Chapter 4
Meanwhile, high in the yet still rocky enclaves of Cloud Country, lightning flashed as clouds rumbled towards a solitary village. At this sort of altitude, one could say that the village had a cloud of its own surrounding it, sheltering it during stormy weather.
However, this weather was certainly no hindrance to the locals. In fact, they tended to prefer the lightning storm over a gentle, breezy, and cloudless day. Such, was Kumogakure, better known as, the Village Hidden in the Cloud.
Father and son sparred in the surrounding mountains, leaping from rock enclave to rock enclave in a strange game of cat and mouse. Or so it would seem. One was garbed in a rather strand attire, resembling quite strongly some yellow and black creature from another world.
The strange garb also had the odd effect of becoming quite bright when the wearer bathed themselves in lightning release. Waves of electricity emitted from this seemingly half-man half , the fur-like attire sounding like a charging bolt of electrical current as the wearer stood atop one of the many cliffs of one of these high peaks.
Directly opposite, was a very different look; with bandages around the hands, one could immediately tell that this was a man, and his blonde hair stood near on end as he flared himself up with electricity. Additionally, a skull bandana was wrapped loosely around his left arm, and a headband tightly claimed his forehead. Relatively straightforward attire, the man wore a light jumpsuit, apparently not bothering to wear anything more fitting for the chilly air and dizzying heights.
He seemed unbothered, though breathing heavily from some exertion, and with sharp blue eyes stared down his quarry. Gripping his fists, it would seem as if these two were fighting.
This wasn't far from the truth, as the black-and-yellow man called out, "Perhaps you would like to call it for today, Nathan?" "No!" Nathan called back with a roar, "I have to go back home tomorrow, and I want to finish this training at long last!" "Suit yourself," the other man replied, once again charging up Raiton to a single palm.
"Aw come on Rai, how about you use that special technique set?" Nathan insisted with a slight whine, "You have been toying with me for half an hour now!" "Sorry son, but I don't go showing off those techniques in relative public," Rai shouted back as he shot a powerful blast of electricity from his outstretched palm, aiming it towards Nathan.
Rapidly Nathan's eyes flashed to life as he narrowly dodged the beam, skidding down the mountain with chakra-augmented steps. Leaping from the mountain just as the top was completely blasted to bits, Nathan spun in mid-air and landed on another mountain, his chakra attaching him cleanly to the rock face.
Almost as if a thousand birds were screeching for his head, the air filled with the sound of Raiton as Rai suddenly appeared behind Nathan with a kunai in hand.
Before an opportunity to slash could be capitalized on, the kunai instantly raised into the air; taking a slightly startled Rai with it. Manipulating the kunai using his magnetic chakra, Nathan hurled the kunai downwards towards the cloud covered 'floor' of their battlefield.
Chuckling to himself, perhaps in amusement, Rai ceased the bird chatter of his clothing and seemingly allowed himself to descend.
Nathan did not buy this for a second, and instead leapt higher up on the mountain, abandoning the manipulation of the kunai. Reaching into his weapons pouch, the man pulled out an entire roll of iron wire. Using his chakra, he quickly expanded it into a web in a mile radius of his location.
Holding onto the ends, Nathan closed his eyes and focused, filtering his chakra to maintain the sometimes suspended wiring. A single twang and Nathan immediately knew where Rai was.
Of course, this didn't matter, as electricity suddenly flowed through the wires towards Nathan. Using the wires and his own Raiton chakra, he would redirect this quick flow of electricity until it was being redirected back to its source. Surprisingly, the entire wiring began to twang as the electricity seemingly gave out. Nathan, suspecting foul play, released the wires, mere seconds before the ends burst with a powerful wave of electricity.
"Gah!" Nathan cried out as he was shocked. Having trained with Raiton for so long, his body could sustain some hits, but he didn't expect the voltage to come out in this manner. However, Nathan leapt from that peak to yet another one, huffing in irritation as a few minor burns appeared on his body.
"Damn, all these months and I'm still not immune to his lightning release…" Nathan grumbled in clear dissatisfaction, bringing his hands together. Intent on changing the very nature of the battle, he would wait, for just a few moments, as he knew that Rai was unlikely to let up until he completely consented.
Yet, he still felt like he was just toying with him. His sparring partner was the host of a tailed beast, after all, and he expected a much stronger showing. Well, one couldn't ask for much extra as Rai suddenly appeared, mid-air, with four fingers extended.
Rotating, the man suddenly set a rain of electric bullets towards Nathan. Not even bothering to move any further, the very ground beneath him suddenly sprouts trees, and just as the bullets were beginning to make impact, a dense dome of the trees completely closed off the man from his counterpart.
"Tch, hasn't shown that all year," Rai mentioned to himself, ceasing his spinning as he landed atop the dome. Trees sprouted randomly from the dome as if they were attempting to restrict Rai's movements; much rather, Rai leap from the trees, only for the mountain cliff that he was about to land on to suddenly swarm with the nuisances.
"Talk about reforestation," Rai joked loudly as he suddenly surrounded himself in Raiton. Just as it seemed as if he would be engulfed by the trees, the man rapidly began bursting through them. Like a lightning bolt, he flashed through his intended restraints as if they were made of mere rock, and appeared on a stable peak some distance away.
Projecting his hands forward, Rai suddenly releases a powerful beam; this, however, was not Raiton, and instead was more like a laser beam, reminiscent of the storm release bloodline limit. The bolt would hit home, shattering the wooden dome and sending its pieces flying into the cloud line below. A bead of sweat dropped from Rai's forehead, much to his surprise, as Nathan was nowhere to be seen.
This was strange, as Nathan was normally not one to run from a spar without as much as a good-bye. Hearing the ground beginning to crumble beneath him, Rai assumed that Nathan had taken this time to maneuver below, as he was aware that his son sported almost as many elements as he did.
However, even as a hand appeared from below, Rai merely stomped the ground with a Raiton enhanced foot, crushing the entire ground beneath him. His eyes would light up; however, as suddenly Nathan appeared to be in three places at once.
"Wood clones!" Rai guessed as he sent out a near invisible wave of eletricity, which quickly sent the three Nathan's sprawling into the tumbling abyss. Even so, as Rai began to fall towards the remaining part of the mountain, a brief whistle of air suddenly caught his attention. Behind him Nathan, his toad-like eyes narrowing towards the back of Rai, struck down hard with a single fist.
Rai would gasp as he was sent plummeting past the poofing clones and towards the harsh ground below. Although his ears popped from the rapid changes in elevation, Rai closed his eyes and concentrated. Nathan watched from above as he neatly landed on the remaining rock face, a smirk on his own face as frog kata had proved its usefulness. However, rather than making a thud, the resounding sound was instead a splash.
"What the…?" Nathan muttered to himself as he suddenly sensed a change in the chakra below. Dodging what seemed to be invisible distortions in the air, Nathan eventually leapt from the mountain to land on an as of yet untouched mountain. Just in time for the clouds below to suddenly begin moving according to some unseen will.
Performing a set of handsigns for perhaps the second time in the entire fight, Nathan suddenly expels a large amount of water into the sky. As the below cloud surges forward, Nathan brings his hands downward, and his sky suddenly begins down pouring with rain. However, this was no ordinary shower, and it was instead in the likeness of a giant wave of water. There seemed to be only one problem involved here, as Nathan was near in the middle of the convergence zone.
His hands being extended, the man clenches his teeth, as perfect timing is required, hoping that both gravity and volume were on his side of things.
Down below, Rai looks upward as he uses Suiton to surge the water droplets of the clouds upwards; based on what he could tell, Nathan was thinking if countering water with water. An odd move, but it was not something that Rai was going to get too upset about as he extended his hands outwards, surging electricity upwards towards the converging waves.
If Nathan had had some sort of plan to merely swim through the water, then he would be quite mistaken. If he were to attempt it, he would be shocked; if he didn't, then he would probably need to use some sort of space-time technique to dodge it. Or so Rai assumed, until his eyes caught sight of a small volume of water suddenly vanishing; and being replaced by Nathan.
Nathan suddenly surrounded himself, almost as if they had grown right from his body, in trees. The wave of Raiton would pass into the above torrents of water, and the wood would break up, leaving a mostly unharmed Nathan to continue his descent.
Preparing to meet Nathan in the air, Rai suddenly noticed an emerging problem. Shouting upwards, he called out, "Nate, I think you forgot something when you decided to replace some of that water…" Before he could finish with his warning, wires would suddenly appear from the ground and wrap around Rai.
Nathan smirked, as he had now restrained Rai's movements; for now. However, for some reason, the sky had suddenly become extremely dark; even by the standards of an approaching thunderstorm. Rai's call fell on deaf ears, however, as Nathan's sage mode dimmed and faded with the completion of his wire attack, using the seemingly abandoned wires from earlier and his magnetism to take Rai off guard.
More concerned with the descending columns of water, Rai suddenly became surrounded in a tangible cloak of red chakra. A mix of Raiton and sheer force freed him from the wires as he suddenly burst forward. The tint of red seemed to be coming in the form of a fox of sorts, but it was hard to tell as the man travelled as nearly a blur upwards towards Nathan. Nathan, realizing that something was wrong, finally took the time to look up, to see a giant column of water spilling down towards him.
The earlier clash between the two bodies of water had resulted in the most obvious of cases; while Rai's cloud body may have temporarily stalled it, gravity was the true victor of the hour as both combined bodies succumbed to its effects. And now, with their combined weight, they seemed to be coming down faster than Nathan was descending.
Certainly not a preferred case scenario, that was for sure. Calling his wires once again to him, the nearest mountain seemingly called forth one tremendously long wire that embedded itself into a parallel mountain; Nathan, using his chakra, managed to land atop this wire, bending it considerably, just seconds after Rai landed next to him, cloaked in electricity.
In a shocking blur, the two men went from atop the wire to gone, as the water completely collapsed the wire and flooded the ground below.
Some miles up the road, Kumogakure, busy as ever, had been hunkered down for the storm, as lightning flashed in the dark sky overhead. A band of shinobi seemed to be crowded around the gates when suddenly the ground gently shook.
The torrent of water completely overwhelmed the road in the distance, much to the perplexion of onlookers. They could only assume that it had been a battle of sorts, though the downward sloping road would keep the water from even getting near Kumogakure.
Despite this, chatter ensued until an electricity encased duo arrived at the gates. Rai was huffing and puffing, a few more drops of sweat now leaving his brow as he looked back at the close call. From his hand he released his grip on Nathan, who dropped to his feet, and wiped the sweat from his brow.
"Whew… That was close," Rai joked, "Any longer and we would have been sinking with the boulders."
"Hail, Raikage!" several of the onlookers said as everyone bowed sharply, save for one lone figure, who bowed much more shallowly. "Lord Raifudo," this figure began, "If you are no longer busy, a word perhaps?" This man was largely concealed, with a hooded cloak hiding most of his features from view. However, the Kumo symbol was embroided on most of the cloak, so it could be presumed that it might be a member of the local ANBU.
"Of course, to my office," Raifudo proclaimed, rubbing Nathan's hair back into a tangled mess. "Till next time," he commented as he walked after the ANBU. Nathan sighed; back to the old grind for him too it would seem. And he had a good bit of travelling to do to get home…
Wandering through a broken down residential area, a single man, clothed in white robes with purple decorations on it, with a single purple diamond on it. The letters within it said "sound". The road was crumbling, the signs of the decayed and highly worn down infrastructure. The man sighed, as he came to one of the few gatekeepers left in this village.
"You are to be in charge of the gates while I am gone," the man declared, "I may not come back, this time, but, I just want you to know that I did always care." The gatekeeper did not reply, most of his form hidden in the shadows. Sighing, the figure cast the robes off onto the broken streets before dashing off in a blur. As the robes fluttered to the ground, the gatekeeper sighed.
Yet another leader had gone by, and the crumbling Sound was losing its luster. Otogakure used to be one of the great nations of the world; now their position had undoubtedly been usurped by the Rain. Recent events had only made things worse, and the constant destruction and reconstruction of the village had taken its toll on the residents.
It was a dying land; and this lone gatekeeper seemed to be one of the few left as a chilling wind blew past. Even the rice fields that surrounded the village seemed dead, and the bright sky contrasted to the bleak landscape. Katana divided parts of the streets; bones littered certain areas as scavenging animals picked off whatever sustenance that they could.
The largest and tallest building in the village creaked and groaned, almost as if it voiced the dying breathes of this once great village. Some moans went out into the day before they were silenced by some unknown whisper. Perhaps a flying piece of metal, or the silent claws of the wild beasts did the deed. Either way, silence persisted throughout most of the time.
Despite this, the gatekeeper dutifully stood guard, defiantly holding down the position until further notice. The walls were crumbling, but this was still the most conventional way of getting in. Stillness finally took root, as the last cry was swiftly silenced by the sounds of a successful hunt. A lone, boney figure shifted down the street, making hardly any noise as they did so.
It was an old man, greyed beyond being able to tell what color his hair originally sported. He went with such a drag that one would think that he was about to keel over at any second. A desperate soul who came to the gates spoke a few words to the gatekeeper. "I do not know why you stubbornly cling to this place, Trev; but I am going to die in the fields. I will not be consumed in my home."
Trev nodded towards the man, and watched as she shifted away. Blinking, as if that brief exchange had touched some emotion long buried with this ruined site, Trev shifted forward just slightly. His form was still largely concealed, but a single whisper emitted from his lips.
He then stepped towards the robes, chilled to the bone by a wind that attempted to deter this action. Shaded now by an overhead cloud, the young man reached down and grabbed the cloak, speaking as he did so. "By my life, I swear that I will not let you die in your own home," Trev spoke to seemingly to no one, "Peace at long last, but oh the price… Father, you have left your own country to rot in such a manner. And so, I take up the mantle that you and your kind have left behind. And I shall renew and rebuild this forsaken village; I so swear it!"
And with that he donned the robes of the Otogakure, staring off towards the old man shifting to the fields. Silence, had truly become the deadliest sound, if men were driven to such notions.