Chapter 268: The Two-Tails Jinchūriki — Yuki
Land of Fire
Sakura wasn't in Konoha right now. Instead, she'd set out for Turtle Island alongside Hikaru, Tobirama, Naruto, and a woman Hikaru didn't recognize — leaving Konoha's day-to-day affairs temporarily in Tsunade's hands.
Fortunately, the Hokage's job wasn't quite the grinding, tedious burden it had once been — Tsunade had hemmed and hawed for a bit, but under Tobirama's insistent glare, had eventually, reluctantly, agreed to take it on.
After all, even Tsunade knew how to weigh what mattered — the Nine-Tails was too significant a matter to risk mishandling.
"Wow, we're really high up..."
The four of them rode atop the great hawk, streaking toward the distant sea, and Naruto — feeling the cold, biting wind rushing past at this altitude — couldn't help but marvel out loud, glancing down at the scenery blurring past below.
The other three felt nothing particularly noteworthy about flying at high altitude.
This great hawk had, after all, been the same summoned creature Sakura had encountered three years ago on her original trip to Turtle Island — the very one that had mistaken her for prey and tried to carry her off to feed its chicks, only to get thoroughly beaten into submission and turned into her personal transport instead. And that was before accounting for her now also having mastered Iwagakure's Light and Heavy Rock techniques.
Hikaru, meanwhile, could simply fly on her own using Susano'o.
As for Tobirama — he'd weathered far greater storms in his lifetime, having fought alongside Hashirama Senju countless times back in the Warring States era, even riding atop a wooden dragon's head using Water Release on more than one occasion. High-altitude flight held no novelty for him whatsoever — and even if it had been his first time, his temperament wasn't one to show it.
Only Naruto was experiencing flight at this altitude for the very first time.
Sakura glanced at Naruto, then let her gaze drift, unobtrusively, toward Hikaru's calm expression.
She seemed to have entirely forgotten what had happened earlier, wearing a face of perfect composure.
"What are you staring at."
Hikaru turned her head, glaring at the pink-haired girl whose gaze had settled on her.
This absolute pervert!
Could it be...
Hikaru suddenly had a bad feeling about this entire trip to Turtle Island.
If Sasuke hadn't been under this pink-haired menace's command — if she hadn't been worried this shameless woman might make life difficult for the Uchiha brat as retaliation — she never would have agreed to come along at all!
"No, nothing..."
Sakura pursed her lips, saying nothing further.
This one...
Really holds a grudge, huh.
All I did was pin her down and blow softly on her ear.
Fine, I'll let her pin me next time.
Either way, whoever ends up on top, I come out ahead.
"Anyway, where's Sasuke?"
"He said he'd be coming along to Turtle Island too."
Naruto, spotting the familiar island rising out of the sea in the distance, turned to Sakura, curious.
"Sasuke got pulled onto a mission last-minute. Can't make it right now."
"I'll have him join once it's done."
Sakura glanced at Naruto, answering evenly, giving nothing away.
She had no intention of telling Naruto about Jiraiya heading to Amegakure.
"I see."
Naruto scratched his head, not pressing further.
Sasuke was a jōnin now, and one of the Hokage's personal ANBU guard besides — of course he'd be busy sometimes.
Thinking of the ANBU guard, Naruto's expression brightened with anticipation.
He remembered — if he managed to master the Nine-Tails' power, Sakura had promised him a spot on her ANBU squad.
And with that came the possibility of someday becoming Hokage himself.
He'd just have to wait for Sakura to eventually step down...
Er...
At that thought, Naruto froze.
He and Sakura were the same age. If he waited for her to peacefully finish out her tenure as Hokage the normal way, he'd probably end up as old as Hiruzen Sarutobi by the time it happened.
By then, Sakura herself would be some sixty- or seventy-year-old woman.
And he'd be an old man himself.
My path to becoming Hokage...
...seems basically dead already, doesn't it.
Naruto's spirits sank abruptly.
Am I supposed to reignite some long-dead burning passion at seventy years old to finally become Hokage?
Just thinking about it was exhausting.
"What's wrong, kid?"
Tobirama, noticing the usually energetic boy suddenly looking despondent, spoke up.
"Nah, I'm fine, Old Man Stone-Face."
"Just feeling like my youth's already slipped away, that's all..."
Naruto's words made Tobirama's mouth twitch.
This kid's only sixteen and already talking like this — people his age normally aren't out here picking their own burial plots yet.
No one paid much more attention to Naruto's sudden gloom — they were all busy preparing to land.
Turtle Island. They'd arrived.
The group leapt down from the great hawk, and Konoha shinobi were already there to meet them.
As one of Konoha's spoils of war against Kumogakure, Turtle Island — a strategically significant territory — naturally couldn't be left unguarded. The island now hosted not just ten layers of barrier seals but also eight hundred Konoha shinobi, freshly equipped with the newest chakra armor.
These eight hundred shinobi, originally chūnin-tier, had, with the chakra armor's boost, reached a genuinely terrifying level of combat capability — not quite elite jōnin, but easily on par with eight hundred special jōnin, which was formidable enough on its own.
"So — even this place belongs to you all now, hm..."
The woman unfamiliar to Hikaru gazed at the surroundings with a wistful, reminiscent look.
Dressed in a white restraint garment, her small, pale feet bare against the ground she'd once walked countless times, she surveyed the terrain she knew so well.
Sorrow flickered in her eyes — a fragile, pitiable expression.
"No, just leased to us for five years."
Sakura glanced at Yuki, her expression calm.
"Is that so..."
Yuki gave a soft laugh. Perhaps from prolonged lack of sunlight, her skin was pale, almost bloodless.
She was nothing like the arrogant, impulsive, quick-tempered person she'd once been.
These three years spent tending flowers in the Uzumaki Annex seemed to have left her quiet, composed, a faint melancholy settled between her brows — like some noble lady kept sequestered within a great house's inner quarters.
"Let's go."
"Is this why you brought me here? Because of him?"
Yuki's gaze fixed on the boy ahead, walking toward the Truth-Seeking Waterfall.
"That's right. He's the Nine-Tails jinchūriki."
Sakura walked beside Yuki. Three years had passed, and Sakura's own height had nearly caught up to hers by now.
Hikaru, alongside them, eyed Sakura and Yuki with a raised brow.
She hadn't realized Konoha kept a figure like this hidden away.
The Two-Tails jinchūriki.
And a perfect jinchūriki, no less.
"I understand."
Yuki gave a small nod, evidently already grasping Sakura's intent.
Sakura wanted her to guide this Nine-Tails boy through mastering his tailed-beast chakra.
Yuki's response didn't surprise Sakura in the slightest.
Three years of quiet, forced introspection had made her considerably more measured, taught her how to actually think things through.
She had no right to refuse.
And she had no real opportunity to try anything underhanded, either.
Because Sakura's instinctive certainty — even if Yuki tried something subtle — would almost certainly catch it.
Still, just to be safe, Sakura had brought Hikaru along. If Yuki showed any hint of ill intent and Sakura's instincts flagged it, Hikaru could hit her with Yachiho instantly.
And failing that, Turtle Island wasn't short on Yamanaka clan members either.
If it came to it, they could simply kill her and extract the information from her mind directly — after all, the Fourth Raikage's own mind had proven no match for that method; a mere Yuki would be trivial by comparison.
But that was strictly a worst-case scenario.
Given the choice, Sakura had no real desire to kill her.
She was, whatever else you could say about her, genuinely easy on the eyes.
It didn't take long before the group arrived at the Truth-Seeking Waterfall.
"Naruto. This is the person who'll be guiding you."
Sakura gestured toward the composed woman beside her.
"Huh?"
"Nice to meet you, I'm Naruto Uzumaki!"
Naruto blinked, genuinely surprised — he hadn't expected that this beautiful woman he'd once briefly crossed paths with would turn out to be the one guiding his tailed-beast training.
"I'm Yuki."
Yuki gave Naruto a small nod, then turned and headed toward the cave behind the Truth-Seeking Waterfall, Naruto quickly following after her.
"That one's not a problem, is she?"
Tobirama spoke.
He wasn't asking about Naruto — he meant Yuki.
Whatever else you could say about her, she was still, technically, Kumogakure's own.
"She knows — even if it costs her life, there's no way she could protect the secret of tailed-beast training methods."
"She isn't a fool."
Sakura shook her head, then followed after them.
Hikaru trailed close behind.
Tobirama, seeing this, said nothing more, following along into the waterfall as well.
—
Land of Rain
Amegakure
Even beneath the driving rain, nothing could quite conceal the enormous cloud of debris that had just erupted...
Blood poured freely from the massive toad's body, mixing with mud and rain alike...
"Gamaken!"
Jiraiya cried out in anguish at the sight.
Even if Mount Myōboku had been watching him, even if they hadn't trusted him with their latest prophecy —
His bond with Gamaken had never once been anything less than genuine.
They were comrades. Brothers.
And now, that toad who'd stood beside him for so many years lay dead, killed by a single strike from Nagato — from Pain. Jiraiya's heart broke at the sight.
"Feeling the pain, Jiraiya-sensei?"
Pain regarded the white-haired man in the rain, his expression indifferent.
"And this is just one small instance among countless sufferings in this world."
Jiraiya couldn't hear Pain's words clearly. He didn't want to hear them.
He simply staggered forward toward Gamaken's massive corpse, desperate, willing him to rise again.
But no matter what, this time — he wouldn't be getting up again...
"I'LL KILL YOU!"
Fukasaku, seeing his own brother's brutal death, erupted with pure, uncontrollable fury.
Drawing the twin blades from his back, he charged straight at Pain!
"Stop..."
Jiraiya's voice came out weak, a murmur — but there was no way Fukasaku, blinded by rage, could hear it now.
"STOP!"
Jiraiya's voice tore into a roar.
Pain watched, entirely unmoved, as that massive blade came sweeping down toward his own head.
Because—
Poof.
Fukasaku vanished.
Jiraiya had forcibly released the summoning technique, sending him back to Mount Myōboku by force.
"You can manipulate objects through gravitational force, and repel physical attacks with repulsive force."
"That's your ability, isn't it?"
"Nagato..."
Jiraiya staggered upright, his gaze fixed on Pain ahead.
Caught by Chibaku Tensei and then slammed by Shinra Tensei right after, his own condition wasn't much better.
He could feel — several of his bones had broken.
"Worthy of my teacher. Just two demonstrations, and you've already worked out this much about my abilities."
Pain watched the man standing in the driving rain, offering genuine acknowledgment.
"So — sensei, are you prepared to die?"
Not a mark showed on Pain's body. Even against an opponent as renowned as one of the Legendary Sannin, he moved with the ease of a man taking a leisurely stroll.
Not the faintest trace of pressure.
And Jiraiya, right now, couldn't even access Sage Mode.
Against that kind of absolute information gap, Pain's Deva Path could deliver a "first-encounter kill" against ninety-nine percent of the shinobi world.
"Sensei, you're simply too strong."
"To avoid any risk of the unexpected."
"I won't be closing the distance with you."
As Pain spoke, the scattered steel wreckage surrounding Gamaken's corpse began, under Chibaku Tensei's influence, to lift into the air.
Steel beams, iron doors, steel spikes, shattered glass, broken wall fragments—
Everything, all of it, rising into the air at once.
The cold, indifferent Rinnegan watched the man before him in silence.
Jiraiya stood alone in the driving rain, the massive corpse looming behind him.
But he paid no attention at all to the danger closing in around him from every side. Instead, he formed hand seals.
The massive body behind him dissolved into white smoke, vanishing into the rain.
Jiraiya had sent Gamaken's body back to Mount Myōboku.
"Nagato, you—"
Before he could finish the sentence, the tall man collapsed to the ground.
A steel spike had pierced straight through his chest.
Blood spread outward from the wound, mixing with Gamaken's own blood still pooling on the ground.
Jiraiya lay in the pool of blood, using both hands, straining to push himself back up.
But another steel spike drove straight through his body.
Jiraiya collapsed into the blood-soaked ground.
His gaze fixed on Pain, still standing in the distance.
I can't die yet.
I can't die yet.
There's still something I haven't finished.
A duty I haven't yet fulfilled.
I can't fall here.
In that moment, his mind drifted to Sakura — the one who'd told him Nagato wasn't the prophesied child.
Sakura...
Maybe you were right.
But whether Nagato was the prophesied child or not — I still had to come here.
Because I'm his teacher. And Nagato is my student.
When a student loses their way, it's the teacher's responsibility to bring them back.
His only regret — he'd come too late.
He should have come to see Nagato long before this. Not waited until after Nagato had already committed such a grave mistake.
Lying in the blood, Jiraiya struggled to pull off his own headband, then, with great effort, carved a series of marks into it.
A puff of white smoke, and the headband vanished from sight.
Pain watched all of this in calm silence, making no move to stop him.
He'd chosen his strongest path — Deva — specifically to end this quickly.
And whatever information had already leaked out, there wasn't much of it, and there wasn't much more that could follow from here.
"Is he dead?"
A cool, sorrow-tinged woman's voice spoke, echoing through the rain.
"He was our teacher, after all."
Pain answered.
"Have Konoha's people take him back."
"That's where sensei's home is."
The voice spoke again.
"...Understood."
(End of chapter)
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