The world wavered before my eyes before parting like a thunderstorm. It... was the most beautiful, horrifying thing I had ever seen. Ten thousand lights in as many flickering shades shone down from the night sky, among them all a pale sphere of yellow light, calmly gazing down upon the lands and casting it in it's glow.

The Fifth.

It had, at long last, come.

With a flickering rush of barely displaced air, my most trusted lieutenant appeared at my side.

"Namikaze-isshou! The squads await your orders!"

I paused for a moment, considering the situation. I had access to all twenty three of Terra's remaining Tenma Reactors, but-

This thing had subverted forty six thousand more.

With a bitter smile, I answered him.

"We have no chance of victory as it stands, Yakushi... We have to retreat. Again."

"But sir- with the number of injuries you've suffered this time around-!"

"I'll most likely die. Yes. Yakushi, with our current resources, do you honestly think I'd waste our lives... On that?"

We both stared up at the enormous, pale yellow orb.

Slowly, ever so slowly, it began to blink.

It wasn't the moon.

It was an eye.

The night sky was covered in ten thousand eyes, and the air vibrated deeply with the thrumming reverberations of nearly as many hearts.

"No. Not a chance."

"Then come, Yakushi. Issue the order. And let not a single man unprepared throw himself into the depths of hell."

I turned, and ran into the Prior Domain of Konoha, an array of tunnels carved out by the last survivors of a distant apocalypse and it madness, they who had sought desperately to undo the tragedy of their past, and nearly succeeded. Deep, deep in those underground chambers slumbered a five hundred year old set of rings covered in, or perhaps made of seals. When fed by a paradox, they called forth a being unlike any other.

"Kyuubi."

"I am here, Namikaze," came the voice from the shadows. A tall, thin man stepped out from them, red hair practically glowing with light.

"We go. One last time."

"As you wish."

With a mighty flare of Ja Chakra, the power of Contradiction, the rings screamed to life, incandescent flames burning at the very fabric of reality itself.

A blurred face appeared in the centre, horrible smile stitched into it by the perfect needlework of a madman.

"Itsugami. I have one last wish."

"And it shall be granted, oh Sower of Discord. It shall be granted."

Time. itself. burned.

Isshou: General (military)

Itsugami: A god

Ja: Evil, perverted (in the sense of wrong, rather than the sense of licentious)