Bao Huang announces that she has located the Scabbards in the upper floor of Kaido’s castle after they were transported away from the roof by Law.
However, she counts ten people in the storage room rather than 9 and the chapter ends on a huge cliffhanger, as we get a brief glimpse of this mystery character’s silhouette. With One Piece on break in the next issue, we’re going to have to wait two weeks to learn the identity of this mystery character, but to me it seems like there are really only two possibilities, but if we look closely, it’s obviously Enel!
Joking apart, in actuality, it would seem this mystery character is either Hiyori or Toki – and I personally lean toward the latter.
It’s pretty clear that the shadow next to Kinemon is the mystery 10th person we see in the last panel. And they look to be “normal” human size which rules out quite a lot of people including Enel. Toki seems to have just the same height as the mysterious character:
So it seems to be a woman based on the shape of the nose and jawline and there seems to be a long strand of hair falling down. We know this character is likely an ally to the Scabbards as they appear to be crying. Hiyori would seem to be the more obvious choice here and I do believe she will still play some critical role, potentially helping to slay Orochi, before the arc ends.
Hiyori gave Zoro Enma, but still holds Oden’s other sword Ame no Habakiri, which borrows its name from the legendary sword used to slay the Yamata no Orochi in the real world Japanese folk story. Momonosuke says that Hiyori was always stronger than him and beat him in fights when they were younger. I hope that Hiyori will be proficient with a sword given the time she spent with Kawamatsu and Denjiro over the past 20 years and thus will play a critical role in the battle against Orochi or Kaido.
