Chapter 447 - 98
Crocodile. Known across the seas as the Sandman, user of the Suna Suna no Mi, a Logia of the natural element class. He was currently one of the Seven Warlords of the Sea, and before receiving that appointment his bounty had stood at eighty-one million Berries.
That number had a way of misleading people who didn't know better. It wouldn't mislead them for long.
Natural-element Logia abilities were spoken of in a different register than other Devil Fruits. Where most powers were described in terms of what they could do, natural Logia were described in terms of what they were: disasters. Forces of nature that had been handed to a person. In the first half of the Grand Line especially, a natural element Logia user was something close to untouchable. The environment itself became their weapon, their armor, their escape. Short of the Navy dispatching someone genuinely exceptional to hunt them down, no pirate operating in Paradise had any realistic answer for what Crocodile could do. He had reigned there accordingly.
Then there was the matter of Whitebeard.
Crocodile had challenged him. Not metaphorically, not through proxies or politics, but directly, in the kind of confrontation that entire eras are defined by. He had lost, and lost badly. But he had walked away, and in a world where challenging Whitebeard and surviving was its own kind of credential, that fact alone had earned him a permanent place in the Navy's considerations. It was that battle, in the end, that had brought him into the Warlord system.
The defeat, however, had done something to Crocodile that couldn't be undone simply by accepting a government title. He had looked at Whitebeard's power and felt, perhaps for the first time, the edges of his own. His ambition hadn't shrunk, but his confidence in his ability to realize it through strength alone had been shaken somewhere fundamental. He began to look outward, toward forces that existed beyond what any single person could build through training and time.
The Ancient Weapons came to mind.
He had returned to Paradise, accepted the Warlord appointment, and used the cover it provided to begin his search. Through Baroque Works, the intelligence network he had built and shaped over years, he eventually extracted a single piece of concrete information about one of the three weapons. Pluton, the warship that history had named the most destructive vessel ever constructed, said to be capable of leveling an island with a single shot. Something of that scale, Crocodile reasoned, might be the only instrument in existence capable of bringing down someone like Whitebeard, and with him, every ambition that had seemed out of reach since that defeat.
He had moved into Alabasta carefully, presenting himself as a hero to the kingdom while quietly positioning himself to seize control of its government. His intelligence suggested that a Poneglyph containing information on Pluton's location had once been held within the country, though its current whereabouts were unknown. Controlling Alabasta was the most direct path to finding it.
The plan was moving along as designed. A few more years and the kingdom would be his, the Poneglyph within reach.
There was one obstacle he hadn't found an answer to.
Poneglyphs couldn't be read by anyone. The knowledge required to interpret them was extraordinarily rare, reserved for a handful of scholars who had devoted their lives specifically to that study. Without someone who could translate what was written, even having the stone in front of him would be worthless.
It was while Crocodile was turning this problem over that a name surfaced in his information.
Nico Robin. Called the Demon Child. Survivor of Ohara, once the greatest center of archaeological study in the West Blue. More importantly, a person Crocodile had seen documented in a wanted poster, identified specifically as a scholar capable of reading Poneglyphs.
He had made his decision immediately.
Baroque Works sent its senior agents after her. Robin and Raki dismantled them without much difficulty. So Crocodile went himself, setting an ambush in the desert, using the terrain and everything his Suna Suna no Mi made possible in that environment. He had also spent the preceding weeks studying how Robin and Raki fought, letting his agents' failed attempts serve as intelligence gathering. By the time he moved personally, he knew their methods well enough to account for them. They were captured, bound in Seastone-laced shackles, and locked away.
...
"Nico Robin. I've heard a great deal about you."
Crocodile stood before the Seastone cage, looking in at the two of them with the relaxed ease of a man who has already won whatever contest mattered.
"Crocodile," Robin said, her eyes on him, expression controlled. "We've never crossed paths before. We have no history with each other. So why set a trap for us? And those Baroque Works agents who've been hounding us lately, those were yours as well, weren't they?"
She was genuinely puzzled, and had been since the ambush. For ten years she and Raki had moved quietly through every sea, searching for anything that might help Rosinante. They had kept themselves deliberately inconspicuous. Attracting the Navy's attention was the last thing either of them wanted. They had come through Alabasta following a rumor about a physician somewhere in the Grand Line with exceptional skill, and somehow that detour had led them here.
Baroque Works had been persistent. But she and Raki hadn't treated them as a serious threat. Rosinante's training had put them well above the level of the average pirate, and in the first half of the Grand Line they had rarely encountered anyone who could genuinely challenge them. The Baroque Works agents had been sent away bruised and empty-handed each time.
What she hadn't anticipated was that Baroque Works answered to a Warlord. The Seven Warlords were not ordinary power. They existed specifically to balance the scales against the Four Emperors, operating under Navy sanction at a level that placed them well above the landscape of Paradise. The gap between a Warlord and what Robin and Raki could manage was real, and Crocodile had made it worse by waiting until his agents had mapped their abilities before moving himself. In the desert, on terrain that was entirely his, the gap had felt very wide indeed.
"You can read Poneglyphs," Crocodile said, settling into a more conversational register. "Work with me, Robin. I locate the Poneglyph, you read it. In return, a historian of your standing gets access to texts almost no one alive has ever seen. That's not a bad arrangement. I'd think it would appeal to you."
Robin's expression shifted.
"A Poneglyph," she said quietly. "A Seven Warlord, pursuing something the World Government has forbidden on pain of annihilation. You understand what they did to Ohara. You're aware of what touching Poneglyphs costs. Even your Warlord status won't protect you if they decide you've gone too far."
"The World Government," Crocodile said, his voice carrying a dismissive edge that seemed entirely genuine, "is an institution staffed by people who are very good at appearing powerful. The Navy is a different matter, they have teeth. But they need to find out what I'm doing before those teeth are relevant. I'm a Warlord. I have room to move. And by the time anyone realizes what I've found, I'll have something in my hands that even the Navy will think twice about challenging."
"I'd be careful about underestimating them," Robin said, level and unhurried. "The Cipher Pol divisions may already be on their way."
Crocodile looked at her for a moment, then let out a short sound of contempt.
"I thought better of you, looking at your record. I wanted a partner. Now I see you're just someone the World Government managed to frighten into caution." He turned slightly, dismissing the thread. "It doesn't change what I need. Help me translate what I'm after, and I'll let both of you go. That's the entire arrangement. For now, stay where you are and make yourself comfortable."
He glanced back at Robin and Raki once more, something close to disdain in his eyes, and walked away.
...