Chapter 114: The Advantage of Death
With a dull thud, their fists collided, the impact bursting with a sharp crack.
Kakashi ground his teeth, glaring at Minato, who was grinning like he was finally having fun.
"Minato Namikaze, how old are you?!"
"Oh? So I finally got you a little fired up?"
"You bastard!"
"It was a bit cheap, I admit," Minato said, still smiling, "but I really do want to see why you and Aizen are doing all this."
His body scattered into specks of light as he vanished, reappearing behind Kakashi just as Kakashi's fist lashed out.
Yet it was as if Kakashi had eyes in the back of his head. His heel whipped back in a perfect counter, slamming into Minato and forcing him to cross his arms in a hurried guard before he was blasted away.
No follow up came. Minato simply kept flying, suspended in the air under Kakashi's gaze.
He coughed lightly, killed his horizontal momentum, then awkwardly flashed back to his original position.
Minato had rehearsed this kind of battle in his head far too many times.
As someone who had pushed space time ninjutsu to the limit, he had prepared not only for being attacked, but had also developed responses for enemies with all kinds of abilities and fighting styles.
For example, right now: if Kakashi were sent flying, Minato would immediately mark the air with explosive tags and detonate them in Kakashi's face, using the resulting shockwaves as cover to rush in with taijutsu from every angle.
Ever since Aizen left, Minato could feel his strength climbing higher amid pain and resentment, as if every moment of suffering sharpened him further. His senses had grown razor keen, his dynamic vision nearly inhuman, his adaptability monstrous.
At this point, he could even use space time ninjutsu to unleash the equivalent of a thousand strikes in an instant, something Kakashi clearly did not know.
So why was Kakashi not attacking?
"As I said, this Zanpakuto is about accumulation, about reinforcing myself until I can win," Kakashi said.
He sounded a bit tired as he scratched at his short white hair, then picked up his gleaming sword and stepped forward.
"If my technique is lacking, I strengthen my technique. If my strength is lacking, I strengthen my strength. Whatever I am missing, I reinforce it until I can overcome my opponent. Which means that when I stand in front of you, I stand with the mindset of absolute victory."
"Oh? That is a bold statement, Kakashi," Minato replied with a crooked smile. "Especially from someone who just had their defense broken by Konoha's ultimate taijutsu."
There would not be a second time.
Kakashi looked at Minato's half smiling face and sighed, a hint of regret in his eyes.
"I wanted to make you understand with words," he said quietly. "But Aizen was right. Ninjas always advance stubbornly in the direction they believe is correct, no matter what anyone else says."
"Of course. In this world, strength still decides everything."
"Then I can only make you understand with force."
Kakashi's voice fell silent. His figure blurred and vanished.
At the same time, Minato's smile deepened, and he disappeared into the fabric of space.
The space maintained by the binding spell remained calm, nearly tranquil, with not a single visible clash. Only the rippling distortions across the ground hinted at movement, like light shimmering over the surface of water.
But from the neighboring space, the howls and detonations grew ever louder, Uchiha Kagami's roar tearing through the air like a signal.
In the next instant, the world between Minato and Kakashi erupted into overlapping afterimages, fists, feet, and fragmented space colliding everywhere at once.
"We both went straight for fists and kicks without even planning it!"
As time and space surged and tangled, Minato's surroundings flickered past him like a broken kaleidoscope. He drove his fist toward Kakashi's face, the scene skipping and shifting behind them over and over.
"But in pure hand to hand combat, do you really think you can beat me?" he called out. "No matter how many times we sparred, I was always the better one in taijutsu, and you know that."
"In essence, I will not lose."
Kakashi's snort was cold, his body twisting as his heel whipped back in another counter.
From their own perspectives, it was a straightforward close quarters brawl, fists and feet slamming together, no wasted flair.
Yet to anyone watching, their every move was being sliced apart and scattered across different points in space.
A punch thrown high in the sky would, in the instant of acceleration, flash through dozens of angles and positions before snapping back to its original arc at the last moment. To the naked eye, it was as if the two of them had multiplied into countless afterimages that covered the heavens and the ground.
The violent shockwaves from their clashes battered the semi transparent barrier, making it shudder relentlessly.
Inside the glowing prison, Kato, Tsunade, and Orochimaru stared at the godlike battle unfolding across the sky, completely at a loss for words.
If this went on forever, they would destroy everything.
To stop that from happening, Minato decided he needed to resort to a trick.
Kakashi, you will definitely see through my first move, he thought. So the real killing blow will be hidden in the second.
After dozens of exchanges, with no clear winner in sight and the fight visibly stretching on, Minato gritted his teeth, took a solid kick from Kakashi, and revealed the blade of light in his palm.
It was a chakra scalpel imbued with spatial properties, a technique he had first perfected during Jiraiya's time. In close combat, it was nearly unrivaled.
Without hesitation, Minato drove his palm strike forward, his mind already planning out the next dozens of moves that would follow.
That was when things went wrong.
The moment Kakashi saw the chakra soaked hand strike, he did not dodge. He did not block.
Under Minato's widening eyes, he straightened his back and took the unavoidable blow straight to the chest.
"...Huh?"
Whatever cutting remark Minato had been about to make died halfway out of his throat.
Like a snowflake under a magnifying glass, Kakashi's chest was cleanly pierced through by the chakra scalpel, Minato's hand punching straight through his heart.
Blood burst out in a spray behind him.
Kakashi coughed a mouthful of red across his white coat, staining it a vivid crimson.
Why?
Minato stared at his own arm buried in Kakashi's chest, blood dripping down his fingers. His mind went completely blank.
He had never intended to kill Kakashi.
Teacher, comrade, student, friend, all rolled into one. It had only been a year, but the bond between them was real, deep, and heavy. Never, even once, had he imagined killing Kakashi.
Kakashi should have slipped past the hand strike.
Minato's original plan was to force Kakashi to evade, then immediately follow up with the Hidden Six Staffs of Kido to bind him in one move. He had secretly studied those spells and understood their strength. Compared to the more lethal destructive arts, he preferred to end battles using binding techniques.
So why had it turned out like this?
Panicking, Minato yanked his hand back from Kakashi's chest.
Without that support, Kakashi's body toppled backward like a puppet with its strings severed. That one strike seemed to have crushed his heart and spine in a single instant, killing him outright.
"No, that is wrong."
Minato stared at the blood on his palm, then at Kakashi's fallen body. His pupils shrank to pinpoints. He stumbled back, two steps, three, instinctively trying to defend himself to the corpse.
"That is not how this was supposed to go. I, I did not..."
"That is why I said you do not understand anything, Minato."
The body whose heart had been pierced suddenly betrayed the laws of life and death.
It rose.
From within that ruined chest, a hand pushed out through flesh and blood.
With a sickening squelch, accompanied by splatters of gore, the arm forced its way free, tearing the corpse open as it emerged.
It looked, bizarrely, like the butterfly Minato had once seen as a child, slowly pushing out of its chrysalis.
The dead flesh peeled away, bit by bit, under that hand, revealing something untouched and pristine within.
At the same time, a crushing spiritual pressure exploded outward, at least three times stronger than Kakashi's earlier aura. It slammed down on Minato like a mountain, leaving him barely able to breathe.
A short figure, entirely distinct from the adult body being shed, slowly crawled out of the torn shell that had been Kakashi.
Like a diver breaching the surface, he took a long, deep breath of the air.
The blood sprayed across the ground began to evaporate and fade.
The former body, and the other scattered remains nearby, shriveled and withered, losing their vitality and collapsing into something like dried husks.
The boy who stepped forward rolled his shoulders, twisted his neck, then turned to look at Minato.
Kakashi.
The boy who had emerged from the corpse, Kakashi, looked at him calmly.
Dead fish eyes, the familiar mask, the same expression that mixed boredom with faint irritation.
He regarded the shaken Hokage with open disdain.
"From the beginning, our nature was completely different," he said. "Shinigami are beings ruled by the soul. Our true beginning only starts after the body dies."
"...What are you talking about?"
"Yes," Kakashi replied lightly. "This is only the start."
The glowing blade flipped in his hand as he tossed it down into the water at his feet.
All around them, vague silhouettes that had gone unnoticed until now slowly took shape, blades gleaming in their hands.
Standing amid crisscrossing light and shadow, Kakashi closed his eyes for a moment, his mind finished with whatever future he had been confirming.
"Give it to me," he said softly, "and I will collect it in your place."
Several figures flashed into existence beside Minato, appearing at his side without a sound.
Their blades leveled in unison, all aimed straight at his vital points.
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