Assassin of the Moonlit Night

Naruto fights like a cornered animal with a library card: explosive tags on kunai jammed into sand armor, the Thousand Years of Death repurposed with a paper bomb, shadow clones spent like ammunition. Each trick buys seconds against a transformation that no longer ends. Gaara, delighted, narrates the philosophy of their mirrored childhoods — love no one, fight for yourself alone — while Sakura suffocates by degrees in the claw. Naruto, upside down out of chakra, bites his thumb for the contract he barely owns.