Naruto turned his back on the smoking crater that had once been Kakuzu, his ice-blue eyes locking onto the other side of the cavern.
Hidan was completely pinned inside a massive, flash-scorched crater in the stone floor. Yugito, fully enveloped in the spectral, cobalt-blue flames of the Two-Tails, was mercilessly bathing the immortal in continuous waves of searing fire. But just as the clone had observed over the last several hours, it simply wasn't enough.
Hidan's skin charred, blistered, and sloughed off, only to rapidly knit itself back together in a grotesque display of unnatural cellular regeneration. He vaulted out of the crater, violently twirling his massive, triple-bladed scythe to deflect the residual flames. His Akatsuki cloak and his slashed Hidden Hot Water Village headband were completely burned away, leaving him clad only in tattered, scorched shinobi pants and sandals.
Landing in a defensive crouch, Hidan glanced toward the far end of the cave. He paused, his purple eyes widening slightly as he registered the absence of his partner's chakra.
He pointed a scorched finger toward the darkness. "So, you actually managed to kill Kakuzu, huh?" Hidan spat, a manic, unhinged grin stretching across his face. "Doesn't matter! That's what happens when you're a fucking weakling who worships money instead of Jashin-sama! I told that stitched-up idiot that if he devoted himself to my god, he wouldn't die so easily!"
Hidan spun his scythe, resting the bloody metal on his shoulder. "But don't worry, brat. You'll be meeting Jashin-sama soon enough. I'm going to sacrifice both you and that overgrown flaming furball!"
The massive spectral cat hissed, the sound echoing like a furnace. Thanks to the Tailed Beast's chakra, the physical injuries Yugito had sustained earlier in the fight were now completely healed. She dropped into a low, predatory stance, ready to pounce.
Naruto simply raised an eyebrow behind his mask and let out a cold, mocking laugh.
"Follow you and Jashin?" Naruto scoffed, his voice dripping with condescension. "Oh, please. Even if I were on my dying breath, I wouldn't waste my time praying to a pathetic, second-rate deity. Why should anyone fear Jashin when we all know the Shinigami stands completely above him?"
Hidan's manic grin faltered, his eye twitching.
"We all know the truth," Naruto continued ruthlessly. "One single mistake by your so-called Jashin, and the true Reaper Death God would drag him into the underworld and eat his soul down to the brink of nothingness."
"Don't you dare disrespect Jashin-sama, you fucking prick!" Hidan shrieked, his veins bulging with absolute, fanatical rage. "All of this is your fault! If you hadn't interfered, we would have already captured this cat bitch, and I would have had plenty of time to enjoy sacrificing her properly!"
Naruto ignored the zealot's screaming, casually walking toward the Two-Tails. He looked up at the massive avatar. "He's completely out of the equation," Naruto muttered, his tone entirely tactical. "Even elite Jinchūriki don't possess a healing factor this instantaneous. Hell, not even Orochimaru has this level of raw endurance. The guy is a walking glitch."
Naruto raised his broadswords, inspecting the metal. He clicked his tongue in annoyance. The immense stress of channeling highly compressed Wind and Lightning chakra for hours had taken its toll. The steel was riddled with hairline fractures, on the absolute verge of shattering.
Naruto sheathed the cracked blades into the ground at his feet. "I'll buy you the time. You charge up a point-blank Tailed Beast Bomb and fire it directly at him."
Matatabi's massive, flaming eyes widened. "What? Are you insane, human? If I detonate a Bijuudama in a subterranean setting this confined, you will be vaporized in the blast radius along with him."
"That's our only hope of putting him down permanently," Naruto replied smoothly.
Reaching up, Naruto unclasped the heavy black tactical mask covering the lower half of his face and tossed it aside, revealing his prominent whisker marks and striking features.
Hidan's jaw dropped. "The Nine-Tails?!" he gasped, instantly recognizing the prime target of the Akatsuki. "What the hell are you doing here?!"
"Oh, nothing," Naruto smirked casually. "You guys started pairing up to hunt us down one by one. I figured it was time we flipped the script. We already dealt with Sasori and Deidara. I thought it was only fair that the 'Immortal Duo' got a taste of the Kyuubi's wrath."
Naruto turned back to the Two-Tails. "And to answer your question, Matatabi... I'm just a shadow clone. It doesn't matter if I die in the blast. My memories, and the intel on this freak's abilities, will instantly transfer back to the original."
Matatabi narrowed her burning eyes, sensing his chakra network. "I see. That explains why your chakra reserves felt so remarkably low for a Jinchūriki."
"Yeah, about those reserves..." Naruto muttered, feeling the deep ache of chakra exhaustion in his coils. He was down to his last quarter. "I need a refill if I'm going to hold this maniac down."
Naruto reached into his kunai pouch and withdrew a highly complex, crimson sealing tag. He ripped open the front of his black tactical muscle shirt, exposing his chest. Without a second thought, he slapped the sealing tag directly over his heart and pumped his remaining chakra into the paper.
The seal violently activated.
It glowed a brilliant, piercing blue for a fraction of a second before violently shifting to a sinister, blood-red hue. An explosion of violent, corrosive red chakra erupted from the tag, instantly flooding the clone's artificial network. Naruto's whisker marks darkened and thickened. When he opened his eyes, the icy blue was gone, replaced by the demonic, slitted crimson gaze of the Nine-Tails.
"Charge it, Matatabi!" Naruto roared, his voice now laced with a demonic, dual-layered growl. "Let's finish this once and for all!"
Matatabi didn't hesitate. She unhinged her massive jaw. Particles of positive black and negative white chakra began violently violently ripping through the air, coalescing into a hyper-dense, terrifying sphere of pure annihilation in front of her mouth.
Sorry about the rough ride, kitten, Matatabi's ancient voice echoed within Yugito's mindscape. But we are about to redecorate this entire mountain range.
Seeing the apocalyptic jutsu forming, Hidan panicked. He charged forward, bringing his massive scythe down in a desperate, lethal arc toward the clone.
Naruto ripped his fractured broadswords from the stone. He channeled the volatile, red Kyuubi chakra perfectly into his Wind manipulation, completely coating the blades and his own body in an imperceptible armor of razor-sharp wind.
CLANG!
Naruto crossed his swords above his head, perfectly catching the heavy scythe. The sheer kinetic impact shattered the stone beneath Naruto's feet, creating a massive crater, but the clone didn't buckle. With a brutal flick of his wrists, Naruto parried the scythe upward, breaking Hidan's guard.
Naruto spun on his heel, delivering a devastating, Kyuubi-enhanced roundhouse kick directly into Hidan's solar plexus. The zealot gagged as his ribs shattered, flying backward across the cavern.
The melee escalated into a blindingly fast blur of silver and red. Hidan swung wildly, desperate to draw even a single drop of Naruto's blood to activate his curse ritual. But it was entirely useless. Every time the scythe grazed Naruto, it sparked violently against the dense layer of Wind chakra coating the clone's body.
"You can survive anything, right?!" Naruto taunted, his demonic eyes glowing in the dark as he perfectly weaved under a horizontal decapitation strike.
With blinding speed, Naruto brought his right sword up in a brutal, diagonal arc. The wind-infused steel effortlessly sheared through flesh and bone. Hidan's right arm—still gripping the scythe—flew into the air, severed cleanly at the shoulder.
Before Hidan could even scream, Naruto dropped into a low sweep, his left sword slicing horizontally through Hidan's left thigh, completely amputating the leg.
"Let's see if you can survive the concentrated hatred of a Tailed Beast!" Naruto roared.
Naruto unleashed a brutal, rising kick directly into Hidan's mutilated torso, launching the screaming immortal high into the air, directly into the flight path of Matatabi's gaping maw.
Simultaneously, Naruto's hands blurred through a final sequence. He unleashed a barrage of razor-sharp ninja wire from his wrists, snagging Hidan's severed arm and leg mid-air. With a violent yank, he hurled the amputated limbs directly at Hidan's torso.
Above them, the Bijuudama had reached critical mass.
Matatabi fired.
The hyper-dense sphere of black chakra shot forward, perfectly intercepting Hidan's torso and his severed limbs.
The subterranean world went completely, utterly silent for a fraction of a second.
And then, the mountain ceased to exist.
Miles above on the surface of the Land of Lightning, the local villagers were violently thrown to the ground by a catastrophic earthquake. The tectonic plates groaned in agony as the earth ruptured.
The villagers looked toward the western horizon in absolute terror. One of the massive, iconic mountain peaks of their homeland was suddenly enveloped in a blinding, apocalyptic flash of pure white light. The mountain didn't crumble—it expanded outward in a perfect sphere of destruction, instantly vaporizing millions of tons of solid rock, ancient forests, and earth into absolute nothingness.
A deafening shockwave shattered windows miles away, followed by a colossal plume of smoke and ash that punched straight through the cloud layer.
When the apocalyptic dust finally began to settle, the landscape was unrecognizable.
The mountain was gone. In its place was a colossal, perfectly spherical crater miles wide. The bottom of the crater was a violent, bubbling lake of glowing, superheated magma, the sheer thermal energy of the Tailed Beast Bomb having instantly liquefied the bedrock.
Hidan, his immortality,was entirely erased from existence.
Standing dead center in the apocalyptic sea of molten rock, completely unharmed by the lava, was the spectral, two-tailed cat. Matatabi slowly lowered her head, surveying the devastation, her fiery blue form cutting a majestic, terrifying silhouette against the burning orange glow of the ruined earth.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If you'd like to support my work and read extra chapters before they're released publicly, I've officially started my Patreon!
At Patreon.com/Godofwhatif
By joining, you'll get:
• Early access to upcoming chapters.
• Extra chapters exclusive to Patreon.
• A chance to support the story and help me continue writing consistently.
If that sounds interesting, I'd love to have you there. Thank you all for your continued support!