Chapter 10

Royal Fury: Part 2

It was the purpose of the Thunder Corp to contribute to the fight from far behind the front lines. The organization, and the jutsu associated with it, had been created with nothing but that in mind. When Mari had been receiving her training, mastering the complicated and deadly jutsu that would vaporize Cloud's enemies from a distance, her sensei, a squat dark-skinned woman with a messy scar across the length of her chin, had told her something she'd found ridiculous.

"When you're in a battle," she'd said, "you're worried about yourself, and the comrades next to you, but not much else. In the heat of the moment, all you can focus on is the situation you're presented with. You survive from fight to fight in service of a greater strategic goal." She'd frowned. "In the Thunder Corp, you won't have that luxury."

The idea had seemed silly to Mari. She'd giggled, shared an incredulous glance with one her friends. The 'luxury' of fighting for your life? It was ridiculous: just one of the things that older shinobi said that reminded Mari they came from a very different world. Hurling lightning from the backline was just as exciting as any spar, and incredibly novel. To Mari, it had been a dream assignment, at least until she'd grown discontent with the lack of action.

It was only now, besieging the nest and frying groups of closing Ants, that Mari understood what her teacher had meant.

This far back, she was completely detached from the consequences of both her actions and the enemies. She threw lightning, Ants died: there was no feedback, and ultimately, little sense of accomplishment. There were always more of the creatures, and they were threatening those she'd come to help protect. She'd heard Hinata's muffled warning over the radio, and now, trapped in her support role, she could nothing but imagine what was happening to the Hyuuga.

Despite the power of the lightning hovering above her and the clear affect it was having on the enemy, Mari Kansai felt helpless. But before her, Isaac Netero seemed unconcerned.

To Mari, the man seemed much like the old shinobi around Kumogakure, particularly the ones willing to talk about the Fourth War. Archaic and yet larger than life, old and deceptively strong. In this battle, he'd practically become the embodiment of that strength. The huge Nen construct surging up out of him that crushed the Ants that attacked him with abandon was absolutely terrifying, like something out of a legend, meant to match the Bijuu. And the Chairman of the Hunter's Association himself…

He was laughing. She could hear it despite the two hundred or so meters the man had created between them. A low, booming laugh, shaking his thin frame inside the golden construct. She couldn't dream as to why.

The Chairman had destroyed nearly one hundred Ants in the minute and a half since Mari had fired the first bombardment that had started the assault. Their numbers seemed endless despite Hinata's early assurances, and they had clearly learned from their fellow's mistakes. While the first couple dozen of the Chairman's kills had resulted from the Ants charging him in a blind bloodlust, the ones following them had been cleverer, trying to attack him from all sides and eventually learning to skirt around him, targeting Mari instead.

Her Tengoku Hogeki had destroyed the first several groups, tearing up great gashes gashes in the forest and halting their advance, but as more and more Ants had managed to slip by Netero, Mari had begun to realize that she may have no choice but to retreat. She couldn't hope to stand up to multiple Ants in close combat, and the Chairman was either unable or unwilling to fall back to cover her more comprehensively.

No, it wasn't that. The moment he fell back, more Ants would surge into the gap; if he drew closer to her now, it would only push more enemies into her. Mari realized that without speaking, the Chairman was creating an opening for her, expecting her to take it. Perhaps he hadn't realized she was less experienced than the other shinobi, or just didn't care. At any rate, the assault team was already inside the nest; it was definitely time to pack up.

The swarm of Ants were drawing closer: there were five or six in particular that would probably reach her before she could safely withdraw, including one towering creature that looked like the unfortunate melding of a man, a rabbit, and some sort of multicolored bird. It leapt across the barren earth, covered in its comrade's blood, saliva running freely from its wide, buck-toothed mouth.

Mari stood up from her cross-legged position, blood rushing back to her legs. She pulled her other arm back up over her head, focusing on the orb of chakra and lightning, and curled both hands into fists. The jutsu convulsed, widened. Static crackled in her ear: it sounded like a name. Her headset was useless while her technique was running. She hadn't expected that.

The Ant was screaming something about eating her, how delicious her bones would taste. Mari did her best to ignore the words, along with the shiver they sent up her spine. The monster was only thirty meters away when she slammed her hands down, her whole body following the motion into a crouch. Her fists blew a small crater in the dirt, the chakra surrounding them faintly glowing with blue energy.

Above her, the ball of lightning suddenly rocketed down, far faster than it had ascended. Jets of lightning skipped off of it. The Ant, just twenty feet from her, looked up, its eyes going wide, just in time to be struck by one thick beam. The electricity stopped it cold, its muscles spasming.

"Not again!" it had just enough time to scream, its body shaking uncontrollably, before the jutsu slammed directly into it with a thunderous BOOM. The explosion of energy sent out a huge wave of heat, blew a eerily spherical hole of crystallized dirt and rock in the ground, and sent Mari tumbling backwards, tossed away by the blast. She rode the shockwave and came to her feet, sprinting for the distant hills and the nearest of Knov's bizarre portals. The Ant had been completely destroyed, and its comrades following close behind it had either been partially fried or had paused in clear shock at the rabbit-like Ant's sudden and explosive death. A cloud of vaporized blood drifted across the crater before it was wiped away by the misty rain.

It gave her enough time to buy some distance, but in the end, one dead Ant wasn't going to make a huge difference. Kiba Inuzuka and Shino Aburame would decide whether the mission was a success or not; at this point, all she could do was keep herself safe.

The first Ant to get in Kiba's way had its head unceremoniously wrenched off. He moved on, the surviving clones falling in behind him. One of his stepped on the head in passing: it was still gnashing its teeth. They'd only been in the nest for twenty seconds, but already two of his clones and one of Hinata's had fallen. Only six left.

Kiba was in that peculiar state of mind that he figured for something like battlelust. A combination of panic, expressed through his pounding blood and jittering limbs, and razor focus, which drove him forward without uncertainty or mercy. He'd only felt it a few times before in his life, but he was glad this was one of them. He'd wanted to go back with Shino to help Hinata, but the both of them had known that would be foolishness. Abandoning the mission out of fear was silly, and between himself and Shino, he had the best chance of finding the Queen without the guidance of Hinata's eyes.

Eight Ants dead so far. It wasn't very many, but every slain monsters gave him a sense of deep satisfaction. This wasn't like fighting people. Each dead beast removed a direct threat to humanity; there was no ambiguity. And the Queen, the foul thing he could smell so clearly at the top of the nest, was the source of them all.

While Shino helped Hinata, Kiba would ensure that no other Ants would be created. It was the perfect compromise.

Well, Hinata was in danger, so not perfect, but she would be fine. He was sure of it. Hinata still had a trump card. Even if she hated it, she would have to use that terrifying lunar chakra if she were in real trouble. Kiba knew she would rather suffer it a thousand times than risk not seeing her family again.

Another ten seconds of frantic running, scrambling through the nest like the Ants occupying it. To Kiba's enhanced perception it was torturously long. Another Ant died, one of Hinata's clones driving a hand wreathed in chakra through one of its bulbous mantis eyes and splattering its skull and brains against the opposite wall. Kiba's nose led him true through the twisting passages, which relentlessly transitioned from horizontal to vertical without warning. The scents of maggot-chewed meat, old bones, pungent crossbreed Ants, thick smoke… they were all irrelevant. Kiba's senses cut through it all, focusing on the one thing that mattered.

But then, when a new smell entered the equation, Kiba was careful to take notice. This was unlike the other: sharper, more distinct, almost like that of the Queens. It smelled like lacquered leather and rotten sweets.

One of the Royal Guards, he was sure. His nose wasn't lying. There was no way to avoid it. There were only two paths up to the queen that wouldn't require backtracking through an unacceptable amount of Ants, and the Guard was standing watch over both of them.

Kiba had to acknowledge the things lived up to their titles. He made contact about three seconds later, bursting into the corridor junction, and the thing's sight.

It was certainly the most human looking of the Ants Kiba had seen. Were it not for the dark wings laying on its back like some sort of cape, its unnaturally pale and unblemished skin, or the antenna sticking out of its forehead, it would have been practically indistinguishable from a normal person. Even its clothes were ordinary enough, if frilly.

"Human," it said, its voice inexplicably cultured, the pronunciation precise. "You've made a terrible-"

"Gatsuga!"

Kiba launched into the technique without slowing down, transforming into a human bullet that roared down the corridor straight into the Ant. The Guard was fast though, maybe faster than Kiba himself. It reached out fearlessly and fastened one hand on Kiba's shoulder in the middle of the jutsu. Skin was scraped away and the Ant's wrist bent in an unsightly way, but Kiba was ground to a painful, jarring halt. The Ant punched out with its other hand, lightning fast, and struck Kiba in the face.

He howled, his nose shattering under the blow, and struck back on instinct: with his teeth. His mouth snapped shut, shearing off all of the Ant's fingers except its thumb. They tasted bizarre, and felt too light, and Kiba spat them out like bullets, trying to hurt the Ant with its own digits. But the detached fingers simply disappeared in a bizarre shimmer of golden light, melting away in microscopic particles that dusted the Ant's face.

The Guard looked enraged, but Kiba didn't give it time to attack again. He planted his feet and threw himself forward, body-slamming the thing back, and then scrambled past it, snorting blood through his shattered nose. It grabbed at his ankle, momentarily halting him, before his and Hinata's clones descended on it en-masse, slamming it to the ground with a muffled protest and tearing into it with Gentle Fist and bare claws. Kiba stumbled forward on all fours, picking up speed.

One of his clones died, suddenly transmitting information. The Guard was mostly undamaged and desperate to pursue him, but the clones were just as desperate to buy him seconds with their lives. The once normal looking Ant was steadily transforming into a deranged looking insect, lashing out without a hint of grace. Kiba didn't look back. He kept running, faster and faster. His nose had been shattered, and so his strongest sense had vanished, but the memory of the Queen's scent drove him forward with unerring accuracy. The pain did too, along with a boiling sense of indignation and rage.

His nose hurt terribly, like someone hammering a spike deep into his face.

'Fuck these things.'

The corridor stretched on forever, an infinite stretch of damp brown darkness.

'We'll kill them all.'

Was it a sunk cost thing at this point? He couldn't be sure. They'd already wasted blood and time dealing with these things. At this point, not finishing the job would be a joke.

And that all started with the Queen.

Two, three turns left? Kiba wasn't one-hundred percent sure. Just a little pain like a shattered nose fogging his memory? All this hunting, and he was still feeling a little rusty. It was more than embarrassing, it was pathetic. Right, left, up, left…

No, right. He spun on his heels, sprinting back, and made another turn, running halfway up the wall, unwilling to bleed speed.

There.

The Queen lay, fat, pulsating, defenseless. Disgusting. It, more than anything else in the nest, looked like a proper Ant, just impossibly huge and swollen. It had nothing resembling a human's expression, but Kiba could swear it almost looked afraid of him. Now he just needed to-

His radio spat static and choked words. "Knov! We need help!"

Hinata. She sounded terrified. A red fog descended on Kiba: he broke into a direct run for the Queen, unsheathing a kunai from his thigh. He'd put a single knife through the thing's face, and this whole thing would be as good as done. The Ants would destroy each other in their confusion, regardless of their intelligence. Shino had assured him of that.

His nose was useless, but there was something else keeping him safe. Kiba had no idea what it really was. Killer instinct? Canine intuition? Fate? Simple, reasonless luck? Later on, he would be sure it was the last.

Whatever it was, as he charged the Queen, he glanced left, away from the terrified creature so jealously guarding its enormous swollen stomach.

His vision was rapidly obscured by an enormous red fist.

Of course, he thought, his murderous intent grinding to a halt. His head was abruptly clear.

Of course the final guard is here, in this room. Where else would it be? What am I, retarded? I didn't see that coming?

He'd been blinded by his pain, eagerness, rage, fear, lingering rust, even after nearly a month of hunting Ants, Hinata's plight, his shattered nose, the inhumanity of the Ants, they'd all distracted him from thinking ahead, coming to the obvious conclusion that his nose had warned him about nearly a minute ago.

The third Royal Guard was standing guard over the Queen. It was a hulking red creature, a monstrous man-thing with cloven feet. Hinata had described it to him. What she hadn't told him was that it had a fist larger than him.

A fist that was about to make contact with his entire body at once.

Kiba almost laughed.

'Man,'' he thought, the black knife in his hand contrasted against the red fist. 'That's fucking dumb.'

The problem was obvious to him. Another crossroad, like the one he and Shino had faced. This time, the answer wasn't as obvious to him. He could kill the Queen now, he was sure of it. A flick of his wrist, and the kunai in his hand would be hurled through the monster's brain, killing it and the King it was gestating. Clean kill. Mission complete. Total success.

Well, mostly total, since Kiba was absolutely sure that if he took that opportunity, the fist that was so quickly and yet so slowly approaching would surely kill him in a single blow.

If he defended himself, there was a chance he'd live. If he didn't, he'd be deader than the First Hokage.

With some bemusement, Kiba found himself considering both options equally, and to his shame, he found himself reluctantly deciding on the second.

In truth, there was no time to think, only to react. Everything transpired in Kiba's head in less than a hundredth of a second.

Kiba screamed in both frustration and pain, bringing the kunai up in a half-guard position, and braced himself. The Royal Guard hit him with more force than a train: the singular blow picked Kiba up off the ground and hurled him into the walls of the nest. His body cut a faint path through the smoke that had infested every inch of the structure, and when he hit the wall, it provided little obstacle to him. The force of the Guard's punch that had broken Kiba's left arm and seven of his ribs–

pop pop pop pop POP

–shattered the wall of the Queen's chamber just as easily. Kiba found himself in the open air, hundreds of feet above the ground, hurtling earthward at an alarming speed and trailing blood and stone in his wake.

The forest spun by, a medley of green and blue and brown, and the world flashed black. Had he blinked, or was he about to pass out? Kiba wasn't sure. The agony in his arm and chest made his nose seem like a careless massage.

'Fuck,' he thought.

'FUCK.'

He needed to prepare himself for a landing. Even a shinobi could be harmed by a careless landing, and he was already in bad shape. He couldn't tell up from down. For some reason, he heard someone say "Now." Where was Akamaru? Why wasn't he here? Everything was spinning, spinning, falling-

Then, just as abruptly as it had started, the confusion stopped.

Kiba found himself suspended in the air, gently held between two enormous golden hands. He looked down, blood dribbling from his mouth and sliding off the glowing hands, and found himself looking into the grinning face of Netero. The old man had caught him with some kind of discount Susano'o. As Kiba watched in astonishment, Netero made a gesture of prayer and then a swipe with his right fist, and another of the construct's many, many hands lashed out, uppercutting an Ant that wandered too close to the Chairman. The monster's upper half was catapulted off into the horizon, while its legs collapsed, ownerless.

Kiba laughed, more blood spilling past his teeth and into the construct's hands. He looked back up, where he'd come from. Rain stung at his eyes. The Guard was there, a massive red figure, looking out of the hole in the nest.

It wouldn't pursue him. It couldn't leave the Queen's side. Kiba was forced to acknowledge, once more, that the Ants were smart.

For bugs.

His eyes slipped closed, black chasing across his sight. He lay in the land between consciousness for several seconds, struggling to stay awake, before giving in. His headset had been cracked when he'd slammed into the wall of the nest, but somehow, it was still partially transmitting. The last thing Kiba heard before he passed out was one of the Hunter's voices voice, barely discernible over the radio.

The only understandable word was 'medical.'

The fear it raised up carried him down into the darkness kicking and screaming.