Rebel Army

The daytime temperatures in the Alabasta Desert were scorching, and the air warped under the heat.

Rain wore that dust-covered black trench coat as he stepped across the burning dunes.

Ordinary people would die of dehydration after trudging through this desert for just a few hours, but to a Rock-Rock Fruit user, sand was merely tiny fragments of weathered rock. Though it was not as easy to control as solid granite, he could still use Rock Vein Sense to locate sturdy bedrock beneath this sea of sand, even drawing a faint trace of underground moisture from the deepest earth to regulate his body temperature.

It had been two days since he left Nanohana.

"Bang! Bang bang!"

Suddenly, a barrage of musket fire tore through the howling wind and sand from behind a massive dune ahead. Along with the gunfire came desperate cries and cruel laughter.

Rain stopped, his pitch-black eyes narrowing slightly. Like a silent ghost, he slowly walked up along the ridge of the dune.

Below the dune lay the ruins of a dried-up oasis.

At that moment, a one-sided massacre was underway.

A dozen or so youths wrapped in tattered headscarves and armed with crude weapons stood with their backs against several dead poplar trees, resisting with everything they had. Most bore gunshot wounds, their eyes filled with despair and unwillingness.

Surrounding them were more than fifty fully armed elites. Half wore standard Alabasta King's Army uniforms, while the other half wore clothes bearing the Baroque Works insignia. They were "Billions," one rank above ordinary grunts.

"Stop struggling, rebel scum!" A man in a King's Army officer's uniform laughed wildly. "By order of King Cobra, all rebels attempting to defy the royal family's rule are to be executed on the spot! Leave none alive! Hahaha!"

"Bullshit! That hypocritical tyrant Cobra used 'Dance Powder' to steal our rain, and now he wants to wipe us out too?!" A red-eyed youth who appeared to be the rebel captain roared. His left arm had been shot.

"The dead don't need to know that much truth." The leading Baroque agent sneered and raised his repeating musket. "Kill them all. We'll report back to Lord Mr. 5!"

"Fire!"

The desperate rebels closed their eyes.

Yet the expected hail of bullets never came.

Instead, a terrifying rumble rose from deep underground!

"Rumble—!"

The ground throughout the dried oasis suddenly began shaking violently. Before those fake King's Army soldiers and Baroque agents could react, the thick layer of yellow sand beneath their feet exploded apart!

"Pshk! Pshk! Pshk!"

Under the rebels' speechless, stunned gazes, dozens of thick gray-black stone spikes surged from the bedrock below, pierced through the heavy sand, and accurately impaled the pursuers.

More than fifty fully armed pursuers did not even have time to scream before the enormous stone spikes skewered them high into the air like candied hawthorns. Blood flowed down the pale gray rock veins, staining the yellow sand a horrifying dark red.

In just one second.

The pursuit force that had been so arrogant moments ago was completely wiped out.

The dozen or so rebels sat limp on the ground, staring at the bloody slaughterhouse around them, like a forest of stone pillars. Their minds were blank.

"You can't even tell who your enemy is. Your rebellion is laughable, like children playing house."

A cold, utterly flat voice came from the dune above.

The rebels abruptly looked up. A young man in a black trench coat was slowly walking down the dune. His hands remained in his pockets, and the violent stone spikes around him shattered one after another as he approached, turning back into grains of sand and sinking underground.

"Y-you... who are you? A Devil Fruit user?" The wounded rebel captain swallowed and forced himself to stand despite his fear.

"A lost traveler who happened to clean up a few noisy bugs." Rain walked beneath the poplar trees, found a relatively clean rock, and sat down. He glanced at the rebel captain. "Since I saved you, you'll handle tonight's campfire and guide duties. No problem, right?"

Night fell, and the desert temperature plummeted.

A campfire rose in the dried oasis. Its faint light illuminated the exhausted, bewildered faces of the rebels.

After a brief conversation, Rain learned that the captain was named Farl, a company commander under Koza, leader of the rebel army. Farl was deeply grateful for Rain's lifesaving help and offered him the half flask of water and dry rations they had left.

Around the campfire, their suppressed emotions finally found an outlet. With reddened eyes, Farl poured out the despair that had been building inside him to the unfathomably powerful man who had saved them.

"For three whole years... Alabasta hasn't had a single drop of rain for three whole years..." Farl's voice trembled with tears. "The fields have dried up, the oases have withered, and old people and children die of thirst every day. Yet King Cobra used 'Dance Powder' in the capital, Alubarna, gathering all the rain in the country over his own palace!"

"We aren't rioters. We just want to live! Why is he doing this to us? Why are those King's Army soldiers slaughtering us like dogs?"

The other rebels lowered their heads and sobbed as well, the firelight filled with the pain of betrayal.

Holding the half flask of water, Rain quietly listened to Farl's accusations.

"Your anger is cheap, and stupid."

Rain suddenly spoke. His voice was not loud, but it was like a basin of icy water, instantly extinguishing the sorrow around the campfire.

Farl froze and looked at Rain in disbelief. "Benefactor... what do you mean?"

"It means you've been played like monkeys, yet you're smugly convinced you're a righteous army carrying out heaven's will." Rain tossed the flask back to Farl, leaned forward slightly, and swept his gaze over every rebel's face.

"The 'Dance Powder' incident? That was nothing but clumsy framing. Half the people chasing you during the day were Baroque Works assassins, and the other half probably weren't legitimate soldiers either. If Cobra truly wanted you dead, he would have deployed the King's Army's regular cavalry. A ragtag crew like you, who can barely hold your guns steady, wouldn't last a week."

"F-framed?" Farl and the others were struck as if by lightning. This truth nearly overturned everything they had believed for years.

"But that doesn't mean your king is innocent."

Rain changed tack, his tone becoming even more biting than the desert's cold night wind.

"Do you think the three-year drought is what truly destroyed Alabasta?"

Rain picked up a dead branch from the ground and poked at the fire, sending sparks flying.

"No. What destroyed this country was King Cobra's excessive tolerance and weakness."

"What do you mean?" Farl's eyes widened.

"The drought was merely the fuse. The real terminal illness was the complete rot of the power structure." Rain's gaze seemed to pierce the night sky, seeing the officials drowning themselves in pleasure in every oasis. "When facing a nationwide natural disaster, what should a true ruler do? He could have imposed martial law, nationalized all water and food supplies, and rationed them uniformly."

"But what did Cobra do? He only issued useless 'reassurance' orders and opened the royal treasury to distribute disaster relief funds."

Rain sneered, his lips curling into a deeply mocking smile.

"Kindness without the backing of a sharp blade becomes nothing more than a fig leaf for the powerful to exploit the common people."

"When a nation lacks the iron hand needed to intimidate those at the local level, the regional governors and security captains who hold real power realize that the king is a 'good man' who won't kill. So, for self-preservation and profit, the enormous bureaucratic system begins to churn madly."

Rain's voice was like a heavy hammer, striking the rebels' hearts again and again.

"The disaster relief money from the treasury gets skimmed away layer by layer. The little groundwater remaining in the oases is stockpiled by low-ranking officials working with gangs, then sold to thirsty civilians like you at a hundred times the price. They trade your lives for heaps of gold. And when you are starving to death and want to resist, Baroque Works only needs to toss out a tiny spark called 'Dance Powder,' and you furious civilians will turn your blades on that weak king."

"The officials keep making money, the mastermind prepares to usurp the country, while you and those innocent soldiers slaughter one another in this desert."

Rain threw the dead branch into the fire and dusted off his hands.

"This is Alabasta's current state. A hell woven together from weak kindness, greedy bureaucrats, and vile conspiracies."

Dead silence.

The camp fell silent as a grave. Only the crackling of the fire remained.

Farl and the other rebels trembled all over. Rain's political analysis had brutally sliced open this country's festering wound and laid the bloody truth before them.

They were not fighting a tyrant. They were fighting a system rotten to the bone, along with an incomparably terrifying mastermind behind it.

"Then... what should we do?" Farl desperately clutched his hair. "Can we only wait to die? Or watch helplessly as this country is devoured clean by those corrupt officials and Baroque Works?"

Rain looked at these youths, whose beliefs had collapsed and who had fallen into utter confusion. A glint flashed deep in his eyes.

The groundwork was sufficient.

He did not need these rebels' combat strength, but he needed these local snakes' intelligence network to help him find high-value prey. At the same time, he needed a sufficiently large stepping stone to formally declare war on a certain Shichibukai sitting in the grand casino in Rainbase.

"I'll do what you don't dare to do."

Rain slowly rose to his feet. His black trench coat whipped wildly in the night wind, like the Grim Reaper merging into the darkness.

"You will raise the banner of resistance in the open and draw the King's Army's attention. I will do the dirty work that your moral limits won't allow you to do."

Rain looked down at Farl and laid out his terms.

"Provide me with the whereabouts of Baroque Works' high-ranking agents, as well as a list of the corrupt officials nearby who are stockpiling water and colluding with gangs."

"And I will let this desert know what true 'terror' means."