The next day, at noon.
In the desert outside Rainbase.
"Are you going to use a Transponder Snail to draw him out?"
Watching Robin take a snail from her person out here in the sand instead of returning to Rain Dinners, Karl asked curiously.
"If I don't, then on home ground like the desert, with Crocodile's caution and suspicion, he'll never come out himself. At most he'll send a trusted subordinate."
Robin smiled as she explained. "But if I'm being held hostage, that's different. Because he needs my knowledge, he'll come out of Rainbase in person."
"So that's it." Karl nodded in sudden understanding.
Got it.
Both rely on outside forces…
But Crocodile isn't like Gecko Moria.
If Moria, after all his comrades were slaughtered by Kaido, refused to feel that pain again and, apart from Perona, Absalom, and Hogback, made everyone else under him into zombies…
Then Crocodile has only ever trusted one person—himself. People like Robin and the staff of Baroque Works are tools to achieve his goal.
Among those tools, Robin is the most valuable.
Until he gets Pluton or confirms whether Pluton lies in Alabasta, Crocodile will not allow anything to happen to Robin.
So if he hears she's been taken, even knowing it's a trap, Crocodile will step right in.
There, Karl glanced at Robin as she dialed, his eyes filled with greater appreciation.
As expected of the advanced-version Karina—every word hits the mark.
"Buru buru… Nico Robin, where are you right now?"
The moment Robin placed the call, the other side picked up.
Before she could speak, Crocodile's voice came through the snail, the face it mimicked scowling as it barked the question.
"Boss, if you don't come, I might be taken off Sandy Island."
Faced with his interrogation, Robin didn't feign panic or nerves; she chuckled lightly as always.
"…What happened?" Crocodile was silent for a few seconds, then asked in a low voice.
"I've been recognized. It's that Dragon Knight who tried to recruit me not long ago."
Robin laughed softly. "He's gone to fetch his companions. There's a dragon watching me right now. If you still don't come, I'll probably be off Sandy Island in under an hour."
"Location." Crocodile asked directly.
"Southwest of Rain Dinners… click."
Just as Robin reported the coordinates, the Transponder Snail drooped its head.
Putting it away, Robin smiled at Karl. "At his speed, about ten-odd minutes to get here."
"Good work. Let's watch from the air with Xiaobai."
Karl waved to the sky, and Xiaobai streaked down in a flash.
He landed before them and began expanding at a rate visible to the naked eye.
In just a few breaths, he was the Blue-Eyes White Dragon again.
"Thanks, Xiaobai."
Robin hopped onto his back on her own, her gaze tender like when she later doted on Chopper, and patted the dragon's neck.
"Gyaoo…"
The Blue-Eyes White Dragon answered softly, then took to the skies.
"He's here."
Before long, Karl sensed a powerful aura racing toward them.
In under two minutes, a figure with its lower body flowing as sand skimmed the ground.
"Brat, where is Nico Robin?"
Crocodile clearly recognized Karl.
The moment he arrived, he barked a question at him.
"Up there. Beat me and you can take her back any time."
Karl didn't hide anything and pointed to the sky.
Crocodile's brows knotted at once. "So you deliberately had her tip me off to lure me out?"
"Correct."
Karl grinned. "Challenging you was the point. Recognizing Nico Robin was just a happy accident."
"I see. Another idiot who wants fame…"
Crocodile accepted Karl's words without surprise.
Just as Karl often mocked—there are endless fools on this sea.
Weaklings dreaming of overnight glory who charge in to challenge or assassinate the strong—there are more than you can count.
Not only Karl—Crocodile encountered such things all the time.
So he filed Karl under that category.
"Hurry it up. Since you've wasted my time, become a dried corpse and be buried in the sands."
Crocodile bit down on a cigar, his savage face twisting with impatience.
He didn't know how strong Karl was.
But just as Aokiji on the ice and Akainu on a volcano, Crocodile in the desert had the confidence to fear nothing and to fight even top-tier powers.
So in his eyes, Karl was as good as dead.
"Then I won't be polite."
Karl didn't care about Crocodile's contempt; he was all but trembling with excitement.
—Shu!
In the next instant, his figure vanished as if he'd teleported.
Only when Karl appeared before him did the sonic crack reach Crocodile's ears.
His pupils tightened—and a huge hole opened in his chest.
Karl drew back the fist that had pierced him and watched as the wound turned to sand, genuinely impressed. "Nice. Even with your attention unfocused, you preemptively went elemental and avoided my Haki-laced punch."
"…"
Sluggish like an old man, Crocodile didn't react until Karl had finished speaking. He reflexively sprang back, putting distance between them.
"Busoshoku Haki… kid, who are you?"
Crocodile's eyes held wariness as he stared at Karl.
If not for being in the desert, where going elemental is practically passive, letting him preemptively disperse, and if Karl's Haki output and density hadn't been modest, he might have been hit just now.
From Karl's file, Crocodile did not believe a Haki user could be a bounty hunter from the weakest sea.
"Why ask so much? All you need to know is, you're the one I'm about to defeat."
Karl's fighting spirit boiled over.
"Fair enough."
Crocodile spat out the cigar and grinned viciously. "You'll be a corpse in a moment anyway. No need for questions."
"Desert Spada!"
As soon as the words left him, Crocodile unleashed his signature move.
His right arm became sand, swelled into a massive blade, and, like a swordsman's flying slash, ripped the desert floor as it carved toward Karl.
Bang!
Karl didn't dodge the giant blade of sand. He met it with a single straight punch—no Haki on his fist—and blasted the incoming sand blade into a spray of grit.
Crocodile's pupils shrank again.
"What monstrous strength… So you're a monster like that guy too?"
In Karl's unmatched speed and power, Crocodile saw the silhouette of a familiar man.
That man was Douglas Bullet, former crewman of the Roger Pirates.
Setting aside his Devil Fruit and the aura about him, Bullet's greatest impression was his inhuman speed and power.
Now, Karl felt to Crocodile just like Bullet had at nineteen.
Unlike Bullet, Karl was even younger.
Shu—
Shattering the sand blade, Karl burst from the dust cloud.
Almost in the instant Crocodile finished his thought, Karl was upon him.
No Rokushiki flourish stolen from CP9—just another unadorned straight punch.
This time, however, Karl laced his fist with Armament Haki to hurt Crocodile.
"Crescent Dune!"
Crocodile didn't dodge either; he swung his still-sand right arm and formed a crescent sand blade that swallowed Karl's driving fist.
Unlike Desert Spada's pure cutting force, this blade carried a terrifying desiccation.
Like a magnet, that drying force sought to flow through Karl's pores and drain the water from his fist and arm.
But that trace of desiccation could not breach Karl's ironlike defense. Armament Haki alone shut it out…
And without even giving the blade a chance to contest, his Haki-wrapped fist shattered it and drove on toward Crocodile's chest.
Crocodile turned fully elemental, slipping the Haki-laced blow, and at the same time his lower body whirled into a sand twister that blasted him skyward.
"Sandstorm!"
Once airborne, a small cyclone of sand formed in Crocodile's palm, then he hurled it down.
The twister swelled at once, becoming a vast sandstorm, spinning faster and wider.
In just a few breaths, it was a colossal vortex large enough to swallow a town.
Fighting in the desert, Crocodile—
Exerted minimal stamina to maximize the Sand-Sand Fruit's might.
Not only did his elemental speed improve—even without Observation Haki he could preemptively dissolve; the power and scope of his techniques multiplied many times over.
"This feeling is fantastic."
Inside the sandstorm, Karl had to squint against the flaying grit, yet he grinned. "From here on, I'm going all out."
He locked onto Crocodile's position with Observation Haki, then launched an uppercut from where he stood.
Boom!
At the instant of the strike, Karl used Life Return to pour his will through his body.
Vast power gathered in his fist, and as it drove upward, it became a shockwave.
A towering air cannon roared skyward.
Floating on the vortex, Crocodile saw a white column surge up and fill his vision.
In the next heartbeat, his whole body felt fettered by shackles. He could only freeze in elemental form.
His stamina ticked down so fast it could be seen.
It was fortunate he was a Logia; a powerful Zoan user would have coughed blood and been grievously wounded on the spot.
With that one punch, Karl stole Lucci's Rokuogan, forged it into an epic reinforcement, and fused it with Haki—an advanced Rokuogan.
Picture Might Guy's Afternoon Tiger from another world.
Like Charlotte Linlin's Ikoku or the giants' Hakoku, except—
Where those are spear strikes through weapons, Karl used Life Return to blast it forth with his fist.
The power of that one strike was from another dimension.
Judging by Crocodile's current paralysis, it's no exaggeration to say that if he weren't a Logia, that single punch would have decided the match.
Had Gecko Moria taken that punch from Karl, even with his freakish physique, he might have survived—only to be left with a permanent hidden injury.
The air cannon engulfed Crocodile and pierced the eye of the sandstorm above.
Boom!
Two forces collided with a deafening blast.
An incomparable shockwave blew apart the town-swallowing vortex, turning it to roaring winds that heaved up endless sand, forming a dust cloud that sprawled for leagues.
Within the haze, there was nothing but yellow and a scour of grit. You couldn't see a thing.
Even Robin, circling above, couldn't spot Karl or Crocodile.
Only the Blue-Eyes White Dragon kept watching the renewed clash within the dust through Observation Haki.
It must be said—there's a reason Logias are called the strongest of the three Devil Fruit classes.
Elementalization alone makes eighty-four percent of the world unworthy to face them.
Of the remaining sixteen percent, one percent has elemental counters, five percent has seastone, and the last ten percent are Haki users.
That punch of Karl's—which is a dimensionality-reduction blow for almost anyone—only shaved off a small portion of Crocodile's stamina and didn't harm him at all.
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