The Land of Water's main island was quiet when they arrived. Too quiet.
Mist drifted low across the coastline, thick and heavy with chakra.
The air itself felt wrong, like something in the world was expanding and shrinking at the same time. Even before anyone spoke, Ryusei felt it.
The Gedo Mazo's chakra pulsed under the earth like a sleeping heart trying to wake.
They landed on a jagged cliff overlooking Kirigakure's abandoned forward base.
Nothing moved at first. But the ground kept vibrating.
Orochimaru stepped forward lightly, eyes narrowing with curiosity.
Nagato said nothing, but Ryusei felt his attention stretching out through the natural energy, reading every distortion.
Ashina touched the air once, sensing the fuinjutsu residue below.
Kiyomi rolled her shoulders, Mangekyō spinning as she looked toward the center.
Renjiro cracked his knuckles, bored but focused.
Pakura's aura flickered with heat, drying the mist around her.
Ryusei simply looked down.
There it was.
A massive crater, carved into the island like a wound.
Chains of Mokuton roots wrapped around the center, trembling as something inside strained against them.
Black chakra vapor seeped upward in slow, poisonous breaths.
The Gedo Mazo.
It wasn't the Ten Tails yet, but it was close enough to feel like one.
Its ribs were moving.
Its single eye was half-open, twitching like something inside was deciding whether consciousness was worth the effort.
It looked wrong in a way that made sense.
Canon-accurate, but more alive.
A giant, skeletal tree-beast.
Limbs shaped like compressed chakra stone.
Rooted in the earth itself.
Rippling with eight distinct beast-signatures fighting to settle into one shape.
Almost whole.
Only one portion of the Nine Tails was still missing.
A portion Madara probably intended to sacrifice if it came to that.
Ryusei's tone stayed flat.
"This thing's got closer than I expected."
Ashina clenched his fist.
"Eight bijuu already sealed. Its nature is changing. The last fragment is halfway through extraction."
Nagato narrowed his eyes.
"The distortions are global. If it finishes, the world will feel it."
Below them, white chakra threads extended from the Gedo Mazo like fishing lines, binding something further in the depths of the base.
Kushina, half-drained.
"Then we're late." Pakura grimaced.
Ryusei shook his head.
"No. We're right on time."
He looked down again.
Madara stepped out of the shadows of the crater's inner ring, calm, almost casual.
His eyes glowed with Rinnegan focus, and behind him dozens of perfected white Zetsu, Kiri remnants, and a half-rebuilt Sasori puppet brigade waited in formation.
Obito perched atop a tall root structure, already masked, already annoyed.
Renjiro frowned.
"Mine or yours?"
Ryusei pointed lazily.
"Renjiro, Pakura, take Sasori, his Zetsu batch, and whatever is still walking around. Don't let any get away."
Pakura nodded once.
Renjiro smirked and vanished in a blur.
Ryusei then looked toward Kiyomi.
"Obito."
She didn't even respond.
She just appeared beside Obito before her Susanoo fully formed, forcing him into immediate battle.
Orochimaru, Ashina, and Nagato stepped up beside Ryusei.
Nagato's new golden Rinnegan pulsed.
Ashina's sealing chains flickered like black lightning.
Orochimaru's sage aura coiled around him, cold and serpentine.
Ryusei lifted his gaze and looked straight at Madara.
Madara smiled faintly.
"So you've come."
Ryusei gave a small shrug.
"Just in time to stop you from becoming something annoying."
Madara placed one hand on the Gedo Mazo's side.
The entire island shook.
The proto-Ten Tails responded instantly, its half-awakened eye widening, its body convulsing with a surge of incomplete divinity.
The air twisted.
The crater walls cracked.
The mist evaporated.
Chakra pressure exploded outward like a tidal wave.
Madara wasn't fully ascended.
Not yet.
But he had already begun the process of drawing power externally, weaponizing the statue's incomplete form.
Ryusei watched him for a second.
"Alright," he thought. "He's stalling. He wants time."
Madara looked back up at him calmly, as if confirming the thought.
"You will not interrupt the birth of a god."
Ryusei stepped forward.
"You're right," he said. "I'll just kill you before that."
And the first clash began.
The crater reacted first.
The proto–Ten–Tails let out a low, hollow groan, like the earth exhaling through broken lungs.
Mokuton roots snapped apart.
The mist shattered into fragments of chakra.
Even the air temperature dropped as eight different bijuu signatures fought inside the Gedo Mazo, each trying to settle into a form that didn't exist yet.
Madara moved with it.
His foot pressed lightly against the cracked earth, and the shockwave that followed wasn't physical.
It was chakra pressure.
Pure, condensed, unrefined Ten-Tails residue blasting outward like a heartbeat.
Ryusei raised a hand, and the wave bent around him.
A simple gesture, but the message was clear.
Madara's eyes narrowed.
Orochimaru spoke first, voice low and curious.
"So this is what you've reduced it to. A half-awake corpse filled with borrowed pieces."
Madara didn't look at him.
"Half-awake is more than enough to erase you."
Ashina stepped forward, chains flickering behind his back.
"We'll see."
Nagato didn't bother speaking.
His golden Rinnegan pulsed once, ripping natural energy toward him like gravity snapping inward.
Madara ignored all of them, including Nagato, his former acquaintance, to say the least.
His attention was fixed solely on Ryusei.
"You've grown," Madara said calmly. "More than I expected."
Ryusei shrugged.
"You're not the first to say that."
The Gedo Mazo roared again.
This time, something attached to its spine shifted, like a half-formed tail growing in twitching starts.
Incomplete.
Chaotic.
But powerful.
Madara lifted his arm.
White chakra threads wrapped around him, pulling raw, unstable energy directly from the proto-Ten Tails into his own body.
His skin cracked slightly, glowing faintly with an uneven pattern.
His Rinnegan dilated, adjusting to the surge.
Ryusei's eyes sharpened.
"External draw," he thought. "He isn't fusing yet. He's trying to stall, force me to burn time while the last extraction finishes."
Madara's foot slid back half a step, settling into a stance that looked almost lazy.
Then the island shook.
A massive, jagged chakra arm burst from the Gedo Mazo's torso, slamming toward the cliff where Ryusei's group stood.
The ground split open. The sea below rose like a wall. The entire shoreline shuddered under the impact.
Ryusei didn't flinch.
A faint cyan glow rippled from his body as six Truth-Seeking Orbs drifted forward, aligning into a seamless barrier that pulsed with his Tenseigan chakra.
The arm struck its head, then bent, its chakra fibers unraveling against the pure yin–yang composition.
Ryusei's fingers twitched once.
The barrier flexed, turning the attack aside like water flowing around stone.
The redirected limb tore through the forest behind them, carving a molten trench hundreds of meters long before disintegrating midair.
Madara's brows twitched.
"Hm. Even this doesn't move you."
Ryusei stepped forward, the ground dimpling beneath his feet.
"Then use something else."
Madara didn't hesitate.
Another limb erupted.
Then another.
Then a cluster of jagged bone-like protrusions.
Then a shockwave of pure negative chakra.
All of it slammed toward Ryusei.
Nagato shifted the natural energy around, ready to intercept.
Ashina's chains flickered, prepared to catch.
Orochimaru raised a spectral serpent of senjutsu energy.
Ryusei's hand shot out lightly.
"Stay back."
The three halted immediately.
Ryusei stepped once.
The incoming shockwave collapsed in on itself before reaching him, the atmosphere warping under his control.
The Gedo limbs disintegrated mid-air, shredded by invisible forces before they could touch his skin.
It was his micro-scale truth-seeking particles fused with the Tenseigan's gravity-like pressure manipulation, compressing space itself into a silent field of dominance.
Madara's eyes widened by a fraction.
"So you truly stand above the Sage's path…"
Ryusei didn't answer.
He kept walking.
Madara flicked a finger.
Limbo.
Invisible clones rushed forward, striking at Ryusei from every angle, coordinated, precise, and far more refined than the canon version.
Ryusei tilted his head slightly.
His sage sensory network saw all four immediately.
One step.
One breath.
And he slipped between them like water.
He didn't even need to counter.
They passed through him as if reality bent to let him through.
Madara exhaled once.
"Then this much is useless."
He pressed his hand deeper against the Mazo's spine.
His chakra spiked violently.
The Gedo Mazo howled.
Eight beast signatures flared.
A torrent of chaotic energy flooded Madara's chakra pathways, cracking the ground around him.
Nagato felt it instantly.
"He is forcing an unstable amplification. His body cannot sustain that for long."
Ashina's eyes narrowed.
"Which means he intends to end this before his time runs out."
Orochimaru smiled faintly.
"How delightful."
Ryusei kept walking.
Madara's voice dropped.
"You will not reach me."
He slammed his opposite hand to his chest.
Unstable chakra surged.
Ten Tails patterns crawled across his skin.
A cloak of wild, shifting energy erupted around him, far from complete, far from divine, but terrifying in its rawness.
A proto–Ten–Tails jinchuriki.
Incomplete.
Chaotic.
Barely held together.
But strong enough to match Ryusei for a short burst.
Madara straightened, cloak flickering violently.
"Come, Ryusei. Let us see whose path reaches godhood first."
Ryusei cracked his neck lightly.
"Fine."
He vanished.
Madara moved at the same instant.
The cliff exploded.
The island trembled.
The first clash was finally real.
The collision sent a shockwave across the entire coastline.
Water erupted upward in pillars.
The cliffside snapped like dried clay.
Several nearby islands trembled under the force.
Ryusei and Madara reappeared hundreds of meters away, both already striking again.
Their movements blurred into streaks of light and distortion as they crossed and recrossed the crater.
Madara gathered his inferior Six Paths senjutsu, compressing it into a burst of dark energy.
Black Yin Release energy tore across the crater, warping the air itself, but it vanished the instant it met Ryusei's counter.
His body twisted mid-step into a spinning back kick, the motion sharp enough to tear space itself. A blazing serpent-dragon of light roared from his heel, Bright Day Serpent Dragon.
It swallowed the potent black discharge like sunlight burning through storm clouds before crashing into him with explosive brilliance, scattering his cloak of chakra in a single blinding wave.