Kaido grinned.
It was a cruel, contemptuous smile — the kind a predator gives when something boring wanders into its path.
"Hehehehe… where did this stray mutt come from?"
He didn't even bother lifting his kanabo.
He simply raised one enormous foot, intending to crush the tiny creature like an insect.
"Move… or I'll eat you too."
Just before his foot landed—
"Woooo—"
The sound from the dog's throat changed.
No longer a frightened whimper.
It was a low, distorted vibration that did not belong to any natural creature.
Kaido's eyes narrowed.
Something was wrong.
The creature beneath him had changed.
Its trembling stopped.
Its docile black eyes—
split open.
Like shattered mirrors.
Four additional scarlet compound eyes bloomed inside the sockets.
Six eyes stared back at him.
Emotionless.
Chaotic.
Alien.
"ROOOOAR—!!!"
The roar was not canine.
It was something deeper — a distortion of sound itself.
Pochi's body began to expand.
Not grow.
Transform.
Crack! Crack! Crack!
Bones stretched and reformed.
Limbs thickened.
Claws erupted, gouging deep trenches into the rock.
Its back arched high.
Black fur bristled apart—
revealing not flesh beneath,
but a network of pulsating dark-red vein-like fibers,
twisting like living cables.
One meter.
Three meters.
Five.
Ten.
Within a single breath, Kaido took an involuntary half-step back.
Before him stood no stray dog.
But a black behemoth over ten meters long.
Its massive body filled half the battlefield.
Multiple jaws drooled molten saliva.
Six scarlet eyes locked onto him.
Dragon-level disaster.
Rover.
A pressure unlike Haki spread outward.
Chaotic.
Entropic.
Violently destructive.
Kaido's grin disappeared.
His raised foot hovered midair.
The alcohol haze vanished.
As the strongest creature alive, Kaido understood power.
Garp's fists.
Roger's Haki.
Whitebeard's quakes.
He understood them all.
But this thing—
its aura was wrong.
A Mythical Zoan?
No.
It did not belong to this world's power system.
This was not simply strength.
This was an anomaly.
Kaido lowered his foot slowly.
Interest replaced contempt.
"Heh…"
"This is new."
Rover opened its enormous maw.
The light around them dimmed.
Heat, light, and energy converged into its throat.
A dark red sphere compressed deep within.
Space itself fractured around the gathering power.
Sizzle—
Kaido's hair rose.
His Observation Haki screamed.
He had not felt danger like this in years.
"This technique…"
Kaido's grin returned — manic and thrilled.
"…looks fun!!!"
BOOOOOOM!!!
A beam over ten meters wide erupted.
Not fire.
Not lightning.
Pure annihilating energy.
Where it passed, matter ceased to exist.
Rock vaporized.
Air shredded.
Even the lingering pressure of Conqueror's Haki collapsed.
Too fast.
Too absolute.
Kaido barely reacted.
At the last instant he transformed, azure scales covering his body, Armament Haki hardening fully.
He wanted to know—
if anything in this world could truly kill him.
He underestimated it.
"UGHHHHHH—!!!"
The blast swallowed him.
The Yonko was launched backward like debris.
The earth split into a canyon.
He smashed through one hill.
Then another.
Then a third—
until he slammed into the island's hardest black cliff.
Silence.
Then—
a mushrooming column of dark red energy erupted skyward.
Nearly a third of the island vanished.
Land turned to glass.
A bottomless crater replaced the terrain.
Seawater surged inward, roaring, unable to fill the void.
The world became destruction.
Time passed.
Steam and dust drifted.
A ragged breath echoed from the crater.
Kaido knelt at the rim in hybrid form.
Blood covered his body.
Scales cracked.
Burn marks scorched across his chest.
He stared forward.
Rover emerged from the smoke.
Unharmed.
Six scarlet eyes fixed upon him.
Kaido's gaze shifted.
Shock.
Disbelief.
Then—
pure, ravenous excitement.
"Hehehehe… cough…"
He wiped blood from his mouth.
"It's been a long time since someone hurt me like this."
"Since Kozuki Oden."
He stood.
Aura rising with every step.
Black-red lightning crackled around him.
Clouds above twisted into a vortex.
"I don't care what you are."
He bent his knees.
Muscles coiled.
"I'll beat you into submission…"
"…and make you my watchdog."
THUNDER
The ground shattered beneath him.
He vanished.
Reappearing above Rover's head—
kanabo blazing with Advanced Conqueror's Haki—
he brought it down.
—GUNDARI!!!
CLANG—!!!
Metallic shock split the heavens.
Rover did not dodge.
It did not defend.
It simply took the strike head-on with its skull.
The shockwave collapsed layers of earth outward.
Its limbs sank meters into the ground.
Its head dipped slightly—
then lifted.
Six eyes rolled upward in synchronized contempt.
Trash.
"ROAR!"
Rover turned its head.
Its mouth opened.
A second annihilation beam began forming at point-blank range.
The air screamed.
Space fractured again.
Kaido's pupils contracted.
Even he felt a flicker of danger.
Then—
WHOOOOOOSH!!!
Something enormous fell from the sky.
"Fist Bone — METEOR!!!"
A massive cannonball coated in Armament Haki smashed into the ground between them.
The battlefield exploded in dust.
Kaido halted and leapt back.
Rover paused, beam dissipating, turning toward the coast.
A warship bearing the seagull flag did not stop at harbor.
It plowed directly onto the beach.
Sand erupted around its hull.
At the bow stood two figures in coats of justice.
Two auras descended like mountains.
Monkey D. Garp.
Fleet Admiral Sengoku.
"KAIDO!!!"
Garp's roar split the air like thunder.
"If you want to keep fighting—"
Sengoku's voice followed, calm yet absolute:
"Then you'll be facing the two of us."
The sea fell silent.
The sky rumbled.
A Yonko.
A living anomaly.
Two legends of the Marines.
And somewhere beneath the shattered rock—
a very tired man just wanted his game console back.