The arrival of the Karasu-Tengu and the Inugami had produced, even in the God's Knights members embedded in the crowd, a moment of genuine uncertainty.
The first wave of the Night Parade had read easily as production — costumes, props, skilled performers moving through choreographed patterns. The two creatures on the walls were something different. The Karasu-Tengu had landed with weight that didn't require theatrical sound effects. The Inugami moved with the quality of something that had never needed to perform anything. The pressure coming off both of them was not constructed.
Drake's expression had gone from professional calm to something it hadn't been in years. "They've never appeared in any previous celebration. Not once." He was doing the math quietly. "If they're real — if all of it is real — Orochi has been sitting on Devil Fruits the entire time. Right under the Beasts Pirates. The financial capacity that would require is—" He stopped. "Not what I thought he was capable of."
Zoan users were not common. Meaningful Zoan users — the ancient or mythical types, the ones with real combat implication — were rarer than that. The Beasts Pirates, who ran an organization built on Devil Fruit power, relied primarily on artificial SMILE fruits for their rank and file. Their authentic Zoan cadre was small and represented the upper tier. That Orochi had accumulated anything comparable, quietly, in a country the Beasts Pirates occupied, was a revision of everything Drake had spent years building an intelligence picture around.
"Snipers," Hibari said, not taking her eye from the mirror she was using for the reflection check. "Rooftop position, under a thousand meters from us. not God's Knights, not official."
Grus assessed the geometry. "Someone jumped ahead of the organized groups. They'll move first and we'll watch what happens."
Below, on the stage outside the General's Mansion, the scene had continued evolving.
The two new arrivals occupied opposite walls — the silver-haired Inugami watching the wider situation from distance, the Karasu-Tengu tracking the faces in the viewing stands. Between them, the hundreds of smaller creatures from the earlier parade held the stage, still not moving toward the crowd.
The mansion doors opened.
Kurozumi Orochi came out under moonlight, in formal shogun's attire, and the creatures on the stage — every demon, every spirit, every monstrous form that had emerged from the fog — bent their heads. The Inugami and the Karasu-Tengu both lowered their necks as he passed between them.
The believers lost what remained of their composure. The noise from the crowd reached a register that bypassed language.
Orochi raised a hand for quiet and gave a speech. The content was structured around several themes: the people's faith had not been misplaced; outsiders could not save Wano Country; only Orochi and the supernatural forces aligned with him could guarantee the country's survival across generations; the Kozuki clan was a cautionary tale from a lesser era. He was good at this — the cadence, the placement of pauses, the way humility and strength traded off in his delivery. Whatever else he was, he had spent years practicing this performance.
"Let these proud invaders see what the Night Parade of a Hundred Demons truly means in Wano Country—"
The bullet arrived before the sentence finished.
The sniper team Hibari had identified had made its decision. One round, precisely placed, punched through the front of Orochi's skull and exited through the back. More rounds followed immediately — chest, throat, every vital point, conducted from distance with the certainty of people who believed they were closing a problem.
The viewing stands froze. The believers who had been cheering nine seconds ago stood in silence, looking at the general of Wano Country bleeding from multiple locations on the stage.
Orochi did not fall.
The wounds began to close.
White vapor rose from each entry point — damaged tissue knitting, broken bone reforming, the body repairing its own architecture at a speed that had no natural explanation. The brain recovered first, because Orochi apparently had priorities. When his eyes came back into focus, he looked almost pleased.
"The celebration has officially begun." His voice was clear. "Kill the invaders first. Make them the blood offering for tonight."
The God's Knights in the crowd made their own assessment simultaneously: if the general of Wano Country could survive that, and if the monsters on the stage were real, the tactical picture had just changed. They drew their weapons anyway — a hundred thousand points was still a hundred thousand points, and perhaps enough concentrated force—
The smaller creatures fell easily enough. The Black-Toothed Women, the minor spirits, the fire-forms — against God's Knights with blades and Haki, they lasted seconds. The crowd of believers scattered or pressed flat against the ground, and the contestants moved through them without targeting them ally, following the point logic, pushing toward the stage.
The elite monsters were different. The larger forms — the ones that moved with the deliberate quality of something that understood combat rather than simply possessing it — dragged engagements sideways. A contestant who expected to close and finish in two exchanges found himself at the eighth, ground being traded back and forth, and the monster wasn't tiring.
Then the Karasu-Tengu came off the wall.
It was fast in the way that renders observation retrospective — by the time a God's Knights member had registered its direction, it was already arriving. The impact when it landed on the first contestant was categorical. The woman was driven through the stage floor, and the Karasu-Tengu rose from the crater with the unhurried manner of something that had not needed to try. The stage surface was marked in a red pattern that had no prospect of fading.
The rush toward the stage stopped.
"That — is that a Mythical Zoan?" One of the contestants, reassessing.
"We can't handle this. Pull back."
Orochi watched the retreat begin with visible satisfaction, clapping once. "Find every last one of them. Kill them all. Wano Country belongs to us."
The Night Parade spread out from the stage into the capital, and the monsters that had been waiting moved with it. The believers who had paid their incense offerings were marked in some way the creatures recognized — scent, or something less explicable — and were moved around rather than through. The God's Knights contestants were the primary target, hunted through the streets they had been hunting through an hour before, and eaten when they were caught.
In the distance, on the rooftop where the private sniper team had been positioned, the Inugami arrived without announcement. The sniper who had put the first bullet through Orochi's head had not run after firing — the professional calculus said the target was down and the mission was complete.
The Inugami picked up the sniper's severed head and turned it slowly in its hands, examining it under the moonlight with the same detached consideration it had brought to everything else tonight.
The silver hair caught the light. The red demonic patterns on its cheeks did the same.
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