The moon hung low over Whiskey Peak, casting long, twisted shadows across the dusty road. Mr. 5 stood motionless, his partner Miss Valentine perched lightly on a nearby barrel as if it were a throne.
"A swordsman," Mr. 5 said, the words tasting of gunpowder. "Who cuts through fifty of our agents without breaking a sweat. Who is he?"
Not twenty yards away, Roronoa Zoro wiped his blade with a look of profound disgust.
"A bogey," he muttered to himself. "I had to slice a bogey in half. This night keeps getting worse."
Before he could sheathe his sword, a cry tore through the silence.
"Traitor!"
Princess Vivi lunged at him, her ceremonial dagger flashing in the moonlight. Her eyes were wild with betrayal—this was the swordsman who had slaughtered the town, the monster who now stood between her and escape.
Zoro didn't even shift his stance. He raised Wado Ichimonji and caught her strike with the flat of the blade, the clang ringing sharp in the night air.
"Calm down," he said, his voice bored. "I'm not with them."
Vivi froze, her arms trembling. "What?"
"I'm here to get you out," Zoro said, lowering his sword. "Your friend with the weird hair sent me. Now stop trying to stab me before I change my mind."
---
Meanwhile, in a shadowed alley, Nami pressed Igaram against a wall.
"Baroque Works," she demanded. "Tell me everything. Now."
Igaram swallowed hard, his elaborate disguise suddenly feeling like a coffin. "It's a secret organization. A ghost ship. None of the members know their boss's true identity—only that he gives orders. Intelligence gathering. Assassinations. Whatever moves his grand design forward."
Nami's eyes narrowed. "And why would anyone follow a ghost?"
"Because he promises a kingdom," Igaram whispered. "An ideal nation. Succeed for him, and you earn a high-ranking position in the new world he'll build."
"Numbers," Nami said, remembering the agents they'd fought. "They have numbers."
Igaram nodded, a bead of sweat tracing his temple. "The boss is Mr. 0. The lower the number, the higher the rank. The stronger the agent." He leaned closer, his voice dropping to a terrified hush. "But Nami-san… anyone with a number of five or below? Their strength isn't human. It's abnormal."
---
Down by the river cutting through Whiskey Peak, Monkey D. Luffy zipped up his pants, having just watered the reeds. He turned, stretching his arms toward the starry sky—and froze.
His eyes widened.
His breath caught.
For a long moment, he just stood there, staring at something off the path, something the reader couldn't see. Then his hands curled into fists.
"No way," he breathed.
And he started to run.
---
Back on the road, the tension had drawn tight as a bowstring.
"So you're the one," Miss Valentine sang, rising gracefully into the air, floating as if gravity were a suggestion. "The swordsman who ruined our welcoming party. How rude."
Mr. 5 raised a hand, his finger aiming like a pistol at Zoro's head. "Why protect the princess? What's your stake in this?"
Zoro slid his third sword between his teeth, the steel glinting coldly. "Let's just say I don't like being called a traitor," he said, the words muffled but clear. "And I really don't like bounty hunters."
Miss Valentine giggled, hovering higher. "My Devil Fruit lets me change my weight at will, darling. From one kilogram… to ten thousand. Let's see your swords block that."
They poised to strike—a floating assassin and a human bomb—when a roar split the night.
"ZORO!"
Luffy came tearing down the road, his sandals kicking up dust, his face a mask of raw fury.
Zoro blinked. "Luffy? What's—"
"I'LL NEVER FORGIVE YOU!" Luffy screamed, skidding to a halt between the Baroque Works agents and his own swordsman. He pointed at Zoro, his finger trembling with rage. "FIGHT ME, ZORO! RIGHT NOW!"
The world seemed to stop spinning.
Vivi stared, confused. Mr. 5 and Miss Valentine exchanged glances, momentarily forgotten.
Zoro slowly removed the sword from his mouth. "What," he said, his voice dangerously calm, "are you talking about, you idiot?"
"You know what you did!" Luffy shouted. "An ungrateful person like you deserves to get beaten!"
"Ungrateful?" Zoro's eye twitched. "How am I ungrateful?"
Luffy's chest heaved. He took one step forward, his shadow stretching long in the moonlight.
"You ate it," Luffy said, his voice dropping to a low, wounded growl. "You ate all of it."
Zoro stared. "Ate… what?"
"THE MEAT!" Luffy exploded. "THE SPECIAL SMOKED MEAT FROM THE FEAST! THE LAST PIECE WAS MINE! YOU KNEW IT WAS MINE!"
A stunned silence blanketed the road.
Miss Valentine nearly fell out of the air.
And then Luffy lowered into a fighting stance, his knuckles cracking.
"I'm going to punch you," Luffy said, deadly serious, "until you spit it back up."
Before Zoro could even process this, Mr. 5 began to laugh—a dry, crackling sound like burning paper.
"A crew tearing itself apart," he said, raising both hands, fingers aimed like twin pistols. "How poetic. Let me help it along."
He pointed one finger at Luffy.
The other at Zoro.
"Bomb Blast," he whispered.
Two explosions erupted from his fingertips, tearing through the night—one aimed at Luffy's head, the other at Zoro's heart—while above them, Miss Valentine's laughter twirled through the air as she became impossibly, devastatingly heavy, a human meteor aimed straight down at Vivi.
And in that fractured second, with his captain enraged at him, with two killers attacking from front and above, Zoro made a choice—
He moved.
But not toward Luffy.
Not toward the bombs.
He moved toward Vivi, shoving her out of the crushing shadow above, turning his back to both his captain and the blast—
And the world turned to fire and sound.
When the dust cleared, Zoro was on one knee, his swords crossed above him, holding back ten thousand kilograms of smiling assassin with sheer grit. His back was scorched and smoking from the explosion he hadn't avoided.
He coughed, blood speckling the dirt.
Luffy stood frozen, his anger forgotten, replaced by dawning horror at what he'd just caused.
And Mr. 5 smiled, reloading his fingers.
"How touching," he said. "The traitor protects the princess. The captain betrays his crew. Shall we see how this ends?"
But it was then that Nami's voice cut through from a nearby rooftop, frantic and raw:
"LUFFY! ZORO! IT'S A TRAP—THE WHOLE TOWN IS—"
Her warning ended in a choked gasp as a fourth figure emerged from the shadows behind her, tall and slender, wearing the number 3 on his coat.
And he placed a blade gently against Nami's throat.
"Welcome," he said softly, "to the real Whiskey Peak."
End of Chapter
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