-Broadcast-
The wound in Yasuo's abdomen was a clean puncture that went all the way through. Not a killing blow delivered cleanly — a stopping blow that left the body the work of finishing. For a younger man it might have been survivable. For a body that had already spent everything it had and borrowed against what it didn't, it was enough.
Yamato looked down at him as she held pressure against the wound. She'd seen the heroic spirit written into his face the moment she'd pulled him back from Orochi — the kind of expression that didn't come from comfort but from a long time doing hard things without looking away from them. Whatever this old man had been before tonight, he hadn't been ordinary.
She'd found out on the way here. A mother and her child — people Yasuo had been protecting through the hunt — had flagged her down near the General's Mansion and asked her to help him. People at the bottom of society remembered the ones who'd helped them, always. She'd followed them.
"Don't rush," she said, pressing down. "Whatever you want to say — say it slowly. I'm not going anywhere."
Yasuo had been trying to speak since she'd picked him up, blood filling his throat and blocking the words. He closed his eyes for a moment, worked through it, and opened them again. The blockage had cleared, at least temporarily.
He studied her face. The horns above her brow. The particular quality of what lived behind her eyes. He'd spent decades learning to read people quickly, and what he read here was not what the name Yamato — Kaido's son — would have led him to expect.
His remaining hand moved inside his clothing. Slowly, feeling his way by touch, he pulled out a book and held it toward her. The cover was old. He'd carried it a long time.
"Everything I learned is written here," he said. "It doesn't matter what happens to me. But this can't go into the ground with me." His eyes stayed on her face. "Whether you want it or not is your choice."
He was thinking about Yone, at the end. His brother. The search that had consumed his life and come back to where it started. If this book made it into a single pair of hands that would actually use it, that was more than nothing.
Yamato took it from him. The cover was warm from where he'd kept it against his body. She didn't know what was inside yet. She didn't need to know right now.
The skeleton demigod's low laugh cut through the moment.
"Yasuo, Yasuo," Kurozumi Orochi said, with something approaching amusement. "Confused right to the end. Do you know whose daughter that is?" A pause for effect. "Kaido's. The young master of the Beasts Pirates. You might as well have left it directly with me — at least I could find you a proper heir."
Yasuo turned his head toward Yamato. His eyes had widened — not fear, but the particular shock of a picture assembling itself in a way you hadn't anticipated. He'd seen a kind-hearted child. He hadn't imagined that child growing up inside the Beasts Pirates.
Yamato's jaw set. "Kaido is Kaido. I am me. Don't mix the two."
Yasuo didn't ask for the book back. He'd given it. That was the end of that question.
"We can't choose where we come from," he said quietly. Not preaching — he'd been an orphan himself; he knew what unsolicited advice about family sounded like from the receiving end. "Yamato. I believe you'll find your own way."
His hand found her wrist. One hand, holding on.
And then it didn't anymore.
Yamato sat with him for a moment after he stopped breathing. Then she laid him flat, smoothed his clothes as best she could with one hand, and closed his eyes. She tucked the secret book against her chest — she wasn't going to leave it somewhere it could be lost or taken.
"Rest easy, Mr. Yasuo." Her voice was steady. "Even if I can't learn what's in here myself, I'll find someone who can. Your swordsmanship won't disappear from the world. I'll make sure of it."
There was a smile on his face. She stared at it for a moment, then decided she was probably imagining things.
She stood up. Lifted her kanabō onto her shoulder. Turned toward the Eighth Form.
Orochi was already talking, the grinding voice carrying its particular brand of patience that wasn't patience at all. "On the surface, your father and I are still allies. Hand me what Yasuo left you, and I'll let you walk out of here today. Don't make this complicated."
Yamato said nothing.
Orochi continued. He understood what Yasuo had been — the last living heir to the Wind Control Sword Technique, a lineage with no other remaining student. The secret book was leverage. A tool. If you couldn't cultivate one master swordsman, you could cultivate a hundred weaker ones, and a hundred swordsmen trained in something other than Kozuki Oden's style were a hundred fewer reasons for the next generation to remember which clan had once ruled Wano. Orochi had spent twenty years erasing that memory. He was almost done. He was not going to let a dying old man's final gift undo the work.
"Dream on," Yamato said. "That belongs to me now. And I'm going to smash your head in."
The Inu Inu no Mi, Model: Ōkami answered her intent before she'd finished speaking.
The transformation moved through her quickly — her body reshaping, expanding, the white fur of the Great Wolf pushing through as her human silhouette gave way to something that stood on different terms with the world. Auspicious clouds drifted around her transformed figure, faint and luminous, as though the mythical beast that the people of Wano had believed in for generations had decided to show up in person.
The guardian god of Wano Country, standing between Wano's Shogun and a dead man's legacy.
The Eighth Form looked at her across the ruins. Yamato had never faced anything at this level before. She knew it. She also knew that years of confinement in Onigashima had not been years of standing still — she'd been getting stronger through all of it, quietly, without anyone to tell her whether the pace was right or not.
It was time to find out how far she'd come.
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