Crocodile pulled himself out of the broken corridor wall.
His massive fur coat was torn open near the wound.
Blood slid down his arm before the gathering sand swallowed it.
The injury wasn't life-threatening, but its re existence sent a chill up the spine of every surviving Baroque Works agent.
A Logia had been cut.
A Warlord had bled.
And the man responsible wasn't even standing in a proper combat stance.
Zaraki remained in the ruined chamber with Murasa hanging slack at his side.
His posture was loose and unguarded, his expression radiating a feral joy that belonged more to a beast than a man.
Around him, Crocodile's hidden command center looked like a war zone.
The polished table was split apart, chairs lay overturned like broken ribs, and sand poured through cracks in the walls as though the desert had finally breached the heart of Rain Dinners.
Robin watched from the breached wall, one hand resting against the Den Den Mushi she had protected.
She had witnessed many forms of power in her life.
She had watched scholars die for forbidden history, governnts erase islands, pirates smile through betrayals, and Crocodile spend years weaving a kingdom into his palm.
But Zaraki was different. He didn't unravel sches—he smashed through them.
Crocodile raised his head. His eyes were bloodshot yet terrifyingly clear.
Pain had stripped away his smooth mask to reveal the old pirate beneath—the man who had once challenged the New World, failed, survived, and buried that humiliation under plots, patience, and sand.
"You think one wound ans you've won?" His voice was rough but steady. "You may have evidence. A recording. A stolen shipnt. A princess waiting outside the city. But evidence alone does not decide everything in this world, brat."
Sand swirled higher around him.
"I am one of the Seven Warlords, a useful asset to the World Governnt. Alabasta is unstable, and the Marines cannot touch a legal weapon without considering the consequences. Even if your report reaches Marineford, those old n will hesitate before discarding over a half-baked accusation."
Zaraki listened patiently before laughing. "You talk a lot."
Crocodile's expression froze.
Zaraki lifted Murasa, the tip scraping across stone with a faint tallic shriek.
"Are you trying to convince , or yourself?"
The room tightened around those words.
Crawling toward an exit, Mr. 3 stopped breathing.
The wax pooling around his fingers froze—not because he had suddenly grown brave, but because he finally understood that moving in this room was tantamount to placing his head beneath a guillotine.
Beyond the breached wall, the shriek of clashing blades echoed through the lower corridors where Zoro and Mr. 1 were still fighting.
Each violent collision sent sparks flashing through the passage, their battle moving like a storm of steel.
Zoro's hoarse, excited laughter cut through the noise, while Mr. 1's calm replies grew shorter and colder with every exchange.
Crocodile's gaze flicked in that direction.
A gunshot cracked from the darkness above, striking the floor an inch from Mr. 3's hand.
"Don't move, candle man," Carina's voice drifted through a ventilation gap, light and sweet enough to make the threat lethal. "I'm not as nice as my boss."
A mont later, weather bubbles rolled across another corridor entrance.
Nami's irritated voice followed. "And if your wax lts all over this place, I'm charging you for every floor tile."
Zaraki's eyebrow twitched. "They're noisy."
For a brief mont, Crocodile looked as though he had no idea what kind of people he was dealing with.
Then, his expression turned completely cold.
The air dried again—not gradually, but instantly. Wine evaporated from shattered glasses.
The carpet shriveled and cracked.
The flowers in a broken vase turned brittle before crumbling into dust.
The moisture in Crocodile's own blood vanished before it hit the floor, leaving dark stains across his coat.
"Enough." His body loosened, trailing sand into the air. "If one storm is not enough to bury you, then I'll grind this entire room into your coffin."
The sand around him withdrew. It didn't scatter; it compressed.
The ruined chamber grew frighteningly still, as though the room itself had taken a breath and refused to exhale.
Even Zaraki's grin faded a fraction—not from fear, but because his instincts sensed the next attack would be heavier than anything prior.
Crocodile raised his hand.
A small sandstorm ford in his palm. At first no larger than a fist, it rapidly grew, devouring dust, broken stone, wooden splinters, marble chips, and every loose grain of sand in the ruined chamber.
The vortex didn't spread wildly; it tightened, becoming denser, sharper, and uglier until the air itself scread around it.
"Sables."
This wasn't the wide storm from before.
It was a compressed spear of desert force, drilling toward Zaraki with terrifying speed.
Only after closing half the distance did it expand violently into a crushing field ant to grind everything in its path into dust.
Zaraki's injured hand tightened around Murasa until the bandage tore.
The system panel flickered in his peripheral vision.
[Warning: Host's body remains in a damaged state.]
[Reiatsu Materialization output unstable.]
[Recomndation: Avoid prolonged high-intensity combat.]
Zaraki's grin returned. "Recomndation rejected."
He stepped forward.
Dark-gold Reiatsu surged outward from his body.
It didn't form a complete skeleton or convenient armor that could erase the desert, it pressed into the air like an invisible beast lowering its shoulders to charge.
Armant Haki crawled over Murasa's blade.
The sandstorm swallowed him.
For one breath, the chamber saw nothing but a blinding yellow expanse.
Then, black-gold light tore through the center.
Murasa cut downward.
The attack wasn't clean enough to erase Sables, nor refined enough to redirect it harmlessly.
Zaraki simply carved a brutal path through the storm, forcing his body through the gap as abrasive sand tore at his shoulders, scraped across his face, and dragged blood from his reopened wounds. The pain only made his smile sharper.
Crocodile's pupils contracted.
'He's forcing his way through? That wasn't how a swordsman was supposed to fight.'
'That wasn't how a Marine was supposed to fight.'
'That wasn't even how a sane person was supposed to fight.'
Zaraki burst out from the other side of the storm and swung.
Crocodile raised his hook, hardening a sand blade around his arm simultaneously.
Bang!
The impact shook the entire underground level.
Crocodile slid backward, his boots carving deep grooves through the sand-covered floor, while Zaraki staggered half a step from the brutal backlash.
The wound across his shoulder split wider beneath the strain, the bone-dry air biting into it like salt.
For the first ti since the fight began, the clash didn't end with Crocodile being imdiately thrown backward.
The Warlord had blocked it.
Barely, but he had blocked it.
Zaraki's eyes lit up.
"Now that's more like it."
---------
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