The entire time, Ryusei maintained a steady telepathic link with his uncle, guiding him through the chaos.
"Move toward me, now," he sent sharply, his mental voice clipped and controlled.
Kazuo was still locked in combat with the ANBU who had pinned him—a skilled operative wielding all five elemental natures like Hiruzen himself, his attacks laced with the Sarutobi clan's signature Fire–Ash techniques.
Blasts of white-hot ash erupted in bursts around them, filling the air with suffocating smoke and sparks.
Each strike forced Kazuo back another step, his defenses cracking under the relentless pressure.
"Uncle, stop trying to outfight him," Ryusei sent again, his voice pulsing in Kazuo's head.
"Retreat through the left hall, I'll cover you. Don't waste chakra—just move!"
Kazuo gritted his teeth and obeyed.
He wasn't as fast as Ryusei, but he trusted him without hesitation, forcing an opening with a quick earth-style wall before breaking away toward the direction Ryusei's chakra flared from.
Meanwhile, Ryusei's eyes briefly flicked to the far corridor.
He could feel Pakura's chakra clearly—bright, furious, burning like a miniature sun.
The Root pair she faced were strong, but she was holding them off easily.
Her movements were sharp, each strike flaring with her Scorch Release, melting through air and armor alike.
"Good," Ryusei thought, a trace of satisfaction cutting through the tension.
He wasn't worried about her. Not now.
Before engaging, he had already dispatched several small Katsuyu fragments from his previous chakra battery toward her position.
They were crawling across the floors and walls unseen, ready to merge with her at any second.
The plan was simple, and he had already explained it to her telephonically beforehand as well.
The moment he reached Kazuo, he'd use the link between the fragments to teleport both of them to Pakura's location.
From there, all three would be reverse-summoned through Katsuyu's pathway straight into the Shikkotsu Forest.
Still, Ryusei knew that one wrong move could undo everything.
The enemy was closing in from all directions, and even with his tactical edge, it would all come down to timing and whether his uncle could hold out long enough to reach him.
"Come on, old man," he muttered under his breath as he darted through another collapsing hallway. "Just a few more seconds."
***
Meanwhile, on the other side of the palace battlefield, a bit earlier, Pakura already fought like a living inferno incarnate.
Tatsuma Aburame moved first, releasing dense, purple clouds of Rinkaichū, toxic, chakra-eating insects, hidden in the controllable smoke bombs with his hands, that crawled through the air like a misty plague.
The swarm spread fast, covering the courtyard everywhere with suffocating precision, narrowing around her position.
But it didn't matter.
The moment the insects touched the air around Pakura, they burned away instantly.
Since her body was wrapped in an aura of heat so intense that the air itself seemed to ripple and fold around her.
"Scorch Release: Blazing Cloak!"
A thin, shifting veil of scorching air had already enveloped her from head to toe.
The blend of Fire and Wind chakra created a perfect convection field, heat rising, air pressure bending, and light refracting.
Her image wavered like a mirage, her very existence hard to pinpoint.
The poison clouds never reached her.
The insects ignited midflight, curling into ash before they could even bite.
The temperature alone could liquefy steel.
Tatsuma cursed under his breath, retreating several steps.
His Kidaichū, giant insects, also couldn't obviously be used here properly in the marble floors of the Daimyo's palace, because they were hard to put down, and the damage they could do to this sacred place was enormous.
He was out of his element.
But Gakuya Inuzuka wasn't.
He was now even stronger than Tatsuma, despite his way younger age and lower seniority within the organization.
Since their last mission against Ryusei, where he'd lost both his lifelong ninken and his only friend, Yoji Aburame, his age, in the Root, at the same time, due to Ryusei's scheming attack, something inside him had broken.
In the months that followed, he had trained like a man possessed. Fueled by grief and rage, he turned himself into something closest to an avenger within Root, where people were not supposed to feel any emotions.
Danzo had seen that obsession and sharpened it further, due to unique times, feeding him jutsu and experimental techniques from Root's laboratories.
Now, Gakuya stood ready, surrounded by three junjutsu-enhanced ninken, each with glowing seals etched into their hides.
Through those physical seals, they radiated unnatural chakra, Fire, Wind, Lightning, tamed through pain, bred for obedience.
Together, they moved like a blur of claws, wind, and thunder.
"Let's see you burn this, witch!" he roared, hands flashing through seals.
"Fire Release: Flame Fang Wolf!"
The beasts spun into motion, forming a spiraling drill of fire that screeched through the air, devouring oxygen and light.
The temperature doubled in an instant as the burning wolf lunged toward her.
Pakura's eyes narrowed, her cloak brightening like molten glass.
The attack struck, and dissolved midair, vaporized in a burst of white light.
She exhaled slowly.
During her long months of "captivity" in Ryusei's sealed room, she hadn't wasted time.
She had practiced, refined, and perfected new concepts they had designed together.
Gakuya clicked his tongue, burns crawling across his arms, yet he didn't fall.
His body pulsed with unnatural resilience, the work of experimental serums circulating in his blood.
His eyes gleamed with manic hatred.
"Die here, Sunagakure's traitorous trash—alongside your master, Ryusei Nishida!"
"Wind Release: Gale Pack Combo!"
He and his beasts spun again, combining slicing gales with spinning fire.
The air howled as a vortex of flame and wind tore through the courtyard.
Then lightning.
"Lightning Release: Thunder Beast Howl!"
A synchronized roar from man and beast erupted, the sound wave laced with electric discharge.
The ground split beneath them, marble fragments scattering like glass.
And yet—Pakura didn't even move.
She stood inside the elemental storm, her figure shimmering through the distortion.
"Pathetic," she murmured.
Her hand rose.
"Scorch Release: Solar Flare."
A burst of blinding light erupted, white-hot and absolute.
Gakuya flinched, his ninken howling as the glare seared their vision and scorched their senses.
The following wave of heat hit like a hammer, bending metal, warping air, and throwing their balance into chaos.
She was already gone.
"Scorch Release: Mirage Descent."
Dozens of her afterimages shimmered across the battlefield, flickering through the haze like ghosts of flame.
Each one distorted, shifting between solid and transparent as the light danced around her.
"Coward!" Gakuya snarled, swinging wildly, claws cutting through nothing.
His beast's nose flared, but even scent betrayed him—the air was thick with ozone and ash.
Then, behind them, her voice again.
"Too slow."
Her palms opened.
"Scorch Release: Heatwave Barrage!"
Rapid bursts of searing wind erupted around her, thin and sharp as blades.
The attack cut through Gakuya's lightning barrier, slicing across his torso and searing through his beast's limbs.
The temperature rose so violently that the air itself screamed.
Blood splattered the ground, sizzling as it hit the floor.
But Gakuya didn't fall.
He grinned, wild and broken, his veins glowing faintly under his skin.
The sealing marks on his body flared brighter and brighter, spreading like fire through his flesh.
"Then I'll show you what Root really made me into… the power which that bastard forced me to use now!"
The seals across his chest and along his ninken's spine ignited, drawing blood and chakra in equal measure.
Both howled, their forms convulsing as a storm of lightning, flame, and raw life force spiraled around them.
"Forbidden Technique—Beast King Fusion!"
This was only possible thanks to Danzo's recent breakthroughs with Edo Tensei–based soul-fusion experiments and the results of Root's newest research team.
The process twisted everything the Inuzuka clan ever stood for.
Their entire tradition revolved around trust and harmony between shinobi and beast, yet this technique erased that bond completely.
It was a perversion, a forced merging of spirit and flesh that turned both partners into one unstable being.
A monstrosity.
But Danzo didn't care. He needed stronger soldiers, ones who could fight and die without hesitation.
And Gakuya, driven by grief and revenge, didn't hesitate either.
He accepted the experiments, helped refine the forbidden jutsu himself, and embraced the abomination he had become, because all that mattered to him now was payback.
The world seemed to tremble.
Man and beast merged into one.
Bones cracked, muscles tore, and chakra screamed through the fusion seal as their souls intertwined.
What emerged was monstrous—a humanoid beast towering three times her height, cloaked in fur and lightning, its crimson eyes burning like molten suns.
Its claws dripped heat, its fangs gleamed like forged steel.
It stepped forward, the ground beneath it breaking apart.
Pakura's expression hardened.
The creature roared and lunged.
Its claws shredded her illusions, each strike exploding in flame and sound.
Pakura twisted aside, her movements fluid, unreadable, countering with another Heatwave Barrage.
The detonations blanketed the field in white-hot smoke.
The beast barreled through, skin cracking and repairing under the cursed fusion's regeneration.
"Scorch Release: Mirage Descent!"
Her silhouettes split again, one to the left, one to the right, and one above.
The real Pakura rose high through the heat shimmer, her chakra peaking.
The beast looked up just in time to see her hands come together.
"Scorch Release: Radiant Blade!"
The sword ignited in her hands—a colossal blade of living sunlight.
The temperature spiked so sharply that the air solidified into a curtain of light.
She descended, cutting straight through the beast's chest.
The fusion howled—a half-human, half-demonic scream—as its form split down the middle.
The cursed seals flared violently, then imploded in a burst of fire and soul energy, disintegrating both man and beast into glowing embers.
Pakura landed softly amid the steam, the Radiant Blade fading into sparks.
Silence.
Then, a faint scuttling behind her.
Tatsuma was fleeing, his surviving insects forming a defensive wall.
Pakura didn't even turn fully.
"Scorch Release: Searing Maelstrom."
A spiral of flame and superheated wind erupted, engulfing the hall and consuming everything in its reach—Tatsuma, his insects, and the remnants of the palace wing.
In his final moments, as the heat closed in and the air around him burned to ash, Tatsuma Aburame's mind spiraled between rage and disbelief.
"How the hell… did he manage this…" he rasped, the words half-choked by smoke.
The image of Pakura—the legendary Hero of Sunagakure, the Heat Haze herself—was the last thing his fading eyes saw.
It made no sense. She was a war hero, once hailed as a living weapon of her village, an older than him and powerful kunoichi revered almost like Tsunade of Konoha had been in her prime, before she defected recently.
And yet here she was, also like Tsunade herself, at that time, standing beside Ryusei Nishida, the much younger teen who had turned Konoha's highest command upside down, cutting down Root's best with divine precision.
As his body began to disintegrate under her radiant flames, the only thought that lingered in his dying mind was bitter and confused.
"What did that bastard say… or show her… to make someone like her follow him again, too?"
But, within seconds, the entire area, including where he just stood, was even unrecognizable.
The marble glowed like magma, air shimmered like liquid glass, and every trace of the Root duo, including Tatsuma, has gone to ash.
Pakura exhaled slowly, her golden eyes glowing in the haze.
Her breathing steadied, her pulse calm despite the devastation around her.
"Pathetic," she murmured, brushing a lock of sweat-dampened hair from her face. "I told Ryusei this disguise was a waste of time."
She lifted her head, sensing the faint pulse of Ryusei's chakra through the telepathic link.
It was approaching fast, chaotic, and urgent.
She smirked faintly as a small slug fragment crawled toward her across the molten floor, its body sizzling faintly against the heat but undeterred.
She knew what it meant—Ryusei's marker, his signal, the prelude to teleportation.
"About damn time," she murmured, the corner of her mouth lifting.
The molten marble glowed beneath her steps as she walked forward, each stride echoing through the ruined courtyard like the fading heartbeat of the battle. It was time to leave.