Setsuna felt a sudden wave of disorientation wash over him.
What had just unfolded with Urashiki felt like an unsettling fever dream.
Inside the cockpit, warning sirens immediately flared across the interface.
"Warning: Unstable brainwave patterns detected," the Gundam's auxiliary AI alerted. "Neural synchronization rate dropping. Pilot must stabilize emotional baseline immediately!"
Setsuna sucked in a sharp, grounding breath to regain his focus.
"Setsuna, stay sharp!" Yusuke shouted over the comms. "He's using time-based ninjutsu!"
"He just rewound the local timeline," Yusuke added urgently.
Hearing that, Setsuna's fingers danced across his command panel. "Auxiliary AI, playback the visual feed from five seconds ago."
The panoramic display instantly replayed the footage: Kuuga's crushing kick landing squarely on Urashiki, followed immediately by the Gundam's beam saber cleaving the Otsutsuki in two—before the entire sequence violently reversed.
Urashiki's temporal rewind could rewrite localized spacetime, but it possessed no power to alter existing physical data, like the encrypted logs of the Gundam's optical sensors.
Every microsecond of the anomaly remained faithfully recorded in the system memory.
Setsuna inhaled sharply through his teeth.
"A god-tier cheat code like that is going to be a massive pain to deal with," Setsuna muttered.
"Don't panic," Yusuke called out, analyzing the situation. "The more broken an ability is, the heavier its toll. Space-time techniques always carry massive side effects or require a lengthy cooldown between uses."
Setsuna gave a firm nod.
"Auxiliary AI, monitor for temporal anomalies and alert me the second reality desyncs again."
"Command logged. Real-time predictive tracking active," the AI responded with a cold chime.
The Gundam disengaged its beam sabers, docking the hilts into their recharge racks while drawing its beam rifle.
The heavy muzzle snapped upward, locking dead onto the floating Otsutsuki above.
Realizing his secret technique had been exposed, Urashiki's expression warped with irritation and venom.
"Heh. I didn't expect a pair of lower lifeforms to see right through my ninjutsu," Urashiki sneered down at Yusuke.
'I've mastered thousands of techniques, including space-time manipulation,' Yusuke thought with a scoff.
Outwardly, the Kamen Rider offered a cold, dismissive smirk.
"Just a cheap parlor trick," Yusuke mocked. "If that's all you've got in your arsenal, you're in serious trouble."
Being belittled by creatures he viewed as mere insects pushed Urashiki's rage past the boiling point.
"Just you wait, you miserable apes," Urashiki snarled, his voice trembling with fury.
"I'm going to rip you apart piece by piece!"
The glowing blue hue in his eyes receded, shifting back into the pale, veiny Byakugan.
Reaching behind him, he grabbed his red chakra fishing basket, opened his jaw unnaturally wide, and swallowed it whole.
Without hesitation, he gouged out his own Rinnegan and shoved them down his throat, devouring his own ocular power to force a grotesque evolution.
A blinding surge of dark chakra erupted from his body as the monstrous transformation took hold.
The sclera of his eyes shifted into a radiant, predatory gold, while a third golden Rinnegan tore open vertically across his forehead.
Pitch-black markings bled across his pale skin, forming jagged horizontal stripes over his face.
A massive, wing-like horn sprouted from his skull, and his feet warped into razor-sharp avian talons.
His forearms mutated into massive, feathered wings capable of tearing through the atmosphere, completing his transformation into a grotesque, crane-like abomination.
His raw power skyrocketed with the shift.
Along with his elevated chakra, his demeanor shifted into pure, unhinged arrogance—stripping away any lingering aristocratic facade in favor of foul-mouthed, bloodthirsty malice.
Setsuna and Yusuke immediately braced themselves, their combat senses screaming that this beast had become far more lethal.
"Die, you filthy dogs!" the transformed Urashiki shrieked with a manic grin.
Amenosubaruboshinomikoto: Ryūgū!
A burst of four-pointed purple chakra erupted from his clawed palm, instantly coalescing into a colossal, serpentine oarfish made of pure black-and-purple energy.
The massive summon roared through the sky, surging directly toward the Gundam.
Its cavernous jaws unhinged, unleashing a massive, hyper-dense sphere of purple chakra that tore through the air like a bolt of lightning.
The cockpit's AI alarm screamed shrilly.
"Warning! Incoming projectile identified as a suspected Tailed Beast Bomb equivalent!"
"Option 1: Maximize plasma thruster output to 70% for emergency evasion. Note: Rapid charging will overload propulsion manifolds, requiring a ten-minute thermal cooldown."
"Option 2: Overcharge beam shield to 100% capacity. Note: Shield generator will incur a ten-minute buffer cycle after absorbing maximum impact."
Setsuna made his choice in a fraction of a second.
Sacrificing flight mobility against a high-speed airborne target was a tactical death sentence.
"Overcharge the beam shield! Brace for impact!" Setsuna barked.
The entire exchange occurred in the span of a single heartbeat through their direct neural link.
The Gundam snapped its arm up, igniting a blinding, maximum-output beam shield just as the devastating chakra sphere slammed into its guard.
Urashiki hadn't stopped with a single target.
While keeping the Gundam pinned with his summon, the mutated Otsutsuki simultaneously turned his wrath toward the Kamen Rider.
Amenosubaruboshinomikoto: Gyokubako!
Dense purple energy condensed within his talons, forming a concentrated, volatile orb of destructive chakra before rocketing straight at Kuuga.
Yusuke reacted instantly, shifting his grip to draw an ornate purple armament from his side.
The Dragon Crest Axe.
"Axe Mode," Yusuke muttered, channeling his golden aura through the heavy blade.
Rocketing forward, he swung the massive weapon in a vicious, overhead cleave directly into the path of the incoming sphere.
BOOM!
The blade crashed violently into the dense chakra orb.
A blinding shockwave of purple and gold light erupted upon impact, drowning out the sky in a deafening, thunderous roar.
Urashiki was visibly stunned that a mortal had actually deflected his purple chakra sphere with a battle axe.
The violet flare shimmered and dissolved into the atmosphere like a fleeting aurora.
The moment the light faded, Kuuga struck like a golden bolt of lightning.
Swinging the Dragon Crest Axe in a broad, lavender arc, he aimed a brutal cleaving strike straight for Urashiki's midsection.
The golden Rinnegan on the Otsutsuki's forehead flared with clarity, tracking the Kamen Rider's high-speed trajectory in vivid detail.
His physical prowess and raw chakra had surged dramatically after the transformation, honing his combat reflexes to an absolute razor's edge.
He instantly gauged the kinetic lethality behind the swing. A clean blow to the torso would inflict catastrophic internal damage.
'To think a worthless ape could possess this much brute force...'
Urashiki's expression hardened, casting aside any lingering arrogance.
As Kuuga closed the gap, the whistling blade inches from its mark, the Otsutsuki snapped his right hand forward.
"Shinra Tensei!"
An invisible wall of repulsive force erupted like a tidal wave.
The concussive shockwave slammed into Kuuga, hurtling the Kamen Rider backward across the open sky.
Yusuke twisted mid-air, firing his reverse thrusters to stabilize his trajectory.
'Getting close is going to be a headache with that repulsive field active,' Yusuke thought. 'Time to switch to ranged pressure.'
"Dragon Crest Cannon: Launcher Mode!"
With a crisp mechanical snap, the axe shifted into its heavy artillery configuration.
Kuuga leveled the weapon at the hovering Otsutsuki and unleashed a rapid-fire salvo of explosive rockets.
Watching the high-explosive ordnance scream toward him, Urashiki offered a cold, derisive smirk.
He materialized a pair of black chakra receivers, extending them into razor-sharp ninjato blades.
His arms blurred into a flurry of steel-cutting strikes.
With fluid precision, he neatly sliced every incoming rocket in two, detonating them harmlessly in mid-air.
"Hmph. You'll have to do better than that before I carve you into pieces!" Urashiki sneered, rocketing directly toward Kuuga.
Meanwhile, Setsuna engaged the colossal black-and-purple summon with the Gundam.
Raising his beam shield, he braced for the beast's incoming chakra assault.
The dense purple blast slammed violently into the hard-light barrier, warping the energy field under the sheer kinetic weight.
The auxiliary AI chimed immediately. "Recalibrating target threat assessment. Threat level downgraded from 'Extreme' to 'Manageable.'"
Upon physical contact, the tactical suite rapidly parsed the projectile's composition and adjusted its data models.
Setsuna checked the shield's thermal integrity and power reserves.
The gauge remained comfortably in the green.
He exhaled a slow, relieved breath.
Urashiki's personal offensive output was terrifying, but this summoned proxy was significantly weaker by comparison.
Setsuna's lips curled into a confident grin.
'Alright, you overgrown eel. Let's wrap this up.'
Syncing his neural interface, he mirrored a fluid deflection motion through the controls.
Snap!
The trapped chakra sphere was violently redirected off the hard-light shield, rocketing right back into the summon's face.
The blast detonated on impact, blowing a smoking crater into the beast's head.
Setsuna gave it no room to recover.
The Gundam's plasma thrusters roared to life, unfurling radiant Wings of Light behind its chassis.
Twin trails of superheated ion particles seared across the sky as the mech closed the distance with blinding speed.
Igniting both beam sabers, the twin plasma blades hissed with deafening, high-frequency energy.
Sensing lethal danger, the giant oarfish shrieked, coiling its massive body like a spring before whipping its colossal tail toward the cockpit.
Setsuna chuckled softly. "Nice try, but you're too slow."
"Three-Sword Style: Black Rope Dragon Twister!"
The Gundam spun on its central axis, synchronizing the dual beam sabers with the spinning vortex of its Wings of Light.
Blades of plasma and superheated exhaust spiraled into a towering dragon of pure kinetic energy.
The localized firestorm tore violently into the summon.
The oarfish struggled for a fraction of a second before the sheer cutting force shredded it into scattered embers.
With the summon eliminated, Setsuna immediately swiveled his optics toward Kuuga and Urashiki.
The two were locked in a blistering clash of axe versus blade.
The dogfight was breathtaking.
Both combatants maneuvered at supersonic velocities, trading lethal blows while repositioning across the vast airspace.
The sky itself had become their arena.
One second they were clashing kilometers in the distance; the next, shockwaves rattled directly above the Gundam's canopy.
Their silhouettes streaked like erratic lightning, leaving bursts of golden and purple sparks scattering through the clouds.
The combat speed was so intense that the Gundam's high-speed optical tracking could barely lock their positions.
Setsuna rubbed his chin, frustrated.
'How am I supposed to provide fire support at that speed?' he thought. 'One stray shot and I risk clipping Yusuke. All I can do is watch for an opening.'
In the sky, Kuuga and Urashiki traded high-velocity strikes, neither giving an inch.
Yet Urashiki fought with mocking ease, relentlessly taunting between attacks.
"You need to be faster, monkey!"
"Lag behind and I'll take your head!"
Urashiki's voice suddenly echoed from below, but before Yusuke could react, the Otsutsuki broke the sound barrier and materialized directly above him.
The black blade plunged downward.
Steel met gold in a screeching parry.
The two broke away so rapidly that the sonic boom of the collision lagged behind their physical bodies.
To an outside observer, afterimages blossomed across multiple points of the sky, with the deafening clang of clashing metal echoing seconds later.
Despite matching the tempo, Yusuke was feeling the immense strain.
Though they appeared evenly matched on the surface, the mutated Otsutsuki was systematically wearing down his guard.
'This guy is an absolute monster,' Yusuke gritted his teeth, parrying another heavy overhead strike.
Then again, the fact that a human who knew zero ninjutsu two years ago was now trading blows with an extraterrestrial god was equally absurd.
That momentary lapse in focus proved costly.
"Got you!" Urashiki cackled.
His clawed hand shot out, clamping down hard on Kuuga's armored shoulder.
Plumes of dense white smoke billowed from his grip, rapidly crystallizing into jagged black minerals.
Temporal Stasis.
It was an ancient sealing technique of the Otsutsuki clan—freezing the target's physical timeline and entombing them within indestructible black crystal.