Karin's breath hitched in her throat, as her Mind of Kagura picked up a cluster of four chakra signatures roughly two kilometers off to the east. They were moving with stealthily, but what made her stomach drop was... at least two of them possessed chakra signatures so immense that they rivaled Kimimaro's.
Every instinct screamed at her to yell out and warn the others that a third party was closing in on their battleground. But her words caught in her throat as Sasuke and Kabuto were locked in a clash against Deidara, they were so focused that her interference could provide openings for Deidara.
If she shouted a warning now, she would reveal the information to the Akatsuki, potentially throwing Sasuke off balance. Leaving her post to inform Orochimaru wasn't an option either. Sasuke and Kabuto relied on her sensory abilities to pinpoint Deidara's elusive position amidst the crossfire. If she abandoned him for even a moment, we will put ourselves in a serious disadvantage.
"Should I just shout and risk alerting everyone?" Karin panicked internally, her mind spinning in circles. "What if that third group isn't here for the Akatsuki? What if they strike Sasuke the second they arrive?"
While Karin remained caught by her own dilemma, two kilometers away, Neji Hyuga was undergoing a terrifying transformation.
The curse mark on his neck throbbed, spreading across his skin as his pale complexion darkened into a earthy grey, the pigment turning corpse-like. The expanding body causing the forehead protector to loosen and fall away revealing a vertical slit closed across his brow. His fingernails elongated, curling into feral claws.
Then came the slouching wet sound tore open his muscles in the back as two extra arms burst from his shoulder blades. Almost simultaneously, the vertical slit on his forehead tore wide open to reveal a eye with concentric yellow rings.
Neji conjured a jet-black spear into his upper hands as he added lightning release around it instantly, crackling around the dark weapon, boosting its piercing, and reach.
He gripped the spear firmly with his upper hands, while his two lower arms elongated, plunging deep into the ground behind him to anchor his frame against the force he was about to unleash. He expanded his Byakugan to its absolute limits. Instantly, the world around him came to a near-complete halt. The flow of time seemed to stretch, allowing his brain to process data at an impossible speeds.
"Sage Art: Black Meteorite."
Truthfully, Neji had underestimated the destructive power within this new form. He had never been forced to unleash this level of power before; during his clash with Kakuzu, he had intended to use it, but he had managed to retreat before Neji could fully realize the technique.
With a guttural growl, Neji twisted his hips, rotating his entire torso a full 360 degrees to build an absurd amount of rotational torque. The air whistled around him as he released the spear.
The moment the Black Meteorite left his hands, the recoil was so overwhelming that despite his extra arms being buried deep in the bedrock, Neji was flung backward.
Sakura flickered forward catching his trembling frame before he slammed into the rubble. The moment her hands touched his torso to examine his condition her eyes widened. Neji's internal organs were battered, and his hip muscles were bleeding profusely from severe over-exertion. A normal human body was anatomically capable of roughly 55 degrees of external hip rotation; Neji had forced his skeleton to turn a full circle.
Beside them, Kakashi swallowed hard as his eye went wide with genuine dread at the catastrophic destruction of the attack.
The Black Meteorite tore through the two-kilometer distance in under a second, arriving in front of Sasori before anyone could even process the sound of the launch. Sasori had no time to react. The spear narrowly missed his main frame by mere inches, driving into the ground.
The resulting detonation was surreal as the tremendous heat and shockwave instantly melted the dense bone pillars Kimimaro rose. Sasori's iron sand was vaporized on contact scattered into nothingness. Lord Orochimaru was caught mid-stride, lifted off his feet by the pressure, and hurled away smashing hard into a stone wall.
Sasori managed to pull himself together into a sphere of iron sand at the last second to shield himself, but the kinetic shock still knocked him back. Kimimaro encased himself in a suit of White Knight armor with his absolute densest bone defense... yet even that dense calcium construct began to soften and melt under the heat, sending him tumbling back.
The apocalyptic explosion brought everyone to a halt. Kabuto, Sasuke, and Deidara all froze mid-charge as they turned to stare at the rising mushroom cloud as they began to search for the source of such absurd power.
Deidara, adjusting the mechanical scope attached to his left eye, zoomed in through the billowing smoke. His eye locked onto a distant figure resting in the arms of a pink-haired kunoichi.
"Is that... a Hyuga?" Deidara muttered. "Wait. I remember that guy. He was alongside Kimimaro when they jumped Kakuzu and Konan back at the hideout during the seven tails extraction. Nobody said he could pull off something like that..."
A mocking grin spread across Deidara's face as he turned his gaze back down to the Uchiha in front of him.
"Hey, Sasuke-chan," Deidara taunted, casually swatting away a stray shuriken Sasuke had thrown his way. "That Hyuga over there looks a lot stronger than you. If you want information on Itachi Uchiha, you'd better be that strong, un."
He chuckled, letting his arms hang loosely at his sides as he leaned in closer. "What's the matter? Did that little display hurt your tiny Uchiha ego?"
Sasuke's eyes turned cold as the three magatama spun rapidly in his Sharingan. "Shut your mouth," He growled as lightning erupted from his body, "or I'll shut it for you permanently."
~~
A/N: Well, Neji should be that strong though it was his all in that attack. This will come to an end in about 3 chapters and then there will be a minor time skip.
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