Kaido stalked towards the thicket, each heavy footfall sinking deep into the mossy loam. The air reeked of terror voided and wet earth. He pushed aside tangled branches thick with thorns – they snapped like dry twigs against his scaled forearm. Four bodies lay sprawled haphazardly, expressions frozen in grotesque masks of primal fear, their cloaks ripped and mud-splattered. He knelt, a low creak escaping his leather sandals. His thick fingers tore open the collar of the nearest corpse, searching for definitive markings: clan symbols woven into inner seams, tattooed sigils, distinctive weapon hilts. Only the kunai mattered – that viper coiled around twin blades. It felt vaguely familiar, glimpsed in fragmented salaryman memories scrolling through historical warfare archives. He traced the etching with a calloused thumb. *Sarutobi? Hatake?* Names surfaced murkily. Predators sniffing at the edges of Senju and Uchiha territory. Scavengers. Beneath him. A low growl vibrated in his throat, thick with contempt. Bodies meant nothing. Power answered everything here. He ripped the kunai free, snapping the finger clutching it. The bone snapped like kindling.
The silence shattered behind him. "You... killed them!" Hashirama's voice cracked, thick with disbelief and horror. "Without... without even seeing them!" Footsteps scrambled closer, frantic. Kaido didn't turn. He kept examining another corpse, coldly pragmatic. This one wore crude iron-plated bracers under the cloak – cheap armor used by minor mercenary bands selling blades to the highest clan bidder. *Expendable.* He tossed the kunai aside dismissively. It embedded itself deep into a tree trunk with a solid *thunk*. "Weaklings break," Kaido stated flatly, the words chillingly matter-of-fact. He rose, towering over Hashirama who stumbled back, his usual vibrant aura dimmed and flickering like a guttering candle under Kaido's oppressive presence. Hashirama's trembling hand pointed towards the corpses. "They were *people*!" Tears welled in his wide eyes, mixing with streaks of dirt.
Madara materialized silently beside Hashirama, placing a firm hand on his shoulder. His face remained unnervingly pale, but his dark eyes burned with intense, analytical focus. He stared not at the corpses, but at the kunai embedded deep in the tree trunk—the effortless power behind the throw. Then his gaze snapped back to Kaido. "The Viper's Tooth clan," Madara stated, his voice low and clipped. "Bandits who sell poison and ambushes to anyone with coin." He didn't flinch away from the carnage; his mind visibly reassembling Kaido's sheer, impossible dominance into a terrifying new variable. "They stalk stragglers near Uchiha patrol routes." His thumb brushed the hidden kunai hilt at his own belt, a subtle shift from wary assessment to calculating appraisal. This wasn't horror—it was inventorying a weapon.
Kaido's lips peeled back slowly, revealing teeth too sharp for any ordinary man. It wasn't a smile; it was the baring of fangs. The raw potato taste still clung to his tongue, mingling now with the metallic tang of blood and ozone. He turned fully towards Hashirama, his immense frame casting a long, oppressive shadow over the boy. "People?" Kaido rumbled, the word vibrating with contempt deeper than the sea he'd fallen from. He leaned in, his voice dropping to a gravelly growl directly into Hashirama's stunned face. "*People* that were trying to kill you and your friend here, boy." He gestured dismissively towards the thicket with a mud-caked thumb. "Weaklings. Insects." His crimson eyes, pupils distinctly slitted now, bored into Hashirama's wide, tear-filled ones. "Snuffed out. Like candle flames." He straightened, the movement deliberate, watching Hashirama flinch. "Feel sorry for prey? Then *be* prey."
Hashirama trembled violently, the vibrant green aura Kaido sensed flickering wildly into near-extinction. He looked up at Kaido, then at the corpses, then at Madara's unnervingly composed face. Tears streamed freely, etching clean trails through the grime on his cheeks. His jaw worked soundlessly for a moment, conflict warring within him—the inherent gentleness clashing violently against the brutal truth laid bare. "They… they didn't even get a chance!" he choked out, his voice thick with anguish. He saw only lives ended, possibilities erased, the terrible fragility of existence on this war-scarred earth. Madara's grip tightened imperceptibly on his shoulder, grounding him against the storm of empathy threatening to sweep him away. Kaido watched Hashirama's shoulders slump, the inconsolable grief radiating from the boy who would one day build a village desperately seeking peace. It wasn't defiance. It was profound sorrow.
Kaido gazed down at Hashirama's bowed head, the wild black hair matted with dirt and leaves. A dissonant chord struck deep within him. The fractured memories surged: not pirate kings conquering seas, but a salaryman rushing through Tokyo rain, briefcase clutched tight, remembering the sleepy warmth of his own children's heads beneath his hand after a late-night commute. The ghostly sensation of soft hair, tiny yawns, bedtime stories read in a cramped apartment. It was a stark, jarring contrast to the crushing pressure of his Conqueror's Haki residue and the stench of death clinging to him. A weary sigh escaped Kaido's lips, surprisingly soft for his immense frame, like wind escaping a cavern. It wasn't a sound of anger or contempt, but of immense, unexpected exhaustion – the weight of lifetimes colliding.
The Beast Pirate captain vanished momentarily. The salaryman surfaced. Without conscious thought, Kaido raised one immense, mud-smeared hand. It moved slowly, deliberately, bypassing Madara's sharp, watchful gaze. His calloused palm, thick with dirt and scaled ridges reminiscent of dragon hide, settled surprisingly gently onto Hashirama's messy crown. The gesture was clumsy, alien in its tenderness amidst the carnage, yet undeniably paternal. He patted Hashirama's head twice, a solid, grounding pressure like a rock anchoring flotsam in a storm. It wasn't comfort offered; it was truth acknowledged. The world *was* this brutal. Choices *were* this stark. The salaryman understood innocence lost. The Beast understood survival demanded its price. "Boy," Kaido rumbled, his voice losing its earlier predatory edge, replaced by a gravelly weariness that echoed across the suddenly silent clearing. "The world doesn't care about chances. Only strength."
Kaido drew his hand back, the ghost of soft hair lingering on his rough skin, drowned instantly by the phantom roar of dragon fire and the chilling vacancy behind those assassins' wide, dead eyes. The salaryman retreated; the Beast slammed back into place. He glared past Hashirama at Madara, whose sharp eyes held not horror, but intense calculation – reassessing Kaido yet again. "Your turn," Kaido stated flatly, nodding towards the kunai embedded in the tree trunk. "Clean this mess." His gaze swept dismissively over the corpses. "Weaklings attract scavengers." He turned away from them both, his immense shoulders blocking the weak afternoon sun filtering through the pines. He stared into the dense forest, nostrils flaring, tasting the sharp tang of pine resin mixed with lingering ozone and freshly spilled blood. The paths before him scorched earth, paved with fury and terrifying potential. Potatoes were forgotten. History had just irrevocably shifted. He inhaled sharply, the dragon within stirring deeper, hungrier. "*My* strength decides the storm."
He stalked away without a backward glance, boots crushing moss into mud. The forest swallowed him quickly – branches snapped like brittle bones under his passage, thick ferns flattened beneath his tread. He pushed deeper, driven by a primal urge clawing beneath his ribs, a sensation achingly familiar yet terrifyingly alien in this chakra-saturated soil. It wasn't power he craved; it was *confirmation*. Was the dragon form truly his? Or merely a phantom locked within this stolen flesh? He needed to *see*. To feel the world crack beneath his claws again. He reached a small depression shielded by ancient, moss-draped cedars, untouched by the carnage's scent. The silence intensified, heavy, expectant. He stopped, planting his feet wide on the loamy earth. The Beast Pirate Captain's will surged through fractured synapses:*Zoans don't ask permission.* His crimson eyes hardened to slits, muscles coiling like titanic springs beneath his kimono. He didn't care about witnesses – Madara's shocked inventorying, Hashirama's empathy – this was *his* crucible.
He focused inward, past the nagging emptiness threatening the edges of his Conqueror's residue. He sought the furnace-core within – the memory of volcanic heat igniting his spine, scales erupting from skin, bones warping with the groan of continents splitting. Only silence greeted him. Then, a spark. A phantom *roar* echoed in his skull, purely instinctual. *DRAGON!* His body seized violently. Muscles thickened grotesquely beneath taut fabric, joints popping with sickening cracks. Azure scales burst forth, iridescent and hard as battleship plating, spreading from his neck down his arms, clawing over his shoulders. His spine arched impossibly backwards, vertebrae elongating with the groan of ancient timber. Fingers thickened, fused, became talons like obsidian scimitars digging deep furrows in the soil. His jaw distended, lengthened, fangs erupting past splitting lips. A sound escaped him – not human, not yet dragon – a guttural, echoing groan of rending flesh and bone that shattered the forest stillness, sending frantic animals fleeing. Smoke coiled from his widening nostrils.
The transformation stalled agonizingly halfway. Kaido stood hunched, a colossal draconic nightmare partially encased in straining, torn kimono silk. Azure scales covered his torso and thickly muscled forelegs ending in wickedly hooked claws. His elongated neck was scaled and thickly corded, supporting a massive draconic head – jaws agape with dripping fangs, horns like broken obsidian spears thrusting upwards from his brow. Yet his lower half remained disturbingly humanoid, flesh straining against scales attempting to push down his thighs, his leather sandals splitting apart over massive clawed feet struggling for dominance. Smoke billowed thicker now, acrid and grey, laced with sparks. He strained, muscles bulging impossibly, pushing against an unseen barrier – not fatigue, but a *wall*. A monstrous growl rumbled deep within his barrel chest, shaking the surrounding cedars.**He felt it then: the phantom chains of unfamiliar physics. This world *resisted*. Its chakra-soaked air clung to him like mud, its gravitational pull heavier, denser than the Grand Line's whimsy. The Dragon-Dragon Fruit wasn't just dormant; it was suffocating.** This wasn't a Devil Fruit surrendering; it was a cosmic law denying him. *Pathetic? Me?!* The Beast King's fury ignited like napalm. Weaklings broke chains. Kings *shattered* them. His Conqueror's Haki roared internally, a psychic maelstrom aimed not outward, but inward – a battering ram against the prison of his own mutated flesh.
He roared. Not a sound, but a physical *wave* of pure dominance that blasted outwards. The air visibly distorted, rippling like disturbed water. Moss ripped free from ancient trunks. Cedar needles rained down as branches splintered. The forest floor cracked beneath his straining claws. This was no cry of pain or frustration; it was the declaration of a primal force defying the universe itself. *I AM KAIDO!* The psychic command echoed in his marrow. **The Dragon-Dragon Fruit wasn't a tool to be mastered; it *was* him. His flesh.*His* scales. *His* roar that cracked continents.** That undeniable truth slammed against the barrier. He felt the world-stuff yield fractionally, its resistance buckling like cheap armor under a warhammer's blow. The scales surged downwards with renewed force, tearing through the last vestiges of human skin on his legs. His feet elongated, claws bursting free, digging deep into the fractured earth. The transformation wasn't graceful; it was brutal conquest. Bones snapped and reformed with wet, crunching sounds, ligaments stretched impossibly taut. Pain was irrelevant. Failure was impossible. With a final, thunderous rending of fabric and flesh, the immense shadow of Azure Dragon Kaido blotted out the weak sun filtering through the canopy.
Standing revealed was true majesty wrought terrifyingly real. Four thousand meters of scaled, serpentine muscle coiled and pulsed, displacing swathes of forest. Cedar trunks snapped like twigs beneath the sheer bulk of his haunches. His immense torso, armored in overlapping plates of deep azure scales that drank the light, rose like a mountain freshly born. Heat shimmered off him; waves of pressure pulsed with each heartbeat, a drumbeat felt in the marrow. Twin sickle-moon horns, blacker than midnight and thick as siege towers, crowned a draconic head large enough to swallow entire battalions. Eyes like molten lava pools, slitted vertically, cast down. Below, amidst flattened ferns and splintered wood, stood Hashirama and Madara – specks. Miniscule figures dwarfed utterly, staring upwards into impossible, scaled infinity. The sheer, crushing aura – Conqueror's Haki mixed with draconic might – pressed down like a physical weight, forcing Madara to his knees despite his iron will. Hashirama simply stared, jaw slack, tears forgotten, replaced by pure, paralyzing awe. The scent of ozone, scorched earth, and raw, terrifying power choked the air. Silence reigned supreme, absolute, save for the deep, resonant inhalation of the dragon – air swirling into cavernous nostrils, smelling of fear and shattered reality.
Kaido lowered his colossal head slowly, a deliberate movement that rustled distant treetops he hadn't yet crushed. One molten eye, easily larger than the clearing they'd occupied minutes before, focused solely on the two insignificant figures below. Madara struggled violently against the oppressive descent, forcing himself onto one knee, his Sharingan blazing crimson – not with its usual sharpness, but wide, pupils dilated in purest primal recognition: *Predator Alpha. Absolute Dominion.* He tried to lift his hand, to form a seal – any defense against the living apocalypse gazing down – but his arm trembled uncontrollably. Hashirama remained frozen, transfixed. Kaido's immense maw opened fractionally. No roar this time. Only breath. Hot, sulfurous wind washed over the tiny humans, smelling of the deep earth and volcanic fury, strong enough to flatten grasses like a gale. His voice, when it came, wasn't heard with ears. It vibrated through the earth, shook their bones, and hammered directly into their minds: ***SEE.*** The psychic pulse carried terrifying clarity: *This is the scale of strength. This is the power deciding storms. Your clans are dust on my scales.* Madara's Sharingan flickered wildly, overwhelmed by the sheer sensory impossibility. Hashirama finally gasped, clutching his chest as if the word had physically struck him.
The dragon inhaled again, the sound like mountains shifting. His gaze lingered on their utter insignificance beneath his shadow. He saw Madara's desperate defiance, Hashirama's shattered innocence – inconsequential sparks against his immensity. ***WEAKNESS BREAKS.*** The psychic statement boomed again, finality incarnate. ***SURVIVE.*** With a deafening crack of displaced air and splintered timber He didn't leap; he *pushed* against reality itself. The forest exploded outwards beneath him, trees flattened, earth thrown skywards as blinding dust. Wind howled like banshees. Where his colossal form had been, only devastation remained – and the suffocating ozone stench of dragon departure. Standing knee-deep in mud and debris, Madara shielded his eyes from flying grit, his Sharingan frantically tracking the impossible silhouette shrinking against the cloud-streaked sky.
He ascended without wings beating. He *flowed*. Azure scales rippled beneath the pale sun as Kaido surrendered his draconic mass not to gravity, but to the raw currents swirling through the Warring States Period's chakra-steeped air. Muscles relaxed; tension dissolved. He became less a creature of flesh, more a manifestation of kinetic grace – a serpentine current riding invisible thermals. Below, smaller forests rushed past his lidded gaze like fleeting dreams. They thought he flew? No. He drifted on the world's own breath.
Hashirama's choked gasp echoed uselessly against the distant canopy Madara called home. Kaido ignored it. Below him spread a tapestry woven in primal hues – emerald smudges of untouched forests bleeding into ochre patches of scorched earth scarred by ancient battles. Ribbons of grayish rivers sliced valleys where mudslides had choked tributaries jaggedly. And everywhere, clinging to strategic ridges like spores, were jagged scars: palisade walls, watchtowers silhouetted against the bruised dusk sky, smoke tendrils coiling upward from clan compounds unseen but *felt*. Homewrecker fortresses. Feeder settlements. Hate's ugly architecture.
He inhaled deeply. The scent was complex: wet cedar carried upward mingled with ozone residue from his transformation, dust kicked up by terrified deer fleeing his shadow, and beneath it all – the sharp, metallic tang of blood-soaked earth drifting from the latest battlefield cluster miles east. Memories flared: Marineford's carnage, the acrid sting of cannon smoke blending with the Grand Line's perfume of brine. Here? Raw meat left to rot beneath a sky that tasted like wet iron. Primordial. Untamed. Perfect.
For the first time since awakening here, Kaido's immense chest vibrated with deep, thunderous contentment – a sound felt rather than heard, resonating through his scales. A slow, predatory curve lifted the corner of his draconic maw. The Warring States Period wasn't an obstacle. It was a banquet hall. Let Hashirama weep for lost chances. Let Madara calculate his terrifying new variable. History wasn't written by insects. It was carved by dragons. Below him, unfurled like a sacrificial feast, was an era begging to be devoured. His crimson slitted eyes scanned the horizon, locking onto the densest concentration of watchfires flaring defiantly against gathering twilight. Hunger stirred, deep and molten. He dipped almost lazily, altering his effortless glide toward the closest fortress screaming defiance in the gloom. *Time to teach mortals the true taste of war.*