The Forest of Death, already partially disfigured by the previous battle with Orochimaru, shuddered from a new cataclysm.
A massive cloud of white smoke, having swallowed the clearing and the surrounding trees, began to dissipate, revealing a scene that made Sasuke's breath catch in his throat.
The forest was no longer visible.
The entire space around the giant sand tanuki—the ground, branches, tree trunks, and even the surface of the forest lake—was covered in black.
Naruto. Thousands of Narutos.
They stood in a dense wall, hung from branches like bats, balanced on the water. There weren't a hundred, or two. There were over two thousand of them.
A whole legion, dressed in black, with burning red eyes and the bared teeth of wild beasts.
Sasuke, lying by the roots of a tree where a clone had thrown him, watched this with horror. His Sharingan darted around, trying to count the chakra.
Every single one of them... has more chakra than I do. And there are thousands... This is Kage level. No, this is Tailed Beast level.
His worldview, where the Uchiha was the elite and the Uzumaki was a lucky idiot, was cracking at the seams under the weight of this arithmetic.
Shukaku, towering over this sea, froze for a second. And then his maw stretched into a mad, wide grin.
"A-HA-HA! SO MUCH MEAT!" the demon's voice was like thunder. "I WILL SMEAR YOU IN A THIN LAYER! THIS WILL BE A GRAND FEAST!"
The original Naruto, standing in the center of the front rank, straightened up. His body hummed with tension. Holding such a volume of chakra and controlling his mind was torture.
"Forward!" he barked. The voice was singular but echoed a thousand times.
The legion moved.
It wasn't a ninja attack. It was an assault on an anthill.
The clones surged forward, jumping on trees, on the ground, on each other.
Shukaku punched his own plump belly with a fist.
"WIND STYLE: AIR BULLET!"
A sphere of compressed air the size of a small house flew from the demon's mouth. It traveled at the speed of a cannonball, mowing down trees.
The projectile slammed into the vanguard of clones.
BOOM!
Hundreds of copies burst instantly. The explosion tore up the earth, turning the forest into splinters. Smoke from the vanished clones mixed with dust, creating a thick screen.
But the wave of black figures didn't stop.
"Shield!" the clones shouted.
A hundred copies jumped straight into the epicenter of the next blast, dampening the shockwave with their bodies so the others could pass. They perished in droves, but the legion advanced.
The original ran in the center of the flow.
His head was splitting. Every time a clone died, its memory returned. The sensation of torn flesh, hitting the ground, suffocation by sand. Hundreds of deaths in seconds.
Naruto gritted his teeth until they creaked.
Qi Concentration. Filter. This is not my pain. This is information. Ignore the pain. Focus on the objective.
He shoved the pain into a far corner of his consciousness, leaving only cold calculation.
Left flank has sagged. Need more pressure in the center. Explosive tags on the knees!
The clones reached the monster.
They climbed the rough sandy hide, stabbing kunai into it to hold on. They slapped explosive tags on the giant's joints.
BANG! BANG!
Shukaku roared as his knees buckled from a series of explosions. He lost his balance, swaying backward.
"FLEAS!" the demon growled. "SAND TSUNAMI!"
His body began to flow. Sand cascaded from his shoulders like an avalanche, washing away clones by the hundreds.
But the original was already in the air.
He didn't touch the sand. He ran on backs.
One clone offered its shoulders—Naruto pushed off. A second clone grabbed his hand mid-jump and flung him higher. A third took a sand needle meant for the original and vanished with a pop.
A living staircase leading into the sky.
Naruto soared above the monster's head.
Right in front of him, on the beast's forehead, protruded the body of the sleeping Gaara. He was protected by an impenetrable dome of compressed sand—the Absolute Defense, which worked even in sleep.
Naruto began to fall toward him.
"NOW!" he shouted.
The last two clones flying alongside grabbed his legs. They spun him in the air and threw him down with all their might like a living projectile, falling into the abyss themselves.
Naruto flew toward the target. Terminal velocity, boosted by the throw.
He extended his right hand.
A sphere roared in his palm.
It wasn't a blue Rasengan. It was a purple, unstable, screeching vortex. In the center pulsed a drop of the Kyūbi's scarlet hatred, compressed by the vise of White Qi.
Hybrid Rasengan. The sound from it was like the scream of a chainsaw cutting metal.
"OUT OF MY WAY!" Naruto roared.
He slammed into the sand dome.
EXPLOSION OF ENERGY.
The Rasengan didn't explode immediately. It bit in. The vortex spun at such speed that the sand melted, turning into glass and dust. Red chakra burned through matter; blue severed bonds.
Naruto felt resistance—the sand was hard as steel. His arm ached, bones creaking from the recoil.
He screamed, putting all his will, all his body weight, and all the Fox's fury into the technique.
"BREAK THROUGH!"
CRACK.
The dome couldn't hold. It shattered into shards of glass and sand.
The path was open.
Right in front of him, a meter away, was the face of the sleeping Gaara.
The Rasengan dissipated. There was no time for a new technique.
Naruto clenched his hand. Index and middle finger jutted slightly forward—the "needle" form.
He put everything remaining into this strike. All his Qi.
Target—Gaara's head.
"WAKE UP!" Naruto exhaled.
His strike slammed straight into Gaara's forehead.
THUD!
The blow was short, hard, dry. Gaara's head snapped to the side.
The Qi pulse passed through bone, struck the brain, severing the connection channel between the medium's consciousness and the Bijū's will.
Gaara's eyes snapped open.
In that same second, Shukaku's giant body froze.
"NO! NOOOOOOO! I JUST STARTED PLAYING!" the demon's howl turned into a disappointed, fading moan.
The monster's form liquefied. Mountains of sand, losing the will holding them together, began to crumble.
The giant collapsed.
Naruto and Gaara, losing their footing, fell down together with thousands of tons of sand.
Height—thirty meters.
Wind whistled in ears.
Naruto, despite exhaustion, twisted in the air. He grabbed Gaara by the collar, pulling him close to shield him from the impact.
They crashed into the crown of a giant tree, smashing through branches which slowed their fall, and plummeted to the ground, raising a final cloud of dust.
Silence returned to the forest.
Sasuke, watching this from afar, slowly sank to the ground. His legs wouldn't hold him.
He had seen an army. Seen a monster. And seen one person walk through hell to deliver the final finishing blow.
"He... defeated a Bijū," the Uchiha whispered. "And I couldn't even scratch him."
In his soul, next to the darkness, a new feeling took up residence. Fear. And the understanding of the abyss that now separated them.