"I won't let you hurt Haori. Unless you kill me first!"
Naruto spread his arms wide, standing in front of Haori.
As he watched the lightning flicker at the tips of Yotsuki Isao's fingers, slowly turning toward his own chest, a very real fear rose in his heart.
But this was the only way he could think of to call for help.
Ever since he was little, whenever he was in a life-or-death crisis, the Third Hokage would always appear at his side.
Every time. Without fail.
Naruto was not stupid.
He knew the Hokage had some way of finding him.
As long as I am in danger, Jiji will definitely show up like he always does.
Then Haori will live.
His blue eyes hardened with resolve as he kept his body between her and that spear of lightning that could pierce steel.
Not an ounce of fear showed on his face.
"Heh. I'll grant your wish."
Yotsuki Isao raised his right hand.
Lightning Release chakra boiled at his fingertips, wild arcs snapping off into the air.
A spark of delight flashed in Haori's eyes.
The more tightly that lightning spear was condensed, the more power it held.
Those stray arcs showed that his control was slipping, and the chakra in his body was already near its limit.
Everything was telling her the same thing: his strength was starting to drop.
Haori gathered Wind Release in her right hand, while the Tailed Beast Cloak wrapped around her left.
She was not worried about Naruto's safety.
Kurama, Asura, Kushina, Minato. There were enough souls in that boy's body to fill a table at a mahjong parlor, and the Sage of Six Paths might as well be watching from the sky on top of that.
There was no way some old man from the Hidden Cloud could overturn that many gods stacked in one place.
All she needed was to drag that power out into the open.
Once Naruto exploded with the Nine-Tails' chakra, the battlefield would flip completely.
A thought flickered through her mind.
Haori put her left palm flat against Naruto's stomach.
Naruto jumped in shock.
"Haori, you…?!"
"Don't talk. Calm down and feel."
There was no time to explain.
Relying on Naruto to be beaten to the brink of death before the Nine-Tails burst out was far too passive.
She wanted to use her own Three-Tails power to knock on the Nine-Tails' door, force its attention onto them, and drag its chakra out directly.
The flame-red Tailed Beast Cloak on her body melted into pure tailed beast chakra.
Haori carefully pushed that power into a tenketsu on Naruto's belly.
"Ugh…!"
Naruto shivered.
The chakra looked like a clump of blazing fire on the outside, but once it entered his body, it carried a bone-deep chill.
Not the clean cold of ice, but the heavy, deep-water cold of the ocean floor.
That chill flooded in.
Naruto felt as if he had sunk straight to the bottom of the sea.
Splash.
Splash.
Water echoed in his mind.
His eyes flew open.
In a vast, dark prison where the ceiling could not be seen, two enormous slit pupils opened and stared at him from far away.
"You… you're…"
"Hiss. Three-Tails' scent? What an interesting little brat."
Naruto jerked his head around and saw Haori standing in this endless waterlogged prison with him.
"Haori, what is this place? And that monster…?"
"Relax. This is the depths of your own mind."
Haori pointed at the colossal red fox behind the bars, taller than mountains, her eyes filled with an almost hungry admiration.
"This is the reason everyone calls you a monster."
She had never seen chakra like this.
Forgive her for calling it "great," a word that felt clumsy on her tongue. She had no better one.
The crimson chakra surged like a tide, vast enough to fill the whole world.
If Haori's chakra was a single drop of water, then Naruto's was a brimming barrel.
And the Nine-Tails' pure Yang chakra was an entire ocean with no shore in sight.
So this is the Nine-Tails that supposedly has infinite chakra.
And this was only half its power, the Yang half.
Haori could not stop her tongue from flicking over her lips.
She did not need much.
Just let her eat three bites of the Nine-Tails' flesh, and even if she could not beat that old man outside, she could sit there and outlast him on chakra alone.
So this is the Nine-Tails.
Within the sealed cage,
Kurama sat on the ground with its great belly drooping, looking down at the figure outside the bars that reeked of the Three-Tails, Isobu.
"I smell greed."
"I have never tried to hide it, Kurama."
Surprise and nostalgia flickered in the fox's eyes.
For the first time in many years, someone had called it by its true name.
Kurama studied the information hidden in Haori's chakra in more detail.
After a while, it spoke again.
"The ocular power of the Byakugan, and an unformed gray bone… You are one of Hamura's descendants?"
Kurama's eyes widened a little as it looked closer at Haori's small frame.
It had never seen Hamura Otsutsuki with its own eyes, but it had heard about that power from the old man of the Six Paths.
The source of all unseen forces.
The end point of all tangible things.
Gray bone.
All-Killing Ash Bones.
Hearing that name from Kurama, Haori's eyes lit up.
The evolution path of Shikotsumyaku was a mystery.
Even the supposed cause of the Kaguya clan's bloodline disease was only her guess, maybe linked to life force. There was no evidence.
Did Kurama know how to push the Shikotsumyaku to the next stage?
Thoughts flashed through her mind, but she knew this was not the time to ask.
"Kurama, lend us some chakra."
Haori shoved Naruto forward as if they were regular visitors here rather than intruders.
Kurama glanced once at the nervous boy and the brazen girl, then at the hulking man outside winding up his Lightning Release.
The fox understood their purpose perfectly.
If Naruto died, Kurama would die with him.
It would take at least thirty years to be reborn.
That kind of endless darkness, drifting in chaos without senses or thought, was something you could not understand unless you had died that way.
Compared to that, sitting in Naruto's belly and watching the world pass by was infinitely preferable.
"Since you managed to get this far, consider this your reward."
The proud fox raised its head.
Crimson chakra seeped through the gaps in the bars, spreading in ripples across the water.
Whoosh.
The red chakra curved deliberately away from Haori and surged straight into Naruto's body.
"Tch. Stingy."
Haori had hoped to skim off a little for herself.
Seeing that, she curled her lip and let go of Naruto, leaving him to be wrapped and devoured by the Nine-Tails' power.
"Hmph."
Kurama snorted and shut its eyes, choosing not to look at her.
It had long since felt the way she stared at it like food.
No way I am letting you eat me.
Splash.
Splash.
The sound of water faded from their ears.
Haori and Naruto opened their eyes at the same time.
Time in the Nine-Tails' seal clearly flowed differently.
Outside, not even a full second had passed.
Yotsuki Isao's arm was still in the motion of lowering, his fingers just about to line up with Naruto's heart.
"Since you want to die so badly, I will oblige both of you."
Lightning crackled between his fingers.
Isao crouched low, right leg braced, his entire body like a sword on the verge of drawing.
One thrust to kill two jinchuriki.
At least then he would not fail the trust the Fourth Raikage had placed in him.
Boom.
A sudden gale howled around Naruto.
His blue eyes warped into eerie vertical pupils.
Fangs pushed out from his jaw.
A deep red fox cloak wrapped his body, thicker and brighter than Haori's faint red coat had ever been.
Crack crack crack.
Claws extended from his fingertips.
The six whisker marks on his cheeks darkened sharply.
In the space of a few breaths,
Naruto had entered his first stage of fox transformation.
Haori stepped out from behind him.
With a sound like cloth tearing,
a pale red Tailed Beast Cloak spread over her body as well.
Her chakra reserves were nearly gone, but the power of the Eight Gates was still burning, barely enough to support one last use of the cloak.
The two of them stood shoulder to shoulder.
"Rrrraaaahhh…"
Naruto could no longer form proper words.
His throat had been overtaken by the fox.
But his mind was still clear.
He could still tell friend from foe.
"Listen, Naruto."
Haori grabbed the frenzied boy and hissed in his ear.
"His technique can only attack one person at a time, so…"
Yotsuki Isao could not hear the jinchuriki's whispered conversation.
He stared at the two red figures in front of him and, for the first time, felt stuck.
Hell Stab's power was unmatched in the ninja world, but every use burned through a huge amount of chakra.
Gathering that much Lightning Release put horrifying pressure on his body.
He was already close to his limit.
Should he kill the jinchuriki, crippling Konoha by taking the Nine-Tails from them for the next thirty years?
Or should he kill that monstrous girl and erase this terrifying prodigy from the world?
His third finger curled in toward his palm.
The forearm thicker than an ordinary man's thigh tensed, every muscle strand standing out as he pressed his sword-hand forward, like an enraged dragon pointing at its prey.
Once Konoha's reinforcements arrived, he would not be able to kill either one.
He had to trade his life for at least one of theirs.
The true upper limit of the Nine-Tails was beyond calculation.
He had no confidence in killing that boy in a single strike.
The girl's limits, however, he had already tested.
After all the fighting just now, her stamina and reflexes had dropped.
Right now, she was the one he had the best chance of taking with him.
Lightning flared around his sword-fingers.
They trembled once, then settled, pointing directly at Haori.
It had to be her.
At the south gate of Training Field Zero, the academy students had gathered in groups of two or three, chattering about the dangers they had just escaped.
Hyuga Neji tilted his head back and stared toward the depths of the forest, brows drawn tight with worry.
"Neji, what is it?"
Tenten bent down and waved a hand in front of his face.
When he finally blinked and focused, she held out the bread their teacher had just handed out.
"It's nothing. Thanks."
He accepted the food and thanked her politely, then lifted his gaze back to the sky.
A few minutes ago, he had used his Byakugan to scout the training field.
He had seen a pillar of greenish light pierce the heavens from the very center of the field.
Before he could take a closer look, it vanished, as if that beam that seemed ready to punch through the clouds had been nothing but an illusion.
The sudden beast tide in Training Field Zero…
Had it been related to that strange light?
Neji's mind was in turmoil.
All the rescued students had been gathered at the south gate under their teachers' watch.
But he had not seen Haori among them.
He knew better than anyone how strong she was.
A few wild beasts were nothing to her.
Even if they gathered every beast from every training field in Konoha, she would just have to spit out a few gusts of Wind Release chakra.
Using the secret of Rotation to turn offense into defense and develop that close-range killing storm of wind around her body…
That kind of genius approach to ninjutsu made Neji, long hailed as the number one prodigy of the Hyuga branch family, feel ashamed of himself.
By all logic,
if he could escape the Konoha forest, Haori should have been out long before him, waiting around outside in boredom.
If she still had not appeared by now, it could only mean one thing.
Something serious had happened.
He thought of the "foreign spies" the teachers had mentioned earlier.
Neji's anxiety grew as he stared into the depths of the forest.
Beside him, Tenten tore off a small piece of bread and nibbled on it carefully, pretending to be a proper lady.
Her eyes kept sliding sidelong toward the straight-backed, melancholy boy.
When she saw him still staring fixedly at the trees without so much as a glance her way, Tenten's round cheeks puffed up in annoyance.
She turned her head away in a little huff and refused to look at him any longer.
Neji was completely unaware.
Time slid by.
The moon climbed higher and brighter.
Now and then, instructors in green flak jackets emerged from the forest with one or two students in tow.
The makeshift camp grew noisier by the minute.
Even the dark forest seemed ready to lose its mystery under the constant chatter.
Rustle rustle rustle.
Suddenly, the deep trees echoed with a rapid scraping sound, plus a set of mismatched, hurried footsteps.
Leaves shook free of the branches and drifted down.
Neji, who had never taken his attention off the forest, narrowed his white eyes and locked onto the approaching figures.
Thud thud thud.
Two academy instructors burst out of the treeline, a man soaked in blood slung across their backs.
Three students and a dog followed in their wake.
Neji immediately saw the dark blue hair and pure white eyes of Hinata.
Her clothes were torn from tree branches.
She looked badly rattled.
It was not just Neji.
The teachers on guard at the south gate noticed the strange group as well.
Sensing something wrong, they rushed over.
"What happened?"
"We need a medic. Now. Sensei Kazama is dying!"
The two instructors' shouts brought everyone's eyes to them.
Only then did they realize that the man drenched in blood on their backs was none other than Kazama Etsu, known as the strongest teacher at the academy.
"How could Sensei Kazama…?"
Seeing his mangled arms, a few of the more sensitive female teachers covered their mouths in shock.
Before long, several medical ninja jogged forward, carrying boxes of supplies.
Pale green light bloomed in their palms.
Kazama's bruised, blackened face slowly regained some color under the flow of Yang Release chakra.
There were plenty of medical ninja in the village, but those who knew the Mystical Palm Technique were rare.
These medics could only use basic healing jutsu to stabilize his vitals for now, then send him to the hospital for treatment from someone more skilled.
Once they saw that Kazama's condition had stopped worsening,
everyone's eyes swung back to Kiba, Shino, and the others.
"Who was the enemy? How did Sensei Kazama end up like this?"
"Kumogakure shinobi infiltrated Training Field Zero!"
"The enemy is at least elite jonin level. Their chakra reserves are more than four times Sensei Kazama's!"
Kiba and Shino spoke one after the other once they had caught their breath.
Under everyone's stare, Hinata ducked her head shyly, but still kept nodding frantically to show that they were telling the truth.
The Cloud nin's speed had been terrifying.
They had not dared to run in a straight line for fear of being chased down, so the group had gone the long way around, using Kiba's drugged powder to hide their scent and circle to the far side of the battlefield.
They had only survived because of that.
When the battle finally ended, the insects Shino had left behind in secret led them unerringly to Kazama Etsu, who had been left to die.
"Elite jonin from the Hidden Cloud?"
Everyone who heard that title went pale.
It was common knowledge.
Because so many factors influenced a fight between shinobi, from terrain to elemental affinity to secret arts, there was no perfect quantitative way to measure a ninja's strength.
So most people used rank as a rough gauge.
You might not become a jonin just because you had a jonin's power,
but you definitely could not become a jonin without it.
The Five Great Villages were extremely strict about granting the jonin rank.
If you were lacking in any area, you would not pass.
By looking at rank, you could at least roughly judge someone's strength.
But that only applied to ordinary shinobi.
There were tiers even among jonin.
At the very top were monsters who could slaughter fifty regular jonin in an instant, and who could fight a Kage to a standstill.
To distinguish those people from normal jonin, the villages had created unofficial titles.
If a village had a hundred jonin,
the top twenty or so would be considered "elite jonin."
The top ten would be the village's famous face, the ones with titles and reputations across the ninja world.
And those who managed to break into the top five…
those became the village's upper echelon and serious candidates for the title of Kage.
People jokingly called them "quasi-Kage."
They were either among the strongest fighters in the world, or the sort of shinobi who served as their village's face abroad.
Even the weakest of them was a top-ranked jonin, an absolute elite.
For someone like that to slip into the village without anyone noticing…
Only one thought flashed through every mind at the camp.
Something big is about to happen.
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