Chapter 9: Awakening
Outside, Kenji was giving orders.
"Sakuko, Shoto, I want you both to move further into the village and take high ground. It could help us buy some time." he said as he was getting treated.
Shoto nodded in agreement. The walls were now useless. Better to defend the main compound that could be used as a fortress.
"I will arrange it as—" Kenji didn't finish his sentence, when he felt it. He wasn't the only one; Shoto and Sakuko felt it, too.
They simultaneously looked at the clash.
Saki's aura was now rapidly decreasing, the chakra that was going-toe-to-toe with a Bijuu-dama was now rapidly shrinking.
Horror washed over Sakuko's face.
"No, no no no," she ran to the edge of the wall.
She saw her teacher get completely swallowed.
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Saki had just regained her senses.
The first thing she felt was agony. But she ignored it. Ignored her now mangled hands. Ignored her broken legs. Ignored her broken and melted armour that was searing to her skin.
Instead she whispered.
"Goodbye, Brother. May we meet again in the afterlife."
Then, the seals covering her entire body began to absorb chakra. And began to change, the roots-like seals wrapping around her body like an exoskeleton began to pulse in their own heart beat.
The black inked seals changed their colour and morphed into crimson petals—red spider lily petals.
The seal matrix behind her back dissolved and with it the whole seal array that was around her body also dissolved in her body.
Saki felt it. The seals were merging with her—not just into her flesh, but much deeper. Like they were etching themselves in her very being.
Something bloomed on her forehead. A single crimson spider lily, petals unfurling outward — then scattering. Red markings crept across her temples, down toward her cheekbones, still spreading, still settling, like the seal hadn't finished deciding its shape yet.
She felt something inside her shatter, like a dam bursting open.
Then Bijuu-dama finally engulfed her whole body.
But in the next instant.
Swish.
The Bijuu-dama was cut in half diagonally. The two parts passed by her harmlessly—well mostly.
Boooom. Boooom.
Behind her two new craters were formed.
Then the shockwaves came, she didn't even budge from her place. The gale violently whipped her hair forward, the strands thrashing in the howling wind. What remained of her shredded, melted armor came undone.
She looked at her hands which were mangled. Most of her fingers were hanging by the flesh. Then her eyes shifted towards her legs. One was bent in the wrong direction with her leg bones piercing her flesh. The other leg had fractured bones.
She turned her head looking behind. The sight she saw pained her. Her village walls, which had stood for years, were now in shambles.
Even these shockwaves, though far from the village, required her students and friends to work together to prevent more destruction.
'I have to fight far from here.' she thought as she looked ahead.
She could feel it, the power coursing through her veins. She could destroy a mountain quite easily. And if she was not careful enough the aftermath would be devastating for her village.
"So this is what it feels like to step beside those two," she said as she looked at her hands. Her red eyes were not looking at the hanging fingers, but at the seals — that were shaped like petals — around her hand.
She felt their breath; felt their pulse.
A small smile came to her lips. Then she bit her own lips. Activating her mutated healing bite.
It was something she learned from Kushina.
And remembering her, a slight worry appeared on her face for a second but it was gone in the next.
'I had trained her better than that.'
Then the place she bit began to glow and in the next instant she felt her wound begin to heal.
The fingers that were hanging by the flesh began to mend themselves together, same for her legs, muscles and bones around her body.
As if time itself had rewound, her body returned to pristine condition.
The only proof that she had been injured at all was the melted remnants of her armor and her shredded bodysuit.
======
Meanwhile, Sanji was grinning just moments before; now wore a horrified look.
He couldn't believe what just happened. The massive Biju-dama—forged by combining two Tailed Beast Bombs—had just been cut in half.
Then he heard the Kiri swordsman's frantic voice beside him.
"Shit! Everyone, prepare defenses! Use Water Style and reinforce it with ice! Hurry!!"
He wanted to ask why the swordsman was giving these orders, but he got his answer a second later. The giant, diagonal slash was still traveling, and it was coming right towards them.
The Kiri swordsman looked at the other two who had snapped out of their daze after seeing the Bijuu-dama cut in half.
He looked at the closing slash. His instincts were screaming at him to run, from the very beginning he saw that woman. But he ignored it.
Now, the closer they got towards the shores, the louder his instincts were clawing at him to run.
"Water Release: Great Waterfall Technique"
"Water Release: Water wall"
"Ice Release: Ice Winds"
They released their jutsus. And the seas answered, walls of water uplifted from the surface and in the next second frozen by ice release.
A few even released their own attack to slow the momentum of the attack.
He looked behind him; to his ninjas and signaled them with a few hand signs, and they nodded and dispersed into the ocean.
Then, the slash reached them. He couldn't even see it through the ice; it tore through layer after layer of their frozen defenses like glass.
Crack.
The final wall fractured, a massive spiderweb of fissures spreading across the ice. But, it held.
Sanji—that Kumo bastard—looked at the exhausted jinchuriki and spoke again.
"You two, handle the Crimson Witch. Stall for time, and we will finish wiping out the village as quickly as possible."
A reasonable order. Pit the monsters against the monster.
He also looked at them. The Two-Tails and The Four-Tails.
Their faces were somewhat pale and resigned.
Then he also said,
"Don't hold back. Go full power from the start… if you don't… you will not get the chance."
He also got ready because they were about to reach the shores.
The two Jinchūriki exchanged a defeated look.
'They were just that—A weapon.'
But they still leaped from the railing down to the water's surface, sprinting toward the shore, the rest of the vanguard closely following behind them.
=======
Saki was still testing her newly mended body, clenching her fists and flexing her legs, when she felt the incoming waves of enemies.
She looked ahead. The crimson spider lily on her forehead began to glow — its petals unfurling slowly, red markings creeping outward across her cheeks down her neck, and for a split second, a brilliant halo of pure fūinjutsu materialized behind her head.
But just as quickly, it flickered and fizzled out.
Saki didn't notice it. Instead her focus was on her own body. The petal-like seals began to glow once more—but they were not on her skin. They were shining beneath it.
Then she narrowed her eyes, focusing inward. She felt it—something on the verge of awakening. She just needed to push it.
She exhaled a breath and stepped forward.
Step.
On the first step, her dense blue chakra flared violently around her. She opened it. The first stage.
Step.
She opened the second stage. As her foot touched the earth, the ground fractured. Stones and debris began to lift and float around her, defying gravity.
Step.
With the third stage, her heart hammered against her ribs, she felt her blood coursing much faster. In each of these stages her strength kept increasing.
Swish.
In the next instant, she became a blinding streak of blue and crimson, converging on the two massive chakra signatures closing in on the shore.
She reached them in a fraction of a second, tightened her grip on her odachi, and swung.
She saw their eyes widen in absolute shock. But they dodged with inhuman flexibility with the help of their chakra limbs.
Her odachi cut cleanly through the surrounding trees, boulders and the ground.
A few seconds before.
The two Jinchuriki, already wrapped in their bubbling Tailed Beast chakra cloaks, had split from the main force. They changed direction, zeroing in on the terrifying growing pressure.
When they reached the shores and entered the forest, their enhanced instincts screamed at them.
In the next second, they saw only a red blur.
And then she was right in front of them. Suspended mid-air with her weapon in hand, her crimson hair flowed behind her in wild waves. Her face was a mask of absolute indifference. The faint glow of her red eyes in the darkness, bathed in the light of the red moon, gave her a haunting, ethereal visage.
But the most captivating detail was the mark on her forehead—glowing brightly like a crown fit for a queen.
Then their eyes widened in shock, when they saw her hand muscles tighten around her odachi and before their mind could react their enhanced body did.
They dodged the blade by mere centimeters, but the sheer shockwave of the swing still flung them back several meters.
The Four Tails Jinchuriki landed first. He looked up to track the woman, but she was already gone.
A split second later, a devastating impact crashed into his jaw. Then... nothing but black.
The next thing he knew, he was embedded deep inside the splintered Kumo warship. His vision slowly clearing around the edges as a deafening whine rang in his ears.
Half of his jaw hung at a sickening angle.
As his senses sluggishly returned, a horrifying realization washed over him. He had been knocked unconscious. By a single punch.
Now he understood why that Kiri ninja told them to go all out. Without his chakra cloak to absorb the blow, that single hit would have obliterated half of his body.
The Two Tails Jinchuriki had just landed and watched how that woman teleported in front of Four-Tails and punched his jaw.
His eyes saw in slow motion how the Four Tails' jaw broke with a sickening crack. His fellow Jinchuriki hurled backward—breaking the sound barrier as he disappeared toward the sea.
A cold sweat ran down his back. Even with the enhanced speed of the Two-Tails, he could barely track her.
Then, those glowing red eyes turned toward him.
His instincts screamed and he braced for the impact, but the blow arrived instantly—Boom—a crushing weight landed in his stomach.
He folded and shot towards the sky, scattering the gathering clouds.
Saki looked at her hands—especially the corrosive chakra that clung to them. Casually, she shrugged it away, flicking it off as if it were nothing.
Her attention shifted to the enemy forces, who were ignoring her entirely to make a beeline for the village.
She narrowed her eyes and was about to launch herself. But a sudden shift in the air stopped her.
Her gaze snapped toward the Four-Tails who was closing in a red streak, then whipped upward, her hands tightening around the grip of her odachi as she braced for the coming impact.
Leaping backward, Saki brought her odachi up and—
Swish.
Blocked the Four-Tails' massive claws in mid-air. She absorbed the heavy clash and masterfully used the recoil to propel herself even further back.
In the next second, a laser eradicated the ground she was standing on, leaving a smouldering crater in the remaining forest.
Carried by her momentum, she came out of the blast zone, at the shore.
Then the Two Tails also landed with a resounding boom destroying the beach and scattering sand everywhere.
When the dust settled, she finally saw them clearly.
They both looked monstrous. Before, they were surrounded by corrosive chakra.
Now they were the chakra itself.
'They activated the second version.' she thought.
But out of the corner of her eye, her gaze caught the shoreline.
A massive fleet of ships was docking, disgorging fresh waves of enemy shinobi onto the coast. Without a second of hesitation, Saki pivoted and launched herself toward them.
'I can't let them pass,' she thought, her grip on her odachi tightening as she closed the distance. 'Especially not this many.'
As she was closing in, from behind came chakra claws, destroying everything as they chased her. And Two Tails Jinchuriki was following her closely.
She dodged what she could. What she couldn't, she cut.
The enemies only saw a crimson streak closing in followed by two bubbling, dark-red masses of chakra. The monsters behind her attacked with chakra limbs, in an attempt to catch the first one.
Saki parried a razor-sharp claw aimed for her head, and counterattacked with her own slash. But the blade couldn't cut deep enough. The Two Tails' cloak absorbed the strike, slightly pushing the beast back. Before she could press the advantage. she had to dodge a pair of Four Tails' claws erupting from underground.
'This is getting annoying,' she thought.
Without missing a beat, she pivoted on her heels and continued her charge towards the other side of the shoreline.