Naruto: The Rise of Kurama

Chapter 92 92: Ten-Tails

Madara was running out of space to retreat.

Kushina pressed him across the dead valley, her chains carving furrows in the earth wherever he'd stood a half-second before. The sage mode layered over her chakra mode had pushed her beyond anything he could match- every exchange left new cuts on his armor, new gashes in his skin, new evidence that this fight had only one possible ending.

He blocked a chain strike with his forearm and the impact drove him back three meters, his feet gouging trenches in the brittle grass. Before he could recover, two more chains lashed toward his flanks. He twisted between them with reflexes trained through countless battles, but Kushina was already there, her fist connecting with his guard hard enough to send shockwaves rippling through the air.

"You're slower than you were at Akagakure," she observed, pressing her advantage with another wave of chains. "Age catching up with you?"

Madara didn't waste breath on a response. He wove through her attacks with increasing desperation, his Rinnegan tracking every chain, every shift in her stance, every flicker of killing intent. His experience was the only thing keeping him alive, and they both knew it wasn't enough.

He's going to try something, Kurama warned. He's too calm for someone who's losing this badly.

Kushina had noticed it too. Despite being driven back, despite the blood running from a dozen wounds, Madara's eyes held no panic. He was waiting for her to overextend, to leave a gap between herself and the statue.

Her gaze flickered to the Gedo Statue looming behind him. The massive construct pulsed with tailed beast chakra, its eight open eyes blazing like beacons in the dead landscape.

Kushina surged forward, abandoning measured offense for overwhelming aggression. Her chains erupted in all directions, a forest of golden links that left no avenue of escape. Madara blocked, dodged, and deflected- yet still took hits. A chain grazed his shoulder and tore through armor to the flesh beneath. Another clipped his thigh and staggered his stance.

"Minato," she called through the communication seal. "Cut off his retreat to the statue."

Yellow light flashed at the edge of her vision as Minato materialized between Madara and the Gedo Statue. The Hokage held a kunai in each hand, his expression focused despite his exhaustion.

Madara's eyes narrowed. For the first time since the battle began, Kushina saw genuine frustration cross his features.

"You've learned to coordinate," he said. "Impressive, for a group that tried to kill each other not long ago."

"Circumstances change." Kushina closed the distance between them, her chains already reaching for his limbs. "You should have killed me when you had the chance."

"Perhaps." Madara made no move to defend himself, which made her hesitate for a fraction of a second. "But I've always preferred to see what my enemies are capable of before I destroy them."

He clapped his hands together in a seal she didn't recognize.

The Gedo Statue's mouth opened.

Kushina felt the surge of chakra before she saw its effects- a massive pulse that radiated outward from the statue and washed over the battlefield. It wasn't an attack. The energy passed through her without causing damage, through Minato and Nagato as well.

But where the chakra touched the ground between Madara and the statue, the earth began to shift.

A strange pot emerged from the earth where the chakra had touched it. It was amber in color and had a thick white rope tied around its rim. It leaked traces of a familiar red chakra.

Kushina understood immediately. "Minato, stop him!"

Madara exploded toward the statue with speed he hadn't shown throughout the entire fight. Minato flickered to intercept, his kunai flashing toward Madara's throat-

A Limbo clone caught Minato mid-teleport. The shadow was invisible to the Hokage's eyes, and its fist drove into his stomach with enough force to send him crashing into the hillside thirty meters away.

Kushina pivoted and launched herself toward Madara, her chains extending ahead of her like spears. She was faster than him, and strong enough to tear through whatever defense he raised. She would reach him in time.

She didn't.

Madara's hand touched the Gedo Statue's surface just as her chains reached him.

Red chakra erupted from the amber pot- unmistakably Kurama's signature chakra- and spiraled into the Gedo Statue like water into a drain.

The statue shuddered. Its stone shell cracked. Light poured through the fissures- a sickly white radiance that made Kushina's skin crawl.

Madara leapt backward as the transformation began, and Kushina's chains found only empty air where he'd stood. She pivoted to pursue, but the chakra pressure exploding from the statue drove her back a step, then another.

The Gedo Statue exploded.

Kushina threw herself backward as chunks of stone the size of houses rained across the valley. When the dust cleared, Madara stood untouched at the crater's edge, and behind him-

The Ten-Tails.

It was massive- larger than any tailed beast Kushina had ever sensed, larger than Kurama's full form, larger than anything that should be able to exist in the physical world. Its body was wrong: a bulbous, twisted thing with ten tails whipping behind it, a single eye dominating its face, no mouth or features beyond that terrible cyclopean gaze. It looked less like a living creature and more like a natural disaster given flesh.

The chakra pressure was suffocating. Kushina had thought the ambient energy from the Gedo Statue was intense, but this was orders of magnitude worse. Even with her sage mode and Kurama's power flooding her system, she felt like an ant standing in the shadow of a mountain.

That's what I came from, Kurama said. His mental voice was flat, clinical. The Sage of Six Paths split that thing into nine pieces and scattered us across the world. He thought it would be safer that way.

Kurama-

That thing shouldn't exist. The old man was right to destroy it.

Nagato's voice crackled through the communication seal, strained with pain: "Kushina, what is that?"

"The Ten-Tails." Kushina kept her eyes on Madara, who stood before the beast with an expression of naked hunger. "Madara completed the summoning. We need to stop him before he merges with it."

She stopped.

The Ten-Tails was looking at her.

No- it was looking at Kurama. Its single eye had fixed on the chakra signature burning inside her chest, and she could feel its attention like a physical pressure against her mind. Recognition.

It knows you, she said.

It knows what I am. What I was, before the Sage divided it. Kurama paused, and when he spoke again, his voice carried an unfamiliar note of consideration. The chakra, Kushina. Can you feel it?

She could. Now that he'd drawn her attention to it, she could sense the tailed beast energy radiating off the Ten-Tails in waves. It was calling to Kurama- recognizing him as the missing piece, the ninth fragment that would make it whole again.

But it was also leaking. The Ten-Tails was so massive, its power so overwhelming, that chakra bled off it in streams and eddies. The energy that had once belonged to Kurama's siblings was everywhere, saturating the battlefield.

I can absorb it, Kurama said. Not all of it, but the fragments, the pieces bleeding off... I can pull them toward us.

Will that weaken the Ten-Tails?

Marginally. It might not even notice. Kurama's mental voice turned thoughtful. But if we survive this fight, that power could be useful.

Kushina didn't hesitate. Do it.

She felt Kurama reach out through their bond, extending tendrils of chakra toward the energy bleeding off the Ten-Tails. The fragments came willingly, drawn to him like iron filings to a magnet. They weren't much, but they flowed into Kurama and settled there, waiting.

Madara was already moving.