Kaguya Ōtsutsuki

Deep in the crater, Madara Uchiha struggled to raise his head, his swollen face.

Bearing a faint, feverish flush.

"I refuse to believe..." he panted, clinging inwardly to one last venomous hope, "that anything in this world can be immune to Infinite Tsukuyomi!"

This was his final trump card, the ultimate Dōjutsu he had spent his entire life pursuing, capable of ending all conflict.

He had begun planning for this moment many years ago.

He did not believe that Pero's clone could withstand this Dōjutsu of the Sage of Six Paths coming from the moon.

He looked up.

There, suspended in the air, Pero's clone, like an incarnation of the sun, merely raised his head slightly.

With eyes made purely of light, he glanced indifferently at the enormous, ominous Rinne Sharingan in the sky.

The crimson moonlight engulfed him like a tide.

The golden flames of light around his body dimmed for only an instant before returning to normal, becoming... even more brilliant than before.

Pero's clone slowly lowered his head and looked at the utterly spent Madara Uchiha in the crater with a mocking gaze, as though looking at a clown.

Splitting my attention does have some effect, Pero's clone silently grumbled. I didn't expect this Tsukuyomi to actually affect me a little. Looks like Superman having no magic resistance applies in every universe.

As Madara Uchiha looked at his completely unscathed opponent, the last shred of hope in his heart was utterly extinguished.

"It didn't work...?"

The light in his eyes rapidly faded.

He gave up trying.

He had nothing left. Taijutsu, Ninjutsu, Senjutsu, Dōjutsu... everything he took pride in seemed so laughable and powerless before this monster.

As his will to fight vanished completely, he felt the power within him that he had only recently merged with.

That violent power of the Ten-Tails began to stir uncontrollably, as though it would burst his fragile shell apart.

He might as well stop being this Jinchūriki!

"So be it..." A deep weariness welled up in Madara's heart. I might as well let them all out.

This new world no longer had room for a remnant of the old era like him.

Perhaps going to the Pure Land to pass on was the best end for him after all.

"It's all... over."

At the very instant this thought arose.

Shlk-!

Without warning, a pitch-black hand pierced his heart from behind, bringing a splash of scalding blood with it.

Madara Uchiha, in disbelief.

Trembling, he struggled to turn his head to one side and look.

He saw a pitch-black face in profile, wearing an eerie smile, slowly rising from the earth beneath him.

"Black Zetsu! You...!"

Madara had never imagined that, at the very end, he would be betrayed by the embodiment of his will that he had created with his own hands.

"You... you're my creation... why would you... betray me?" His voice was filled with confusion and anger.

Black Zetsu slowly shook his head, an expression full of mockery and pity appearing on his pitch-black face.

"You're wrong, Madara Uchiha." His voice became ancient and weathered beyond measure. "You've been wrong from beginning to end. My will... is Kaguya!"

"From the very beginning, you've only ever been... the most important pawn, existing solely to resurrect my mother."

"Just like everything you did in the Shinobi World, you're no different from Obito."

"Your mission is over."

At that instant!

Across the battlefield, the tens of thousands of enormous white cocoons hanging high above, wrapped in the vines of Sage Art: Birth of the God Tree World, began to tremble violently!

Vast streams of pure chakra were frantically extracted from the bodies of the ninja trapped in eternal dreams!

"You absorbed the God Tree, absorbed the Tailed Beasts' chakra, absorbed Mother's chakra scattered throughout the world."

"Now, Mother's shell, Mother's chakra, and Mother's will have finally all come together at this moment!"

"Rise again! My mother!"

Black Zetsu let out a frenzied cry!

Endless chakra flowed along the God Tree's vines into its underground roots, like a hundred rivers flowing into the sea, until all of it surged into Madara Uchiha's body!

"No-!!!"

Unable to move, Madara could only watch as that mass of chakra, vast enough to burst a planet apart, poured frantically into his body.

His body began to swell wildly in an utterly horrifying manner that defied every law of life!

Like a balloon being endlessly inflated, his skin stretched until it was transparent, while his muscles and bones groaned and shattered!

At that moment, he felt like a clown.

An utter, self-important, ridiculous clown.

He had spent decades laying his plans, believing himself the player controlling the Shinobi World's chessboard, manipulating everyone in the palm of his hand.

In the end, everything had dissolved into an illusory dream.

It was not merely that Pero, a monster beyond all bounds, had utterly crushed his plans with absolute power.

Even his years of painstaking preparations and the "will" he had believed in without question had all been a complete and utter lie!

He regretted it.

He regretted appearing in this world once again.

At last, Madara Uchiha's unwilling consciousness was completely swallowed by that endless torrent of chakra.

"Hashirama, was I truly wrong?"

His body, swollen to its limit, slowly began to contract and reshape itself.

Gradually, it became a white woman with skin as pale as snow, dressed in white feathered robes, with a Rinne Sharingan on her forehead and a pair of fearsome horns growing from her head.

She slowly opened her eyes.

They were a pair of pure Byakugan, without any pupils.

Her gaze immediately turned toward the golden figure in the sky, the only one still radiating light.

At the same time, Black Zetsu's voice emerged from her sleeve, carrying a trace of flattery and grievance.

"Mother, it's that man! He's the one who's been interfering with my plans to resurrect you!"

"And this is only his clone!"

Kaguya's Byakugan shifted slightly. Chakra instantly gathered in her eyes, and the veins around them bulged.

She analyzed the composition of Pero's clone.

Yet she found only that his entire body was composed of chakra.

"You... are not of this world." Her voice was ethereal and haughty, carrying a god's indifference toward mortal things. "Such an energy structure belongs to no race known to me."

"Life among the stars, beyond the Otsutsuki?"

As she spoke, Kaguya slowly raised both hands, as though to embrace the entire world.

"No matter."

"This planet is mine."