…
My fist hit Crocodile square in the face.
His cigar disappeared first as Crocodile went through his desk, taking the map, the reports and most of his recruitment pitch with him. The chair struck the wall behind him, and I was still holding his wrist when the rest of his arm broke into sand.
Some of it slipped between my fingers. Some didn't.
I felt that familiar resistance beneath the grit, adjusted my grip without quite knowing why, and pulled. Crocodile came out of the wreckage shoulder-first, his golden hook cutting across my chest before I could throw him again. My jacket opened from lapel to ribs, and the force sent me skidding through what remained of the desk.
I looked down at the damage. Basha had fitted that jacket personally (ㆆ_ㆆ)
"You could've just declined the handshake."
Crocodile's right hand spread, and sand poured across the carpet, climbing the walls and swallowing the broken furniture. Behind me, Robin moved toward the door, his attention snapping between us. "What did you tell him, Miss All Sunday?"
"Considerably less than I imagined he already knew."
His hook lifted toward her, so I stepped into its path. The point struck my forearm with enough force to drive my elbow against my ribs, but it didn't get any farther.
"Your meeting's with me," I said. Sand erupted between us. I lost his wrist, felt something gather low beside my legs and jumped as a cutting ridge tore through the floor. It continued through the office wall, opening the corridor beyond it and sending people screaming toward the casino.
Right. We were leaving.
I reached for the larger musculature across my shoulders and back. My jacket tightened, the remaining seams gave up, and pale flesh spread along my right forearm as the blade formed beneath its wrappings.
Robin stopped at the doorway. Her gaze passed over my arm, then the sand spreading beneath her shoes.
"Alubarna," I told her. "Go their now."
She looked back at me. "You're giving me travel instructions?"
"Please appreciate the effort; it's my gift to you."
Crocodile reformed beside the broken window, his coat lifting in the sand pouring around him. I crossed the room before he could send another attack through the building and drove my left fist into his stomach. Glass burst outward, and we left Rain Dinners together.
His departure was less voluntary than mine.
We struck the pavement outside hard enough to overturn two empty tables. Crocodile dispersed beneath me, swept across the street and rose above the casino entrance while I pulled myself out of the crater.
People had already begun running, and one security guard looked from the hole in his employer's office to the blade on my arm, then abandoned whatever professional obligations he'd been considering.
Crocodile drew his hand back. Sand gathered along it in a long, curved edge.
"Desert Spada!"
The street split toward me.
I brought my blade down into it, and the collision drove me backwards through the pavement. Stone broke around my heels, the sand edge divided against mine, and both halves continued past me into the empty tables behind.
My shoulder hurt, fortunelty the blade remained attached, which was encouraging because the alternative would've been deeply inconvenient.
I'd spent months practising with the thing against packed sand, buried timber and stolen armour, changing how I braced it until it stopped wrenching my shoulder sideways. None of those exercises came with a Warlord attached, though, and I hadn't walked into his office expecting the sword to do everything for me.
Crocodile was already preparing another attack when I reached him.
He tried letting my hand pass through his face. My fingers sank into grit, caught something underneath it and closed around his jaw. The sensation wasn't identical to Smoker, but it was close enough that I didn't have to start from scratch.
His hook scraped across my side as I turned and threw him beyond the buildings at Rainbase's edge.
I followed before he landed.
The larger muscles in my legs ruined my trousers almost immediately. My first leap cleared the last street; the second carried me over the outer wall, and Crocodile struck a dune ahead of me in a rolling explosion of sand.
Behind us, Rain Dinners was still standing. See, I do have restraint!
Crocodile rose with blood beneath his nose and pressed his right palm into the ground. I changed direction, keeping the city behind me while he watched my approach.
"Ground Death!"
The dune collapsed beneath my feet.
Sand spread outward in a widening depression, swallowing the scrub, the stones and an abandoned shelter farther ahead. Its wooden posts shrivelled before the whole structure came apart. I dropped waist-deep, then chest-deep, and felt the moisture being dragged out of me through every point of contact.
My tongue stuck briefly to the roof of my mouth. The skin across my left hand tightened, then loosened again while Crocodile kept his palm against the ground.
The first accidental week without water had been miserable. The deliberate training afterwards hadn't been much better, especially once I started combining it with exercise. I'd carried water every time, despite what certain birds apparently thought of my intelligence.
Crocodile was pulling harder than anything I'd managed to imitate. Unfortunately for him, he'd already introduced himself to the same adaptation in his office.
I pushed my way through the sand.
By the time I reached him, my mouth was wet again.
His hand left the ground. I caught it before he could retreat, and the sand climbing my arm fell away as my grip settled around his wrist.
"No water," he said, staring at our hands. "No seastone."
"Yeah, Smoker was annoyed too." I hit him hard enough to send a channel through the dune behind him, then turned slightly east before going after him.
The capital was a long way away. I knew that from the maps, the shipping records, and an afternoon I'd spent wandering around Alubarna while pretending my interest in the palace's western grounds was entirely architectural.
I'd found the mausoleum. Getting underneath it remained a problem given I couldn't sneak in yet.
Crocodile could help with that and, more importantly, I wanted him beaten beside the very thing he'd been making Robin useful for. She could finally stand in front of a Poneglyph without this bastard deciding what her ability was worth to him.
That was worth a bit of running.
He met me with a sandstorm.
It rose so quickly that the desert disappeared behind a rotating wall. Crocodile stood within it for a moment, blood dripping from his chin, then released the whole thing toward me.
"Sables!"
The storm lifted me off my feet.
I vanished into sand, broken rock and pieces of the shelter he'd destroyed. Something struck my temple, another fragment buried itself in my shoulder, and the wind spun me badly enough that I couldn't keep track of which way the ground was.
I tucked the blade close and covered my face with my other arm.
The sand kept scraping. Breathing hurt for several seconds before my throat stopped admitting quite so much, and the pressure against my skin became steadily less unpleasant.
Finding Crocodile took longer. With Smoker, I'd learned to notice the movement beneath the smoke. Here, everything was moving, most of it trying to take my fucking skin off. You ever been hit by a fucking sandblaster before
I let myself turn once more, caught a change in the pull above my shoulder and reached.
My hand closed around his ankle.
We came out of the storm sideways, Crocodile dragging behind me as I drove both altered legs into the ground. The sand beneath us compressed, then burst outward. I swung him through the lower wall of his own cyclone and let go, heading east.
The storm continued across the desert without him.
I stood in the trench my landing had made, spat grit onto the ground and pulled the fragment out of my shoulder. My shirt had ceased being respectable.
"Basha's gonna charge me extra." I sighed.
Crocodile tried three different directions over the next stretch of desert. I caught him each time and sent him farther toward Alubarna.
He stopped wasting attacks on ordinary punches fairly quickly. The ground opened beneath me, sand blades crossed my route, and storms rolled across the dunes while I kept closing the distance. Some caught me cleanly. Others arrived after I'd already passed, leaving long cuts and collapsing ridges behind us.
His desert got increasingly difficult to stand on, so I spent less time standing.
At first, every leap needed an awkward correction. My legs produced more force than my hips expected, and landing with the blade dragging one side of my body down was still a pain in the ass. I changed the muscle across my back to compensate, eased the extra mass from one thigh and tried again.
The next landing was better.
A few minutes later, I stopped needing to think about it. Crocodile scattered into a low stream of sand and swept between two ridges. I landed ahead of him, reached into the stream and dragged him out by the collar.
His coat tore in my hand.
"You've been steering me," he coughed.
I glanced east. "Took you a while."
He drove his palm against my chest. My skin tightened beneath his fingers, but his arm bent before I did. I stepped through the pressure and sent him over the next ridge.
The longer we travelled, the less ground he gained between impacts.
My calves had burned during the first stretch, but now they barely complained. The strain building through my lower back eased as the altered muscles kept working, and I started arriving ahead of the sand he'd thrown at me.
I wasn't sure how much was adaptation, how much was finally using Partial Manifestation properly, or whether those were even separate questions.
I had several hundred kilometres of desert available to investigate.
By the time the Sandora opened ahead of us, one shoe was gone. Crocodile reformed on the near bank, breathing through his mouth. The river stretched across our route, wide enough that the opposite shore looked deeply unreasonable.
He looked at the water, then at me.
I caught his hook before he could move away from it. Gold ground against my palm as I pulled him close, drove my shoulder into his chest and launched him across the river.
For a moment, he was a dark shape above the water.
Then he became a trail of sand.
I backed up several steps, pushed more of my thighs and hips toward the larger form, and jumped after him. The bank broke beneath me, water passed far below my feet, and halfway across I had just enough time to appreciate how thoroughly I'd committed to this decision.
Nami would've charged admission to watch me miss.
I hit the opposite bank beyond him, carving through sand until my left hand caught a buried slab of rock. Crocodile was still in the air when I turned.
His hook came down toward my head. I struck him across the ribs with the flat of my blade and redirected him inland.
Behind us, the river kept flowing.
I checked the distance we'd crossed, then looked at my legs. "Fuckin' excellent."
The final stretch took less time than the first, partly because Crocodile's attempts to stop me had become attempts to get away. He still made me work for it, though. One sand blade opened my cheek; another struck my forearm hard enough to twist me off course. He buried me beneath a moving dune, and I came out through its far side with him already turning to flee.
When I reached him, he swung his hook across my eyes.
I caught the gold, thickened my left arm and threw him toward the rising land beneath Alubarna.
The capital's lights appeared ahead.
I angled south of the nearest road, keeping our approach away from the houses, then drove him up the bare slope beneath the city. Stone shattered where he landed. His body dispersed into the dust, but I was already following the heavier current through it.
We reached the western grounds with Crocodile in my hand.
Two guards stood outside the mausoleum. One raised his spear, recognised the man I was carrying and forgot to lower it.
"Move," I told them.
They did. Crocodile wrenched himself free as I entered, sending sand across the floor and up between the stonework. I'd seen the upper chamber before; I hadn't found the way down.
He solved that by planting his palm against the paving.
The surface dried and fractured. Sand drained through a widening seam, exposing steps beneath the broken floor.
I looked down, then back at him.
"Thanks."
His gaze followed mine. Whatever he saw in my face made him abandon the attack and throw himself toward the opening. I caught his coat, pulled him back from the stairs and carried him down instead.
We struck the lower passage hard enough to crack the wall. I kept the blade turned away from the carvings while he tried dragging the ceiling down around us.
Dust poured over my shoulders. A block struck my back and split against it.
Then the passage opened into a chamber, and I saw the stone.
The Poneglyph stood beyond the pillars, its carved surface intact beneath the falling dust. I couldn't read a fucking word of it.
Still worth the trip.
Crocodile staggered beside me, staring past my shoulder. His right hand pressed against his ribs while his hook hung low.
"You knew," he heaved. His eyes shifted toward the passage we'd entered through. "She told you."
I shook my head. "Robin didn't tell me shit."
He pulled the golden covering from his hook, exposing the narrower weapon beneath it. Something wet shone along the point.
I let him advance far enough to clear the nearest pillar. My right shoulder thickened, the blade settled along my forearm, and Crocodile's body began coming apart before he swung. Sand spilled from his coat and across the floor.
I could still feel where his arm was.
The hook came toward my throat. I stepped inside its reach and brought the blade across.
It cut through his left arm below the elbow, cleanly separating flesh, bone and the weapon attached to them. The severed limb struck the floor beside the hook.
Crocodile hit the stone on his knees, pitched forward and stayed there.
I stood over him until I was certain he wasn't getting up, then let the extra muscle recede. Blood was spreading beneath his sleeve, so I pulled off what remained of my tie and secured it above the cut.
After that, I sat against the nearest pillar.
My feet hurt, I was starving, and somewhere back in Rainbase Robin was going to have to arrange her own transport because I'd apparently turned a meeting into a fucking cross-country event.
I looked from Crocodile to the Poneglyph.
She could take her time.
…
End of Chapter!
Word Count - 2524
a/n -
Double upload today to make up for me disappearing for a bit! Sorry about the wait, people; hopefully two chapters are acceptable compensation for my crimes.
Anyways, this chapter was mostly just Kai vs Crocodile, and honestly I had a lot of fun with it. I wanted the fight to feel FAST. Not necessarily in the sense of them throwing eight billion punches at each other, but literally covering stupid amounts of distance while fighting. Rainbase to Alubarna basically becomes the world's most violent road trip, with Kai gradually realising he can keep pushing his Partial Manifestation harder and harder as they move.
Is travelling several hundred kilometres like this completely realistic?
Probably not.
Do I care?
No.
We're calling it a speed/endurance feat and moving on. Fuck off (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻
I also liked showing how much Kai's previous experiences actually matter now. Smoker gave him experience interacting with Logias, his dehydration training makes Crocodile's moisture drain effectively useless, and Partial Manifestation is finally starting to feel like something he can actively experiment with rather than just "make arm bigger." He's adjusting his legs, hips, back, weight distribution and everything else while travelling, which is something I want to keep developing.
And yes, Crocodile got COOKED. That's intentional. This isn't meant to become a rivalry where Kai needs three rematches to eventually scrape out a win. Crocodile is incredibly dangerous, but he ran into someone whose entire power is basically designed to make fighting him progressively worse.
Ending the fight beside the Poneglyph was also very deliberate, especially with Robin in mind. We'll be dealing with the consequences of all of that very soon.
As always, lemme know what you thought of the fight, especially the pacing and Kai's current strength level.
Bye-bye :)