14 14: alabasta 3

setting out the next day everyone had to listen to luffy complain about the heat while chopper was being dragged behind zoro as he was struggling with his fire and the heat, alex and ace seemed fine with the heat because of their fire elements. after more travelling when they were only one tenth of the way to yuba. luffy starts asking for food in which vivi says they can eat at the next rocks they see, so luffy says that w]they will have a rock paper scissor match with the winner having to carry everyone's stuff.

Alex and ace not wanting to give her stuff to others, keeps carrying hers while luffy ends up winning the contest and carrying everyone's bags. usopp spots some rocks up ahead causing luffy to bolt ahead leaving a dust cloud in his wake. luffy arriving at the rocks is ,eat with a bunch of injured birds, so he drops the stuff he's carrying before rushing back to the group to get chopper to heal them, this freaks vivi out as she just remember another danger of the desert, the Warusagi birds or better known as desert bandits that trick travellers and steal their belongings.

the birds come back showing off the items they stole before running away with luffy hot on their tails, ignoring the crews advice of not chasing them and ends up almost eaten by plants as a result. After killing the plants, luffy saves a camel from the same fate before they are both set upon by a sandora dragon. The camels with luffy hanging of him bolts off into the direction luffy came from leading the sandora dragon back to the crew resulting in luffy zoro and sanji to kill it for food.

After they kill it a second dragon appears causing vivi to again remember important information to late, that the sandora dragons hunt in pairs. Ace ends up killing the second one by jumping in its mouth and cooking it from the inside out. the crew then starts asking luffy about the camel while enjoying the food sanji made out of the lizards when chopper exclaimed

"I knew it!"

as he recognized the camel from the twin the crew gathered supplies from before he started a conversation with the camel. when the crew got excited about being able to ride the camel, he told them he won't allow any men on him, causing him to be beat up by luffy sanji and usopp.

"I'm so sorry! My crewmates are so ill-bred! Your a good boy! What should we call you?"

the men on the crew came up with insulting names before nami decided to call him lashes. Alex walking in to the ca,el goes to pet it but he turns his head away making noises that chopper translated as

" i already said no men!"

this causes alex to get a tick mark as she punched the camel yelling

" I'm a woman! i just like to dress this way stupid percy camel!"

before walking away. This caused the camel to look at chopper in question but he got a head nod in reply saying it's true making the camel almost want to beg for forgiveness, but he is a prideful camel and won't do such a thing even for the fairer sex. nami seeing this gets vivi to climb up with her instead as alex still looks ready to kill the camel, before the crew sets off again toward yuba.

Luffy getting thirsty ends up eating hallucinating cacti and attacking everyone before chopper gives him a tranquilizer. during their travel they lost sight of nami and vivi as well as ace a little while later. Usopp hears a noise so the crew gathered at the top of a sand dune and usopp uses his goggles to look for what's making the noise, before seeing a pirate ship travelling across the desert with nami vivi and the camel tied up on deck. Luffy rushing the ship ends up losing the strength to slow his landing smashes into the mast of the ship causing it to break off, before asking the pirates if they have any water. Luffy ends up making friends with the sand pirates before hi, and vivi end up travelling with two of them to get more timber to fix the mast. Alex seeing as it will take awhile for the, to come back starts to experiment with her powers, she is able to get fire to come out easily but she struggles with the black thing, before she can practice more the sand pirates are attacked by desert bandits. while the bandits were charging a grand dung beetle ends up dropping its dung down the dune the bandits were on, causing it to roll toward the ship crushing bandits in its path as well as the bandit leader and pirate captain who tried to stop it.

"Ah! i'm not dealing with dung! Someone else can take care of it"

alex says as she moves behind zoro to use him as human shield against the dung. Zoro and sanji end up breaking the ball of dung apart, causing the bandit leader to get scared and decide to leave and attack again another time. alex decided to work on her powers again and managed to get the black power out before she fell into a shadow.

"Ah help me! how do i get out?"

alex yelled out for the shadow she was in, causing sanji to try to pull her up only to grab the ground she was supposed to be in.

"we can't reach you, we keep hitting the ground, how did you fall into that?"

sanji said before chopper t

ride to get her to stop using the black power as he saw her use it before falling into the shadow. Alex listening to chopper stopped using it and was spat out of the shadow an instant after.

"guess we found out what the black power does. heeheehee"

alex replied with a laugh. Alex continued to use the shadow power as she figured that when she want to practice fire, it would be best to have ace nearby to teach her. Luffy arrived back before night fell and everyone went to sleep after fixing the mast. The next morning the crew set out to a nearby village, and this time alex managed to get a ride on the camel as it knew she was a girl this time. Arriving at the two. they are rested by ace wo]ho brought them lots of food and water before explaining about how there was fake rebel soldiers5 in the town using it for free food and booze. vivi decides to test the fake bandits to see if they would at least try and help the village or just run away, so the crew pretended to attack the village. alex vivi and nami stay behind and watch as the rest of the crew threatened the village and eventually got defeated by the fake rebels before running away.

as they were travelling they ran into a man who was apparently the reason there was rumours that blackbeard was in yuba, he explained how he's trying to prove to his kids that he's an amazing bounty hunter by catching ace, so he started the rumour that blackbeard was there to have a chance to capture ace. But his two kids who chased after him got him to stop, saying it was time to go home now and not to throw his life away trying catch someone much stronger than him.

Ace seeing as blackbeard wasnt in alabasta decided to leave and continue his search, giving luffy a vivre card before leaving.