The cold, invasive slime clung to Renjiro's left arm and shoulder like a parasitic second skin, squelching faintly with every frantic movement. It wasn't just adhesive; it was invasive. A vile, pulling sensation radiated from the contact, a physical manifestation of the entity's hunger.
'Devour.'
The word echoed in Renjiro's mind, a chilling counterpoint to the Gates' agonising symphony screaming through his muscles and bones.
'Stupid!' The self-recrimination was a lash.
'I only ever saw them consume corpses! Fallen Akatsuki, Obito's arm… I thought it was cleanup, recycling! Not… not this! Not the consumption of the living!'
Gritting his teeth, Renjiro's free hand flashed through hand signs. Chakra, volatile and sharp, surged through his pathways.
"Fuuton: Reppushō!" he snarled, the sound ripped raw from his throat.
A torrent of compressed air, visible as shimmering distortion, erupted from his palm.
"FWOOSH!" It struck the main bulk of the white goo, but it was not directly latched onto him.
The effect was immediate and violent. The seething mass rippled, then stretched, large globules tearing free and splattering against the dense chakra barrier before sliding down.
A significant portion of the amoebic form was blasted backwards, plastered against the compacted earth wall held within the barrier. For a single, desperate heartbeat, the pressure on his arm lessened.
But the reprieve was fleeting. The parts blasted away re-coalesced with terrifying speed, drawn back towards the central mass like mercury attracted to a magnet.
"SHLUCK-GLURGLE."
And the part clinging to Renjiro? It tightened. The numbness intensified, creeping up his bicep. He felt a disturbing lag in his fingers' response – a fractional delay when he tried to flex them.
"No! Motor control… it's interfering with nerve signals!"
Panic, cold and sharp, threatened to override his battle focus.
'Why isn't my healing kicking in?!' His Chakra Seinou, usually a roaring furnace of regeneration, felt… suppressed. Muted. The goo's invasive presence seemed to emit a field that dampened his body's natural restorative processes, focusing its energy purely on the parasitic invasion.
He unleashed another Reppushō, then another, creating a continuous gale force within the confined space. The white goo deformed, streamed backwards, parts flung against the barrier again. But each time, it adapted. It became denser, more viscous, presenting a smaller profile to the wind. It learned to flow with the gusts, using the momentum to surge back faster.
'I can't drop the barrier!'
If he released the Adamantine Chains even for a second, the Zetsu would melt into the earth and vanish, carrying its intelligence and knowledge of him straight back to Madara.
'But I can't keep it active like this!'
Maintaining the barrier under compression, while fighting this relentless, adaptive horror consuming him limb by limb, was unsustainable. The barrier's drain was immense. And the Zetsu was winning the battle of attrition. Soon, his focus would falter, the chains would retract instinctively as his chakra control slipped, and the creature would escape anyway… after potentially devouring half of him.
The white goo surged again but to splatter more of itself onto his right leg.
"SPLORTCH!"
The cold, numbing invasion struck anew. Renjiro roared, a sound of raw fury and encroaching desperation, twisting violently to avoid a third attachment point. Zetsu's gurgling voice vibrated through the goo, dripping with mockery.
"Struggle is futile, Uzumaki!"
'Enough!' Renjiro's mind, pushed to the absolute brink, snapped into a terrifying clarity. The Nara-like paths of retreat vanished. Only one insane, all-consuming path remained:
'Burn.'
He stopped the wind jutsu. The sudden silence within the barrier was profound, broken only by the chains' high-pitched sound and his own ragged, steam-venting breaths.
He closed his eyes for a fraction of a second, shutting out the grotesque, pulsating mass before him. Inwards he turned, diving deep into the chakra maelstrom the Five Gates had unleashed. He didn't try to control it, to shape it. He released it. All of it.
"HRRAAAAAGH!"
A visible shockwave of crimson chakra exploded outwards from his body.
"WHOMPF!"
It wasn't an attack; it was a detonation of raw power. The air superheated instantly. The Gates' red flush on his skin intensified from angry crimson to an almost incandescent, molten scarlet. Veins stood out like glowing cables, threatening to burst. Steam erupted from his pores in a violent, continuous geyser, filling the confined space with a dense, scalding fog. White Zetsu recoiled momentarily, its surface bubbling violently from the sudden, intense heat and chakra pressure. The parts latched onto Renjiro flinched, the invasive probing momentarily stunned.
"Hah! Now you show your true power? A volcano of chakra! Impressive reserves, Renjiro Uzumaki! Truly worthy of your bloodlines!"
It surged forward again, adapting, seeming to absorb some of the ambient chakra heat, its pale surface shimmering slightly.
"You think brute force can stop assimilation? You only make yourself a brighter beacon, a richer feast!"
Renjiro ignored the taunts. The agony was beyond anything he'd ever experienced – the Gates tearing his muscles, his chakra pathways screaming at the uncontrolled torrent, the Zetsu's cold invasion battling the volcanic heat radiating from his skin. But within the crucible of pain, his focus was diamond-hard. He wasn't just releasing chakra; he was forging it.
With an act of will that felt like tearing his own soul apart, he seized the raging torrent of raw chakra surrounding him. He didn't try to calm it. He transformed it. He forced the unshaped energy through the mental and physical pathways attuned to his strongest affinity: Fire. Katon.
"FWOOM!"
The crimson chakra aura surrounding him didn't just intensify; it ignited. One moment he was a figure wreathed in incandescent scarlet energy, the next he was a living pillar of roaring, white-orange flame.
"WHOOSH!"
Fire exploded outwards, filling the space within the chains not occupied by compacted earth. It wasn't a jutsu formed; it was his chakra essence, burning.
The temperature inside the barrier rocketed from scalding to infernal. The air shimmered violently, threatening to ignite. Dust particles flashed into incandescent sparks. The chains themselves glowed cherry red where the flames licked them, their hum rising to a tortured shriek.
"SCREEEEE!"
The main mass recoiled violently, slamming against the compacted earth wall, its surface boiling and bubbling furiously.
"Katon… Sublime! Not just power… control! To manifest such pure flame from raw chakra release… remarkable!"
The gurgling voice was strained, "But fire… Uzumaki… fire purifies, yes… but it also consumes fuel. And you are the fuel! You burn yourself alive to keep me at bay!"
The goo surged forward again, slower this time, its surface hardening into a dark, crackling crust that resisted the immediate flash-incineration.
"Your fire scorches my surface… but it cannot stop me!"
The heat was unbearable, even for Renjiro. His skin blistered beneath the self-inflicted inferno. His vision swam at the edges. The Gates' toll, combined with the massive chakra drain of maintaining both the barrier and this full-body conflagration, was pushing him towards collapse.
Zetsu was right. He was burning his body away, buying seconds, not victory.
His lips, cracked and bleeding from the heat, parted. Steam hissed out. Two words, spoken so softly they were almost lost in the inferno's roar, yet carrying the weight of absolute, final conviction:
"I know."
As the words left his lips, his eyes… changed.
"SNICKT!"
The roaring orange flames surrounding Renjiro didn't just flare. They transformed. Instantly. Completely.
One moment, the barrier was filled with the incandescent fury of natural fire. The next, it was flooded with an eerie, spectral green.