Swoosh!
The dark golden rainbow of light that Minato had unleashed in his moment of desperation stretched across the battlefield like the last hope of humanity itself. The beam pulsed with concentrated chakra, each flicker representing years of training, countless battles, and the accumulated will of a man who refused to accept defeat. It seemed almost alive as it extended upward through the chaotic gravitational fields, straining with every fiber of its being to bridge the impossible distance between salvation and catastrophe.
This was it—Minato's final gambit in a war that had already claimed too much.
Facing Madara who had absorbed the terrifying power of the Gedo Mazo and the chakra of eight Tailed Beasts, the Fourth Hokage understood with painful clarity that he was no longer capable of mounting a direct resistance. The mathematics of power were brutally simple: even at his peak, even with perfect conditions and unlimited chakra, this new version of Madara represented a force beyond conventional warfare.
This desperate plan, this last-ditch effort to teleport Gaara to safety, was the only strategy left that didn't end with the completion of the Ten-Tails and the end of everything they had fought to protect.
It was why he had thrown every last reserve of his strength into blocking Madara's devastating energy beam—not from any hope of survival, but to buy these precious seconds. Everything he had learned, everything he had become, all of it distilled into this single moment where the fate of the ninja world balanced on the edge of a kunai.
Bang!
The moment arrived with the finality of a closing tomb. Even as Minato's rainbow of chakra light raced toward its target, Madara's energy beam struck with the force of a collapsing star. The defensive barrier formed by the Nine-Tails' chakra around Minato's body—that golden armor that had turned aside countless attacks—began to crack and splinter like glass under impossible pressure.
The previous battles had already drained too much from him. His chakra reserves, legendary though they were, had been carved away by the relentless demands of combat against an opponent who seemed to grow stronger with each passing moment. Now, facing the full fury of Madara's enhanced power, those depleted defenses proved tragically inadequate.
Swish!
But just as the energy beam prepared to punch through his failing defenses and reduce the Yellow Flash to nothing more than a memory, Minato vanished. The Flying Thunder God technique activated with split-second timing, whisking him away from certain death through the dimensional pathways that only he had truly mastered.
At that same instant, the other energy beams that Madara had launched across the battlefield reached their intended targets, each one carrying enough destructive force to level a small mountain.
The Second Hokage, Tobirama Senju, stood with deceptive calm as death approached at light speed. In his weathered hands, he held what appeared to be an ordinary kunai—but the initiated eye could see the Senju family crest etched into its surface, and more importantly, the complex seal work that surrounded it. With movements that spoke of decades of experience in impossible situations, he activated a defensive barrier that shimmered into existence just as the energy beam arrived.
Elsewhere on the battlefield, Minato's shadow clone materialized beside Kushina, the red-haired woman whose fierce expression couldn't quite hide the fear in her eyes. The clone's hands moved in familiar patterns, calling forth another barrier that would protect the love of Minato's life from obliteration.
Naruto and Sasuke, their Perfect Susanoo gleaming like a golden god of war, shifted their massive construct to shield Deidara, Sasori, and the other vulnerable fighters. The ethereal warrior's four arms spread wide as it prepared to take the brunt of an attack that could crack the very foundations of mountains.
Through it all, Minato's true body appeared on a massive chunk of rock that hung suspended in the gravitational field like a floating island. His eyes, those blue orbs that had seen too many friends die and too many victories turn to ash, lifted toward the sky as his hands flowed through a sequence of seals with desperate precision.
The golden rainbow he had launched moments earlier was so close now—mere yards from Gaara's position, close enough that he could almost taste victory.
But even as hope began to bloom in the hearts of the Allied Forces, disaster struck with the casual cruelty that defined this war.
Bang!
The chakra light rainbow, that last desperate hope for salvation, simply... dissipated. Like morning mist touched by sunlight, it faded into nothingness before Minato's horrified eyes. All that power, all that concentrated will and determination, scattered to the winds as if it had never existed.
At that moment, Madara's ancient gaze found Minato across the battlefield, and the Fourth Hokage saw his own defeat reflected in those terrible Rinnegan eyes. The Uchiha legend had seen through his actions completely, had understood the plan from the very beginning and simply allowed it to play out for his own amusement.
"It's over."
The words carried across the battlefield with the weight of divine pronouncement. Madara's smile was that of a predator who had finished playing with his prey, cruel and satisfied and utterly without mercy. With movements that seemed to mock the very concept of distance, he appeared directly in front of Gaara as if the space between them had simply ceased to exist.
Gaara, the young Kazekage who had once been consumed by hatred and bloodlust but had learned to love and protect his people, was far from helpless. His sand, that extension of his will that had served as both weapon and armor throughout countless battles, began to respond to his desperate commands. The gourd on his back started to crack open, ready to disgorge the golden grains that had once made him the terror of the desert.
But Madara's speed transcended mortal limitations. Before Gaara could even begin to manipulate his signature sand techniques, the Uchiha legend had already stepped onto the cloud of defensive particles and wrapped his fingers around the young man's throat.
Those eyes—those terrible Rinnegan that had witnessed the rise and fall of civilizations—fixed on Gaara with casual intensity. The Kazekage's struggles, his desperate attempts to break free or at least inflict some damage on his captor, ceased instantly as if a switch had been thrown. The power of the Sage of Six Paths flowed through that gaze, turning resistance into impossibility.
"Gaara!"
Naruto's voice tore across the battlefield like the cry of a wounded animal. The young jinchuriki, encased in his Perfect Susanoo, could see everything that was happening with clarity—and was utterly powerless to prevent it. The distance between them might as well have been measured in light-years for all the good his legendary speed could do him now.
Boom!
Above them, one of the intercepted energy beams struck the Perfect Susanoo with the force of a falling meteor. The golden construct, that manifestation of Sasuke and Naruto's combined will, shuddered under the impact as explosions painted the sky in shades of orange and red. Even as the ethereal warrior weathered the assault, more destruction rained down from above.
At the precise moment that Madara's grip tightened around Gaara's throat, something fundamental shifted in the fabric of reality around the Uchiha legend. Power, vast and ancient and terrible, began to emanate from his form as the gravitational forces that had been holding everyone in place suddenly reversed. Instead of being pulled downward, both captor and captive were drawn inexorably upward toward the partially formed stone planet that hung in the sky like a second moon.
When the explosions and smoke cleared enough for vision to return, the sight that greeted the Allied Forces was one that would haunt their nightmares for whatever remained of their lives.
Madara stood atop the artificial celestial body he had created, his silhouette dark against the burning sky. With casual, almost bored movements, he formed a single-handed seal—a display of chakra control that should have been impossible even for shinobi of legendary caliber.
Roar!
The sound that erupted from behind Madara was like the death cry of the world itself. The massive head of the Gedo Mazo emerged from the stone surface in a grotesque parody of birth, its features twisted into an expression of eternal hunger. The statue's ancient eyes, each one representing centuries of accumulated malice, fixed on the scene below with predatory satisfaction.
As the golem's mouth opened wide enough to swallow buildings whole, light began to pulse from deep within its throat—not the warm light of the sun or the gentle glow of the moon, but something cold and alien that hurt to look at directly.
Whoosh!
Eight spheres of chakra light, each one pulsing with the distinctive energy signature of a different Tailed Beast, were expelled from the creature's maw like pearls cast before swine. The Two-Tails through the Nine-Tails—centuries of accumulated power, the living embodiments of natural forces that had shaped the ninja world since its inception—hung suspended in the air like macabre ornaments.
Madara's expression remained utterly indifferent as he formed another single-handed seal, his movements carrying the casual authority of someone rearranging furniture rather than manipulating forces that could reshape continents.
Buzz!
A sickly yellow light began to emanate from Gaara's abdomen, the chakra signature distinctive and unmistakable. At the same moment, a chain wreathed in faint purple energy extended from the Gedo Mazo's mouth like the tongue of some cosmic predator. The ethereal links wrapped around the sandy yellow luminescence with the inexorable certainty of fate itself.
What emerged, pulled from Gaara's body like a soul being ripped from its mortal shell, was Shukaku—the One-Tailed Beast, the Tanuki of the Desert, the ancient spirit that had been both Gaara's curse and his salvation.
The creature's form writhed and struggled against the binding chains, but before the awesome power of the Rinnegan, even beings of such legendary might were rendered as helpless as insects caught in amber. The Sage of Six Paths' eyes saw through all illusions, commanded all chakra, dominated all lesser beings through sheer superiority of existence.
The Gedo Mazo's mouth opened wider, creating a void that seemed to extend beyond mere physical dimensions. With a sound like the universe itself taking a breath, it drew Shukaku into its depths, adding the One-Tail's essence to the terrible collection already stored within its form.
As the final motes of the Tanuki's chakra disappeared into the statue's throat, something began to change. The golem's first eye, which had remained tightly sealed since the dawn of the ninja era, began to show the first signs of loosening. Ancient eyelids that had not moved in centuries started to tremble and shift.
The sealing procedure for the Tailed Beasts followed an immutable order—One through Nine, each addition building upon the last in a sequence that had been established when the Sage of Six Paths first divided the Ten-Tails' power. Any deviation from this pattern would result in failure, even if all nine beasts' chakra was eventually collected.
Roar!
The sound that emerged from the Gedo Mazo now was different—hungrier, more alive, suffused with an anticipation that made the very air tremble. Its mouth opened even wider as it began to feed with increasing voracity, drawing in the chakra of the Two-Tails, then the Three-Tails, each absorption making it stronger and more terrible.
The process accelerated as the statue's appetite grew. Four-Tails, Five-Tails, Six-Tails—each mighty spirit disappeared into that cosmic maw with barely a struggle. Seven-Tails, Eight-Tails, and finally, the crown jewel of the collection, the Nine-Tails' chakra that had been torn from both Naruto and Kushina in previous battles.
When the last traces of the Nine-Tails vanished into the golem's depths, the entire structure convulsed as if struck by lightning. All nine eyes snapped open simultaneously, revealing orbs of pure malevolence that had not gazed upon the world since the age of legends. The chakra fluctuations emanating from the creature's form became so intense that they were visible to the naked eye, reality itself bending and warping around the statue's presence.
"The golem has sustained considerable damage over the centuries..."
Madara's voice carried a note of clinical observation, as if he were a scholar examining an interesting but flawed specimen. The truth was that the Gedo Mazo, despite its terrible power, bore the scars of eons. The natural resurrection of the Ten-Tails would take time—time that Madara's enhanced but still mortal form might not possess.
But patience had never been one of Madara's virtues when destiny called.
The golem's massive head began to merge with Madara's form, ancient stone and bone and chakra flowing together in a fusion that defied every law of nature and physics. The process was less evolution than revelation—the unveiling of something that had always been meant to be.
Boom!
Far below, the explosion that marked the interception of Madara's final energy beam painted the sky in brilliant colors. The broken fragments of chakra light, scattered by the defensive barriers, fell like luminous snow around Sasuke, Naruto, and their allies.
Even the incredible defensive power of the Perfect Susanoo had buckled under the assault, the golden construct's armor showing cracks and stress fractures that spoke to the devastating force it had absorbed. But miraculously, through the combined efforts of space-time barriers deployed by both the Second Hokage and Minato's clones, no one had been seriously injured.
Everyone was unharmed—and yet there was no joy to be found in any face among the Allied Forces.
The Second Hokage, his weathered features grim with the weight of experience, suddenly raised his head toward the sky. Around him, Naruto, Minato, Kushina, and every other shinobi with advanced sensory abilities followed suit, their enhanced perceptions picking up something that made their blood run cold.
In the flames and smoke that obscured the artificial moon above them, there was a presence—restrained but suffocatingly powerful, like standing at the edge of an ocean that stretched beyond all horizons. The chakra signature was unlike anything any of them had ever encountered, carrying with it the weight of primordial forces that predated human civilization.
That feeling was pure, undiluted despair made manifest.
Bang!
The sound that echoed across the battlefield was like the breaking of chains that had bound the world since its creation. The massive chunks of rock and debris that had been drawn upward by the gravitational forces suddenly stopped their ascent, hanging motionless in the air as if time itself had paused to witness what was about to unfold.
Everything returned to normal—or what passed for normal in a world where gods walked among mortals and legends came to life.
In the flames and smoke that wreathed the stone planet, a shadow began to emerge. As the figure descended toward the battlefield below, the very light seemed to bend away from him, creating an aura of darkness that had nothing to do with the absence of illumination and everything to do with the presence of something fundamentally opposed to life itself.
Madara's form materialized before the assembled forces of the ninja world, and what they saw defied every expectation and shattered every hope they might have harbored.
"What's happening to him?"
The question rippled through the ranks like wildfire as every eye fixed on the impossible sight before them. The chakra fluctuations emanating from Madara's body were indeed terrifying, a constant pulse of power that made the air itself difficult to breathe. But even as his strength grew to godlike proportions, visible changes were occurring that seemed to contradict everything they were witnessing.
His long black hair, once as dark as midnight and flowing like liquid shadow, was rapidly shifting to silver and then to pure white. The process accelerated even as they watched, decades of aging compressed into moments. The skin on his face and exposed torso, which had maintained its vitality despite his advanced years, began to wrinkle and dry like parchment left too long in the sun.
"His life force is being rapidly depleted!"
Tsunade's medical expertise allowed her to see what others might miss. Her voice carried both amazement and confusion as she struggled to understand what they were witnessing. His chakra levels were indeed climbing to heights that made her sensor abilities scream warnings of imminent danger, but if his vitality continued to deteriorate at this rate, even Madara's legendary constitution would fail.
Had the absorption of the Ten-Tails' power been flawed somehow? Had Madara made some critical error in the process that would lead to his own destruction?
The thought should have brought hope, but instead, every experienced shinobi on the battlefield felt their instincts screaming that something was terribly wrong with this picture.
Everyone stared in horrified fascination—everyone except Madara himself, who seemed as calm and composed as if he were meditating in a peaceful garden rather than undergoing what appeared to be rapid death by chakra poisoning.
He raised his withered hand, examining the skin that was drying and cracking with almost scientific detachment. When he spoke, his voice carried neither concern nor fear, only the satisfied tone of someone whose carefully laid plans were proceeding exactly as intended.
"If it weren't for the fact that this body contains Hashirama's cells, this method truly would be unbearable."
The words sent chills through everyone who heard them. Of course—the First Hokage's cellular material, stolen and integrated into Madara's form decades ago, was the key that made this impossible transformation survivable. The legendary vitality of Hashirama Senju, the man who had tamed the Tailed Beasts and founded the modern ninja world, was the foundation upon which this godlike ascension was built.
"But... it should be about the right time."
A gleam of anticipation flashed in Madara's ancient eyes, and suddenly every sensor on the battlefield understood that what they had been witnessing was not failure but preparation.
Roar!
The sound that erupted from within Madara's body was like nothing that had ever emerged from a human throat. It was the voice of something primordial and vast, a creature that had existed since the dawn of time and had waited eons for this moment of rebirth.
"The Ten-Tails has returned!"
The simultaneous exclamations came from Minato, Naruto, and the Nine-Tails sealed within Kushina's body. All three possessed enough experience with Tailed Beast chakra to recognize the signature that was now pulsing from Madara's form—but this was different from any individual beast they had encountered.
This was the original, the source from which all other Tailed Beasts had been derived. This was the creature that had once threatened to destroy the world before the Sage of Six Paths divided its power into nine separate entities.
"What?" The three of them spoke in unison, their voices carrying identical notes of shock and disbelief.
"The reason Madara's vitality was weakening so rapidly," Minato's analytical mind began to piece together the terrible truth even as he spoke, "is because he was using his own life force to nourish the Ten-Tails within his body."
The process they had witnessed—the aging, the apparent deterioration—had never been a sign of failure. It had been the chrysalis stage of a transformation beyond mortal comprehension.
Under the horrified gaze of every living soul on the battlefield, Madara's aged and withered appearance began to reverse itself. The wrinkles smoothed away, the gray hair darkened, and the bent posture straightened as vitality flooded back into his form with supernatural intensity.
"His life has been restored!" Tsunade's medical expertise could barely process what she was seeing. This went beyond any healing technique she had ever encountered or imagined.
But the physical changes were only the beginning.
The chakra surrounding Madara's body began to condense and solidify, taking on the appearance of flowing white robes that seemed to be woven from pure energy itself. Across the surface of these ethereal garments, black magatama patterns began to appear—the same symbols that had adorned the Sage of Six Paths in the ancient legends.
With casual movements that spoke of power beyond measurement, Madara clenched his fist. No light emerged from his palm, no visible energy discharge marked the gesture. Instead, black liquid began to materialize from nothing, flowing into existence as if summoned from the void between dimensions.
The dark substance quickly solidified, its form shifting and reshaping until it had become a staff of impossible black material. The weapon's surface seemed to absorb light rather than reflect it, creating the unsettling impression that it was less an object than a hole cut through reality itself.
This was no mere tool or weapon—this was a symbol of authority that had not been seen in the ninja world since the time of myths and legends. The Staff of the Six Paths, the implement of creation and destruction that had been used to shape the world itself in the hands of its original wielder.
Madara Uchiha, the man who had sought power beyond mortal limitations for his entire life, had finally achieved his ultimate goal.
He had become the Ten-Tails Jinchuriki—the host of the most powerful entity that had ever existed, the living embodiment of chakra itself.
And as he stood there in his divine regalia, surveying the battlefield with eyes that now held the wisdom and malice of eons, one terrible truth became clear to every person who witnessed his transformation:
The war for the ninja world was over.
They had lost.