The first half of the Grand Line, the desert kingdom of Alabasta.
Deep within an ancient ruin, Crocodile climbed out of an underground sand pit, his face dark and stormy.
"Boss?" Mr. 1, Daz Bonez, stood by the pit with a slight frown, calling out carefully when he saw how unhappy his boss looked.
Crocodile took a slow breath, irritation dripping from his voice. "Not what I wanted…"
After a brief pause, he asked, "Is this the last ruin?"
"Yes," Daz Bonez answered in a low tone. "With your ability, and with everyone we've had spread throughout Alabasta, we've been investigating for years. Every desert ruin has already been found…"
"There's really nothing left?" Crocodile pressed, still unwilling to accept it.
Daz Bonez hesitated, looking at Crocodile without answering.
Crocodile knew the question was pointless. Without Nico Robin, he'd been forced to do things the hard way. Over the years, he'd gone through all of Alabasta himself. With the power of his Suna Suna no Mi, there couldn't have been any omissions. If there were still something out there… then it would only mean his own ability wasn't good enough.
And Crocodile was nothing if not confident in himself. He also knew he'd searched thoroughly, down to the last detail.
There couldn't have been anything missed.
So if he still hadn't found what he wanted, there was only one explanation.
Alabasta simply did not have the Ancient Weapon Pluton he'd been looking for.
The thought sent a surge of anger through him. He raised a hand and snapped it upward. A violent sandstorm erupted at once, swallowing the desert ahead in moments and twisting the air into an extreme, savage climate.
After venting some of that fury, Crocodile ground his teeth and spat, "Then what the hell have I been doing all these years in Alabasta?"
With his hope finally shattered, Crocodile felt nothing but disgust and irritation toward the entire country. He didn't want to spend even one more second here.
After a stretch of silence, he made his decision.
"Make preparations," he said. "We're leaving this dull place."
"Huh?" Daz Bonez asked cautiously. "You mean…?"
"Leave Alabasta," Crocodile said in a heavy voice. "There's nothing here worth staying for anymore. It's time to return to the New World."
"Boss, the New World is that man's territory," Daz Bonez hurried to warn him. "Your relationship with him doesn't seem very good. We…"
The New World was within the sphere of influence of Marine Admiral Benn Ortoren. Daz Bonez knew his boss, Crocodile, didn't get along with that Marine Admiral. Rumor had it Crocodile owed that Marine Admiral several hundred billion Belly and hadn't repaid it. Daz Bonez didn't know the details, and he'd never dared to ask.
Whenever Crocodile mentioned that Marine Admiral, he always looked like he wanted to bite someone's throat out.
At first, Daz Bonez hadn't thought it was that frightening. His boss was strong. They were both Logia users. What was there to fear?
But after Ortoren smashed Whitebeard and took the title of the world's strongest man, Daz Bonez was sure of it.
His boss was not a match for that Marine Admiral.
After all, why had Crocodile left the New World back then? Because he'd failed when he challenged the Whitebeard Pirates and got beaten out of it.
But Ortoren had crushed the Whitebeard Pirates with overwhelming force, and even defeated Whitebeard himself.
Did that gap even need comparison?
The moment Daz Bonez said it, Crocodile's face went from pale to livid. He snapped, furious, "You think I'm afraid of him? You think I'm afraid of Ortoren? Who the hell do you think I am!?"
Seeing he'd hit a sore spot, Daz Bonez immediately shut his mouth.
A moment later, Crocodile continued, "But it's better to settle grudges than keep them. Prepare fifty billion Belly in cash, along with my gift. That should be enough to clear up the misunderstanding between me and Ortoren. Besides… we never had any real conflict to begin with…"
Heaven help him, he'd never even spoken to that Ortoren bastard. The most they'd ever had was a distant glance back in Loguetown.
Their "conflict," when you got down to it, started because Ortoren had inexplicably tried to extort twenty billion Belly from him. Crocodile refused, and that was how it began.
How could this possibly be his fault?
This was clearly all Ortoren's fault!
He'd never provoked that bastard in the first place, all right?
Daz Bonez froze for a moment, then quickly asked, "The gift you mentioned… you mean that technique?"
"What else could it be?" Crocodile snapped irritably. "In the entirety of Alabasta, that's the only thing that can even be called valuable!"
Back when he was investigating the various ruins, Crocodile had accidentally uncovered a mysterious technique that had been passed down through generations of the Alabasta royal family.
It was a Devil Fruit ability inheritance technique.
As was well known, throughout Alabasta's thousands of years of history, there had been two guardian deities: the Jackal and the Falcon.
These two conceptualized gods had protected Alabasta and safeguarded the Nefertari family for generations.
And coincidentally, within the royal guard of the Nefertari family, those two Zoan-type Devil Fruit abilities—the Jackal and the Falcon—had been passed down from generation to generation.
Once or twice could be chalked up to coincidence. But for a thousand years, every single time, those two abilities ended up in the hands of the Nefertari family. Was that really just luck?
Of course not.
It was perfectly reasonable, because the Nefertari family truly possessed a method for inheriting Devil Fruit abilities.
Over the years, the reason no one else had targeted or coveted it was simple: the Nefertari family only ever used this technique on those two abilities. They never applied it to any other Devil Fruits, so it posed no threat to anyone else's interests. After all, they were just two ordinary Zoan fruits. Combined with the Nefertari family's background, no one had ever tried to seize them.
You could even say that very few people knew about this at all. Those who were qualified to know saw that the Nefertari family understood their place and had no desire to risk offending the descendants of the Twenty Kings. Those who weren't qualified naturally knew nothing in the first place.
Even the technique Crocodile now held hadn't been taken from the Nefertari family. He'd found it in an ancient ruin.
Seeing that Crocodile's mind was made up, Daz Bonez said nothing more and immediately went to carry out the arrangements Crocodile had ordered.
After Bonez left, Crocodile stood there alone, lit a cigar, and stared ahead with an unreadable expression, deep in thought.
News of the war in the New World had naturally reached his ears as well. The Big Mom Pirates and the Beasts Pirates had formed an alliance to deal with Ortoren.
Among all of that, Crocodile focused on only one thing: the Beasts Pirates.
Back when he had been chasing clues about the ancient weapon Pluton, he had obtained two vague leads. One pointed to Alabasta. The other pointed to Wano Country.
At the time, he was still in the New World, having just been defeated by Whitebeard and left with nothing. Wano Country had already been occupied by Kaidou and the Beasts Pirates, while Alabasta had no powerful figures to speak of. Naturally, Crocodile chose Alabasta.
Now, after all these years, he was almost certain that Alabasta held nothing he wanted. That meant the other lead had once again entered his sights.
Wano Country.
If returning to the New World meant easing tensions with Ortoren and joining forces to wipe out the Beasts Pirates, Crocodile didn't mind playing along or even lowering himself for the time being. As long as he could take Wano Country, that was all that mattered. Once he had turned Wano Country inside out and, if he managed to find Pluton, then he would settle the score with that bastard Ortoren properly.
Unfortunately, Crocodile had been holed up in Alabasta for far too long, and his intelligence network in the New World was sorely lacking. He had no idea that Kaidou and Ortoren were on the verge of becoming family by marriage. The "war" between those two was nothing like the kind of conflict he was imagining.
Of course, even if he had been in the New World, he still might not have learned about something at that level. After all, in the entire New World, only a handful of people knew the truth behind it.