'Jiron is not here,' he thought. 'He is probably in the New World. The Five Elders are not just bad at their jobs but they are terrible at it, no wonder why I personally have to take the action.'
Just killing Jiron wasn't enough. People would just call him a hero. Imu knew he had to do something more. He had to kill the idea of revolution. He had to make everyone in the North Blue hate the word "revolution."
He had a much crueler plan. He would use his tens of thousands of puppets. But he wouldn't use them as spies. He would use them to be monsters. He would make the "heroes of the people" become the bad guys.
He sent a powerful thought to all of his puppets in all four kingdoms. It wasn't a simple command this time. It was a whole new set of rules for them to follow.
Imu commanded the puppet soldiers "Take away food and wealth from the people"
After this command they started executing the orders. This started happening in all four kingdoms at the same time. In the city of Lvneel, the puppet soldiers walked through the marketplace. They didn't buy anything. They just took everything. They took all the fish, all the bread, and all the cloth.
An old woman who sold spices held a small box. It was all the money she had in the world. A puppet soldier with empty eyes walked up to her.
"Give me that," the soldier said in a robot voice.
"No, please," she cried. "It's all I have. we helped you, I gave your people food when you were fighting the king"
The soldier didn't care. "The revolution needs money and sacrifice if you are not doing this then you are not a worthy of revolution, shame on you to show resistance towards revolutionary" he said. He took the box from her and walked away, leaving her crying on the ground.
In the farming kingdom of Balsamico, it was even worse. The puppet soldiers went to the big buildings where all the food for the winter was stored. The townspeople gathered, looking confused and scared.
Their mayor who had helped the revolution said, "Friends What are you doing? This food is for us"
The puppet officer in charge turned to him. "The revolution needs food," he said in his empty voice. His men started taking all the food and putting it on wagons. They were taking away the town's only way to survive the winter.
At the same time in Fresta, people were getting angry. They had cheered for these soldiers. Now the soldiers were stealing from them.
A strong blacksmith had two puppet soldiers come into his house. They were taking his family's secret savings. His son a brave young man stood in their way.
"Stop" he shouted. "What are you doing? You are acting just like that old evil king"
The two soldiers stopped. They both turned and looked at the young man. They raised their guns and pointed them at his chest.
"You" one of the soldiers said in a flat voice, "are a threat to the revolution."
The young man's eyes got wide with surprise. Before he could say anything else, two gunshots fired in the small house. The young man fell to the floor in front of his screaming parents. The soldiers just took all their money and food.
The same thing happened all over the four kingdoms. Anyone who tried to fight back was shot. And over every dead body, the puppet soldiers would say the same scary thing: "You are a threat to the revolution."
The news spread quickly in all four kindoms. All the hope the people had was gone. Now they are filled with a new terrible fear.
Their old king had been mean to them, but at least they knew what to expect from him. These new rulers, who they thought were heroes their heroe, are cold monsters.
The word "revolution" no longer meant freedom. It meant being hungry, poor and scared for your life.
Far away, Imu watched all of this happen. With his Haki, he could feel the happiness and hope of the four kingdoms disappear. It was being replaced by sadness, fear, and a new strong feeling: hatred.
Imu heard these words in his mind and he liked them. He didn't invent the words and he didn't have to.
People have been using words like that to hurt each other for a very long time. It was a pattern he had seen happen again and again for last eight hundred years.
He had seen it so many times. First, people would be unhappy with their king. Then they would dream of a happy, perfect world with ideas like 'freedom' and 'justice'. They would fight together and win with a full of hope.
But right after they won, the beautiful idea they fought for would become their new boss. And this new boss was much meaner than the old king. The "revolution" became like a new god that everyone had to obey.
This new god didn't like it when people asked questions. If someone tried to keep a little food for their family or if they just wanted to be left alone, they were called a bad person. They were called an enemy of the people. They were called a threat to the revolution.
And to protect their beautiful idea the new leaders would do terrible things. They would let their people starve. They would kill their friends. They would do things the old king would have been too scared to do.
Imu knew that this was a weakness in people's hearts. He wasn't creating this fear himself. He was just helping it happen faster. He was using their own dreams of freedom to break their spirits.
He was proving something he had known for a very long time: if you let people choose, they will always pick a new set of chains, but they will call them wings.
The people now starting to hate the revolutionaries. They were starting to hate the idea of revolution. They were learning a hard lesson: sometimes the promise of a perfect world can turn into the worst nightmare.