"...!"
On the perimeter, Konoha's shinobi were stunned. A forest of titanic trees had erupted to blanket the entire training ground. Deep Forest Emergence the signature of the First Hokage.
Why did that masked man wield a Wood Release even Konoha had lost? Awe curdled into fear.
Shinobi are not fools. They had at least seen Moke around the village, but the way the Third and the others bristled at the masked intruder made it clear he was an enemy.
Shimura Danzō's gaze turned flinty as his fingers brushed his right arm. He weighed what he saw. His own Deep Forest Emergence could not cover one tenth of Uchiha "Madara's." Yes, Danzō already knew this man called himself Madara after their prior contact. He had doubted the claim. Now he could taste only bitterness.
I need to tell Orochimaru. One arm is not enough. We raise the dosage.
The trees came in a rush, and Moke understood this technique would drink an enemy's chakra as fuel. He tried cutting a few trunks with his zanpakutō and saw that it did nothing that lasted. The gaps he carved did not survive a heartbeat before new growth surged in to fill them.
If the sweep of the blade is too narrow, then change the tool. His free left arm swelled and transformed, blooming into a crimson talon more than ten meters long. A few lazy swats, hardened with armament, and everything within reach a swath of trunks and roots was ground to ash. Internal destruction. That was the beauty of armament.
At last, the regrowth could not keep up, and a broad clearing opened.
But an opposite problem surfaced. Lack of real combat experience. Even if the forest could not truly threaten him, he still lacked a reliable way to hurt Obito.
The Wood Release gave Obito a breather. His Kamui timer reset.
Deliberately show an opening, let Obito drag me into the Kamui space, then mark its coordinates with my own space power?
No. He had no idea how that pocket overlapped the world outside. He had no guarantee he could return quickly. He made a note to himself. He needed Kakashi to awaken the Mangekyō as soon as possible so they could record that pocket's coordinates.
Hidden inside a living trunk, Obito stared at that all too familiar crimson claw. A crazy thought flashed across his mind, one he himself found absurd. He banished it after a quick test with a summoning. The redhead did not react. Fine. Ridiculous theory discarded.
He had his own dilemma. Moke could not touch him, but his techniques seemed unable to harm Moke as well. Worse, the redhead fought without ever giving him a clean angle at the eyes. Every time Obito tried to snare him with Sharingan genjutsu, the man had already shifted. Not once had their gazes properly met.
Two fighters short on real wars suddenly found themselves in sync on one point. Stalemate.
Moke broke first. He set his blade upright before him and breathed a single word.
"Bankai. Da Qian World."
The release rippled out from the sword, invisible yet absolute, washing to the very edge of the Forest of Death.
Bankai Da Qian World. Everything around them became his world. Within it, the stronger Moke grew, the more absolute his control. Elements. Then time and space. One day even the will of the world. In this bounded sky and soil, there would be one god.
His zanpakutō shed its old skin. The slim katana became a two-handed giant taller than Moke himself, blue-white like living lightning. The hilt lengthened again, and ice-like spikes budded near the guard and pommel. The fox-faced guard unfurled into a six-pointed star. The blade thickened and split into twin edges, one broad and one fine. Between their trailing arcs the air twisted like a wound in space. Lightning ripped out of that shimmer and ran the edges like a roaring dragon.
It looked uncannily like a legendary stormblade Moke remembered from another life. Thunder was the scepter of kings. Fitting that the Sword of Dominion crackled with it.
"Judgment Day."
Scarlet flashed along the steel. Meteors blossomed out of nothing and plunged earthward, mantled in fire, wrath beyond counting. They struck from every vector. The forest's hunger could not replenish as fast as the world-devouring rain tore it apart. Obito fled from trunk to trunk, phase humming. He tried the safety of the ground. No good. He did not believe the redhead could sustain this coverage for long.
Then the jutsu failed him. His favorite mayfly dive refused to take. The ground itself rejected him.
He kept the mist-body up, ramped his chakra, and forced the trees to regrow. Even that felt wrong. The space here had thickened, turned stubborn. His Mangekyō shuriken trembled and his eye bled threads of red before, finally, the phasing took. But the cost bit deep. In this strange world the drain was brutal. He guessed he had maybe three minutes of mist, not five.
The fight stretched into a tug-of-war. One stood aloft in the air, dead calm now that the beast's claw had faded. His shihakushō streamed in the wind. Every meteor curved wide of him, bending to an invisible will to strike the ground at his feet instead. In this domain, even coincidences conspired for him.
Yet the Deep Forest was the badge of the God of Shinobi. The trees sucked at life with relentless jaws, from beasts, from soil, from everything. Their growth had slowed to a stubborn crawl, but crawl it still did. Moke frowned. He could deny the mayfly entry with earth, but he could not yet forbid Wood Release from drinking the land.
He became what this world demanded impassive and sovereign and spoke without a flicker of feeling.
"Winter, descend."
Fire still fell from the sky. From the world's bedrock, a different power surged, ancient cold rolling out in a single breath. The land froze to permafrost. The trees struggled to pierce the iron crust. Worse, with the ground locked, Deep Forest could no longer feed.
Chakra that had been sluicing from nature turned on Obito instead. His face went ashen. He killed the technique.
Two minutes bled from his phasing clock. No more delay. He clapped his hands, veins standing out, and roared with everything he had. "Wood Release. Wood Human Technique!"
A colossal arhat rose beneath him, lifting him to Moke's height. He looked up and saw those detached eyes, focus gone, like the redhead had already judged him unworthy. Rage prickled. He sucked in another breath.
"It is not over, brat."
He forced more chakra into the construct. Behind the arhat, disjointed giant hands thrust up, upright like a grove. The face of the statue softened, a hint of mercy blooming in its carved lines.
"Ha... ha..." Obito panted, a conqueror's snarl fighting with the wheeze in his chest. "You are strong. Name yourself. Before my Wood Human, you have no chance of victory. Still, you are worth remembering."
Moke's look was pure contempt. "If you had the thousand-armed True Several Thousand Hands of the First, I would not promise a win. But this little Wood Human of yours is not worthy of my name."
Even the same technique told the difference. Hashirama's statue had looked alive. Obito's was only an imitation.
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