If you like this story, check out my new one too:
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Oops, I'm Kimimaro? Guess I'll Be the Final Villain!
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(You can find the link for it on my profile page.)
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Inside the Land of Rivers, the war between Konoha and Sunagakure was tilting steadily in the Leaf's favor.
Minato and Kushina had been sent as special support, and their arrival had already started shifting the local balance of power.
Minato was at his most dangerous here, not just for his raw speed, but for the relentless psychological warfare he waged on the enemy.
Sunagakure's forces had become increasingly hesitant, their captains nervous, squads second-guessing every movement.
Nobody wanted to commit too deeply, not knowing if Minato would appear behind their lines in the next instant.
Paranoia crept through the sand-nin ranks like poison.
He had marked half the battlefield already, scattering Flying Raijin kunai everywhere, hidden in tree trunks, under rocks, even on the boots of fleeing enemy shinobi.
Traps were set, safe zones for Konoha established, escape routes and chokepoints mapped out with surgical precision.
Every marker was a threat, a warning that nowhere was truly safe from the Yellow Flash.
Tonight, the enemy's elite ANBU reinforcements moved quietly along a riverbank, cloaked and careful, trying to break through to rescue a surrounded Suna commander.
They had no idea Minato and Kushina were 'watching' from miles away, across the front.
Kushina's world-class sensory skills picked up the faintest tremor of enemy chakra across the vast distance, and Minato's eyes flashed as he gripped her hand.
Their chakra synchronized smoothly, Minato's focus sharpening, Kushina's reserves steady and strong.
In an instant, he teleported them both to a marker he'd left earlier, nearest to where Kushina sensed them from miles away, right in the path of the moving Suna ANBU unit.
The ambush was immediate.
Kushina reacted first; her Adamantine Sealing Chains erupted outward, the golden-red chakra splitting the night as they formed a barrier all around, cutting off every possible escape.
With a flick of her wrists, she sent more chains crashing into the advancing ANBU, pinning limbs, locking bodies, and starting to suppress their chakra before they could even react.
Minato, meanwhile, zeroed in on the leader, a masked figure whose aura screamed danger.
Sunagakure's ANBU captain, the kind of opponent that could change the flow of a battle if left unchecked.
"Big fish," Minato thought, vanishing again with a flicker of yellow light and reappearing directly behind the captain.
He didn't hesitate. In a single, fluid motion, he aimed a kunai for the shoulder joint, a disabling strike, not an instant kill just yet.
At the same time, his other hand traced two seals on the man's back, at the same time, attempting to both lock the ANBU's chakra while also marking him with the Flying Raijin seal, stopping him from using any last-ditch technique.
But the Suna ANBU Commander wasn't just any target.
The moment he sensed Minato's chakra, through his enhanced sensory mode due to his Wind Release mastery, and felt the sealing formula searing into his cloak, the man's reaction was instantaneous.
He surged with chakra, wind whirling around his body in a violent cyclone.
With a flash of hand signs, the leader invoked a high-level Wind Release: Thoughtless Airspace, his chakra synchronizing with the entire atmosphere for meters around.
In a heartbeat, he "saw" every mark, every flicker of Minato's movement, his own body outlined in Minato's senses like a glowing silhouette in the gale.
Minato's kunai and jutsu shiki tag vanished, swept away by an invisible air current.
In the same instant, the ANBU captain took to the sky, feet leaving the ground as swirling wind lifted him higher.
Whip-like gusts lashed out at Minato's markers, sending them spinning away, disrupting any attempt at creating safe landing zones.
He came back down with a barrage, Wind Release: Wind Dragon Bullet, a serpentine mass of slicing chakra roaring across the field, jaws snapping shut where Minato had been an instant before.
But Minato was already gone, reappearing high into the air, where another special kunai passed, only to be forced back by another technique, Wind Release: Wild Soar, hurling the man into a sudden spiral high overhead.
The commander grinned from behind his mask, wind chakra swirling black and silver around him, Shadow Wind Release.
The very air seemed to blur, distorting space, the dark wind not only cutting through the battlefield but clouding Minato's senses, pressing on his mind as well as his body.
For the first time in a long time, Minato felt a real thrill of danger.
'So that's the trick. Wind and Yin... He's a sensor, a barrier, and an attacker all in one. He can counter my tags and keep me from getting a direct approach…'
But Minato wasn't called the Yellow Flash for nothing.
He responded in an instant, calculating.
While the commander's wind attacks could repel his kunai and cut his escape routes, they still couldn't erase every mark.
Minato flickered forward, transporting all over the ground to the already thrown kunai, now there, unleashing an upward, unpredictable, wide, rapid sequence of Flying Raijin kunai, each one disappearing into the storm, only to be thrown back again by a gale.
He pivoted, hoping and teleporting between the markers at dizzying speed, keeping just ahead of the dark wind's grasp.
But the enemy pressed in, launching another Wind Dragon God, larger, winged, a living storm of compressed wind and shadow, detonating with an explosion of cutting gales that threatened to sweep the field.
Minato didn't retreat.
Instead, he activated his trump card, Flying Thunder God: Guiding Thunder.
He formed the hand seals in a flash, placed his palm carefully in the air, as an ink-like, sealing formula barrier erupted around him, glowing with the Flying Raijin symbols.
The wind dragon slammed into the barrier and vanished, instantly warped away, scattered to another marked location miles from the battlefield.
The enemy ANBU captain faltered, momentarily stunned by the sudden turn, his focus wavering for just an instant.
Minato seized the opening. He hurled another kunai upward, letting it arc just beyond the man's reach before disappearing in a blur.
The captain whipped around midair, lashing out with Wind Whips in all directions again soon, but Minato reappeared above him in the next instant, already gathering his largest Rasengan, raw chakra swirling to dwarf the enemy's wind.
With a single decisive motion, he slammed it downward, overwhelming the barrier of air and forcing the captain into a full defensive retreat.
In the same breath, Minato executed the Flying Thunder God: Second Step, vanishing as another kunai sailed past, in the meantime, and materializing in the enemy's blind spot just as the Suna ANBU tried to counter.
'Flying Raijin… there's no defending against something that erases distance itself... Even with my wind... So this is what they meant… by the Yellow Flash...' The man realized in that frozen instant that Minato was already there.
So, before the captain could react, Minato struck, sealing the outcome in a heartbeat.
Minato's hand flashed, tagging him with a new seal, and teleported him, body and chakra both, directly into Kushina's barrier below.
The enemy hit the ground hard, Adamantine Chains already snaring him, chakra sealed, mind reeling from the sudden reversal.
"You read the air well," he said, voice calm, almost polite. "But you missed the point, you can't read what isn't there."
For a moment, silence reigned, then Minato landed lightly next to Kushina, eyes cool, voice even. Kushina's chains tightened, sealing the enemy for transport.
All across the field, Sunagakure's survivors felt the shift; their strongest falling, and their morale dropped another notch.
Minato only glanced once more at the fallen leader, in the distance, then prepared his next kunai, already scanning for the next threat.
They needed him alive for intelligence.
Minato had quickly deduced that, based on his strength and command presence, this was likely the true leader of Suna's ANBU.
That's why Minato didn't finish him off with a Rasengan, for example.
The battle was over before most even realized it had begun.
The rest of the Suna unit, meanwhile, barely had time to shout.
Kushina's chains whipped through the formation, slamming several into the ground and suppressing their jutsu before they could even attempt to counter.
The entire encounter was over in seconds; the enemy left dazed, disarmed, and surrounded.
Minato glanced at Kushina, shared a brief nod, then split into several clones in an instant.
Together, they scattered his special Flying Raijin kunai across the battlefield, each flash of yellow light marking another trap, another escape, another strike waiting to happen.
Within seconds, the field was alive with glimmers of gold, and panic spread through the enemy ranks.
Kushina, meanwhile, increased her chakra output further and finished her preparation completely; even more chains burst out of her.
Adamantine Sealing Chains were a rare fusion of more Yin Release and high-level fuinjutsu, living seals shaped into form.
Unlike ordinary restraint techniques, these chains carried tangible chakra signatures that not only physically pierced and oddly suppressed movement on contact but also gradually drained and sealed away the target's chakra that Kushina could later access herself through the chains.
So, the victims held too long were also left more limp than before right away, and eventually lifeless since their entire chakra was stripped clean, and their bodies, like all bodies, couldn't function without it.
It was no coincidence that this stood as the highest standard of the Uzumaki clan's sealing arts, a technique that defined their mastery.
Kushina had long mastered the art of layering these chains, but now even molding their lengths and thickness, and sizes depending on the need, even embedding some pre-sealed elemental releases within them, which only the most advanced Uzumaki holders of the technique could perform as well.
Water and Wind, for instance, were the most fitting elements for her version; fire or lightning would have made the chains far deadlier, but she personally lacked those two affinities.
Instead, she refined her mastery over pressure and cutting force, shaping her seals to unleash slicing torrents of wind and crushing waves of compressed water, attacks that could kill instantly on direct, fast impact or slowly crush their victims if caught within their grip.
Now she unleashed that full potential against the Suna forces.
Chains of shimmering blue light tore through the battlefield, binding and sealing as torrents of compressed wind and water burst along their paths, cutting off escape routes, grinding through defenses, and wearing the enemy down with relentless precision.
The dual nature of wind and water made the technique even more effective: wind for piercing and disorienting, water for pressure and weight.
Together, they restrained movement even more competently and were gradually grinding the body itself.
Meanwhile, Minato's golden flashes struck between the chaos, cutting down any who still tried to regroup.
So, in less than a few minutes, the elite Suna ANBU reinforcements, nearly a hundred strong, were gone.
This was the advantage Konoha held: precision, teamwork, and power that could end a skirmish before it ever truly began.
The Sand's most dangerous soldiers, neutralized in an instant.
The message would spread; there was nowhere left to run from the Yellow Flash and the Red Habanero. And with each victory like this, Sunagakure's morale cracked just a little more.