---Third POV---
Ryouma looked up at the massive, blazing red chakra in the sky.
"ROAR!!!"
A thunderous roar tore through the air like a storm.
The colossal form of the Nine-Tails gradually solidified within the swirling blood-red chakra. Every strand of fur shimmered with an ominous crimson glow. The overwhelming aura of the strongest tailed beast surged across the entire coastline.
"You're not bad, but do you really think you can covet my power?!"
For the Nine-Tails, seeing the light of day again felt almost like a dream. But this time, it was determined to take back everything that belonged to it.
First, it would begin by destroying the village founded by Hashirama and Madara… or would it?
The faint sound of ocean waves echoed nearby. It looked around, a trace of confusion flickering in its eyes.
Was this still Konoha? And where the hell did Shukaku's jinchūriki drag it to?
"Stop looking around. Before, when you were all sealed up and pitiful, we didn't bother with you. But now, I suggest you behave yourself, otherwise, you're in for a world of pain!"
Shukaku lay sprawled across Ryouma's shoulder, wearing a smug, punchable expression as it mocked the Nine-Tails. Just thinking about how the fox was about to get thrashed by its partner made it want to laugh.
As for whether the Nine-Tails could be reasoned with or reformed? Total nonsense. Based on what it knew about this fox, it would only behave after being properly beaten into submission.
"Heh, seems like you've got a pretty close bond with your jinchūriki," the Nine-Tails sneered. "In that case, let me send you both to hell together!"
As expected, Shukaku's words had successfully provoked the Nine-Tails into a fury.
"Shukaku… you did that on purpose, didn't you?"
Ryouma had initially wanted to try reasoning with the Nine-Tails for a bit, maybe test out the "Talk-no-Jutsu" techniques he learned from Naruto back in Rōran. But the moment Shukaku opened its mouth, it cranked the fox's rage meter straight to max.
It was hard for him not to suspect that Shukaku was deliberately using him to settle an old grudge with the Nine-Tails.
Shukaku's guilty thoughts were clearly seen through. Feeling exposed, it turned its head away and started wagging its tail innocently.
Ryouma sighed lightly, then pulled out Lostvayne from behind his waist.
Oh well, if you raise a tanuki yourself, then of course it's your job to spoil it too.
Might as well take this chance to help Shukaku vent properly.
"You're coming at me with a broken sword? Are you looking down on me?" the Nine-Tails growled, its vertical pupils glaring at Ryouma with danger in every inch.
"Oh? I didn't expect you to care about something like that," Ryouma said in mild surprise.
Even though Orochimaru had gifted him the Kusanagi sword, he still preferred using Lostvayne.
He didn't really need powerful weapons anymore, even a kunai was enough if necessary.
"Don't underestimate this sword, it's the famous blade that once killed Madara."
A sword's name was forged by the battles it had fought. Its power revealed by the enemies it had slain.
Though Lostvayne's craftsmanship was nothing special, nor was it made by any renowned smith, in terms of battle achievements, it surpassed any other blade in the shinobi world.
"You killed Madara?"
There was a hint of irrepressible excitement in the Nine-Tails' voice. Suddenly, this jinchūriki of the One-Tail didn't seem so annoying anymore.
"That's right," Ryouma replied with a light smile. "This sword's accomplished more than a guy like you, who got knocked out cold by a single genjutsu."
You had to admit, when it came to ticking off the Nine-Tails, Ryouma and Shukaku were perfectly in sync.
After all, the greatest humiliation of the Nine-Tails' life… was being toyed with by Madara.
So when Ryouma dropped that last line, it immediately reacted like a cat with its tail stepped on, roaring furiously.
It opened its massive mouth, within a single second, a gigantic Tailed Beast Ball had charged and was fired.
As it hurtled toward him like a black meteor, his eyes narrowed. He suddenly swung Lostvayne in his hand, the blade slicing through the air with a crisp, ringing hum.
In that instant, an invisible domain silently expanded, enveloping the surroundings.
The massive Tailed Beast Ball was violently reflected back at a speed even faster than before. It tore through the air and, before the Nine-Tails could even react, exploded point-blank under its disbelieving gaze.
"What?!"
BOOM!!
The deafening explosion thundered like the sky was collapsing. Smoke billowed upward, instantly forming a massive mushroom cloud.
A huge shockwave blasted outward from the epicenter in a circular wave.
The beach along the coast was hit first. Fine grains of sand instantly vaporized under the extreme heat and pressure, transforming into sheets of glass-like crystals.
The coastline itself cracked open from the blast, with giant fissures spiderwebbing across the ground. Rocks shattered into dust, trees were uprooted completely.
Smoke, dust, and debris mixed into a dark, thick haze that completely blocked out the sunlight.
The term "natural disaster" truly was fitting for a tailed beast.
In the middle of this apocalyptic scene, Ryouma soared into the sky on a cloud of sand, escaping the roaring shockwave.
He looked down at the devastated land left behind by the Tailed Beast Ball and couldn't help but comment, "Shukaku, how many of those could you take?"
Faced with a point-blank ultimate attack from his own partner, Shukaku just snorted and deliberately turned its head away with a proud, dismissive expression, refusing to say a word.
"Haha."
Its reaction made Ryouma chuckle. Slowly sheathing Lostvayne, a thought suddenly came to him.
"Don't be mad, Shukaku. How about this, I'll use your techniques for the rest of the fight, sound good?"
Down below, the Nine-Tails furiously swept away the dense smoke in front of it with one massive paw, revealing a pair of eyes burning with rage.
"Damn Konoha ninja!!" it howled, its voice filled with hatred and unwillingness.
Its tails, flexible like extra limbs, shot toward Ryouma in the sky like spears.
Though that point-blank explosion had been devastating, the Nine-Tails had wrapped its tails tightly around itself just in time to weather the blast. It had survived, but its fury had only grown even more intense.
After decades of being unjustly sealed up, resentment had built up in its heart. Now, after getting blasted into a scorched mess, its thirst for revenge reached its peak.
Ryouma could see each tail's trajectory. Instead of dodging, he met them head-on. His hands shot out, coated in Armament Haki, grabbing two of the massive tails mid-strike. The impact should have shattered his arms, yet it only hurt. Well… more than just a bit.
"What?!" The Nine-Tails' eyes widened as Ryouma spun, at the same time, his hands moved at lightning speed, forming hand seals to channel Shukaku's chakra from within.
Endless sand exploded outward.
The entire coastal battlefield turned into a flowing desert in seconds, devouring everything in its path. The Nine-Tails suddenly lost its footing, its entire right leg was sucked deep into sand.
"This is… that tanuki's power? You think you can beat me with this pathetic chakra?!"
The Nine-Tails roared in fury, stomping its trapped leg with a sudden burst of force. It managed to tear itself free.
Taking advantage of the moment when the Nine-Tails lost its balance and couldn't control its tail attacks properly, Ryouma moved. His hands quickly formed seals mid-sprint, and with a sudden clap against the earth, a massive surge of chakra flooded into the ground.
The sea of sand instantly began to churn, and sand and rocks surged like an angry storm.
In the blink of an eye, a colossal sand-and-stone giant, as large as the Nine-Tails, rose from the earth and stood proudly on the battlefield.
As soon as it appeared, the sand giant wasted no time. It swung its massive fist straight at the Nine-Tails' head.
The Nine-Tails reacted swiftly, twisting its body to dodge the blow. Its several tails shot out like sharp spears, violently piercing through the sand giant's body.
Standing atop the sand giant's head, Ryouma's lips curled slightly into a confident smirk. With another clap of his hands, several sand dragons burst out from the points where the Nine-Tails' tails had pierced the sand giant. They coiled rapidly, tightly entwining its tails.
Immediately after, black sealing patterns followed like shadows, rapidly spreading and making it impossible for the Nine-Tails to retract its tails.
And not just that, beneath the sand sea, the quicksand began to swirl wildly, and in the blink of an eye, it completely submerged the Nine-Tails' hind legs, rendering it immobile.
"Damn it! Damn it! Damn it!! All of you humans deserve to die!!"
It seemed that the ninjutsu had stirred up some deeply buried memories. The thread of reason within its mind finally snapped completely. Now, its enormous beastly eyes were filled with nothing but madness and fury.
The beast opened its jaws wide, and a Tailed Beast Ball even larger than before rapidly began to form.
But instead of firing it, the Nine-Tails suddenly swallowed it whole, and an unimaginably immense amount of chakra rampaged within its body, causing it to swell into a massive, round sphere, as if it might explode at any second.
"Now that's more like it," Ryouma muttered, bursting from the sand and charging straight at the swollen Nine-Tails.
Then, the Nine-Tails roared and opened its mouth wide. A blade-like beam of orange energy burst forth, slicing through the sand dragons and even its own tails in one violent strike.
The unstoppable energy blade carved a terrifying chasm into the ground behind him, extending all the way into the distant sea, as if it were about to split the world in two.
BOOM!
The unleashed energy wave surged outward. The entire sea was stirred into a raging storm, sending colossal waves crashing down upon the desert domain.
---
On a distant cliff, a group of spectators were watching the full visual spectacle of the battle unfold. They were all stunned by the sheer power of the tailed beast.
Especially Rin, who was used to seeing Shukaku and Isobu in their smaller forms back in Konoha. Experiencing the Nine-Tails' strength up close like this truly left her speechless with shock.
"Kushina-nesan, you used to have… this kind of monster living inside you?" she asked with wide eyes, stumbling over her words.
"Haha…" Kushina gave a dry laugh. Even though she had shared a body with the Nine-Tails, she had only felt a small portion of its power during a few brief instances when the seal weakened.
Like the others, this was her first time seeing the Nine-Tails in its fully unsealed form.
"Obito, let's fall back a bit more. I don't think it's safe here," Kakashi said, wiping the cold sweat from his forehead.
"Can't handle just this level of intensity, huh?" Obito raised an eyebrow. "Back when Ryouma and I were fighting alongside Minato-sensei in the Land of Grass, the battlefield was way more intense than this."
"Didn't you retreat halfway through? You only came back after everything was over, right?" Kakashi mercilessly exposed him.
Obito's face froze slightly. "I left to escort Jiraiya-sama back, okay? And how did you even know about that?"
"Minato-sensei told me," Kakashi shrugged.
Unlike the lighthearted vibe on Kushina's side, back on the battlefield, Ryouma stood on the ocean's surface, rising and falling with the waves.
---
Ryouma didn't take the attack head-on, he wasn't stupid. What he faced was only the aftermath of the blast. Even so, his body was covered in burns and bruises, his clothes torn to shreds… yet he was grinning like a madman. He could feel it, the beginning of the compression.
He gazed at the Nine-Tails, the corners of his lips lifting as he praised sincerely, "Not bad at all."
It had managed to think of soaking the sand with seawater to increase its weight, which in turn would increase the difficulty of Ryouma's Magnet Release control.
However, what he didn't know was that this was entirely overthinking it.
The Nine-Tails hadn't made that move based on any kind of tactical brilliance. It had simply been stimulated by the black sealing, triggering a reflexive trauma response, as if fearing it would be thrown back into that lightless prison.
For most Magnet Release users, this seawater-soaked battlefield would indeed be extremely disadvantageous.
But for Ryouma, it barely mattered. In fact, the added weight of the wet sand only increased the power of his techniques.
The only drawback was that it consumed more chakra, but right now, chakra was the last thing Ryouma lacked.
Spotting the perfect opportunity, Ryouma slammed his palms together again. The sand sea beneath the water's surface surged up once more.
Five massive sand hands erupted from the sea, each one nearly as large as the Nine-Tails' body.
These gigantic hands lunged directly at the Nine-Tails.
The Nine-Tails remained defiant. It opened its jaws wide, gathering chakra, and fired a barrage of Tailed Beast Balls in rapid succession.
Each Tailed Beast Ball launched like it cost no chakra at all, firing wildly and hitting the first two giant sand hands.
The sand hands were instantly blasted into particles, disintegrating into clouds of scattered dust that rained down onto the sea.
But the attack wasn't over. Three more giant hands followed immediately behind.
The Nine-Tails began forming another Tailed Beast Ball in its mouth, relentless, as if it would never tire, firing again and again.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Just as the Nine-Tails and the sand hands clashed in a fierce standoff, another colossal sand giant rose directly from beneath its feet, lifting the beast onto its shoulders.
One massive, merciless hand clamped tightly around the Nine-Tails' neck, forcing its head back. The Tailed Beast Ball it was about to fire shot into the sky and exploded in the air.
At the same moment, several sand dragons suddenly burst from the surrounding sea, climbing up the giant's body, quickly wrapping around the Nine-Tails' limbs and binding it tightly in place.