-Broadcast-
Aramaki was not afraid of the black sun above him. He was the Mori Mori no Mi — he was the mother of all the nature currently dying under that descending shadow, and that meant he had a position in this fight that Dark WarGreymon did not.
He exhaled. Green life energy poured outward from him in every direction, not as a weapon but as a call — reaching into the soil of Wano Country and the roots already in it and the seeds waiting in the cracked earth, and asking all of it to wake up at once.
Wano Country answered.
The vegetation erupted. Trees rose from bare ground. Root systems that had been dead for decades pushed upward with the urgency of something that had been waiting for exactly this signal. Branches intertwined before they'd finished growing, forming structures that individual plants couldn't have built alone — and from those structures, a shape emerged. Arms. Hundreds of them, each one a thick branch-cluster wrapped in leaves and climbing vines, each one extending outward from a central form that kept building itself taller as more vegetation joined the framework.
The Thousand-Armed Wooden Buddha rose above the Flower Capital at several hundred meters — a cathedral of living wood, every surface breathing, every arm reaching toward the sky with the particular patience of something that had grown rather than been built.
Aramaki stood at the top of it, his Marine coat moving in the wind the sheer size of the structure was generating.
Kurozumi Tama, watching from Dark WarGreymon's shoulder, let out a breath that was not quite a word. "Is this man a person or a force of nature?"
Dark WarGreymon released the black sun.
The Dark Gaia Force descended.
The first things it touched were the outer arms of the Wooden Buddha — leaves scorched yellow in an instant, branches twisting under a heat that had no business existing in open air. The grass below turned to black dust. The nearby water evaporated before it could flow anywhere. The ground itself cracked in expanding lines from the impact zone, thick smoke rising from fissures in the earth.
On the tree men still moving toward the coast, SWORD watched the place where Aramaki had been standing disappear into the dark.
Hibari's hands were shaking. She pressed them together to make them stop. "I hope he's okay. I hope he's okay."
"The tree men are still moving," Helmeppo said. His voice was steady. "If he was gone, the tree men would stop. He's alive."
He believed that. He needed to believe it, and he did.
Above the impact zone, Kurozumi Tama reassessed.
"Kuro," she said, "the Admiral's dead. Plant against sun — the math isn't complicated."
Dark WarGreymon's eyes flashed red.
"Aramaki is not dead."
The dark energy was still dissipating across the impact area when the branches started coming back up through it.
Not rebuilding — consuming. The plants that should have been scorched to nothing were instead absorbing the black energy at their wound sites, converting it into growth, feeding on the Gaia Energy Cannon's output the way ordinary vegetation feeds on sunlight. The scorched ground began to green at the edges. New shoots pushed up through the cracked earth. The outer arms of the Wooden Buddha — reduced to charred stubs — were already regrowing from the stumps, thicker than before, the absorbed energy having become part of the structure's mass.
The Wooden Buddha grew.
And grew.
And the arms kept extending toward the sky.
"I don't appreciate being looked down on from above," Aramaki's voice came from somewhere inside the structure, or perhaps from all of it at once. "Come down here."
Hundreds of wooden hands opened in the air around Dark WarGreymon's position, reaching from every angle simultaneously — not fast individually, but numerous enough that navigating the gaps required constant attention. Dark WarGreymon moved between them with a combat instinct that was clearly experienced, crushing the ones that came too close without breaking its pattern of movement.
"There are too many of them." It glanced at its shoulder. "Tama. Get inside."
Tama knew her own limits. She wrapped her arms around Dark WarGreymon's neck, and her body dissolved into a red light that was absorbed into the Digimon's frame without ceremony. The weight on its shoulder vanished.
Dark WarGreymon rotated.
The rotation accelerated into a spin that built its own weather — a black whirlwind forming around its body, the cutting force of it shearing through the wooden hands in its immediate radius before they could close. The technique carved a corridor of cleared air downward through the grasping forest of arms.
Dark Tornado.
It came down through the corridor it had made, the whirlwind shredding everything that reached for it as it descended. What the branches couldn't match was raw physical force — the Wooden Buddha's arms were extraordinary in number and reach, but each individual arm was still wood against something that hit like a hundred-meter meteor.
"The physical strength is genuinely difficult," Aramaki said, from inside the structure.
Then he merged with it entirely.
The Mori Mori no Mi's full blessing moved through the Wooden Buddha's entire framework at once — not directing it anymore but becoming it, Aramaki's consciousness and life force distributed across every arm and root and leaf simultaneously. The structure responded to him as an extension of his body rather than something he was riding.
The Thousand-Armed Wooden Buddha continued growing.
At one kilometer, it stopped. Or rather — it completed. The arms that had been reaching toward the sky settled into their final arrangement, the scale of the structure redefining what the surrounding air was doing, the sheer mass of living wood at this size generating its own atmospheric effects. It was not the Wooden Buddha anymore.
It was the Thousand-Armed Guanyin.
The True Thousand Hands came down toward Dark WarGreymon from every available angle, and Dark WarGreymon met them, and the two forces began their accounting in earnest.
Neither one was gaining ground. Not yet.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~