"Boom, boom, boom-"
Within the cumulonimbus clouds above Sapporo City, it seemed as though a thunder god was beating war drums. Summer thunder rumbled, and lightning snaked through the dark clouds like dragons and serpents.
Crackle, crackle.
The dark rain clouds filling the sky, laden with moisture, finally succumbed to gravity. Fierce winds howled, and torrential rain poured down.
Amid the thunderstorm, explosions distinct from the thunder rang out one after another. F-15J fighters of the Air Self-Defense Force burst apart and disintegrated in midair, their wreckage crashing into the city below and exploding into fireballs.
Uchiha Naruto watched without joy or sorrow as a few lucky pilots ejected from their cockpits, opened their parachutes, and drifted slowly toward the ground.
The index finger of his right hand twitched slightly, as though he were about to point it.
With a mere curl of his finger, Uchiha Naruto could have Susanoo's Yasaka Magatama wipe out all those fortunate survivors from ten or fifteen kilometers away, as easily as erasing names from a register of life and death.
But in the end, Uchiha Naruto remained impassive and did not strike.
This was not out of pity. These antlike mortals simply did not warrant a second attack from him.
Consider your survival a gift from heaven. Live on in gratitude, steeped in terror, clinging to your miserable lives.
Not so long ago, he had still been an ordinary person. Even with the Sharingan, he had been wary of the machinery of the state. Now that he had awakened the Mangekyō Sharingan, even a fighter formation's relentless bombardment could do nothing to him.
Looking back now, it felt like another lifetime.
"Ah, so this is the power of the Mangekyō Sharingan? I can command the clouds and rain with a turn of my hand.