"Yo ho yo ho, to Arabasta."

""Yo ho yo ho, they won't last, ah!""

"On a dead sea, dead sea, we be sailin'."

""Throwing the hostages straight off the railing!""

"Comin' for the murder and the plunder to be makin'."

""Finding cash, leaving only ashes to be rakin'!""

"On a dead sea, dead sea, we be sailin'."

""If you listen, if you listen, you can hear 'em wailin'!""

If there was any doubt about the literary and musical talents of the crew, their attempts at fabricating their own sea shanty would be putting them to rest by the third day of your journey to Arabasta, at the latest. Similarly, if there were any doubts about you having nothing better to do than silently listen to them through their own ears and critique what they come up with, they are dead, buried, unearthed and thrown in a ditch to rot by this point.

One of the things you might've underestimated, when you went and decided a life of crime on the high seas was just, like, the thing to do here, is the sheer boredom of long sea voyages, falling over the ship like a never-ending tide of tediousness blanketing everyone in sight until someone comes up with something to do, receding just long enough to come back the moment whatever it is gets old.

Doubly so when most chores are automated like on the Grand Cruiser, to boot, leaving less to make the minions do and keep them busy. Case in point, despite your best efforts to distract them, the crew has taken to trying out varying cadences and lyrics to throw into a themed sea shanty, to… middling results.

In their defense, they've managed to mostly rhyme, slang rhyming or otherwise. Ah well, there's worse things they could be getting up to, and at least they managed to find plenty of pornographic magazines to distract themselves with in the evenings and all that.

Texa Texa Town was kind of a blessing in that regard. They had quite a lot of porn lying around, and the men gathered it like the porn mags were made of solid gold or something. Considering they seem to have set up a crude kind of barter economy based on them, maybe that comparison's more apt than you'd assume at first glance, even.

"From the Dead Sea there ain't no escapin'."

""No runnin', no gunnin', it won't be helpin'!""

"Yeah, I think we need to workshop that line a little more, guys."

"You heard the lady! What rhymes with 'escapin''?"

"Maybe aping? You can't ape us, that kinda thing?"

"How about 'we're gonna take you' or something?"

Yeah. The worst part is, you're just kind of listening in because you have nothing better to do yourself right now, while the sun's still out- the girls are just hanging around below deck, seeing as they're still not exactly immune to the effects of the sun.

On the one hand, you want to tell them to go and get used to it already, but on the other hand… Well, you still remember just how vividly unpleasant it felt to be out in the sun, even when it stopped burning you outright.

This is a bit much coming from you of all people, yes, but it's unnatural for a being that doesn't suffer from headaches, nausea or any of those mortal foibles to be subjected to them, especially as pretty fucking bad as what sunlight triggers in vamps. It sucks, so you don't really want to push them into subjecting themselves to it.


Getting all the way to Arabasta takes far more off-tune singing, inexpert crewmanship and ploughing through confusing weather patterns than any sane mind might be comfortable with (Look, the cube-shaped hail and iron sand storms were one thing, but when lightning starts to curl in on itself without you doing anything and storms decide to produce one single, enormous wave they push through the ocean as though by design, you start to have some questions, okay?), but in the end it only takes around two weeks at top speed to finally arrive.

Insofar as you eventually hit upon the unmistakable meteorological stability only a real island's vicinity brings with it, the heat emanating from Arabasta making it clear it's a 'summer type' island, also known as 'one of the hot ones'.

Unsurprising, if you know the place is largely covered in desert. Which you just so happen to do, thanks to the memories of Mister Hairs (who still insists his beard nearly let him escape you to this day, inside your inner world). You'll need some appropriate clothing for the crew once you arrive, of course, wouldn't want anyone to get heatstroke or sunburn while you're active here.

The question remains how exactly to approach this entire thing, of course. You could be open and direct- fly your Jolly Roger coming in, openly start to convert the populace into food while sifting through their souls for anyone connected to Baroque Works, all that good stuff.

Of course that does lack a certain flair of finesse, but it is an option. A much more likely choice on your part, though, is to keep your piracy secret just a little, dock normally and then explore and investigate Arabasta as a whole, figure shit out, get the lay of the land and seek out the choicest bits of soul you can find.

Ooor, and you're mostly considering this approach purely because of just how well you could pull it off, you could overlay Mister Hairs and infiltrate Baroque Works in person, having the girls investigate in the background and stand at the ready for the inevitable bit of fighting should simply assassinating whoever's in charge not be feasible or something.

You're reasonably sure you could imitate the man perfectly, so even if their information security is too insurmountable to overcome in any reasonable time frame, you don't foresee any failure on your own part otherwise. And if you can manage to get your hands on any of the higher ups…

Well, taking apart entire secret organizations may well be your new hobby at this point, honestly.


The kingdom of Arabasta, as you soon find out upon hitting up the nearest harbor and disembarking and after some quick talking with the port authority, once you get a hold of a few of the people responsible for keeping things in order here, happens to be kind of a desert kingdom.

That's not so much an impression as it's the result of a geological survey, courtesy of Taylor spreading herself around and scouting the surroundings. Not that the impression you're getting is any different, mind you; people are wearing appropriate clothing, all white, long-sleeved and airy to deal with the heat and the sun as best they can, the buildings are basically what you'd imagine someone thinks the Middle East would have looked like a thousand years or two ago and even the locals' accents tend to invoke the general area.

Not that you're about to complain overmuch, mind you. Splitting everyone up to spread around the town you ended up in, you go ahead and find yourself the nearest drinking-related establishment, unsure whether they're called pubs, taverns, saloons or whatever else around here.

Seriously, why not just call them 'drinkeries'? It's about as descriptive as you're gonna get and it fits better than the nonsense people came up with so far.

But alas, you do not spend half an hour pouting at humanity's hopelessly incompetent handling of language and instead go in to have a drink. And pump the people around for information.

Mostly to pump for information, yes, but they actually do have some drinks that you would vaguely consider for recreational use yourself. Never having really been into alcohol all that much yourself, that means your interest is largely restrained to the hot cacao drinks, which seem to be somewhat of a local specialty of the particular place you ended up in.

Prices have been hiked up a bit lately due to some temporary supply issues, the way you hear it, but it's nothing you can't afford. The offered hot chocolate ranges from being sweet just like you'd think of it in modern times all the way to spicy and surprisingly filling, so that's something, right?

Oh, yeah, the information. Stuff to find out. Right, so from what you can find, casually scanning for conversation and collating what the others can find out, Baroque Works is… A pretty much unknown quantity around these parts, insofar as most people haven't really heard of them.

As far as pirates and their opposition goes, the one guy everyone knows about would be a pirate named Crocodile, one of the Warlords of the Sea, a title given out by the World Government itself in an attempt to harness the more powerful pirates around against the rest of the rabble, as you understand it. Essentially, he's a sanctioned pirate that gets to dick around without the Marines after his ass in exchange for also screwing over other pirates, at least in theory.

Personally, you think this approach isn't the worst to take, though if they were going to offer pardons to some select pirates they really should do the same for any pirates that don't conduct themselves too atrociously and are open to rejoining society in some productive way.

Sure, that runs counter to the Marines' no-tolerance policy towards piracy in general, but then you could say the same for the whole Warlords thing. Ah well, you ain't here to tell the World Government how to run itself, just to laugh at it for being such utter crap.

Anyways, it's not like Baroque Works existing is a secret around these parts or anything, most locals just aren't aware they're operating in Arabasta itself. Instead, Crocodile is somewhat of a folk hero, a powerful protector of the people and all that jazz.

On the other hand, the ruler of the land, one King Cobra (no, you aren't making the name up and no, you will not comment on it all that much, you've just given up on that account) is held in a little less esteem of late. Apparently, almost the entirety of Sandy Island (again, no comment) has been undergoing a drought for a while now, so while nobody can really blame him for his tragic inability to dictate the weather, there's been quite some unrest against the current regime overall.

To the point a bunch of people actually gathered up into a whole open rebellion, though one that the kingdom isn't doing anything about. Pointedly so, in your opinion- in all likelihood, raising arms against his own citizens probably just isn't what this King Cobra wants on any account.

The specifics of how and why a rebellion arose against him, then, would be kind of interesting to see. Sadly, it seems nobody can give you any exact details, no matter how many free drinks you sling around- beyond general sentiment about the handling of the drought and the Palace's apparent disinterest in the issues resulting from it.

On the other hand, Sarah and three of the crew's guys are currently shaking down one Baroque Works operative they've been able to find for information, though the guy himself doesn't really know much of use in turn. Or didn't, rather, considering Sarah took no risks and just ate him to see what he knew. Same difference for you, really.

He was just a point of contact for a handful of other agents, including one Mister Hairs (which is how you knew of him in the first place), delivering details about what they were meant to accomplish on their next assignments. Interestingly, it turns out Mister Hairs was supposed to blend in with the rebel forces not too far from the city, sabotaging any efforts made to de-escalate any potential hostilities in the next week or two.

Yeah, somehow you're getting the feeling you know why this rebellion is a thing.


It's tempting, you think, to stick around and make a mess of this town, or maybe run around sabotaging everyone and everything in sight just for the heck of it, you decide you may as well move on to greener pastures first, seeing how you're kind of interested in consuming this Crocodile guy and all.

Specifically, you find out he actually runs a casino over in a nearby small city called Rainbase. Which, as it just so happens, is your best option for actually finding out where the dude's hanging out right this moment. Unsurprisingly, he doesn't exactly publicize his personal to-do lists on a daily basis, so actually finding him might take a little doing.

Not, like, overly much- if you really need to, you can always bust out your magic to just point yourself in his direction and go from there- but for the moment you're content to take it slow, see the sights and maybe fuck with the man's casino. They are, after all, establishments whose purpose is to pretty much siphon money from elsewhere; you're just looking to redirect where some of it flows, for once.

The joys of being stupidly powerful and not giving shits, you suppose. You can just plan to walk in there, cheat a bunch and come out with a ton of money in tow just because.

Organizing your move to Rainbase would be a lengthy and annoying process for most groups, but as for yourself… Well, you can just telepathically tell everyone to gather up while setting the Grand Cruiser up to guard itself, the animated nature of your ship making leaving it alone by itself a lot less risky than it would be otherwise.

The crew gathers not far outside the town, out in the desert covering the majority of Sandy Island. You do carry some of your money, a burlap sack filled with Beri, as starting capital for your planned activities, too- if you had any, you'd have taken one with a Beri symbol painted on it for good measure, but you couldn't be arsed to bother for what amounts to a relatively minor joke.

"So, uh, captain? How're we getting through the desert?" One of the mooks asks, looking around. "I heard something about Moving Crabs in town, so I thought…"

"We have neither the time nor the inclination to make nice with the local wildlife," you announce, carefully focusing your attention on the sand you're all standing on. "Now all of you, make sure not to run around too much."

"Why's tha-aaaaah!"

Adjusting the gravitational forces applying to a small chunk of the desert, you raise a platform of sand up into the air, lifting both yourself and your entire group upwards.

"If you fall off, I'm sticking you to the underside of this thing. Just letting you know."

And just like that, you're off, flying towards the direction of Rainbase with considerable speed. Not too much speed, wouldn't want the wind pressure to damage your minions, but certainly pretty fast.


Travel times through the desert have to be an absolute bitch, for most people. Y'know, people that don't have superior transportation options.

For you, making your way to your destination mostly involves keeping everyone entertained for the time it takes you to shove what amounts to a rock made up of sand from one place to another, which is technically impressive, but really just amounts to you setting up a background exertion of your esper power you check up on regularly to make sure everything works as intended.

Which… really isn't all that hard, really. To be honest, your control over gravity is actually pretty impressive, if you do say so yourself, if not necessarily visually so. You honestly wonder whether you would be categorized as a Level 5, if you were in Academy City… Then again, the pricks in charge there are kind of judgemental about this kind of thing, not to mention even if someone's a Level 5 they judge them based on potential scientific merit rather than anything else, so their opinions kind of suck anyways regardless.

Ah well. Anyways, Rainbase is easy enough to find, particularly thanks to the landmark standing out in its middle; as it turns out, the city was built all around a large lake, a life-giving source of fresh water in what is otherwise the middle of the damn desert. More importantly, someone then went and built a huge-ass pyramid-shaped structure onto said lake, tipped with a structure shaped after a crocodile's head peering down from atop its perch.

Unsurprisingly, it seems Crocodile chose not to be subtle about who owns this joint in the least. You know what, good for him, you'd have done the same if you had the time and energy to waste in this dimension.

Anyways, you're already looking forward to having a long afternoon to work with while you hunt down your late lunch. And there's absolutely no way you've just ended up taunting Murphy about that.


Much as it's just another painfully direct reference to the place it's located in, Rain Dinners, the casino in the middle of Rainbase, is named surprisingly aptly. A multi-story affair making use of the vast floor space its pyramid shape gives it to work with, there's a massive arrangement of all kinds of usual casino-related games of chance on offer stretching out as far as the eye can see right from the entrance- roulette tables, poker tables, slot machines, all that good stuff. There's even a few dart boards you see off in the distance, and surely there's more further in.

On the floor above the casino's main body, of course, there's a surprisingly fancy restaurant set up to cater to the people coming in with plenty of money to burn in the first place, giving them another worthwhile method to do so. It's actually a pretty well-designed money sink, in your professional opinion.

You, of course, enter with all the casual style you can muster, meaning you just wander right in without arousing too much suspi-

""All Make Way For The King of The Clouds!"" A dozen voices exclaim, a red carpet rolling out in front of you as your crew… pulls their usual shenanigans, you suppose. Where'd they even get a red carpet on short notice?

Regardless, you sure as hell aren't about to not play along. That would just be a waste of a setup. "Really, you don't need to bother," you make a show of waving them off, "not like this audience understands how high an honor my presence really is."

It's good carpet, too, dirt-resistant while still being soft and fluffy. You stroll right along it of course, making your way into the casino.

"That hardly matters, sir!" "That's right, it's a matter of principle!" "Can't have them disrespect you, Captain!"

You shake your head by the time you finally reach the poker table, sitting down with aplomb belying how easy you're taking it right now. "Hello there, how's the game played 'round these parts? Deal me in while you explain," you tell the dealer, leaning into the chair. It's not as comfortable as you'd have thought it would be, to be honest. Couple minus points there.


Cheating at cards is pretty simple actually, as long as you know the right tricks. Heck, you'd argue counting cards is really just a matter of skill and quick thinking, plus some simple applied maths. In any case, it probably doesn't hurt that you have Sarah observing your dealer from afar, analyzing his microexpressions and stuff to get a very much complete picture of whatever hand he has.

Then a couple of other people come in, attracted by the big deal your crew is making about you, and try playing against you. Naturally, you welcome such challenges with open arms.

And send each them packing with nothing but the clothes on their backs. Not even those, in two outstanding cases that couldn't accept how lost a cause winning their money back from you was.

"I have four Desert Warriors. You can't have a Full Palace and win over this hand!" Staring at you with bloodshot eyes, a man, the last in a group of three you've been emptying out of money like a collection of juice packs, bites his teeth.

"Maybe I can't, maybe I can," you reply, idly looking over your own hand. Honestly, you don't have so much as a single pair- this is as much of a losing hand as you can get. Not even an Oasis or a King to get at least a decently high-valued single card into play. "But that's not what really matters here, is it?"

"Huh?!" Sweating, the guy's eyes shift between the piles of gold-glinting coins arrayed at both of your sides and yourself, his nerves obviously on the fritz right now.

"What matters is whether you think you can afford to lose right now." Nodding at his own, much more modest bet, just a few neatly stacked Beri in front of his face, you give him a smile. "In fact, if we really get down to it, it's all about how lucky you feel about this hand. Double or nothing."

"Are- are you serious?!" He all but shouts, the rough edge of his leather hat digging into the skin of his forehead. "You can't-"

"Double or nothing," you repeat, grabbing another handful of coin from where one of the crew minions holds up your sack of disposable income for you and carelessly scattering it over the table. "So, you feeling lucky, punk?"

The power of your meme proves too great, and the guy bows out with shaking hands. Nice. You don't reveal your hand just to rub it in at this point, of course- why kick a man when he's down his savings already anyways? Instead you just gracefully let him leave those behind for you to add to your hoard, collected by your underlings as you ponder what game to cheat at next.

The slot machines, you eventually decide. Sarah can't help you much with those, though she insists she could put together individual statistics and figure out how to guarantee an abundance of wins with extremely high likelihood with just a little work.

You, on the other hand, have an easier method in mind. A quick, whispered curse is all it really takes to turn these things against their owner, after all. "Disgorge your master's wealth with every touch," you quietly command, fingertips trailing across the face of the one-armed bandit you chose to begin with.

Then you insert a handful of coins and pull the lever. You win, getting out five times as much.

You repeat the process. Literally every pull is another win, to the point you soon empty the thing out entirely and have to move on to the next one.

Rain Dinners has quite a few slot machines, you idly note to yourself, leaving your crew shouting for more money sacks in your wake, slowly but surely burying them in more and more wealth. You're not exactly subtle about this whole thing here, but then, subtlety just gets in the way of stress-testing the Grand Cruiser's carrying capacity by stuffing it with literal tons of money, doesn't it?


It shouldn't come as a surprise when, in relatively short order, the casino's security shows up, this being one of the few things that stay consistent across dimensions no matter where you go. A casino, after all, exists to take money from its customers by dangling the illusion of possibly doing the opposite in front of them; if someone actually makes money off of one, said establishment is naturally going to notice and respond.

In this case, that response consists of three squinting, big guys in black suits approaching your person from deeper inside the building, one of them demonstratively cracking his fingers and all. "Excuse us, sir, we would like to have a word," the one in the middle says as they come, arms crossed behind his back yet ready and in position to act the moment you do anything to piss him off.

Luckily for him, you aren't about to eat him quite yet, seeing as you're here to see- well, not the manager, much as your inner karen is screaming for it, but rather the owner of the establishment. For a start, though, you suppose you may as well take it slow, for now.

"You're welcome to, as soon as I'm done emptying out this row," you reply laconically, waving at the slot machines you plan to treat like a piggy bank that's already served its purpose. "In fact, please, say anything you want right here. I'm sure it'll be good for a laugh, at least."

"I'm afraid that's not how things are done here, sir. We-" He reaches out to grab your shoulder, presumably to drag you into some back room or something, the way these places usually deal with people they suspect to be cheating. You already prepare yourself to rip his arm straight off and beat him to death with it on the spot just to make a point when, suddenly, the main entrance doors open wide, a short guy with spiky, black hair wearing a desert poncho and a straw hat under its hood coming inside, inhaling deeply.

"CROCODILE!" He shouts, arms raised in the air without a care in the world. "GET YER ASS OUT HERE!"

",,,Well, that's new," you comment, grinning a little. "Should've thought of that approach myself, actually."


You know, something about this situation does niggle at your brain, as though there's something you've seen at some point that's relevant now. Taking a moment to think back, through your unnecessarily perfect recollection of everything that's ever happened since you decided that 'dead' wasn't sexy enough for you to be, it's the scar under the boy's eye that has you sure you've seen him before, or someone like him, at any rate.

…That one time you had your souls reconstruct anime, back on Thule. You swear, if you ended up inside a dimension that just so happens to be straight from that show, you'll… Well, you aren't sure what you'll do exactly, but it's a safe bet to say it'll probably be at least mildly cataclysmic.

Ugh. Trying to distract yourself from the incoming existential crisis you'll make a point to just ignore, letting it pass through you without comment (you're pretty good at that part of mental health management, actually), you turn to look back at the three stooges that were trying to shake you down or something, all the while the newcomer and his companions start shouting at each other.

"How's that going to make him show up, idiot?" The redhead woman asks, hitting the guy that was screaming for Crocodile to begin with. The long-nosed fellow with the goggles up on his hat mirrors her, too.

"He's the hero of this country, you wanna make the customers here fight us, too?"

Uncaring for the violence inflicted upon his head (clearly used to getting his brain shuffled from concussion to concussion in his daily life, in your opinion as a medical specialist), he turns around, quickly and quietly discussing the situation. "Fine! So… what do we do, then?"

"Hey, wait a minute! Without Vivi, we don't know where Crocodile is!"

"Where is Vivi, anyways?"

Apparently, the three have reached some sort of understanding already, all of them now screaming in unison. "VIVI! CROCODILE!"

The fourth among their number, a green-haired dude concealing no less than three swords under his desert-appropriate clothing by your count (marking him as probably a massive tryhard) just looks at them like they're complete idiots. An estimation you share, for all that you find them more hilarious than annoying for now.

"You guys sure you want to bother me right now?" You ask the security trio, eyebrow raised. "I'll wait here, you should probably deal with these guys first."

Pointing your thumb towards the entrance, you time the gesture just right to indicate the blood signature you can see running after these jokers bursting into the casino as well.

Making a racket because apparently government officials aren't allowed in here (and utterly uncaring about the people trying to stop him), a pale-haired guy wearing a Marine's coat comes following the pirates that- Ugh, they're the Strawhat Pirates, let's be honest here.

Now if only you knew whatever arc of the anime was going on here… Maybe the version of it your souls know of doesn't match up with the one you're in?

"It's Smokey! Run!"

Following your advice, the security guards abandon their attempt to grab you and instead go to try and hold up the ruckus now darting straight into the casino at large- utterly unaware one of them stays behind, not so much to split up and take care of everything at once and more so because you soundlessly reached out and buried your claws inside his neck already, killing him before the other two noticed.

Quickly draining this juicepack, you hand the body over to one of the crew members currently assisting you. "Too bad I'm already kind of full, else this opportunity would be, like, really great."

"Should we, ah, should we do anything about these people, Captain?"

"No, no, no need," you wave off your mook's concerns. "You guys just help me carry all the money out here while I eat a couple people in plain sight."

"Are you sure?"

"Trust me, I'm a professional at this kind of thing. Just act normal and nobody will suspect a single thing."


As it turns out, you're legitimately starting to feel like you're not the main show for once, which… has been a while, really. Ah well, much as you like to feed your ego beyond all reason, you're perfectly happy to make use of the distraction of this whole commotion, casually making your way from one black-suited bouncer guy to the next.

Those members of your crew you've got on support duty are doing their part admirably, too, following your lead in appearing utterly inconspicuous even as you assassinate one person after the next, adding them to your personal collection of plundered souls and disarming the local response of the casino's management.

Inasmuch as these guys are likely to see combat at all; you've been staying in contact with Taylor and Sherrel, of course, and the two, keeping an eye on the rest of the city, have reported scattered combatants emerging to fight what you suspect to be other members of the Strawhats, coming out of crowds and starting to shoot or stab with little warning.

Baroque Works operatives, of course. Turns out you've stumbled straight into what appears to be some good old pirate-on-pirate violence… And nobody involved has any idea you're even here.

Convenient, that. Convenient and quite useful, if only in that you can sneak in after the Strawhats and their Marine pursuer, all of whom managed to get themselves caught in a literal pitfall trap that has deposited them straight into a giant cage underneath the casino's main floor.

Who knew Crocodile had such a snazzy supervillain-esque bond basement? Sure, it's not much compared to your own home, but then few assholes just building entire cities' worth of infrastructure just because exist, in your experience. You can't hold everyone to your own standards.

In the process of spying on what's going on as a shadow on the wall, up on the ceiling and all, you get to find out a few interesting things, too. One, a material called 'seastone' exists, which does something something power of the sea- long story short, it fucks over Devil Fruit users, sapping their energy and keeping them from being able to use their powers when in contact with the stuff.

The cage is made out of it- and the Marine that was following the Strawhats, Smokey or whatever, has a club-like weapon tipped with the stuff, too. It doesn't really help him much from inside the cage, but it's a thing that exists.

He also apparently ate a Devil Fruit of his own, though without knowing what kind it was you can't really say much about how difficult he'd be to fight. Regardless, they're now all in the same boat for the time being.

Side note though, him smoking two cigars at once is kind of impressive in its own way. Probably not healthy, and you'd smack him up the head hard enough to dislodge if there were any kids present in the general vicinity on principle alone, but this kind of thing does require some good lip coordination.

He'd probably be a pretty cunning linguist if he set his mind to it. And shaved a little more thoroughly, you suppose.

But setting aside all of that (as well your desire to steal that weapon and keep it on hand against the next Devil Fruit user you can find), the man of the hour himself is also here, taunting the trapped heroes as he sits outside their cage.

The big guy's wearing a large mantle over his shoulders, his slicked-back black hair shows off the size of his forehead, also making sure the long scar going horizontally across his face from cheekbone to cheekbone, right over the bridge of his nose, isn't concealed at any point. His left hand has been replaced with a bulging, golden extension from the wrist on down, tipped with a large hook of all things.

He's also sporting a massive, shit-eating grin as he, and you have to repeat this because of just how important this part is, gloats at his captured enemies. "Oooh… You really are a wild dog, Smoker. You never thought of me as an ally from the start, huh? I was going to have you die in an 'accident' fighting the Strawhats later…"

"So you're… Crocodile, huh…?" The straw hat wearing guy mutters, anger manifesting on his face. "HEY YOU- bwuh…"

"Don't touch the cage, idiot!"

"You did well to come this far, Strawhat," Crocodile continues monologuing like a literal bond villain, a step too far even for you in all your time as a villain yourself. "I never thought I'd actually meet you. Don't worry- I'll be killing you very soon."

Getting up, the Warlord walks a few steps, still staying well out of reach of anyone inside the cage right now.

"But the guest of honor isn't here yet. I just sent my partner to pick her up."

Indeed. Taylor has eyes on a confrontation currently taking place out in the streets of Rainbase, a couple dozen hoodlums holding up a woman with light blue hair. Presumably the person in question. Y'know, you're pretty sure there's a lot of context here you don't have, just saying.


Remaining a silent observer for you, mostly just adjust your position to get a better view of everything that's going on in here. Meanwhile, Taylor does much the same, sharing everything she sees and hears with the rest of your present network; as it turns out, the woman that likely is the partner Crocodile referred to comes out after a guy that ate some Zoan-type Devil Fruit giving himself the ability to fly beats the crap out of the people that were menacing the blue-haired woman.

She then proceeds to mess with him by pretending to kill the woman he just saved using her Devil Fruit power, followed by using it again to… pretty decisively disable him. See, she ate the Hana Hana No Mi, or the Flower Flower Fruit, allowing her to 'bloom' parts of her body out of any nearby surfaces- including the bodies of her enemies, evidently.

Cue her damn near breaking this guy's back and neck by bending him over backwards with two of her arms under his chin and more than you care to count all over his body, not giving a single shit about how fast or strong he would be under most circumstances. Damn cold about it, too.

Long story short she brings this Vivi down to the basement of Rain Dinners, just when Crocodile begins to make fun of Straw Hat for valuing such things as 'trust' in his friends. Gee, you wonder when he'll start to expound on the values of evil and why betraying anyone that turns their back to you with a knife propelled straight into said back is the only way to live or some shit.

"Well, hello… Welcome Vivi, princess of Arabasta. No, Miss Wednesday. You've done a good job making it through my assassins on the way here," is how he greets her once she comes in, arms spread wide.

"Of course I'd come… I'd come from anywhere to watch you die, Mister 0!" She replies, venom in her voice. You're once more getting the feeling you don't have the full context here, but you're pretty sure you can guess what's going on by now.

Looking her square in the face, Crocodile smiles wide, he doesn't even grin or anything. "It's your worthless country that's going to die, Miss Wednesday."

Biting her teeth in rage, the princess pulls out a pair of… pendulums? Attached to her little fingers with strings? What the fuck kinds of weapons do people come up with around here? "If it weren't for you, Arabasta would be at peace!"

With that, she charges straight at him, ignoring the Strawhats shouting at her to free them first. Which, to be honest, would be the smart move here- rule one when dealing with fights, always bring more friends than the other guy, that way you can all team up and beat the other guys up much easier.

"Peacock String Slasher!" Somehow projecting her little weapon forward, she uses it to slash at Crocodile who just lights himself up a cigar, completely unconcerned… Even when his head is seemingly blown straight off.

At least it looks like that to most, you suppose. To your eyes, it's clearly apparent something fucky's going on; you literally saw a puff of sand emerge when he was 'hit'. Smoker, looking on grimly, confirms as much as well. "Nope."

Turning into a squirming, undulating cloud of sand, Crocodile reconfigures himself right behind Vivi, his hand and hook restraining her. "Satisfied, Miss Wednesday?" He asks, clearly not at all bothered by anything going on right now. "If you live in this country, then you should know about my Suna Suna No Mi power…"

Sand Sand Fruit? Well shit, he sure picked the right island to sit his ass on, you suppose.

"Shall I turn you into a mummy?"

"Hey! Let go of Vivi, dammit! I'll kill you!" You do wonder when Strawhat will turn on his brain and figure out nothing he says really means anything until he gets out of that cage he's in…

Throwing the princess into one of the chairs arrayed around the same table he was just sitting at earlier, Crocodile turns, clearly up to something. "Sit, and stop glaring at me. It's just about time for the party to begin." Looking up at his 'partner' at the entrance of the room, up the big stairs leading inside, he continues. "Am I wrong, Miss All-Sunday?"

"You are correct. It's past 7."


Crocodile then proceeds to, and it's honestly kind of hard to believe this even watching and listening with your own eyes and ears, explain his secret master plan in detail, from using a fake body double of the king to rile up the rebels he's been fostering to simultaneously supplying said rebels with a large amount of weapons by crashing a huge ship into the town they're staying at, all the while the royal guard over at the capital are left leaderless and bound to fight them once they arrive due to the king's 'mysteriously' well-timed absence.

Then there's this bit where he just laughs his ass off about how he uses all these people's patriotic feelings to destroy this entire country, which… Well, hey, at least he's having fun?

Not even you would spend this much time and effort gloating at your enemies, to be honest, even if you weren't self-aware enough to keep your spaghetti from spilling like this.

Of course you still have a few questions left after this ad-hoc presentation, so you figure you may as well ask them.

"Excuse me," you say, sitting up on top of the oversized cage Crocodile's got the four pirates and one Marine he caught himself in, "but there's one thing I still don't quite understand about your plan."

"Who the fuck are you now?" The man of the hour asks, looking thoroughly unamused about your presence.

That's alright, though. You can have some extra fun at his expense until it's enough for two. "What, me? Just a random pirate, really," you smirk, making it a point to reflect his own shit-eating grin from earlier. "Gabriel, Captain of the Dead Sea Pirates, if you want to be all exact about it."

"Shit," you hear Smoker mutter to himself below you, obviously recognizing your name. Or the name you gave your band of pirates, at any rate. Same difference.

Ignoring him quietly telling the four pirates down there you're bad news, you continue right on. "So, what's the big deal, anyways? Why're you going through all this trouble to make this kingdom collapse in on itself? There have to be easier ways to just destroy it, if you really want to."

"Isn't it obvious?" Crocodile sneers, the scar across his face twisting a little in an expression he has to be practicing in front of a mirror every morning. "I'll be to be taking over Arabasta once all of these idiots have killed each other. Once a few million people die, nobody will object to me assuming-"

"Ah, yeah, got it. You're just an idiot," you wave him off.

"Ex-fucking-cuse me?" Crocodile growls, fixing you with the kind of venomous glare that might well kill someone with a weak heart.

"I mean, if you really wanted to just take over the kingdom, there's a bunch of easier ways to go about it," you shrug, sitting up where before you were lounging casually. "How much time did you spend setting everything up? Founding Baroque Works, financing everything, buying or making all that Dance Powder to manipulate the weather…"

Interesting stuff, that. Basically a chemical agent used to forcefully adjust the location precipitation comes down in, at the cost of drawing on moisture in the surrounding atmosphere, ensuring that, basically, nobody else gets rain in exchange.

You don't exactly have any use for this shit, of course, but getting a few samples later might be a neat idea.

"Just saying, you could've just had your imitator replace the king, then give yourself unlimited power through him. Or staged a violent coup, 'tragically' killing him and stepping in to govern the kingdom, then never vacated the throne. Or… Well, I could go on," you say, one hand waving lazily in the air. "But hey, bonus points for effort put into the project, I guess?"

"That's not funny, asshole!" Strawhat shouts at you from inside the cage. "And don't give him ideas!"

"Relax, he's committed already, Crocodile's not about to change his plans this late in the game," you drawl, hopping off the cage to let everyone see what's about to happen nice and clearly. Wouldn't do to disappoint the audience, after all. "Besides, you don't get a say in anything while you're powerless inside a Seastone cage."

"Bleeh!" He… shows you his tongue, one finger pulling down an eyelid. Man, this guy's mental age really got stuck a bit early in his childhood, didn't it? "If you don't like it, free us so we can kick Crocodile's ass already!"

A wave of murderous intent washes over the room, though it doesn't seem as if Strawhat cares. In contrast to his buddies, one of which is shivering and already berating him for talking to a Warlord of the Seas like that to his face. "Oh, you'll try, little man," Crocodile intones more than he speaks.

"You're the little man here! The littlest of men!"

Deciding to interrupt this little pissing match, you sigh obnoxiously loud, shaking your head with a hand on your forehead. You also release your own wave of malevolence, intense enough to make the very air around you shiver like a fata morgana for a brief moment.

You… didn't know that was even a thing. But you also aren't going to stop and investigate right now. "No need for any of that, now. Besides, I'm about to murder Crocodile, so I'd appreciate it if you guys didn't get in the way."

Still undaunted, Strawhat angrily waves his fists at the cage bars, having already learned not to touch them after being sapped of his strength only, what, two or three times by now? "No! I'm gonna kill him first for what he did to Vivi!"

"I'd like to see you morons fight this one out, but I just don't have the time if I'm going to be punctual for the big finale," Crocodile lets you know. If you didn't know better, you'd almost say he's pouting right now, but he's just too grumpy for any of that. "So I'll just-"

Reaching out to grab you, Crocodile tries to do… something, you suppose. You, of course, simply let his hand phase through you, turning into electricity around it so it can pass through your shoulder without ever making contact.

"Oh? That some performance issues I see there?" You ask when he just glares at you, obviously not having achieved the results he wanted. "Don't worry. Happens to a lot of guys when I'm in the room."

Visibly a lot more cautious now, Crocodile obviously readies himself to react to whatever you do. "You ate a Devil Fruit too," he states (as opposed to asking).

"Sure did. It was a Logia, too, just like yours," you helpfully inform him.

"Hey! Let us out already!"

"Luffy, shut up! Do you want to get us all killed?" The female pirate in the cage growls, trying to physically wrangle Strawhat into being quiet.

Note to self, treat this guy like he's literally disabled. You managed to handle Okita just fine, you'll manage him as well.


At the same time, outside the Rain Dinners Casino, a curious scene was taking place. Dozens upon dozens of figures were gathering not far from the bridge leading to the casino's main entrance, weapons drawn and ill intent clear.

These were, indeed, Baroque Works operatives, each and every one that had been stationed in Rainbase prior to this day. Meant to act as backup in case of emergencies and a covert force to take out any trouble before it could impact the big plan, they were out in force today to deal with some of those particularly troublesome elements abound.

To their detriment, however, they had also managed to walk straight into an ambush, set up before they ever managed to figure out the one guy starting a fight with them wasn't acting alone- much like he, himself, had no idea he had backup himself.

"Baroque Works! Your evil deeds end today!" "You guys sure this is alright? 'S not like we often actually fight anyone." "The Captain and his girlfriends are busy, so it falls to us, clearly."

Holding up in the middle of a brawl, one foot on one of his enemies's heads after kicking him to the ground, the blonde cook looked up onto the roof these new additions to the scene were occupying. "'Scuse me, but who're you guys?"

"We're the Dead Sea Pirates!" "And today, we're screwing Baroque Works!" "Eeeh, we're more un-screwing them when you think about it, really." "We're the guys about to kick ass!"

"Screw you!" One of the Baroque Works bounty hunters, clearly fed up with all of the shit happening to his life right that moment, got out his rifle, trying to shoot one of the men shouting downwards.

The bullet then went on to bounce off his forehead harmlessly, limply plinking back onto the streets.

"Whelp. Some can't wait to die!"

And with that, a certain level of pandemonium broke out. One that involved quite a bit of wanton violence, to boot.


"So who're you, anyways? You with the Straw Hats?"

"Me? Call me Mr. Prince. Why do you ask?"

"Well, the Straw Hat Pirates are the only ones fighting Baroque Works right now other than us, as far as we know anyways."

"Right. Mind helping a fellow out a bit then?"

"Yeah, I bet you'd be kinda worried, considering your friends are inside a trapped cage underneath the casino right now."

"What."

"Yup, our Captain's distracting Crocodile right now, but you're probably trying to find a way to free 'em, right?"

"Guess I'll have to. Haah… Hey Chopper, what do you think we should do?"

"Uhm…"

"WAH! A walking reindeer!" "Could be a human using a Devil Fruit, calm your tits."

"No, I'm a reindeer that ate the Human Human Fruit…"

"GUBAH!"

"Unununu… Guys, the Captain's saying something."

"Gunununu…" Hunununu…" "Agabaga…"

"…Well shit, pretty sure we're on our own here, buddy."


Well, turns out there's at least one member of the Straw Hat Pirates with an at least vaguely functioning brain, or else this Mr. Prince just lucked out from not being with the rest of the brainrot crew, but he's outside the casino right now and politely asking, through your own crew, to help him free the Straw Hats by distracting Crocodile and get him away from them so he can get to work on that.

And you know what, why not, it's not like you're planning to kill any of these guys other than Crocodile today… Not to mention you doubt Luffy would taste good. He kind of gives you the impression he's just not balanced enough of an intellect to be self-aware enough to really count as particularly extreme on the gradients of morality as you judge them by taste.

That's a lot of words to say that he's too stupid to have any particular taste in either direction. You just didn't want to sound too rude about it. Not like he can help being an idiot.

So here you are, staring down Crocodile and considering how to best get him out of here so the bystanders can get the fuck out of the way already. And probably screw his 'master' plan over while they're at it.

Honestly the main reason you're even entertaining this entire thing- it's yet another way to fuck with Crocodile. Screwing this guy over is becoming more and more entertaining the more you observe him, purely because he's just that big of a douche.

Question is, you conclude in the seconds it takes you to work through all of this thinking (look, you're finding you can think really fast if you want to, it's one reason you often end up rambling inside your own head), how you'll get this uber-douche to forget all about the idiots in favor of fighting you.

Not that you intend to actually give him a chance to fight you in earnest- if it gets dangerous, you'll absolutely pull out all your tricks and end the fight at any cost- but this also is a great opportunity to get some practice with Logia on Logia combat, or even Devil Fruit on Devil Fruit in general. So maybe holding yourself back just a tad works out nicely as well.

Just a bit, though. If you can integrate it into the powers you obtained by eating your Devil Fruit, you'll consider it fair game, you decide. Crocodile likely has had more time to work on his, after all, so you have to compensate somehow.

Yes, yes, this is the first time in a long while you have to compensate for something, you're aware. You also don't really care all that much. Any guy's allowed to be a little insecure sometimes.


When you do it, you do it quickly and thoroughly. Above you, the ceiling groans and crumbles, just a single moment of realization allowed for everyone present.

Then you explosively redirect the force exerted by gravity onto this whole pyramid-shaped building, wrenching a good third of it off the ground and pretty much peeling it upwards like a banana's peel, to the screaming of both at least two or three of the pirates inside the cage and all of the people currently inside Rain Dinners, a lot of whom are now no longer inside, strictly speaking.

Smoker just silently glares at everything going on, carefully taking in what he sees presumably so he can write a report about it later. Seeing how that suits you just fine, you proceed to ignore him as he sits next to the screaming female pirate, instead using your transformation into electrical energy (you could call it lightning, but does it really count when you don't impact anything?) to zoom your way up the now present hole in the ceiling.

"Hey, we doing this now or what?" You ask, plopping down to sit on the broken wall still buckling under your psychic might. "Or should I go tell everyone how your Devil Fruit power lets you cause sandstorms and how interesting that is to know for Arabasta as a whole?"

"You little…!" Obviously pissed off, Crocodile turns his head to shoot his 'partner' a glare. "You take care of things here, Miss All Sunday. I have a shitty little pirate with a big head to teach how to talk to his betters."

Heh. Been a while since anyone was brave enough to shit-talk you like that. It's almost refreshing, in a way. "You sure you want to stand around dawdling so much? I might just get impatient, y'know?" Grinning at him, you hop back up, inhaling deeply.

Crocodile doesn't bother waiting to see what you're about to do. Transforming his lower body into a surge of sand that propels him towards you, one hand outstretched to try and grab you again.

Your response to this is to turn into a bolt of lightning yourself, zapping through the air just above the lake he built his casino on, hitting the rest of town in short order. Specifically, you emerge near the biggest concentration of dead and unconscious bodies nearby, the piled-up remnants of the fight between Crocodile's Baroque Works mooks and your own, along with the Straw Hats' free guys.

If the humanoid reindeer counts? Honestly, you don't see why he wouldn't, from what you saw through the eyes of your crew.

"Hey look, we have a whole pile of shit for you here," you call out for Crocodile, the resting bitch face of a lifetime coming after you quickly, but still slower than you went. To be fair, lightning generally is the kind of thing that travels faster than sand in nature, so that tracks. "Are you more a fly or a dung beetle in how you treat it?"

Wordlessly, the Warlord chases after you, churning out a wave of sand flying up as though to cover you before you can flee- except you're still just that much faster than him, zipping from rooftop to rooftop before he ever can try much of anything.

Until you arrive at the edge of town anyways, whereupon the master-douche stops chasing you for a moment, your electric charge pulled back under your skin.

"Finally running out of places to run?" He asks, the hook replacing one of his hands raised as though to use it against you at any moment.

"Who said I was running?" You return, eyebrow raised. "I'm just strategically repositioning. Less stuff to get in the way, you know."


Back in the casino's basement, things weren't looking too good for the remaining Straw Hats (and Smoker), as the room was rapidly filling up with water now and a bunch of bananadiles- giant crocodiles with singular bananas growing out of their heads, or maybe bananas that had grown crocodiles somehow, who really knew with these things, were already lining up to eat all of them whole.

For some, this might be dire circumstances. It certainly felt like it for some of them, too. On the other hand, this kind of thing may as well be just another Tuesday for them given their experiences so far- and ones yet to come, for that matter- so it wasn't surprising, either, when at least one of the cage's occupants remained largely calm.

Insofar as Smoker had his priorities straight, anyways. "That woman that was with Crocodile… She's been on the run from the World Government for twenty years. The price on her head is 70 million Beri."

"SE-! SEVENTY MILLION!" Usopp cried out. "S-So what?"

"Almost as much as Crocodile's would be…" Nami added.

"Worse though, that other guy? If he was serious, his bounty's 150 million," the Marine Captain revealed.

"HUN!"

"DRED!"

"AND FIFTY!"

Like this, Nami and Usopp had proven that they, too, could share the same braincell on occasion. A joyous day indeed.

"He's some seriously bad news. What're you-"

"So what!" Luffy declared, arms crossed. "We'll just go kick Crocodile's ass! And then we'll kick his ass if he keeps being a butt, too!"

"…Fine," Smoker agreed. "So how're you getting out of here?"

"AAAH, the water's up to my thighs!"

"GYAAH, I'm gonna die! GYAAH!"

Just then, however, when all hope was lost, an explosion rocked the entrance of the room (the open entrance of the room, for the record), the smoke then clearing to reveal a bunch of well-muscled men jumping through the basement door.

"THE DEAD SEA PIRATES!"

"MAKING AN EXPLOSIVE ENTRANCE!"

"TA-DAH!"

Posing dramatically, the group only then took a moment to actually look at what lay before them.

"Oh hey, doesn't this look kinda bad?" "It sure does. What're all these bananadiles doing here?" "You guys think we should do something?"

"Everyone!" A blue-haired girl shoved her way to the foreground, a relieved smile on her face. "I found help!"

""VIVI!""

"I'm also here, by the way."

"Sanji, you dick!"

"Did you even help?"

What followed was a methodical case of what professionals may describe as 'great kicking of ass combined with technical animal cruelty', along with a mildly humorous moment of trying to carry a huge-ass Seastone cage outside the room to prevent its current occupants from drowning horribly.

It did not exactly work, as the cage remained larger than the doors. Luckily, through sheer coincidence, one of the bananadiles ended up vomiting up everything it had eaten in the few hours, including a ball of wax created by a certain 'Mr. 3'.

Beating him into making a wax key to open the cage with was child's play at this point, and so the Straw Hat Pirates (plus Captain Smoker) were freed safely after all.

Of course while all of this happened, a certain fight had steadily proceeded towards its conclusion…


You know, it was kind of obvious from the start, but Crocodile is kind of really enjoying a territorial advantage here, given his whole thing is sand and you're literally in the middle of the desert and all that. It's kind of a given, even. He sure didn't choose to grow his roots here because the general area isn't conducive to his powers.

That said, he really is pretty good in a fight, you have to admit it. "Desert Spada!"

Case in point, randomly shooting out a sizable 'blade' made of waves of sand that cuts a literal swathe through the desert? That's a pretty solid, dependable method of attack, you feel. With or without a whole damn desert nearby to draw on. The sudden dip into Italian notwithstanding. Probably just a weird translation issue on your end.

Naturally, as you think about all of this, you're idly dodging past the point of attack, your side turned towards Crocodile as you sidestep with the assistance of your Logia powers, sparking up momentarily as you swerve to the side.

The wind rushes by as the air displaced by the surge of sand blows past you, the sand crumbling inwards to fill the gap opened up by your opponent's strike. You aren't really looking to go on the offensive for the moment, instead just looking to see what you're dealing with and all that.

"What's wrong? You talked some big game earlier, but you're not actually doing anything," Crocodile sneers, confidently staring you down. "Realized you don't have way to fight me?"

"On the contrary actually, actually," you let him know pleasantly, one corner of your mouth raised in a smirk of your own. "I'm thinking about what I should try on you first. Too many options, hard to make a choice, you know?"

"Feh." Likely not believing you, he just squints at you, one hand rising to chest height. "Then how about I make you hurry it up a little, huh? Sables Sandstorm."

Within moments, a swirling, churning wave of sand rises into the air, a tornado in its own right raging in short order. It draws in more and more sand from the surroundings, whipping the desert into a violent, at this range quite dangerous, frenzy.

"Dodge this, motherfucker." Crocodile's voice is hard to hear over the wind, but your enhanced hearing picks it up with little trouble.


Contrary to what he may be intended, you, for one, do not in fact attempt to dodge the sandstorm he just whipped up just for you. Instead, you casually raise a hand, snapping your fingers- turning their tips into living lightning that shoots upwards, extending and reaching and swiping across the sky.

The streak of electricity is nigh invisible against the howling sand covering the horizon from this perspective, but it does everything you need it to, retracting it back down just as quickly as it went up. Letting the force of the swirling, raging granules wash against you, leaning against it if anything, you give Crocodile the one thing a man in his position absolutely does not want to see.

A smile. The easy, happy, casual kind. The kind that indicates a joke on someone's expense. Specifically, his.

Normally, your brand of outright weather manipulation is a slow, ponderous thing, as predicated by the nature of how it functions; manipulating the very mechanics of the planet's atmosphere on such a scale that it can affect visible changes takes a bit just to get everything going, so to say, making use of small pushes and widespread atmospheric shifts to build up into whatever you want.

However, as it turns out, you can get better at this kind of thing, work on the speed you act at quite a bit. Add to that how your Devil Fruit transformation makes things like lightning clouds… easier accessible, for lack of a better term, and you can get some seriously quick results if you really push it.

In other words, within moments a few disparate drops of water come down, swept up by the raging sandstorm without doing much of anything. Then more comes, and more yet, the rain going from being nonexistent to halting to a steady bit of a pour.

"So much for the sand being nice and dry," Crocodile mutters, squinting at you in annoyance- and cutting out with one of his arms. Hopping up as a full bolt of lightning, you smoothly dodge over the scythe of sand swiping across the area, coming back down onto it to break it apart.

Y'know, on sheer principle alone. May as well, at this point.

"Say, your whole plan had a lot to do with a drought all across the kingdom, didn't it?" You note over the increasingly violent weather conditions, pitching your voice to make sure he can hear it. "Awfully easy to make it rain now. I thought it'd take a minute or two longer than this."

Right on time, some proper lightning comes down, striking squarely into the tornado of sand he's controlling, actually dispersing some of it with the force of the impact.

"…I'll fucking kill you," Crocodile growls, evidently far and beyond caring to appear affable. Yet another field in which you surpass him, you suppose.

"Oh, don't get cute now. You were going to try anyways," you wave him off.


You could press the attack right now, try and push Crocodile off balance while your storm keeps growing in intensity. However… Well, he still has yet to prove he actually can touch you, so you may as well just sit around and wait while the situation grows worse and worse for him.

Evidently realizing the same things you are (that he's getting fucked harder the more rain and lightning you're getting going), Crocodile launches himself at you in short order, jumping into the core of his still ongoing sandstorm and emerging with all the momentum of a literal dust devil coming at your face, only to be ignored as you step right through him before he gets anywhere, both your forms half-ethereal, half his body made of churning sand, yours of buzzing electricity.

"You know, I can do this all day," you note as you sidestep through another one of those oversized sand-blades formed to, you guess, surprise you? Coming in from the side just when you pass him. "Might want to kick it up a notch if you want to get anywhere."

Huffing in annoyance, Crocodile regathers himself, a quick glace upwards confirming what you're starting to just feel without bothering with such things as eyes in the way; the clouds up above are gathering, heavier and heavier, obstructing the glare of the desert sun like an increasingly solid barrier.

"There's always some like you," he tells you, reaching out with his golden hook hand, as though to slide it around your neck. "Some new pirates thinking they're hot stuff, with a brand new power to fuel their ego."

"Oh, I bet you get the sort every now and then," you nod, curious to see where he's going with this.

"Bet you haven't even seen anyone that could hit you, with that power."

"Well, I haven't actually confirmed anything of the sort if that's what you mean," you shrug. "I'm sure there's plenty of people and other things that could figure something out."

"Let me do the honors, then!" Rushing at you again, Crocodile swings his hook along the side of his body, and it looks a lot like he's just repeating the same old useless attacking once again- except, something feels off about this, beyond the obvious implication he just gave off that he has a way to hit you when while you're transformed into lightning.

Observing him closely, you quickly notice what seems different; it's his soul, you realize as you go through your various additional senses, your own vague soul-sense twigging on to something. Somehow, he's using his own soul to… stretch, you suppose, reaching across his own body.

Reaching out yourself, you once more step into his charge, but this time, instead of going past each other fruitlessly, he can touch you, just as you touch him.

He's stopped cold by your hand on the base of his hook, entirely unable to overcome the resistance of your grip. "Hmm… Interesting," you note, trying to transform your arm, but even when it should be just about entirely intangible, the soul-coated limb of your opponent just refuses to treat it as such.

"You-!" He grunts, straining against you. Ah, right, you probably should pay attention to what else he's doing, huh?

Or rather, may as well get started with the mind games yourself. "You've shown me something good, so how about I tell you a little secret?" You ask, one-sided smirk back in place. "I can see the fears of others in their eyes. It's a fun little thing, I'm never sure whether to call it useful or a random gimmick I barely use."

"What're you getting at?"

Leaning in, getting nice and close, you stare him square in the face. "Right now, the one thing you're most afraid of… is me realizing liquid is your weakness. Like the rain, for instance."

It's pretty easy to read when the person in question is actively thinking about it.

Jumping back, Crocodile dissolves into sand, letting himself be swept up by the currents of his more terrestrial storm. "You think I'm afraid? Of you?" He demands more than he asks, voice echoing in the rising walls of swirling, rushing sand. "Let me show you how wrong you are."

…And now his soul is visible, just a little, in pieces and chunks of the sandstorm, staying down low even as he pushes up more sand as a shield against the rain.

The sun is blocked now, everything around you growing darker. More clouds are spreading in all directions, some of them covering the entire island.


When it began, it was well visible from Rainbase, the closest city to the phenomenon forming over the desert of Sandy Island. A sandstorm, forming quite suddenly and near the city.

Alarming, but not overly so- the wind was blowing southwards, set to have it miss the city itself rather than bury it in sand along with each and every one of its inhabitants. For the moment, at least.

"Is that…"

"Yup, that's the Captain fighting Crocodile," one of the pirates the Straw Hats were working with for the moment said, eyes faraway. Smoker made note of it for later. "They're at a standstill right now, so let's keep going! We need to get you guys to Alubarna, yah?"

"Let's hurry so we can come back and punch both of them later!" Strawhat Luffy shouted, both arms thrust into the air.

"Heh, better hope the capt'n's in a good mood then, maybe he'll even let you," another new pirate noted, a large sack of probably stolen coins slung over his shoulder. It was taken from Crocodile's casino, so… He'd deal with that later.

"Why'd you lot save me, anyways?" Smoker asked the question that was on his mind, waiting for the desert wind to dry out his uniform. The room had been submerged too fast at the end there, in part thanks to the holes blown through its walls, so he'd have been in some deep shit it hadn't been for both Strawhat and the Dead Sea Pirates agreeing to pull him out of the Seastone cage.

"What, weren't we supposed to?" "Orders were to save everyone in that cage, so…" "Who cares? You're alive, right, that's all that counts!"

For a bunch of murderous bastards, these guys sure were upbeat.

"Duh! If you wanna fight, we can do it later!" Strawhat said, raising a fist.

"There they are! The Straw Hat Crew!" "And Captain Smoker!" "We'll back him up, come on!"

""Shit, it's the Marines!"" Both Straw Hats and Dead Seas shouted.

Smoker closed his eyes. Were these guys ever serious?

"Oooh… Guys? The Captain's getting serious," one of them said, pointing a finger at the sandstorm out in the distance.

The storm above which an actual storm was now raging, dark, thunderous clouds gathering and spreading out in all directions; water pouring out over the sand as though the drought in this place had been a lie all along. And, just moments after everyone present turned to look, no less than ten bolts of lightning came down into the swirling sand simultaneously, their collective brightness blinding as their thunder was deafening.

Biting back a curse, he thought about what to do here, the entire city stunned for a few long moments.

"Go." The gathered pirates looked at him, not getting what he was saying. Typical. "This time only, I'll let you all get away."

Turning away from them, he shouldered his weapon.

"Next time we meet, you're all dead. Remember that."

"Heh. You know, I don't hate you, after all!" Strawhat said, instead of, y'know. Going. Like he'd been told to. "Shishishishi!"

"Get the hell outta here!"

Chasing the pirates off, Smoker went to meet his men, who'd regathered their senses by this point. "Captain Smoker!" "Hurry, they're getting away!" "Aren't you going to chase them, sir?"

"No. We have other priorities right now. Call headquarters and tell them so send all Marine ships in the vicinity straight to Arabasta."

"Call for reinforcements? But… i don't think the superior officers will let them all come to deal with a small number of-"

"Since when do I care what my superiors think?" Smoker asked, not caring to hear a reply. "Besides, look at that. We have a major situation on our hands."

Another, larger, barrage of lightning went down, casting eerie shadows in the towering walls of moving sand raised and destroyed in short order.

"Y-Yes sir! Right away, sir!"


The situation has, in the last minute or two, developed in an… interesting direction, you suppose. Having realized you're abnormally strong in a direct fistfight, Crocodile has apparently chosen to avoid anything resembling a straight-on confrontation like that.

Normally, you're the one resorting to trickery and indirect combat, but as it turns out you absolutely aren't the only one capable of it, huh?

Anyways, instead of coming at you like a braindead animal (the way your fights usually tend to go before you overwhelm who- or whatever you're dealing with) he's been using the sandstorm he's conjured up to hide himself while striking at you remotely, sending whirling scythes of sand, trying to trip you up by removing the sand below your feet and even attempting to crush you with blunt pillars of the stuff shed from the higher reaches of the storm, reusing the soaked sand he can't control directly anymore as projectiles against you.

You, on the other hand, have just been moving around and negating all of these attacks, some of whom share Crocodile's curious ability to ignore your intangibility, all the while further increasing the size of your own storm, pouring water from the sky like it's your personal water hose.

What started as a localized torrent has become a bit of a flood by now, pouring down relentlessly only to be swiped up by the raging winds of your opponent's work, any progress you make in just getting it all wet and useless to him countered by the sheer amounts of sand he keeps on drawing up, using the entire desert below your feet as a shield against you.

It's a bit of a stalemate, to say the least. Sure, you can keep on doing this all day, but so can Crocodile keep it up as long as he has more and more sand to control, not to mention how much of it he's shitting out himself as you think through all of this.

Until, that is, you finally decide you've got enough electricity built up in the burgeoning typhoon you've been cooking up and take control of it yourself, hammering down a massive set of simultaneous lightning strikes streaking right through the feeble protection of the roiling sheets of sand Crocodile has been relying on so far, forcefully slamming through anything in their way.

And in their wake, curved, trailing pieces of rock are left behind, the dark gray, jagged form of fulgurite manifesting itself, both raining down from the body of the sandstorm you've hit and rising from the impact sites of your lightning.

Turns out sand tends to just kind of fuse with other nearby sand when subjected to the kinds of extreme heat that happens in the context of, say, lightning hitting it, with the end result taking on some some pretty characteristic shapes. It's one of those things you randomly looked up at some point of your random internet searching and wiki-walking, once more proving you're great at putting your perfect recall to work when it counts.

Because random factoids like that are what life's all about. Anything that's worth doing is worth doing sounding like a smartass, if only inside your own head.

Sadly, it seems Crocodile doesn't appreciate the new rock formations you're burning into existence every time your lightning comes down, 'cause next thing you know the entirety of the storm begins to collapse around you, trying to just smother you with its weight and density.

He's literally trying to bury you alive now. Well, in all fairness, it's not like he'd know you don't actually need to breathe…


"The longer the drought, the mightier the rain."

-Future Arabastan Saying


Realizing where this is going, you don't even bother fighting back, instead just letting yourself be swept up by all the dry sand Crocodile can muster to throw at you. It's barely even something you need to worry about, all in all.

Sure, the sand rams into you with the force of a particularly angry freight train, but that's hardly a cause for concern when your body is literally capable of shrugging this level of violence off just fine. And sure, the guy does try really, really hard to just press you to death, piling on a mountain's worth of sand and then some, packing the material tightly enough to be literally airtight so you couldn't turn into lightning to escape even if you wanted to.

You don't, of course, but it's the thought that counts here, you suppose. You do pull up your arms and use them to blunt some of the force, essentially letting the avalanche roll over you while rolling with it to keep it from crushing you too much, eventually coming to a halt encased in a grave of sand, literal tons of weight pressing down on you.

…It actually reminds you a little of that time you woke up inside your own grave, except you're a lot less confused and hungry right this moment. If anything, this whole thing is weirdly comfy actually, as much as most people would've died a dozen times over already.

Maybe it's just your vampiric sensibilities, but honestly, you've swam around the bottom of the ocean and you managed just fine; now, the darkness and the silence and the pressure are almost pleasant to you.

Makes you kind of wonder how the vacuum of space would feel like to you; your body's so stupidly durable you could probably survive it, so what would it feel like? Would you extend your armor out of your skin, or would you just let the pressure try to pull you apart as is?

Well, in any case, you're actually quite comfortable as is, no matter how panic-inducing this kind of complete darkness and inability to move would leave most human people. And quite a few non-human ones too, you'd think. And of course while all of this 'buried alive' business is happening, you continue to stir the sky, pouring more water from the clouds.

You don't really have much of an idea about exactly how much rain you're causing, mind you- this weather manipulation shtick doesn't come with much of any feedback for you, beyond your array of normal and abnormal senses to see what you're doing. All you can really tell is what you're pushing the atmosphere to do, and that can be summed up as 'do rain' at the moment.

Anyways, Crocodile's still trying to kill you, digging sharp spikes of sand at you from all directions, increasing the pressure, all that good stuff. Sadly for him, you're staying calm and simply forcefully straining against your sandy grave, slowly beginning your ascent back up to have a little talk about him disrupting your chill time.

…You'll probably have to literally swim all this sand faster than he can push you down low, won't you? Ah well, you're pretty sure he can't push you lower than the island's bedrock at least, so there's only so far he can take things before you get annoyed and just get out the hard way.


When you emerge from the literal mountain of sand, swimming like a literal fish for a bit to make your way through the dense, granular material, it's already getting kind of wet around the edges, despite the continued efforts of Crocodile to stop that from happening.

Actually, looking around, it's actually kind of impressive he's still managing. The skies are darkened entirely by now, the downpour you're pulling torrential, to say the least. Additionally, while you've stopped targeting them manually for a bit, lightning strikes are still ramming themselves into the increasingly wet desert, erecting one twisted pillar of fulgurite, much larger than you'd find it in nature, after the other.

…Ah well, this is probably fine. You don't see any way that kind of drowning the better part of a desert island could come back to bite you in the ass. The people living here, maybe, but you don't exactly plan to stick around overlong.

Your arms breaking through to the surface first, you jump out of the sand seamlessly, shaking the sand out of your hair as you rejoin Crocodile, who's once more back in person, rather than hiding in all the sand. "Finally give up?" You ask, priming the next set of lightning strikes already.

"Heh… It's funny you'd think so," the sneering Warlord replies, his right hand going to his hook- removing it with a quick twist of his wrist, revealing- another hook under it? This guy's got an unhealthy obsession, you decide. "It's too bad I can't be in the capital in time to watch the show, but even if the rain keeps those idiots from fighting, I've got backup plans."

"Sure man, whatever you have to tell yourself to sleep at night," you shrug, not really giving a fuck either way. Last you knew, the Straw Hats went off with parts of your crew to go interfere with whatever Crocodile had going on, so they'll either succeed, which would be good, or they won't, which would be mildly annoying.

Nothing more than that, though. The amount of real fucks you have to give here is about as numerous as the fucks Crocodile has to give about civilian casualties; both are nonexistent.

"Being a pain in the ass to kill is all you amount to in the end," he growls, knowing full well his time is running out right now. He actually looks a little exhausted, you think, though his massive resting bitch face makes it a little hard to judge. "Or are you about to actually try hitting back?"

"Oh, I was just waiting for you to give it your all. You know, give you a little time to shine. No worries if you can't come up with anything that works, though- it happens to guys all the time," you wave him off, very much still not taking him seriously.

A vein standing out on his forehead for a moment, Crocodile takes your measure, doing the thing with his soul again. "Just die already, why don't you?"

With that, he comes at you again, pointy snakes of sand assaulting you simultaneously with his assault. Now this is what you're talking about.


When Crocodile strikes, you're leaning out of the way, darting past the sand whipping at you not necessarily faster than a human can blink, but rather just fast enough to stay a step ahead, keeping enough momentum in reserve to deal with any issues or surprises up your opponent's sleeve.

Once you're out of his immediate range (immediate being the operational word because there's few distances outside his range in the middle of the desert), you reach into the pockets of your pants, feeling the tight metal embrace of your weapons greet your hands and arms in short order.

Last Embrace all but pull themselves out of the shadows of your pockets, reaching for your limbs rather than you reaching for them. They settle in place with a metallic clank, biting into your skin with the eagerness of a vindictive lover and and itch for violence rivaled only by the very worst, fattest of mosquito bites imaginable.

You don't have time to go into how much you always hated mosquitoes, though, because right now it's time to end this fight before it can drag on any longer. With a flaring blast of plasma driving you like you were a plasma-propelled blood-seeking missile, you appear right in front of Crocodile, ramming your arm through his torso uncaring of how he just disperses into a cloud of sand- more plasma fires from Last Embrace in short order, literally starting to glass any dry sand in sight until he shows his mug again.

Once he does, you call down a tactical lightning strike or two, fucking up what remains of his control over the sandstorm still raging all around you. He curses, but before he can do much of anything, you also start to fire off the chemical disintegration blasts you've got inside your babies, literally rending swathes of his sand into undifferentiated matter, molecules torn apart and reduced to gaseous crap nobody cares about and that he can't make use of.

And just like that, you're on him again, a flaming, bursting strike exploding out with all the force you can put into it without overextending yourself, throwing up a great wave of sand that meets the opened floodgates you maintain up in the air, finally tearing through Crocodile's whole power and screwing over his ability to control anything at all.

"Fucking-!" His eyes are wide open when you stare him down, a satisfied smirk on your face as you size up your soon-to-be latest meal.

"I'd ask for any last words, but I'm not really the type," you shrug, arms raised along with Last Embrace in a loose boxing stance, of sorts.

And with that, you finally have him, rainwater drenching everything in sight including Crocodile himself, effectively shutting down his power for a moment. Striking him like a literal bolt of lightning, half-transformed to speed yourself the fuck up, you straight-up punch him right through the chest, nothing particularly out there about it beyond the speed and force behind it, your fist ramming into his ribs and finally hitting something important inside his body, breaking a couple of the bones in the way in the process.

Then Last Embrace decides they may as well and deploys the drill extension, pumping the adamantite-covered tip through his insides and out his back for good measure.

He… may have tried to protect himself with that soul-trick crap, but to be honest, you don't think your weapons noticed any increased resistance in the way, or would have if they were capable of feeling resistance at all.

"Damn it…" Blood running out his mouth, Crocodile stares at you blankly, coughing up another mouthful of red in the process of speaking. "To think I'd go like this… To some shitty no-name monster out of nowhere…"

Holding his limp body aloft, you give him a reassuring smile. "Happens more often than you'd think, in my humble experience," you joke, teeth sharpening in the rictus leer of a vampire about to feed.

And that's that. No need to prolong things any more than necessary. Ripping Last Embrace back out, you let Crocodile fall straight into your teeth, biting through his shoulder and his neck, the blood already spilled at both his front and back, coming out his mouth, rising to stream into the corners of your mouth just to be thorough.

You consume Crocodile, a Warlord of the Sea, secret head of Baroque Works and all-around over-ambitious asshole.


When the rain stopped, it was less an end to what felt like a miracle for most of Arabasta and more of a relief, after how much of it had come down. For an island filled mostly with desert, outside of the odd oasis here and there (some of which had turned into cities centered around them, too, such as Rainbase itself to name the one closest to the source of this phenomenon), experiencing torrential rain like this was not some everyday occurrence, to say the least.

Flooding had quickly started to become a serious problem, especially in more urban areas that could not simply wait for the rain to seep into the ground, as most rainwater would normally; a considerable amount of citizens had to take their families up to the roofs of their houses in fear they would be swept away entirely otherwise, and for a few hours inland boating using whatever vaguely fitting objects as rafts became the transportation of choice for what first responders made the rounds.

The fighting in the streets of Alubarna, too, had died down quickly once the rain arrived over the capital, severely shifting the balance of power as the highest-ranking operatives of Baroque Works realized that their leader likely was connected to what was happening… and not in a way conducive to his plans.

Simply put, Sandy Island was running over in the aftermath of the fight between the Dead Sea Pirates' Captain and none other than Crocodile, Warlord of the Seas and very much culprit behind the series of disasters that had struck the kingdom of Arabasta. The battle had been witnessed from afar halfway across the island, or at least its most visible aspects had.

Sandstorms were far from all that unusual, but ones that reached all the way up towards the clouds, making it possible to see them from miles and miles away, certainly were rare. Rarer yet was to see them literally opposed by the clouds above them, the very sky actively fighting it down by way of drenching the earth below with more tons of precipitation than the island usually saw in ten years or so.

Having succeeded in stopping the violence between the rebel forces manipulated into attacking the royal palace and the temporarily leaderless royal guard, Princess Vivi managed to coordinate rescue efforts when the flooding began in earnest. In the meantime, the Straw Hat Pirates fought the top agents of Baroque Works, eventually succeeding in retrieving the 'absent' King Kobra from them before everyone drowned in the chaos that ensured.

Even though Luffy nearly managed to anyways. He was just particularly talented like that,

All in all, Arabasta was, despite the… surprise and its shocks to the system, reinvigorated to a considerable degree, drought-blighted regions picking up all the water they could- if nothing else, none would die of thirst that day.

Having seen the devastation brought about by the confrontation that produced all of this, eyewitnesses would later testify that a great, water-filled bowl of cracked, cratered glass remained behind amidst a forest of twisted, craggy rocks, like a monument to whatever exactly had happened here.

A short-lived cult may or may not have developed in the immediate aftermath, before it was dispersed by the authorities later on, too.

And absolutely none of any of this mattered to one Gabriel Livsey as he slowly made his way off the battered battlefield, the corpse of Crocodile slung over his shoulder as he floated his way above the streams of water still soaking into the sands below. Slightly dazed due to the bloated, full feeling welling up inside him after his latest meal, he didn't move all too quickly, not sick but something that came somewhat close.

Which was around when the person he'd been observing for a short while already revealed themselves, drifting closer atop a small boat carried by a wave of human hands reaching out of the ground and fading back down as they handed it off again and again.

"Miss All-Sunday. Or Nico Robin, rather," he greeted the black-haired woman, shrugging with the dead body for effect. "What a coincidence, meeting you here."

"That would be one way to describe it, I'm sure," she said. "Incidentally, I am fresh out of an employer, but there is something on this island I wanted to accomplish before leaving no matter what."

"I am aware. I know everything Crocodile did," he told her. "Question is why exactly I should care."

"I'm sure we can come to an agreement. As I said, my previous employer is quite indisposed, but my services do remain valuable…"


You end up sending the newest recruit of your crew off to Alubarna by herself, heavily suspecting the object she seeks, according to Crocodile's memories, to be somewhere nearby the capital if not inside the city itself. It kind of seems like the sort of important thing whoever settled this place would have kept in mind, way back when.

"Yes, I'm aware you're searching for this poneglyph thingy, I know everything the big guy knew before his death," you say as the two of you stand on the boat Nico took to get to you, now flying under your power rather than carried by hers; technically you're making it fall forwards on account of manipulating gravity and all that, but that's beside the point. "You're looking to find out what's written on it rather can caring about what it is exactly, if I'm getting this right?"

"…That is convenient. Yes, the ancient weapon-"

"Don't care, you do your thing and we'll see if we can find more of the things going forward, but I make no promises," you shrug. "That sound like a deal?"

"It's fair enough. You really don't care about Pluton?"

"I really don't." You shake your head. "It's some weapon that can destroy entire islands? I can do that myself, or just build something that does the job just fine as well. I'd take it apart to see how it works if convenient, but it's not something to make a big fuss about."

"Hm." Sitting at the edge of the boat, Nico lets her leather-clad legs dangle in the air, her miniskirt just long enough to maintain some kind of cover for her upper thighs. "Well, as long as you protect me from the Government while I continue my search, I think we'll get along fabulously."

"Oh, the World Government the least of our worries. If anything, I welcome the chance to fight a few strong people. And drink them like juice packs," you smirk, adjusting Crocodile's body still slung over your shoulder. "Anyways, you go on ahead to Alubarna, things over there should've settled by now so it won't be too hard to meet up with a few of the others. I sent my sister ahead already, so she'll help you out doing your thing. In the meantime, I'm going back to the ship, I'll likely be busy for a little while."

"Oh?" The dark-haired woman asks, tilting her head.

"You'll probably see when you get back with everyone else. Unless you cut and run beforehand, your choice," you shrug. "Good luck looking for the Poneglyph either way."

No more than half an hour later, you're back on the Grand Cruiser, half the crew manning it at the moment while the others are busy in Arabasta itself, Crocodile's dead body stowed away below deck much as you yourself are.

"Wooow, is the capt'n a butterfly or something? Is he gonna grow wings?" "Think we could use the red stuff as silk? That's how silk is made, right?" "I dunno, but-"

"Don't touch it you idiots," you grunt out amidst the half-liquid red threads you're spitting out right now, the stuff spreading all over half the cargo loading bay you're currently taking up. "If you get tangled up, you're staying there until it melts, good luck cutting yourself loose."

"Crap! Crap! I got some on my sleeve!" "My hand! My Haaand! I don't wanna lose it, it's one of my two favorite ones!" "Quick, we need lemon juice and vinegar!"

You'll be honest, this entire thing is quickly turning out a lot more chaotic than usual. Especially when, as it turns out, you actually end up needing more space for this whole routine than usual- and your cocoon, when lacking it, simply breaks out onto the deck, the only control you have over it allowing you to at least not push downwards instead of up.

Man, repairing the Grand Cruiser after this will be kind of a bitch, is your last thought before your brain begins to dissolve inside your skull, the bone itself following suit quickly thereafter as you boil and freeze and liquidate all at once, your entire body undergoing this particularly curious process.

And, this once, maybe because you've grown to some extent or maybe because you know to watch out for it now, a dim spark of awareness remains when your 'real' body stirs, its abstract, overly indescribably bubbling 'surface' reaching out for the essence of what 'you' are, not consciously drawn to it for not being conscious at all.

Just a little bit of exchange occurs, then. A bit of your greater non-mass intruding on the body you control, like the lure of an anglerfish or maybe a single finger poking into the fabric of whatever reality you're sticking to at any given time, making you stronger in the sense that a little bit more of you full might is under your full control- and, in turn, just a little bit of your conscious mind osmosing over to the other side as well, all made possible under the influence of the only catalyst you've ever needed to bridge the gap between the real and the imagined.

The gathered suffering of your victims, that is, you already more or less confirmed as much before. Somehow, the process is more nonsensical the more you know about it, not that you truly 'know' all that much right now, without your mind really being active in any recognizable way.

Yet. Things are about to change very soon.