The Land of Water was a place of eternal mist and salt, but today, the fog felt like a shroud. Deidara and Sasori moved through the marshes, their Akatsuki cloaks damp from the spray. They were searching for the Three-Tails, but the air suddenly grew thin. The birds stopped singing. The water became as still as glass.
"Sasori-no-Danna," Deidara whispered, his hand-mouths nervously chewing clay. "Do you feel that? It's like the sky is getting lower. It's heavy, hm."
From the heart of the mist, a figure emerged. He didn't walk; he drifted. Naruto Uzumaki—the First Espada—stood before them. But he wasn't the boy who wore orange. He wore the white of the void, and his eyes... they were the most painful part. They were blue, but a blue so cold it looked like the depths of a frozen ocean.
The Art of Despair
"You," Sasori hissed, his puppet joints creaking. "The boy who vanished. You've become a puppet of that man, Aizen."
Naruto looked at them, and for a fleeting second, a flicker of something human crossed his face. A memory of a swing in the sun, of a warm bowl of ramen, of a laugh that used to shake his chest. But then, the Hogyoku's influence surged, and his expression turned to stone.
"Puppet?" Naruto's voice was a hollow echo. "No. I am finally free. I no longer have to beg for your love. I no longer have to bleed for a village that hated me until they needed me."
Deidara screamed, "Enough talk! My art is the only truth! C3!"
He launched a massive white clay bird. It soared toward Naruto, glowing with explosive chakra. But Naruto didn't even raise his hands. He simply looked at the bird.
"Cero del Sol."
A thin beam of golden-black light erupted from Naruto's chest—right where his heart used to be. It didn't explode. It simply erased. The clay bird vanished. The mist for three miles vanished. The very clouds above them were torn asunder.
Deidara fell to his knees, his eyes wide. "My art... it didn't even get to bloom... why? Why is there so much sadness in your power, hm?"
Naruto walked past them, his footsteps silent on the water. He didn't kill them. To Aizen's Naruto, they weren't even worth the effort of a finishing blow.
"Because," Naruto whispered, a single tear of spiritual energy evaporating before it could hit his cheek. "To be a God is to be perfectly alone. And I have finally found perfection."