Ayanami Kaito stood at the heart of the battlefield as Kaguya's form swelled and darkened, her presence folding space around her like a storm. She had expanded the Truth-Seeking Orb, the ultimate power she commanded. It was an all-consuming force, capable of erasing and remaking a world, a raw power of creation and destruction in one. The orb's growth turned Kaguya into something vast and terrible, a living rupture between realities.
Kaito watched without fear. Electricity danced across his skin and Chakra coalesced around him, bright and tangible. He had drawn on every remaining element he could control, fusing them into a single purpose. The Truth-Seeking Orb expanded with a hunger that threatened to tear the starting sphere apart.
Kaguya's inflation accelerated until the very fabric of the starting sphere began to splinter. The delicate seams of space showed hairline fractures that widened with cruel speed. Kaito had already poured the other four elemental natures into his thunder construct, compressing it until the impossible felt near. The towering thunder giant that had once reached a thousand feet shrank by Kaito's will to about ten feet, compacted into a concentrated column of raw destructive force. Its skin turned black and veins of ruin traced across its body like spiderweb cracks — a sign of the immense energy contained within.
Kaito's face remained composed, his voice steady, "Everything, end it now."
He spoke as if addressing the battlefield itself, as if the words were a key. Then the thunder construct plunged forward like a spear of night and lightning, aimed squarely at the expanding Truth-Seeking Orb.
Where they met the sound was like the cracking of the heavens. The collision splintered the world; the impact rolled outward as if something primeval had been struck open. Blinding light converged, then tightened into a single point, then shattered. The explosion painted the sky white and for a moment the entire ninja world glowed as though dawn had arrived at midnight.
That brightness did not bring relief. Across the lands, strangers and allies alike fell under Infinite Tsukuyomi, their minds trapped in an endless dream. The white light faded, the sky returned to night, and the battlefield stilled.
Kaito had been hurled into a turbulence of space — a storm so violent even Six Paths level energies would be shredded. Yet amid that chaos a form endured, flickering with white light. The shimmering was not injury; it was space-energy, the only thing that allowed him to remain intact inside the storm. He moved forward with slow, deliberate steps. In such a place, teleportation and normal space techniques were useless; Flight of the Thunder God and similar jutsu had no purchase here. Movement was possible only by inching through the storm using the space energy that wrapped his body.
He advanced until something unmistakable floated ahead — a strange fruit, unscathed by the violence around it. It shimmered like a calm center inside the maelstrom. The fruit was the body of Kaguya in seed, the god-tree fruit. Kaito's jaw tightened; he recognized it at once.
"That thing lived," he muttered. "It didn't die."
Though the turbulence made Kaito's progress slow, the fruit moved as well. Its direction was toward the diaphragm of the ninja world — the threshold separating the worlds. Kaito shoved himself onward, closing the distance with effort that felt like motion through syrup.
The fruit noticed him. Inside its shell a voice trembled with disbelief and fury. "Impossible. How can anyone survive this turbulence unscathed?"
Kaito made no answer. He needed to reach it before it crossed fully into the ninja world. The fruit's barrier weakening showed it planned to flee and condense back into a body. As the fruit tore a gap toward the ninja world, Kaito stepped and flared with white light. He moved through the tear and burst into the high sky above the ninja world, the fruit following him. Slowly, the fruit began materializing into a figure.
At the first sight of Kaito the newly-formed body recoiled, then fled. Now in a corporeal form, Kaguya was vulnerable and not yet fully stable; she chose survival. But before she could put distance between them, Kaito's hand flashed through space and seized the fruit-body. The grasp felt impossible — as if his arm reached through realities.
"Let go of me! Let me go!" the fruit-turned-body screamed, voice cold and hissing. Kaguya's tone was unmistakable, the same regal cruelty that had dominated nations and realms.
Kaito held firm, unbothered by the panic. He spoke plainly, the words stripped of anything but resolve. "You have two choices now. One, I wipe your consciousness away and you die completely. Then I will consume the fruit. Two, you surrender your claim and I leave with what I have."
The threat was simple and final. Kaguya's features twisted in disbelief. She measured him — the one who had shattered worlds and walked the space storm — and the calculation in her eyes shifted.
Kaito's space-energy remained steady around him, a faint white glow that cut the chill from the sky. The turbulence still rolled and tore at the edges of the world, but inside that light his movement felt inevitable. He had not been reckless; every step had been precise. The thunder construct's destruction and the collision with the Truth-Seeking Orb had left the balance of power altered, and now Kaito stood within reach of the thing that birthed Kaguya's form.
A hush settled, forced by the tension of the moment. Even the remnants of the battlefield seemed to hold their breath. Kaito's voice was low but carried an absolute edge, "Decide."
Kaguya's response was a whisper of power, a pulse that tried to unmake the hold. But the storm held back, and the fruit's trembling slowed. Whatever choice she made next would determine the fate of the ninja world — the victory that had been carved out of thunder and space would either end here or be swept aside.
Kaito did not falter. The turmoil around them might continue to rage, but his intent was clear: he would not let this seed of calamity slip away. He had come through the chaos and stood ready to finish what his strike had begun, unwilling to allow the cycle of creation and destruction to be decided by chance.
The wind of the space-storm howled on, but the two figures — one the hunter, one the origin — faced each other within the calm that circled them. The next moment would decide what remained when the light finally faded.
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