Boom.
The sound wasn't just loud; it was like a physical force. A shockwave that punched into their chests and made the very ground tremble. Sand and dust blasted into the air, choking the landscape in a gritty, blinding haze.
"Whoa, now." Kabuto brushed a speck of dust from his sleeve, having just sidestepped the swipe of the massive, shadowy hand. His infuriatingly calm smirk never wavering. "That was a little too close for comfort. The raw power behind that… it feels comparable to a Tailed Beast."
Pakura wasn't smiling. Her sharp gaze was locked on the older, teenage version of Hyūga Hanabi who had just tumbled into their world. "You. Other-worlder. You know what that thing is, don't you?"
Hanabi's face was pale, her eyes wide with a deep-seated, ingrained terror.
"Mamonos," she whispered, as if the word itself were cursed. "Heteromorphs. They… they bring ruin. They destroy everything."
"Mamonos?" Kushina blinked.
"Heteromorphs?" Mikoto echoed.
The two women exchanged a completely lost look. While they'd picked up plenty of esoteric knowledge from their time with Yuto, these terms were entirely new. They meant nothing.
'Wait a second,' Kushina thought, a completely inappropriate and private memory surfacing.
'Last night, with Yuto… that 'Mamono girl' roleplay… Oh, gods. A hot flush crept up her neck, and she decided to keep that particular connection to herself.'
"Let's back up," Yuto said, his voice cutting through the tension with its usual calm. He looked at Hanabi. "Start from the beginning. Where do these things come from?"
"They're from the Land of—" Hanabi began automatically, before the present danger overrode her instinct to answer. She shook her head, frantic. "What are we doing? This isn't the time for a history lesson! It's still here!"
As if on cue, another roar shattered the air—a sound that was less noise and more a wave of pressure, making their ears pop and heads swim.
Crack. CRACK.
The giant hand was followed by a thick, muscular arm, then a hulking shoulder, and finally a monstrous head as it hauled its entire body through the tear in reality. It stood over fifty feet tall, its form a mass of dark purple skin and corded muscle, with legs wrapped in pulsing, sinister red patterns. Two huge, twisted horns curled from its skull.
Devil was the only word that fit its appearance.
"No… no, no, no," Hanabi stammered, retreating a step. "A Sun-Eclipse grade?! But that's impossible! This can't be a Nightmare, then…?"
"You're going to have to translate," Pakura said, not taking her eyes off the monster.
"Sun-Eclipse grade? Nightmare what-now?" Kushina added.
"I thought I was just having a nightmare! A really, really bad dream!" Hanabi's voice was tight with a wave of panic. "But this is real. I'm so sorry, I've brought this on you…"
"A nightmare, huh?" Kushina muttered. "Guess that's one theory."
"The Shinobi Alliance ranks them," Hanabi explained, the words tumbling out in a desperate rush. "Star-Eclipse, Moon-Eclipse, Sun-Eclipse, and Calamity. A Sun-Eclipse can take out a whole nation on its own."
"But where did they even come from?" Mikoto pressed.
"The Land of Demons. A thing called the Mōryō," Hanabi said, her voice dropping to a hushed, fearful tone. "It fed on the chaos of the Great War, absorbed the Ten-Tails' power… and then it just started… splitting. Making copies of itself. It wants to turn our whole world into theirs."
Mōryō. Yuto's eyebrow lifted in recognition. He remembered that story. The priestess, Shion, with her doom-and-gloom prophecies. Naruto showing up and proving fate wrong. The whole affair had seemed almost quaint in retrospect. The monster was supposed to be a world-ender, but in hindsight, it hadn't seemed that formidable.
'How did a loser like that manage to hijack the Ten-Tails right under Madara and Obito's noses?'
"Look out!" Hanabi's shriek severed his line of thought.
The monster moved. It was horrifyingly fast. One moment it was across the clearing, the next it was upon them, its two colossal fists plummeting down like meteorites.
WHUMP.
The impact was colossal, kicking up a sandstorm that blinded everyone. Hanabi shielded her face, her heart plummeting. This was it.
But as the dust settled, she could only stare, dumbfounded.
The woman with the dark green hair—Pakura—was standing perfectly still, one arm held up casually. And resting against her outstretched palm was the monster's gigantic, clenched fist. She had stopped it.
No. Not just stopped it. She hadn't even been budged an inch.
"You know, Kabuto," Pakura said, a lazy, predatory grin spreading across her face. "You were right. This thing's got some weight behind it. Not bad."
"If it's not too much trouble," Kabuto called out, pushing his glasses up his nose. "A mostly intact specimen would be far easier to study."
"I'll see what I can do," Pakura replied. And then, she was just… gone.
She reappeared standing on the thing's head.
"Alright, big guy. Naptime," she declared. And then she punched it.
The sound was unbelievable—a sickening, wet crunch of force. The monster's head snapped down and its entire colossal body was driven straight into the desert floor like a nail. Sand erupted outward in a perfect, massive crater.
Hanabi's jaw hung open. "You've… you've got to be kidding me."
She had seen Sun-Eclipse-grade Mamonos battle Naruto in his full Nine-Tails mode. Those were battles that leveled landscapes and lasted for hours. This woman had just… one-shotted it.
"Oh, still squirming?" Pakura said, sounding almost amused as she looked down at the twitching form beneath her feet. "Let's see if we can calm you down a little."
A sphere of violent red energy flickered to life in her palm. She didn't even bother to yell a name, she just casually slammed it into the monster's skull.
KABLAM!
The thing screamed—a truly horrific, grating sound—as a web of red light spider-webbed across its head.
"Uh huh. Still got an attitude, I see." The red light bloomed in her hand once more.
Boom! Boom! BOOM!
She hit it again. And again. And again. The desert shook with each concussive impact. Finally, after what felt like a small eternity of punishment, the monster lay still in its crater, a thin wisp of smoke rising from its pulverized head.
"Pakura," Kabuto sighed, sounding like a disappointed librarian. "What about the 'intact specimen' you promised?"
"Relax, it's fine," she said, hopping down and nonchalantly grabbing one of its horns to heft its head up. "I only used Bala, not Cero."
With the immediate threat now literally smoking at their feet, the atmosphere shifted.
Yuto turned back to Hanabi. His voice was still kind, but it now carried an weight. It was time for answers.
"The problem you arrived with seems to be handled," he said. "Now, how about you tell us what's really going on? With your world."
Kushina rushed over, her expression a tortured mix of dread and desperate hope.
"Yeah, and… and what about Naruto? Is he okay?"
Hanabi hugged herself tightly, looking down at the sand as if it were a grave. The fight was over, but the real horror was only just beginning. When she finally spoke, her voice was hollow, stripped of all spirit.
"It's bad," she said. "It's all gone. The Mamonos… there were so many. Konoha… it's just… gone." She took a shaky, ragged breath. "When I left, they estimated… maybe twenty thousand of us left. In the entire world. That's it."
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