A/N

I'm baaaaack! I didn't poof out of existence!

Thank you sooo much for being patient with me. I am finally done my exams and I'm finally on summer vacation! To all of you on vacation, have fun! And to those of you who are not, you're almost there!

And also, I changed how the casino (Rain Dinners) looks a bit. It has more levels and a staircase on the side of the casino room. Why? Because I can. ;)

Disclaimer: I do not own One Piece or the references to Avatar: the Last Airbender.

Enjoy!

Anni's POV

Nami's voice pierced through my head, waking me up.

"What the hell are you two doing?!"

I shot up from my bed, excuse ready, when I saw Nami stomp across the room towards Sanji and Zoro, who were in the middle of an argument over the breakfast that Sanji had prepared and Zoro had nearly knocked over. I sighed in relief, flopping back down on my pillow. I turned my head towards Ace's bed, where he lay smirking at me, and rolled my eyes.

I rolled over to stare at the bottom of the bunk above me. Closing my eyes, I tried to get a few moments more of sleep. I was just about to drift off into another dream when I felt a poke in my side. I grumbled and rolled away from the poker, but my attempts were unsuccessful.

"Anni, get up and eat," Nami instructed, done with lecturing Sanji and Zoro.

I pulled my blanket over my head, mumbling, "Not today..."

She was silent for a moment, so I peeked out and saw a vein twitch under her eye. "Anni..." she warned, an overly friendly smile on her face.

At the sight of that expression I was out of bed and eating enthusiastically in less than a minute. As I shoveled food into my mouth, Chopper and Usopp both sat down next to me rubbing their eyes and yawning. The door banged open and Luffy came flying inside yelling, "FOOD!"

"G'mornin," Usopp mumbled through a mouthful of toast, trying to avoid the enthusiastic crumbs flying everywhere.

Chopper yawned widely, standing in his seat to reach for a small pot of strawberry jam. A thought suddenly struck me.

"Hey, if Yuba's abandoned, where did all of this food come from?" I asked no one in particular.

"None of it is fresh," said a voice from behind me, "And it's slowly running out."

Toh-Toh came to sit down across the table from me. "When the rebels moved their base, they missed a small storehouse full of food on their way out," he explained, "It was all preserved, and with only me here to feed, it should last for a while. There is also a small amount in the houses, but most of that has spoiled in the heat."

"Oh, okay. But what happens when the food runs out?" I asked.

Toh-Toh looked down. "Hopefully the rebellion will have stopped by that time. If the worst happens, I can always hope for travelers to come along."

"But isn't there a city around here with food? I mean, if no one comes you have to go somewhere, right?" I inquired.

"Hmmm..." the old man thought, "If I had to move to a city, I could go to Rainbase. It's closest. But..." he trailed off, looking grim.

"But?" I continued.

"Rainbase is where Crocodile lives," he finished bluntly.

I went silent, along with the others who had been listening to our conversation. Chopper's strawberry jam-covered knife clattered onto his plate. There was a small 'shhnk' as Zoro sheathed his swords. Vivi put a hand on Nami's shoulder to steady herself.

"Crocodile lives that close?" Sanji asked.

Toh-Toh waited a moment before answering. "I don't know for sure where he his, but I've heard that he lives in a casino called Rain Dinners in Rainbase. If I was looking for him I would go there first."

The room, still silent, watched as Luffy walked over to Vivi, who looked stunned. "Where do you think would be better to go? Rainbase, or Katorea?"

Vivi let go of Nami and clutched the sides of her cloak. "I... I don't know..."

"We're fine either way," I offered.

"But..." Vivi's voice sounded shaky. She looked indecisive and verging on hysterical. "But I want to..."

Luffy took another step forwards. "What do you want to do?"

"I-I want... I don't... want to..." she blinked back tears. I looked on, wanting to go comfort her, but I knew that Luffy was more than capable of handling the situation. I just wondered why he was doing it like that.

"Vivi... You need to trust us," the captain said, "Or we'll get nowhere."

I was shocked. Vivi didn't trust us? No, that wasn't it. She wanted to do everything by herself because she didn't want anyone else to get hurt.

"But I don't want you to die for me," Vivi whispered, sinking into a chair next to the wall.

"That's what I mean. You must trust us to not die," Luffy said.

She nodded slowly. "I can do that."

Sensing that it was okay for me to intervene, I went up and stood beside Luffy. The other five crew members plus Ace came to stand next to us in a show of unification. We would all help, and none of us would die fighting.

"Hey, I have an idea," Ace said. We all turned around to look at him as he continued, "We could split up and half of us go to Rainbase and the other half go to Katorea."

"That's actually a good idea," Zoro commented.

All of the crew members pondered this idea. It seemed like a good one. If some of us went to go beat up Crocodile while Vivi took the rest of us and went to Katorea to stop the rebels.

"But what if the rebels have already moved to Alubarna?" Sanji asked, lighting his cigarette, "It would seem like now would be the time that they would move and attack. I think that half of us should go to Alubarna instead of Katorea."

"Yeah, but what if they see Vivi come to the city?" Usopp wondered.

I was confused by that. "What do you mean?"

"Well, if the rebels see Vivi coming into the city, then they'll fire. If we had some kind of camouflage, then maybe they wouldn't know which one of us is Vivi, right?" Usopp explained.

"That could work, but what then? Once we get into the city?" I asked.

"We stop the rebellion."

Vivi stood up, determined. She pointed to each of us in turn, saying either 'Rainbase' or 'Alubarna'. Finally, the two groups stood separately on each side of the room. Luffy, Sanji, Ace, and I were going to face Crocodile at Rainbase, while Zoro, Usopp, Chopper, Nami, and Vivi were going to Alubarna. It seemed like the most effective split, as we would need much of our strength to go to stopping the rebellion, even though we didn't know Crocodile's full power. Plus, he might not even be there, and we wouldn't want to waste most of our strength.

Our only problems with the groups came from Sanji and Zoro. Sanji desperately wanted to go with Nami and Vivi, although we got him to stop complaining once he saw that I was in his group.

Zoro also wanted to switch groups so that he could get a shot at beating up Crocodile. He still wanted to switch, but we told him that the Baroque Works agents could be at Alubarna, so he quit grumbling.

We divided our supplies proportionally and got ready at the edge of the town. Toh-Toh came out to see us off. He handed Luffy a small flask of water from the hole that they had dug.

The two groups looked at each other, and with an enthusiastic "Yosha!" from Luffy, set off on their separate paths.

"Wait! Remember about the arm bands if you're not sure that one of us is real!" I called after them, hoping they could hear me.

XxX

"There's sand in my shoe..."

"I'll carry you, Anni-chwan!"

"I'm hungry..."

"Why are the supplies so heavy if they're only half of what we have?"

I sighed, taking off my shoe to shake out the sand. I was originally excited about seeing a desert, but by now, I was starting to feel a bit worn out. There was only so much you could do to entertain yourself in a desert.

As I walked, I scooped up a handful of sand and let it fall between my fingers. It tickled. Scooping up another, I slowly heated my hand up until the sand particles melted together, the blew on it to cool it off. It wasn't clear, but if you squinted hard enough, there were parts where the sand was less opaque.

"Hey, look!" I laughed, showing off the heavy lump of solid sand.

The three boys stared at it for a long time. I could almost hear the wheels turning in their heads until Luffy said, "What is it?"

Sanji swatted him. "That was an insult to Anni-chan! She obviously put a lot of effort into making this... um..." he waved his hands about trying to think of a word to describe it, settling on, "Thing."

"I melted the sand. It's kinda like glass," I informed them.

Ace picked up a handful of sand and tried it himself, but it dripped out of his hand. It cooled as it fell though, so it ended up looking really neat. Luffy's eyes bugged out as he watched.

"Awesome! Can I try?" he said as he scooped up some sand and stared at it.

As Ace lectured his brother, Sanji knelt down and drew a short squiggly line in the sand. Looking up at me, he said, "Do you think you could use this as a mold?"

I sat down beside him and tried to pour some of the molten sand into the makeshift mold. The liquid sand poured out of my hands and went along the outline of the mold. When I picked it up, a bunch of the sand particles from the desert stuck to the liquid. I brushed them off, and it was left with a bumpy finish.

I frowned at it. "Well that didn't really work."

Sanji put an arm around my shoulders, saying, "Don't pout, my lovely flower! You will perfect it someday."

I noticed that Sanji's arm was migrating south, and I was relieved when I heard Ace's voice call, "Come on! We need to get to Rainbase!"

"Yeah, let's go, Sanji," I exclaimed, jumping up and running over to the two brothers. The four of us walked in silence for a while. I tried to make figures out of the sand, but I wasn't very good at it. Over the course of about an hour, I managed to create an accurate representation of Luffy, complete with all four limbs stretched out and looking kind of droopy as they dripped off the side of my hand.

It got ichy, so I tried in vain to shake off the glass, but it was firmly stuck on my hand. I pulled at it with my other hand. Just as my skin was about to rip off, I heard a panicked yell.

Luffy, with a piece of cactus in his hand, pointed to my hand and shouted, "The sand is eating Anni's hand! Use an axe! Quick, Sanji, make a cake!"

Sanji grabbed the cactus out of the captain's hand. "Why did you eat this? Last time you did this, you drank all of our water!"

"Thirsty..." Luffy moaned, switching moods and drooping over tiredly.

The cook looked closely at the cactus before throwing it over his shoulder. "This won't quench your thirst. It isn't even nutritious," he said.

Luffy dived for the cactus and grabbed it before it hit the ground. He jumped up and posed, holding the cactus high in the air.

"It'll quench ya! It's the quenchiest!" he announced like he was advertising it. His head snapped around and he pointed off in the distance. "Look! A giant golden crocodile! Maybe it's friendly! Hellooo... Can you hear me?" He started waving his arms around in the air, looking like a giant noodle.

I shaded my eyes with my hand and squinted in the direction that he was pointing. Sure enough, there was a huge golden pyramid with a giant golden crocodile perched on top of it.

"Is that Rainbase?" Ace asked. His eyebrows nearly reached his hat as he stared at it. He dropped the rope that was connected to the sled of supplies that he was dragging. Sanji's cigarette fell out of his mouth as he gaped in awe. Luffy started spinning in circles as he did his noodle dance.

"Well, ya think anyone we know lives there?" I asked rhetorically. I was shocked at the sheer amount of wealth that was on display. I mean, who has so much money that they could build a gold pyramid and put a gold crocodile on the top? Not to mention what could be inside! Definitely not me.

"Hmm, if I had to guess, I'd say that this is Nami's future playhouse."

I laughed at Ace's joke. I could picture Nami swimming in gold and having a castle twice the size of this. I suddenly had a chilling feeling that Nami knew exactly what I was thinking and would fine me for it. I shuddered and started walking towards the city, grabbing Luffy's arm as I went. The other two followed after a moment more of admiration.

XxX

As we neared the city, the cactus juice wore off Luffy and was replaced with the smell of barbecued food. At the edge of the city we found a small group of palm trees to leave the supplies in. Continuing into Rainbase, Sanji and I had to hold Luffy back from rampaging through the restaurants.

We eventually reached the base of the pyramid. I looked up and saw a sign saying 'Rain Dinners Casino'. Surrounding the casino was a deep pool filled with huge crocodiles. The look in their eyes just screamed murder as they eyed up the fancy people walking along the bridge to the casino.

"What's the plan?" I asked quietly as we walked over the bridge. The people around us wore fancy clothes with excessive accessories. One lady in particular carried a shoulder bag with jewels stitched into the pattern of a face of a chihuahua. The small dog was riding in the bag looking quite smug.

"We go in and kick Crocodile's ass," Luffy declared, thumping one fist into his open hand.

"No, baka. We should be in teams of two," Sanji suggested, "The four of us go in, and we each explore one side of the casino. If Crocodile is here, then he's most likely in some kind of secret room."

"I think that the best division of fire-power," I snickered at my own joke, "Would be if Ace went with Luffy and I went with Sanji. That way, each team has one hand-to-hand -or foot- fighter and one pyromaniac. What do you think?"

The three nodded. We approached the doors with Ace and Sanji in front. As we walked past the man at the entrance, he put a hand out in front of me and Luffy. All four of us stopped, unsure of what he was doing.

"I'm sorry, but you two," he indicated to Luffy and I, "May not enter. There is an age limit of eighteen, so as to discourage young citizens who could form an addiction to gambling," he said with a forced smile and obviously rehearsed words.

"Aw," I said, and reached up to hug the two who were allowed to enter, whispering, "We'll meet you inside, wherever the bar is, 'kay?"

Ace and Sanji walked into the casino, as Luffy and I made our way to one side of the pyramid. I noticed a set of big, ornate windows about two stories above the ground floor and pointed them out to Luffy after making sure that no one was staring at us.

"Can we get up there?" I asked.

Luffy grabbed me with his left arm and shot his right up to the windowsill. He caught on and went flying up, dragging me behind.

The glass shattered as we crashed through it into a lavishly decorated room. Fortunately it was empty, and no one had seen us, or else we would have had a problem. The one drunk person who was outside yelling, 'There were two of them! The guy's arm stretched out and they broke through the window! I swear!' was being politely escorted out over the bridge.

I stood up and took in the room with a whistle. There were paintings of Crocodile himself on every wall, all in golden frames set against off-white walls. The blood red curtains were edged with gold rope. On the intricate drawers, glass vases were filled with every colour of gem I could imagine. The handwoven carpet was a detailed garden of flowers on a dark wooden floor.

"Woah, how much do you think we could get if we sold this entire room?" I asked Luffy, who was also admiring the room.

"Shishishi~, you sound like Nami," he laughed.

"Imagine if Nami were here. I bet the room would be cleaned out and her pockets would be huge," I covered my mouth with my hand to keep from attracting the attention of the entire casino through my laughter.

Luffy walked towards the door and tried the handle. It opened silently into a hallway that was just as decorated as the room. Sounds of laughter and talking drifted up from the end of the hall where it turned onto a set of curved stairs that led into the casino.

Just as I took a step out of the door, a sparkle caught my eye. I looked back into the room and saw one of the jewels glinting in the light. I was reminded of Nami's hair by it's orange colour, then I realized that maybe I could give it to her to repay my future debts.

I reached down into the glass vase it was in and pulled it out. Dropping it into a pocket in my bag, I stared at the other multicoloured jewels. My weakness for sparkly things got the best of me, and, being the slightly less-than-honest pirate that I was, I grabbed a big handful of them and shoved them in my pocket.

I ran to catch up with Luffy, who was crouching at the top of the stairs. He was being oddly careful, so I peered around the corner. On the stairs was a man who had obviously had too much to drink. He looked slightly overweight and was much taller than either me or Luffy. He seemed to be a pirate from the shape of hat perched on his long black curly hair, and he wore a red jacket. His laughter could probably be contributed to the mug of sake in his hand, or the pie in the other.

"Should we wait until he leaves, or sneak around him? Shishishi~ I'm not good at sneaking," Luffy whispered.

"Uh, let's try sneaking around, because drunk people don't tend to move," I replied. We got up and tiptoed around the man on his left as he took a drink from his mug. However, before we could run down into the casino area, he lowered his mug and belched.

We froze as he noticed us.

"Ya know what sucks?" he slurred drunkenly, "They don't have cherry pie. I had to get this crap instead!"

I stared at Luffy and he blinked back. I sensed something off about the man, but I turned to the drunk, and said, "That's nice. I'm sure you'll get your pie, but for now, we have to go, alright?"

"Wait," he squinted. Luffy turned to scan the crowd for Ace and Sanji as the drunk studied my face, "You're that... pry-o... pie row... may-nee-ack, right? The, uh, the one that-"

I cut him off. "Yeah, uh, we have to go now, so if you don't mind, we'll be leaving."

From experience, I knew that drunk people tended to get angry easily, so it was best to be polite.

"No, wait," he said through a bite of pie as he tipped over to one side, "Ya gotta tell the people that it's me! But not the people that are looking for me, just the people that I'm looking for. Those people -the other ones- are nasty. But the others are good... even though they didn't do the pie dance... or maybe they will..."

As I struggled to decipher that speech, Luffy jumped over the railing of the stairs. He had spotted Ace and Sanji, who were laughing with drinks in their hands. I was about to follow, but the drunk's hand grabbed my foot.

"Your friend over there," he said darkly, tilting his head in the direction of my nakama at the bar, "Has a fiery temper. I wouldn't trust him. But that's just my opinion," he said, reverting back to drunk mode.

Now thoroughly creeped out, I speed-walked down the remaining stairs and made my way through the many people to my nakama.

What the hell was that? Who was that guy? And was he talking about Ace? How does he know him? Why wouldn't I trust Ace? Geez, too many questions. But I did feel something very off about that man. Something very off.

As I approached the bar, the three boys stood up. Sanji indicated the one exit in the center of the far wall. It had a red carpet lined with ropes leading up to it, so I assumed that it was where Crocodile's secret room was. It split into two hallways, so Ace and Luffy would go in the left hallway while Sanji and I would take the right.

We split up, Ace and Luffy walking along the left side of the carpet, and Sanji and I walking along the right. Once near the doorway, we discreetly walked over the ropes and each ducked into our respective hallways.

"Good luck," I whispered.

The hallway that Sanji and I had entered was not very long and filled with doors. Each door looked quite different. For example, one had dirt coming out from beneath the door, while another was covered with spider-webs. I was not going to enter that room for any reason.

After peeking in every room, we concluded that none of the doors looked like they would be good for a secret room for a Shichibukai. At the end of the hallway, it split. One hallway led to a stairway, while the other had more doors.

"Do you want to split up, or stay together?" I asked Sanji.

"I would stay with you forever, Anni-chan," he replied enthusiastically, "But for the sake of time I would recommend that we split up. I will see what is at the end of this staircase, while you look in these rooms."

I nodded. "Okay, but if you run into anybody, come back."

He nodded and started up the stairs. I opened the door to the first room and stepped in. I was so fascinated with the array of knives and swords that were in the room that I didn't check for people.

Crashing and yelling sounds came from the direction that Ace and Luffy went, so I spun around to go check on them – only to run into a rock-hard person. Blinking, I stepped back and rubbed my nose.

I looked up to apologize to who I assumed was Sanji, but a hand covered my eyes and a sharp pain hit my neck.

Before I fell unconscious, I muttered, "You're not Sanji..."

A/N

Ooo, I wonder who the mysterious people are...

The story is going a little off from canon, but it's okay, right? Also, I should be back to a weekly schedule if all goes well. Tell me what you think of the chapter now, and what you think was going through the mysterious pie-lover's head.

See ya and have a great summer!