"Huh? You bastard, are you looking down on me?! Watch me shave off your head with a spinning drill!"
Mushuru's face twisted in fury, clearly provoked by Shirogai.
He raised his left arm like an umbrella, spinning it at high speed as he rolled up his sleeve, prepared to charge.
"Wait, Mushuru! That smiling guy isn't someone to take lightly!"
Wapol quickly jumped in to block his brother's path.
"I told you not to call me brother, you idiot!" Mushuru snapped in frustration.
"Come on, Mushuru, don't throw a tantrum now," Wapol replied, trying to stay calm despite the tension. "You've always been my brother—even when you were firing toxic spores into the sky trying to kill everyone."
Indeed, when Mushuru was a teen, he had recklessly fired a deadly spore bomb—a rare substance formed once every ten years inside his body—into the air, hoping to annihilate the entire population of Drum Kingdom. That day, only the kingdom's powerful winds had spared them, dispersing the toxins before they could fully spread.
Even so, the aftermath was grim. Many were infected, lives were lost, and the royal family's reputation plummeted.
The previous king, desperate to save what remained of his country's credibility, began prioritizing medicine, transforming Drum Kingdom into a center of medical innovation.
But Mushuru's twisted nature couldn't be reformed. Out of desperation, the king had exiled him to the Fire Country, where the extreme heat would suppress his Germ Germ Fruit powers.
In Wapol's eyes, though, Mushuru wasn't a monster—he was an idol. A hero.
"Mushuru, that guy just flicked his finger and destroyed five of my cannonballs. He even turned his finger into some weird paddle and smacked me halfway across the sea!"
Wapol shuddered at the memory.
Mushuru paused, brows furrowed. "Hiss... You're right, that ability sounds dangerous."
He wasn't stupid. Years of surviving in Fire Country had honed his instincts. But just when he started reconsidering, Shirogai provoked him again.
"Hey, you two," Shirogai said casually, drawing a circle on the snowy ground with his foot. "I'll stay right here. If either of you can knock me out of this circle, I lose. Sound good?"
Mushuru's eyes twitched. His lips curled in a manic grin. "You think I'm some kind of joke?! Since you want to die so badly, I'll oblige!"
He vanished, reappearing high above, his body tilted with the wind. Raising his hands, he fired a barrage of violet-colored missiles.
"Parasitic Missile!"
The moment they struck, needle-thin hyphae exploded outward, violently lashing the surroundings.
Shirogai's body was instantly coated in a layer of glossy black—Armament Haki. The hyphae shattered against him like twigs on steel, falling uselessly to the ground.
Each of those hyphae was designed to pierce flesh, burrow into the bloodstream, and rapidly multiply—until the host was sucked dry. Then, grotesque red fungi would burst from the corpse, spreading infectious spores to any living creature nearby.
A single touch from those fungi would cause them to erupt again, repeating the carnage in a cycle of parasitic annihilation.
Mushuru grimaced. "Tch. He really is a problem…"
But he wasn't done.
"Awooo!"
Inhaling deeply, Mushuru's skinny body swelled like a balloon until he towered over even Wapol.
Hovering above, he roared: "Fungal Tornado!"
A kaleidoscope of spore powder spewed from his mouth. As the spores mixed, they fed off each other, twisting into a swirling vortex of fungal growth.
From one meter… to ten… to fifty.
The tornado hit the ground with a roar, engulfing Shirogai and the surrounding snow in a mushroom-colored cyclone.
When the storm finally passed, all that remained was a massive hill of multicolored fungi—mushrooms on mushrooms, stacked high like some grotesque layered cake.
Mushuru snickered. "He actually stayed in the circle? Fool. Now he's mushroom fertilizer!"
"He's dead, right?!" Wapol beamed. "Brother, that was amazing! You just one-shotted that smug pretty boy!"
Mushuru glared. "I told you not to call me brother!"
But their celebration was cut short by a calm, familiar voice from within the mushroom mountain:
"Not bad. This Devil Fruit is pretty useful. Looks like I won't need to worry about fresh vegetables on the ship anymore."
"Eh?"
The brothers froze like statues, disbelief in their eyes.
"H-He's still alive?!"
"Impossible!!"
BOOM!
A plume of white smoke burst from the heart of the mushroom mountain. Flames erupted, consuming the entire fungal mass.
Mushuru turned ghostly pale. "F-Fire?! No, no, no, no—put it out! PUT IT OUT!"
"Don't panic, Mushuru! I've got it!"
Wapol morphed into emergency mode, gulping down snow and transforming his hands into extinguisher nozzles. He sprayed water frantically over the blaze.
When the smoke finally cleared, what they saw stunned them:
In the center of the scorched mountain, untouched snow remained in a perfect circle.
And sitting cross-legged in that white patch… was Shirogai.
Calm as ever.
Holding a skewer of perfectly roasted, golden-brown matsutake mushrooms, he gave the brothers a friendly grin.
"Roasted matsutake tastes amazing. You two want some?"
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