"What?!" Okiku barked, channeling pure hostility as she glared at the stranger who had violently breached their perimeter.
"You're claiming Kanjuro is the mole?! Based on what proof?! Who the hell are you anyway?!"
Okiku, a core vanguard asset anchoring the Akazaya Nine, was logged in the historical archives under her full biological header, Kikunojo. She was part of the primary displacement unit that had bridged a twenty-year timeline alongside Kin'emon to manifest within this exact microsecond.
The ship's deck fell into an absolute, freezing quiet. Every single retainer present projected a dark, aggressive aura, their glares locking onto Bell with intense displeasure.
"Is the diagnostic readout... truly pointing to his signature?" Denjiro murmured, keeping his head lowered as he forced his voice online.
His own processing units struggled to accept the calculation. The decades they had spent operating as a synchronized unit under the Kozuki banner were permanently logged in his memory files. Those early rotations of the calendar had been entirely pristine; they had navigated the world with zero strategic anxieties, casually tracking behind Lord Oden with absolute freedom. Unknowingly, their variables had fused until they became an indivisible, close-knit brotherhood.
Yet the cancer had been nesting right inside their primary network loop.
The sheer irony of the equation was staggering.
"The telemetry is absolute!" Bell noted flatly, his icy gaze refusing to drift from Kanjuro's relaxed posture. "The exact microsecond Denjiro downloaded his profile into the grid, every single asset on this vessel experienced a genuine spike in joy. Except for him. His internal emotional servers returned a severe wave of anxiety! To put it in simpler terms: his system explicitly desired a scenario where Denjiro's vital signs had been permanently deleted from the world's ledger!"
"What?! Kanjuro's internal algorithms hoped that Denjiro was dead?!" Kin'emon, Ashura Doji, and the remaining samurai instinctively expanded their spatial intervals, stepping several paces away from the accused asset.
Their stares flickered with a severe layer of confusion and distrust as they cross-examined Kanjuro.
"Hey, hey, hey... let's not allow our processors to integrate the corrupted text delivered by this outsider," Kanjuro interjected smoothly, running a rapid damage-control protocol as he recognized the shift in the environment variables. "Our biographies have been hard-coded since childhood through a shared, day-and-night brotherhood. Exactly what brand of broken logic would prompt my system to desire a scenario where Denjiro was erased from the grid?"
The retainers maintained a zero verbal output, the silence growing heavier.
"Denjiro! Your analytical framework—" Kanjuro scrambled to launch a secondary defense script.
"Kanjuro!" Denjiro's throat-shredding shriek cut him off completely, his sharp gaze pinning the traitor down like a physical vice. "Terminate your deception routines. Maintaining the disguise carries zero baseline utility."
"If your system is currently idling to wait for an encrypted response file from Orochi, abort the loop. Because Shogun Orochi's primary life signs have been permanently deleted!"
"WHAT?!"
The sudden deployment of that monumental data point instantly caused the collective morale of the armada to explode into absolute chaos.
Kin'emon and the core retainers experienced a severe psychological system shock, their pupils violently contracting to pinpricks as they struggled to process the text.
The surrounding low-tier samurai infantrymen were left entirely paralyzed by the readout. The tyrannical monarch who had successfully anchored his absolute regime over the geography of Wano for twenty consecutive rotations of the calendar... had been systematically wiped from the board just like that?
"Are you asserting that Shogun Orochi has entered a state of total deletion?!" Kanjuro blurted out, a sharp gasp fracturing his composure.
In that exact microsecond, every single pair of eyes anchoring the vessel locked firmly onto his coordinates.
His linguistic sub-routines had just processed an illegal identifier. He had addressed the tyrant using his formal title—Shogun Orochi.
Any remaining shred of unverified trust the samurai had preserved for his profile was instantly wiped from their systems, replaced by an iron-clad, defensive posture.
"Ahahaha! Exceptional news! The treacherous, submissive coward Orochi has finally sustained a fatal deficit!" Kanjuro frantically attempted to deploy a corrective script to mask his slip of the tongue.
However, the diagnostic window was already closed; not a single asset on the deck had missed the systemic error in his phrasing.
"Does our command blueprint dictate a lethal purge, or do we retain the asset for interrogation?" Bell asked, his hand maintaining a steady grip on his hilt.
"This... the incoming data might be heavily compromised by an interface error... Kanjuro's history..." Okiku stammered, her internal systems struggling to reconcile the betrayal.
"Okiku!" Kin'emon's voice boomed across the deck, sharply terminating her input.
The retainers rapidly shifted their visual sensors to lock onto their leader. Kin'emon's shoulders were vibrating violently under a massive layer of internal strain, his features contorted into a complex mask of unadulterated torment.
Turning a heavy look toward Bell, he spoke with a low, respectful tone, "Sir, your unit functions as a core vanguard asset serving under Luffy-dono's other older brother, correct? Our coalition expresses its deepest gratitude to your faction for successfully unmasking this cancer within our lines."
"Master Kin!" Okiku gasped, her eyes widening in absolute, paralyzed disbelief.
The remaining members of the Akazaya Nine slowly lowered their heads, choosing to let their verbal output drop to a permanent blank.
Right at the absolute matrix of their collective silence, Kanjuro initialized his breakthrough maneuver.
BOOM!
Wrenching his colossal calligraphy brush through the air, he unleashed a massive kinetic sweep aimed straight at Bell's perimeter.
The straight-edged ninjato and the reinforced brush handle collided head-on, sending a brilliant shower of high-velocity friction sparks arcing across the deck framework.
"Gale Force: Swift Severance!"
Moving with blinding execution velocity, Bell cycled his blade through a succession of sub-second draw-strikes, systematically perforating Kanjuro's physical infrastructure multiple times over. Yet, completely defying standard biological properties, the wounds returned an absolute zero on crimson fluid extraction.
"How can his structural metrics tolerate that level of penetration?!" Kin'emon and the retainers experienced a massive tactical shock.
Kanjuro appeared to have sustained absolute zero mechanical damage from the high-density blade work.
"Hehehehe...!"
A deeply wicked, unsettling cackle suddenly resonated from the absolute rearguard of the vessel. The samurai rapidly re-calibrated their visual sensors toward the stern, only to discover an identical biological duplicate of Kanjuro standing calmly at the lip of the hull.
And clutched firmly within his iron grip was the absolute sacred spiritual anchor of Wano's future—Kozuki Momonosuke.
"Lord Momonosuke!" Kin'emon roared, his tactical planners hitting an immediate critical alert.
"Kanjuro! Do the historical ledgers truly record your entire existence as an absolute lie?!" Okiku's eyes filled with a fresh wave of moisture, her jaw tightening as she bit her lip through the pain.
"Ahahaha...! Talk about a magnificent, world-class theatrical performance...!" Kanjuro burst into a fit of maniacal, booming laughter, his features twisting with pure, unadulterated madness.
The collective psychology of the samurai caved into a freezing state of absolute certainty. The reality of the board was undeniable: Kanjuro, a core pillar anchoring the sacred header of the Akazaya Nine, was an active undercover spy operating under the direct administration of Shogun Orochi!
"Was the entire timeline we braved alongside your system a simulated fabrication?! Exactly what parameters governed your existence?! Download the unedited file to me, Kanjuro!" Okiku shrieked, her voice cracking under the emotional weight.
"LORD MOMONOSUKE!!"
"Ahahaha...! The simulation has reached its definitive timeout loop! Shogun Orochi's life signs are permanently offline, which mathematically means the logical purpose sustaining my cover identity has been deleted from the ledger," Kanjuro noted, casting a casual glance down at the trembling child secured in his grasp, his lips curling into a sharp smirk.
Evaluating the macro-board with a single sweep, Kanjuro's analytical sub-routines easily computed the layout of the war. His encrypted communication channels to the Capital had returned a continuous blank for a significant length of time.
Looking at the board now, the tyrant had undeniably sustained a fatal deficit.
Even if his vital signs weren't completely erased... his administrative capacity had clearly suffered total structural collapse.
Furthermore, the expressions mapping across Denjiro's vanguard lines were a dataset that his decades of espionage experience could decode with absolute certainty. When those assets declared that Orochi was dead, the emotional metrics verified it wasn't a fabricated line of text.
Running a comprehensive cross-reference, the conclusion was absolute: Shogun Orochi was dead!
And his own undercover parameters had been permanently unmasked, leaving his system with an absolute zero percent probability of charting a successful escape vector from this armada.
Since his individual survival sequence had hit a permanent terminal loop, executing a high-stakes move to delete Momonosuke from the board would allow him to gracefully place a definitive, flawless exclamation point to conclude a role he had meticulously performed for twenty consecutive rotations of the calendar.
"What exact nonsense is your system outputting?! Kanjuro, terminate your treasonous protocols!" "Lord Momonosuke... deploy an immediate release vector for Lord Momonosuke!"
"Ahahaha...!" Watching the absolute, wide-range panic consume the features of his former brothers, Kanjuro's internal satisfaction metrics scaled to supreme limits.
From the precise microsecond the global networks logged the arrival of the Whitebeard Pirates under Fire Emperor Ace and the Drake Pirates, the overarching variables of this campaign had steadily drifted outside his predictive models.
First, the allegedly invincible military deterrent of Kaido's dragon form was successfully blockaded on the coast.
Then, his secure communication lines to the Capital caved into a permanent blackout. The compounding weight of these anomalous errors had nearly pushed his internal processors to a total breakdown.
But right now, the curtains were falling.
The chaotic variance that had broken away from his control was over, and it was time to orchestrate a pristine, artistic final act for his masterpiece.
"The play is over—the countdown has reached absolute zero. If my system chooses this exact microsecond to truncate the windpipe of this tiny parasite clutched in my hand, or simply drops his physical mass into the crushing depths of this marine grid... ahahaha...! Even if your allied coalition manages to secure a total military victory over the Beast Pirates, exactly what future parameters will your victory preserve?"
Delivering the tactical breakdown, Kanjuro couldn't help but log a minor spike of pure arrogance within his thoughts.
His own intellectual processing was remarkably flawless.
The exact microsecond Momonosuke's primary vital stats returned a blank, every single native samurai asset composing this rebel army would instantly lose the spiritual anchor animating their compliance loops. Their fighting will would collapse.
Whether their alliance conquered Kaido or caved to his thermal output would become an entirely irrelevant calculation. Without a legitimate Kozuki heir to claim the throne, exactly what baseline future could Wano Country hope to reconstruct?
"You dare target the physical safety of Lord Momonosuke?!" Kin'emon's pupils dilated to their absolute limits, the tight rows of his teeth grinding against one another with an intense, mechanical rattle that echoed across the deck.
The acoustic feedback was definitive verification of the apocalyptic fury twisting through his mind.
Momonosuke represented the absolute, sacred future sovereign of their home. If his structural integrity sustained a fatal deficit, then even if their alliance systematically deleted every single member of the Beast Pirates from the world's ledger, the entire campaign would be rendered a hollow, meaningless error.
TAP-TAP-TAP—
Completely bypassing the dialogue loop, Denjiro stepped into a maximum-velocity dash, his boots tearing across the wooden deck as he mapped a direct, lethal intercept vector toward Kanjuro's coordinates.
A dense, roaring current of Advanced Armament Haki infused his blade, a supreme tier of destructive power condensing across the steel as he threw his full torque into a crushing execution strike.
"Kanjuro! The historical files detailing Lord Oden's execution twenty years ago... you are the primary virus responsible for engineering that structural tragedy!"
"Then initiate the clash!" Kanjuro countered with a wicked, malicious grin.
Wrenching his massive calligraphy brush through a succession of high-speed geometric patterns, his ink splattered across the deck wood to initialize an unmapped drawing subroutine.
With a final, violent stroke of his arm, he slammed the reinforced brush head directly against Denjiro's descending steel.
BANG!!!