"So you're the Third Raikage's son," Minato said quietly. "The man obsessed with victory… A."
That chakra cloak was unmistakable.
The Lightning Release Armor—an advanced taijutsu unique to Kumogakure. By cloaking the body in lightning-nature chakra and forcing the muscles and nerves into overdrive, it drastically boosted both defense and speed.
Only the Raikage, and those recognized as their successors, were allowed to learn it.
"Yellow hair, and a body flicker that fast…"
A's eyes gleamed with sharp interest, absolutely no fear in them at all.
"You're Konoha's Yellow Flash, right?"
He cracked his neck.
Then flexed his fists, the sound of his knuckles popping like distant thunder.
"I've heard the stories. The Yellow Flash's speed is insane. Today, I want to see it for myself—see if your speed can match my Lightning Armor."
"Keep an eye on Obito and Rin," Minato told Kakashi.
He could feel it already.
This would not be an easy fight.
BOOM!
A's first step shattered the earth.
The sheer force behind it turned the ground beneath him into a spiderweb of cracks, stone erupting in jagged shards. A wave of raw pressure radiated out from his body, whipping dust and snow into a frenzy.
Lightning flared.
In the next heartbeat, his form blurred into a streak of blue.
He broke the sound barrier with a crack like thunder, compressed air bursting around him in snapping, concentric rings. The killing intent riding his charge hit like a tidal wave.
On the beach at the edge of a storm, water draws back before it surges in.
Then the first wall of waves rises, tall and implacable.
Then the next.
And the next.
That was what A felt like—crashing forward in layers of increasing force.
"Lightning Oppression Horizontal!"
His arm thrust forward.
All that speed and strength packed itself into a single blow, the air vibrating from the sheer violence of it. Everything in front of him—air, dust, mud—was punched aside.
Obito's Sharingan spun desperately.
He couldn't track it.
Not really.
With three tomoe, he could barely catch the afterimage of that blue streak. It was so fast it reminded him, horribly, of Minato-sensei's teleportation.
A's punch tore the air apart—but it passed through empty space.
Minato's sandals barely kissed the ground before his body flickered.
Flying Thunder God.
A skidded to a halt, fist hitting nothing but whirling dust.
He didn't look surprised.
"So you dodged that, too," he said.
"Yellow Flash lives up to the name. You avoided my fastest strike."
"Protect Obito and Rin," Minato repeated.
Now that he'd tasted A's strength and speed, he knew his students could not get involved in this.
"Leave them to me," Kakashi answered.
He understood.
This was not a fight genin had any business joining.
He hated it.
The helplessness felt like acid in his throat. If he were stronger—strong enough to stand beside his father, to carry even a fraction of the White Fang's reputation—would he still be stuck on the sidelines, watching?
Even with those thoughts twisting inside, he followed orders and pulled Obito and Rin back, putting distance between them and the clash of monsters.
"Trying to run?" B shouted.
He'd noticed the retreating three at the edge of the clearing.
"In front of Killer B, nobody gets away free!"
He lunged after them, but a kunai slammed point-first into the ground in front of him, making him check his step.
The metal gleamed.
There was a familiar three-pronged shape to it.
Minato stepped into place behind the kunai, hand closing around it.
"I said it already," he said mildly. "Your opponents… are me."
Kunai flew.
One after another, they sliced through the air in glinting arcs.
Strangely, they didn't fly at A or B. Their trajectories were scattered, almost random—embedding themselves in trunks, rocks, and the earth all around the battlefield.
A and B stared for a moment.
Then their eyes sharpened.
"Stop him!" A snapped.
Lightning exploded around his body again.
He shot forward at insane speed, punching through the air so fast the pressure stung exposed skin. His fist drove straight toward Minato's face.
Minato's eyes stayed utterly calm.
He bent slightly at the knees and flicked the kunai in his hand upward.
Once again, A's blow hit nothing.
The Yellow Flash vanished.
In the next instant, he reappeared beside one of the kunai that had landed earlier, body aligned, expression as placid as still water.
A's face tightened.
He didn't say impossible, but the word was written in the lines around his eyes.
"You dodged my full-speed charge…" he muttered.
He hadn't finished the thought when Minato blurred again.
This time the teleport was so fast it might as well have been literal blinking.
There was ten meters between them one heartbeat.
Then there was none.
Minato appeared behind A, the kunai he'd just tossed dropping neatly into his waiting hand. He stepped in, angle perfect, and drove the blade toward the base of A's neck.
"Big Bro!"
Danger flared in Minato's gut.
He jerked, every instinct screaming.
His hand flashed through a seal.
Space folded.
He vanished.
KRAKOOOM!
A gigantic tentacle, thick as a tree trunk and lined with suckers, scythed through the space he'd just occupied.
It smashed the air like a club.
Chunks of rock and splinters of wood went flying as it slammed into the ground.
Perched on a tree branch, Minato stared down at the writhing, octopus-like limb.
His expression finally darkened.
"Eight-Tails Jinchūriki," he said. "And the Third Raikage's heir… both on Konoha's border at the same time. Are you trying to start a war?"
Tailed beasts were this world's nuclear weapons.
For a village to move a jinchūriki all the way to another country's doorstep—with the next Raikage candidate in tow—wasn't something that happened by accident.
"If you've figured it out," A said roughly, "then we can't let you leave."
He still smarted from the near-miss earlier.
If B hadn't intervened, that kunai would've punched straight through his spine.
His respect for the Yellow Flash had gone up.
So had his killing intent.
"This guy's speed… it's not any ordinary Body Flicker."
"If he runs at full speed, he'll escape," B said.
Blood-red chakra boiled off his body. A single tail unfurled behind him, lashing the air.
He'd entered Version 1 cloak.
"As long as we block off the space around those kunai, reduce the area he can jump to, we can corner him~ Then we get a clean hit, and boom—Yellow Flash goes splat~"
Lightning crackled around A as he nodded.
Minato straightened on the branch.
His eyes were steady.
"This is your final warning," he said. "Leave the Land of Fire's border now. If you don't… I won't hold back."
"Don't get cocky, Yellow Flash," A snapped.
"We've figured your jutsu out. You can only move to spots where your kunai have landed. Once we control those, you have nowhere left to run."
Lightning flared again.
A launched himself forward, punching through the air in a blur. His armored fist drove forward, the shockwave splitting the air ahead of him.
Fly, Yellow Flash, he thought grimly. Where will you appear next?
B dropped to all fours, cloak whipping around him, senses stretched thin to catch even a flicker of movement.
The tension in the air stretched to snapping.
Minato exhaled once, quietly.
"I really do admire you," he said. "Both of you. But… I'm carrying a lot of people's hopes."
He didn't get to finish the thought.
Because without warning, crushing pressure crashed down on the battlefield.
Chakra—huge, dense, suffocating—bulged into existence over the clearing like a black star.
All three men froze.
A sphere hung in the air, dozens of meters across, pitch-black and perfectly smooth. Its mere presence made the air feel heavy. Chakra was compressed inside it to an almost absurd degree.
"Is that… a Tailed Beast Bomb?!"
"A Bijūdama?!"
"B—? No…!"
All three shouted at once.
B stared, stunned.
"That ain't my bomb…" he breathed.
A swallowed.
If that thing detonated where it was, it would wipe out everything for hundreds of meters in every direction.
And it wasn't alone.
Minato's head snapped sideways—and his pupils shrank.
A roaring wall of water, towering like a liquid cliff, was surging in from the treeline. It churned with terrifying force, water pressure alone enough to splinter steel.
Its path?
Straight toward Kakashi, Obito, and Rin—who'd retreated to "safety" at the edge of the fight.
Minato's mind went cold.
In that instant, the situation froze into a brutal equation.
If he used Flying Thunder God to redirect the Tailed Beast Bomb, the water jutsu would hit his students full-on.
They would be shredded.
If he teleported to save Kakashi and the others, the Bijūdama would explode where it hovered.
The shockwave would obliterate the clearing.
At best, everyone on the field would be maimed.
At worst—
There might not be enough pieces to bury.
Two disasters.
One Yellow Flash.
Only one choice.
For a tiny, stretched-out fraction of a second, the world seemed to hold its breath.
Then the Tailed Beast Bomb and the crushing wave of water kept falling.
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