The night over Kirigakure wasn't merely dark; it was a suffocating blanket woven from perpetual mist and the brooding weight of conflict. High on a jagged, basalt outcrop overlooking the village, shrouded in the thickest tendrils of fog, a figure stood silhouetted against the faint, sickly glow of the village lights below. It wasn't human. This was White Zetsu and Black Zetsu, merged, a symbiotic horror observing the chessboard.
White Zetsu shifted restlessly, "This is taking forever!" he groused, his voice a wet, gurgling rasp that cut through the damp silence.
"Look at them down there! Scuttling like ants, building ships, whispering secrets… all for this pathetic, drawn-out squabble! When do we act? When does the real plan begin?"
Black Zetsu remained still, his shadowy form barely distinguishable from the surrounding gloom. His voice, when it emerged, was a low, chilling hiss, devoid of inflexion yet carrying millennia of calculated intent. "Haste breeds error, my excitable half. A masterpiece, especially one as intricate, cannot be rushed. The war is the kiln, the suffering the fuel. Let the Shinobi stoke the fires themselves."
His single, slitted red eye, embedded within the darkness, glowed faintly. "As the pressure builds… the desperation deepens…" He paused, the hiss deepening slightly.
"Perfect conditions for the seeds of chaos to take root. Our puppet in Kiri consolidates. Our influence spreads like mycelium through the cracks of their fear."
"Mycelium? Consolidates?" White Zetsu scoffed, a wet, unpleasant sound. "It's boring! Watching them posture and bleed… I want to see the despair! I want to feel the chakra when the tailed beasts are ripped free! When Madara-sama walks the world again! When Mother—"
Suddenly, White Zetsu froze mid-tirade. His yellow eye widened, then snapped shut.
"Uuuurgh…"
A low, involuntary groan escaped their mouth; it was more shock than pain.
Black Zetsu's shadowy form rippled, his red eye narrowing to a dangerous slit. The air around them grew colder, heavier.
"What is it? Report." The hiss was sharper now, laced with command.
White Zetsu's eye snapped open, wide with disbelief and a flicker of something akin to primal fear. His voice, when it came, lost its usual mocking tone, becoming flat, serious.
"One of my clones… it's gone. Destroyed. Completely."
"Where?" Black Zetsu's hiss was ice. "Which front? By whom?"
"The Kumo-Konoha-Kiri skirmish line," White Zetsu rasped, his gaze turning distant, accessing the fragmented, final sensations.
"Near a Kumo outpost… Miyahira. It was monitoring the joint Kiri-Konoha attack… specifically the Swordsmen from this village and that Konoha brat, Renjiro Uzumaki."
He shuddered, "The feedback… it wasn't just destruction. It was… unmaking."
"Renjiro Uzumaki…" Black Zetsu's shadow deepened, swirling with dark intensity. "This is problematic. We need the remnants; it was a gift from Master. We need to know how it was destroyed."
Without another word, their merged form sank. Not jumping, not falling, but flowing into the dark, wet rock of the outcrop as if it were water. "SHLOORP-GLURK."
The ground offered no resistance, swallowing them whole with a sound like mud closing over a sinking stone. They became one with the earth, moving through the bedrock with impossible speed and silence, a subterranean nightmare hurtling towards Kumogakure, especially the now ruined outpost of Miyahira.
=====
The scene a few hundred meters from Miyahira was one of utter desolation. The pre-dawn light, grey and unforgiving, revealed a landscape scoured by violence. The air hung thick, not with Kiri's mist, but with the acrid stench of ozone, burnt wood, spilt blood, and the underlying, sickly-sweet smell of decay. Bodies lay scattered like broken dolls – numerous shinobi in their flak jackets, their expressions frozen in the final moments of shock and agony. The ground was cratered, churned into muddy slurry in places, hardened glass in others.
Near the centre of the ruin, three familiar figures lay close together, unmoving amidst the debris. Honda Minako, her fierce face slack and pale, a deep, charred wound visible on her side. Katsu, the meticulous strategist, lay half-buried under fallen masonry, one hand still clutching a partially unrolled, blood-soaked explosive tag scroll. Sakurai Yuji was sprawled face down, his back a ruin of torn fabric and dark, wet stains. The silence here was absolute, heavy with the weight of extinguished lives.
A few meters away, backlit by the ruin of a collapsed watchtower, knelt Ayame. The Jinchuriki of the Six-Tails was a wreck. Her Kiri flak jacket was torn and scorched, her dark hair matted with blood and grime. She trembled violently, her breaths ragged, wet gasps that tore at her throat.
"Huuuh… Huuuh… Koff!"
Each exhale punctuated by a painful cough that speckled the mud before her with crimson. She braced herself on one arm, the other pressed tightly against her abdomen. Her face, usually sharp and composed, was a mask of exhaustion, pain, and simmering, impotent fury.
On her abdomen, visible through the torn fabric, a complex seal glowed with a faint, malevolent purple light. Its intricate lines pulsed rhythmically, actively suppressing the immense chakra of Saiken, the Six-Tails, coiled within her. It was a cage of pure chakra, preventing the beast's power from flooding her veins, leaving her terrifyingly vulnerable.
Through gritted teeth, blood trickling from the corner of her mouth, Ayame forced the words out, her voice a raw scrape against the silence, yet vibrating with unyielding defiance:
"You… will pay… for this!"
A figure stood before her, partially obscured by the shifting haze of dust and lingering chakra residue. Tall, clad in dark, non-descript attire that blended with the gloom, he radiated an aura of cold, detached power. His face was shadowed, but his voice, when it came, was clear, deep, and laced with a contempt so profound it felt like physical pressure.
"How dare you?"
He took a single, deliberate step forward, the mud barely yielding beneath his boot. "You are the uninvited guest. The trespasser. The rabid beast brought to our doorstep by traitors and fools."
He didn't shout. The calmness was more terrifying than any rage. Ayame looked up, meeting the shadows where his eyes should be. She saw no pity, no hesitation, only the absolute certainty of her subjugation. She tried to push herself up, to summon even a flicker of chakra past the suffocating seal, but her body betrayed her, trembling violently. The purple glow on her abdomen flared slightly, sending a fresh wave of nauseating weakness through her.
He moved faster than sight. One moment, he was several paces away, the next, he was directly in front of her kneeling form. There was no wind-up, no tell. Just a blur of dark motion, and then his fist, wreathed in a faint, crackling aura of condensed chakra, slammed into her jaw.
"KRA-KOOM!"
The impact wasn't just physical; it carried a shockwave of pure force. Ayame's head snapped back with brutal force. A sickening crack echoed – not bone, but the sound of displaced air and devastating kinetic energy. Her body lifted clean off the ground, twisting limply in the air before crashing back down into the mud and shattered stone five meters away.
"THUD-SPLASH"
She landed on her back, utterly still, arms splayed, eyes wide open but unseeing, a thin trickle of blood tracing a path from her temple into the dirt. The faint purple glow on her abdomen pulsed once, erratically, then stabilised, holding the beast firmly in check.
The attacker didn't spare her fallen form a second glance. His head tilted slightly, as if listening to something beyond the immediate ruin – perhaps the distant cry of a scavenger bird, perhaps the subtle shift in the wind carrying the scent of approaching chakra signatures. His shadowed gaze swept the carnage – the bodies of Honda, Katsu, Yuji, the unconscious Jinchuriki, the utter devastation.
Then, without a sound, without a puff of smoke or a flicker of light, he was simply… gone. One moment, a solid, menacing presence amidst the ruin, the next an empty space where he had stood.