"You and I are both merely ordinary people," Minato replied, his voice carrying the steady authority of someone who had spent years contemplating the nature of power and responsibility. "There is no one in this world who possesses the right or the ability to unilaterally decide the fate of all humanity."
His words cut through the tension-filled air with the precision of a carefully aimed blade, challenging not just Nagato's stated intentions but the fundamental assumptions that had driven him to this point of transformation and madness.
"No matter what shape the future of the world ultimately takes," Minato continued, his gaze never wavering from Nagato's transformed features, "it must be the result of the collective efforts, hopes, and dreams of all mankind working together. No single individual, regardless of their power, has the moral authority to impose their vision upon everyone else."
The statement was both philosophical declaration and tactical challenge, designed to probe the psychological foundations that supported Nagato's current worldview. Minato understood that battles were won not just through superior techniques or overwhelming force, but through understanding and potentially undermining the mental frameworks that guided an opponent's actions.
Nagato's experiences throughout his tragic life had indeed made his thoughts extremely radical, pushing him toward a messianic complex that convinced him he alone possessed the wisdom and power necessary to guide the world toward its proper destiny. The transformation from idealistic orphan to self-proclaimed god had been gradual but inexorable, each trauma and disappointment adding another layer to his conviction that only through absolute control could true peace be achieved.
No one could accomplish such a feat, Minato knew with absolute certainty. No matter how powerful an individual might become, whether it was Uchiha Madara in ages past or Nagato in the present moment, the complexity and diversity of human nature would always resist such singular control.
"That is precisely why the world requires someone to illuminate the true path forward," Nagato responded, his voice carrying the serene confidence of someone who had moved beyond doubt and into the realm of absolute certainty.
His transformed features showed no trace of uncertainty or internal conflict—the boy who had once questioned every decision had been replaced by a being who believed himself to possess perfect understanding of reality's fundamental nature.
"I am the God who guides this world toward its destined evolution," Nagato declared, each word carrying the weight of divine pronouncement. "If you are willing to cooperate with me, to accept the guidance I offer, there will be no more war and killing in this world. Peace will reign eternal under my administration."
The offer was made with apparent sincerity, as if Nagato genuinely believed that his proposal represented the most reasonable and beneficial course of action available to all parties involved.
Minato's brow furrowed deeply as he processed the full implications of what Nagato was proposing, his analytical mind working through the logical flaws and moral contradictions inherent in such a plan.
"Although I still don't completely understand the specific mechanisms through which you intend to achieve your stated goals," Minato said, his voice taking on the patient tone of someone explaining fundamental truths to a student who had lost their way, "I am absolutely certain that your proposed actions will only succeed in bringing tremendous pain and suffering to innocent people throughout the world."
His words carried the weight of experience and observation, the accumulated wisdom of someone who had witnessed firsthand the consequences of well-intentioned actions that were built upon flawed philosophical foundations.
"Your methods will inevitably cause more children to suffer the same traumatic fate that befell you, Yahiko, and Konan during your own childhood," Minato continued, his voice growing stronger as he built toward his central argument. "The cycle of pain and hatred that shaped your worldview will be perpetuated and amplified rather than broken."
The irony was both tragic and profound—in seeking to eliminate suffering through the application of superior force, Nagato would inevitably create the very conditions that had originally produced his own trauma and radicalization.
"You once stood up courageously for the safety and welfare of the Rain Country's civilian population," Minato observed, his tone carrying genuine respect for those earlier, nobler impulses. "But what you are proposing to do now represents a complete reversal of those principles—it's putting the cart before the horse in the most fundamental way possible."
The comparison was carefully chosen to highlight the internal contradictions that had emerged as Nagato's idealism had been corrupted by power and trauma. The same person who had once been motivated by compassion for the innocent was now prepared to sacrifice countless innocents in service of an abstract ideal.
"This is simply the reality of how this world functions," Nagato replied, his voice carrying the cold certainty of someone who believed himself to have achieved perfect understanding of human nature's fundamental limitations.
"Human beings are incapable of truly understanding one another except through the shared experience of profound pain and suffering. Only when people have been stripped of their illusions and forced to confront the harsh truths of existence can they develop the empathy necessary for genuine communication and cooperation."
The philosophy he espoused was both seductive and deeply flawed, built upon partial truths that had been distorted by trauma into something approaching nihilistic fatalism. Nagato had taken the genuine insight that shared suffering could create bonds of understanding and twisted it into a justification for deliberately inflicting trauma upon others.
"Stop talking such bullshit!" Kushina interjected suddenly, her voice cutting through Nagato's philosophical exposition with the righteous anger of someone who had heard enough empty justifications for cruelty.
Her normally controlled demeanor cracked as she raised her hand to point accusingly at Nagato, her violet eyes blazing with indignation that had been building throughout the confrontation.
"What do you mean by 'mutual understanding through shared pain'?" she demanded, her voice rising with each word. "If you have truly experienced the so-called pain you claim to understand, if you really possess the empathy that such suffering is supposed to create, then how can you stand there and ignore the anguish you are causing right now?"
Her challenge was both personal and devastating, designed to force Nagato to confront the contradictions between his stated beliefs and his actual behavior.
"Do you have any comprehension of how your former teacher feels, standing here and watching what you have become?" Kushina continued, her voice carrying the full weight of maternal fury mixed with genuine compassion. "Can you imagine the heartbreak that Jiraiya is experiencing as he watches his student transform into everything he fought against?"
She gestured toward the assembled group of defenders, her movements sharp and accusatory as she highlighted the human cost of Nagato's philosophical journey.
"And what about Konan, standing beside you? She is being forced to face the teacher she once respected and admired above all others, knowing that her loyalty to you has made them enemies. Do you understand the torture you are putting her through?"
The questions were designed to pierce through whatever psychological barriers Nagato had constructed to protect himself from acknowledging the pain he was causing to those who had once cared about him.
"And there's Yahiko—the friend whose memory you claim to honor!" Kushina's voice reached a crescendo of accusation and grief. "What you're doing now is destroying everything he dreamed of achieving! You're perverting his vision of peace and understanding into something twisted and unrecognizable!"
She paused for breath, her chest heaving with the intensity of her emotions, before delivering her final judgment.
"This isn't about pain or understanding or the greater good—it's nothing more than your own selfish, willful thoughts and actions! You're using philosophy to justify personal revenge and the desire to impose your will upon others!"
Kushina had heard the full story from Jiraiya—the tale of three orphaned children who had dreamed of changing their war-torn world through compassion and understanding. The transformation of those noble ideals into Nagato's current nihilistic crusade was something she could no longer tolerate in silence.
"That's enough!" Nagato interrupted before Kushina could complete her emotional assault, his normally serene features twisting with anger and something that might have been shame.
His face had turned livid, the pale coloration that marked his transformation becoming even more pronounced as powerful emotions threatened to crack the facade of divine calm he had been maintaining.
"You have always been protected by the Fourth Hokage and the elite ninja of Konoha village," he accused, his voice carrying the bitterness of someone who believed his suffering gave him unique insight into reality's true nature. "You have never experienced genuine hardship or loss, so you cannot possibly understand what true pain actually means."
The accusation was both defensive and revealing, showing that beneath his claims of transcendent understanding, Nagato remained fundamentally driven by the wounded child who had never fully processed his own trauma.
"Don't I understand?" Kushina's expression flickered through a complex series of emotions as her own painful memories surfaced unbidden.
Her hands began to clench slowly into fists, the physical manifestation of psychological struggles that most people never suspected she had endured. The controlled exterior that she maintained in public concealed depths of personal pain that few had ever been privileged to witness.
She might not know the specific details of Nagato's childhood experiences, but Kushina had certainly lived through her own version of that existence—days and nights spent on the knife's edge between life and death, never knowing when violence might shatter whatever temporary safety she had managed to find.
Her own background as a refugee from the destroyed Uzumaki clan, her experiences as a jinchūriki who had been viewed more as a weapon than a person, her struggles to find acceptance and belonging in a world that often seemed hostile to her very existence—all of these experiences had given her profound insights into the nature of suffering and resilience.
Kushina's face began to change as these memories threatened to overwhelm her carefully maintained composure, but Minato's intervention prevented her from saying something that might have escalated the confrontation beyond any hope of resolution.
Minato moved slightly to place himself between his wife and their opponent, shaking his head gently while maintaining eye contact with Nagato.
"Don't say anything more," he advised quietly, his voice carrying the authority of someone who understood both the tactical and emotional dimensions of their current situation. "Looking at his current mental state, he won't be capable of understanding or accepting anything you might tell him."
The assessment was both compassionate and coldly practical—Minato recognized that Nagato had moved beyond the reach of rational argument or emotional appeal, having constructed psychological defenses that would resist any challenge to his current worldview.
Minato raised his head to look directly at Nagato once more, his analytical mind shifting from philosophical debate to tactical assessment.
"Are you deliberately stalling for time?" he asked, his voice carrying the certainty of someone who had identified their opponent's true strategy.
The question was not accusatory but rather indicated that Minato had completed his analysis of the situation and reached conclusions about Nagato's actual objectives.
He absolutely did not believe that Nagato was foolish enough to assault Konoha with only Konan as backup, regardless of what power he might have gained from integrating the five tailed beasts. Such an approach would be tactically suicidal unless it served some larger strategic purpose.
Therefore, Nagato must have developed a comprehensive plan that accounted for variables beyond the immediate confrontation. His strategy was probably not difficult to deduce for someone with sufficient analytical skills and knowledge of the larger situation.
"Did you figure it out?" Nagato responded with a smile that held no warmth, his gaze shifting slightly as he acknowledged that his opponent had indeed perceived the true nature of the game they were playing.
The admission was delivered with the satisfaction of someone whose intellectual capabilities had been properly recognized, even by an enemy.
Swish!
At that moment, a figure moved rapidly through the maze of houses and streets below, using advanced movement techniques to traverse the village at tremendous speed before landing gracefully in front of Minato. The newcomer was Shisui, his distinctive appearance and bearing immediately identifiable to all present.
"Hokage-sama," Shisui announced formally, his voice carrying the crisp precision of someone delivering critical intelligence under combat conditions.
In his hands, he held three scrolls, each one bearing the distinctive markings that identified them as being connected to Minato's Flying Thunder God technique. The scrolls themselves were sophisticated pieces of equipment that Minato had developed by adapting certain capabilities of the Sharingan, creating a communication system that allowed for fixed-point space-time transmission of information across vast distances.
"As expected," Minato murmured, his eyes narrowing slightly as he examined the three scrolls that confirmed his tactical assessment of Nagato's strategy.
The number of scrolls and their origins would tell him everything he needed to know about the scope and nature of the enemy's coordinated assault.
"The Sunagakure, Kirigakure, and Takigakure have all come under attack by members of the Akatsuki organization," Shisui reported, providing a concise summary of the intelligence contained within the scrolls.
Nagato made no attempt to interfere with this information transfer, his passive observation indicating that this development was indeed part of his carefully orchestrated plan. The intelligence gathering and communication were not threats to be prevented, but rather necessary components of the psychological pressure he was attempting to apply.
"Where are the specific attackers?" Minato asked, his voice carrying the focused intensity of someone processing tactical information under combat conditions.
"What we can confirm so far is that the masked man appeared in the Sand Village, Deidara is operating in the Mist Village, and several corpses were discovered outside Takigakure with their hearts surgically removed—that signature indicates Kakuzu's involvement," Shisui replied, his report delivered with professional efficiency despite the disturbing nature of the information.
"What about the other members of the Akatsuki organization?" Minato pressed, seeking to understand the full scope of the enemy deployment.
"We haven't been able to confirm their specific whereabouts yet," Shisui admitted, his tone indicating that intelligence gathering was still ongoing despite the urgency of the situation.
After receiving this critical intelligence, the expressions of the Third Hokage, Jiraiya, and the other assembled defenders underwent dramatic changes as they processed the implications of what they were hearing.
The scope of the coordinated assault was staggering—three separate villages under simultaneous attack by an organization that had already demonstrated its capability to capture and extract tailed beasts from their hosts.
"Feint attacks rather than committed assaults," Minato observed, his tactical mind immediately grasping the true purpose behind Nagato's strategy. "This individual's real goal is to force me to disperse all the available forces in the village to respond to multiple threats simultaneously."
He stared directly at Nagato as he spoke, his voice carrying the respect of one tactical genius acknowledging the work of another, even when they stood on opposite sides of the conflict.
The strategy of deliberately creating multiple crisis points was designed to prevent Minato from concentrating his full defensive capabilities in any single location. Rather than allowing Konoha to bring its overwhelming power to bear against specific targets, Nagato was forcing them to spread their strength thin across multiple fronts.
"Nagato is appearing here personally, but his real objective is probably focused on me specifically," Minato continued, his analysis cutting through to the heart of the enemy's psychological strategy.
Now, except for Konoha's Nine-Tails, the remaining tailed beasts—the One-Tail of the Sand Village, the Six-Tails of Kirigakure, and the Seven-Tails of Takigakure—were all at risk of falling into the hands of the Akatsuki organization if Konoha's defensive response was inadequate or poorly coordinated.
"Minato, what should our response be?" the Third Hokage asked, his voice carrying the weight of someone who had also quickly analyzed Nagato's true intentions and found them deeply troubling.
However, Konoha did not appear to have any immediately effective countermeasures available to address this type of multi-front assault. The village's strength, impressive as it was, could not be in multiple places simultaneously.
"You should all disperse to your assigned defensive positions," Minato commanded in a low voice, his tone carrying the absolute authority of someone who had made his decision and would not be swayed by further discussion.
The next moment, his eyes locked onto Nagato's position high in the sky above them, and his figure suddenly vanished from the rooftop in a burst of spatial distortion that marked the activation of his signature technique.
Swish!
At that instant, a golden stream of light seemed to rise into the heavens like a reverse lightning bolt, pointing directly toward Nagato's hovering form with the precision of a guided missile. The movement was so fast that it left a visible trail of disrupted air in its wake, creating a golden rainbow that connected earth to sky.
"Using natural energy to create temporary leverage points in the air to facilitate aerial movement and close-quarters engagement?" Nagato observed, his voice carrying analytical appreciation for the technical sophistication of Minato's approach.
With the support of the Gedo Mazo and the chakra of five different tailed beasts flowing through his system, Nagato's visual acuity, reaction speed, and overall physical capabilities had been enhanced far beyond normal human limitations. He was no longer unable to perceive Minato's movements as he had been during their previous encounters.
After mastering the power of the tailed beasts, Nagato had gained the ability to sense the massive quantities of natural energy that surged around Minato whenever he entered Sage Mode. The enhanced perception allowed him to track techniques and strategies that would have been completely invisible to his previous level of capability.
"Are you testing the extent of my current abilities?" Nagato wondered internally, recognizing that the most critical component of his overall strategy depended upon his ability to effectively restrain and ultimately defeat the Fourth Hokage.
If he could not accomplish that fundamental objective, then all the elaborate maneuvering and psychological pressure would ultimately prove meaningless.
"Konan, you should withdraw to a safe distance as well," Nagato instructed, his voice carrying both protective concern and tactical necessity.
He then raised both hands in front of his body, forming a embracing posture that positioned his arms to channel and direct the tremendous forces now flowing through his transformed physiology.
Snap!
He suddenly brought his arms together with explosive force, his hands meeting in a gesture that seemed to compress the very air around him. The movement was both elegant and terrifying, combining the precision of a master craftsman with the raw power of natural disaster.
As Nagato's hands came together, the visual effect was immediately apparent to anyone with the enhanced perception necessary to observe such phenomena. The air in a large area of sky below his position seemed to come under tremendous pressure, creating visible distortions as two massive ripples of force began approaching each other from opposite directions.
Bang!
The pressure directly crushed and compressed the air between the converging force fields, creating a sound like thunder as the approaching ripples caught Minato's ascending form directly in their center.
The technique was essentially a massive compression attack that used the Rinnegan's gravitational manipulation abilities to create opposing pressure waves that would crush anything caught between them.
Minato's eyes narrowed as he immediately recognized the nature of the attack and began mobilizing natural energy to form invisible barriers on both sides of his body. The defensive technique was one he had developed specifically for countering large-scale gravitational or pressure-based attacks.
Crack!
However, the moment the converging ripples made contact with his natural energy barriers, a clearly audible sound of structural failure echoed through the air above the village. The barriers that should have been capable of deflecting most attacks were being overwhelmed by forces that exceeded their designed capacity.
The ripples behaved like two enormous invisible hands, applying pressure that threatened to crush Minato's defenses and everything within them. The compression was so intense that it created visible distortions in the air itself.
Minato felt a moment of genuine surprise as he realized the extent of Nagato's enhanced capabilities.
"The repulsive and attractive forces he can now manipulate are far stronger than anything he demonstrated in our previous encounters!" he thought, his analytical mind rapidly recalculating the tactical parameters of their confrontation.
The power that Nagato had gained from integrating the tailed beasts was not merely additive—it seemed to have created entirely new levels of capability that transcended anything Minato had prepared for.