The barrier was gone, replaced by a shroud of thick, churning mist that glowed with an unholy amalgamation of Gyūki's corrosive crimson and the lingering, sickly blue of Orochimaru's poison.
The very air was a toxic soup, burning the lungs and stinging the eyes. Shockwaves, born from the sheer pressure of the unleashed chakra, continued to ripple outwards, not as sound, but as physical force.
On a distant ridge, safely removed from the epicentre of the cataclysm, the three Sannin stood as silent sentinels to the disaster they had engineered.
Below them, towering over the mist like a mountain given life and malice, was the partially released form of the Eight-Tails. Gyūki's upper body—the massive, horned bull-like head and four of his serpentine tentacles—thrashed and flailed, emerging from an unstable, bubbling shell of Killer Bee's chakra.
Jiraiya watched, "We broke the balance…"
Beside him, Orochimaru's smirk was a stark contrast, his golden eyes reflecting the chaotic light below with unadulterated fascination. He said nothing, merely drinking in the monstrous display, a scientist observing the beautiful failure of a hypothesis.
=====
Inside the tempest, within the churning, dark ocean of his own mindscape, Killer Bee was drowning. The water was violent, crashing against the shores of his consciousness with waves of pure, undiluted hatred. Towering above him, Gyūki's form was a monument to fury. The great beast thrashed, its eight tails lashing the psychic waters into a frenzy.
"Gyūki!" Bee screamed, his voice a tiny thing against the roar. He stood firm on a small, crumbling island of his own will.
"Calm down! Listen to me! You'll kill us both! You'll kill everyone!"
Gyūki's voice, usually a deep, resonant rumble, was now a distorted, static-filled snarl.
"They… CHAINED me… POISONED my chakra…! That serpent… his venom burns in our veins!"
The beast swung a massive tail, and in the real world, a corresponding tentacle of chakra slammed into the earth, carving a new canyon into the valley floor.
Bee was thrown to his knees in his mindscape, gasping as a wave of the corrupted chakra pressure washed over him. In the physical world, his body convulsed violently within the unstable chakra shell, muscles seizing.
He didn't understand the specifics—only the result. That snake, Orochimaru, had done something, injected some vile jutsu that had shattered their hard-won equilibrium.
"Damn you, Orochimaru!" he cursed, the words a raw scrape in his throat. "You interfering, snake-bastard!"
=====
The rampage was a lesson in unstoppable power. One of Gyūki's partially materialized tentacles, a construct of solidifying crimson chakra, swept horizontally across the battlefield. It didn't just impact the distant ridge where the Sannin stood; it erased it.
The entire rock formation disintegrated into a cloud of dust and shrapnel, the resulting shockwave hurling boulders like pebbles towards the three legends.
Tsunade reacted instantly, "Doton: Doryōheki!" (Earth Release: Earth-Style Wall!)
But it wasn't a standard wall. She anchored it with her own chakra, reinforcing it with the very debris flying toward them, creating a jagged, makeshift barrier that shuddered under the impact but held.
Jiraiya, beside her, bit his thumb. "Kuchiyose: Gamahiro!"
The massive toad appeared for only a moment, his bulk stabilising the trembling ground beneath their feet before dispelling in a puff of smoke, his job done.
They were being forced back, step by step. The sheer, oppressive presence of the corrupted Hachibi was a physical weight, a suffocating aura that even the Sannin could not simply shrug off.
Then, the unthinkable happened. In the centre of the maelstrom, a sphere of black and red chakra, crackling with unstable blue energy, began to form between Gyūki's jaws.
It was a Tailed Beast Bomb, but malformed, a cancerous growth of power. It lanced out not as a clean sphere, but as a jagged beam of annihilation. It tore across the horizon, vaporising a swath of ancient forest and leaving behind a deep, smoking trench that glowed with residual heat, several kilometres long.
The cataclysm was visible for miles. A detachment of Kumo shinobi, led by a sharp-eyed, composed jonin named Raidou—whose calm demeanour and white hair reminiscent of a future successor—saw the tell-tale explosion of the unstable Tailed Beast Bomb lighting up the sky.
"By the gods…" one of his men whispered, his face pale.
"That's the Hachibi's chakra!" Raidou barked, his voice cutting through their stunned horror. "But it's wrong! Bee's in trouble! All squads, double-time to the epicentre! We need to establish a perimeter!"
They arrived at the edge of the devastation, the chakra intensity hitting them like a physical blow. Several lower-ranked chunin stumbled, clutching their heads. A team tried to form a barrier, their hands weaving seals, but the chaotic energy caused their technique to fizzle and pop erratically before it could even fully form.
"It's no use, Captain! We can't stabilise anything in this soup!"
It was then that a flicker of blue lightning cut through the mist. Ayy, battered, his armor cracked and flickering, pushed himself up from where Tsunade had pinned him.
His body screamed in protest, but his eyes were fixed on the thrashing, monstrous form of his brother. His heart clenched with a cold, sharp dread.
Seeing his men about to throw their lives away, his voice, though strained, carried the full authority of the future Raikage. "All squads, stand down! I repeat, stand down! Do not engage that thing head-on! That is an order!" His expression was a war of torment—the duty to his village and his men warring with the primal need to save his brother from the monster he was becoming.
From their vantage, now even further back, the Sannin made their calculation.
"We've already completed the primary objective," Jiraiya stated, his tone grimly pragmatic. "The Kumo front is in disarray, their ultimate weapon is turned against them, it's time to withdraw."
Tsunade, however, didn't look at him. Her eyes were locked on the convulsing form within the Hachibi's chakra shell. The medic in her, the part that swore an oath, was deeply unsettled. "That jinchūriki… he's still fighting in there. He hasn't given up. He's trying to regain control."
Orochimaru, already gathering his scrolls, murmured without looking up, "Interesting. Even corrupted and poisoned, the symbiotic link between man and beast holds firm. It's not breaking; it's straining. A perfect, if volatile, study subject…"
As they began their withdrawal, Gamahiro's summoning fully dissipated, and Orochimaru's snakes slithered back into the earth. The air around them suddenly changed.
It wasn't the chaotic pressure of the Hachibi.
This was different. Sharper. Heavier. A suffocating pressure that rolled over the battlefield like an invisible tide, causing the very mist to flatten and cling to the ground.
=====
Back in the mindscape, Bee was on his last legs. Gyūki's corrupted chakra was consuming him, the acidic poison seeping into the foundations of their bond. He was about to be swallowed whole, lost to the storm.
Then, a memory surfaced, clear and sharp through the pain: Ayy's voice, from a years-ago training session, stern but unwavering. "You control the storm, Bee, or the storm controls you. Your power, your rhythm—it has to be yours."
With a final, desperate surge of will, Bee stopped fighting the waves and instead dove into them. He drove his consciousness, his very soul, directly into the core of Gyūki's raging spirit, not with force, but with a declaration.
"You're not a monster!" he screamed, his voice ringing with a truth that transcended the chaos.
For one breathtaking moment, it worked. In the real world, the lashing tendrils slowed. The deafening roars faltered. Gyūki's blazing red eyes flickered, the crimson rage receding to reveal a flash of their intelligent white core.
The connection held.
But the poison-jutsu was a vile, persistent thing. The moment of clarity shattered under a fresh wave of corrosive energy. Bee's nose began to bleed profusely in the real world, the strain of maintaining even that fractional control pushing him to the brink of collapse.
=====
As Bee's valiant effort caused Gyūki's chakra to dim and falter slightly, a strange, brief quiet fell over the battlefield. The eye of the hurricane.
Then, the new pressure solidified. It was immense, yet utterly distinct from the Hachibi's raw, chaotic fury. This was older, hotter, and filled with a sleek, predatory malice.
The Sannin, already in mid-retreat, stopped dead in their tracks.
Jiraiya's pupils narrowed to slits, his sage-trained senses screaming a warning. "That chakra… it's nothing like the Hachibi. It's… cleaner. And far, far angrier."
Tsunade tensed, her fists clenching, raising her guard against an unknown threat.
Orochimaru looked genuinely intrigued, a thin, calculating smile gracing his lips. "It seems our evening's entertainment is not yet over."
On the field below, the effect was immediate. Several of the Kumo shinobi dropped to one knee, overwhelmed by the crushing, dual-layered aura of the two tailed beasts. Raidou grit his teeth, sweat beading on his forehead. Ayy looked up from his brother, his eyes wide with a fresh, dawning horror as he stared toward the source of the new pressure. A dark silhouette was forming deep within the dissipating mist, a figure wreathed in chakra that burned with the intensity of molten gold.
=====
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