"Second Hokage… I say you let us handle this." His grip on his sword tightened further. "Go on ahead. Protect the shinobi. They're breaking. If they see you fall too, the last of their morale dies with you."
Sasuke spoke first, voice low but cutting through the storm like a blade.
Tobirama raised one white eyebrow.
Naruto cut in before the Second could answer. His voice was rough, almost growling.
"We are the strongest on this planet." Golden-black chakra surged violently around him, making the ground beneath his feet sink several inches. "If the three of us can't stop him… then no one can. If we all die here, there's nothing left anyway. No point running."
Tobirama looked between the two younger men for a long moment. Then he turned his gaze forward—toward the enemy—and the faintest, most dangerous smile appeared on his face.
"We stand together, ninjas," he said quietly. "We fight to the death."
The man they faced had not moved since the last exchange ended.
Goku stood casually, feet planted, orange gi torn at the shoulder and chest but otherwise intact. His hair—impossibly spiky—did not even stir in the apocalyptic wind. His expression was calm. Not mocking. Not cruel. Simply… waiting.
"If you three are done talking," he said cheerfully, "then come. Let's be done with this battle."
He extended his right hand, palm forward.
White light gathered instantly.
Not slowly. Not dramatically. Just—suddenly there. A sphere of pure, screaming energy the size of a grapefruit condensed in less than half a second. Then he flicked his wrist.
A blinding white lance of ki tore across the battlefield.
Naruto vanished in a golden blur, reappearing twenty meters left.
Sasuke's Rinnegan flashed — Amenotejikara — and the beam suddenly changed direction mid-flight, redirected toward an already ruined mountain three kilometers away.
The collision was apocalyptic.
The mountain did not explode.
It disintegrated.
A mushroom cloud of white fire and pulverized granite rose kilometers into the sky. The shockwave arrived four seconds later—flattening what little forest remained, hurling shinobi off their feet even twenty kilometers away. Many fell to their knees, staring at the sky in horror as the light kept rising, higher than any jutsu had ever reached.
Tobirama was already moving.
He crossed two hundred meters in a blink—Flying Thunder God leaving afterimages of blue light. He appeared directly in Goku's guard and unleashed a storm of taijutsu faster than most eyes could follow. Each strike carried Water Dragon-level cutting power. Fists, elbows, knees, open-palm thrusts—every blow aimed to sever arteries, crush organs, break bones.
Goku blocked every single one.
Not with effort. Not with strain. Just… calm, perfect deflections. His forearms met Tobirama's strikes like they were choreographed.
Then he caught the Second Hokage by the throat with one hand.
And slammed him downward.
The impact created a new canyon.
Tobirama's body cratered the bedrock. Cracks raced outward like lightning. A geyser of blood erupted from the Second's mouth. His Edo Tensei regeneration flickered wildly—half his face already dissolving into white ash before it could reform.
Goku stepped back casually and raised his right hand to his face once more.
Another sphere of light began to form—brighter, denser, hungrier.
Sasuke answered with black fire.
Amaterasu erupted in a roaring wall thirty meters high and a hundred meters wide. The inextinguishable flames raced toward Goku like a tidal wave of night.
Goku leaped skyward in a single bound, leaving Tobirama's broken body behind.
The moment he left the ground, a fist the size of a house came down.
Kurama's avatar—fully manifested through Naruto's chakra—roared as its claw smashed toward the Saiyan. The air imploded from the sheer force.
Goku met it head-on.
Knuckle against Kurama's massive finger.
The collision sounded like a star exploding.
The shockwave shredded the remaining clouds. Lightning arced wildly across the sky.
Before Goku could recover, purple light flooded the battlefield.
Sasuke's Perfect Susanoo stood thirty stories tall—complete armor, wings of black flame, blade wreathed in Chidori-style lightning. The colossal katana came down in a diagonal arc that could split a country.
It struck Goku square in the back and drove him into the earth.
The ground buckled for miles. Dust rose in a choking black tsunami.
And then Naruto roared.
He formed six different Rasengan simultaneously—each one infused with a different nature transformation—Wind, Lava, Magnet, Boil, Yin–Yang, and one that simply screamed with pure Tailed Beast chakra. Behind them, a second sun formed: the Tailed Beast Ball, so dense it bent light around itself.
Tobirama—half-regenerated, face still smoking—raised both hands.
A Water Release: Severing Wave spiraled into existence… then kept growing. And growing. Until a colossal trident of water towered four times taller than the largest mountain remaining in the valley. Its edge shimmered like a blade of liquid diamond.
Sasuke drew back the Susanoo bow.
Indra's Arrow formed—black flames spiraling around a core of pure lightning and hatred.
Three ultimate techniques.
Three signatures of three different legends.
All aimed at one man.
Goku hovered in the center of the maelstrom of incoming death.
His aura exploded.
Not golden.
Not blue.
His hair flickered silver at the edges for just a heartbeat before settling back.
He brought both hands together.
"Ka… me… ha… me…"
The words were quiet.
Almost gentle.
"HA!!"
A blue-white beam thicker than a river erupted forward.
It did not clash with the three attacks.
It consumed them.
The Rasengans shattered like glass.
The Bijū Bomb detonated prematurely inside the beam and vanished.
The water trident turned to steam before it could even scream.
Indra's Arrow bent, fractured, and was swallowed whole.
Naruto, Sasuke, and Tobirama had less than two seconds to react.
They didn't get two seconds.
The Kamehameha swallowed them.
The world turned white.
Then black.
Then white again.
When the light finally faded and the dust began to settle, the planet was still trembling.
Sasuke lay on his back thirty meters from where he had stood. His Susanoo was gone. His cloak was shredded. Blood coated his face, chest, arms—his own and vaporized earth. His eyes were closed. His breathing was shallow. Kusanagi lay broken in two pieces beside him.
Naruto was at the bottom of a new crater almost half a kilometer wide. His body had plowed a trench through solid rock. His left arm ended in a charred stump just above the elbow. The Kurama cloak flickered weakly, trying and failing to regenerate the limb. His right hand still clutched at the dirt, fingers twitching.
Tobirama was simply… gone.
No body. No ashes. No lingering chakra signature.
The Edo Tensei had been erased from existence.
Silence.
Then footsteps—slow, unhurried.
Goku walked out of the fading dust cloud. His gi was torn in a few more places. A thin line of blood trickled from the corner of his mouth. He wiped it away with the back of his hand and smiled faintly.
He looked around the broken world.
No one else stood.
No one else moved.
He turned his head slightly toward the tiny floating figure that had watched everything from high above.
"Lord Zeno… let's leave."
Zeno, his enormous eyes blinked once.
Then he smiled.
A happy, innocent smile.
"Okay~!"
He raised one tiny hand.
And snapped his fingers.
A black sphere appeared behind Goku—perfectly circular, perfectly silent, swallowing light itself.
Goku gave one last glance over the devastated plain.
Then he stepped backward into the void.
The black hole collapsed in on itself with a soft *whoomph*.
And was gone.
Behind him he left:
A shattered continent.
Burning skies.
A missing Hokage.
A one-armed Jinchūriki bleeding out in a crater.
An unconscious last Uchiha.
And an entire world that no longer knew whether it would survive the night.
The shinobi who had fled finally dared to look back.
They saw only smoke.
Only ruin.
Only silence.
And somewhere beneath the rubble, a single faint heartbeat still echoed.
Weak.
Broken.
But alive.
For now.