Time seemed to freeze in the split second. In it, came absolute silence.
In that very moment, he felt a sensation that he had never felt before. Like every cell in his body simultaneously stopped heeding his call.
His lungs refused to draw air. His veins bulged His spine tingled.
But none of it was natural, and none of it was his doing.
Something else pulsed under his skin, through his blood, but it wasn't anything he could grab hold of.
His skin stretched, his tissues expanded, and until ... SQUELCH!
Blood exploded outward as if his entire body had turned inside-out.
The earth beside overhaul was dyed red. In the distance, Eri froze mid-step, pupils shrinking in horror. What remained of Yuta hit the ground in a collapsed mass—the shape of a human only in the loosest definition. Muscle sheared into ribbons.
"What the .."
Overhaul's pupils shrunk to slits.
Bone half-dissolved. Organs slumped and barely intact. A thin, stubborn network of tissue clung together around a faintly beating heart.
"That's .."
The organs were covered, his skeletal structure held barely, and only a few strands of hair remained on his head. The vast major majority of his skin however, was another story.
It looked like a scene straight from a horror movie.
Nevertheless, one simple fact remained. 'I'm ... Still alive?' Yuta's consciousness was extremely hazy. The past second .. felt like he had fought a brutal war.
He could feel his cells vibrating—shifting—caught in a ceaseless struggle between being broken down and held together.
And for a moment, he had nearly lost. His quirk seemed to feel the same as the next action it took was completely out of his control.
It gave up.
Ceasing the struggle and yielding control over the cells it had lost, then hunkered down on what was left and refused to back down. As if possessing autonomous thought, or basic survival instinct, it prioritized his life above all else.
Held together by raw, desperate instinct… and his Quirk refusing to release anything else.
The result was right before him.
Blood rushes like a river, and even with his pain suppressed, everything hurt. If not, he would have likely passed out after the first second.
"Damn. He's still alive?"
Rappa's voice cut through the settling mist of blood, rough and almost impressed. He tilted his head at the twitching, barely recognizable mess on the floor.
Then turned to Overhaul.
"Oi… boss. You didn't hold back, right?"
Overhaul didn't answer immediately.
He just stared. Motionless. Silent. Eyes narrowed to thin, trembling slits behind his mask.
What lay at his feet was not a person. It wasn't even a corpse. It was a mistake—an impossibility—held together by sheer refusal to die.
"…No," he finally said, voice dark and low. "I didn't hold back."
Rappa blinked. "Then how the hell—"
"It shouldn't."
Overhaul's voice cut in. He took a step closer, boots squelching softly in the blood-soaked dirt.
His shadow dragged across Yuta's collapsed form.
Hands clenching.
"Normally, this shouldn't be possible."
His gaze scanned the remains—bone shards trying to knit, organs flickering between dissolution and form, strips of muscle twitching as if attempting to remember their shape.
And that faint heartbeat. Weak. Incoherent. Yet annoyingly alive.
'How?'
"No one has ever resisted deconstruction before,"
His eyes scanned Yuta's body intently. "Yet you can resist it. However barely you did."
Rappa folded his arms. "Tch. Looks more dead than alive to me."
"That's what makes him valuable," Overhaul said, rising to his feet.
"Rappa. Bring him. We're taking—" The body twitched. With energy from who knows where, the head raised to stare overhaul dead in the eye. Overhaul scoffed.
"Still intent on .."
The next action happened before he could finish. Inside Yuta's body, a metamorphosis had taken place. Under some unseen force, his cells began proliferating rapidly. Alongside it came a guess of energy previously in short supply.
The shape in those scarlet eyes morphed into something new, blood pooling from the sides.
Three points condensing and expanding to form a black and red pattern.
'Huh?' Overahul took a step back. It was too late though.
The moment the pattern settled fully in Yuta's eyes, color drained from the world. With tunneling vision, everything shifted before resetting into something else.
By the time he gained his senses, he was no longer in the alley In Machida but an empty wasteland. A crimson sky stretched endlessly in all directions. No sun. No clouds, and a blood-red moon hanging overhead, casting everything in deep scarlet light.
The ground beneath his feet was solid. Cracked. Like dried earth that had seen no rain in centuries.
Overhaul's eyes darted left, then right. His breathing remained steady. Controlled. But his fingers flexed.
"Where is this."
His voice echoed. Once. Twice. No response.
His brows narrowed.
'Tch.'
Just before he could do anything else
"So this is the power of the Mangekyō Sharingan, huh?"
Overhaul's head snapped up.
Yuta stood twenty meters away.
Or what was left of him.
The same ruined organs. The same exposed ribs. Bone jutted through skin. His organs were visible through gaps in his torso. He looked exactly as he had in the real world—except he was standing upright like the damage meant nothing.
And those eyes—those black and red spiraling eyes—were open, bleeding fresh trails down what remained of his face.Yuta wasn't looking at him.
He was looking at his own hands. Flexing fingers that shouldn't exist. Examining the state of his body with fascinated curiosity.
"No wonder Sasuke was drunk on power," Yuta muttered, closing his eyes, voice distant. "If I had this... saving Eri would have been a breeze."
Overhaul's eyebrow twitched.
"Mangekyō… Sharingan?" he repeated in a low tone. "Human delusion truly has no limits. Even after I showed you the difference in our abilities, you still think you can take Eri from me."
His expression cooled further.
"I don't have time for this—"
Yuta's eyes snapped up.
The ground beneath Chisaki fractured like cracked glass, then erupted. Dozens of black spikes shot upward in a single instant. No warning or buildup.
They pierced his legs, his chest, his shoulders— His body jerked.
His face twisted—first in instinctive shock, then fury—then frozen mid-expression as more spikes erupted through his spine and skull.
Yuta's voice followed a second later, quiet and cold.
"Let's see how you like it."
In the real world, Overhaul's body convulsed.
Rappa was stunned.
"Boss?!"
SQUELCH!
Holes tore open across Overhaul's body. Blood burst outward from his legs, his chest, his neck—as if invisible spears had run him through.
Exactly where they had in the wasteland.
He didn't even have time to scream.
His head snapped back. His left eye exploded. His consciousness was snuffed out before he could use his quirk on himself.
Overhaul's body twitched slightly, and collapsed lifelessly under everyone's gazes.
___
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