The Unagi Strait – The Mizukage's Resolve – Point of No Return
The world had become a painting of chaos. The chakra-mist, once a controlled blanket, was now a churning maelstrom whipped by the violent birth-throes of the Three-Tails. The sea was no longer water; it was a heaving, living mound of phosphorescent blue-grey chakra, from the center of which a mountainous, tortoise-like shell was breaching the surface with geological slowness. A single, mournful eye, wide with ancient confusion and new-born pain, stared balefully at the sky. The black receiver rods Obito had planted pulsed like evil hearts, their rhythm syncing with the Gedo Statue's distant hunger, creating a visible, vibrating spatial link—a funnel of distorted reality leading from Isobu to nowhere.
On the deck of the flagship, pandemonium reigned. Sealing teams were down, injured from the backlash. Kiri shinobi scrambled to form new defensive lines, their faces etched with terror and determination. Mizukage Mei Terumī stood at the shattered edge where the seal-pot had been, her hands clenched, her chakra boiling with a rage so hot it made the surrounding mist steam.
Mei: "He's pulling it apart as it's being born! We have to break those rods!"
Chōjūrō, Hiramekarei now extended into its broadsword form: "But the intangibility—our attacks pass right through him!"
Ao, his Byakugan tracking Obito's every micro-movement: "He's maintaining the link. He has to be tangible to channel that much power through the rods. But the intervals are microscopic—less than a tenth of a second between phases. He's a ghost with perfect timing."
On their floating stone platform, the Kumo team assessed the catastrophe with lethal calm.
Darui: "He's not fighting us. He's ignoring us. We're insects to him. The rods are the target. Karui, suppressive fire on his position, staggered intervals. Force him to phase on our schedule."
Karui, her lightning chakra crackling: "On it!"
Darui turned to Yugito. "We need something he can't phase through. Something that exists in a state he can't simply decide to ignore."
Yugito Nii met his gaze, then looked inward, to the sovereign presence nestled in her soul. Her voice was quiet, resolved. "Matatabi agrees. The ghost uses space as his weapon. We will use what exists between spaces. The blue flame that purifies instability."
She closed her eyes. This was not the old, desperate transformation of a Jinchuriki losing control. This was an invitation, a collaboration between two sovereign beings who shared a home across two realms.
Yugito: "Matatabi. Let's show the ghost that some fires burn in realities he cannot touch."
Matatabi's voice, warm and fierce in her mind: The sorrowful one below cries out. We will answer. Remember the form—the dance of the twin flames.
Yugito's hands formed not the standard ram seal of a transformation, but a complex, graceful series of gestures that seemed to weave the very air. Blue flame, not erupting from her in a torrent, but unfolding from her skin like the petals of a luminous flower, enveloped her. It was silent, controlled, beautiful. Her form expanded, but not into the monstrous, quadrupedal form of the Nibi. This was something else—a Sovereign Manifestation.
She stood, now fifteen feet tall, a humanoid figure of condensed, serene blue flame. Her hair was a cascade of fire, her eyes twin pools of cool, intelligent light. Curving, elegant horns of flame swept back from her brow. She wore not the Nibi's skeletal structure, but what appeared to be articulated armor of solidified blue chakra, etched with Uzumaki-like whorls. In each hand, she held a whip of vibrating, ultra-hot flame. This was Matatabi's Avatar Form—the full power and consciousness of the Two-Tails, perfectly integrated with Yugito's will, a being of pure, stable energy that existed simultaneously in the physical world and the dimensional fabric of the Sapphire Ember.
Obito, from his position near the pulsing rods, paused. His single visible eye fixed on the new form. "A parlor trick. A beast in prettier wrapping."
Yugito's voice echoed with a dual harmony—her own and Matatabi's resonance: "We are not a beast. We are a sovereign. And your void holds no dominion over a settled throne."
She moved. Not with a beast's lunge, but with the grace of a dancer. She flicked one of her flame-whips. It didn't crack; it sang, cutting through the air with a harmonic frequency that made the mist itself vibrate. The whip lashed not at Obito, but at the space between two of his black receiver rods.
The effect was immediate. The harmonic disruption interfered with the precise spatial frequency the rods were emitting. The funnel of energy to the Gedo Statue flickered, stuttered. The rising Three-Tails groaned, the pull on its essence lessening for a moment.
Obito's composure cracked. "You dare?"
He solidified, abandoning his phased state to reinforce the rods with a burst of his own chakra. In that moment of tangibility, Mei Terumī struck.
"Lava Release: Melting Apparition Jutsu!" A tidal wave of corrosive, fast-cooling rock surged across the deck towards him.
"Boil Release: Skilling Mist!" Simultaneously, she exhaled a cloud of superheated, acidic vapor that could melt armor in seconds.
Obito, committed to maintaining his ritual, didn't phase. He simply raised his left hand. From his sleeve, a massive, segmented fan—the Gunbai—materialized. He swung it once. The stored wind release within it erupted, scattering the lava wave and blowing the boiling mist back towards the Kiri lines, forcing them to scatter. The display of casual, immense power was chilling.
Mei snarled, her frustration palpable. Her most devastating techniques, nullified by a single tool. He was a fortress they couldn't breach.
Karui, following Darui's order, unleashed her staggered lightning attacks. Bolts of white-hot energy shot at Obito from different angles at split-second intervals. He was forced into a rapid, dizzying dance of phase-solidify-phase, like a stuttering image. It disrupted his focus, but didn't stop him. The rods continued to pulse, and Isobu continued to rise, its massive head now fully above water, its three coral-covered tails lashing in confused agony.
Darui analyzed, his mind cold and sharp. "He's waiting. He's not extracting it while it's half-formed. He's letting it be born. The moment it's fully materialized, fully 'alive' in this world, that's when the statue can consume it most efficiently. He's using our attacks as a distraction until the perfect moment."
Ao, his Byakugan seeing the chakra cohesion in the beast solidify by the second: "He's right! The beast's chakra matrix is reaching critical stability… now!"
The Three-Tails, Isobu, gave a world-shaking roar that was less sound and more a pressure wave of pure, watery chakra. It was complete. Born. It swung its colossal head, its lone eye focusing on the nearest source of pain and constriction—the black rods and the small figure of Obito before it. With a guttural bellow, it opened its mouth, and a swirling orb of compressed water and malice—a Tailed Beast Ball—began to form.
Obito looked up at the gathering cataclysm and smiled behind his mask. "Perfect."
He abandoned the rods. He let Karui's lightning pass through him. He ignored everything. His hands flew through seals.
"Uchiha Flame Formation: Chains of the Binding Netherworld."
This was not the defensive wall he'd used to protect the Kamui vortex. This was an offensive, capturing technique of the highest order. From the Gunbai's shaft and from seals on his own wrists, chains of pure, black fire erupted. But these weren't flames of heat; they were flames of conceptual binding, forged from Uchiha will and fuinjutsu. They ignored Isobu's physical mass, phasing through its shell as easily as Obito phased through attacks, and then solidifying inside the beast's chakra core.
The Three-Tails' roar cut off into a choked gurgle. The forming Tailed Beast Ball winked out. The black chains, now visible as a glowing, constricting net wrapped around its spiritual form, pulsed in time with the receiver rods. The extraction didn't just resume; it amplified exponentially. A torrent of blue-grey chakra, thick as a tsunami, ripped from Isobu's form and poured into the spatial funnel.
They weren't just capturing a Tailed Beast. They were draining it, alive and conscious, in front of them.
Yugito-Matatabi moved. "The connection is absolute now! We must sever the concept, not the chain!"
She crossed her flame-whips in front of her, and they fused into a single, brilliant spear of condensed blue fire. "Sovereign Technique: Sapphire Lance of Purification."
She hurled it. The lance flew, not at Obito, not at the chains, but at the point of conceptual agreement between the Uchiha binding and the Three-Tails' captured will—the very idea that Isobu could be bound.
The lance struck the nexus of the chains. There was no explosion. There was a sound like a crystal singing, then shattering. A wave of pure, clean, denying energy washed over the ritual. The black chains didn't break, but they weakened, their conceptual hold fraying at the edges. The torrent of stolen chakra lessened from a tsunami to a violent river.
Obito staggered, a grunt of pain escaping him. Interfering with an Uchiha's supreme binding technique, on a conceptual level, had backlash. "You… meddlesome cat."
He was vulnerable. Tangible. Angry.
Mei saw it. So did Darui. It was their one, unified chance.
Mei: "Chōjūrō! NOW!"
Chōjūrō leaped, Hiramekarei morphing mid-air into its twin-sword "Chōkō" form. "Hiramekarei: Twin Dragon Blast!" Two massive beams of chakra energy, capable of cutting through mountains, converged on Obito's position.
Darui performed a single, perfect seal. "Laser Circus: Prism Focus." All his scattered lightning bolts in the area suddenly redirected, converging into a single, blindingly hot needle of plasma at the same point.
Obito, reeling from the Sovereign technique's backlash, couldn't phase fast enough. He raised the Gunbai again. The twin dragon blast and the plasma needle hit it simultaneously.
KRA-KOOOOOM!
The Gunbai, a legendary weapon, shattered into splinters and twisted metal. The concussive force blew Obito off his feet, sending him skidding across the water's surface, his cloak smoldering. He came to a stop, one knee down, his mask cracked from the upper left corner down to the chin.
For the first time, they saw a sliver of his face—pale skin, and a glimpse of a snarling mouth.
The black chains, deprived of his direct, focused will and damaged by Yugito's purification, trembled. The extraction faltered badly. Isobu, sensing weakness, gave a titanic heave. One of the receiver rods snapped. The spatial funnel destabilized.
Obito looked from his broken mask to the struggling Three-Tails, to the converging forces of two Kage and a Sovereign. The calculation in his visible eye was icy, furious, but precise. The ritual was compromised. A full extraction was now impossible without sustaining unacceptable damage.
He made the call.
With a gesture, the remaining black chains and receiver rods dissolved into shadows. The spatial link snapped closed. The torrent of stolen chakra ceased.
But the damage was done. Isobu, the Three-Tails, still lay bound in remnants of black-flame chains, its form translucent, flickering. A staggering 68% of its chakra and essence had been ripped away in those few, brutal minutes. It wasn't a corpse, but it was a crippled, fading echo of itself.
Obito rose to his feet. The cracked mask made him look deranged. "A partial victory is still a victory. The statue has been fed. Its second eye opens. Your world grows weaker. Mine draws nearer."
He took a step back, and the familiar Kamui vortex swirled to life behind him. Yugito-Matatabi fired a beam of blue flame, but he was already half-gone, phasing into his personal void.
His final words hung in the sulfuric, mist-choked air. "The next beast will not be so lucky."
And he was gone.
Silence, heavy and sick, fell over the strait. The wounded Three-Tails let out a low, pathetic whimper, its massive body beginning to slowly sink back beneath the waves, too weak to maintain its form. The mist began to slowly clear, revealing the devastated Kiri fleet.
Yugito's sovereign form dissolved in a cascade of blue embers, revealing her standing exhausted but upright on the platform. Matatabi's small avatar reappeared on her shoulder, flickering weakly.
Mei Terumī stared at the sinking Isobu, her hands trembling not with fear, but with impotent fury. They had stopped a complete theft. They had wounded Obito, destroyed his fan. But he had taken what he came for. The Gedo Statue was now two-thirds fed.
Darui walked to the edge of the deck, looking at the spot where Obito vanished. "Troublesome. He played us. Used the beast's own rebirth as a trap. We were so focused on preventing the capture, we didn't anticipate an on-site extraction of that magnitude."
Karui, her energy spent, leaned on her sword. "We hurt him. We broke his mask."
Yugito, voice weary: "We saved 32% of a Tailed Beast. And we proved his techniques can be opposed, if not defeated. Matatabi's purification… it worked. It can work again."
Ao approached the Mizukage, his Byakugan scanning the fading chakra of the Three-Tails. "The remnant is stable, but barely. It will sink to the deep and sleep for… decades, perhaps centuries. It is no longer a target. It is a ghost itself."
Mei finally turned, her expression hardening into a mask of grim leadership. "Then we salvage what we can. Treat the wounded. Secure the area. And prepare a full report for the Raikage and the Coalition." She looked at Yugito and Darui, her gaze holding a newfound, hard-won respect. "You fought a ghost today. And you made him bleed. That is more than anyone from Kiri has managed in a generation. Thank you."
It was not a celebration. It was an acknowledgment of a costly, painful stalemate. The Storm Coalition had, once again, prevented a total loss. But the Akatsuki's clock was ticking faster, and with two of the Nine-Tails' eyes now open in that distant, hungry statue, the darkness on the horizon grew ever deeper, ever closer.
End of Chapter – 88.