Madara landed on a scorched cliff, the hem of his cloak fluttering with the heat waves still rippling from Iwagakure's ruins. With one leap, he landed beside Kai, his eyes still carrying the manic afterglow of war.
He folded his arms. "It's done."
Kai didn't immediately respond. He was standing still, watching the wind carry ash and cinders into the distant sky.
Madara's Sharingan flared to life, the tomoe swirling intensely as he turned to him. "...What happened to your chakra?"
Kai said nothing, but Madara noticed it instantly.
The difference was drastic. Kai's chakra wasn't overwhelming in size, but its quality and density had shifted significantly. It no longer felt like a harmless background hum. Now, it buzzed, compressed, and layered, like a loaded spring.
Interesting.
Still, Madara didn't seem too surprised. "A trick, then?" he asked aloud, eyes flashing with suspicion.
He had seen Kai appear and disappear without any hint of chakra usage before. Now this sudden spike? It didn't add up. But Madara was too old to jump to conclusions. It was smarter to assume deception until proven otherwise.
"You've been hiding," Madara muttered, "or lying."
Kai only smiled faintly.
The truth was, his chakra signature had changed—but not because of some hidden reservoir suddenly unlocked. Instead, his system-level abilities were slowly adapting to the energy of this world. A dozen hidden limiters had eased off. Now, he could operate with more freedom. Not like a shinobi—but like something else.
But there was no need to tell Madara that.
"Beautiful," Kai said instead, gazing at the devastation. "Was the dance enjoyable?"
Madara sighed, cracking his neck. "Not bad. But it wasn't Hashirama."
The tone was neutral, almost bored—but from Madara, that counted as praise.
"Ishikawa held his ground until the end," Madara added, a rare note of appraisal in his voice. "As for Mu… he was certainly a tricky opponent. Had he managed to charge that Dust Release for just another second, he might have actually cracked through my Susanoo."
Kai's interest sharpened. "You think Dust Release could actually break through the complete form?"
Madara gave a single, definitive nod. "Under the right conditions, yes, it could. But that jutsu demands time to fully charge, and Mu simply didn't have any left."
"Pity," Kai remarked, a hint of disappointment in his voice. "I was hoping to see it truly clash."
Madara merely grunted. "So was I."
For a brief moment, a rare, almost palpable sense of mutual curiosity connected the two.
Kai decided to break the silence and tapped his chin thoughtfully. "Think anyone survived out there?"
Madara's brow furrowed. "A few may have escaped, perhaps. Injured, mostly. Some civilians. And perhaps that Ōnoki brat."
"Oh, the kid?" Kai asked, a flicker of recognition in his eyes.
"The one who talked back at the shrine," Madara confirmed.
Kai chuckled softly. "He had spirit, I'll give him that."
Madara's brow twitched, a subtle sign of annoyance. "You want me to finish the job, then?"
"No," Kai replied, shaking his head firmly. "Children are not the enemy, Madara. And we're not here to wipe out bloodlines."
Madara exhaled slowly through his nose, a sound of grudging acceptance. "Hn."
"Besides," Kai added, a faint, almost mischievous glint in his eye, "Ōnoki may carry the Dust Release one day. Let's not snuff out all the interesting bloodlines just yet."
Madara's eyes narrowed, watching Kai more closely now, a hint of something unreadable in their depths. "You're not as cold as you pretend to be."
"Neither are you," Kai replied, glancing sideways, a small, knowing smile playing on his lips.
Madara offered no response, simply holding Kai's gaze. A long silence settled between them once again.
Then Madara shifted his weight and said, "I held up my end of the bargain. Iwagakure is no more."
Kai looked at him, nodding slowly. "You did."
"Then it's time," Madara declared, his eyes glinting with fierce anticipation. "Take me to the future. Show me the Eye of the Moon."
But Kai didn't move, holding up a hand, palm open, not in refusal, but in a gesture of delay. "Hold up! The battlefield's not clean yet."
Madara's chakra surged, his patience wearing thin. "You're stalling."
Kai didn't flinch.
Madara's voice darkened. "You think you can use me and then delay the deal?"
Kai shook his head. "I said I'd show you the truth, and I will. But this has to be done right."
"What else is there to destroy?" Madara barked, gesturing to the devastation around them. "I crushed their walls, erased their core forces. That entire village is ash."
Kai didn't argue. Instead, he simply stepped away and vanished in a ripple of distortion.
Madara blinked once, then narrowed his eyes, extending his senses. Chakra. It was high above, thousands of meters up in the sky.
Kai reappeared in the air directly over Iwagakure's ruins. Wind buffeted his coat, and ash swirled in faint spirals around him. His gaze was fixed on the broken crater below—jagged remains of buildings, buried dead, and flickering embers.
Still… there were traces of life. Survivors. Injured shinobi. Scattered enclaves of the stubborn and dying. That wouldn't do. If Iwagakure was to be a message, it had to be absolute.
From his inventory, Kai pulled out a long, cylindrical object—gray-green, matte, and utterly unassuming. It was nearly three meters in length.
[Modern Physical Exchange Voucher: Successfully Exchanged]
He released the payload. The weapon dropped silently from the sky. Kai didn't watch it fall; he teleported away before it hit terminal velocity, reappearing instantly beside Madara.
The elder Uchiha raised an eyebrow. "What did you just drop?"
Kai didn't answer immediately. Instead, he smiled faintly and offered Madara a pair of tinted glasses from his cloak.
"What is this?" Madara grunted, suspicious.
"For protection."
"You think I need—"
"Trust me."
Madara scowled but took the glasses, settling them onto his face.
Then the world changed.
In the distance, at the center of the crater that was once Iwagakure, a light ignited—small at first, then rapidly expanding, consuming everything. The very sky split. A sun was born.
The blast wave arrived seconds later. It was silent at first, as if the air itself had forgotten how to carry sound. Then it roared—a low, terrible rumble that seemed to tear at the bones of the earth, shaking them to their core.
The mushroom cloud rose relentlessly into the stratosphere, curling and swelling with sickly reds and yellows. The light was unbearable. Even through the tinted lenses, Madara had to shield his eyes.
When the tremor finally faded, when the ash began to fall like black snow, Madara spoke, his voice hushed.
Then he murmured with great excitement:
"What kind of ninjutsu is that?!!"
Kai's tone was matter-of-fact. "Dongfeng-17. Supersonic nuclear-capable ballistic warhead. Roughly 150 kilotons yield."
Madara stared speechlessly. "The-what...?"