Chapter 176: Half a Hairpin
Stelle skidded to a halt, the dust settling around her boots. A wide, unapologetically sinister grin split her face as she looked down at her fresh catch.
"Black Zetsu, my old friend," she purred, her voice dripping with dark amusement. "Long time no see."
Without missing a beat, she clenched her fingers. The glowing edges of the Sealing Barrier instantly contracted, compressing inward with a sharp hum. Inside the cube, Black Zetsu let out a muffled gag as the spatial pressure squeezed his inky body until he was flattened into something resembling a burnt pancake.
Black Zetsu was utterly dumbstruck. His bulging yellow eyes stared up at the woman he knew as Ida Mutzuki in absolute, unadulterated horror. His mind spun, violently rejecting the sheer absurdity of the situation. How could there possibly be this many coincidences in the world?
Mie had just been clashing with Mutzuki's ultimate technique. Zetsu had merely been lurking in the shadows, a silent observer playing it safe. Then, Mutzuki's attack was suddenly repelled by a massive shockwave. That exact shockwave had launched her backward, and she had happened to crash-land on the precise millimeter of dirt where he was hiding. Not only that, but she had somehow mastered the absurd ability to cast a one-handed Sealing Technique instantly, which happened to snap shut around him the millisecond she touched the ground.
Once again, he was completely at her mercy.
Was she casting high-level Fuinjutsu instantly now? Zero hand seals? Zero delay? The fluid, practiced motion made his non-existent stomach churn. It felt as though she had rehearsed this exact sequence tens of thousands of times, specifically engineering it just to capture him. The moment her skin brushed his, the barrier had snapped into existence automatically. Even Mie's sealing arts, which were terrifying in their own right, required a lengthy startup sequence. This? This was completely unscientific!
Stelle casually tossed the glowing square barrier in her hand like a baseball, her boots crunching over the scorched earth as she strolled forward. A serene, thoroughly terrifying smile danced on her lips. The invisible cascade of system notifications chiming in her head—a beautiful flood of panic-induced mood values—was enough to send her into a state of pure euphoria.
Given this miraculous stroke of luck, she absolutely had to teach her favorite living ATM a proper lesson.
"Black Zetsu, oh, Black Zetsu," she mused aloud, tapping a finger against her chin. "You've finally fallen into my hands again. How should I process you this time? How about slicing you into a hundred and eight neat little segments?" She paused, her smile widening into something feral. "Actually, three hundred and sixty segments might be more aesthetically pleasing. You truly have no idea how deep our grudge goes, do you?"
She pressed her palm flat against the top of the barrier. A surge of dense, colorless chakra flared to life around her fingers.
Inside his little glowing prison, Black Zetsu felt a wave of deep, instinctual terror wash over him. The sheer density of that colorless energy screamed danger; he knew, down to his very core, that letting that chakra touch him would result in a fate worse than death. His inky form trembled violently against the barrier walls. If literally anyone else in the ninja world had caught him, he wouldn't be this afraid. Actually, no one else could catch him.
But Ida Mutzuki was the anomaly. He genuinely wasn't sure if she possessed some hidden, logic-defying technique capable of permanently erasing his existence. He mentally swore a vicious oath: he was never setting foot near Konoha again. Every single time he came near this cursed village, he met with catastrophic misfortune.
"I bet you don't dare," Zetsu sneered, forcing his voice to remain steady despite the internal panic clawing at his mind. "Your chakra reserves are nearly tapped out. The Second Great Ninja War is raging outside, and your precious troops need their commander. If you kill me and fully provoke a being like Mie, how will you possibly maintain your four-sided front?"
He pressed himself against the barrier glass, his yellow eyes narrowing. "You know you two are evenly matched right now. No matter which battlefield he decides to obliterate, it will cause immeasurable losses to Konoha. You are only one person, Ida Mutzuki. You cannot protect everyone. I advise you to be sensible and release me."
Stelle almost laughed out loud.
Black Zetsu, you absolute idiot. You just leaked critical intelligence, do you even realize that? You were so terrified I wouldn't connect the dots about this black-robed man's identity that you practically handed me his name.
She arched a delicate eyebrow, shifting her gaze toward the distant figure of Mie. She casually shook the glowing cube, rattling the hostage inside like a pair of dice.
"Your little companion is in my hands," she called out, her voice carrying over the ruined battlefield. "The advantage is mine. How do you plan to respond?"
"Tsk. What a useless piece of trash."
Mie's voice was cold, echoing with heavy disdain. The black-robed man stood tall, his hands clasped loosely behind his back as he stared at the captured spy. He tilted his head, genuinely appearing to weigh the pros and cons of simply leaving the creature to die.
That single, callous sentence was a critical hit. It pierced straight through Black Zetsu's chest. He didn't possess a biological heart, but in that agonizing moment, he felt the distinct, phantom pain of a blade twisting between his ribs.
He really had become a burden. He was dead weight. His grand, overarching plan had been to use Mie to drain Mutzuki's strength, paving the way for the Four Nations Allied Forces to crush Konoha. Instead, he was the one dragging the entire operation into the mud. A suffocating wave of dejection washed over the ancient shadow. What had he even been doing for the past thousand years? It suddenly felt as though his entire existence amounted to absolutely nothing.
Ding! Ding! Ding!
The system chimes rang incessantly in Stelle's mind. Her Top Donor was truly putting in the work today, practically hemorrhaging negative emotions. A genuine, bright smile reached her eyes as she addressed Mie.
"He's right about one thing. My chakra is running on fumes, but yours must be scraping the bottom of the barrel too. So, we have two choices." She held up a finger. "First: a fight to the death. Naturally, even if I fall first, you aren't walking out of here alive. If I don't kill you, my subordinates will tear you apart."
She held up a second finger. "Second: you exchange those pretty Rinnegan of yours for this pitch-black blob, and then you crawl out of Konoha."
The Rinnegan user's oppressive gaze shifted back to Black Zetsu. The sheer contempt radiating from him was thick enough to choke on. "I propose a third choice," Mie replied, his tone glacial. "I leave on my own, and abandon this trash to you."
Black Zetsu: "..."
He had made a fatal, catastrophic miscalculation. He had underestimated Ida Mutzuki yet again and allowed himself to drift too close to her orbit. For the first time in his impossibly long life, his ultimate fate rested entirely in the hands of others. The helplessness was nauseating. He swore to the heavens, with every fiber of his being, that he would absolutely never step foot in Konoha again. Not for anything. Even if someone handed him Ida Mutzuki's severed head on a silver platter, he would refuse to attend the funeral.
A suffocating silence descended over the cratered battlefield. The two titans reached a tense stalemate, neither twitching a muscle.
Trapped in the middle, only Black Zetsu knew the true depths of his own panic. He really, truly did not want to die here.
The brief, agonizing minute of deliberation expired. Without a single word of warning, both sides struck simultaneously. Stelle slammed her palm flat against the barrier glass. Pure, concentrated Yin-Yang Release flared to life, piercing straight through the glowing walls and stabbing directly into Black Zetsu's core.
Zetsu shrieked in absolute horror. The moment that pitch-black, primordial energy invaded his form, his body began to aggressively melt. Like a block of ice tossed onto a scorching summer pavement, his inky mass hissed, visibly shrinking and thinning out. If she kept this up for even a few more seconds, he would be completely dissolved, erased from the world without a single trace.
"Mie! Save me! Save me!" Zetsu wailed, his pride completely shattering. "You can't complete the plan without me, you know that!"
At that exact moment, Mie finally moved. He thrust his palm forward, fingers splayed wide. A terrifying, invisible gravitational pull erupted from his hand, locking directly onto Stelle. It was an absolute attractive force dictated by the power of the Rinnegan's rules, something that could not be easily defied.
Stelle grunted, her boots digging deep trenches into the dirt as she gripped Zetsu's cage tightly. The overwhelming gravity dragged her slowly toward the black-robed man. But after sliding only a few feet, she abruptly dug her heels in, halting her momentum entirely.
It became a brutal, grinding tug-of-war. The air between them warped and groaned under the sheer pressure of their conflicting energies. After a dozen seconds of agonizing stalemate, the truth became painfully clear: neither could physically overpower the other in this state.
Acting on pure battle instinct, both warriors released their holds simultaneously. They launched themselves into the air, the last dregs of their chakra flaring wildly as their ultimate techniques materialized in their hands. A blindingly bright, purple Flame Bomb roared to life in Stelle's grasp, while a colossal, roaring Fire Dragon forged from Mie's dark chakra coiled around his arm.
Exhausted, battered, and running on empty, both combatants poured every last ounce of their remaining lifeforce into this single, decisive strike.
The two apocalyptic masses of fire collided in mid-air. The scorching chakra fluctuations compressed for a fraction of a second before detonating into a blinding, world-shaking explosion that consumed the sky.
Miles away, near the shattered gates of Konoha, Uchiha Kagami had just returned from the front lines.
The distant boom of the explosion echoed over the horizon, painting the clouds in bruised shades of purple and black. Suddenly, a glint of light caught his eye. Something small and broken was fluttering down from the ash-choked sky.
He reached out, his gloved fingers closing gently around the falling object. He opened his palm.
Resting against the leather was half of a shattered hairpin. It was a uniquely styled piece, inlaid with a cracked purple gem that he recognized instantly. The delicate silver edges were completely charred, warped, and deformed by unimaginable heat.
Kagami stood frozen. The ambient noise of the rushing medics and shouting shinobi faded into a dull, ringing silence. He suddenly felt as if his own heart had violently stopped beating. His fingers trembled as he gripped the ruined metal.
"Stelle..."
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