Pushing the fear aside, Kaida rushed with all of his speed toward the shadow clone. Alas, he was a fraction of a second late. Just as his sword met the clone who had abandoned all concepts of defense and was only focusing on forming the hand seal, it dispersed.
The sword easily cut through the neck of the shadow clone, but in the last second, there was a smile on its face which was increasingly sickening to watch.
And soon Kaida understood the reason for that smile.
Pooof
A sound Kaida didn't want to hear at the moment. His mind stopped thinking about the situation that had spiraled out of control, but on the positive side of the deal, he had just destroyed the shadow clone of the person who had appeared right now, meaning he would have to deal with the influx of the large amount of memories which were going to him right now.
'If there is a perfect time to attack the real Orochimaru, it is now,' Kaida thought. Not even a second had passed from the moment he had delivered the finishing blow to the clone.
He quickly turned towards the source of the sound, without even waiting for his Sharingan to process the visual details. He swung his sword to the estimated location of Orochimaru's neck.
Tang
By the time his Sharingan saw what had happened, the moment of surprise attack had already passed. At the last moment, even when going through the memories in his mind,
Orochimaru had used supercharged: Earth Release: Iron Skin Jutsu, not on his whole body but just in his hand, which he had used as a shield to block Kaida's attack.
The attack which should have easily taken his neck or hand off was only able to produce a surface level wound on his hand, not even reaching the bone.
Seeing this, Kaida didn't wait for Orochimaru to do something even more absurd and started attacking with one slash after another, striking from angles which would be difficult to block with just one hand.
"Can you wait a moment? I'm busy right now," Orochimaru said as he used his other hand to form hand seals while using the other to block Kaida's attacks.
Though this had resulted in various injuries forming on his body, he was not even fazed by them. Considering the amount of fire chakra Kaida had passed into his body and the smoke coming out of each of his injuries, the pain should have been enough for a normal person to pass out from just pain alone.
But Orochimaru somehow braved through the pain and finished his hand seals.
"Wind Release: Great Breakthrough Jutsu." "Fire Release: Fire Stream Jutsu."
He released two jutsu simultaneously, something that should have been virtually impossible to do. If Kaida didn't have Sharingan, he would have accused Orochimaru of cheating in the game of life.
But here he could see the slight delay, which meant Orochimaru had used one jutsu after another, but the speed was so fast that it felt like he had used two jutsu at the same time.
Though He didn't have time to analyze it further as a tsunami of fire rushed toward him. Reluctantly leaving his attacking spree, Kaida jumped back while using Body Flicker Jutsu to dodge the attack.
Only to face hundreds of snakes coming out of Orochimaru's sleeve. He knew that the fire wall would not be able to stop Kaida for much, so he released this attack toward Kaida's location, predicting his landing point after using Body Flicker.
Tch
Clicking his tongue, Kaida dispatched the snakes coming toward him in seconds, easily slicing ten of them in half with a single strike. But this was giving Orochimaru valuable time to deal with the memories and injuries.
Kaida too was healing his leg injuries. Even though he had done that way before Orochimaru, Kaida still couldn't utilize the opportunity as many poisonous snakes were waiting to deliver just a single attack before dying. He couldn't even use any jutsu as snakes would jump at him at that particular moment.
But suddenly Kaida remembered something.
'I am such an idiot.'
His Sharingan glowed red, and suddenly the snakes who were waiting to attack him all turned toward Orochimaru like he was their mortal enemy.
Due to fighting Orochimaru's clone for so long without being able to use his genjutsu even once, Kaida had forgotten how effective it was. Suddenly the jutsu Orochimaru was using to get some time backfired.
But he had already gone through all of the important memories of his clone. Even though his injuries were still in very bad shape with some of them even producing smoke until now, he looked toward Kaida with a smile.
"Truly a specimen worthy of bringing me out of my lab," he said, not even looking towards the snakes who were about to jump toward him, as with a single seal all of them went back to the place he had summoned them from.
"I don't think you will be able to handle a specimen of my level," Kaida said. As he had gotten some time, he was done with the jutsu he was preparing. This time it was his turn to overwhelm his opponent.
Just like the first attack Orochimaru's clone had released, Kaida also released tens of supercharged wind blades toward Orochimaru.
In his injured state, there was no chance for him to dodge the attack, and with the amount of chakra Kaida had placed in the jutsu, even an earth wall would shred at the impact.
But to his surprise, Orochimaru didn't even try to defend. He moved to the area where the number of wind blades was minimum—enough that he would not die from the injuries—and then bit his finger.
'Not once again,' Kaida thought, but it was already too late. He had already released the attack. By the time he would reach him or release any other jutsu, the summoning would be complete.
'Sigh, I can no longer hold back,' he thought, and quickly created a shadow clone, dispersing it the next second. The intent of creating the shadow clone was not to attack, but to send a message to the shadow clone he had left behind.
….
'Disperse yourself within 10 seconds, by any means necessary.' With some of the memories, a message was delivered to the shadow clone in the main business city of Kirigakure. With other ninja accompanying him to the meeting along with Ryozo moving forward, dispersing himself unnoticed was impossible.
"Captain, I am not feeling well. I will join you later. Can you please go without me?" Kaida's clone said, holding his belly.
"Are you all right?" Taizen turned to him, only to see the pale complexion on Kaida's face.
"Just some stomach ache," Kaida said, running back toward the hotel they were staying in.
"Hahaha, no matter how powerful he is, he's still a child. Maybe the food of Kirigakure is not suiting him well," Akito laughed. Since they were in a neutral zone, there was no need for them to worry about any attack, especially with 8 jonin present.
So without much thought, they left Kaida behind and went toward their meeting area. Kaida's clone didn't even go toward their room. As soon as he found a quiet corner in the lobby, he dispersed himself.
Poof
"Wasn't someone just coming through the hall?" the maid cleaning the area thought out loud, before dismissing it as some misunderstanding and continuing her work.