“Water Release: Raging River Force!” My first [Water Clone], cloaked in Isobu’s chakra, slammed the Bo-staff into the scarred earth, and a torrent erupted like a dam breaking under years of strain. A roaring flood carved through the battered ground, drenching Kurama’s massive paws in an instant. He bared teeth down at us as he slipped against the muddied earth, his growls rolling like thunder in the sky.

The water churned violently, surging higher. My second [Water Clone] rose atop a forming wave, commanding, “Water Release: Drilling Water Spears!” The flood morphed into enormous, jagged spears that hurtled through the air with a deafening howl, hammering against Kurama’s head, chest, and limbs. Few truly doing any damage beyond the concussive force desperately needed to stave off the Bijuu’s landscape changing attacks.

Above the cacophony, I finished weaving forty-seven hand seals. “Wind Release: Final Threshold of the Three Calamities—Water!”

The air itself seemed to recoil as the winds rose, carrying Kurama’s guttural roars across the secluded patch of Konoha Minato had teleported us to. The gnarled trees still standing swayed precariously, their leaves torn away by the storm of winds I brewed right underneath Kurama.

The water surged, rising past the great Bijuu’s knees in an overwhelming tide, a feat of Water Nature Release mastery I couldn’t help but pat myself on the back for— even if Isobu’s extreme affinity for the element only served to enhance my own.

I wouldn’t have dared to do this much back then…I thought of home and the shinobi that stepped forward to challenge for the title I bore with overwhelming pride now.

My winds sent waves across the small ocean my Chakra-cloaked clone existed to generate, it carried debris, sand, full logs of timber and whole trees in a chaotic, swirling cyclone.

I smiled as Kurama snarled, his crimson fur matted with the spray of water and mud. He squinted against the stinging gale, his feral eyes burning with a hatred that could set mountains ablaze. The cyclone pulled at him relentlessly, drawing its power from the makeshift ocean below, growing into a colossal vortex that slammed into his chest like an unyielding tide, delivering direct shots of [Drilling Water Spears] into his face, arms, chest and every part of the angry red fox my second [Water Clone] could see.

Said clone looked over and nodded at its fellow who hadn’t moved from the spot it slammed the Bo-staff in, water still cascading in excessive but all too necessary force. A gulf from the water’s cutting force had already formed, the carved trench effectively placed us on higher ground than the Tailed Beast as the level ground was grinded into the small ocean and again in the tornado at its centre.

But that wasn’t why it called my attention. I grimaced at the sight of my clone defiantly gripping onto the Bo-staff, its right arm and leg already beginning to return to the sludge of water I’d created it with. It would continue until the clone was entirely dissolved, an unfortunate side-effect of my brilliant idea to imbue my clones with Isobu’s chakra.

“He’s struggling right now, let’s give him more to chew on.” My clones gave curt, understanding nods. There was more to the radical plan I’d formed when all Minato had to say when he saw me was, ‘Keep him busy.’

I stared out at the Nine-Tailed Beast, Kurama was too deaf to listen to anything Isobu or I would have to say. My cyclone continually smashed against him, flinging boulders, trees and all sorts of carriable debris into his body while the [Drilling Water Spears] did the truest damage.

Not nearly enough, not for a Tailed Beast. I gritted my teeth and nodded to my second clone. The first would only continue to exist for another five minutes or so before Isobu’s chakra completely degraded it. In that time, with the chakra I have left…

Kurama’s furious roars reverberated across the battlefield, shaking the ground beneath my feet. His tails lashed wildly, their immense weight smashing trenches into the waterlogged earth. Each strike sent tidal waves rippling outward, only to be absorbed by the vortex that now dominated the landscape. The fox was trapped in a nightmare of my creation, his movements sluggish in the mire of mud, blinding winds and the surging water.

I let out a breath and pressed my fingers into familiar hand seals, my clone working in close tandem with me. He went first, moulding the waters that made the [Drilling Water Spears] into flat disks that rose along the winds of the cyclone. Each disk was as large as Kurama’s own claws, long, thin and moving at rapid cutting speeds. With lethal intent, I pressed my fingers into the Bird hand seal and commanded a surge of my cyclone’s winds to reinforce the terror of the water disks.

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The result was a tornado as large and tall as Kurama, overwhelmingly chaotic and appendaged by blades of wind and water moving too fast for even I, the caster, to see. It was effective. Even with my rather unsteady control of the winds carrying such masses of water, Kurama was tossed on his ass severely enough for his roars to become cries of frustration and his swipes, taken at the earth to be little more than desperate attempts at escaping what was coming.

A sharp pain lanced through my chest, and I fell to one knee. My vision darkened for a fleeting moment, my heart skipping two beats too many. I gasped for air, my strength waning as if the artificial maelstrom was draining the life from me. It was.

More, I need more to keep this up, Isobu! I called inward to my friend, desperation creeping onto me as much as it did Kurama.

“You will die.” came Isobu’s unflinching response, his tone colder than I’d ever heard it, colder than the storm chilling my bare skin.

I promise I won’t. Just a bit longer an-!

“And you will die, Yagura. This is as much as you can give right now.” Isobu said, not a drop of his chakra came surging through my pathways. He wouldn’t refuse me if I reached out for it myself, if I took as I used to. But I neither had the strength, chakra or even the concentration required to fish for his chakra.

As the disastrous winds blew and the blades of thinned water sliced through Kurama, I felt the breeze light on my bare chest. There was little to nothing left of my attire after Kurama bathed me in his [Tailed Beast Bomb: Cannon], all that remained was a single pair of my boots and the scorched remains of my pants and apron. It was as much a miracle they’d survived Obito and now Kurama but I guess the same could be said for me.

The wounds I suffered fighting Obito healed but their effects still felt like a phantom, regardless, they were the least worrying of my handicaps, the worst being my chakra pathways. They were spent, no, abused. I’ve been a Jinchuriki for only eight months, not long enough to acclimate to the stretch by any standard but I was a Kage for a reason and I managed.

But that was only a minor strain, one that would resolve itself the more time passed. The true strains were the rampages I experienced before I became myself and more recently the continuous tests and experiments. The past three days alone were a credit to majority of the damage my chakra pathways bore now and yet I couldn’t help thinking this would have been easier if I had a larger chakra reserve, if I had mastered [Sage Mode] or at least understood it enough to have an alternate source of chakra.

“You forget, your natural reserves are still needed to balance against the Nature Energy. You will always spend chakra to get stronger and you’re all out now, Yagura,” Isobu said, right as always his words were not cruel, but a blunt reminder of the limits I refused to accept. “This is no place for you to die, Yagura. You knew you wouldn’t be able to beat Kurama on your own, not without Senjutsu or Fuinjutsu, both of which you’ve learned incompletely.”

My control over the tornado began to slip more and Kurama escaped its battering and mincing long enough to run his claw through the ground, unearthing a plethora of boulder sized projectiles that he flung in my direction. One, the size of a house soared overhead and crashed behind me with a thundering thump that should have been drowned out by the sounds of my first clone’s water generation, but it had already degraded to a puddle beside my Bo-staff.

I cursed inwardly and course corrected the storm into Kurama again, the Tailed Beast already up on his feet, mouth glowing with chakra as he spat out short condensed blasts at it. The tornado shrank before my eyes as Kurama tore through it, his chakra blasts evaporating large chunks of the swirling waters.

“This is the best result you can hope for now and it's a good one if you can stay awake long enough to ensure it.” Isobu continued his lecture, he wasn’t sympathetic, he was being smart where I didn’t want to be.

My second clone blobbed into a puddle beside me as my will to continue this handicapped struggle waned. Kurama had moved away from the trap I’d lured him in and I’d spent all the chakra I had left maintaining it that there was no way to chase more damage into the lacerated fox.

Still, I maintained my Bird hand seal and controlled the amalgamation of my efforts even as Kurama continued to blast evaporating holes through it. Those small balls of chakra he spat exploded within the tornado, heating and expelling much of it away. It was growing smaller with each blast.

I wanted to eat my cake and have it. I wanted so badly but I knew Isobu was right— without [Sage Mode] or [Fuuinjutsu], holding Kurama back while Minato prepared to die was all I could do. Without Minato…ending the Akatsuki, ending Obito. I’d have to figure something else out, somehow.

Out of spite I weaved from Bird to Ram, Rat, Monkey, Bird, Dragon and then Bird again. The result was the entirety of my jutsu—now half the size of Kurama— morphing into the largest elemental dragon I’d ever created.

An elemental beast rose from the storm’s heart, a towering embodiment of water and wind, its maw open wide to engulf Kurama in a final, furious strike.

“Hiden: Torrential Serpent King!”