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.
Changing plans to sealing him meant we had to weaken him as much as possible. Part of me wished I hadn't agreed to Grandmother's terms of not bringing the Uzumaki to war. If we had five or six sealing masters on hand, this would be much easier. Of course, there was a chance that I'd manage to get all six of them killed, and in that case, I'd have lost six people who could have otherwise been able to save thousands of lives in the long term with their seals and inventions. Uzume moved to the side. I kept a careful watch on her chakra levels as she shot two arrows from her Susano'o at the Raikage's burly form. He clapped his hands, the force of the clap dispersing the arrows. He was fighting harder than he had previously. Something had rattled him. I just wished I could know what.
I shot across the ground, my tails pushing me faster than ever. I slapped at his face with one of said tails. He caught a hold of it, and then I slammed a kick into his chest. Again, he blocked with his other hand. Good thing I had more limbs. I slapped along his body with my remaining tails. His armor took the blow, but he was forced back again as Uzume's Susano'o hand came down and was about to grab hold of him.
He pointed his arms forward. I teleported to the side, black lightning covering the space where I had just stood.
Uzume shot another pair of arrows. They hit naught but air as he shot at me. I was barely able to track him and avoided the punch he sent by the skin of my teeth. I aimed a kidney shot at him. His armor took it, and then my head was ringing as his knee rose. I rolled across the ground, only able to stop myself by stabbing my tails into the ground. I stared at the sky while Kurama's chakra fixed whatever brain damage he had just caused with that hit.
I felt the ground shake beneath me and sighed, shooting to my feet. The Raikage was punching his way through Uzume's Susano'o. There were cracks along the body of the purple specter. I could see Uzume's chakra rising as she prepared to transition from the upper body into a full-body Susano'o. No, I signaled with my chakra before I dove at the Raikage.
I speared him off her and into the distance. Our momentum carried us miles away, leaving the wasteland we had created in the middle of Iwa as another building came crashing down around us. His feet stabbed into the ground like nails through wood as he brought us to an abrupt stop. I felt him punch my back. Once, twice. I ignored both even as I felt bones break. I picked him up with the grip I had around him and suplexed him into the ground behind me. I twisted my body, half backflipping so I was straddling him on the ground. I reached for his neck, needing both my hands to encircle its girth as I began to choke him out.
He reached for my hands, grabbing a hold of both my wrists as he began to forcibly wrench them apart. We struggled against each other for—I don't even know how long. Me on top of him, him beneath, snarling at what he must have viewed as the injustice of it all. We kept struggling and then there was a flicker of movement. I closed my eyes for a second in the struggle, but it was too late to do anything about it. I felt my skull crack, my brain tossed about like clothes in a washer. I went scrambling back. I couldn't think. Not clearly. Where was he? Where was I?
I could hear Kurama saying something, but it was all gibberish. Who was Kurama even? Who was I?
With the sound of popped air, everything came back into focus. My name is Shorirama Senju, and I have a fucking kage to kill.
"That was rude," I said. He snarled from his position as he wrestled Uzume's Susano'o. She had even less chakra now than she did before. I gave her a minute more, at most. If—when—we killed this bastard, we were going to work on her chakra reserves as best we could. She already had great chakra for an S-rank, but it clearly wasn't enough. Not in the face of monsters like this. And as hard as the Raikage was to fight, I had no doubts that he was an easier opponent than any version of Madara. I clenched my fists. This was not the end of my ability. I could win.
I pulled at the natural energy I had stored before. It clicked in my head now. I had wondered how to increase the ratio of natural energy to my chakra as a way of getting better sage mode. But that was the wrong question. Sure, you could get better wine by messing with the concentration of the ingredients. But there was one way to improve the quality of the output almost immediately: Improve the quality of the input.
"Kurama, work with me, please?" I asked out loud, not quite stable enough to tell the difference.
"A pleasure," he said. He was just as curious as to whether this would work or not. It had to work, though. Now that the Raikage was not holding back, it was taking all we had to just keep him here, to keep him contained and fighting. If I wanted to weaken him, then I needed more. More power. More speed. More strength.
I dropped out of sage mode, letting the previously merged natural energy flow from me. And then I grabbed it back, pulling it back into my seal as best I could.
I began to release natural energy from the seal, but this time, instead of natural energy on one side, my chakra on the other, and Kurama's coming over everything later on, I put my chakra on one side, and then Kurama's on the same side, merging our chakras as best as I could—which was not very good—but Kurama himself could do it as easily as breathing. And then the nature energy was on the other side. The combination created a stronger form of sage mode, the potent natural energy (and there was more of it now because of how much more chakra I had on the other side) and the potent tailed beast chakra along with my Uzumaki chakra merged.
My tails retracted, flowing back into my body. The tailed beast cloak itself also disappeared. My body swelled in size. I was as tall as the Raikage now, I felt. All my organs felt like they were working on overtime. I looked over at Uzume and I could see every drop of her chakra. She still had passable reserves, but any more and it would be too much. Plus, there was the risk of remaining in an active warzone while chakra-exhausted. I pushed off the ground.
Ay's head turned right in time for my boot to smash into it and send him flying. I turned to my teammate, my partner, my friend.
"Drop out of Susano'o. Stop using Stasis as well. I'm not asking you to leave the fight, but with your reserves as low as they are, it's for the best if you bide your time and wait for an opening." She gave me a look and I half-expected her to snarl at me with her objections. Instead, she swallowed them. An understanding of time and place?
"You look strong," was all she said instead, eyes running over my form assessingly. I nodded. I felt strong, even.
"Kill him, Hokage-sama," she said, using the title for the first time, and she didn't even sound like she was being sarcastic. And then she was off. I turned to the Raikage, where he was watching with a smirk on his face.
"The last time I fought a Hokage, he sent his allies away. I am sure you saw what happened to him after that, Shorirama Senju. You will be no different, boy. If I were you, I'd call her back," he said.
"The last time I fought a Raikage, I killed him. I buried an arrow straight through the top of his head. I got his brain in one shot. He had no last words; what could he even have said? He must have died ashamed. And I guess you will be different in that you will die with no shame. You get to have the privilege of being the second Kage to fall by my hands this war. If I were you, I would make peace with my demons, for the next place you will lay your eyes on is Naraka," I said, spreading my hands as grandiosely as I could.
My new transformation had not come without cost, I realized. My chakra, normally light and free-flowing like water, felt like mud as it moved through my coils. It was dense. So dense that it was a struggle to move it anywhere it did not naturally want to go. Ninjutsu was basically a non-starter in this case. Okay, not ninjutsu as a whole, but anything that required precise control. I'd probably manage a fireball three times hotter and bigger than normal, but I'd struggle to even cast the most basic genjutsu in this state.
His chakra spiked, rising even further, until his hair that had previously reached down to his back in a lazy fall began to rise at the ends. Not enough to be comical, but enough to be noticeable. He shot at me, noticeably faster than before, but he was not the only one to have gotten a boost, and my boost had come with an idea for how I could weaken him even further. His senses worked as well as a normal person's despite the armor. Maybe if I were any better with them, I would use a poison of some sort. But I didn't have any, and besides, that was not how I wanted to win.
I blocked his straight punch and moved to the side to allow his knee to hit nothing but air. I retaliated, a punch going straight for his head. He took it straight on, even though I had put my full strength into it, and for the first time, we clashed, and he was the one to lose. I did not break through his armor—I wasn't so lucky by any means—but I did manage to force him backward.
The shocked look on his face did not get to remain there for more than a second as I pressed my advantage. Two punches, each aimed at his midsection, were dodged before he tried kicking my feet out from underneath me. I danced away, stretching my fingers out and striking at his chest with all my strength, focusing my dense chakra on my fingertips. He raised his hand to block, and for the first time, I felt my gentle fist succeed; the lance of chakra cut through his armor and stabbed at his tenketsu.
Closing it was a temporary relief as he merely shook his hand and spiked his chakra again, somehow forcing it back open. But a temporary relief was still a relief, and in this case, it was proof of concept. Tailed Beast chakra plus sage mode created chakra dense enough to pierce that armor of his. Good. That was a weapon I could use.
Almost as if by agreement, we struck at each other at the same time. His punch was slapped to the side as I leaned fully into the gentle fist. My fingers sought another chakra point, but he danced backward. Good, I had given him something to fear now. I pressed the attack.
I went for his head, seeking to scramble his brains and end the fight there. He twisted his head to the side, his leg racing to catch me in the chest. I backpedaled, giving space to allow myself to come at him again. When his foot hit the ground, however, the ground beneath him exploded, two creatures made of black lightning shooting at me. Staring at the chakra that made them up, I knew I would not be able to react in time to get a jutsu of my own off. I crossed my arms in front of myself and felt my body be inundated with what had to be enough electricity to power a small town.
But even as I roasted from within, I healed thanks to Kurama's yang chakra. I fell to one knee, struggling to get air through my lungs. "Interesting," I heard the Raikage's voice, and then I felt an impact on my head and my body was sent flying. My nerves were still healing, so it didn't hurt as much as it should have—the kick. I rolled along the floor, feeling more and more sensation return to me as I did so until I pushed up from the floor and to my feet.
He stretched out his hands, and in each gathered a massive amount of black lightning. At least there was some warning now. I brought my fingers together. It had been so long since I had had to use seals for a jutsu this basic that I worried I had forgotten the hand seals themselves. Thankfully, the body never forgets. Not after thousands of reps and years of practice. I formed the tiger seal first, and it was almost automatic, my fingers forming the ox seal. My chakra was sluggish to obey, but that was what the seals were for. They dragged it along for the ride. Dog next, and then rabbit.
"Raiton: Kuro Panther!" the Raikage growled, the mass of black lightning in each of his hands taking on the shape of a snarling feline, soaring through the air at me. The last seal, snake, formed between my fingers. My chakra clicked. First, I inhaled, and that on its own was like a jutsu being triggered. Loose bits of rubble were sent in the air, coming toward me as I sucked up enough air to fill my much-expanded lungs and then some. The lightning release jutsu was still coming, but it mattered not. The inhale wasn't the danger.
"Sage Art: Wind Release—Great Breakthrough!" I screamed mentally as I exhaled. There was nothing I could compare it with—the storm I unleashed. It ripped apart the powerful lightning release jutsu as it passed and then continued on. The Raikage dug his feet into the earth. The wind ripped the ground he stood upon apart and carried it with him. For as far as my byakugan could see, there was nothing but devastation. A massive trench carved into and through the heart of Iwa.
XXXXX- TOSHIRO
He sensed the build-up of Shori's chakra before the jutsu was fired, and that might have been the only thing that saved his life. From being teammates with the Senju scion from a young age, he knew there was one language Shorirama Senju spoke better than any other: it was violence and escalation. So when he felt the build-up and calculated that they would be in the path of whatever he was going to unleash, Toshiro pushed back against Hayate of the Six Swords, forcing him backward—a temporary reprieve at best, but enough for him to jump away, pausing to wrench Inoken from where he was hiding from the bombardment of fire release that the Desert Blaze was peppering their position with.
Only the fact that they clearly wanted Inoken alive had kept them in this for so long. "What are you doing?" he heard Inoken say to him as he kept moving, pushing his legs to the maximum and just running. The Suna shinobi chased them, and for the first time in a long time, Toshiro dared to pray. 'Please get caught in it, please,' he muttered to himself over and over again.
And then his mind went elsewhere—he heard it before he saw it, and it was coming quickly. He turned to the side and watched a full-on skyscraper be torn off its foundation in a matter of seconds. Shorirama Senju, he thought to himself as he dove behind an upturned piece of rubble and braced himself. He felt the wind lick against his form, fully aware that these were just the fringes of the attack, not the main thing. He stretched out his chakra, trying to get a feel for the Suna shinobi, but there was no chance of it. All he could feel was Shori's suffocating chakra in the jutsu. It was everywhere.
Finally, the jutsu had run its course. Inoken was out of his arms once he felt it was safe to move and had turned to look behind them—at the jutsu's aftermath. "What is it?" he asked, but Inoken didn't even seem to have heard him.
Toshiro knew they should have continued running, but he turned to look as well, and he understood Inoken's silence. It was a large valley carved into the middle of a village. They had been considering it throughout this invasion, but this was the end of Iwa. There was no chance they could come back from it. Everything in the path of Shori's jutsu was just gone. Toshiro would have believed it was the Tsuchikage's famed dust release if he hadn't felt it himself. That was wind. Just wind release. No kekkei genkai, nothing. Just wind release. Fuck.
There was a sound of rubble moving, and he turned to find Hayate pushing a stone slab off of himself. "Run," he told Inoken, turning and taking off a second later. If Shori's jutsu had injured them, then they had a chance of escape here.
A/N: So what do you feel about the chapter? Ended by checking in on Toshiro to show the jutsu from another perspective. 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.