Alabasta—a kingdom half-swallowed by desert, nearly had become Baroque Works' private territory. The organization's public face was pirate-hunting; its real agenda was conquest. Behind it all was Sir Crocodile—one of the former Warlords notably absent from Marineford.
Desert kingdoms and drought went hand in hand. Yet for a considerable stretch of time, Alabasta had been spared. Crocodile had seized on precisely that, engineering a frame-up: King Cobra, he claimed, had been using Dance Powder—a prohibited substance capable of inducing rainfall over a target region by drawing moisture from neighboring lands. A drought machine for others, passed off as a self-serving miracle.
As for why he'd skipped Marineford—he had his own history with Whitebeard and wasn't indifferent to the war. But unlike Hancock, he'd simply never received an invitation.
The short version: Straw Hat Luffy had heard Ace was being executed. He'd bypassed every island between here and there, intercepted the Marine ship carrying his summons to the war, and gone at the crew headfirst—apparently trying to seize a warship and get coordinates to Marineford.
Crocodile didn't have the full picture. He only knew the kid had failed, because at the exact moment Crocodile—already furious over his inexplicable removal from the Warlords—had come to confront Cobra directly and take the Poneglyph by force, some brat had come crashing in, yelling about punching him.
"Things are awfully loud out there."
On Crocodile's orders, his female assistant had taken Cobra hostage and located the hidden Poneglyph—a massive square stone slab.
Nico Robin. That was her name. The girl Aokiji had let walk out of Ohara twenty years ago; one of the only people in the world capable of reading a Poneglyph.
She'd come to Crocodile for protection and offered her skills in return. Beyond the arrangement, though—as a scholar—she was genuinely drawn to whatever it might reveal about the Void Century.
"Don't waste your effort. There's nothing on it," Cobra said, sweat running into his eyes, still trying.
Robin ignored him and read in silence.
Tap. Tap...
The footsteps seemed to announce Crocodile arriving—but by the second step Robin had already recognized a stranger's gait. Light and quick, more like a child's than a woman's, skipping two steps at a time. Before Robin could prepare herself, the figure was already standing in front of her.
"A child?" Cobra blinked.
Robin's pupils contracted. She took two steps back.
This was no child. She'd had no trouble recognizing the two-day-old headline: Dracule Yimi, vice captain of the newly-crowned Emperor Hawk-Eye's crew. Why was someone like that here?
"Lucky!"
Yimi's eyes lit up. She ran straight for the Poneglyph.
She hadn't left yet—she'd been hunting for something valuable to pay off her debt to the Demon. For days she'd drifted the Grand Line in the small boat Hancock had given her, finally tracking down the second Devil Fruit she'd seen since arriving in this world. Then one careless moment and Baroque Works lackeys had made off with it.
The fruit was still gone. But a wrong turn had brought her here—and right in front of her was the very Poneglyph Rayleigh had once described.
"Pluton. And Wano?" the cat said, in the tone of someone commenting on the weather, while both Robin and Cobra went pale.
This child can read Poneglyphs?
Of course she could—for reasons that were, frankly, disturbing. She had Robin to thank for quietly studying the ancient script as a child, and Ohara's annihilation to thank for adjusting the world's average literacy in "ancient script" down to exactly one person.
Robin had been eight at the time, though. Meaning only the seven-year-old's knowledge had carried over to Yimi—barely enough to muddle through.
"How do you—" Robin pressed her hand to her mouth.
Could Hawk-Eye's mysterious wife be an Ohara survivor? Or was it Hawk-Eye himself...
Yimi ignored her. She stood motionless, craning up at the inscription, her head loading for a long moment.
Rayleigh is in Wano? Why would they carve something like that on here? Rayleigh is obviously at Amazon Lily!
The little cat turned away, dissatisfied, and marched back up the passage two steps at a time.
"Wait—!" Robin moved to call her back—but that was precisely when Crocodile unleashed the Devil Fruit awakening he'd developed after letting his Haki fall into disuse. The moisture drained from every stone of the palace at once. The walls began crumbling into sand.
Of all the timing...
The country was already descending into chaos. Crocodile's framing of the king had stirred up friction with neighboring nations for months; his open move was the signal they'd been waiting for.
In the mess that followed, recovering the stolen Devil Fruit was all but impossible—and Yimi didn't even consider her own Cat-Cat Fruit worth much.
She set it drifting aimlessly, her mood flat.
Time to summon the Demon.
"Long time, Lady Star Spirit." The Demon bobbed on the surface of the sea, squeezing its short, stubby fingers. "My longing for you has never faded—like a banana set in a corner after being picked. Though you do seem to have forgotten something."
"Couldn't find it. The inscription only said Pluton is in Wano." Yimi sat on the bow, dangling her legs above the water.
The Demon narrowed its small eyes. As the embodiment of greed, even in an unfamiliar world, it had no trouble immediately sensing the strongest desires in this one—first, naturally, the great treasure Pirate King Roger had left behind; below that, the three Ancient Weapons.
"The Ancient Weapon Pluton? Fascinating. It's said to fire shots capable of destroying an island in an instant." The Demon flicked out its tongue twice.
"Ancient weapon?" Rayleigh came to mind.
So someone as old as Rayleigh counts as ancient.
Yimi swung her legs. "You want something that can destroy islands?"
The Demon smiled. "My lady, if it were yours I'd be delighted to accept it as payment. But since it isn't in your hands—why wouldn't I simply acquire it myself, then trade it to whoever wants it most?"
The Demon's goal was never any specific object. It was the ever-expanding greed of those it dealt with.
Yimi shook her head.
If destroying islands was the standard, she had something like that right here.
She reached into her storage space, produced a card, extracted the mushroom inside, and held it out. "Here."
The Demon took it, puzzled, and stared at it.
It was nighttime.
The mushroom began to swell...
(End of Volume)
Volume Division: Fate—The Fourth War