The neon pulse of Oukoku felt different tonight. The high-tension hum of the exams had faded, replaced by the cool, evening scent of rain on asphalt. Uri stood outside the academy gates, his purple blazer draped over his arm, his body still map-marked with bandages beneath his shirt.
Tori-san approached, her bright blonde hair catching the glow of the overhead streetlamps. She wore a simple sundress, her modest build framed by the soft light. When she saw Uri, her eyes softened, reflecting a warmth that the "Black Sun" within him could never extinguish.
"You're late, Hero-kun," she teased, though her hand trembled slightly as she reached out to touch the bandage on his cheek.
"Lancid-kun is a difficult man to put down," Uri replied, a small, genuine smile tugging at his lips.
They walked through the city's central park, a sanctuary of greenery amidst the steel. They didn't go to a fancy restaurant; they sat on a secluded stone bridge overlooking a koi pond, sharing a bag of warm taiyaki. The silence between them wasn't heavy like the mountain fog—it was light, anchored by the seal Tori had placed on his heart months ago.
"I saw your eyes in the final, Uri," Tori whispered, looking at the ripples in the water. "For a second, the darkness started to leak out. I was scared I'd lose you to 'that' again."
Uri looked at his hands. "I was scared too. But then I felt the warmth you gave me. It's like... a different kind of nature. Not magma, not fire. Just... peace."
Tori turned to him, her face flushing a light pink in the moonlight. "I'm glad. Because I don't want to be just a seal, Uri. I want to be the reason you stay."
She leaned in, and Uri met her halfway. It wasn't a cinematic, sweeping moment; it was a quiet, tentative collision. Their first kiss was brief, tasting of cinnamon and the cool night air—a grounded, human contact that felt more powerful than any Conquerors Energy. When they pulled apart, Uri's heart felt lighter than it ever had, the jagged edges of his trauma finally starting to smooth over.
The morning sun filtered through the high windows of the Academy as Team 7 gathered for their first official briefing. Blyna was still brooding, his shoulders hunched from the sting of his loss in the semi-finals.
"Hey, Blyna-kun," Uri said, bumping his shoulder with a small, genuine smile. "Lancid is a freak of nature. Don't let a 'scientist' get in your head. Your water pressure was the only thing that actually made him sweat."
Blyna looked up, his defensive aura softening. "You're just saying that because you won, Magma-boy." But a smirk tugged at his lips. "Fine. But next time, I'm the one putting out the fires."
Yorozu walked between them, her dark tactical gear replaced by a lighter traveler's cloak. She seemed surprisingly upbeat, her usual stoic mask replaced by a playful glint. "If you two are done flirting with each other, we have a job to do," she teased, catching Blyna's eye.
Blyna flushed a deep red, adjusting his collar. "I-I wasn't... anyway, where are we going?"
Their first mission was a simple escort: protect a young lady on her journey through the ancestral forests to her grandmother's estate. While the city was a fortress, the forest was a lawless stretch where Animaju and rogue warriors lurked.
That night, camped out in a single large tent under the sprawling boughs of the cedar trees, the trio stayed up late. The tension of the exams melted away as they shared stories. Yorozu and Blyna kept up a back-and-forth banter that bordered on heavy flirting, while Uri laughed—really laughed—for the first time in months. For a moment, the "Black Sun" felt like a distant nightmare.
The next morning, they arrived at the meeting point. Uri froze.
"Tori-san?!"
"Uri-kun?" Tori stood there, dressed in traveling clothes, looking just as shocked. She ran to him, her bright blonde hair glowing in the morning light. "I didn't know the Academy would send you!"
Uri held her, but a cold thought pricked at his mind. Why is a modest girl like Tori-san a high-priority target for an escort mission? He pushed the suspicion down, choosing to cherish the time together.
For three days, they trekked. The bonding continued, the four of them becoming a tight-knit unit. But on the third night, the forest went deathly silent.
A man wrapped from head to toe in grey bandages, leaving only his piercing, hollow eyes visible, stepped into the firelight.
"Who are you?" Blyna shouted, his hand already manifesting a swirl of water.
The man, Mu, didn't speak. He simply leveled his palms at Uri and Blyna. A strange, invisible frequency hummed through the air, and both boys collapsed, their consciousnesses yanked into a dark void.
Uri opened his eyes in the Red Abyss. Standing across from him was a silhouette—himself, but draped in that terrifying, pitch-black Kekkei Jutsu armor.
"Who are you?" Uri whispered.
"I am you," the figure replied, its voice a hollow echo.
"If you're me... why do you feel so much stronger?"
The silence that followed was deafening. The figure stepped closer, the white voids of its eyes burning. " you have something important to do. Wake up, Akasake Uri."
Uri and Blyna snapped awake simultaneously, Blyna through water clones that were independent. but Uri and Blyna couldn't move. Mu was puppeteering their bodies like dolls. To their horror, Mu forced them to manifest their own powers—Uri's Uzumaki and Blyna's Compressed Water Sphere—aiming them directly at their teammate who just woke up.
"No! Stop!" Uri screamed internally.
CRACK.
The combined elemental explosion cleared. Yorozu lay in the center of the clearing, her body broken by the very techniques of her friends. She was dead before she hit the ground.
The puppet strings snapped. Uri fell to his knees, staring at his hands in a catatonic shock. Beside him, Blyna let out a harrowing sob, the tears streaming down his face before his grief curdled into a white-hot rage.
"YOU MONSTER!" Blyna roared, thrusting his hand forward. A pressurized water cannon tore through the air, but Mu casually raised a wall of solid earth, absorbing the impact.
Uri stood up, his eyes flickering jagged red and looking for revenge.
The clearing was thick with the scent of ozone and the iron tang of Yorozu's blood. Mu stood as an immovable monolith, his bandaged face revealing nothing. He didn't just have Earth Nature; he had the Mass of the World in his palms.
"Blyna! Stop charging!" Uri yelled, his voice cracking but firm. "He's baiting your rage. We can't break that wall with raw pressure."
Blyna skidded to a halt, his chest heaving, his eyes bloodshot with grief. He looked at Uri, then at the fallen Yorozu, and finally at the bandaged man. He took a jagged breath, forced his hands to stop shaking, and nodded. "What's the play, Magma-boy?"
"He's a static fighter," Uri whispered, his eyes darting across the terrain. "He relies on the ground. We're going to take it away from him." Uri and Blyna came up with a plan.
Phase 1: The Steam Screen
Blyna didn't fire a cannon this time. He unleashed a wide-spread, low-pressure Mist Veil, saturating the air with heavy moisture. Simultaneously, Uri slammed his glowing palms into the dirt, not to attack, but to vent extreme heat. As the water hit the scorched earth, a massive, blinding cloud of steam erupted, swallowing the entire clearing.
Mu stood calm, his palms open, sensing for vibrations. He felt a heavy presence rushing from the left. He pivoted, raising a thick slab of bedrock to crush the intruder—but it was just a decoy of pressurized water shaped by Blyna.
Phase 2: The Mud-Trap
While Mu was distracted by the decoy, Uri was underground. Using a refined version of his magma flow, he didn't burn upward; he liquified the soil directly beneath Mu's feet.
"Now!" Uri roared.
Blyna channeled his highest output, not at Mu, but at the liquified soil. The interaction of high-pressure water and molten earth created a volcanic slurry—a boiling, inescapable mud-trap. Mu's heavy boots sank instantly. He tried to raise a pillar to lift himself out, but the ground had lost its structural integrity.
Phase 3: The Uzumaki-Turbine
Mu finally showed a hint of movement, his hands glowing with a brown aura to solidify the mud.
"Too slow!" Blyna shouted. He sprinted in a circle around the trapped man, creating a vortex of water that acted like a containment ring.
Uri leaped into the center of the vortex. He didn't use a standard Uzumaki; he held his fist toward the water. As the Magma Drill spun, it caught Blyna's rotating water. The two elements didn't cancel out—they became a thermal turbine. The steam pressure reached critical levels, creating a vacuum that pinned Mu's arms to his sides.
The Finish: The Fik Tree Compression
With Mu immobilized by the vacuum and the mud, Uri closed the distance. He didn't punch. He reached out and touched the earth-wall Mu had built earlier. Using the Fik Tree technique, he didn't just create a cage; he used the Earth-user's own wall against him.
He wove his magma filaments through Mu's bedrock, petrifying the stone and the man within it into a single, obsidian-hard monument.
Mu's eyes widened for a split second before the "bark" of the Fik Tree covered his face, sealing his Conquerors Energy completely. The man who had effortlessly puppeteered them was now a silent statue in the middle of a ruined forest.
The steam cleared. Uri and Blyna stood back-to-back, trembling from exhaustion. They had won through coordination, but as they looked back at Tori-san and the lifeless Yorozu, the victory felt like ashes.