{Just skim through the last chapter before the break, it'll make it easier to follow the story.}
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THUD!
The impact shook the entire battlefield.
Matatabi's colossal, flame-wreathed body slammed into the earth like a falling mountain, carving a massive crater outward in a violent ring. The shockwave flattened what remained of the surrounding trees, and a dense wall of dust erupted skyward, blotting out the horizon.
Pebbles rained for several seconds and For a brief, suspended moment, there was nothing but drifting dust, heat distortion, and the distant hiss of cooling stone.
Then the dust began to settle.
At the center of the newly formed crater lay Yugito Nii, no longer a titanic inferno, no longer the roaring Two-Tails. Her body was curled on its side, unconscious, scorched and battered. The chakra cloak was gone completely, burned away like mist under sunlight. Her breathing was shallow but steady.
Around the battlefield, the surviving shinobi of both Stone and Cloud slowly came back to their senses. Some were half-buried in rubble. Others were on their knees, staring at the crater in disbelief. A few dropped their weapons without even realizing it.
They had just watched a tailed beast fall.
Fear crept in quietly.
Then Ren moved.
His hands blurred through seals, fingers moving faster than most of them could even track. He slammed his palm into the ground.
[Genjutsu: False Darkness.]
The world inverted.
One second, the remaining shinobi were staring at the aftermath of a cataclysm. The next, their minds were swallowed by absolute black.
There was no sky, no ground. Just a suffocating void that pressed against their thoughts and crushed all sense of balance.
Bodies began to fall.
One by one, shinobi from Cloud and Stone alike collapsed where they stood. Some dropped instantly. Others staggered, clawing at empty air as if trying to grab onto reality. A few genjutsu specialists managed to resist for a heartbeat longer, teeth clenched, chakra flaring as they desperately tried to dispel the illusion.
But the outcome never changed.
They, too, crumpled to the ground moments later.
For Ren, affecting minds at this level was effortless. His Yin Release control was far beyond normal limits, refined by constant practice. Against exhausted shinobi who had already been battered physically and mentally, the genjutsu worked like a charm.
Within seconds, the battlefield went still.
Ren exhaled slowly as silence finally returned.
He didn't kill the 40 or so remaining shinobi because prisoners were more useful for what would be coming next.
He turned and walked toward the crater.
Yugito lay where she had fallen, her breathing faint, her body still giving off residual heat from the tailed beast chakra that had only just receded. Her clothing was badly torn from the transformation and the repeated impacts. Bits of scorched fabric clung loosely to her frame.
Ren knelt beside her, studying her for a moment.
His gaze drifted to her abdomen and he licked his lips.
With a swift, efficient motion, he moved what remained of the cloth aside from her stomach.
Then a seal was exposed.
A complex pattern of three interlocking anchors formed a triangular structure around a central core. Each anchor glowed faintly with residual bijuu chakra. The design was elegant in a utilitarian way, functional, but far from flawless.
Ren's eyes traced the formula line by line.
"Trinary Anchor Seal…" he murmured.
Recognition settled instantly. He had seen this pattern before, inside the scrolls given by Grandma Mito. This was an older-generation sealing method. Stable enough for mid-tier bijuu. Crude compared to the Four Trigrams used on Kurama.
And riddled with compromises. This thing doesn't isolate consciousness and doesn't buffer malice. It doesn't dampen emotional bleed-through either.
His fingers hovered just above the markings, practically itching to dissect them. The part of him that loved understanding systems was screaming to take it apart and map every flaw.
But he stopped himself.
Instead, he reshaped his right hand into a loose claw. Blue chakra flickered to life at the tip of his thumb, middle finger, and little finger, condensing into small, steady flames.
He placed each glowing contact point directly onto the three anchor nodes of the seal.
Then he fed chakra into it.
The seal reacted instantly. The triangular pattern lit up, lines flaring as Ren's foreign chakra flowed through the system. The Trinary Anchor resisted for a moment, then stabilized under the superior control.
Ren twisted his hand clockwise.
A guttural roar tore from Yugito's unconscious throat but the sound was not human. It was Matatabi, furious, cornered, lashing out in its last moment of freedom. The chakra around her body flared violently for a split second before being dragged inward.
The roar was cut off abruptly as the two-tails' consciousness was forcibly locked deeper into the inner space of the seal. The triangular nodes glowed once more… then dimmed. The violent fluctuations in Yugito's chakra ceased almost entirely.
Her breathing evened out.
"That should keep your passenger asleep a little longer," Ren muttered.
He then moved with brisk efficiency. One sealing tag after another appeared in his hands. Sleep seals, paralysis seals, Chakra flow dampeners, and other suppressors. Within seconds, Yugito's upper torso, limbs, and even forehead were marked with layered restraint formulae.
Once satisfied, Ren stood and walked toward Kitsuchi and the old commander was easier.
He still lay half-buried in collapsed earth, unconscious from the internal devastation caused by Mountain Crusher. Ren knelt beside him and applied an equally dense but less complex set of sealing restraints, chakra locks at the tenketsu, a nervous system dampener over the spine, and a high-output paralysis array across the chest.
Ren finished and stepped back, surveying both captives only then did the tension finally leave his shoulders.
He walked a few meters away from the crater and sat down heavily on a slab of broken stone, elbows resting on his knees. Steam rose faintly from his skin as the last traces of high-output chakra circulation calmed. His breathing slowed from battle rhythm to something closer to normal.
Ren finally exhaled, truly exhaled, after what felt like hours of walking on the edge of a blade. The kind of breath that came from deep in the chest, slow and heavy, as the last remnants of killing intent bled out of his body and into the night air.
The battlefield was dead quiet now, no chakra surges, no hidden pressure from warped space, no faint, oily presence slithering beneath the earth.
Obito and Zetsu were gone.
That realization alone took a weight off his shoulders he hadn't noticed he was carrying.
He sat there for a moment longer, eyes half-lidded, senses spread wide out of sheer habit. There were no distortions, no strange blind spots, no unnatural suppression. Whatever Zetsu had been doing earlier it had all stopped.
Ren clicked his tongue softly. "So that tongue stunt didn't piss him off enough to come out, huh."
He had honestly expected Obito to take the bait. Sticking out his tongue at him while punching a man's heart out with Chidori wasn't exactly subtle. Part of him had wanted the man to show himself, just to confirm a few theories, test a few reactions.
Instead, Obito had done what he always did.
He vanished.
Ren didn't know whether to regret that or feel relieved. Another fight at that moment, especially one involving space-time nonsense would've pushed even him into a territory where mistakes happened. Still, the unanswered tension lingered faintly at the back of his mind like an unsolved equation.
For now, though, it was over.
He leaned back against a broken slab of earth and let his head tip up, staring at the night sky. The clouds had thinned, revealing a pale scatter of stars. It had gone well past midnight by now. The moon hung low, cold and distant, bathing the ruined battlefield in silver light.
His body felt… fine.
Too fine, actually. Thanks to yang chakra and reinforced conditioning, there were no major injuries left. Muscles still hummed from overuse, joints protested faintly, but nothing serious. No broken bones. No torn tendons. Nothing he couldn't ignore.
His mind, on the other hand, felt heavy.
Two consecutive high-level battles. One with an S-rank relic like Kakuzu.
Another with an entire village-scale ambush, a jinchūriki, multiple elite commanders, and two lurking anomalies in the shadows.
Even with Hyperfocus stabilizing his perception and Flow anchoring his reactions, mental fatigue was unavoidable. It wasn't disorientation. It wasn't dizziness. It was that quiet exhaustion that settled behind the eyes when you'd pushed yourself to your absolute limit for too long.
Ren closed his eyes briefly.
Right now, more than anything else, he wanted to be in his bed. He wanted silence. Real silence. He wanted sleep that didn't end with him snapping awake because his instincts thought a claw was about to tear his throat out.
But that wasn't happening tonight or for a few more days for that matter.
He opened his eyes again and let out a soft breath through his nose.
"Tomorrow's going to be a pain," he muttered.
His gaze drifted back toward the barrier in the distance, where Yugito and Kitsuchi were sealed and restrained. Then further, toward the invisible line that marked the path back to the village.
The trial was tomorrow.
Danzo Shimura.
Ren's expression flattened slightly at the thought. He already knew how the trial would end. The decision had been locked in long before witnesses were gathered and arguments were prepared. The evidence was overwhelming. The political groundwork had been laid. Danzo's fate, as far as Konoha was concerned, was already sealed.
Ren wasn't worried about the verdict.
He was worried about what came after.
Danzo was not a man who accepted defeat quietly. He was the kind who pulled triggers when his back was to the wall, even if the gun was pointed at his own village. Ren didn't believe for a second that the old man wasn't holding some final contingency in reserve. Something buried deep enough that even Yoru and the Intelligence Division hadn't found it yet.
And that was why Ren needed to be there.
Not as a participant, Not as a witness, But as a failsafe.
If Danzo twitched in the wrong way after the trial, Ren wanted to be close enough to end it before it turned into another tragedy written into Konoha's history books.
His thoughts shifted again, naturally drifting to another unresolved worry.
His father.
Juichi's condition when Ren had left him in Utakata's care had been mostly stable, but "mostly" was a dangerous word when it came to the Flow. Ren trusted Utakata's skill as a medic, but there were limits to what even the best healer could guarantee when something higher-order than chakra damage was involved. The currents of life were unpredictable when they were disturbed that deeply.
He didn't like being this far away.
He didn't like not knowing.
Then another thought slipped through, Naruto.
The corner of Ren's mouth twitched slightly. He had made that promise almost a year ago now. Their shared birthday. He remembered the exact look on Naruto's face when he'd said it, so happy that it was the best thing that had happened to him ever, hope leaking through every forced shrug.
Ren didn't know if Naruto would remember.
But given the boy's life, given how few things were actually his to hold onto, Ren suspected he probably would. Naruto remembered every scrap of genuine attention like it was treasure.
They hadn't interacted openly much this past year. Ren had kept his distance deliberately. Naruto had just started at the academy, the social pressure had ramped up, and any visible association with an already controversial figure like Ren would've painted a bigger target on the kid's back.
Besides, Naruto had found his own footing, in his own messy, stubborn way. Shikamaru, Choji and a few others. The rest of the village's kids didn't matter much in the long run, just background noise that Naruto would eventually outgrow.
But once Danzo was dealt with, politically dealt with, the game changed.
Once that shadow was removed, Ren wouldn't need to stay on the sidelines anymore. He'd finally have the freedom to interfere openly, to guide where he wanted without invisible knives hovering at his back. And Naruto… Naruto would benefit from that more than anyone.
That alone was reason enough to make sure he returned by tomorrow.
Ren pushed himself to his feet and brushed dust from his clothes. The battlefield lay silent behind him, prisoners secured, threats temporarily gone, the echoes of combat fading into the earth.
He looked once more at the sky.
It was past midnight.
"Alright," he said quietly. "Time to go home."
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{Half of this chapter was written before I got sick and half after so, if it felt at some point there were some confusing things there probably were, but it would be fine from next chapter onwards.}