How to win a civil war

“How THE FUCK am I the least injured out of all of us?”

“That's not true, Vivi only has a few scrapes”, Chopper provided helpfully.

It had been five hours since Luffy had beaten Crocodile all the way from the catacombs to the surface only to collapse shortly afterwards.

“Wait a second, why is he even ****? Sure the idiot got Crocodile's right hand a few times, but thanks to his rubber body it seems he can bounce back from that pretty quickly.”

Chopper lifted up Luffy's shirt to reveal an innocuous looking band aid on the side of his chest.

“It's only a small scrape, but whatever caused it was laced with an extremely potent poison. A highly concentrated scorpion venom, to be exact. I'm not even sure, if Luffy somehow just powered through it's effect, or he was administered the antidote in the catacombs. After all Crocodile might have had an antidote for himself on him, …”, Chopper started to explain before descending into muttering. His hove scraped over the eyepatch he had to wear for the next two weeks, so his left eye could recover properly.

Next to him Usopp definitely looked the worst: his entire right half was in a cast. His head was bandaged and between that and the splint for his nose he had a hard time glaring at you.

In second place for worst injuries was Zoro.

“You! Why the fuck do you look, like you tried to wrestle your swords?”

“It's your fault!”

“How is this my fault? I did the best I could, to train you in how to cut. But I warned you that it was no guaranteed success.”

“Huh? It worked perfectly.”

“Then why are you so cut up? Did Mr. 1 blindside you sixteen times?”

“That's how you told me how you learned it!”, the swordsman accused you.

“What are you talking about? I didn't get cut to learn how to cut steel! The guy I went up against didn't even use a sword!”

“You said you just had to get a near **** experience, so I just let Mr. 1 have at me with my eyes closed to train this haki thing. You could have told me, that you're using haki to cut steel!”

“That's … why … GODDAMMIT Zoro! Haki and the voice are not the same thing!”, you screamed slapping the swordsman, before quickly correcting yourself, “I mean they kind of are but, … if you actually did learn haki, you would understand what I mean you idiot!”

“If you ask me, the marimo overperformed”, Sanji sneared. Sanji, who had hole in his stomach almost as big as your wrist.

You glared at him with your finger raised, but the words didn't quite come to you.

He slumped down in defeat: “Yeah, you're right. First he got me by turning into Nami and then I totally underestimated these swan-shoes. And that after you already fought him.”

You continued to glare, but Nami, who had two perfectly round holes in her body, one in her left biceps and one in her right foot, took your attention off him: “If you want to be angry for someone being stupid, it should be me.”

“What did you do?”

“Remember what you told me, when you said I could take Doublefinger on?”

“Damn that feels so long ago … I think something along the lines of 'remember your training'?”

“Close enough. As long as I wouldn't lose track of her and wouldn't let her get the drop on me, she wouldn't be able to lay a finger on me. Then when we tried out the clima tact you reminded me, that even if I was stronger than you are, my main strength was that I'm smart … well I forgot all of that.

I stupidly tried to run away twice and each time she got me. Honestly it was dumb luck, that she didn't kill me with her first attack. And then instead of trying to build up a thunder cloud or something I just whacked her on her head.”

Nami let her head hang in shame: “Honestly, if it wasn't for this Tornado Tempo …”

“You would've found a different way to defeat her”, you stopped her.

“How can you be so sure?”

“I wasn't there, so could you tell me what you did, when Vivi told you, that the bomb was supposed to go off at half past four?”

“Well, I helped her evacuate the main square.”

“Really? Because from where I was, it looked like you created a huge storm that scared the rebels and the army into scattering even after the Baroque Works agents tried to kill Khoza.”

Nami responded with a cute blush. “And how they tried”, she deflected, “If you hadn't warned her no way that Vivi would have noticed them quickly enough to save him … Now that I think about it … that was before Luffy arrived. How come Crocodile even let them do that?”

“AND THAT'S WHY I DON'T GET WHY I AM THE LEAST INJURED OUT OF ALL OF US!”, you screamed, before explaining to your crewmates, what you had been up to, while they fought the officer agents.

You made your way to the palace trying to identify and take out as many Baroque Works agents as you could. However suddenly a dry, sandy wind made you pick up your pace and prioritize reaching the palace as quickly as possible.

Getting into the palace was easier said than done: After all right in front of the palace the fighting was thickest and the royal guards were doing their best to close off the gate. Judging by the crowd right at the gate Crocodile and Nico Robin had barricaded themselves inside with the king.

You made your way around the palace in a pretty wide arc and as you got closer you could see eyes at the top of the palace wall. You finally reached the edge of where the guards had taken post and grit your teeth. Climbing wouldn't be easy, but you saw no other way in. Just as you got a running start you felt dozens of familiar arms reaching out. Robin had carried you about a third of the way up, when suddenly a cut appeared on all of her left hands and her arms vanished for a moment. You managed to hold onto the wall in time and heard the sound of the gate being busted open.

Then the way up resumed.

You were panting when you reached the top and found Crocodile on top of the palace with four huge men in guard uniforms glaring up at him.

“Oh, your still alive!”, you called up to him. From the way he turned to face you, you could tell, that Crocodile was hurt, even if he didn't look it. He was heavily favoring his left leg and hiding his iconic hook hand behind his back. He tried to pass it off as crossing his hands that way, but when he went to gesticulate towards you, he almost flinched when he institutionally wanted to wave around that arm as well.

“Ah finally one of his crew mates! Come to follow your captain into the grave?”

“You sure he's dead? Sometimes when he overeats he just falls asleep with his mouth full”, you said in a nonchalant tone.

Crocodile: -100/100.

The fact he wasn't attacking you right now was further evidence to how badly Luffy had gotten to him. He could not afford to be slowed down for too long, or whatever plan he had to safeguard against the World Governments retaliation wouldn't be ready in time. And if he revealed himself to be **** he'd risk to be attacked way more often and way more effectively.

“I killed him, moron.” And so he was limited to name-calling against you, since he already knew that between spit and haki, you'd actually be able to make it look like a fight. At least the four guards collapsed as if on cue. From their appearance, they must've taken some type of steroid that now made them crash. Hard.

“Ah you gave him poisoned food. I call him a dumb ass, he complains about the stomach pains, I punch him over the head and in two weeks he'll fall for it again”, you said faking a bored confidence as if you were not lying out of your ass.

“Tell you what”, you said as if you were trying to sell the warlord something, “How about you come down here, I beat you to ****. Maybe I even let you get a few hits in, to make you feel better, and then you don't have to bear the bullying Luffy is going to put you through.”

“Are you delusional?”

“Don't just act like you have any good alternatives. You're plan is done. I didn't kill all your men in the rebel forces, but I took out enough. Vivi will be easily able to defuse the fighting. And I already took care of your bomb as well.”

“There is no way you already climbed the clock tower and took out the 7 pair.”

“Of course not, dingus, but thanks for telling me where they are and who's guarding it, or I'd have to waste time searching it.”

“Why you …”

“Listen to me. Here are your options: You can try and pretend, your plan is still on. So you dally around here, Luffy shows up and you just know, that what he'll do to you will be humiliating. He'll probably piss on you or something like that.

Your next option would be running. That way you could at least pretend the reason your plan failed was something cool.

Or lastly you take my offer: You fight me, I beat you and you get to tell the folks in prison about how my technique is up there with the likes of Mihawk. No shame losing to someone like that. You wouldn't even be lying and it's not like they get much of an opportunity to check what I'm up to, after I beat you.”

Crocodile POV:

He had a hard time keeping a cool mind. The frail girl had shown him, just how much he had let himself go. At the time he had been instated, he had been among the more dangerous of the Shichibukai. Yet he had not used haki in years to the point that any vice admiral could actually threaten him.

The last time he had met his … colleagues, he had only been confident that he could beat Moria if it came to it. His plan explicitly called for an alliance with both Hancock and Jimbei by promising to use Pluton to defend Amazon Lily and Fishmen Island as well.

He had to rely on Kuma, Mihawk and Doflamingo not bothering to react to him for long enough, that he could get his training back into gear.

The marines should be deterred with Pluton.

Sure the girl's armament was basically nonexistent, but then the pain at his heart exploded. She had spit on her knuckles!

Crocodile felt a pressure build up, similar to something he had felt once before. He had provoked the fishman Jimbei and so the fishman had hit him. Once. It wasn't really an attack, but it made it absolutely clear, why the man was a Shichibukai. If Crocodile had not been exceptionally dry thanks to his devil fruit this halfhearted punch would have burst the blood vessels in his arm.

And what that frail girl had launched directly at his heart was very clearly the same technique and the reason he survived was twofold. For one because she had spit on her knuckles to relay her attack into his body the shock wasn't properly transmitted with the dry parts of her fist basically doing nothing.

The other was, that the girl was laughably weak and so instead of instantly dying to an exploded heart Crocodile felt a sensation like heartburn, that just wouldn't go away, while he could practically feel his pulse going off rhythm and his blood pressure spiking and dropping again and again.

Then there was the girl's captain. While he didn't appear to be able to use haki, contrary to the girl, who had moved with the confidence of someone who knew exactly how their opponent would attack, he was faster. A lot faster.

He was no doubt used to sparring with the girl and so avoided anything from his hand to his Desert Spada with ease.

The next issue was, that similar to the girl, he had spit on his hands. This made it necessary for him to actually dodge, as in jump away from his punches. Because if he tried to dodge the “normal” way by turning into sand there was a risk of him attacking his insides directly. Something he learned the painful way, when he wasn't fast enough to disperse his knee and got the joint attacked beneath the kneecap shattering the joint. He could still walk, by turning the part into sand and moving that, but the pain was still there and it would definitely hold him back until it was healed.

He had encountered the types of the straw hat before. If he'd let him, he'd soon understand why his fists were working, while his kicks were not. Hell, these kinds of people could just learn haki or awaken their devil fruit if the fight went on for long enough.

So he'd break out the dirty tricks. He took off the cover of his hook so his poisonous hook was revealed and prepared his Desert Girasole.

He fired it off, fully aware, that the rubber man would dodge by closing the distance, but it was about the counter.

What he didn't expect was for Luffy to just wrangle his hook hand until he could break off the venom covered hook. And stab him with it in the side!

The good news was, that it opened the kid up to getting grabbed with his hand, dehydrated and thrown into the middle of the quicksand pit.

Crocodile quickly drank the vial of the antidote and made his way to Alubarna, while assessing the damage. Now that he had taken the antidote, the stab wasn't bad.

But his hook hand was visibly mangled. he couldn't use the cover, until he got it repaired. At least it was still functional enough, that he could protrude the blade and cover it in venom.

His knee was busted. Luckily his fighting style didn't involve much legwork so aside of the pain it wasn't too much of a hindrance. That said the pain was bad. Without the adrenaline of the ongoing fight he now had a hard time to not have it show.

As for his heart, he was confident if he got a day of rest, he'd be as good as new. But today he couldn't take off. The pain was easy enough to ignore, but Crocodile wasn't dumb enough to ignore the dangers of heart disease. Sure he'd definitely survive the day, even if he pushed himself, but it wouldn't do, if he pulled of his plan only to irreparably damage a vital organ and cutting the time he could be active in the future short.

Of course he had to run into that girl again. He was glad to note, that his initial assessment, that she was pathetically weak held true, however she also had an annoyingly precise read on him as well.

And now that he had blabbed to her, where the bomb was, he couldn't allow her or Vivi to get away. Her plan was obvious and most aggravatingly he noticed himself fully falling for it with no idea what to do about it: She wasn't strong enough, but Luffy's haki was not yet developed enough to reliably beat him, if he brought his A-game.

So she simply made sure that he wouldn't. Insult him, belittle him reminding him of everything that could possibly go wrong. Right now she was waving him goodbye, while reminding him, that it was entirely possible, that Cobra had not lied and Pluton was nowhere close enough for him to seize it in time.

Nico Robin meanwhile had taken the king away to “check the poneglyph”.

As much as he hated it, he now had to, PERSONALLY, kill this damn girl and also the princess to be sure or otherwise they might just manage to disarm the bomb. Sure his plan didn't hinge on it, but it was the easiest way to get rid of the rebels, the royalists and most importantly everybody who could expose him in that **** stage while he seized Pluton.

The brat was absolutely insufferable, charging at him, which allowed Vivi and Khoza to escape to towards the plaza.

The fact, that she kept making jabs at him for ten seconds, before he finally got his hand on her had him fuming in his head.

And then she spat in his face. He barely reacted in time throwing her over the palace wall, which meant instead of her knife gouging his eye out it just cut the back of his hand.

He sighed in relief only to get a fist in his eye.

The god damn strawhat was back, carrying a barrel and a smug grin.

Pell had caught you and after explaining the situation dropped you off in a window of the clock tower.

Two snipers were not really dangerous to a girl with precognition in a stairway and a bomb with a timed trigger was easily disarmed, when you had more than ten minutes available.

“This thing is massive! Did you really think you'd be fine up here, if you fired it into the plaza?”

The **** bodies of Mr.7 and Ms. Father's Day didn't respond.

As you finally took the time to catch your breath and made your way down, you wondered how the hell Crocodile had managed to get the cannon and the bomb in here in the first place.

No way he could've fit that through the stairway and on any other day the clockface swinging open would surely have been noticed.

“I stabbed a bomb!”

Nami gave you an exasperated look: “Really? That's what you think should've caused you injury?”

“What do you mean?”

“Not Mr. 2, not Nico Robin, not Crocodile, but disarming the bomb?”

“I have no idea what I was thinking! I could have triggered it to blow up early!”

“Why would you endanger Nami and Vivi like that, if you were not sure?!”

“I for one am glad you decided to stab that timer”, a new voice said.

It belonged to the falcon-man who had helped save the day, “otherwise I would have had to try and carry it far enough away and with ten minutes carrying a bomb of that size out of Alubarna … sure would have ruffled my feathers.”

Pell: 90/100

Pell: 10/100

That man was more than grateful for the service to his country you had provided. It felt somewhat weird to know he found you hot. Sure he was a handsome man, but not only was he almost twenty years older than you, but he was also, much more importantly a man.

“What brought you here?”, Nami asked the head guard.

“The king and the princess have invited you to join them for supper.”

“What about Luffy!?”, Usopp shouted.

“We can hardly appear before the king without our captain”, Zoro agreed matter of factly.

“But Vivi”, before Nami could finish whatever point she had wanted to make the door was opened again by the princess herself, her father and a familiar, if bandaged, face.

“The princess decided, hmhm MAH MAH MAH, the princess decided that we should have our supper here with you.”

It was Iggaram, Alabasta's captain of the guard. The man who had greeted you under the guise of the mayor of Whiskey Peak and was then bombed by Nico Robin.

“What happened?”, you asked both him and the king, who was the only witness to the end of the fight between Luffy and Crocodile. Or at least the only one present.

“Well … Nico Robin … escorted me to the royal mausoleum where our most important historical treasure was located. While Crocodile had hoped for the opportunity to weaponize it I had the impression, that Ms. Nico's interest was purely academical. She openly lied about the contents of the treasure. While I do not know the details, I do know enough to know, that the weapon Crocodile was searching was indeed real.

When Ms. Nico claimed the treasure had only archeological value Crocodile reasoned that she had outlived her usefulness to him and they tried to kill one another. Crocodile had hit her with the remains of his hook and was about to dry her up when Luffy burst in and laid into him. Crocodile did inflict some damage off his own; he withered part of Luffy's left arm and managed to scrape him with the knife from his hook hand. But at the end of the day it was surprisingly one sided. I even had the impression, that Crocodile was already on the back foot when the fight started!

But at the end of the fight the mausoleum was collapsing and then Luffy carried Ms. Nico and I out through the hole he made by punching Crocodile out the ceiling.”

“What happened to Nico Robin?”, you asked.

“I am not sure. Luffy was collapsing and so I went away to get help, while I saw her drawing, what I presumed to be a vial of antidote. When I returned Luffy asleep and she was gone.”

Nico Robin: 30/100

Nico Robin: 10/100

Nico Robin: 2/100

“I was surprised just how … cooperative she was”, Pell mused, “Not only had she not killed me, but contrary to what she claimed she had not broken a single of my bones and as soon as Crocodile was in pursuit of the princess she set me free and gave me a vial of antidote to the venom Crocodile was so fond of using, which allowed me to safe Luffy back at Rainbase and bring him to Alubarna so quickly.”

“I take it the civil war is over?”

“Definetly. With Vivi visibly saving Khoza's life and both agreeing talking their people down it got fairly easy to explain the role of Baroque Works.

Especially when Crocodile was burst out of the ground”, the king said, his tone clearly showing his satisfaction with the development.

“Sure, the marines are trying to arrest you guys, but I can tell they are not too serious about it. Smoker and Tashigi are fully aware, that without you Crocodile would have installed himself as king and declared war on the World Government. Really we have cause for celebration!”

“Well”, Zoro said with a grin, “Luffy's still ****, so we can still prepare.”

Call for help: Hi ten-tackle here! I'm in a bit of a pickle. I need someone to act as an Editor.

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