Chained

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The news of Luffy's defeat spreads while Luffy himself sinks deeper beneath the sea. His unconscious body drifts upside down in the water, bubbles rising around him, and the caption says, "He's sinking to the bottom of the sea..." On the live floor, Chopper in Monster Point screams, "Luffy!!" and the shock ripples through the battlefield. Queen towers over the hall in brachiosaur form while samurai and Beast Pirates react from every side. Someone cries, "Aaarrrohh!!" and another refuses to accept it: "There's no way you actually lost, right?!" Fighters shout, "Straw Hat was beaten?!" and "What are we supposed to do now?!" The page turns Kaido's announcement into visible despair. The alliance had been fighting under the belief that Luffy would return victorious from the roof, and now the image of his sinking body makes the broadcast feel brutally real.

The shock reaches allies across the live floor. A samurai calls, "Straw Hat-san!!" and another asks, "Is Momonosuke-sama safe?!" while a fighter wonders, "Does that mean we've already lost?!" The enemy side gains momentum at once. Queen, bruised but delighted, says, "I feel as good as new after eating the dango Speed gave me!!" and laughs "Cough!!" as his side boasts, "It's insane that all the best rookies were crushed after joining forces." Another Beast Pirate says the rebels are not weak, but Kaido-sama is simply overwhelming. On the lower battlefield, Marco and others continue fighting despite the demoralizing announcement. A calm voice says, "That announcement was meant to hurt our morale. Indeed, we have no way of verifying it!!" while another calls the wavering fighters "dumb bastards" who have all lost the will to fight anyway. The page shows the psychological strike working unevenly: enemies surge, allies hesitate, but some veterans refuse to accept a broadcast as proof.

Queen closes in on the exhausted Chopper and sneers, "How disappointing! You were all fired up earlier, so I thought I'd play along!!" Chopper remains in Monster Point but is plainly wearing down, while samurai cry, "Chopperemon-san!!" Perospero uses the moment to attack from above. He laughs, "Kukuku--when the 'general' falls, all the pawns lose their composure!! Perorin," then readies another volley. Fighters shout, "He's launched another volley of arrows!!" and "This is bad!" Perospero announces the attack in stages: "Candy... Shower!!" A storm of sharpened candy arrows rains down across the hall. The people below panic, screaming, "We're gonna die!!" and "It's no use!! There's nowhere to take cover!! Please have mercy!!" The page presses Chopper's helplessness: he cannot protect the whole live floor, Queen is still standing, and Perospero's arrows are about to slaughter the exposed fighters unless someone interrupts.

Queen prepares to crush Chopper, laughing, "Muhaha! You're gonna die too... you cowardly monster!!" He tells the exhausted reindeer, "At this point, you just look like tender venison!!" Chopper can only stare in alarm, marked by "!!" Before Queen can finish him, a blazing kick crashes into the dinosaur's head. Sanji appears with the familiar flame of Diable Jambe, and the impact lands with "Crash!!" Queen's neck bends sharply under the force while Perospero and the others react. Sanji's attack continues into "Rotisserie!!" He spins Queen's long dinosaur body, turning the huge brachiosaur into a sweeping weapon. The rotation catches the incoming candy arrows and Queen's own massive body becomes the shield and flail that breaks the attack. The page transforms the live floor's certain doom into sudden rescue: Sanji arrives at the exact moment Chopper is about to be killed and uses Queen himself to disrupt Perospero's slaughter.

Sanji's spinning kick drives Queen across the live floor in a huge circular arc. Queen screams "G'yaahaaah!!" while the attack's momentum scatters debris, smashes through the hall, and deflects the descending candy arrows. People cry, "He's deflecting the arrows!!" and Perospero shouts, "Hey! Wait a minute!!" as his own attack is ruined by Queen's spinning body. The crowd, moments from death, yells, "We're saved!!" Sanji lands amid the wreckage with Zoro still wrapped in bandages like a cross-shaped bundle. Chopper, shocked and relieved, calls, "Sa... Sanji!!" and also worries, "Luffy is...!!" Sanji answers without panic, praising him: "You did good, Chopper. You really pulled through." The page restores morale through action first, then words. Sanji does not deny the crisis, but his calm arrival and immediate rescue show the alliance that the fight is still alive.

Sanji sets the tone for the battlefield. Seeing Chopper's tears, he says, "Don't cry, you idiot. We've seen this happen countless times before, remember? All those miracles..." Chopper's eye widens at the reminder. Sanji then tosses the bandaged Zoro toward Chopper and says, "I'll leave this lug to you!! If he recovers, he'll be worth 10 men." Chopper blurts, "Zoro?!" and someone asks, "Huh? Wait, is that..." Zoro, still wrapped up, is treated as a terrifying weapon rather than a patient, with the joke "More like 2000!!" hanging over the scene. Queen recognizes Sanji and snarls, "So it's you... Judge's brat!!" Sanji answers with a hard look, "Leave the dino to me!!" Elsewhere, allies regain heart. A fighter asks how Sanji can keep going when his captain just died, and Marco smiles, "That's why I like them-yoi!" The page makes Sanji's faith contagious: Luffy's apparent death is not the end to people who have seen the Straw Hats survive impossible moments before.

Back in the castle interior, first floor attic, the aftermath of Kaido's attack lies in rubble and dust. Kiku and Kanjuro's bodies are down, and Kin'emon is barely moving beneath the damage, shown only by a faint "Twitch twitch." Kaido stands over the wreckage with his kanabo, his silhouette and tail filling the room as smoke coils around him. Momonosuke and Shinobu have fled, but the devastation behind them is fresh: broken boards, shattered beams, fallen weapons, and bodies spread across the floor. Kaido's face tightens with grim irritation in the lower panels as he tracks the escape. There is almost no dialogue on this page, only the sound of ruin and the small sign that Kin'emon is not instantly dead. The stillness after the blow is more frightening than another speech, because Kaido has already decided that Momonosuke must not leave this room alive.

Kin'emon remembers a tender moment with the young Momonosuke. Momo once asked him, "I'm to call you father?" and Kin'emon answered, "Yes. We must hide your relation to Oden-sama!!" In the present, Momonosuke cries out, "Father!! Stop saying 'sama'!!" while Shinobu shouts, "Hey, Momonosuke...-sama!!" Kin'emon, remembering the role they played together, laughs in the memory, "Wahaha! Maybe we should switch roles?!" and tells the boy, "Pull yourself together, K... father!!" Now, however, Kaido stands over the wounded Kin'emon and asks, "What's the point in buying time? What's the point in trying to run?" Kin'emon, bleeding and exhausted, calls, "Momonosuke!!" while Momo screams back, "Father!!" The page shows why Kin'emon's sacrifice matters. The disguise of father and son began as a strategy, but over the long journey it became emotionally real enough for both of them to cling to it at the end.

Kin'emon begs Shinobu to keep moving: "Please escape, Momonosuke-sama!!" and "Keep running, Shinobu!!" Momonosuke wails "Waaah!!" as Shinobu carries him away through the castle. Kaido looks down at Kin'emon and says, "It's not easy... but sometimes you have to accept defeat." Then he drives his weapon down with a brutal "Stab!!" Kin'emon's silhouetted body jerks in the impact while Kaido completes the lesson: "Embrace your honorable death like a true samurai!!" At the edge of the room, a Mary frog sits with its eye-marked mask and says, "Ribbit." The page is cold and ceremonial. Kaido is not simply trying to kill Kin'emon; he is trying to define the death as submission, forcing the samurai's last stand into his own language of defeat. The presence of the Mary nearby also gives Momonosuke a means to turn the moment into a message instead.

Momonosuke, crying and hiccuping, seizes the Mary frog as Shinobu carries him through the rubble. Shinobu asks, "What?! A frog?! Momonosuke-sama, why are you..." but Momo says, "I have to tell them!!" A voice in his mind encourages him: "Momo, let everybody know!!" Down on the live floor, the broadcast suddenly changes. A Mary announces, "...Kozuki Momonosuke!!" Fighters react with "!!?" and "Momonosuke-sama!!" Chopper asks, "You're unharmed?!" while samurai stare up through the chaos. One cries, "Our lord crying...?" Momo, still sobbing and panting, forces out the message: "This is... Luffy entrusted me with a message!!" The unfinished enemy line "Luffy-taro has already been--" is overtaken by Momo's voice. The page turns Momo's tears from weakness into proof that he is alive and connected to Luffy, giving the alliance a new voice after Kaido's broadcast tried to silence them.

Momonosuke screams the truth through the Mary network: "Luffy is still alive!! He told me he would definitely make it back!!" He sobs and pants while the message races through the battlefield. Luffy is shown upside down underwater, bubbles rising from his mouth as his thought reaches Momo: "Momo... let everybody know!! I'm still gonna..." The command resolves into a blazing declaration in Momo's broadcast: "Beat Kaido!!" Momo continues, "So please, keep fighting!! Even if it hurts, even if you have nothing left!! I implore you to keep fighting... until your very last breath!" Nami, Chopper, Law's side, Kid's side, and countless fighters hear the message. The page reverses Kaido's psychological attack with Luffy's own stubborn will. Luffy's body is sinking, but his will is not finished, and Momonosuke becomes the mouth that carries that impossible certainty to everyone still standing.

The alliance answers Momonosuke's broadcast. Across the live floor, samurai and allies roar back that because Luffy "is going to win!!" they must not give up. Weapons rise, fighters shout "Woah!!" and the cry "Don't give up!!" spreads through the hall. Faces that had been frozen in despair now shout again, while enemies stare at the sudden reversal. In the attic, Kaido hears Momonosuke and asks, "Are you satisfied?" as Momo stands before him as the son of Oden. Shinobu uses her technique, crying "Juku Juku no Jutsu!!" and decays the floor beneath them. The wood crumbles and the ground collapses with a roar, making Shinobu and Momo drop out of Kaido's reach. Someone shouts, "Hey, somebody is down here!!" as the falling figures appear below. The page pairs the symbolic and physical escape: Momo has already sent the message, and Shinobu's aging power rips open a path before Kaido can reclaim him.

Below Onigashima, people spot something in the water and shout, "Is it a person?!" and "Wait... isn't that Straw Hat?!" The Heart Pirates' submarine crew notices Luffy's sinking body and one says, "It's like we could hear his voice even though we're under water!!" Another orders, "Let's worry about that later... we've got to save him!!" and "Hurry!! Is he still alive?!" Inside the castle, Nami and Usopp react to the news with relief. Usopp yells, "Big bro... he's alive!!" and Nami says, "Let's run straight to the stage, Nami!" while another voice says, "It's good to hear Straw Hat's okay." Nami is startled when her Clima-Tact speaks: "My Clima-Tact... just spoke!!" A small voice giggles, "Hehehe," revealing that the weapon and Zeus-like presence have been collaborating for a while. Nearby, Big Mom laughs, "Mamamama!! What a pathetic bluff! This was over the moment he fell into the sea!!" but Law's side knows better: when it comes to Luffy, they have learned to never say never.

Big Mom turns on the fighters who have joined against her and shouts, "Trafalgar!! Did you come to get in my way?!" Law answers calmly, "Settle down, Eustass-ya. Don't you think we should play nice for now?" Kid is bristling, but the two captains now face the Emperor side by side after Momonosuke's message restores the battlefield's will. On the roof path, Kaido notices Yamato approaching and says, "Don't you mean 'father,' Yamato!!" Yamato shouts back, "Kaido!!" and then declares the heart of the chapter's title: "That bond has chained me for too long... I'm here to free myself!!" The final caption says "Taking the initiative!!" and marks "Ch. 1015 / End" with "No break next week." The chapter closes by linking two chains: the alliance's faith in Luffy pulls them back into the fight, while Yamato rejects the family bond Kaido uses to control him.

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