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Nagato felt Chiba's words reach him like a spear through the dark.
It wasn't just that Chiba had guessed. He had spoken with the calm certainty of someone stating a known fact - casually tearing open the secret of the Rinnegan and the truth behind the Six Paths as if those mysteries had never been mysteries at all. In that moment, shock surged through Nagato so violently his eyes widened, his breathing catching as a cold dread crawled up his spine.
In his understanding, no one else should have known.
No one in this world should have been able to name the Rinnegan's mechanisms so cleanly, much less see through the puppet bodies and the hidden controller behind them.
And yet Chiba had done it with a faint smile, like it cost him nothing.
That effortless clarity didn't simply threaten Nagato's plan - it threatened his faith in the power that had defined his life. For the first time in a long while, fear - sharp, unfamiliar, humiliating - flashed through him.
On the battlefield, wearing the face of a god, Pain's Deva Path stared at Chiba and spoke with a low, final weight.
"It seems," he said, voice hardening, "you truly must die."
Chiba's expression didn't change. His smile remained soft, almost warm, though the meaning underneath was ice.
"If you can do it," he replied, "then go ahead and try."
While Chiba and Pain's Six Paths clashed at the summit of the battlefield, Turtle Island had already become a furnace.
Jiraiya and Konan's teacher-student battle leaned quickly toward Jiraiya's victory. Konan's Shikigami no Mai ("Dance of the Shikigami") was elegant and lethal - paper storms that sliced, wrapped, and suffocated - but she was still fighting a shinobi who had survived decades of war. The Legendary Sannin's experience showed in every step, every feint, every moment he refused to panic.
Her paper techniques surged forward and were met by Jiraiya's Katon, burned away before they could tighten into a kill. When Jiraiya's Ran Shishō no Jutsu ("Wild Lion's Mane Technique") tried to bind her, she slipped free with a technique that shed physical restraint like shedding skin. The fight moved like that - Konan striking with precision and invention, Jiraiya answering with endurance and ruthless practicality.
Then experience closed the trap.
Jiraiya's Gamayu Endan ("Toad Oil Flame Bullet") splashed across her paper constructs. Oil clung to her, soaked into the technique, and robbed it of its greatest advantage. Paper couldn't shift freely when it was weighed down and glued in place. Konan stiffened, her movement cut off, her transformation halted - trapped.
Jiraiya stood over her, breathing steady. If he used Katon now, he could end it.
But Konan wasn't only an enemy.
She was a student.
His eyes tightened, not with hesitation - but with pain.
So he didn't kill her. He restrained her, forced her still, and then turned away, searching for where his help mattered most.
His gaze found Kakashi.
Kakashi was fighting the masked man called "Tobi" - the one who had once claimed the name Uchiha Madara. Jiraiya knew what that shadow meant. This was the architect behind the Kyuubi incident, the unseen hand tied to Namikaze Minato's death, and one of the forces that had moved in the darkness on the night of the Uchiha massacre.
For Konohagakure, he was a disaster waiting to happen again.
For Jiraiya, he was personal.
So Jiraiya moved to intervene.
By then Kakashi was being pressed back little by little. He was formidable - feared, respected, and dangerous - but the Sharingan he used wasn't his bloodline. It had been given to him by Uchiha Obito, and no matter how perfectly Kakashi wielded it, it wasn't the same as a true Uchiha. Meanwhile, the masked man used his Mangekyō almost without cost, aided by Hashirama's cells, pouring out dōjutsu as if he had no limits.
Kakashi began to slip toward a disadvantage.
Yet even then, the masked man couldn't simply erase him. Kakashi had always been the kind of shinobi who refused to lose cleanly - every retreat hid a calculation.
When Jiraiya arrived, the battlefield pressure shifted sharply.
No shinobi could face both Jiraiya and Kakashi at once and call it comfortable.
Jiraiya landed beside him. "Kakashi - have you analyzed his ability yet?"
Kakashi's voice stayed steady, but there was tension beneath it. "Yes. His most troublesome ability is that Mangekyō space-time technique. It looks like he can become intangible - avoid any attack entirely."
His eye narrowed. "But I've started forming a hypothesis. I need a partner to verify it."
He glanced at Jiraiya. "Jiraiya-sama… help me."
Jiraiya nodded once. "Alright."
Elsewhere, Deidara was locked in a brutal engagement with Akatsuchi, the son of Tsuchikage Ōnoki.
Deidara had once been Ōnoki's disciple - more than that, his proudest. If he hadn't defected, he might have been the next Tsuchikage. But that path was already ash.
Akatsuchi showed no mercy.
Deidara's explosive clay techniques tore the air apart again and again, but Akatsuchi's Doton was heavy and frightening, swallowing blasts that would have erased ordinary shinobi outright. At the same time, Deidara couldn't recklessly use his true finishing arts. C4 Karura was indiscriminate - once released, it killed allies and enemies alike with invisible nano-bombs. C3 and C0 were no different, each one a massacre that didn't care who stood nearby.
So Deidara began dragging the fight outward, searching for open ground - somewhere he could go all-in, even if it meant dying for his "art."
On another front, Sasori of the Red Sand fought a battle soaked in old blood.
He faced Gaara and Kankurō together.
Gaara had lost Shukaku - he was no longer a jinchūriki - but his power hadn't fallen. If anything, it had become more terrifying. Without a bijuu's will stirring inside him, his sand moved with cleaner precision and heavier intent. His chakra flowed without needing to suppress a tailed beast's rampage, making his offense and defense feel seamless - like the desert itself had decided to obey.
And the truth was, being a jinchūriki was never the only reason someone like Gaara was strong.
It was the opposite.
Only those with extraordinary chakra reserves and iron will could be chosen to contain a bijuu in the first place. The Uzumaki clan had long been proof of that. Gaara was proving it now.
Beside him, Kankurō summoned the puppets Chiyo had entrusted to him - Father and Mother, Sasori's earliest creations, shaped from grief and longing. To Sasori, they were a wound. To Kankurō, they were a vow - Chiyo's last command given form.
Then Sasori revealed his greatest puppet.
The Sandaime Kazekage.
The sight ignited rage so sharp it almost drowned out reason. For Gaara and Kankurō, it confirmed the truth behind an old mystery: the Third Kazekage's disappearance had never been a mystery at all.
Sasori had killed him.
Their battle erupted into something even more violent - sand, puppets, poison, and fury colliding with the weight of years.
Across Turtle Island, Akatsuki's members - Shimura Danzō, Kakuzu, Uchiha Itachi - were locked in fierce battles of their own, each one held back by elite shinobi from the Five Great Nations.
But the turning point that threatened to flip the entire war -
was the sudden arrival of the jinchūriki.
They had broken the barrier.
As planned underground, the combined force of six jinchūriki had torn the seal apart. No defensive barrier could endure that kind of unified, bijuu-backed output. The hidden chamber exploded open, and four figures surged out toward the battlefield.
Yugito Nii.
Miru.
Utakata.
Killer B.
They charged without hesitation.
Fū and Naruto - too young and still unready - were kept back by force, sealed inside the hidden base despite their protests.
The moment the four jinchūriki arrived, the battlefield's rhythm changed. The air itself felt heavier, as if the world had recognized that truly monstrous power had entered the field.
Chiba's brows tightened slightly. He hadn't expected them to actually shatter the barrier and rush out.
But when he thought about it, it was only natural.
Jinchūriki weren't tools. They weren't cargo. They were people - people with pride, will, and an unwillingness to hide underground while others bled for them. In the original timeline, Naruto and Killer B had forced their way out to join the Fourth Great Ninja War as well.
Chiba could only exhale and give a rueful shake of his head.
Then Killer B roared.
And the battlefield learned, again, what a perfect jinchūriki truly meant.
In a heartbeat, Killer B underwent complete bijuu transformation, becoming the full form of the Hachibi - Gyūki. A tidal wave of chakra erupted outward, violent enough to make even veteran shinobi stiffen in alarm. In raw destructive power, Killer B stood near the very top of the shinobi world - high enough to rival even Pain's Six Paths in sheer impact.
His presence alone could change a war.
And he wasn't alone.
Yugito, an elite shinobi of Kumogakure, moved with fierce control - her power beneath Killer B's, but still far beyond ordinary standards.
Miru - now a perfect jinchūriki - stood shockingly close to the level of Yondaime Mizukage Yagura. In pure combat ability, she surpassed Yugito outright.
Utakata hadn't reached perfect control, but he could enter partial transformation and draw on terrifying bijuu chakra, enough to turn any battlefield into a hazard zone.
Four jinchūriki joining at once sent allied morale soaring.
And it drained color from Akatsuki's faces.
These were their targets - yet the targets had arrived by choice, and they were fighting.
Then Gyūki moved.
Killer B unleashed Hachibi Hachiken ("Eight-Tails Eight Twists"), a violent burst of power that became a roaring chakra storm. The ground tore up, Turtle Island's shell shuddered, and the Edo Tensei troops were blown away like leaves in a hurricane. No one - no matter who they had been in life - could brace against that level of destruction.
Killer B shouted with his usual bravado. "This is the real me! Time to make you cry - Eight-Tails Killer B is here, fool! Dummy! Oh yeah!"
Gyūki snapped at him. "Enough of that annoying rap!"
Then the bijuu's voice turned sharp and practical. "Those are Edo Tensei dead. You can knock them back, but you can't kill them again."
"Use sealing. Seal the strong ones."
Killer B grinned. "OK!"
He moved immediately, unleashing the sealing art he and Gyūki used together.
Ika Fūin ("Octopus Seal")!
Gyūki's ink erupted and shaped itself into thick-bodied humanoid forms - ink clones that rushed the reanimated elites and locked them down in crushing holds. A few seconds was all it took. The targets hardened into sealed, ink-black blocks - fixed, immobilized, neutralized.
Yugito's eyes flashed with approval. "Nice work, B!"
She joined the fight at once.
Miru entered complete bijuu transformation as well, her Sanbi form emerging as she unleashed massive Suiton attacks that crashed across the battlefield like moving lakes. Utakata drew on bijuu chakra and released Suiton: Awa no Jutsu ("Water Release: Bubble Technique"), sending countless bubbles drifting through the air - harmless until they touched an enemy, where they erupted into brutal chain explosions.
With the jinchūriki fighting, the battlefield began to tilt hard in one direction.
Kabuto's expression turned ugly. The revived shinobi he valued most - his strongest pieces - were being sealed one after another. And this wasn't temporary. Once sealed, they could no longer be summoned again through Edo Tensei.
It was permanent loss.
His jaw clenched in fury.
Then another blow landed.
Might Guy defeated Might Duy and Hatake Sakumo. The allied sealing squad surged in and sealed them immediately. Even as they were taken, both men wore faint smiles, offering their sons a final farewell - proud, unburdened, with no regrets left behind.
Killer B continued sealing reanimated elites, including powerful members of the Uchiha and Hyūga clans.
Pain's Six Paths watched it all, their expressions darkening by the second.
Akatsuki's members were being held back by the Five Great Nations' elites. Konan had fallen to Jiraiya. Edo Tensei elites were being sealed one by one. Chiba had pierced the secret behind the Six Paths.
If this continued -
Akatsuki would be crushed.
Pain's Deva Path let out a furious roar, the sound ripping through smoke and chaos. He finally decided to stake everything on one last surge of chakra and will.
"Chiba!" he shouted. "It's time to settle this for good!"
In one decisive act, the Deva Path drew chakra from the other Paths, siphoning their power into itself until the remaining bodies went slack and collapsed, unconscious and unmoving.
Chiba noticed immediately.
In the original story, Pain had done this to unleash Chō Shinra Tensei ("Ultra Almighty Push") - to flatten Konohagakure and force the world to "know pain."
But now the buildup felt different.
Not an outward blast.
Something heavier.
Something that pulled.
The Deva Path brought its hands together with a sharp clap.
Then, slowly - deliberately - Pain spoke his final trump card, each syllable falling like judgment.
"Chibaku Tensei ("Planetary Devastation")!!!"
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