Smoke choked the air of Nanohana, a bitter perfume of burning wood and shattered trust. Flames clawed at the night sky, reflecting in the terrified eyes of the citizens as they scrambled with buckets of sand and water, their efforts pitiful against the inferno left by the retreating 'Royal Guard.'
At the center of the chaos, Kohza stood trembling, not from his wound, but from a fury so profound it turned his blood to ice. The king's ship was a distant silhouette on the dark water.
"Why?" Kohza's voice was a raw scrape against the wind. "After all the suffering… you would burn the very people you swore to protect?"
From the deck, the figure of King Cobra turned, his features indistinct in the haze. But his voice carried, clear and cold. "I apologize… for the Dance Powder."
The words were a lit match dropped into a powder keg.
"APOLOGIZE?" Kohza roared, surging forward. "You starved our children! You broke this country! An apology won't—"
CRACK.
The gunshot was a sharp, final punctuation. Kohza staggered, a bloom of crimson darkening his shoulder. He fell to one knee, his gaze locked on the departing king, whose face seemed to shift for a moment in the flickering light—a smirk that didn't belong.
Before anyone could process the shooting, a new horror arrived.
A thunderous groan of shearing wood split the night as a massive trading vessel, its sails ablaze, plowed into the port with catastrophic force. Docks splintered. The ground shook. And from the raining debris, two figures walked away calmly, untouched by the pandemonium they'd delivered: a man with a blade for a forearm, and a woman with sharp, pointed fingers.
Mr. 1 and Miss Doublefinger melted into the shadows of a collapsing street.
*
At the edge of town, where the desert began to swallow the city's scars, the 'king' shed his royal robes with a flourish. The regal posture dissolved into a fluid, theatrical pose.
"Bon~ soir!" Mr. 2 Bon Clay giggled, peeling off the meticulously crafted latex mask of King Cobra. "A performance for the ages! The tears! The rage! Magnifique!"
"Save your celebrations," a monotone voice cut through the night. Mr. 1 emerged from the darkness, Miss Doublefinger at his side. "The job is not complete. We rendezvous. Now."
"So serious!" Bon Clay pouted, but began to follow.
A small gasp froze them all.
From behind a shattered water cart, a young boy named Kappa stared, his face pale with disbelief. He'd seen the mask come off. He'd seen the king become… someone else.
"T-that's not the king…" Kappa whispered, then his voice found strength. "THE KING IS A FAKE!"
His shout was a tiny dagger in the noisy night, but it struck true.
Mr. 1 turned. His eyes held no more emotion than a stone. "A witness."
"Oh dear," Bon Clay sighed, not sounding sorry at all.
Kappa turned to run, to scream his discovery to the burning town, and slammed directly into the immovable chest of Mr. 1.
The boy looked up, into a face of pure, carved indifference.
"Please…" Kappa breathed.
Mr. 1's bladed arm moved—not a slash, but a swift, brutal piston-strike to the child's midsection. The air left Kappa's lungs in a silent rush. Miss Doublefinger's sharp fingers tapped his temple, a precise, merciless strike.
Kappa crumpled to the dust like a broken doll.
A moment later, a townsman rounding the corner found him. "A child! Help! A boy's hurt!"
Kappa's vision swam, dark at the edges. He felt hands lift him. With his last shred of consciousness, he tried to form the words, to warn them. "The… king… is…"
But his mouth only bubbled with blood. The citizen heard only a pained gurgle. "Don't try to speak, son! It's okay!"
No, Kappa's mind screamed into the void. It's not okay. Nothing is okay.
*
The sight of the small, broken body being carried through the crowd was the final spark.
Kohza, his own wound bandaged with torn cloth, stood over a crate that had spilled from the shattered ship. Not food. Not medicine.
Weapons. Swords, rifles, gunpowder—a grim harvest from the wreck.
He lifted a curved sword, its edge catching the firelight. The despair in his eyes hardened into something lethal.
"They shoot us. They burn us. They leave our children for dead in the streets." His voice, though weak, carried a new, terrible resonance. He looked at the faces around him—soot-stained, tear-tracked, filled with a mirror of his own shattered faith. "The king is not in Alubarna. He is here, waging war on his own people. There is no more discussion. No more waiting."
He pointed his sword toward the distant plateau where the royal capital slept.
"We take Alubarna. Tonight. We take back our country… or we die in the sand trying."
A roar went up, a wave of fury and grief given purpose. The rebellion was no longer a protest. It was an army.
*
In the silent, marbled halls of the palace in Alubarna, Royal Guard Commander Chaka stared at the frantic missive in his hand, the paper trembling.
King sighted in Nanohana. Fires set. Shots fired. City in revolt.
"This… cannot be," Chaka whispered to the empty throne room. "His Majesty would never… This is a trick. It must be."
But even as he denied it, a second, third, and fourth messenger arrived, their voices overlapping in a crescendo of panic.
"Rebel forces are mobilizing from the south!"
"The western towns are declaring for Kohza!"
"The rumor is the king attacked his own people!"
The foundations of the kingdom were not just cracking—they were crumbling in real time. Chaka's loyal heart warred with the impossible evidence. He looked at the majestic throne, the symbol of the Nefertari family's 800-year promise.
That promise now smelled of smoke and treason.
He straightened his back, the grief in his eyes replaced by the steel of duty. If the king had gone mad, or if this was some enemy's plot, his role was unchanged: protect Alubarna. Protect the kingdom.
"Sound the alarm," Chaka commanded, his voice echoing in the vast chamber. "Secure the gates. Mobilize every guard. We defend the capital. We hold the line… and we push this rebellion back into the desert."
War was no longer a threat. It was a fact.
*
Far away, in the opulent casino city of Rainbase, the architect of the nightmare enjoyed his finest moment.
Crocodile stood over his captured audience: Princess Vivi, bound to a chair; the Straw Hat Pirates, sealed in a cage of sea-stone bars; and Captain Smoker, imprisoned in a net of his own Devil Fruit power turned against him.
"Years," Crocodile mused, puffing on his cigar. The smoke coiled around Vivi's tear-streaked face. "Years of careful planning. Buying drought. Selling hope. Positioning a hero to topple a tyrant. All it required was the patience to let a nation… rot."
"You monster!" Vivi strained against her bonds. "They're dying because of you!"
"They're dying because they believed in fairy tales," Crocodile corrected smoothly. "In kings and princesses. I simply showed them the truth: that their leaders are frail, flawed, and ultimately… false."
He detailed his scheme, each word a lash on Vivi's soul. The manipulated droughts. The smuggled Dance Powder framed on the king. The Baroque Works agents sown like poison seeds. He had not just planned a coup; he had authored a national tragedy, line by heartbreaking line.
"And now, the final act," Crocodile said, his golden hook glinting. "The rebel army marches on Alubarna. They will slaughter the royal guard. And when both sides are exhausted, bled white by their own hatred… I will appear. The hero who stops the civil war by defeating the 'mad' king. The people will crown me their savior. And the Ancient Weapon buried beneath these sands… will be mine."
"It won't work!" Vivi shouted, but her voice broke.
With a desperate, furious cry, she threw her weight sideways. The chair toppled. She hit the marble floor with a jarring thud, but began to worm her way toward the door, her wrists still bound behind her. "I have to… stop them… I have to get to the rebels…"
Crocodile watched her pathetic crawl with detached amusement. "And go where, little princess? Your country is a tinderbox. I hold all the matches."
He nodded to his subordinates. "Prepare the carriage. We leave for Alubarna to witness the culmination. Leave our guests here to… ponder their failure."
As Crocodile turned to leave, his coat sweeping behind him, Luffy finally spoke from the cage. His voice was low, a vibration of pure, unadulterated rage.
"Crocodile."
The Warlord paused.
Luffy's eyes were dark, his hands clenched white on the sea-stone bars that sapped his strength. "When I get out of here… I'm going to punch you so hard… you're gonna see every single one of those years flash before your eyes."
Crocodile merely smiled, a thin, cruel thing. "A charming sentiment. But you won't be getting out. Enjoy the show from your cage. The news should start arriving by dawn."
He left, his laughter fading down the hall.
The heavy door to the chamber sealed shut, leaving them in silence. Vivi lay on the cold floor, her body shaking with silent sobs. The clock was ticking. An entire nation was rushing toward a cliff, and they were locked in a gilded prison, powerless to stop it.
In the darkness of the cage, Luffy let his head fall against the bars. Then he took a slow, deep breath, and did the only thing he could.
He began to chew, methodically, relentlessly, on the unbreakable sea-stone bar in front of him.
Crunch.
*
The rebel army was a dark tide flowing across the moonlit desert, their weapons glinting, their silence more terrifying than any war cry. Alubarna's walls rose in the distance, lit by defensive fires.
In the palace, Chaka drew his sword, the last line of defense.
On the road to the capital, a lavish carriage rolled through the night, carrying a man who thought himself a god.
And in a casino prison, the crunch, crunch, crunch of teeth on stone was the only sound—a desperate, impossible promise in the dark.
The hour of Alabasta's destruction had arrived.
And miles away, standing on a dune overlooking the marching rebels, Mr. 1 received a small Den Den Mushi. He listened, then turned to his companions.
"The boss has a final order. The princess must not reach the capital alive." His blade-arm gleamed. "Find her. End her. Before the dawn."
TO BE CONTINUED…
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