Chapter 1044

His heartbeat pounding like a drum, Luffy wonders why he can stand after losing and why the fight suddenly feels so joyful, while Momonosuke relays Zunesha's claim that Luffy is Joy Boy. The drumming wakes Sanji in a tower of the Pleasure Hall, and across the castle allies like Nami and Tama weep with relief that he lives. Far away in Mary Geoise, the Five Elders question whether sacrificing one of their finest agents was wise, since it only enraged Kaidou, yet decide that snuffing out something so dangerous is worth it. For eight centuries, they admit, the Gomu Gomu no Mi has slipped their grasp as if it had a will of its own.

The elders disclose the truth: the fruit is no Paramecia but a Mythical Zoan, the Hito Hito no Mi, Model Nika. It grants the body the properties of rubber bounded only by imagination, lets its user spread smiles across the world as the Warrior of Liberation, and on awakening strengthens that rubber form enormously while granting godlike freedom, making it, they say, the most absurdly powerful fruit alive. In the treasury, Orochi grovels for mercy, claiming he always honored Oden and was merely Kaidou's pawn. Hiyori reminds him how he and Kaidou strung Oden along for five years and broke their word at his execution. She casts off her mask, names herself proudly through tears, and condemns him as an honorless killer. A shrunken Kazenbo arrives; mistaking it for Kanjuro, Orochi orders it to slay her, but the failing flame brushes him and sets him ablaze.

On the rooftop Luffy names his new state Gear 5, unleashing a wave of Conqueror's Haki that drops nearby Beasts Pirates before he enlarges a hand, drags Kaidou's dragon body up, and slams it back and forth across the surface. He turns the ground itself to rubber to bounce a Bolo Breath back at its owner, and the two combatants trade gruff apologies before resuming. Oda later named this chapter, with its Gear 5 debut, his choice for a turning-point chapter when asked during an interview, and the Five Elders are shown to grasp the hidden willful nature of Zoan fruits.