Chapter 93: Moonfall
The authority and dignity of the Main House were non-negotiable. Every elder present had sensed the brief flicker of hesitation, the unspoken thoughts of self-preservation that had run through the Branch House ranks during the crisis. Such thoughts were a cancer. They required a brutal, immediate cauterization to prevent metastasis. This public punishment was as much about crushing future dissent as it was about penalizing past failure.
As the minutes crawled by, the agonized wails from the courtyard faded into weak whimpers, then into the ragged gasps of the unconscious. The bodies of the Branch members lay scattered on the ground, limbs twitching sporadically.
The elder, Hyuga Noboru, maintained his seal, his face an impassive mask. He was a master of the Caged Bird's application. The art was not in killing—death was an escape. The art was in calibrating agony, in stopping precisely at the precipice of irreversible psychological collapse.
When the last twitch stilled and the victims hovered on the very edge of shattered sanity, he released the seal.
Hiashi turned away from the scene, his daughter a warm, sleeping weight against his chest. His eyes fell upon the cluster of Main House maids standing rigidly to the side. "Remove them," he ordered, his voice devoid of inflection. "See that they are… attended to."
The maids scurried forward, their faces pale, to drag the broken forms of their clansmen away.
Back in the sterile silence of his private laboratory, Uchiha Akira shed the Akatsuki cloak and mask. His immediate task was clear. Using the tiny sample of tissue, he began the meticulous process of cultivating a clone of Hyuga Hinata. The goal was not the child herself, but the precious Byakugan that would develop within the clone.
"It's a pity directed cloning isn't feasible yet," he muttered, setting the culture parameters. The technology to grow isolated organs—like eyes—was still beyond them. A full-body clone was the only path, a cumbersome but necessary intermediate step.
His thoughts drifted to the unexpected guests. "Their timing was… fortuitous. I was wondering how to locate the lunar Ōtsutsuki's enclave." A wisp of a smile touched his lips. An idea formed.
A translucent version of himself—his spirit—emerged from his body. The moon was vast. While Kamui could bridge the distance physically, finding a specific, hidden pocket dimension within the celestial body was a needle-in-a-haystack problem.
But now he had a beacon.
Releasing his spiritual perception, he instantly locked onto the distinct, cold chakra signature of the elderly, eyeless leader from the chariot. The group was moving fast, their energy signatures oddly… uniform.
'Puppets, every one of them,' he realized. 'Their lack of individual vitality makes sense now.'
He tracked them. Their chakra vanished abruptly at a specific coordinate in the southern Fire Country, only to reappear moments later at a point on the lunar surface.
'So that's it. A fixed spatial gateway. Likely established and maintained by the Great Tenseigan's power.' The pieces clicked into place. The secret passage between Earth and the hidden world within the moon was now mapped in his mind.
"Found you," he whispered.
His physical form took a steadying breath. "To the moon, then."
With a subtle spatial distortion, he vanished from the lab.
The transition was not effortless. Akira reappeared in a vast, cavernous space, the air cool and still. He was once again clad in the Akatsuki guise, the mask hiding his features, leaving only his crimson right eye visible. Around him was not the barren, airless rock of the lunar surface, but the interior of a pocket dimension—a world within the moon, forged by Ōtsutsuki Hamura millennia ago.
"It's a significant distance," he remarked quietly to himself, feeling the residual drain on his chakra. "Without Hashirama's cells replenishing me, that jump would have been taxing."
Kamui's power was not bound by markers; its range was limited only by the user's chakra and ocular strength. He had both in abundance now.
Before him sprawled an architectural complex of stark, elegant lines, reminiscent of the Hyuga compound but on a grander, more solemn scale. It was shrouded in a profound, eerie silence, lit by a dim, sourceless glow. It felt less like a home and more like a mausoleum.
'Their numbers must be critically low,' Akira thought, his Sharingan scanning the empty walkways and silent buildings. 'It's no wonder they're virtually extinct in a few decades.'
His perception, heightened by the Hashirama cells, flared. He sensed life—fifteen distinct chakra signatures deep within the central structure. Three of them burned with particular intensity, easily on par with Sarutobi Hiruzen in his prime.
But his attention was irresistibly drawn elsewhere. Floating in the center of the vast cavern, suspended by invisible forces, was a small, rocky island. Upon it stood a majestic, ancient temple. From that structure emanated a pressure that was almost physical—a dense, overwhelming confluence of chakra and pupil power that pressed against his senses.
'That's the source,' he breathed, a thrill of awe and caution running through him. 'The Great Tenseigan. Such monstrous power…' He remembered its fate in another timeline—shattered by Naruto and Hinata. 'A weapon meant to remake worlds, turned to dust. What a waste. It would be the perfect tool against the Ōtsutsuki threat.'
He shook his head, dismissing the thought. 'Not yet. I can't approach it.' The defensive mechanism was clear in his perception: any being without Hamura's blood would have their life force and chakra utterly drained upon nearing the temple. He was strong, but not strong enough to defy that.
Turning from the floating island, Akira's form flickered, using Kamui's intangibility to phase through walls and corridors, heading directly for the cluster of living chakra.
His entrance did not go unnoticed.
Though the lunar Ōtsutsuki had sacrificed their personal Byakugan to power the Great Tenseigan, they could use its omnipotent perception within this space. The moment he materialized within the inner sanctum, an alarm—silent but palpable in the surge of energy—rippled through the dimension.
Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!
From every doorway, shadowed alcove, and even from the very walls, figures erupted. They were the puppets—dozens, then over a hundred of them, clad in grey robes and masked, moving with a fluid, unnatural grace. They surrounded him in an instant, a silent, coordinated army. Some brandished razor-sharp chakra blades, others held spheres of condensed golden energy.
"The puppeteer with the Tenseigan is truly the ultimate master of the art," Akira observed, almost appreciatively. Compared to this, Sasori's Hundred Puppets performance seemed almost quaint. These constructs had independent life, required no chakra strings, and their combat instincts were honed.
In a synchronized rush, they attacked from all angles, a wave of lethal intent.
The three tomoe in Akira's visible eye spun lazily. "Kamui."
Every blade passed through him. Every energy sphere dissipated in the space he occupied without touching him. He stood immaterial at the center of the storm.
"Speed, strength, tactical coordination… each equivalent to a seasoned jōnin. No wonder Toneri had the confidence to raid Konoha single-handedly in the future," Akira mused, analyzing their movements even as they futilely struck at his intangible form.
He decided to end the demonstration.
Crackle… ZZZZT!
Black lightning, deep and void-like, erupted from his body. It didn't just flash; it swarmed, expanding in a sphere of devastating energy.
"Kamui Lightning Burial!"
The black lightning carried with it the distorting power of his Mangekyō. Where it touched, matter didn't just burn or shatter—it was erased. Sections of puppet limbs, torsos, and heads vanished into non-existence, swallowed by microscopic spatial rifts woven into the lightning itself.
It was a technique inspired by Hatake Kakashi's fusion of Lightning Release and Kamui, refined and amplified by Akira's greater reserves and control.
Crunch. Clatter. Thud.
The assault halted as abruptly as it began. The courtyard before the central building was now a junkyard of dismembered puppets, limbs and torsos strewn about, many ending in clean, void-like cuts where parts had been completely excised from reality.
Silence returned, deeper than before, broken only by the faint sizzle of fading lightning.
(End of Chapter)
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