Chapter 1: Mistakes or Crocodile's Pride
Crocodile sat in his cell, deep beneath the oceans surface, on the sixth level of Impel Down. While escape was an option he could take at any time, he had long ago learned the value of patience. A chance to escape would come when it would, their was no need to act hastily, and possibly make a costly, or fatal, mistake. However, just because he chose to bide his time, did not mean he wasted it. Rather he used it for perhaps its greatest purpose, to think, and to remember.
He thought on his current circumstances, and how he ended up where he was. He remembered his youth, the choices, the lessons and the hopes that led him to where he was now. He thought of the boy he once was, full of joy and hope for a better future, and he thought of the man he had become, full of greed and anger. He remembered his childhood, and adolescent years, and what they taught him, and he remembered his more recent years, and what they had cost him. But above all he pondered on that boy, that boy, who while so young, so naive, had destroyed his plans. That boy, who only a month or so into the Grand Line, had defeated him. Him! A man who had sailed through Paradise and into the New World. A man who had been made a Shichibukai while still in his twenties. A man who had fought the most powerful man in the world, Whitebeard himself, and had lived to tell of it. How? How could a child, barely past puberty, have defeated him?
It was then, as he sat in his dark cell, that Crocodile realized the truth. That boy had not been the one to defeat him, he was merely an instrument of chance, someone in the right place at the right time. No the one who had defeated Crocodile, had been Crocodile himself. He had doomed himself with his hubris, his arrogance and pride. He had allowed himself to fall into the trap that so many powerful men fall into, he had believed in his own hype. For thirteen years he had been a Shichibukai. He had mastered his skills, never becoming over reliant on his Devil Fruit, or his magic. He had trained his body and mind until they were as sharp as any sword. And for all those thirteen years, aside from his fateful battle with Whitebeard, he had never been truly challenged. Every enemy who stood before him, was struck down, every intellectual challenge was overcome, nothing was able to make him short of breath, or tired in mind. He had come to believe he was the most powerful. That none could stand before his strength. He had come to believe he was the most intelligent, that none could match him in a game of wits. This belief, this arrogance, had made him hold himself back. He had become bored, so he chained himself down. Held back his strength, slowed down his mind, hoping for someone who could make him give his all, but when none had been able to push him to his limits, he had, in time, forgotten his own strength. And when he needed it most, he was unable to grasp it. This was his arrogance.
He knew he shouldn't have fallen to his arrogance, he should have been able to see the fall coming and avoid it. After all, he had seen first hand what happened to those who believed themselves greater than they were. He had seen it when he was but a child of some sixteen years, and had personally slaughtered Voldermort.
Voldermort had been more powerful than Crocodile, or as he was known in those days, and in that place, Harry Potter. He should have been able to kill him with little more effort than a grown man slaughters a chicken. But he had chosen to flaunt his power. To torture his enemy, and play with him in order satisfy his own sadism, rather than simply finishing the job. His arrogance, his surety that he was immortal, his certainty in his own power, had blinded him to the most important truth in battle. Even the most powerful man in the world can be killed by the weakest of children. All it takes, all it has ever taken is one, single, solitary, lucky blow. For that is what had cost him. Crocodile, had killed him not with a spell or a curse, but with a knife, thrust between his ribs. And some nineteen years later, Crocodile had followed the same path. He was just lucky enough to have faced an enemy without the will to kill.
Realizing this truth, that he had fallen to his arrogance, Crocodile considered, what else had he fallen to. What other lessons had he forgotten, was it just arrogance that had cost him, or was it something more?
Impatience, he decided, impatience had been his second mistake.
When Crocodile had first learned of the legendary weapon Pluton, and that its location was recorded on a Poneglyph, he had become obsessed with, wanting that power for himself, though, he couldn't remember why. He had planned his actions extensively. He knew that there was a Poneglyph in Alabasta, the location known only to the king, however he knew he could find it. The entirety of Alabasta was covered in sand. Any where he stood, he was able, with concentration to feel anything in the country. He had found the location, but knew he could not reach it without being seen, and risking the World Government's wrath, was not something he wished to do, so he plotted. He used Dance Powder to create an even worse drought than the country was used to, and pointed the ignorant masses at the king. An easy think to do, as long as one remembers that the masses are a mob, and a mob is only ever as smart as its most foolish member.
Next, he quietly began sowing seeds of rebellion. The organization he had formed, Baroque Works, were in fact, among the first of rebels, and from their, it was merely a matter of time until the country erupted in civil war. Eventually the war would, as all wars do end, and what would be left, regardless of victor, would be a broken country, the common people, always the ones to suffer the worst of war, would be angry at the rebels for starting the war, and angry at the royals for making war necessary. They would all began searching for someone to take the reigns of their country, someone who, to their knowledge, had no part in the war, and who better, than their hero, Crocodile. He would be made ruler, without even having to fight, given a throne on a wave of public support. As king, no one would find it suspicious if he were to go out and explore his new kingdom. He could waltz right into the Poneglyph chamber, with his assistant Nico Robin, whenever he wished. All his plan hinged on, was patience. But somewhere along the way, he had gotten tired of waiting. He had chosen to expose himself, rather than wait a few more years. And that impatience had cost him dearly. He had forgotten the lesson that his school years had taught him.
Every year, from ages eleven to seventeen, he had invariably found himself in mortal peril. The first time, perhaps even the second, he could have been forgiven for being unprepared, for rushing in without a plan. After all he was young, inexperienced. But after that, he shouldn't have been unprepared. He should have devoted every waking moment to improving himself, to planning for all possibilities, but he hadn't. Again and again, he rushed headlong into danger, sometimes alone, most times with his friends, and never once planned ahead. That fact that he and his friends consistently survived, was not as many thought, due to skill or power. Rather, it was equal parts his and his friends luck, and his enemies arrogance. The impatience, the inability to plan ahead, had in the end, cost him, in his fifth year, the life of a man who was, in all but blood, his father, Sirius Black, to the hands of Sirius' mad cousin Bellatrix. In his sixth year, lack of planning had cost him his hand, when Death Eaters invaded Hogwarts, thanks to that little shit Malfoy.
Both losses were made easier to bare in the end, when he had gotten his revenge, first by killing Bellatrix after he, Hermione, and Ron had been captured by the mad bitch, and taken to Malfoy manor. He had put her down like the dog she was, a piercing hex sent straight through her skull. Draco, had gotten his just desserts during the battle of Hogwarts, in the Room of Requirement. Crocodile had thrown him into the raging Fiendfire, that Crabbe or Goyle, one of Draco's interchangeable minions in any case, had let loose. Crocodile still smiled when he thought of the blond's screams. Those kills, while unplanned, were the final lessons he needed on the importance of patience. He knew that given time to plan, both kills would have been far more satisfying, but alas, that past could not be changed.
Finishing this train of thought, and suppressing the smile the thoughts of Bellatrix and Malfoy's deaths had brought to his face, Crocodile began considering a thought that had come up. Why had he wanted Pluton in the first place? At the time he heard of it, he had no interest in ruling a country, let alone the world, and as such, he had no need of a super weapon. So why had he been so consumed by it?
The more he thought of it, the more concerned he became. The entire idea of taking Pluton for himself seemed somehow foreign. As if it was not something he had thought of, but rather something that had been implanted within his subconscious. The very notion was troubling, for while he once again remembered the cost of arrogance, he was still strong in his belief that his mind was his own. His skill at Occulmency was something he took great pride in. Not since he was fifteen, and bound to Voldemort by the soul piece in his head, had anything been able to enter his mind without his consent. So how could a foriegn thought become so entrenched in his psyche? More importantly, were their other thought that were not his own?
Now feeling ever so slightly afraid, a feeling he hadn't experienced since his battle with Whitebeard, Crocodile closed his eyes, and delved into his mindscape, ready to cleanse an foriegn thought he found.