The portal opened with a deep, resonating hum, he floated out of the portal silently and Into the quiet void of space near Jupiter. Toneri stepped through, his Tenseigan instantly taking in the infinite black, reading every detail of the ruined sector. Of course what he saw was the aftermath of his clash with Darkseid. The handiwork of their little quarrel leaving nothing but silent devastation.
Crushed and obliterated chunks of moons drifted like cosmic shrapnel. Gaps where specific moons should have been was now empty no thanks to that damn god. Jupiter loomed in the distance still massive, still burning with its gaseous storms but now it was stripped of most of its moons, a lonely giant slightly off its usual path. Toneri's gaze lingered on it, noting the faint shift in its orbit. The balance here had been shaken, and in time, such a shift could ripple outward, changing the harmony of the entire system.
Yeah that can't be allowed to happen.
He turned his head, scanning further and saw Uranus floated far off, or rather, what was left of it. Only half of the planet remained with a fractured hemisphere holding together only by its own stubborn gravity. The other half had been erased by the Orthoclase Wheel, reduced to nothing. Beyond it, Neptune bore great scars across its surface, the remnants of gravitational warping and shattered ice storms. And Pluto… Well Pluto was gone.
Toneri let out a long, slow sigh, the sound lost to the vacuum but heavy in his chest.
'That's also my fault,' he admitted to himself.
Another sigh. Then he caught himself, blinking in faint amusement.
'I've been sighing a lot lately, haven't I?'
The thought tugged at a memory of Hamura-dono, his dear teacher, doing the same whenever things became tedious. A faint, almost reluctant smile curved Toneri's lips.
"Well," he murmured to no one, "time for some reconstruction work and a celestial renovation."
Chakra rolled off him in massive waves, the sheer pressure rippling through the starless void like an unseen tide. He brought his hands together in a prayer seal. His voice was calm as it resonated, carring power into the emptiness.
"Kaishi."
The word left his mouth, and emerald brilliance erupted from his body. It poured outward like a star being born, flooding the entire sector. His Tenseigan shifted into overdrive, capturing every detail of the wreckage, every floating fragment, every particle adrift in the nothing. Then his chakra began to change. Energy became matter, and the tide of destruction was reversed.
First, the Jovian moon Ganymede shimmered into existence from scattered fragments, reforming its mighty ice-crust and rocky core before sliding seamlessly back into its rightful orbit. Then, debris spiraled inward, coalescing into the volcanic world of Io, its surface already glowing faintly from internal heat.
Pulse by steady pulse of chakra, the others followed: Himalia, Elara, Pasiphae, Sinope, Lysithea, Carme, Ananke, and Leda. Each reconstructed as they once were and guided into perfect position, as though they had never been lost.
Once Jupiter's family of moons was whole again, his chakra stabilized the surrounding space. Toneri's TCM1 mode then flared to life, emerald light wrapping the gas giant itself, nudging it back into its original orbit. When he stepped back and examined his work, another sigh slipped out.
"One down," he muttered.
In the blink of an eye, he vanished from Jupiter's space and reappeared before the broken face of Uranus. His hands remained locked in the prayer seal.
"Next."
Once more, chakra surged, engulfing the remaining hemisphere of Uranus. Across the void, shattered planetary fragments drifted toward him. The pieces that had been vaporized were reformed from pure chakra, reshaped atom by atom, until the planet's missing half began knitting itself together. Its aquamarine glow returned, the great icy bands circling its form as it neared completion.
As the regeneration continued, Toneri's thoughts wandered. His gaze lingered on the swirling emerald light and the immense damage his second mode had wrought. 'I'll have to be more cautious,' he reflected. Not out of guilt because he felt absolutely none, he did what he had to do to ensure Darkseid was defeated. No, it was simply the fact that some collateral damage was unavoidable, and now he was stuck here cleaning up the consequences.
Yet the thought of caution drew out another truth and one he simply couldn't deny. The first time he had truly unleashed his chakra during the fight with Darkseid, it had felt… good. A slow, involuntary grin pulled at his lips. After so long keeping himself restrained, afraid to shatter the world around him with a casual strike or a mostake, finally cutting loose had been intoxicating. To hit with enough force to make his knuckles sting, to feel pain pulse through his bones, to hear the rush of blood in his ears and it was something he hadn't experienced in far too long.
Darkseid's incursion had been, in a twisted way, both curse and gift. The curse was obvious this destruction and death that he brought with him as an aspect of entropy itself. But the gift… the gift was freedom. Freedom to throw away restraint and fight as an Otsutsuki was meant to fight. And though he might despise all of his kin, he couldn't deny what they were. Parasites, conquerors, battle junkies and creatures like Momoshiki, Kinshiki, Urashiki, and the one responsible for his exile from his own universe… Ryushiki.
That hunger for conflict was in his blood as well, whether he wanted it or not.
He exhaled again, softly this time, as Uranus completed its rebirth to about 90% whole now, spinning slowly in the black.