"This chakra..."
The moment Minato released his chakra without reservation, the atmosphere across the entire battlefield shifted dramatically. The raw power emanating from the Fourth Hokage created visible distortions in the air itself, and within Nagato's body, the Gedo Statue responded with violent, uncontrolled trembling. The ancient construct seemed to recognize something primal and threatening in Minato's energy signature, its stone form shuddering as if in fear or anticipation.
Nagato's Rinnegan pierced through the smoke and dust that still lingered from their previous exchange, tracking every subtle change in his opponent's chakra manifestation. Minato's pupils, which had originally shifted to the distinctive brown-yellow of Sage Mode, were undergoing another transformation entirely. The change was mesmerizing and terrifying in equal measure.
A dark golden light began to condense within Minato's pupils, starting as mere flickers before growing into steady flames of power. This wasn't the gentle gold of normal chakra enhancement—this was something far more primal and dangerous. The light burned with an intensity that seemed to consume everything around it, reality itself bending slightly under the weight of its presence.
As the two disparate forces within Minato converged—his own perfected Sage Mode and the freely given chakra of the Nine-Tails—his pupils underwent a final, startling transformation. The circular shape distorted and stretched, ultimately settling into the distinctive form of a cross. The geometric precision of this new dojutsu spoke of power beyond normal comprehension, a fusion of human potential and Tailed Beast might that had never been achieved before.
"Why is there Nine-Tails chakra in his body?" Nagato's voice carried a note of genuine confusion mixed with growing alarm. His analytical mind raced through possibilities, but the masked man—Obito—had never shared this crucial piece of intelligence with him.
The revelation hit Nagato like a physical blow. All their planning, all their tactical preparations, had been based on incomplete information. Minato wasn't just the legendary Yellow Flash with his space-time ninjutsu—he was also somehow connected to the very beast that had once nearly destroyed Konoha. The implications were staggering.
Nagato's expression flickered between surprise and calculation, but he didn't have the luxury of time to fully process this development. His heightened perception through the Rinnegan told him everything he needed to know about the immediate threat: this chakra was more powerful than anything he currently possessed, even with five Tailed Beasts sealed within his body.
What truly unsettled him was the absence of murderous intent from Minato. Despite the overwhelming power being displayed, there was no sense of bloodlust or hatred. Instead, there was something far more dangerous—absolute determination coupled with reluctant resolve. This wasn't the chakra of a man consumed by rage, but of someone who had accepted a terrible necessity.
The realization forced Nagato to abandon any remaining restraint. His figure rose into the air with fluid grace, the Six Paths power allowing him to defy gravity effortlessly. As he ascended, his hands moved through a complex series of hand seals, each gesture precise and deliberate despite the urgency of the situation.
"Roar!"
When the final seal was formed, a deep, primal roar erupted from within Nagato's body. The sound was multilayered, carrying the voices of five different Tailed Beasts, each one adding its own note to the terrifying symphony. The roar seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, reverberating through the very earth and air around them.
"What's happening?" Kushina's voice carried a note of panic that was completely foreign to her usual confident demeanor. She had been engaged in aerial combat with Konan, their paper and chakra chains dancing through the sky in deadly patterns, but the roar from Nagato's direction demanded her immediate attention.
Kushina's eyes snapped upward, and what she saw made her blood run cold. The sky above the devastated landscape was darkening, not with natural clouds, but with something far more ominous. The very air seemed to thicken and coalesce, taking on an almost solid quality that pressed down on everyone below.
"Rumble!"
The first flash of deep blue light split the darkened sky like a wound in reality itself. The light condensed and stretched, forming massive lightning bolts that crackled with supernatural energy. These weren't ordinary lightning strikes—they were concentrated manifestations of Tailed Beast chakra, each one carrying enough power to level a small village.
The lightning descended toward the area where Nagato and Minato faced each other, seeking to overwhelm the Fourth Hokage through sheer, devastating force. The bolts moved with predatory intelligence, adjusting their trajectories to account for any possible evasion attempts.
As the lightning approached, Minato remained perfectly still, his cross-shaped pupils tracking the descent of each bolt with supernatural clarity. There was no hint of fear or uncertainty in his posture—only the calm readiness of someone who had transcended normal human limitations.
"Boom! Boom! Boom!"
The lightning struck with the force of divine judgment, each bolt carrying enough energy to vaporize solid rock. But instead of finding flesh and bone, the strikes encountered something far more formidable. The dark golden light that had been burning around Minato suddenly erupted outward, transforming into several massive tails of the same ethereal color.
These weren't physical constructs—they were pure chakra given form, each tail moving with fluid grace as they intercepted the lightning strikes. The tails wrapped around the bolts like living things, absorbing and dispersing the energy with casual efficiency. The Nine-Tails' chakra, freely given rather than forcibly extracted, provided protection that no stolen power could match.
High above, Nagato gazed down at the scene with a mixture of grudging respect and growing desperation. His body had become a living nexus of conflicting energies—blue flames rose from his feet, red flames danced around his hands, and white steam began to pour from his skin as the various Tailed Beast chakras fought for dominance within his form.
"Does this guy's ninjutsu require so much time to charge?" Nagato muttered, his eyes never leaving Minato's motionless form. The Fourth Hokage stood within the protection of his chakra tails, seemingly content to wait and observe rather than press any advantage.
The delay was both frustrating and concerning. Nagato had pushed his own power to its absolute limits, and maintaining this level of chakra output was taking a severe toll on his body. Meanwhile, Minato appeared completely calm, as if the devastating exchange they had just witnessed was merely a warm-up exercise.
With growing urgency, Nagato raised his right arm toward Minato's position. The limb began to transform with mechanical precision, flesh and bone shifting and reconfiguring until it resembled a sophisticated cannon. The transformation was both fascinating and horrifying—a perfect fusion of human anatomy and weapon engineering.
"Buzz!"
Purple light began to condense within the cannon's muzzle, but this gathering energy was fundamentally different from Nagato's previous attacks. Where his earlier techniques had been controlled and precise, this was raw, chaotic power that seemed to fight against its own containment.
As the purple light continued to accumulate, its color gradually shifted toward deeper, more ominous hues. The initial bright purple faded to dark violet, then to deep indigo, and finally to a complete absence of color that seemed to absorb light rather than emit it.
Nagato's status as an imperfect Jinchuriki created unique limitations that a complete host would never face. Unable to properly synchronize with the Tailed Beasts within him, he was forced to rely on the Rinnegan's power to forcibly extract their chakra. This violent extraction process prevented him from using traditional Tailed Beast Balls, forcing him to channel the stolen power through his Asura Path abilities instead.
He understood the tactical implications of this limitation. Traditional repulsive or gravitational attacks would be largely useless against someone who had mastered space-time ninjutsu to Minato's degree. The Yellow Flash could simply redirect or avoid such techniques with minimal effort. But this attack would be different—this would be unavoidable.
Within seconds, the energy in Nagato's arm cannon had transformed into something that seemed to devour light itself. The concentrated power stretched and pulsed, causing the very space around the muzzle to become distorted and blurry. Reality itself was being warped by the sheer intensity of the contained energy.
"You can compress chakra of that intensity into a single point!" Kushina's voice carried a note of professional admiration mixed with personal terror. Her enhanced perception allowed her to sense exactly what Nagato was attempting, and the implications were staggering.
"Minato, you..." Her voice trailed off as she whispered her husband's name, her brows furrowed with worry. Despite her absolute faith in Minato's abilities, how could she not be concerned when faced with such overwhelming destructive potential?
Kushina noticed that Konan's attacks had slowed considerably, the paper-based assaults becoming more hesitant and less coordinated. Even Nagato's most loyal supporter was experiencing doubt and concern as she witnessed the apocalyptic energies being gathered above them.
"This fight between us is meaningless," Kushina called out, her voice carrying across the battlefield with desperate urgency. "If you're worried about him, you might as well persuade him to stop now!"
Konan's response was immediate and resolute, though her voice carried an undercurrent of uncertainty. "This is what he has chosen to do. The only thing I can do is support his decision."
"You're such a stubborn person who refuses to listen to reason!" Kushina's frustration finally boiled over, her normally controlled demeanor cracking under the stress of the situation.
Meanwhile, Minato focused his entire attention on Nagato's developing attack. His cross-shaped pupils tracked every fluctuation in the energy signature, analyzing the technique's construction and searching for potential weaknesses or countermeasures.
At this moment, something extraordinary began to happen to Nagato's right arm. The space around the limb started to distort and warp, creating a phenomenon that the wielder himself had never experienced before. A portion of his arm seemed to be caught in some kind of invisible vice, held firmly by forces beyond normal comprehension.
This was the power of space-time manipulation in its purest form—a force that transcended the normal rules governing chakra and ninjutsu. Even with the Rinnegan's incredible analytical capabilities, Nagato found himself confronting something that operated on principles beyond his understanding.
"In that case..." Minato murmured, his voice carrying the weight of final decision. Nagato's chaotic chakra fluctuations had begun to stabilize, indicating that the attack was nearing completion. The time for passive observation had ended.
Minato raised his right arm with deliberate slowness, chakra beginning to condense in his palm. The energy gathered there was different from anything he had used before—it was the perfect fusion of his own refined chakra control and the Nine-Tails' overwhelming power, creating something entirely new.
"This attack will be impossible to deflect even with space-time ninjutsu!" Nagato's voice rose to a scream, his control finally cracking under the pressure of containing such destructive force. "This is my power now!"
The declaration carried a note of desperation that hadn't been present in his earlier taunts. Nagato had committed everything to this single attack, and the energy was becoming increasingly difficult to contain. If he didn't release it soon, the compressed power might consume him from within.
This strike represented the culmination of everything Nagato had worked toward—the combined might of five Tailed Beasts focused through the Rinnegan's power and channeled through his Asura Path abilities. The energy was sufficient to reduce the entire mountain range to dust, to carve a permanent scar in the earth itself.
A jet-black energy wave, no thicker than a man's fist but containing unimaginable destructive potential, suddenly erupted from the muzzle of Nagato's transformed arm. The moment it was released, the attack seemed to vanish entirely, disappearing from normal space-time.
But it hadn't truly disappeared. In the blink of an eye, the attack reappeared directly above Minato's head, having somehow bypassed the normal constraints of distance and time. The technique had literally jumped through space itself, making traditional evasion impossible.
"Just as I thought," Minato said calmly, his voice carrying no hint of surprise or panic. In his palm, a ball of light with the same dark coloration as Nagato's attack began to form. The space around this chakra sphere rippled and distorted, creating patterns that seemed to fold in on themselves.
The pitch-black energy wave began its descent from above, carrying enough power to annihilate everything in its path. Minato's response was swift and precise—he turned his wrist and threw the chakra ball directly toward the incoming attack.
Swish!
The moment the ball of light left his hand, Minato disappeared from his position entirely, his form dissolving into the same golden light that had protected him from Nagato's earlier lightning strikes.
"The speed at which he gathers that level of power is so much faster than mine!" Nagato's voice carried a note of genuine awe mixed with growing alarm. His enhanced perception through the Rinnegan had allowed him to sense the exact energy signature of Minato's counter-attack, and the readings were almost identical to his own technique.
But before he could fully process the implications of this revelation, something unprecedented began to happen. The pitch-black energy wave and Minato's chakra ball didn't collide as expected. Instead, they maintained a precise distance from each other, each attack seeming to orbit around an invisible center point.
Nagato watched in stunned silence as the space between the two attacks became increasingly distorted. The very fabric of reality seemed to be stretching and warping under the combined influence of their techniques, creating a zone where normal physics simply ceased to function.
"Space... distorted..." Nagato whispered, his voice barely audible as he witnessed something that challenged his understanding of what was possible, even with the legendary powers at his disposal.
The two attacks hung in the air like binary stars, their combined gravitational influence creating a localized anomaly that threatened to tear apart the very foundations of the world around them. The final confrontation between the two most powerful disciples of Jiraiya had transcended normal combat and entered the realm of cosmic forces.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Writing takes time, coffee, and a lot of love.If you'd like to support my work, join me at [email protected]/GoldenGaruda You'll get early access to over 50 chapters, selection on new series, and the satisfaction of knowing your support directly fuels more stories.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~