The aftermath of the explosion cleared.
Saiki, protected by his Auspicious Cloud, hadn't suffered a single scratch, yet he still felt a growing headache.
"Sigh, this is getting annoying," he muttered.
Being able to attack and defend with absolute impunity meant Saiki was practically invincible, but enemies who played dirty by refusing to let him close were a nuisance.
And Saiki hated nuisances more than anything.
At that moment, Minato Namikaze demonstrated why he was a legend in the making.
He hurled a specialized kunai with a flick of his wrist.
"Shuriken Shadow Clone Jutsu!"
The single kunai multiplied in mid-air, transforming into a lethal sword-array that rained down upon the Cloud ninja below.
Swish! Swish! Swish!
Mooooo!
The Eight-Tails let out a thunderous roar.
With a violent sweep of its massive tails, it swatted away a significant portion of the iron rain, but a vast number of kunai still managed to embed themselves in the earth all around their perimeter.
In the next heartbeat.
"AGH! GAH! ARGH!"
Several blood-curdling screams rang out.
Before the kunai had even finished settling into the dirt, Minato utilized the Flying Thunder God.
He flickered through several positions simultaneously, executing and crippling multiple Cloud ninja in a blur of yellow light.
The Flying Thunder God was largely useless for direct combat against true top-tier powerhouses, serving mainly as an escape tool.
But against anyone weaker than the user, it was the most efficient slaughtering method in existence.
"Don't get cocky, you bastard!"
The moment the shuriken exploded, A—who was already wreathed in his Lightning Style Chakra Mode—was on high alert for Minato's teleportation.
Stimulated by the lightning chakra, A's neural reflexes were more than capable of tracking Minato's movements.
He transformed into a streak of blue-white electricity, charging toward Minato and throwing a punch backed by pure, unadulterated fury.
The Lightning Style Chakra Mode was considered the pinnacle of Taijutsu in the Shinobi World.
A's speed was blinding.
In a literal blink, his fist was practically touching Minato's nose.
However, that tiny fraction of a second was all Minato needed.
Flash!
Minato vanished from the spot, reappearing dozens of meters away.
A's fist struck nothing but thin air.
To defeat Minato, one either had to lock down the space around him or possess speed so absolute that his brain couldn't process the input.
Neither of those was an easy feat.
Working together, A and Bee could potentially stalemate Minato, but A alone was clearly incapable of pinning down the Yellow Flash.
Unfortunately for A, Bee was in no position to help him right now.
The moment Minato moved, Saiki had also launched his offensive.
Saiki moved with a velocity that matched A's own explosive speed.
Facing the razor-sharp edge of 'Thunderstorm', and knowing from their previous clash that his Kenjutsu was inferior, Killer Bee didn't try to parry.
He condensed a massive volume of chakra into his fist, maximizing his defense as he threw a heavy counter-punch.
CLANG!!
The collision between the chakra-wreathed fist and the blade produced the screeching sound of high-tensile steel striking stone.
A Tailed Beast's chakra cloak already possessed legendary durability, and Bee had layered an extra-thick coating of chakra over his knuckles.
Even Saiki's Kenjutsu couldn't easily slice through such a dense concentration of energy.
During their last battle, Saiki had managed to cripple the Eight-Tails in a few moves because he had extravagantly burned his internal Senjutsu chakra.
Now, he was relying on standard chakra.
No matter how flawless his Nature and Shape Transformation was, it didn't change the fact that his base chakra density was inherently lower than that of a Tailed Beast.
Having successfully blocked the slash without losing his hand like his brother, Bee let out a mental sigh of relief.
However, he couldn't afford to relax for a single second.
Bee's natural strength was immense, and in his semi-tailed state, it was multiplied several times over.
A single punch from him could easily pulverize the earth into a crater.
Yet, from Saiki's strikes, he felt a weight of power that was actually beginning to overwhelm him.
Compared to their last fight, Saiki seemed to have grown even stronger.
And he's still just a child!
While Bee marveled at the boy's growth, Saiki didn't give him time for philosophy.
The blade of 'Thunderstorm' came at him again.
CLANG-CLANG-CLANG-CLANG!!
Saiki's sword blurred into a chaotic web of afterimages.
He unleashed dozens of slashes in a single heartbeat.
Bee responded by firing his fists like a pair of heavy autocannons, each strike heavier than the last.
The atmospheric pressure expanded, hammering the earth into a hard-packed floor.
Simultaneously, the rogue arcs of Saiki's blade-qi carved deep, clean-edged trenches into the dirt in every direction.
SHRED!!
Even though Saiki hadn't played his trump card yet, Bee was the first to break.
A clash between a blade's edge and a fist is a battle of surface area.
Anyone with basic common sense knows which side takes more damage in a prolonged exchange.
As the intensity peaked, Bee's arms could no longer condense chakra fast enough to keep up with Saiki's attack speed.
Despite the protection of the chakra cloak and the beast's regenerative abilities, Bee's arms were soon carved into a bloody mess.
The white of his radius and ulna began to peek through the shredded meat.
The only reason his arms hadn't been lopped off already was that they were partially transformed into the Eight-Tails' hardened limbs; if he were in his human form, Saiki would have turned him into mincemeat long ago.
The other Cloud ninja tried to assist their Jinchuriki, but Saiki was topped by his Auspicious Cloud.
Currently, nothing they threw could break his shield.
Saiki ignored the rain of kunai, explosive tags, and mid-level Ninjutsu as if they were nothing more than bothersome flies.
Setting aside Bee's mangled hands, the shockwaves from Saiki's strikes were opening deep gashes all over Bee's chest and shoulders.
If it weren't for the beast's rapid-healing factor, Killer Bee would have been a cripple by now.
"BEE!" Finally, A—acting like the protective big brother he was—rushed over after assisting his subordinates in clearing Minato's kunai.
With zero regard for a "fair duel," A launched a full-power kick at Saiki's flank.
"Guillotine Drop!"
Massive amounts of Lightning Style chakra concentrated in his leg.
A strike like this was guaranteed to shatter the earth and turn any human into a pile of crushed meat and ash.
Facing the incoming kick, Saiki pulled back his blade from Bee and turned to face A.
He made no attempt to dodge.
Gripping his hilt, Saiki spoke in a low, chilling whisper.
"Do you really not want that leg anymore?"
Seeing Saiki stand his ground, A felt a surge of predatory excitement, believing he was about to land a killing blow.
Minato, watching from the periphery, could only stare in horror.
He was too far away to intervene.
The Flying Thunder God was instant, but it required a marker.
In terms of raw physical movement, Minato couldn't possibly beat A to the punch.
A's heavy boot slammed directly into the Auspicious Cloud hovering above Saiki's head.
In A's mind, no matter how miraculous the boy's defense was, it couldn't possibly withstand a strike of this magnitude.
Saiki's cloud defense could be broken, but not by A's current power level.
The impact didn't feel like hitting solid rock.
Instead, it felt deceptively soft.
But then the miracle happened: the Lightning chakra A had painstakingly concentrated in his leg instantly flickered and died.
The massive kinetic force of his kick was effortlessly bled away, vanishing into nothingness.
"How is this possible?!"
Before A could process the shock, a desperate roar rang out from Bee.
"BROTHER, WATCH OUT!"
Only Killer Bee, having faced Saiki twice, truly understood the boy's lethality.
He knew that standard logic didn't apply here.
Even as he shouted the warning, Bee whipped a massive tentacle forward, slamming into A and knocking him clear of Saiki's range.
SHRED!
Saiki, having casually lopped off another section of the octopus tail, looked at Bee with a look of bored disappointment.
He genuinely didn't understand how Bee could treat the Eight-Tails' limbs as disposable "consumables."
He was surprised the beast still wanted to be friends with the guy after having his tail cut off every five minutes.
With the Flying Thunder God active, Minato had maximized his evasion, but his direct offensive power remained a weakness in this high-tier brawl.
Seeing Saiki surrounded and then effortlessly neutralizing the crisis, Minato let out a heavy breath of relief.
Both sides pulled back once more, returning to a tense standoff.
Even though it was two against a hundred, Saiki and Minato held the absolute advantage.
Furthermore, Tsunade was currently leading a relief force toward their position.
The Cloud strike team was officially in a death trap.
While the Cloud unit here was facing a crisis, the main Cloud army on the primary front was in even worse shape.
To ensure the success of the raid on the medical camp, A and Bee had taken nearly a hundred of their most elite operatives with them.
Hollowed out of their primary vanguard and missing their two strongest warriors, the Cloud main force was being systematically dismantled by Jiraiya and the elite Leaf clans—the Uchiha, the Hyuga, and the Ino-Shika-Cho combo.
Even with a terrain advantage, the Cloud was being pushed back toward their own borders.
The Cloud was the second most powerful military in the world after Konoha, but faced with the Leaf's full might, their hubris was proving fatal.