Sealing the Three-Tails with the Four Symbols Seal

Before long, a deep, dark Cave appeared before the two of them.

Strangely, the entrance was silent. They could not sense even the slightest ripple of Chakra. It was as though a massive beast had opened its jaws and was quietly waiting for its prey to walk into the trap.

Kakashi and Asami Ri exchanged a glance, lowered their centers of gravity, and slipped into the cave like ghosts.

Deep within a dim stone channel, they immediately spotted Rin Nohara bound to a stone pillar.

"Rin!"

Kakashi's heart jolted. He rushed forward, short flashes of lightning streaking from his fingertips as he sliced through her bonds.

He caught Rin's swaying body, lightly checked her pulse with his fingertips, then woke her.

"Kakashi... Ri?" Rin Nohara slowly opened her eyes, her gaze unfocused in the dim light. Her voice was full of confusion. "What happened? I..."

Her hand instinctively pressed against her chest. Something was stirring uneasily inside her, but her muddled thoughts kept her from examining it closely.

"We can't stay here. Retreat!" Asami Ri warned.

His gaze shifted uneasily across the empty Cave, his sense of danger already at its peak. "That was too easy... It's like they laid her out and waited for us to rescue her."

Yet the instant the three stepped out of the cave, the once-silent Wasteland changed abruptly!

"Whoosh—whoosh—whoosh!"

Blurry figures slowly emerged from the shadows of bushes and rocks.

More than a dozen Kirigakure Anbu formed a semicircle around them, cutting off every route of retreat.

Their Demon Face Masks looked especially sinister in the cold air.

These Anbu did not launch a fierce assault. Instead, they herded them like trained hunting dogs driving lambs.

Every kunai they threw and every Ninjutsu they unleashed subtly avoided the trio's vital points. Only to the east did they deliberately leave an "escape route."

"They're driving us that way." Kakashi's gaze was sharp as a blade as he stared at the only opening, cold sweat seeping from his temples.

As a Jonin, how could he fail to recognize such a crude lure?

But now, certain death lay behind them, their badly wounded companion had only just awakened, and his own Chakra was beginning to run dry.

He knew danger waited at the end of that opening, but he had no way back.

"Kakashi, don't go that way!" Asami Ri gritted his teeth and searched for a way through, only to find every other direction sealed off by the Kirigakure Anbu. That was the only opening.

"We have no other choice... Ri, follow me!" Kakashi growled. Forcing out the last of his strength once more, he gripped his kunai and charged resolutely toward the deliberately left "escape route" with Rin Nohara.

Asami Ri followed close behind, his palms slick with sweat. He had no idea whether he could survive this staged ordeal.

Three figures darted through the Jungle, while the Kirigakure Anbu trailed them through the thick mist, neither too close nor too far behind.

They neither rushed to attack nor allowed themselves to be shaken off. Their relentless presence kept piling pressure on the three.

"Kakashi... Ri... Stop."

Rin Nohara stumbled, her face turning pale. Her breathing came so rapidly that her lungs seemed to be burning. "Kill me. I can feel it... They put something terrifying inside me. If I return to camp, I'll destroy it!"

A Medical Ninja's keen sensitivity to Chakra had let her realize she was becoming a ticking time bomb.

"Don't talk nonsense, Rin." Asami Ri stopped abruptly and turned to support her, his gaze frighteningly calm. "It's not time to write our last words yet."

He glanced up at their pursuers, temporarily screened by the dense Jungle, and quickly gave an order. "We need time to catch our breath. Kakashi, look into Rin's eyes with your Sharingan. I have a bad feeling!"

Kakashi wasted no words and roughly pulled aside his forehead protector.

His scarlet Sharingan glimmered in the darkness, its tomoe blurring into a single black shadow.

When his mind entered Rin's inner world, towering waves of dark red Chakra, thick with the stench of blood, crashed toward him like a tsunami.

In the dark, damp depths of her consciousness, he saw an enormous, bizarre armored beast with three flat tails. Its cold, bloodthirsty single eye stared fixedly at him.

"It's the Three-Tails..." Kakashi abruptly shut his eye, a drop of blood spilling from its corner. His voice trembled slightly. "Kirigakure has gone mad... They put a tailed beast inside Rin!"

Even a genius like Kakashi found his mind briefly going blank.

Sealing a strategic-level tailed beast inside a ninja from another village?

There was no normal logic behind this. It was a gamble born of sheer madness.

"Kakashi... Please..." Tears spilled from Rin Nohara's eyes and rolled down her cheeks.

She did not want to hurt the village. Rin Nohara looked at Kakashi, pleading with her eyes.

"Calm down, Kakashi!" Asami Ri's sharp, low shout snapped his panicking companion back to his senses.

Asami Ri's hands flashed through hand seals, four points of ghostly blue light glowing at his fingertips. "Listen, Kakashi. Try using your Sharingan's Genjutsu to suppress the Three-Tails' will for now. I'll use the Four Symbols Seal and see if I can temporarily stabilize its rampaging Chakra."

He looked toward the Kirigakure Anbu drawing closer in the distance, his expression resolute. "As long as we hold out until Minato-sensei arrives, we can turn this around. Obito entrusted her to us. As long as we're alive, she cannot die!"

At Asami Ri's firm words, Kakashi gritted his teeth, and his Sharingan blazed with startling intensity.

"All right. Do it!"

"Just... settle down!"

A strained roar burst from Kakashi's throat.

Ignoring the nearly depleted Eye Power in his left eye, he forced his Sharingan to its limit.

Overworked beyond its capacity, the crimson Sharingan filled with terrifying blood vessels around its edges. A warm trail of bloody tears slipped silently down his cheek, mingling with the rain.

Against a tailed beast with nearly limitless Chakra, the Genjutsu of a two-tomoe Sharingan should have been as futile as an ant trying to shake a tree.

But at that moment, the will Obito had left behind resonated with Kakashi's determination to protect his comrades.

In an instant, the Sharingan's innate power to suppress tailed beasts awakened.

Under the assault of his Genjutsu, the Three-Tails' savage consciousness actually faltered for a moment.

One second.

For a ninja, one second was enough to turn everything around.

"Now!"

Asami Ri shouted in a deep voice. His body blurred into an afterimage, his five fingers pressed together as the Chakra he had gathered condensed into a dazzling azure light at his fingertips.

He slammed his palm against Rin Nohara's abdomen, each word ringing out with force:

"Four Symbols Seal!"

Intricate, profound black sealing formulas spread rapidly across Rin Nohara's skin from beneath Asami Ri's palm, like wildly growing vines.

The ink-black symbols carried an ancient, heavy sealing power, forcibly locking down Rin Nohara's chakra pathways.

The Three-Tails' Chakra, which had been raging like an erupting volcano, seemed to become a trapped beast seized by the throat when it touched that sealing power. With a reluctant wail, it slowly retreated into the depths of Rin's body.

The raging wind stopped abruptly.

Rin Nohara's face, twisted in pain moments before, finally relaxed. Severely drained, she tilted her head and fell unconscious in Asami Ri's arms.

"Hah... Hah..."

Kakashi clamped a hand over his left eye and dropped to his knees in the mud.

Searing pain shot straight from his eyeball into his brain, as though a rusty iron nail were being twisted inside it over and over.

Yet a brilliant smile spread across his face, soaked with bloody tears.

He felt the faint pulsing of his eyeball beneath his palm, as though he could hear Obito whispering in his ear.

"Obito... Did you see that?"

He murmured into empty space, his voice weak but filled with unprecedented resolve.

"You gave me this eye, and I... used it to protect Rin."

Even though the cold, sinister Anbu were already closing in behind him, even though their encirclement was complete, Kakashi felt the resentment he harbored over his father's suicide quietly shatter at that moment.

Minato's figure flickered as he dodged a massive water dragon's attack and appeared atop a tree, a Flying Thunder God Kunai embedded at an angle beside his feet.

His gaze remained fixed on the middle-aged man before him.

"The Third Mizukage himself has come to the front lines. Do you intend to fight Konoha to the death?"

But the Third Mizukage acted as though he had not heard him, his eyes as lifeless as stagnant water. Rain soaked his long hair as his hands slowly formed hand seals.

"Young man, let me see this legendary speed that's said to be the fastest in the Shinobi World."

Minato's face was expressionless, but his blue eyes were far from calm. Behind him lay the Konoha Position; before him stood the Third Mizukage.

He sensed the trembling of the distant Flying Thunder God Mark.

Although he already knew Kakashi and the others were in danger, he could not go to their rescue. His only consolation was that the Flying Thunder God Mark was still trembling, which meant they were still alive.

Kakashi, Ri, Rin, hold on. I'll come save you soon.

Minato appeared behind the Third Mizukage, a Rasengan silently taking shape in his hand.