More king sabo au :) thinking about the changes to the sabo koala relationship…

So plot-wise, this is after the second reverie that Sabo ever attends, at the age of 22. This is also the reverie where a lot of shit goes down— the five elders kill king cobra, Vivi and Wapol go into hiding with Morgans, and the Revolutionary Army invades and successfully declares war on the Celestial Dragons, and retrieves Kuma.

In this AU, Sabo manages to befriend Vivi by talking about Luffy, and finds a way to hide and watch the confrontation between Cobra and the five elders + Imu, the way that Wapol did. But perhaps not quite as thoroughly, so he’s seen, and forced to hide, and cannot return to Goa. Unfortunately Cobra is not saved, as Sabo isn’t strong enough without his years of training as a Rev to even attempt to save Cobra. But Sabo manages to hitch a ride to Kamabakka with the Revs, most likely as a stowaway, and reveals to them as soon as they land about what he saw. Dragon agrees that it’s unsafe for him to return to Goa, and lets him stay with the Revs for the time being as he figures out what to do next.

Now during this time, Koala, soon to be promoted to Chief of Staff, meets him. But she is also incredibly angry at him, and takes it out through “friendly spars” that Sabo agrees to because he wants to get stronger. It’s through these spars that he eventually returns to being able to wield a pipe with proficiency, but the first few really are just him getting absolutely destroyed by Koala.

This all comes to a head at some point when Sabo asks why Koala always beats him down so thoroughly— so angrily— when they spar, and they end up getting into an argument over ideology during a spar. Koala asks, what reason does she have to not be angry at him? He, who became king to a country under some misguided notion that he could help people, who has been king for 5 years and yet has not been able to make any substantial changes to Goa that would help the people. What has Sabo achieved, beyond becoming one of the people that the Revolution seeks to overthrow? Did he have slaves at the castle? Did he ever try to free them?

The problem is that Sabo could have become a Revolutionary much much sooner. He could have asked, and the Revolutionary Army would have sent a small team or something to extract him—he was a strong child and he is still pretty strong, and his heart’s in the right place. But at some point Sabo fell into so many logical fallacies, that he was weak, that he was trapped, that even if he ran he would never escape his noble upbringing, that eventually he believed that the only way he could be useful was as an informant, and in the meantime, clung to and maybe even enjoyed the luxuries he could have as a young noble in Goa.

This verbal (and physical) beatdown from Koala is what eventually gets him to ask Dragon if he can become a Revolutionary. Dragon says that the Revolution has always had its arms open for him.