I came back to Konoha with the easy calm of someone who'd just eaten too much ramen and had a head full of plans. The ridiculous little talisman-pigs Tsunade insisted on giving me for instant contact vanished into the shadow clone at the border like they had a better life to attend to. Tsunade went off to rest after the Five Kage summons; I watched her go, thinking about seals and clones and everything that still needed fixing.
The Nine-Tails and the dragon-vein chakra were both split and tucked away where they could recover without turning the village into a battlefield. I used the Flying Thunder God to peel myself free—one mark for Orochimaru, one mark for wherever the rest of my pieces needed to be. I left a wake the way Minato used to: polite, efficient, and precise—and dropped into Orochimaru's lab like a shadow that knew the place too well.
Orochimaru was a ruin of focused energy—pale, wrung out, and absolutely thrilled. The cloning cellar hummed and glowed with the kind of lab fever that made Kabuto stand to attention like a dog hearing his name. Watching Orochimaru talk me through his progress made a slow smile spread across my face. He'd done exactly what I'd asked: more clones, better synthesis, hybrids that made his tongue slap his lips in genuine delight. Indra and Asura fragments, pieces of Senju DNA, bits of Uchiha, and elemental-compatibility work—his handiwork turned my plan into something that looked less like far-fetched fantasy and more like a blueprint.
Still, even brilliant work leaves gaps. The hole I'd pointed out nagged at me—no Hyūga-derived vessels, no Toneri piece of Ōtsutsuki blood to complete the circle. Orochimaru took it in stride; he promised adjustments and added the items to the harvest list. I left him salivating over samples and promises, then headed back to Konoha by a path the Flying Thunder God always made easy.
I hadn't been back five minutes when a pig squeaked in my pocket like it was late for something important. I unstoppered it; the tiny puff of smoke turned into a message in Kabuto's voice. He sounded more formal than usual—like a man holding back a dozen bad omens.
"Naruto-sama," Kabuto said. "We've got—well, something you should know."
When Kabuto picks his words carefully, it means the news stinks. I slowed.
"Tell me," I said.
He spilled it. White Zetsu activity had flickered across the globe and converged on the Water Country border. Uchiha Obito had appeared—he'd been readying the stolen Rinnegan but had delayed installing it because White Zetsu's scouts had just located the Seven-Tails jinchūriki: Nanao. The kid I'd put somewhere I thought safe. The one I'd warned and given strict instructions to. She'd slipped away from the place I arranged and gone roaming. Kabuto said it like someone reciting the weather: dangerous and stubbornly true.
My fingers clenched the pig until it squealed again. Nanao should have listened. She should've been safer. The Uzumaki in me pumped anger like fresh blood through my veins.
"Where?" I asked.
"Near the border of the Water Country," Kabuto answered. "White Zetsu estimates a trajectory toward Konoha. Obito's moving to intercept."
The Flying Thunder God was already warm under my skin before Kabuto finished. I left a mark on the nearest pine for return and vanished.
It took maybe a breath and a half to pop out of Kamui space and find myself in front of a scene that should have been quiet—except nothing involving Obito is ever quiet. He was there, a black silhouette masked in shadow, his right eye beginning that slow, lazy whirl of Mangekyō. White Zetsu shapes peeled from the earth like weeds. Nanao was light and terrified, not nearly ready to be dragged across someone else's mad plan.
She tried to fly. Wings of faint chakra—extra appendages formed by the seven tails—pushed at the air. Obito didn't blink. He came at her with the patient cruelty of a man who'd swallowed too many terrible plans.
I didn't let him get there. The Flying Thunder God devoured space and I landed in front of Nanao in a heartbeat.
"Stay behind me!" I shouted. My voice came out lower than I meant it to; the little jinchūriki's eyes widened and she hid, a small, frightened island in a sea of panic.
Obito's laugh rustled like dead leaves. "You're a little late, Uzumaki," he said. "But if the Nine-Tails has come, perhaps this will save us the trouble."
White Zetsu slithered toward Nanao, then froze as Samehada cut through the sand and transformed the air. For a heartbeat I had to remind myself that Kisame's corpse had been turned into research material and not a yokai of revenge—I could feel the residue of Samehada's hunger in the place like a memory. Obito blinked, then shifted tactics. His Mangekyō reached for the Seven-Tails' will—those eyes, surgical and patient, tried to take the jinchūriki like a child's toy from an unknowing hand.
Nanao's transformation wavered. She bucked, bright tails flaring, but Obito was patient. He produced wood pillars—brittle and cunning—and bound her until she exhausted herself. The tailed beast's form wound down, drained by suppression and the constant puncturing feeling of someone trying to rewrite a soul.
"Careful," I said through my teeth. I'd fought Obito before; the man with Sharingan in his fist is always dangerous.
He tried to make it simple: capture and run. His Kamui steamed open like a wound, ready to swallow Nanao in a single motion. But luck isn't just luck when you're a shinobi—it's timing and stubborn interference. At the brink, the tailed beast burst again—raw chakra, wild and stubborn—and Obito staggered back, forced to twist away. He recalibrated, looked at me, then at the jinchūriki, and his voice tuned strange with triumph.
"This one will be useful," he said, cataloguing his potential spoils. He vaulted forward, fingers shaped to take; a pocket of Kamui opened, greedy and cold.
Nanao screamed.
Everything slowed, because when a life you promised to protect is threatened, the world shrinks to the size of the problem and nothing else exists. I let my chakra roar—the Nine-Tails lent a single hot thread, not full force but enough. I stomped into that second, raised a Rasengan that whistled like a hurricane, and slammed it into Obito's advance.
He tumbled back, mask cracked, for the first time looking uncertain. This was my opening. I ripped Nanao free from the last snare and carried her into the Kamui seal I'd prepared on a nearby rock. She wasn't stable; the tailed beast inside her still screamed. She wasn't out of danger. But she was with me.
Obito made a noise like a laugh through teeth, then slipped into slipspace with a last, flat murmur: "Not yet finished." The world snapped back to normal.
I should have breathed. Instead I left a mark with the Flying Thunder God and teleported like a rocket because somewhere in the world the Five Kage were gathering and I could smell tension like iron.
The Kingdom of Iron is neutral. Mifune has patience shaped like steel; he greeted the Kage one by one and made sure no one started a fight on his floors. The hall smelled of old wood, oil, and the thin fear that the Five Kage meeting could become a useless brawl—everything you'd expect with so many old grudges gathered in one place.
Tsunade was sharp and plain as a knife. Ohnoki was a smaller mountain. Ai had thunder in his eyes and impatience under his jaw. Gaara sat still as a desert. The Mizukage's presence was a cool storm. They talked about Akatsuki like surgeons discussing a tumor—hate, care, and the necessity of cutting.
I arrived too late to be seated at the table; the lack of a chair felt like the universe telling me to watch rather than speak. Mifune opened the meeting; polite barbs flew like knives. Then something unplanned happened: someone entered without invitation.
Bai Zetsu stepped in as if dropping by for tea, his smile neutral and mocking. "I have a message," he said blandly. That was all the sign anyone needed that nothing polite would come of this visit.
Kage faces tightened. Tsunade's hand drifted to a hidden seal. Ai's shoulders coiled. Ohnoki erupted about dignity. Gaara's expression didn't change but his eyes cut the room like glass. Terumi shifted the air like a storm warning.
Then Akatsuki's interruption became physical. Paper and shadow slid across the floor; a whisper-sense of something organized and terrible spread. White Zetsu rose like a fungus out of wood, and a vortex opened where Bai Zetsu had stood.
I'd fought Akatsuki before; I should have been ready. What I hadn't expected was how quickly Obito and the others would try to shift the board.
A gust spilled across the floor and the meeting chamber went from tense to outright chaos. Soldiers raised swords. Kage-level chakra bloomed like warning lanterns. And there, at the edge of my sight, Obito's shadow flicked and someone—something—was torn into the air. I knew by scent and instinct that it was the tailed beast I'd just rescued.
My pulse spiked. Nanao's weight in my arms was small and heavy, a child and a storm at once. She slept against me, breath ragged but alive. I could feel something else: the hunger in Obito's success. He'd taken something important, even if I'd kept Nanao breathing. The balance had shifted.
Mifune tried to bring order, but his words were swallowed by colliding chakra. White Zetsu's laughter curled like smoke. The meeting dissolved into the start of war.
I didn't hesitate. I wasn't a Kage, but I was a protector. Standing is my law. I stepped forward and placed Nanao in a safe hold; she clung to me like she already knew what it meant to be underfoot of monsters.
"Enough," I said. "If you think Konoha will hand over the tailed beasts, you're wrong."
Everyone looked: the Kage, the envoys. Obito's absence was thin in the air, like a bruise. Bai Zetsu's smile was soft and sharp. My message landed: Konoha wouldn't roll over for threats—not while I could still stand in front of what mattered.
Konan moved, paper like frozen wings at her command; the room trembled between negotiation and catastrophe. I watched the calculations on every face—attack and response, give and take. The Five Shadows met my eyes like generals looking for the one soldier who might decide the evening.
I'd come for different reasons—collecting samples, tweaking seals, making people safer in the long run. The world doesn't wait while you plan. Obito had taken a prize today, and he'd learned something that would make his next move more dangerous. The Rinnegan in his hands, the stolen power of Nagato—those changes were a spider web tightening.
I felt a knot in my gut: the game had just become blood real. Standing in that hall of rulers and war-sour smiles, I tasted the future and it wasn't sweet.
"Then we decide," Ai said, thunder in his voice. "We do not give them the beasts. We hunt them down."
It wasn't consensus. It wasn't even close. But it was a start. As I tightened my jaw, I knew the map we'd been drawing in secret was about to become a battlefield.
I left the chamber with Nanao's heartbeat settling under my shirt and a thousand plans leaking out of my pockets. Orochimaru's clones, Hyūga pieces, Toneri cells—they were all more necessary now than ever. If Obito had taken something, we'd have to take more. If Akatsuki had found a hole, we'd have to close it.
Outside, the wind cut hard and the moon watched like a patient judge. I felt the weight of every promise I'd made—Tsunade's trust, Jiraiya's faith, Hinata's quiet cheer, every small life I'd said I'd protect. Protecting them had always been why I trained, learned, and risked things.
"We'll fix this," I told Nanao and myself. "We'll make sure they can't take what matters again."
Her breath was a tiny, steady thing against my chest, and for the first time since the fight I let myself believe it.
The Five Kage meeting would end in threads and treaties and threats. Akatsuki would regroup and Obito would count his trophies. I would go to Orochimaru and sharpen plans until someone screamed. I would find a way to make the pieces fit. I would make sure the tailed beasts were never easy to steal again.
I always find a way.
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