Naruto, Madara is my girl.

While Akira's clone relished the chaos elsewhere, Tobirama's body was starting to buckle under the pressure.

Taijutsu? Ginkaku excelled at it, being born in the Land of Lightning.

Ninjutsu? With the Six Paths Ninja Tool, the Bashōsen, Ginkaku could release any of the five chakra natures without using his own reserves. Anything Tobirama cast was either countered or overpowered outright.

Genjutsu? Ginkaku had eaten the flesh of the Nine-Tails. The beast's chakra flooded his system, making him immune to illusions entirely.

Even though Ginkaku's word-spirit sealing tools hadn't worked, Tobirama had been thoroughly restrained and damn near beaten senseless.

For most shinobi, that would have been enough to seal their fate. But Tobirama wasn't most shinobi.

Trained through decades of war, his instincts eventually calibrated to Ginkaku's attack pattern-simple and direct.

Akira's tactics had left Tobirama with well conserved chakra, and that was enough. Substitution techniques, body-flickers, shadow clones and explosive tags turned the battlefield into hell for someone as brute-force obsessed as Ginkaku.

Tobirama's plan was simple: make the situation unbearable. Explosives in hiding places, shadow clones that did nothing but bait hits, and movements that scraped just outside of reach. Ginkaku couldn't fucking stand it.

His own squad didn't dare move in. The explosive tags scattered around were too unpredictable. They resorted to tossing projectiles and mid-range ninjutsu, nothing else dared enter the kill zone Tobirama had built around himself.

Silver Horn was losing it. He couldn't catch up. Each time he swung wide and actually connected, it turned out to be another goddamned clone-and half the time those things had paper bombs strapped to their backs.

Detonating tags didn't matter to someone like Tobirama. He had enough money to buy truckloads of them. Hokage families didn't worry about price tags. It was psychological warfare every time another one lit off-thump-smoke-shrapnel-and another laughing fucking clone ran past him again.

Boom-

Another direct explosion tore open Black Smoke around Ginkaku's chest. Though his body avoided the worst of every strike, it was adding up fast. Wounds covered him, he looked like shit that'd crawled out of someone's sewer drain.

"Asshole!"

He screamed it with hoarse fury before slamming the Bashōsen into his mouth for storage and abandoning everything else, then cracked straight into Tailed Beast Mode.

Red chakra surged from his back-veins of power wrapping tight until he expanded beyond human shape. Five meters tall, tails coiled outward. Rage boiled in every movement as animalistic impulses took over fully formed muscle and bone.

It wasn't proper Bijū control, not even close, but it was enough to make him invincible to anyone without devastating firepower or high-tier sealing skills.

His eyes went blank with killing instinct, scanning the field until they locked on one thing, Tobirama's retreating figure. In his broken state of mind, nothing else mattered anymore. Even his own comrades ceased to exist in that moment.

"Lord Ginkaku-it's us-!"

"Please calm down-"

"Wait-!"

They begged in vain. Ginkaku didn't even flinch before lashing out.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

Tails cracked through trees and earth-massive gouges formed as he struck indiscriminately at anything resembling humanoid shape. Some were crushed into mush on impact-others had limbs torn clean off in one swing.

Cloud shinobi stopped talking immediately after that and fled. No point trying to recover leadership when their leader was now the biggest hazard on the field.

Tobirama started to bolt-but Ginkaku saw him and launched immediately into forming a bijūdama aimed right for his fleeing back.

Too quick. Too close.

"Summoning Technique!"

Tobirama bit into his thumb mid-flight and slammed both palms toward the dirt-

Boom-

Metal clanged through smoke. Ginkaku stopped moving-not due to confusion-but recognition of what stood now blocking his path.

Massive gates crashed down from above, carved with demonic faces and loaded with defense-focused seals across every inch of their surface.

Rashōmon, specifically, Double Rashōmon, the same gate Hashirama used during war times. Tobirama had only summoned two due to chakra limitations but they held fast against the blast of demonic energy aimed at them.

It worked, but exposed his position completely.

Clang!

Metal scraped above him again-and Tobirama's head whipped up just in time to spot Ginkaku anchoring himself onto the Rashōmon wall with his tails wound tight for support-and looking straight down at him, grinning behind red-flecked eyes.

"Got you…"

Ginkaku whispered it under his breath-then pounced down with violent force-

Thud! Thud! Thud!

Nine chakra tails slammed down relentlessly at Tobirama's last-seen position-each impact carving deeper into stone until dust and smoke enveloped half the battlefield in clouds.

"Feel it… die…"

His words mashed together as he lost coherence mid-onslaught-but kept pounding away until nothing around moved anymore.

Gradually his breathing slowed, and he started coming back to himself just enough to process what he'd done. The tailed beast form receded as red chakra pulled back into skin and Ginkaku stood panting at the edge of the now ten-meter-deep crater beneath him-

"I did it… Hahaha… Senju Tobirama-you bastard-you're finally... huh?"

His laughter stopped dead when he looked down again-

Inside lay what looked like Yamcha folded into bottom-dweller pose-a limp "corpse" twisted weirdly but intact in posture.

Ginkaku's mouth opened-a word died before forming as he yanked out a kunai and hurled it through the body-

Thunk-

No movement followed-not even blood leaked out correctly from where it should have pierced vital points-

"This…"

Confusion froze him-and then cold dread crawled up his spine-

Rustle-

Hands exploded from below-pale digits curling around his ankles from inside the ground itself-

"I've been waiting," snapped Tobirama's low whisper just behind his ear.

"Flying Raijin!"

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