Killer B watched the frantic activity, the sudden reinforcement of the fourth gate. He didn't look angry; he looked amused. He struck a pose, pointing at the shimmering wall and the tiny figures behind it.
"Yo, Konoha crew, patchin' the hole, workin' hard, playin' your role! Thinkin' you stoppin' the unstoppable B? Nah, yo, just wait and see!" He started a rhythmic, almost mocking shuffle.
"This barrier's tough, gotta give it respect, but Bee's power you gotta expect! Gonna break it down, piece by piece, make your chakra strain, make your hope cease! Like whack-a-mole, pop! Goes the shield, your resistance just makes this battlefield yield... to the Bee! Yeah! Pointless fight, just delayin' the night, gonna shatter your walls with pure Tailed Beast might! Word up!"
'Why the hell is he speaking this way?'
Miwa couldn't help but wonder. Since Bee was a new Jinchuriki, all Konoha had about him was just his appearance and not his eccentric way. But Miwa could not afford to dwell on it, she had more important things to worry about.
"Ka-Thooom!" Bee's palm struck again.
The fourth gate buckled violently, the light flaring crimson at the impact point. Miwa gasped, feeling the blow resonate through her bones, through the chakra link.
Her Sharingan saw the intricate lattice of the fuinjutsu scream under the stress. But the combined will of dozens of Konoha shinobi held. Barely. The cracks deepened, and pulsed white, but the gate didn't shatter.
Yet.
And so began the brutal, grinding stalemate. A horrific, chakra-draining dance of destruction and desperate repair.
"Ka-Blam!" Killer Bee shattered the fourth gate. The Konoha shinobi, already moving, poured everything into reinforcing the fifth, Miwa screaming coordinates, her voice growing hoarse.
"Shatter-Crunch!" The fifth fell as the sixth was bolstered.
"Crack-Boom!" The sixth crumbled under the seventh's reinforced glow. Each strike from Bee was a world-ending impact, shaking the earth, vaporizing stone, sending gales of superheated air screaming through the breaches.
Each reinforcement by Konoha was a symphony of agony, shinobi collapsing as their chakra was ripped from them, replaced immediately by others, faces pale, veins standing out on necks and temples. The air inside the barrier zone grew thick with the metallic taste of expended chakra and the sour smell of fear and exhaustion.
Killer B, though seemingly tireless within his chakra cloak, wasn't just blindly attacking. His youthful face, beneath the bravado and the rap ("Takin' my time, breakin' the pace, wearin' you down all over the place! Conserve the juice, let 'em sweat and strain, make the final break cause maximum pain! Yeah!"), held a sharp, tactical edge.
Why expend immense energy blasting through all layers at once when he could systematically shatter them, forcing Konoha to constantly redeploy and exhaust their barrier specialists and channelers? Each broken gate meant fewer hands, and less chakra, for the next. He was draining their most vital defensive resource right before the main assault. It was efficient.
It was cruel.
And brilliant.
=====
An hour. An eternity. The seventh gate fell with a final, weary "Crumble-Flash!". Only the eighth and innermost barrier remained, a thin, desperately glowing honey-gold shell directly shielding the exhausted defenders and the heart of the fortress.
The ranks of supporting shinobi were decimated. Dozens lay unconscious or retching from chakra exhaustion. The rest swayed on their feet, their reserves utterly spent, their faces grey masks of despair.
Miwa stood before the trembling eighth gate, her legs shaking violently. Her Sharingan was fading, the tomoe spinning sluggishly, her vision blurring at the edges. She had channelled more chakra, and pushed her senses harder, for longer, than ever before.
Her hands, still pressed to the last anchor point, felt like lead weights. She could taste blood in her mouth. The orange monstrosity that was Killer B filled her failing vision.
He raised his palm again, the chakra swirling into a vortex of destruction aimed not just at the barrier, but directly at the cluster of collapsed and vulnerable shinobi behind it – behind her.
'I guess this is it,' the thought cut through the roaring in her ears, cold and clear.
'Once the shield breaks. We break.' Her life didn't flash before her eyes; it condensed into a single, piercing point of regret.
Renjiro.
Her vibrant, infuriatingly optimistic nephew. The last Uzumaki she knew. The Last connection she had to her elder sister. The boy she'd sworn to protect after his parents…
'Live,' she begged the uncaring universe, the image of his bright crimson hair and goofy grin searing her mind.
'Live a long life. Don't… don't end like this. Not like me. Please.' The orange light swelled, filling her world. She closed her eyes, bracing for the annihilating heat, the final, merciful darkness.
"Claaaaaaaaang!"
The sound wasn't an explosion. It was the shriek of ancient, impossibly hard metal striking the earth with the force of a falling mountain. It resonated not just in the ears, but in the bones, in the teeth, a gong struck by a titan.
Miwa's eyes snapped open. Killer B, had vanished from his position directly in front of the eighth gate. He reappeared twenty meters back, landing in a low crouch, his orange chakra cloak flaring defensively, his young face twisted in surprise and narrowed focus, the playful rapper vanished, replaced by a wary predator.
Where he had stood, rising from the shattered ground like the fist of some buried god, was a wall. Not stone, not chakra. Metal. Dark, pitted, impossibly ancient iron, etched with grotesque, leering demonic faces.
A single, colossal Rashomon gate, easily fifty feet tall, stood between the stunned Konoha shinobi and the Jinchuriki.
Dust and debris rained down its scarred surface. It had blocked Bee's strike; Interposing itself with impossible speed, taking the blow meant for them. The eighth barrier, weakened but intact, shimmered weakly behind it.
Silence, thick and disbelieving, hung for a fractured second. Then, a choked cry from a Konoha Jonin near Miwa, pointing a trembling finger upwards, past the towering Rashomon.
"THERE!"
Hovering several hundred feet above the desolate battlefield, silhouetted against the bruised sky, was a giant eagle. Its wingspan blotted out a significant portion of the visible sky, with feathers the colour of storm clouds and volcanic ash.
And standing tall and impossibly calm upon its broad back, one hand resting lightly on the giant bird's neck, the other still extended in the unmistakable seal of a summoning technique, was a figure.
Crimson hair whipped in the high-altitude wind, visible even from this distance. Relief, sharp and dizzying, warred with utter disbelief in Miwa's exhausted heart.
Uzumaki Renjiro.
But the reprieve was terrifyingly brief. Killer Bee straightened up, his orange chakra flaring brighter, a low, dangerous growl mixing with his words. "Yo! Big door, crashin' the show! Where'd you come from? Gotta know! Interruptin' Bee's flow, not cool, gonna send this gate back to demon school! Yeah!" He tensed, preparing to launch himself at the solitary gate.
Before Bee could move, the ground groaned again. Not beneath him. Around the cluster of collapsed Konoha shinobi. Behind Miwa, to her left, to her right, beyond the first Rashomon.
"Crunch-Clang! Crunch-Clang! Crunch-Clang!"
Like monstrous iron teeth erupting from the jaws of the earth, Rashomon gates slammed upwards in a rapid, thunderous sequence. Not one. Not two. Dozens.
They rose in a rough, protective circle, some towering taller than the first, others thicker, their demonic visages snarling inwards, forming an instant, impenetrable fortress of aged metal around the vulnerable Konoha forces. The sound was a deafening orchestra of slamming vault doors, each impact shaking the ground, throwing up plumes of dust that momentarily obscured the giant eagle and its rider. The last echoes of the shattering barrier were replaced by the grim, final clang of ancient iron sealing them in.
The honey-gold light of the eighth barrier was gone with the passed-out shinobi, replaced by the cold, dark shadow of the Rashomon walls. They stood, not as a shield of light, but as a brutal, defiant bulwark of iron, a final, desperate gambit etched in demon-faced metal against the orange inferno of the Eight-Tails. The battlefield held its breath, the only sound the settling creak of the colossal gates and the furious, pulsing hiss of Killer Bee's chakra cloak. The giant eagle circled once, high above the newly formed iron fortress, a silent sentinel against the bruised sky.
=====
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