"..."
Kurama noticed several of the Tailed Beasts acting strange.
How exactly the giant fox managed to read the micro-expressions of giant chakra monsters was unclear.
Maybe Tailed Beasts came with some kind of encrypted private channel.
Either way, Kurama caught on.
"Don't even think about teaching this method to your jinchūriki! It's dangerous enough for them already. If Naruto catches them using Tailed Beast Sage Mode, all our hard work goes down the drain," Kurama warned.
For now, the other beasts shelved their ideas.
But expecting them to obediently fall in line was impossible. Tailed Beasts were not tiny pets!
And even if they were, only an owner could issue commands.
Since when did pets get to order each other around?
Why should they listen?
Did Kurama think he stood one rank above the rest of them?
That rebellious thought instinctively echoed in every Tailed Beast's mind.
So what they really plotted was that they could simply warn their jinchūriki later.
They would make sure their hosts tried their best—no, absolutely made sure—to hide it whenever Naruto was around!
"Speaking of which, where are the Four-Tails and Five-Tails? It's been ages, and they still haven't been sent in."
"Yeah. Matatabi, did you find yourself an owner yet?"
"Shukaku, why hasn't your meat-suit Gaara come looking for Naruto?"
The Tailed Beasts laughed awkwardly, forcing the conversation onto entirely different topics to deflect Kurama's suspicion.
...
Meanwhile, Naruto's consciousness snapped back to reality.
He was about to resume training on the Rasenshuriken when he heard the heavy sounds of combat echoing in the distance.
"That's coming from Kakashi-sensei's side? Weird." Naruto scratched his head.
If an enemy ambushed them, his lifeguard shadow clone would have popped and transferred the memory.
But his clone hadn't reacted at all.
Could Konohamaru and Kakashi-sensei have completed Sage Mode at the exact same time and started sparring?
With that thought, Naruto abandoned his jutsu development.
Driven by pure curiosity, he sprinted back to the campsite.
When he arrived, he discovered Konohamaru still sitting cross-legged in the grass, deep in meditation.
The ones fighting were Kakashi and Might Guy, who had apparently crashed the campsite.
"To think Kakashi-sensei can match Bushy Brows-sensei in pure taijutsu. He really mastered Sage Mode!"
Naruto watched Kakashi trade blows while carrying all eight ninja dogs on his body.
His speed hadn't dropped in the slightest.
In fact, he was moving faster than before.
Still, Naruto felt a little surprised—disappointed, even.
He originally pictured Kakashi merging with one of his hounds like Kiba did with Akamaru, transforming into a furry degenerate!
But Naruto forgot that although Kakashi also summoned ninja dogs, he wasn't a member of the Inuzuka clan and lacked their bloodline fusion techniques.
So Kakashi's situation mirrored Jiraiya balancing two toads on his shoulders.
"Kakashi, what kind of hellish training did you do?! How did your taijutsu level up this much in such a short time? Is this the power of genius?!"
After trading a flurry of kicks and springing apart, Might Guy landed in a crouch, looking genuinely shocked.
The reason Guy showed up in the first place was because he had been giving Rock Lee a history lesson.
Lee wanted to prove that hard work could surpass natural genius, but he hit a bottleneck.
So Guy told Lee a story from his own childhood.
Guy once believed he worked hard enough, only to discover that Kakashi—despite acting cold and aloof in public—secretly trained like an absolute lunatic when no one was watching.
Guy used that story to encourage Lee.
It wasn't that effort couldn't defeat genius. It was simply that Lee hadn't worked hard enough yet, because the geniuses were grinding just as hard in the shadows.
To prove his point with cold hard facts, Guy dragged Lee around the village hunting for Kakashi.
After asking around, they finally tracked his location to the riverbank.
And the moment they arrived, they found Kakashi standing perfectly still, buried under a pile of eight dogs.
Guy was incredibly embarrassed!
To save face, he insisted that hanging dogs from one's limbs was an advanced form of weighted resistance training.
According to Guy, Kakashi was training his endurance and needed to remain motionless, along with plenty of other motivational nonsense.
Then Kakashi opened his eyes, successfully refined the senjutsu chakra, entered Sage Mode, and the two of them immediately clashed.
That sparring session continued until now.
"Guy, this isn't the result of ordinary taijutsu training. It's the stat boost brought by senjutsu," Kakashi explained.
He lowered his head and glanced at his current setup.
He realized he needed to commission a custom tactical vest with several deep pockets built in.
Otherwise, having an entire pack of dogs clamped to his limbs looked ridiculous and messed with his center of gravity.
"Senjutsu?! Did you hear that, Lee?! Kakashi was already a powerhouse! Yet even as Konoha's Copy Ninja, a man who mastered over a thousand techniques, he never stopped learning! Now he's even mastered senjutsu!" Might Guy burst into passionate tears, turning around to lecture Rock Lee.
"Guy, you could actually try learning it too," Kakashi offered.
He remembered Guy also possessed a summon beast: his ninja tortoise.
And physically speaking, Guy's raw stamina made him vastly more compatible with Naruto's degenerate shortcut than Jiraiya ever was.
"Huh? Kakashi, what are you asking me to learn?" Guy, who had been hugging Lee and sobbing, froze mid-tear.
They had been rivals for years.
Now Kakashi was asking him, a man who specialized exclusively in taijutsu, to learn a ninja-based art?
Was this really Kakashi?
Could this be an imposter using a transformation jutsu?
Might Guy instantly grew suspicious.
He let go of Lee, strode over, and carefully inspected Kakashi from head to toe. In the end, he reached a solid conclusion.
He couldn't verify if Kakashi was real.
But the Eight Ninken hanging from him were definitely genuine.
"Guy, Sage Mode isn't ninjutsu. It's a physical state, operating on a similar logic to your Eight Gates. That's why I believe you can master it and push your taijutsu to the next level," Kakashi pressed.
Against the looming Ōtsutsuki threat, the only viable weapons were pure taijutsu and senjutsu.
Guy already dominated the taijutsu category, so logically, Kakashi didn't need to force this upgrade on him.
But ever since Kakashi was forced to moonlight as a romance author, he developed a sharp sense of literary awareness.
One rule in particular stuck with him: If an explosive tag is shown in the first act, it has to detonate in the third.
Guy mastered the Eight Inner Gates.
By opening the eighth gate and paying with his life, he could briefly secure power surpassing even the Hokage.
A fair amount of people knew that trump card existed.
In the past, Kakashi didn't think much of it.
But ever since he started analyzing reality from a writer's perspective, he realized Might Guy's fate felt dangerously predetermined.
A character who mastered a suicidal ultimate move would inevitably make his final exit by triggering the Gate of Death!
It mirrored traditional trope logic: if the protagonist discovers a resurrection technique, the author is absolutely planning to torment and kill them at least once.
Kakashi wanted Guy to master senjutsu specifically to rewrite that tragic ending.
"Guy, are you telling me you're backing down just because you encountered a little difficulty?" Seeing Guy hesitate, Kakashi smoothly deployed a taunt.
This tactic worked flawlessly on simple-minded hotheads like Guy and Naruto.
Sure enough, Guy took the bait.
"Kakashi, first we finish this match! If you can beat me, I'll learn it!"
"Seriously?"
"Seriously! Bring it on!"
"Good. Then don't blame me for not holding back, Guy." Kakashi's visible eye narrowed.
Even though he just unlocked Sage Mode minutes ago, a complete, flawless battle plan had already taken shape in his mind.