Ninety, I’ll add my seal as well.

A blood-red pillar of light shot straight into the heavens from the training field on the outskirts of the Leaf Village.

The Hokage’s office.

Hiruzen Sarutobi sat back in his chair, puffing on his pipe as he listened to his disciple Orochimaru report on the mission. Then, all at once, Orochimaru’s voice cut off, his gaze flicking toward the window in startled suspicion.

“Why did you stop?”

Hiruzen asked in surprise. Following Orochimaru’s line of sight, he turned to look as well—and froze.

The ancestral manor of the Senju clan.

Tsunade and Shizune, teacher and apprentice, were on the balcony practicing yoga, their bodies slick with sweat.

Ever since learning yoga from Kisame Hoshigaki, Tsunade had fallen in love with the exercise, and recently she had even pulled Shizune into practicing with her.

“Shizune, your posture is off. Go lower.”

Tsunade was correcting Shizune’s position when her brows suddenly drew together. She sensed a vast and sinister chakra. A heartbeat later, she saw the crimson column of light rising from the outskirts.

The hot spring district.

At a window seat on the second floor of an izakaya, Jiraiya and Minato Namikaze were drinking and reminiscing.

“Minato, when I left the village last time, you were still just a half-grown kid. And now, after only a few years, you’ve grown into quite the handsome man—and even managed to snag the Nine-Tails jinchuriki as your girlfriend. Not bad at all... much better than your master, I’d say.”

Jiraiya had drunk quite a bit, and he sighed with a bleary, drunken smile.

“About Kushina...”

When Minato spoke of his beloved, a happy smile lit his face.

Just then, the blood-red pillar of light from the outskirts caught both their attention at once.

“That chakra... the Nine-Tails?!” Jiraiya instantly sobered, his expression turning grave.

“Teacher, I’ll go on ahead.”

Minato was even more shaken. He formed a seal and vanished on the spot.

The training field.

A jinchuriki’s transformation into a tailed beast can be divided into four stages:

chakra leakage, borrowing chakra, partial tailed-beast transformation, and full tailed-beast transformation.

Kushina had now entered the third stage directly.

Although her body remained human in form, as Nine-Tails chakra gushed out endlessly, a dark red tailed-beast cloak had formed over her skin.

Four tails had also burst from her back at once.

Faced with the formidable Kisame, Kushina had ultimately borrowed the power of the Nine-Tails.

In this half-transformed state, her speed, strength, and defense were all greatly enhanced, and she even gained the ability to fire a tailed-beast bomb.

The price, however, was that her consciousness had become as muddled as Might Guy’s had been before.

The Nine-Tails was awakening fully and taking control of this body.

But one person was faster than the Nine-Tails.

Whoosh.

A figure arrived in an instant.

Just as Kushina had completed her partial transformation, her mind still in confusion, Kisame decisively charged in and—faster than the eye could follow—

slapped a hand onto her forehead.

Buzz.

The character on Kisame’s palm, meaning “seat,” flared with black light. A special chakra flowed from his hand into Kushina’s body.

The Art of the Heavenly Prison Hand of Subduing Demons was unleashed.

Boom boom boom boom.

In an instant, more than a dozen wooden pillars burst from the ground around them, rising into a circle like a colossal cage.

Kushina was trapped within it.

The Nine-Tails, having just seized control of Kushina’s body, had not even had time to celebrate its freedom or run wild before it was dealt a heavy blow to the head.

It was slammed straight back into Kushina’s body.

Within the next few seconds, her tailed-beast cloak vanished rapidly, her tails withdrew into her body, and she collapsed into unconsciousness.

Kisame caught her with one hand.

At nearly the same moment—

Whoosh.

A yellow-haired figure appeared out of thin air and descended upon the training field.

Minato Namikaze had arrived.

As expected of the Yellow Flash—he had come fast enough to seem like light itself.

Kisame narrowed his eyes and immediately used Kushina as a human shield, pressing the index blade of his needle sword against her throat.

“Let her go!”

Seeing Kisame, Minato cried out in alarm. At the same time, he gripped the tri-pronged kunai in his hand tightly, looking for an opening to use the Flying Thunder God again.

“I advise you not to act rashly, Minato Namikaze. Your Flying Thunder God may not be faster than my blade.”

As he spoke, Kisame drove the needle sword’s index blade into Kushina’s neck, and blood began to seep out at once.

“Who are you, and what do you want?”

Minato’s face changed. He lowered the kunai on his own and took a step back.

“Do you know? The greatest difference between you and me is this: I act without any burden, while you must protect far too many people. That is your fatal weakness. One day, it will kill you.”

Kisame fixed his gaze on Minato and finished speaking with deep meaning. Then he opened his mouth again and activated the power of the Samehada release.

Swoosh.

A sphere of energy shot from his mouth, but not toward Minato Namikaze.

It went straight for the unconscious Mikoto and Kakashi not far away.

The explosion rang out.

Bad.

Minato hurriedly activated Flying Thunder God, teleporting to the two of them and saving them just in time, escaping the blast.

When he turned back, Kisame had already taken Kushina and, with a few nimble bounds, vanished into the woods beyond the training field.

A few minutes later.

In the woods south of the Leaf Village, a winding river flowed slowly through the trees.

This river was called the Naka River. It was by its banks that Hashirama Senju and Madara Uchiha once first met and competed over who could urinate the farther, thus beginning a lifelong tale of mutual love and mutual slaughter.

Kisame had fled here with Kushina in his grasp.

His eyes swept over her, and he frowned. With the needle sword, he cut open the clothing on her shoulder, and sure enough, beneath her right shoulder he found the Flying Thunder God formula.

It consisted of two small words: “shinobi love.”

It seemed Minato Namikaze had marked the woman he loved, allowing him to locate Kushina’s position and appear in the training field in an instant.

Flying Thunder God let Minato Namikaze mark territory everywhere, like a yellow dog pissing wherever it pleased.

By using the marks left all around, he could teleport at any time, making it very convenient for pursuit, ambush, rescue, or escape.

Kisame was deeply envious.

Still, he also knew that even if he obtained a scroll of the Flying Thunder God technique, he would never be able to learn it.

After all, he was no genius. He was only a foolish fish.

“I’ll leave a mark of my own too. It might come in handy someday.”

Kisame thought this to himself and placed his left hand on Kushina’s left shoulder, activating the power of the Exploding Blade: Hazy Mist.

He left behind a black character for “explosion” on her body.

When Kisame finished forming the seal, that character immediately became faint and indistinct, then quickly vanished entirely from Kushina’s skin, hiding within her body.

This was a flexible use of the Exploding Blade: Hazy Mist.

The “explosion” character he left inside Kushina was only a very faint trace of chakra, with no real lethality, yet it was also extremely difficult to detect.

It could be considered a form of mark.

Using this mark, Kisame could sense Kushina’s movements as long as she remained within a radius of five kilometers.

The next time he came to the Leaf Village, if he needed to take her hostage again, it would be very convenient.