Chapter 261: Adamantine Sealing Chains
Six years wasn't a very long time, but it had been enough for Kirigakure to recover a measure of its strength. The village's younger generation in particular had grown into something worth watching.
Mangetsu Hoshigaki. Terumī Mei. Rinrin Yuyuri. Kisame Hoshigaki. Zabuza Momochi.
Five names — the finest of Kirigakure's rising generation.
For the Three-Tails exchange, the Fourth Mizukage Yagura had come in person. Of those five, Mangetsu Hoshigaki, Terumī Mei, and Kisame Hoshigaki accompanied him.
The ship flying the Kirigakure banner cut through the waves.
On deck, the group stood together looking out at the coastline in the distance. They had entered the waters of the Land of Fire. Shiya Harbor was close.
"Lord Mizukage, I'm detecting a large number of chakra signatures on the shore ahead. Konoha ninja."
The sensor ninja kept his voice low as he made his report.
The Fourth Mizukage Yagura, with his baby-faced features, gave a brief nod without taking his eyes off the distant shore. "Stay alert. Don't let your guard down. Uchiha Madara and Orochimaru could move at any moment."
The sensor ninja acknowledged the instruction and kept working, not sparing any thought for chakra conservation, maintaining constant sweeps of the surrounding area.
At the same moment, a young woman standing among the group spoke up. She had long auburn hair, vivid green eyes, and skin pale as milk. She was young and striking, and she chose this moment to say: "Lord Mizukage, I still think taking the Three-Tails back right now is not a wise decision."
Every head nearby turned.
Mangetsu Hoshigaki closed his eyes and covered his face with one hand.
Yagura was equally at a loss. He turned to look at the young woman who had just publicly questioned his decision, and managed a pained smile. "Mei, we're already here. You couldn't have said this earlier? Wasn't my explanation clear enough?"
"Your explanation was perfectly clear. I just think your conclusion is wrong. Taking the Three-Tails back right now does more harm than good."
The young woman called Mei was genuinely not in the habit of softening her words.
But Yagura couldn't simply shut her down.
She had the standing to speak as she pleased.
Her full name was Terumī Mei. Her mother's family name had been Kirishima before marriage. More to the point, she had inherited both the Terumī clan's Lava Release and the Kirishima clan's Boil Release — the first person in Kirigakure's history to carry two Kekkei Genkai simultaneously. A talent of an altogether different order.
The Terumī, Kirishima, and Hoshigaki were the three most powerful families in Kirigakure. Two of those three stood behind Mei.
And that wasn't all. Her exceptional abilities had been evident from childhood, and she had been taken on as a student by the Master — effectively Yagura's own last direct disciple. She was being groomed as his successor. Barring some catastrophic self-inflicted disaster, the Mizukage's seat would eventually pass to her.
Mei kept her eyes on Yagura. "The Three-Tails was ours once, yes. But whether we have it or not doesn't actually change much for the village right now. Getting it back won't give us the strength to challenge Konoha's dominance. The way things are looking, the balance of power in the ninja world probably isn't going to shift significantly for a long time to come."
Yagura steadied himself and pushed back. "You're forgetting Uchiha Madara. That's the variable."
"Madara has a fearsome reputation, but Lord Mizukage, have you forgotten the report Mangetsu submitted six years ago? Konoha's White Yaksha captured Uchiha Tatsuhata alive, drove Uchiha Madara away, and scared Orochimaru off. You honestly think a man who should have died decades ago can handle Konoha's White Yaksha?"
"And by that logic — with the White Yaksha standing in Konoha, we're just supposed to live entirely at their mercy?"
"Aren't we already?"
Mei's jade-green eyes went wide. "Lord Mizukage, you're not still holding onto some unrealistic ambition, are you?"
"Mei." Mangetsu stepped in. "Show the Mizukage some respect."
"I'm not being disrespectful."
"You don't sound remotely respectful."
"I'm discussing serious matters with Lord Mizukage. Since when does respect mean nodding along with everything he says?"
Mangetsu had no answer to that.
Yagura could only manage another pained smile. He exhaled slowly. "Mei. This is my decision as Mizukage, and the majority of the village's leadership has backed it. You're welcome to disagree. But a few words from you aren't going to make me reverse course."
"...Understood, Lord Mizukage."
A flicker of disappointment passed through Mei's eyes.
She genuinely believed that accepting the Three-Tails right now was a mistake. The smarter play was to leave it in Konoha's hands, watch how the confrontation with Madara played out, and decide later. But being Kirigakure's leading candidate for the Mizukage seat wasn't the same as actually being Mizukage. Her will couldn't override the sitting Mizukage's.
Yagura looked at her downcast expression and continued. "I know you're worried about Madara. But there's a difference between being cautious and being so afraid you stop fighting back entirely. If you're that worried about choking, you don't stop eating — you just die slower. And you said it yourself: with the White Yaksha on their side, Madara won't be causing catastrophic damage. If we don't recover the Three-Tails before Konoha deals with him, we might never get another chance."
Mei said nothing.
She hadn't been convinced. She simply recognized that there was no point saying anything further. The Fourth Mizukage had made up his mind completely, and short of some dramatic upheaval, that decision wasn't going to change. Arguing further was wasted breath, and she had no interest in wasting it.
While they had been talking, the Kirigakure fleet had entered Shiya Harbor and was guided by the harbor pilots to its assigned berths.
On the shore, more than a hundred Konoha ninja waited.
At their head stood the White Yaksha himself — Fifth Hokage, Hyuga Ritsu.
"Lord Hokage, thank you for the welcome."
"Lord Mizukage, a long journey — you must be tired."
The two Kage shook hands on the dock with smiles, and a photographer nearby caught the moment on film. Anyone looking at that photograph would find it hard to believe that seven or eight years ago, ninja from both these villages had been killing each other not far from this very stretch of coastline.
A brief exchange of pleasantries, and then Hyuga Ritsu invited Yagura inside to talk. Yagura accepted without hesitation and kept his escort modest — Terumī Mei, Kisame Hoshigaki, and eight other Mist ninja. Mangetsu Hoshigaki was left on the dock to manage things there.
"Lord Hokage, I don't think we need to waste each other's time on small talk. Shall we get to the point?"
Yagura set down his teacup and looked sideways at Hyuga Ritsu, sitting beside him. The two of them occupied the head positions, a small square table between them. The people each had brought sat in rows along either side.
"My feelings exactly."
Hyuga Ritsu smiled. "I find that kind of conversation about as enjoyable as chewing sawdust. And honestly, I don't think there's much left for us to discuss — everything was agreed beforehand. Let's just proceed as arranged. You have no objections?"
"None on my end. Everything I promised to bring is on those ships, and then some. But the question I need answered is how exactly you plan to deliver the Three-Tails. Are you selling us your current jinchuriki along with it? Or just the Tailed Beast?"
Yagura's eyes didn't leave Ritsu's face.
As far as he was concerned, the trickiest part of this whole arrangement was the actual handover. The Shukaku pot was gone — stolen along with the One-Tail, according to Konoha — which meant the Mist had no convenient vessel to reseal the Three-Tails into. And a jinchuriki who had their Tailed Beast extracted died. That was established fact. So either Konoha's Three-Tails jinchuriki was about to be sacrificed for this transaction, or Hyuga Ritsu had something unusual up his sleeve.
"Lord Mizukage, please. Konoha has never been in the business of trafficking people. If I caught an actual human trafficker, I'd pull their tendons out through their fingertips."
The killing intent in Ritsu's voice was completely matter-of-fact.
Yagura's brow creased slightly. He pressed his lips together. "Then how are you planning to deliver the Three-Tails? Our agreement requires you to hand it over to us. That's the condition."
"Don't worry. I'm not backing out of anything."
Ritsu waved a hand lightly and turned to look down the row of people on his side. "Rin."
The young woman stood immediately and stepped forward, her head lowered. "Lord Hokage."
"Are you ready?"
"Whenever you need."
Ritsu gave a satisfied nod and looked back at Yagura. "Lord Mizukage, I can give you the Three-Tails right now. The space in here is a little tight — let's take this outside."
"Of course."
Yagura agreed without hesitation. He was curious to see what Ritsu actually had in mind.
The group moved to an open area outside. Shiya Harbor had been placed under lockdown since early morning, all non-essential personnel cleared out. There was no risk of bystanders getting caught in whatever was about to happen.
Nohara Rin stood alone in the middle of the open ground.
Kakashi, Akiba, and the others formed a loose ring around the outside, every eye fixed on Rin, silently willing her through whatever was coming.
"Rin. Nervous?"
Ritsu walked up to her and asked it lightly.
"A little."
"That's fine. After today, this particular problem is gone from your life for good." He meant every word of it, and felt it. Fate had a way of going in directions no one planned for. He had once encouraged Rin to try reaching out to the Three-Tails, to seek some form of communication and eventually control. That had been his genuine belief at the time. But after six years with almost no progress to show for it, today that hope was being put to rest permanently.
"This will be quick. Just hold on."
He kept his voice easy, raised his right palm, and touched it gently to Rin's abdomen.
A dense lattice of seal markings bloomed across her stomach in the next instant, spreading rapidly and then dissolving just as quickly. The seal suppressing the Three-Tails collapsed.
Six years had not been idle ones for Ritsu. After becoming Hokage, every secret the village held had been made available to him — including the full library of sealing texts. He could have slept with the sealing scrolls every night and no one would have said a word. His sealing techniques, while not yet masterful in the constructive sense, were more than sufficient for breaking existing seals. Destruction had always been simpler than creation.
Rin screamed.
The seal was gone, and the Three-Tails' enormous chakra, freed from every constraint, began flooding through her body like a dam giving way all at once. The pain was like being burned and stabbed from the inside simultaneously.
But Ritsu had no intention of letting that go unchecked.
Adamantine Sealing Chains.
Brilliant gold chains of pure chakra shot from behind him like striking serpents, driving themselves into Rin's body one after another. In seconds, every rampaging strand of the Three-Tails' chakra was caught and bound by those golden links. The chains followed each thread back to its source, winding around the complete mass of the Three-Tails' chakra.
Then, slowly, they began to pull.
The Adamantine Sealing Chains were an Uzumaki clan secret — a technique written into the bloodline itself. Even a completely uneducated member of the Uzumaki clan who had never been taught a single technique had a chance of eventually awakening it naturally. Ritsu had taken Nagato's Uzumaki bloodline through the Chimera Technique, and after a handful of attempts to reach inward and feel for it, the technique had come to him without difficulty. He hadn't even needed to consult the sealing records the Fourth Hokage and his wife had left behind.
He was using it now to draw the Tailed Beast out while keeping the Three-Tails' chakra from consuming Rin's body in the process.
What would happen to Rin once the Three-Tails was gone — that was already handled.
Roughly five minutes passed.
Then the Three-Tails was fully extracted.
Rin's eyes rolled back. Her body, no longer under her conscious control, folded and dropped. And the enormous, dense mass of chakra that had been living inside her gathered itself in the open air and took shape — an immense creature like a great armored turtle, the Three-Tails manifest.