Yugito tried to break free, but the air around her felt like solid iron, leaving her with no leverage. She remained suspended in mid-air, a mere meter away from Hiruko.
"With only this much power, what could you possibly do even if you touched me?" Hiruko asked with detached indifference.
"You bastard... what kind of sorcery is this?" Yugito hissed, her fangs baring.
"My understanding of chakra is beyond anything your mind can fathom," Hiruko replied calmly.
Yugito glared at his cold, handsome face and smirked. "Maybe. But do you have as much chakra as this?"
She unhinged her jaw and took a sharp, violent breath, vacuuming the blue flames surrounding Hiruko back into her mouth. A second later, a terrifying surge of chakra exploded from her body—mountainous, vast, and as turbulent as a stormy sea.
The shockwave of energy was so violent that Hiruko, who had been standing steadily on the branch, was physically blown backward, falling toward the forest floor.
A gutteral roar tore through Yugito's throat as blue spectral flames engulfed her entire form. Out of the inferno charged a colossal blue cat—the Two-Tails, Matatabi. Its face was a mask of demonic fury.
BOOM!
The beast slammed into the ground, the impact shaking the entire battlefield and kicking up a localized sandstorm of dust and debris.
Cries of terror erupted from the Konoha side. "A Jinchuriki! It's the Two-Tails!"
Nara Shikaku and the other commanders paled. They had planned a perfect encirclement, but they hadn't accounted for a Tailed Beast being deployed here. The mission was on the verge of total collapse.
The Hidden Cloud possessed secret methods for controlling their Jinchuriki, allowing their hosts to perfectly harness the Tailed Beast's power. This wasn't a rampaging monster; it was a living siege engine under Yugito's command.
Uchiha Fugaku, currently engaged in combat elsewhere, looked toward the giant blue cat and frowned. Dealing with a beast of that magnitude would cost him a significant amount of ocular power.
Hiruko stabilized himself as he hit the ground.
Yugito, her consciousness still intact within the beast, barked an order to the Cloud commander, Tutai: "Go finish off the other Konoha ninja. This guy is tricky; I'll deal with him myself!"
"Understood!" Tutai signaled the reinforcements.
Matatabi leaped, her massive frame soaring into the thick of the fray. With one swipe of a flaming paw, a dozen Konoha shinobi were swatted into the earth, crushed into bloody splinters instantly.
"Attack! Fall back and counter-attack!" the Konoha ninja screamed, hurling jutsu at the beast.
The Two-Tails opened its maw and let out a roar so powerful the resulting shockwave knocked kunai and ninjutsu right out of the sky. Konoha's Fire Style was useless—Matatabi was a creature of fire itself. Water Style fared no better; before the water could even touch her fur, the intense heat vaporized it into thick clouds of steam.
Then, the beast gathered a massive sphere of blue fire in its mouth and launched it at a cluster of Konoha reinforcements.
"Block it! Form a line!" The Konoha ranks broke into chaos.
"Earth Style: Mud Wall!" Dozens of shinobi slammed their hands down, raising a fortress of stone to intercept the fireball. The wall barely held, but Matatabi didn't give them a moment to breathe. She began rapid-firing fireballs—thump-thump-thump—like a biological Gatling gun.
Suddenly, Hiruko appeared directly in front of the "Big Kitty."
Seeing him dare to approach again, the fully transformed Yugito sneered inwardly. The heat was so intense the air began to warp and shimmer. Steam rolled off Matatabi's body as she aimed a volley of fireballs directly at Hiruko.
They hurtled toward him with the sound of incoming artillery, carrying enough heat to incinerate everything in their path. Hiruko stood perfectly still, seemingly paralyzed.
But to the shock of everyone watching, the fireballs didn't hit him. They whistled past, missing his body by a fraction of an inch.
"I missed?" Yugito was bewildered. How could I make such a rookie mistake at this distance?
She looked at Hiruko, whose expression remained a blank mask of boredom. It infuriated her.
"You persistent pest!"
The cat roared, preparing another strike. Just then, Tutai's voice rang out like a warning bell: "This is a war, Yugito! You have comrades behind you—don't just strike blindly!!"
Yugito forced herself to calm down, ignoring Hiruko for a moment. She lunged back into the main battlefield, swatting another Konoha ninja into the dirt.
"Aaaargh!"
"Yugito-sama... why?"
For a split second, Yugito thought she heard the dying ninja call her name, but she brushed it off. She opened her mouth and spat a dozen more fireballs at the Konoha cluster in front of her. This time, they didn't even try to resist; they were simply erased in a series of blue explosions.
Yugito felt a surge of grim satisfaction. If she kept this up, Konoha would be wiped out.
"Yugito! Yugito, what are you doing?!"
This time, she heard it clearly.
"Yugito, why are you attacking our own people?!" Tutai's roar was deafening, filled with pure horror.
"Attacking our own?" Yugito froze. She looked down at the charred remains beneath her paws and felt her heart drop into her stomach. They were wearing Hidden Cloud flak jackets.
"How... how is this possible?" She had specifically targeted Konoha headbands!
Her eyes scanned the chaotic battlefield. She saw a group of Cloud ninja fleeing in terror, and right in the middle of them, a single Konoha ninja stood out like a sore thumb.
"A flaw in the jutsu?" she snarled.
"Don't attack! Those are your teammates!" Tutai's voice screamed again.
Panic began to claw at Yugito's mind. She had just slaughtered her own comrades. "Matatabi! Matatabi, help me break the genjutsu!"
"You aren't in a genjutsu," the beast's voice echoed in her head, equally confused. "I saw them as Konoha ninja too... why did they turn into Cloud ninja after they died?"
"Yugito, wake up!" The cries of her friends were everywhere now, making her feel isolated and terrified. She couldn't tell who was a friend and who was a foe.
Then, she spotted him again. Among the crowd, one Konoha ninja was standing perfectly still, watching her with that same, chilling indifference.
"There you are!"
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