The next day, the air over Alubarna, the capital of Alabasta, didn't just feel hot—it felt heavy. A terrifying, oppressive force was descending upon the city, a weight that pressed against the lungs of every citizen.
King Kobra stood upon the high balcony of the palace, his regal robes fluttering in the rising wind. He had been prepared for this for days, ever since the warnings arrived. Below him, the Royal Guard and local soldiers were already in motion, guiding the terrified population toward the underground bunkers and reinforced stone shelters.
Speed was of the essence, yet a massive shadow began to devour the horizon, blotting out the morning sun. The sandstorm didn't just arrive; it invaded. Within minutes, the sky was a bruised, sickly yellow. Vision was choked off. You couldn't see the person standing three feet away, let alone the majestic gates of the city. To the common folk, it felt like the literal end of the world.
"We could have evacuated them days ago," Kobra murmured, his voice strained with the guilt of a ruler. "I could have moved my people to the northern oases under the guise of a festival... but to avoid arousing the suspicion of that 'Sand Crocodile,' I chose to wait."
He looked toward his daughter, his hands trembling. "I have put the lives of my people on a razor's edge. This is a gamble I never wished to take."
"Don't worry, Father," Vivi said, stepping up beside him. Her sapphire hair was tied back, and her gaze was fixed on the swirling dust. It had been her decision to keep the city populated—a cold, tactical necessity Evan had explained to her. If Crocodile saw the capital empty, he would have vanished into the deep desert, becoming a phantom they could never catch.
"They will solve this," Vivi continued, her voice possessing a new, steely resonance. "Evan and the Straw Hats... they are the only ones who can end this nightmare once and for all. If we don't stop him now, he will just wait for the Navy to leave and return like a plague. We cannot live in fear of a shadow forever."
Kobra looked at his daughter and realized he was no longer looking at a naive princess. The girl who had left on a desperate mission to infiltrate Baroque Works had returned as a woman with the soul of a Queen. She had learned the hardest lesson of leadership: sometimes, you must risk the few to save the whole.
"Evan won't stay here," Vivi thought, her mind drifting to the diary entries she had pored over. "He has the whole world to see. But I will stay. I will be the help he needs from the shadows of a throne. I will become the best Queen this desert has ever seen, so that when he returns, he finds a kingdom worthy of him."
She blushed slightly, a rosy hue fighting through the dust on her cheeks. She couldn't tell her father the rest—that in her heart, she was already claiming the title of Evan's wife.
"This is gambling with a nation, Vivi," Kobra whispered.
"It's only a gamble if you don't know the odds, Father," Vivi replied confidently. "You underestimate these people. Luffy is a man who will be King of the Pirates. And Evan..." She paused, her eyes flashing. "Evan's strength can overwhelm even Mihawk, the Greatest Swordsman. If a man like that is on our side, the desert king has already lost. He just doesn't know it yet."
Down in the streets, the chaos was being managed by an unlikely alliance. A group of female Marines, led by the beautiful and deadly Gion (Momousagi), were working in perfect lockstep with the Alabasta soldiers.
And then, there was the old man.
Vice Admiral Garp stood near a fruit stall, his face a mask of profound annoyance. He looked down at his hand, where his favorite donut was now coated in a thick, gritty layer of Alabasta's finest sand.
"That damn Crocodile..." Garp growled, his voice vibrating with a power that seemed to push back the wind. "My donuts are ruined. He's making people run for their lives, he's destroying a beautiful city, and now... he's messed with my snacks."
Garp swallowed the sandy donut in one defiant gulp, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "He's gone too far. Gion! Take over here. I'm going to go have a word with the weather."
Garp didn't wait for a response. He dropped into a half-squat, his massive leg muscles bulging through his suit trousers. The cobblestones beneath his feet shattered instantly, spider-webbing out for ten meters. With a sound like a physical explosion, Garp launched himself into the air like a human cannonball, hurtling toward the western wall.
At the same moment, a blinding flash of violet-blue lightning erupted from the palace spires.
Evan, sensing Garp's move, didn't want to be outshone. He knew the Crocodile had split the storm into two massive pincer movements—two towering walls of sand designed to crush Alubarna from both sides.
"Garp's going west? Fine, I'll take the east," Evan muttered, standing atop a high minaret. "I could probably handle both, but why work harder when you have a living legend doing the internship for you?"
Evan drew his sword, Raikiri. The blade hummed, sensing the massive reserves of electrical energy Evan was channeling. After several "system reinforcements" and his own relentless training, Evan felt his power beginning to swell toward a new peak.
[Diary Entry: I wonder what happens when I actually put some muscle behind a swing? Between the swordsmanship, the Haki, and the fruit power, I'm feeling a bit... overpowered. It's time to test the limits.]
[I need a cool name for this. Something legendary. Something... borrowed.]
"Look at me," Evan whispered, his eyes glowing with an internal light. "This is a strike without thought. Musou no Hitotachi—The Blade of No Conception!"
He swung.
It wasn't just a sword strike. It was a vertical thread of divine judgment falling from the heavens to the earth. A pillar of concentrated lightning, thin as a needle but dense as a star, sliced through the air.
The ground groaned and split, leaving a deep, blackened ravine in its wake. The world seemed to tremble as the lightning hit the wall of sand.
The sandstorm didn't just dissipate; it was annihilated. The friction of the lightning fused the silicate particles instantly, turning the towering wave of sand into a glittering, shattered curtain of glass. The thunderous roar that followed was so loud it drowned out the screaming winds, sounding like the very heavens were cracking open in rage.
Evan stood at the center of the clearing he had just created, the air around him smelling of ozone and scorched earth.
[Diary Entry: Not bad. A bit flashy, maybe. I really need to master Overlord's Color (Conqueror's) infusion. If I had that, this strike would have probably split the island in half. Still, it's a good start. I need to keep getting stronger. The New World won't be this easy.]
[Image: A high-definition snapshot taken by the diary showing a mile-high wall of sand being bisected by a pillar of violet lightning, with the city of Alubarna visible in the background, untouched.]
In their various locations, the women reading the diary fell into a stunned silence.
Robin stared at the image, her hand trembling. She had seen the power of Aokiji and the Admirals, but this... this was something different. This was a man who viewed a national disaster as a "test swing."
In the palace, Vivi looked toward the east, where the sky had suddenly turned a brilliant, clear blue. The sandstorm on that side had simply... ceased to exist.
"Evan..." she whispered, her heart swelling with a mix of awe and terror.
And in the west, Garp, who was currently punching the center of a tornado with his bare fists, looked over his shoulder at the massive lightning strike. He let out a boisterous laugh.
"That brat!" Garp roared, his fist shattering a house-sized boulder of compressed sand. "He's showing off! Well, I can't let a rookie have all the fun!"
The battle for Alabasta had reached its boiling point. The storm was being held back by two monsters, leaving the path clear for the third—a rubber man with a straw hat—to find the source of the sand and bring him down.