Crackle, crackle, crackle!
The crazily tightening Lightning Release light cage shrank inch by inch, slicing the alloy floor into neat, uniform metal strips.
Inside the prison, the small figure stood dead center. Facing certain death, she seemed helpless, as though she had already abandoned resistance.
Lightning Fire Dual Pole Seal.
A combined nature technique that fused two of the most violent transformations together. Its difficulty was rated A rank, and in Kumogakure, only Dākui could use it at present.
Using lightning and fire's extreme offensiveness, it formed a prison that could not be touched. Lightning Release restrained water and earth, and the fire inside covered lightning's weakness against wind.
If not for the harsh activation conditions, needing formulae carved into a fixed location and requiring the enemy to be lured into the trap, this technique would have been perfect.
"Tell me your real identity and purpose," Yotsuki Tsuyoshi said, suppressing the killing intent in his chest as he studied the small figure in the cage. "I can spare your life."
He had never believed she was truly Kirigakure ANBU.
Kirigakure had long practiced isolationism, and the village was separated from Kumogakure by an ocean. The two villages had almost never clashed. Judging by her methods and the ornamentation of her mask, she looked far more like a subordinate of the legendary "Darkness of the Shinobi."
Kumogakure had only recently fought Konoha. If she was from Konoha, that would make far more sense.
"Wrapping Fire Release with Lightning Release to create a high temperature, high pressure chakra jet." Konome Taketori's voice was calm, almost excited. "That's an impressively elegant design."
She ignored his questions entirely, eyes bright as she studied the laser like bars in front of her.
A flood of technique knowledge surged up from her mind, fire, water, wind, earth, lightning. The accumulated practice and insights from her shadow clones churned and fused.
Water counters fire. Wind counters lightning.
To break this seal, the best solution was a combined water and wind technique.
Konome lifted both hands. On her left, a raging current gathered. On her right, a storm condensed.
The wind compression method she had just learned from Danzō.
The high pressure water lance she had abandoned after learning Lightning Release.
The Vacuum Palm inspired cannon she had invented from the Eight Trigrams Air Palm concept, then shelved because it charged too slowly and didn't fit her fighting style.
Countless discarded, unwieldy, "useless" techniques were rearranged and recombined.
Under the pressure of the Lightning Fire Dual Pole Seal, inspiration flashed.
Whoosh!
A massive volume of water was forcibly compressed into a sphere. Bubbles burst across its surface. A low thunderous rumble churned inside.
With the Byakugan, Konome analyzed the formation of the lightning fire pillars. Her control tightened.
Wind Release chakra wrapped around the water sphere, forming a dense wind film.
Seeing the wind water sphere in her hands pulsing with terrifying chakra, Dākui's gaze sharpened. The chakra inside him surged violently.
Crackle, crackle, crackle!
The laser prison tightened faster, spraying sparks as it carved the floor. The cage was already so small there was almost no space left.
Inside the sphere, the pressure climbed higher and higher, roaring like oceans colliding.
Konome held the newly created wind water orb between her hands, one above, one below, and aimed it at the shrinking cage and at Dākui's clasped hands beyond.
Her fingers opened like a flower.
The sphere trembled violently.
A chill ran down Dākui's back. A shock of danger shot from his spine into his skull. His assassin's instincts, honed through years of ANBU slaughter, screamed like a siren.
"Get down!"
Yotsuki Tsuyoshi's pupils shrank to pinpoints. He slammed a thick arm onto Dākui's head, forcing him down, and both of them hit the floor.
A sound followed, like a high pressure steam pot venting, like a cobra hissing venom.
From a tiny fissure in the sphere, an impossibly thin water line sprayed out, thinner than a hair.
At the tip, Wind Release chakra hummed, so faint it was like a mosquito's whine, yet sharp enough to tear through anything.
The laser like lightning fire bars contracted inward, smashing into the wind water beam head on.
Sizzle!
Lightning on the pillar's surface burst into arcs, only to be split cleanly in half by wind, exposing the orange red flame inside.
Whoosh!
The scorching fire tried to ignite the wind, but the icy, pressure heavy water cooled it instantly. The high pressure stream scattered the flame in one strike.
That "perfect" explosive lightning fire pillar was pierced by the combined assault of wind and water.
The ultra fast water line punched through everything, skimming over Dākui and Yotsuki Tsuyoshi's heads and drilling a needle hole into the warehouse's thick alloy wall.
Chi!
Konome gripped the violently shaking sphere, rotated it slightly, and the water line swept from left to right.
No resistance at all.
The lightning fire cage erupted into sparks, and the entire alloy warehouse was cut in half.
Hisssss.
Scalding steam filled the space.
Stepping out of the shattered prison, Konome crushed the sphere, now drained after venting its pressure, then looked at the two men scrambling up from the floor, their faces still pale with shock.
She lifted her chin.
"Not bad. What's that technique called?"
"D, Dākui," he answered, swallowing hard.
The rage in Dākui's blue eyes had turned into pure fear. If the captain hadn't pinned him down, he would have been cut cleanly in two like the bodies outside.
He stared at the alloy wall, more than ten meters thick. At around waist height, a perfectly straight line glimmered faintly, like a seam of light.
He had never seen a Water Release technique with penetration power that could compete with Lightning Release.
And that wind film had perfectly countered the lightning fire bars.
The sheer specificity of it made him doubt himself.
Had his intelligence leaked, and she prepared in advance?
Or was his luck simply rotten, and he had run into the exact counter to his technique?
It couldn't be… something she created on the spot just to break the seal.
The idea was too absurd to even entertain.
"Dākui? Never heard of you."
Konome searched her memory and found nothing. He wasn't a character from the original story.
But then…
She turned her head, looking past him.
That iron tower build. That steel needle hairstyle.
For some reason, the man looked familiar.
Do all Kumogakure shinobi look the same?
"And you?"
"Yotsuki… Tsuyoshi."
Yotsuki Tsuyoshi spoke his name slowly, his eyes heavy.
That silent needle line through the alloy wall told him one thing clearly. His Lightning Chakra Mode would not have a high chance of enduring it. This enemy was a true threat.
"Yotsuki Yū is what to you?"
"You really are Root from Konoha."
Crackle!
Lightning crawled over his face as Yotsuki Tsuyoshi's eyes went wide. The instant she said his father's name, he saw through her completely.
This was Konoha's retaliation.
Crackle!
Lightning flared over Konome's body as well.
Kumogakure's secret art.
Lightning Chakra Mode.
No more words were needed.
Using the Yotsuki clan's secret Lightning Armor in front of him was a naked provocation.
Yotsuki Tsuyoshi's rage ignited completely.
Boom!
His right leg smashed into the ground.
Using the rebound, his body launched like a cannonball.
In less than half a second, that massive frame was in her face, blotting out the sky, swallowing Konome in shadow.
His savage tiger eyes locked on her.
That wind water combined technique needed at least three to four seconds to prepare.
More than enough time for him to turn her into paste.
That was the confidence of a taijutsu shinobi.
His arm bulged. A fist the size of a sandbag crashed toward Konome's face.
"Not very original."
Lightning stimulated Konome's neurons. Her Byakugan tightened. The incoming punch slowed in her vision, like it was moving through syrup.
Yotsuki Yū had once used Lightning Chakra Mode's speed and reflexes to beat her until she couldn't fight back.
But now, Konome Taketori had learned Lightning Armor too.
Her weaknesses were gone.
With the Byakugan linked to Lightning Chakra Mode, her reflexes and dynamic vision finally synchronized.
A speed so fast ordinary people couldn't even see it was, to her, as slow as a crawling snail.
Hum.
Lightning tightened her muscles.
She slipped aside from the crushing punch, planted one foot, and lifted her right leg.
Her whole body twisted, every muscle aligning into one force.
Crackle, crackle, crackle!
Lightning chakra gathered at her toes. The blinding flash was like a stun grenade in the dark, and Yotsuki Tsuyoshi's vision blanked for an instant.
A side kick.
The wind shrieked.
It was as if a thunderclap detonated inside the warehouse.
Her black foot slammed into his left ribs.
Crackle!
Lightning smashed into lightning, penetrating, refusing to yield.
But the raw force behind the kick tore his feet off the floor.
That huge body was launched sideways like a kite with its string cut.
Boom!
He hit the wall.
The wall had already been severed by Water Release, and it couldn't bear the impact at all. Yotsuki Tsuyoshi crashed straight through it and flew out of the warehouse.
From the moment he charged and threw that punch to the moment he was kicked out, less than three seconds had passed.
Only now did Dākui finish forming his last hand seal.
His chest expanded.
Wind Release: Vacuum Continuous Waves!
Buzz, buzz, buzz!
A chain of vacuum slash waves burst from his mouth.
As a Kumogakure shinobi, he knew Lightning Armor's weakness.
Its defense was essentially offense used as guard.
Lightning wrapped around the body destroyed anything that tried to come close.
But against Wind Release techniques with extremely high attack frequency, Lightning Armor could end up protecting one place and exposing another, unable to fully defend.
Seeing the endless vacuum slashes tearing toward her, Konome did not let them strike.
She was only a shadow clone. Even a small cut could make her disperse.
There was no point gambling on Lightning Armor's defense.
Lightning flashed.
She dodged.
The ground shuddered.
A terrifying weight, carrying the momentum of a charging war elephant, slammed toward Dākui.
The best way to deal with genjutsu and ninjutsu types was to close the distance and crush them.
Even if she mocked Yotsuki Tsuyoshi's attack as unoriginal, Konome still made the same decision.
A fight didn't need novelty.
It needed efficiency.
Buzz, buzz!
The vacuum waves hammered the walls.
The warehouse, already unstable after losing a load bearing wall, finally gave up.
Creak!
A shriek of tortured metal.
The roof tilted.
Then the steel alloy ceiling, weighing over ten tons, came crashing down.
Dākui's mouth curved into a grin.
Everyone knew what a taijutsu fighter was thinking.
Those vacuum waves were never meant to hit a lightning fast enemy.
They were meant to collapse the building.
As the owl like mask with its pitch black eyes drew closer…
Crackle!
Lightning Armor wrapped Dākui's body too. Standing at the doorway, he shot out of the collapsing warehouse first, faster than Konome.
"Captain!"
The moment Konome rushed toward the exit, Yotsuki Tsuyoshi appeared at the door, though he had been sent flying out earlier.
He crossed his arms over his chest, teeth clenched, and braced himself in front.
Boom!
They collided.
The difference in both mass and strength was brutal.
Yotsuki Tsuyoshi felt like he had been rammed by a giant elephant. His body shot backward without even slowing.
His organs took the impact. He spat a mouthful of bloody foam midair.
But his block forced Konome's charge to halt.
The beams and roof collapsed all at once. Walls toppled. Dust exploded.
In the blink of an eye, the warehouse became a heap of rubble.
"Cough… cough…"
Yotsuki Tsuyoshi flew dozens of meters and slammed into the ground, hacking. Blood streamed from his nose and mouth, speckling the dirt.
A sickening rust taste filled his lungs.
This was Lightning Chakra Mode's second weakness.
Lightning could shred blades and resist ninjutsu, but it could not resist pure, brutal physical impact.
He had always been the one crushing opponents with overwhelming bodies.
This was the first time he had tasted what it meant to be suppressed by sheer force.
His organs felt displaced. His heart and lungs were badly hurt.
"Cough… Dākui… is the enemy finished?"
Silence.
Only dead silence answered him.
A bad feeling rose in his chest.
Yotsuki Tsuyoshi forced himself upright and looked ahead.
His tiger eyes widened.
In the center of the rubble, the black figure stood unharmed. A crimson cloak fluttered in the wind.
Evil black red chakra condensed into two massive hands.
One hand held up the ten ton roof.
The other stretched more than ten meters, gripping Dākui by the head and lifting him into the air.
"Ghk…"
Dākui's legs kicked wildly in midair, but he couldn't fight that terrifying strength. His eyes rolled white, his face turning purple.
The huge hand tightened.
Sparks exploded from Dākui's Lightning Armor.
"Aaaah!"
His scream tore into the clouds.
Crunch.
A bone grinding sound that made teeth ache echoed through the air.
The crimson hand crushed Dākui's head in an instant.
Red and white matter dripped down like a smashed watermelon.
Thud.
The headless corpse dropped, melting into the many bodies on the ground.
The girl in the crimson cloak stepped out of the ruins at an unhurried pace.
Boom!
Only then did the roof finally slam down, kicking up dust again.
Pale red bubbles floated into the sky.
The storm like black clouds stopped roiling and instead began to gather and spin in an eerie spiral.
Moisture thickened in the air.
Green sprouts pushed up from the earth.
Watching the girl approach, wrapped in that living crimson cloak, Yotsuki Tsuyoshi felt his throat go dry.
Kumogakure possessed two Jinchūriki, the Two Tails and the Eight Tails.
As a former ANBU captain, he knew exactly what that freely shifting crimson cloak represented.
This girl was Konoha's…
A perfect Jinchūriki.
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