It had started with a speech.
A year before the Straw Hats would set foot on Alabasta, a grand announcement had been made in the capital city of Alubarna. People gathered in thousands. King Nefertari Cobra was expected to speak about a potential water source breakthrough—hope for a land that hadn't seen true rain in years.
Instead, a changed Cobra stepped up to the balcony. His walk was stiff, his eyes lacked the warmth the people loved. And his voice—though similar—was coated with arrogance.
"We have decided that the few reserves of water left in Alabasta will be sold to the highest bidder! Progress demands sacrifice. The weak must adapt… or perish."
Silence.
Then murmurs.
Then roars of rage.
From nobles to commoners, every citizen stood dumbfounded. A man once known for compassion was now a tyrant?
They didn't know it was Bon Clay, the clone-clone fruit user, impersonating Cobra.
But the damage was done.
That night, in the poorer district of Nanohana, a group of young adults gathered in a dimly lit cellar beneath a dried-up well.
Among them was Koza, now seventeen, standing tall with a desert scarf draped around his shoulders. The sand had made him lean and bronzed, but his eyes burned brighter than ever.
Beside him were Zaid, a former palace messenger; Kumi, a healer's apprentice from Katorea; and Jarrah, a former palace guard stripped of rank for questioning the king's orders.
They had all seen through the lie.
"That… wasn't our king," Kumi whispered, voice trembling.
Koza's jaw tightened. "No. And even if it was… he no longer rules for Alabasta."
"People are scared," said Jarrah. "They think the royal family has turned on us. There's panic in the west—looting already started in Rainbase."
Koza looked at them all. "Then we fight. Not with fire—not yet. But we spread the truth. We build numbers. In every town. Every market. Every broken well."
The group was small at first.
But Koza had always been a leader—even back when he was chasing imaginary pirates with Vivi.
He spoke to hearts.
He went from town to town with Zaid and Jarrah, posing as traveling merchants. Every night they would meet with small gatherings. Kumi sent coded messages in medicinal herbs to alert sympathizers.
Within two months, Koza's whisper became Alabasta's growing pulse.
They never claimed to be against the real King Cobra—but they defied the image that had hurt the people.
Koza made one thing clear in every meeting:
"We don't raise arms to destroy. We rise to protect what our king once stood for."
By the fourth month of the rebellion's quiet rise, Baroque Works noticed.
The growing web of whispers, secret handshakes, coded messages in crates of fruit—none escaped their attention for long. Koza's rebellion had lit a match in the dark, and Crocodile's agents moved to snuff it out.
They came dressed as traders, fortune tellers, and wandering priests. Their smiles were sweet, but their blades were sharper.
One day, in the town of Erumalu, Koza and Jarrah were ambushed in a grain storehouse by two Baroque agents—Mr. 12 and Miss Honeyday. The agents had orders to assassinate the "desert brat who dared turn a kingdom's people against their king."
The fight was short but savage.
Jarrah, who once served in Cobra's palace guard, shielded Koza with a broken spear. Koza used a sand-slicked chain whip—a gift from a rebel blacksmith—to wrap Honeyday's arm and disarm her.
"You think you're saving the kingdom?" she hissed. "You're feeding it to the crocodile."
Koza knocked her out cold and tied her hands using the same chain.
"I don't care for your metaphors," he said, his eyes dark. "But I won't let this land rot quietly."
From that day, the rebellion began deploying non-lethal defense squads across towns, called the Winds of the Storm. Their job wasn't to kill—but to delay, to expose, and to protect.
Kumi crafted herbal flares—smoke bombs that released vaporous symbols, alerting rebels in the area of danger. Jarrah trained youths in self-defense, especially girls who wanted to fight. And Koza made sure each rebel carried a shard of obsidian glass etched with the word truth. They wore it like a pendant or tucked it in boots—a reminder of their cause.
They even had a strange ally—an anonymous merchant from Nanohana who left behind boxes of polished mirror shards. The rebels learned to reflect sunlight to blind ambushers or signal long distances. Koza believed these came from someone tied to a larger force… but never dug deeper.
The rebellion wasn't loud. It was a quiet tide that pulled away lies and planted seeds of courage.
One night, in the silence between raids and rallies, Koza sat alone on a sand dune in Katorea, the stars glinting like secrets above.
He clutched a letter—Vivi's last message before she left the kingdom. It was formal, political… but at the end, in her handwriting, she had written:
"Protect them for me. I believe in you."
He felt someone beside him—Kumi, her dark hair wrapped in a desert veil, her eyes quiet but strong.
"You're not sleeping again," she said.
"Dreams are heavy," Koza murmured.
She looked out across the desert. "We've lost more than we imagined. Families are scared to dig new wells. Children think war is the only way forward. Do you ever regret this?"
Koza stayed still for a long moment.
"I regret… that I have to do this," he said finally. "But what I don't regret—is showing people that they are not alone. That there's still honor in this sand. That we can carry hope even if we're bleeding."
He clenched the obsidian pendant in his palm. "I fight… so when Vivi returns, she still has a kingdom worth fighting for."
Kumi smiled faintly and leaned her head on his shoulder.
The dunes whispered with the wind.