The wind howled without mercy. It carried the biting, relentless sting of desert sand.
Yuba was supposed to be a jewel. It was meant to be the grand crossroads of the western desert. It was supposed to be a place of life.
Instead, it was a sprawling graveyard.
The Straw Hat Pirates trudged over the crest of a massive, rolling dune. Their eyes widened in shock. The heat beat down on their shoulders. Sweat dripped off their chins.
They were all dressed in traditional Alabasta-style desert clothes. Loose, flowing fabrics. Wide head-wraps. Long, sandy-tan cloaks designed to block the blistering sun.
But the sight before them made their blood run cold despite the heat.
Sand had swallowed the buildings. Stone roofs were caved in. Withered trees stood like skeletal hands. They reached for a blinding sky that offered absolutely no rain.
Vivi stopped walking. Her boots sank into the hot sand. Her face turned chalky white.
"How could this happen?" she whispered.
Her voice trembled. She couldn't believe her eyes. This was the greatest oasis in all of Alabasta. Now, it was a silent ghost town.
"Where is the Rebel Army?" Vivi asked. Panic rose in her chest. "Where are they?"
She hurried forward. She didn't wait for the others. Her white veil fluttered wildly in the harsh wind.
The crew exchanged worried glances. They adjusted their heavy desert robes. They followed close behind her.
They stepped over buried carts. They walked past shattered pottery. The silence of the dead city was deafening. It felt like walking through a tomb.
Deep inside the ruined city, they found a crater.
It was a wide, wind-scoured pit. Inside, a single figure moved in the dust.
It was an old man. He looked incredibly gaunt. He looked painfully frail.
He was digging. He drove a worn, rusted shovel into the dry, unforgiving earth. He dug over and over again. He didn't stop.
His skin looked like rough tree bark. He was baked and cracked by the endless sun.
"Is that a traveler?" the old man asked.
He stopped digging. He leaned heavily on his shovel. He slowly climbed out of the deep pit.
"I am truly sorry," the old man wheezed. "This town has already dried up."
He looked at the strange group of pirates in their desert cloaks. He didn't look afraid. He just looked tired. So very tired.
"However, if you wish to rest, that is no problem. There are many empty houses here. That is currently the only thing this town has to be proud of."
Vivi quickly pulled her white veil up. She hid the lower half of her face. She stepped slightly behind Kai.
Kai stood near the front of the group. He had traded his signature red hoodie for the loose, flowing Alabasta-style desert clothes. A sandy-tan cloak draped over his shoulders. A light scarf was wrapped loosely around his neck.
He didn't look intimidating. He offered the old man a friendly, easygoing smile.
"Hey there, old man," Kai said casually. He shoved his hands into the deep pockets of his desert pants. "We're actually looking for the Rebel Army. Do you know where they went?"
The old man froze. He narrowed his sunken, dark eyes. He looked at Kai strangely.
"You're quite well-informed," he grumbled.
His tone shifted. It lost its welcoming warmth. It became filled with extreme, bitter disappointment.
"That's right. Those idiots have already left."
The old man pointed a shaky, withered finger toward the eastern horizon.
"They migrated to Katorea. If you're here to join the rebels too, then leave quickly. You are not welcome here!"
The Straw Hats stopped breathing. Their jaws dropped to the sand.
"Katorea?!" Nami shrieked.
She grabbed her orange hair in sheer, unadulterated frustration.
"But Katorea is right next to Nanohana! That's the port city where we just came from!"
"Are you kidding me?!" A robotic voice buzzed loudly.
It came from the sleek orange watch strapped to Kai's left wrist, peeking out from under his desert sleeve.
"We walked across a blistering, boiling desert for absolutely nothing?!" Bot whined from the watch. "My gears are grinding! I've got sand in my speaker grill for no reason! Aw, man..."
Kai sighed. He wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead.
"Quiet down, Bot," Kai muttered. "Nobody knew. We just have to deal with it."
Sanji let out a long, heavy puff of smoke. He pulled the cigarette from his mouth. He dropped it into the sand and crushed it flat beneath his heel.
"So we essentially made this whole grueling trip for nothing," Sanji growled.
While the crew complained, the old man suddenly froze.
He dropped his shovel. It clattered loudly against the stones.
He stared intently at the blue-haired girl hiding behind Kai's sandy-tan cloak.
"Vivi?" the old man gasped.
He took a shaky, stumbling step forward. Tears welled up instantly in his sunken eyes. They tracked through the heavy dirt on his face.
"Are you really Princess Vivi? Thank heavens. Thank heavens you're alive!"
He walked forward tremblingly. He reached out with both hands. He grabbed the blue-haired girl's hand tightly.
His voice was raspy. It cracked with heavy, unbearable emotion.
"Do you not recognize me? Well, I suppose I have lost a lot of weight over these years."
Vivi looked carefully at the old man's face.
She studied his brow. She studied his kind, sad eyes.
The chubby, smiling face from her childhood memories slowly overlapped with this weathered, aged face in front of her.
"You are... Uncle Toto?!"
Vivi covered her mouth. She was in absolute shock.
She truly hadn't expected this. The proud father of her childhood friend, Koza, looked like a walking skeleton. He was wasting away.
Just as the two were catching up, the air suddenly changed.
The temperature dropped. The wind died completely.
Chopper's expression suddenly morphed into pure, primal terror.
The little reindeer lifted his head. He sniffed the dry air frantically. His blue nose twitched wildly.
"This is bad, everyone!" Chopper shouted. Pure panic laced his squeaky voice. "A sandstorm is coming!"
Chopper was an animal. He had an extremely powerful natural instinct for environmental disasters. He could feel the atmospheric pressure dropping rapidly.
Everyone looked up.
A massive, towering wall of swirling yellow sand was rushing toward them. It looked like a tsunami of dirt and debris. It stretched all the way to the clouds. It blocked out the sun completely.
"Look out!" Kai yelled. He didn't hesitate.
He stepped directly in front of the group. His loose desert robes flapped wildly in the sudden gale. He tapped the glowing face of his Power Watch.
He wasn't an unstoppable god. He had only unlocked his base powers so far. He was capped at Level One. But it would have to be enough to buy them a few precious seconds.
"Elemental Power: Earth!"
Bright yellow light flared brilliantly from the watch. Kai slammed both his palms hard onto the sandy ground.
The earth rumbled deeply.
A jagged slab of solid sandstone erupted from the dirt in front of them. It was thick and wide. It wasn't a massive, impenetrable fortress. It was just a sturdy, Level One Earth wall.
BOOM!
The sandstorm slammed into the rock. The impact was deafening.
The stone cracked instantly under the immense, crushing pressure. But it held. It absorbed the devastating first strike of the howling wind. It shielded the crew from the initial blast.
"Inside! Now!" Toto yelled over the roaring wind.
He ushered the Straw Hats quickly past the crumbling earth wall. They piled into a sturdy stone house nearby.
Toto slammed the heavy wooden door shut. He threw the rusted iron latch into place.
Right outside, Kai's earth wall finally shattered into dust.
The sand struck the stone walls of the house. It made a ceaseless, deafening rustling sound. It sounded like a million tiny claws scraping at the door.
The inside of the house was dim. Dust floated thickly in the air.
"Over these years, a sandstorm strikes Yuba almost every few days."
Toto leaned heavily against the wooden door. He shook his head helplessly.
He looked at Vivi. His eyes were full of profound sorrow. He began to speak about the Rebel Army. He spoke about his son, Koza.
"...I have always believed in the King. I believe the King is not that kind of person!"
Toto covered his head with his dry, withered hands. He slid down the wooden door. He collapsed onto the dirt floor.
He curled in on himself in deep, physical pain. His wrinkled face was covered in fresh, wet tears.
"Vivi, I beg you. Please stop those idiots!"
"Uncle Toto..." Vivi hurriedly rushed over. She knelt in the dirt. She helped Toto sit up. Her gaze became increasingly firm.
"Rest assured. I will definitely stop the Rebel Army!"
"I quit."
The voice was entirely flat. It cut through the heavy tension in the room like a dull, heavy knife.
Everyone turned around.
Luffy was sitting cross-legged on the dirt floor. His arms were crossed stubbornly over his chest. The brim of his straw hat shadowed his eyes entirely.
"Luffy? What are you saying?" Vivi asked. She was deeply confused. "We have to go to Katorea. We have to stop the rebels!"
"It's useless," Luffy said bluntly.
He looked up. His dark eyes were deadly serious. He wasn't smiling.
"You want to stop the rebellion. But you don't want anyone to get hurt. You want to save the rebels. You want to save the Royal Army. And you want to save us."
Luffy paused. The wind howled outside.
"But we're going up against a Warlord of the Sea. People are going to die, Vivi."
"Shut up!" Vivi screamed.
The immense stress of the journey finally broke her. The weeks of running. The terror of the assassins. The starvation. The sight of Uncle Toto. It all boiled over in an instant.
She lunged forward. She swung her hand wildly. She slapped Luffy hard across the face.
Smack!
"Don't say that!" Vivi sobbed loudly. "That's exactly what I'm trying to prevent!"
To everyone's absolute shock, Luffy didn't back down. He didn't apologize.
He didn't yell. He simply pulled his arm back. He punched the princess right in the face.
Bam!
Vivi tumbled backward. She crashed hard into the dirt floor.
"Luffy! What the heck?!" Kai yelled.
He instinctively stepped forward. His desert cloak swirled around him. His fists clenched tightly. But Zoro put a firm, heavy hand on his shoulder. The green-haired swordsman shook his head silently. He told Kai to stay out of it.
"You're being naive!" Luffy yelled at Vivi. He completely ignored the angry, murderous glares from Sanji and Chopper.
"You can't stop this just by talking! If we want to save Alabasta, we have to beat the guy causing all of this! We have to defeat Crocodile!"
Vivi sat in the dirt. She clutched her bruised cheek. Her shoulders shook violently.
"I know that!" she sobbed out loudly. "But he's too strong! I don't have anything else to risk except my own life!"
"THEN RISK OUR LIVES TOGETHER!" Luffy roared.
His voice echoed sharply off the stone walls. It drowned out the howling sandstorm outside. It pierced straight into everyone's soul.
"AREN'T WE FRIENDS?!!!"
Boom.
Luffy's words struck Vivi like a physical blow to the chest.
The mask of strength she had been wearing for months finally shattered completely. Fresh, heavy tears streamed down her face uncontrollably.
She had been trying to carry the weight of an entire nation. She had tried to do it all by herself. She thought she had to be the perfect, untouchable princess.
But looking at Luffy, and then at the fierce, unyielding faces of the rest of the crew, she finally realized the truth.
She didn't have to do it alone.
Kai watched the princess cry in the dirt. He let out a long, slow breath. His tense shoulders finally dropped.
He wasn't much for big, dramatic speeches. He hated lecturing people. It just wasn't his style. He was just a guy trying to help his friends.
He walked over to Vivi. He crouched down in the dirt right in front of her.
He offered her a hand. He gave her a lopsided, easy grin.
"Come on, get up," Kai said simply. "Captain's a rubber idiot, but he's got a point. You're stuck with us now."
Vivi sniffled. She looked up at him with red, swollen eyes.
Kai tapped the sleek orange face of his watch.
"Look, my Earth, Water, and Leaf powers are barely Level One right now," Kai told her casually. "I'm no god. I can't move mountains yet. But I'll gladly throw some rocks and splash some water at this Crocodile guy if it helps. We're in this together."
"Yeah!" Bot's robotic voice buzzed cheerfully from the watch. He sounded unusually fired up. "We're gonna kick that sand-guy's butt! I'll even play some cool battle music from my speakers while we do it!"
Vivi let out a wet, shaky laugh. It was a beautiful sound in the dark room.
She reached out. She took Kai's hand firmly. He pulled her easily up from the floor.
She wiped her eyes with the back of her sleeve. She looked around at the smiling, confident faces of her friends.
The heavy, suffocating knot in her heart was finally untied.
A few minutes later, the atmosphere in the room changed completely.
The crying stopped. The despair vanished. The focus shifted entirely to action.
Nami cleared a space on a shabby wooden table in the corner of the room.
She didn't have any fancy technology. She didn't have holograms. She just had a worn, crinkled paper map of the country. She spread it out flat on the table for everyone to see.
"Okay, so our ultimate goal is Crocodile," Nami said professionally. She tapped a large dot on the map. "He's currently stationed at a casino city called Rainbase."
"Oh! Wait a sec. Before I forget!"
Kai spoke up suddenly. He reached deep into the folds of his desert cloak. He pulled out a crumpled, sandy stack of folded papers.
He tossed them onto the center of the wooden table.
"When we were fighting those Baroque Works bounty hunters back in Nanohana, I grabbed these off one of their coats," Kai explained. He shrugged his shoulders. "Bot told me they looked important."
"I have a great eye for trouble!" Bot declared proudly from the watch on his wrist. "There were weapon shipments listed all over them. Lots of 'em! Swords, guns, cannons, you name it!"
Nami snatched the papers from the table quickly.
Her brown eyes scanned the text rapidly. Her expression grew incredibly serious. It turned dark.
"These are ledgers," Nami muttered. She traced her finger over the black ink. "Baroque Works has been secretly smuggling weapons. Directly to the Rebel Army."
"But why?" Sanji asked. He frowned deeply. "The Royal Army has better equipment. But the Rebels have more people. If Crocodile gives the Rebels weapons..."
"...He wants them to destroy each other," Vivi gasped.
The blood drained completely from her face once more. The horrific, twisted truth finally clicked into place.
"He wants the two armies to fight an evenly matched deathmatch," she continued. Her voice trembled with sheer horror. "They will fight at Alubarna. The capital. Once they completely wipe each other out, he swoops in as the hero. He takes the throne!"
"That's terrible!" Chopper cried out. He hid behind Zoro's leg in fear.
"He's an absolute monster," Sanji growled lowly. He struck a match. He lit a fresh cigarette. The bright flame illuminated his angry, shadowed face.
"Good work grabbing these, Kai," Zoro nodded approvingly. He rested his hand on the hilts of his swords. He looked ready to fight right now. "So, knowing this, what's the plan?"
Luffy slammed his fist hard into his open palm. A huge, fearless grin spread across his face.
"It's simple!" Luffy shouted enthusiastically. "We go to Rainbase! And I send Crocodile flying!"
"I knew you were going to say that," Usopp groaned loudly. He facepalmed hard. "You idiot!"
"Actually," Nami smiled. She looked down at the crinkled map. "Luffy isn't entirely wrong this time."
The crew looked at her in genuine surprise.
"Directly attacking his doorstep is dangerous," Nami explained calmly. "But we have to draw him away from Alubarna. He's the one pulling the strings. And as a hub city, Yuba is the perfect place for us to start our counterattack."
Kai grinned widely. He cracked his knuckles. "Sounds like a road trip. Let's show this Warlord exactly what the Straw Hats are made of."
Just as he said that, the Power Watch on his wrist emitted a loud, strange hum.
Bzzzt!
The steady orange glow flickered wildly. It sparked. The screen flashed rapidly between two completely unknown, strange colors.
"Whoa! Hold your horses, Kai!" Bot yelled from the speaker. His robotic voice sounded totally bewildered. "Something weird is happening in the core chamber!"
Kai frowned. He tapped the side of the watch. "What's wrong? Did the sand get into the gears?"
"No! It's not sand!" Bot buzzed frantically. "Two completely new elemental cores are reacting! The pressure from the storm and the adrenaline... they're waking up!"
"New elements?" Kai's eyes widened in surprise. "Awesome. What are they? Fire? Lightning?"
"I... I don't know!" Bot cried out. "My screen is totally blank! I can't identify the elements at all! This has never happened before!"
Kai stared at the sparking watch for a second. Then, a slow, confident smirk spread across his face.
"Well," Kai chuckled, pulling his desert scarf tight against his neck. "Guess we'll just have to find out what they are when we hit Rainbase."