Pre-Chapter A/N: Here we go with another chapter, coming in right on time. Next three chapters on my patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga)— same username as here and link in bio.
I reached him first. My fingers darted out even as Kurama's chakra flowed through me, enhancing my strength and reactions to the nines. He weaved out of the way of my first two thrusts, but Uzume was there to place more pressure on him. She wielded a chokuto that had to have come from Mikoto, forcing Madara to block with his kama. They strained against each other, and I weaved to the side, aiming to take advantage of his occupation. Another pair of arms grew from his body; the false limbs allowed him to slap away searching fingers and protect his chakra points from being blocked.
I stomped the ground, even as I attacked, turning it all into mud and reaching for him with said mud. He jumped backwards. His false limbs retreated back into his skin and his real arms turned into chakra cannons that he aimed straight at us.
I teleported behind Uzume and she crossed her hands in front of her face as the attack hit her and broke against the immovable object that her mangekyou ability made her into. I tapped her blade and her shoulder once the attack was gone. The attack had destroyed part of the ground around us. That I turned into mud as well, reaching up for him with tendrils again. This time, as he created missiles to destroy them, he was forced to abandon the attempt as the Uzume in front of me faded. The real one had been running up with my mud tendrils, aiming for him with her blade.
"Almighty Push," he intoned once she was too close for his comfort. At the last second, she tossed her blade at him.
It managed to reach him before his technique took effect, but he settled for twisting his head to the side to avoid its flight path.
I teleported to the sword, grabbing it by the hilt, flooding it with my chakra, and twisting to use it to remove his head from his shoulders. A hand grew from said shoulder, catching the blade in its palm. He'd even created those black rods on the palm to prevent the blade from cutting into him. He tilted his head backwards and his eyes met mine. I shattered one genjutsu, and then another before the heat warned me to escape.
I teleported to Uzume's side as her flame dragon bullet hit. He'd managed to lift a hand in time and just absorbed the fire release jutsu in its entirety.
"He's annoying," Uzume tsked, sprinting in again.
"There's a five-second cooldown between his pushing and pulling attacks," I called out after her and followed in her wake. Uzume leading the charge only made sense as nothing could actually hurt her in this state. I just needed her to create an opening. A rasengan whirled into being in my grasp, and then I began to fill it with earth release chakra. Rasengan variants were powerful jutsu almost without exception, but this one? This one was something else. If I could connect it then the fight would be over. Uzume would sense the build up of chakra and know the kind of opening I needed.
She reached her clansman, and they exchanged blows. He took her much more seriously than he had ever taken me in close combat, actually fighting back. He did not settle for just dodging her attack and waiting for the chance to counter as was standard with the interceptor fist. Instead, he leaned in to the fight with a style that took me longer than it should have for me to recognise.
I'd learned to fight the Hyuga way, and then the Uzumaki way over time, but the Senju taijutsu style was never something I paid much attention to beyond the basics. Madara had mastered it, and he used it against Uzume's interceptor fist, forcing her from the attack into a defensive posture that she was forced to maintain. When my jutsu was ready, I flared my chakra to signal Uzume, and she suddenly gave up on blocking or dodging his attacks. She stepped into a stab from the kama, taking it head on, and then using the chance to almost cut off the hand with her sword. The gunbai was there in a block.
She twisted the sword at the last second and instead of clashing with the gunbai, it stabbed into it. Her body was flooded with chakra as she wrenched upwards, creating a second of space. A shadow clone switched places with Uzume, rasengan in hand. Madara was off-balance, shocked, but not beaten. The almighty push came seconds before the clone could make contact.
It went flying, but its real goal had been to place the flying raijin seal on the ground there, and that was where I appeared, the earth release rasengan in my grasp. I shoved it into his chest even as he tried to form a sussano'o between us, but the ribcage was not enough. Not even close. The earth release rasengan hit the purple armour. It pulsed once, there were cracks along the armour, and then by the second it was just gone. My rasengan broke through and I felt the kiss of victory upon my brow. Kurama was roaring in my head now. A hand grew out of his chest with the intention to absorb the technique and I smirked. It was foolish of him not to have moved much since the battle started.
The seal I'd placed all that time ago with that handstand came in handy as I teleported behind him. No chance for him to react, not with Uzume having body flickered in and tried to stab him in the neck. He managed to block that, but that took any hope of him managing to escape me. I slammed the earth release rasengan into his back. The pulsing orb of chakra that had pulsed like it had a heartbeat hit his armour, and then pulsed. The armour was gone, and there was just his back.
When it began to dig into his back, I teleported away, leaving the technique and the man I'd hit with it behind. The earth release rasengan did not produce rocks or stones like I had initially visualised. Instead, it focused on one principle. Vibrations. It felt like the city itself had been hit with an earthquake. Where Madara was standing, the ground began to collapse inward, forming a crater that deepened even as more tremors spread across the city.
I couldn't see any Konoha nin in the range of my chakra. I teleported to Uzume, grabbed a hold of her, and then teleported to the farthest marker I'd placed. The jutsu created quakes that spread over the battlefield we'd chosen and much of the city as it felt like the world itself was vibrating. Buildings were beginning to fall all around us. I grabbed Uzume's hand and used the lightweight boulder jutsu to float us into the air, high enough that none of the collapsing towers presented a threat.
The jutsu ran its course over a few minutes, and by the time it was done, the street we had once fought in had now become a wasteland. The towers that had once reached up to the sky were now gone. The buildings that had once been shops, homes, everything else, were in shambles.
Uzume arced her body in front of me as I spotted a glimpse of purple in the distance. It covered the space between us, and Uzume crossed her hands. I grabbed her from behind to prevent her from being sent flying as the yasaka magatama hit her to great explosive effect. No damage was done, however.
Her mangekyou ability coming in clutch once more.
A flex of my chakra blew away the smoke that the explosion had created. And we were met with the sight of Madara's full body sussano'o.
Uzume flared her chakra, matching his spectral armour with one of her own as she hurled herself towards the ground.
"Kurama?" I asked mentally, receiving an answering roar before his chakra flooded my body. Kurama had a unique facet to his chakra that allowed him to create solid constructs out of his powerful yang chakra. That was essentially what the Kyubi chakra mode was. It was not Kurama's body, but his chakra being manifested outside the seal in a semi-solid form. My gaze was tinged orange as the chakra armour grew around me. I felt myself become aware of a body several orders of magnitude larger than my own and with thirteen limbs instead of four. Two arms and legs, and nine tails.
We roared as one as we landed on the ground with both Uchiha already beginning to face off. We stepped into the brawl, catching Madara's wrist to prevent his sword coming down on Uzume's sussano'o. She then stabbed a knife hand through the chest of his spectral armour. All nine of our tails stabbed in the opening she left behind as she retracted said hand.
We pulled it apart with all our strength, forcing the sussano'o to unravel. It was ripped apart with the power of the nine tails and once it was gone, Uzume went in for the kill. Her blade arced downwards, aiming to skewer Madara once and for all to bring an end to the battle.
But then his chakra spiked again. Purple chakra oozed out of his body, flooding my senses and then my gaze as the perfect sussano'o was born. For all that I wished to be able to attack while he was doing his transformation, it happened too quickly for me to take advantage of. The Perfect Sussano'o towered over Uzume's full body one, as her blade shattered against its armour.
She stepped back behind me as her chakra spiked as well. She was going to transition into her own perfect sussano'o while we held him off. It was like a massive purple samurai complete with the armour and the helmet. Chakra poured out from its eyes and nose, creating a purple haze around it. And then there was the size. It towered over Uzume, and even for Kurama and me, it stood a whole head taller. The entirety of Rain was so far below us now that with every step, we probably destroyed multiple buildings and couldn't even feel it. I hoped Minato and the team had managed to get the Konoha army out. Rain was a lost cause now. Two perfect sussano'os and the most powerful of the tailed beasts duking it out were unlikely to leave anything of value behind.
Madara drew the blade that could cut mountains in half and swung it at me. Even before it reached me, I could feel the power in the swing. But power was no issue for Kurama and me. Tails swung around, catching the blade mid-swing as I opened my strength of a hundred seal even further, allowing more and more sage energy to flow from it and to and through Kurama's avatar.
The chakra that made up the avatar became denser if such a thing was even possible. Gazing through the skull was now like seeing through a gel when it had been like seeing through a haze before. I activated my byakugan again, consciously filtering out the metres closer to me from my vision and focusing on my opponent. Uzume's sussano'o came to its full form behind me and she stepped into the battle as well. Firing two shots from the crossbows in her upper hands, one from each.
Madara roared his fury, less than pleased to have the realm that had once belonged solely to gods like himself and Hashirama be intruded upon by mere mortals like Uzume and myself. His other hand rose and both of the lightning bolts that Uzume's crossbows fired broke upon his armour. The extra pair of hands behind him began to lash out, one aiming to cut through the tails that held his main blade in their grasp while the other lengthened and slashed out for Uzume. Her lower hands pounded against the drum that floated against her midsection, creating a shockwave that forced the blade to a standstill and then dispelled it a second later.
The differences between their spectral armours could not be more visible as they fought her. Madara's sussano'o was a warrior, a Samurai without peer. Uzume's was more like a Priest. The drums sold that story more than anything else, as well as the fact that now that they were side by side, the armour that I had once written off as just merely armour now looked more like robes than anything else. Madara wore armour. Uzume's did not have the same stiff appearance, instead looking to have been woven to fit her form.
I stepped into the attack, using my tails to pull his blade out of position and then punching the head of his armour twice. Madara had lived his life fighting against Hashirama, so he was no amateur at using his sussano'o, but Hashirama's journals detailed less than a dozen clashes between them once they had gotten to the peak of their powers. That was less than Uzume and I got against each other on a slow month. We fought against each other so much that this size was almost as familiar to us as fighting in our base forms. Uzume pounded her drums, creating blasts of concussive force that pushed him back even further.
Smelling blood, both of us went in for the kill.
Positive and negative energy coalesced right in front of my mouth. Kurama supplied the power, I supplied the control and we formed a tailed beast bomb in what had to be record time, and slammed it right at his sussano'o. He managed to gain some of his balance back and brought his sword to bear, slashing once and cutting through the pinnacle of tailed beast power. The explosion forced all three of us back from each other, destroying a huge part of the city and creating nothing but bare earth between us.
Kurama and I slid along the ground, pushed away by the blast while using our tails to protect Uzume's form as she prepared her own attack. When the smoke cleared, revealing Madara's sussano'o scuffed but mostly fine, Uzume fired. Both her crossbows had come together to create one massive crossbow that she held with both hands.
It unleashed a bolt of lightning that was more like a pillar than a bolt.
Madara's blade was there again, but he was pushed backwards by the pillar, not able to fully tank the attack as it pushed him across the ground almost until the edge of the city. With one final heave, he slashed downwards, and the lightning scattered. His sussano'o seemed to be breathing heavily, showing the exertion we'd forced him to undertake. Uzume sent a smile my way. We could feel it. He'd made a mistake pushing the fight to this point. We were better prepared for this. There were two of us to his one. We would win here. There was no other option. Victory.
With a roar, Kurama and I began to charge. We could taste the victory already. Uzume raced by our side, aided by the wings that grew from her sussano'o. Madara himself let out his own war cry and matched our charge, coming as well. My mind was fully on the battle so it took me a second too long to catch the tear in space that opened between the three of us, or even the two forms that came out of it.
So long, that I did not feel their interference in the battle until I could not move. I was stopped in my tracks, unable to move. It was like my body was trapped in cement, or like we were being held taut by chains across every limb and all our tails. My byakugan told me Uzume was in much the same state. And opposite us, Madara was also in the same situation.
Between us were two people. One of them I recognised almost instantly. Black Zetsu. Kaguya's will. Fuck. The second was less recognisable — I didn't know him, but I could guess who or rather what he was. That pale skin, that white hair. Those gleaming and otherworldly blue eyes that could only be the Tenseigan. What the fuck was going on here?
Kurama was roaring his fury at his kill being denied.
"Hold," I begged my friend. I needed to figure out what was going on here.
"While normally I would allow this clash to continue and give us the entertainment we need, I fear we do not have the time," the Otsutsuki spoke.
"Now, I need all three of you to disarm so we can speak like civilised beings," he said next. Kurama snarled within me and I found myself sharing the sentiment.
"I must say that you three do not want me to disarm you. I can be quite heavy handed with how I handle things. So why not save ourselves the indignity." Kurama and I kept straining against the hold. Whatever he said did not matter.
We built up our chakra, gathering the positive and negative energies. We might not have had the ability to move anymore, but that did not make us defenceless.
The Otsutsuki sighed, and then a green aura formed around his body. Faster even than my eyes could track, three of the truth seeker orbs at his back fired out for all three of us.
I did not see it when it hit me. I only felt myself crash into the ground, and then be bound at my hands and my feet by something that actively suppressed my chakra. My byakugan deactivated itself.
Looking around showed Uzume and Madara in similar situations.
"Now, we can talk," the Otsutsuki said, floating towards the ground and flicking his hand to bring the three of us towards him. Black Zetsu turned his gaze towards us now, and I was shocked to see two mangekyou sharingan floating in his skull where his eyes should have been. What the fuck?
A/N: Did I mention this was an AU? Well, of course everything stems from a few points of divergence and all should be explained with time. Next chapter comes on here by Wednesday night (Done with my rest week so we get two chapters this week). Next three chapters up on patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga) (same username as here and link in bio), support me there and read them early.