The moment Arata gathered his chakra, a faint gleam flashed in his eyes.
"Lightning Release — Chidori!"
CRACK! BOOM! ROAR—!
The explosion was like a meteor striking the earth.
The entire forest shook violently as a blinding surge of golden lightning consumed the night.
In an instant, the darkness was banished. The entire valley—no, several kilometers around—was illuminated as if the sun itself had fallen upon the mountains.
Bolts of gold connected heaven and earth, cascading in furious arcs.
Within hundreds of meters, Arata stood at the heart of a storm — a god of thunder reborn.
The power was apocalyptic.
The ground quaked, trees vaporized, and the air trembled with the force of a thousand tempests.
The golden storm raged for ten whole seconds.
Ten seconds that remade the very landscape.
When the blinding light finally faded, the serene hills behind Konoha were gone—replaced by a massive crater hundreds of meters wide and tens of meters deep.
And at the very center of that crater lay Arata, motionless.
A flash of silver appeared beside him.
Kakashi landed silently, his expression grim. He scooped the unconscious boy into his arms and vanished in a flicker.
If he lingered even a minute longer, the arriving ANBU would've taken Arata straight to an interrogation cell.
Sure enough, less than a minute later, masked figures in black appeared around the crater.
They were all ANBU—Konoha's shadow operatives.
When they saw the destruction before them, several of them froze in disbelief.
"What the hell… caused this?"
"Did the Nine-Tails break free again?"
That was the only explanation that made sense.
Even the Third Hokage himself couldn't create devastation like this. Only a tailed beast could.
"Could it be an enemy attack?" someone suggested.
Another masked ninja shook his head immediately. "Impossible. The village barrier's intact. No infiltration detected. Whatever caused this… came from inside."
"Then it has to be the Nine-Tails. Maybe the jinchūriki lost control."
Within moments, the ANBU's suspicions turned toward Naruto Uzumaki.
After all, who else in the entire village could unleash this kind of destruction?
"Report to Lord Third," their leader ordered sharply.
The squad disappeared into the night, leaving only the smoking crater behind.
Meanwhile, Konoha was in chaos.
Ninja darted across rooftops, racing toward the explosion site.
From above, the village looked like it was under siege again—just like the night of the Nine-Tails' attack years ago.
But Kakashi was already gone.
He had carried Arata back home safely before heading straight to the Hokage Building.
As one of Konoha's elite jōnin, if he didn't show up for an emergency summon, it would immediately look suspicious.
Leaping from rooftop to rooftop, his expression was grim.
What… was that power?
He'd seen jinchūriki unleash their beasts. He'd seen lightning that could tear through stone. But what Arata unleashed just now… was beyond any of it.
That wasn't the power of a tailed beast. It wasn't chakra as he knew it.
The lightning had life—alive, conscious, and impossibly dense.
And Arata's chakra reserves shouldn't have been enough to sustain even a fraction of that.
The destructive energy he'd just unleashed was equivalent to a Tailed Beast Bomb.
Kakashi clenched his fists.
It was impossible. The boy was twelve.
Unless…
Unless what he saw wasn't just chakra.
In truth, Arata's power wasn't chakra at all—it was pure natural energy, condensed and weaponized.
When Arata used Chidori, his control slipped. The natural energy in his body surged wildly, resonating with the nature energy around him.
The result was catastrophic—a golden storm that devoured everything in its reach.
Ordinarily, such uncontrolled power would have annihilated its wielder. But something… or someone within that energy had protected him.
A golden aura had surrounded Arata the instant he lost control, shielding him completely from the very lightning he unleashed.
The energy moved with intention — as if it knew it had to protect him.
Even so, the strain was immense.
Every drop of energy in Arata's body had been drained dry, leaving him unconscious and pale.
Kakashi didn't know any of this.
All he could do was guess.
Natural energy…? Sage chakra?
He muttered under his breath as he raced toward the Hokage Tower.
"If he was born with Sage Chakra… it would explain everything. The sheer output, the instability—it all fits."
It was the only explanation that made sense to him.
Still, even if Arata's chakra was Sage Chakra, there was no way it should have produced that scale of destruction.
Not even Jiraiya, one of the Legendary Sannin, could unleash that much power in Sage Mode.
No, this was something else entirely.
By the time Kakashi reached the top of the Hokage Tower, dozens of high-ranking ninja had already gathered.
The air was thick with tension.
At least twenty jōnin—many of them from the ANBU—stood in formation, faces grim beneath the moonlight.
Kakashi's old friend was among them.
Might Guy turned at his arrival, his usual grin replaced with a rare, serious expression.
"Kakashi," Guy said gravely, "what do you think it was?"
Kakashi hesitated. He could tell the truth—or protect Arata.
He thought of the boy's calm eyes, his honesty, his quiet desire to live simply.
No, he couldn't expose him. Not yet.
"…Most likely," Kakashi said slowly, "an intruder with immense power."
Guy frowned. "That doesn't add up. The barrier never triggered an alarm. If someone entered the village, we'd know."
Kakashi looked away. "Then it's something else. But whatever it was… it wasn't ordinary."
Guy folded his arms, gazing toward the distant horizon.
"The shockwave felt like the Nine-Tails. But if it wasn't… then what in the world are we dealing with?"
Kakashi didn't answer.
He just clenched his fist inside his pocket, feeling the faint warmth of lightning that still lingered on his skin.
That boy…
What exactly are you, Arata?
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