Jigen's shriveled face lay pressed into the muck, his throat rattling with wet, gurgling gasps.
His long white robe was plastered with black mud and blood. His chin rested on half a broken blue brick, with a large patch of skin scraped raw.
His eyes stared fixedly at the battered slippers beneath my feet, his pupils shrunk to pinpoints. His whole body shook like a leaf.
The iron chopsticks in Naruto's hand remained suspended in midair. He didn't even notice the meat juices dripping from the corner of his mouth onto his crotch, sitting petrified on the stone stool.
"This... is impossible... absolutely impossible..."
Jigen suddenly let out a shriek like fingernails scraping an iron pot, both hands clawing desperately at the rotten vegetable leaves in the dirt.
"This is Konoha? I was deep in the northernmost ice fields just now! Twenty thousand kilometers away! How could I possibly get here in an instant...?"
The black markings on his body began spreading wildly, like countless black centipedes crawling up his neck toward his forehead.
I waved my battered palm fan, sending a gust of hot, earthy-smelling air straight into his face.
"So what if it's twenty thousand kilometers? In my vegetable patch, even digging down to the planet's core only puts you a shovelful of dirt away."
I spat a mouthful of tea dregs into a plate of leftovers on the stone table and gave him a sidelong look.
"Are you deaf? I told you to lick that cabbage clean. Didn't you hear me? Do I have to smack you in the face with my slipper before you'll move?"
"Insolence! You lowly monkey! You dare humiliate a god?!"
Jigen's entire face suddenly twisted out of shape. With a crack, countless bloody fissures split open across his fragile human shell.
Violent