-Broadcast-
The survivors walked across the ice in silence. Around them, the Flower Capital had finally gone quiet — the shouting, the chaos, the screaming. All of it had stopped, as though the world itself was catching its breath.
"All of Kurozumi Orochi's clones are dead," Helmeppo said, his Clairvoyance sweeping across the city in a wide arc. "Killing the original was the right call."
He could see it in the distance — the Sixth Form copies scattered through the Flower Capital had stopped the moment their source was gone. The sturdy bodies were already rotting where they stood, decomposing at a speed that had nothing to do with natural decay. Within a minute, each one had collapsed into bare bones, then into nothing. No pursuit. No final act. Just dissolution.
Todoroki pressed his palm to the ice-covered ground. The cold flame he'd left behind receded, and the temperature of the surrounding air began to climb back toward normal. The ice itself would take time to melt — the ground would stay pale and slick for a while yet.
"Between the three of us, there's not enough left of him to find his ashes," Sett said. "There's no surviving that."
Helmeppo lowered his golden eyes. "The God's Knights took serious losses here. That's good news for the Fleet Admiral — she'll have more room to maneuver without them at full strength." The most loyal armed force of the Celestial Dragons had been reduced to a fraction of its original number over the course of this single night. Nobody had predicted that outcome when the hunt began.
They turned to leave.
Footsteps.
All three of them stopped.
The young man who emerged from the dark had snow-white hair that fell softly to his shoulders, as clean as winter. His eyes were a deep, quiet green, framed by light red eyeshadow that made his gaze look deeper than it should. Between his brows sat two small red marks against pale skin.
He looked at them without urgency, without aggression.
"You've come a long way," he said. "There's no need to leave in a hurry."
He reached up and removed his shirt.
His upper body was covered in markings — dense, flowing characters like tadpoles frozen mid-motion, layered across his pale skin from shoulder to hip. Even as they watched, those markings began to shift. They moved, gathered, pulsed with something that wasn't quite light.
Sky Screen Character Note: Kimimaro
The flesh responded to the seal.
Starting at his shoulder, it grew — not from within him but out of him, extruding in a way that made the stomach turn. A shape assembled itself from the growth: the outline of a face, the contours of a head, features forming one by one with horrible precision. The expression it wore was fixed in place, eyes sealed shut, mouth curled at the corners in a smile that communicated nothing good.
Kimimaro's body trembled throughout. His eyes didn't waver.
The growth slowed, then stopped. A misshapen lump of flesh hung from his shoulder, carrying a face that every person on the battlefield could have identified in their sleep.
Kurozumi Orochi.
He had carved a piece of himself — body and soul — into this young man's skin. A safeguard, hidden in flesh and ink, to be peeled away when everything else failed.
Kimimaro said nothing further. He appeared, delivered his payload, and disappeared — there one moment, gone the next, leaving the three SWORD members staring at a lump of flesh lying in the ice.
The question hung in the air: container, or puppet? A fragment of soul, or something more?
The flesh lost its connection the moment Kimimaro left. Deprived of the nutrients that had sustained it, it stopped growing and lay still. The face with Orochi's features never opened its eyes. Never spoke.
Whatever it was, it wasn't moving.
"Is he dead or alive?" Sett asked.
"Use your Clairvoyance," Helmeppo's teammates urged.
He focused. His golden eyes searched through the lump of flesh on the ground and found —
"There's something inside. Small spheres. Spinning."
Before he could say anything else, the spheres moved.
Several of them drifted upward through the flesh and hung in the open air, hovering there for a fraction of a second. They didn't look dangerous. They were round, almost smooth, faintly luminescent — polymer, not organic, dense with compressed energy.
"Get down —"
The moment the spheres met open air, they detonated.
Not with heat or concussion. The spheres flattened and split apart, each one erupting into a cascade of blood-red droplets that launched outward in every direction at a speed that made Soru look slow. They carved through the earth. They left ruler-straight tracks in stone. Armament Haki meant nothing — the drops punched through it like it wasn't there, threading between the Haki and the body underneath, finding flesh regardless.
The Flying Guillotine didn't discriminate. It covered every angle.
Sett and Helmeppo curled around their vitals and took the rest. Dozens of punctures each, clean and deep. If either of them had been anyone else, the wounds would have been fatal. As it was, they were bleeding from too many places to count.
Todoroki stared down at himself.
His nature — the intangibility that should have made him untouchable — had done nothing. The drops had passed straight through his elemental form and found his real body inside it, puncturing him across the chest and abdomen in a pattern that looked like something from a nightmare. He pressed one hand to the wounds and felt the warmth there.
"I was careless," he said quietly, and his voice was different from usual. Smaller. "Father. I'm still not strong enough..."
He went down.
Helmeppo caught him before he hit the ice, dragging his falling body close with both arms. He pressed a hand to the wounds and felt the blood moving too fast, too freely. He knew what that meant. He'd seen enough battlefield injuries to know it without the Clairvoyance.
"Todoroki. Wake up. We still have missions. You're still so young —"
He shook him. Called his name again. Again.
Todoroki Shoto's eyes had already gone still. His pupils no longer tracked the light. The genius who had two Devil Fruits power and made fire and ice answer to the same body had died in Wano Country, on a field of his own ice, with blood on his hands that wasn't anyone else's.
Helmeppo couldn't move him. Couldn't do anything for him.
Sett heard it before he processed what it was — that low, mechanical spinning sound again. He turned.
The flesh corpse was moving again.
More spheres were rising from inside it, dozens this time, and when they reached the air they flared red and detonated all at once into tens of thousands of blood droplets. The coverage was massive. There was no angle safe from it, no corner of the battlefield that the Guillotine didn't reach.
Even Kujaku and the others stationed at the perimeter were caught in the first wave.
Kurozumi Orochi's Seventh Form was going to take everyone present down with it.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Writing takes time, coffee, and a lot of love.If you'd like to support my work, join me at [email protected]/GoldenGaruda
You'll get early access to over 50 chapters, selection on new series, and the satisfaction of knowing your support directly fuels more stories.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~