Chapter 276: Perfect Coordination
Disclaimer: Naruto and all of its characters belong to Shueisha and Masashi Kishimoto. I own nothing but the original characters I create.
"Dialogue"
'Thoughts'
-Author notes-
Chapter 276: Perfect Coordination
"Hmm, don't get too confident because you destroyed one of my puppets. They can easily be replaced... in the end, my power is limitless!"
The one who spoke was the strangest-looking puppet. This one barely looked human and possessed an extra pair of arms.
Mechanical noises sounded as the puppet opened its two extra arms, revealing the barrel of some type of firearm underneath.
From one of them, a barrage of metallic bullets emerged, and Naruto blocked them with a shield made of wind chakra.
From the other, metallic cables shot out, attempting to bind his body.
At the same time, the other puppets began to move as well.
The Animal Path summoned two more gigantic beasts, while the Human Path ran at full speed toward Naruto.
Meanwhile, the Naraka Path used its ability to summon a massive head they called the King of Hell. This entity was capable of bringing people back to life, though Pain mostly used it to restore his lost puppets. The target was clearly the Preta Path puppet Naruto had just destroyed.
Fukasaku panicked when he saw that. "Naruto, don't let that one finish!" he shouted while pointing at the large summoned head.
"The King of Hell will continue to bring back the ones you destroy. There will be no end to it," Shima added.
"Mmm... I see, so this is what the Rinnegan can do," Naruto commented as he avoided the metal cables. "Each puppet follows a different path. Deva, Asura, Human, Animal, Preta, and Naraka. The six Buddhist Paths of Reincarnation."
"You are familiar with us," the Human Path appeared behind him. "That won't help you." It reached for Naruto, attempting to pull his soul from his body - killing him in the process. Pain's logic was that all the chakra Naruto had absorbed from the Bijuu should still be sealed inside his body, making this the easiest method to obtain what they wanted.
What Pain didn't know was that Naruto had already reached the point in cultivation where all accumulated energy fused with his soul itself. Had he succeeded in this task, he would have been left with an empty shell of a body.
Naruto felt his soul stir and understood what this puppet was attempting.
A smile appeared on his face.
"You have no idea how pointless your attempt is..."
His soul had been reinforced to an absolute extreme, as he was already reaching the peak of the Nascent Soul realm. The Human Path's ability was meant to work on normal human souls.
At this point, trying to forcefully pull Naruto's soul from his body would be like trying to drag an elephant with a sewing thread.
The puppet made an expression of surprise when it finally realized the futility of its actions.
It didn't have much time to be surprised, though.
Naruto snapped his fingers, and its entire upper torso was blown away by a blast of wind.
He then threw a kunai into the air while moving away before the two dog-like beasts could reach him.
The kunai exploded into a rain of cloned formula kunai. Now he could move anywhere he wanted.
"Careful!"
"He's not dead!"
The two toads on his shoulders let out sounds of panic when they saw another Pain appear behind him.
This was the first one Naruto had defeated - the Deva Path he'd punched into a crater.
It was now standing up and aiming its ability at him. The puppet had been waiting for the opportune moment to rise.
"Almighty Push!"
The ground around Naruto broke apart from the pressure, and he felt his body becoming a thousand times heavier.
Naruto considered standing in place to fight this gravity, but quickly remembered the two toads on his shoulders. They wouldn't withstand this pressure for more than a second, so he used the Flying Thunder God jutsu to teleport away from the high-gravity area the Deva Path had created.
He appeared on the other side just in time to see the giant head opening its mouth, from which a large man emerged. This was the Preta Path - the one who absorbed chakra attacks, whom Naruto had just destroyed with a Rasengan. The puppet was now in pristine shape again.
"Naruto, you need to destroy that one first," Fukasaku said with difficulty, as he was still recovering from the gravity attack.
Shima the added. "There will be no end to this otherwise. He'll then bring back the Human Path you just killed," the toads stated the obvious problem.
Naruto was about to respond when a rocket shot toward him.
He blocked it with another wind shield, but this one exploded into a cloud of smoke.
The two summoned beasts were almost upon him already, and a third one, a giant bird had now joined the fray.
"This is starting to annoy me..." He had to admit all the puppets complemented each other quite well, covering their flaws and coordinating attacks perfectly.
He could understand why Jiraiya had fallen to such an opponent. But he was already in a different level.
First, he created a clone to pick up the two toads and carry them away.
"Wait!"
"What are you doing?!" the toads complained.
"Sorry, but you'll have to watch from the sidelines for a bit. I need to get serious, and what I'm about to do would likely kill you."
The aura around Naruto began to change, growing more intense. The shockwave of energy emanating from his body pushed away the smoke cloud and even the two massive dogs trying to bite him.
Everyone around him felt their blood ran cold. The energy emanating from his body was enough to put everyone on high alert.
"What..." Kakashi muttered, his uncovered sharigan was locked on the figure of Naruto.
"Is this the Kyubi's chakra?." Kurenai asked.
"No, this is something else..." Gai responded.
"I can feel natural energy in there." Tsunade commented. As someone who had dabbled in the path of the Sage, he was familiar with it.
"This is much more than that..." Fukasaku spoke. He had been the one who taugh Naruto how to become a Sage. "I never expected for him to take things this far in such a short amomunt of time."
"What do you mean?." Tsunade asked.
Shima was the one who answered. " He means that Naruto was already using the Sage Mode before, he has perfected the method to a degree that allows him to be in a permanent Sage Mode, just like the original user was able to do...the Sage of the Six Paths."
" But what he is doing now is something else...this is more than just a combination of yin, yang, and natural energies... I think he is adding something else now." Fukasaku said.
Naruto's calm voice resonated across the area as his body became encased in a golden aura.
"Pain... let me show you the difference between someone pretending to be a god and someone aiming to become one."
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