Chapter Text
Beneath Alabasta, dead silence reigns. Miss All Sunday stares impassively into Sir Crocodile’s face, watching his scar roll like a stormy sea as his expression turns from shock to anger.
“No mention of Pluton?”
“None at all.” She tells the lie easily. Her mind is a storm of thoughts, chief among them: Wano Country! Of course - it’s been closed so long, no wonder no one has found it! But her face remains cold and still.
Unfortunately, King Cobra lacks her composure.
Robin sees Crocodile’s eyes shift, sees him read the confusion on Cobra’s face, and she springs. One might call it decisive action. She knows it’s her nerves faltering. The flask of water spins through the air, and Crocodile vanishes into a swirling vortex of sand.
Just a second later, she feels the hook bite into her back.
“Thank you, your majesty,” says Crocodile, his voice dripping with smug satisfaction. “You’ve confirmed my suspicions about this lying little robin. But if Pluton was here, you’d know, wouldn’t you?” He pulls the hook free, and Robin falls to her knees. “Which means it must be elsewhere. No reason to stay in this dreary, dying country, then.”
“No.” Cobra’s voice trembles. His robes are stained with his own blood, pain evident in each word, but as he pushes the pillar beside him over and the tomb begins to rumble with collapsing rock, his eyes are clear and focused. “You will remain here, Sir Crocodile. Forever.”
The ceiling begins to crack, and Crocodile laughs.
“Is this your last attempt to save your country, old man? Amusing. But I have no intention of being buried amongst your crumbling ancestors -”
And just then, the sound of sandals slapping on stone comes down the stairs. Luffy, running at full tilt, hollering as he comes.
“SAND-CROC! I’M GONNA KICK YOUR ASS!”
For a moment, Crocodile pauses. Then a smile crosses his lips. Why should he stay and fight? He has nothing to prove to this ignorant whelp.
“Stay here, then. King Cobra, Nico Robin… and Straw Hat Luffy. Enjoy your tomb.” And then he rises, body crumbling into sand, slips into the widening cracks in the ceiling, and is gone.
Less than a minute later, the Straw Hats have gathered at the base of the clock tower, staring up and trying to figure out how to get to the top before the bomb explodes - only for a terribly familiar face to lean out over the edge.
“Hello, Princess,” says Crocodile. Behind him, the ticking of the bomb has come to a halt. “And the Straw Hat crew. How wonderful. I have the privilege of telling you all face to face: Monkey D. Luffy and King Cobra are both dead.”
A horrible silence grips the assembled group, Vivi’s hand clasped over her mouth. Zoro’s grip on Wado’s hilt goes white-knuckle. Crocodile steps off the ledge, and slowly begins to float downwards on a cushion of sand.
“Now, then… I planned for you to die in the explosion, but now I can finish you off myself, Queen Vivi. Straw Hats, if you run, you may escape the city before I detonate the bomb.” The sun glints off his hook. “Otherwise, you will all die with her.”
For just a moment, all is still. Then one of the Straw Hats steps in front of Vivi.
Nami is as surprised as anyone that it’s her.
A second later, Sanji steps up next to her. Zoro advances on the other side. Both are staring skyward.
“Anyone got a plan?” Zoro grunts.
No one responds.
So Nami does what she always does when no one has any idea what to do. She starts making it up.
“Zoro, Sanji. How long can the two of you hold him back?”
They look at each other. Zoro raises an eyebrow.
“Cook’s almost dead.”
“You too, marimo.”
Then they look back at her. Sanji pulls a crumpled cigarette from his front pocket and lights up.
“Fifteen seconds, maybe.” His voice is steadier than his hand.
“More, if we could figure out how to hit him.” Zoro is tying his bandana around his head. The black isn’t usually so striking against his skin. He’s lost a lot of blood.
Nami turns around to see Usopp and Chopper. Neither are backing away. Neither looks hopeful, either.
“Usopp, can you fix this?” Nami shakes the Clima-tact at him. Usopp blinks, then shakes his head.
“The Tornado Tempo? N-no, I can’t- it’s the springs, it takes too much tension, it took Zoro an hour to wind them up last time-”
She turns to Chopper. “Do you have any of your candy balls? The things that make you transform?”
He shakes his head. “I… can’t. If I take anymore, it’ll cause an overdose.” It seems like he wants to say more, but instead he grows into his humanoid form, clenching his fists tight in anxious anticipation.
The sound of sand scraping on stone resolves into the click-clack of fine boots. Nami turns. Time’s up.
“Very well, then. You all die together.”
Crocodile surges forward, the top half of a man carried by a tidal wave of sand. Zoro ducks under a scything sand-blade, but as Crocodile’s hook drives down towards his neck there’s no way to dodge - until the heel of Sanji’s shoe intercepts, turning the wickedly sharp gilded point aside. The momentary opening is enough time for Zoro to spin, sword slicing straight towards Crocodile’s throat, but the blow fails to connect with anything but a cloud of sand.
Sanji and Zoro both watch for him to reform, but instead the cloud begins to swirl around them, and within seconds a vortex traps them both. Without a word, they fall into position, back to back - not a moment too soon, as Crocodile begins to stab inwards with a flurry of sand-blades and swipes from his hook.
Nami watches with dull horror. Zoro and Sanji are the strongest out of all of them, and against Crocodile, they’re struggling just to survive. Step #1 of the plan is already going poorly. As for Step #2…
Now, Nami thinks, would be a great time to figure out Step #2.
Something flies past her face right at that moment. Nami recognizes the dull sheen of one of Usopp’s Lead Stars, flying straight into the shifting sands. If Crocodile even notices, he doesn’t react. Nami watches the little metal pellet sink into the surface of the vortex, then disintegrate under the viciously high-pressure sandstorm. It briefly leaves a streak of grey-black sand that lengthens and fades, mixing into the rest within a second.
Hmm. Nami files that piece of information away under “Things That Might Help Us Not Die.”
In the same instant, a spray of blood arcs out from Zoro’s calf. His leg buckles, and he drops to one knee, swords still swinging. Sanji turns, and Nami sees Zoro bark something - she’s known him long enough to guess it’s probably some swordsman’s oath about death before dishonor or whatever. But they’re both rattled. In a few seconds, they’ll be dead.
Nothing for it. Nami draws the Clima-tact, deftly disconnecting the Hot and Cool sections and spinning them to send a stream of air bubbles into the sky above Crocodile. The cloud begins to form, and her hand itches, ready to draw the final rod and call the lightning… but somehow, it doesn’t seem to be growing. Nami looks back to the swirling mass of sand and realizes a second too late what’s happening. The growing dark cloud is sucked down into the sand, and Nami can only watch as her weapon fades uselessly away.
Then, without warning, the vortex disappears. Crocodile tumbles to the ground, and before he can recover, Sanji lands a crushing blow to his stomach in the same instant that Zoro slashes across his sternum. With an unceremonious crash , Crocodile flies backwards through the wall of the clock tower and out of sight.
“Nami…” Behind her, Usopp is staring, awestruck. “What did you do?”
“Can you do it again?” Zoro demands in a pained bark.
Nami looks down at the Clima-tact and thinks. No electricity. It shouldn’t have hurt him. On its own, a cloud is just moisture…
Moisture.
“Water,” she says. “Of course! Wet sand sticks together! He can’t use his powers if he’s wet!”
“Congratulations,” comes that silky, sharp voice. “Although you should know, that idiot of a captain figured it out first. It didn’t save him.” Nami blinks. The voice isn’t coming from the hole in the wall. It’s -
“Above!” Usopp cries, a second before it happens.
“It won’t save you either!” As Crocodile roars, a hail of blades pour down from the sky. The Straw Hats scatter, Vivi struggling to hold Zoro upright. Nami finds herself running alongside Usopp, who struggles through his heavy bandages to look over his shoulder at Crocodile.
“N-nami! Glass is just - burnt sand, right?”
So he’s thinking the same thing as her. “Yes, but-” Usopp doesn’t wait for the rest. He turns and fires.
“Flame Star!”
The little pellet streaks towards Crocodile. At the last second, he raises his hand to block it, and a bloom of fire erupts in his palm.
Nami waits with bated breath as the smoke clears. Maybe she’s wrong. Maybe it really will be that easy. If it is, hell, she’ll even forgive Usopp for giving her a joke weapon that only worked on accident.
Instead she sees Crocodile looking down at his palm. A brief glint of light shines on it. Then he closes his fist with a tiny crunch. For a moment, a few drops of blood rain onto the cobblestones. Then, in a blur of sand, his hand reforms, whole again.
“I’m almost impressed. But you’re too weak for that to work. I can grind glass back down to sand far, far faster than you can melt it.” Crocodile fades, and then reappears, towering over Usopp. “In the end, you’re just smart enough to be annoying . Just like your captain.”
Sunlight shines off of the golden hook. Usopp screams.
“Armée de l’Eau!”
“Horn Point!”
There’s a crash as a water barrel breaks across Crocodile’s back, and a dull thump as a tanuki-sized Chopper headbutts him. As Crocodile turns, bemused, Sanji screams from down the street:
“Chopper! What the hell was that?”
“I told you!” Chopper wails. “The side effects of an overdose!” And as Crocodile swings his hook, a panicked “Jumping Point!”
Instead he balloons into a ball of fur. Crocodile’s hook sinks into it, and as he struggles to pull it out, Sanji streaks down the street. He leaps into a kick, driving his heel into Crocodile’s jaw and spinning as he lands to lash out one, two, three more times. With the last blow, Crocodile explodes into sand again and reforms atop a nearby building.
“It’s not enough time,” Usopp mutters, curiosity briefly overtaking panic. “He’s drying up too fast.”
“Probably his Devil Fruit.” Sanji briefly clutches his ribs. Chopper, emerging from his protective cocoon of fur, rushes over, but Sanji waves him off.
“Okay.” There’s a ratcheting click as the Clima-tact snaps into place. Nami scans the rooftops for Zoro and Vivi. Nothing. So what? She used to take on whole crews of pirates with nothing but a staff and her wits. A four-on-one fight is cake compared to that. “So we have to keep the water on him. Buy me time.”
With that, she turns on her heel and runs, spinning the Clima-tact and sending balls of cool and heat into the sky.
Crocodile looks down and meets Sanji’s eye. The golden hook sweeps across his body, and he gives a mocking bow - and once again bursts into a cloud of sand that pursues Nami down the street, gaining fast.
Sanji swears. He begins to run, but his legs can’t propel him faster than a Logia in flight. The sand accelerates, two points emerging from the cloud as if it’s reaching forward, and it is , that hook emerging, and Sanji swears again, trying to force himself to move faster, to be there , damnit, but as Nami turns and gasps he knows he won’t be fast enough, and -
Something flies overhead. As if in slow motion, Sanji watches the lead balls drift into the sand.
Crocodile reforms, hitting the ground just as Nami leaps out of the way. Sanji turns back to Usopp to see him kneeling, blood spotting his bandages as he sweeps a handful of lead balls through the puddle left by the barrel of water.
“The water!” Usopp shouts. “It doesn’t have to be on him! Just get some water before you hit him!”
Sanji turns back, no longer looking for Crocodile. He finds what he needs almost immediately. A water butt stands outside a house - at least, it does until Sanji runs through it, not even bothering to kick. The wood splinters inwards, and he feels the water soak his legs. In one more leaping stride, he’s on the warlord.
Crocodile rolls and catches Sanji’s kick with his hook. He pulls, and Sanji goes sprawling, crying out as his cracked ribs meet the stone. With a growl, Crocodile lunges, and Sanji’s world shrinks down until nothing is left but pain and fear, desperate lashing kicks that drive the vicious, mad-eyed man back for a second, rolls that barely take him out of the path of deadly swipes from that hook. Then Crocodile grabs his leg - only for a second before Sanji breaks free, but with the water dried from his shoes. He tries to crawl backwards, and then the heavy golden base of Crocodile’s hook comes smashing into his ribs. His breath escapes in a rush. He tastes blood along with it. The hook rises again and Sanji screams in pain and anger and bloody defiance and a ribbon of golden light drops to tear out his throat and all he hears is -
CLANG.
Zoro’s sword hovers over Sanji, braced against Crocodile’s hook.
Another volley of Lead Stars strikes Crocodile’s back as he begins to drift into sand.
Sanji brings both feet up and drives them into Crocodile’s chest with every ounce of strength he can.
As the warlord flies back down the street, Nami looks up. There, up above, are the beginnings of a bank of storm clouds. Not yet ready to pour, but if she can just get a little more time…
“All right.” Crocodile, standing in the middle of the road, casts his eyes around. “The weapon isn’t here. I don’t need this city. Princess Vivi-” He raises his voice, looking up to the sky. “Time for your kingdom to return to the desert.” He kneels, and places a palm on the stone. “Ground Secco.”
For a moment, everything is still and silent.
Then the world begins to collapse.
Sanji pushes himself up, staggering alongside Zoro as the stone beneath their feet softens into sand. Zoro shouts something, Nami can’t quite catch it, and the two jump, grabbing onto a nearby rooftop and pulling themselves up. Down the road, Chopper wraps his arms around a limping Usopp and cries out “Jumping Point!” Instead he swells into a gorilla-sized human, and with only brief hesitation, wraps Usopp tighter as he charges straight through the wall of a nearby building.
Nami feels the ground begin to go. The stones crack, her feet slip, but still, she continues to spin the Clima-tact. She can’t stop. It’s not her life on the line. It’s everyone’s. Every person in the city, every one of her crew. Vivi. How can she stop? Above, the clouds are growing. Nami cranes her neck. The Clima-tact can’t be working this fast. But if Crocodile’s powers have been suppressing the rain…
She realises too late that the sound of the ground cracking and drying has stopped. She looks down to see Crocodile staring up, watching the clouds gather. Slowly, his gaze falls to meet her eye.
She turns to run and he is already there. As she stumbles back, his hand swoops down and snaps the hot and cool rods of the Clima-tact away.
“A weapon that controls the weather…” He turns his hand, inspecting the metal pipes. “Incredible. Ingenious, even. Practically made to defeat me.” His eyes meet hers. “If only it wasn’t in your hands.” He squeezes, and Nami watches in disbelief and horror as the metal of the Clima-tact bends, crushed in the warlord’s grip into uselessness. He gives her one last look before turning his eyes skyward. “Now, let’s do away with those…”
Crocodile raises his hand, and a sandstorm begins to swirl overhead. Nami watches as it rises higher and higher, as the clouds begin to stir and dissipate. She cries out, swinging the last remaining piece skyward, praying for a bolt of lightning - but Crocodile lashes out, his heel striking her jaw and sending her rolling.
“Patience, girl,” he snarls. “I’ll kill you after this. Then I’ll finish your crew off, and then-”
He freezes, then explodes into a cloud of sand. Nami sees it faintly through the swirling particles: something swinging towards him. Another futile attack.
As it connects, Crocodile collapses back into flesh, the blade tearing through his side. Nami sees the glint, the green-and-blue pattern, and knows who it is before her eyes have followed its path to the opposite rooftop.
Vivi stands there, one of her arms still extended from throwing the string slasher through Crocodile. He turns, gasping as he clutches his side: “How?”
Vivi lets the other string slasher unfurl and draws it up the outside of her calf. As the wound opens and the surface of the blades grow slick, she bares her teeth in a humorless grin.
“Everything I have for Alabasta.”
The second slasher whips out, but this time Crocodile’s hook deflects it. He turns, clutching his side, and Nami watches his skin wrinkle. The flowing blood coagulates, then dries. As Crocodile grins, teeth stained red, he erupts once more into sand and launches towards Vivi.
“ Armée de l’Air Power Shoot!”
Sanji kicks, and Zoro, perched on his leg, takes off like an arrow. Nami looks up as he passes overhead, and sees him unsheathe his sword and draw it across his side. With a wordless cry, he swings. Crocodile, poised to strike at Vivi, has no way to turn before Zoro opens a crimson streak across his back.
Crocodile turns only to see Sanji flying toward him. He dodges to the left, but Sanji isn’t aiming to attack. He lands on the rooftop, sweeping Vivi into his arms, and squats, legs tensed, looking down at her.
“Hey, princess. Let’s get out of here.”
He kicks off, and the roof shatters beneath his feet. Crocodile, blood still soaking his back, drops down into the house. Then another figure rises into the sky, higher, faster than Sanji: Chopper, legs elongated, with Usopp clinging to his back and letting go just long enough to fire a cluster of projectiles down after Crocodile.
There’s a second of silence before the explosion.
As the walls collapse on top of Crocodile, Sanji drops out of the sky with Vivi still in his arms, followed by Chopper. Usopp drops from Chopper’s back, landing heavily on the street with an “OW!” Finally, Zoro pushes himself up, hissing in pain as he puts his weight on his wounded leg.
Sanji absent-mindedly pats his shirt pocket, but there are no cigarettes to be found. “Think that might have killed him? Just maybe?”
“Wishful thinking.” Zoro clutches his side, and Chopper leans down, working as fast as he can with his current form’s clumsy fingers to get a bandage in place.
“Anyone have a plan?” Usopp’s bandages have begun to unravel, and Nami sees just how badly broken his body is underneath them. As she swallows, mouth suddenly dry, she realizes they’re looking at her.
“I… I don’t know. He broke the Clima-tact. I was going to summon a rainstorm, but… I can’t. The only thing I have left is…” Her fingers graze the last rod, and a tingle of electricity flows through them.
Suddenly, with the desperation of those not quite yet dead, her brain begins to work.
“Vivi, are there any big pieces of quartz in the city? Any at all?”
“No, I… I don’t think so… most of the statues are stone, and the gems-”
Nami cuts her off. “Anything. Anything at all. Rose quartz, or, or smoky quartz.” Her mind spins faster. Think. Everything you’ve ever learned, use it. Use it now . Then a memory surfaces: a scam she worked out with a group of pirates to fleece some traveling merchants, before she double-crossed them and made off with the ill-gotten gains. “Um, um… amethyst! They’re the same rock - density, hardness, everything except color and value! Stain quartz violet, and they’re indistinguishable!”
“Yes!” Vivi leans forward. “Great-great aunt - um, Queen Khemi’s statue! But I don’t know if it’s still standing, all the fighting might have-”
Zoro’s sword slams into its scabbard with a deadly finality. “Then let’s go. Now.”
Nami nods. “Yes. Now, listen carefully, all of you.”
With a grinding roar, the building collapses into sand, and Crocodile erupts to the surface. He turns, staring, searching for the Straw Hats. Nothing.
But there is a trail of blood leading off through the buildings.
Someone is leaving it. Crocodile is going to kill them. With little more thought than that, he follows.
The square is already chaotic when Crocodile enters, roaring out of a doorway cloaked in a sandstorm. Rebels, soldiers, and Baroque Works agents alike are tossed aside, sand scouring their skin deeply enough to stain the ground where they land red. A circle of avoidance spreads as he walks forward, people turning to flee one by one until he sees the flash of blue hair. There.
Crocodile crosses the square in a heartbeat, and feels the blow coming from behind him. He whirls around to see Roronoa Zoro, all three swords driving forward, just in time to swing his hook up to catch them. His eyes are filled with a deadly calm. He will keep fighting, Crocodile realizes, until he cannot.
Then let him rest. Crocodile pulls up hard, and Zoro, caught off his guard, is lifted off his feet. With his right hand, Crocodile reaches out and grabs hold of Zoro’s right calf.
“Dry.”
Beneath the cloth of his trousers, Zoro’s leg begins to shrivel. The skin sticks to the bone as if vacuum-sealed, and it spreads, in an instant almost to the knee -
Sansai Kitetsu flashes, and Zoro’s calf and foot come away in Crocodile’s grip. With a laugh, he closes his fingers, feeling flesh and cloth turn into sand, and tosses Zoro away. As he turns back to Vivi, he once again feels a momentary regret at not being able to recruit such a talent.
Then the sword bites into his ankle, almost taking his foot. Crocodile turns his leg and tears free of the blade, looking down to see Zoro, arm outstretched. Crocodile’s lip curls. He was mistaken. Zoro won’t fight until he can’t. He’ll fight until he’s dead. So Crocodile reaches down with his right hand, this time towards Zoro’s face.
A blur of brown fur skids past, and Zoro is carried away on an impressive rack of horns by a creature Crocodile recognizes only by its ridiculous hat. Fine. It doesn’t matter how the obstacle is removed. It just has to get out of his way.
As he turns away again, he doesn’t see where Chopper goes next. He doesn’t see the little reindeer drop Zoro and flicker through his forms desperately until he drops back into one that can tend, pulling from his rapidly dwindling supplies to cover the wound and stop the bleeding. He doesn’t see Usopp, just a few feet away, cutting open his remaining Gunpowder Stars very, very carefully and arranging the contents precisely around the base of Queen Khemi’s violet form.
He does see Vivi, arguing with someone - the blond Straw Hat. The one who’s been sneaking around behind his back all this time. The sandstorm roars higher, and they both turn and see him coming. As he watches, the blond extends his leg, and Vivi carefully steps onto it before he gently kicks, sending her twenty feet up to the roof of the building beside them. Crocodile scoffs. Do they think that’s enough to save her? He begins to rise, legs fading into sand, and flies towards Vivi, scrabbling her way up to the highest point she can.
And all the while, Nami is waiting there, sending a steady stream of electricity up into the sky.
Crocodile rises higher, gaining on the princess, swirling sand around the point of his hook to hone it to the sharpest it can be.
Usopp lights a match, looks up at the statue ten yards away, and flicks it with perfect accuracy to land in the line of gunpowder along the base.
Chopper reaches up to catch the falling piece of amethyst, and feels a sinking in his stomach as his body refuses to transform out of its small, dextrous, and very weak hybrid form.
Zoro rises like a man possessed, gritting his teeth as he leans on his right knee, and catches the statue on his shoulder.
Sanji turns, and sees, and breaks into a sprint.
Vivi reaches the domed top of the tower rising from the building’s center and pulls herself up, turning to see Crocodile surging towards her.
Chopper pleads as Zoro strains to hold the statue, begging him to let it fall. Zoro only shakes his head. “Can’t. Have to. Have to. Finish it.” He strains, his left leg tensing, and then gasps in pain and shock. “Can’t… can’t stand…”
An arm wraps around his chest. Someone’s body next to his. Sanji is kneeling on Zoro’s right side, holding him carefully. “On her signal. I’ve got you.”
Crocodile thrusts.
Vivi feels the hand push her to the left, off the tower, out of the path of Crocodile’s swing.
“Sorry,” Nami says into the still air.
The golden hook tears through her stomach.
Everything, just for that moment, hangs in stillness.
Nami screams, and the moment breaks. Vivi topples to the rooftop below, landing hard but immediately pushing up to her feet. Sanji cries out, voice ragged and broken with despair, but pushes to his feet anyway, bearing Zoro’s weight across his shoulders. Zoro digs into his core, into the well of strength he’s exhausted ten times over already, and pushes again, harder, for more. Usopp cradles his last Gunpowder Star and slips it into the pouch of his slingshot.
On the tower, impaled on Crocodile’s hook, Nami’s mouth curls into a smile.
“What,” Crocodile demands in a hiss, “could possibly be funny to you right now?”
Nami’s lips move, her voice barely more than a whisper.
“...from the blue.”
Crocodile twists his hook, and another scream tears its way out of Nami’s chest. Then she forces the corners of her lips up again even as blood begins to trickle from them.
“You won’t know what happened,” she says, head slumped almost to her chest. “You might not even realize it’s happening. Maybe you’ll think it’s an act of god…”
Crocodile looks down and sees it clutched in her hand: the last rod of her weapon. He reaches out and grabs a fistful of her hair, and drags her head back, forcing her to stare into the sky. “What do you think will happen? The clouds are gone! I tore them from the sky like I did in Suiren, and Erumalu, and Yuba! You think that toy can overpower me? I killed the rain!”
Nami’s eyes roll down to meet his. “Who said anything about rain?”
Her left hand swings up towards the heavens.
Zoro cries out and hurls the amethyst statue towards the tower.
Usopp looses the Gunpowder Star, sending it arcing towards the flying hunk of purple quartz.
Five feet from Crocodile’s back, it explodes. A brilliant blast of light paints the square purple for a quarter of a second, and then two thousand pounds of gemstone shrapnel rocket into Crocodile.
Just before impact, Crocodile’s body disperses into sand. As the amethyst sinks into him, it erodes, filling his form with glittering purple.
Nami lifts her right leg, slick with her own blood, and jams it into Crocodile’s chest, forcing his expanding mass to coalesce towards her.
And down from the sky comes a pillar of lightning, a bolt from the blue drawn down a rising trail of electricity into the Clima-tact. Nami cries out as the heat strikes her, and her muscles lock as her own nerves’ signals are overridden by the force of the storm arcing through her. Even as her hair burns and her skin cooks, she keeps her eyes open -
Because what happens to Crocodile is worse. As the electricity flows into him, his back arches and he screams. Instinctually, he tries to escape from the pain, and his body disintegrates into sand - but the quartz, the mass of silicate pumped into him, is still swirling inside the sand that should be his chest, and as the lightning hits it it absorbs thousands and thousands of degrees of heat in a fraction of a fraction of a second, and Crocodile feels his insides begin to melt. His last thought, as the particles of sand between which his consciousness stretches drift apart, is that he should have let the damn bomb take care of it.
And then the boom of thunder rolls through the square, and silence follows in its wake.
Up above, at the top of the tower, Sir Crocodile’s body comes apart. His head and his arms and his legs collapse into sand, his golden hook left behind to wrench free from Nami’s stomach and drop like a stone. The rest of the mass that once was him drops too, a shining chunk of fulgurite, forked glass like frozen lightning falling until it hits the square below and shatters into a million brilliant violet pieces. The hook lands amongst them with a dull THUD, and moves no more.
Nami, watching from above, just about manages a soft cheer before she slumps and falls.
Someone below her screams, which she thinks is Vivi, and it’s nice to know she cares, but Sanji is definitely also screaming when he springs to catch her before she hits the rooftop. He lays her down, her name spilling from his lips over and over again, interspersed with desperate, pleading apologies.
“Sanji,” she hears herself say. “Relax. It’s not… it’s not that bad…”
Then her focus shifts to Vivi’s face, and, oh. Oh, no, it is that bad. Vivi is weeping, the cloak torn from her back and held over Nami’s stomach as the horrible wracking sobs shake her body. Nami struggles to meet her eyes through the tears, and as she does, reaches up. Gosh, her hand is bloody. That can’t all be her blood, can it? Definitely not, because if it’s hers, there’ll be almost none left inside her body, and that’s not very good, she’s pretty sure.
For a moment, her mind focuses, like the lenses of a spyglass aligning, and she sees Vivi’s face. Somehow, the thought that she's probably about to die doesn’t send her into a panic. She reaches up and trails her fingertips down Vivi’s cheek.
“If I have to go, I’m glad I get to go seeing you.”
She pushes a smile into place, and falls backwards into darkness.