Rainbase was beautiful in all the wrong ways, flaunting its abundance, almost mockingly, over the bone-dry ache of the desert beyond.
The lake at the city's heart brimmed with water. The crew glimpsed it from the approach road and fell silent, letting the sight settle in. After days of desert—after Erumalu and Yuba and the parched veins where water once flowed—the lake glittered in the afternoon light. It seemed utterly indifferent, as if its abundance had never struck it as strange.
This was where the water ended up. This was the Dance Powder operation from the winning side. Crocodile's showcase city gleamed full while the rest of Alabasta withered. The contrast between this lake and the empty channels of the Green City was no accident. It was the arrangement, mapped onto the land itself.
The crew stepped into Rainbase with tense resolve, hearts already braced for danger ahead—Rain Dinners, Crocodile's casino, standing as the beating heart of a man whose promise of protection felt like a betrayal.
Luffy surveyed the city, eyes roaming over the buildings and people. Nami began silently memorizing the layout of the streets, planning possible routes. Vivi moved stiffly, every step careful, alert to danger—she knew Rainbase was Crocodile's territory, and she treated every building as a potential threat. Carue matched Vivi's tension, sticking close to her side.
---
The bar entered the story because Luffy and Usopp were thirsty, and there was a bar. Luffy's wants and actions always lined up with no delay. The crew had split to cover different approaches to Rain Dinners. Luffy and Usopp were technically on task. Their route just happened to pass straight through the bar.
They walked in.
Smoker was at a table. Tashigi was beside him. They were drinking coffee in the way marine officers on assignment drink it — with the focused dissatisfaction of people in a place because duty requires it, and who are managing their relationship with it accordingly.
Luffy's eyes widened in recognition; Usopp froze, heart leaping to his throat. The shock spilled from them in an unguarded burst of water, disguising the flash of anxiety in their eyes.
It splashed onto the table, into the coffee, and all over two Marine officers who had not planned on being doused in a Rainbase bar.
The moment after was very brief.
---
Chaos bloomed, the kind that erupts when a small problem bursts into a citywide spectacle in half a minute. The bar door. The street. The city is catching wind of trouble at its core. Crocodile's people moved with the precision of a security force trained for exactly this: pirates in Rainbase.
The Seastone cuffs snapped on quickly.
When the cuffs snapped shut, Luffy's face did not show pain. It showed the hollowing of someone whose core had been muted—a rubber body suddenly ordinary. His arms hung strangely. He was still Luffy, but the Gomu Gomu no mi had fallen silent.
Zoro cursed, the sound sharp as a blade. Nami, Usopp—the net was merciless, tightening hope.
Smoker ended up in the basement with them because the alternative was leaving a Marine captain loose in Rain Dinners, and that was not an option Crocodile's people were willing to take. Smoker in Seastone would not produce the same diminishment it produced in Luffy — his smoke Logia was suppressed, but he remained physically himself — and Smoker's view on his current accommodations was visible in every line of his posture.
The cage was below the casino. They were in it.
---
Liam was near Nami when the handcuffs went on.
He scanned the room the way he always did when chaos hit—fast, thorough, every variable weighed in a heartbeat. Seastone suppressed Devil Fruit powers. His body was not a Devil Fruit, but Seastone might still affect him. He did not care to discover what, not when ignorance could cost him. He moved.
He had skills Crocodile's security couldn't match. Navigating chaos and avoiding the cage was possible. He slipped outside.
He was watching from the casino floor when Robin took Vivi.
Robin moved with the effortless confidence of someone who owned the room. Her hands appeared and vanished; her fruit stretched her reach beyond expectation. She secured Vivi before anyone could react. Already, she headed for the basement.
She looked across the casino floor as she moved.
Their eyes locked for a heartbeat. Liam stood still, hands open, posture harmless. He looked at her with deep recognition—deeper than the moment allowed. He should not know her as well as his eyes claimed. She should not have given him that look on the Merry, but she had. Now, he returned it.
Robin's eyes assessed him in a second, then she took Vivi and continued.
---
"Tashigi's here."
He and Zoro spent a fleeting thirty seconds on the same street. Both were still free. Zoro headed straight for trouble; Liam circled it. Liam kept his tone light.
"Interesting that of all the marine postings in Alabasta, she ended up in Rainbase." He glanced at Zoro. "If circumstances were different, would you want to get to know her? The swordswoman. The marine."
Zoro made a sound that conveyed his complete assessment of this line of conversation, then turned his attention with deliberate totality to the direction he was heading.
Liam accepted Zoro's rebuff with quiet understanding; camaraderie and wariness tangled in his chest as he faded once more into motion.
After some moments, Zoro was captured when he separated from Liam.
---
The basement cage held six people. It held two clashing personalities and the need to invent uneasy teamwork.
Luffy's energy filled the cage differently now, but dimmed, like a fire banked but not extinguished. He sat with Seastone cuffs, wearing the patience of someone who had decided to solve the problem, even if he did not yet know how.
Smoker sat in the far corner. He wore the look of a marine officer who had hit an unwelcome twist in his day and now had no one to answer to but himself.
Nami was already plotting. Usopp joined her. The two of them slipped into the familiar rhythm of survivors who made a habit of solving the impossible. They were on the problem.
Zoro leaned casually against the wall, arms crossed. Although the cage could not truly contain him if he chose to break free, he waited for the right moment, watching the room with measured patience and weighing possible escape strategies.
Vivi was there. Carue with her.
---
Sanji's face was not in Baroque Works' files.
This was a surgical error in Crocodile's surveillance—a mistake born from the Bon Clay encounter between Drum Island and Alabasta, when a face-copying agent photographed three Straw Hats but missed the fourth. Sanji had slipped through untouched. His face was a blank in their files. The agent saw only a blond man in a suit who did not fit the profile, so he let him pass.
Sanji was free. He was thinking. The outline of a plan was forming—the kind that comes to someone who has already counted the pieces and started fitting them together.
Chopper was outside the cage because he had been mistaken for a pet rather than a crew member. It was a different kind of oversight, born from underestimating what a small reindeer in a hat could do. Chopper waited, uncertain but ready to help when called.
Liam was outside both of those situations and all of them simultaneously.
He occupied a space Crocodile's operation had left open. The gap was for someone who did not fit any threat profile. He slipped through the cracks, free to move in a city hunting Straw Hats. Right now, mobility was his greatest asset.
He was working his angle. The angle produced belonged to the next moves in a situation that was still developing.
The cage was closed. Sanji was thinking. Chopper was waiting. Liam was outside.
Night settled warm over Rainbase. The lake still glittered at the city's heart. Beneath the casino floor, six people wrestled with a problem they never planned to face.