The forest filled with chaos.
Hundreds of Narutos rushed in all directions like a tidal wave, trying to disorient the enemy with numbers.
Orochimaru stood in the center of this hurricane. A smile played on his face—the smile of a vivisectionist who had been brought too many lab mice.
"Quantity does not replace quality," he rustled, his voice audible even through the noise.
He casually waved his hands. An endless stream of snakes burst from his wide sleeves. A living wave of scales and venom. The snakes elongated, intertwined, attacking with unnatural precision. Each snake found its clone.
POP.
POP. POP.
White puffs of smoke began to flare here and there, but there were too many clones. They continued to scatter, distracting, hindering, blocking the view.
Orochimaru's eyes narrowed. He was already bored with this game.
"Fūton: Daitoppa! (Wind Release: Great Breakthrough)"
The Sannin wove signs and exhaled.
A wall of compressed air, comparable to the shockwave of an explosion, swept through the area.
The forest groaned. Trees bent into arcs, most of the foliage stripped instantly.
The remnants of the clone army that hadn't yet been destroyed by snakes were caught in this press. They were simply swept away. Hundreds of bodies popped simultaneously, merging into a single giant cloud of smoke that was immediately dispersed by the same wind.
An entire clearing was cleared in a couple of dozen seconds.
Naruto, hiding behind the crown of a tall oak and suppressing his chakra to a minimum, felt a chill run down his spine.
He cleared the entire battlefield with one attack, the thought raced through his mind. Hundreds of shadow clones... simply erased. A terrifying gap in power.
Qi Sensory worked at its limit, scanning every movement of the enemy. But even it didn't manage to warn of the danger.
Orochimaru, standing below, suddenly jerked his head up. His golden eyes with vertical pupils finally found the original.
"And here is the head," he hissed, licking his lips with a long, forked tongue. "Hiding, are we?"
He shot upward. Uzumaki couldn't run. The enemy was too fast.
"Kage Bunshin!"
Four clones appeared in the air before him, creating a living shield to take the hit. But Orochimaru ignored the doubles, slipping between them.
The Sannin appeared right in front of the real Naruto. Blue, cold flame burned on his fingertips.
"Gogyō Fūin! (Five Elements Seal)"
A seal! Realization struck, sharp as a needle. He wants to block my Chakra! Sever my connection to the Fox!
This was the end. Dodging was impossible.
But he didn't panic. His mind, accelerated by meditation, had already made a desperate decision.
I never used this, fearing the consequences... but there is no choice. Either risk burning from the inside or inevitable death from the outside.
Naruto closed his eyes and focused. A stream of Qi focused on his mind, creating a dense protective shell. His consciousness turned inward, to the golden cage.
Fox! I need your power! Right now!
Two huge red eyes, full of malice, flashed from the darkness.
"Hmph! Is the 'white magic' no longer enough? Well... since you ask, jailer!"
An ocean of red, scorching, dense power flooded his chakra channels.
"GET AWAY!" Uzumaki roared with a double voice.
Explosion.
Not just a chakra release. A detonation.
The surrounding snakes, along with the clones, incinerated in mid-air.
Orochimaru's glowing fingers, dangerously close to the boy's black jacket, slammed into this wall of dense, boiling energy.
Then he was flung aside like a doll. He somersaulted in the air and landed on a nearby tree, looking at his hand with interest. His fingertips smoked, the skin peeled off. He looked up.
Naruto stood upright in the One-Tail Cloak.
The tree bark beneath his feet charred and blackened. The air around him trembled, creating a heat haze effect like over hot asphalt. Wood chips and leaves caught in the aura's radius slowly rose, defying gravity, and burned up.
Red chakra bubbled, eyes turned crimson, a tail materialized behind his back, whipping the air and leaving fiery trails. But there was no madness visible in his eyes.
There was icy calculation.
"Oh..." the Sannin exhaled, shaking off ash. "The seal is broken? No... just cracked open. So you retain your sanity? But how? Such a concentration of power should have crushed your mind."
Usually, Jinchūriki in a state of rage growl, rampage, lose control.
The blonde didn't answer. He simply vanished.
Shunshin, amplified by Bijū power.
He appeared before Orochimaru instantly. The Sannin barely had time to react, starting to dodge, but a fist covered in boiling chakra caught him.
A hard, technical punch to the jaw.
BAM!
The sound was repulsive. A loud, unnatural crunch.
Orochimaru's head jerked back with such force that his neck bent like a broken doll's. The vertebrae should have shattered into dust.
The Sannin's body flew ten meters, crashing into tree trunks and snapping them like matchsticks.
Naruto landed on the ground, scorching the grass beneath his feet.
From the pile of debris, a figure rose. Orochimaru stood, swaying. His head hung limply on his shoulder, chin facing backward.
With a wet, squelching sound, the muscles in his neck contracted.
CRUNCH. CLICK.
His head jerked back to its normal position. The Sannin ran his tongue over his lips, licking off blood.
"Khm..." The snake eyes lit up with excitement. "And you are full of surprises. Not just a beast. A warrior in a beast's skin. Let's test how strong your will is!"
Orochimaru opened his mouth, and the blade of the Kusanagi emerged. He grasped the sword and rushed into the attack.
The sword whistled, slicing the air. Naruto dodged, using reflexes enhanced by Fox chakra and Qi Sensory. Trees around them fell, sheared by invisible swings of the extending blade.
"What's the matter?" the Sannin mocked. "Afraid of getting cut?"
Uzumaki, having started tracking attack patterns, stepped into the strike.
Orochimaru put all his strength into a vertical swing, intending to cleave the opponent in half.
CLANG!
Naruto caught the blade of the legendary sword with his bare hands.
Steel screeched with a whine that popped eardrums. The cloak hissed, fiercely resisting the cutting edge. The sword, capable of slicing rock, bit into the red chakra, striking showers of sparks.
Naruto felt the skin on his palms bursting from the heat, but the concentrated Qi saturating his bones held the structure. It was like trying to stop a circular saw with bare hands.
"You... will not cut... me!" Uzumaki growled with a double voice.
He yanked the sword toward himself, pulling the Sannin in, and struck with the chakra tail like a whip.
Orochimaru was forced to unclench his fingers and jump back, forming seals in the air.
"Fūton: Daitoppa!"
Hurricane-force wind stripped the topsoil, but Naruto dug his claws into the earth and stood firm, like a rock in a storm.
***
Aside, on a tree branch, Sasuke Uchiha sucked in air spasmodically.
While the two monsters tried to tear each other to pieces, the crushing, paralyzing Sakki directed at him vanished.
Orochimaru was completely focused on Naruto.
The world stopped spinning. Lungs filled with oxygen again.
Sasuke blinked, shaking off the prolonged stupor. He saw the fight. Saw Naruto catching a sword with bare hands. Saw this transcendent power.
He... is holding him back, the thought hit like a shock. Naruto is buying us time to escape.
Uchiha pride screamed, demanding he join the fight, but the survival instinct, sharpened to the limit, was louder.
Run! Now!
Sasuke jumped to his feet. His legs trembled but obeyed.
He darted to Sakura, who was still sitting in a stupor, hands pressed to her mouth.
"We're leaving!" he barked hoarsely, grabbing her arm.
***
Orochimaru landed. The face made of another shinobi's skin began to melt from the burns of the Nine-Tails' chakra. He tore off a strip of skin, revealing his pale, true face.
The Sannin cast a sideways glance toward the center of the forest. The ground beneath his feet trembled barely noticeably—a battle of this scale could easily attract unwanted attention.
"Tough," he hissed, but irritation seeped into his voice. "Too tough. To break your defense, I would have to summon Manda or use Rashomon. And that..." he glanced toward Konoha, "...will attract too much attention. I have no desire to mess with a rampant Jinchūriki and incoming reinforcements."
Two types of chakra... from the Fox and from something else. They don't mix, they... cooperate. If only I had time, I would dissect you right here, Uzumaki. Your secret smells of immortality.
He looked at the blonde.
"You are strong, boy. But you are not the vessel I need right now. Too... problematic."
Orochimaru's gaze slid to the tree where Sasuke, having regained control over his body, was trying to use the delay to escape with the pink-haired girl.
"Uchiha," Orochimaru smiled. "Broken. Empty. Ready."
The Sannin instantly switched targets.
"Doton: Doryūheki! (Earth Style: Mud Wall)"
He spat a stream of mud, creating a high, solid wall between himself and Naruto, cutting the Jinchūriki off from his line of sight.
At the same moment, he used Shunshin.
Sasuke didn't manage to take even a few steps before a shadow covered him.
"You will come to me for power, Sasuke Uchiha."
Bite.
A scream of pain.
Orochimaru tossed Sasuke's body aside.
"Enjoy your power while you can, monster," he threw at Uzumaki, who shattered the wall into dust with a claw strike. "We will meet again."
The Sannin dissolved into the ground. A second later, a small white snake poked out from the same spot, quickly slithered to the Kusanagi sword lying in the grass, swallowed it whole, and immediately went underground, following its master.
The red, bubbling chakra on Naruto's body flickered, becoming unstable without a clear target.
Chaotic energy still demanded destruction.
He's gone... That's enough, need to stop, Naruto commanded himself, feeling the red veil trying to corrode the mental shell of Qi.
He gathered the remnants of energy and struck the seal from the inside, slamming the flow shut.
CLICK.
The red chakra hissed and retracted, leaving behind only the smell of burning and emptiness.
"Ghh..."
Uzumaki fell to his knees, his body beginning to writhe in agony from the shock.
He fought and survived. But the enemy still left, taking what he came for.