A rumble stirred in the upper atmosphere, distant and deep, like thunder waiting for the right moment to strike.
Then a blur ripped through the clouds.
Faster than light could announce it. A golden streak, burning with kinetic fury, pierced the night sky like a divine spear loosed from heaven.
Heat shimmered off the trailing arc of energy as Maelstrom rocketed forward, wrapped in rippling pressure waves and restrained violence. The air screamed around him, unable to keep up with his speed.
Cloud banks burst apart in his wake. Birds scattered apart like shrapnel. A passenger plane nearby shook violently, the cockpit flashing with warning lights as the shockwave nearly tipped its wings.
The pilots reached for controls too slow to matter. Below, the sea churned, whipped into frenzy by the vacuum he left behind.
Weather patterns cracked. Jet streams bent. The sound barrier didn't just break, it exploded, leaving a deafening boom that echoed from the Balearic Isles to Cyprus. Entire continents felt the ripple.
He was a comet without a tail, a bullet without a trigger, screaming towards destiny with no one left to stop him.
And still at the center of all that devastation
It seemed as if he barely moved.
Cairo glowed faintly on the horizon, too distant for human eyes.
But to his extraordinary eyes he could already see the smoke in the horizon.
He could already smell the blood.
And the golden streak roared on a second sun falling to Earth.
____
The city burned in his wake.
Flames chewed through ancient stone and modern glass alike, turning Cairo into a funeral pyre stretching for miles. Minarets buckled and fell. Roads cracked open like dry skin. Smoke rose in thick, grasping columns, curling like black fingers into a sky that no longer remembered peace.
Ash rained from above, drifting past shattered balconies and fractured monuments. A sea of flipped cars smoldered in the streets, their twisted skeletons glowing red beneath oil-slicked fire. Sirens had stopped screaming hours ago. Now there was only the crackle of fire and the distant thunder of collapse.
And the silence of the dead.
Corpses lay scattered across sidewalks and intersections. Families, soldiers, and strangers a like were piled in heaps or slumped against the walls like broken toys. Their eyes, or at least those that remained stared upward, as if even in death, they sensed what was coming.
Buildings leaned like drunks, their insides exposed, their windows weeping smoke. One crumbled brick by brick in the distance, groaning like an old man who had seen too many wars and finally decided not to stand up.
Ka-Hor stood atop the shattered brow of the Great Sphinx, one boot planted squarely between its cracked stone eyes. The monument's face had long since eroded into mystery. Now, even its mystery was bleeding dust.
His silhouette was sharp against the burning sky, arms outstretched like a conductor about to summon his final note. Gold-etched armor clung to his body, slick with the blood of mortals. It pulsed faintly with stolen power, like souls trapped in circuitry. The symbols carved into his grotesque undead flesh burned with sickly green light, shifting with every breath.
He inhaled slowly, the chaos washing over him like incense.
"Ahh… beautiful," he whispered, voice dry as papyrus. "Civilization. So fragile. So loud. So easy."
A high-pitched scream echoed across the ruins. It was a child.
Ka-Hor tilted his head, listening. Not out of empathy but of memory.
"Still they cry," he said. "Across every era. Always the children first."
He knelt, brushing fingers across the Sphinx's surface. A line of gold followed his touch, sizzling through ancient stone.
Then he froze as the air shifted and pressure spiked around him.
The winds changed direction. Clouds, once drifting aimlessly, tightened above him. The stars themselves, blurry at first began to shudder, like something was pulling at the very fabric of the sky itself.
Ka-Hor slowly rose as his grin faltered.
He felt it. Not a presence, but a weight. A force of cold fury, hurtling toward him like judgment written in flame.
He looked up.
High above, far beyond mortal reach, a single golden spark pierced the heavens.
It blazed across the atmosphere, drawing closer with every second, bending the night around it in a glowing arc of fury.
Ka-Hor narrowed his eyes. "It arrives."
His breath caught.
That was no satellite. No jet. No missile. No thing built by the hands of mortal men.
It was faster than sound. Faster than lightning.
And Ka-Hor, The ancient prince of dead dynasties, killer of kings, godling of forgotten blood suddenly understood what the others had failed to warn him about.
He wasn't alone anymore.
Not truly.
"Not of this world…" he muttered, voice low now, jaw tightening. "Just like me."
And still through smoke, through fire..
Naruto had arrived
The ruins of Cairo burned around them.
Heat shimmered off collapsed buildings. Pillars lay shattered across the sand. Firelight danced across blackened walls, casting long shadows of two figures standing at the heart of it all. One, regal and draped in ancient gold armor etched with green glyphs that pulsed with stolen energy.
The other, a teenage boy in a yellow-and-black suit, steam rising from his skin like smoke from a smoldering brand.
Ka-Hor glared down at him, jaw clenched.
"You stand before a god," he spat. "You are nothing. A child pretending to wield power."
Naruto's gaze didn't waver. His posture was relaxed. Arms at his sides. No fighting stance. No fear in eyes or heart. Just silence.
And that silence infuriated Ka-Hor more than any insult.
"You dare look at me like we are equals?" Ka-Hor roared, stabbing his hand toward the sky. Obsidian shards launched from the sand, orbiting him in a spiral of green-lit blades. "I've slaughtered empires for less!"
Naruto's voice was low. "You killed civilians."
Ka-Hor blinked. "What?"
"You butchered a city," Naruto said, tone flat. "Children. Families. People who didn't even know your name."
The wind picked up, carrying the stink of smoke and blood. Naruto took a step forward.
"You think this makes you strong?" he asked. "Burning a place like this to the ground?"
Ka-Hor gritted his teeth. "This place was built on bones. It survived conquest, collapse, and revolution. I simply returned it to its natural state."
Naruto stared at him. His sapphire eyes burning with cold judgement.
"You're not a god," he said. "You're just a egomaniac that doesn't know when to stay dead."
Ka-Hor's defiant scream split the air.
The obsidian blades snapped forward but Naruto vanished. In the blink of an eye he reappeared at Ka-Hor's flank, driving a fist into his ribs with enough force to crack the armor and send Ka-Hor sliding through sand.
Ka-Hor caught himself mid-skid, planting his feet as dust rose around him.
He was already lunging again, faster now, swinging a curved blade from nowhere. Naruto ducked low, turned with the motion, and struck Ka-Hor's knee with a sharp elbow. Metal bent. Ka-Hor stumbled, snarling.
"You dare mock me?!" Ka-Hor shouted. "I've existed since the sun rose over this continent. I ruled before your kind learned to crawl!"
Naruto stepped back, letting Ka-Hor swing again. The blade cut air, again.
Naruto caught the third strike, gripping the blade between his palms. It hummed with energy but Naruto didn't flinch.
"I don't care who you were," he said.
He twisted the blade from Ka-Hor's hands, letting it fall to the sand.
"I care about what you did."
Ka-Hor's fist came flying but Naruto met it with his own.
The shockwave flattened a row of ruined buildings. Glass exploded. Flame snuffed out. Sand kicked up in a halo around them, turning to molten glass at the center of their clash. Ka-Hor growled and surged forward, slamming Naruto through a toppled obelisk.
The stone cracked and Naruto vanished again in the debris.
And reappeared above him.
He slammed Ka-Hor into the sand hard enough to carve a crater ten meters wide.
Ka-Hor gasped, green blood in his throat, and tried to rise but Naruto was already there, lifting him by the collar.
"You think because you lived a long time, it means you're right?" Naruto asked, voice steady. "You think 'old' means 'better'?"
He slammed Ka-Hor into the ground again.
"You destroyed this city for what?" Naruto asked. "To feel important?"
Ka-Hor coughed, struggling, rage flashing behind bloodshot eyes.
"Iamimportant," he hissed. "I am divine. I am!"
Naruto drove his knee into Ka-Hor's gut.
The words stopped.
Ka-Hor hit the ground and stayed there.
Naruto stood over him, breathing slow, watching. Natural energy sparked under his skin, veins glowing faintly like lightning behind clouds.
"You want to be remembered like this?" Naruto asked. "As a butcher of innocents?"
Ka-Hor snarled, reaching for his weapon.
Naruto stomped down on his wrist hard. Bone cracked and Ka-Hor screamed.
"I don't care how many temples had your name carved into them," Naruto said. "You don't get to walk away from this."
Ka-Hor trembled now, sweat and blood dripping from his chin, his pride cracked open. "Why… why do you fight me? You're like me. I can feel it. That power. You could burn this world if you wanted to."
Naruto looked at his own hand, watching the light flicker through his skin.
"Maybe," he said. "But that doesn't mean I should."
The wind blew across the plateau again. The fires of Cairo still burned in the distance.
Ka-Hor's body twitched in the sand, half-buried by the force of the last blow. His armor, once radiant with the stolen light of ancient dynasties, flickered with instability, his glyphs sputtering like dying embers. Smoke curled from his mouth as he tried to push himself upright again.
Naruto didn't move.
He watched silent and still
Ka-Hor spat blood, chest heaving. "You don't understand... I was summoned. The people remembered me. They called me back. They wanted this."
"No," Naruto said. "You wanted this."
Ka-Hor roared and lunged, wild now, power bursting off his body in toxic green arcs. His shoulder slammed into Naruto's chest. It felt like hitting a mountain.
But Naruto didn't budge.
He grabbed Ka-Hor by the throat.
Then he threw him.
Ka-Hor's body sailed through the air like a missile, crashing through the remnants of a collapsed temple. The explosion of stone and fire sent a dust cloud into the stars.
Naruto walked through it, slow and steady.
Ka-Hor climbed from the rubble, limping, armor half-melted, mouth twisted with rage. "You can't kill me. I am bound to the soul of this land. As long as Egypt remembers, I will.."
Naruto punched him across the face.
The sound rang like thunder.
Ka-Hor spun through the air, landing hard and skidding across the glassed sand. Before he could lift his head, Naruto was already there, gripping his chestplate.
"You want to be remembered?" Naruto growled. "Then remember this."
He drove Ka-Hor into the earth. The sand cracked. A fault line erupted beneath them. Light shot upward from the ground like geysers of molten gold, as if something beneath the plateau stirred at last.
Ka-Hor screamed not in pain. In fear.
"No… no! You don't understand what you're doing!"
Naruto grabbed his arm and ripped it off at the joint.
Ka-Hor howled.
From the torn limb, green light sprayed like venom, the stolen souls screaming as they leaked out in a wail of tortured voices.
"You bound yourself to the dead," Naruto said. "So go be with them."
He drove his foot into Ka-Hor's chest.
CRACK.
Ribs shattered.
Ka-Hor's armor split down the middle, his body convulsing as the glyphs turned black. His skin began to peel, not flesh, but layers of preserved soul wrappings, woven with dark magic. Naruto tore the wrappings away and slammed his palm against Ka-Hor's exposed chest.
For the first time, Ka-Hor begged.
"No! Don't send me back!"
The ground beneath them split open.
A pit of obsidian light yawned beneath the godling's broken body. Inside it was not fire. Not void. But a tomb. Stone walls covered in sealing spells. A sarcophagus chained shut by bronze locks crusted in blood. The very place where Ka-Hor had been buried, sealed away by his own priests centuries ago after his madness turned against them.
Ka-Hor reached for anything. Sand. Air. Naruto.
But Naruto didn't offer mercy.
"I told you that you don't get to walk away from this," he said again.
He stomped once more and Ka-Hor snapped.
His body crumpled inward, bones folding like paper, armor crinkling, screaming as his undead soul was sucked downward into the pit. Glyphs tore from his flesh like leaves caught in a storm. His voice shattered in the wind.
And then..
Silence.
The pit sealed shut.
No trace of the tomb remained. Just a melted scar in the desert floor.
Naruto stood alone, the winds finally calming.
The fires of Cairo still burned in the distance, but the unnatural weight in the air was gone.
He looked at his hands. The glow was fading now as natural energy retreated back into his skin.
He exhaled.
No victory cry. No celebration.
Just one more evil gone. One more mistake cleaned up.
The silence felt heavier than the fight.
A soft crackle buzzed in his ear. He exhaled through his nose and tapped the communicator clipped near his collarbone.
Cecil's voice filtered through, calm as ever.
"You did good. Real good," he said. "Ka-Hor's gone. You stopped a global resurrection cascade and saved half the continent from waking up to another undead god king. You don't need me to tell you what that means."
Naruto didn't answer at first. He stared at the melted stone beneath his boots, then at the crater where Ka-Hor's soul had been swallowed back into its tomb.
"Don't thank me," he muttered. "Thank the idiot who dug him up."
There was a pause.
"We'll send a team to clean up the site. High radiation, residual necro-energy, the usual. Press will spin it as an earthquake. You did your job."
"Yeah," Naruto said. His tone was flat. "Great. Super fulfilling."
"You don't sound thrilled."
"I'm not."
He looked east. The horizon was starting to lighten, the sun just beginning to rise. Birds were finally returning to the sky.
"I've got school," he said.
"…What?"
"I've got a history test in two hours," Naruto repeated. "And this thing? This whole god-rising-out-of-the-dirt bit? Not exactly part of the study guide."
Cecil's voice clicked, processed through multiple layers of digital filter, but the disbelief was clear anyway.
"You're telling me–"
"I'm telling you," Naruto cut in, "next time you've got some undead jackass playing god, call someone else."
"Kid, there isn't anyone else. Not like you."
"Well, find someone," Naruto said.
Then he reached up and pressed a button on the comm unit.
The line went dead.
Naruto stood there for another second, watching the sun peek over the remains of the city. Smoke curled upward, catching in the gold light. Somewhere in the distance, a dog barked. A siren wailed. Life tried to restart itself.
He flexed his fingers. The glow under his skin finally faded.
"I hate Cairo," he muttered.
Then he crouched slightly, the air around his feet beginning to ripple.
And just like that, he shot upward, cutting through the air, trailing heat and speed behind him, a streak of gold rocketing across the sky.
He had a test on the French Revolution and he wasn't planning on failing it.
____
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