Obito-Sensei Chapter 79
Knows Their Limits
Once he had Yahiko alone, it only took Minato thirty-two seconds to remove his fellow student's eyes.
Yahiko was still in Sage Mode, and Minato's had faded; that was the price of the Scorch Rasenshuriken, which was an enormous expenditure of chakra. Initially, that gave the Amekage who had ruined everything unearned confidence. When Minato returned to face him, Yahiko wasted no time in trying to seize the perceived advantage. The man was a master of Wind and Water jutsu, and he used both with equal skill as deadly projectiles and zoning tools to counter the mobility of the Hiraishin.
He talked. Minato had come to understand that Yahiko enjoyed talking. He used it to throw his opponent off-balance, and to embolden himself and his allies. He boasted about Nagato deflecting the Rasenshuriken, and about Minato's foolishness in trying to oppose that power. But at this point, Minato was beyond listening.
"Here's the problem," he said quietly, twenty-three seconds in. "Sage Mode doesn't make everything equally tough."
They met in the air, Yahiko trying to impale him with a Wind blade as Minato feinted from one building to another, giving the impression that for just a moment he'd lost track of the Amekage and didn't know where to teleport next. The blade scraped past his side, puncturing his flak jacket but missing his body. Minato spun, and drove his blade towards Yahiko's face.
The man caught it, ready to shatter Minato's hand with invisible energy. He was an incredible shinobi, so of course he caught it. Minato wasn't so far beyond someone who had learned the secrets of Myoboku that he could stab them before they could react.
But Yahiko hadn't yet seen the Flying Thunder God Slice, because Minato hadn't used it yet.
In the same millisecond that the kunai stopped and Yahiko counterattacked with a blow that would cut Minato in half, he teleported. Using the Hiraishin had become something that had more in common with breathing than a Ninjutsu; Minato had trained himself long ago to teleport purely by reflex, to bring himself from here to there no matter how impossible the transposition was, before he could consciously make the decision. All shinobi fought with trained reflexes, but Minato had learned that his ability to train reflexes for senses and reactions that couldn't naturally exist was what set him apart from others.
The secret to his impossible speed was an ignorance that it was impossible in the first place.
The Flying Thunder God Slice was a fancy name for a simple technique created by the Second Hokage. You attacked and teleported at the same time, like the old comparison of patting your belly while rubbing your head but several million times more difficult. Keeping oriented during instant teleportation by itself was challenging; coordinating a complex and powerful motion like an attack that could injure a shinobi was stunning.
Over the course of the battle, Yahiko had adapted to Minato's fighting style, which he felt some admiration for. The Amekage was a battle genius who had conquered a country thanks in no small part to his own strength and force of will. With Sage Mode and his sensory skills, he had begun to anticipate where Minato would appear and reliably counterattack over the course of the battle, and with Nagato he had brought down Jiraiya, one of the top ten ninja in the world by Minato's reckoning.
It was the same here. As Minato appeared and reappeared at Yahiko's side instead of in front of him, Yahiko was already readjusting the course of his vacuum blade. If Minato hadn't been expecting it, his head would have been split in half and he would have died in that instant.
But he was expecting it.
Hiraishin: Yūdōdan.
Returning Thunder Step was a simple technique, though no one but Minato had ever called it that. It was essentially a dimensional ricochet between two anchors, executed with such speed that even Minato couldn't perceive the transposition. All it did was remove him from his current position by sending him to another Hiraishin marker and bounce him back an instant later in the exact same placement. Its one and only use could be dodging attacks too fast for Minato himself to block or redirect without making him vulnerable to the same danger of counterattack upon his return.
Functionally, what it meant was that Yahiko's supersonic precognitive counterattack passed through the space Minato occupied, but through ill-fortune only while he was no longer there.
It had been inspired by the Kamui. But Minato wasn't thinking about that. In battle, he was single-minded, and spared no thoughts but for what was in front of him.
His steel-hard fingers formed into a wedge and before Yahiko could understand why his attack had missed, Minato scooped out his left eye.
Yahiko grunted, moving faster than the pain, and lashed out with an invisible fist that could shatter Minato's ribs and pulp his heart. But the sudden blind spot made him sloppy.
Sloppy enough that his grip was loose enough for Minato to teleport back to the knife still clutched in Yahiko's hand and drive it forward. Yahiko jerked, trying to drive the blade off-target, and succeeded. The long blade missed his eye and failed to pierce his brain, scraping along his cheek instead.
But Minato had decided on pronged kunai for more reasons beyond their obvious style. The secondary blade at the side of the knife slipped forward and jabbed into Yahiko's eye, hooking on the side of the socket and bursting it.
This time, Yahiko screamed. He detonated in a storm of razor sharp and invisible blades, an armor of wind that acted as both offense and defense, but Minato was already gone. He abandoned the kunai to be shredded by Yahiko's instinctual defense and reappeared on the side of a nearby building where he'd placed his mark by hand, watching his enemy and waiting to see what opening his attack had made.
Yahiko wasn't blind; he could see with Sage Mode's extrasensory perception, so long as he maintained it. Minato didn't know what the time limit on that might be. Between Yahiko's ability to instantly activate it at Myoboku and his ridiculous stamina in this battle, Minato had a theory that the Amekage must be storing pre-prepared Sage chakra somewhere and accessing it mid-battle. Perhaps with Shadow Clones, which was a brilliant concept that Minato likely never would have considered. But with blood dribbling from his sockets and pain clouding his reason, the man who had betrayed Jiraiya's dream was vulnerable.
"Hokage." Rasa's voice didn't distract Minato, but he and Yahiko both stopped to consider the arrival of the Kazekage. The man was observing the battle from above on a cloud of gold dust, arms crossed and eyes disdainful. "You have this in hand?"
Minato looked to the west, where the blue flames of the Nibi were only growing fiercer. He was rather sure that Rasa only cared for his son as a military asset, not as a child, but there was a kind of concern there nonetheless. Yugito Nii was like Gaara, a host that had mastered their beast, but older and more experienced for it. The battle could be turning against him.
Yahiko snarled, preparing to attack again, but Minato wasn't concerned. He'd felt the anticipation of defeating a strong opponent enough before that he was one-hundred-percent sure of his victory.
"I-" he started to say, and then Nagato returned.
The Uzumaki had been flung away by Yahiko, Minato had gathered upon his return. At a guess, the vacuum effect of the Great Flame Exploding Winds Spiral Shuriken had damaged him internally, an effect that Yahiko's Sage Mode had prevented. Minato had been sure that Nagato and the Rinnegan would have been taken out of the fight for at least a couple minutes by consequence; no matter how superhuman shinobi were, internal damage couldn't just be toughed out.
But maybe Nagato was more than superhuman; simply not human. Because despite blood dribbling from his mouth and eyes, he re-entered the battlefield as a storm of chakra, a cannon bursting from his shoulder and firing a coherent purple laser up at both Minato and Rasa as he rushed to Yahiko's side.
Minato dodged; Rasa blocked. The Kazekage swirled overhead like a beautiful but deadly storm and Minato gained more distance, trying to ascertain the new situation. Two on two was still to their advantage with the Amekage's injuries, but it wasn't ideal. The rest of the assassination squad was still occupied, injured, or dead. Orochimaru was a lingering threat.
He had promised Jiraiya he wouldn't kill Nagato unless he had no other choice. Minato wondered if that point of no return was approaching, and if his sensei would forgive him.
"Yahiko," Nagato rasped, standing between his friend and the men who were trying to kill him. "Your eyes-"
"It's fine!" Yahiko snapped. "I can still see just fine!" He laid a hand on Nagato's shoulder. "You're-?!"
"Fine," Nagato said, obviously lying as Minato watched with interest. Rasa's gold dust was beginning to coalesce into a storm of needles, but he must have known that such techniques were useless against Nagato. The golden rain of blades was a means to occupy the Rinnegan with defense instead of attack, and a way to open the way for Minato. He understood what he had to do immediately.
"We have to kill them now," Yahiko said, and Minato felt a grin tug at the corner of his lips for just a second. "While the rest are gone."
"Unlikely," Rasa declared, and glittering blades began to rain down.
While Nagato was here, focusing on Yahiko was too dangerous; he had to be removed from the field first. Minato leapt off the building, ripping the brick he'd marked with the Hiraishin away with his foot as he did and hefting it in his hand. The man was pale, shaking; he raised one hand and a gleaming sphere absorbed most of Rasa's attack, draining away the Kazekage's chakra and leaving his gold dust inert. Some color returned to Nagato's cheeks, and in the back of his mind Minato was fascinated by the implications that the Rinnegan's technique didn't just nullify jutsu, it transformed the chakra into more of Nagato's and reinvigorated him.
He flipped head over heels and hurled the brick, breaking the sound barrier. Yahiko was watching him, his bloody face twisted in a snarl as his Wind blade grew longer and he lashed out, probably both to strike the brick out of the air and to break the Hiraishin marker.
Minato wasn't deterred. He flashed to the ad-hoc projectile's side with a Rasengan already in hand and redirected the invisible blade with his own screaming chakra. At the same time, Rasa launched another wave of golden attacks, confident that none of them would hit his ally.
The brick flew straight and true, right to the edge of Nagato's chakra absorbing technique, and then Minato teleported again.
It brought him to within five feet of Nagato, who whirled towards him. Slower than he'd been, and so far, far slower than he needed to be. The Rasengan guttered out, devoured by Nagato's bottomless appetite, and Minato felt the Rinnegan tug at his own body, ready to greedily devour his chakra. Almost out of knives, unable to perform jutsu, and probably, he realized with some tension, unable to teleport away. By all means, Nagato and Yahiko had him dead to rights.
Unfortunately, in his weakened state Nagato didn't have a mystical technique to prevent Minato from seizing the brick he'd thrown and, as the Hiraishin mark on it wilted away, smashing it into Nagato's ribs.
Minato felt several of them break. Nagato fell back with a wheeze, blood pouring from his mouth. The chakra absorbing field vanished, and golden blades began to rain down once more, digging into Nagato and Yahiko from every angle.
"Good," Minato grunted, not bothering to teleport away this time. He hurled himself at Yahiko with another Rasengan already forming, dancing through the blades as the Amekage spun towards the new threat. The blade flung out in a horizontal bisecting slice but Minato slipped past it, not bothering to teleport again; Yahiko, like Nagato, was slowing down.
He slammed into his fellow student and buried the Rasengan in his chest. Even with Sage Mode, a direct hit would tear Yahiko's insides apart and doom him, but Yahiko was still just quick enough to turn with the blow; the Rasengan ground away at his side but didn't make solid contact, only blowing a hole in his cloak and scouring the skin his abdomen.
But he was there, and Yahiko was off balance. Minato finally took the moment he'd needed from the start, and gently placed his hand fully against Yahiko's side.
The Hiraishin burned its way in, becoming a permanent tattoo, and then Minato was gone before Yahiko could counterattack.
He paused again, calling out to Rasa. "Go," he said. "I'll handle the rest."
The Kazekage didn't wait to confirm; he flew across the sky like a golden cloud towards the rampaging blue flames in the distance, and Minato refocused on his opponents. He'd expected Yahiko to either charge or wait, and his opponent was waiting. He understood that if he made the wrong move, Minato would pierce his brain; he also understood that his only hope was for Nagato to remove the seal, as he had done for Sakura.
But Nagato wasn't moving either. He was frozen, eyes wide and full of terror, blood dribbling from his mouth. He knew the moment he moved, Yahiko would die.
"Minato," he said. "This isn't necessary."
Minato frowned. "You know it is," he said, and Nagato closed his eyes, stricken by grief. "Anyway, you're not in a position to negotiate. The best thing you can do now is nothing."
"Hit us both, Nagato," Yahiko said. Minato cocked an eyebrow. "When he attacks, throw everything you've got. I can take it."
It wasn't a terrible idea, but it wouldn't work. The Amekage were running on fumes, but Minato estimated he'd only burned through fifty-three percent of his chakra, give or take five percent. His reflexes were still sufficient to dodge Nagato's ninjutsu.
"Even now, Yahiko?" Nagato said, not opening his eyes. "Even now, like this, you're still doing this?"
"There's no choice," Yahiko said with bared teeth. "I knew this could be the cost-"
Minato chose that moment to attack.
He appeared at Yahiko's side, Rasengan in hand, and slammed it into the man's spine as he started to turn. It made solid contact, and he felt one of Yahiko's vertebrae crack even through the protection of Sage Mode.
But hesitant or not, Nagato counterattacked, following Yahiko's wish. It wasn't the gravity wave that Minato had expected; rather, it was an attractive force that ripped Nagato and Minato off their feet and sent them hurtling directly into Nagato.
He teleported out with the Rinnegan's hungry chakra nipping at his heels, but realized Nagato's intent in the same moment.
So Minato returned, lashing out with the same Rasengan and trying to crush Yahiko's skull. The jutsu didn't make contact, devoured by Nagato's jutsu, but Minato was still able to dodge Yahiko's counterattack and slam his palm into the man's jaw, nearly dislocating it. His Sage Mode was finally fading, but-
Nagato had reached out and yanked the Hiraishin marker off his fellow Kage's side, like a man ripping off an inky bandaid.
With his mind working at several hundred thoughts per minute, Minato saw Nagato make an irrational decision. Instead of the ink whipping away in Nagato's hands, the Amekage stared down at it, melding it into his own chakra system.
Minato didn't hesitate.
'Nagato,' he thought.
'You must have known that if you tried that, I'd have to kill you.'
He had one marked knife left, an emergency backup, but there were plenty of completely ordinary kunai in the various pouches across his vest and pants, and it was one of those he pulled. Minato dashed in and drove it up with enough strength to pierce the heavens.
He was no longer worrying about what Jiraiya would think if he killed Nagato. The man hadn't given him a choice.
Unfortunately, Nagato did not die.
His opponent moved so fast that Minato almost laughed. A jet of flame burst from Nagato's hand and jerked it into a collision course with Minato's attack, and he didn't have time to alter its trajectory. The knife pierced straight through Nagato's palm and jabbed a half-inch into the Amekage's throat before Nagato's fingers closed around it.
There was an infinitely long moment where they stood there making eye contact as Minato tried to push the blade in far enough to finish the job, knowing both that having Nagato's hands on him could mean death and also that he couldn't afford to retreat an inch in this moment. The Rinnegan burned into him, a bottomless pool that threatened to crush him beneath an unfathomable weight, but his chakra wasn't drained. Nagato was focusing on something else, wheezing and pushing back as Minato poured every ounce of his strength into driving the kunai fully through Nagato's hand and into his throat.
Minato saw a spark of desperation and brilliance in Nagato's eyes, and realized he'd made a mistake.
Putting the man a half-inch from death, maybe for the first time in his life, had given him the push he'd needed.
Nagato's other hand came up, shakily running through four hand signs. Then, he disappeared.
Minato spun, acting entirely on instinct as Yahiko charged in. The man was now truly blind, and it was child's play to sweep his legs from under him and lash out with the now blood-stained knife to try and catch him in the skull on the way down.
But Nagato's hand caught Minato's before he could make contact, and for the first time in the fight, the Hokage cursed.
"Nagato!" Yahiko coughed out as he hit the ground and bounced, leaving a bloody mark. "Kill him!"
"No," Nagato said, his grip iron around Minato's wrist.
"What?!" Yahiko snarled, trying to pull himself back to his feet. Anyone else would have been paralyzed; Minato had to admire his endurance, if literally nothing else. "But-!"
"Yahiko," Nagato said, blood trickling from his throat as he glared down at the both of them. "Shut up."
Minato didn't care for their little spat. He was too busy considering the cold reality of the situation.
His greatest fear had come to pass. Right now, his priority should be killing Nagato as quickly as possible.
No, wait. That was selfish thinking. First, he needed to make sure that the Amekage didn't gather more advantages, and get more assistance for the fight. He needed Rasa, and probably Gaara too.
He teleported away to a nearby knife and broke into a sprint, heading towards the blue flames across the rooftops and spiraling pipes that made up Amegakure's skyscape. He heard a pop of air a moment later, and found Nagato chasing after him; space warped, pushed aside, and the Amekage flew through the air with impossible speed, rapidly gaining.
Nagato may have figured out the secrets of the Hiraishin, Minato mused as he fled, but not all of them. He still required hand-signs to execute the jutsu, and his teleportation wasn't instant. Obviously, he wasn't present in the border space from his perspective for more than the blink of an eye, but there was a delay in his arrival of about a second; a potentially fatal amount of time in battle between shinobi.
Still, that didn't change the nature of the catastrophe. The Flying Thunder God was one of the core pillars of Konoha's strength, and through Minato's own sloppiness and Nagato's genius an enemy had taken it.
Nagato clearly wanted to negotiate; he wasn't attacking. Right now, Minato couldn't tell if opening those talks or killing the man would be the right move. He'd have to take things moment by moment for the time.
The farther west he went, the hotter the air got; it was full of particulate, melted steel and shards of glass, and Minato held his breath and channeled chakra to his lungs to clear any debris that had snuck by before he'd noticed. Normal humans couldn't survive this sort of environment, but it wasn't quite severe enough for shinobi to require equipment. Not yet, anyway. Blue flames raged all around now, buildings slagged and buried in sand, and the roaring of great beasts echoed through the streets. Minato slung himself past a sagging skyscraper, catching himself and looking down one of the wide artery-like streets that ran the length of the city.
Despite being prepared for the sight, his heart still caught in his throat.
Creatures as large as Tailed Beasts weren't really meant to wrestle, but that was definitely what was happening. The Nibi, a cat made of incandescent blue flames, and the Ichibi, a tanuki of sand, clashed against each other again and again, crushing buildings beneath their bulk. There was a constant, deafening crackling of sand fusing into glass, but more and more pushed out and replaced it, Gaara launching attacks from somewhere within the Tailed Beast that hissed like fire of their own as the Nibi was pummeled with massive melting limbs.
Gaara was winning, Minato noted. Even though Yugito Nii had mastered her Tailed Beast, Gaara was winning. Did that mean he had made even more progress than her despite his young age, or was she impaired in some way? He had no way to know, and at the moment it was immaterial. The Kazekage was here as well, ensuring his son's victory. Golden loops restrained the Nibi, keeping it vulnerable as Gaara's Bijuu form pounded it with ever more vicious attacks, but thankfully Rasa stayed at a safe distance high above all the while.
Nagato was only a second behind him, but a second could be all he needed. The Nibi was in a position for a knockout blow; a large enough Rasengan could get the job done. Minato steadied himself, channeling chakra and preparing to leap.
But in that moment, Minato saw something that made his heart stop.
He was a rational man, a quick thinker who could adapt to almost any situation, but having two impossibilities stacked on top of one another proved too much for him. Because when golden chains burst out of a building behind Gaara and wrapped around him, dragging the tanuki to the ground and stilling its sand, Minato blinked, and froze.
He saw the flash of red through a window, a pale, terrified face lit by blue fire and golden light.
'Kushina?'
It wasn't Kushina. He knew that, of course. It had to be Karin Uzumaki, one of the many of Kushina's clan who'd been scattered across the world in their exodus from Uzushiogakure. Team Seven's report had mentioned her, but there had been nothing about her awakening the clan's Adamantine Chains. That had to be a recent development.
It was easy for Minato to analyze the situation, but impossible for him to act on it. He shifted his focus, but found himself unable to complete his leap. Crashing down on one of Kushina's clansmen and killing her in an instant was unthinkable; even though she was dooming the assault with her actions, killing one of Naruto's friends made Minato twitch violently enough that the bloody knife fell from his hand.
He heard a pop, and spun; Nagato had vanished from behind him. He'd been distracted, but the Amekage hadn't taken advantage of his lapse. As the Beasts raged and the Nibi fell on a prone Gaara while Rasa furiously rained down golden lances from the sky and Karin ran for more solid cover, Minato heard Nagato's voice echo through his mind and across the city.
'I recommend you surrender, Hokage, or all your ninja will die.'
He could feel Nagato's regret and determination through the telepathic link, and though Minato wasn't in Sage Mode he didn't need to be to instantly understand where Nagato had gone.
He sighed and teleported away, leaving Rasa and his son to their fate. Now, he was back across the lake, with the Yamanaka contingent and the Hiraishin kunai he'd left as a safety consideration.
A plan that had completely and totally backfired. Nagato was standing behind Fukuro, his impaled hand placed firmly on the top of her head. Invisible energy danced around it as blood dripped down her face but the Yamanaka was unharmed despite being obviously terrified. The chakra of the Rinnegan shone in her own eyes; Nagato had hijacked her jutsu, wired his chakra network into hers, and despite Nagato still being pale, sagging with his broken ribs, and covered in blood, Minato was very sure there was no way he'd be able to knock him off his subordinate before he crushed her skull or ripped out every drop of her chakra.
"Hokage," Nagato said, his voice whistling slightly through the hole in his neck. "I implore you." He looked around, obviously taking in the other Yamanaka members surrounding him. "I'd prefer to end this as quickly as possible."
"Every moment we talk, more of my ninja die," Minato said shortly, and Nagato nodded.
"So tell them to retreat," he said. Minato narrowed his eyes. Nagato was weakened, so this…
He was at a terrible crossroad. Before him were the responsibilities of the Hokage and the responsibilities of Jiraiya's inheritors. Here now was one of his peer students offering an impossible olive branch, a cease fire. But the Hokage couldn't afford to take that peace offering, not when he could push the advantage and decapitate the Hidden Rain that had so grievously betrayed him and Konoha. From a military perspective, Nagato could not be allowed to live.
But the man hadn't been speaking lightly. If Minato didn't surrender, the cost would be grotesque. Most likely, the entire assault force would die or be captured thanks to Nagato's newfound mobility. Minato was not so arrogant to believe he could kill the man without a fight, even in his weakened state. His mind was unfocused; his heart was at war. There was no correct solution to this dreadful problem.
'Today,' Minato thought, 'I'll save lives. Tomorrow, I'll face the consequences.'
He slowly moved forward, one step at a time as the other ninja watched in disbelief. To them, seeing the Yellow Flash give up had to be an experience of transcendent terror. The flame of Nagato's legend would rage out of control after this, but Minato's prestige did not matter nearly as much as the lives of Konoha's ninja.
He pressed his hand to Fukuro's forehead and found it slick with sweat. She made eye contact with him, and he gave a single firm nod.
Nagato's burning chakra bound them all together, and Minato sent out a short command with all the intensity he could manage, hoping to sear it into the minds of every ninja within a hundred miles.
'Shinobi of Konoha and Suna, retreat. Kill any that pursue you.'
He let his hand drop, and refused to let an interminable silence prosper. "Now what?"
Nagato sighed, refusing to drop his guard but obviously relieved. "Thank you," he said, gingerly releasing Fukuro's head. She stayed still, like a rabbit playing dead in the den of a wolf. "I'm not sure," he said.
"You're not sure?" Minato said, quiet and calm. He was running through every possibility he could think of, and Nagato voiced one of them.
"This has been a tremendous waste," Nagato said simply. "Against my wishes, against Konan's wishes. You were justified in this assault, Hokage. What my village did to yours can't be forgiven." He paused with a wheeze, and carefully wiped some blood from his lips. It was a sign of weakness, but not enough; Minato had no illusions that for now, the detente had to hold. "But there's no reason for it to continue."
"Give me Yahiko," Minato said. "And I'll consider that close to true."
Nagato hesitated.
"You won't," Minato confirmed.
"I won't," Nagato said. The Yamanaka were spreading out, anticipating an attack, but Minato held up a hand to stop them as Nagato continued speaking. He didn't want them to die. "Despite what he's done… Yahiko's important to me. I couldn't turn him over to be executed." He gave Minato a sad smile. "You've blinded him. His hatred literally blinded him. Can that be enough for now?"
"No." Minato shook his head. "Jiraiya told me that Yahiko launched the attack by himself."
"That's true."
"Then he's still dangerous," Minato said, feeling an indescribable cold settle over his mind and pour from his lips. "Even if you made a show of stripping his power, he'd maintain loyalists. He's a charismatic man."
"If you kill him," Nagato said, and Minato was surprised to find the same cold, the same power, in his peer, "you'll make him a martyr. The voice of a martyr can't be controlled; if he's alive, I can manage him. Consider that, Minato."
And Minato did consider it. It was a tempting fantasy: the firebrand brought to heel, rationality prevailing and peace prevailing as Rain and Leaf laid down their arms.
'But it is a fantasy,' he thought. 'The cycle has started now; there will always be those in Rain who hate Leaf, and those in the Leaf who hate Rain. Surrendering here will be seen as weakness, and so long as Nagato lives, my replacement is inevitable. Then, the conflict will begin again with a fresh generation, as it has time and time again.'
But the situation was fragile, his ninja in danger, and he was faced with a god crushed into the body of a man, and so Minato decided to lie.
"I won't pursue him," he said, and Nagato nodded. "For today, we'll bring this to an end."
Minato gestured to Fukoro and the rest of the Yamanaka. "Give a general retreat order," he said, and they obeyed without questioning, understanding the gravity of the situation. As a storm of telepathic commands began to pulse out, Minato drew closer to Nagato, who regarded him cautiously.
"How will you control him?" he asked, and Nagato understood that their negotiation had shifted. He lowered his voice, keeping himself far enough away to have a buffer from Minato's speed but respecting his wishes for privacy.
"He'll be imprisoned," he said. "Even with Konan out of the village, I have enough ninja for that. No one will question-"
"It will be questioned," Minato said. "That's the weakness of your trinity. It has not yet been challenged by a fractured front."
Nagato narrowed his eyes, but after a moment he nodded. "You're right. But regardless, I don't intend for Amegakure to continue this war. Our ninja won't enter the Land of Fire; we will focus on our true enemy."
"The Hidden Cloud."
"Yes." A tremor of anger ran through Nagato, and Minato crushed the impulse to take a step back. "Even with Yahiko's mistake, punishing Cloud should still be well within our power."
"You will return Gaara," Minato said, moving on, and Nagato paused, obviously pushing his senses out as he looked past the Hokage towards the city. Perhaps that was the moment Minato should have attacked, but it passed so quickly that even he would have been pressed to take advantage of it.
"He's been captured. His father was driven off," he said. Minato was torn between surprise and acceptance. That Gaara had been captured by the Adamantine Chains wasn't shocking, but he would have thought Rasa would have fought harder to save him. Karin Uzumaki must have received assistance after he'd departed; the Kazekage was strong, but he wasn't the kind of man who could fight an army on his own, not when the Nibi had been there too.
Nagato shook his head. "We won't release him," he said, truly surprising Minato for the second time.
"It will be difficult to justify a truce with you holding our ally's Jinchuriki hostage," Minato said shortly, but Nagato laughed.
"He's a mass murderer. That he was still walking free at all is a testament to the Land of Wind's complete amorality," Nagato said, a bit of fire creeping back into his voice as the cold rationality which threatened to overwhelm the negotiation melted away. "He was sent to the Land of Waves as an agent of the Daimyo; his crimes and the country's are one and the same. If his home and allies are unwilling to punish him, the Land of Rain will need to step in."
"That's not your place."
"We will make it our place," Nagato declared, and Minato realized that he wouldn't make any further progress on this. Nagato was making a moral declaration first and foremost; there wouldn't be any convincing him.
Minato conceded. "If Sand attempts to retrieve him, it will be done so without our knowledge."
"I'm sure," Nagato said, and Minato knew that both of them understood that his words couldn't entirely be truthful, but would have to stand for now. Some of the fire went out of him, and he sighed. "The attack is almost fully withdrawn. You should go, Minato. They'll need their leader."
Minato didn't spare a word as he turned to leave, but Nagato threw something after him. "You'll modify the jutsu formula, won't you?" he said, and Minato stopped. Nagato sighed. "It's an incredible thing, but..."
"But not one I can let you have. I will modify it, yes," Minato acknowledged, knowing that Nagato would understand the truth whether he lied or not. He thought the man would respond with some manner of bravado, like Yahiko would have, but instead Nagato stayed quiet.
"We've both drawn blood," he eventually said. "Can't we just pretend to be kids, and say that's enough?"
Minato paused, looked back. He could see two Nagato's: the god in the body of a man, unparalleled, ferocious, a force that could challenge the world alone, and another one of Jiraiya's students, a paradox of a ninja that had learned to kill for the sake of preventing death. They were laid over one another, existing in the same kind of equilibrium that Minato had built for himself.
"We're not children," he said, and Nagato sank in on himself. "Tend to your ninja, Amekage."
Nagato closed his eyes and vanished, whipped away by the Hiraishin, and Minato breathed out, preparing to face his failures.
###
For a man who'd left his son in the hands of the enemy, the Kazekage's fury was impressive.
"You ran," he declared, making no effort to hide his disdain. Many of Sand's ninja had come to their leader's side in the confusion after the attack, and Minato felt he was facing the whole contingent that remained, nearly eighty ninja. They had spread out through the forest and the trees and shinobi of Konoha opposed them, including Rin and Sasuke, who had come straight to him after the psychic command. "You sacrificed both my Bijuu and my son."
"The Amekage's threat wasn't idle," Minato said, both noting the order Rasa had named his losses in and curious despite himself at how he was managing to keep collected even under these dreadful circumstances. "And I had no intention of letting him make good on it. Many more than your son would be lost if I hadn't chosen to negotiate, Rasa."
'Is something wrong with me? I hardly feel a thing.'
"He's the one we could not lose," the Kazekage bit out, his knuckles white. "A perfected Jinchuriki-"
"A mass murderer," someone behind Minato called out, and he glanced back, not immediately recognizing the voice. It was a member of the medical corp and one of Rin's assistants, Tanjiro, and he stood his ground despite the Kazekage's dark eyes flicking towards him.
"Hokage," Rasa said quietly, and his tone was so dangerous that despite his previous bravado Tanjiro didn't speak again. "You'd let one of your ninja speak to me in such a way?"
Minato weighed his options, and shrugged. He felt the ninja at his side tense, preparing for whatever would come.
"He's right," he said, and the whole Sand contingent shifted, whispers and dark muttering spreading rapidly. "Nagato made the same claim; it was his justification for not releasing him."
"Shinobi," Rasa said, looking like he might grind his teeth to dust, "cannot murder, nor be murdered. You of all people should understand that, Minato."
"Perhaps," Minato said. "But the decision has been made."
"Without our consent," Rasa said, and his shinobi nodded or voiced their assent, almost universally showing agreement. Minato wondered just what the character of the ninja who Rasa had decided to bring along on the assault were; he had noted long before that the Kazekage's other children weren't among them. "If this is how you treat an ally, well, how you treat your enemies seems a mercy." He looked around, catching the eye of several of his Jonin, and the nearest ones nodded.
"We're leaving," the Kazekage bit out. "Consider this the end of our alliance. Perhaps we will forgive you if you come to us on your knees, begging and scraping, and with an additional Bijuu to replace the one you've lost." The Kazekage sneered. "I'm sure the whole world will be fascinated to know the coward you've become, Minato."
Minato didn't spare a word. He just nodded, and Rasa's expression grew even more foul. Without another insult, he and his contingent turned and began to rush south to the Land of Wind.
Minato waited until they were gone to consider giving any new orders.
"If you have any Hiraishin kunai, drop them," he eventually said, the order and the confusion that accompanied it quickly spreading. "We're heading home."
"Minato," Rin said from his side, and he breathed in, turning towards her as the march began.
"Casualties?" he asked, and she shrugged.
"Not too bad. Only about a hundred, and three dozen of them dead," she said, rattling off the numbers with the efficiency only the head medical ninja could possess. "The retreat pulled together in good order."
Sasuke was there, Minato saw, watching everything quietly with bloodstained eyes. He'd been forced to burn more of his vision, probably fighting-
"Orochimaru?" he asked the both of them. Sasuke shook his head, while Rin frowned.
"He's dead," Sasuke said, and Minato let out a breath he hadn't known he'd been holding. "Or close enough to it. He… turned into a tree."
Jiraiya's teammate really had become a complete monster; torn apart by ancient chakra and petty jealousy. 'How could someone so brilliant,' Minato wondered, 'be so blind?'
But Orochimaru was now dead, or close enough to it, as Sasuke had said, so Minato permanently put him out of mind. He could see Jiraiya approaching, navigating through the shinobi spreading out as the march back to Konoha began in earnest. A light rain was drizzling down, masking what little sound they were making; it was a silent and shameful retreat.
"You did well," was the first thing Jiraiya said, and Minato almost spit.
"Yahiko's alive," he said, and he couldn't help but feel a bit of disgust when his master looked relieved.
'Does he not understand what that means? That this isn't over?'
He didn't, and he proved it. "Nagato will keep him under control," Jiraiya said with unearned confidence. "He's a wise man. Konan too. They'll get Rain back on the right track."
"I hope that's the case, sensei," Minato said, knowing it wouldn't be. "For now, it doesn't matter. Nagato stole the Hiraishin; I couldn't risk continuing the battle with that in his arsenal."
Rin, Sasuke, and Jiraiya all looked equally terrified, a terror that would surely race across the world when word of Nagato's victory spread, either by a triumphant Rain or a spiteful Rasa. But Minato could use that. It would make his enemies overconfident.
That was his initial thought. Minato could always find the silver lining in any situation. But the longer they marched, the longer the thought festered.
He'd failed. His life hadn't had many failures, if he was honest with himself. He hadn't lived a blessed existence bereft of strife, but whenever he'd put his mind to something, he'd accomplished it. But now, he'd finally met a man who'd stonewalled even him.
Minato had been labeled a thunder god, a god of war. But most pantheons weren't led by a god of war; war was subordinate to greater things, more fundamental physics and necessary pursuits.
Now, Minato couldn't help but think that Nagato was that greater god.
'He turned my strength against me,' he thought. 'No one else could. I thought my position was secure, that my secrets were safe, but that was a delusion.'
But then, that hadn't been his only delusion. He'd stood by and refrained from cementing Konoha's position as a hyperpower through rule of cruelty on the assumption that people would understand it was in their interest, not his, and Rain and Cloud both had rewarded that mercy with slaughter. He was the one with the divergent mind, the fear of himself, and now more than ever with Jiraiya's relieved look lingering in his mind it seemed to Minato that he was the only one who understood the true stake of things.
'How many more mass murders will there be?' he wondered. 'Waves, Rain, Konoha, and now, surely the Land of Frost, and many countries beyond. Stone will move soon, and the world will only plunge deeper into war. Even if our fight with Rain is done for the moment, the real war is about to begin. I thought they would be happy to accept a cold war where we spent money before lives, but everyone is thirsty for power and control, the means to remake the world in their image, to buy their people infinite security and freedom no matter how impossible their coexistence is.'
He was strong. Minato knew that. It was why he had been made Hokage.
'But am I strong enough? The Hokage is supposed to defend the village. The Hokage is supposed to carry on the Will of Fire. Have I really done that? Or were the Uchiha right? Did I waste these years waiting for a peace that will never come, blindly believing it would build itself?'
They left the Nation of Rain behind, but only physically. Minato was stuck there, dread weighing his soul down.
'Am I worthy of being the Hokage if I can't take that peace with my own two hands?`