Chapter Thirty-One | The Lion's Den

Down they fell, the wind whipping at their cheeks just long enough for the Straw Hats to think there would be no end to the pit, until another trapdoor opened beneath them revealing light, a tiled floor, and the gray smear of latticed steel all around.

A fraction of a second later Quinn swore when she struck the tile face first, although it hurt far less than it should have. More resilient now, she reminded herself, rolling onto her back only for a whirl of smoke to appear overhead. Her strength left her when Smoker's jitte found purchase against her throat, his brow drawn low with anger.

"Get off her!"

The rubbery punch aimed at his head did nothing, only carving through an immaterial puff of white. Smoker didn't even bother to look away, but his eyes did widen with surprise when Luffy sucked in a deep breath and, with his body inflated to a ridiculous size, blew him away. He disappeared again, only for an instant, because as soon as the smoke that made up his body struck the bars of the cage they'd found themselves in did he come back together, slumped with exhaustion.

"Seastone?" he growled through his cigar, trying but failing to drag himself away from the heavy rungs. "Damnit, Crocodile…"

Snatching his jitte from the ground and propping herself up on it as she got back to her feet, Quinn shook her head in annoyance, before taking a look at the vast underground room they'd found themselves in. Shining brass and gold trim ran circles around the ceiling, palm trees and wide-leaved ferns dotting the carpeted floor. A table sat a short distance away, fine food and crystal decanters full of some amber liquor dotting its surface. Windows more akin to portholes looked out into the lake that Rain Dinners was built on top of, reminding Quinn of the view from the Slytherin common room. Instead of the occasional murky figure of the Giant Squid there were Bananadiles, their immense form crystal clear through the polished looking glass. It was intimidating, she'd admit, and Quinn assumed they'd be getting a look at Crocodile soon enough. Judging by the look of the place he seemed the gloating type.

"Luffy?"

"Yeah?"

"Would you be mad if I just shot Crocodile the moment he showed up?"

He hummed and scratched his chin. "I wanted to beat him up…"

"But we're here to help Vivi, right?"

"Eh. Sure. Go ahead then." Crossing his arms behind his head, Luffy sat down and leaned against the smooth wall opposite the cage bars. He slumped the instant he touched it, shoulders sinking and his eyelids falling low. "Huh?"

"It's seastone," Nami hissed, dragging Luffy away from the wall, keeping a close eye on Smoker while she did. For his part, Smoker had clawed his way to his feet and was now standing as far away from them as he could, though he kept shooting glances at the jitte still held in Quinn's hands. He was also doing an incredible job ignoring the slingshot leveled at his head, Usopp using it as a shield as much as he was an actual weapon.

"You're not in league with Crocodile, are you?" He suddenly asked, Usopp flinching away from him the instant his lips so much as twitched, nearly dropping his slingshot in the process.

"Does it look like we are?"

"Yeah, stupid. We hate that guy," Luffy added, glaring at the man.

"It could all be a clever trick, but…" Casting a quick glance Luffy's way, Smoker then shook his head. "That would be unlikely."

"You do have a lick of sense then, hey?"

He took a step forward, fists clenching. "I won't take that tone from you, Marine Killer."

Biting back her urge to snip at him, Quinn instead asked him a question. "What crime would be met with a death sentence for a Marine?"

Pausing, Smoker tilted his head at her. "What are you implying?"

"Have you listened to a single word I've said to you?"

"Why would I ever give a scumbag like you the time of day?"

"Fuck's sake, you're worse than Percy." Putting a hand up, she tried her best to wrangle together the next words to come out of her mouth. "Say a Marine was getting a cut from some pirates for turning a blind eye, and they did that for… Nami, how many years had Arlong been terrorizing the Conomi isles?"

"Eight years," she spat. "Eight long years."

Smoker was both easy and impossible to read. She could tell what he was feeling without needing to take so much as a cursory peek at his mind, his heart on his sleeve and his eyebrows doing thrice the talking of his lips. But the substance of those thoughts evaded Quinn's studious gaze.

"You were stationed in East Blue. You know Arlong."

"I know of him. I'm also aware that you're all responsible for taking him down."

"Were you aware of the fact that Captain… Nezumi?" At Nami's curt nod Quinn continued, "Nezumi had been taking handouts from him for years? That Marine that I shot? He tried to kill me – on Nezumi's orders – when I called them thieves for trying to steal what was effectively ransom money. Ransom money, I might add, raised with the express purpose of buying Cocoyashi village back from Arlong."

A grunt, and Smoker nearly chewed the tip off his cigar, instead rolling it to the other side of his mouth and crossing his arms, fury ebbing off him in waves. "Nezumi," he said after a moment, looking up at Quinn with contempt. "You're implying a Marine Captain was responsible for such a crime? And what? That makes you a just executioner?"

"Would anything have happened to him?" Nami asked, planting her climatact at her feet and leaning on it like a walking stick. "Has anything happened to him? Has he been investigated? Punished? Because I know that my friends and neighbours back home would have told someone about him by now."

"That doesn't give you the right-"

"Oh for God's sake. Just answer her question."

Growling, Smoker's eyes narrowed before flicking to Nami. "I don't know if anything happened to Nezumi. But if we get out of this place…" He trailed off for a moment, scanning the cell and shuffling his feet. "...I'll be looking into it. Not because I believe you. But if there's any chance, however remote, that he was working alongside Arlong? I want to make damn certain his head rolls."

"It better," Nami said.

"That guy really was the worst. And he looked like a rat too. Do you remember his teeth?" Tapping his foot on the floor, Luffy pointed at Smoker's poached jitte, still being used by Quinn as a glorified walking stick. "For a guy who hates pirates it's kinda' funny you fight like one."

"What!?"

"That thing," he echoed, pointing at the jitte again. "With the seastone on it."

Smoker ground his teeth together, glaring at Luffy. "So we've gotten to gloating already?"

"Gloating?" Luffy gawked at him and then pouted, turning his back on the man. "I was trying to be nice. Jeez."

Even Usopp snorted at that, Nami stifling a giggle behind her hand while Quinn chuckled quietly. In a short few seconds Smoker's expression shifted from anger to poorly disguised confusion. That only made Nami laugh harder, and Usopp hid his face behind her back as if it would stop his half-stifled snickering from echoing round the cell.

"You people are insane." Crossing his arms and putting on an air of unbothered stoicism as well as he could, Quinn thought the man held himself relatively well, considering he'd been disarmed and trapped with who he considered his enemy. "Why are you even after Crocodile anyways? The only thing that comes to mind would be the infamy of taking down a Warlord"

With a grunt and a shake of the head, Luffy crossed his arms. "Because our friend asked us to, that's why."

A pause, and Smoker went to answer when a drawling laugh interrupted him, the crisp snap of wooden soles cracking against the distant marble steps ringing out alongside it. It was then that Quinn and the rest of them got their first look at Crocodile, a giant of a man that stood head and shoulders above even Smoker, who loomed over them like a spectre from his shadowy corner of the cell.

But it wasn't Crocodile's height alone that made his presence a heavy thing. It was his very presence, a weight about him that carried with his every step. And with black, slicked hair, a cigar clamped between his teeth, and the knotted scar that stretched across his face from cheek to cheek, his appearance did nothing to quell that presence. The great golden hook that took the place of his left hand did nothing to help that either, the curve of it glinting, that shine telling of an unmistakably deadly edge.

Almost immediately upon setting eyes on the man, Luffy jumped towards the bars and shouted at him. "Croc!"

A second later he slumped, tongue lolling from his mouth as he crumpled against the seastone bars. Weak murmurs of confusion slipped out of him while Nami cursed, grabbing Luffy by the shoulders and dragging him away from the bars. "Moron," she growled quietly, helping him to his feet.

"Forgot," he admitted, before crossing his arms and directing a glare Crocodile's way. "Lemme out of here so I can kick your ass!"

"Uppity, aren't you?" Cocking his head to the side, Crocodile took a long puff off his cigar, studying the lot of them with lazy abandon. "Unfortunately for you, you're not getting out of that cage. You're going to die here, Straw Hat. You and your friends, and that wayward Marine I see sulking in the corner. Don't be shy, Smoker. It's unbecoming of a Captain of our proud and loyal soldiers of Justice."

Smoker said nothing, though he did grind one of his cigars between his molars and exhale sharply, his gaze never leaving the Warlord before them.

Chuckling again, Crocodile spread his arms wide and took another step forward. "The Straw Hats… you've certainly caused a lot of havoc for a bunch of wet behind the ear rookies." His voice, already low, dropped almost impossibly so, and Quinn thought it something that would better match the giants she'd seen tearing through friend and foe alike at the Final Battle. "I'd be impressed if you'd gone and picked a fight with someone other than myself. Instead, all you've managed to do is act like the very insistent, very obnoxious insects that you are."

Crocodile's eyes, a pair of black, beady, cruel things shoved deep into their sockets, narrowed as he closed another few steps between them and the cage they were trapped within. His hooked arm raised, and the instant it did Quinn unholstered her pistol and fired a warning shot through the bars. As expected, it did nothing, Crocodile looking down at the sand-edged hole in his gut dispassionately.

"You really thought that would work, didn't you?"

Her lips twisted into a smirk, and Quinn fired again, lacing the bullet with enough lightning to turn sand to glass on impact. She nearly blinded herself with her own attack, the heavy crack of gunfire a hollow precursor to the enraged howl that followed it. But the bullet, the earth shattering snap it made as it bored through the air, shocks of sheer white bursting in a corona that scorched the tile in its path - had only managed to carve through Crocodile's arm, just above the elbow.

He clutched his scarred and smoking limb, a lattice of bright red spiderwebs crisscrossing from wrist to elbow. A second later he stumbled, twitching from the aftershock, and nearly fell to his knees, and the solemn grunt of pain he gave out cut through the silence that had followed her attack. Sand collected around the scorched, blistered mess of Crocodile's arm and solidified, protecting it in a sheath of tan stone. Now armoured, Crocodile pointed at her with his reinforced arm and scowled fiercely.

"You caught me by surprise," he admitted, eyes flicking to the pistol still pointed his way. "You're lucky. That cage is the only thing protecting you right now."

Quinn was starkly reminded of the casual ease with which Mihawk dispatched Zoro, and though Crocodile seemed a shadow of the man, something about him contradicted that same gut feeling. He was powerful, yet stunted, some invisible malaise hanging over him that could not be seen nor felt, yet it could be perceived nonetheless. It was like rust had been packed into his bones, in and between his joints, even his soul – and that rust eagerly awaited the moment it could be shrugged off like an old coat and the true Crocodile, hidden beneath, could shine once again.

And that was when she realized that he hadn't just flinched at the second gunshot, he'd almost dodged it.

The fact that he stood unbothered and largely contemptuous of the wound inflicted on him spoke even more loudly of his prowess than that, and a voice in the back of her head eagerly rallied at the prospect of herself or Luffy personally delivering his comeuppance.

It was a strange thing to think, all things considered. She should fear the man. And she did, she'd be a fool not to, but ever since she set foot upon these strange seas it felt as though a wire had come loose inside her mind, the magics of this world playing havoc on her body and conscience alike. Quinn feared Crocodile and yearned to knock the wind from his sails in equal and opposite measure, and that determination had her wanting to not kill the man, but upend his life. She wanted him to see his plans, years in the making no doubt, go up in a blaze of glorious proportions. She wanted him to know that it was the Straw Hats who took his plot and tore it to pieces right in front of him, to see the recognition in his eyes before he was dragged to a faraway prison cell never to see the light of day again.

She turned her back on Crocodile, who she could easily picture gnashing his teeth at the brazen move. Thankfully, Quinn needn't worry about reprisal, as she was safe behind the seastone bars – the aura they emanated easily able to prevent Crocodile from snaking between them and throttling her. He could try and shoot her, but her magic hummed beneath her fingertips, ready to spring up in an instant and put another barrier between the two of them. Her gaze flitted past an exhausted Nami, a quivering Usopp, and landed on her newfound brother, to whom she gave a meaningful look, one Luffy returned with a grin, no need for words to convey what they both felt.

They were going to ruin Crocodile.

They would do it because it was the right thing to do. Because their friend had asked it of them. Because in the short time they'd been in Alabasta they'd seen firsthand the shadowed eyes of her peoples and the weight upon their thin and sunchapped shoulders. Most of all, they were going to do it because the two of them could not and would not abide a tyrant, especially one as vainglorious as Crocodile.

-::-

When some upstart rookie had escaped him in Loguetown solely through the intervention of a man that was more myth than flesh, Smoker knew that calm days were now behind him. He'd set off the next morning with a fervor that bordered on mania, intent on knocking Straw Hat down a peg and in doing so wiping away the stain that sullied his otherwise impeccable record. Tashigi was just as eager, mentioning something about Straw Hat's swordsman under her breath when he gave her the orders to round the men up and pursue the ragtag crew.

Tashigi was a good second. She would be a great second once her naivety had been sharpened into something more suited to the Grand Line.

Unfortunately, something about his failure to capture the slippery little brat had made him reckless. Maybe it was the sheer insult of it all, to have a boy with nary a hair on his chin wreak havoc in his town and walk away untouched. Perhaps it was because he hadn't had the opportunity to track a pirate down in years, sequestered in the East Blue outside of the annual visit to Marineford he made not of his own choice, but because it was compulsory for someone of his rank. And maybe, just maybe, he'd gone a bit stir crazy after being tossed around by the most wanted man alive and a murderous woman with hair as red as fire, the two of them forming a wall between him and some kid with a patched together hat.

There was something different about her. About her Captain. The two had an air to them, something in the way they walked, they talked, that made you want to stop and listen. Yet, they were both completely unassuming. A boy with a scar beneath one eye and his… First Mate? Smoker didn't know, but the way she mirrored him was strange, a scar of her own splitting her brow and branching out to her nose, her cheek. It was a scar unlike anything he'd ever seen before, and the only thing that came to mind when looking at it was the split-second flash of lightning. That chaotic bramble leaping from sky to soil.

He'd tracked them to Alabasta after listening in on a call coming from Little Garden, and that ended with him being unceremoniously launched through a wall, and then getting into a fight with one of Whitebeard's commanders who, if he heard right, may or may not be related to Straw Hat.

Straw Hat.

Smoker had been there that day. That damned, awful day. He'd seen Roger, heard his words, watched him smile even as blades parted his flesh and took with them his life. He'd smiled. Before he died, and as he died, the grin he wore was joyous. Because he'd won. He knew exactly what would happen when he spoke those fateful words and set the world ablaze. But even still, confronted with his own, imminent death, he beamed with pride.

And so had Straw Hat. Locked up in the very same gallows, he'd grinned at his crew, the crowd, and the apology that flew from his lips sounded more like a passing quip than someone's final words.

He couldn't get the image of it out of his head.

Which was probably why he was now stuck in a cell with them, baffled beyond belief and barely able to truly worry about the Warlord currently staring them all down. Because these four trapped with him beneath Rain Dinners were pirates, but… they weren't. They didn't act like pirates. They didn't talk like pirates. They barely even looked like pirates.

And one of them, that damned woman, had told him that the man she'd killed was corrupt? Even more surprisingly, a part of him believed her?

It was unfathomable. An hour ago the only thing on his mind was seeing the bunch of them shipped off to Impel Down and now he was trying to wrap his head around the very real possibility that the entirety of the East Blue Marines were either corrupt, incompetent, or outright traitors. Morgan was enough on his own, but Nezumi? Everyone working under him?

Arlong was a monster, a true pirate that checked all the boxes – pillaging, murdering, and all else in between. But if what Straw Hat's navigator had said held true, then Nezumi and a hundred other men were responsible for an incomprehensible amount of bloodshed and suffering.

The thought followed, then, that if that was the case then what else had he been lied to about? No institution was perfect, that was obvious to him, but for Nezumi to be able to get away with everything he was accused of, what checks weren't being checked? What scales weren't being balanced? Where did the corruption begin and end, and how could he identify it on his own and, even if he did, what could a common Captain do to mitigate it?

Shaking his head, Smoker kept to his shadowy corner of the cell, just shy of the seastone bars. Monkey D. Luffy, Quinn, Nami, Usopp. He rattled off the names in his head, committing them all to memory for his later report should he make it out of Crocodile's prison alive. Smoker had barely even thought about that – the very real possibility of what would be a frankly embarrassing demise, and instead all he could think about were the four lunatics he shared a cage with.

It certainly helped that all Crocodile had done so far was taunt them and get injured by whatever strange Devil Fruit powers the woman had. He may die here, but at the very least he got to see the executioner's hand get bitten.

He died or he didn't die. Simple as that. What wasn't simple was the issue of why one of those names sounded so familiar.

Quinn? No.

Usopp? That one rang a slight bell.

Nami didn't make him pause for a second, so it must be Luffy.

Or was it-

Smoker froze, staring at the back of Straw Hat's head, who was in the process of leaning away from the bars while he told the woman that her plan was, "Cool, but not as cool as what I came up with." Not a second later he let loose a string of childish taunts towards Crocodile, who looked both amused and offended by the temerity of what amounted to a very loud, very troublesome gnat. But Straw Hat's behaviour only served to solidify the mad theory bouncing around in Smoker's head, far too many parallels racking up alongside what Smoker would admit was a blatantly conspiratorial marriage of correlation and causation.

Monkey D. Luffy.

Monkey D. Garp.

It was impossible. Improbable. Insane. In what world could those two be connected?

But… they acted the same. They laughed the same. They ate the same. The more he thought about it, the more it made far too much sense that the brat in front of him and the absolute terror that was the Hero of the Marines were, in fact, related.

"Garp, you bastard," he whispered, blinking unsteadily, wishing more than anything that he could leave this cell and sit down in the veritable throne beyond it, if only to steady himself. Instead he settled for lighting up one of his many cigars, eyes slamming shut the instant the smoke danced across his tongue.

"Mind if I have one of those?"

Grunting, he opened his eyes to see the woman – Quinn – holding a hand out expectantly. His gaze flicked between her waiting palm and her face, dancing back and forth until finally settling on the pirate who looked more a starved scholar than the rugged pillaging type. His hand moved before he could even think, plucking a cigar from his jacket pocket and planting it in her hand, at which she smiled.

"Thank you."

She flicked the end of lazily, a twitching finger serving to clip the tobacco in place of a blade. The woman lit it just the same, gliding the pad of her thumb across the tip of the cigar, revealing it to be lit a healthy cherry. A puff, two more, and she blew out a small puff of smoke that she frowned at for a moment, obviously thinking about something, before letting the idea go with a minute shrug.

"What do I owe you?"

"Hm?"

"For the cigar."

Smoker blinked. "Three thousand."

"Thirty odd then, not a bad price." She took a thin wad of bills out of her pocket and held it out to him, which Smoker took after a moment's hesitation. "Cheers."

He would have said more, perhaps asked a question about what bizarre Devil Fruit she must have eaten, when the sound of footsteps echoed through the vast room, and the shrill of a girl's shouting that followed soon after drowned it out entirely.

Smoker did notice Quinn's shoulders go rigid, her countenance shifting between one blink and the next. She'd been remarkably relaxed, taking her and her crew's capture in stride, and Straw Hat seemed the same besides his fidgeting and forgetfulness when it came to the seastone bars. The other two… they were nervous. Very nervous. But the calm of their crewmates – their unassuming leader – kept anxiety that tempered.

Now?

Now he was thinking she was an ex-marine. Had to be, what with how swiftly she stood to attention, directing her gaze towards the ruckus and smoothly shifting her centre of balance to prepare for any attacks. Her right hand rested on the pommel of her sword, her left on the butt of her pistol, shoulders tensed to draw them at a moment's notice.

She'd seen combat. Proper combat. War.

Her earlier words struck him then, and a faded memory of Nezumi erupted to the forefront of his mind. That memory was dashed away when he set sight on the source of the enraged screams and her captor.

"The Princess?" Smoker asked aloud, his breath hitching as he continued. "Nico Robin?"

"Ah, Vivi my dear. You've finally arrived." Crocodile spread his arms wide on greeting, turning his back on the cage. "Or do you prefer Miss Wednesday? Either way, you've done a remarkable job dodging my assassins." He closed the distance between them, the Princess shivering with fright or anger, Smoker didn't know, but the enraged voice of Straw Hat cut through the din.

"Don't you dare touch her."

"I was going to do nothing of the sort. Come, Vivi. Sit." Pulling out a chair, Crocodile gestured to it, before striding over to the other end of the table and taking his own seat, sending a glance Nico Robin's way as she sidled up next to him. "I'd like to tell you all about how I'm going to destroy your country. Or, I would have, had your… compatriots not attacked me. Miss All Sunday? If you would."

With a swift chop, Nico Robin's hand cracked against the back of the Princesses head, knocking her to the ground and leaving her limp. Straw Hat raged, screaming his anger, and all the while Crocodile laughed. Giving the slumped form of Vivi a curious prod with the tip of his shoe, he turned their way and grinned. "I'd wish you all well, but we both know you're going to die here."

He then flicked a switch on the wall and slammed a button with his fist, the grinding of gears and creaking of machinery ringing out from within the walls. In the middle of the room a hatch slowly swung open, revealing the shimmer and glint of water, and with it Smoker's heart dropped into his belly.

"The Bananadiles…" came the quiet, dismayed whisper of the boy with the slingshot. "Oh no, no, no, no-"

"We're gonna' get out of here, we're gonna' save Vivi, then we're gonna' save this country," Straw Hat insisted through gritted teeth. "So quit crying."

"Yes, Captain."

And as Crocodile and Nico Robin walked away, the sudden ring of a transponder snail made itself known. A click later, and her voice echoed down to them from the top of the stairs. "Yes? Is this the Millions?"

"This thing working?" said the voice on the other end. "You hear me alright?"

"We do. Speak quickly and clearly. We have little time."

"Ah, perfect. Well, this is Restaurant de la Shit. Remember me?"

"What?" Smoker breathed at the same time Crocodile loudly exclaimed the same. Straw Hat, on the other hand, looked at them all and smiled.

"See? I told you we're gettin' out of here."