Chapter 56: A Clash of Titans
Shinra looked down from his Susanoo, his contempt for the Nine-Tails palpable. 'Uchiha Madara treated you as a mere beast, and for you to say such a thing now is the height of hypocrisy.'
Enraged beyond reason, the Nine-Tails gathered another Tailed Beast Bomb and fired it point-blank at the dark tengu warrior. The resulting explosion was deafening, forcing the colossal Susanoo to skid back hundreds of meters, its feet carving deep trenches into the earth.
"Is this all you have?" Shinra's voice echoed, laced with mockery as he willed the Susanoo's slightly cracked armor to repair itself in an instant. "Aside from having a bit more chakra, you're nothing but a pig in my eyes."
The full-body Susanoo was truly a marvel of power; it could take a direct hit from the strongest Tailed Beast and remain standing.
"YOU WRETCHED INSECT!" the fox bellowed. The perfect offense and defense of the Susanoo were a nightmare to deal with. Tailed Beasts dominated ordinary shinobi because they couldn't pierce their defenses, but facing this was an entirely different matter. The Nine-Tails could break the Susanoo, but it would require sustained, concentrated firepower—something Shinra had no intention of allowing.
As the fox began to form a second Tailed Beast Bomb, the Susanoo closed the distance in a flash. It sheathed its massive chakra blade and, with a world-shaking crunch, delivered an uppercut directly to the Nine-Tails' jaw. The force of the blow snapped the fox's mouth shut, causing the half-formed Tailed Beast Bomb to fizzle and backfire in its throat.
"The great Nine-Tails, the incarnation of disaster... you're nothing special." With a grunt of effort, the Susanoo wrapped its arms around the dazed beast, hefted its immense weight, and with a mighty heave, hurled it several kilometers away from Konoha's outskirts.
Shinra's goal was to subdue the fox, but doing so with the Susanoo alone was a messy affair. The collateral damage from their battle could easily reduce Konoha to rubble. He didn't care about the village itself, but Mikoto and Kushina were there. And Tsunade... she would be heartbroken if her home was destroyed because of him.
The moment the Nine-Tails landed with a ground-quaking impact, Shinra dismissed the Susanoo. In the next instant, he was a blur of motion. Using his immense physical speed, he crossed the several-kilometer distance in a heartbeat, appearing before the staggering fox. He didn't stop; he pivoted and delivered a devastating kick that sent the Nine-Tails flying another few kilometers, ensuring they were now in a desolate, uninhabited area far from any sign of civilization.
The Konoha shinobi watching from a distance could only stand in stunned silence. The sheer, overwhelming display of power had rendered them speechless.
"The power of the Sharingan... is truly monstrous," Orochimaru murmured, a rare flicker of raw envy in his serpentine eyes. This was the first time he had felt such a deep, covetous desire for the Uchiha's dōjutsu. The earlier attack by Uchiha Ryo had been impressive, but this... this was a level of power that could dominate the shinobi world.
Beside him, Danzo was practically salivating, his single eye wide with avarice. 'If I possessed that power,' he thought, his mind racing, 'becoming Hokage and leading Konoha to rule the entire world would be trivial! Why must this divine power reside in the cursed Uchiha?! It should be mine!'
By now, the patriarchs and elite shinobi of Konoha's major clans had arrived on the scene, their faces pale as they witnessed the distant battle.
"Hokage-sama, what is the situation?" Nara Shikaku asked, his analytical mind struggling to process the scene.
"A mysterious individual, suspected to be connected to the Uchiha, is engaged in combat with the Nine-Tails," Sarutobi Hiruzen replied, his gaze inadvertently drifting toward Uchiha Tajima.
The Uchiha patriarch felt like he was about to vomit blood. Watching the Susanoo, gleaming under the moonlight as it manhandled the mountain-sized fox, filled him with a profound sense of despair. To have such a powerhouse in their clan that even he, the clan head, knew nothing about was both terrifying and humiliating.
"Hokage-sama, I swear, this has nothing to do with the Uchiha clan!" Tajima stated firmly. "While that is indeed a Susanoo, its user is not one of ours!"
"I know," Hiruzen said, and he meant it. If the Uchiha truly had this kind of power at their disposal, they would have already made a move for control of the village. The only logical explanation was that this was a rogue Uchiha, perhaps a descendant of one who had left the clan generations ago.
"Sarutobi, we must focus on recapturing the Nine-Tails and dealing with this masked man!" Mitokado Homura, one of the village elders, urged.
Hiruzen let out a bitter, hollow laugh. "Look at them. If we move now, we would be nothing more than cannon fodder. They wouldn't even notice us."
A heavy silence fell over the assembled shinobi. No one wanted to get between two forces of nature.
"Sarutobi! Are you just going to let the Nine-Tails escape?!" Danzo exploded, his voice shrill.
"If you believe you are strong enough, Danzo, feel free to try and stop them yourself," Hiruzen retorted coldly.
Danzo immediately fell silent. He was a survivor above all else; charging into that maelstrom was tantamount to suicide. His later "heroic" sacrifice in the original story was the final, desperate act of a dying man trying to whitewash his legacy. In reality, his hands were stained a deep, permanent black.
'Though,' Shinra might have mused from afar, 'in a world where almost every major villain gets a tragic backstory and a redemption arc, I suppose even Danzo could be painted in a sympathetic light. Except for Kaguya, poor woman. She just wanted to save the world, and she never got her "I was misunderstood" speech.'
"Mangekyo Sharingan is terrifying," Jiraiya muttered, almost to himself. "If there were a few more pairs of eyes like that, the entire shinobi world combined wouldn't stand a chance."
It was an offhand, thoughtless remark. But in the tense, paranoid atmosphere, his words landed like a declaration of war.
Sarutobi Hiruzen, Danzo, the council elders, and the leaders of every major clan—their eyes all shifted to the Uchiha contingent, their expressions hardening with deep-seated suspicion and fear.
Uchiha Tajima looked like he was about to have an aneurysm. He shot a venomous glare at Jiraiya. The Uchiha had never wronged the man, and now he had essentially painted a target on their backs with a single, careless sentence.
"What an idiot," Orochimaru hissed under his breath, shaking his head. Jiraiya had just made a powerful and dangerous enemy for the Uchiha clan.
Amidst the growing tension, only Tsunade was preoccupied with a different question. 'How can Shinra use Susanoo?'
As the only person present who knew the masked man's true identity, the sight was baffling. 'If he can help Mikoto awaken the Mangekyo,' she reasoned, 'then perhaps it's not so far-fetched that he can replicate its ultimate technique.'
She had long since given up on understanding the full extent of Shinra's abilities. His strange taijutsu, his golden light transformation... they were all secrets she chose not to pry into. Forcing the truth from him would only shatter the fragile trust between them, and that was a price she was unwilling to pay.