"What… is this?"
The Rasengan in Menma's palm no longer resembled the stable, azure sphere Kakashi remembered from Minato's demonstrations.
Its outer layer remained blue, spinning at violent velocity but beneath it churned a darker core, distorted by the corrosive influence of the Nine-Tails' chakra. The air around it twisted, vibrating with unstable pressure.
At close range, the killing intent was unmistakable.
For the first time in this battle, Hatake Kakashifelt the distinct brush of mortality.
There was no path of retreat.
"Buzz!"
Lightning howled in his palm as he forced more chakra into the technique. There could be no conservation now. This was no longer about restraint. It was survival.
His Sharingan spun rapidly, dissecting Menma's forward motion frame by frame hip rotation, shoulder alignment, the torque of the descending arm. He locked onto the centerline of the incoming Rasengan.
The Lightning Blade screamed to life.
"Raikiri!"
The thunderous cry of compressed lightning split the air.
Across the riverbank, the others felt it.
Naruto froze mid-exchange.
"Brother Kakashi…?"
Even Sasuke's eyes narrowed at the sheer density of chakra colliding in the valley.
Naruto's chest tightened. This was never what he wanted. Not this. Not Team 7 tearing itself apart at the Valley of the End like a twisted reflection of the past.
Sasuke advanced on him without hesitation, Sharingan cold and analytical.
Naruto clenched his fists.
"I'll drag you both back if I have to break every bone in your bodies!"
But the center of the battlefield belonged to two figures alone.
Menma saw nothing but Kakashi.
The chakra cloak around him flared violently three tails whipping behind him, cracking the air like burning whips. The Version 1 state trembled on the edge of instability, but Menma forced it into cohesion through sheer will.
"Kakashi," he said quietly, voice stripped of warmth, "this is where you fall."
He drove forward.
"Rasengan!"
From below, Kakashi thrust upward with Raikiri.
The two techniques collided.
"BOOM!"
Light devoured sound.
Blue rotation met white lightning in a blinding eruption. The ground beneath them fractured outward in concentric rings as chakra pressure detonated into the river.
For a heartbeat, they held.
Rasengan grinding.
Raikiri piercing.
Kakashi felt it first, the rotation beginning to overpower the linear thrust. The Nine-Tails' chakra did not change the Rasengan's nature, but it magnified its destructive output beyond normal parameters.
His pupils contracted.
"Drink!"
He forced more chakra forward, pushing past safe thresholds.
But Menma's eyes hardened.
"Enough."
He compressed the Rasengan further and drove it downward with decisive force.
The equilibrium shattered.
"BOOOOM!"
A violent shockwave exploded outward, tearing a trench across the riverbank.
Kakashi's Raikiri dispersed in a burst of lightning fragments.
His body was hurled backward like a broken projectile.
He struck the earth near the statue base with catastrophic force, carving a deep ravine through stone and soil before finally stopping.
Silence followed heavy, suffocating.
Kakashi coughed violently.
Blood spilled from his mouth, staining the shattered ground. His flak jacket was torn open; a severe indentation marked his abdomen where the residual force had crushed through his guard.
Though Raikiri had neutralized much of the Rasengan's piercing momentum, the rotational blast had still landed cleanly.
His chakra reserves were nearly depleted.
Breathing became labor.
Footsteps approached.
Measured.
Unhurried.
Kakashi forced his eye open.
Menma walked toward him, cloak flickering but still active. The three tails swayed behind him like sentient blades.
Not far away, the last of the Root operatives lay motionless eliminated by shadow clones once the primary clash began. Efficient. Clinical.
Kakashi exhaled weakly.
Perhaps this is the price.
When he spoke again, his voice was strained.
"Menma… maybe the village failed you. Maybe we all did." He coughed. "But Naruto is innocent. He doesn't know the truth of any of this."
His eye softened faintly.
"He's your brother."
A pause.
"Minato-sensei… and Kushina-san… they would never have wished for this."
At the mention of those names
Menma stopped.
For the first time since the battle began, something shifted in his gaze.
Namikaze Minato.
Uzumaki Kushina.
Twelve years in this world.
Whatever resentment he carried toward the village, he could not deny that those two had given him life.
For a fleeting second, memory intruded
warm hands, gentle smiles, a presence he had barely known yet somehow understood.
His chakra cloak flickered.
Then steadied.
The emotion was sealed away.
Menma stepped forward again, gaze cold once more.
"Don't speak their names as if they justify the village's sins, Kakashi Hatake."
The air grew still.
The killing intent had not vanished.
But something had changed.
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