"Squad Seventeen, escort the noncombatants to shelter!"
"Hurry and report to the Third!"
"Team Five, come with me and hold back the Nine-Tails!"
"Reinforcements! We need reinforcements!"
After the initial chaos, ninjas came rushing in, voluntarily organizing manpower to prevent even greater losses... They earnestly carried out whatever tasks they were capable of...
Their only mistake was probably underestimating the Nine-Tails far too much...
If a few chunin—or even jonin—could distract the Nine-Tails, then tailed beasts would never have become ultimate weapons.
"Watch out!"
"Don't get too close!"
"Use shuriken and explosive tags..."
"Roar!"
After the razor-sharp claws swept through, the scent of blood filled the air. Those ninjas who had volunteered to hold back the Nine-Tails died beneath a single claw before they could even draw its attention...
What followed was collapse... A winding evacuation line, twisting forward like an earthworm, was exposed and fell into the tailed beast's crimson gaze... They were right next to the Nine-Tails!
Uchiha Mikoto had been classified as a noncombatant and was squeezed among the evacuees on their way to the shelter. She simply could not break out...
"Kitahara... Go... check on Itachi... check on Sasuke..." As a mother, all she could do now was trust the crow.
"Caw!"
What a joke... Uchiha Mikoto's situation was far more dangerous than back at home! It had no idea how Itachi had managed to hide with Sasuke from this disaster...
But it could see one thing clearly: if this continued, Mikoto would definitely be unable to escape the Nine-Tails' attack! All it could do was trust Itachi and find a way to get Uchiha Mikoto out!
The crow bitterly hated its own laziness. It had never left behind a single Flying Thunder God formula! The Nine-Tails' vicious gaze had already turned toward them...
Elsewhere, several ninjas responsible for evacuation exchanged glances. There were no other combatants in this area anymore. They could only nod to one another. "Let's go!"
"...Be careful!"
Several white claws, as slender as bamboo poles, pierced through every ninja's chest and abdomen... A fierce gust swept past, leaving almost everyone in the area dead or wounded...
The children who had been shielded beneath their parents and elders slowly crawled out. Their clothes had been soaked through with blood, their faces smeared crimson, and the fear had yet to fade from their eyes.
"Dad... Mom..."
As the first child murmured softly, sobbing erupted across the open space in an instant, and grief began to spread...
"Grandma..."
"Big brother... Big brother..."
"My child... My child..."
Under one rampage of the Nine-Tails' claw, only dozens survived out of several hundred. Fewer than one in ten remained.
Kitahara let out a long breath. Thankfully, Uchiha Mikoto was unharmed. Crow feathers drifted down all around her as she rose... They were fragments of its shattered shadow clone...
It dared not imagine what it would use to face Fugaku's family—or its own conscience—if anything had happened to Uchiha Mikoto...
"Kitahara... I'll take them to the shelter first!" A little girl stood beside Uchiha Mikoto, blank-faced as Mikoto led her away. There were quite a few others with that same expression...
Even an aftershock was more than this broken group could withstand!
An enormous Chakra fluctuation instantly caught Kitahara's attention. The Nine-Tails slowly opened its fanged maw, and a mottled sphere gradually took shape...
"It's a Tailed Beast Bomb!" Uchiha Mikoto let out a long breath and said in utter despair, "...Run... Hurry and run... Kitahara!"
Uchiha Mikoto knew quite a lot. Someone ignorant would not have recognized it... Her resolve right now was nothing like that of an ordinary housewife.
The Tailed Beast Bomb was probably aimed at the Hokage Building. But the Fourth's house was not far from there either... Given the Tailed Beast Bomb's power, death here was almost certain...
Kitahara could only be grateful that Uchiha clan records had documented the Tailed Beast Bomb. Mikoto had seen them before and could recognize it...
"Caw!"
I can't make any kind of Rasengan, but I can still fire off a Tailed Beast Bomb!
A small black orb instantly condensed within the crow's beak and shot toward the unfinished Tailed Beast Bomb in the sky!
Boom!
The massive blast tore at everyone's eardrums...
In the sky, the black-purple sphere vanished. The giant fox's fangs were badly shattered, and its nine enormous tails drooped to the ground. It had clearly suffered severe injuries.
The Nine-Tails' eyes were tightly shut, as though it were dead. Reinforcing ninjas swarmed toward it...
The crow was terrified out of its wits. Even though it was not a ninja, it could sense that the immense Chakra inside the Nine-Tails had not dissipated. Anyone with a brain should have known the Nine-Tails could not possibly be killed by a single Tailed Beast Bomb. Why were there still such idiots among the ninjas?!
"Caw!"
What Kitahara had not considered was that it had seen the original story and understood the power of a Tailed Beast Bomb more thoroughly than ordinary ninjas. But these ninjas probably thought it was enough, or at least believed the Nine-Tails had lost its ability to fight.
It no longer cared what the outcome would be. It cried out at Uchiha Mikoto, snapping the stunned clan head's wife awake... One woman and one crow fled at full speed with a group of burdens trailing behind them.
The Hokage Building was no longer safe, so the nearby shelters could be ruled out as well. The shelter in the Uchiha compound was too far from the Hokage Building... They would go wherever was farthest from the Nine-Tails...
"Roar!"
"Run!"
"Don't run! Draw the Nine-Tails outward!"
"Hold on! The Third will be here soon!"
Screams rang through Konoha one after another. Even without looking back, Kitahara could guess what had happened...
The afterimages of two claws tore apart everything before them. Reflected in the crimson Sharingan eyes of the Nine-Tails, even blood appeared pale.
The flames that followed briefly lit up the road ahead. It was a black energy projectile. This was only the beginning...
Explosions thundered without end, and the firelight flashed continuously like extravagant New Year fireworks... It seemed they had learned their lesson... That bastard who had summoned the Nine-Tails...
"Caw!"
Kitahara formed a shadow clone and sent it to meet an incoming energy projectile. The clone was blasted to pieces, while everyone else was thrown to the ground in miserable disarray by the shockwave.
A pair of crudely made cloth shoes entered their view...
"Hurry and get them to the shelter!"
"Second Team, continue searching for survivors!"
"The rest of you, come with me!"
A small figure appeared before them. The old man's deep voice brought incomparable reassurance at this moment. The Third, former Hokage Sarutobi Hiruzen, had finally arrived.
Ever since the Nine-Tails' surprise attack, Sarutobi Hiruzen had been gathering his directly commanded ANBU to enter the battle. Unfortunately, the Nine-Tails was a summoned creature; every ninja who tried to lure it outward became a sacrifice.
That damn Nine-Tails was practically a house-wrecking husky, single-mindedly tearing down Konoha's buildings and destroying everything in its path...
The ANBU had no choice but to carry out rescue work first... Uchiha Mikoto's group was the only surviving group near the Nine-Tails.
"...Third, the Uchiha clan head's wife... is among these people!"
Someone among the ANBU quickly recognized Uchiha Mikoto and Kitahara... Their intelligence on the Uchiha clan was practically exhaustive.
Sarutobi Hiruzen frowned. "Get them to the nearest shelter first! Also, send someone to notify the police force. Order them to conduct rescue operations and evacuate noncombatants where they are!"
"They'd better... not show up here!"
Completely unaware of the conversation outside, Kitahara silently left a crow-shaped Flying Thunder God formula on Mikoto after confirming the shelter was safe...
It had to check on those two brats, and then... In truth, from the moment it saw the Nine-Tails, it had been certain that Uzumaki Kushina would die...
Namikaze Minato certainly would not survive alone either... But when facing someone like him, it should at least see him off, right?
Perhaps it could help somehow...
The first update didn't feel quite satisfying enough. I'll add another one this afternoon or evening.
Before you continue