Chapter Seven: Fight of the Vagabonds(2)

Tayuya looked to the horizon, worry etched into pale, delicate features, Naruto's mark still in full bloom across her face. A sphere blotted out half of the world's edge, engulfing a third of the forest and half of a distant mountain range with an uncanny smearing of colors. A barrier ninjutsu—or was it senjutsu, she wondered—that carved out a separate space, completely isolated from all else; the Reality Mandala*, so absolute that not even summonings could be performed within its rigid borders.

Yet, despite this, that things' chakra could still be felt, more potent than normal gravity. Even from so far away, perched on the tip of a tree, she could feel the monstrous chakra caged within, like hands pressing down on her shoulders. That shouldn't be possible. Then again, she reminds herself that, when it comes to Tailed-Beasts, what is possible for a human has no bearing on monstrosities such as them.

Tayuya was not used to being left out of a fight; in fact, it was a bitter sting to her pride that she had to leave the heavy lifting to Naruto. His being her newfound husband only made the pain worse. She liked to think that it went beyond mere pride, but she knew herself too well to believe that. But it wasn't just pride; of that, she was also certain. She felt guilt at not being able to help the man who had done so much for her. The only person she loved.

"You better come back to me, Naru," she muttered aloud, too lost in thought to catch herself speaking aloud.

…

A giant hand slapped down on the world. The ground rumbled, and trees shivered. The creature kept moving. Dropping from the clouds, a giant, feminine foot, red as if bathed in the bloods of hell, etched with similar tattoos to Naruto's sage form and decorated with a single anklet of bone, crushed the malformed beast with the weight of thousands of boulders. Dirt plumed at the explosive force.

In the sky, Naruto floated in defiance of gravity. In his right hand, he gripped a khakkhara, an old monk's staff, with an ancient shaft of wood yet an artistically complex metal finial pierced with hanging metal rings jingling against the wind.

With a roar, the limb of Naruto's yidam was lifted, then spitefully heaved towards its creator. A single hand-sign with his off-hand dispersed it before getting too close.

Naruto looked down at the demon with forged confidence. It was a necessary delusion. His odds of surviving were small, and his chances of actually winning were even smaller, and with each second, they shrank even more. The stages of possession were progressing far faster than he expected. If he survived this battle, then it was going to be many years before he ever even considered using the Paradox again.

Utakata was a thing now detached from himself, a meat suit piloted by a creature no human could fully understand. Hunched on all fours, back bending in a way no human should, the demon looked at Naruto with a smile tearring to its ears, showcasing multiple rows of shark-like teeth waiting to tear chunks off bone.

Naruto felt a twinge of responsibility for the creature. His ancestors had screwed around with things beyond man, and this was the result. If nothing else, he found it fitting that an Uzumaki would reseal this thing or die trying.

Utakata's form suddenly became distorted. It moved, but not with motion. Its image was a distorted reflection rippling on a lake's surface, smearing into a wave of colors and reknitting itself together at random points on the ground in alien dashes of speed. It apparently had no idea how to judge velocity and distance when its target floated in the sky. This was Naruto's chance.

He stabbed the pommel of his staff into the sky like it was a physical object, creating an impossible sound. The earth roared beneath them. Naruto could taste the coppery chakra in the air, growing fat and saturated with the beast's red chakra. He could not play it safe in hope of preserving his diminishing sage chakra; the beast's supply was virtually infinite, while he, at this pace, had less than ten minutes already.

Quick, overwhelming force was his only hope, even if it shortened his timer.

His staff shrieked against the bright noon sky. Seven writhing worms of chakra burst free from the landscape, each rivaling the size of the legendary toad summons of Mount Myōboku, yet only the width of a man. The worms flowed like liquid; some began pouring themselves into the surrounding landscape in frothy waves, while others were like threads being woven into the earth itself.

The beast seemed confused, childishly twisting its head in impossible angles and rotations to look at the strange maggots. The ground convulses, an unnatural rhythm pulsing through the landscape as Naruto channels his enhanced chakra. The battlefield shifted, growing jagged and disorienting. No longer mere dust and soil, the surroundings erupt and swirl. Smooth brass gleams under sunlight, its metallic sheen a cold defiance to the demon's gathering darkness. Silver liquid weaves intricate conduits amidst the brass, snaking pathways for raw energy to flow. Walls of polished stone erupt, not jagged and raw but honed as if crafted by a master mason.

His enemy snarls, the transformation twisting its features into a grotesque mockery of humanity, now sporting five tails of red chakra. It does another dash but its charge is blocked, and Utakata rams into a wall. It cracks and breaks, but does not crumble—that alone is a testament to its great construction. Utakata looks at the maze caging it—a labyrinth capable of encasing a small village, created in heartbeats. It seems the creature didn't understand the concept of 'up'.

Atop the monstrous labyrinth were rows of single-shot cannons, multiple dozens of them, taking their form from Naruto's will alone. For a second, Naruto allowed himself to revel in this power he commanded; it was a rare occasion where he could use senjutsu uninhibited like this. With a thought, all the cannons swiveled, locking onto the demon-to-be.

Suspended above his creation and its prisoner, Naruto could see everything with a bird's-eye view. He spins the khakkhara like a conductor's baton. Tendrils of light erupt from the stone and silver pathways, concentrating chakra and channeling it to the cannons. He sweeps his staff and points it down at the beast like a commander ordering his troops and bellows: "Fire!"

Fire rained. The melody is a harsh cacophony of booming detonations. Each cannon bursts forth not with shot and steel but with blinding explosions of chakra light. Each flash sears across his vision, yet through the afterimages, he sees. Explosions bloomed where a human parody had clung only seconds before. Naruto gripped the staff tighter, his power roaring through its length.

The demon howled, not in defeat but in rage. Naruto could feel the sound in his teeth despite being so far away. Tails of dark chakra whipped outward, seeking a target. One smashed into a stone wall, shattering it into rubble. Another lashed in a deadly swipe that cleared eight cannons; the chakra-constructs warping like hot wax. Naruto waved his staff again; more chakra pulsed through silver conduits like blood through veins, and ordered another volley. The cannons unleashed their fury. Light swallowed the battlefield.

The creature dashed in distorted waves, now smoking, chunks of his body pulverized. The brass gleamed with intelligence as cannons pivoted, tracking the demon's every move. With a thought, the shifting maze thickened, walls hardening, hallways extending outwards or receding in retreat in an effort to funnel the rushing beast into a more convenient location. Maggots of chakra infested cracks and holes, writhing in their dozens or thousands, knitting the material together like a living thing's immune system, scarring over cracked foundations and broken walls with fresh repairs. Escape routes were cut off, and the cannons moved along tracks to follow their prey, pulsing with gathered chakra and unleashing more blasts.

There's an age-old adage about how cornered animals are the most dangerous. The same is true for people, but also, it seems, for higher beings as well. Utakata's hands punched into the stone floor and gripped something. The ground groaned. The whole battlefield seemed to bulge a few inches, a small potbelly of pressure building up from underground. Geysers of screaming steam split the floor of the maze and beyond, plumeing violently enough to peel back the cracks into ugly, bleeding wounds of boiling water.

Then, before Naruto could channel more shots into his cannons, the demon heaved.

Water. Groundwater. Naruto had never given the idea much thought, other than simply knowing that water got absorbed into the ground. That was all he needed to know. He hadn't thought too much about how much there could be underground. This changed that.

It was an eruption, a biblical deluge ripping the earth apart, violently scattering house-sized chunks of rock, uprooting trees the size of boats, and his own shattered fortifications alongside it. Whether by accident or intention, he was directly in the line of fire.

Naruto plunged like a meteor, aimed at the heart of the chaos. The landscape became a watercolor smeared by his descent, greens melting into browns, the sky a dizzying swirl of blues. He shaved mere inches past razor-sharp shards, the wind of their passing singing in his ears. Each dodged geyser blast sent a wave of scalding air whipping past him, momentarily turning his skin scarlet. A metallic tang of blood and ozone stung his nostrils, the earthy scent of shattered soil heavy in the air. His muscles screamed in protest as he contorted his body, the G-force threatening to pull him apart. He was a whirling blur of orange against the rising plume of steam, dodging debris with an impossible grace. He was not just falling; he was dancing on the edge of death. Naruto dove under crescents of slung water, bowed upwards to avoid even more weaponized debris, twisted over currents of too-hot steam, and fell beneath swipes of fleshy tails before flying back around.

The air crackled with a guttural growl as Utakata twisted in the vapor, channeling screaming steam to his palms, condensing it into a razor-sharp ring that spun faster than the eye could track. Unleashing the attack, a radial wave of water surged outward, a shimmering scythe slicing through the chakra maze and beyond with shocking ease.

The forest echoed with the scream of violated wood as colossal trees, a mile in every direction, dipped under the watery blade. Their massive forms toppled, crashing to the ground in a deafening cascade of splintered trunks, shattered branches, and billowing clouds of dust. Utakata looked to the ground suddenly, shocked by something. It gave way a second later. The sudden absence of ground water triggered the earth's collapse, and a sinkhole grew like a hungry beast devouring the shattered landscape.

In the eerie silence that followed the devastation, only the faint hiss of escaping steam and the distant groan of settling earth disturbed the stillness. The once-vibrant clearing lay broken, a testament to the raw power Utakata had unleashed in his desperate defense. So great that he had buried himself in tons upon tons of dirt and trees, buried hundreds of feet down.

That would have killed anyone else, but it was not over. In just a few moments, Utakata would emerge once again. At this rate, his barrier is going to collapse, Naruto thought. Two jutsus—that's all he had left. He had to do this right.

He came to a stop over double the height of where he had started. He could hear the snarling thing muffled by the planet itself, but it echoed across this enclosed space louder than ever before. Finding its exact spot by sound was out of his reach—he wasn't Tayuya. But that's where the eye marking on his forehead was for. It may be a shadow of the true sage's ability, but the fake Eye of Kagura was not just decoration. By closing his eyes, his vision rivaled the legendary Byakugan of the Hyguas. He angled his head towards where Kagura's eye focused him.

With a flick of the wrist, the staff became his bow, held horizontal against the wind and swirling steam. He pulled back with his right hand, as if arming an imaginary bow with a god-killing arrow. An unearthly twang ripped through the air—not one, but a symphony of pulled strings.

A hundred ghostly bows materialized, a shimmering phantom brigade answering their master's call. Adamantine-tipped arrows hung heavy, impossibly solid.

Right where his third eye foretold, dirt bloomed in a cloud. Naruto's hand moved, and the hundred bows trembled with potential energy. Utakata's skin is peeling back in ragged strips, floating up unbound by gravity before burning into ash like sheared paper at the potency of the beast's alien chakra.

Naruto's fingers released, and the arrows rained down.

Utakata shrieked. For a second, time seemed to solidify—those shimmering gold points pressing against the crushing weight of the world. It thrummed through the dust-choked air, a crushing pressure, a bass note too low for human ears but felt to the marrow. Every nerve ending screamed in protest. Stone and shards vibrated like warping glass about to shatter.

Then, annihilation: in a blink, the titanic swarm of arrows exploded outward, reduced to ethereal dust. The power of a Tailed-Beast wasn't merely physical; it was a twisting perversion of reality itself. Naruto's attack didn't breach the wave; it was consumed, reduced to shimmering golden motes.

However, Naruto smiled. Distraction achieved.

Then the chains shot forth.

From beneath the dust, Naruto's final countermeasure unfurled. Born from a single chakra worm infused into the heart of the battlefield, one he had deliberately held back when constructing his maze, adamantine chains thicker than an oak erupted from the earth. Utakata roared in surprise and outrage as a dozen gleaming links pierced into his legs, chest, and arms, and chains whipped and coiled, finding purchase on every jutting limb and exposed muscle.

No matter how the writhing thing strained, the chains held. For now, the demon wouldn't break free; with its immense power anchored so fiercely, Naruto could finally deliver the finishing blow.

Naruto, floating high above, dropped his staff, yet it did not fall. It held there, suspended as if by its own will, waiting for its master to pick it back up. His legs curled up, crossing them in a more meditative position. His hands slapped together between his heart and stomach, fingers flat against fingers, one thumb pressing down on the other. Two red arms materialized behind him, each connecting thumb to index finger.

Tantric Art: Vajrayogini's Kartika!

In the sky above them, a phantasmal image of a crescent blade with a hooked end split the blue sky, larger than the maze, radiating a fierce aura of destruction, almost otherworldly in awe. It didn't form from something or appear in a flashing light; in an instant, it was simply there, floating in the sky, as if it had always been so but left unseen.

Naruto looked down at Utakata, his blue eyes burning with power, third eye bleeding thicker lines down his face. He pointed down at the squirming beast and uttered a single word: "Drop."

The blade responds. It fell from the sky like a guillotine, but unnaturally fast. It cleaved the distance with a deafening roar and friction, with the air sparking a trail of fire.

The mad Utakata sensed the danger and looked up, his face little more than a twisted silhouette of a virgining monster. What was once Utakata screamed as the blade reached him, just two heartbeats later. He felt the sharp pain of it cleaving through the Tailed-Beast's chakra, which should be protecting his body.

A long gash was carved into the forest. The blade cut through rock, split boulders, and cleaved trees in two. It left a trail of destruction in its wake, sinking into the earth like a butcher's blade swallowed by fresh meat. Within the barrier, the crust of the island rumbled.

For the minute after, Naruto simply floated, slowly descending with uncharacteristic trepidation. The kartika faded away against his around, what little of his maze that was not swallowed lay twisted and shattered. Where gleaming metal, stone, and chakra-formed creations once stood, there were only pockmarked craters and rubble. Trees, once majestic, were skeletal silhouettes missing branches and bark. The ground itself was caved in, forming a massive sinkhole bisected by a great canyon-sized gash.

A pang of something like guilt touched Naruto's weary heart. Had he won today? Not really. He had 'won' in the same way someone in the path of a tornado finds shelter: he avoided the worst, but at the end of the day, luck was the thing that had given him his life. Had the possession gotten worse, he had no delusions of his strength. Even the First Hokage, considered by most to be the strongest ninja in history, only managed the Tailed-Beasts by the graces of the Uzumaki he had married into. Even someone as great as him was little more than a mewling infant to these ancient horrors. Not many understand that.

With his eyes blocked by clouds of dirt, Naruto trained his Kagura's eye onto the slumped form at the center of the sinkhole.

At that moment, something groaned.

A gasp tore from Naruto's throat. It shouldn't have been possible. The adamantine chains had bound Utakata with the strength of the earth itself, and that last attack should have damaged the host enough to knock the thing back into hibernation. Naruto watched in dawning horror as the demon stirred. Not just a shift against the unyielding chains, but a low rumble from within Utakata, as if the beast were only just now waking from a deep slumber rather than succumbing to defeat.

The beast was rising. Slowly, terribly, smoke oozed from the links where they dug into corrupted flesh, and it hauled itself upright. The world itself warped and pulsed. The chains held true, but the shear strain was fracturing the ground itself. Cracks like jagged black veins opened on the already demolished battlefield, spreading out from the struggling demonic form.

"Damn it, just stay down!" Naruto hissed, the frustration bitter in his mouth. The staff found its way to his hand, not that it would be much use now. His reserves were depleted, burning the fumes of the chakra he had given to Tayuya then taken back. He had less than a minute before this sage chakra, and the barrier protecting the world itself, disappeared.

It lurched again, and a chain snapped. And another. The ground buckled, a tremor sending ripples of destruction outward. From within, it breached the curtain of dirt and dust.

Utakata is a torn, grotesque mask of mutilated humanity. From within his skinny frame, a pulsing, fleshy mass pressed against his skin, the core of his being breaking apart his crust. From his right eye socket, six eyestalks bloom with bloodshot orbs, glaring at Naruto with child-like malice and love, rattling together like a bundle of spears. There was something odd about their motions, Naruto noticed, twitching and jerking, desperately searching for something familiar in a strange world of linear time and only three physical dimensions. It was the strangeness of a human thrust into a world of only two dimensions.

A shiver shook Naruto's spine; he felt a sudden pressure on his chest, as if being submerged in the depths of the sea, each breath carrying with it the heavy poison of pungent brine. The sky had lost all color, draining into a melancholic parody of the natural order. He looked up in a cold sweat. The azure sky of a cloudless noonday had changed into a swirling vortex of ocean water—a churning maelstrom of towering waves of ocean water, their crests foaming with an otherworldly frenzy—crashing against each other in an endless, gravity-defying violence. The clashing waves sprayed foam down on them like cold, salty rain.

However, the worst part was seeing the shadow lurking just beyond. Under the water's surface, its form pulsed—no mere absence of light but a writhing reflection of what Utakata would become—a monstrosity mirrored in the stagnant water. Bloated, a mix of maggot and slug, its gurgling breaths echoingd so great they churned the surface of the sky-ocean even further. Six tails, each the size of a mountain, writhed across the liquid sky, fanning like malevolent chains keeping the horror captive. Its hunger bled through the surface, a chilling anticipation that clawed at the edges of reality. It was a creature waiting on the other side, watching its own hoist degrade to the point it could force its way through and tear down the world that dared imprison it.

Naruto could hardly believe his eyes; his wet face scrunched in shock—this wasn't illusionary. No, this was the penultimate stage before a full materialization, before the spirit fully tears down the border between reality and the things never born. The Tailed-Beasts power was altering the world, possibly unintentionally—trying to create a more familiar environment for itself.

This was the natural course for a Tailed-Beast transformation. The first was the cloak of chakra enveloping the body, little more than extra power for the host. However, the longer the cloak exists, or if the host tries to siphon more energy than the cloak provides, the risk of stirring the will of the sleeping beast intensifies. Eventually, if full possession takes place, like now, then true power starts leaking into the world. Calling it chakra is acceptable and the norm, but far from the truth. There are no words for what leeches from the tailed demons, but whatever it is taints the world around them involuntarily. Or maybe there is nothing, and they simply bring forth their own concepts when forced into a world they have nothing to do with.

Naruto almost pitied them, in a way.

The creature piloting Utakata's flesh reaches out a hand, but not one of skin and bone, but a grotesque appendage forming six, raw, oozing muscles. His fingers, more like fleshy tendrils with suction cups, sink into the churning air as if grasping at a tangible surface, leaving open wounds in the air.

Naruto felt a drastic change in the natural energy around him and pivoted back towards the ground. With a violent heave of his shoulders, Utakata twists, his monstrous form wrenching the world itself around him.

The sky and the ground swap locations.

Naruto felt his lungs constrict, his vision tunneling as water filled his mouth and nose; in an instant, he was underwater. He writhes, his limbs flailing like a drowning insect, but the invisible current holds him fast. Around him, the world tilts and churns, the ground a distant memory, replaced by a churning sea of air. Disoriented animals that had been caught in Naruto's barrier shot past, hooked helplessly by the same current he was struggling with, their eyes wide with silent terror, flailing about with bubbly screams.

This is a nightmare given form, a world turned upside down, a place where the very air is a suffocating ocean and the laws of physics bend to the whim of a monstrous entity. It was a testament to the true horror of Utakata's transformation, a glimpse into the abyss of those who defy the natural order.

Naruto was drowning. He felt the water fill his lungs, choking him. He tried to move, but his limbs were heavy and numb. Animals that had been caught in the barrier floated up in the air like bloated corpses. He saw the demon's eyes, somehow standing statue-still in the center of the raging waters, staring at him with a twisted smile. He saw Utakata's face, half-human, half-monster, fading away.

Desperate, Naruto crossed a line. His hands clapped together. They formed an odd sign, one with only the pads of his thumbs and pinkies touching, the other six interlacing tight.

Spiral Art: Nine Seals!

A white light swallowed everything.

The world just around the barrier started dying. Tayuya suddenly straightened her back, ready to either jump forward or farther back in retreat if necessary. Trees closest to the sphere sagged and withered, dropping leaves like elders' loose teeth, drooping into colorless husks of themselves.

The sphere suddenly cracked, like a mirror, yet it made no sound; it was unnerving. The explosion was the opposite. It burst with the throaty growl of ten thousand paper bombs—the trees of the forest bowed in opposition to the shockwave ripping plumes of dirt into the air. If just a heartbeat later, in sticking her feet to the tree with chakra, Tayuya would've been knocked across the woods.

Foamy water flooded the plain, a collection of radial tsunamis released on command. Roaring tides thundered, uprooting nearby trees and gouging deep canyons into the forest like cuts on flesh and bone. Things dropped from the sky, impacting the ground with either heavy thuds or oddly wet splats. One of these weird things careened over Tayuya's head. She gave it a quick glance.

She wanted to throw up.

It was a deer, malformed with a dozen bubulus fish eyes, hind legs twisted into a single, vestigial dolphin's tale. Barnacles crusted over the antlers, and ridges of fishy spines lined its furry face. It fell behind her, snapping branches before smashing against the ground into sloppy pieces.

Fear and disgust contorted her face.

"What the fuck!"

…

When Naruto woke, silence hung heavy, a shroud even thicker than the dust slowly settling back to earth. Each wheezing, wet breath was a tiny victory echoing across the ruined battlefield. He was filthy, caked with mud and pasty dirt, and soaked to the bone in sea water. The markings denoting a sage were gone, replaced with cuts, hashes, and bruises across his smudged face.

Naruto let out a ragged sigh, and, with nothing but force of will, he pushed himself up with trembling hands. Getting to his knees was the easy part. When he attempted to stand, the last of his adrenaline-fueled energy left. His knees nearly buckled, exhaustion hitting like a tidal wave.

He looked around. A Reality Mandala was a separate space, a replica of the real world copied and sectioned off. The utter devastation wrought on the battlefield was, mostly, nowhere to be seen, leaving only an eerie, calm forest. However, that only applied to the forest itself. The stuff created within the barrier did survive.

All around, the remnants of his creation broke up the sandscape, and an entire lake's worth of water and mutated fish flooded the grassy plain; these are all that remain as testament to their fight. He looked to his side.

A pang of something like guilt touched Naruto's weary heart. Utakata lay slumped, kimono reduced to a parody made of tattered rags, his skin a burning red color, a result of being subjected to such concentrated chakra. The missing limbs and chunks of flesh and muscle were replaced by that red skin as well, acting as something akin to scar tissue on a normal person. It would take a bit, but eventually the beast's own chakra should replace the red skin with healthy tissue again.

Naruto groaned and sat down with a huff, splashing himself with muddy water, not that he had the state of mind to care. For a moment, he just breathed, eyes closed, and enjoyed the feeling of real sunlight and the gentle breeze, untainted by abominable chakra. Adjusting to the quiet after a battle for your life was always serene. It's almost drug-like—the clarity one feels when fighting on the edge of death. Nothing else matters in the moment; there are no thoughts of the distant future or worries of the past; the muddy grayness of life is briefly calmed in an effort to focus on survival. It's during the aftermath, as the body recovers from the adrenaline rush, that the true risk of what you're doing and what you could lose weighs on you.

A voice called to him, and he looked at it. Tayuya was looking at him from the treetops with uncharacteristic anxiety, still keeping a distance until he gave the okay. Naruto wondered how she would react upon his passing; he immediately snuffed out that train of thought. No, there is no need for that now. He was alive. They were still together. He gave a lopsided smile and raised a thumb in the air. Her face brightened, and she jumped from tree to tree, speeding his way.

Naruto scrutinized Utakata with side-eye. To ease his paranoia, he had to make sure the seal was set. Naruto reached over, gently placing his fingers against his exposed chest. Utakata's skin felt like standing too close to an open flame, but Naruto forced through it with gritting teeth. A pulse of chakra circulated the body, traveling the chakra network, snaking past organs and inner gates, searching for the Tailed-Beast within...

Wait, where'd it go? No matter how many ripples of chakra he sent through Utakata's body, he found no trace of the Tailed-Beast—nothing, not even the seal itself.

"What the hell?" he wondered out loud. He had practiced the Nine Seals jutsu before, and it was a seal—a powerful one, but nonetheless a seal. In the same way dams don't remove water, a seal does not remove chakra; it simply contains it and keeps the stuff within from mixing with anything without. So where was the red chakra, or even just the seal itself?

Something burning screamed for his attention. He winced and groaned at the feeling of gripping hot iron. He brought his right hand to his face. A spiral nine layers deep was carved into his now-reddening palm. Naruto thought he saw it start to actively twist underneath his skin, like it was alive.

He suddenly had a strange compulsion to gaze at the sky. He didn't know why. For a brief instant, it looked as if there were stars above, moving gently as one in vague alignment, like the shimmering scales of a great snake coiling around the world as if its egg. With a blink of his eyes, the stars were gone, replaced with a clear blue sky and a single sun.

Tayuya landed on the ground, crunching dirt, and rushed the rest of the way towards him.

Naruto saw her reaching for him, but all he could hope for was that he hadn't just made an apocalyptic mistake.

(End of Chapter Seven)

Original jutsu:

*Reality Mandala: An extremely potent barrier that replicates a space within a perimeter and seals it off, so thoroughly that not even summonings can be performed within its domain, not even by its caster. All things created by this space will dissolve along with it, from mountains to oceans, leaving only the stuff either brought in or created after the fact. Things manipulated by Tailed-Beasts seem to be an exception, also.

*Vajrayogini's Kartika: A power initiated by Naruto and the two arms of his Yidam forming mudras to concentrate nature energy. In a weakened state, it materializes a phantasmal crescent blade (bigger and larger than most buildings) that, with a command, drops from the sky like a guillotine, capable of cleaving a half-mile long gash in a forest, cutting through rock, boulders, and trees, even chakra constructs, evenly and easily.

Author's Notes: *Peeks head out* Hello! Been a bit since I've done a chapter, sorry about that lol! I think this chapter was just very unlucky. For most of December I was too preoccupied with work or family stuff for the holidays, so I didn't get much done for the whole month. Then I went through this period of disinterest, because no matter how much I like a fic, writing six chapters of the same story back-to-back is a lot for me and I needed a palette cleanser. Then, circle around to this being the climax of a big fight, and, with what I stated in my last A/N, and how awful I feel like I am with fight scenes, I was microwaving my brain on how to write this chapter for the longest time, and then rewriting it so it reads good to me. On the bright side, I plan for the fights in this story to be the extra spice sprinkled in rather than the main ingredient, so the next several chapters should be relatively easy to make and post.

So, umm, I hope it was worth the wait!