These abilities are completely broken, Kenji thought, landing in a crouch about ten meters from the Deva Path.
Pain's powers weren't technically complicated. Attraction and repulsion, that was it. But the practical applications were absurd. Every attack he threw got predicted and countered before it could land. The Rinnegan's visual prowess, inherited from the Sharingan's bloodline, gave Pain near-perfect awareness of incoming threats. At least Nagato's current condition meant he'd only had time to complete the Deva Path. The other five bodies of Pain weren't operational yet. That was the only good news in this entire mess.
What puzzled him was the cooldown between techniques. In his memories from his previous life, Shinra Tensei was supposed to have a five-second interval between uses. But the smaller-scale repulsions Pain had been throwing around came almost continuously. Maybe only the massive, omnidirectional version counted as the "real" Shinra Tensei with cooldown restrictions?
He filed the observation away for later analysis. Right now, thinking was more important than theorycrafting.
His goal wasn't to defeat the Deva Path. It was to stall. They were close to Konoha. Reinforcements would arrive soon. Neither Obito nor Pain could afford a prolonged engagement. If he could hold out until backup showed up, or until Minato finished dealing with the explosive tags and returned, this crisis could be contained.
While Kenji faced off against Pain, his three puppets had already used Flying Thunder God to teleport to Kushina's side. They formed a protective triangle around her. Rin had taken the opportunity to help the unconscious Taji and the barely-conscious Biwako over to the medical table, getting them out of the combat zone. She kept her eyes on Obito.
The Wood Release and Swift Release puppets moved simultaneously, converging on Obito from two angles. Wooden vines erupted from the Wood Release puppet's hands, spreading across the floor and walls to seal off escape routes. The Swift Release puppet became a blur, attacking from multiple vectors in rapid succession to keep Obito constantly phasing. The support puppet stayed glued to Kushina's side. Its special integration drew in the Nine-Tails chakra that was leaking through her damaged seal, preventing the energy from destabilizing further and making the situation worse. At the same time, it converted that absorbed chakra and fed it back into Kushina's body, accelerating her recovery. By any logical assessment, Obito's plan should have fallen apart. He couldn't abduct Kushina like in the original timeline. Retreat was the smart play.
But he stood his ground, showing no intention of leaving.
"You really think you can stop me?"
Kushina's eyes widened with alarm.
Then, in the distance within Konoha's borders, two massive plumes of smoke erupted into the night sky. The explosions were accompanied by roars that shook the air. Two enormous waves of tailed beast chakra washed over the village, pressure so intense that windows shattered in nearby buildings and civilians in the shelters felt it through reinforced walls.
A turtle-like creature with three tails and a heavily armored shell materialized in one district, the Three-Tails. In another area, a white slug-like beast with six tails appeared, the Six-Tails.
Both tailed beasts were inside Konoha's walls.
Then Kenji noticed where the beasts were positioning themselves. Chakra was condensing in front of both creatures, massive spheres of compressed energy forming at an alarming rate. Tailed Beast Balls, each one containing enough destructive force to level multiple city blocks.
And both were aimed at Hokage Rock.
Beneath Hokage Rock were the emergency shelters. Where every civilian in Konoha had been evacuated. Thousands of people packed into reinforced chambers that would do exactly nothing against a direct Tailed Beast Ball impact.
"Shit!"
His Wood Release puppet vanished, using Flying Thunder God to teleport directly into Konoha. It reappeared in front of the Six-Tails, chakra already surging as it activated its technique.
"Wood Release: Wood Human Technique!"
Emerald-green wood erupted from the ground with explosive force, forming a towering humanoid construct that rose to match the Six-Tails' height. The Six-Tails was in the final stages of charging its attack. The Tailed Beast Ball had reached critical mass.
The wood golem moved first.
Its massive fist came around in a devastating uppercut that connected with the Six-Tails' jaw. The impact was tremendous. The slug-like beast's head snapped upward violently, its entire body lifting slightly off the ground from the force.
The Tailed Beast Ball launched, but the trajectory was completely wrong. Instead of firing toward Hokage Rock and the shelters beneath it, the sphere of compressed chakra shot straight up into the night sky.
It detonated maybe three hundred meters up.
The explosion lit up all of Konoha like a miniature sun had appeared overhead. The shockwave rattled buildings and set off every alarm in the village. Heat washed over the district below, intense enough that people felt it through walls and roofs.
But the shelters were safe. The civilians were unharmed.
At the same moment, the Three-Tails finished charging its own attack. The Tailed Beast Ball launched, flying directly toward Hokage Rock on a perfect intercept course.
A golden flash cut through the air.
Minato appeared standing atop the Hokage monument, his hands already forming seals. A massive barrier formula spread out in front of him, the Flying Thunder God technique matrix glowing with chakra.
The Tailed Beast Ball hit the barrier and vanished.
Space rippled as the technique redirected the attack, and a split-second later a massive explosion erupted in the mountain forests several kilometers outside Konoha's borders. Trees were vaporized in a sphere of destruction, the blast creating a crater that would be visible for years.
Minato stood on the Hokage monument, residual chakra still crackling around his hands from the technique. He'd arrived just in time.
The immediate crisis was averted. Both attacks had been stopped. But the tailed beasts were still active threats.
The wood golem wrapped its arms around the Six-Tails' body. The beast thrashed and struggled. The golem's feet dug into the ground, creating furrows as it began dragging the Six-Tails toward Konoha's outer wall. Stone and earth shattered as the golem hauled the massive creature across the district, away from civilian areas. Within a minute, both the golem and the Six-Tails were outside the village boundaries.
On the opposite side of Konoha, Hiruzen had engaged the Three-Tails.
He wielded the Adamantine Staff, and used it like a battering ram, driving the beast backward step by step. At the same time, thick wooden vines erupted from the ground all around the turtle-like creature. These were the Wood Release puppets Kenji had provided to both the village and Root. They'd been positioned throughout Konoha for exactly this kind of emergency. Now they worked in concert, binding the Three-Tails' legs and restricting its movement while Hiruzen pushed it toward the wall.
Between the Third Hokage's assault and the puppets' restraints, the Three-Tails was being forced out of the village despite its size and power.
Minato saw that both beasts were being contained. He immediately used Flying Thunder God to return to the secret chamber. Kushina was still his priority. And that masked enemy.
---
Back in the chamber, events had continued to unfold during those crucial seconds. The moment the Wood Release puppet teleported away to deal with the Six-Tails, Obito made his move. He rushed toward Kushina, his body flickering between solid and intangible as the Swift Release puppet tried to intercept.
The puppet attack was relentless, forcing Obito to maintain Kamui constantly. As long as he stayed intangible, he couldn't grab Kushina. But the puppet couldn't hurt him either. It was a stalemate, but not one he could afford. Time was running out. He phased through another strike, his hand reaching for Kushina, preparing to pull her into the Kamui dimension.
That's when Rin moved.
She'd been guarding Kushina the entire time. The instant Obito solidified to make his grab, she struck.
Her kunai came in fast, slashing toward Obito's outstretched arm. It was a perfect cut, angled to sever tendons and disable the limb without killing. Obito was forced to abort and phase again. Rin's kunai passed through empty air as his arm became intangible. She watched her blade go through him, frustration flashing across her face beneath the mask. An enemy you couldn't touch was the worst kind.
But then Obito countered. His hand moved, solid again, gripping a kunai that flashed toward Rin's head faster than she could track. She raised her kunai instinctively to block. But the kunai kept coming, phasing through her blade like it didn't exist. Her eyes widened behind the mask as she realized what was happening. The kunai was passing through her weapon, continuing its path directly toward her face.
CRACK!
The blade struck her ANBU mask. The ceramic shattered, fragments falling away as cracks spread across its surface. She tried to pull back, but she was already off-balance from the attempted block. The kunai kept coming, the tip inches from her forehead. Then the Swift Release puppet, still pressing Obito from behind, burst forward. As Obito phased through Rin's defense, the puppet seized her shoulder and yanked her backward, dragging her out of the kunai's path by mere centimeters. She stumbled back, catching herself against the wall. Her breathing was heavy from the adrenaline spike.
But the damage was done.
Her mask had shattered, broken pieces falling to the floor. The break exposed her right eye and a portion of her cheek. Enough to recognize her face.
Obito froze.
He'd been mid-movement, already shifting position for another attack. But the instant his eye tracked to Rin's partially exposed face, his entire body went rigid.
The world seemed to stop.
That face. He knew that face. It was burned into his memory, carved into his soul. The face he'd watched die.
Rin's face.
She was standing right in front of him.
His breathing had stopped. His mind couldn't process what he was seeing. She was supposed to be dead. He'd seen her die. The memory was so vivid, that he'd built his entire worldview around it. The world was cruel and broken because people like Rin died young. Reality needed to be remade because this reality had taken her from him.
But she was here.
At that exact moment, Kushina seized her opportunity.
The support puppet had been feeding her chakra for the past minute. Combined with her Uzumaki vitality, she'd recovered enough strength to act.
Red chakra exploded around her body.
The Nine-Tails' energy poured out through the weakened seal, but instead of letting it run wild, she shaped it. The chakra formed a cloak around her entire body. Behind her, the skeletal outline of the Nine-Tails manifested, a massive fox-shaped phantom that towered over everyone in the chamber. She'd entered a half-tailed beast transformation. The Version 1 cloak, they called it in ANBU reports. Dangerous, difficult to control, but incredibly powerful.
The Swift Release puppet blurred, attacking Obito from the side while he was still frozen in shock. The strike forced him to phase, his body becoming intangible on instinct even as his eye remained locked on Rin's face.
The puppet's fist passed through empty air.
But Obito's distraction cost him. The moment he phased to avoid the puppet, he lost track of Kushina. When the puppet's attack ended and he solidified again, automatically reaching toward Rin.
A massive hand formed from Nine-Tails chakra materialized beside him, easily the size of his entire body. By the time Obito realized the danger, it was too late.
The chakra hand came down like a hammer.
WHAM!
Obito was hit, the force lifting him off his feet and sending him flying backward. His body became a projectile, shooting across the chamber and slamming into the far wall.
The stone wall exploded.
Obito's body punched straight through it, creating a massive hole. Chunks of rock and dust erupted outward as he disappeared into the darkness beyond.