Pre-Chapter A/N: Welcome to October, guys! Let's smash whatever goals we've set ourselves this year. More chapters on my patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga)— same username as here and link in bio. Experimenting with two chapters a week, we'll see how long I can keep this up for.
"Like I'd fucking let you," I snarled, pushing myself off the ground and straight at him. I kicked the glowing green hand upwards, forcing it away from the wound. Uzume, now recovered, stomped the back of his knee with so much force that the chakra she'd used was probably visible to the naked eye. A less elegant version of my cousin's technique, but effective enough to be useful. She forced him down on one knee while I ground a rasengan into his head.
No dice. At least the wound was still freely bleeding. He brought his arm around, trying to grab me again. I jumped over the hit, aiming a kick at his neck. He tanked the hit, pushing himself to his feet as he did so, sending me backwards. I landed with my hands first, and then my feet.
'More,' I silently asked, and felt the number of tails behind me grow to six. Now my vision was entirely tinged red. I rushed at him once again even as I watched his chakra spike. He flooded the space between us with black lightning. I teleported to the side, forming a rasengan with each of my tails as I rushed at him.
Each of the tailed beasts had a special ability that distinguished them from the rest. For the one-tail, it was his sand control and fūinjutsu. For the three-tails, Coral. The five-tails had steam. What did Kurama have? Sheer chakra malleability with as much chakra as the other eight combined.
I extended my tails out, trapping the Raikage between two giant rasengans. He tanked them and the resulting explosions, but then I was in his face again. I punched him straight in the face. His head rocked backwards. I watched his eyes widen. I hadn't breached his armour by any means, but it meant I was hitting with enough strength to force his body to move regardless.
He retaliated, and this time, I was fast enough to curve my body around his own punch. The tails that had used their rasengans earlier wrapped around his feet, dragging him off them and to the ground while another two rasengans from two more of my tails nailed him deeper and deeper into the ground. He broke through the grip my tails had on him and managed to escape unscathed, but that wound was still bleeding.
Somehow he noticed that I was still staring at the weeping wound. "This small thing? You think you can win because of this small thing?" I prepared to jump in, in case he tried to heal it again. But this time, he didn't even move. I watched his chakra spike as a small thread of it escaped the armour, heading inside, not out.
He cauterized his wound, staring right into my eyes as he did so. The smell of burning flesh spread across our very man-made battleground. I tried not to give in to despair, but that was proving far from easy. I'd burst too fast, used my trump card before it was ready. I should have forced him down to one finger before redirecting the attack. Now that he knew what I was planning, I doubted he was going to whip it out again.
I caught a glint of purple as Uzume's Susanoo began to form. First was the rib cage, and then the hands as the entire upper body formed in a matter of seconds, showing that the training we'd been putting in was working.
Uzume struck from behind, her spectral armour hitting him with so much force that he flew in my direction. I slammed my last two rasengans down on him, forcing him deeper and deeper into the ground. This time, I did not allow him to just get up. I shoved my hands into the ground, using Kurama's chakra to fuel the jutsu. The ground, as deep as I could feel it, which was at least a few miles underground, turned to mud. Mud that dragged him down. I commanded it to force its way into his nose and mouth, trying to suffocate him. But the armour allowed no ingress. He only moved a few metres before he began to fight against the force.
And even with what had to be a few tons of mud pressing down on him and no leverage, he managed to push his way out of it. Uzume was waiting for him though, three purple arrows slamming into his body, one following the other. If I had fewer survival instincts, I would have made a comment about her Susanoo taking a bow as its primary weapon. But I wasn't a fool. Unluckily, she didn't get any divine tools attached to her Susanoo like Itachi did.
"Plan C," I said, loudly enough that she could hear it. Plan A had been the Hell Stab. A conditional success, ruined by me pulling the trigger on it too early, and it was unlikely an opportunity would arise again. Plan B had been using an arrow hewn from chakra-inert stone that should not have been stopped by his armour. That had been a bust as well. Plan C? Well, Plan C was to use what my clan was known for. We just had to weaken him to the point where we would be able to seal him. This one was, apart from Plan D, the one I was least sure about. He was a human being, not a tailed beast. My prisoner seal only worked on unconscious people for a reason.
As long as he had a will of his own opposing the sealing, it should be impossible. But Reiji, Souta, and Ayame had cooked something up. Something that meant that if Uzume and I, the ones triggering the seal, had more willpower than the one being sealed, then we had a chance of succeeding. It was all theoretical, but we just had to hope and pray—as much as that infuriated me.
Uzume acknowledged the change of plans with a nod.
XXXXXX- CEE
His Kage was not winning, he thought to himself as he practically flew across the village. He had just barely been able to hide when Shorirama Senju had intervened in the fight with Kinkaku and Ginkaku. He had felt it keenly when the two of them had been ripped apart. He thought the Raikage in a rage would be the scariest chakra he ever had the displeasure of sensing. The beast inside the Senju had him beaten, and quite handily at that. Whatever part of the nine-tails had remained in the brute brothers before their demise was a drop in the proverbial ocean.
So much hatred, so much anger. And to his shame, he had been paralyzed by the power coming from Shorirama Senju. So frozen he had been that he had been unable to make it to Killua. It was all for the best, in the end. Uzume Uchiha had intervened in that battle, and while he had confidence in his abilities, there was nothing he could do against a woman who just stood there and let Killua hit her over and over again with all his most powerful jutsu. So focused on her, his attempts to pin the trio of S-ranks down had failed.
The memory of Orochimaru's Kusanagi blade carving straight into Killua's neck while Tsunade Senju's monstrous strength turned everything below his chest to pulp was one that he would treasure for the rest of his life. If only that period wasn't getting shorter and shorter. Somehow, the damn snake had caught on to him, and instead of continuing their massacre of Kumo and Iwa shinobi, they were chasing him down.
No, they weren't so careless as to just make a mad dash for him. He was sure they didn't even have his exact location on lock, but they did know enough that they kept turning up in his general area. They were searching for him, and that meant what he could do to help his Kage was limited. He stopped for a few seconds, weaved seals, and tried to snake another genjutsu into Shorirama Senju's chakra coils. Once again, the genjutsu failed to take hold.
Fuck, he cursed internally as he started running again. He just needed a place to focus and concentrate for a few minutes. No one was immune to genjutsu. No one! He just needed the time to focus and get it right. The Uchiha was at least susceptible, but she broke out of them instantaneously. He would need even more time to craft something insidious enough to fool her. If only he could get close enough to try an auditory genjutsu. The only issue was that the three of them had decided to turn the center of Iwa into a wasteland with their fighting. Cee had already felt multiple chakra signatures snuffed out as they fought.
When the elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers, he remembered a saying his father had been fond of. And nowhere was it truer than in that battle. He felt most sorry for the Iwa shinobi that had been hiding in the building before the Uchiha's fire release jutsu turned it and a quarter-mile of space around it to ash. Their fates were almost as bad as that of the civilians trapped in the building the Raikage had wrestled Shorirama Senju through. They didn't even notice how much death and destruction they were causing in their battle, and from what Cee's senses could tell, the only one who was wounded among them was the Raikage, and the wound felt like nothing serious.
If only he had managed to perfect his remote healing before this. There were lots of ifs on his mind. If only he had been able to foresee Konoha making a mad dash to bugger them in the ass right as they were buggering Iwa. If only he was stronger. If only—
"Kukuku." He froze. What? Where had that come from? A white snake erupted from the ground, and from the snake came a man. If he could even be called that. His skin, pale as the snow that dotted Kumo's peaks, and eyes yellow as piss.
"How the fuck—"
"What a fascinating sensing ability." His voice was practically a hiss.
"Can you be less creepy, Maru?" Another voice from the side, his head snapped there instinctively. Jiraiya. Next to him, Tsunade Senju, watching everything with cold eyes.
"H-how?"
"Simple enough. Shadow clones to trick your senses into thinking we were farther away, my white snake here has interesting abilities of his own, and the oaf has a trick or two up his sleeves. Now, what I want you to tell me is how your sensing works. How far is your range? I guessed the whole village, but Tsunade doesn't believe it can extend that far. That would make you the most powerful sensor ever recorded, wouldn't it?" Cee was careful to keep his face blank. His senses extended well beyond the village if he focused. But somehow, they had managed to fool them.
Now that they were in front of him, though, there was no fooling him. He reached for their coils, playing them like instruments under his spell. They attacked as one, moving for where he had been as he fooled them with a mirage.
He jumped to the side and was about to escape into the shadows again when a kunai flew past his head. All three of them had frozen, and as he moved to dodge the second kunai, so did he.
His body just refused to move no matter what he did. He could see that the shadows of his assailants were connected to each other and then a straight line into the distance and guessed the source of his predicament. A Nara. The three snapped from his genjutsu.
"That was good. Better than even Sensei," Tsunade Senju said, more to herself than the others.
"Let's just get this over with."
"Indeed. I want to see the Raikage's jutsu for myself," Orochimaru said, and then they began to walk towards him.
XXXXXX- TOSHIRO
He still remembered the pitying looks he had received when the teams had been announced. Not everyone made it obvious, of course, but even Sensei had taken him aside to offer some condolences. He hadn't understood it then. He wasn't the best in the class by any measure, but he had smoked the written test and passed the physical ones as well. He was just as much a shinobi as Shori and Uzume. All he had to do was work hard, and one day he would close the gap.
Except that had never happened. He trained hard, he worked harder than anyone else he knew, but he still lagged behind. He trained his genjutsu until he could cast it with closed eyes and bound hands, trained a whole new form of ninjutsu that allowed him to merge his native lightning release affinity with his genjutsu. He was a dangerous shinobi as far as he was concerned. He showed it again, cutting through two Kumo jōnin in a whisper of movement. Kizuru's genjutsu ensnared them the second before he struck, making them just that tiny bit slower, and that was enough for him to get the kills.
But Uzume and Shori would not have needed Kizuru to do that. Shori had killed a Kage before he'd even finished puberty. Now, he was one himself. Uzume, she was Uzume. When she and Shori fought in the village, he'd barely been able to keep track. And now they were fighting the Raikage in a fight that stretched so far that Uraume was giving orders for everyone to avoid the entire central area of the village. If Iwa existed after this, then it would be much diminished. He couldn't see a path to recovery, especially because the fighting was not yet over. Not for them, sure. But not for Shori and Uzume either, and that was the fight causing the most damage.
"How's it going?" He gave in, asking Uraume after he dispatched the last chūnin in the district.
"Kumo has been conclusively routed. All their shinobi are either dead, too wounded for combat, or captured. Iwa's ANBU are going to attempt an ambush on our position soon. When they do, we will end the last of Iwa's resistance. The Tsuchikage herself surrendered to Shikahime and Inoken earlier. They have her in a prisoner scroll. Inoken will be coming here to hand her over to me before he returns to Shika."
Toshiro nodded, but that hadn't been what he wanted to know. The news of the Iwa ANBU ambush was useful in that it meant he could not rest yet and needed to keep going for just a bit longer, yes. But still not what he had come here seeking.
"I meant with Shori and Uzume," he said.
"Worry not. Shorirama and Uzume are powerful, and from what I have seen, it is only a matter of time until they breach the Raikage's durability conclusively. He is unable to handle the two of them at the same time and is being pushed to the wall," she said.
"Then they better be careful."
"Indeed. There is no animal more dangerous than a cornered one," she agreed.
He was about to say something, but then her head snapped to the side.
"Inoken is being followed," she said.
"Iwa shinobi?" he asked instantly, hand moving to his blade. They couldn't afford to lose another friend now. Not after Choni, Kuro, and Izuku.
"No. Suna."
"What the hell is Suna doing here?" But did it matter? They were after their friend, and they needed to move.
"Impossible to tell, but they are practically hunting him down. He's fast, but they are gaining, and quickly."
"Scramble a team, let's go," he said.
"The Iwa ambush is about to happen."
"What does that matter? We need to help Ino."
"No. You do. Take Shiba and go help. Be careful. One of them has at least as much chakra as Uzume. The other one… he somehow feels even more dangerous. Hold them off until we can finish here. If the situation is dire, have Inoken call in Team Orochimaru for reinforcements. Tell them the order comes from the Hokage himself." He nodded.
—
They barely made it in time. The one with the blade was just about to cut down Inoken from behind when Toshiro body-flickered between them, his blade meeting that of the Suna-nin. It only took him a single look for his heart to fall into his stomach. Hayate of the Six Swords. Shiba's insects fell upon the other one with all the wrath of God. There was a single click, the sound of snapping fingers, and the heat that crawled up Toshiro's skin made him want to shy away.
The attack hadn't even been aimed at him. All the insects fell to the ground dead. That had to be Kosuke the Desert Blaze. What the hell were two of Suna's S-rank shinobi doing here? This was out of their pay grade. Far out of it, and his inattention came close to ending his life as Hayate shifted his stance and his sword. Toshiro's blade slid forward, running along the edge of Hayate's with no resistance as the man moved to open him from neck to navel with his sword out of position. Toshiro did not fight the substitution that took him out of there.
The blade cut through Shiba only for him to collapse into a swarm of bugs that surrounded the Suna-nin. Toshiro almost breathed a sigh of relief, but then there was a flash of purple chakra, and Hayate began to move. It should have been impossible, that kind of precision, yet the bulk of Shiba's insects were dead on the floor before they could attach themselves.
"Inoken, call Team Orochimaru for reinforcements," he said, feeling far out of his depth
A/N: And there we go. Next five up on patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga)(same username as here and link in bio), support me there and read them early.