All of Japan had plunged into panic.
On the Tokyo TV live broadcast, a colossal figure clad in heavy armor stalked through the burning ruins, its face a mask of carved fury.
Strewn around it in every direction lay the wreckage of Japan's most advanced tanks and armored vehicles, twisted steel mingled with drifting smoke in a scene ripped straight from the end of the world.
When the broadcast first aired, most viewers assumed they were watching a clip from some superhero blockbuster, or maybe war footage from some distant conflict in the Middle East.
After all, they had the armies of their 'American Daddies' watching their backs. Who would dare cause trouble on Japanese soil?
But the Susanoo held their gaze and wouldn't let go.
What is that thing? Some kind of new weapon?
Then the horror set in. The crumbling buildings in the background were unmistakable, their signage written in crisp Japanese. Every last shred of denial evaporated.
BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.
A column of Type 10 tanks, Japan's newest and finest, roared onto the field.
Their barrels swung in unison toward the towering gray-black giant and opened fire.
Thunder rolled across the city. Smoke billowed in great curtains. And the armored colossus stood untouched, as though the shells were rain against a mountainside.
The camera zoomed in. There, at the heart of the giant's torso, stood a young man. His expression was electric, eyes blazing with a fierce, exhilarated light.
Viewers who followed the news recognized him immediately.
Makoto Nishikado.
The close-up caught the slow spread of his grin, wider and wider, as he raised his right hand.
The Susanoo moved in perfect sync. Its right arm rose. The massive gray-black chainsaw clutched in its fist screamed to life, a shriek of grinding metal that split the air, and swung down in a single devastating arc.
Every tank that had encircled him was cleaved clean in half.
Along with the crews inside.
Living men, bisected at the waist.
Scalding blood erupted from the wreckage, painting the shattered armor in red.
The violence hit viewers like a physical force. Across the world, people screamed.
Many clapped their hands over their eyes, desperately trying to convince themselves this was just an impossibly realistic horror film.
But the thing that shattered that illusion wasn't the Susanoo alone.
On the ground, squads of fully armed Japanese infantry had attempted to swarm Makoto Nishikado's position. Against power on this scale, they were insects throwing themselves at a bonfire.
The broadcast captured a group of young women weaving between the soldiers like ghosts, each unleashing techniques that defied every known law of physics.
One raised her hand and exhaled a fireball the size of a truck. Flames engulfed an entire platoon in an instant. Another summoned a roaring water dragon that surged forward and swallowed dozens of soldiers in a churning wall of white water.
Before long, the citizens of Tokyo heard a sound that froze their blood: the shriek of jet engines overhead.
A formation of F-35 fighters streaked across the sky, vectoring straight for the city center, and began dropping ordnance.
Missiles rained down. Fireballs bloomed. Buildings collapsed.
This was real.
Every detonation, every crumbling facade, every pillar of smoke hammered the same impossible truth home.
Then the armored giant changed.
The Susanoo shed its heavy plating, its frame contracting, streamlining into a leaner, more agile silhouette.
Susanoo, Second Form.
An instant later, legs erupted from the humanoid figure's lower body. It stood upright, Makoto Nishikado still sealed perfectly within its chest.
Susanoo, Fourth Form.
He bent the Susanoo's newly formed knees and launched skyward.
Straight into the descending curtain of missiles.
Explosions hammered its body one after another, fire swallowing the figure whole in a chain of blinding detonations. Inside their cockpits, the fighter pilots' hearts pounded against their ribs.
Did we get him? Is it finally over?
A spinning chainsaw wreathed in roaring black flames punched through the wall of smoke and carved a fighter jet, pilot and all, cleanly in two.
The remaining pilots went white.
"Break off! Break off now!"
"Fire! Keep firing!"
As the jets scrambled to re-engage, the Susanoo's free hand whipped forward, hurling a storm of gleaming projectiles.
Nobody saw what happened next.
One moment the fighters were banking into attack runs. The next, every single one of Japan's most advanced jets had been sliced apart like paper, tumbling from the sky in flaming pieces.
Burning wreckage rained across Tokyo's wards, smashing through buildings, sparking infernos, feeding the chaos.
In the span of a heartbeat, Tokyo had become a war zone.
Susanoo Flying Thunder God.
The gray-black Fourth Form blurred across the sky and landed, light as a cat, on the broken pinnacle of Tokyo Tower.
"Is that all?"
Inside the Susanoo, Makoto Nishikado turned his head slowly toward the lone helicopter still circling above, the one belonging to Tokyo TV.
In the cabin, Rena Mizunashi and her crew felt their hearts seize.
"Not enough." He raised his voice, projecting each word toward the chopper with deliberate clarity. "Go get your daddy. Otherwise..."
Before the sentence was finished, the Susanoo's chainsaw swung downward at Tokyo Tower itself.
The entire upper section of the tower sheared apart and crashed to earth, pulverizing the ground beneath it. Dust and debris erupted skyward in a colossal plume.
"That's what happens."
One minute later. Across the Pacific.
Inside the Pentagon, a room full of uniformed officials stared at their screens and erupted into chaos.
"Have we reached the Okinawa base?"
"Confirmed. The George carrier is ready to move on command!"
"The George alone won't cut it! Scramble the Michael too!"
"Is that level of response necessary? He's just one man..."
"Are you out of your goddamn mind? If we don't eliminate him now, when? He just challenged the United States on live television in front of the entire world!"
"Yes sir!"
Okinawa. Home to America's largest overseas military installation in Japan.
The aircraft carriers George and Michael, two of the largest in the world, sat at anchor in the waters off the coast.
Every deck on both carriers buzzed with frantic activity, the fleet lurching into a state of readiness it hadn't seen in decades.
"Battle stations! Move it, you worthless sacks of..."
A five-star admiral bellowed from the bridge as thousands of servicemen surged into action, the highest-tier combat alert shrieking across every intercom.
Their target was singular: Makoto Nishikado, currently occupying the center of metropolitan Tokyo.
"Fire!"
The admiral's command cracked across the fleet.
Not just the carriers. Every strategic asset the U.S. had deployed in the region opened fire simultaneously.
A deluge of cruise missiles, naval artillery rounds, and anti-air ordnance streaked toward downtown Tokyo like a meteor shower.
The sky above the city split open with a deafening roar. Hundreds of warheads and shells wove trails of fire across the blue, staining it an angry, molten red.
Below, millions of Tokyo residents huddled in shelters and storefronts, watching the broadcast with slack jaws and hollow eyes.
The asteroid that killed the dinosaurs probably looked something like this.
Perched atop the severed Tokyo Tower, Makoto Nishikado watched the incoming storm of ordnance and murmured to himself, "No nukes, huh?"
The missiles converged on a single point.
Explosion after explosion tore the air apart in rapid succession. Black smoke boiled upward like a living thing, devouring the sky over Tokyo entirely.
"Yes!"
Aboard the carrier's bridge, the admiral watched the city center dissolve into scorched earth on his monitor, a satisfied grin spreading across his face. No one could survive that.
On the outskirts of Tokyo, Yui Yuigahama and the others who'd retreated stared at the screen, hearts in their throats. Her voice cracked, wet with tears threatening to spill.
"Ma... Makoto, is he... is he okay?"
Whatever else he was, they'd spent nearly five years at his side. The feelings were real, and none of them wanted him dead.
Beside her, Yumiko Miura and Hina Ebina said nothing. Their fists were clenched white.
Ichinose Chizuru's thoughts flashed to the Akizuki sisters, Utaha Kasumigaoka, and the others who'd been fighting alongside Makoto Nishikado in the thick of it. She bit her lip.
She'd run too fast. It hadn't even occurred to her to stand and fight with him.
By the time she'd realized, the military assault had already begun. At her level, there was no way to push back through to the center of the battlefield.
And it wasn't just their group watching.
All of Japan was glued to the broadcast. Half the planet, more likely.
Even players who'd been inside other worlds before felt the shock hit them no less than anyone else, because the power Makoto Nishikado was displaying now was on a completely different plane from what he'd shown in the Naruto world.
Yukino Yukinoshita's face was ashen, terror and awe knotted together in her chest. The gulf between herself and that man had never felt so vast, so absolute.
Mrs. Yukinoshita's nails dug into her palms, her eyes bright with something close to prayer. "Please be alright..."
The bombardment tapered off. Silence crept back in.
On the monitors, downtown Tokyo was a wasteland of ash and rubble. The admiral aboard the carrier pronounced his verdict: Makoto Nishikado was dead.
"Shame we can't recover the body for study. A genuine superhuman." One of the American officials muttered, greed flickering behind his eyes..
"Well, next best thing. Round up those girls who were with him."
"Issue the order. Prepare to..."
"Is that it?"
The return-to-base order died on the admiral's lips.
A mocking voice cut through the broadcast signal, ringing out across the world once more.
A shadow burst through the wall of smoke. Massive. Impossibly massive. A silhouette the size of Tokyo Tower itself materialized before the cameras.
Every face watching went white.
The shape that emerged dwarfed the Fourth Form Susanoo several times over, a titanic specter hovering above the battlefield inside a vast, pulsing elliptical shell of energy.
Something was gestating within it, radiating a pressure so immense it seemed to compress the air itself.
And there, standing calmly atop the monstrosity's crown, was Makoto Nishikado. His expression was relaxed, almost amused.
"Japan, America, China... at the end of the day, this is all this world has to offer."
His voice carried through the speakers, quiet at first, then rising to a roar that reached every corner of every screen:
"Tremble before my Perfect Susanoo!!"
The word Susanoo sent a fresh jolt through Japanese viewers.
Why was this monster invoking the name of a god from their own mythology?
The colossal egg-shaped mass began to expand, swelling at a terrifying rate.
Makoto Nishikado raised one hand. His fingers curled slowly into a fist.
"Solidify."
A single word.
The elliptical sphere of Chakra erupted outward, sprouting enormous arms and legs, reshaping itself into a titanic armored deity that looked ready to punch a hole through the sky.
"It's... it's huge!"
Inside a classroom at Totsuki Academy, Erina Nakiri's jaw dropped, her famed God's Tongue peeking out past parted lips, shock written across every feature.
Totsuki was packed with people Makoto Nishikado knew.
Yukino Yukinoshita, Hayato Hayama, Kotonoha Katsura, and many others had been evacuated here when the crisis engulfed Shuchiin Academy.
The two schools had always maintained good relations as fellow elite institutions, and Totsuki's campus, built out in the countryside to accommodate its farms and culinary research facilities, made it a natural refuge.
Tomoya Aki stared at the screen, at the god-figure that blotted out the sky, and his knees buckled. He hit the floor, voice trembling.
"So this is... his real power..."
Without warning, the Perfect Susanoo unfurled a pair of enormous black wings from its back and shot into the air like a loosed arrow, hurtling southwest at blistering speed.
The Tokyo TV helicopter couldn't begin to keep pace.
"Where's he going?"
Alice Nakiri, still pale from what she'd witnessed, turned to the person next to her.
Hachiman Hikigaya blinked. "Looks like... southwest."
Southwest.
The color drained from every face in the room. Alice, born and raised in Northern Europe, took a beat longer to grasp the implication.
Southwest meant Okinawa.
And everyone knew what sat in Okinawa: America's largest military base in Japan.
About two minutes later, phones across the country buzzed violently.
A YouTube notification filled every screen.
[Streamer Makoto Nishikado is LIVE: Killing Your Daddy. Come Watch!]
Brains short-circuited nationwide.
What now?
YouTube's official team later admitted they hadn't had much choice. Makoto Nishikado had sent them a direct message: push the notification, or the next thing he destroyed would be their headquarters.
Trembling fingers tapped the link. The video opened on Makoto Nishikado grinning at the camera, one eyebrow cocked in a signature smirk.
Then the lens panned downward.
Below stretched an endless expanse of deep blue ocean. And there, sitting dead center, were two colossal aircraft carriers: the Michael and the George.
The sea began to churn, the surface roiling as if the ocean itself was recoiling in fear.
A blade of light over a kilometer long fell from the heavens, plunging toward the two carriers.
The flash was blinding, white as noon even through phone screens. Viewers flinched and shielded their eyes.
From the southwest, a boom rolled across the islands like the earth splitting open.
When the light faded and everyone looked again...
The carriers were gone. The sea itself had been cleaved in two.
A wound in the ocean, fathomless and razor-straight, stretched all the way to the horizon and beyond, with no visible end.