"Kakashi, Rin — fall back!" Minato ordered sharply, his voice cutting through the tension like a blade.
Without hesitation, both students darted into the cover of the forest, chakra surging in their legs as they leapt between the branches. Once safely positioned behind the dense tree line, they turned back just in time to see their sensei standing calmly on the surface of the shallow river—facing none other than Arano, the Second Tsuchikage.
In the blink of an eye, the ground beneath Minato cracked violently as a spike of jagged stone erupted upward—an ambush of hardened earth aimed straight for his heart.
ZWHIP.
Minato vanished in a yellow flash just before the spike impaled the air where he stood.
"Good thing I placed a few teleportation seals earlier," Minato thought, reappearing on a distant riverbank, holding a kunai marked with his Hiraishin seal. "Caution always pays off."
Arano didn't move. His face remained unreadable—neither surprised nor annoyed. He knew Minato's tricks, and he had no intention of leaving another opening.
Minato knew that letting Arano take the initiative was a mistake. He had to control the rhythm of this fight.
With one fluid motion, he drew three Hiraishin kunai from his vest and hurled them in rapid succession toward his enemy.
CHINK!
Arano deftly caught one in midair and batted away the others with expert precision, the ringing metal echoing across the river.
ZWHIP.
Minato reappeared behind him, hand gripping a new kunai, blade already in motion.
TING!
Metal met metal as their weapons clashed—Kunai against Kunai—the high-pitched sound ringing out like a bell of war. The two figures moved in a blur, feet barely touching the river surface as they struck, parried, and countered.
Minato darted in, Arano twisted out, their shadows flickering across the silver water like dancing ghosts.
Each attack was precise. Each dodge, calculated. Yet neither could land a decisive blow.
Minato narrowed his eyes. "This isn't getting me anywhere…"
With a feint slash from his kunai, Minato shifted suddenly—dropping low and lashing out with his leg, aiming directly at Arano's knee.
Caught mid-motion, Arano had already braced for the kunai—not the kick. The blow struck true.
CRACK.
His balance broke, and he staggered, body beginning to tilt backward.
"This is it!" Minato thought, kunai poised to strike—
But at the last moment, Arano launched himself backward, flipping through the air. His back skimmed the river surface, sending up a fine mist as he twisted and landed gracefully a short distance away.
Minato's eyes narrowed."Using the river to slide out of range… Not bad."
He smirked faintly, just enough to dig in."Retreating already?"
Arano's face didn't move—but a twitch at the corner of his eye betrayed his irritation.
"Sometimes… miracles do happen, Minato."His voice rumbled low, like a quake building beneath the surface. His cloak fluttered behind him, chakra flaring in waves.
"But I'll make sure…" He raised a finger glowing with raw energy, "…that it never happens again."
"Doton: Sekkai Dama."
At his fingertip, a dense black-and-gold sphere began to spin, cracking with glowing fault lines. The air trembled. The river beneath him rippled unnaturally.
Then—he hurled it.
The orb hit the river and—
BOOOOM!
The water erupted upward like a geyser, the explosion vaporizing a section of the river in an instant. A shockwave of seismic force followed, rippling outward, cracking open the ground and tearing apart the terrain in a massive radius.
Minato flashed away mid-air, narrowly escaping the blast, but still drenched in the geyser's wake.
Then came the quake.
The ground below him began to collapse—massive stone plates falling like broken teeth. The river cratered, his teleportation marks obliterated in the destruction.
The terrain he'd planned for—gone.
"Not good," Minato muttered, caught mid-air as the earth disintegrated beneath him.
Then he saw it.
Arano, descending from above—flying, with six translucent white cubes of glowing chakra in his hands.
Jinton.
"You may have survived the blast…" Arano's voice boomed as he hurtled downward, "But your luck ends here!"
He hurled the six Jinton cubes at full speed.
Eyes wide, Minato countered the only way he could: with six kunai—each marked with Hiraishin seals—thrown in every direction.
ZWHIP. ZWHIP. ZWHIP.
He teleported to one kunai—then the next—evading cube after cube as Arano launched another barrage.
Still mid-air, Minato realized the worst: Arano was already flying toward him, preparing for melee combat with a Jinton cube in his palm.
"One hit… and I'm erased."
He had no choice. He hurled one kunai toward the bottom of the crater, where the river's waters had begun to pool again—then threw others outward to create distractions.
ZWHIP.
He vanished, reappearing at the kunai embedded at the crater's base.
But Arano had predicted it.
Another Jinton cube was already waiting—hovering, humming with lethal intent.
"I'm out of options," Minato thought. "I can't sustain this tempo forever."
In one desperate maneuver, Minato threw every remaining kunai mid-fall—each glinting like a star in the crater's shadows.
ZWHIP. ZWHIP. ZWHIP.
As Arano hurled one final Jinton cube, Minato vanished in a trail of golden light, teleporting from seal to seal in a blur too fast to follow.
But Arano wasn't finished.
He slammed his hand to the ground. The terrain shifted again—jagged spikes of stone erupting from the crater walls, converging toward Minato like the jaws of a great beast.
Ducking, weaving, teleporting—Minato barely avoided being skewered.
Finally, he shot out of the crater's edge, wind tearing at his hair as he scanned the forest.
"Kakashi. Rin…"
There!
He saw them—watching, stunned but unharmed.
"I don't have time," he muttered, and in one final burst of chakra, he teleported to their side—his hands landing on their shoulders.
And in a flash of yellow light—they were gone.
…
Arano hovered in the crater's center, surrounded by silence.
He looked up, eyes gleaming with grudging respect.
"Such power… at such a young age. The future has much in store for you, Minato."
Then his face hardened.
"But first, you have to survive."
His mind drifted back to Minato's earlier words.
"Iwa has already lost."
"No," Arano whispered, fists clenched.
"Impossible."
But doubt gnawed at him. He couldn't risk it anymore. He had to return to the front.
He had stayed away for too long.
And Konoha was already moving.