"DADDY!"
Haruno and Yukino Yukinoshita collapsed to their knees, both on the verge of breaking apart.
Haruno, who spent every waking moment behind a mask, and Yukino, who armored herself in thorns to keep the world at bay. Neither mask nor armor mattered now. They wailed like children.
Mrs. Yukinoshita, by contrast, held herself together. Her pupils contracted sharply, but she hadn't shattered the way her daughters had.
"Who the hell are you?!"
Shukaku couldn't help but curse.
The One-Tail had roamed the Land of Wind since the Warring States era and didn't recognize the Susanoo looming before it.
Makoto Nishikado strolled up to Shukaku with his hands in his pockets, sizing up the massive creature with a look that hovered between amusement and contempt.
"Naruto."
The single word cut through the chaos.
Naruto Uzumaki, still warped by the Nine-Tails' Chakra, flinched. The savage expression melted from his face.
Through Makoto, the Nine-Tails sensed it: that Chakra unique to the Uchiha bloodline, the kind that had dominated Tailed Beasts since time immemorial.
The fox wasn't stupid enough to press its advantage now. In the span of a heartbeat, Naruto's eyes shifted from feral crimson back to their usual bright blue.
"Take Sasuke back. Then bring him to see me. There's something I need to discuss with him."
Naruto nodded. "Got it."
Their relationship had always been solid, and watching Makoto demonstrate that kind of overwhelming power left no room for argument.
Naruto hoisted Sasuke over his shoulder and took off running.
"Hey! I'm talking to you! Are you deaf?!"
Shukaku erupted when Makoto continued to ignore it. Its belly swelled, and it spat out a massive sphere of compressed wind.
"Wind Release: Drilling Air Bullet!"
The blast was the size of a meteor. Every player on the ground went pale.
"Makoto!"
The Akizuki sisters, Ichinose Chizuru, even Yui Yuigahama grabbed at his sleeves on pure instinct.
Yui and Makoto had never crossed any lines beyond friendship, but four years of washing the man's feet every night had built a dependency that went beyond logic.
Besides, in a situation like this, he was the only one who could do anything.
A skeletal frame erupted from Makoto's body, even larger than before. One bony hand caught the Drilling Air Bullet mid-flight and hurled it straight back.
The image was almost identical to the legendary scene of Hashirama Senju using his Wood Golem to catch a Tailed Beast Ball and slam it right back.
The reflected blast detonated against Shukaku's abdomen, blowing a gaping crater through its bloated gut.
But the wound was already closing. Makoto glanced at the shattered earth below. Sand and dust swirled upward from every direction, streaming into the hole, rebuilding the One-Tail's body piece by piece.
Shukaku might have been the weakest of the nine Tailed Beasts in raw power, but in one respect it was the hardest to kill. As long as sand existed, it could regenerate forever.
"Ha ha ha! I'm invincible! INVINCIBLE!"
Shukaku howled with laughter.
Deep inside Naruto, the Nine-Tails watched the spectacle and wanted to groan.
That idiot... hasn't it noticed the kid's Mangekyou Sharingan?
All these years, and it's still the same moron.
"Pathetic."
Makoto's voice carried across the battlefield, and Shukaku's laughter died in its throat.
"What did you say?!"
The One-Tail whipped around to find Makoto standing with his hands on his hips, staring up at it with the exact same look Madara Uchiha once wore.
For a brief moment, Makoto had considered playing the part.
Channel Madara, tame a Tailed Beast, make it his personal summon. One look at Shukaku's face killed that idea. The thing was hideous, for starters. And clearly an idiot on top of that.
"Go back to sleep, Shukaku."
The pattern of the Eternal Mangekyou Sharingan spun wildly in Makoto's eyes.
Shukaku's enormous body seized mid-laugh, locking rigid as if every grain of sand had frozen at once.
That technique...
Haruno, still choking on tears over her father's death, felt her expression shift. The One-Tail's sudden paralysis reminded her of something she'd seen before: her own father, puppeted by the very same eyes.
Shukaku's pupils slowly morphed into three tomoe. Its consciousness dimmed, retreating back into the depths of Gaara's mindscape.
"No... damn it! I only just got out!"
One final roar of protest, and nothing more. Under the disbelieving stares of every player on the field, Shukaku's massive body shrank and warped until all that remained was the unconscious form of its jinchuriki.
"How... how is that possible?!"
Temari and Kankuro had just arrived in time to witness the end. Their eyes darted between Makoto and Gaara, unable to process what they'd seen.
In their minds, Gaara had always been synonymous with invincibility.
And yet before this man, he was nothing.
They weren't the only ones stunned. Kakashi and Asuma, fresh from their own battles, wore the same look of disbelief.
Several of them had recognized Shukaku, but none had imagined it could be defeated so casually.
"So that's the power of the legendary Mangekyou Sharingan." Kakashi murmured it to himself.
He possessed a Sharingan of his own and had heard whispers of the Mangekyou's existence, but the reality defied anything he'd imagined. Makoto had subdued a Tailed Beast as easily as swatting a fly.
But what disturbed Kakashi even more was a different question entirely.
Why did Makoto possess the Sharingan at all? It was obvious he'd had it before stealing Itachi's eyes. And how could someone who wasn't an Uchiha toggle freely between normal eyes and the Sharingan?
Too many questions. No answers.
"Someone get over here," Makoto called.
Silence. Everyone was still processing.
"I said, someone get over here!"
The bark jolted the crowd like a crack of lightning.
"Uh... y-yes, Makoto? What do you need?" Kakashi limped over with a forced smile, blood caked across every inch of him. Without Might Guy around, he'd taken a worse beating than he did in the original canon, though nothing life-threatening.
"Lock them up." Makoto jerked his chin toward the three Sand Siblings. "They're bargaining chips for negotiations with the Land of Wind."
"Stop!"
Baki, who'd been locked in a standoff with Asuma Sarutobi and Genma Shiranui, broke away and charged, desperate to rescue his Kazekage's children. He had no idea the "Kazekage" on the arena rooftop was Orochimaru in disguise.
"The hell do you think you're doing?"
Makoto's gaze swept over Baki, the Eternal Mangekyou flickering.
A wave of cold shot from the base of Baki's spine straight into his skull. He froze where he stood. Genma and Raido seized the opening, tackling him from both sides and pinning him to the ground.
"Makoto, Lord Hokage is still..." Kurenai approached, worry written across her face.
"I'm going to reinforce Sensei right now."
The words barely left his mouth before he vanished.
The assembled Jonin of the Hidden Leaf remembered all at once: during the pre-invasion briefing, Makoto had given a Flying Thunder God kunai to Hiruzen Sarutobi and both of his advisors.
"Thank goodness Makoto's here." Kurenai let out a breath, pressing a hand to her chest as a smile broke through. With that kind of backup, the war was as good as won.
Kakashi, however, kept his expression grim. Something still felt off.
The three Yukinoshita women knelt in the dirt, gathering the remains of the family patriarch.
Yukino understood now. Truly understood what this world could take from you. Tears streamed down her face as she scooped up handfuls of bloodied sand mixed with fragments of flesh.
Her teeth clenched so hard her jaw ached, and a single thought hammered through her mind on repeat:
I will get stronger.
I will.
Nearby, Saika Totsuka sat down hard on the ground. The adrenaline that had carried him through a life-or-death fight drained away all at once, and every emotion he'd been holding back came flooding in. The boy, prettier than most girls, broke into uncontrollable sobs.
The other players were in similar states, collapsed where they stood, crying tears of relief.
All of them weeping, but for different reasons.
Hachiman Hikigaya moved among his teammates, patting shoulders and murmuring reassurance. "It's over. It's okay. No more enemies."
Eriri Spencer Sawamura clung to her mother, face buried against her shoulder. "Mom, I want to go home... our real home..."
"I know, sweetheart." Sayuri held her tight. "We'll go home soon."
The Akizuki sisters were the calmest of the bunch. They'd been terrified, sure, but from start to finish they had believed, with absolute certainty, that Makoto would handle it. And he had.
Marina, ever kindhearted, began tending to the wounded around her.
Airi perked up with a thought. "Wait, this is the Sys—... I mean, this is the mission called the Konoha Crush operation, right?"
Every player within earshot went still.
Expressions shifted. Relief. Nostalgia. A quiet ache. They'd spent nearly five years in this world, and they missed home.
Especially players like Yui Yuigahama and Yumiko Miura, whose families hadn't crossed over with them.
Yumiko's eyes lit up with another realization. "I'm pretty sure the skills we learned here carry over to the real world, right?"
The mood shifted again. Despite everything they'd been through, more than a few couldn't suppress a grin.
Four years of ninja training was no small thing. Every technique they'd mastered would have real applications back home. The Transformation Technique alone could make someone obscenely rich.
"Don't even think about it."
Yukino's voice cracked like a whip.
"No one is using these abilities for selfish gain. Not a single one of you."
What a champion of justice.
Hachiman studied the flat-chested champion of justice, a flicker of grudging respect breaking through his usual cynicism.
He'd never been fond of Yukino. She'd always struck him as the textbook sheltered princess, the kind who'd never known real hardship.
Her attempt to recruit him and Eriri into the Service Club to hunt down Makoto had only cemented that impression.
She was the archetypal idealist: someone who believed the world should bend to match her principles simply because she willed it so.
But today, he saw her a little differently. The woman did practice what she preached.
There was one small problem, though.
Half the people here were stronger than her. Could she actually enforce that?
And even setting that aside.
Even if she could control everyone in this room...
Could she control Makoto Nishikado?