This is getting tricky. My attacks are basically useless against the Nine-Tails, but one hit from it and I could lose half my HP.
Minato surveyed the scene—the Nine-Tails hemd in by wave after wave of Konoha shinobi—then swept his gaze across the surrounding landscape, now reduced entirely to rubble.
He drew a long, slow breath. His eyes glinted cold.
A substantial number of jōnin had arrived as reinforcents, along with Hiruzen and several mbers of Konoha's tactical brain trust. But two nas were conspicuously absent: Shimura Danzō and Orochimaru.
Minato was unsurprised. Since taking office, he'd had enough dealings with Danzō to know exactly what kind of person the man was. In a crisis like this, Danzō was probably praying for Minato's death.
I can't let the Nine-Tails keep rampaging. I need to find an opening and seal it for good—otherwise the entire village is finished. A full quarter of Konoha has already been leveled.
* * *
While Minato was frowning at the restrained-but-still-thrashing Nine-Tails, a voice rang out beside him—one that was simultaneously familiar and unexpected.
"Phew… just a few hundred ters short. If it'd hit my place, I'd have been sleeping on the street tonight. By the way—you still haven't sealed this thing?"
Minato's pupils shrank. On pure instinct, the odd-shaped kunai in his hand jabbed toward the right.
But before the blade connected with anything, his wrist was caught. Held fast.
Before he could mount a counter—
"Could you maybe look before you stab? Just a thought."
Minato froze. Turned his head to the right.
Ryū was standing there—having materialized at so undetectable mont—his hand clamped around Minato's wrist, rendering the kunai strike completely inert.
Once he recognized his visitor, Minato abandoned the attack. An embarrassed grimace crossed his face.
In fairness, Ryū's voice appearing out of nowhere in the middle of a live combat zone had triggered every nerve Minato had. Anyone would have reacted the sa way.
Ryū released Minato's wrist and turned his attention to the Nine-Tails.
That body. Colossal beyond imagining. Like a mountain that breathed.
By comparison, I'm about the size of… one of its eyeballs. Maybe slightly bigger.
* * *
The Nine-Tails was currently bound by a restraining ninjutsu, led by Hiruzen and executed by a squad of jōnin. But the fox was thrashing violently, periodically flinging shinobi clear off the restraint formation. It was only a matter of ti before it broke free entirely.
Below it, the ground was a wasteland of collapsed buildings and crackling fires. Thick black smoke coiled upward, filling the air with ash. Every ti the Nine-Tails so much as flexed, the earth trembled. Its periodic roars of fury left people's eardrums ringing.
So that's Kurama. One of the Tailed Beasts. Those three lightweights managed to release it… probably by burning through whatever weird Lord God Space artifacts they had.
Ryū's eyes lit with curiosity. He rolled his neck once.
Minato blinked, alard: "Yagami-kun, you're not thinking of getting involved, are you? The Nine-Tails is extraordinarily powerful. Even my attacks can't deal aningful damage to it. Even Gamabunta's strikes can only make it feel pain—"
Minato didn't finish the sentence. Because his expression was already changing.
In his peripheral vision, he'd spotted the Nine-Tails' mouth yawning open once more—chakra condensing inside, yin and yang properties compressing into a dense sphere of black. Another Tailed Beast Bomb, charging fast.
The destructive potential was unambiguous. At full charge, a Tailed Beast Bomb could erase half of Konoha in a single detonation.
* * *
Minato was about to move when a hurricane exploded to his right.
A wall of displaced air slamd across his face, setting his cloak snapping like a flag in a gale.
He whipped his head right—and the spot where Ryū had been standing was empty.
That speed… if you weren't paying attention, you'd never even register it.
Minato clicked his tongue in sheer disbelief.
No chakra signature at all. Which ans that terrifying speed is pure physical output.
Just… leg strength? A human body can move that fast?
At this point, even a Tailed Beast's raw strength is about the sa, isn't it?
* * *
A sonic boom cracked across the sky.
Not figuratively. The literal shockwave of an object exceeding the speed of sound—compression front, pressure cone, the full acoustic detonation. At this altitude, several nearby shinobi nearly had their eardrums ruptured by the blast.
The Nine-Tails—mid-charge on its Tailed Beast Bomb—heard the concussion and tilted its gaze upward.
A tiny black speck flashed across its field of vision.
And then—
The Nine-Tails' jaws snapped shut.
Not voluntarily.
Its bloodshot eyes bulged. Every blood vessel in the whites stood out in vivid relief.
The half-ford Tailed Beast Bomb collapsed inside its closed mouth and detonated.
An explosion of catastrophic force—contained entirely within the Nine-Tails' skull.
The massive head slamd earthward like a felled redwood—face-first, in a perfect faceplant. The fox's skull cratered into the ground with enough force to send fissures racing in every direction. A wall of dust and debris erupted skyward—
—only to be instantly flattened by the invisible pressure wave that followed.
* * *
Good thing I activated Iron Body before the hit. Otherwise that Tailed Beast Bomb blast would've been rough. That explosion is no joke… and it was a little toasty in there.
Ryū—who'd been flung clear by the detonation's shockwave—touched down on the ground via Moonwalk, landing cleanly.
His clothes were lightly charred in a few spots. Courtesy of the Tailed Beast Bomb's blast radius catching him on the rebound.
What he'd done was simple in concept: Moonwalk to gain altitude, build montum in the air, then deliver a single overhead axe-kick straight down onto the Nine-Tails' head.
What he hadn't expected was the kick slamming the fox's mouth shut so hard that it bit through its own half-charged Tailed Beast Bomb—causing it to detonate inside the creature's mouth.
Which had caused the explosion. Which had launched him backward.
* * *
Are you… serious? Is he a monster?
Minato, who had watched every fra of this play out, felt the era passing him by.
Since when can a human being do that?
Force a Tailed Beast Bomb to detonate inside the Nine-Tails' own mouth?!
And then walk away from the blast without a scratch?!
A mory surfaced unbidden—a certain senior colleague of his.
One of the Legendary Sannin.
Tsunade.
☆☆☆
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