The fortress belonged to the Iwakura clan – minor predators allied loosely with Uchiha rivals. Palisades thick as ancient trees formed concentric rings atop craggy basalt cliffs. Torches cast nervous light on armored silhouettes patrolling high walkways. Kaido didn't bother concealing his approach. His immense shadow fell upon them first like night itself descending, silent yet utterly chilling. Panic erupted. Horns blared frantic warnings, arrows arced upwards pitifully, snapping against scales harder than castle stone. He landed full-weight atop the central watchtower. Stone screamed, splintered, and imploded inward beneath him, swallowing shrieking guards whole. Dust choked the courtyard below. Kaido inhaled the chaos – screams mingling with crushed rock, the ozone scent of fear thickening – and focused. His Conqueror's Haki slammed downwards, invisible and crushing. Eighty armed men, frozen mid-charge, dropped like puppets with severed strings, eyes vacant voids. Only three remained conscious: backs pressed against trembling walls, faces drained of blood. Two samurai trembling uncontrollably… and one scarred giant clutching a warhammer larger than himself, leaning heavily on it despite the pressure forcing him to his knees. His eyes weren't vacant; they burned with primal defiance. Kaido's vertical pupils dilated fractionally. *Potential.*
Smoke curled around Kaido's massive claws as he lowered his colossal head, casting the trembling giant in shadow deeper than midnight. The fortress groaned under his weight; crushed stone shifted beneath scales harder than mythril. The scarred warrior's knuckles whitened on his warhammer's haft, defiance spiking like acid beneath Kaido's suffocating presence. Infrared heat shimmered off the man's straining muscles mixed with the ozone-stench of terror from his companions. *Potential,* Kaido acknowledged internally. Not strength – not yet. But the raw audacity to resist where others broke. A waste to crush such grit. With a mental shift like tectonic plates grinding, he focused inward. The dragon-form dissolved not as retreat, but as strategy – scales melting into weathered skin, horns receding like tide-pools, immense bulk condensing into the familiar, towering human silhouette wreathed in settling dust. Ash coated his simple kimono as he landed silently before the three survivors, boots sinking into fractured cobblestones.
He strode forward, each step deliberate. The unconscious forms of eighty warriors littered the courtyard like fallen leaves. The two samurai whimpered; one wet himself, the sharp tang of urine cutting through dust and iron-blood. The giant forced himself upright using his hammer, boots scraping stone, every tendon in his thick neck corded with strain. Kaido stopped mere feet away, his shadow swallowing them whole. He surveyed the trembling faces – the samurai's vacant horror, the giant's sweat-beaded, scarred visage etched with furious confusion. "What," Kaido rumbled, the word vibrating the loose pebbles at their feet, deep and resonant as a quarry detonation, "are your names?"
Silence thickened, broken only by ragged breathing. The giant swallowed audibly, throat clicking. His voice, when it came, was gravel scraped raw, yet defiantly loud: "Goro. Of the Stone Crags." He jerked his hammer towards the weeping samurai. "That sniveling whelp's Kenji. The other…" He spat blood-flecked phlegm near Kenji's knee. "...Hideshi. Weaklings. Both." Kenji flinched violently; Hideshi stared blankly at Kaido's mud-stained sandals. Kaido's crimson gaze remained fixed on Goro, reading the tremor in his calloused hands – not fear, but adrenaline-charged fury barely leashed. A name earned, not given lightly. *Stone Crags.* Harsh. Unyielding. Worthy of note amidst this sea of insignificance.
Kaido moved with impossible speed, a blur that stirred dust devils. Before Goro could lift his warhammer, thick fingers like iron bands clamped around his thick neck. Kaido lifted him effortlessly, Goro's boots dangling inches above shattered cobblestone. The giant choked, hammer slipping from useless fingers with a metallic clang. Veins bulged on his scarred temples, breath whistling through constricted windpipe. Kaido hauled him closer, ignoring Goro's scrambling kicks against his forearm scales. He thrust the choking brute towards the trembling figures of Kenji and Hideshi. "You call *these* weaklings?" Kaido growled, the vibration hammering Goro's ribs."Yet *they* stand. Breathing." His slitted eyes bored into Goro's terror-widened gaze. "Much like *you*, boy." The insult stung deeper than the grip. Goro's panicked thrashing slowed, replaced by dawning horror as Kaido's words sank in – the mortifying truth of his own precarious survival laid bare amidst the carnage. Kenji whimpered; Hideshi scrambled backward on his hands.
Kaido tightened his grip fractionally, silencing Goro's choked gasp. He turned his head, glaring at the petrified samurai. "Weaklings break," Kaido stated, voice echoing flatly off ruined walls. He jerked Goro violently towards Kenji's tear-streaked face. "Yet *he* stands. *You* stand." He released his grip abruptly. Goro crashed to his knees, clutching his bruised throat, coughing violently onto cold stone. Kaido loomed over all three, his shadow an executioner's shroud. "Why?" His question was a demand, not curiosity. It vibrated with primal weight, forcing them to confront their own bewildering persistence amidst impossible annihilation. Goro spat crimson phlegm, gasping defiance warring with terror. Kenji stared, slack-jawed, at his own trembling hands like they belonged to someone else. Hideshi froze mid-crawl, realization dawning: *By what miracle am I alive?* The courtyard reeked of dust, terror, and the metallic tang of futures irrevocably altered.
Kaido turned, his immense back deliberately presenting itself – an open challenge, a dismissal of threat. He strode towards the collapsed watchtower rubble, kicking aside splintered beams with casual force. "Scavengers," he rumbled, the word thick with contempt. "Clean your fortress." He halted, glanced back over his shoulder, crimson gaze slicing through the settling dust. "Or join the corpses." He didn't linger. He moved deeper into the fractured stronghold, boots crunching on debris, searching not for treasure, but for *cloth*.
His eyes scanned the inner courtyard walls, noting faded clan banners hanging limp and stained. The Iwakura symbol – jagged peaks enclosing a stylized flame – fluttered weakly above the main hall's entrance. Too small. Too weak. The dragon within snarled. Kaido leaped effortlessly, landing on the eaves with unnatural silence. Thick fingers tore the banner from its fixings like pulling weeds. He stared at the embroidered peaks, the pathetic flame. **Weakness defined.** With a fluid, dismissive motion, Kaido ripped the symbol in half vertically. The silk parted silently. Then he shredded it horizontally. The useless fragments fluttered down like grey snow. He crumpled the insignia into a ball, casting it onto the blood-smeared courtyard stones below. Prey wore symbols. Predators *were* symbols.
Ignoring the stunned survivors – Goro coughing, Kenji paralyzed, Hideshi trembling – Kaido stalked into the main hall. The air hung thick with smoke and the bitter scent of spilled sake. He scanned the dim interior: shattered pottery, overturned tables, crushed armor. His gaze narrowed on a heavy tapestry depicting hunting scenes hanging behind the shattered dais. Raw wool dyed deep indigo. Perfect. He ripped it from the wall in one savage pull, the aged fabric tearing free with a groan of strained fibers. Dust bloomed, tasting of neglect and mothballs. Kaido hauled the heavy cloth back outside into the ruined courtyard, throwing it onto the cobbles with a heavy thump that echoed in the unnatural stillness.
He knelt, a mountain folding itself. Rough hands smoothed the deep blue wool. No blade. No ink. Only purpose. One enormous calloused thumb pressed hard against the fabric, dragging downwards with deliberate force. It tore cleanly, etching a ragged vertical line. Shifting, Kaido dragged his thumb horizontally rightwards across the midpoint, the wool yielding beneath dragon-forged strength. Another tear, parallel. A final brutal swipe angled downwards. Four savage rents transforming indigo wool into jagged white shapes: A skull rendered through rending force alone. Beneath it, the crossed bones weren't drawn – they were *carved* by the same thick thumb tearing through cloth diagonally. When he stood, the Beast Pirate Jolly Roger stared defiantly up from the courtyard stones – a declaration etched not in thread, but in primal fury. Goro stared, comprehension dawning like terrifying sunrise: This man didn't conquer clans. He overwrote them.
Kaido scooped the crude banner up, ignoring the dust clinging to the freshly torn edges. His crimson gaze scanned the ruined courtyard walls, settling on the highest surviving timber beam above the shattered main gate – a skeletal finger pointing east. He leaped, landing silently inches from the trembling Kenji. The samurai flinched violently, scrambling backward, his bladder releasing anew, the sour stench sharp against smoke and dust. Kaido ignored it. Massive fingers shoved the bundled banner against Kenji's sweat-slicked chest. "Hang it," Kaido commanded, his voice flat stone. "High." Kenji stared blankly at the wool skull, limbs trembling uselessly. A choked sob escaped him.
Kaido's patience vanished, incinerating like dry tinder. He snatched the nearest dropped sword from the cobbles – a katana splattered with its owner's dried blood. Its worn hilt felt flimsy, insulting, in his grasp. He tossed it contemptuously onto the quivering pile Kenji had become. The blade clattered against stone near the man's knees. "Wake," Kaido snarled, the word a physical blow. Kenji jolted, eyes wide with animal terror. Kaido jerked his chin towards the gate beam, then back to the blade. "*How well can you swing that toy, boy?* Climb. Or decorate the gates like your fallen masters." The implication hung thick: Hang the banner... or hang yourself. Kenji stared at the sword, then the skull banner crumpled against him, then Kaido's impassive, scaled face. Survival instincts finally pierced paralysis. He scrambled for the blade, fingers slipping clumsily on the blood-slicked hilt. The skull banner lay beside him, accusingly white.
Kaido watched Kenji's graceless scramble towards the gate beam, clutching sword and banner like talismans against oblivion. He turned away. Observing weakness was tedious. His focus shifted, predatory and absolute, onto the scarred giant still kneeling near Hideshi. Goro met his gaze, defiance a flickering ember amidst ash. "You," Kaido rumbled, stepping closer, his shadow swallowing Goro whole. Dust caked the grooves of his kimono sleeves. He gestured negligibly towards the massive warhammer lying discarded nearby, its blackened steel head dented but functional. "That hammer. Crude. Ugly." A pause, weighted, as crimson eyes bored into Goro's weathered face. "But effective. Tell me, Goro," the name rolled like stone, "*are you a blacksmith by chance*?" The question hung heavy, unexpected. Not curiosity. Assessment.
Goro blinked sweat and dust from his eyes. His throat ached where Kaido's fingers had crushed, voice rasping like gravel under a cart wheel. "Stone Crags..." he coughed, forcing the words out, "...no soft earth for farms. Only rock... and ore veins deeper than regret." He spat crimson phlegm onto fractured cobblestones, gaze drifting to his hammer. Calloused fingers traced a deep gouge in the handle – memory etched in wood. "Smelted my first blade at eight summers. Hammered clan armor before my beard grew thick." He lifted his chin, defiance flaring anew. "Aye. I smith metal. What of it?" Blood pounded in his ears, drowning out Kenji's frantic hammering above. Kaido's silence pressed heavier than his shadow.
Kaido's crimson gaze shifted, igniting volcanic hunger deep within molten pupils. "Kanabō," he rumbled, the word vibrating fractured stones beneath Goro's knees. "Taller than seven men stacked. Heavier than grief." He paused, deliberate, letting the impossible scale sink into Goro's shuddering mind. "Forge it." The command brooked no argument, no plea. It was the edict of a tectonic plate shifting. "Not iron." Kaido's scaled hand gestured dismissively at Goro's warhammer. "*Your* ore. Stone Crags stone." His voice lowered, becoming dangerous silk wrapped around jagged steel. "Melted in *your* deepest fire. Hammered by *your* strongest arms." He leaned infinitesimally closer, the ozone-stench of dragon-breath washing over Goro. "Fail?" The unspoken consequence hung colder than winter twilight. Goro's knuckles whitened against crushed stone. Eight summers forging blades meant nothing against this. His forge fire? Pitiful sparks. His strongest swing? A child's tantrum against the storm. Stone Crags ore wept iron tears, not the blood of mountains Kaido demanded. He opened his mouth—a denial, a plea for mercy—but Kaido's gaze silenced him. It wasn't fury burning there. It was terrifying, absolute *belief*. Belief Goro didn't possess himself.
Goro choked on the ash-thick air. The sheer impossibility paralyzed him—taller than seven men? Stone Crags ore shattered under heavy hammers, didn't yield to monstrous ambition. Yet Kaido's presence pressed on his spine, bending him not toward fear, but toward a terrifying precipice of potential. Memories surged: his father sweating rivers before the clan forge, coaxing stubborn rock into serviceable spearheads. The clan's crude bellows wheezing like dying lungs. Stone Crags didn't have deep fires; they had shallow, coughing hearths. His defiance curdled into bitter despair. "Can't," he rasped, tasting dust and defeat. "The fires… weak. The stone… brittle." He gestured weakly toward the distant crags, visible beyond ruined palisades like broken teeth against bruised sky. "It *shatters*." Kaido didn't move, didn't speak.
Kaido's crimson eyes narrowed. A low growl resonated deep within his chest, vibrating the rubble-strewn courtyard stones. Then he shifted. Scales erupted across his skin in a deafening cascade, bones cracking and elongating with wet, violent snaps. Azure plates gleamed dully beneath smoke-stained clouds.. The immense silhouette of the Azure Dragon blotted out the failing light. Goro scrambled backward, knees scraping stone, hammer forgotten. Kenji froze mid-climb on the gate beam, banner dangling limp. Hideshi buried his face in debris. Heat shimmered off Kaido's colossal form, a furnace wind rippling torn banners. Massive muscles coiled. His horned head lifted, jaws yawning wide—a cavernous maw lined with obsidian teeth. Goro glimpsed the churning vortex deep within: molten crimson mixed with swirling blue-black energy, gathering violent momentum with a low, gathering roar that shook loose stones.
The Blast Breath detonated. Not flame, but pure, coruscating annihilation. A searing torrent of crimson-blue plasma ripped the horizon apart. It struck a distant forest miles beyond the crags—an emerald smudge Goro had known since childhood. The world flashed blinding white. Then came the sound: an apocalyptic thunderclap rolling over shattered hills a heartbeat later. Goro saw it unfold in terrifying slow-motion beneath Kaido's shadow: trees vaporized in an instant, leaving only charred stumps and boiling earth. A mountain of displaced earth and superheated air mushroomed upward, swallowing valleys whole. The shockwave hit moments later—a scorching gale tearing at clothes, flattening furrows through debris-littered courtyard, forcing Goro to shield his eyes. Silence followed, profound and deafening. Only the ozone sting remained—sharp, acrid, tasting of lightning and endings.
Scales melted back into flesh; horns receded; Kaido landed amidst settling dust, his feet cracking fractured cobblestones anew. He stood humanoid once more, ash drifting from his simple kimono sleeves. He didn't glance at the smoldering scar now etched across the distant landscape. His crimson gaze locked solely on Goro's ash-streaked face, eyes wide with petrified awe. Kaido's thumb pointed casually over his shoulder toward the still-expanding column of destruction visible on the horizon—a pillar of fire and smoke painting the twilight sky crimson-black. "Weak fires?" he rumbled, the words scraping Goro's frayed nerves raw. His scaled lips curved into something predatory, humorless. "**Use that, then.**" The raw chakra-fueled devastation wasn't an answer. It was the forge hammer itself. The command echoed: Melt your stone in *that*. Forge your kanabō in fires hotter than dragon's wrath. Or shatter. Goro stared at the apocalyptic horizon, then down at his own trembling, scarred hands. The Stone Crags felt suddenly soft.