Rain.
It was the simplest thing in the world, yet Crocodile had stolen it from an entire kingdom. Luffy felt the water soaking through the wraps on his fists, cool and heavy. Not just water—understanding.
"So that's it," Luffy said, his voice low, a growl that vibrated in the dry palace air. "You're afraid of a little rain."
Across the ruined throne room, Crocodile's smirk didn't falter, but his golden hook gleamed under a shaft of harsh desert sun. "Afraid? I controlled it. I made a nation of millions beg for a single drop. That's not fear, boy. That's power."
"It's weakness," Luffy shot back, sinking into his fighting stance. The stone beneath his feet was cracked from their earlier blows. "You stole the rain 'cause you can't handle getting wet. You're just a bully who hates puddles."
Crocodile's eye twitched. The air grew heavier, grains of sand beginning to swirl around his legs. "You have a remarkable talent for reducing cosmic power to childish insults."
"Our fight's only just beginning," Luffy said, and this time, it wasn't a boast. It was a promise. He raised his dripping fists. "I'm gonna punch you so hard, it'll rain in here."
---
Alubarna, City Square – Ten Minutes to Detonation
The heat was a physical weight. Usopp's hands trembled as he adjusted his goggles, scanning the dizzying rooftops.
"The blast radius is five kilometers," he muttered, brain whirring. "So the shooter has to be at least 2.5 klicks out, on high ground, with a clear line of sight to the clock tower…"
"Or they could be right next to us."
Vivi's voice was hollow. All eyes turned to her. Dust streaked her face, her royal garments torn. She looked at her friends not as a princess, but as a soldier who had seen the worst of her enemy.
"Crocodile would plant the shooter close. Close enough to watch. He's the kind of man who would kill his own comrades just to prove a point. Just to see the hope leave their eyes before the bomb even goes off."
Zoro and Sanji froze. The grim logic of it settled over them like a shroud.
"That's…" Sanji began, but his words died as his instincts screamed. He moved before he thought, his leg a blur of black as it connected with the jaw of a Baroque Works agent who had slithered from a nearby alley, dagger aimed at Vivi's back.
The man crumpled. At the same moment, Zoro's scabbard slammed into the temple of another, emerging from a shadow on the opposite side. Two bodies hit the cobblestones with twin thuds.
The group stared, stunned.
Then, they looked up.
From every doorway, every window, every crumbling archway, they emerged. Dozens of them. Baroque Works agents, their faces set in grim masks of ambition.
"The order is clear!" one shouted, his voice echoing in the sudden silence. "Kill the Princess! A direct promotion to Officer Agent!"
A sea of weapons glinted in the sun. Swords, pistols, weighted nets.
Sanji lit a cigarette, the flame a tiny, defiant beacon. "Moss-head. How much time do you plan on taking with this trash?"
Zoro drew two swords, placing the third between his teeth. His single eye narrowed, calculating the swarm. "We have ten minutes. Every second counts."
He turned his head, the sword in his mouth giving his words a deadly grit. "So. Two seconds."
The agents charged with a roar.
What followed wasn't a fight. It was a storm.
Zoro became a whirlwind of steel, a phrase muttered under his breath—"Santoryu…"—and men fell like wheat before a scythe. Sanji was a dancer of destruction, his kicks creating concussive booms in the air, each one sending bodies flying into walls.
"GO!" Nami screamed, grabbing Vivi's arm. Chopper, in his heavy Point form, bulldozed a path. Usopp and Pell covered the rear, knocking aside stray attackers.
They broke through the cordon and fled into a narrow side street, the sounds of combat abruptly muffled behind them. Vivi risked one glance back, seeing Zoro and Sanji standing back-to-back amidst a growing circle of unconscious foes.
Two seconds. They'd done it.
But as she ran, the palace clock tower loomed in the distance, its face a mocking eye. The minute hand jerked forward.
Nine minutes.
"Will we make it?" Vivi gasped, the question tearing itself from her throat.
No one answered.
---
The Royal Palace – Throne Room
"Do you truly believe you can defeat me?"
Crocodile's question hung in the dusty air. He stood where the throne once was, a king of ruins. Behind him, the bound and bleeding form of King Cobra strained against his chains.
Luffy wiped blood from his lip. "Yes."
A dry, humorless laugh. "You saw through my weakness. Impressive. Most die confused, wondering why their fists pass through sand. But knowledge alone is not power, boy. It is just the final, cruel clarity before the end."
"I'm not gonna end," Luffy said. He bounced on the balls of his feet, energy coiling in his legs. "I'm gonna be King of the Pirates. And you're just a nasty old log I gotta break to get there."
"A log?" Crocodile's composure finally cracked, his voice dropping into a venomous whisper. "I am a Warlord of the Sea. One of the Shichibukai. A power recognized by the World Government itself. I am a god in this desert."
Luffy's eyes burned with a conviction that seemed to push back the very darkness of the room. "Then I'll be the eighth god. And I'm gonna punch all seven of you out of the sky."
From his prison, Cobra stared. This reckless, bleeding boy… this was the pirate who had crossed deserts and armies to bring his daughter home?
Miss All Sunday—Nico Robin—observed from the shadows, her face an unreadable masterpiece. "It seems your daughter's friend will live a little longer, Your Majesty," she murmured, almost to herself.
Cobra found his voice, raw with desperation and a flicker of insane hope. "You… you are the one who brought Vivi back to me."
Luffy didn't look away from Crocodile. A slow, fierce grin spread across his face. "Yeah. And I'm gonna bring her the rain."
He shot forward, not with a wild charge, but with focused, terrifying speed. His fist, glistening with water, pulled back.
Crocodile's sand swirled, forming a massive, spiked shield. "Desert Spada!"
A blade of compressed sand sharper than any steel shot toward Luffy.
But Luffy didn't dodge. He punched through it, the water on his fist dissolving the sand-mid-flight in a hiss of steam.
He was inside Crocodile's guard.
For the first time, a flicker of something other than contempt showed in the Warlord's eyes. Surprise.
Luffy's voice was a thunderclap in the confined space.
"Gomu Gomu no…"
---
Alubarna – Rooftops
Usopp skidded to a halt, his eyes locked on the palace. Nami almost crashed into him.
"Usopp! What is it? We have to keep moving!"
The sniper didn't hear her. His sharp eyes, trained for distance and detail, had seen what the others missed. High on a minaret, not 500 meters away, a glint of sunlight on polished metal.
A scope.
"Vivi," Usopp whispered, his blood turning to ice. "You were right."
He pointed a trembling finger.
Perched like a vulture, in a perfect, unobstructed line of sight to the bomb-laden clock tower, was a single figure. A Baroque Works sniper, rifle steady, finger on the trigger.
And in his other hand, he held not a den den mushi, but a simple pocket watch.
He was waiting for the exact moment.
The exact second to erase a kingdom.
Usopp's breath hitched. The palace where Luffy fought, the square where the bomb ticked, the sniper in between—they were all connected in a deadly triangle.
And he was the only one who saw it.
"Chopper… Nami… get Vivi to cover now," Usopp said, his voice strangely calm. He unslung his Kabuto slingshot. "I have to make a shot."
"What shot? Usopp, we have eight minutes!" Nami cried.
"A shot," Usopp repeated, loading a single, heavy Star. "Further than I've ever shot before. With the wind, the heat distortion, a moving target…"
He swallowed, his Adam's apple bobbing. The sniper was half a kilometer away. An impossible shot for anyone but a master.
Usopp the Liar, Usopp the Coward, raised his weapon.
"If I miss…" he didn't finish. He didn't need to.
On the minaret, the sniper saw them. He smiled, waved tauntingly with his pocket watch, and then settled back into his aim.
He wasn't waiting for the ten minutes.
He was waiting for the perfect moment of maximum terror.
And Usopp had only one chance to stop him.
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