"Those who stand at the top determine what's wrong and what's right. This very place is neutral ground. Justice will prevail, you say? But of course it will. Whoever wins becomes justice."
— Donquixote Doflamingo, One Piece
--
[Third Person POV]
Outside, the battle raged.
Shisui Uchiha moved like a phantom, his tanto flashing arcs of silver light. Each strike was precise, clean, impossible to predict. Orochimaru's serpentine grin only widened, his tongue flicking out as kunai danced between his fingers, slashing with inhuman precision.
"Your movements… they're beautiful,"
Orochimaru hissed, twisting away from a blade that came within a hair of his throat. His body bent like no man's should, spine contorting like it had no bones.
"But beauty fades, Shisui. You'll bleed like the rest."
A rain of serpents burst from Orochimaru's sleeve, fangs glistening with poison. Shisui spun, his Sharingan blazing, his tanto severing snake after snake in blurs of steel and sparks. Fire jutsu clashed against wind, explosions lighting the night sky. Each collision shook the ground beneath their feet.
Steel screamed against steel as Shisui's tanto met Orochimaru's kusanagi. Sparks showered between their faces, so close Shisui could see the hunger in those pale yellow eyes.
For a heartbeat, Shisui hesitated.
Kotoamatsukami. He could end this now. Bend Orochimaru's will, turn him, crush this madness at its root.
His eyes burned, spinning—
But then—
The air shifted.
Both combatants froze, their instincts sharper than words. The wind howled unnaturally, carrying with it something heavy, dreadful. The night itself seemed to hold its breath.
They turned their heads upward.
And saw it.
***
[First Person POV - Otis]
My body felt like it was already falling apart. Every bone, every nerve—screaming. But I wasn't done. Not yet.
My legs gave out once, but I forced them to rise.
Tap.
I pressed my right foot into the stone floor. The ground cracked under my heel as I forced chakra down. An earth wall rose from the ground, jagged and heavy. My palm slammed against it as my fingers dug into raw earth, tearing out a chunk bigger than my chest. My muscles screamed, but I'd trained them for this, broken them for this.
I pushed earth chakra into the slab, slow at at first, like coaxing dying embers into flame. Loose grains began to bind, pulled into a single heartbeat, I hardened it, again and again, until it no longer felt like earth at all and more like forged steel.
But it wasn't enough.
My teeth ground together, veins crawling up my arm like fire as I cranked the chakra higher. My fingers shook violently, skin splitting as the pressure burned through flesh.
Then—
A hum started.
Low at first, a faint vibration under my palms. Then louder. Stronger. It swelled, buzzing through the chamber like a swarm of hornets, crawling into bone, rattling teeth.
Cracks split the stone—but instead of breaking, they glowed. Thin veins of light, a faint blue hue, bleeding from within like a dying star cracking open.
My hands trembled harder. Not from fear. From weight. From the raw chakra clawing through me, threatening to tear my own muscles apart.
Too much. I knew it. My body knew it. But I didn't stop.
Behind me, Sayuri, Hinata, Sasuke, Naruto—all of them had backed away, just like I'd told them. Not one dared breathe too loud. Even the sound of it—this thing I was making made their chests tighten. Their lungs didn't know whether to draw air or hold it forever.
My grip trembled. This was it.
I bent low, feet digging trenches into the dirt. Every tendon stretched to the brink. My shoulders locked, spine coiled like a bowstring. The hum rose higher, louder, until it drowned everything else, until it was all I could hear.
I roared, hurling it with everything I had left.
Air ripped apart around me
A violent shockwave exploded outward, flattening grass, rattling bones. My arm didn't just move, it detonated forward. The sound barrier shattered with a thunderclap, the chamber itself groaning under the force, slamming everyone back.
Purple swelling crawled down from my shoulder to wrist, veins bulging grotesquely as my arm hung useless, ruined. Flesh burned. Muscle shredded. Bone screamed. But I didn't. I couldn't. My lungs were empty.
I had thrown my whole body into it. Weight, breath, marrow, soul, everything.
When the stone left my hand, I collapsed, cheek pressing into the cold earth. The taste of iron filled my mouth.
Before the dark closed over me, I saw it climbing into the sky — glowing brighter, spinning faster, unstable chakra tearing it apart from the inside, light splitting at the edges like a newborn sun.
"Skycleaver."
Then darkness took me, before I could see it land.
(Pic)
***
[Third Person POV]
The battlefield froze.
Shisui froze mid-strike, his tanto raised. Orochimaru's tongue flicked out, his grin faltering. Danzo's one visible eye widened.
Shisui and Orochimaru looked up together, Sharingan and serpent-eyes locked on the same horror. Danzo's Root shinobi halted mid-step, instincts screaming louder than orders.
The night wind grew heavy, suffocating, charged with raw chakra that clawed at the skin.
The unstable mass cracked and screamed as the blue glow tore free, blazed brighter and brighter, chakra tearing it apart from within until it was nothing but a condensed sphere of raw, unstable energy, turning night into day.
"Impossible…" Danzo rasped.
Shisui reacted instantly—his chakra exploded, rib bones of a spectral titan snapping into existence around him. A half-body Susanoo, skeletal and glowing green, closed around him in desperate defense.
Orochimaru's grin finally faltered. He twisted, serpents bursting from his skin as shields, but even his monstrous reflexes knew the truth — too late.
But for the rest—
There was no time.
Then it hit.
The world went white-blue.
A shockwave of fire, stone, and raw chakra flattened everything within forty meters in every direction. The heat roared like the breath of a god, swallowing root shinobi by the dozens. The explosion's heat seared flesh from bone in an instant. They didn't even have time to scream, reducing men to smoldering husks. All that remained was just charred husks, frozen in mid-motion, before crumbling into ash.
Those on the edges staggered, armor bubbling, flesh blistering, eyes melting in sockets as they collapsed into the dirt.
When the smoke cleared silence crushed the battlefield—
The crater smoked. Blackened bones jutted from mounds of ash. The earth glowed faintly with blue embers that refused to die, stubborn sparks clinging to life long after the men who had carried them were gone.
Inside his half-formed Susanoo, Shisui staggered. The green skeletal ribs cracked. His breath rasped. His eyes narrowed as he scanned the destruction, his stomach twisting.
Too many… too fast…
A scream tore through the silence.
"aahhhahhhhhghhhhhhhhhhhhhhh"
Danzo lay in the dirt, lower body gone, burned clean away by the blast. He howled like an animal as his hands clawed at the earth, blood spraying from the ruin that had once been legs. Nails ripped from his fingers as he screamed in rage and disbelief.
"No… no! Not like this!" he choked
Orochimaru—cockroach that he was—dragged himself upright, his body seared and torn. His grin was gone, replaced with thin, calculating malice. He stared across the ruined battlefield, lips curling faintly
"Such power… Shisui. Power even the Uchiha don't claim as their own…"
He licked blood from his lips, yellow eyes narrowing with obsession.
He didn't stay to test fate. Reinforcements would come — ANBU, Hokage, Shinobi. He wasn't here to die. Without wasting another second, He slithered across the battlefield, pale arms wrapping around Danzo's ruined frame, hefting him like a sack of flesh. Danzo screamed, spat blood, cursed, but Orochimaru only chuckled as he carried him away into the smoke. The last few surviving Root limping after him.
Shisui's Susanoo faded, ribs of chakra breaking apart. He dropped to one knee, his chest heaving, his eyes still glowing crimson as he stared at the crater Otis had carved into the earth.
Silence lingered
In the distance, the sound of Leaf reinforcements finally rushing in.
And in that silence, one thought echoed in every survivor's mind.
Otis was a monster… but whose monster was he?
--
(A/N)
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