"Time Deletion" channeled an enormous surge of temporal power.
That energy dragged Goku Black into a churning current of deleted time — a stretch of history Ino had already erased. Zamasu, who had been rushing toward them, froze in midair. He forgot why he had charged in the first place. Goku Black, trapped in the temporal current, began losing pieces of his memory too, and the deeper he was pulled into the flow, the more of those memories slipped away.
Who am I? Where am I? What was I trying to do?
The Zamasu of Future Trunks' timeline snapped out of his own momentary confusion quickly enough. He tried to pull Goku Black free — but he was too far away, and there was nothing to be done. In the end, all he could do was watch as Goku Black and the temporal current dissolved together into countless ashen blotches and vanished completely from sight.
It wasn't quite death. But it wasn't living, either.
"Damn you! You wretched woman!" Zamasu ground his back teeth, his face contorted with rage.
Ino dismissed the golden Susanoo. Holding Mai's shotgun, she raised it and mimed pulling the trigger at Zamasu. He flinched back — and then, once he realized it was a bluff, his brow furrowed deeply.
"Heh. Looking at the evidence, you clearly used the Super Dragon Balls. That one just now wished to swap bodies with Son Goku, and your wish was immortality — correct? A formidable ability. I genuinely can't deal with you right now. But you've also lost your greatest asset. Without Goku Black, the two of you can't fuse with the Potara Earrings anymore."
She regarded Zamasu with calm eyes. "Next time. When I come back next time, I'll deal with both of you together."
No matter how much she restrained herself, Ino's power was still far too vast for Mai's body to handle. If she kept fighting, she wouldn't be able to use her time-based abilities again for a while — and if she pushed past Mai's limits, this body would simply break down. And besides...
She looked toward the end of time. Using her temporal power to dispatch Goku Black in an instant had, inevitably, caught Aeos's attention. The Big Loli was absolutely furious, cutting through what must have been countless layers of space and bearing down on her fast.
Out of courtesy to Aeos, Ino decided to pull back first.
"Don't even think about running!" Zamasu saw through her and lunged. An energy blade over a foot long materialized in his palm, his face twisted with fury — he clearly intended to land a crippling blow on Ino before she could escape this timeline.
"You're even weaker than Goku Black. Honestly, you're not even worth my time."
Ino slipped into Ultra Instinct. It cost her almost nothing. She extended her hand in what looked like a casual, offhand gesture — and with a single touch of her fingertip against the air, using the softest possible technique, she shattered the energy blade just before it fell. By the time Zamasu tried to press his next attack, Ino had already taken control of Mai's body and disappeared.
Zamasu couldn't sense Mai's ki. He stood where he was and deliberated for a moment, then had no choice but to give up.
Ino tidied up the loose ends on Mai's side — making sure she could return here smoothly next time — then turned and headed back to the main timeline.
...
Ino was getting a bit of a headache.
The situation had effectively produced three Zamasus.
The first was the Zamasu who shared her timeline and her present moment — but hadn't yet stolen the Time Ring.
The second was the Zamasu who shared her timeline but existed at a different point in time: the one who had stolen the Time Ring, causing an inadvertent cross-temporal displacement, and then used the Super Dragon Balls to swap bodies with Son Goku. That was Goku Black — the dangerous one she had just thrown into the time rift. He could be considered dealt with.
The third was the Zamasu of Future Trunks' timeline — the one who had used the Super Shenron to wish himself an immortal body.
The Supreme Kai's Time Ring had let Zamasu leap between two separate points in time simultaneously.
These things had to be resolved one at a time. Current mission progress: 1 of 3. One Zamasu down.
What next? Her clone immediately exchanged information with her main body.
Her main body was still at Grand Zeno's Palace, in the middle of discussing the Tournament of Power.
The tournament itself wasn't especially complicated — eighty warriors from eight universes in a free-for-all, with the surviving universe declared the winner and the other seven erased by Grand Zeno.
Whichever universe ultimately won didn't really matter to Grand Zeno. What mattered was what came after.
"Your Majesty Grand Zeno, Lord Grand Minister — there's something I've wanted to say for a long time now. I just never had the opportunity before. The original intent behind building a civilized universe is entirely sound — our worlds gaining access to more resources benefits all intelligent life. But as a Supreme Kai who once belonged to the Seventh Universe and handled the actual day-to-day work, I have to point something out."
Ino paused. Grand Zeno and the Grand Minister were both watching her, listening attentively.
"The number of staff — divine and otherwise — actually doing the work is far too small!" The frustration crept into Ino's voice despite herself.
Such a vast universe, and every bit of the workload was expected to fall on a single Supreme Kai's shoulders? Did they want to work him to death?
She had already offloaded some of the less critical tasks to over nine hundred underworld administrations to handle — and even then, the endless stream of petty bureaucratic trivia had eaten up enormous amounts of her time.
If a Supreme Kai was diligent, fine. But if they snapped under the pressure and just checked out entirely, the entire universe's operations would grind to a complete halt. That was simply no way to run things.
She wasn't asking for anything like a certain national football association, which could casually conjure up thirty directors, ninety deputy directors, three hundred section chiefs, nine hundred deputy section chiefs, and over a thousand assorted idle personnel to manage a grand total of eleven players on the pitch — but surely there had to be some middle ground.
One Supreme Kai managing an entire universe. The workload was simply unreasonable.
Ino said: "My proposal is this — use the Tournament of Power as an opportunity to select a group of suitable warriors, so that in the future they can join the work of building the civilized universe, rather than piling everything onto the Supreme Kais."
Anything involving institutional structure was completely beyond Grand Zeno, who looked thoroughly lost and glanced over at the Grand Minister.
The Grand Minister — boyish as ever in appearance — thought it over carefully for a moment. "Perhaps we could promote some outstanding Kais to the position of Supreme Kai, and at the same time loosen the requirements for becoming a Kai."
Ino nodded in immediate agreement.
Based on her own experience, the Grand Kai, the North Kai — even the West Kai, who had never gotten along with her — were all genuinely capable individuals. They were simply locked out by the World Tree's bloodline requirements, their talents with nowhere to go.
The Grand Kai, with nothing to do, spent his days racing and playing rock music. The North Kai, stuck on a planet barely larger than a house, studied bad jokes and drifted through his existence. It was an absolute waste.
Promoting them, and then bringing in fresh people to fill the Kai positions they vacated — that was genuinely necessary.
The Grand Minister was on the conservative side. After a long discussion, all he would agree to was a trial run: starting with the winners of the Tournament of Power, then evaluating the results before deciding whether to extend the policy to the other universes.
While the discussion was still ongoing, the clone passed along information from the future timeline to the main body.
Ino considered it briefly.
The main body couldn't afford to leave easily. Zamasu was destroying the "future." Grand Zeno was capable of erasing the "present." Which of those took priority was self-evident. To prevent Grand Zeno — that troublesome child — from reversing course on a whim, she needed to stay by his side a while longer.
The Zamasu problem would have to be left to the clone.
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