Momoshiki Otsutsuki hurtled ever faster through the torn air beneath the clouds, his robes billowing and whipping in the wind. Deep within his consciousness, the haze gradually lifted under the pull of gravity and the rush of wind.
He finally managed to raise his left hand, spreading his trembling fingers as he tried to steady himself during his fall.
Meanwhile, on the ground farther away.
Naruto Uzumaki abruptly stepped forward, leaving a shallow depression in the grass beneath his foot.
His blue eyes were locked on the figure plummeting from high above, his voice taut. "That Ōtsutsuki got knocked down!"
Sasuke's right hand had already closed around the hilt of the Kusanagi Sword, but he had not drawn it.
His gaze shifted once between the falling figure and Naraku and Isshiki, who were facing off again high above, before settling on Momoshiki, who was about to hit the distant ground.
"There's still another one."
Sasuke kept his voice low. "The Hokage will deal with him."
Naruto did not argue, but he had already leaned slightly forward, his knees bent, ready to charge out at any moment.
His gaze never left the battlefield high above.
At that moment, Isshiki bore down on Naraku again, his bearing completely different from before.
"I can't let you kill him so easily."
Isshiki spoke in a voice deeper than at any point before.
Naraku's blade pointed diagonally toward the ground as he calmly met Isshiki's gaze.
"You're welcome to try."
The next instant, Isshiki left an afterimage in midair, trailing a series of translucent, broken traces through the air.
His Black Rods no longer stabbed from a single direction. Instead, more than ten, twenty, then thirty condensed around his body, bearing down along with his charge.
Naraku took a step, turning Kurikara from a forward