"Summoning: Quintuple Rashōmon!"
"Wood Style: Nativity of a Sea of Trees!"
"Wood Style: Wood Locking Wall!"
Standing off to the side, Link watched as "First" Hashirama unleashed one Wood-Style jutsu after another. The spreading shockwaves from the explosion were halted roughly ten kilometers from Konoha Village.
Even so, the ground trembled violently, the mushroom cloud on the horizon refused to disperse, and the air temperature had risen by at least twenty or thirty degrees. Link felt his hair curling from the heat.
(Strange… Is Hashirama's power always this strong?) he wondered.
"Phew, that was a risky jutsu indeed."
Orochimaru emerged from the underground. He had fled so fast he actually managed to keep up with Hashirama, who had activated Sage Mode.
As he spoke, he gave Link a subtle side-eye. Orochimaru had known for a while that the Five Elements Seal had reached its developmental limits. He'd never imagined that technique could interact in such a way with the Ten-Tails of all things.
Thinking back, one could brand that technique onto Tailed Beasts as well, turning them into living weapons. From a "bomb-making" perspective, perhaps the Five Elements Seal still had potential.
"First" Hashirama looked perplexed. Frowning in thought for a moment, he said, "That monster's power just now was almost identical in nature to natural energy. So when it took that seal, the effect was far greater than on anyone else who's been sealed by it."
"And in its own, mindless way, it used the seal's natural energy to try and free itself from Myōjinmon and the other seals. By the time it clashed with something it couldn't override, it was all too late."
"Link, don't just carelessly use your Five Elements Seal from now on. That technique doesn't merely restrict chakra—it repels all foreign energy."
"It's too dangerous."
Because the order of the Five Elements can melt the body and reject other energies…
Of course Orochimaru knew this. Weak energies—like certain people's chakra—would simply vanish under it, as had happened with Kimimaro's Kekkei Genkai or his chakra. But Kimimaro's cursed mark, also powered by natural energy, could fiercely resist, until eventually an explosion occurred from the rejection overload.
What surprised him was that even a monster like the Ten-Tails couldn't crush the Five Elements' order.
Interestingly, the seal array plus Myōjinmon had worked together to apply so much pressure that the mindless Ten-Tails, in blindly harnessing the Five Elements Seal's power, couldn't handle the clash and ended up blowing itself to bits.
…
After waiting a while, the three returned to the site of the explosion.
Thanks to the terrain of the valley and the earlier Wood-Style barriers Hashirama placed to contain the Ten-Tails, more than half the blast's energy had gone underground. Now the area was fully transformed into a massive fissure. No one could tell how deep it went, and white-hot magma—over a thousand degrees—poured along the bottom.
All forests in the vicinity lay in ruins, and the mushroom cloud overhead lingered, refusing to fade.
"The natural energy here is so abundant," Hashirama observed from atop his Wooden Dragon. His gaze swept over the "ground."
The blast hadn't gone straight downward but at a slant, plus he'd deliberately channeled the force skyward, earthward, and toward uninhabited seas. The resulting chasm meandered haphazardly like a jagged scar.
"Splooosh!"
Before he finished speaking, thick magma bubbled, then came the roar of surging seawater. Waves thundered in from far off, hissing into steam as they met the molten rock, sending up colossal plumes that blew away the dust-laden mushroom stalk.
Massive dark clouds quickly formed, lightning cracked, and a raging wind kicked up, dropping sheets of rain. The sea rapidly healed that ghastly "planetary wound."
"Found them."
Hashirama pressed his hands together, then thrust one palm forward. A Wood Dragon sprouted rapidly, burrowing into one side of the chasm. After a few seconds, it yanked out the Eight-Tails.
Normally towering in size, the Bijū was only two or three meters tall now, looking pitiful as the dragon coiled around it.
He liked to keep seeds on him—just in case. Right now, it came in handy for controlling the situation.
(The Tailed Beast actually survived? I assumed it would have to be reborn after that…)
Link was stunned. He'd thought they'd have to wait for a "Bijū respawn."
Clearly the Eight-Tails was beaten down; it didn't even resist. The aura of its chakra felt far weaker than before, and it passively let its tentacles wrap around the Wood Dragon.
Hashirama repeated the process, and in just over ten minutes he retrieved each of the other seven "miniature" Tailed Beasts.
The Ninth Tails, of course, was absent because there were two of them: One was sealed in Kushina Uzumaki of the Second Parallel World, and the other in Main World Naruto.
The "complete" Ten-Tails here had been formed through Link's intel, using the Ginkaku-Kinkaku brothers as supplementary material. Presumably, they'd been blown straight back to the Pure Land by that explosion.
These eight Tailed Beasts originally belonged to the Second Parallel World. Thanks to Link's earlier notion of "collecting Tailed Beasts," fusing them into the Ten-Tails had gone surprisingly smoothly.
A side note: for the Main World Minato's reincarnation, he'd given his half of the Nine-Tails to Naruto.
Otherwise, the seal might not have been so shaky—Naruto had gotten it undone almost casually, but fortunately "First" Hashirama was there. If a full Nine-Tails lost its temper, they'd have faced another Nine-Tails Rampage.
The three soared overhead for a while, searching in vain for the Gedo Statue. Perhaps it was destroyed or plummeted into the rift. That newly formed canyon had swiftly become an extension of the sea. That final detonation effectively turned Konoha into a coastal village.
Returning to the village with eight subdued Tailed Beasts—miniature versions, for the moment—practically every ninja stood along the outer walls, watching warily.
The commotion had been so huge that Konoha was already on wartime footing.
"What were you all doing?" Tobirama demanded, arriving after being summoned by the Funa-tsū.
Orochimaru calmly explained.
"Too weak," Hashirama interjected after hearing it all. "Judging by the natural energy I sensed, the blast's power was underwhelming. Something clearly blocked the Ten-Tails at the last second."
He added, "I'd expected its might to be three or five times greater. I was prepared for half—or actually the entire—Land of Fire to be wiped out."
"Moreover, my jutsu felt different—" he lifted his hand, staring at the sun-like mark. "Right before the explosion, I received extra power, which strengthened my technique. So not only did the Ten-Tails get briefly held back, but I was able to redirect the brunt of the blast away from inhabited areas."
Tobirama, hearing the account, wore a thoughtful look.
"Tobirama," Hashirama said sternly, "don't toy with this approach. You could destroy the entire Third World in one shot."
If that subtle blocking or Hashirama's sudden power boost hadn't occurred, even Konoha couldn't have escaped. If they repeated it, forcibly boosting the explosion's scale, then sure, it might kill Kaguya, but it would also obliterate that world.
He knew his little brother well: if they didn't restrain him, he'd create a massive uproar in no time.
~~~
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