Chapter 281: A Whetstone? Then I'll Break the Blade!
Inside a cave
A handful of indistinct figures moved in the dim light.
An emaciated, red-haired man lay propped against a mechanical apparatus supporting his body, with two figures standing on either side of him.
Obito Uchiha.
Konan.
"That's where the Nine-Tails and Two-Tails jinchūriki are."
Konan peered through a gap in the cave wall at the distant island.
Fifteen kilometers. That was already the outer limit of Nagato's range for controlling Pain.
"The Hokage's there too."
Obito said, expressionless.
Per Black Zetsu's plan, this whole operation was meant to let Nagato throw himself against a wall — the moment Pain fell, Obito was to use Kamui to pull Konan and Nagato out immediately.
Of course, Nagato himself had no idea just how strong this particular Hokage actually was. Neither Obito nor Black Zetsu had any intention of telling him.
Even Obito's own reason for being present here was purely as insurance.
And as further insurance, he'd already set up an Izanagi beforehand.
Facing this Hokage, there was no room for carelessness, no matter how the fight went. Every precaution had to be in place.
The smallest oversight, and losing Nagato would be the least of it — losing the Rinnegan itself would be the real disaster.
A single three-tomoe Sharingan as collateral was a fair trade for that kind of certainty.
At that moment, the Deva Path — Pain, controlled by Nagato — had already reached the edge of Turtle Island.
His pale-lavender, ripple-patterned eyes surveyed the massive island, taking in the barrier surrounding it with perfect clarity through the Rinnegan.
"A barrier. Ten layers?"
"Looks like Zetsu's intelligence checks out."
The Deva Path, leading the group, murmured to himself.
"Animal Path breaks through the barrier and uses the Summoning Jutsu to bring everyone in."
Though all six bodies were controlled by a single mind, in this moment they moved as though genuinely six separate individuals.
The Animal Path was an orange-haired man with a single ponytail, currently being carried on the Asura Path's back.
The Asura Path hummed with a low mechanical whine, and with a burst of overwhelming force, launched the Animal Path straight at the barrier surrounding Turtle Island.
...
At that moment, one of the members of the barrier team maintaining Turtle Island's defenses stiffened suddenly.
"Intruder detected. Just one."
Weighing this, the team member's expression turned uncertain.
"Four o'clock direction, roughly three kilometers from the Truth-Seeking Waterfall."
Another barrier team member spoke up: "Notify the Hokage immediately — we have an intruder."
"And alert the patrol team at once. Move to capture."
...
"Lord Hokage."
Everyone gathered around the fire had already finished breakfast, and Naruto had begun preparing for training.
"What is it?"
Sakura looked at the shinobi in chakra armor standing before her.
"We have an intruder."
"Roughly three kilometers from your position, moving this way. Clear target."
At those words, Naruto's steps stopped, and he looked over at Sakura, puzzled.
"Not your concern. Go train with Yuki — Sasuke and Karin should get here around noon."
Sakura glanced at Naruto, then turned to Mirai.
"You go stay with Sister Hikaru for a while."
Hikaru nodded slightly at that without a word.
Mirai, though, was clearly unhappy about it — she wanted to stay with Sakura. But one look from her sister was enough, and she pouted, then trudged off on her short little legs toward Hikaru.
Sister's mean.
At that exact moment, the sky, clear as anything just moments before, had darkened without warning and begun a light, steady drizzle.
Watching the others head into the Truth-Seeking Waterfall, Sakura raised her palm, and a raindrop landed in it.
Chakra.
There was chakra in the rain.
This wasn't ordinary rain.
Summoning: Toad Rain — Free Motion.
That made it obvious who the intruder was.
"Tell the patrol team to fall back. This isn't something they can handle."
"I'll go myself."
The shinobi acknowledged the order and withdrew.
Watching him go, Sakura looked up at the sky.
Her chakra hadn't fully recovered yet, but she was still sitting at around sixty percent.
Should be fine.
She pulled a specially made soldier pill from her pouch, popped it in her mouth, chewed, swallowed.
If Pain had come here looking to die, Sakura had no objection to obliging him.
The only annoyance was not knowing exactly where Nagato's real body was hiding. That was a genuine problem.
Would've been convenient to have Karin around for this.
Thinking it over, Sakura headed off in the direction the shinobi had indicated.
Pain wasn't much of a threat to her personally, but several of his techniques covered absolutely massive areas. To avoid the risk of him leveling Turtle Island entirely, Sakura needed to move the battlefield out over open ocean.
If a single Chibaku Tensei wiped out Turtle Island in the process, that would defeat the entire point.
The rain kept falling, steady and light, as Sakura walked forward.
Though Pain himself posed no real threat, she couldn't help turning over what this whole thing actually meant.
Black Zetsu wasn't stupid. Quite the opposite — he was one of the genuinely sharp minds in this entire world.
...Well. A sharp lump of something, anyway.
Someone with his read on the situation had no reason not to see that Pain wasn't remotely in her weight class.
So if that was the case — why was Nagato even here?
Just to throw himself away?
The thought nearly made Sakura laugh out loud.
At that moment, the light patter of approaching footsteps reached her.
"Hokage. It's been a while."
A voice, cold to the point of sounding almost devoid of any emotion at all, rang out ahead of her.
Sakura looked up to find six figures had already surrounded her.
Identical black cloaks with red clouds, orange hair, Rinnegan eyes, and the black rods controlling each of them.
"Didn't expect you to come all this way..."
"Just to die."
Sakura looked at the man speaking in front — the Deva Path.
Her tone carried the same arrogance she'd once used, back when Deidara's ring had projected an illusion of her into Amegakure itself.
"A blessed life. Different from ordinary people since childhood. A disciple of the Hokage at eight years old."
"A path free of any real hardship, your whole life — and now, standing before a god, you dare show such arrogance."
"If you turn back from this path and lend us your aid instead."
"I'll forgive you."
The Deva Path spoke as though discussing the most ordinary thing in the world.
"You'll forgive me?"
The Hokage looked as though she'd just heard a joke, an open, unhidden mockery spreading across her face.
By now, she understood.
Her being here. Naruto being here. Yuki being here.
Black Zetsu had deliberately fed Nagato this information.
Nagato's arrogance ran too deep — with the Rinnegan in his possession, he considered himself a god. The Rinnegan's power was overwhelming enough that, given the information gap most shinobi were working with, the vast majority of them genuinely weren't a match for Pain's Six Paths.
So...
When exactly...
...did I become someone else's whetstone?
And the blade being sharpened doesn't even worry it might snap in the process.
"I see."
The Hokage let out a low, quiet laugh.
"What?"
The Deva Path's brow furrowed.
He didn't understand what her words meant.
"Being used without even knowing it. A whetstone's still a whetstone, I suppose."
"Either way — you were never going to be a match for me."
The Hokage had no particular objection to sparring with someone who fancied himself a god, however this played out.
Even if the fight itself would ultimately yield nothing.
A war that would engulf the entire shinobi world was coming soon regardless. When that time came, she'd wipe out every enemy left standing, all at once.
"You think you can withstand a god?"
The Deva Path continued.
But in the next instant, a figure suddenly appeared right in front of him.
The Rinnegan's eyes contracted sharply!
With the Rinnegan's extraordinary dynamic vision, he could track the Hokage's speed clearly enough.
But—
His body couldn't keep up.
His body simply wasn't built for it.
This body had belonged to Nagato's friend — Yahiko. It had none of the physical qualities that would define an elite shinobi.
Perhaps, as a jōnin, Yahiko's body had been more than sufficient against the average shinobi.
But this Hokage standing before him was clearly nowhere near "average."
Her speed was on an entirely different level, far beyond anything Pain had anticipated.
He watched her raise an arm, fist closing, driving straight at him.
Only at that moment did the Deva Path manage to force out the words:
"Shinra Tensei."
An invisible repulsive force erupted outward from his body.
Trees around them shattered, flung away. The ground beneath them cracked and burst apart.
But the Hokage stood exactly where she was. Unmoved.
Her fist landed directly against the invisible force of Shinra Tensei itself.
That's — that's not possible!
Pain's mind reeled in shock.
Shinra Tensei was one of the Rinnegan's signature, defining techniques — its power was in an entirely different category from ordinary jutsu. And yet this Hokage had absorbed it head-on with nothing but her own body, and driven a fist straight through it. How was he supposed to accept that?
And it didn't stop there.
If Shinra Tensei should have sent her flying and it hadn't, then physics demanded one conclusion: only a body with strength equal to hers could have kept that balance intact.
But could Yahiko's body — an ordinary Amegakure jōnin's body — possibly measure up to a Hokage's?
Given the gap in shinobi classification between the great villages and the smaller nations, plenty of "jōnin" from minor countries were roughly equivalent to a Special Jōnin, or even just a Chūnin, from one of the great villages.
Under her emerald gaze, laced with equal parts mockery and pity, that supposedly all-powerful, untouchable "god" went flying backward.
Straight off the edge of Turtle Island, out over open water.
And at that moment, the remaining five Paths moved as one.
The Asura Path transformed, sprouting three heads and six arms, an iron tail extending from its back as it charged the Hokage.
The Animal Path began forming seals, preparing to summon creatures for battle.
The Human Path gripped a black rod, ready to coordinate with the Asura Path for a finishing blow.
The Preta Path positioned itself before the Naraka Path, shielding the core of the six-body formation.
So many.
Too many.
And every single one of them is—
Worthless.
The Hokage watched the charging Asura Path with cold indifference. At the same instant, the Human Path came at her from the left, and the Animal Path's summoned rhinoceros charged from the right.
Behind her stood the chakra-absorbing Preta Path.
The Rinnegan tracked her every movement, missing nothing.
It should have looked, to anyone watching, like the Hokage was standing in an inescapable deathtrap.
Against a formation like this, most shinobi would have had no choice but to submit and simply accept their death, rather than resist and die anyway.
But the Hokage spoke.
Black markings spread outward from beneath her feet, radiating in every direction.
"Summoning Jutsu."
"Demon-Gate Barrier."
In an instant, an enormous, demon-faced iron gate burst up from the ground, carrying the Hokage dozens of meters into the air on its surface.
Pain's attack faltered in that same moment.
Only the summoned rhinoceros managed to slam headfirst into the massive iron gate.
Under the impact, the demon-faced gate let out a bone-grating screech and began to topple.
The Asura Path, caught beneath where it was falling, barely managed to clear the impact zone in time, narrowly avoiding being crushed.
The Hokage stood suspended in midair, her expression coldly indifferent.
And then, she moved.
She simply reached out and caught the chains hanging from the massive gate — halting its fall, dozens of meters tall as it was, in mid-collapse.
Then, under Pain's stunned gaze, she hauled the entire structure upright and swung it.
With a single-armed toss, the massive demon gate became something like a paddle, and she slammed it directly into the rhinoceros.
Under that monstrous force, the creature — dozens of meters tall — was sent flying straight up into the sky, arcing out toward the ocean visible in the distance.
A colossal beast, hurled through the air by the Hokage like some kind of oversized pet toy.
Even Pain, who considered himself a god, felt a genuine chill at the sight.
Four heavy thuds followed in quick succession, and four more massive summoned creatures appeared, called forth by the Animal Path.
A water buffalo. A lobster. A crab. A wild dog.
All four charged the Hokage together, their massive strides sending faint tremors through the whole of Turtle Island.
But the Hokage's eyes stayed cold, and she kept swinging the demon-faced gate.
Smack. Smack. Smack. Smack.
Each swing sent another massive creature flying.
All four summoned beasts sailed off into the sky one after another, following the rhinoceros's example.
Five colossal creatures in a row crashed down into the ocean, kicking up considerable waves.
Meanwhile, on the ground, the Asura Path opened its skull, revealing the cold gleam of machinery beneath.
Energy gathered, and a white laser cannon locked onto the Hokage in the sky.
At the same moment, the Animal Path made another move.
Summoning Jutsu!
A shadow fell over the Hokage.
An enormous panda statue plummeted from above, crashing down toward her!
At the same time, the Asura Path's laser cannon finished charging.
But just as the panda statue fell overhead, the Hokage raised a single arm and caught the entire structure — dozens of meters tall — with one hand alone.
Then she swung the demon-faced gate in her other hand with tremendous force.
Like a farmer tilling a field, several massive trees, along with all five Pain bodies, were swept up together in the arc of the swing.
Soil and uprooted trees, all five Pains, swept together and hurled off toward the exact spot where the five summoned beasts had just landed.
The Asura Path's laser cannon was cut off mid-fire, the beam disrupted entirely.
But the Hokage still wasn't finished.
She hefted the giant panda statue in her other hand, testing its weight, and hurled it—
Swinging the demon-faced gate once more.
The panda statue shot forward like an artillery shell, straight toward the five scattered Pain bodies.
But the Hokage still wasn't finished, even then.
Right after launching the panda statue, she threw the massive demon-faced gate itself, with tremendous force, in the same direction.
A sharp, ear-splitting shriek of displaced air ripped across Turtle Island.
And it still wasn't over.
She raised a single hand in a sword-seal before her chest and spoke, quiet:
"Ninja Art — Shuriken Giantification Technique."
The dozens-of-meters-tall demon-faced gate instantly grew to hundreds of meters.
But it still wasn't over.
"Ninja Art — Shuriken Shadow Clone Technique."
The hundred-meter gate split, in that instant, from a single door into twenty—
Blotting out every last line of sight the five Pains had left.
(End of chapter.)
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