"Ha... ha... brat, you've really angered me. Let's see if you can still stand there bragging in a minute."
Obito's breath was ragged, his body flagging, but Moke's contempt stoked something savage inside him. Even the mask on his face cracked with a tic-tac grid. He bellowed, and the Wood Human's forest of arms snapped out, hurling a storm of fists at Moke.
Same Wood Release, different terror. The Wood Human's hardness dwarfed Deep Forest Emergence. The flaming meteors raining from above could not even scuff its bark. Dozens of arms whipped forward, punches overlapping like waves until the barrage began to look a little like a thousand hands of legend. The sky near the tower vanished in smoke and exploding fire. For a heartbeat the world was nothing but impact and roar.
On the perimeter, Konoha's shinobi stood slack-jawed at the hundred-meter colossus striding through the Forest of Death. In this world, sheer size was a chasm most shinobi could not cross. They remembered how even an elite like Ibiki Morino had been helpless before one of Orochimaru's great serpents battering the village gates. Imagine the despair when the Nine Tails once faced a statue tens of times its own size with a thousand arms.
At last, beneath the bombardment, someone whispered in hopeless awe.
"No way... that Uzumaki boy is finished. This is the God of Shinobi's power. That intruder is too strong. Konoha is doomed."
Danzō twisted toward the speaker, a forty-something jonin from the civilian ranks, just in time for Hiruzen to cut him a warning look. No needless bloodletting. The village could not afford it. Hiruzen scanned the ring of faces and found even the Sarutobi were flagging.
He cleared his throat hard enough to turn heads.
"Be shocked at the intruder's Wood Release if you must. I have seen the First Hokage's own power. This is not his equal. And even if it were... do not forget."
He straightened, voice like a drawn blade.
"I, Hiruzen Sarutobi, am the Strongest Hokage of All Generations."
Danzō fought the urge to roll his eyes. Had the old man told that story so long he now believed it? But the line did what it needed to do. Backs straightened. Eyes hardened. He let it stand.
Hiruzen's cheeks warmed. On a good day he might handle a Wood Dragon. A Wood Human would cost him his life, and victory would still not be certain. He shifted the attention back to the field, cinched the battle bracers under his robe, and met Danzō's gaze. Between a hostile legend in a mask and a dangerous ally with a village address, Uzumaki Moke was the lesser evil.
Six Paths aside, I can trade one for one. He caught himself and amended the thought. With exceptions.
He remembered the redhead shattering the so-called Shinigami like glass and quietly added one more exception.
In the Dead Forest — no, a blasted desert now — the fight lurched again.
"So this is all you can do, Uchiha 'Madara'? Disappointing."
The voice rolled out from smoke and flame, even and cold but threaded with real scorn. Chakra thundered in Moke's skull, calling for ruin, yet the part of him that loved to show up a stage held the reins. Even his tone had been chosen.
Obito's vision burned. He poured more chakra into the Wood Human until the half of his body studded with grafts began to wither. White Zetsu's voice burbled in his ear.
"Obito-san, I can't keep this up. You still owe me a description of what poop feels like. You can't tap out before that or I'll have no motivation."
Obito ignored it. He would end this sham of a world. No red-haired upstart would bar the way. The Wood Human punched faster, wind howling like a thousand oaths. Then a sheet of blood-red light detonated out of the smoke. Moke's crimson pressure blew the flames and fumes apart, a gale that wound the clouds overhead into a black whirlpool as if the sky itself were a mouth.
Moke stood within it, a giant ice edge layered over his zanpakutō, holding a two-handed guard and batting the statue's fists aside with light, unhurried strokes. This was his world. Before each cut, wind massed at his back and drove the blade. Ahead of the edge, the air peeled away into a knife of vacuum. Around the Wood Human's knuckles the air thickened like syrup and seeded with needles of ice, bleeding the power from every strike. Speed meant nothing when the world itself told Moke where each fist would land. The wind whispered. His arm was already there.
His left hand slid across his face, five fingertips crackling with crimson and lightning.
"Mouse who calls himself Uchiha Madara, your borrowed strength is a palace on mist. You are a long road from the real man."
"Fine. Watch closely. Above the Shadow there is a truer tier. Even the lowest rung of it, when born from oneself, is beyond anything wrung from scraps and stolen parts."
Crimson lightning flared across his features. A bone-white mask snapped into place, the skull of a fox that flickered between sacred and profane. Ears like twin horns speared the air. A cloak of red settled over his shihakushō, trimmed at the hem with licking black flame.
He sketched the statue's hailstorm aside with a few lazy parries, thrust his left hand forward, and chanted in a cadence that rose and dipped like a spell being hammered on an anvil.
"Pride of the heavens, walls of forged iron. Dragons stride, lions roar, tigers bellow, wolves run. Sever sky from earth before the fall."
"Bakudō Number Eighty-One, Dankū."
Air congealed into a towering wall. The Wood Human hammered at it. It did not ripple.
"What is that... a jutsu? No, there were no seals. He just recited nonsense and made it real. A bloodline limit?"
Perched on the statue's crown, Obito stared. No seals, yet a barrier that stonewalled a giant. He fell back on the shinobi world's favorite category. If it made no sense, call it a kekkei genkai and bow to the ancestors.
On the ridge, heads nodded. Sensible. Comforting. Danzō's eyes gleamed with a familiar, ugly light. He had craved the redhead's power since the day the boy shattered the Dead God. Now a casual incantation was blocking a Wood Human. His right arm pulsed. That arm was a universal card slot. Bloodlines were cards. Why fight for a deck when all you needed was a few cells?
Shame the boy had yet to bleed. No matter. Cells could be harvested by gentler means. His mind was already paging through his operatives. Perhaps a kunoichi with the right... talents could coax a few strands of hair.
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