The Fight Begins

Urashiki readjusted the fishing rod on his shoulder, his gaze slowly leaving the portico of the stone structure and settling back on Toneri and Hanabi's faces. The moon's cold light poured down from above and to the side, splitting his features into light and shadow—his usual smile still hung at the corners of his lips, but the undertone beneath it had changed into something purer, entirely unmasked: lofty condescension.

"The Tenseigan." He repeated the three words as if grinding their syllables over his tongue once more. "You guard it, use it to patrol the moon, observe the stars, and keep that giant Tenseigan running. That's all you've done for centuries. Do you know how many uses the Otsutsuki Main Family has for something like this?"

Toneri did not answer. His Tenseigan remained fixed on Urashiki's pupils, its pale golden patterns rotating at a steady pace beneath the cold light.

"Let me tell you a fact." Urashiki's tone returned to that frivolous, teasing rhythm. "There's too much native earthling blood flowing through your bodies. The Tenseigan only glows passively within you, like a gem stuffed into a wine bottle. At most, you can make it shine, but you don't know how to turn it into a weapon. You don't know what it can truly do."

He paused, his gaze passing back and forth between Toneri and Hanabi's Tenseigan once. Something almost like pity lay hidden in his eyes—the peculiar downward gaze the Otsutsuki reserved for mixed-blood descendants, one marked by aesthetic distance, like the regret someone might feel while looking at a crudely made imitation.

"But the gem itself is still valuable, no matter who holds it," Urashiki said. "So—I'll be taking your two pairs of eyes."

Toneri's lips tightened slightly. His voice came from beneath the portico, not loud, but