Chapter Text
(Recommended Song To Listen While Reading : Back To Mad By Texas)
The sky was already broken.
A spiderweb of light veined the clouds, each line a rippling scar from a clash that didn’t wait for introductions. A shock ring rolled over the jagged plain as Monkey D. Luffy’s Jet Pistol met Son Goku’s open palm, rubber force and godlike calm detonating into a wind-shear that tore grass from the earth and flung it upward like rain in reverse. Goku vanished. Luffy’s fist snapped back, his grin wider. The ground under him crumpled as he vanished too—two blurs carving contrails through the air, swapping altitude with each punch, each kick, each burst of steam.
Below, Roronoa Zoro met Ichigo Kurosaki’s black blade with three of his own. Sparks screamed between steel; then a black crescent—Getsuga Tenshō—roared forward. Zoro bit the hilt between his teeth and moved, the crescent splitting and fanning into frost-silver sleet as it passed through air chilled by Rukia Kuchiki’s Sode no Shirayuki. The sleet hardened and shattered when Zoro’s slash turned to fire mid-swing—Ryuo sparks licking the edge, flame spiraling: Hiryu Kaen. Rukia slid one pale foot in a circle, petals of ice orbiting like moons before snapping inward; the temperature plummeted.
Tanjiro Kamado felt the sting in his lungs even across the field. He stepped with Water Breathing’s Sixth Form: Whirlpool, blade singing an ink-blue arc that spiraled around Nezuko Kamado. She kicked off his guard, blood igniting with a thought. Exploding Blood unraveled Rukia’s frost into steam; the steam condensed, snow hissed into slush with a smell of sky before rain, and then—
Katsuki Bakugo ripped through the cloud like a jagged comet, grenade bracers flaring. He thunder-clapped a series of micro-explosions so close to Zoro and Ichigo that it sounded like a single crackling scream. “Move, extras!” he barked, skidding sideways on his own blast as Ichigo’s afterimage dissolved where Bakugo had aimed.
“Full Cowl—” Izuku Midoriya shouldered past the sonic wall left by Bakugo, green lightning snapping into a lattice over his skin. He used the recoil of one kick to fold into the next, bouncing off nothing, off air, off sound itself, to align on Naruto Uzumaki—
Who wasn’t there.
Shadow Clone feints flurried through the dust—dozens of Narutos surging forward in a tidal wedge, each with a whirling Rasengan humming at different pitches in their palms. The first met Deku’s shoulder; the second switched with a rock with a paper-quiet pop as Sasuke Uchiha’s eyes bled crimson and onyx. Amenotejikara threaded the battlefield like invisible string. The real Naruto flashed in behind him, the cloak of Kurama’s chakra blooming in sun-sheaves. A tail blocked Bakugo’s AP Shot; plasma burst harmlessly off chakra.
Sasuke’s Chidori screamed awake in his hand, the blade of lightning so fine it shook the air around it into a shimmering tunnel. Rasengan met Chidori with a howl and a spray of sparks that skated like fireflies over Deku’s knuckles as he slid under, redirected, then tore upward with a Detroit Smash that bent the shock cone into visible rings. Sasuke’s ribs formed around him in spectral violet; Susanoo shrugged the blow and the rings tore trenches a hundred meters long.
A flash of white: Killua Zoldyck, hair razored by electricity, took the trench as a runway. Godspeed folded the world around him into a narrow hallway where he was the only moving thing. He slid past Naruto’s clones, swiping a dozen chakra tails with two fingers, and in that same syllable braced his foot on the armored hip of Alphonse Elric. The armor groaned but held; Al’s orange seal-lines pulsed, shoulders bracing, arms widening.
Edward Elric clapped. The ground heaved like a sleeping beast rolling over. Iron rebar screamed up from the earth in a cage around Killua even as the boy’s lightning tore at it. Sparks showered, welded, broke. He twisted once and was gone again, an arc-light ricochet off an aluminum transmutation spire that ground to mercury under Ed’s hand. Killua’s elbow kissed Ed’s jaw a heartbeat later—but a stone gauntlet caught the boy midair. The gauntlet belonged to the statue that had not been there a second ago. Ed smirked, blood bright on his lip. “Don’t blink.”
Gon Freecss leaped into that gap. “Jajanken—Rock!” Aura concentrated into his fist with a child’s uncompromising sincerity. He fell past gravity’s rules and punched the air. The air lost. The shockwave flattened a grove of fossil trees and booted Goku downward out of a brief exchange with Luffy. Goku landed on both feet because of course he did, skidding backward, smiling wider.
“Nice punch!” he called, and the ground cracked from the friendly thunder in his voice.
Up high, Luffy disappeared in a blur of steam; Gear Second scribbled pink jet-lines behind him. He snapped his arm back farther than his body should admit and let it slam forward with the hunger of a slingshot god. Jet Bazooka. Goku slipped around it in that paradox way that looks lazy and impossibly fast at the same time. He tap-stepped on Luffy’s forearm, heel planting on Haki-hardened rubber, and vaulted into an elbow that stopped a blink in Luffy’s cheek before it could happen. The pirate slingshotted around it anyway, laughing through his teeth. “That’s good!”
Vegeta tore the horizon open with a Final Flash.
It came from an angle nobody was watching because everyone was watching each other. The beam carved a canyon in the sky. Dry earth cracked open like pottery under a fire. Bakugo’s curse drowned in the roar. Zoro disappeared into shadow; Ichigo was already there, Tensa Zangetsu drawn, both of them cutting—slabs of the beam sheared into ribbons by black and green arcs and flung upward in drafts. The upper half of the Final Flash grazed the cloud ceiling and split it into two kingdoms.
“Pay attention,” Vegeta snarled, blue aura sonic-booming around him. Every breath out of him ate the fog.
Rukia’s circle completed. Tsukishiro’s column detonated upward under Vegeta’s position, a pillar of absolute zero reaching skyward as if to spear a star. Frost raced across Vegeta’s boots in frantic lace. He flexed, and the ice sublimated in a ring, blasting away into glitter that caught the sunlight and burned. He pivoted to fire, but a strange shadow rolled like ink over his arm and then down into the earth: Megumi Fushiguro’s Ten Shadows Technique, a pair of Divine Dogs exploding from the slick black. They slammed into Vegeta’s flank while he was airborne.
Vegeta’s counter-kick was a thunderclap.
The Dogs limned in curses spun into smoke. The boot that had struck them instead dented an elephant. Max Elephant trumpeted, scattering the shock of the blow through four legs and into stone; Megumi’s silhouette hunched on a boulder, one hand out, eyes unfocused—the chessboard of shadows and light overlaying the whole world in his head. Yuji Itadori streaked by him as a meteoroid, landing in the wake of Vegeta’s recoil. His fist carried the smell of ozone, the taste of iron, and a black line like a sword drawn inside a thunderclap.
Black Flash. It bloomed at the last second, and Vegeta’s forearm took it, aura crisping into shards. He slid backward, snarling. “Hnh. That hurt.”
Yuji shook his knuckles, grinning sheepish and determined. “Good.”
The ground between them detonated as Sasuke called lightning from the bones of a cloud. Kirin’s shape flickered—dragon, storm, judgment—and in the time it took for anyone to understand its story, Naruto was already there, golden cloak flaring, palms held out like he was holding a universe between them. Bijuu chakra compressed, Rasenshuriken unfurled—a whirling flower of wind with petals sharp enough to erase what they touched.
Deku didn’t run from it. He ran with it. Air Force shots popped from his gloves, micro-blasts shifting the tornado’s course just enough to scythe past Yuji and roll the Kirin onto a different axis. The storm-dragon sheared sideways, smashing into a mountain that hadn’t been there a moment ago because Edward put it there, because Alphonse anchored it, because they’d both dug their heels into the laws of their world and insisted they could still count here.
Ichigo blurred through the field, Shunpo stringing his body into lightning-zigzags as he and Zoro fell into a rhythm neither had learned but both understood. Three swords became nine as Ashura opened behind Zoro, an oni’s roar filling the air with old hunger. Tensa Zangetsu hummed low and content in Ichigo’s hand. Black and green traced the same path at different angles, cutting a spiral stair up a beam that Goku had just fired.
Kamehameha braided with Getsuga Tenshō for a breath. The two energies twisted, then repelled; light flared between them in a color eyes aren’t sure how to name. Zoro cut the flare and kicked off the light itself to redirect. He landed in the middle of a garden of Narutos, swords up, grinning like a shark. “Who’s the real one?”
“Does it matter?” a hundred voices answered, and they were all true for an instant.
On the ground, Tanjiro heard the water. Not the metaphorical water—the water Rukia’s frost had stolen, the water Naruto’s storm had dragged out of the air, the water Deku’s air bursts had let fall again. He drew Breath of Water, First Form: Water Surface Slash, then folded it into Sun Breathing, Dance, the arc bright enough to throw a shadow with its heat. Nezuko crossed the path of the slash mid-swing and set it ablaze. The strike left a flaming scar that chased Killua—who had been about to step where Tanjiro knew he’d step—forcing a pivot that carried him into a waiting transmuted wall that then wasn’t there because Ed decided it shouldn’t be. Killua flicked his eyes sideways at Ed. Ed flicked his back. Points awarded without a word.
Rukia passed through that flame scar like a winter’s thought. She pointed, and the world hung for the barest heart-beat, slow enough to hear each snowflake ring on steel as it formed. “Some no mai, Tsukishiro.” The ice pillar mushroomed, a cruel flower. Nezuko exploded her own blood across it. Pink fire crawled through white veins, lighting the pillar from within. Rukia looked almost pleased as she stepped back into the drift.
Gon swung “Scissors,” aura blade sharp and clean, to carve a path through falling ice splinters toward Luffy—who used them like stepping stones because why wouldn’t he. He bounded, rubber legs coiling and releasing, Haki crackling on his skin like storm-iron, then ballooned his fist into Third Gear mid-flight. The shadow that fell over Ichigo and Zoro could have been a sudden eclipse if not for Luffy’s grin hanging in the middle of it like a sun. He came down with an Elephant Gun that could have written a new river—if Rukia hadn’t drawn a line and said winter instead, if Sasuke hadn’t swapped the stone under Luffy with a drift of leaves and let gravity fumble the punch for a heartbeat, if Deku’s shoulder hadn’t slammed into the trajectory from the other side to put it back on line.
It still hit.
A crater bloomed.
Dust rose like a continent lifting from the sea.
Goku was in the dust already, instant movement breaking sense. He palmed Luffy’s next punch and spun him once, using his rubber against him, then kicked him back into the crater. Vegeta was there to greet him—not with mercy—with a Galick Gun fired from behind clenched teeth and old pride. Zoro interposed, sword crossing swords crossing a beam; the purple light split around his edges in twin spears, shredding mountains no one had sworn to protect. Ichigo braced at his back, the both of them not planning this and doing it flawlessly anyway.
Yuji and Naruto collided in a flurry that sounded like a deck of cards shuffled by a storm. Divergent Fist left ghost-punches in the air, delayed impacts popping like distant popcorn. Naruto’s clones took those hits and smiled through the smoke as the real one slipped behind Yuji, Rasengan expanding and contracting in his palm like breath itself. Megumi saw it in the shadow of a rock and moved the rock; Yuji moved with the shadow, slid under the Rasengan not quite in time, and took it to the shoulder instead of the spine, bouncing twice, rolling to his feet with the kind of wince that promises gratitude later.
Alphonse’s gauntlet clanged as Killua rattled off a combo inside it, Godspeed turning each hit into a thunder tick. Al took a knee and didn’t move. Inside the armor: a seal, a boy’s will. Outside: a friend’s job. Ed transmuted a ring of iron around Killua’s foot mid-burst—it snapped immediately under lightning, but the heartbeat was enough. Gon’s “Paper” lit the world for a split second and sent Ed skipping like a stone across a lake until he dug his metal arm into a wall and hung there by the elbow, laughing breathless, eyes bright. “Okay! Okay, I see you!”
Vegeta was done watching.
He launched like a railgun fired a man instead of a slug, met Goku mid-air, and the two of them traded a flurry so fast it looked like their bodies were being erased and redrawn as interpretations of violence. Blue and gold braided and frayed. A punch broke the sound barrier and the concept of polite distances; a kick erased a flock of clouds as if scolding weather for being in the way. They drifted down and vanished up and met in the middle again, each time like magnets re-learning intimacy.
Ichigo drew a line with Getsuga, and Sasuke cut it with Chidori. The shockwave wrote calligraphy on the dust at their feet. Zoro’s Ashura burned like an old god. Rukia froze it for one second—just long enough for everyone to admire the sculpture—then let it go as Tanjiro chased its edge with sunfire. Nezuko’s kick redirected a Bakugo blast into a Goku dodge into a Vegeta glare into a Goku laugh.
Deku felt his bones sing when he blinked and found Luffy next to him. The pirate looked at him, eyes bright with the good kind of trouble. “Let’s push it!”
Deku nodded once, the decision already made before the words. They ran.
Luffy’s arms thinned into serpents of prehensile motion, Jet Gatling’s rain hammering at the same single point on the same single plate of Vegeta’s aura. Each hit stole a pixel from reality in that spot; each pixel yearned to be a hole. Deku arrived into that hurricane with a rhythm of his own, strikes threaded into the gaps, Full Cowl haloing his body in bright green lines. The point gave. Vegeta’s eyes widened, and for a breath he looked delighted—an honest shock—before he bent the universe in his direction again and it stopped making sense in front of him.
From the edge of the storm, a voice cut through, calm and cold. “Step back.”
Rukia raised her blade; a white bloom unfolded through the battlefield, slow, inevitable, terrifyingly beautiful. Hakka no Togame would have ended the dance and the chapter both, but she kept it leashed at a whisper, frost-kiss instead of total judgment. It was enough. Hoarfrost rimed Haki, kissed chakra, argued with aura. Breath misted from everyone at once like a single organism exhaling.
Goku lifted his hands. Light gathered there the way water remembers the ocean. “Kamehame—”
Sasuke raised one hand, lightning knitting to finger; Vegeta mirrored him with a lens of gold. Ichigo’s blade burned black; Zoro drew lines the air wanted to follow. Naruto’s clone army condensed into five, nine, one, all of them holding a star in their hands. Deku’s breath synced to a heartbeat that belonged to more than one person now; Bakugo burned the sky into traction. Tanjiro inhaled and tasted family; Nezuko’s blood became fire; Killua’s hair lifted as if the storm had called his name; Gon smiled at his friend and stepped forward; Ed clapped; Al set his feet; Yuji’s eyes widened as every sense fell into that tiny sliver of time where Black Flash is possible; Megumi set his shadow like a trap for fate itself.
The world paused.
Then everyone fired.
Beams, arcs, crescents, fists, tears of sunlight; a menagerie of everything a soul can do. They met, merged, rejected, married, argued. The center swallowed color. A sphere formed at the collision, a newborn star with a heartbeat, its skin rippling with signatures of a dozen realities trying to occupy the same breath. The pressure punched trenches outward in a perfect ring. The broken sky’s cracks lit up all at once like the planet was smiling too hard.
In the white-hot moment before it let go, time lengthened into something like mercy. A hundred choices flickered and resolved. A hundred counters coiled inside them.
It burst.
A mushroom of light rose, petals folding over the field, shockwaves crashing over ruins and rebuilding them and breaking them again. The blast threw everyone everywhere, none of them alone; someone’s hand found someone else’s shoulder in the storm, and then there was air again, and grit between teeth, and the hush of a battlefield catching its breath.
The dust didn’t settle so much as agree to hang. Through it, silhouettes stood, flashed, squared.
There was only fighting left to do.