Chapter: 12 :
Kushina's POV
Kushina's purple eyes stared up at the sky, watching the red moon peek from behind the scattered clouds as three streaks of chakra illuminated the night.
Her eyes tracked the red, crimson, and blue streaks as they relentlessly clashed. From miles away, she could actually see the massive, rippling shockwaves of the sound barriers shattering in the sky long before the deafening thunderclaps ever reached her ears.
She knew her teacher was strong—absurdly strong. But this... this incomprehensible power she was feeling from miles away was both awe-inspiring and deeply frightening.
'And I want to surpass that,' she thought, a bitter, self-deprecating smile tugging at her lips.
But the truly concerning part wasn't her teacher's power. It was the fact that those beasts were fighting her teacher toe-to-toe, and worse—they seemed to be getting stronger.
"So those are the Jinchūriki," she murmured to herself.
She still remembered when her father had received that letter from the Hokage, heavily hinting that she, Kushina, could be the next Nine-Tails Jinchūriki. She had scoffed at the idea at the time, but watching this powerful display forced her to reconsider just what kind of power being a Jinchūriki meant.
But accepting it would mean leaving Uzushio.
She crushed the idea then and there. She wasn't going anywhere.
A sudden, pained groan echoed from the room behind her. Her aunt—the closest thing Kushina had to a mother figure—was currently in the agonizing process of giving birth. Her team's medic was also inside the room stabilizing her condition. The event was generating such a massive anomaly that even ordinary, non-sensory shinobi could feel the ambient chakra violently converging inside the room.
Whatever was happening was highly unusual, and it only spiked her mounting anxiety.
Suddenly, she felt a subtle displacement of air beside her. Before her mind could even register the newcomer's chakra, her combat instincts took over.
She whipped around, her kunai slashing lethally toward the target—only to be blocked mere inches from their throat.
When she finally recognized the familiar chakra, she relaxed her stance slightly.
"Shoto-sensei, what are you doing here?" she asked, puzzled. "I thought you were at the frontline."
"Kushina-sama, I am an Independent Clone," the copy replied in a flat, monotone voice.
"Okay... and why are you here?" she pressed.
She remembered Uncle Shoto working on some project related to shadow clones. But she hadn't paid any attention then. It was something related to a self sustaining clone or something.
"The enemies have broken through—"
Kushina grit her teeth. She already knew that. The three shadow clones she had deployed earlier to distract the enemy and weed out the weaker ones had been destroyed some moments ago.
"—This time, a force of over a thousand shinobi is marching directly toward the village," he continued, his tone flat. "So, I am requesting you once again: evacuate the village immediately and seek shelter in Konoha."
Kushina's violet eyes narrowed dangerously.
"No... I... will... not... abandon... my... village," she enunciated, her voice like iron.
The clone didn't show a single ounce of surprise. He simply nodded. "Then we will do everything in our power to stall the powerful ones from reaching this compound. But—" he cast a flat look toward the delivery room, "—the ambient chakra being siphoned from the environment is going to act like a massive beacon to enemy sensors."
"I know," Kushina replied sharply. "That's exactly why my team is currently blanketing the compound and the surrounding mountain with traps and sealing matrices."
The clone didn't argue further. With a final, respectful nod, he turned away.
As he walked the perimeter, he rapidly etched complex seals into the architecture, watching them melt seamlessly into the surroundings before he vanished into the shadows.
*********
Saki's POV
High in the night skies above Uzushio, the deafening sounds of their clash continued to violently shatter the clouds for miles in every direction.
But beneath the bleeding light of the red moon, the fighters paid no attention to the environmental devastation they were causing.
Saki drove a devastating punch into the Four-Tails—who was now more ape than a human—launching it like a meteor toward a distant mountain. In the exact same breath, she whipped her odachi around to block the incoming, fire-coated claws of the Two-Tails.
Locked together, the two of them began rapidly plummeting from the sky.
Just a split second before they cratered into the earth, Saki masterfully angled her odachi to the side. The Two-Tails' flaming claws slid down the length of her blade in a blinding shower of sparks. Using the redirected momentum, she flawlessly pivoted behind the beast, using its massive body as a living cushion.
Boom.
They crashed violently into the ground, shattering the terrain. Saki coughed up a harsh mouthful of blood as her already-burning organs absorbed the impact, but her grip didn't loosen for a second.
Saki was practically riding the Two-Tails, her legs locked around its torso as she used her odachi like a lethal leash.
With the razor-sharp edge pressed deep into the blue-flamed fur of the beast's neck, she reached forward. One hand gripped the hilt while the other clamped down hard on the flat backside of the blade, providing the terrifying leverage she needed to shear through the monster's spine.
Her muscles bunched, her red-hot skin steaming against the cold night air. Every ounce of her remaining strength was channeled into her hands.
She took a jagged breath. With one violent, explosive tug, she pulled.
But she was forced to abandon the kill when a colossal shadow suddenly cast itself across the ground—the unmistakable, silhouette of a towering ape.
She was beginning to hate these monsters to her very bones. They weren't supposed to be this resilient. Something was wrong with them, and she could feel it in her gut.
She had fought Mito's six-tails Jinchūriki form in the past and had dealt serious damage to her. Yet a blade capable of shearing a mountain in half couldn't even sever the Two-Tails' neck?
The shadow continued to expand, descending rapidly. Saki didn't have time for questions.
She loosened her hold on the odachi and allowed the thrashing Two-Tails to violently fling her away.
A split second later, the Four-Tails plummeted from the sky in a bone-crushing leap, striking the Two-Tails' body and creating a crater ten times larger than the first.
The resulting shockwave sent Saki tumbling further across the wasteland. Gritting her teeth, she bit down hard on her lip, feeling her body instantly knit itself back together.
The spider lily seal on her forehead flared with new light, her red skin glowing with renewed intensity.
She gripped her odachi with both hands and plunged it deep into the earth, using the blade as an anchor until she finally skidded to a halt.
The glowing matrix of seals immediately adapted to her intent. Without a second of hesitation, she launched herself straight back toward the towering beasts, who were currently distracted, snarling furiously at one another inside the crater.
As she pushed off the ground, the spider lily seal on her forehead flared, automatically and drastically decreasing her physical mass.
In truth, throughout this entire battle, Saki had been constantly manipulating her own weight.
By shifting her mass from feather-light to achieve blinding speed, to crushingly heavy right before her strikes connected, she manipulated the very physics of the fight.
It was this intricate network of weight-altering Fūinjutsu that allowed her to batter these beasts until the sound barriers shattered, while her brutal healing bite was the only thing saving her from burning herself alive from the inside out.
As she closed the distance, the two beasts instantly snapped their massive heads toward her, and sprinted directly at her.
Saki braced herself. The seals blazing across her glowing red skin reacted, violently compressing her muscles in preparation for a devastating blow. Her grip strength tightened like a vise around the hilt of her odachi.
She leapt into the air, colliding head-on with the Four-Tails. Her crimson odachi clashed violently against its dense, chakra-coated arms. The sheer force of their impact generated massive shockwaves, causing the earth beneath them to ripple and shatter like a tidal wave of solid rock.
Suddenly, Saki released her grip on her weapon.
Using the suspended odachi as a pivot point, she executed a breathtaking display of flexibility. She vaulted herself upward, spinning her body mid-air to plant her hands directly atop the Four-Tails' head. By launching herself upward, she flawlessly dodged the Two-Tails, whose blazing claws swiped through the empty air where she had just been.
The seals wrapping around her arms flared with light. Instantly multiplying her physical mass to an impossible weight and capitalizing on her raw momentum, Saki let out a fierce roar and physically flung the towering Four-Tails far into the distance.
As she began her descent, time seemed to dilate, her perception slowing to a crawl. Her eyes widened slightly as the Two-Tails' blazing, open maw appeared mere inches from her face.
'It got faster.'
The realization hit her in a fraction of a second.
From the corner of her eye, she spotted her discarded odachi falling through the air in slow motion. With a microscopic twitch of her finger, she triggered the seal on the weapon's hilt.
In the next instant, the massive blade shot directly beneath the Two-Tails' maw. The moment it reached the beast's chin, the weight seal activated, maximizing its mass. The odachi slammed into the monster's lower jaw like a sledge hammer, violently snapping its flaming jaws shut.
The beast faltered for less than a second, but it was all the opening Saki needed.
Concentrating a massive surge of dense crimson chakra into her fist, she unleashed a devastating right hook, punching the staggering beast far to the right with every ounce of her remaining strength.
Only then did her boots finally, safely, touch the shattered earth.
Saki exhaled, a thick cloud of steam from her lips into the cold night air. She dragged in one sharp, deep breath, flooding her burning lungs with oxygen.
Then, without a single second of hesitation, she launched herself directly at the rapidly closing Four-Tails.
And their clash began once again.
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Hello there
This chapter is way to big. So I have cut it in parts.
And for clarification.
Two-Tails' has fully transformed into its Buju mode.
Four tails is on verge of transforming. And he is now look like a big red chakra monkey. But not fully big like his biju mode.