The forest border between the Land of Fire and the Land of Earth didn't look like a battlefield; it looked like a geological argument.
Minato moved faster than thought. He was a yellow streak in the midday sun, weaving between trees that were actively bursting into flame. He held a kunai in a reverse grip, throwing his body weight into a strike aimed at the joints of the armored giant before him.
Clang.
The metal didn't yield.
Han, the Jinchūriki of the Five-Tails, stood like a statue cast in iron and steam. He was massive, his red armor hissing as internal pressure built up. He didn't block Minato's strike; he simply ignored it.
"Too light," Han rumbled, his voice muffled by his mask.
Steam erupted from the vents on Han's back—a scalding, high-pressure shriek. It wasn't an attack; it was propulsion. Han didn't move to engage; he moved to create distance, blasting himself backward through three oak trees with the force of a runaway train.
Acceptance through distance, Minato analyzed, skidding to a halt on a mossy branch. He moves so fast and hits so hard that nothing can get close enough to hurt him. He isolates the monster by isolating himself.
To his left, the forest screamed.
Rōshi, the Four-Tails Jinchūriki, was a different kind of nightmare. He didn't run. He walked forward, his beard wild, his skin glowing with the heat of molten rock. He spat a glob of lava onto the ground, watching the earth hiss and melt into slag.
"Burn it," Rōshi grunted, stepping into the puddle of magma as if it were a warm bath. "Burn it before it burns you."
Acceptance through domination, Minato thought, sweat stinging his eyes. He controls the beast by being more destructive than it is.
Minato tightened his grip on his kunai. They were powerful. They were awe-inspiring.
And they were exactly what he refused to let Kushina become.
"Wind Style: Great Breakthrough!"
Dekai, Minato's teammate, lunged from the canopy. He was a good shinobi—solid, reliable, with lungs like bellows. He unleashed a vortex of cutting wind aimed at Rōshi's exposed back.
It was a perfect ambush. Against a human.
Rōshi didn't even turn around. He simply flared his chakra. A coat of molten rubber and fire expanded from his skin, catching the wind blade and eating it.
"Weak," Rōshi spat.
The old Iwa-nin whipped around, a fist coated in lava swinging in a wide arc.
"Dekai, move!" Minato shouted, flashing forward.
He was too late. The heat wave alone caught Dekai in mid-air. The wind user screamed as the superheated air scorched his lungs, throwing him backward into a limestone cliff face.
CRACK.
Dekai slid down the rocks, his flak jacket smoking, his eyes rolling back.
"I got him!"
Jiraiya slammed into the ground between Rōshi and the fallen boy. The Sannin's white mane was wild, his face grim. He scooped Dekai up with one arm, leaping backward as a geyser of lava erupted where they had just been standing.
Dekai groaned, his head lolling against Jiraiya's chest, blinking up at the white hair framing the Sannin's face.
"I thought..." Dekai wheezed, his voice dreamy and hypoxic. "I thought I just saw heaven..."
Jiraiya leaped to a high branch, looking down at the boy with a mix of relief and annoyance.
"Thank you for the compliment," Jiraiya deadpanned, shifting Dekai's weight. "But I'm into ladies."
Below them, Rōshi prepared to jump, his legs coiling with magma-enhanced strength.
"Uchiha!" Jiraiya barked. "Cover!"
Habaki Uchiha stepped out from behind a tree. He was young, nervous, his Sharingan spinning frantically as he tried to track the monsters. He inhaled, his chest expanding.
"Fire Style: Ash Pile Burning!"
It wasn't a fireball. It was a cloud of superheated gunpowder ash and smoke. He breathed a thick, gray fog that blanketed the clearing, obscuring Rōshi's vision and clogging Han's steam vents.
"It won't hold them!" Habaki yelled, retreating to Minato's side. "My fire is nothing compared to that lava!"
Minato landed beside Habaki. He looked at the smoke cloud. He looked at his team—battered, scorched, outclassed.
This was a failing war of attrition. He could hit them a thousand times, and they would heal. If they hit him once, he was dead.
"We need to leave," Minato said, his voice calm despite the chaos. "Now."
As if hearing him, the smoke cloud turned red.
The air pressure dropped. It wasn't a subtle shift; it felt like the entire atmosphere had been sucked into a vacuum. The birds stopped singing. The wind stopped blowing.
Gravity bent.
Through the haze, two lights appeared. One purple, one crimson.
Rōshi and Han had stopped playing.
They opened their mouths.
Minato's eyes widened. He didn't look away. His mind, honed by years of studying sealing formulas, clicked into hyper-focus. Time seemed to slow down to a crawl.
He watched the chakra gather.
It wasn't just energy. It was a ratio.
Positive black chakra. Negative white chakra.
He saw the particles coalescing in front of their mouths. They were heavy, dense, screaming with power. But they weren't exploding. Not yet.
They were rotating.
Minato watched the spin. The chakra was being compressed, forced into a sphere by opposing currents. It was a storm contained in a bottle. The wind screamed inward, pulled by the gravity of the density.
Rotation, Minato realized, his blue eyes reflecting the terrifying light of the bombs. Compression. Containment.
Rōshi controlled it by burning it. Han controlled it by venting it.
But the bomb itself... the bomb was stable. It was a perfect sphere of chaos held together by a shell of pure will.
Minato looked at the black sphere. He didn't see a weapon of mass destruction. He saw a solution.
He thought of the ice pops exploding in his hand. He thought of the two galaxies shearing apart.
I was trying to make a shell, he realized. I should have been making a core.
He thought of Kushina. He thought of the cold void in her stomach, the hatred pressing against her skin, the barrier she lived under. She was fighting a war every single second to keep that chaos from tearing her apart.
"THEY'RE FIRING!" Habaki screamed, his voice cracking.
The smoke swirled. The Tailed Beast Bombs were fully formed, dense balls of void that warped the light around them.
Rōshi and Han reared back.
"Everyone to me!" Minato commanded. It wasn't a suggestion.
He threw a kunai. It wasn't aimed at the enemy. It was aimed at the branch where Jiraiya was holding Dekai.
Jiraiya understood instantly. He grabbed the kunai out of the air.
Minato grabbed Habaki's flak jacket.
The Tailed Beast Bombs launched. Two beams of annihilation tore through the forest, disintegrating trees, rocks, and air. They converged on Minato's position in a blinding cross of destruction.
Minato didn't flinch. He visualized the mark on the kunai handle in Jiraiya's hand. He visualized the spatial coordinates of the safe house three miles away.
He held the image of the spinning sphere in his mind.
Zip.
The clearing vanished.
An instant later, the forest border was erased in a dome of white light and fire, mushroom clouds rising to touch the heavens.
Three miles away, in a quiet clearing, four figures tumbled onto the grass.
Minato landed in a crouch, breathing hard, his hand trembling slightly. Not from fear. From revelation.
He looked at his palm. He curled his fingers, imagining the rotation, the density, the balance.
If that could be held... Minato thought, the concept locking into place like a key in a seal. So can she.
It wasn't about overpowering the Fox. It was about creating a shape strong enough to hold it.