"Am I late?"
To anyone else, hearing such a casual greeting at the exact moment they were about to be dragged into a double suicide might sound like a cruel joke.
Fortunately, Ren Uchiha knew Minato "The Little Sun" Namikaze's personality well. He wanted to respond with a smooth, "No, you're just in time," but Chiyo's neurotoxins had other plans. His facial muscles refused to cooperate, and with his throat slashed open by Ebizo's blade, he could only open his mouth in a silent, fish-like gasp.
Minato Namikaze, having arrived at god-like speed, looked up to a scene that shattered his heart.
He saw a pale youth staring at him blankly, only to suddenly vomit a massive glob of blood. The boy was gasping for air like a fish out of water, his mouth opening and closing as if trying to speak, but the injuries were so severe that each breath seemed like his last.
A gaping hole in his abdomen left his internal organs visible. A massive cleaver was still embedded in his neck, and a fountain of blood sprayed along the blade's edge... it looked as if his head was hanging on by a thread!
Any normal shinobi would have been out of the fight after just one of those wounds. Yet this boy, to buy him time, had pushed himself to this horrific extreme.
Ren's hot blood splattered across Minato's face.
The future Hokage froze, his expression shifting from shock to profound grief and heavy pity.
"I... was I late again?"
Minato's fists clenched. The moonlight reflected off half his face—the side drenched in his comrade's blood. It felt as if a wild beast was tearing at his heart. He looked up at the perpetrator, Ebizo, and his sky-blue eyes suddenly ignited with an uncontrollable, white-hot fury!
Across from him, Ebizo wanted to curse the gods.
He stared at the blonde youth with a crawling scalp. He was bewildered by the sheer intensity of the killing intent Minato was radiating—they had only just met!
Minato didn't know the truth, but Ebizo did: this "half-dead" Uchiha brat was a freak. Give him a second to breathe, and a fresh one would crawl out of that corpse's mouth. One brat had already driven him to the brink; now, a man whose speed he couldn't even track had joined the fray.
For a moment, Ebizo hallucinated his late master, the Second Kazekage, waving at him from the afterlife.
"Dammit! I can't die here!"
Ebizo ground his teeth and hatched a desperate plan. He sneered at Minato, "Minato Namikaze? This brat is still alive. If you want to save him, then—"
Mid-sentence, Ebizo released his grip on Ren's throat and swung his arm, hurling the boy away like a discarded rag. Simultaneously, his mechanical chest and palms slid open, unleashing a dense cloud of poisoned senbon!
Blue flames erupted from the thrusters on his back. The massive G-force propelled Ebizo backward. The moment his feet touched the sand, he didn't look back; he simply turned and sprinted like a marathon runner.
Threaten, ambush, and flee! The sequence was flawless, buying him the precious seconds he needed to escape.
The senbon streaked through the air, threatening to shred both Minato and the falling Ren.
Minato's pupils shrank. With a tap of his toe, he vanished. He reappeared mid-air, catching Ren by the shoulder and flashing back to his original marking point within the barrier.
He gently laid the mangled youth on the sand. Looking at Ren's pale face—flickering like a candle in the wind—Minato whispered with a pained voice:
"I'm sorry, Ren Uchiha. I was late!"
Even though Minato had diverted from his path the second he saw the flares, moving through his network of Flying Raijin kunai without a moment's pause, he still felt the weight of the boy's condition on his shoulders.
He took a heavy breath and made a promise to the "dying" youth: "I'll be right back!"
He looked toward the horizon where Ebizo was charging toward the cracked edge of the barrier. "Is he trying to break the barrier to escape? It seems I was lured away from my primary post..."
Minato adjusted his headband, the metal leaf gleaming. He stood tall on the desert waste, the tails of his headband fluttering in the night wind.
"Carrying the last wishes of a comrade, protecting my family in the village, and defeating the enemy... this is my duty!"
Fury burned in his blue eyes as he locked onto the runaway "bulldozer" that was Ebizo. "I won't let him go any further!"
He prepared to flicker away, but a trembling hand suddenly grabbed his pant leg.
"Hmm?" Minato paused and looked down.
Ren Uchiha, his face and neck a mask of blood, held his hand up toward Minato, his palm open as if asking for something.
"Ku... kunai..."
He forced his severed throat to produce the sound. At this stage, Minato was young and hadn't yet mastered the Rasengan. Ren knew Minato could win, but to kill an Ebizo who had turned himself into a living tank? Minato's current offensive power was a bit light.
Especially since, while being thrown, Ren's Sharingan had spotted an uninvited guest in the distance.
Beyond the barrier, at the edge of the dunes, a man with short brown hair and black shinobi robes was approaching at high speed. It was the Fourth Kazekage—Rasa!
"You... you still want to fight?!"
Minato was visibly moved, looking at the boy who barely had half a life left. Ren couldn't speak, so he simply stared back with a gaze of absolute iron.
Minato went silent. Taking this as Ren's final "dying wish," he nodded solemnly. He reached into his pouch, pulled out a specialized Three-Pronged Kunai, and pressed it into Ren's hand.
"Then please, watch my back, Ren Uchiha!" Minato said, his voice deep. "This is our joint battle. In that case, I shall name this move—"
"Combined Art: Flash Super-Circle Dance Howl Final Farewell Slash!"
Minato turned away, unable to look at the "dying" boy any longer. "Are you ready? Let's go!"
In a flash of yellow, Minato vanished, moving even faster than Ebizo's jet-boosted puppet body. He tore through the sand, closing the gap in a heartbeat.
Behind him, Ren finally regained control over his nervous system.
It was like his previous experience with genjutsu—he had to use his hands as feet and his feet as a head for a moment—but he adapted quickly. He forced his body to unhinge its jaw.
A pale arm reached out, tearing the old skin apart as a fresh, pristine youth crawled out.
With half his body still inside his previous "mouth," Ren watched Minato's charging back and sighed.
"What a terrible name," he muttered. "'Final Farewell Slash'?"
He reached down and snatched the specialized kunai from the hand of his discarded "shell," then pulled his original marking kunai from the sand. With his Kusanagi in his other hand, he stood up.
His serpentine Sharingan locked onto Ebizo. Ren's lips curled into a savage grin as he stepped forward.
"You got the name wrong!"
"This move... is called—"
"Combined Art: Flash Super-Circle Dance Howl Immortal Triple Blade Slash!"
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