The world had been reduced to a flat, smoking plain of glass and rubble. At the center of this self-made hell, two figures stood as monuments to their own mutual destruction.
On one end, Gando wavered on his feet. Each breath was a ragged, wet draw that ended in a hacking cough, spraying a fine mist of blood onto the already stained ground.
Daichi,on the other hand, stood encased in a titan of shimmering, orange-bronze energy. The Susanoo, the legendary chakra construct of the Mangekyo Sharingan, was a sight to strike dread into the heart of any shinobi.
It radiated a palpable pressure, making the air hum. Yet, even within this ultimate defense, Daichi was far from unscathed. Twin streams of viscous blood, darker than the night, poured from his eyes, tracing crimson paths through the grime on his cheeks.
And most strikingly, his left eye was different. The brilliant, sinister pattern of his Mangekyo was gone. In its place was a dull, clouded grey, the pupil lifeless and fixed. The light had been extinguished forever, the ultimate price paid in a moment of absolute necessity.
'This bastard...' Gando's thought was a venomous spike of pure hatred that cut through the pain.
He remembered the final, desperate embrace, the crystallization of his own body, the building glow of a point-blank self-destruction. He had felt the victory in his grasp. Then, in the instant before the red flash consumed everything, this orange armor had flickered into existence, just for a heartbeat, just long enough to deflect the absolute zero point of the blast. Daichi had not merely survived; he had cheated death itself using a power Gando's village had only theorized about.
From within the translucent skull of the Susanoo, Daichi's voice echoed, distorted and amplified, like a god speaking from a throne of energy. "Do you still want to go ahead with this, Gando? Look around you. Your corps is decimated. Your mission is a failure. Lay down your life with what little honor you have left."
Internally, Daichi was pleading. The pain in his right eye was a white-hot brand searing into his brain. The void where his left eye used to be was a constant, chilling reminder of his mortality.
'I've already sacrificed an eye to trap this damned bastard. I cannot lose another. I cannot die here, not when the clan is so vulnerable.'
Gando did not answer. He lacked the breath for a retort, and any words would have been a lie. He knew, with the cold certainty of a dying man, that his fate was sealed. The curse mark on his tongue was not just a tool; it was a terminal disease. His chakra coils were fraying, his life force burning away to ash.
He had, at most, three more attacks left in him—three final, glorious expressions of his art before the flame was snuffed out. But his goal had narrowed, sharpened to a fine point. Honor was meaningless.
The mission was secondary. All that remained was the primal need to tear down the man who had humiliated him, to prove that his destruction could reach even this legendary defense. He would take Daichi with him, or die trying.
Daichi watched the silent, defiant glare. "I'll take your silence as an answer,"
The Susanoo moved. It was not a blur of speed—it was too massive for that—but a deliberate, earth-shaking stride. The colossal armored fist, larger than Gando's entire torso, pulled back and then shot forward like a siege weapon, aiming to crush the Iwa shinobi into paste.
"CRACK-BOOM!"
Gando didn't dodge. He met force with force. He crossed his arms, and a hexagonal shield of deepest amber crystal, thick as a fortress wall, materialized before him.
The Susanoo's fist connected, and the sound was not of shattering crystal, but of a mountain splitting. The shield exploded, but it held just long enough for Gando to be hurled backward, skidding across the glassy ground, his boots carving deep furrows. He came to a stop, coughing up more blood, but he was alive. His first major counter.
"Is that all?!" Gando roared, his voice tearing from his ruined throat. "A fancy suit of armor? Let me show you real power! Crystal Release: Twin Dragon Projectiles!"
He slammed his hands together. From his palms, two massive serpents of jagged, emerald crystal erupted, twisting around each other as they shot through the air. They didn't aim for the Susanoo's torso; they coiled like pythons, one around each of the construct's massive arms, their crystal fangs sinking into the energy armor with a screech of protesting chakra. The Susanoo staggered, its advance halted.
Daichi grunted inside the core, feeling the immense pressure. The crystals weren't just binding the Susanoo; they were vibrating, resonating with a frequency designed to shatter. 'He's targeting the structural integrity.'
Gando saw the hesitation. "Now! Shatter!" He made a crushing motion with his hand.
'KRA-KOOOM!'
The twin dragons detonated simultaneously. The resulting explosion was a focused, internal blast designed to break things from the inside out. The Susanoo's arms were vaporized up to the elbows, and great fissures spiderwebbed across its chest plate. With a sound like a giant bell cracking, the entire orange construct flickered wildly and then dissolved into motes of fading chakra.
Daichi was left exposed, kneeling on the ground, panting heavily. The backlash from the destruction of his Susanoo was a physical blow.
Gando didn't celebrate. He was already moving, his body screaming in protest. "First one!" he wheezed.
This was his chance. He charged, his right hand crystallizing into a massive, spear-like point. He aimed for Daichi's heart.
Daichi looked up, his one good Mangekyo spinning furiously. "You break one…" he whispered, his voice thick with pain and defiance. "I'll just make another."
"WHOOSH!"
A second Susanoo erupted around him. This one was identical to the first, its orange light blazing back to life, fully formed and intact.
Gando's crystal spear shattered against its chest plate as if he had struck a diamond mountain. The force of the impact sent him reeling backward, his arm numb with the feedback.
Despair, cold and sharp, pricked at Gando's heart for the first time. He had poured a significant portion of his remaining life into that attack. And it had been negated so effortlessly. The chakra disparity was monstrous. He was a mortal trying to punch a god.
"No… NO!" he screamed, the sound half-cough, half-roar. He wouldn't accept it. He flared his chakra, burning years of his life away in an instant. The ground around him erupted in a forest of sharp, red crystals—the same life-force-infused shards that had proven so potent before.
"Crystal Release: Scarlet Thorns!"
The crimson forest shot towards the Susanoo, intent on impaling it from all sides. The Susanoo responded by simply crossing its newly formed arms in front of its face. The crystals impacted with a continuous, deafening "CRUNCH-SHATTER-CRUNCH!"
They were powerful, each explosion carving chunks out of the Susanoo's armor, but they couldn't achieve a critical breach. The construct stood firm, weathering the storm.
When the last crystal had exploded, the Susanoo was pitted and scarred, but still standing. Gando was on his knees now, his body visibly withering. The black cracks on his face had spread, looking like porcelain on the verge of total collapse.
"Second one…" Daichi intoned from within his fortress.
Gando looked up, his vision blurring. The towering orange giant seemed to mock him. He had given everything, twice, and it hadn't been enough. The seal's power was fading fast; he could feel the cold hand of death closing around his heart. He had one attack left. One final chance.
With a final, soul-rending scream, he channeled every last spark of his being.
"JUST DIE! CRYSTAL RELEASE: FINAL SUN!"
He didn't create a projectile or a shield. He turned his own body into the weapon. He became a nexus of light, a miniature star of condensed crystalline energy, and launched himself at the Susanoo in a suicide dash.
The impact was blinding. "FWOOM!!!"
A sphere of white-hot energy expanded, consuming Gando completely and slamming into the Susanoo. This time, the defense did not hold. The armor cracked, then splintered, then vaporized under the absolute, finality of Gando's self-annihilation. The second Susanoo was utterly obliterated.
The light faded, leaving an even deeper crater. Silence descended, broken only by the crackle of distant fires.
And then, from the center of the devastation, a third Susanoo materialized. It was slower this time, the orange light slightly dimmer, but it was whole. It was unbroken.
Daichi stood within it, his face a mask of utter exhaustion and pain. He looked across the short distance.
Gando was still standing. But he was not moving. His body was frozen in a final, defiant stance, his arm outstretched from his last, desperate charge. But his eyes were vacant. The fanatical fire was gone. There was no breath, no tremor of life. A single, final trickle of blood ran from his nose. He had not been struck by a physical blow. He had died the moment he saw the third Susanoo form, his spirit broken, his heart literally bursting from the combined strain of the seal and the absolute futility of his efforts. He had died of despair.
The Susanoo flickered and dissolved. Daichi collapsed to his knees, then onto his hands, vomiting a small amount of blood onto the scorched earth. The strain had been immense. He looked at Gando's lifeless, standing corpse, a monument to stubborn pride.
He then raised a trembling hand to his face, his fingers brushing against the dead, grey orb of his left eye. A bitter, hollow laugh escaped his lips, echoing softly in the ruins.
"I can't believe he actually forced me to use the Izanami," Daichi muttered to the uncaring night.
The destruction caused by Gando shattering the first two Susanoo was nowhere to be seen. Because, in the reality Daichi had rewritten with his left eye's sight, those first two Susanoo had never been destroyed at all. The entire, grueling battle after his near-death experience had been a illusion woven into reality, a script where he had allowed Gando to exhaust his life force against phantoms, all while the real Daichi conserved his energy, waiting for the man to simply burn himself out. The ultimate genjutsu, cast not on the mind, but on the world itself.
It was a cruel, devastating trick, a testament not to Daichi's power, but to the cold, calculating ruthlessness that had made him Clan Head. Gando had fought with the passion of a dying artist. Daichi had fought with the logic of a man playing a game of shogi, sacrificing a piece to ensure checkmate.