Chapter 302 - 302: Madara Wants Kushina. Everything Breaks.

Actually, when the village was attacked, the ANBU were always the first responders.

They were the only group with semi-permanent readiness, the only force that could mobilize instantly without chaos.

Especially the core ANBU, the ones typically used by each Hokage to maintain control over the village, so this was why they were always so ready.

Now that core was led by Tobirama himself, signifying basically who was de facto in charge of this hidden village.

So they were the first to arrive at the scene from the Uchiha compound's direction.

But because Tobirama anticipated, very early, that someone might attempt to snatch Kushina at the worst possible moment, he had already prepared secondary response groups in secret.

Groups not tied to ANBU, but to the clans, from the regular shinobi forces, who possessed the numbers and cohesion to mobilize on a large scale.

Thus, within moments:

Shikaku Nara. Inoichi Yamanaka. Chōza Akimichi.

All arrived in full war gear, urgently leading their clan forces behind them with somber faces.

Alongside them came the Aburame patriarch, the Inuzuka patriarch, and countless shinobi unaffiliated with any major clan, but led by all of them in a makeshift kind of hierarchy.

A wave of Konoha's military power converged toward the center in a somewhat synchronized formation.

Madara quietly assessed all of this in a single glance.

Then spoke, cold and low.

"Obito… take your former sensei. If you wish."

He didn't even look at Minato.

Then he flicked his gaze at the others.

"Zetsu. Kakuzu. Sasori. Deal with the incoming waves of trash."

They obeyed immediately.

But at that exact moment—

Kushina herself burst out of her room.

She refused to let her husband fight alone so close to her, not when she was the actual target, and not when she could still stand at his side.

Yet, she shouldn't have been standing, let alone fighting, so deep into pregnancy, by all normal shinobi parameters, truly.

Unless... She fully borrowed the power from someone or something else instead.

Fortunately for her, for some reason, the Nine-Tails was cooperating with her fully in its own strange mood today, responding to her pleas positively and relatively quickly at that, too.

Golden chakra whipped around her body, flickering like a blazing tail behind her, alongside some peculiar black bodily markings.

A full-on Nine-Tails chakra mode cloak despite her condition.

Tobirama's eye twitched.

Perfect. Just perfect.

He inwardly cursed his luck again.

Might Duy in Seven Gates, strengthened by Ryusei.

And Kushina, with a powerful golden jinchuriki chakra mode, which he saw for the first time.

The disaster kept compounding by the second.

At the very same time, in another sector of Konoha…

Fourteen-year-old Might Guy stood frozen for a moment, staring toward the village center where his father had just rushed off, then up at the shattered sky above the translucent barrier, then back again at the distant chaos.

He had a strange, unshakable feeling.

The sky splitting.

The distant roars of chakra storms.

The unnatural pressure bending clouds.

He didn't know how he knew it…

But everything in his gut told him that the one responsible was the same older teen who once trained with him.

The same boy who once pushed him forward, inspired him, and shaped his outlook on strength, just as Guy had shaped his in return.

Ryusei. It made his fists tremble.

Elsewhere, Kakashi, now with only one eye, also stood in the street, frozen.

The single Sharingan Obito had once given him was gone.

Suddenly stolen by an odd masked man one day during this war.

Leaving him broken, half-blind, and in a depression he couldn't climb out of.

His strength had fallen to that of an elite jōnin at best.

But even in his hollow state…

Some instinct inside him, old loyalty, old pain, old suspicion, told him to move toward the village center.

He didn't know why.

He just felt he had to be there. Now.

Everything converged toward the same point.

The center of Konoha.

Where Madara waited.

And the confrontation that would decide the fate of the village was about to ignite.

Actually, Madara himself had not just been foolishly standing there like an idiot, but he had been gathering the important information the entire time, calmly reading the battlefield outside the barrier through his sensory mode, where he got the great chance like now.

That was why he barely moved. His focus was fixed on Ryusei and that strange, ethereal being he was fighting. Madara didn't know why, but something about that entity filled him with a deep, instinctive disgust. Yet he was equally impressed. Their power was absurd.

Even with his pride, Madara wasn't entirely sure he could defeat either of them right now. That realization only pushed him to take the Ten-Tails Jinchūriki plan even more seriously.

Only with that power could his dreams survive in a world filled with so many variables he had never accounted for during the previous decades he lived in shadows and perhaps in hubris.

He had never seen anything like Ryusei, so fluid, so unnatural, so layered and abnormal in one area that defied all common sense, which was his physique and close-range combat.

The Slug Sage Mode, Madara always ignored, was elevated to something so monstrous.

Madara even had to acknowledge it internally despite their age difference. Nor had he ever imagined anyone could push the Eight Gates to such an extent without dying instantly.

As a potential, more than qualified, greatest opponent in the near future, if he pulled through this today, Ryusei filled Madara with a rare surge of fighting intent and seriousness now.

It was one thing to hear reports and scattered rumors about Ryusei's true strength and the rate of progress, and another to witness a boy that young wielding power many times greater than Madara had possessed even at his own peak in life.

But just as shocking as Ryusei was the barrier surrounding Konoha. It wasn't merely vast; it felt alive too, and governed by laws Madara had never encountered.

That unsettling sensation somehow dragged his mind back to Black Zetsu, his origins, his lies, the way he had manipulated Madara for decades, for some reason.

The moment Black Zetsu vanished half a year ago, Madara had finally woken up to the truth.

Something that had been close to him for so long had been far more dangerous than he ever realized.

It wasn't his creation at all, but the greatest unassuming threat lurking beside him, waiting for the perfect moment to bury him for some unseen, malicious purpose.

Madara's greatest humiliation, as well, he eventually realised and admitted to himself truly.

And he had only uncovered it by accident, thanks to that fight with the visitor from the moon.

His presence had stirred something in him, something that clearly unsettled Black Zetsu enough to flee at the very first opportunity, before he fully woke up and connected it all.

And now this barrier only reinforced it.

There were far more secrets in this world than even he had imagined, and the Uchiha Stone Tablet clearly hid more than it revealed.

Madara had hunted Black Zetsu relentlessly, but all he found were traces suggesting Ryusei had been the one to eliminate him in the end, somehow… that Black Zetsu's true form had been something more proper shinobi-like and immensely powerful during his final moments.

That was, however, bad for Madara.

Because whatever Black Zetsu knew, whatever purpose he had woven around Madara, had died with him, swallowed by Ryusei.

If Madara wanted answers now, he would have to get them through Ryusei Senju instead.

However, Madara pushed all larger thoughts aside next.

First, he needed to deal with what stood before him and secure Kushina Uzumaki.

His Rinnegan's gravitational field activated with a subtle hum.

His Limbo clones spread silently through the air.

And a perfect Susanoo erupted around him, rising like a colossal demon of chakra, its sheer height casting half the village into shadow.

Madara exhaled slowly.

He didn't see himself as some mindless destroyer.

Even if the village had failed him long ago, he wasn't a psychopath who slaughtered for nothing.

He was a savior, the one who would drag this world toward salvation.

So he would not purposefully annihilate Konoha or butcher innocents.

But if they stood in his way, then so be it.

The Susanoo stepped forward, each footfall cracking entire avenues as if the village were paper beneath it.

Tobirama moved first.

He flickered in front of the towering construct, unleashing the full range of his advanced elemental releases with ruthless precision.

Frostfire jets burst from his palms, freezing and igniting across the Susanoo's surface in the same instant.

Gale sandstorms whipped around its legs, grinding against the armor with high-speed particles.

Spectral blades phased in and out of the chakra plating, stabbing at angles no solid object could reach.

Abyss surges of dense, electrified water followed, trying to clamp the giant's joints even for a fraction of a second.

Kushina struck next.

Golden Nine-Tails chakra flared around her swollen form, steady and controlled despite her state.

She didn't punch. She unleashed sealing force.

Dozens of gold-black Kyūbi–Sage–infused Adamantine Chains erupted from her back with a roar, whipping around the Susanoo's wrist and forearm like living restraints.

The ground split under the impact, the sudden yank forcing the construct's arm to hitch backward several meters, its bone-like chakra plating grinding under the combined assault of sealing power and tailed-beast chakra.

Then Duy arrived.

The Seventh Gate roared open around him, brighter and steadier than any version he had shown in his lifetime.

Ryusei's essence threaded through his cells allowed him to hold that impossible state without tearing apart.

His strongest Hirudora yet exploded against the Susanoo's ribs, the shockwave blasting open the air itself, rattling the armor and kicking the giant a full step to the side.

The destruction was immense, yet everyone held back just enough to avoid erasing half the village outright.

Barrier teams inside the perimeter raised layered constructs of chakra to absorb secondary shockwaves.

On the other fronts, war broke out instantly.

Obito, now wielding both Kamui abilities freely, long and short range, clashed with Minato in a blur of space-warped kunai and distorted reality, two masters of teleportation trying to outmaneuver each other within fractions of seconds.

Sasori, in his human puppet body, unleashed his new Mercury Release, streams of superheated, metallic vapor combined from Iron Release and fire jets, with unique poison chemicals inside, cutting through dozens of shinobi like molten wire.

Kakuzu already had his elemental masks unleashed, all four hearts firing off simultaneous blasts of wind, fire, lightning, and earth at the incoming waves.

White Zetsu erupted from the ground in clusters, spores draining chakra from anyone they touched, multiplying across the battlefield.

All around them, explosions rang, shockwaves rippled, and the entire center of Konoha transformed into a full-scale warzone in seconds.

And at the center of it all, Madara's towering Susanoo pushed forward for Kushina Uzumaki.