Chapter 119: Armament Haki + Iron Body
"What—what just happened? The Nine-Tails' Tailed Beast Bomb just… detonated? It blew half of us off our feet, and now the Nine-Tails looks like it's… down?"
A jōnin who'd been rattled senseless by the blast wave staggered upright, not bothering to dust himself off. He stared at the Nine-Tails—its head buried in the ground in a catastrophic faceplant.
His face was a portrait of disbelief.
He had no idea what had just happened. All he'd heard was an enormous boom, then an inexplicable explosion, and then he'd been launched into a wall. By the time he crawled back to his feet, the Nine-Tails was… like that.
* * *
Hiruzen Sarutobi glanced at the dazed jōnin beside him, then fixed his gaze on the Nine-Tails. The beast's immense body was motionless—its head still embedded in a crater. The hole was at least a hundred meters across. Depth: unknown.
Hiruzen inhaled deeply—the air was anything but fresh—and shifted his attention to a certain young man standing nearby. A young man he recognized immediately.
Yagami Ryū. The kid who'd casually dismantled Kakashi and Might Guy without breaking a sweat. Hiruzen knew every detail of those encounters—he'd been the one to brief Minato on Ryū's existence.
So when the village faces a crisis of this magnitude, even he steps in. That speaks to a considerable sense of belonging toward Konoha.
And his power… his raw physical strength is monstrous. To kick a Tailed Beast—a creature whose very body is a weapon of mass destruction—headfirst into the ground hard enough to crater the earth…
Hiruzen considered the question honestly: if he'd taken that same kick, he'd probably be dead.
And Ryū hadn't opened the Eight Gates. There was no Gates-release signature at all. This was pure, unaugmented physical strength.
He's a human-shaped Tailed Beast.
What Hiruzen didn't know was that Ryū had intervened purely because the Nine-Tails had been about to trash the neighborhood containing his house. "Belonging toward Konoha" had absolutely nothing to do with it.
Can you really expect someone who's been transmigrated here for less than six months to feel patriotic?
* * *
Then the Nine-Tails stirred. Its massive frame shuddered, and its skull slowly rose from the crater, eyes blazing an even deeper crimson than before.
Hiruzen snapped back to focus and barked orders: "Stop gawking! Spacing out in combat will cost you your life! We cannot allow this beast to keep destroying our village. The Will of Fire needs them to carry it forward!"
Kurama glared at the swarm of shinobi charging toward it with undisguised irritation. It was thoroughly annoyed—but also, for the first time, feeling something close to helplessness.
The jōnin alone weren't a concern. The problems were the old man, and Namikaze Minato, and those two damn summoning toads.
Even the Nine-Tails—the strongest of the Tailed Beasts—was being ground down by Konoha's stacked roster. And this didn't even include Orochimaru, Danzō, Kushina (evacuated by Minato), the Uchiha clan (deployed on civilian evacuation), or the two absent Sannin—Jiraiya and Tsunade. If every single one of those names showed up, even two Nine-Tails wouldn't be enough.
* * *
That human. That's the one who kicked me. That detestable creature forced my half-charged Tailed Beast Bomb to blow up in my own mouth. That nearly cost me dearly.
Kurama ignored the swarming shinobi and fixed its bloodshot, burning gaze on Ryū.
Plenty of onlookers had no idea why the Nine-Tails had suddenly face-planted. But the fox that had actually taken the kick? It knew exactly who was responsible.
Lucky it was only half-charged. If that had been a fully condensed Bomb… my head might have been gone entirely.
* * *
Feeling the massive wave of malice lock onto him, Ryū raised his head and met those scarlet, hate-filled eyes. He raised an eyebrow.
The big fox is targeting me now? One kick and I've pulled all the aggro?
Whatever—I already committed. And it's now aggro'd on me. Might as well go all out. A punching bag this big doesn't come along every day. Shouldn't capsize in a ditch, right?
Ryū knew his practical combat experience was lacking. But his Observation Haki compensated for that gap—his reaction time was orders of magnitude beyond anyone else on the field.
Plus the Nine-Tails wasn't that absurdly strong in the grand scheme. It couldn't have beaten the First Hokage, Hashirama. Sure, Tailed Beasts were classified as "nuclear weapons" and the Nine-Tails was the strongest of the set—but Ryū wasn't going to come out worse.
Odds of a fluke loss are low. No reason to hold back.
Facing the bloodshot, snarling Kurama—
Ryū did not wait for the fox to attack.
He struck first.
* * *
A detonation of compressed air. To Hiruzen, Minato, and every other spectator, Ryū simply ceased to exist in one spot and reappeared somewhere else. All that marked where he'd stood was a fresh crater in the earth.
The scenery blurred into streaks of light.
Wind roared across his face.
None of it mattered.
Localized Iron Body · Armament Hardening · Finger Pistol Extension: Fist Cannon!
His right arm was sheathed in Armament Haki—pitch-black and gleaming. Veins stood out in cords along the forearm. Every muscle fiber locked into max tension in a single instant.
Speed: terminal.
Kurama had no time to react. An ominous premonition flooded through its body an instant before impact—and then the left side of its face caved in.
The entire foxlike visage crumpled, contorted, deformed grotesquely around the point of impact. Objects that looked suspiciously like teeth rocketed out of Kurama's mouth.
The Nine-Tails' colossal body lifted clean off the ground—ten meters, fifteen—and hurtled backward toward the Hokage Rock face.
When it hit the ground, it didn't stop. The body skidded dozens of meters, bulldozing through a field of wreckage, flattening everything in its path.
A pillar of dust and smoke erupted tens of meters into the sky, engulfing the fox entirely.
Then a hole punched through the smoke cloud.
Ryū was already airborne again—Moonwalk compounded with Shave—ratcheting his speed even higher, closing in for a follow-up.
But mid-trajectory, his expression flickered.
He torqued his body sideways, violently altering course.
A black sphere—compact, dense, screaming with energy—tore past him at a distance of less than one meter.
* * *
"YOU INSUFFERABLE HUMAN!"
"YOU HIT MY FACE AGAIN!"
☆☆☆
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