Minato's eyes widened in utter disbelief at what his eyes beheld.
It was as though a scene from just mere moments ago had been copied into a dimensional game console, and forcibly replayed at this very moment.
Kagero had saved him once more.
"Wow, I can't believe that actually worked!"
Kagero exclaimed in excitement, the rough cuts embedded into his palm from his rasengan stealing his attention.
And before long, a blue screen flashed in his vision, one that only he could see.
DING!
'[You have successfully copied the rasengan.]'
'[Employing Ninjutsu Specialist.]'
'[You have successfully mastered the Rasengan.]'
{ *** ~ • JUTSU NAME • ~ *** }
|
Rasengan
JUTSU TYPE
|
Ninjutsu
JUTSU RANK
|
{ •|~ A-Class. ~|• }
'Awesome!' Kagero mused inwardly, turning his attention away from the System tab.
"Oh— yeah." He snapped himself back to reality. "Are you— okay Minato?"
Kagero's voice had a mix of rhetorical worry, and a bit of concern.
He coughed before adding.
"Cause you're looking at me pretty weirdly."
At Kagero's statement, Minato sprung up to his feet with a nervous smile, ruffling through his hair with a chuckle.
"It's just that—" He hesitated momentarily when he realized that he didn't know the young man's name.
"Excuse my rudeness." Minato offered his hand to Kagero. "What is your name?"
Kagero responded and shook his hand, letting Minato continue with his earlier statement.
"Kagero." He paused for a second. "How are you still alive?"
"Huh?" Kagero blinked twice at the absurdity of his statement. "Because I never died?"
Realizing the Boy hadn't quite fully grasped his question, Minato cleared his throat, leaving that line of discussion for another time.
"Anyways, thanks for saving me once again. I'm the Hokage, and yet— I've already been saved by you twice now."
Kagero watched Minato with a wide and spaced out expression.
It was the kind of look one would have, if they opened their bathroom to an alien going number two.
Oh, that's never happened to anyone?
Anyways, that look was caused by two complementary things.
One, Kagero was a Weeb! A nerd if one might add.
And the second being the very fact that right now, standing before him was one of his favorite characters in the entire franchise.
He wasn't just beholding Minato, he was getting thanked by him!
"E…m are you still there?"
Minato's calls snapped Kagero out of his mental Otaku realm. 'Ohh darn, he caught me looking dumb.' Kagero lamented.
'Say something that isn't stupid.'
The red haired boy's internal coach imperatively cut into his thoughts, causing his mind to go haywire in search of a proper response.
"Yeah, you're welcome." A nonchalant response escaped Kagero's lips, whilst he tried to gain back his cool demeanor.
Minato then took a deep breath, his formerly jovial personality fading away into one of cold seriousness.
"Also, how do you know that jutsu?"
The Fourth hokage was the creator of the sphere of blue chakra known as the rasengan, and he had only taught this jutsu to one other person.
So his deductive alarms couldn't help but go off, at the sight of a stranger, albeit his savior, using it.
'Shit!' Kagero's eyes widened in utter bewilderment at Minato's question.
'What the hell am I gonna say? Should I tell him it's because I have that?'
'I didn't think this through!'
Although he hadn't even come up with a convincing answer, he felt his lips being pried open instinctively.
After all, he knew full well, that quiet meant guilt.
"That's because—"
"MINATO!" A beyond exhausted groan echoed through the night, cutting their conversation short.
"I can't keep holding this darn Cat any longer!" Gamabunta screamed out once more, spurring Minato immediately into action.
"I apologize Chief." The fourth Hokage twisted his palms with different hand signs before raising it into the air.
All five of his finger tips burned with a blue blaze of chakra, and he slammed those fingers right atop Kurama's head, dispelling a wave of sinister scarlet energy from the Beast's body.
"Contract Release!"
There was a defiant roar from the Ninetails, but when Minato's jutsu reached its completion, Kurama's pupils spun back into their normal slits once more.
Its eyes then slowly but gradually grew heavy, causing the beast to kneel on all fours, with its head lowered in silence.
"It's about time." Gamabunta confessed with a pained sigh, collapsing on his butt.
"That's pretty cool." Kagero looked over at the Ninetails, only to see his eyes were shut tight.
It was as though the beast had been enthralled within a deep slumber.
"Is it finally ove—"
Kagero tried to ask, but a cold voice that only surfaced memories of pain and struggle echoed through the dust cloud.
"Hahaha."
An inaudible laugh escaped the Man's lips.
"Hahahahahahahahahahaha!"
It then transformed into a maniacal chuckle that raged into the night, as a masked individual held onto his arm in pain.
His arm was mangled, streams of blood flowing down it as it barely held itself onto his shoulder.
Courtesy of Kagero's Rasengan.
"Isn't this comical?!" Obito rested his palm upon his head, losing himself in more peals of crazed laughter.
"I'd already basically won— plans upon plans upon plans UPON PLANS!"
The masked Uchiha's temperament calmed, as he let out a tired breath.
"All led up to this very moment. But it was ruined." His tone immediately waxed hot once more.
"By one annoying little brat!"
"Are you some kind of immortal pest?" Obito pointed at Kagero, his face creased in anger behind his mask.
Obito's state of mind seemed as though it were cracked.
His formerly cold and calculating demeanor shattered under the pressure of defeat, and was replaced by one of comical madness.
As he swung between moods of calmness and rage.
"Your name— It was Kagero, right?" Obito asked, continuing right away without expecting an answer.
"Yes, I'll remember that name." The masked Uchiha's gaze ascended, piercing Kagero with a death stare.
Obito's cold and dark personality suddenly wrapped around his being once more.
"Kagero, this is my promise to you."
His eyes grew into a bloody scarlet hue, and through his slightly broken mask, only a fiendish smile could be seen pasted across the vengeful Uchiha's lips.
He then uttered a chilling warning.
"I'll make you regret that you ever inserted yourself— Into a world that you don't understand."
"And as you watch everyone around you die one by one."
Obito's Sharingan revolved into the Mangekyo as he concluded his eerie warnings.
"Remember that you were the one who chose to be a hero."
Obito then caused a purple warping chakra to course around him, in a bid to retreat for the time being.
But right before he had completely phased through time and space.
A voice belonging to his source of hatred called out to him.
"O—" Kagero cut his words short, remembering Minato stood right next to him. It wasn't yet the time to expose who the masked individual was.
"Masked man." He reiterated his wordings.
"On your way, also remember this." Kagero's voice darkened with a cold and bodacious touch to his tone, as his face hardened in a threatening showcase.
"When you do come."
Kagero's expression relaxed into a derisive smirk.
"I'll be here to stop you."
Scowling at the smiling child, Obito warped out of their vision, in such a surreptitious way, that it seemed as though the nightmarish being had never been before present in their midst.