Kuro had spent the st few days exhausting every trick in the book to earn the little fox's favor. Charm, bribery, even outright threat, nothing seemed to move her.

  He really wanted to get the information involving the Sage of Six Paths, including but not limited to how he slept with Kaguya.

  A feat that was, by all known logic, impossible. Kaguya, sealed away for centuries, no longer possessed a physical form, and even if she did, the logistics of producing offspring in such a state defied common sense.

  Unfortunately, the little fox wasn’t talking.

  Instead, she had made herself at home in his home. She’d usurped his bed, cimed the couch as her throne, and won over his parents with ease. Kisara had all but defected to the fox’s side, even naming her Kirama.

  “You’ll get nothing from me, human,” the fox, Kirama, said as she curled up like royalty beside the hearth, tails flicking in amusement. “Not unless you offer something truly entertaining in return.”

  Kuro sighed.

  Just as he was menting, Niji appeared from his shadow with an urgent face.

  “Lord,” Niji said, bowing slightly, “we’ve lost all contact with Bckbeard and his crew.”

  Kuro blinked. “Lost contact? That’s not unusual. He vanishes sometimes. Probably drunk or—”

  “No,” Niji cut in, voice clipped. “This is different. I tried locating him through shadow rey, but the connection was severed. Not blocked but severed. As if he no longer exists within this pne.”

  Kuro, for the first time since allowing his shadow soldiers to vacation, use his power to sense their aura and location.

  “…Gone,” Kuro muttered, brows furrowing. “Just… gone.”

  Kirama, noticing his plight, cracked open one golden eye, watching him with the zy amusement of a cat who just watched a canary vanish mid-song.

  “Gone, you say?” she purred, stretching nguidly. “Now that’s entertaining. Considering your abilities, there aren’t many things in this world that can do that to those shadow freaks.”

  Kuro didn’t answer her. His focus shifted to Niji, who now knelt deeper as the pressure in the room began to rise, thick and suffocating. (A/N: That's what she said.)

  “What was the st known location?” Kuro commanded Niji.

  Niji’s back began to ‘sweat,’ chakra trembling under the growing weight of his master’s power.

  “The Land of Water,” Niji answered, lowering himself fully to the ground. “Two nights ago. They were ambushed by Mist shinobi. The vilge has grown unusually aggressive as of te.”

  Kuro’s eyes narrowed. “The Land of Water…”

  Niji bowed lower, almost fttening to the ground now. “They were ambushed. Bckbeard responded in kind. Our scouts intercepted transmissions of a mist jutsu not recorded in any archives. It restrains the chakra. Even shadows.”

  That st part made Kuro’s gaze fsh dangerously. The fmes in the hearth guttered.

  “Impossible,” he said coldly. “There’s no known jutsu that can bind shadow essence. Not unless...”

  “Unless it’s not from this world,” Kirama said.

  Niji didn’t say anything but gred at the creature that was impudent enough to cut off his Lord.

  Kirama noticed the gre immediately. Her ears perked, and her head tilted ever so slightly, amused by the fsh of defiance.

  “Oh?” she said, voice honeyed with mischief. “Did I ruffle your fur, little shadow?”

  Niji said nothing, but the temperature in the room dropped as his chakra stirred, a dark mist coiling faintly at his feet like smoke eager for battle.

  Kuro didn’t even turn to look at them. “Stand down, Niji,” he said coolly. “She speaks freely because I permit it.”

  ‘More like Kisara allowed it.’ Kuro thought inside his head.

  Niji inclined his head slightly at the command, though the tension in his shoulders remained. “My apologies, Lord. I overstepped.”

  At that, Kuro turned to face them both. “Let me be clear. Whatever technique annihited Bckbeard and his crew didn’t originate from the Mist Vilge. As far as I know, only two entities could be responsible.”

  He let the silence stretch.

  “Bck Zetsu and White Zetsu.”

  Niji’s eyes fred. “Then… does the Lord command the Shadow Legion to erase the Mist Vilge?”

  “No,” Kuro said, shaking his head. “Not yet.”

  “But—” Niji started.

  “If the Mist Vilge is being used as a puppet,” Kuro interrupted, “then burning the puppet does nothing but warn the puppeteer.”

  He leaned forward, his voice like distant thunder. “Maintain surveilnce. Continue as you have. As for this... I’ll handle it myself.”

  He rose from the couch, and the air grew heavier — a pressure so immense even Kirama’s tail bristled.

  “It is time for this world to witness my power.”

  With a flicker, he vanished, leaving the room steeped in silence and tension. Kirama and Niji exchanged gnces, neither speaking.

  ***

  A few hundred kilometers away from the Leaf Vilge, Kuro appears as he stares in the direction of the Land of Water.

  Kuro stood at the edge of a sheer cliff, his cloak rustling softly in the breeze. Beneath him, waves crashed violently against jagged rocks, as though the ocean itself sensed the danger.

  Kuro closed his eyes, trying to sense Bckbeard and his crew.

  “…Still nothing,” he muttered. “But there are two strange signatures... unfamiliar.”

  With a puff of smoke, Kirama appeared on his shoulder.

  “What are you going to do?” She asked him.

  Kuro gnced sideways at her. “Didn’t I already say?”

  Then, without warning, he leapt from the cliff’s edge.

  The silence left behind was broken only by the wind through the grass — until a massive gust surged upward from below.

  A great shadow rose.

  Dark scales shimmered in the sunlight. A colossal dragon, wings outstretched, burst into the sky. It banked eastward, each beat of its wings sending shockwaves through the air.

  The dragon banked hard, tilting toward the east. The sun gleamed off its scales as it sped through the sky like a living comet.

  ***

  Meanwhile, Deep in the Land of Water.

  Inside an unknown cave.

  Inside a damp, forgotten cavern cloaked in unnatural mist, Bck Zetsu and White Zetsu stood before a massive cage. Inside, bound by chains made of a foreign, gleaming metal, writhed the broken remnants of Bckbeard’s crew, shadows stilled, their essence flickering.

  “You won’t get away with this!” Bckbeard snarled, yanking at his restraints. “Once my Lord finds out, you're dead! Do you hear me? D.E.A.D!”

  Bck Zetsu stepped forward.

  “Oh? Someone like you serving a master? How quaint. He must be very powerful... or you're just that desperate.”

  White Zetsu leaned in, a wide, mocking grin on his face.

  “Ooooh! I’m sooo scared!” he cooed dramatically, clutching his face in exaggerated terror.

  Bckbeard bared his teeth. “Mock me while you can, freaks. He’s coming. And when he does—”

  “—You’ll still be in a cage,” Bck Zetsu interrupted, his tone ft and final.

  But before he could continue, his head jerked up.

  His eyes widened.

  “White! RUN!”

  Without another word, Bck Zetsu vanished into the earth, melting into the stone floor like smoke slipping through cracks.

  “Huh?” White Zetsu blinked, still half-smiling, looking toward where Bck had been. “What are you—”

  Unfortunately for him, he was too te to run.

  BOOOOM!!!

  The entire world split open.

  A force like a meteor crashed into the cave — a titanic shockwave pulverized the stone walls, vaporized the cage, and reduced the entire chamber to rubble and dust in an instant.

  There was no warning. No time to escape.

  Only destruction.

  The mist was gone.

  The shadows, now free from the weird bind, revived.

  And in the crater that remained, amid the howling silence and shattered earth, he stood.