The crater, once a theatre of howling wind and grinding destruction, was now a cathedral of silent, spectral menace. The Third Raikage stood a hundred yards from the epicentre of this new cataclysm, his bloodied form frozen mid-retreat, every instinct screaming a primal warning he had not felt in decades.
Before him, the silver light coalesced, solidifying into a form of myth and nightmare. It was a giant's skeleton, a half-formed titan of incandescent energy that radiated cold fury. Within its protective ribcage, Renjiro stood, reborn not from hope, but from pure, undiluted rage.
Blood streamed from his eyes like macabre tears, painting stark trails down his pallid cheeks, yet his posture was no longer one of a defeated man, but of an avenging spirit.
A low, incredulous breath escaped the Raikage's lips, misting in the charged air. "That… that form…" His mind, a repository of shinobi history and legend, scrambled for context.
"Is that the famed Susanoo? The power that Madara Uchiha wielded?" The question was a whisper, meant for no one but himself, a testament to the sheer historical shock of what he was witnessing.
He received his answer not in words, but in violence.
The skeletal arms of the Susanoo shifted with a sound like grinding continents. From the silver bones of its wrists, chains erupted forged from the same ethereal, silver energy as the Susanoo itself. They were immense, each link the size of a human torso, and they unspooled into the night with a deafening, metallic clang.
"SHHHHHIIINK!"
They moved not like weapons, but like the lashes of a vengeful god.
The first chain whip struck the ground where the Raikage had been standing a microsecond before. The impact was not an explosion; it was an erasure. A trench fifty feet long and ten feet deep was carved into the powdered earth with a single, contemptuous "CRACK-THOOM!"
The second whip followed, scything through the air with a whistle that tore at the eardrums, missing the Raikage but catching the edge of the crater wall. An entire section of the cliff face sheared away and slid down in a silent, colossal avalanche of dust and rock.
The display of raw, uncontrolled power was staggering, a league beyond anything Renjiro had shown before. For a heartbeat, a feeling the Raikage was utterly unfamiliar with touched the edges of his consciousness: intimidation. This was not just a jutsu; it was a force of nature.
But he was the Third Raikage. Fear was a fuel, not a prison. He crushed the feeling instantly, his mind analysing the threat with cold, battlefield clarity.
'The power is immense… but it's slow. Wild. Unfocused. He's lashing out in pain and anger, not with precision.' His body, already coiled, prepared to move. He would weather this storm and find his opening.
He switched his stance, raising his right hand. Now, only his index finger was extended. The Ippon Nukite, the One-Finger Spear. The ultimate concentration of his piercing power. He became a blur, not aiming for Renjiro, but for the base of the spectral giant, targeting what he perceived as its anchor point.
The attack was a pinpoint of unimaginable force. It hit the silver shin bone of the Susanoo's leg with a sound like a diamond drill hitting a mountain of steel—a piercing, high-frequency sound.
"ZZZNNNNN-CRACK!"
Inside the Susanoo, Renjiro screamed. It was not a scream of physical pain, but of metaphysical violation. The sound echoed within the cage of ribs, a raw, agonised sound.
The crack that appeared in the Susanoo's leg was minuscule, a hairline fracture in the colossal energy structure, but to Renjiro, it felt like a fissure had been driven into his own soul. The stakes of the fight snapped into horrifying focus.
This was no longer a battle of attrition; it was a battle of existence. The Susanoo was not a shield; it was an extension of his very life force, and it could be broken.
"ENOUGH!" Renjiro's voice, amplified and distorted by the Susanoo, boomed across the crater, no longer human.
From his back, his true Adamantine Sealing Chains erupted once more, but this time, they did not shoot out as drills. They flowed like liquid silver, weaving themselves over the Susanoo's skeleton, covering every inch of the spectral form in a dense, metallic web. The silver giant was now clad in a second skin of shimmering, interlocking chains.
Then, the green fire answered his call. The cold, ethereal flames of his Mangekyo, the flames that devoured chakra, erupted from his eyes and raced along the chains, sheathing the entire colossal construct in a roaring, silent inferno of malevolent green. The Susanoo was now a nightmarish vision: a silver skeleton clad in chainmail armour, wreathed in chakra-hungry flames, a green-eyed demon from a forgotten legend.
The Raikage's eyes widened, his confidence faltering for the first time. The green fire… he knew its taste. It had thinned his cloak, drained his reserves. To see it now, covering this monstrous form, was alarming on a fundamental level.
The attack resumed, but it was transformed. The chain-whips were now burning lashes of green and silver. They moved faster, guided by Renjiro's fury and his Mangekyo's predictive sight. The Raikage's evasions, once effortless, became desperate, narrow things. He was a lightning bolt trying to dodge a thunderstorm.
One of the burning tips, moving with a feint he didn't anticipate, finally found its mark. It didn't strike with blunt force; it licked across his right shoulder as he twisted away.
The result was instantaneous and horrifying.
"HISSSS"
There was a sizzling hiss and a smell of ozone and burnt flesh. A chunk of his legendary, nigh-impenetrable deltoid muscle, the very muscle that could deflect swords, was simply… gone. Whisked away into nothingness. Not cut, not torn, but erased by the combination of immense physical force and the chakra-devouring flames.
'Impossible!' The thought was a thunderclap in his mind.
'My body… it… it didn't resist?!' His durability, the foundation of his fighting style, had been bypassed. The attack hadn't tried to pierce his toughness; it had simply annihilated what it touched.
Now, Renjiro's Mangekyo was fully active, its tomoe spinning wildly. He wasn't just watching the Raikage move; he was predicting the paths of evasion, seeing the subtle shifts in muscle tension and chakra flow that presaged his blinding movements.
"You're on the defensive now," Renjiro's voice echoed, cold and taunting from within the flaming giant. "Your patterns are easier to read when you're running."
The Raikage, gritting his teeth against the searing pain in his shoulder, tried a new tactic. He gathered his strength for a final, desperate charge, aiming to close the distance and strike at the Susanoo's core directly.
But as he got within twenty yards, the air itself grew thick and heavy. The green flames roared hotter, and he felt a terrifying suction, a draining sensation that pulled at the chakra within his cells. His speed bled away, his limbs feeling leaden.
'The flames… they create a field… they weaken me the closer I get!' It was a devastating realisation. His greatest asset; his close-quarters, overwhelming speed, was being systematically neutralised.
Another burning chain lash caught him across the back, tearing through his shredded shirt and carving a deep, sizzling furrow along his shoulder blade. He grunted in pain, stumbling forward. A third attack grazed his thigh, shearing away skin and muscle. The injuries were mounting, each one sapping his strength, each one healing slower than the last thanks to the chakra-draining properties of the green fire.
He switched strategies again, his mind racing. Attrition. He would make this a war of endurance. He had pierced the boy's abdomen. A wound like that, even for an Uzumaki, was catastrophic. He would evade, let the boy burn himself out, let that internal injury and the drain of this monstrous technique do the work for him.
He focused his senses on Renjiro, looking for the tell-tale signs of shock, blood loss, and fading chakra.
He found none.
Through the shimmering green fire and the silver lattice of chains, he saw Renjiro standing tall within the Susanoo's ribcage. The horrific wound in his abdomen… was gone.
In its place was pink, new skin, already fading to match his complexion. The only blood on him was the twin rivers still flowing from his eyes, a testament to the terrible price of this power, not the injury the Raikage had inflicted.
'He… he already healed it?!'
The Raikage's blood ran cold, a sensation he had not felt in a lifetime. This was beyond the usual Uzumaki vitality. This was something else. Something monstrous. The boy wasn't just powerful; he was a self-sustaining engine of destruction, healing faster than he could be injured.
A profound, chilling concern took root in the Raikage's heart. He was not facing a talented Konoha shinobi. He was facing a phenomenon that could not be allowed to exist.
It was at that moment, as despair began to tinge his strategic calculations, that both combatants sensed it simultaneously.
Two new chakra signatures. Immense, familiar, and blindingly powerful. They appeared at the edge of the crater's rim, their arrival not announced by sound, but by the sheer, overwhelming pressure of their presence.
One was a deep, vast, and earthy warmth, like a dormant volcano suddenly awake—a chakra that spoke of immense resilience and hidden depths.
The other was a cold, slippery, and profoundly sinister presence, a chakra that felt like a nest of serpents, intelligent, venomous, and utterly without mercy.
The Raikage's head snapped toward the crater's edge, his single-minded focus on Renjiro shattered. Renjiro, within his Susanoo, also stilled his attacks, the flaming chains retracting slightly as he turned his bleeding gaze toward the new arrivals.
Standing side-by-side, silhouetted against the moon, were two of the most famous shinobi in the world.
Jiraiya and Orochimaru had arrived.