Kurozumi Higurashi

Higurashi appears as a withered, ancient woman, her wild green hair grown long, a cleft marking her chin, and a smile broken by absent teeth. When she first approached Orochi more than four decades before the present, she dressed in a worn pale kimono paired with dark trousers, with a pair of burning candles strapped to her brow by a band. Once Orochi held the title of shogun, roughly twenty-five years prior, her garments grew tidier and she had taken to staining her teeth black. Through her Devil Fruit she could remake her body to mirror other people, taking on the looks of figures such as Kouzuki Sukiyaki and Oden.

In Higurashi's view, authority alone settled what was right and what was wrong, so no grab for power struck her as immoral, murder included. That outlook left her sympathetic to the Kurozumi clan's earliest bid for the shogunate, and she leaned on trickery to hand Orochi the title. Shrewd and patient, she had him stockpile money and arms long before his ascent, recognizing what such reserves would later be worth. She abandoned any notion of fair play in battle, and like many in the series she carried a signature cackle, rendered as Ni kyo kyo kyo kyo.

Born in Wano roughly a century before the present day, Higurashi watched the head of the Kurozumi line poison rival daimyo in a failed grab for the shogunate, a crime that ended in his forced seppuku and left the family hunted. She fled Wano for a stretch, endured hardship abroad, and during that time she ate a Paramecia fruit, the Mane Mane no Mi, which granted her the power to copy the face of anyone she met; among the faces she gathered was that of Shiki. Returning more than forty years before the present, she sought out Orochi, the grandson of the executed leader, recounted his family's ruin, and urged him to amass gold and forge weapons, dangling the Hebi Hebi no Mi as his reward.

Disguised as Oden, she planted Orochi inside the shogun's castle, and later, wearing an ailing Sukiyaki's form, she had Orochi named interim shogun. Around the same period she struck a bargain with Kaidou, binding the Kurozumi cause to the Emperor in trade for weapons. Two decades before the present, while Oden battled the Beasts Pirates at Udon and had wounded Kaidou, she took the shape of a captured Momonosuke to draw Oden's attention, letting Kaidou land the deciding blow. That ploy cost Higurashi everything: Kaidou, who despised dishonesty in his fights, struck her down, and her interference set in motion twenty years of suffering under his and Orochi's rule.