Squelch.
Bones pressed into the waterlogged earth.
Konome suddenly lunged at Blood Hound.
He spun to retreat, but she accelerated in an instant, her bone blade slicing down toward his back.
Clang!
The strike did not cut through as she expected. Instead, her blade bounced off his back as if she had struck solid stone.
Her wrist trembled, jarred by the rebound, and for a moment she wondered if she had hit a mountain instead of flesh.
Seizing the opening, Blood Hound escaped.
Byakugan locked onto him.
Beneath his cloak, his skin glowed with dense layers of Earth Release chakra.
"Earth Hardening Technique."
Mist Crow's sickly voice slithered through the mist: "So, little miss, what will you do now?"
Konome ignored his taunts, mind whirling.
The elite of Kirigakure's ANBU were no joke.
Even with their strongest tools taijutsu and genjutsu neutralized, they were still incredibly difficult to handle.
Her bursts of extreme power always left her body in a six-second vacuum, when both stamina and chakra were too drained to fight. Without unleashing that power, however, this six-year-old body could not produce enough strength to kill in a single blow.
Mist Crow excelled at the Water Body Flicker. Finding a gap in his guard was nearly impossible.
Blood Hound, whose right arm was crippled, was the key target. If she could destroy his Hardening Technique, he would be finished. To break through, she needed blunt force.
Crrrk.
Thick bone ground against itself as it erupted from her palm, thin at the front, thicker at the base. Smooth curves shifted into sharp, squared edges.
Moments later, a massive quadrangular mace of dense bone solidified in her grasp.
She gave it a light swing.
Its forward-thin, rear-heavy balance fit perfectly in her hands.
Blood Hound frowned. Something about this weapon felt wrong.
Whoosh!
Konome vanished. In the next instant, she reappeared right before him.
Her pale arm lifted high.
The heavy mace swung down with crushing force, the sheer pressure of displaced air roaring like a storm.
Blood Hound's temples throbbed.
Maintaining Earth Hardening had slowed his movements. Against this monstrous blow, he had no choice but to cross his arms over his head and brace.
Boom!
The mace crashed into his forearms.
Far more terrifying than her earlier strike, the impact sent waves of force flooding through his bones.
Crack!
The rocky layer of chakra shattered, fragments scattering as his massive frame was flung backward like a ragdoll struck by a runaway carriage. He spun through the air before slamming into a tree trunk with a deafening crash.
"Urgh!"
Blood sprayed from his mouth. His arms shook violently as he pushed against the ground.
Whoosh.
Konome swung again.
The mace's sharp edges whistled through the air, this time aimed straight for his skull.
Terror gripped Blood Hound. If that landed, his life would end.
"I've got you!"
At that moment, Mist Crow flashed in, his Water Body Flicker bringing him right to her flank. The water at her feet suddenly writhed into a whip, lashing around her ankle.
Konome jerked her mace aside to evade, and in that instant, Blood Hound roared and charged, his massive body tackling her arms.
Thud!
Her slender body jolted as his crushing grip locked her in place.
Shhk!
Bone spines erupted across her body, stabbing out in every direction. Yet they scraped harmlessly against the hardened armor of Earth chakra. Sparks crackled where bone clashed with stone.
Her earlier bursts had drained her strength. For the moment, she could not break free of his grasp.
Five seconds.
All three fighters thought the same number.
She still needed five more seconds before her next burst.
Mist Crow's hands clapped together.
"Water Release: Water Prison Technique!"
The surrounding streams surged upward, twisting into a massive sphere of liquid that surged around Konome and Blood Hound, threatening to entomb them.
Once fully formed, the Water Prison could not be broken from within. It was a jutsu designed specifically to trap solitary elites. Even the strongest shinobi would suffocate, helpless.
Now was the time.
Konome's eyes narrowed.
Still pinned, she abruptly released her mace. Her ten fingers shot toward Mist Crow, who was shaping the prison.
To maintain the Water Prison, the caster's hands had to remain submerged. Without them, the jutsu would collapse.
With the ground's water now pulled into the jutsu, his Body Flicker was sealed. At that moment, Mist Crow stood utterly defenseless.
Shikotsumyaku
Gleaming bullets of bone coiled at her fingertips, ready to fire.
Three seconds.
But a sudden surge of water swirled between them, a spiraling wall rising up.
"Water Release: Water Formation Wall!"
Another Mist Crow appeared in the distance, completing the barrier before dissolving back into water and merging with the prison, accelerating its completion.
"Little miss, isn't this the very jutsu that killed that unlucky Dark Fox?"
Mist Crow's mocking voice seeped from the watery barrier.
"It's over."
One second.
He poured his chakra in, the Water Prison sealed completely, swallowing Konome and Blood Hound whole.
Inside, they vanished from sight.
Mist Crow finally breathed. Soon the air inside would vanish, and Blood Hound could be rescued. Their mission would be complete.
But before he could sigh in relief, the prison trembled violently, as if on the verge of collapse.
"What?"
Mist Crow panicked, forcing chakra into the jutsu. But then he felt it foreign chakra invading his network, blocking his own chakra flow piece by piece.
Terror widened his eyes.
Fine strands of hair extended from beneath the water sphere. Invisible in the night, they pierced his acupoints with surgical precision, flooding him with alien chakra.
His tenketsu were sealed.
Crash!
The Water Prison collapsed, spilling water across the ground.
From within emerged Konome, drenched, still bound in Blood Hound's arms.
Her lips curled faintly.
Even upside down, with her head bent grotesquely backward, her blindfolded eyes locked on Mist Crow.
Her hand mimicked a pistol.
Bang.
A finger bone bullet erupted.
Mist Crow's eyes bulged. His head snapped back as the projectile tore through his skull, spraying brain matter into the night. His body convulsed once, twice, then fell limp.
"Mist Crow!"
Blood Hound roared, rage twisting his face. His arms locked around Konome's throat.
Blue chakra flared wildly, flooding his muscles until they swelled like steel. With a thunderous bellow, he snapped her neck backward.
Crack!
Her head folded to her back at an unnatural angle. Skin tore, exposing a gory throat and severed vertebrae.
Ecstasy flashed in Blood Hound's eyes. But in the next heartbeat, terror followed.
For despite her broken neck, Konome was smiling.
Snap!
The exposed vertebrae sprouted a spear of bone, driving straight into his eye and piercing deep into his brain.
"Arghhhhhh!"
Blood Hound screamed. His massive frame convulsed, the hardened chakra shell vanishing as bone tore him apart from within.
With wet, ripping sounds, his body became nothing but shredded meat in Konome's grasp.
Blood Hound. Dead.
…
The forest howled with wind.
Night faded.
At the horizon, a faint glow streaked across the sky, light breaking into the world once more. Twilight was over.
Konome shoved against Blood Hound's ruined corpse, prying herself free.
Bone spines slid back into her body, leaving wet blood to soak the earth.
Crack.
She gripped her dangling head, twisting it back into place. Fresh bone sprouted, knitting vertebrae, reattaching tendons and nerves.
Chakra hissed, steaming from her body.
Her head still felt like it might fall off at any moment. But it would hold.
Not fatal.
The Shikotsumyaku was powerful, but its healing was not infinite. Against wounds like this, she could only barely survive. If only she had the Senju or Uzumaki's bodies.
Still, she had won.
She had survived.
No one dared fight the Hyūga or the Taketori up close. That was the iron law of the shinobi world.
And yet, Mist Crow and Blood Hound had dared. They nearly succeeded.
If not for her final trump card, the Rabbit Hair Needles, she might have lost.
A tokubetsu jōnin in genjutsu, a mid-chūnin taijutsu specialist, and still they had nearly taken down someone with two kekkei genkai.
The reasons were many.
Her age. She had only awakened her memories a week ago and had been hunted by Kirigakure ever since. There had been no chance to grow in safety.
And Kirigakure's shinobi honed by the Blood Mist policy were monsters forged in cruelty.
It was a brutal system. But one that made them strong.
Konome recalled her father's words about the Will of Mist:
"The mist cannot become the vast sea. Only when watered with blood and fed with flesh does the cruel, beautiful flower of the Blood Mist bloom.
As long as the mist remains red, the flower never dies."
The battlefield stank of blood.
Dawn's light broke through the trees, gilding the forest with fragile warmth.
Konome stripped her ruined clothes, her body shielded beneath layers of bone membranes and scales resembling serpentine hide.
She walked barefoot across corpses and broken ground, returning to her tent.
Miraculously, it had survived untouched.
She dressed in fresh clothes, pulled on her cloak, and took up her blind staff.
One by one, she set fire to the corpses. Flames licked at charred flesh, filling the air with a grotesque mixture of stench and savory scent that made her stomach twist with hunger.
Then, from Blood Hound's corpse, something crawled out.
A palm-sized, flat, blue-black worm glistening with slime.
The Byakugan flared.
The creature was tiny, yet its chakra glowed brighter than Blood Hound's had ever been.
So this was the source of his sudden burst of strength.
Konome's face darkened.
She slammed her bone fist into it, grinding it into the mud.
It writhed violently.
She hammered it again and again until it went still.
Scooping it up, she stuffed it into an empty pill bottle, sealed the cork, and tucked it into her cloak.
Whatever it was, she would take it with her.
She chewed on a soldier pill, shouldered her pack, and stepped into the dawn.
Tap, tap.
Her staff clicked softly on the earth.
Her back turned to the rising sun, Konome Taketori walked west.
Toward Konoha.
There, she would find true power.
There, she would break free of cruelty.