WARNING: The following contains spoilers for One Piece Chapter #1028," by Eiichiro Oda, Stephen Paul and Vanessa Satone, available in English via Manga Plus and Viz Media.
Last week in One Piece, it was revealed that Onigashima is only five minutes away from crashing into the heart of Wano's Flower Capital. Things are looking dicey for Luffy and co, but what's worse is that a familiar enemy has revealed himself to be closing in on the isolated country of Wano.
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Chapter #1028 starts by returning to the guest parlor, where the members of CP-0 are talking through a transponder snail to their superiors. Readers may remember that these agents entered Onigashima for a meeting with Orochi. However, after the shogun was thought to be assassinated and Kaido took over, the samurai coup was sprung, and they decided to bunker down in the guest parlor and keep a tally of both sides' numbers.
The nameless CP-0 agent tells the person over the transponder snail about the pink dragon that wreaked havoc all across Onigashima. They surmise that the dragon must have come about due to the stolen smile fruit from Vegapunk and that he is an enemy of Kaido.
The superior then informs the agents that a fleet of Navy ships are heading toward Wano to seize control, in the freak chance that Kaido does actually lose. When asked what the chances of that happening are, the nameless agent says that it's a close battle to be sure, but he can't envision Kaido losing.
A look at the shogi board that has been used to keep track of the dwindling numbers reveals that Kaido's army is down to 12,000 pirates, while the samurai army is at 8,000. This is remarkable considering that the Beast Pirates started at 30,000 pirates and the rebels were only a little over a sixth of that. In fact, because of O-Tama using her Dango to sway the hearts of the Gifters, the rebel army's numbers have jumped drastically from their initial 5,400 samurai.
The story then cuts to where Rob Lucci is revealed to be the one on the other end of the call. Rob Lucci was, of course, the main antagonist of the Enies Lobby Arc. In the background, readers can also see an adorable snoozing Kaku, another familiar face from the same arc, as well as Stussy, a double agent revealed to also be working for CP-0 during the Whole Cake Island Arc.
Lucci then gives the agent another order, saying Nico Robin must be captured alive and brought back to Navy Headquarters at all costs. Given her ability to read the Poneglyphs and how hard he and the rest of CP-9 worked to get her, this comes as no surprise.
This is going to be a worrisome development, no matter how the battle with Kaido turns out. Momonosuke, Yamato and the rest of Wano having to deal with the ruthless Navy presence after just usurping their last tyrant will be disheartening. Rob Lucci actually put it best in a line he said in this chapter: "In the end, what we do isn't any different from the pirates."
