They split into squads and spread across the village, searching alleyways, rooftops, and forest edges. But nothing was familiar. The downpour had wiped the land clean—like someone had tried to erase Menma himself.
Suddenly, Yoruusagi—running point—spotted something along the edge of a rooftop. Something out of place. A flicker of familiarity caught her eye.
She dropped down immediately, scanning the ground. Her eyes widened.
Weights.
The iron weights Menma always wore on his ankles—cast aside, half-buried in the wet grass.
Her hand trembled as she picked them up.
He had removed them.
He was fighting seriously.
"This is bad…" she whispered.
Her breath caught.
The ground trembled slightly—followed by a sudden burst of red light from the horizon.
A flare.
No… not just any flare.
A surge of chakra—wild, raw, overwhelming—ripped through the clouds above them. It burned across the sky like a gash in reality, pulsing with rage.
Yoruusagi's heart sank. A soundless scream pressed against her ribcage.
Menma.
She shot off toward the light, barely pausing to call the others.
She didn't need to explain.
The air itself told the story: something had been awakened.
---
As she neared Training Ground 7, more ninja began to appear—clustered on the edges, frozen in place. Their feet refused to cross an invisible threshold.
The scent of scorched earth.
Blood in the air.
The crackle of tainted chakra hanging like fog.
Snow whimpered in her arms.
She squirmed—then leapt down.
Yoruusagi turned sharply. "Snow!"
But Snow had caught the scent.
Menma.
She ran toward it, paws splashing through mud, ignoring the cold and pain. She didn't care. She had to see him.
Yoruusagi pushed through the gathering crowd, her own breath quickening, pushing aside bodies that stood, slack-jawed and mute, staring at something they couldn't comprehend.
And then she saw it.
---
---
The battlefield.
It was no longer a training ground.
It was a massacre site.
The earth was torn and cratered, clawed open by wrath.
The soil—once a field of growth—was now soaked in blood.
Charred trees stood like blackened skeletons, their limbs reaching skyward in silent agony.
Ash floated through the air like ghostly snow.
The wind didn't move.
Time had stopped.
Before them, stretching outward in jagged lines, were red chains—thick, pulsing, and dripping with blood.
They slithered across the ground, dividing reality in two.
It was as if the world had been split:
One side living.
The other—ruled by death.
And in the center of it all—
Menma.
Still.
Shrouded in the deep red glow of pure rage and corrupted chakra.
But this wasn't the Nine Tails.
No… what stood there was something else.
Something older.
Something wilder.
Three tails—long and thin like whips, low to the ground and barbed like ancient spears—lashed behind him. They weren't fox tails. They were wolf-like, crimson and predatory. Born not of a bijuu's nature, but of a soul devoured by pain.
A beast made not of chakra—
But of heartbreak.
Menma's back was to them.
His body trembled—though whether from exhaustion or fury, no one could say.
In his hand—
A throat.
The neck of a man, limp and bloodied, clenched tightly in his grip.
A final crack echoed across the field.
A sharp twist.
A collapsed body.
The man fell like a puppet whose strings had been cut.
Menma's arm dropped to his side, soaked in red.
His breath was ragged, his shoulders shaking beneath the weight of everything he had lost.
And his eye—
That right eye blazed, a smoldering red inferno, casting the entire scene in shades of crimson.
---
Yoruusagi stood among the others, frozen.
She couldn't speak.
Couldn't scream.
Couldn't even move.
Not a single shinobi stepped forward.
Not even the most seasoned among them.
Because what they saw…
Wasn't human.
And then—
A shadow moved.
From the edge of the red-stained chains, a man's figure flickered back into view.
A survivor.
His body was mangled—bleeding heavily, limping with panic.
He ran.
He thought he could escape.
He thought distance meant safety.
He was wrong.
Puff. Puff. Puff.
Three chains snapped like vipers through the air, impaling him with unnatural precision. They coiled around his limbs, dragging him screaming back toward the beast.
Menma turned.
His face came into view.
A wide, inhuman maw, stretched far beyond human anatomy—jaws opened back to the base of his ears. His teeth gleamed—sharp, jagged, dripping with blood.
His eye—vertical, slitted, feral.
And then—
He bit.
Right in front of them.
The creature devoured the man's head—bit clean through with a sickening crunch.
The body dropped limply to the side.
And now—
He stood alone.
The chains around him hissed and slithered as they retracted.
The blood-stained earth steamed beneath his feet.
He turned slowly, his gaze sweeping across the shinobi frozen in place.
The air turned heavy.
Killing intent pressed down like gravity itself.
It was ancient.
A pressure so vile, so heavy, it didn't feel like chakra anymore.
It felt like death.
The beast took one step forward—
Schhhluck.
The sound of thick blood beneath his foot.
He took another.
And another.
Each one closer to them.
Until—
Meow!
Meow!
Meow!
Meow!
A single sound split the horror.
A tiny, white figure walked into the field of carnage.
Snow.
Covered in mud, fur clumped together, yet she walked with quiet grace—
Like a phantom dancing in a nightmare.
Her paws touched down in puddles of blood,
But she didn't waver.
She looked up at the monster before her,
And meowed again.
Not with fear.
Not with anger.
With longing.
With sorrow.
With love.
Kakashi stepped forward instinctively—but was stopped.
A hand gripped his wrist.
Hope.
Everyone held their breath.
The beast—Menma—stopped.
The tails behind him froze.
He turned his head slightly, eyes twitching as if something buried deep inside had stirred.
Snow stepped closer—unafraid.
She stood up on her hind legs.
Pawed gently at the air.
"Meow…"
She called again.
A final plea.
A final cry—
To her boy.
Menma's eye flickered.
The red dimmed—just slightly.
His jaw unclenched.
His shoulders sagged.
And then—
He dropped to his knees.
Hands falling to the earth.
Chains evaporating like smoke.
The red storm peeled away from his body like fog lifted by dawn.
He looked down.
Snow brushed her head against his chest.
She was dirty. Wet. Shivering.
But alive.
And he—
He sobbed.
Not as a monster.
But as a child.
In the blood-red battlefield, surrounded by death and silence,
A white kitten sat in the arms of a boy who had nearly destroyed the world.
And love—
love did what no seal or jutsu could.
It saved him, and the world from him...
---