Alabasta, Rainbase.
After founding the League of Heroes, taking over Wano Country, and declaring war on the World Government, the first thing Garen did was return to Alabasta to pick up some people.
Over the past half year, Demacia Company's shipping business and anti-piracy operations in the first half of the Grand Line had been handled by Vivi, Robin, and Hancock.
There were not many big fish in the first half of the route to begin with. With Hancock, one of the Shichibukai, stationed there, and Vivi steadily growing stronger, things had always remained peaceful.
But now, things were different.
Garen had become the World Government's mortal enemy, while the first half of the route was where the Government and Navy's forces were strongest. The situation of Demacia's Alabasta branch, once jokingly called the "Navy G0 Base," immediately became delicate.
A cornered vicious dog would bite.
And the World Government was a monarchic state with a bottom line so low one could not see it, and its war with the League was a national conflict that concerned its very survival.
Garen was very worried that CP0 would target Vivi, Robin, and Hancock in Alabasta and use them as leverage against him.
So, after leaving Wano Country in his subordinates' care, Garen hurriedly boarded a floating rock with the ghost Golden Lion and flew straight from Wano Country back to Alabasta.
Golden Lion possessed the power of the Float-Float Fruit. If he had to control a massive floating island, he would fly very slowly;
but if he only controlled a floating rock, he could fly several times faster than an airship.
Together with Garen, a knockoff Float-Float Fruit user, the two "perpetual-motion machines" could make that floating rock fly like a subsonic fighter jet. In a single day, they crossed half