波風ミナト
The Fox had been pushed away from the village by the time he'd arrived. The old, retired Third Hokage had donned his armor once more and had kept the Fox from further destroying the village by pushing it out of the village with his Rod of Heaven, a massive extendable pole that jutted directly into the Nine-tails' midriff. The Chakra signatures of many brave men and women were being extinguished left and right as they gave their lives to distract the Nine-tails to sate its lust for blood and keep it from bounding back towards the village. How many had died, how many more would die he couldn't bear to fathom.
He'd wasted too much time, selfishly prolonging what he knew to be some of the last moments he would have with his wife. And his selfishness had come at the cost of many lives.
Just nearly a mile out from the village, the Fox turned its head toward the Hokage Monument on which he stood. It sensed him and recognized his presence. How could it not? It had been sealed inside Kushina after all. He and Kushina had been close since they were children. The Fox recognized him alright.
And it hated him.
Ignoring the many Shinobi pestering it with useless explosives, the Demon collected itself. A dark spherical concentration of Chakra began to form in the epicenter of its jaws. The Shinobi surrounding it began to panic. They could feel the sheer, destructive power contained in that purple-black sphere. It was enough to wipe out entire landscapes and decimate mountains.
From his vantage-point, Minato could feel the entirety of the Demon's wrath being concentrated on his person. The Fox was blaming him for his hypocrisy, for being a killer among men held in high esteem for his natural talent. Most of all, he felt a senseless, rampant hatred, a rage so black it seemed to be endless in depth.
And then the ball was released, shot towards the village like a bullet.
Minato placed his hands in a seal and, with the same ability he used to transport himself across space-time to arrive at where he currently stood, he created an entry point directly on the point of impact, the faces of the Hokage Monument.
The bomb entered the mountainside seamlessly like water through a permeable film, seeming to vanish entirely from sight.
The bomb was transported many kilometers away into the deserts near the Valley of Ends via a Flash marker. The sky lit up, and for an instant, the night receded and the blue of the sky returned. The moment was soon followed by earthquake tremors, and the air vibrated with the pressure of wind and sound.
Then, from amidst the chaos, the Fourth Hokage spoke to the Demon, knowing that it would pick up his words with its incomparably sharp ears.
"If you hate me, then come. I will be your opponent."
The Demon's roar was deafening and it charged toward the village. The Third Hokage's Pole of Heaven that had initially held it back suddenly seemed no more than a mere stick to be batted aside.
Finding the Flash marker near the outer perimeters of the village that he had felt earlier, Minato put himself in the Fox's path. The retired Third Hokage stood behind him with a small squad of people. Apparently the old man, in a moment of ingenuity, had went out of his way to find and keep a Flash marker with him.
"Minato!" The village's former leader called.
Minato turned briefly to give the elder his winning smile, the one which could charm the knickers off a bonobo. "Take care of my son." Was all he managed to say before vanishing and taking the Demon with him.
It was the last thing Sarutobi Hiruzen, the one-time God of Shinobi and Third Hokage of the Hidden Leaf, would hear from his successor. He would never see the man alive again.