The four orange-red tails swaying in midair were blinding.
Hiruzen Sarutobi felt as though his breathing had stopped.
It wasn't the Nine-Tails' power that unsettled him.
The Four-Tails' power.
It could threaten Hiruzen Sarutobi, but it was only a threat.
What Hiruzen couldn't understand was how this mysterious masked man could use the Nine-Tails' power.
That was something even Konoha's own ninja couldn't do.
Seeing someone else use their own Tailed Beast so proficiently was both absurd and ironic.
Hiruzen wasn't the only one who couldn't make sense of it. The other Konoha Ninja were even more baffled.
Looking at Neji, who was covered from head to toe in a Tailed Beast Cloak, Might Guy shouted, "Kakashi, isn't the Nine-Tails Jinchuriki ours? Why can this outsider use the Nine-Tails' power?"
Kakashi's throat bobbed. "I don't know!"
Whoosh!
At that moment, Neji's feet slowly lifted off the ground. Under everyone's horrified gaze, he floated into the air.
The Nine-Tails Chakra enveloped him, billowing in the wind like a robe.
In the next instant, a chakra bead emerged from Neji's forehead. Then came two, then four—in the blink of an eye, eight chakra beads hovered before him.
"What's that?"
Hiruzen glanced at the chakra beads, his brows knitting together.
Even with his keen eye, he couldn't tell what the chakra beads were.
He didn't know what they were or what Neji planned to do, but Hiruzen instinctively sensed something was wrong.
"Attack!"
The atmosphere grew more and more oppressive. Someone shouted the order, though no one knew who.
Under Neji's threat, the Konoha Ninja unleashed their best techniques almost instinctively, without waiting for the Hokage's command.
Whoosh!
The air suddenly grew scorching. Reflected in Neji's lowered eyes was a sky filled with flames.
Flames surged upward from below, crashing toward Neji like