The air in the ruined bar crackled with violence. Luffy's fist, a blur of raw power, slammed into the ground where Vivi had stood a heartbeat before, cratering the stone. She scrambled back, her heart a frantic drum against her ribs.
"Stop this!" she cried, her voice lost in the whirlwind.
Zoro watched, a vein throbbing in his temple. The idiot captain was treating this like another game. Enough.
"You're not taking this seriously," Zoro's voice was a low, dangerous rasp that cut through the chaos. He slowly drew Wado Ichimonji, the shing of steel the only warning. "If you're going to fight me, then fight me."
Vivi's blood ran cold. "Zoro, no!"
But it was too late. The two forces of nature ignored her. With a wordless roar, Luffy launched himself forward, a rubbery cannonball of pure intent. Zoro met him, not with a technique, but with a brutal, horizontal slash meant to bisect.
The collision wasn't a clash; it was a detonation.
BOOM!
The shockwave blew out the remaining windows. Luffy was hurled backward, crashing through a timbered wall with a yelp. Zoro grunted, skidding across the floor, his boots carving trenches in the wood before his back smashed into the stone fireplace, cracking it.
Dust and silence descended, broken only by the patter of falling debris.
Now. Go now! Vivi's survival instinct screamed. She turned to flee into the Whiskey Peak night, but a shadow fell over her. Then another.
They stood in the doorway, silhouetted against the moon, their forms trembling with pure, unadulterated rage.
"You… think you can make a joke of us?" Mr. 5 hissed, picking a piece of snot from his nose with lethal precision.
"Humiliation has a price, dahling," Miss Valentine sneered, her parasol spinning. "And we've come to collect."
Vivi froze, trapped between the ruined bar and the agents of her nightmare.
Then, two voices spoke in unison, dripping with identical annoyance.
"You're in the way."
From the hole in the wall, a stretched arm shot out, grabbing Mr. 5's head. From the dust by the fireplace, a green blur erupted.
"Gum-Gum…"
"Three Sword Style…"
"PISTOL!"
"TATSUMAKI!"
Luffy's fist connected with a CRUNCH. Zoro's whirlwind of blades became a cyclone of pure force. Mr. 5 and Miss Valentine didn't even have time to scream before they were vacuumed up and launched into the starry sky, twin shooting stars of defeat.
They vanished with a distant, fading "Farewell~"
Luffy retracted his arm, cracking his neck. Zoro landed, sheathing his swords. They turned, their eyes locking once more, the brief interruption forgotten. The fight wasn't over. The air tightened again, thicker than before.
"Now," Zoro said, a feral grin spreading across his face.
"Shishishi!" Luffy echoed, bouncing on his toes.
"ENOUGH!"
The shout was a whip-crack of pure, avaricious fury. Nami stood on the stairs, her eyes not filled with fear, but with the blazing fire of betrayed profit. "Are you two complete morons?! You just blew away a 1 billion berry reward!"
The number hung in the air, stunning even Luffy into momentary silence.
"Reward?" Luffy blinked.
"The girl," Nami pointed a trembling finger at Vivi. "She's the one Baroque Works has the bounty on. 1 billion berries. Alive. And you two are trying to turn her into paste!"
All eyes turned to Vivi. She shrank under the weight of their gazes—Luffy's confusion, Zoro's sharp assessment, Nami's calculating hunger.
"I…" Vivi's voice broke. The princessly composure she'd clung to shattered. "I can't… I can't promise you that money."
"What?" Nami's voice dropped to a deadly whisper.
Tears, held back for months of infiltration and fear, finally spilled over. "My country… Alabasta… it's dying. Baroque Works is killing it. They've sown lies and stolen rain, pushing us to the brink of civil war." The words poured out in a desperate flood—her infiltration with Igaram, the sinister "Dream Country" plan that was a blueprint for conquest.
Luffy's playfulness vanished. His face grew still. "Who's behind it?"
The question was simple, direct. In her emotional torrent, Vivi let the most dangerous secret slip.
"The leader… Mr. 0… it's Crocodile. One of the Shichibukai."
The name landed like a tombstone.
A Warlord of the Sea.
The silence that followed was absolute and heavy. It was broken not by them, but by a high, grating giggle from a dark alley.
"Fyafyafyafya! Transaction complete! Identity of Mr. 0: confirmed!"
From the shadows waddled a bizarre, mismatched pair—a tall, dour man in a bat hood and a small, grinning woman with a devil fruit blossom on her head. The Unluckies.
"Targets acquired!" the woman, Miss Goldenweek, chirped. "Straw Hat Luffy, Pirate Hunter Zoro, and… the traitor, Miss Wednesday. New priority status: Elimination."
The man, Mr. 13, held up a slate and with a quick claw, scratched their images onto it. A direct report to the highest levels of Baroque Works.
Igaram stepped forward, his face ashen but resolved. "Princess, there is no more time for secrecy. We have the same enemy now." He produced a small, ornate compass from his coat—an Eternal Pose, its needle holding unerringly to one direction. "I will take the Pose and draw their attention. I will sail directly for Alabasta and become the decoy. You must go with them. It is the only way."
He thrust the Eternal Pose toward Luffy.
But before Luffy's hand could close around it, a paintbrush flicked through the air.
A splash of crimson paint hit the Eternal Pose. Then, with a sound like shattering destiny, the sacred, unbreakable navigational artifact exploded into useless shards in Igaram's hand.
"No decoys," Miss Goldenweek sang, dipping her brush into another color. "No escapes. Mr. 13 has already sent the Den Den Mushi signal. Every agent on this island now knows your faces, your crime, and your sentence."
She smiled, a sweet, terrible smile.
"The hunt for the Straw Hats… begins now."
From all around them, in the streets, on the rooftops, from every shadowy corner, eyes began to glow. Silhouettes rose, weapons gleamed under the moon. The soft click of blades, the creak of drawn bows, the low growls of awakened killers filled the night.
They were surrounded. Not by dozens, but by the entire, treacherous population of Whiskey Peak. Every friendly face from the festival was now a mask of cold, professional murder.
Luffy slowly pushed his straw hat down onto his head. Zoro's hands drifted back to his hilts. Nami gripped her staff, all thoughts of berries gone, replaced by raw survival.
Vivi looked at the sea of hostile eyes, then at the shattered pieces of their only sure path to Alabasta at her feet.
Igaram met her gaze, his own filled with a desperate apology.
The lead agent, a hulking man with axe-blades for hands, stepped forward, his voice echoing in the deadly quiet.
"By the order of Mr. 0… Kill them all."
TO BE CONTINUED.
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