Title: The Black Arrow
The battlefield was veiled in swirling dust and rising smoke. Across the cracked, steaming earth, rainbow-colored lightning still flickered in lazy sparks each one dancing for a moment before vanishing like a ghost.
The silence was almost sacred.
Then
From within the haze, a voice rose steady, low, almost reverent.
"…such powerful energy…."
A figure stepped forward, slow and measured.
It was Lord Arcade.
His body shimmered with a subtle glow, but it wasn't the fiery Shen of before. No his skin now carried the pale elegance of polished wood, faintly veined with green. His once human-like form had changed, thinned his features elongated. His limbs moved like silk. His eyes gleamed with the knowing stillness of ancient trees.
"I had to ascend," he said, staring at his palm. "Into my Ascension State: One With Yggdrasil."
He smiled faintly.
"You're really something else, boy."
And then he raised his hand.
From the broken earth, a tremor pulsed.
Sakamoto's eyes snapped wide.
The ground beneath him split and from the gaps, they rose.
A hundred giant wooden branches thin as spears, but towering like the limbs of sleeping gods shot upward. They twisted as they climbed, each one groaning with divine pressure, their bark covered in sacred runes. They formed a forest of titans in a matter of seconds, all looming high above Sakamoto like executioners waiting for command.
Sakamoto's eyes darted left, then right, and he leapt back
Just as several of the branches cracked down beside him, striking with the force of hammers.
He rolled, staff in hand, and struck one of the branches with a rising swing crack! it shattered cleanly in two. He landed, twisted, and struck another incoming limb.
But the pieces regrew immediately.
New wood extended from the stumps, coiling like vines, and came at him again.
He didn't have time to think.
In an instant
All one hundred moved.
"Godseed Forest: Blown." Arcade's voice echoed high above.
At the tips of each branch, a pale flower unfurled and then burst.
A wave of invisible pressure exploded outward and the branches came alive.
They twisted midair, turned downward, and launched toward Sakamoto.
He swung once, twice breaking two more but then the rest converged.
WHUMP.
The world went dark.
Dozens of branches slammed into Sakamoto at once, pinning him down, driving him into the earth. Bark crushed against his body. Roots twisted around his limbs. The hundred branches folded in, curling inward like a blooming cage.
They sealed him.
Silence fell again.
Above, Arcade hovered in the air, arms crossed.
"Why do you fight a battle you know you cannot win?" he called out. "Why don't you listen? Why not accept what fate has already decided for the lesser beings of this world?"
No answer came.
Just the faint, distant thrum of voices within.
The wood groaned as it shifted, adjusting to Sakamoto's every breath, every twitch. The bark was warm with unnatural life, pulsing faintly as if mimicking a heartbeat. He lay crushed under the immense pressure, limbs pinned, lungs constricted.
Above, Lord Arcade hovered like a judgment passed down from the skies, his expression twisted with quiet disdain.
"Why do you persist in this nonsense?" he asked, voice calm, rhetorical. "Why do you struggle to protect those who cannot protect themselves?"
His eyes glowed faintly green as he spread his arms.
"They are weak. Without Shen. Without strength. And therefore without worth."
His gaze lowered.
"You. You could join me. You could rise above the parasites."
Still no answer.
Because beneath the ground, inside the cocoon of root and bark Sakamoto was not listening to him.
He was listening to something else.
Deep in his subconscious, he sat cross legged in the dark, surrounded by a field of silence. But slowly, softly, a pulse filled the air.
Then voices.
Not Arcade's. Not Jushin's.
They were older.
And they were his.
The monkey ancestors.
They did not shout. They did not command.
They spoke in rhythms chanting, humming, whispering through time.
Sakamoto's breathing evened out. He leaned into the sound.
In the vision realm, coiled Shen began to rise around him like steam calm, controlled, no longer wild or chaotic. His posture straightened. His eyes opened clear, radiant.
In the real world, the Sakamoto pinned beneath the crushing trees stirred.
Wood cracked faintly.
Then
He spoke.
"Because they're human," he said, his voice barely more than a breath.
The roots trembled.
"Because even if we have Shen… even if we carry divine power…"
He lifted his head straining against the weight and glared upward.
"That doesn't make us gods."
Arcade's face shifted, his lips tightening into something between anger and incredulity.
Sakamoto's voice hardened.
"Even if we were," he said, "why shouldn't we protect them?"
He roared the last word.
The air itself recoiled.
The roots still coiled around Sakamoto, but they no longer felt suffocating. The moment he spoke his truth a wave of energy pulsed out from him. It was subtle. Controlled. No scream of Shen. No wild burst.
Just resolve.
Above, Arcade's lips curled.
"You're just like your father," he hissed. "Always the preacher. Always playing guardian to people who'd trade your blood for food if they were hungry enough."
He extended his arm.
"Then I must kill you."
His fingers curled inward almost gently then spread wide like a lotus blooming.
"Creation Order: Calamity Core Meteor Judex."
In his palm, a tiny black orb blinked into existence.
It was quiet.
It hummed not with sound, but with the deep, crushing silence of gravity itself. Space warped around it. Light bent away. And then
It vanished.
Sakamoto's eyes widened.
He strained against the wood again, his muscles flaring but the more he struggled, the tighter the roots pressed. They responded with equal force, crushing inwards, binding him to the earth with divine efficiency.
Then
The sky burned.
The black orb reappeared above him, expanded now into a flaming celestial mass. It spun slowly, coated in a red-black aura, with a visible core at its heart dense, humming, ancient. It radiated heat and pressure like a newborn star made of nothing but wrath.
Sakamoto couldn't move.
He couldn't breathe.
Gravity, it had pinned him in place before the meteor even touched him.
Arcade's voice echoed from above like the crack of doom.
"Farewell, little Prince of apes."
The meteor's core rippled with growing intensity, flames wrapping tighter around its center. Sakamoto's vision blurred. His knees buckled. It was happening again he could feel himself breaking apart at the seams.
But then
THHHHHHHHHHHHUNK.
A single black arrow tore through the sky.
It moved silently, cutting through space with such precision it made no sound until it struck the meteor's core.
CRACK.
A heartbeat passed.
Then
The meteor shattered.
Exploded.
A cyclone of gravitational collapse sucked the flames inward, dissipating the mass into fragmented void energy. Ash spread across the sky like the remains of a star.
Sakamoto fell, rolling hard along the earth. He groaned, but the black energy inside him surged, sealing wounds before they could bleed. His chest, scorched and blackened moments ago, began knitting back together with a dark gleam.
A gust of wind passed beside him.
He coughed. "What… the hell…?"
He lifted his head.
There on the far side of the battlefield three figures stood.
Two unfamiliar,Kenzy and Gansu cloaked, hardened, their eyes already locked on him.
The third stood between them, taller, broader his silhouette wrapped in black mist, a colossal bow dissolving slowly into his back.
It was Draven's Sephiroth warrior.
Sakamoto's lips parted in surprise as the wind howled again and Draven reappeared beside him in a blink.
The man's armor bandage gleamed obsidian, eyes fierce beneath his tangled black hair. He sniffed once, unimpressed.
"Buck boy," he said dryly, "you've gotten weak."
Sakamoto blinked, barely upright. "You're the guy… from the tournament… the one with the weird fire and revenge."
Draven grinned. "Tch."
He reached down, offering a hand.
Sakamoto took it.
"You ran off last time," he said, coughing.
Draven snorted. "Ran off? You must still be dizzy from that meteor hit. I let you breathe."
Sakamoto chuckled weakly. "Guess you're not here for moral support."
Draven turned toward Lord Arcade, who hovered above the ruined battlefield, now visibly agitated.
"I've got scores to settle with that man,"
He glanced at Sakamoto. "Don't be a bother and don't slow me down"
Both of them raced forward a streak of light and dark energy rippled behind them.