The world was a symphony of pain, and the Raikage was its sole, unwilling conductor. The acrid stench of his own seared flesh filled his nostrils, a personal insult beneath the grander smells of ozone and devastation.
Across his chest and shoulder, a grotesque, blackened wound pulsed with a heat that shamed the sun, the flesh cracked and weeping where his own Hell Stab had turned traitor.
Around the injury, his Lightning Armour flickered like a dying lamp, the blue-white energy sputtering in weak, pathetic arcs. A single drop of blood, then another, fell from his chin, each plink a deafening admission of failure in the sudden, eerie quiet.
He couldn't remember. He truly could not recall the last time an enemy had left a mark this profound upon him. Scratches, perhaps. Bruises from the fight with the Kage.
But a wound? A true, debilitating injury that spoke of a broken technique and a failing body? Never. And to be delivered by his own hand, guided by the panicked flailing of his own son's possessed form… it was an humiliation that burned hotter than the lightning.
"Unacceptable…" The word was a guttural rasp, torn from a throat raw with smoke and effort. He clenched his fist, the muscles in his forearm screaming in protest.
"I am the Raikage."
It was not a boast. It was a commandment issued to his own failing body. A reminder of the covenant between his title and his flesh. Slowly, agonizingly, he pushed himself to his feet. The muscles in his legs trembled, but they held.
The fight, however, had not paused for his introspection. A hundred yards away, Gyūki thrashed, its form a chaotic maelstrom of crimson chakra and lashing tentacles. Each colossal limb came down with the force of a meteor, shattering the pristine tundra Hiroshi had created, sending geysers of ice and mud into the air. The very ground, a patchwork of frozen acid and glass, groaned under the assault.
The Raikage moved again, a phantom of his former speed, but his will was iron. He and the beast exchanged blows that shook the foundations of the valley. A swung tentacle he dodged by a hair's breadth, his return punch landing with a concussive thump that staggered the great beast.
Through the roar of chakra and collapsing ice, a voice, strained and desperate, echoed from within Gyūki's form.
"Pops—stop! I can't… hold him—steady!" It was Bee, his rhythm broken, his words a frantic plea from a drowning man.
The Raikage's jaw tightened. His strikes became colder, more precise—measured, focused applications of force designed not to kill, but to break and subdue.
Inside the nightmarish mindscape of the partial transformation, Killer Bee was losing his own war. He stood on a platform of churning, black water, facing the gargantuan, shadowed form of the Eight-Tails. Gyūki's usual, grumbling intelligence was gone, replaced by a distorted, staticky snarl.
Bee, his own form flickering, tried to rally, to find the rhythm that always soothed the storm.
"Yo, Gyūki, listen to the flow, we don't have to be the foe—" he began, but his words faltered, the rhyme crumbling into a gasp as a wave of corrosive rage washed over him.
Externally, this internal struggle manifested as a critical hesitation. Gyūki's rampage, for a single, fleeting second, slowed. Its head tilted, a flicker of confusion in its blazing red eyes.
It was the opening the Raikage needed.
He saw it—a crack in the beast's relentless assault. With a final, monumental surge of will, he pushed past the screaming agony in his chest.
"Lightning Armour: Maximum Output!"
The words were a crack of thunder from his lips. The faint, sputtering aura around him exploded into a blinding, solid shell of blue-white light. He became a living comet, a blur of incandescent speed so intense it hurt to look upon.
He charged. He did not throw a single, overwhelming punch. Instead, he became a whirlwind of precise, devastating strikes. A lightning-clad elbow to a pressure point on a tentacle. A palm-heel strike, crackling with sealing formulae, to the beast's core. A high-speed combination of taijutsu and lightning-based suppression that was a lecture in violence.
On cue, as if summoned by his resolve, figures in Kumo flak jackets flickered into position around the periphery. The Sealing Corps—elite fūinjutsu specialists who had been held in reserve for this exact, unthinkable contingency. Their faces were grim, their hands already moving, scrolls unfurling.
"Contain Gyūki!" the Raikage roared, his voice cutting through the din as he used his own body as a living pin, grappling a massive tentacle and driving the beast down onto one knee.
"Don't hurt Bee!"
The coordination was a beautiful, deadly ballet. As the Raikage provided the anvil of raw force, the sealing corps became the hammer of intricate chakra-work. They wove complex, glowing barrier patterns in the air, golden strands of energy snapping into place around the thrashing Eight-Tails.
Simultaneously, a secondary squad reinforced the Raikage's own lightning prison around Matatabi, layering sealing tags over the crackling energy bars, slowly forcing the Two-Tails' fiery form to compact and dim.
With a final, shuddering bellow that was equal parts pain and relief, Gyūki's colossal form collapsed. The raging crimson chakra dissolved like a receding tide, pulling back from the battlefield and flowing inward, retreating into the exhausted, trembling form of Killer Bee, who dropped to his hands and knees on the cracked ice, panting, vomiting a stream of watery bile.
A heavy, profound silence fell. It was a physical weight, pressing down on the scarred land. The last echoes of lightning and beastly roars faded. The surviving Kumo shinobi stood in stunned disbelief. Then, a single, ragged cheer went up. It was followed by another, and then a wave of them.
Men and women fell to their knees, some crying uncontrollably, others laughing with hysterical relief, a few simply praying to whatever gods had seen fit to spare them. The sound was a catharsis, a release of three years of relentless, grinding war.
The Raikage stood amidst it, his massive chest heaving, his expression an unreadable mask of granite. He scanned the battlefield, taking in the cost. The lives. The pride. The future, now irrevocably altered.
His deep voice, when it came, cut through the celebration like a blade.
"Pack up everything," he commanded, his tone leaving no room for question. "We're returning to Kumogakure."
The cheers faltered. Confusion and hesitation rippled through the ranks. They had just won. Hadn't they?
Then he added, quieter, but with a finality that silenced the world, "The war is over."
The words landed not as a relief, but as a shockwave. A jonin dropped his sword, the clatter unnaturally loud. Another simply stared, his mouth agape. Murmurs erupted, a frenzy of disbelief and dawning, cautious joy. 'Three years.'
Three years of endless deployments, of friends lost, of a world defined by borders and bloodshed—ended. Just like that. In a single, bruised, and battered breath from their leader.
It was in this moment of fractured euphoria that a new chill swept the field, one that had nothing to do with ice. A gust of wind, sharp and cold, carried a familiar presence.
The Mizukage, Hiroshi, stood atop a ridge of frozen debris, his aura as composed and frigid as the glacier he had summoned. His voice, when it came, was a scalpel, cutting through the celebratory noise.
"This is not over, Raikage!"
Every Kumo shinobi tensed, hands flying back to weapons. The brief joy was snuffed out, replaced by a familiar, weary dread.
Hiroshi's glare was pure, undiluted hatred, focused solely on the Raikage. "It may not be today," he said, each word dripping with venomous promise, "but I will make sure you—and Kumogakure—pay for what you've done. This debt will be collected in blood and regret."
The threat hung in the air, a lingering frost in the soul. Then, with a final, contemptuous flicker, Hiroshi vanished, leaving behind only a wisp of mist and the taste of a future conflict.
The Raikage watched the empty space, saying nothing. His hand, almost unconsciously, tightened over the gruesome wound on his chest, a fresh pulse of pain a reminder of the day's price.
Ayy approached slowly. He then asked the question that had been burning in him since his father's return.
"Father…" he began, his voice hesitant. "What really happened—when you confronted the Hokage?"
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