Amidst a dead silence across the battlefield, Kikyo executed a spatial transfer, materializing directly onto the deck of the Queen Mama Chanter. Her eyes locked straight onto the mysterious figure lurking in the shadows—the youth bearing the exact face of Uchiha Madara.
"Who are you?"
"I am Uchiha Madara!"
"You are not. Nor are you Menma Uzumaki."
Under Kikyo's overwhelming spiritual pressure, the mysterious individual began exhibiting unnatural physical distortions. In this world, his true powers were heavily suppressed by global laws, evoking an instinctual, innate dread when facing a shrine maiden who specialized in purificatory exorcism.
Without warning, Patrick Redfield thrust his rapier forward, a beam of blood-red energy shooting out to impale Kikyo. Yet Kikyo executed another spatial transfer, reappearing on his flank while swinging her hands outward to unleash a wave of spiritual force.
BOOM!
Amidst a violent explosion, Kikyo drew her longbow once more. Locking her spiritual perception onto the mysterious youth, she released another Sacred Arrow.
With no room to dodge, the incoming Sacred Arrow forced the imposter to shed his disguise. He revealed a bizarre, non-human visage—an unnatural biological entity that gave off the distinct aura of an otherworldly organism.
Though the Sacred Arrow failed to inflict lethal damage, it successfully forced him to expose his true form. Billowing with a massive haze of frost, he retreated off the Queen Mama Chanter alongside Redfield.
Having repelled the mysterious intruder, Kikyo felt a sudden, sharp chill from behind. The instant she turned to parry, Charlotte Katakuri lunged forward, thrusting his trident Mogura straight toward her.
Katakuri—the strongest among BIG MOM's children—stood as the undisputed pillar of the family. Revering him as the absolute masterpiece of the Charlotte bloodline, his younger siblings adored and idolized him. To protect every member of the Charlotte family, Katakuri maintained a flawless, invincible persona at all costs.
He was a man who appeared cold and stoic on the outside, yet harbored deep affection for his family and crew. Possessing both intelligence and martial valor, he remained calm under pressure, boasting extraordinary tactical IQ and crisis-management skills. Crucially, he despised outside interference in his duels.
Using his advanced Observation Haki that granted brief glimpses into the future, Katakuri could predict, copy, or neutralize an opponent's techniques before they materialized. Yet when facing true powerhouses, he respected their martial prowess, seeking a fair and honorable duel to determine the victor.
As a child, he had been cheerful and free-spirited, unbothered by how others perceived him—refusing to cover his torn mouth even if it meant making no friends. But after his younger sister Brûlée was disfigured by bullies because of him, Katakuri retreated into silence, vowing to forever play the role of an invincible man whom no one could look down upon.
During BIG MOM's battle against Kikyo, Katakuri had remained on the sidelines. But with BIG MOM now visibly battered and her chest flattened by Kikyo's holy blast, he stepped onto the front line.
Unlike his mother—whose Soul-Soul Fruit was hard-countered by Kikyo's purification—Katakuri harbored no fear toward the shrine maiden's spiritual mechanics. Twirling his trident, he unleashed a fierce death storm of razor-sharp thrusts.
Katakuri suddenly veered back on pure instinct as a swirling tempest of spiritual energy erupted right where he had stood a fraction of a second prior.
This woman... possesses spatial teleportation. Standard Observation Haki foresight has limited effectiveness against her, and her long-range archery is lethal...
An exceptionally difficult opponent... To think the Sunagakure Pirates field another powerhouse of this caliber.
Katakuri realized that even when facing Aoki Shiraishi or Uchiha Madara, his mother had never been rendered this battered. Yet Kikyo existed as a natural bane to the Soul-Soul Fruit. Although Kikyo had sustained a deep slash along her arm from BIG MOM's Ikoku Sovereignty, her overall posture remained vastly more composed than BIG MOM's.
Katakuri had always maintained that directly provoking the Sunagakure Pirates was an unwise decision. Yet now that the entire Big Mom Pirates had deployed—only to prove unable to take down a single shrine maiden—it was far too humiliating for the family's honor.
To uphold the dignity of the Big Mom Pirates, Katakuri stepped up to take over the duel against Kikyo.
Facing consecutive battles against top-tier opponents, Kikyo was beginning to feel the strain of fighting alone. She relied on rapid spatial transfers to continuously evade Katakuri's relentless advances.
Katakuri possessed the Mochi-Mochi Fruit (Mochi Mochi no Mi), allowing him to transform his body into mochi, freely alter his physical shape, and extend his limbs—sharing strong similarities with the Rubber Fruit (Gomu Gomu no Mi). This enabled him to replicate similar combat techniques while freely segmenting his body to dodge incoming attacks.
Furthermore, he could generate highly viscous mochi to trap anything it touched, though it lost its stickiness when exposed to moisture.
Though only in his early twenties in this era, Katakuri had already reached the realm of Devil Fruit Awakening, enabling him to convert surrounding inanimate objects into mochi or endow them with mochi properties.
Kikyo found herself continuously pressed onto the back foot. The observing members of the Big Mom Pirates breathed a collective sigh of relief, though a bitter sense of embarrassment lingered—for Cracker, BIG MOM, Katakuri, and the Lone Red to jump a single shrine maiden was hardly a glorious victory.
Stepping back repeatedly under immense pressure, Kikyo kept her longbow firmly gripped. Just as Katakuri took a heavy step forward to press his advantage, an attack suddenly struck him from behind!
It was his younger brother, Charlotte Snack!
"Snack?!"
Yet Snack offered zero response. Moving like a brainless puppet, he launched a berserk assault straight at Katakuri. In that split second, Katakuri realized the truth...
Is this... the same mind-control technique she used on Brother Cracker?!
Kikyo had never abandoned her tactical setup. Throughout her high-speed spatial transfers, she had dispersed countless invisible Soul-Sucking Serpents (Shinikodama) across the entire Big Mom Pirates fleet!
Mysterious and virtually unnoticeable, these Soul-Sucking Serpents were impossible for ordinary warriors to detect. Aside from a few individuals with unshakeable resolve like Katakuri who could resist the spiritual intrusion, numerous children of BIG MOM fell under control, turning their weapons against one another in a chaotic brawl!
Several of Katakuri's younger brothers began attacking their own allies, plunging the deck into total, chaotic infighting.
Throughout the uproar, BIG MOM gradually regained her composure, glaring with bloodshot eyes at Kikyo.
Just as she prepared to step back into the fray, a colossal explosion rocked the outer perimeter!
Turning toward the sea, several patrol warships attached to the Queen Mama Chanter were seen sinking into the ocean under heavy bombardment. The vessel executing the barrage was none other than the legendary Red Force—the flagship of a rookie crew making waves across the New World...
The Supernova, Red-Haired Shanks, had arrived!
"BIG MOM... let's end this conflict here..."
"Mamama! Red-Hair, what makes you think you have the qualification to ask me for face?! A mere rookie Supernova?!"
In this era, Shanks was merely a rising Supernova across the New World. While BIG MOM had not yet been formally designated as one of the Four Emperors, she was already an established overlord of these seas. Why should she give face to a newcomer?
Who does Shanks think he is?!
Yet BIG MOM understood internally that with the Red Hair Pirates intervening, continuing this battle had lost all strategic value.
They had been on the absolute verge of securing Weatheria Base No. 3 and seizing control of the Sky Corridor!
Simultaneously, across the outer sea of Whole Cake Island, Aoki Shiraishi and the Sunagakure Pirates' second flagship, the Nekomata, glided toward BIG MOM's core headquarters.
Dressed in an elegant silver-white captain's coat, Shiraishi adjusted his tricorn hat, an icy killing intent flickering in his eyes. The moment the three pairs of frost wings unfolded behind his back, a sub-zero blizzard swept across Whole Cake Island.
The ocean trembled as the water's surface flash-froze into solid ice. Raining snow crystals sealed the horizon in a frozen tomb...
The descent of absolute frost marked the day of Whole Cake Island's total destruction!