The monster roared, a sound that wasn't just noise—it was a shockwave.
Naruto scrambled backward, his boots sliding in the mud, dragging Sylvie with him. She was squinting, her eyes streaming tears, blindly clutching his jacket.
"Naruto?" she whispered, her voice trembling. "Is it big? It sounds big."
The ground beneath us trembled with a rhythmic, wet thud-squelch, like a giant heartbeat echoing through the mud.
"It's huge," Naruto choked out. "And ugly."
Arashi—or the thing that wore Arashi's face—lunged. The massive crab pincer on its right side snapped shut, shearing through a concrete pillar like it was cardboard. Debris rained down around them. Concrete dust exploded outward, coating my tongue with the dry, chalky taste of pulverized limestone.
"Shadow Strangle Jutsu!"
Shikamaru's shadow shot across the clearing, wrapping around the monster's ankles.
SNAP.
The shadow shattered instantly. Arashi didn't even slow down. He was too strong, his chakra too chaotic for the Nara technique to hold.
"Mind Transfer!" Ino yelled, her hands formed in the seal.
She aimed. She fired.
Two seconds later, she collapsed into Chōji's arms, gasping. "It's too loud!" she screamed, clutching her head. "There are too many voices in there! It bounced me right out!"
"Human Boulder!" Chōji roared, expanding into a spinning sphere of destruction.
He slammed into Arashi's side.
BONK.
Arashi didn't budge. He backhanded the spinning Chōji with a spider-leg arm, sending the Akimichi flying down the street like a skipped stone. The impact rang out like a bell—a hollow GONG that vibrated deep in the chest cavity.
"Damn it," Asuma growled. He and Anko stood side-by-side, unleashing a torrent of fire and wind.
The flames washed over the monster, but Arashi just shook them off, his mismatched skin sizzling but unburnt. The smell of singed hair and cooked meat wafted across the clearing, thick and greasy, making the bile rise in my throat. He barreled through the inferno, his eyes locked on Sasame.
"TRAITOR," the collective voices gurgled.
He reached into his back. With a wet shlucks, he pulled out the massive Pincer Scissors—Kamikiri's weapon, now fused to his spine.
He hurled them.
The metal blades spun through the air, aimed directly at Sasame, Naruto, and Sylvie.
"Move!" Naruto screamed, trying to shield the girls.
WHOOOSH.
A massive blast of pressurized air slammed into the clearing from above. It hit the spinning scissors mid-flight, knocking them sideways. They embedded themselves in a factory wall with a deafening CLANG.
Sparks showered down from the impact point, fizzing out in the mud like dying fireflies.
Naruto looked up.
Perched on the fire escape of the factory was a figure in Sound fatigues. His arms were heavily bandaged, bulky, and reinforced with metal plating and thick air vents. He looked like a cyborg prototype.
"Zaku?!" Naruto yelled.
Zaku Abumi scowled. He jumped down, landing with a heavy thud between Naruto and the monster.
"Don't get the wrong idea, Leaf trash!" Zaku shouted over the roar of wind leaking from his vents.
He aimed his palms at Arashi. The vents hissed like a steam engine about to blow. Heat shimmered above the exhaust ports on his arms, smelling sharply of superheated ceramic and ozone.
BOOM.
He blasted a shot of air pressure that staggered the monster.
"Lord Orochimaru just paid for these upgrades!" Zaku snarled, flexing his plated arms. "If this idiot Arashi destroys the town and scratches my paint job, I'm the one who gets recycled!"
A loose screw rattled inside one of his arm braces—tink-tink-tink—a tiny mechanical flaw in his intimidating display.
He looked back at Naruto. His eyes were hard, but not murderous.
"You learn any fancy new tricks since I last saw you?"
Naruto wiped his nose with his thumb, a grin spreading across his face.
"Believe it."
"Then do it!" Zaku turned his air-cannons back on Arashi. "I'll keep the freak busy! I'm not dying in a basement because some Fūma loser has a martyr complex!"
Naruto looked at Zaku's vents. He looked at the swirling air currents. An idea sparked in his brain—crazy, dangerous, and perfect.
"HELP ME!" Naruto shouted.
He clasped his hands together.
"Shadow Clone Jutsu!"
POOF.
A clone appeared beside him. They both held out their hands. Blue chakra began to swirl in Naruto's palm, forming the sphere of the Rasengan.
"ZAKU!" Naruto yelled. "SUPERCHARGE ME!"
Zaku glanced back, confused. Then he saw the rotation. He saw the wind chakra.
"Ugh," Zaku groaned. "If I calculate the air currents wrong, we're both gonna blow up. But at least I won't have to work overtime, I guess."
Zaku aimed his vents at Naruto's hand.
"Decaying Airwave!"
He didn't fire a blast. He fired a controlled stream of high-pressure air, matching the rotation of the Rasengan. The spinning chakra emitted a high-pitched whine, like a jet turbine starting up, vibrating the air until my teeth ached.
WHIRRRRRRR.
The blue sphere didn't just spin; it screamed. It gorged itself on the extra wind, bulging outward, expanding until it was three times its normal size. The wind whipped Naruto's jacket violently, the fabric snapping loud enough to be heard over the roar of the Jutsu. It wasn't the refined Rasengan Jiraiya had told him about—it was unstable, jagged, and wild.
"NOW!" Zaku roared.
Naruto sprinted forward, the massive ball of chakra tearing up the ground beneath him.
Arashi turned, raising his crab claw to block.
"RASENGAN!"
Naruto slammed the sphere into Arashi's back.
KRA-KOOM.
The impact was blinding. The wind shredded the Casualty Puppet jutsu apart. The biological horror unraveled. The extra limbs were torn away, dissolving into red mist. The sound was horrific—a wet slop like a bucket of water being thrown onto pavement—as the excess biomass lost its cohesion. The faces of the dead Fūma screamed one last time and vanished.
Arashi was thrown forward, crashing into the dirt. The monster was gone. Only a broken man remained.
Silence fell over the clearing.
Arashi lay on the ground, his body shrinking back to normal. He gasped, his grey eyes clearing, no longer cloudy with madness. Steam rose from his skin in the cold night air, his body temperature plummeting rapidly back to human levels.
He looked at his hands. He looked at the destruction.
"I..." Arashi whispered. "I failed."
He reached for a kunai lying in the dirt. His hand shook.
"I failed the clan," he sobbed. "Orochimaru will kill them all. It's my fault."
He reversed the blade, aiming it at his own heart.
"Stop."
A hand clamped around Arashi's wrist.
Jiraiya stood over him. He wasn't angry. He looked... sad.
"If you want to save your clan," Jiraiya said softly, "killing yourself is going to leave one less person to help them."
Jiraiya's shadow stretched long across the dirt, engulfing Arashi in a protective darkness that blocked out the factory lights.
Arashi stared up at the Sage. "You... you would spare me? After what I became?"
"I've seen monsters," Jiraiya said. "You're just a man who got lost in the dark."
Naruto stepped forward, helping Sylvie stand.
"He's right," Naruto said. "You gotta live, believe it."
"I can't see anything," Sylvie added, squinting at a blurry shape she assumed was Arashi. "But I agree. Suicide is bad for the complexion."
I reached out, my fingers brushing against rough tree bark, grounding myself in a world I couldn't currently see.
Sasame ran past them. She threw herself onto Arashi, burying her face in his chest.
"Cousin!" she cried.
Arashi dropped the kunai. He wrapped his arms around her, weeping silently.
Anko watched the scene, leaning against a tree. She pulled out a pack of cigarettes.
"Whatever, dude," she muttered, lighting one up. She exhaled a cloud of smoke.
Asuma walked over, his lighter already out. He lit his own cigarette.
"Too bad your Uchiha brat bailed," she says around the smoke. "Kid would've loved this. Cousins crawling out of industrial hell to play house again."
Asuma side-eyes her. "They're distant kin."
"Still kin," she shrugs. "Sometimes that's enough."
Shikamaru eyed them from the side. "Does that even do anything?" he asked, genuinely curious.
Anko shrugged. "Wanna try?"
Asuma nudged her with his elbow. "Don't taunt the boy, Anko-chan."
Anko narrowed her eyes at him. A dangerous smile played on her lips.
"Keep calling me 'chan'," she warned, flipping the cigarette so the burning cherry pointed outward like a weapon, "and I'll share it with you instead."
She motioned the ember toward Asuma's beard.
The cherry glowed bright orange, a tiny, threatening star in the gloom, smelling of clove and danger.
Shikamaru sighed, looking up at the smog-filled sky.
What troublesome adults, he thought. What a troublesome mission.