News comes over the telepathy network - Madara's apparently settled the illusion... And appears to be on their side now. (Sasuke confirms that "switching sides" is actually the original purpose of the illusion).

The man himself arrives very quickly after that news, setting a massive segment of the white zetsu aflame and barrelling towards the masked man.

As long as he's fighting them, that's fine by her.

His contribution appears to be enough to turn the tide of battle -

Until he's speared by several black tendrils. He shouts, and sets himself on fire, which forces the tendrils to recoil.

But another enemy's joined the field, one fast and difficult to catch and thoroughly capable of engaging Madara's attention. (Madara seems to know the shadow, based on what he's yelling about traitors - and something about idiots who listen to raving old men at the masked man).

Ellisaria concentrates on keeping the hordes of white clones at bay.

- And Obito summons a massive statue, a hundred times the size of a human, which begins to glow -

Kurama snarls, creates a black sphere larger than the mountains, annihilating the entire range the statue rests upon -

And ten very, very long tails whip out of the explosion, high enough to block the moon, and a monster so large it's difficult to take in its enormity except from a great distance appears. Its claws dig into the mountains, leaving long furrows through them. It's malformed, almost, a single red eye and a gaping mouth taking up most of its face.

Fel. That thing is bigger than Deathwing. She can't fight that. Not here, not alone. Time to regroup.

Madara decides to distract it - it is at a minimum inconvenienced by meteors, and either too slow or too stupid to dodge, so it isn't attacking the wider forces just yet. (Madara has also decided to just ignore the black shadow still periodically stabbing him. He regenerates anyways.)

'Unfortunately,' he sends over the telepathy network, 'Anything of mine big enough to seriously harm it is going to bring up 'how much do we like this continent being inhabitable.''

'We've already evacuated civilians to the coast, the outlying islands, underground, or the northern continent. We can step that up, now that the Edo Tensei aren't everywhere.'

The Kage don't seem happy with that - but they do order a farther evacuation.

'Kurama thinks he can grow to that size for a little bit if we grab enough nature chakra, but I need to not be attacked while I'm doing that.'

How long do you need?

'Having never done this before - uh, thirty minutes? At most?'

'I will take you underground. Disengage and retreat back a ways.'

He does, moving far from the main battle - his teacher's able to keep the masked man from pursuing him, fortunately.

Ellisaria lands next to him and begins opening a path down. The earth ripples aside not quite like water, but much more smoothly than rock and dirt tends to move.

"You're fast at this," he mutters, trying to take deep breaths - he'll have to wait until he's still to gather the chakra, but he can try to get into the right headspace first.

"The earth is my domain, and this earth is mine. It responds to my magic."

"Neat! Stuff's not that easy with chakra..." This is helping him calm down from the battle-rush, at least.

"Mana is intelligent. It wants to help, if you know how to ask."

"Huh - wonder if that'd work with nature chakra..."

"I'd suggest you save such experiments for another time. The pathway is finished now. Go, you will be safe at the bottom."

"Right! Thanks!" And he jumps off her back, summons two shadow clones, and all three begin to meditate.

She heads back to the surface, sealing the tunnel behind her.

Fortunately he can sense while he meditates, including emotions, so he shouldn't be surprised if one of those plant monsters sneaks up on him.

And on the surface, they're barely managing to keep the ten-tails from building up its attacks.