Out on the training grounds, Terra had been getting acquainted with the Gunbai with Max's clone's help when the ground suddenly began to tremble beneath their feet. The clone felt it immediately,an enormous bloom of chakra radiating from the direction of the hideout. Then the roar hit them. Deep, ancient and powerful.
Then silence.
Terra turned to the clone. "What was that?"
"The Ten Tails," the clone said. "My guess is the real me has already teleported it somewhere to prepare for the sealing process."
Terra was quiet for a moment. "So Thena is about to seal the Ten Tails inside herself."
"Yes. And afterwards she becomes the second strongest."
"Can we go? I want to see it."
"Sure." The clone placed a hand on her shoulder. "Hold on."
They vanished and reappeared atop a sand dune far from the action. So far that Max and Thena were completely invisible at that distance. But the Ten Tails? The Ten Tails was visible as clearly as day.
Because nothing that size could be hidden.
Terra stared up at it, her voice dropping to barely above a whisper.
"Wow."
In all her life she had never seen anything that tall. Not even Skyscrapers and those weren't alive.
Down below, the Ten Tails shifted its gaze.
Its massive Rinne-Sharingan moved slowly, deliberately, until it was staring directly at Max and Thena. Then it rose,pulling itself up onto its hind legs, towering even higher against the sky,and clasped its hands together, chakra immediately beginning to pour into its body. Its arms thickened,its torso expanding. The sheer pressure of the chakra it was gathering sent a tremor through the sand around them.
"Uh...dad?" Thena's voice carried a distinct edge of nervousness. "Why is it infusing chakra?"
"Because it's preparing to attack," Max said simply. He turned to her. "Watch closely."
His hands moved through a sequence of seals. Ram. Boar. Tiger. Snake. Dog. Tiger. Snake.
"These are the hand seals for the Ten Tails Coffin Seal," he said as he went. "You'll need to get close to use it. For now I'll deflect its attack and pin it down so you can move in."
The Ten Tails finished its infusion.
Its mouth opened mpossibly wide,and from within it, a gigantic flower bud slowly emerged, still glistening with saliva, before it was expelled from its mouth and bloomed outward into an enormous red flower with a hollow center. Chakra immediately began pouring into it, condensing rapidly into a Tailed Beast Bomb of absolutely catastrophic scale.
The pressure alone generated a violent sandstorm around them, walls of sand whipping outward in every direction.
"We can't let that explode on the ground, dad," Thena said, watching the Tailed Beast Bomb continue to swell in size,already large enough to dwarf entire mountain ranges and still growing.
"I'll deflect it," Max said.
He reached into his pouch and pulled out two Flying Thunder God kunais. He hurled one straight up into the sky with everything he had, then held the second out in front of him.
"This is the next stage of the Flying Thunder God," he said, eyes fixed on the incoming blast. "Given the powerup you're about to receive, I doubt you'll be learning it yourself but watch anyway. This is just how useful it is."
The Ten Tails released the Tailed Beast Bomb.
The sheer size of it was incomprehensible up close. It tore across the desert at tremendous speed, the displacement of air alone generating a shockwave that swept outward across the sand in every direction, throwing dunes apart as it came screaming toward them.
"Flying Thunder God Guiding Thunder!"
A gigantic sealing formula erupted in the air directly in the bomb's path. The Tailed Beast Bomb hit it,and vanished. Completely and utterly swallowed, leaving nothing behind but empty air where something catastrophic had been a moment before.
Before Thena could process what had just happened, Max activated his Stage 3 Susanoo. It erupted around them both, armoring them completely.
"Brace for an explosion," he said.
Far away on the distant sand dune, Terra had watched the exact same thing happen,that incomprehensible ball of energy simply ceasing to exist mid-air. Max's clone activated its own Stage 3 Susanoo around them as Terra stared at the empty space where it had been.
"What happened to it?" she asked.
"It's up there," the clone said, and pointed skyward.
Terra followed the gesture. The blood red moon hung in the night sky above the sky,and right beside it, a tiny dot had appeared where before there had been nothing.
Terra squinted. "Is that really-"
The dot glowed,then it expanded.
A sun bloomed in the middle of the night sky followed by a thunderous BOOOOM! followed an instant later, so powerful that Terra's ears rang immediately. The shockwave hit next, pushing the Susanoo back slightly and blasting the surrounding sand dunes apart in every direction, sand raining down across the desert in great cascading curtains.
Terra stared up at the fading light in the sky, ears still ringing.
"Holy sh*t!" Terra breathed.
The thing had detonated so high up in the sky you'd swear it was right beside the moon,and even from that distance the shockwave had been powerful enough to push the Susanoo back and level the sand dunes around them. The Ten Tails really was a monster. And to think that only someone wielding Sage chakra could meaningfully harm it,its regeneration was so rapid that raw physical force and conventional attacks were essentially useless against it. Or so Thena had told her.
She stared at the fading bloom of light in the sky a moment longer.
Down below, Max tucked away his Flying Thunder God kunai and deactivated his Susanoo. He turned to find Thena standing beside him, jaw slack, apparently having had no idea the Flying Thunder God could be used that way.
"Get your act together," Max said. "It's coming right at us."
He pointed.
The Ten Tails was already closing the distance, each step sending a tremor rolling through the desert floor beneath them. Max blasted off toward it without hesitation. Before the beast could react, he drove a powerful punch straight up into its chin,lifting it completely off the ground in an impressive display of raw strength before it crashed back down, the impact sending a shockwave rolling outward across the sand.
"Thena! Now!"
Thena teleported to his side in an instant. She took a deep breath, steadying herself for what she was about to do. The Ten Tails thrashed wildly beneath them, shaking the earth. Her hands moved,running through the sequence of hand seals she had copied from Max with her Sharingan and when she was done she shouted.
"Ten Tails Coffin Seal!"
The Ten Tails lurched,then was pulled rapidly toward her, drawn in like a tide retreating from the shore, and absorbed into her abdomen. A cocoon of snow white light formed around her instantly, encasing her completely.
Max hovered in the air beside it,waiting for her to emerge.
Then it cracked,the cocoon shattered into snow white feathers that drifted slowly downward, catching the light as they settled into the sand below.
And where the cocoon had been, Thena stood.
She wore a snow white trench coat with a hood, magatamas running down the length of both sleeves. Nine Truth Seeking Orbs hovered in a slow arc behind her. The hood was drawn up, her face completely obscured,only the faint glow of a Sharingan and a Rinnegan visible from within the shadow it cast.
Then she reached up and pulled the hood back.
Snow white hair spilled out around her shoulders as she turned toward Max and grinned.
Max allowed himself a small smirk.
End of Chapter
Chapter 40:A job
Chapter 41:A promise
Chapter 42:Brainiac descends