't evergreens, but didn't you say most trees lose their leaves during the winter? Why are these all still green?"

The crew pondered this. "Sudden snow?" suggested Usopp. No one had a better answer.

As they walked, the landscape grew stranger. It was as though winter had intensified, the temperature slowly dropping as they moved further inland. Here and there ice formations made strange and unnatural shapes that hemmed in their movements. Chopper soon relaxed from his earlier nervousness. He was always more comfortable in cooler climates, and after a long adventure spent in the desert country of Alabasta he was grateful for the change. But the mood wasn't all cheerful. Robin walked beside him, eyes scanning everywhere for danger.

"Robin?" the small reindeer asked, his hooves making cute little noises as he trotted across the terrain, "What's wrong? Are you okay?"

Robin looked back at him, blinking confusedly, before returning a nervous smile, "Yes… I'm fine. I'm just thinking about something."

"Okay, if you're alright then that's fine."

Before long, they encountered more bodies, bloodless but torn to pieces. It appeared as though another especially vicious battle had been fought here. Broken ice was scattered everywhere, and the earth was torn and burnt in numerous areas.

"Wait," said Sanji, kicking one of the many disembodied limbs that littered the landscape, which rolled off with a clattering sound, "Are these things dolls or something? Look, they're made of wood."

Sasuke frowned, then activated his Sharingan. Out of habit, he scanned each visible body for any signs of chakra. Here and there he recognized the telltale signs of a fading seal that had expended its energy, or a static seal that had never had the chance to be used. One body in particular, bigger than the others, lay collapsed in the middle of a clearing. It was adorned with Akatsuki's now-familiar patterned robe of dark red clouds.

"Puppets," he stated. "Apparently Akatsuki has someone skilled in the ninja art of puppetry. Or had someone, at least. It's hard to tell."

Usopp, who after some tentative prodding had begun examining some of the intricate mechanisms of the scattered dolls, looked up in surprise. "Puppets? You use puppets for fighting?"

"No, not me, but I know of a couple of people that do."

"But… I don't see any strings. How can these be puppets?"

"They make strings out of their chakra," Sasuke said, making a spidery motion with his fingers. "Don't ask me how."

Usopp returned to his examinations, grumbling all the while. As he worked, Sasuke tried to piece together what had happened as best as was possible. It was difficult; this place had been visited by a whirlwind of destruction. Besides that, someone capable of controlling this many puppets could have devices to do just about anything… For example, was that scorch mark over there a fire jutsu or a flamethrower?

Carefully, he smelled the air. Ah, that was a familiar scent. The bombs that had been thrown their way on Jaya had left smoke that smelled like this. At the very least, that bomber had been here too. Slowly, other patterns began to emerge. It appeared as though a fight had started between the puppeteer and this mystery assailant, and then other Akatsuki members had joined in afterwards. His thoughts were interrupted by Usopp, who continued their earlier conversation as if there had been no interruption.

"The mechanisms in this stuff are amazing, even if it does rely on crazy magic strings… Hey, Naruto! I hate to ask a favor of you like this, but do you think you could get some of your shadow guys to cart some of this stuff back to the ship? I'll make it up to you, I promise!"

Naruto looked around at the scattered debris and shrugged. "Sure, no skin off my nose. Oh, hey, Usopp! Be careful with that stuff! Sometimes ninja put traps on their gear."

Usopp dropped the puppet piece he was examining like it was on fire, jumping backwards in a hurry.

"Don't worry about it, man," said Naruto, "I'll bring 'em back to the ship and we'll see what's in 'em later, okay?" After a quick check with Sasuke to scan for chakra signatures and rule out any extremely violent traps in the remains, Naruto summoned about twenty shadow clones to help him move the more intact pieces of puppetry back to the ship. As his clones worked, Sasuke and Naruto were approached by Robin.

"Mr. Ninja? Curious One?" Robin asked, sounding somewhat more nervous than usual, "Sorry to interrupt, but I have a question. Is it possible for ninjas like yourselves to control... ice?"

Sasuke and Naruto both looked up, then shared an uncomfortable glance. "Ohhhh, yeah it sure as hell is," said Naruto, as if reliving a painful memory. "We kinda got our asses handed to us by an ice-user on our first real mission out, ya know? Real pain in the butt."

At this, Robin took a deep breath, then let it out. "I see. That's interesting to hear. So it's fairly common, then?"

"No," said Sasuke, "Actually, I think we killed the last known user of it that day. Akatsuki might have another, but I've certainly never heard of them if they do."

Robin looked visibly nervous once again, causing Naruto to frown. They hadn't known her long, but this was as flustered as they had ever seen her. He had just opened his mouth to ask her a question when Luffy interrupted them, crying out from where he had been examining a boulder-sized spire of ice set in a crater in the earth.

"Hey! I found something!"

Luffy's discovery was set all alone from the other debris, and it looked as though there had been a violent explosion of earth when a massive spire of ice had erupted from underneath the ground, sending showers of dirt in every direction around the crater. Inside, frozen in the ice, a young man with Akatsuki robes and vibrant red hair was visible, his eyes wide open and staring off into the distance.

"Oh no! How long has he been in there?!" asked Chopper.

"Hey, I hope you're not thinking about helping him," said Sanji, pointing a finger, "Last time we tried that with Akatsuki they nearly killed us."

"It's alright," sighed Sasuke, releasing the Sharingan, "I know it looks more like a person than any of the others, but it's just another puppet. The workmanship is so fine that the seams are hard to see through the ice, but it's not living, and there's no chakra inside it."

He shook his head, exhaling a tense breath as he did so, "Well, I don't know who they ran into, or if this was just internal fighting or what, but there's too much equipment here to just leave behind on a whim. It looks like Akatsuki finally ran into some actual competition and I can't say whether this new threat is still on the island or not."

As if this was what she had been waiting for, Robin called for attention. "Everyone, listen! I know that I haven't been with you for long, and you don't have any real reason to trust me. Still, I don't make many requests, so I need you to listen to me with that in mind."

"Robin? We trust you. Why, what's wrong?" asked Nami.

"We need to get off of this island immediately. There's only one person I know of capable of causing this early winter. Someone far more powerful than all of us here put together. More powerful than anything we've yet seen from Akatsuki. He..."

Robin froze, shivering in sudden terror.

"Robin," Luffy said, his voice now calm and cool, "Who are you talking about?"

The sudden appearance of this new, serious Luffy caused Naruto and Sasuke some considerable degree of confusion.

"He's a Marine," she continued, her voice imploring and passionate, "If he sees us, our lives will be forfeit. You don't know what he's done… the things he's capable of. Luffy, I know that you defeated Crocodile, but this man is in an entirely different league."

"Robin, I'm gonna need you to tell me who this is," insisted Luffy.

Sanji, ever unnecessarily chivalrous, quickly stepped up to her defense. "Luffy, if she doesn't want to talk about it, she doesn't have to. We can get back to the ship and wait this out if we need to."

"No, none of you understand!" she pleaded, "There's no point to any of this tiptoeing around right now! We need to get away from here as fast as we can, even if it means leaving the island before the Log Pose has set. He wants me dead, and if he finds out that I…" Robin paused, unwilling to continue.

"I'm not going to leave anywhere until you tell us what's going on," repeated Luffy.

"I agree," said a deep voice that seemed to resonate from nowhere and everywhere at the same time, "If I found out… what? It would save me a lot of trouble if you went ahead and finished that sentence, Nico Robin."

The crew was shocked into action.

"Who's there?!" Luffy shouted.

"Oh my, excuse me." The voice lost its omnipresent quality as a man leaned forward out of a nearby wall of jagged ice. Seeing the man move through the ice as if it were a part of his own body, Naruto and Sasuke had flashbacks to their past confrontation with Haku. He towered over them, though it was difficult to tell if that was because he was really ten feet tall or if it was because he was high up inside the wall itself. The older man had curly black hair and tanned skin that was scuffed and scraped in one or two places. A white vest with a couple of missing buttons sat over a deep blue dress shirt that was singed along the cuffs. All over his exposed body, frost crackled and moved like a living organism.

Robin gasped, taking a step back and tripping over a chunk of ice.

"I'm sorry for eavesdropping like this," he said, "It's been a rather difficult day. I'm in the area investigating a series of unusual disturbances when all of a sudden I get a call bringing me here, and I run into a rather stubborn set of malcontents. I thought I'd ambush and interrogate one of them alone, but it seemed he had different plans. An unpleasant enough battle even before others joined in. It's not every month I'm forced to back down from a fight. Who would have thought I'd run into Nico Robin right on their heels?"

"You're the one Robin was talking about, aren't you?" growled Luffy, taking an aggressive step forward, "Tell me what you did to her, or I'll clean your clock!"

"No! Luffy! Don't attack him! Please!" Breathing heavily, the normally unflappable Robin struggled to compose herself. "This man is a Marine Admiral. His name is Aokiji. We can't risk a fight here."

"No way…" muttered Sanji, backing off slightly, "An Admiral?! The Marine Admiralty is known as the Navy's greatest military asset, right? He got into a fight with Akatsuki?"

"Hey, you jerk!" shouted Usopp, suddenly cowering behind Zoro, "There are other, scarier pirates around for you to go after! Like Akatsuki! If you hurry, you can catch 'em! Shoo! Shoo!"

"Oh my… Scarier pirates for me to go after, hmm?" Aokiji said, pretending to contemplate the concept with a hard look in his eyes. "But I think you're quite scary enough already. It all has to do with that woman, Nico Robin."

"Hey! Robin's not scary. You take that back, or I'll make you regret it!" shouted Luffy.

Aokiji shifted, spreading his arms wide as he stepped out of his icy wall. He really was as tall as he had appeared. He also appeared to be wounded, a red spot having stained through his white vest shirt on the right side of his abdomen.

Robin's wary glare intensified as the Admiral turned the conversation back to her. Aokiji had the expression of a man who already had all the answers, and was just going through the conversation as a formality. His next words, however, seemed to cast some doubt on that.

"Nico Robin," the man pronounced the name like a judge passing down a sentence, "What is your relationship with Akatsuki? I need to know everything you told them. Think about what you're going to say very carefully, because your answer today will determine whether or not your friends live to see the inside of a cell."

CANON REFRESH:

In canon, the Straw-Hats arrived on this island and helped an old man named Tonjit and his horse get to safety (Both of them are fine; Tobi is always quite pleased to help the elderly.)

In the process, they got involved in the Davy-Back Fight. Afterwards, depending on whether you read the manga or watched the anime, they either met Admiral Aokiji right away or they had a buttload of filler and then they met Aokiji on a completely different island.