The air in the cave was not anymore air. It was purpose, weighted down with the load of a will recreating the world. Cell Akatsura looked at them as they limped back to their feet having been brought back to life by the sacrifice of Sakura. His glances were not angry, but deeply, disturbingly curious, such as a sculptor would look at a piece of marble that has a defect.
You continue, he heard; his voice the hum of a quantum field. A fine, but unreasonable variable. But every variable has to be incorporated or done away with.
He lifted a hand, though not to strike, but to make a gesture. "Behold. The end of evolution."
His body unfolded.
It was not just an onslaught of force. It was a transcendence of form. His skin went clear, and inside of it showed light patterns of fractals. Back of him, silent, cosmic waltzing, six rings of Pranic halo, like the sacred regalia of Orochimaru and the chakra receivers of Pain. His hair was like molten glass, and his eyes were wells of cool, shifting prismatic information. This was his Idol Perfect God--the Shape of the Seraphic Shinobi.
He was loveliness and horror combined.
The first to break was Raizo who was driven by rage and the residual energy of the healing of Sakura. "RAGING JUGGERNAUT STRIKE!" All Eight Inner Gates had been opened, and he was a green glow of aura and malevolence, and his last, mountain-battering blow made to fall upon Akatsura at the heart of it.
Akatsura did not move. He just gazed at the assault. Air before his chest was crystallized into an ideal, hexagonal pattern of hardened Prana. The blow of his fist struck Raizo, and the force of the blow did not burst: it was taken in, pumped in the lattice. then, out of the fist of Akatsara himself, another Prana Fist Cannon of the same character burst, refined, perfected, and enhanced. It hit Raizo right on the head, and threw the martial artist back as a toy, the final technique he had on himself with destructive effectiveness.
In the darkness Shikurin took his step. Some twelve clones, one of them a Decoy Labyrinth, met, and Phantom Prana Binds, which shot out of the staff of the actual Shikurin, were designed to trap the energy pathways of the god.
The voice of Akatsura, the voice of the shadow machine, came not out of his mouth, but out of that air between them. You play around with odds. I manipulate reality." His Seraphic eyes flickered. These decoys just unwove, the Prana of the decoys scattered to harmless light. Reached him the binds of shadow, and were rewritten, driven back to a splash of cherry-blossoms. Predictions on your traps are on a cause-effect universe. I am rewriting the causes."
He waved his hand, and the earth beneath Shikurin melted down and became liquid light, and then hardened, and plunged him all the way up to his chest in crystalline jail. His whole plan, which had become outdated by a creature that had the power to modify even the laws of the game.
Sasuke then acted with a Rinne Saiyan Form flaring. "Final Rinne Flash!" An erasing timeline beam of time-dilating energy flew at Akatsura.
The Seraphic Shinobi lifted one finger. Before him a miniature Rinne Shinra Pulse occurred, a gravity well, which did not intercept the beam but squeezed it. The divine technique of Sasuke was pounded into one sparkling drop of light and Akatsura took them in his hand and sucked them out of the air and into his person.
Akatsura, in his voice, which now had something of what might once have been pity in it, said "Pride. The ideology that your personal will concerns itself in opposition to the current of cosmic nessity. Sasuke Vegeta, your pride is a vice. A gorgeous, tragic imperfection which I will cut out of the experiential genome.
He presented his main philosophy at that time, not by a bellow, but with the certitude of a law of physics. His words fell on them, and hurt them worse than a beating.
You are struggling to defend a tainted life. The fact of pain and rot and constant and insignificant war. You call this 'life'. I call it a failed prototype."
He stretched his arms, his six halos flaring, the whole of the Eclipse Valley insensible with his strength.
"I do not destroy. I perfect. I struggle to make existence flawless and everlasting. State of unadulterated, equilibrating energy. No pain. No loss. No weakness. No you."
He gazed on them, and his gaze dissected them.
And then I say to you, children of chaos... who of us is really divine? Who is the one who holds to the illness, or the one that brings the healing?
The question suspended up in the air was a moral and philosophical trap even worse than the physical kind of trap they were in. They were shattered, their finest attempts were easily countered, and confronted with an enemy who believed sincerely that he was the savior of the universe. The Architect of Divine Flesh was standing there, not as a monster, but as the messiah of nothingness, and at that instant, he never appeared in so strong, or so frighteningly right.