Ryu's punch connected to the nine-tailed fox.
With the concentrated density of a [Senju-Style Chakra Impulse] behind them, Ryu's knuckles hit the Nine-Tailed Fox in the face, and the impulse exploded in his face, knocking him back for a moment.
Ryu fell from the height of the fox.
"Wow", he said, mid-fall. "That felt wonderful."
He glanced at his right fist.
He had red chakra on his knuckles. It stuck—thick and sticky, like gum in his skin grooves. He could feel the heat of it, the enormous rage behind it.
"Contact-based chakra syphoning", Ryu noted.
"Why?... Maybe because mine and Naruto's chakras are synced right now. Both of us are of the Uzumaki lineage and are carrying the similar chakra frequency in our chakras… Or maybe there is a much simpler explanation… Mine and Fox's chakras are very compatible, and the chakra usually naturally goes from high density to a lower one."
*
In a separate space, Minato stood with his arms crossed and said nothing for a long moment.
Kushina had already been watching. She said, ""That strike..."
Minato said, "Yes… That's Senju-style taijutsu… There's no way that a simple punch can pack this much power otherwise."
Kushina replied, "But he's a child... That taijutsu is impossible for a non-Senju to master."
Mainto said, "I know that."
*
Above, the Nine-Tailed Fox regained its composure and roared, its red eyes glowing with malice.
Air was a hard place to dodge and in air his [Lightning Release – Body Flicker] needs proper footing like any other sprinter.
Fox was not stupid either; he guessed it quickly and tried to deal with Ryu in mid-air.
Ryu's smile vanished when he saw the attack coming while being mid-air.
Minato saw Ryu in trouble but he did not react, seeing his unhinged smile even in this undodgeable situation.
The [ReflexGuard-Trampoline] formed under Ryu's foot. And when he made contact, it pushed him off, upwards. Another appeared beneath his next step in mid-air. A third caught him as he corrected direction, and he chained all three in under just one second and dodged the attack mid-air and covered quite a distance with the final leap. It was like stairs were appearing for him in mid-air.
The dodge was executed perfectly, surprising everyone who saw it.
"You," the fox said, "are from the Senju Clan."
*
Kushina said quietly, "Minato… Look at his hands."
Minato had seen it. Fuinjutsu... but like tattoos. The fine lines of it were difficult to read from this distance. Both Minato and Kushina, who were familiar with most fuinjutsu of the Leaf Village, understood the earlier barriers were products of the fuinjutsu on Ryu's skin.
Minato thought, "I have never seen an application of barriers like this… He used his own body as a medium and used very small barriers in the air as footing… The barrier also seems designed specially for this… His chakra control of his skin must be very high and his fuinjutsu level must already be at grandmaster level for high-speed and chakra-based deployment… and I did not see any scrolls, so they must be from memory… amazing."
Kushina reached the same conclusion as her husband. She knows very well how hard it is to reach grandmaster level in fuinjutsu but a child was proving them wrong.
Kushina said, "He used genjutsu, ninjutsu, taijutsu and now fuinjutsu… He is an all-rounder type."
*
Ryu looked back at the fox, a satisfied smirk settling on his face.
"Yes…one-quarter Senju, actually," Ryu said cheerfully, answering the fox's earlier question.
The fox sniffed and it growled.
"There's Uzumaki too in your blood," it said slowly. "I can smell it... but it feels like something different."
Ryu said, "I am half Uzumaki, Quarter senju and the rest of me is Hamura."
Ryu let that sink in and said, "So if you are interested in doing the genealogy, Mr-9, you and I are distant relatives. Feel free to take a moment with that."
The fox sneered. An involuntary reaction to the sheer audacity of a human child claiming blood kinship with a tailed beast.
"What?" Fox thought. "How does he know? …"
Ryu grabbed his hand and gathered chakra. And lightning formed and concentrated in his palm.
*
Minato recognised it. And said, "That's Kakashi's technique."
Kushina looked at him. "So he must be Kakashi's student."
"But He doesn't have the Sharingan," Minato said. "Without it, the tunnel vision that jutsu creates should make it nearly unusable for evasive opponents. He shouldn't be able to—" He paused. He watched Ryu doing something very different from Kakashi.
*
Ryu held the screeching chakra in his right hand and then he reshaped it.
The jutsu changed its blade-like shape into a wolf made entirely of concentrated lightning. It was no longer a close-range thrust but a high-speed, long-range projectile bolt.
"Chidori Wolf", Ryu said.
It ran like a missile. It corrected its path once, then again, curling into a tight zigzag before the final approach, and it hit the Nine-Tailed Fox dead in the chest.
The fox roared from slight pain.
"So..." Ryu said, "Lightning is effective on you… Fuinjutsu works on you too. You already know that—you've been inside the seal for most of your life… and Genjutsu. That is your oldest wound."
The fox's chakra pressure in the room rose by several degrees.
Ryu asked, "Earlier, how long did it take you to realise Madara and Hashirama were genjutsu?"
Ryu continued to anger the fox.
Ryu asked, "By the way… which one do you hate the most? Madara, who made you his bitch with just a glance of his Mangekyou Sharingan and forced you into a summoning contract. Or Hashirama Senju, who subdued you without genjutsu using brute chakra only."
The fox said nothing.
The roar that came out of the Nine-Tailed Fox was nothing short of a shockwave.
Fox then said, "I will not fall for provocation."
"But you did earlier," Ryu replied. "You forget they are long dead and were rattled… you were scared due to your past trauma."
Fox's anger was now rising again. He sneered, "I am a divine being; I do not have trauma…"
"You have every emotion a living being can have," Ryu said. "Fear. Rage. Grief… In that moment of anger and confusion, the moment those faces were in your eyes and your judgement was gone—you did not consider the possibility of genjutsu for a second." He let that word sit exactly where it landed.
"In the same moment of anger, you tried to kill Naruto a few years ago … He was a newborn. He had not done a single thing to you. That is not the divinity you spoke of…. That is trauma responding to a trigger."
The fox stared at him with nine enormous tails and ten thousand years of accumulated rage and had, for a moment, nothing to say at all. Fox was thinking of his past action. Trying to deny what Ryu said about him. But he knew Ryu was right. Ryu noticed his confusion and decided to act.
Ryu disappeared again using [Lightning Release - Body Flicker], and he hit the fox again—same spot, same dense chakra impulse of [Senju Style - Taijutsu] behind the knuckle—and this time the red chakra that stuck to his hands was thicker. Ryu absorbed more chakra this time.
Ryu was again in the air this time but the fox had been more than ready this time.
The first tail came from the left, not to crush him but to lure him—to push him into a predictable path and hold him there. Ryu read the angle and deployed a [ReflexGuard-Trampoline] to dodge but the next attack came too fast.
The fox attacked with his paw and closed in to widen his range and completely overwhelm Ryu by encircling him on all sides. Ryu was so little that it simply required getting close to him.
- [Fast Thinking] Activated
-[Parallel Thinking] Activated
Time slowed down for him. The fox's attack neared him in slow motion.
"This stupid fox is getting used to my fighting style. I cannot dodge the paw; even if I could, the next one is ready to come at me before I dodge this one. He was ready for my attack and lured me to hit him…I guess he is not entirely stupid," he reasoned, his thoughts outpacing the descending attack.
He glanced at his hands. It still carried the absorbed red chakra from the earlier hit.
Ryu thought, "I guess I have to take this hit head-on… I have to just reinforce myself to protect myself as best I can… I always want to try this one."
Ryu crossed his arms in a defensive stance. Ryu closed his eyes and focused on his cell with every brain cell he had. He felt every muscle fibre and tendon in his forearms. Ryu pushed chakra into them. Ryu alternated yin and yang chakras into every other muscle fibre, and even in his bones, Ryu formed layers of yin and yang. The force of attraction had a strong reaction. His hands turned gold.
The [ReflexGuard] activated on reflex, as it always did. But it shattered immediately and the fox's paw hit him sideways.
The impact launched Ryu downward at a high speed that removed all dignity from the concept of falling.
Ryu hit the surface of the water at an angle and skipped like a stone thrown into a lake sideways.
Minato for the first time was worried. Ryu had rolled and skipped tens of times before stopping and falling on his face into the water.
Fox smiled and Minato and Kushina had worried expressions on their faces.
Ryu stood up after some struggle. His red-and-white hair lay messy. His entire body was wrapped in the Nine-Tailed Fox's red chakra—thick, slow-moving, clinging to every part of his body. His hands were still gold. He looked at them.
For two seconds, he was perfectly still. His face settled into the precise expression of someone watching a theory become a fact.
"Durability is acceptable…" he thought. He flexed one hand, testing the tension and feel in his hands. In the real world, the side effects on living cells under combat stress were still unmapped, but his [InstinctGPT] seal was already actively cataloguing the data. His body was learning it. Every tissue and muscle fibre was memorising the exact alternating Yin-Yang pattern required for the transition—the alternating layering was what made them cohesive, bundling each cell tightly against the next to generate the immense physical tolerance needed to withstand the high-level physical trauma.
"What should I call this... huh... Armament Haki has a nice ring to it but... it's golden... Golden Haki.... maybe... no... [Golden Aura]..." Ryu said to himself.
*
Kushina had both hands pressed flat against her chest. She was doing something quietly complicated with her expression that she did not often do.
Minato had not spoken since Ryu stood up. He was watching the boy.
"He is not standing there recovering," Minato thought. "He is ... thinking."
*
Ryu cracked his neck—left side, then right. He gripped his chin. His eyes moved to the middle distance in a way that had nothing to do with the fox.
"The [Lightning Release - Body Flicker] has three hard limits. Charge time: determines jump power, cannot be bypassed. Multiple jumps are unreliable; each successive jump compounds the instability. Mid-air direction change. If I try to correct the trajectory during a jump at full speed, I can trip. And if I fall on a hard surface, like a rock, I might die by my own jutsu."
He looked at the Nine-Tailed Fox.
"More output is not the solution. More lightning discharge in my muscles means more strain on the real-world body, more tissue damage, and more long-term risk. I cannot condition my way past it with just training alone. Even if I could, that would take years of work and possible body modifications."
The fox had settled back to its full height above him, all nine tails fanned behind it, and it regarded the small figure at the edge of the water with something that was not quite respect but was at least no longer contempt.
"You are fast," it said. "For a child." A pause that was its own kind of verdict. "But you are nothing like the Fourth Hokage."
Ryu considered that for a moment.
"Thank you, but I know I am not like Lord Fourth," he agreed.
After a moment Ryu added, "I am me… And I am still the fastest kid alive right now." A brief pause. "And the smartest," another pause, slightly more satisfied. "And the richest." The final pause was the longest and the most deliberate. "And the cutest. There are several more fitting adjectives, but these shall do for now."
*
Kushina's lips were twitching from watching the arrogance and self-praise of Ryu. But Minato was smiling, seeing Ryu was fine and kicking mentally and physically.
*
A smile formed on the fox's lip.
"Arrogant child. Even the fastest mosquito alive is still one clap away from oblivion. As are you. From my perspective, you are just a fast-moving and annoying mosquito. And I can clearly see where you are flying... like how Minato moved."
Ryu blinked and then smiled.
"Thank you, Mr 9. You just gave me an idea," he said.
The fox stared at him. He has never been thanked before in his lifetime.
Ryu was already looking down at his own hands.
"The Fourth placed his kunai as a marker to pull him towards it across the spacetime continuum." He turned the thought over slowly. "I cannot use the spacetime continuum… yet… But I know Anchors."
He put his hand up with the palm facing up.
A small construct of golden chakra appeared. Then he began laying the funjutsu onto it.
He inscribed concentric rings of fuinjutsu seal script into the chakra sphere, tight as micro-engraving. He assembled it in real time from his mental catalogue, combining familiar seal principles into a configuration that had never existed before. The storage seal, the remote triggers, the lightning prison seal and a few more. Ryu has mixed everything needed for his new jutsu.
The fox had gone very still.
"That is Minato's jutsu," Fox said, confusing the glowing chakra sphere with another jutsu.
*
"No," Minato said. The word came out fast.
Kushina looked at him; he was already leaning forward slightly, reading the chakra structure of the constructs the way he read seal geometry.
Minato explained, "A Rasengan requires constant rotation to maintain its shape along with a thin layer for containment." But what he is doing… is different."
Minato watched the chakra construct for another second, his voice dropping into quiet awe. "He has achieved pure, stable compression without any rotation at all. I want to know exactly what he is building. And how he did it."
*
Ryu raised his voice slightly, not breaking his focus as he made a few more chakra spheres. "It is not the [Rasengan] of Lord Fourth…. I am not sure which one is powerful…. But this is more versatile than his jutsu."
The fox slightly tilted its huge head forward, and its huge eyes fixed on the golden sphere things floating in Ryu's hands with a look that had changed from anger to recognition.
Fox said, "That chakra control... This jutsu... It belongs to the moon."
*
Minato turned and looked at Kushina. Kushina looked back at Minato. Both were confused by what Fox had just said.
*
Ryu finished the last construct and held it for a moment. Ryu thought of Naruto and the fox whose chakra Ryu was using to make his new jutsu possible.
He swept both arms out, palms spread wide. The creations scattered—not thrown, not propelled, but released, each drifting in its own quiet, purposeful course. They settled at various heights throughout the space. Each one sat and held its position, the seal on them moving slowly like a living thing.
Ryu lowered his hands.
"What should I name this?" he murmured, more to himself than to anyone.
The fox did not wait for him to answer.
The next second, a tail came down aimed at Ryu.
Ryu remained motionless while watching it fall. He remained exactly where he was, letting the shadow of the descending tail consume him entirely. The air pressure increased against his face. The water at his feet rippled up, propelled by oncoming pressure.
Lightning began to crackle out from the surface of Ryu's skin.
- [Overclocking] Activated -
The immense mental acceleration was necessary to project the Yin-Yang augmentation across his entire body, reinforcing every individual muscle fibre and organ tissue at the exact same time. His entire body turned gold.
A bolt of lightning fired from Ryu and aimed at a nearby anchor made of his golden chakra sphere. The anchor also did the same and both their lightning connected. All this happened in a fraction of a second.
Ryu was gone.
The tail hit the floor. The impact was enormous—water exploded outward. Waves rolled across the dark water in every direction.
When the water settled, Ryu was standing far away beside one of the anchor constructs.
What had happened is that Ryu used the anchor and lightning just like Mabui, the secretary of the Raikage, used long-distance teleportation. But Ryu's version was different and short-ranged, tied to anchors; he did not use real lightning but his own, and he used many of his jutsu in conjunction to increase his speed and minimise the negative impacts of high-speed travel.
The already dangerous [Lightning Release - Body Flicker], combined with the [Golden Aura], which was an application of yin-yang reinforcement on his own body, and the [Yin-YangAnchor], which was generating lightning and also acting like a pulling force and his destination. Ryu can move the anchors by mere thoughts.
Ryu smiled at his first successful attempt at the full-body [Golden Aura] and at his faster version of the same technique, [Lightning Release – Body Flicker], and said, "I have decided…I will call this [Flying Raijin]."
A/N:
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