Chapter 7: Bone Forest Purgatory
The air was frigid, thick with the sharp, antiseptic tang of chemicals. Every breath was like swallowing ice shards, scraping against Nara Shikamaru's raw throat. He was standing in a sealed training ground deep beneath the Sound Village, a place known as the "Corridor of White Bones."
The chamber wasn't large. The walls and ceiling were constructed from a ghastly white rock with a bone-like texture that gleamed disturbingly under the eerie green light of the mineral lamps, making him feel as if he were trapped inside the skeleton of some giant creature. The air was permanently stained with the smells of blood, disinfectant, and a faint, chilling aura that seemed to emanate from the marrow of the very walls.
Kimimaro stood ten paces away, still clad in his simple white kimono. His frame was as thin as bamboo, his face so pale it was almost translucent, as if he might fade away at any moment. Only his eyes—hollow, dead, like two bottomless wells—were fixed on Shikamaru, exerting a tangible pressure.
"Shikotsumyaku: Ten-Finger Drilling Bullets," Kimimaro's raspy, emotionless voice announced, like a cold, mechanical declaration.
Before the words had even finished echoing, with no hand seals whatsoever, the skin at the tips of his ten fingers ripped open. Ten ghastly white, spiraled, razor-sharp finger bones shot out like bullets from a gun barrel, tearing through the air with a shrill, ear-piercing scream.
They were so fast that in the same instant the sound reached Shikamaru's ears, the deadly white streaks of light had already crossed the ten paces between them, aimed with cold, piercing lethality at ten vital points on his body—his brow, throat, heart, shoulders, knees, and abdomen.
The shadow of death fell instantly. The hair on Shikamaru's body stood on end, his heart seized as if by an icy hand.
The combat instincts forged in three months of hellish physical conditioning exploded to life. His brain, operating at impossible speeds, calculated the most likely angle of evasion. His body reacted almost before the thought was complete.
FWOOSH! He threw himself to the right, curling his body to minimize his target profile. The movement was clumsy, desperate, but so fast it left an afterimage.
Thk-thk-thk-thk...!
A series of sickening, flesh-piercing sounds erupted against the bone-white wall behind him. The hard surface was punctured as if it were paper, leaving ten deep, bottomless holes that smoked faintly at the edges. Shikamaru could feel the searing heat as the bone bullets grazed his scalp and back. A cold sweat instantly drenched him.
He rolled back to his feet, half-kneeling and gasping for breath. That single, explosive dodge had nearly exhausted him. A sharp, burning pain flared on the outside of his left arm. A deep gash, carved down to the bone, was already gushing blood—torn open by a grazing shot. If he hadn't made that split-second dodge, he would now have ten new holes in his body.
"Reaction speed, passable," Kimimaro's voice was as flat as ever. "Defense, zero." His empty gaze swept over Shikamaru's bleeding arm without a flicker of emotion. "The penetrating power of the Shikotsumyaku far exceeds that of any kunai or shuriken. A graze is a severe wound. A direct hit is death. Your Shadow Possession Jutsu, in the face of absolute speed and piercing power, is useless."
Shikamaru pressed down hard on the wound, his teeth grinding together. Pain and the lingering terror of death screamed along his nerves, but beneath it all was a cold, clear understanding. Kimimaro was right. Against this kind of attack, his shadow techniques were too slow. The enemy wouldn't give him time. Hidan's scythe, Kakuzu's wind-style jutsu... they were all lightning-fast, all designed to kill in a single blow.
Simply dodging wasn't enough. He needed a way to block, or at least deflect, these lethal attacks. He needed a shield—a shield that could protect himself, protect his friends, protect Asuma-sensei in that critical moment.
"Again!" Shikamaru roared, his voice raw but resolute, his eyes burning with a near-maniacal fire. He ripped off a piece of his shirt and crudely tied it around his arm, the fabric quickly turning crimson.
Kimimaro's expression didn't change. He simply raised his pale hand again. This time, it wasn't his fingertips.
The skin on his entire right forearm writhed and tore like a living thing. A massive, ghastly white bone spike, as thick as his arm and sharp as a knight's lance, erupted from the flesh, slick with blood and radiating a chilling aura.
"Shikotsumyaku: Dance of the Camellia."
The cold declaration was a death sentence. Kimimaro's form blurred. He was no longer firing projectiles; he became one. He shot forward like a white phantom, the terrifying bone lance leading the charge, an unstoppable force that promised to tear through everything in its path. He was even faster than before.
There was no escape. The narrow corridor left no room to maneuver. Blocking was suicide.
The suffocating feeling of death choked him. His brain screamed alarms. Shadow Possession? Not enough time. The speed difference was too great. Tank the hit? He'd be skewered.
In that split second, the soul of Alex—with its countless experiences of clawing a path to survival—and the 200 IQ of Nara Shikamaru—with its frantic calculations—and the agonizing memory of his body being forcibly healed in the chemical vats, all crashed together and fused into a single, desperate, instinctual thought.
Chakra... Condense it! Not for defense! For redirection! For deflection!
No time to think. With a beast-like roar, Shikamaru surged forward. He squeezed every last drop of chakra from his body and, in a single, desperate gamble, funneled it all into his arms. He twisted his body into an unnatural posture, not to meet the lance head-on, but to intercept its side, his arms crossed in a sweeping V-shape. For a fraction of a second, his arms glowed with a faint, highly condensed film of chakra that spun with a strange, rotational energy.
SCREEEEECH—CRACK!
A teeth-grinding sound of metal scraping mixed with the crisp crack of breaking bone.
Shikamaru's arms felt like they'd been hit by a freight train. The chakra film shattered in less than a tenth of a second. The tip of the bone lance slammed into the junction of his crossed arms. The ulna and radius bones in both of his forearms shattered on impact. Agony, white-hot and absolute, seared through his body.
But he wasn't impaled. He wasn't sent flying.
In the instant before the lance could tear through his broken arms and pierce his chest, that spinning film of chakra had acted like a tiny, out-of-control vortex, creating a brief but violent sideways pull. Combined with the angle of his body, it was just enough to deflect the lethal trajectory by a hair's breadth.
But a hair's breadth was enough.
The massive bone lance scraped past his shattered arms, tearing away a spray of flesh and bone fragments, and plunged deep into the wall beside him.
BOOM!
The bone-white wall exploded inward as if struck by a battering ram, a massive crater forming as cracks spiderwebbed outwards.
Shikamaru was thrown back by the shockwave, slamming into the opposite wall and vomiting a mouthful of blood. His arms hung limply at his sides, the pain threatening to swallow his consciousness.
But he was alive. He had met the full, terrifying charge of the Shikotsumyaku head-on, and he had survived.
"Cough... cough, cough..." Blood bubbled from his lips. He slid to the floor, his eyes, impossibly bright, fixed on the massive bone spike still vibrating in the wall.
Kimimaro stood motionless. The bone lance slowly retracted back into his arm, the torn flesh writhing and sealing itself shut. His empty gaze fell upon Shikamaru's mangled arms, then to the crater in the wall. A flicker, so faint it was almost imperceptible, passed through the dead calm of his eyes. It was no longer pure indifference. It was something... akin to surprise.
"Chakra redirection... deflection..." Kimimaro's raspy voice was laced with a rare, almost analytical tone. "Instinct? Or... calculation?"
Shikamaru didn't answer. Two expressionless Sound-nin appeared, dragged him away like a sack of broken bones, and tossed him back into the green chemical vat.
"AAAAARGH—!!!"
A pain more terrifying than being pierced by bone spikes consumed him. It was the agony of being unmade and remade, of bones being forcibly reset and flesh being violently regenerated.
When he was pulled out, his consciousness was frayed to a thread. His arms, though still screaming with pain, were crudely re-fused.
Kimimaro's shadow fell over him. "Rest is over. Next round: Bone Forest Impalement."
Shikamaru's body twitched.
"Shikotsumyaku: Dance of the Seedling Fern."
Without a moment's pause, Kimimaro lightly stomped his foot.
KRA-KA-KA-KA-KRAK!
A horrifying, dense cracking sound erupted from the floor and walls all around the chamber.
In the next instant, a forest of ghastly white, razor-sharp bone spikes of all sizes erupted from every surface, a crazed thicket of thorns bursting forth with no warning and no blind spots.
Shk-shk-shk-shk-shk!
The sound of flesh being pierced was everywhere at once.
"Ghhk—!" Shikamaru only had time for a choked grunt. His thigh was skewered by a spike as thick as a calf. His shoulder blade was impaled by two diagonal lances. His side was torn open. A sharp point shot past his temple, taking a slice of scalp with it. He was pinned in place, a specimen in a forest of white thorns, blood pouring from his wounds to form a rapidly growing pool on the floor.
"Perception... prediction... chakra flow..." Kimimaro's cold voice seemed to come from a great distance. "Before the bone forest takes form... find the sliver of a 'path to life'... Otherwise... you die."
Die... The word was a final weight, pressing down on his flickering will.
Give up?
But then came the images: Choji's smiling face offering him chips; Ino's focused expression as she arranged flowers; Asuma's blood-soaked cigarette; his father's worried eyes.
"CAN'T... DIE...!" A roar echoed in the depths of his soul. The will to protect, doused in gasoline, erupted into a roaring inferno, incinerating the pain and despair.
"GRAAAAAH!" An inhuman scream tore from his blood-clogged throat. He began to struggle, his broken body exploding with a final burst of strength. He didn't see with his eyes. He began to 'listen' with his body, to 'feel' with his soul, searching for the subtle ripples of chakra Kimimaro sent into the ground just before the bones erupted. He was searching for the source.
"Left! Three o'clock! Below!" The thought was a lightning strike. He twisted his impaled body violently toward the right rear—a space that felt marginally less dangerous. Just as he moved, dozens of even sharper spikes erupted from the spot where he'd just been.
He felt the bones pinning him tear his flesh further, but he kept moving.
"Right! Seven o'clock! The wall!" His brain was screaming, on the verge of overload. He kicked off a spike behind him, throwing his mangled body forward, just as the wall he'd been leaning against exploded into a nest of bone lances.
He was no longer just dodging. He was dancing on a razor's edge, surviving in the slivers of space between the blades of a death storm. Blood sprayed behind him, a crimson trail marking his desperate, broken path.
Finally, the eruption of bones stopped.
The entire chamber was a hellscape, a dense jungle of white spikes. And in a relatively clear corner, Shikamaru was on one knee, gasping, his body a ruin. He was soaked in so much of his own blood he was barely recognizable. His left arm was limp, and a gruesome hole had been punched through his right thigh.
He was propped up on his good arm, shaking uncontrollably but refusing to fall.
Kimimaro stood at the other end of the bone forest, watching him. And in the depths of his hollow, dead eyes, it seemed as if something... had shattered. A flicker of something complex—surprise? confusion?—rippled through the dead water.
Squelch.
With a final surge of strength, Shikamaru gripped the thickest bone spike—the one skewering his thigh—and wrenched it out of his own flesh.
A fountain of hot blood erupted from the wound, but he ignored it. He held the bloody, ghastly white bone—Kimimaro's bone—in his hand. He lifted it like a trophy, pointing it at the pale, deathly figure across the room.
He raised his head, and through a red haze of pain and blood, his eyes, like forged steel, burned with an unquenchable fire.
A broken, ragged voice, thick with blood and exhaustion, echoed in the silent, bone-filled chamber.
"'Am I... fast enough... now?'"