Operation Utopia

Operation Utopia was the name of the project designed by Crocodile to dispose of King Nefertari Cobra to take over the throne of the Arabasta Kingdom and acquire the ancient weapon Pluton which is supposedly hidden somewhere in Arabasta, achieving the purpose of creating a "utopia" capable of competing with the World Government. The members of Crocodile's crime syndicate Baroque Works were mobilized for this operation.

This operation ended in failure when the entire syndicate was defeated by the Straw Hat Pirates, and most of the members were arrested by the Marines. However, some of the members managed to escape and open a cafe together while the rest, including Crocodile himself, were sent to the highest-security prison in the world.

Details


First, Crocodile won the hearts of the people of Arabasta through the use of public appearances as one of the Seven Warlords of the Sea, becoming a hero to the people by rounding up invading pirates. This made it so that no one suspected that he was the mastermind behind everything.

During this farce, Baroque Works secretly used Dance Powder to cause the capital city to have abnormally high amounts of rain while the rest of the country suffered endless drought. The people did not suspect a thing until it was noticed that other cities were getting below normal rainfall. Baroque Works agents later brought a shipment of Dance Powder into the country and once in the middle of the town of Nanohana, they faked an accident with the delivery cart, causing the citizens to discover the powder. When questioned, the agents said it was a delivery for the king, making them suspect that their monarch was behind the drought.

Several Baroque Works members were assigned to join the royal guard, thus allowing them to smuggle large amounts of Dance Powder into the palace. When the powder was found, the people were pushed into thinking that the king was behind the lack of rain. The younger citizens of Yuba were even beginning to form ideas of rebellion. To make sure the rebellion was pushed forward, several Baroque Works members joined their ranks, even going so far as to become close officers to Koza, who had later become the rebellion's leader.

Then Baroque Works organized a scheme that would be the final push to incite the rebellion to make the final charge on the capital. First, Mr. 4 and Miss Merry Christmas snuck into the royal palace and kidnapped the king of Arabasta. Afterwards, Mr. 2 used his Devil Fruit power to transform into a lookalike of the king and publicly apologized to the people of Nanohana for his use of the powder. Baroque Works also made sure that the time of the fake Cobra's appearance and the time of the real Cobra's disappearance lined up with how long it would have taken Cobra to travel to the town. In addition to confessing to causing the drought, the fake Cobra pointed out that the possession and use of Dance Powder was illegal; so to cover his tracks, everyone in the town would be killed.

Just when the fake royal soldiers had finished setting the town on fire, a large ship crashed into the shore, causing it to jump out of the sea and land in town, courtesy of Mr. 1 and Miss Double Finger. Mr. 2 and the fake soldiers used this as a distraction in which to make their escape. The citizens, fooled by Mr. 2's deception, decide to ally with the rebel army and take up arms against the king. Initially, the rebellion did not have enough weapons to mount an attack on the capital, but that changed because the large ship that Mr. 1 and Miss Double Finger crashed was actually an armory ship filled with weapons.

The rebel army, whose numbers increased from 700,000 to 2,000,000 strong, began its advancement on the capital. Once the rebellion got close to the capital, a Baroque Works agent in the royal army "accidentally" shot a cannon at the rebels, marking the beginning of the final battle. Crocodile also arranged for a bomb with a five kilometer blast radius to be shot into the center of the battlefield once the fighting reached its climax and the maximum number of royal soldiers and rebel soldiers were all gathered in one place, killing all the rebels and royal soldiers in one fell swoop. Naturally, a bomb with a blast radius of that size would itself have to be very large, so it was necessary to hide it and to launch it from very close to the battlefield, and at a high elevation to take advantage of gravity, so it was hidden in the top of a nearby clock tower. Once both armies were eliminated, it would be simple for Baroque Works to take over the country. Crocodile even rigged the bomb with a timer, so it would still go off, even if something happened to Mr. 7 and Miss Father's Day, the agents assigned to launch the bomb.



Before the bomb was supposed to be launched however, Crocodile took it upon himself to question the king about the ancient weapon known as Pluton, a battleship that can destroy an entire island with only a single cannon fire, which was supposedly hidden somewhere in Arabasta. With both Pluton and Arabasta under his control, Crocodile would have been able to unite all the pirates in the area under his command and eventually become more powerful than even the World Government.

The king's daughter, Princess Vivi, after discovering the Dance Powder setup, took it upon herself to infiltrate Baroque Works, hoping to find a way to stop them. However the crime syndicate took every measure to keep Vivi from bringing the rebellion to a halt. Firstly, by trying to kill her so she could not share the information she had acquired, then by preventing Koza from seeing her, by firing at Koza when he surrendered, and by stopping the people from hearing Vivi while she was trying to get their attention.

Throughout the Arabasta Saga, it became clear that Baroque Works was behind the problems in Arabasta. It was not until late in the story arc that the Rebellion leader Koza became aware of Crocodile's deception; by then it was almost too late to stop what had happened.

Rebels
The rebellion was led by Koza, Vivi's childhood friend. Among the rebels are even more of Koza's and Vivi's childhood friends from the Suna Suna Clan as well as various Baroque Works agents who infiltrated the rebel army's ranks to ensure that their organization's plans would come to fruition. The rebel army reached seven hundreds thousand members before the appearance of Mr. 2 as the king, at least 300,000 of them being defected royal soldiers. By the time of the attack on the capital city, they had become a force of "two million angry warriors" according to Chaka. In the anime, there are also several civilians that posed as rebel army soldiers.

Course of Events
Initially, the rebellion was simply a cold war with six hundred thousand royal soldiers vs. four hundred thousand rebels. However, as Vivi and the Straw Hats found out in a newspaper, 300,000 the royal soldiers, half of their forces, defected and joined the rebels, changing the numbers to 300,000 royal soldiers vs. 700,000 rebels, shifting the balance of power in favor of the rebels. This signals to the Straw Hats that the rebellion will escalate and soon blood will be shed.

Skirmish in Nanohana
The rebel army was getting ready to mobilize and attack Alubarna in a kamikaze attack. Meanwhile, a young boy, Kappa, asked if he could join the rebel army but they said he could not join them and explained that people in the rebellion are in real danger. Koza also told him they had not given up on the king yet. Awhile later, Mr. 2, disguised as Cobra, attempted to destroy Nanohana and frame the king for it, the real Cobra having been kidnapped by Mr. 4 and Miss Merry Christmas. At the same time, Mr. 1 and Miss Doublefinger hijacked a massive weapons ship and crashed it into Nanohana, causing a massive fire that depleted the majority of the town's remaining water. Many citizens, outraged at what their king had supposedly done, joined the rebels. These citizens strengthened the rebel forces to around two million people, while the weapons ship that the Mr. 1 pair had runaground gave the rebels more than enough weapons to both arm their new recruits and launch their final assault.

Battle of Alubarna


It is in this battle where in the rebel army charged in to defeat the royal army to force the king of the Arabasta Kingdom to surrender, not knowing that the war between them was actually engineered and being set up by the Baroque Works, led by Crocodile. Vivi would have blown up the Alubarna Palace to catch the attention of the warriors fighting to urge them to stop the rebellion, but had failed to do so because of Crocodile. Koza, the leader of the rebel army who knows the secret entrance to the palace, witnessed the commotion within and had found out that it was Crocodile who stole the rain. He and Vivi rushed to the royal army to make them surrender to the rebel army to stop the rebellion. But a Baroque Works agent who had infiltrated the royal army shot Koza and thus continued the war.

On the other hand, the Straw Hat Pirates fought their own battle: Usopp and Chopper fighting with Mr. 4 and Miss Merry Christmas, Sanji with Mr. 2, Nami with Miss Doublefinger, and Zoro with Mr. 1, each one ending with the Straw Hats victorious.

During the climax of the battle, Crocodile revealed that he planned to fire a bomb into the square, killing everyone. After searching the entire city, Vivi and the Straw Hats (sans Luffy) located it in the central clock tower, where the cannon was guarded by Mr. 7 and Miss Father's Day. Working together, the Straw Hats helped Vivi reach the top of the tower where she defeated the bombarders and put out the fuse. However, it was revealed that Crocodile had put a timer on the bomb which would cause it to detonate one minute after its failed firing. Alubarna was saved when Pell pulled the bomb into the sky where it would detonate harmlessly, seemingly sacrificing himself in the process (though it would later be revealed that he survived).



Despite the bombing having been stopped, the fighting continued, despite Vivi's cries and the Straw Hats attempts to stop them. Just then, however, Luffy finally defeats Crocodile in their third and final battle, in the Arabasta Poneglyph Chamber in the Tomb of the Kings. Upon losing consciousness, the effect of Crocodile's Suna Suna no Mi that kept the rain from falling was neutralized and the rain finally returned, calming the enraged battle. With the threats of both the bomb and Crocodile neutralized, and the rain having returned, Vivi was able to quell the fighting from the top of the clock tower, and with the help of Kappa, who had seen Mr. 2 change, cleared the King's name, ended the civil war and disbanded the rebellion. The World Government could not ignore Crocodile's abuse of his privileges as a Warlord and he was dismissed from his position and arrested by Captain Smoker and Ensign Tashigi of the Marines.

Aftermath
The downfall of Crocodile would have several lasting effects on the world:
 * To cover up the fact that the Straw Hats defeated Baroque Works, the World Government passed the credit onto a Smoker and Tashigi, who would be presented a commendation and a promotion in rank, much to their anger and grief.
 * Admiral Fujitora later repaid this injustice by publicly exposing the truth of Donquixote Doflamingo's actions at Dressrosa and his defeat by Luffy and Law.
 * Luffy's bounty of 30 million would be increased to 100 million, while Zoro received his first bounty of 60 million for defeating Mr. 1 (aka Daz Bonez).
 * Thus, Luffy becomes a Super Rookie and a member of the Worst Generation.
 * Crocodile's partner, Miss All Sunday (aka Nico Robin) would join the Straw Hats following Crocodile's defeat (due to Luffy saving her from the collapsing underground tomb when she wanted to die).
 * The biggest of all, however, would be that with Crocodile gone from the Seven Warlords of the Sea, the World Government had to find a replacement to fill his vacant title.
 * Blackbeard would use this to his advantage in the first step of his plan to become the next Pirate King, which then led to the Summit War of Marineford where both Portgas D. Ace and one of the Four Emperors, Whitebeard met their demises.
 * At the Levely, Nefertari Cobra used Crocodile's actions as a reason to abolish the Seven Warlords system.

Legacy
Though he initially failed to launch his project, Sir Crocodile did not give up on this project and still wanted to create a utopia. After the Seven Warlords system was abolished, Crocodile contacted Dracule Mihawk and made a proposal to enter into a partnership. His plan was to create a new powerful organization known as the Cross Guild which they would lead together. Lacking the funds, however, Crocodile quickly turned to Buggy on Karai Bari Island, whom he saved from the invading Marines, to collect the debt Buggy owed him. Buggy, unable to pay, instead offered his organization, Buggy's Delivery, to Crocodile as a start point for the Cross Guild.

With the Cross Guild's newfound power and widespread reach, Crocodile hoped to use its influence and military strength to complete his desire to create the utopia he dreamed of. Unfortunately, his plans were put on hold when Buggy, who was being used as a figurehead leader for the organization due to a misunderstanding from his subordinates, openly declared that they would hunt down the One Piece instead.

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