"Didn't I tell you not to try anything strange with my little brother?"
The fox smiled, unaffected by Ryu's killing intent.
"Did you forget?" the fox said. "One cannot die in this place. This boy does not have a real physical body here."
"But he would have felt it," Ryu said. "His spiritual self would have suffered backlash."
"And yet," the fox said, "he would not have died from it."
Ryu said nothing.
The fox watched him for a moment. "You are very protective of a boy you have only met a handful of times."
"I meant it when I said he is family now."
A brief silence passed between them.
Then the fox said, "How about this? If you take my attack without moving, standing exactly where you are, I will never try to hurt the brat again."
It was a trap dressed as a challenge.
Ryu saw through it immediately. The fox would use his strongest attack. Even if death was off the table in this place, backlash was not. If Ryu failed to withstand it without moving, the damage would still be real where it mattered.
He looked up at the beast. "Do you mean it?"
"I am more than a thousand years old," the fox said. "I do not make promises I do not intend to keep."
Ryu stood still.
Then he raised one hand.
Chakra gathered in his palm and spun into shape, blue and dense and violently controlled. A [Rasengan] formed above his hand as naturally as if he had been shaping it for years.
Small. Brilliant. Entirely inadequate against the sheer scale of a Tailed Beast.
The fox stared at it for seconds. He knew the jutsu. He had seen it before.
And then, for the first time in what felt like centuries, the Nine-Tailed Fox laughed and laughed.
Ryu stood exactly where he was and said nothing.
*
In the separate isolated space within the [Eight Trigrams Seal], Minato's eyes widened.
"So he knows the Rasengan," Minato said, stunned. "I wonder who taught him that… it might be Jiraiya-sensei or Kakashi, but I am happy he knows it. Now he carries two jutsu whose names carry my legacy."
Beside him, Kushina watched the scene unfold. "This is good… This way he will pass down the jutsu to Naruto… but using it against the Nine-Tails!!! He challenged the fox to a mano-a-mano clash. You know which attack the fox is going to use."
*
Back in front of the cage, the fox's laughter thinned.
"Finally," the fox said. "You brought out Minato's jutsu."
Ryu smirked. "The Third Hokage gave it to me. I actually asked for something else after winning a bet against Aunt Tsunade. He refused and handed me the Rasengan instead. No complaints from me, though—I mastered it in one day."
*
In the isolated space, Minato blinked. "So the Third Hokage passed it on..."
Kushina glanced at him. "Looks like he is close to the kid."
Minato stared at the scene. "But what kind of forbidden jutsu did he ask for, so in the end the alternative was an A-rank Rasengan?"
"Maybe he asked for your signature space-time jutsu or Lord Second's... But can it be possible that he mastered your Rasengan in a day?" Kushina pointed out.
"One day?" Minato said. "That is impossible. It took me years to develop it. But after developing the training method, it can now be mastered in months. Jiraiya-sensei needed three months just to figure it out after I explained the basics. An academy kid mastering it in one day is not possible."
*
Inside the cage, the fox snorted.
"I believe you," the fox said. "Mastering it with the chakra control you have inherited from those of the Moon Clan is a simple feat. I don't know how you made them give you their jutsu, but neither that nor Minato's jutsu can save your life. This poor imitation of us Tailed Beasts by Minato is laughable and insulting compared to the real thing."
*
In that isolated space, Minato frowned. "The Moon Clan? Are they talking about some hidden ancient clan?"
Kushina looked at him. "Maybe... But I don't know any Moon Clan. It must be a secret hidden clan. "
Minato did not fully understand Ryu's angle, but he knew the boy must have a plan.
*
Ryu looked at the Rasengan in his palm. "Maybe. But the lack of raw power makes room to add more things."
"Like what?" the fox asked.
Ryu smiled. "You will soon find out."
"Sure," the fox sneered, his tone darkening. "I am going to put everything into this attack. If you don't want the backlash to end your ninja career before it begins, I suggest you throw everything you've got."
Ryu smiled faintly. "That would be difficult."
The fox went still. In the isolated space, Minato and Kushina held their breath.
"If I throw everything I have got," Ryu replied calmly, "it will be my jutsu that results in ending my ninja career, not yours."
*
Minato understood immediately.
"He's talking about an unstable variant," Minato said. "A forbidden jutsu with exceptionally high risks."
Kushina's voice was tight with worry. "Step in if you think he won't be able to handle it."
"I will be ready to move at any second," Minato replied. "But first, let's see what more the kid has in his bag of surprises."
*
"[Magnet Release-Rasen-Magnatar] is too dangerous," Ryu thought. "I might get sucked into the jutsu itself. Using any other variant without a safety simulation is also a risky move. Even lightning is not safe. I have a rough idea of what a Lightning Rasengan might do, but it is risky and not a safe bet against this... It acts like the Chidori—good for a piercing, high-speed attack... but without a wide-range clash. My safe bet is the Wind Rasengan. But will it be enough?'
Ryu met the fox's gaze. "You're wrong on a few counts, though."
The fox's eyes narrowed. "Oh?"
"First, this jutsu isn't a copy of your Biju Dama...
Even though yours is much stronger, it is made of raw power instead of strategically crafted unraw and unrestricted power, and it is also hard for anyone to control who isn't a perfect jinchuriki. I don't like that kind of power...
Second... this jutsu isn't Lord Fourth's. The original concept is far older than him. It's almost as old as you are."
*
Minato went still.
"My jutsu is as old as the Nine-Tails? It means a similar jutsu existed in the past and was used by someone else. They must have had the same idea as me, drawing inspiration from a Tailed Beast. But how does this kid know? There's no such jutsu in any known historical record."
*
The fox's amusement disappeared.
The shift was small but noticeable. He stopped looking at Ryu like a reckless child and started looking at him like a threat he had misjudged.
Ryu pushed the rest of his focus inward. The corridor seemed to slow.
-[Fast Thinking] activated
-[Parallel Thinking] activated
*
Minato's brow furrowed. Kushina felt it too. Ryu had not moved, but something in him had shifted from provocation to calculation.
"What is he doing?" Kushina said.
*
Ryu kept the Rasengan stable and let his mind drop deeper.
-[Overclocking] active
Time limit approaching
Pressure gathered behind his eyes.
"I am already running on fumes," Ryu thought. "Overclocking will be too much after a few minutes. I will need a cooldown and a lot of migraine pills after this if I do not stop before my mind breaks."
-[Simulation: Clash Survival Probability]
The inner landscape of his thoughts turned sharp and bright. Numbers. Vectors. Compression models. Rotational failure points. Shell stability. Impact tolerance. Wind-layer interaction. A thousand possibilities unfolded at once.
Base Rasengan: 4%
Odama Rasengan: 12%
Rasenshuriken: 30%
Ryu frowned. "Thirty percent is too low."
He ran a simulation flooding the jutsu model with excess wind chakra.
-[Simulation: +300% Wind Chakra saturation]
-[Result: Premature structural collapse and Point-blank explosion]
"So I need to keep the chakra saturation below one hundred percent but increase the numbers," Ryu thought. "Using two Wind Rasengans wouldn't simply double the chance to sixty percent. In fact, the total probability would be lower than the sum of the individual jutsu, as the opposing wind layers would interfere with and destabilise each other. They would need to be perfectly complementary for a direct addition of probabilities. I need to think of a new Rasengan entirely instead of firing multiple spheres at a single target."
"My control over wind chakra may not be better than Naruto's when he created the Rasenshuriken, but my general chakra control is centuries ahead of him. I need to include all kinds of chakra control—precision, technical discipline, layer management, and fine manipulation."
The fox's tails moved once behind him, slow and heavy. "Are you done thinking, boy?"
Ryu looked up. His voice came out calm.
"Almost. Just give me a minute."
He needed more than a stronger Rasengan. He needed the most stable and powerful Wind Rasengan ever constructed.
But first, he had to design it in his head before he dared build it in his hand, as whatever he creates, it should not explode in his own hand.
A/N:
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