The hideout was never meant to be found. He had to cut short his conversation with Kelvin to focus on who or what the intruder is, he didn't like this a bit.
Menma had carved it from the space between realities—a pocket of existence folded into the creases of the world, accessible only through specific coordinates in the Land of Hot Water's volcanic wastelands. The entrance appeared as a fissure in cooling lava, invisible to normal perception, intangible to physical matter. He had spent three years establishing the wards, layering genjutsu within genjutsu, creating a fortress of illusion that should have been impenetrable.
Should have been.
The first indication of intrusion was silence.
Not the absence of sound, but the presence of its opposite—a quality of stillness that pressed against the ears like deep water, that made the air thick and resistant to movement. Menma was meditating when he felt it, his consciousness distributed across twelve projection points throughout the elemental nations, and the sudden severing of three simultaneous viewpoints snapped him back to his physical body with violent immediacy.
He opened his eyes to darkness.
The braziers that normally burned with cold fire—chakra flames that illuminated without consuming—had been extinguished. Not extinguished, he realized as his Sharingan activated. Inverted. The light still existed, but it had been twisted into a spectrum his eyes couldn't process, his brain couldn't interpret.
Genjutsu.
Not subtle. Not layered. Brute force illusion, hammering against his perception with the elegance of an avalanche.
"Impressive," a voice said from everywhere and nowhere. "Most would be screaming by now. clawing at their own eyes, convinced they'd gone blind in truth rather than deception."
Menma didn't respond. He was already moving through counter-seals, his fingers forming the Tiger-Ram-Snake sequence that would disrupt standard visual genjutsu. Nothing happened. The darkness remained, complete and suffocating.
"That won't work," the voice continued, amused. "I know your techniques, Menma. I've studied you for years. Since the incident in the Rain, when you first demonstrated that... unusual ability to phase through solid matter. Since the whispers began about a ghost with mismatched eyes, appearing at massacre sites, warning villages that would never heed his warnings."
Menma felt it then—a presence coalescing in the darkness, not entering but revealing itself, as if it had been there all along, occupying space he had failed to perceive. His Sharingan spun faster, the tomoe blurring, and finally he saw it: the distortion in the chakra field, the pressure of another consciousness pressing against his own.
The Fourth Hand of the Five Great Hands materialized like a nightmare surfacing from deep water.
He was smaller than Menma expected. Compact, almost delicate, with features that would have been handsome if they held any expression beyond serene amusement. He wore the standard black of his organization, but his sleeves were longer than practical, covering his hands completely, and his collar rose high enough to brush his jawline. Only his eyes were exposed—pale gray, almost colorless, with pupils that didn't reflect light so much as consume it.
"Illusionist," Menma said. Not a question.
"Dreamweaver," the Fourth Hand corrected, inclining his head with mock courtesy. "The Fourth Hand, formally. Though my companions call me simply 'The Dreaming,' when they call me anything at all." He smiled, and the expression didn't reach his eyes. "You may use that name, if you prefer. It will be the last thing you hear before I take your consciousness apart and examine the pieces."
Menma didn't waste words on threats. He had learned, through years of being hunted, that combat began before the first strike—that the true battleground was preparation, positioning, the geometry of advantage established in seconds of apparent inaction.
He had positioned himself, during the conversation, to be exactly three meters from the eastern wall. Close enough to touch the emergency seal he had carved there. Far enough that the Dreaming wouldn't expect immediate retreat.
His hand moved.
Not toward the seal. Toward his own face. Fingers hooked into the mask that had hidden his features for years and pulled, revealing skin that had rarely seen sunlight, a second mouth sealed shut by stitches that glowed with suppressed chakra, and the pale eye that matched the Sharingan's crimson with its own wrongness.
The Rinnegan, or something that wore its shape.
The Dreaming's expression flickered—surprise, recognition, a moment of genuine uncertainty. It was all Menma needed.
"Fire Style: Ash Bone Incineration!"
The technique wasn't standard. It wasn't taught in any village, recorded in any scroll. Menma had developed it through years of experimentation, combining the Uchiha's natural affinity for flame with the strange chakra nature that had manifested alongside his second eye. The result was fire that didn't burn—it unmade. Matter exposed to the ash-gray flames didn't combust; it decomposed, molecular bonds severing with silent efficiency, leaving behind only dust that remembered its former shape.
The Dreaming raised his hands, sleeves falling back to reveal pale fingers that blurred through seals too fast to track.
"Water Style: Tears of the Forgotten!"
The counter emerged from the air itself—water that hadn't existed moments before, drawn from the humidity, from the sweat of both combatants, from the molecular moisture of the stone walls. It met Menma's ash-fire in a collision that produced neither steam nor explosion, but a nullification, both techniques consuming each other in a sphere of absolute silence that expanded outward, destroying everything it touched.
Menma was already moving, body-flickering to the chamber's ceiling, feet finding purchase on stone that ran with dissolving matter. He formed seals one-handed, the other drawing the sword he kept sheathed against his spine—a blade of obsidian glass, non-metallic, designed specifically to resist the chakra detection techniques that had betrayed his previous hideouts.
"Wind Style: Vacuum Blade!"
The slash didn't travel through air—it removed it, creating a corridor of absolute pressure differential that howled as atmosphere rushed to fill the void. The Dreaming looked up, still standing in the center of the dissolving chamber, and his smile widened.
"Interesting," he said, and then he wasn't there.
Menma felt the displacement a fraction too late—chakra signature appearing behind him, already formed, already striking. He twisted, bringing his obsidian blade around in a desperate parry, and felt the impact shudder through his arms as something wrong collided with his guard.
The Dreaming's hand had transformed. The pale fingers had elongated, segmented, become something between insectile and arboreal—jointed in too many places, tipped with points that dripped liquid shadow. The strike had been aimed at Menma's spine, at the chakra points that controlled lower body function, and only the blade's unnatural density had prevented penetration.
"Kenjutsu," the Dreaming observed, pressing forward, forcing Menma back toward the dissolving floor. "You surprise me again. I had catalogued your abilities as ninjutsu-specialized, with genjutsu support and that... spatial technique for evasion. But you trained in blade work. With whom? The samurai of the Iron? The missing-nin who call themselves the Seven Swords?"
Menma didn't answer. He was losing ground literally—his feet finding less purchase as the stone beneath him continued to decompose. He needed space. Needed to reestablish the geometry of combat, to force the Dreaming into a position where Menma's techniques could flourish.
He made a choice that would define the engagement.
"Kamui!"
The space around his body twisted, reality folding like wet paper, and he phased—not teleporting, not escaping, but becoming temporarily intangible, allowing the Dreaming's next strike to pass through him harmlessly. It was the technique that had made his reputation, that had allowed him to survive encounters with forces that should have killed him instantly. The cost was chakra—massive, unsustainable amounts of chakra—and the risk was the disorientation that came from existing partially outside conventional space-time.
For three seconds, he was untouchable. For three seconds, he could observe, plan, prepare.
The Dreaming didn't pause. Didn't hesitate. He simply... adjusted, his form blurring with the same wrongness that had characterized his initial appearance, and Menma realized with cold certainty that his opponent was doing something similar. Not the same technique—nothing so crude as space-time manipulation—but a genjutsu so complete, so self-sustaining, that the Dreaming's physical body had become merely one possible expression of his true form.
"You're not here," Menma said, understanding flooding through him even as his intangibility ended and he had to solidify, had to become vulnerable again. "This is a puppet. A construct. Your real body—"
"Is safe," the Dreaming finished, his voice coming from the construct's mouth and simultaneously from the walls, the ceiling, the dissolving floor. "As yours could be, if you surrendered that fascinating eye. The technique you use—Kamui, you call it?—it's incomplete. Damaged. I can see the strain it places on your chakra network, the micro-tears in your pathways that will accumulate until you can no longer use it at all." He tilted his head, the insectile hand retracting, becoming human again, becoming harmless. "I offer a trade. Your eye for your life. Your secrets for my mercy."
Menma laughed. It was genuine, surprised, the reaction of someone who had encountered an unexpected absurdity.
"You've studied me for years," he said, "and you think I value survival over purpose?"
He moved.
Not away. Toward. Closing the distance that the Dreaming's construct had opened, accepting the intimacy of close combat where ninjutsu was difficult and genjutsu was immediate. His blade became a blur, the Vacuum Blade technique still active, creating zones of destructive pressure with every slash, and the Dreaming—forced to react, to engage—met him with hands that shifted between human and other, blocking and striking in patterns that suggested multiple combat styles fused into something unique.
They fought in the dissolving chamber, and the chamber died around them.
Stone became dust. Dust became void. The pocket dimension that Menma had carved from reality began to collapse, its structural integrity compromised by the clash of techniques that operated on principles conventional chakra theory couldn't explain. The fissure that had been the entrance widened, admitting the volcanic air of the outside world, and suddenly they were fighting in fire and poison gas, in the heat that could melt steel, and neither slowed.
Menma's sword met the Dreaming's palm—a palm that had become chitinous, armored, that caught the obsidian blade and held it, grinding against the edge with sparks that weren't sparks but ideas, concepts of friction and resistance made manifest. He tried to withdraw, to find new angle, and the Dreaming's other hand struck his ribs with force that shouldn't have been possible from the compact form, sending him hurtling through what remained of the eastern wall and into the volcanic wasteland beyond.
He rolled, recovered, found his feet on cooling lava that cracked beneath his weight. The sky above was the color of old bruises, clouds of ash and sulfur that choked the sun into a dim red disk. The Dreaming emerged from the collapsing hideout without hurry, his black clothes somehow untouched by the environment, his pale eyes finding Menma across the distance with the certainty of predation.
"Your sanctuary is destroyed," the Dreaming said. "Your projection points severed. For the first time in years, Menma, you are truly present—body and consciousness occupying the same space, vulnerable to true death." He raised his hands, and the wasteland responded. The ash stirred, the poison clouds churned, and Menma felt the genjutsu settle over him like a blanket woven from nightmare and memory. "Shall we discover what you're truly capable of, when you cannot run?"
The illusion hit him like physical force.
He was standing in his childhood home, in the village that no longer existed, watching his mother burn. The flames were real enough to sear his lungs, the screams real enough to rupture his eardrums, and he knew—knew—that this was the Dreaming's specialty, not generic terror but specific horror, extracted from his mind, amplified, made inescapable.
But Menma had spent years in genjutsu. Had developed his spatial techniques specifically to escape traps like this. And he had learned, through pain that had nearly destroyed his sanity, that the Sharingan and its counterpart could see through illusion if the will behind them was sufficient.
He activated both eyes simultaneously.
The pain was extraordinary—like driving heated needles through his own skull, like forcing incompatible currents through circuits designed for single flow. But the vision that resulted was worth it. He saw the genjutsu's structure, the elegant architecture of chakra threads that connected his perception to the Dreaming's will, and he cut them, not with technique but with sheer force of rejection, with the absolute refusal to accept reality as presented.
The burning village shattered.
He stood again in the volcanic wasteland, gasping, blood running from his nose and ears, but free. The Dreaming's construct was visible, positioned twenty meters to his left, hands still raised in the genjutsu's maintenance seals—surprised, for the first time, by the speed of escape.
"Impressive," the Dreaming said, and there was something new in his voice. Not fear. Interest. "Dual-dōjutsu activation. I had theorized it was possible, but the chakra requirements should be fatal. How do you survive it?"
"Anger," Menma said, and attacked.
He didn't use ninjutsu. Didn't use genjutsu. The exchange that followed was purely physical—taijutsu at speeds that blurred even the enhanced perception of their respective eye techniques. Menma's blade against the Dreaming's transforming limbs. Footwork on cooling lava that cracked and shifted with every impact. They moved through the wasteland like destruction given will, and the environment died around them in new ways—pressure waves from their collisions shattering stone, shockwaves rippling through the poison atmosphere, creating temporary clearings in the ash clouds that revealed the bruised sky beyond.
The Dreaming was faster. His construct's form, unconstrained by human biology, could reconfigure for optimal performance—lengthening legs for stride, adding joints for flexibility, armoring vital points with chitinous plates that appeared and dissolved as needed. But Menma had trained with purpose that the Dreaming's centuries of existence had perhaps eroded. Every movement was meaningful. Every strike carried the weight of years spent preparing for exactly this confrontation.
They separated after an exchange that lasted nearly a minute of continuous contact—blocks and counters and desperate evasions that left both damaged. Menma's left arm hung wrong, dislocated at the shoulder, broken in two places. The Dreaming's construct had lost its right hand entirely, severed at the wrist by a Vacuum Blade that had finally found purchase, and black fluid that wasn't blood but memory, consciousness, leaked from the wound in patterns that suggested continuing function.
"You cannot win," the Dreaming said, and his voice came from everywhere again—the construct's mouth, the wasteland's stones, the poison clouds themselves. "I have resources you cannot imagine. Patience you cannot match. Even if you destroy this vessel, I will simply... dream another into existence, and another, until your chakra fails, your body breaks, your will collapses."
"Then I'll destroy them all," Menma said, and popped his shoulder back into place with a motion that made his vision gray, that forced him to activate Kamui briefly just to stay conscious.
He formed seals with his good hand, the other holding his blade in a reverse grip that would allow both defense and immediate strike.
"Fire Style:—"
The Dreaming moved, closing distance with a burst of speed that compressed the air between them, striking at Menma's seal-forming hand with fingers that had become blades of compressed shadow. Menma aborted the technique, twisted, let the strike pass close enough to part his hair, and brought his sword up in a rising arc that should have bisected the construct from groin to skull.
The Dreaming's body unfolded.
It was the only word Menma had for it—the compact form suddenly becoming two-dimensional, then one-dimensional, then something that occupied space in ways that made Menma's enhanced vision ache to process. The blade passed through without resistance, and the Dreaming reconstituted behind him, already striking, already pressing the advantage of Menma's committed momentum.
The blow caught Menma's kidney with force that made his legs buckle, that sent him sprawling across cooling lava that burned through his clothes and seared his skin. He rolled, came up fighting, and found the Dreaming waiting, patient, amused.
"You're learning," the construct said. "Adapting. This is why I chose to engage personally rather than simply overwhelming you with numbers. There is value in quality opposition. In the sharpening of edge against edge." He tilted his head, considering. "I wonder, Menma—have you ever considered joining us? The Five Great Hands offer freedom that your current existence cannot match. No hiding. No running. Simply... being, in all the fullness of your capabilities, without the constraint of village or morality or the petty fears of those who cannot comprehend your level."
Menma spat blood. It steamed in the poison air.
"I've seen what you create," he said. "The villages you destroy. The minds you break and leave as husks, walking reminders of your passage." He straightened, blade ready, accepting that his body was failing, that this engagement was approaching its terminal phase. "I am many things, Dreaming. Criminal. Traitor to my birth village. Monster, by most definitions. But I am not boring. And what you offer—endless destruction without purpose, power without meaning—that is the most boring thing I can imagine."
The Dreaming's smile vanished.
"Then die," he said, and the wasteland screamed.
The genjutsu that followed wasn't personal. Wasn't tailored. It was scale, the application of technique developed over centuries to a single point with the casualness of someone swatting an insect. Menma felt his perception of time fracture, his sense of self dissolve, his memories begin to unspool like thread from a dropped spool.
He saw himself as a child, training with eyes that marked him as cursed. Saw himself fleeing the village that had raised him, the friends who had tried to help him, the teachers who had ultimately chosen safety over his survival. Saw the years of isolation, the development of techniques that made him ghost rather than man, the slow accumulation of purpose that had led him to Kelvin Stone, to the conviction that this boy, this child, represented something worth protecting against exactly the force that now sought to destroy him.
And through the dissolution, he found something to hold onto.
Not memory. Not identity. Technique. The fundamental structure of Kamui, the spatial manipulation that had defined his existence, that operated on principles deeper than genjutsu, more fundamental than illusion. If the Dreaming attacked his perception of reality, he would respond with reality itself—would force the confrontation into a domain where genjutsu couldn't operate, where only pure chakra and physical law determined outcome.
He activated Kamui at maximum output.
Not partial intangibility. Not selective phasing. Full spatial displacement, forcing his entire body into the dimensional void that his eye could access, that existed parallel to conventional space-time. The genjutsu shredded, unable to maintain connection without a target anchored in shared reality, and Menma hung in the void, in the place of absolute silence and absolute dark, gathering himself for what would have to be a decisive strike.
He couldn't maintain this state long. The chakra cost was measured in seconds of life, in years of potential lifespan converted to immediate power. But he needed only a moment—needed to position himself, to prepare the technique that would end this or end him.
He found the Dreaming's construct in the void's reflection of conventional space. Found the chakra threads that connected it to its operator, the elegant web of consciousness that extended across impossible distance to wherever the Dreaming's true body waited in safety. And he cut, not with blade but with the void itself, with the principle of non-existence that Kamui represented.
The construct shuddered.
Menma emerged from the void directly behind it, blade already moving, already committed to the strike that would sever the connection threads and destroy the puppet's function. The Dreaming turned—too fast, impossibly fast, the construct's form reconfiguring to meet the threat—and their weapons met in collision that shattered the cooling lava beneath them, that sent shockwaves radiating outward in patterns visible from miles away.
They fought in the crater of their own making, and the world felt it.
Three days later, the battle continued.
The volcanic wasteland had been transformed. Where once there had been cooling lava and poison atmosphere, now there existed a landscape of impossible geometry—zones where gravity functioned sideways, where fire burned without fuel, where water flowed upward in defiance of thermodynamics. The clash of their techniques had damaged reality, had forced local physics to accept contradictory rules and left scars that would persist for generations.
Menma no longer remembered his original purpose in this place. The extended use of dual dōjutsu, the constant genjutsu countering, the physical trauma of combat against an opponent who could reconfigure form at will—all had eroded the higher functions of his consciousness. He operated now on instinct, on the trained responses that had replaced identity, on the absolute refusal to fall that had always defined him.
The Dreaming's construct had been destroyed and reformed seventeen times. Each iteration was slightly different—adapted to Menma's evolving tactics, equipped with countermeasures for techniques that had previously succeeded. The current version was larger, more armored, with multiple sets of eyes distributed across its surface that allowed 360-degree perception and simultaneous genjutsu projection from any angle.
They had progressed through all forms of combat. Ninjutsu exchanges that had exhausted the local chakra environment, forcing both to rely on internal reserves. Genjutsu duels that had lasted hours of subjective time while only minutes passed in conventional reality. Taijutsu at speeds that had begun to approach sonic thresholds, creating shockwaves with every impact. Kenjutsu that had reduced Menma's obsidian blade to a jagged shard and forced him to rely on wind-chakra constructs for cutting power.
Now they fought in silence.
Both had lost the capacity for speech—the Dreaming's construct no longer bothering with the affectation of conversation, Menma's throat damaged by inhalation of superheated gases during a Fire Style exchange that had briefly ignited the local atmosphere. They communicated only through movement, through the language of violence that required no translation.
Menma struck with a wind blade formed from his own chakra, compressed to monomolecular thickness. The Dreaming's construct intercepted with a limb that had become entirely chitinous, the impact sending fragments of armor in all directions but preventing the cut from reaching vital systems. The Dreaming countered with a genjutsu that Menma recognized by pattern rather than content—falling, the sensation of endless descent that had been effective three iterations ago—and rejected it with the automatic response he had developed for exactly this technique.
They separated, circled, evaluated.
The Dreaming was learning faster now. Each exchange provided data that improved the construct's performance, that closed the gap between Menma's experience and the Dreaming's adaptive capability. Menma could feel the trajectory—could calculate, in the part of his mind that still functioned mathematically, the point at which adaptation would surpass innovation and he would have no new techniques to deploy.
He needed to end this. Needed to find the true body, to force confrontation on terms that didn't allow infinite replacement of failed vessels. But the Dreaming's security was absolute—centuries of paranoia made manifest in concealment that Menma's spatial techniques couldn't penetrate, that his information networks had never successfully traced.
Unless—
The thought emerged from somewhere deeper than conscious strategy. From the same place that had led him to Kelvin Stone, to the conviction that a child represented hope worth protecting. If he couldn't find the Dreaming, perhaps he could force the Dreaming to find him. To abandon safety for necessity. To become vulnerable in pursuit of victory.
He made a choice.
Stopped moving. Stopped defending. Lowered his blade—what remained of it—and stood exposed in the center of the damaged reality they had created, both eyes active, all techniques prepared but unexpressed.
The Dreaming's construct paused. Evaluated. Sensed trap but couldn't identify mechanism.
Menma spoke, his voice raw, barely audible, but functional enough for words.
"Your true body," he said. "I know where it is."
Lie. He knew nothing. But the Dreaming's reaction—micro-tension in the construct's posture, fractional delay in response processing—confirmed that the statement had registered, had threatened something that the Dreaming valued.
"You're lying," the construct said, the voice coming from everywhere, the affectation of speech restored now that Menma had initiated it.
"Am I?" Menma smiled, and the expression hurt his damaged face, cracked the dried blood that had accumulated there. "I've had years to search, Dreaming. Years of appearing at your massacre sites, of studying your patterns, of tracing the chakra signatures your constructs leave when they dissolve. You're careful. But not perfect. No one is perfect."
He raised his blade, pointed it at a specific angle toward the horizon, toward a location that he selected entirely at random but that happened, by chance or by fate, to correspond with a region of the Land of Hot Water that was seismically active, that contained networks of caves and tunnels where someone might reasonably hide.
"There," he said. "The dormant volcano, three kilometers northeast. Your consciousness has been operating from there since before this engagement began. From there, you project these constructs, these puppets, these dreams of physical presence."
The Dreaming's construct was absolutely still.
Menma pressed the advantage of uncertainty, of the possibility that his random selection had accidentally touched truth. "I can reach it. My spatial techniques allow displacement across that distance, even exhausted as I am. I can be there in seconds, can confront your true body while this construct still operates here, can force you to divide attention between two battlefields."
"You're bluffing," the Dreaming said, but the voice was different now—tighter, less omnipresent, coming specifically from the construct's mouth rather than the environment. "You would have acted already if you could. This is desperation. This is the tactic of someone who knows they're losing."
"Then call it," Menma said. "Continue this engagement. Destroy this construct and form another. See if I reach your true body before you adapt to my final techniques."
They stood in the damaged reality, two figures who had become less than human through extended combat, each waiting for the other to demonstrate weakness or strength. The silence stretched, filled with the subsonic rumble of the wounded environment, the distant collapse of gravity-warped stone, the whisper of poison winds through zones of altered atmosphere.
The Dreaming moved first.
Not attack. Retreat. The construct's form began to dissolve, to unspool into the black fluid that represented its essential nature, and Menma understood—too late, or perhaps exactly on time—that his random selection had been correct, that the Dreaming's true body was indeed threatened, that the engagement was transforming from confrontation to escape.
He lunged, blade extended, Kamui activating to phase through the dissolving form and strike at the chakra threads that connected construct to operator. The Dreaming countered with genjutsu deployed in the microseconds of contact, with physical reconfiguration that created barriers of chitin and shadow, with every technique available to a consciousness that had centuries of combat experience to draw upon.
They collided in the space between dissolution and escape, and the world around them—
The shockwave was detected in three neighboring villages.
In the settlement of Yuge, twenty kilometers to the south, windows shattered simultaneously, and the elderly claimed afterward that they had heard voices—two voices, arguing in a language that existed below human hearing, that resonated in bones and teeth rather than ears.
In the trading post of Tsuchigumo, forty kilometers to the east, the ground heaved for three seconds, throwing merchandise from shelves and cracking foundations in patterns that suggested something massive had struck from below.
In the hidden village of Kusagakure, sixty kilometers to the west, the sensors activated for the first time in decades, detecting chakra signatures that exceeded their measurement capacity, that broke their calibration scales, that forced emergency protocols designed for tailed-beast encounters.
And in the volcanic wasteland itself, where the battle continued, the reality that Menma and the Dreaming had damaged finally surrendered to the stress, creating a zone of absolute instability—a place where space and time and consciousness became indistinguishable, where the combatants existed in states that could not be described as living or dead, victorious or defeated, present or absent.
The battle continued.
It would continue.
In the spaces between moments, in the folds of damaged reality, two forces that had defined themselves through opposition found that neither could achieve the termination they sought, and so they persisted—fighting, adapting, learning, becoming—through hours that became days that became something that no longer measured cleanly against conventional duration.
And somewhere, in the distance that might have been physical space or might have been conceptual separation, a boy named Kelvin Stone slept with a scroll beneath his pillow, dreaming of fire and eyes and the weight of potential that had been placed upon him, unaware that the battle which would determine his future had already begun and had not yet found its end.