"Hmph! All this mystifying nonsense!"
The Fourth Raikage, A, shot a glance upward and lunged downward without hesitation.
Forget everything else—get the Nine-Tails' jinchūriki first!
Kumogakure had successfully trained the Two-Tails and Eight-Tails into perfect jinchūriki.
There was no reason they couldn't do the same with the Nine-Tails.
But at the exact moment he twisted his body and reached out—
A bone-chilling cold crawled up his spine.
It felt like being locked onto by a feral beast.
"Gulp…"
He swallowed hard.
The arm he had extended slowly retracted.
His head tilted upward.
Humm—
Humm humm humm—
The space above continued to shudder.
Like a shattered mirror cracking apart.
And within that fractured void, the figure grew clearer and clearer.
A young man stood steadily in midair, looking down upon them.
Those eyes—
Crimson, tinged with pitch-black shadows.
Sharingan?
No—
Not quite.
Raikage A instinctively tensed, fully withdrawing his arm.
That boy above made every hair on his body stand on end.
Creaaak—
The space overhead let out a teeth-grinding groan before finally settling.
At the center of the spreading fractures, the figure fully solidified.
Uchiha Kai.
He gazed calmly downward, his eyes sweeping over both sides—
Before stopping on the massive claws and stone hands hovering over Naruto and Hinata.
The air froze.
The stone colossus—larger even than Fugaku's Susanoo—locked in place.
Yugito's partially transformed tailed-beast claws still burned with ghostly blue flames—
Yet now, they were like blades pressed against an unbreakable shield, unable to advance even an inch.
The battlefield fell into deathly silence.
Only Uchiha Kai's voice remained.
It wasn't loud.
Yet it echoed clearly in everyone's ears.
"Stealing people…"
He tilted his head slightly, unmistakable amusement in his tone.
"…and you're stealing them right in front of me?"
The words fell—
And he stepped forward.
Pop—
The void beneath his foot rippled like water.
"You."
His voice rose sharply, the temperature dropping with it as killing intent surged.
"You've got some nerve."
"Enough of this ghostly bullshit!!"
Raikage A snapped out of it almost instantly.
"If you're not attacking right now, then you're just standing there waiting to die. Konoha's ninja discipline really is disappointing."
He glanced at the stunned Konoha shinobi, bared his teeth—
And charged.
Like thunder detonating in an instant, shattering the suffocating stillness.
As Raikage, his strength needed no introduction.
Under Lightning Release chakra, his speed ranked among the very best in the shinobi world.
Add to that his monstrous physique—
Even though Kai had startled him earlier, a few breaths were enough to recover.
Years of battlefield instinct kicked in.
Ignore the threat above—secure the target first.
Lightning chakra armor compressed violently around his body.
He stomped the ground—
And became a streak of light.
His target: Naruto.
The speed was so extreme that multiple afterimages lingered in his wake.
One thought dominated his mind.
0.1 seconds.
That was all he needed.
Just a fraction of a second—
And the Nine-Tails' jinchūriki would be his.
BOOM!
But just as he reached Naruto—
It was as if he had slammed headfirst into an immovable mountain.
A devastating rebound surged back through his arm and chest.
Raikage A felt blood rise in his throat.
The next instant, his body was hurled backward.
THUD!
CRASH!
He tumbled across the ground for dozens of meters before finally stopping.
"Cough—cough… how is this possible?!"
He was stunned.
Clutching his numb arm, his dark, bell-like eyes locked onto the young man still floating calmly in midair.
His pupils were filled with disbelief.
That charge—
His full-force burst—
Had been stopped.
Easily.
And that Uchiha brat hadn't even moved.
A storm finally erupted in his heart.
At that moment, he understood why none of the Konoha shinobi had reacted.
It wasn't that they couldn't react—
They didn't need to.
"T-this… this is my brother?!"
On the ground, Sasuke's eyes nearly popped out of their sockets.
He never imagined his second brother's entrance could be this outrageous.
This—
This was his dream scene!
Beside him, Naruto shouted excitedly,
"Big brother! You're back!"
For reasons he couldn't explain, Naruto felt an overwhelming sense of safety around Kai.
Like the warmth of being held when he was very young.
So even now, he believed—naively but firmly—that Kai could handle everything.
Compared to their shouting—
Hinata's reaction was much quieter.
But the fear in her eyes slowly gave way to resolve.
"NYAA!!"
Seeing this, Yugito Nii, in her half–tailed-beast state, reacted instantly.
The three children in her grasp—
Were the unknown boy's weakness.
She let out a sharp snarl.
"Don't move! Or I'll kill them!"
Though she spoke fiercely, an icy dread crept through her heart.
It was the instinctive warning of a tailed beast screaming danger.
She tightened her grip on Naruto, using him as leverage.
"Stop!"
"Damn it—stop!"
"Are you really going to start a war with us?!"
Fugaku and the others finally snapped out of their shock and shouted.
Even Raikage A and Ōnoki tensed.
A living jinchūriki was valuable.
A dead one?
No one present could clean up that mess.
Yugito ignored them all.
Her eyes never left Uchiha Kai.
"Step back! Or I swear I'll kill them!"
She even ground her foot down harder—on two heads… no, three.
Sasuke's lungs felt like they were about to explode with rage.
But—
Struggling on the ground, staring at the brother he felt he was seeing for the first time, he spoke two words he had never willingly said before:
"Brother… please save them…"
Sasuke had never experienced the night of the massacre.
His capacity for love far outweighed hatred.
He simply hid it beneath arrogance.
And over this time—
Naruto had become the second light in his life.
Brilliant. Irreplaceable.
So at this moment, Sasuke didn't think of himself.
Nor did he question what his lazy, sun-loving, dog-teasing second brother was capable of.
"Don't worry."
Uchiha Kai gave him a rare, gentle smile—calm and steady, mimicking Itachi's manner.
"They won't escape."
Not a single one.
BOOM!
As the words fell, Kai brought his hands together.
Two traits activated simultaneously.
Toad Sage Mode!
Water Release: Who's Going to Fix the Dam?!
In an instant, overwhelming senjutsu chakra erupted from his body.
A yellow-white, water-infused domain descended like an inverted bowl—
Slamming down over the entire Forest of Death.
A radius exceeding ten kilometers.
But inside—
Was a vacuum.
The scene left the Cloud and Stone shinobi completely dumbfounded.
"Th-this… is Water Release?!"
"This scale could wipe out a small hidden village!"
"A village? Be bolder—this could erase an entire small nation!"
"Shouldn't you be wondering how we're supposed to survive inside this thing?!"
This kind of massive, super-scale Water Release—
Was nearly impossible to escape.
Hearing their panic, Kai's lips slowly curled upward.
"What should we do?"
"Then let's—"
"Do it big."
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