Arrival in Alabasta

"Smoker lost?"

At Marine Headquarters, Sengoku's expression froze when he heard the news.

"All right. I understand."

Sengoku hung up the Den Den Mushi. He held a pen in one hand but wrote nothing, his brow furrowed.

"Alabasta should be next along that route, shouldn't it?" Sengoku muttered, pulling out a map.

The Marines had complete maps of the First Half of the Grand Line. Apart from a few little-known, dangerous waters, they had records of the rest.

"It's Alabasta. Since they're there, I can have him make a move. We'll see if he's strong enough." Sengoku nodded. The two people he had in mind were very different.

Two days later, Rogge and the others set sail again. They still hadn't fully felt how restrictive the Grand Line was. They had to wait for their Log Pose to finish recording an island before they could move on, which explained why so many pirate crews ran into one another.

The main reason was that they had to stay on each island for a while. During that time, pirates behind them might catch up because their recording times differed or because they had changed routes. The routes gradually narrowed, making encounters more likely, until everyone converged on the final island.

Alabasta was a vast island. Rogge didn't know its exact size, but this desert nation maintained a standing army of more than six hundred thousand. That alone gave him some idea of its population and total area.

A desert nation was mostly desert, of course. What Luffy and the others had seen was only a fraction of Alabasta. Many more cities and places had never been shown.

Only after arriving did Rogge grasp how large the country truly was. Few nations in the West Blue could compare. On the surface, Alabasta hardly looked magnificent. How much could there be to see in a desert nation?

But Alabasta was different. What set it apart was its awe-inspiring history.

The Celestial Dragons and the World Government had controlled the world for only about eight hundred years, while Alabasta was among the first nations to develop a civilization. It had established a culture of its own more than four thousand years ago.

Alabasta's royal Nefertari Family had even been one of the twenty original Celestial Dragon families. But the king of the Nefertari Family must have noticed something back then. He had chosen not to move to Mary Geoise—or perhaps he had left it—rather than join those decadent royal families in becoming a new race.

Only those involved probably knew why. Rogge and his crew had now reached Alabasta, and as luck would have it, they landed at Rainbase.

Even Rogge was surprised. Rainbase was Alabasta's most commercially developed city, and one could hardly think of it without thinking of a certain man.

Crocodile. One of the Shichibukai, the world's only seven legally sanctioned pirates, whose strength was recognized by the World Government.

Perhaps the most debated thing about Crocodile was his sex. Was he a man or a woman?

Various clues suggested he might once have been a woman before becoming a man.

Then there was his strength. During the Alabasta arc, he defeated Luffy, only to lose to Luffy when he rallied. Tashigi arrested him and sent him to Impel Down, after which Blackbeard Teach took his place.

But once Luffy entered Impel Down, a man as formidable as Crocodile could hardly just disappear from the story. He broke out alongside Luffy and the others and took part in the largest battle involving pirates to date: the Marineford War.

Crocodile stunned everyone the moment he appeared at Marineford. He went straight for Whitebeard, the World's Strongest Man, and only Luffy stopped him.

Crocodile held nothing back in the Marineford War. He stopped the first attempt to execute Ace, fought Donquixote Doflamingo, and later attacked Akainu to cover Luffy and Jinbe. He stood alongside the Whitebeard Pirates against the Marines.

He was a man of mysteries. There was definitely more to his relationship with the Whitebeard Pirates.

Rogge had once suspected that Old Sand had belonged to the Whitebeard Pirates. Perhaps he had left because he was a woman at the time, then set out to surpass Whitebeard.

Crocodile could hold his own against almost anyone. As a Logia user of the Gravel-Gravel Fruit, Alabasta's desert climate was heaven for him, as though the island had been made to order.

"Don't be nervous. We'll deal with whatever comes," Rogge said, patting the tense Simon.

This was no joke. Crocodile was one of the Shichibukai. Simon was confident in his own abilities, but anyone who earned a place among the Shichibukai was recognized by the world as a top-tier powerhouse.

Simon had barely survived being hunted by Crocodile's men. Now that he was back in Alabasta, the thing he regretted most was probably sticking his nose into Crocodile's affairs in the first place.

They moored the ship, and everyone took some money. They left Billy behind, though. The weather was too hot for a husky from Winter Island. Heat like this could kill him, so they had him guard the ship and hoped he wouldn't tear it apart.

"It's so hot," Jelly said, his tongue hanging out.

"When did you start acting like Billy?" Ham asked with a grin.

"What? What do you mean, acting like Billy? I'm Jelly." Jelly tilted his head and looked at Ham in confusion.

"The way you're panting, I thought Billy had come along," Ham said with a laugh.

Rogge chuckled. "He's calling you a dog."

Jelly caught on and glared at Ham. "Are you asking for a beating, you kangaroo bastard?"

"From you? Don't make me laugh," Ham said.

"Don't stop me! I'm going to kill him!" Jelly shouted.

But Rogge and the others simply stood in a row and watched. No one stepped forward to stop Jelly as he stood there alone.

Rogge genuinely had no idea which of the two was stronger. He cheered them both on. "Fight! Come on, fight! Jelly, take down that bastard Ham! Ham, beat that idiot Jelly!"

"Captain, there's something tasty over there," Ares said, tugging at Rogge's clothes.

At the mention of food, Rogge forgot all about Jelly and Ham. He led Jerry and the others off to eat, leaving the two staring at each other. In the end, neither made a move. They exchanged disdainful looks and followed the others.

"Shouldn't someone stay and watch the ship?" Cook asked worriedly.

"You volunteering to go back?" Rogge asked, raising an eyebrow at him.

Cook immediately straightened up. "Forget it. It's my first time in Alabasta too. This country doesn't look all that special."