The world ended in white.
It was not a sound, but the cessation of it. A vacuum of noise that sucked the air from Gando's ninjutsu a microsecond before the reality of the blast caught up. Then, it wasn't a roar, but a physical wall of pure, incandescent force. The force was so immense it felt less like a hearing and more like a fundamental rewriting of the atmosphere.
The light was a physical blow, searing even through closed eyelids. Gando, standing at the epicenter of his own making, shielded his face with a meaty arm, a savage grin stretching his lips. This was his ultimate art, the Garuda, refined and unleashed with a specificity that was his alone. He hadn't just thrown an explosion; he had sculpted it. The blast wave was directed, a focused cone of ruin designed to scour a single, brutal path through the Uchiha defenders. He felt the heat wash over him, a familiar, comforting embrace. This was power. This was clarity.
For a long moment, there was only the churning, angry orange and black of the explosion, climbing into the sky like a diseased sun. The shockwave rippled outwards, shaking the foundations of the camp itself. Then, slowly, the inferno began to subside, collapsing in on itself, leaving behind a landscape of nightmare.
Where a bustling section of the camp had stood was now a smoldering crater, a hundred and fifty meters wide and glowing with residual heat. The edges were glassy, molten rock cooled into grotesque, shiny shapes.
Gando's chest heaved with exertion and triumph. He scanned the devastation, his eyes searching for the particular prize he sought: the broken body of Uchiha Daichi.
He expected to see scraps of black hair, a tattered green flak jacket, perhaps a single, staring Sharingan eye amidst the ashes.
He saw nothing of the sort.
His grin faltered. His eye narrowed, piercing through the thinning curtains of grey smoke. Two hundred meters away, at the very edge of the blast zone where the force had dwindled enough to merely pulverize stone instead of atomizing it, a figure stood.
Daichi.
He was on one knee, his back to the crater, his body positioned as a human shield. Huddled behind him, trembling but alive, were three young Uchiha clansmen, their faces pale with a terror so profound it had frozen their features into masks. They were clutching his flak jacket, their knuckles white.
But it was Daichi who commanded Gando's disbelief. His clothes were in tatters. His flak jacket was shredded, hanging off his shoulders in scorched strips. The dark fabric of his shirt and pants were mostly gone, revealing skin that was a horrific tapestry of burns, lacerations, and deep, weeping wounds.
Blood streamed from a gash on his forehead, painting a crimson path down his cheek. His arms, raised to block the initial flash, were blackened and blistered. Yet, he was upright. He had not just survived; he had intercepted the blast, moved at impossible speeds, and saved others from its heart.
'Impossible,' Gando's mind screamed, the word a dull thud in his skull.
'No one tanks that. No one.' The calculations of his attack, so perfect in his mind, shattered.
***
A searing, white-hot pain was the first thing Daichi registered. It was everywhere, a symphony of agony conducted by the nerve endings across his back and limbs. Every breath was a ragged gasp, drawing in air thick with toxic smoke and the smell of his own burnt flesh. The world swam back into focus not as images, but as sounds: the whimpers of the children behind him, the crackle of dying fires, the ringing in his own ears.
'Too close. That was far, far too close.'
His mind, trained for analysis even under duress, replayed the last few seconds. There had been no time for a sophisticated counter. Only instinct. The Body Flicker technique, pushed to its absolute limit, fueled by a surge of chakra that felt like tearing his own muscles apart. He'd become a blur, snatching the three closest clansmen—children, barely genin—from the path of oblivion. He'd turned his back to the blast, wrapping them in his own chakra as a desperate, flimsy shield.
'Idiot. Reckless, sentimental idiot,' a cold, analytical part of him chided.
'You prioritized three lives over the strategic objective. If that expenditure left you unable to fight, you've doomed the entire clan.'
He pushed the thought down. No. There was no 'if'. He was still standing. The wounds were superficial in the grand scheme of things; painful, debilitating to a normal shinobi, but for one with his reserves and healing factor, they were manageable. The real cost was chakra. He could feel the drain, a significant portion of his well now empty.
'He can't do that again immediately. The chakra cost for an explosion of that magnitude must be immense. This is my opening. I have to end this. Now.'
A new, chilling thought crystallized. Gando was not alone. This was a coordinated attack on the First division. There were other enemies, perhaps just as skilled, hunting his clansmen in the chaos. If he engaged in a prolonged, cataclysmic battle with Gando, they would tear the entire district apart, and the collateral damage would be catastrophic. He had to draw this monster away from the other battles. Better yet, he had to finish him with overwhelming, decisive force.
'But what if there's another? What if another shinobi of his calibre is out there, and I exhaust myself here?'
The doubt was a cold knot in his stomach. He was strong, perhaps the strongest the Uchiha had produced in his generation, but he was not invincible. This was not a duel; it was a warzone.
He steeled himself, his jaw tightening. No. Gando was the priority. A weapon of mass destruction like him, left unchecked, was an existential threat. Eliminating him was the single most impactful action he could take. The other enemies would be dealt with in turn. He had to believe that. He had to have faith in his clansmen and division. His resolve hardened, turning the fear into fuel. The priority was clear.
***
Gando saw the moment of decision flash in Daichi's posture. The clan head was wounded, but not broken. He was assessing, planning.
'He's going to move. He's going to try and take the fight elsewhere, or worse, try to finish me while I'm recovering my breath.'
A surge of adrenaline cut through Gando's shock. This was the dance. The moment of vulnerability after a grand technique. It was a dance he knew well. He willed his muscles to coil, to push him forward into a pre-emptive strike.
'Move, damn you!' he commanded his body.
But his body did not answer.
A strange, cold numbness was spreading from his core. It wasn't a paralysis born of injury; there was no pain. It was a simple… disconnection.
The command from his brain to clench his fist became a thought that echoed in a void, never reaching its destination. He tried to shift his weight to his front foot. Nothing. A profound, terrifying stillness had taken hold of him.
'Poison?' The thought was immediate, a shinobi's primal fear.
"When? How?' His mind raced, scanning the brief fight. A senbon he'd missed? A coated kunai? No. He'd been hyper-vigilant. His defenses were airtight against such tricks. He would have sensed it, tasted it in the air. This was different.
Panic began to bloom in his chest. It was a cold flower, its petals unfurling around his still-beating heart. He tried to flare his chakra, to force it through his coils in a violent surge that would blast away any foreign influence.
But the attempt was like trying to push a boulder with a feather. The pathways were there, but the will to move the chakra through them was… muted. It was a bizarre, horrifying sensation. Controlling his chakra was now infinitely harder than controlling his limbs, which was itself an impossibility. He was a prisoner inside his own flesh, a spectator to his own helplessness.
His eyes, the only part of him that still obeyed, darted wildly. They swept over the smoldering crater, the terrified children, and finally landed on Daichi, who was now slowly rising to his feet.
The Uchiha was crouched, one hand pressed against his face. Blood, thick and dark, streamed from between his fingers, tracing crimson rivers down his wrist. He was trembling slightly, whether from pain or effort, Gando couldn't tell. Then, Daichi lowered his hand.
And Gando saw them.
The Sharingan. The usual tomoe pattern was gone. In its place was a stark, menacing design: a black, four-pointed shuriken shape, each point sharp and distinct, rotating slowly against a blood-red background. The pattern seemed to drink the light around it, holding a depth that was profoundly unnatural.
A look of realization settled on Gando's face, smoothing away the panic for a moment with the sheer weight of understanding.
The Mangekyo Sharingan. The cursed eye of the Uchiha, spoken of only in whispers. The clan head hadn't just tanked the explosion; he'd used the moment of visual contact amidst the chaos to plant this… this curse.
"Krak-thump."
Gando collapsed. His legs simply gave way, and he hit the glassy, hot ground with a heavy, ungainly thud. He lay there, a mountain of muscle rendered inert, his face pressed against the warm earth. He could see, he could think, he could breathe. But he could not move a single finger.
Daichi stood over him, his movements slow and deliberate, each one clearly an effort. The blood from his eyes had stained twin tracks down his cheeks, giving his pale, pained face a strangely demonic quality. The new, terrifying pattern in his eyes seemed to pulse with a faint, dark light.
"Struggling is pointless, Gando," Daichi said, his voice hoarse but firm. "Your brain is sending the signals, but my eyes are intercepting them. Your body answers to me now."
Gando tried to snarl, to spit a curse, but his jaw and tongue were as useless as the rest of him. All that escaped was a faint, guttural rasp. He could only glare, pouring all his hatred, his fury, his humiliation into that one look.
Daichi seemed to understand. "You want me to kill you? To grant you a shinobi's end?" He shook his head slowly, a gesture of cold finality. "No. That mercy is not for you. You will lie here, a witness. You will watch as your comrades are hunted down and eliminated. You will see your entire operation fail. You will instead have a front-row seat to the death of every single one of your subordinates. Only then, when you understand the full extent of your failure, will your life be forfeit."
The words were not spoken with rage, but with a chilling, absolute certainty. It was a sentence far more cruel than any quick death. Gando's mind screamed. He thrashed against the invisible bonds with every ounce of his will. He pictured his chakra as a raging inferno, trying to burn through the phantom chains. But it was like trying to light a fire in a vacuum. There was no fuel, no oxygen. Only the cold, silent prison.
He saw Daichi turn away from him, those cursed eyes scanning the battlefield for his next targets. The humiliation was a poison more potent than any toxin. To be dismissed so utterly, to be left as a trophy, a piece of debris…
And then, something within Gando broke. Not his will, but something deeper. A seal, placed on his tongue by his village—a final, desperate contingency for a shinobi of his rank, laden with too many secrets to be captured alive. A forbidden technique that traded every last spark of life force for one, final, autonomous command to the body.
With a Herculean effort that had nothing to do with muscle and everything to do with soul, he forced a single, choked word past the paralysis, past the genjutsu, past the seal itself. It was a wet, bloody whisper, but it carried across the short distance with the force of a final verdict.
"Kai…!"
Daichi froze, halfway through a hand seal, and spun around, his Mangekyo Sharingan wide with shock. The paralysis should have been absolute.
Gando's body shuddered violently. A network of black lines, like cracks in pottery, spread across his skin from his mouth. The life was visibly draining from his single eye, but it was now filled with a triumphant, manic light. He had broken the control, if only for a second, by shattering the very vessel it sought to contain.
"Mangekyo…" Gando rasped, a trickle of black blood leaking from his lips. "A worthy secret… to die for. But since you've shown me your trump card… It's only right… you die here."
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