The enormous wooden face on the giant tree's trunk sneered, blasting out a gale that swept vast sheets of yellow mudwater straight into the sky. "Mutual destruction? You old boot, you sure can spout nonsense when you open that big mouth. You're not even fit to be my toothpick, and you think you can tear apart my trunk? Even if you ripped off all your old hide and fed it to the dogs today, you wouldn't scrape so much as a speck of bark off me. Stay underground and eat dust!"
"Damn brat, shut your filthy mouth! Die!" Madara had gone completely mad. His lone eye bled, and his bones creaked painfully under the violent impacts. He controlled the hundred-meter-tall Susanoo, its hands whipping up raging blue storms as it clamped around the Divine Tree's main trunk. The veins on his forehead nearly burst. With a furious roar, he pulled backward with all his strength, instantly tearing enormous fissures through the earth. Dust shot into the sky, thick enough to make anyone choke and cough.
"Sen! That old boot's gone completely nuts! He's going to blow himself up! He wants to blast this whole place flat!" Far away behind a rise, Naruto stamped his feet anxiously, gripping a thick, rotten log with both hands and shouting at the top of his lungs. "Get back! Kakashi-sensei, let's retreat another thousand meters! This wind and flying sand are insane! We can't even stand steady or open our eyes! There's sand everywhere!"
"Retreat, my ass. Running that far just to swallow cold wind-are you stupid?" The mouth on Sen's rough wooden face stretched into a huge grin. His tone was utterly relaxed, without the slightest urgency. Watching Madara below, grinning savagely as he desperately tugged at the tree, he called out cheerfully, "Old