-Real World-
Luffy, Zoro, Sanji, and Robin were each pinned down. None of them could break away. That left three people alone in an alley with no backup coming — and of those three, two were unconscious.
Nami had taken one of the bomb blasts directly to the head. She was bleeding, still breathing, but not waking up, and without treatment that situation had a direction it could only move in one way.
Usopp had arrived in Arabasta still recovering from what had happened on Drum Island. The explosion had found him before he'd fully healed, and his body had made the only decision it had left — it had stopped. He was down beside Nami, equally still.
That left Chopper.
He had eaten one Rumble Ball already and pushed into his Hybrid Point — the strongest form he could maintain with any degree of control. He was using it to stand between his unconscious crewmates and every agent Baroque Works had seen fit to assign to the "low-priority" problem of a ship's doctor and two civilians.
"If you have something to say, say it to me!" Chopper kept his back to Nami and Usopp and his eyes on the men in front of him. "Stop throwing things at people who can't fight back!"
Mr. 5 circled at the edge of his reach, patient and methodical, working through his inventory with professional thoroughness. The Bomu Bomu no Mi (Bomb-Bomb Fruit) never ran short of ammunition — his own body produced it. Booger bombs, dandruff bombs, exhaled bursts — the delivery method changed, the result was consistent. Chopper couldn't dodge all of it without abandoning the two behind him, so he didn't try. He took what he had to take and stayed in place.
His fur was scorching. Small fires caught and went out along his coat. Every blast he absorbed to keep it off Nami and Usopp was damage he couldn't return.
In a shadow at the edge of the alley, Galdino watched with his arms folded.
"Whenever you're ready," he said to Mr. 5. "No hurry. I'll handle the cleanup."
Mr. 5 did not acknowledge this. He was in the middle of something.
Chopper knew he was running out of time. The bleeding from his burns was adding up, and his Hybrid Point's stamina had a ceiling. When that ceiling came, Nami and Usopp would have nothing between them and whatever Baroque Works decided to do next.
He reached into his bag with one hand and found the small round pills he had been saving.
Three Rumble Balls. He looked at them for a moment.
He knew exactly what three meant. He had seen what one did to his control, what two did. Three removed the question of control from the equation entirely. Three turned him into something that had no memory of Nami or Usopp or any reason not to destroy everything in reach.
He put all three in his mouth and bit down.
The transformation came up from somewhere below thought. His body expanded past every limit his training had established — past Hybrid Point, past any form he had ever chosen voluntarily, into something that had never been asked for. The fur thickened and darkened. The antlers grew and branched until they scraped the building walls on both sides of the alley. His eyes lost focus, then lost everything behind them.
Monster Point.
The roar shook the street. The bounty hunters at the edge of the engagement scattered before the sound reached them. The ones who didn't move fast enough were swept aside by limbs the size of support columns.
Mr. 5 looked up at the thing in front of him — easily ten times Chopper's normal height, with no sign of recognition in its face — and decided to run his experiment. He flicked two booger bombs at the monster's flank.
The monster turned toward the source of the irritation.
Mr. 5 held his ground. The monster reached down and closed one enormous hand around him, and Mr. 5 let it, and the hand closed, and then Mr. 5 detonated himself.
The explosion blew out from inside the closed fist. Several of Monster Point Chopper's fingers broke at the knuckle and he released with a howl of pain — and Mr. 5 dropped to the cobblestones below, shaken but functional, already checking himself for anything critical.
"That's your cue," he called toward the shadow where Galdino was standing.
Galdino stepped into the light with the unhurried confidence of someone whose plan has not changed.
The monster wheeled toward him, still registered as the source of recent pain, and charged — enormous hooves striking sparks on the stone, bulk that would flatten anything it reached.
Galdino did not move.
The hooves came down directly on him. The body beneath them deformed and flattened and lay still.
The monster paused, processing, and looked down.
What it had trampled was white. The color of candle wax. It spread at the edges into the stone and lay flat — no bones, no blood. A sculpture. A Miss Goldenweek decoy, painted to precise ations and left in exactly the right position.
"An irrational monster and a fake body that doesn't breathe," Galdino said, from directly behind.
His arms came up and forward. The Doru Doru no Mi (Wax-Wax Fruit) released a white torrent that moved faster than the monster could turn. It hit Monster Point Chopper across the back, the shoulders, the arms, and kept coming — flowing into every gap, covering every surface, building up layer over layer before it began to set.
The monster fought it. Of course it fought. The strength in Monster Point was enough to crush most structures, and it threw that strength against the hardening wax with everything it had.
The wax hardened anyway.
Galdino's wax, at full hardness, was comparable to steel. It had held a giant before — had held someone several magnitudes beyond Chopper's Monster Point, in its time. The deer's brute force found nothing to push against that gave.
The Monster Point was trapped. Immobile. Still roaring, but immobile.
Galdino exhaled and straightened his jacket.
"Very straightforward," he said, with the satisfaction of someone who had been called in precisely because he knew how to end this kind of problem. "Baroque Works: one. Future animal god of the Grand Line: zero." He glanced back at the two unconscious figures still lying where Chopper had been protecting them. "Handle the rest of it. We're done here."
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