WARNING: The following contains spoilers for One Piece, Chapter #998 by Eiichiro Oda, Stephen Paul, and Vanessa Satone, available in English now from Viz Media.
Oda goes full-on Jurassic World in Chapter #998 of One Piece. All across Onigashima, Kaido's elite officers reveal their prehistoric Devil Fruit powers. In the latter half of the Wano arc, Oda has taken a great interest in experimenting with the different SMILE users, causing various Beast Pirates to have bizarre half-way transformations. Here though, we get to see the real power that a full Devil Fruit transformation commands.
When Marco subsides the Ice Oni virus with his phoenix flames, it falls on Chopper to start working on a cure with the antibodies. However, a spiteful Apoo pulls himself to his feet to retrieve the antibodies back from Chopper. What stops him is the first Ancient Devil Fruit transformation. In a sweeping chomp, the former Tobiroppo and secret marine spy, X Drake, takes his allosaurus form to grab Apoo with his jaw. The dinosaur assures Zoro that he can take care of things here while he goes to the roof to help fight Kaido.
Elsewhere, Franky, in his Iron Pirate General Franky mecha fights Sasaki and her armored SMILE users and have a tough time of it. The Tobiroppo takes it one step further as he reveals his Triceratops Devil Fruit power to Franky, which he uses to send the cyborg rolling back. The shipwright has a tough challenge ahead of him.
The other Straw Hats aren't faring any better elsewhere. On the third-floor banquet hall, Sanji runs from his life from the Tobiroppo, Black Maria, and her maidens. They corner him in a terrifying two-third page spread with Black Maria in her Rosamygale Grauvogeli Devil Fruit form; an extinct genus of spiders that are similar to tarantulas. What's so excellent about this page, in particular, is that it shows off a skill of Oda he doesn't often use -- his ability to draw unique and expressive female characters. The last time we saw this many differently preportioned female characters from Oda was in Amazon Lily. Since then, a lot of his female characters have fallen under one specific body type. Hopefully, this is a sign from Oda he'll be experimenting more with his female characters' designs.
On the fourth floor, Jimbei is surrounded by the third Tobiroppo of this chapter, Who's Who, and his feline cohorts. Who's Who reveals his Devil Fruit to the former "Warlord," as he calls him -- a frighteningly massive sabertooth tiger. To this, Jimbei says that he prefers to be known as the "Helmsman of the Straw Hat crew" now, rather than his previous title. It really shows the respect he has for Luffy and how privileged he must feel to be apart of his crew. It's also alluded to that Who's Who met Jimbei back when he was still a Warlord, but Jimbei doesn't remember him with the massive devil mask that the Tobiroppo wears. A curious situation indeed.
Finally, amid all this prehistoric carnage, we find out what happened to Ulti and Page One, the only Tobiroppos whose Devil Fruit transformations we've already seen: Pachycephalosaurus and Spinosaurus, respectively. Earlier, Tama saved Nami and Usopp from the siblings by having the baboon, Hihimaru, distract them, but it seems the dinosaur pair have made short work of the primate. Now, they're out for blood, as Ulti is eager to split Nami's skull in half after not submitting to her will.
Oda's always had a special knack for illustrating animals, demonstrated in the way he often chooses to include them on the cover pages of each chapter, and you can tell he's been having a lot of fun with the designs of the animalistic Beast Pirate crew. Considering how well he's established each Tobiroppo has a legitimate threat, it'll be exciting to see how all the various Straw Hats deal with Kaido's elite officers as we close in on Chapter 1,000.