-Broadcast — Flower Capital, Wano Country-
The boxer hit him again. And again. The bald old man curled inward, arms over his head, making sounds that satisfied the Celestial Dragon's instinct toward spectacle.
Those watching from a distance were starting to feel something was wrong. Five forms, each with its own terrible ability — and the sixth was a bald, soft-bodied old man who could be beaten like a street criminal? It didn't fit the pattern.
He never plays by the rules he sets himself. That much was established.
The eyes of the sixth form, visible between the arms shielding his face, were not afraid. They were watching. Every punch that landed — its angle, its speed, the footwork before it, the shoulder rotation, the follow-through — was being catalogued.
The cruelty that had lived behind Orochi's eyes across all his forms surfaced now.
He uncurled.
He put everything he had into one fist.
The boxer's head snapped back. His feet left the ground briefly. He came down staggering, blinking at a world that had temporarily lost its correct orientation.
He shook it off. He came in again — this time varied, changed patterns, something different from the first sequence. No one adapts in the middle of a beating. That was the assumption.
The bald old man met the boxer's changed attack with the boxer's changed attack, reproduced precisely. The fists met in the air. The Celestial Dragon felt, for the first time, that his own knuckles had hit something that knew exactly what his knuckles were going to do.
He changed again. Orochi changed with him. He went faster. Orochi went faster. He shifted angles. Orochi found the same angles from the opposite side.
"When did your fist get soft?"
The punch that landed on the boxer's chin was technically perfect — his own technique, returned to him at full power from a direction his guard had left open. He went down. The bald old man stood over him.
There was no reason to stop now. He drove his fist down once, and the question of the boxer's continued participation in the evening was resolved. A moment passed where Orochi looked at what his borrowed technique had produced.
"I used to think the God Clan had different blood than the rest of us," he said. "They don't. They bleed exactly the same."
He turned to look at SWORD.
The sixth form's ability was now clear: perfect imitation. Exposure to a technique once was sufficient for reproduction. Repeated observation improved accuracy until the copy exceeded the original. A powerful ability — assuming the original being imitated had power worth copying. Against the boxer, who had tried to beat an old man to death with his hands, it had been enough.
Against what was standing twenty meters away, the calculation was different.
Sett rolled his wrists. He had been patient all night — a condition that did not come naturally to him — and the patience had not improved his mood. He stepped forward.
"Since the Celestial Dragons are finished with their portion of the evening," he said, "I suppose we continue."
Orochi looked at him. Looked at Todoroki. Looked at Helmeppo.
"You're Marine." His voice was matter-of-fact. "Accomplices. You helped bring the God Clan here." He adjusted his new body's shoulders. "I'll deal with the masterminds first. The accomplices can wait."
He began to peel.
It was not a violent act — more like shedding, the flesh separating from itself and finding new organization in the air. Two identical bald old men stood where one had been, studying each other with the recognition of identical things. Then each peeled again.
Two became four. Four became eight. The doubling continued with consistent rhythm — each generation produced in the time it took to breathe twice. Eight became sixteen. Thirty-two. Sixty-four. The ruins of the Shogun's Mansion filled with copies of the same bald, naked, bronze-skinned man, each one examining its own hands with Kurozumi Orochi's eyes.
By the time the doubling reached its limit, there were thousands.
They dispersed without command — not randomly, but with the shared direction of something that had one mind operating through many bodies. Groups of them moved into the streets of the Flower Capital, each group heading for a cluster of surviving Celestial Dragon contestants. The imitation ability, carried in every copy, would learn the skills of everyone they encountered. Every technique demonstrated against one clone would be available to all of them within the minute.
Three remained in the ruins, facing SWORD.
At a high point above the Shogun's Mansion, Figarland Garling had been watching for some time. He had come here as referee — above the competition, observing, prepared to execute any contestant caught killing another contestant.
He was watching Kurozumi Orochi's clones disperse across the city, each one heading for a Celestial Dragon contestant, and thinking about cost.
Wano Country had been presented to the God Clan as an opportunity. Garling had understood from the beginning what it actually was: a place where the Celestial Dragons could spend their expendable members. The strongest of the God's Knights, the ones the God Clan actually needed, had not been sent here. What had been sent was the reserve — the ones who needed proving, or the ones who had already been assessed as losses the God Clan could absorb.
By this accounting, the operation had been correctly designed.
But Orochi's clones were multiplying in real time across the Flower Capital, each one capable of absorbing and reproducing any ability it encountered. Every Celestial Dragon contestant who fought one was teaching it something. Every technique lost to a clone's imitation was a technique that would be used against the next one.
Poison wrapped in honey. That was what this island had always been.
He began calculating how long it was appropriate to stay before the calculation changed.
Across the Flower Capital, thousands of bald old men moved through the streets where the Night Parade had been, and the hunting competition entered a phase that none of its organizers had foreseen.