Gamabunta grunted in pain, his grip across his blade loosening by virtue of the forceful tails that gripped his entire body.
"Chief!"
Minato yelled out in concern right from the top of the toad's head, watching everything unfold.
The Ninetails intended on popping the amphibian like a balloon, a pest that he had finally caught in his melancholic grasp.
However, despite the fact that his strength was nowhere near that of the beast, Gamabunta still tried his best to escape his binds.
But it was all to no avail.
And with brute force out of the window, he was left with just one choice to getting loose.
"Minato!— do you remember how we got my snakeskin wallet?"
The Fourth Hokage's brows furrowed in confusion, only for his face to brighten up a second later.
His hope returned as the memories of that past event came flooding in.
"So you want me to do that?—" A sense of relief beamed from Minato's formerly worried demeanor.
"—Right Bunta?!"
Gamabunta responded with a pained smile, doing his best to prevent the full brunt of Kurama's crushing pressure.
"Let it rip! Chosen one!"
Suddenly, Minato shut his eyes and maintained a calm stance, clasping his palms together.
His hair flowed back, swaying in the air with ghostly grace.
And as though the very earth itself joined in his assimilation. The ground began to slowly but surely quake in a calm tremor.
The winds too joined in his bizarre choir, swirling around the motionless Hokage, to leave a serene whistle in the already ethereal night.
The performance of nature finally reached its climax, as an odd sight reflected in the Ninetails eyes.
While the beast watched the statue-like human, blue flames of chakra gradually emanated from the Hokage's body.
The winds that once wrapped around him transformed into a radiant blue aura, before being absorbed into Minato's being.
"Sage transfiguration." Minato's voice blended into the air.
"SAGE MODE!"
He opened up his eyes, causing chakra to billow from him like a forceful tempest.
His pupils were slit into a horizontal bar, and around his eyes, a yellow marking painted his eyelids.
This was no longer just the Fourth Hokage.
It was a Hokage, pulsing with divine authority.
The Ninetails immediately drew its arm back, noticing Minato's strange transfiguration.
It had sensed a similar energy once before, from a battle of centuries past. That gentle but oppressive aura.
The Ninetails' talons retracted outwards like tree-like knives, before making a beeline for Minato.
But it was too late.
With his arms slammed against Gamabunta's head, the formerly fatigued toad immediately burst with vigour, as streams of chakra swirled around him.
"Attaboy!" Gamabunta pushed his arms sideways, breaking loose from the Ninetails' lock with a violent spin into the air:
The beast stumbled backwards, watching the gargantuan toad spin upwards like a fidget spinner.
Clad in waves of senjutsu chakra, the amphibian warrior descended, clashing his blade against Kurama's claws once more.
The toad then used that momentum to leap backwards, coating his blade in an outpour of chakra, then sending projectile slashes racing towards the Orange beast.
But Kurama blocked it, arching his tail into a barricade in front of him to shield the attack.
The ground trembled, cracks stretching through it, and tremors raging from it, as Kurama dug his tails into the ground.
All nine of the beast's tails chiseled underground in an uncanny sight, leaving what would later ensue to only be imagined.
"Chief." Minato's gaze turned to the earth beneath them. "Watch out!"
Dozens of chakra-like tails broke forth from the ground right between Gamabunta's legs.
Yet, with a single leap, the toad evaded them, twisting and turning its body in the air to dodge the tails that swatted at him in the air.
"When I get back to Mount Myoboku, I'll ask Ma to prepare a feast for me."
Gamabunta rotated past a forceful tail, digging his blade into it, and sliding through like a zip line.
But like an eternal nightmare, a plethora of more tails unearthed themselves, aiming their sharpened edges at the toad's flesh.
Making his blade wax hot in an aura of blue chakra, Gamabunta took a defiant stance.
"Come right at me, you bastards!"
In a way that almost teased that the chakra-like tails had ears, they came rushing forward at the moment of his challenge.
The Warchief swung his blade behind him, slicing through a few tails like a hot knife through butter.
But the instant his blade went through them, another set of sharp appendages lunged at him from the side.
He set his blade sideways to block the attack, sending him sliding back into another myriad of tails that stood in wait, for the perfect moment to rend through his flesh.
However, the Hokage had other plans.
Conjuring a mass of rotary chakra in his palm, Minato leaped from Gamabunta's head, driving his jutsu right into a towering cluster of tails.
He pushed them backwards, his chakra growing and growing with a violent spin, before bursting right through the cluster of tails.
Landing back atop Gamabunta, Minato observed the battlefield.
"This is bad."
They were surrounded all over. Like two ants in a garden of towering tails of chakra.
But they had to still keep on going. Now was the best chance to get on the Ninetails.
After all, they would have a better chance at doing it before his sage mode eroded.
However, he couldn't risk dying before then.
Because, if he was to spare any moves he had left, the Ninetails would be sure to make him regret it.
"Chief." Minato called, slamming his arms against Gamabunta once more.
"Go crazy."
Suddenly, even greater magnitudes of chakra than before raged around Gamabunta, swirling around him as though he were in the middle of an F5 tornado.
"Just the words I was looking for!"
Gamabunta raced forward like a frenzied animal, slicing through tail upon tails of chakra as he bolted through the battlefield.
The ground unearthed, tails flying right at the Warchief with edges dripping with malice.
He hopped upwards, maneuvering strategically to evade the strikes.
He then landed on one of the appendages, arching his blade to leave severed chakra pieces littering the floor.
"All roads lead to you— Foxy!" Gamabunta yelled, pulsing with chakra as he darted across the battlefield.
Slit!
A rip stretched through his cloak.
Slit!
A tail cut through his side.
Slit!
Red fluid spilled from his arm.
But he still kept on going, much to the Beast's irritation.
With a thunderous roar into the air, Kurama sent every tail that buried itself into the ground, as well as those already on the battlefield to latch at the Toad and its Summoner.
Like a congregation of darkness, the tails merged together, wrapping around Gamabunta into a thick cocoon.