For a fraction of a heartbeat, a span of time so brief it existed only in the space between nerve impulses, Daichi was utterly, profoundly perplexed. It was not an emotion he was accustomed to. Annoyance, yes. Calculated anger, frequently. The cold satisfaction of a plan coming to fruition, often. But this… this was a glitch in his reality.
His Mangekyo Sharingan, the pinnacle of his power, the cursed gift born from his deepest sin, had been breached. The absolute, puppet-master's control he exerted over Gando's nervous system had, for an instant, flickered. It was like feeling a single marionette's string snap, a vibration of wrongness travelling back to his very soul.
'Impossible,'
That was his first, primal thought, mirroring Gando's own from moments before. But where Gando's shock had been one of brute force meeting an immovable object, Daichi's was one of fundamental law being broken. His ability was not a suggestion; it was a command written directly onto the flesh.
'How did he do it?'
The answer manifested instantly. He saw the black, spider-web cracks spreading from Gando's mouth, saw the terrifying, final light of triumph in the man's eyes. It wasn't strength that had broken the control. It was a death curse.
A failsafe. A seal designed to trade every last drop of life for one final, autonomous action. The situation wasn't just escalating; it was about to cascade into a cataclysm beyond his control. The air itself began to warp, pulling inward toward Gando's chest as if a miniature star were being born in his ribcage.
[Shuen no Mai] - The Dance of Puppets.
Daichi's Mangekyo ability was a peculiar one, unrecorded in the Uchiha clan's secret chronicles. It lacked the grand, destructive theatre of the Amaterasu's black flames or the temporal manipulation of Kotoamatsukami. It was subtler, more insidious, and in one-on-one combat against a powerful individual, it was arguably more devastating.
It didn't just trap the mind in an illusion; it trapped the body in a reality dictated by Daichi's will. It was an advanced genjutsu that bypassed the brain's higher functions to directly hijack the motor cortex and the peripheral nervous system. The victim became a marionette, their own flesh and bones turned into strings that Daichi pulled with his gaze.
They were fully aware, trapped behind their own eyes, forced to watch as their limbs moved against their will, a passenger in the vehicle of their own body. The sheer psychological torment of it was often a weapon in itself.
When he'd first awakened it, kneeling in the rain over the body of the only person he'd ever called a friend, the irony had been a bitter pill. Puppetry was the domain of Sunagakure, of sand and scorpions, not the fire and shadow of Konoha's Uchiha. But then he remembered the reason, the true reason, he had manipulated that friend, led him into a trap, looked into his betrayed eyes as the life left them. His wife's lifeless form, a casualty in a shadow war his friend had inadvertently started.
The Mangekyo was the prize for that ultimate betrayal. A puppet master's eyes, gained by turning a brother into a puppet. The universe, he decided, had a ridiculously cruel sense of poetic justice. But it had been worth it. It had to be worth it.
The ability, however, came with a brutal cost. The chakra drain was extreme, a constant, sucking vortex that made sustaining it in a prolonged battle a dangerous gamble. It demanded not just power, but an overwhelming mental acuity, a clarity of will that had to dwarf the target's own.
This was the true challenge; shinobi of Gando's calibre were rarely just physically strong. Their wills were forged in fire and discipline, protected by mental fortifications as sturdy as their physical defences. Forcing the Dance upon them was a battle of spirits fought on the battlefield of the target's own nervous system.
And now, one of those spirits had found a way to cheat.
"No!" Daichi roared, the word a conduit for his chakra and his will.
The effect was instantaneous and grotesque. Gando's body, which had been coiling inward for its final self-annihilation, violently unspooled. His arm, slamming toward his own chest, wrenched sideways as if the bone had been replaced with rubber. His back arched at an impossible angle, his head snapping back to stare at the smoke-choked sky.
A guttural scream, this one entirely his own, ripped from his throat. The distorting air around him stuttered, the gravitational pull faltering. He was fighting it, not with chakra, but with the raw, terminal momentum of the death seal. It was a macabre tug-of-war, Daichi's will against the irresistible finality of a pre-ordained suicide.
With a final, wrenching psychic heave, Daichi forced Gando's hand away from his chest. The compression of the chakra halted, collapsing with a sound like a thunderclap happening inside a glass jar.
"WHUMP!"
The backlash of disrupted energy sent Gando flying backwards, tumbling across the glassy ground to land in a broken heap.
Daichi gasped, sweat mingling with the blood on his face. The chakra cost of stopping that technique was astronomical. He felt a hollow ache in his core. But there was no time for recovery.
Gando pushed himself up, coughing up a thick glob of black blood. The seal's backlash was ravaging him from the inside, but the man was a monster of endurance. His single eye blazed with a hatred so pure it was almost transcendent.
"You… you dare!" he snarled, his voice a ruined thing.
His hands flashed through a series of seals—clumsy, slower than before, but still effective.
"Crystal Release: Exploding Hexagonal Shards!"
A volley of crystals, each the size of a kunai, shot from his palms. They weren't aimed with precision; they were a blanket of shrapnel, designed to overwhelm. Daichi's body moved on instinct, a blur of motion among the ruins. Swish. Thwip. Thwip. He wove between the projectiles, the air humming behind him as they shot past. Some impacted the ground where he'd just been standing, detonating with sharp cracks that sent shards of stone and crystal flying.
'It's not impossible,' Daichi thought, his Mangekyo still locked on Gando. The Dance was still active, but it was like trying to steer a charging bull with a thread.
The death seal had not completely negated his ability, but it had crippled its finesse. He could impose gross motor delays, cause spasms that ruined Gando's aim, but he couldn't stop the attacks entirely. It was a battle of attrition he was ill-equipped to fight.
Gando realised it too. A flicker of frustration crossed his pained face. This was not the glorious, explosive end he had envisioned. This was a messy, degraded struggle. He was a master sculptor, being forced to work with a cracked chisel. His hands came together again, a different, more complex sequence. The chakra that flared around him was darker, more volatile. "Crystal Release: Crimson Lotus Prison!"
He slammed his palms onto the ground. This time, the crystals did not fly through the air. They erupted from the earth itself, directly beneath Daichi's feet.
But these were different. They were a deep, venous red, pulsing with a dangerous light, and they grew not as projectiles, but as a cage, shooting up in interlocking hexagonal pillars to encircle him.
Reacting instantly, Daichi's hands formed a single seal.
"Lightning Release: Lightning Cutter!"
A blade of pure, white-hot lightning extended from his hand. He slashed at the nearest crimson crystal. The usual result—the crystal shattering under the elemental advantage of lightning—did not occur.
Instead, there was a sizzling, grinding sound. The lightning blade scored a deep black line across the surface, but the crystal held, its red glow intensifying.
'What?'
Daichi's mind raced. 'How are they resisting Lightning Release?'
He had less than a second to deduce the reason. The crystals weren't just denser; they were fundamentally different. They were saturated with Gando's own life force, with the bloody, chaotic energy of the death seal. They were no longer pure crystal; they were crystallized suicide notes.
The world dissolved into a brilliance of red.
"KABOOM!!!!"
The explosion was different from the first. It wasn't a wave of concussive force; it was an all-consuming flash of heat and light. The crimson crystals did not shatter; they detonated, each one a miniature sun. The hexagon of light consumed Daichi, a pillar of annihilation that shot into the sky. The shockwave was a physical ring of fire that flattened the surrounding rubble for a hundred meters.
From within the epicentre, Gando, doubled over, vomited a torrent of blood. His body was failing. The seal was consuming him. But he had to see it through.
Through the ringing in his ears and the haze of his own dying vision, he saw Daichi, who was on one knee, his body smoking. His Mangekyo was spinning wildly, the strain evident. Before Gando could even process the Uchiha's survival, Daichi's hands moved.
"Fire Release: Fire Bullet Jutsu!"
A compressed flurry of spheres of fire, no larger than a fist, shot from Daichi's lips. It was not a grand technique, but it was fast and precise, born of desperation.
"FWOOSH!" They struck Gando square in the abdomen, punching through his weakened defences. Gando grunted, staggering back, his hand flying to the sizzling hole in his gut.
And then he smiled.
He had staggered back directly toward Daichi. It was a feint. As the Uchiha Clan Head began to rise, expecting a final collapse, Gando spun with a speed that defied his mortal injuries. His arms wrapped around Daichi in a crushing bear hug.
"I finally got you," Gando whispered, the words bubbling with blood.
Daichi's eyes widened. He struggled, but Gando's grip was the final, unbreakable contract of a dead man.
"The mission…" Gando choked out as tiny, sharp shards of crystal began to emerge from every pore of his skin. They grew rapidly, encasing both of them in a grotesque, sparkling cocoon.
"Destruction… was always… our purpose. Killing the Clan Head of Konoha's strongest clan… is a worthy final sculpture."
Daichi could feel the heat building within the crystalline prison, could see the same deadly red glow starting to emanate from Gando's body, transferring to the cage around them. This was it. There was no escape.
Then the world was lit up in a final, brilliant flash of red.