"Sage Body… Uzumaki, or Senju?"
For a moment, Hiruzen Sarutobi felt his mind knot up.
An ugly sense of dread crawled up his spine.
The Uzumaki clan's destruction… the Senju's decline…
If anyone dug deep enough, there were shadows in both—and Hiruzen knew exactly where he'd stood in those shadows.
Now a mysterious man with Sage Body chakra had appeared out of nowhere.
And Hiruzen—rarely shaken—felt his throat go dry.
On the battlefield—
BOOM!!
More thunderous blasts erupted.
Three of the Nine-Tails' tails were severed cleanly by Ren's strikes.
The violent tremor-force shook that colossal body so hard it shuddered—then crashed to the ground.
Humiliation.
Pure, suffocating humiliation.
Even with its mind shackled by Mangekyō Sharingan control, the Nine-Tails' instincts still screamed:
This is bad.
It had finally clawed its way out of Kushina's seal.
It should've been free to rampage—to crush—to vent centuries of hate.
Instead—
It was reliving the old nightmare.
Back in the Warring States era, it had been unstoppable.
Then it met Hashirama Senju and Madara Uchiha.
One controlled it with Sharingan.
One suppressed it with Wood Release.
And now?
It escaped a seal… only to run into two more monsters in the same lifetime:
First, the spiral-masked man.
Then—
a Whitebeard mask.
Is the world allergic to letting me breathe?
For the first time in a long time…
the Nine-Tails almost wanted to question its own existence.
"ROOOAR—!!"
But it was still the Nine-Tails.
Even beaten back, it refused to submit.
Chakra erupted from its body again—so heavy the air itself felt pressed down.
And under that surge, the severed tails regenerated at shocking speed, growing back like nothing had happened.
Ren's gaze cooled.
"Still asking for it."
BOOM! BOOM! BOOOOM—!!
The next sequence was brutal.
White cutting waves that cracked the air tore through the battlefield.
Some smashed incoming Bijūdama mid-flight.
Others slammed into the Nine-Tails with tremor-force behind them—hammering again and again until—
it was driven down into rubble like a beast being carved apart.
Tail after tail was erased from the fight.
And finally—
the Nine-Tails lay there, huge and shaking, unable to rise.
"…That's enough."
Ren tightened his grip on Murakumogiri and blurred forward.
In a single step, he was on top of the Nine-Tails' head.
BOOM!!
He dumped force straight down.
The Nine-Tails had barely lifted its muzzle when its skull was smashed back into the earth.
The ground cratered.
Dust and stone burst outward.
The beast froze.
Its mind went blank.
One thought echoed inside its head:
I'd rather be sealed than come out here and get bullied.
Because this wasn't just losing.
This was being turned into a joke.
And the worst part?
Ren standing on its head wasn't even "high damage."
But it was—
maximum humiliation.
A direct replay of the helplessness it remembered under Hashirama's suppression.
From afar, the watching shinobi stared, numb.
"…It's not even resisting."
"Is that really the Nine-Tails?"
"That move… he's not trying to kill it—he's just humiliating it!"
No one could believe what they were seeing:
A man standing on the Nine-Tails like it was a platform.
And the Nine-Tails… taking it.
Hiruzen clenched his fists.
A fierce hunger flickered behind his eyes.
I have to keep this man in Konoha.
A being this strong could tip the entire shinobi world off balance.
If the masked man had no hostrility toward the village…
then Hiruzen could try.
Try to wrap him in the Will of Fire.
Try to make him a weapon—with a smile.
On the Nine-Tails' head—
Ren looked out over Konoha's burning skyline, calm as a statue.
Then he spoke inwardly.
"System. Sign in on the Nine-Tails' head."
A minute of suppression?
With Sage Body, Tremor-Tremor Fruit power, and Armament Haki layered together…
this was nothing.
One second… ten… thirty…
The countdown ticked.
And finally—
the System chimed.
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