Yuba City, Alabasta.
This once-prosperous oasis city had become a living hell. Flames soared among shattered walls, and billowing black smoke blotted out the sky. The air reeked of blood, burning, and despair. Kingdom Army soldiers and remnants of the Rebel Army were still fighting brutal street battles, but the cries and fleeing footsteps of civilians were more prevalent.
At the city's central square, the scene was even more horrifying.
In the middle of the square stood a crude throne of yellow sand, dozens of meters tall. Crocodile lounged upon it with a cigar between his lips, its ember flickering through the drifting dust. He wore a black fur coat, and the hideous cross-shaped scar on his bare chest stood out sharply in the firelight. He gazed down at the hellish city with indifferent eyes, as though watching a play that had nothing to do with him.
Several imposing figures stood beneath the throne.
"Mr. 1," Daz Bones, a Dice-Dice Fruit user, had turned his entire body into blades. Expressionless, he resembled the most loyal of killing machines.
"Miss Double Finger," Pola, a Thorn-Thorn Fruit user, had transformed her fingertips into sharp thorns. A cruel, excited smile spread across her face.
The pair "Mr. 4" and "Miss Merry Christmas"-one dragging a four-ton bat, the other a Mole-Mole Fruit user-were impatiently clawing at the ground.
"Mr. 11" was a short, stout man wearing a grotesque clown mask, while his partner, "Miss .12," was a heavily made-up woman carrying an enormous paintbrush. They were agents Crocodile had dispatched to carry out the "Final Purge," tasked with reducing Yuba to rubble and blaming it on the "savage Rebel Army" and the "incompetent Kingdom Army."
Farther out were dense masses of low-ranking Baroque Works agents and bounty hunters. Like a swarm of locusts, they