With Jiraiya joining the fray, the Hidden Leaf managed to stabilize its crumbling front, yet the stalemate remained agonizingly tight.
Jiraiya's Fire Style was ferocious, but A's Lightning Style Chakra Mode was a force to be ruled with.
By coating his body in Lightning-natured chakra, A could hyper-activate his physical cells, utilize the Lightning Body Flicker, and maintain a near-impenetrable defense. The electricity crackling through his system even accelerated his neural processing speeds.
As his chakra reserves surged, his speed and defense scaled accordingly; the Lightning Style Chakra Mode was the ultimate fusion of offense and defense.
Pioneered by the Second Raikage, the technique had been perfected into a legend by the Third Raikage and his son, A.
Currently, A was pushing the mode to its absolute peak. In a strobe light of blue sparks, his speed and raw power reached levels that defied comprehension. Without entering Sage Mode, Jiraiya had no definitive way to put him down.
He could defend, but he lacked the opening to launch a lethal counter-attack.
The Leaf forces let out a collective breath of relief, but things were significantly more desperate for Saiki. Amidst the deafening clangs of steel, Saiki made a silent vow to himself: once this battle was over, he would find a blade that didn't break.
With a final, thunderous clash, both fighters were sent skidding back by the sheer kinetic force. Saiki performed a fluid, stylish flourish, snapping his katana back into its scabbard as he dropped into a low-profile drawing-sword stance.
"Bakayaro! Didn't I tell you your toy was broken?!" Killer Bee roared with manic glee.
Saiki didn't rise to the bait. He tightened his grip on the hilt, his cold eyes locked onto Bee. Although Bee hadn't fully transformed into the Eight-Tails yet, he was currently wreathed in a volatile Version 1 chakra cloak, with eight translucent tails thrashing wildly behind him.
Arcs of electricity danced across Saiki's skin as he focused his breathing. He was prepping for his final gambit; he knew that after this strike, his blade would be nothing but scrap metal.
With a sudden, explosive step, Saiki launched himself toward Bee like a surface-to-air missile. Seeing the charge, Bee frantically flooded his system with Gyuki's chakra, readying a counter-strike.
The moment Saiki's blade cleared the scabbard, Bee realized his mistake too late.
"How?!"
Saiki was wreathed in blue lightning, but the blade he drew was wrapped in a screaming, crystalline net of high-frequency wind.
Being able to maintain two separate nature transformations simultaneously was a level of control Bee had never encountered.
The wind blades tore through the air like a localized hurricane. Saiki blurred across the battlefield, and as the razor-sharp gale closed in, Bee was forced to go all-in.
He instantly transitioned from the bubbling Version 1 cloak into the dense, lava-like dark red armor of a Version 2 semi-tailed beast transformation.
CLANG!
Wind collided with Lightning. A sharp CRACK echoed through the forest.
Wind naturally countered Lightning, and with Saiki's infusion of Senjutsu-grade chakra, Bee's short sword was simply erased, severed cleanly by Saiki's strike.
But the reality of the situation betrayed Saiki. His chakra blade was even more brittle than he had calculated. The moment the steel shattered, the wind blades lost their stabilization and veered off their lethal trajectory.
What should have been a bisection of Bee's chest became a glancing blow that merely tore a massive, ragged hole through his shoulder.
"ROAR!"
The semi-transformed Bee let out a pained, guttural shriek. The chakra surrounding him turned into a violent, concussive aura that blasted outward in a terrifying shockwave.
His shoulder was ruined, but Saiki's sword was gone. Bee saw his opening to end the boy once and for all.
In the span of a single breath, a condensed orb of purple-black energy began to coalesce in Bee's unhinged jaw.
Suddenly, a voice cut through the chaos: "Saiki! Catch!"
Tsume Inuzuka had realized Saiki was effectively disarmed. She had scavenged a fallen ninja's blade and, seeing Saiki's sword shatter, she didn't hesitate. She hurled the weapon toward him with all her might.
Since the duel began, Bee had been constantly outmaneuvered. Saiki's "perfect" Substitutions and surgical Kenjutsu had left the Jinchuriki frustrated and bleeding.
He had finally cornered the boy, and now someone was trying to hand him a new life. Bee wasn't going to let that happen.
He pivoted his aim away from Saiki. He launched several rapid-fire, miniature Tailed Beast Balls directly at Tsume and the flying sword.
"YOU DARE!"
Even a miniature Tailed Beast Ball was a localized nuke; Tsume would be reduced to fine ash in a heartbeat. Saiki let out a roar of pure, unfiltered fury.
Watching the spheres of death screaming toward her, Tsume's life began to flash before her eyes. At her level of power, she couldn't react, and she certainly couldn't dodge.
Even Saiki's shadow clone, standing guard beside her, lacked the "Auspicious Cloud" to tank a direct hit from a Bijuu Dama.
The Tailed Beast Balls were fast, but Saiki was operating on a different clock. Fueled by a desperate surge of Senjutsu chakra, he transformed into a bolt of pure, blinding electricity. He materialized in front of Tsume in a blink of an eye.
A pristine white cloud drifted from his crown, expanding instantly into a canopy that shielded them both. A fine, misty rain began to fall, forming a shimmering curtain of divine energy. The Tailed Beast Balls slammed into the rain-curtain.
Saiki's Pre-natal Qi cloud was an ultimate defense, but it wasn't absolute. Given the haste of the manifestation and the raw, world-breaking power of the Eight-Tails, the barrier reached its structural limit.
BOOM!
The collision of chakra produced a cataclysmic explosion. A wall of fire and concussive force swallowed Saiki and Tsume whole.
The rain-curtain nearly shredded. The cloud itself was almost dispersed by the impact. Saiki took the full weight of the kinetic backlash. A massive geyser of blood erupted from his mouth, painting the front of Tsume's green flak jacket a violent, wet crimson.
The chaotic chakra within him acted like a raging river, battering his internal organs and tearing through his meridians. Saiki stumbled, his knees nearly buckling.
Tsume was frozen in shock. It was only when Saiki's hot blood splashed across her face that she snapped back to reality.
"SAIKI! Oh god, Saiki!"
She desperately grabbed him, trying to hold his swaying body upright, her heart filled with a crushing mix of terror and guilt.
Saiki couldn't answer her. The internal damage was agonizing; it felt as if his organs had been pulverized by a massive iron hammer.
He forced himself to endure the pain, drawing on his final reserves of Pre-natal Qi to stabilize the cloud guarding them.
Wiping a trail of blood from his lip, he managed a weak, pained smirk. "Don't... don't worry. I'm... I'm still standing."
Outside the wall of soot and smoke, Bee sensed that Saiki's chakra hadn't vanished. He was stunned. No human body should have survived that bombardment. Without hesitation, he locked onto their position and prepped another volley of Tailed Beast Balls.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Massive spheres of fire rose from the earth as the forest was systematically leveled by the ongoing explosions.
But at the heart of the inferno, once Saiki had fully stabilized the Auspicious Cloud, it became truly invincible. The rampaging forces of the Tailed Beast were held at bay by the divine mist.
Saiki had tested this: the cloud could tank a Rasenshuriken. It was the foundation of his Dao. The Pre-natal Qi was the seed, and the Senjutsu chakra was the fuel that sustained the miracle.
However.
Tanking an S-rank bombardment of this scale was draining his three years of accumulated reserves at a terrifying rate.
"What?! How is he still alive?!"
Inside the crater, Saiki's presence remained as steady as a mountain. Bee couldn't wrap his head around it. Even a Tailed Beast would be feeling the strain of this much direct fire.
Beneath the cloud, sensing Bee prepping an even larger, more concentrated blast, Saiki's mind worked with cold efficiency.
"Internal damage is too severe. I can't sustain a direct engagement anymore. There's only one way out." He reached out and grabbed Tsume's hand, linking their chakra networks.
"Sensei! Brace yourself!" Saiki barked through gritted teeth.
Tsume was mentally broken by the sounds of the nukes detonating against their shield. Before she could process what he was doing, Saiki wove a one-handed sign.
Under the protection of the cloud, just before the massive Tailed Beast Ball could land, the two of them vanished into a swirl of spatial distortion.
The projectile tore through the smoke and slammed into a distant ridge, creating a massive mushroom cloud that made the very foundations of the earth tremble.
"What happened?!"
The main battlefield finally took notice of the apocalyptic display in the Back Mountain.
Jiraiya felt the disappearance of the two massive chakra signatures and his heart sank.
"SUMMONING JUTSU!"
Ignoring his own chakra depletion, Jiraiya summoned a gargantuan toad from Mount Myoboku to buy time for his Sage Mode.
The massive beast flattened several Cloud squads as it landed, the shockwave echoing the chaos of the night.
By dawn, both the Leaf and Cloud had suffered catastrophic losses. The Cloud's plan to erase the Medical Camp had failed, and they were forced into a bitter retreat.
But Saiki, the MVP of the night, was nowhere to be found.