"Kenshin, I've always known you carry a heavy burden in your heart," Drake said, his gaze locking onto the swordsman beside him. "Tell me... are you finally ready to settle that score and clear your mind?"
Kenshin's physical frame stiffened involuntarily. A look of deep, fleeting vulnerability flashed through his eyes before he slowly lowered his head, staring at the ground.
He knew it was structurally impossible to hide anything from Drake.
"Go on," Drake said, offering a casual wave of his hand. "No matter what parameters you need to recalibrate out here, the Drake Pirates didn't cross into this sea just to return home empty-handed."
He had held a long-standing intuition that Kenshin was originally a native of Wano Country, though the precise historical variables that had left him drifting across the global grid remained unmapped.
The data verified his hypothesis perfectly. From the precise microsecond their unit breached the country's borders, Kenshin's verbal output had dropped to near-zero, his demeanor growing exceptionally quiet and heavy. Drake had logged every micro-expression, but he understood with absolute certainty that a psychological knot of this magnitude could only be untied by the asset himself.
"I understand! Rest easy, Drake!" Kenshin nodded heavily. Without wasting another millisecond, he pivoted on his heel and strode down the path.
His trajectory was locked straight toward the Flower Capital.
The Flower Capital—the imperial seat of Wano Country, and the fortified stronghold where Shogun Orochi anchored his regime.
The remaining fighters kept their commentary to zero, each processing the heavy, suffocating aura dragging down Kenshin's spirit. While the underlying historical data remained hidden from their database, the specifics carried zero weight; the only critical calculation that mattered was ensuring their comrade successfully emerged from his past.
"I'll synchronize my coordinates with Brother Kenshin," Bell spoke up. It was his absolute first time witnessing the swordsman projecting an energy signature this bleak.
Normally, while Kenshin was naturally quiet and detached, his spirit never carried a weight this suffocating. Bell's strategic radar flagged the anomaly, refusing to let the swordsman navigate the hot zone isolated.
"Mmm," Drake nodded toward Bell, approving the joint deployment. "I'm placing Kenshin's safety parameters under your jurisdiction."
"Consider it handled!"
Within seconds, the vanguard units completely evaporated from the ridge, leaving a grand total of three live assets occupying the sector: Ace, Drake, and little Tama.
The three of them fell into an absolute, heavy silence. Tama's big eyes flicked relentlessly back and forth, tracking the expressions of Ace and Drake in turn. For reasons her childhood logic couldn't decode, the two brothers simply stood frozen, staring blankly at each other without emitting a single line of verbal text.
After a long pause, Ace broke the silence. "Luffy's overall power metrics have undeniably scaled up over his training timeline, but his baseline stats are still insufficient to overpower Kaido."
Drake chose to maintain a zero verbal output.
Ace adjusted his hat, continuing, "However, once the fallout of this total war settles, this grueling friction will serve as the exact catalyst required to forge him into a genuinely apex powerhouse!"
"Precisely."
"So, do our current protocols dictate that we simply anchor our positions on this ridge and watch?" Ace asked, tilting his head toward the coast.
"Negative."
Drake shook his head firmly, rejecting the proposition. "The blueprint dictates that I shall remain at this vantage point to log the encounter. Your parameters are unaligned for this sector."
"Why exact variable dictates that?" Ace asked, a hint of surprise flickering across his features. "Is there a specific tactical objective you require my system to execute?"
Drake simply leveled a flat, unblinking glare straight into Ace's eyes, choosing to remain completely silent.
The intense, knowing nature of the look caused a subtle ripple of unease to disturb Ace's composure. He offered a forced, defensive chuckle. "If your database contains a deployment route you require me to chart, simply download the data. We're brothers; what exact reason could we possibly harbor to hold back our words?"
"Are you entirely certain you hold zero desire to deploy to that sector?" Drake countered with a sharp, knowing smirk.
Ace: "..."
This entirely cryptic, disjointed linguistic exchange left Tama completely bewildered, her small brain entirely unable to extract the underlying meaning of the dialogue.
Heck, even Ace's internal processors were struggling to compute what exact direction Drake was steering the narrative toward. His brow furrowed tightly. "Cut the complex framing and deliver the raw text. I can't parse your meaning when you wrap it in riddles."
"Ahem," Drake cleared his throat, casting a deeply amused glance at his older brother. "I'm simply calculating that our future sister-in-law..."
Sister-in-law?What sister-in-law?!
Ace's brain stalled out completely. But within a fraction of a millisecond, a specific file was retrieved from his memory tracks, and a brilliant, unmistakable crimson flush instantly painted his cheeks.
"Cut the nonsense! What exact sector of your data returns a variable like a sister-in-law?!"
Despite the aggressive verbal denial, the deep crimson stain mounting across his face completely betrayed his internal parameters.
"Ahem! Ace, keep your parameters stable—my system hasn't dropped a single specific name yet," Drake teased, his grin expanding to maximum proportions. "Evaluate your own biological feedback. Tell me, exactly what prominent asset just flashed through your thoughts?"
Drake's internal logic had previously flagged this data point with a minor margin of uncertainty, but watching this physical reaction play out, a massive wave of triumph rippled through his mind. Holy hell, the data is verified!
This sister-in-law variable was an absolute, unchangeable certainty!
Drake silently logged a high-priority directive within his database: If anyone attempts to disrupt this romantic alignment, they will face the immediate lethal output of this entire brotherhood. We've already reserved her spot on our family ledger.
"Ugh..." Ace froze, realizing with absolute clarity that Drake had engineered this entire verbal loop explicitly to extract a confession from his system.
"Your capacity for underhanded verbal manipulation has scaled up significantly over the last two years, hasn't it, Drake?"
"Eh...?" Staring at the subtle, dangerous smirk suddenly playing across Ace's lips, Drake's playful expression froze, a sharp instinctual warning blaring within his danger-radar.
"Move out! Let's step into a clear sector and trade some high-intensity blows!" Ace commanded, violently rising to his full height.
Drake: "..."
Yep, that's the textbook definition of lashing out due to absolute romantic embarrassment.
"Ahem... my presence is structurally required here to track Luffy's vital signs..." offering a sheepish, defensive smile, Drake rapidly re-stabilized his tone to project an air of absolute, professional gravity. "Ace, navigate out to the sector. While the objective of this campaign dictates that we permanently delete the ruler of that stronghold... at the end of the day, we are still discussing the biological father of the asset in question..."
Internally, Drake added a silent addendum: Though given how catastrophic their father-daughter relationship parameters are...
"I hold zero intentions of granting a pass to Kaido!" Ace declared with absolute gravity.
The exact microsecond the words cleared his jaws, Ace felt a massive wave of strategic regret. Damn it! Delivering a line like that was mathematically equivalent to confirming that his system had fully integrated her presence into his core motivations!
He cast a deeply strained, unnatural glance toward Drake, only to discover that the bastard was actively shielding his mouth with a hand, his shoulders shaking as he fought down a fit of triumphant laughter.
"Your analysis contains a moderate tier of structural soundness," Ace spoken, desperately scrambling to re-calibrate his logic to salvage his dignity. "Since your coordinates are securely anchored to track Luffy's perimeter, it would be logistically inefficient for my system to remain idle. I shall initiate a high-speed scouting transit toward Kaido's sovereign headquarters—Onigashima. It will permit me to map the local terrain variables and run a precise diagnostic on the Beast Pirates' current garrison distribution..."
As the words flowed, Ace pushed his velocity parameters, his silhouette rapidly fading into the brush until his physical signature completely vanished from the ridge.
A lone, resonant voice drifted back through the wind tracks: "Drake, I'm leaving Tama's safety metrics under your temporary jurisdiction. The operational parameters of Onigashima are far too hazardous; dragging a non-combatant asset into that hot zone carries an unacceptable risk index."
Flicker!
In the next split second, a tiny, lightweight physical frame was smoothly deposited directly into Drake's arms.
Staring down at the blinking Tama clutched against his chest, Drake couldn't help but launch a massive internal critique: Can you honestly wrap a tactical excuse in a package that pristine?
Hazardous?The single most destructive, apocalyptic biological entity occupying the entire country of Wano—the Yonko Kaido—is actively trading mountain-shattering blows right down on that beach!Which exact sector of this island qualifies as the highest-priority danger zone right now?
If your algorithms simply crave an isolated, distraction-free environment to interface with your romantic interest, just deliver the raw text!
Naturally, Drake kept this entire rhetorical download safely locked within his internal servers, fully aware that voicing the critique within Ace's sensory range was a shortcut to a critical deficit.
The raw destructive potential of the Fire Emperor's thermal output was an absolute anomaly; even with Drake's upgraded baseline stats, securing a guaranteed victory against his older brother wasn't a confirmed mathematical certainty. At best, his spatial loops guaranteed he could establish a permanent, unyielding stalemate.
The properties governing spatial energy were fundamentally broken. Instantaneous displacement and the capacity to warp localized space meant his techniques were an absolute nightmare to defend against, slipping through any standard guard.
Furthermore, Ace occupied the absolute apex seat of seniority within their brotherhood; engaging in light, technical sparring sessions was an acceptable parameter, but launching a genuine, serious duel against their oldest brother was structurally out of the question!
BOOM!!!
Down on the parched shore, a spectacular detonation rent the air. Luffy, utilizing the high-speed velocity loops of Second Gear, drove a devastating fist straight into the center of Kaido's massive scales. What separated this strike from standard parameters was the thick, violent display of dark crimson lightning arcing and crackling outward from the point of kinetic impact.
Advanced Conqueror's Haki Infusion!
This exact microsecond of combat data was processed cleanly by Ace, who had paused briefly near the edge of the ridge before executing his final transit.
"He's successfully mastered Conqueror's Infusion! Luffy... your core talent parameters truly refuse to lag behind my own!"
While the phrasing appeared to border on absolute arrogance, it was a precise statement of mathematical fact.
Throughout his intense, two-year training timeline under the Whitebeard Pirates, the legendary Edward Newgate had explicitly downloaded an evaluation into his files, stating that Ace's raw potential represented the absolute highest metric he had witnessed across his decades of ruling the seas. There was zero competition.
Over those twenty-four months of secluded mastery, his overall capabilities had undergone a catastrophic, daily evolution.
This metric was remarkably evident within his Conqueror's Haki development.
An attribute that conventional fighters deemed completely impossible to upgrade through standard training loops was something his system could scale up as naturally as consuming water.
And yet, evaluating Luffy's timeline, his younger brother's Conqueror's Haki had only experienced initial awakening roughly two rotations of the calendar ago. To successfully master the intricate, high-level parameters of Conqueror's Infusion within a restricted timeframe of that scale was definitive verification of an elite talent tier.
"KAIDO! REDUCE YOUR EXPECTATIONS TO ZERO, BECAUSE I'M THE MAN WHO'S GOING TO BURY YOU!" Luffy's throat-shredding shriek echoed toward the sky, an unparalleled wave of raw, unadulterated force erupting from his fist.
The gargantuan, serpentine frame of the Azure Dragon sustained the full concussive weight of the blow, crashing heavily into the earth. The sheer kinetic momentum pulverized a massive row of industrial structures into fine dust, sending the local civilian assets fleeing across the streets in an absolute, panicked frenzy.
RUMBLE... BOOM!!!
The impact carved a massive, gaping crater deep into the Wano soil, sending a colossal, wide-range wave of dirt, shattered stone, and debris erupting outward to blanket the entire quadrant.