Sir Crocodile was officially bald.
The desert king was in his late forties—a dangerous age where the hairline becomes a precious resource. Between the total collapse of his criminal empire, the mounting pressure of Evan's blackmail, and Garp literally grinding his face into the pavement moments ago, the man's scalp had reached its breaking point.
Crocodile reached up with trembling fingers. His hand met something terrifyingly smooth. The "big back" was gone. The dignified, slicked-back mane of the Warlord had been replaced by a gleaming, desolate void.
The last thread of his sanity snapped like a brittle twig.
"Evan... I am going to kill you," Crocodile hissed, his voice trembling with a cosmic level of hatred. "A thousand deaths will not be enough to repay this!"
His lower body dissolved into a frantic, violent sandstorm. He didn't just attack; he lashed out. Blades of compressed sand whistled through the air, aimed squarely at Evan's throat.
"Relax, Crocodile. You're a desert butcher, aren't you?" Evan said, parrying the sand-blades with a casual flick of Rachel. "Why are you stealing lines from sword demons in other universes? Besides, it was clearly Garp who pushed your head into the dirt. I just gave you a trim."
"Bwahahaha!" Garp, never one to let a tragedy go un-mocked, was doubled over. "I'm an old man and even I don't have hair loss like that! You're a desert king and you're a chrome-dome! This is too much, I can't even fight anymore!"
The three-way standoff was descending into farce, but then a blur of red and blue burst into the clearing.
"Sand Crocodile! Your opponent is ME!"
Luffy arrived with a thunderous impact. He was wearing his signature straw hat and red vest, his feet firmly planted in his supreme battle-sandals. His fist was already coated in gleaming black Armament Haki. He didn't waste time talking; he lunged forward and delivered a punch that sent the Warlord skidding back ten meters.
Then, Luffy stopped. He tilted his head, looking utterly confused.
"Wait... who are you?"
It is a well-known fact that Luffy is chronically face-blind. He once mistook a man in a poorly made costume for his own crewmate. He looked at the bald, scarred man in front of him, then pulled a crumpled bounty poster out of his pocket. He looked at the poster, then back at the bald man, then back at the poster.
"Why are you bald?" Luffy asked with devastating sincerity.
[Diary Entry: Luffy has a natural talent for psychological warfare. He doesn't even mean to be cruel, which makes it ten times worse. Crocodile was already on the edge; Luffy just pushed him off the cliff and asked why he didn't have a parachute.]
"The Captain is here," Evan smiled, stepping back. "Crocodile is all yours, Luffy. Captain versus Captain. Make it count."
Luffy grinned, pounding his fists together. "Leave him to me!"
Crocodile was vibrating with such rage he could barely maintain his human form. He didn't care about Evan anymore; he wanted to pulverize the rubber boy who had dared to question his hairline.
"Luffy, huh?" Garp watched his grandson with a complicated expression. "A bit of Conqueror's spirit in there. Looks like my 'fists of love' training actually paid off. He's gotten much stronger."
Garp then turned his gaze back to Evan. The humor vanished from his eyes, replaced by the sharp, piercing focus of a Marine Hero. "Now, back to where we left off at Rogue Town, brat."
"I'm really not much of a fighter, Vice Admiral," Evan sighed, exhaling a long plume of breath. "Can't we just watch them settle it?"
"You just split a national-level sandstorm with a single swing," Garp sneered, cracking his knuckles. "Don't give me that 'not a fighter' crap. My old bones need a proper workout today."
Evan frowned. This was a difficult situation. He couldn't go all-out—this was Luffy's grandfather. If he accidentally hurt the old man, explaining it to Luffy would be a nightmare. But if he held back, Garp would likely turn him into a pancake.
[Diary Entry: Garp is the ultimate 'unquantifiable' powerhouse. In the manga, we rarely see him at 100%. He's always the guy in the background until he decides to punch a hole through a mountain range to save a subordinate. Fighting him is like trying to box a hurricane.]
[I can't play nice anymore. If I don't give him something to chew on, he'll never let me go.]
Evan raised his hand. Using the electromagnetic properties of the Rumble-Rumble Fruit, he pulled a cloud of iron sand from the desert floor. He compressed them instantly, forming a dozen glowing, metallic spheres.
"I'm not getting into a fistfight with you, old man," Evan said. "Let's try some long-range testing."
The spheres ignited with orange-red heat as they were caught in a linear magnetic field. BOOM.
A volley of Railgun shots streaked toward Garp, tearing the earth apart as they passed. It was a multi-shot electromagnetic cannon, a feat of precision control. Garp, however, moved with the agility of a giant bear. His "Soru" was so refined he simply vanished, the Railgun shots exploding harmlessly in the distance.
"Chidori Current!" Evan stabbed his blade into the ground as Garp reappeared behind him.
Thousands of lightning "birds" chirped as a massive electrical field erupted around Evan. Garp didn't even flinch. His Haki-clad fist punched straight through the lightning, aiming right for Evan's jaw.
"Small tricks are useless, brat!" Garp roared.
Evan flickered away at the last millisecond, feeling the wind of the punch graze his cheek.
"Is that it?" Garp taunted, beckoning with his finger. "Where's that strike from earlier? The one that split the storm? Show me what you're really made of!"
"If I use that here," Evan said, glancing at the surrounding city walls, "this capital will be reduced to rubble. We'd be fighting over a graveyard."
Garp paused, looking puzzled. "You're a pirate. Why do you care if the city gets trashed?"
"Because this is Vivi's city," Evan replied, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
"Who?" Garp blinked.
"The Princess. We're... very close. I can't exactly wreck her home while I'm trying to impress her, can I?"
Garp stared at him for a long beat. "So... you're holding back because of a girl?"
"It's called being a gentleman, Vice Admiral. You should try it sometime."
Garp's face turned bright red as he let out another explosive laugh. "A gentleman pirate! What a load of crap! Fine, if you won't bring the fight to me, I'll bring the mountain to you!"