When the Azure Giant, dozens of meters tall, fully formed and stood inside the mine, it punched straight through the ceiling of the vast underground cavern. Huge chunks of rock collapsed from above, only to be pulverized before they could touch Susanoo's chakra armor.
Moonlight poured through the ruptured ceiling, bathing the towering warrior, seemingly risen from myth, in an interwoven glow of silver and azure.
Sasori tilted his head back and stared at Susanoo's colossal silhouette. For the first time, his handsome, sinister face went blank with something close to numbness.
He was not a man who frightened easily. From the moment he defected from Sunagakure and assassinated the Third Kazekage, he had stripped fear from his heart as a useless emotion.
But now, with the Azure Giant towering before him like a natural disaster made flesh, his mind briefly went blank-not from fear, but because nothing in his understanding of the world could explain the sight before him.
"...What is that?" Sasori's voice turned hoarse, the words almost squeezed from the depths of his throat.
Uchiha Makoto did not answer. He stood within the Chakra Core at Susanoo's brow, his hands resting naturally at his sides, calmly looking down at Sasori on the ground like a god gazing upon the mortal world.
Then Susanoo struck.
The Azure Giant raised its right hand, spread its fingers, and slowly brought its palm down toward Sasori. The movement did not look fast. It could even have been called "slow"-but it carried the inescapable weight of a collapsing mountain range. Before the enormous palm reached the ground, the pressure beneath it had already forced a massive depression into the earth. The rock beneath Sasori's feet shattered inch by inch, while scattered puppet wreckage flew away on the shock wave, slamming into distant