Zain arrived at the execution site, landing on top of the building in silence. Below him, Kival and Ali were locked in combat, their blades clashing in rapid succession. He crossed his arms and watched. He wouldn't interfere. Not yet. He'd wait until he couldn't sense either of their Raiki anymore.
Kival stepped back and raised his hand. "Stage 1."
Sand erupted around him, shifting and reshaping itself into weapons that launched toward Ali from every angle. Ali moved — ducking, weaving, reading each one — but they were coming too fast. Just as one was about to connect, he whispered something under his breath.
"Stage 1."
Flowers burst from nothing and absorbed the blow completely.
Kival stared. "So your power is flowers." A pause. "Interesting."
"That shouldn't concern you," Ali said, and rushed in.
He drove his fist toward Kival's gut. Kival responded instantly. "Stage 2." A dense wall of sand formed around him, absorbing the punch. He's going to channel his Raiki through the hit to break through, Kival thought. Predictable.
Ali's pink Raiki erupted — exactly as expected.
I knew it.
But Ali's other hand was already moving. A Kunai, drawn in the same motion, pink Raiki poured into it in an instant. Kival registered it too late.
The blade took his left eye.
Kival leapt back, pressing his hand over the wound, teeth clenched. "A Kunai—"
"You forgot," Ali said quietly, "that I am also a Shinobi."
Kival looked at him through his remaining eye, breathing hard. "Why do you defy me? Why are you doing this — to your own people?"
Ali didn't hesitate. "If seeing them free from this system is defiance, then so be it."
Kival laughed. It wasn't warm. "You call this freedom. This is your ideal." He tilted his head. "Let me tell you something. There are as many would-be rulers in this world as there are stars in the sky. And yet — there is one seat that has never been filled. You wonder who will sit in it?" He smiled. "The one whose ideal either resonates with the world — or outweighs it."
He spread his arms wide.
"Stage 4 — Domain."
The rooftop disappeared beneath a tide of sand. It stretched in every direction, swallowing the ground, the walls, everything. Ali felt it shift beneath his feet — quicksand, pulling him down slowly, deliberately. He sank to his knees. Then his waist.
What if he's right? The thought crept in before he could stop it. There are so many people with ideals out there. What if mine doesn't outweigh theirs? All I want is peace — but what if that's not enough? What if I'm not enough?
The sand reached his chest.
Then something ignited.
"And I am not going to achieve it by doubting myself!"
Pink Raiki detonated outward from his body like a shockwave. The quicksand split apart and Ali burst free, launching himself into the air above the domain.
Kival stared up at him. He broke out of Stage 4. His jaw tightened. How strong is his Raiki? No — how strong is his will?
Ali hovered in the air and extended one finger toward Kival.
"You are standing in the way of my goal."
He exhaled.
"Sakura. Stage 3."
His pink Raiki shifted — the same energy, but now it bloomed outward in petals, waves of pink flower energy cascading off him like a second skin, filling the air around him until the sky itself seemed to change color. He unleashed it all at once, overwhelming Kival from every direction, giving him no room to breathe, no angle to counter from.
Then Ali ran — across the air, each step certain — and thought to himself: It doesn't matter how powerful a domain is. You can lose in two ways. The first — if you don't know how to use it properly. The second — if your opponent's Raiki is strong enough to amplify their Stage 3 past your limits.
He looked at Kival through the storm of petals.
And you don't know how to use yours.
He stopped the assault without warning. Kival seized the opening and launched a wave of sand forward. Ali sidestepped — pink Raiki flooding into his legs — and closed the distance in an instant, appearing directly in front of him.
"Blossom."
His sword transformed, blooming into flowers, pink Raiki running through every petal like blood through veins. He brought it across in a single clean arc and sliced through Kival's head.
Kival fell.
Ali stood over him and exhaled slowly. The drawbacks. I need to reverse them — bring myself back down to at least Stage 1 before— He felt his body give. Actually... I can just faint.
He tipped forward.
Zain's hand caught him before he hit the ground.
"Well done, kid."
On the ship, Aisha went still. Then her eyes went wide.
"Kival has been defeated!" she shouted.
The ship erupted. Everyone celebrated — everyone except Ryo, still unconscious, unbothered by the noise.
Zain carried Ali across the battlefield on his way back. He passed through the wreckage of Manal and Ryo's fight and slowed down.
Manal was face down in the dirt.
A finger moved.
Zain stopped. He reached down and picked him up.
This is a bad idea, Zain. Kiriyu's voice surfaced in the back of his mind. This is Ryo's opponent. He's still alive.
"Ryo wouldn't have left him breathing unless there was a reason."
Why do you trust that kid so much?
Zain was quiet for a moment. "Elizabeth trusted him. She took care of him. Her intuition was never wrong." He kept walking. "So I'll keep trusting it."
Zain returned to the ship with both of them.
"Everyone can come out."
Bob opened the ship up. The ninjas and samurai emerged slowly, blinking at each other across the wreckage of everything that had happened. Then, one by one, the apologies came. The realizations. They had been manipulated — all of them — turned against each other by a system that needed them divided. They shook hands where they had once drawn weapons. They settled their differences quietly, with the heaviness of people who had lost time they couldn't get back. And then they began to rebuild.
The next morning, Ryo opened his eyes.
To his left, Ali was sitting up in bed, completely still. He wasn't looking at Ryo. He wasn't looking at anything in particular. His eyes were fixed somewhere across the room — on Manal, who sat in a chair with his head bowed, the weight of everything he had done pressing down on him visibly.
Ali hadn't said a word since he woke up. He just sat there, watching. Thinking. Turning something over in his mind that he hadn't yet found the words for.
Manal slowly raised his head and met Ali's gaze. He held it for a moment then stood and walked over. He stopped in front of Ali and looked down at the floor.
"I know I have no right to ask for this," Manal said quietly. "But I am sorry. For everything I did. For the part I played in all of it." He paused. "I was carrying my father's wishes when I should have been carrying my own."
Ali said nothing. He just looked at him — still, unreadable — the way someone looks at a thing they haven't fully decided about yet.
Manal held his gaze for another moment. Then he nodded slowly, as if accepting whatever verdict Ali had silently reached. He walked to the small window at the side of the room and looked out at Paldea — what remained of it, and what was already beginning to be rebuilt.
"I'll be leaving now," Manal said quietly, more to himself than anyone else.
Ryo looked up from his bed. "You're going?"
"This is my country," Manal said. "I made a mess of it. The least I can do is help put it back together." He turned from the window and picked up his coat from the back of the chair. He paused at the door and looked back at Ryo. "Thank you. For not finishing it."
Ryo said nothing. He just looked at him.
Manal's eyes moved to Ali one last time. Ali still hadn't spoken. Still hadn't moved. But something in his expression had shifted — barely, almost imperceptibly — like a door that hadn't closed all the way.
Manal dipped his head.
Then he walked out.
The room was quiet for a moment after he left. Ryo stared at the ceiling. Ali stared at the empty chair where Manal had been sitting.
Then the door burst open.
"Alright!" Aisha's voice filled the room instantly. "Who's alive in here?"
The room flooded with Team Z. Sulaiman and Salma launched themselves at Ryo simultaneously, both of them landing on top of him at once.
"Big brother, you're alive!"
They looked at each other.
"He's my big brother," Salma said.
"No, he's mine," Sulaiman shot back.
They started arguing immediately, both of them jostling on top of Ryo while he lay there looking at the ceiling.
Ali watched them from his bed. Something loosened in his chest — slowly, quietly — like tension leaving a room after a long silence.
Then his eyes landed on the empty doorway Manal had just walked through.
His blade was out before anyone registered he had moved.
"He's gone," Zain said from the corner, not even looking up. "Put it away."
Ali held it for a beat. Then lowered it.
Benjamin shook his head, walking over to Ryo's side. "Dude. You had me and Abraham genuinely worried."
Abraham nodded firmly. "Don't do that again."
Scarlet crossed her arms. "Next time, you follow instructions."
Leona stepped forward. "Next time I come up with a plan—"
"Our plan," Rimazu said quietly.
Leona's eyes cut to him. "What was that?"
"...Nothing."
Ruqqaya looked down at Ryo with an expression somewhere between exasperated and relieved. "How am I supposed to teach you how Raiki works if you keep almost dying?"
Ryo looked around at all of them. "Sorry. I'll avoid trouble next time, I promise."
Zain snorted. "I don't think that's possible. You have a bounty on your head. You're a wanted criminal now." He paused, then smiled. "But don't worry. Your captain is here."
Ryo felt something loosen in his chest. He turned to Salma and Sulaiman then looked over at Ali, who had set the blade down but whose eyes still drifted occasionally toward the door.
"So," Ryo said. "Are you going to join?"
Ali was quiet for a moment. Then something settled in his expression — a decision made, a door closing on everything that came before.
"I can't achieve my dream alone, can I."
It wasn't really a question.
The room smiled. Rimazu said, "We've got a new addition." Benjamin and Abraham said together, "And a new friend." Bob's voice came through from the front of the ship. "We'll be setting sail shortly."
Ryo looked at Salma. "You should head back."
Salma's expression flickered. "Big brother — if you come back, you visit me first. Promise me."
"Sure."
Sulaiman tugged at his sleeve. "What about me? Promise me something too."
Salma shot him a look.
They came out of the room to find the entire population of Paldea gathered at the shore. Every face turned toward the ship. Among them, standing at the front of the crowd, was Manal. He had already begun. Already talking to people, already listening, already doing the work.
He looked up when he heard the ship and found Ryo's eyes across the distance.
He nodded once.
Ryo nodded back.
Manal turned to the crowd and held out his hand. Someone passed him a flag. He raised it high. "Thank you — all of you."
The crowd roared.
Salma stood beside her mother, waving. Ruqqaya turned to Abraham with raised eyebrows. "When did you make that flag?"
"As soon as we arrived," Abraham said, straightening his collar.
Ryo shook his head slowly. "Don't act surprised. He does this every time we leave a country."
He turned to face the open water. The ship had already begun to move, Paldea shrinking slowly behind them until the crowd became a blur and the blur became nothing.
Benjamin leaned on the railing beside Zain. "Captain. Where next?"
Zain looked out at the horizon.
"Next up — Halihalu."