Emergence of Talents
Anger. Confusion. Dismay.
Fear. Panic. Despair.
Hatred. Sorrow.
Naruto felt all of these things, yet not all of these feelings originated from within himself. He felt the fear and pain of the masses who now fought, disorganized and desperate, against this unexpected threat.
They had thought, they had planned and conceived, reckoning only a battle against Kaguya. Such a fight would surely be hard-won, but it could be won.
This one was less certain.
His parents were on the field of battle. But they were the enemy, both having already struck down many score of kunoichi between them. So too were his daughters, the children he had sired by his four beloved wives.
Tamon. Koumoku. Zoujou. Jikoku.
Naruto felt his anger at Kaguya grow deeper and hotter. Not only had that woman done so many horrible things to the world, but now she was even using his own daughters against him?
He clenched his fists, and his eyes flashed.
"Dammit..." he growled. "What did Kaguya do to them?"
Shikamari surveyed the destruction spread around the wide camp of the Kunoichi Alliance, a weary expression on her face.
"Are those your daughters out there?" she ventured to ask Naruto.
The blond nodded, gritting his teeth.
"And my parents," he said. "Kaguya must have done something to them. Brainwashed them or something."
"They need to be stopped," Sakura said. "If Kaguya's trying to use them against us, then we just need to snap them out of it."
She squeezed Naruto's shoulder and gave him a comforting smile.
"We still have around half of the surviving Akatsuki here in the central camp with us," Hinata said, her byakugan active as she surveyed their surroundings. "They're awaiting orders."
"So are the other jinchuuriki," Gaara added.
"Raikage, Mizukage, and Tsuchikage are out on the front lines, or getting close to them," Naruto said pensively.
He looked at Shikamari, who furrowed her brow in thought.
"We'd concentrated most of our strongest assets in the center camp so they would be equidistant from any point that might be attacked by Kaguya," Sasuki interjected. "If we emptied this camp and sent everyone out to one of the six fronts, it should be enough to turn the tide."
"I'll go to Mina," Miraiya said. "I know enough about her fighting style and techniques to stand a good chance."
"So will I," said Obi after a moment's thought. "And I think Kagome should, too." Shikamari nodded.
"All three of you are people important to Mina, right?" she mused. "You have the best odds of snapping her out of this."
"If that's how we're doing it, then we should probably send Sasuki, Hinata, Gaara, and Sakura out to talk sense into their daughters," Tsunade suggested.
"It would also be expedient to have the jinchuuriki reinforce those camps which represent their home villages," Mari added. "They would be best suited to coordinating with their own kind."
"We should probably do something similar with the Akatsuki, then, too," said Kagome. "The ones still here, at least."
"Hidan and Kakuzu are unaccounted for," Hinata noted. "As is Sasori-chan."
"Suna will be getting the least reinforcements, going by our current formula," Gaara commented. "As it is, I would request the accompaniment of Naruto's remaining ANBU guards. And now Sasori is missing?"
"You can take Deidara with," said Sasuki. "Iwa will be getting more than enough reinforcements with the Yonbi and Gobi."
Naruto nodded in agreement.
"This sounding good to you, Shikamari?"
"It's still a bit lopsided," the shadow mistress remarked. "But we can't exactly afford to stand here debating troop movements all day. I suppose you'll want to handle Kushina?"
Naruto nodded.
"Yeah," he said. His voice was a touch hoarse.
Shikamari nodded.
"Alright," she said. "Give the orders, supreme commander. Gaara, Sai, Nadeshiko, Yugao, and Deidara will be going to the Suna camp to engage Tamon. Sasuki, Konan, Yahiko, and Fuu will be heading off to tackle Jikoku. Sakura, Tsunade, and myself will take on Zoujou—"
"—so will I," Mari said, looking in the direction of the Konoha camp. "She's using the same ninjutsu as Hashirama, and I'm the most knowledgeable one here on how to fight a wood-style master."
"Fair enough," Shikamari said with a shrug. "That leaves Hinata, Kouma, Utakata and Yagura to incapacitate Koumoku; Obi, Kagome, Miraiya, Bulma, and Hanko to fight Mina; and Naruto, Honey Bee, and Yugito to stop Kushina. That all?"
Naruto nodded. Cupping a hand to the side of his mouth, he hollered:
"You heard Shikamari, girls! We're moving out!"
A palm to the midsection. Energy swirls and flickers, chakra flowing from her hand into the body of her victim. Tenketsu flare like pinpricks of light, a rush of foreign destructive power coursing outward through the pathways of the enemy's keirakukei.
The blend of mental and physical energies intuitive to all shinobi floods through the chakra circulatory system. Vital internal organs around which which the vessels of chakra are tightly wound suffer damage. The body's natural circulation pushes her chakra into the victim's guts with no further manipulation necessary on her part.
Intestinal and stomach linings are damaged, duodenum rupturing. Blood vessels break, internal hemorrhages forming.
This happens in less then a second.
A subsequent blow to the left shoulder, this time a precision jab with the index and middle finger of her right hand, overloads and closes one of the keystone brachial tenketsu. Two successive jabs to a point on the bicep, and another point a little to the right of the armpit, completely disables the victim's left arm.
Provided sufficient opening to get through her target's guard, she then finishes with a sharp blow to the forehead using the heel of her left palm. She delivers a quick and fatal burst of chakra into the frontal lobe that passes through the entirety of the brain, overloading the neurons in all sections and instantly killing her opponent.
Another three enemies come at her from behind. These ones are wearing ceramic masks with mere slits for eye holes. Kirigakure's symbol is carved into the brow of their vizards, as expected.
Hidden Mist hunter-nin. Assassins specializing in quick and silent disposal of their prey.
Koumoku Uzumaki sees the chakra building up in their stomachs, and perceives it flowing out through their hands. They flick their hands through an unfamiliar sequence of seals.
Koumoku feels absently aware of a stiffness in her nipples, and she sees her breath coming out as a visible puff of condensation. Ambient temperature is quickly dropping. She feels sharp pinpricks throughout her skin, sees frost beginning to form on her epidermis.
Ice style ninjutsu. A kekkei genkai of the nearly extinct Yuki clan.
The one with the largest chakra is in the lead. The latter two have lesser reserves, if only marginally so.
Koumoku peers through their masks, seeing fair and feminine faces. Pale visages, an almost ethereal beauty. Cold and remote.
Perilous.
Byakko, she sees the lips of the one in front form these syllables. Yukiko. Move in. Incapacitate her.
Do not kill if at all possible.
Koumoku notices that movement has become dreadfully laborious. Her limbs are numb and leaden,
responding to her directions only slowly, if at all. The insidious grip of ice has all but stilled her movements, making her a seemingly easy target for the two young kunoichi.
She breathes a sigh.
Chakra flares from within her, the power of a deva. An invisible force travels outward from the core of her body, a perfect sphere of kinetic energy. The frost is brushed off of her skin, and the two incoming assassins are stopped in their tracks.
Shinra Tensei.
Koumoku raises her hands toward the two young Yuki, Byakko and Yukiko, mother and daughter.
Half-sisters to herself. One of them a niece also.
Koumoku feels no remorse for what she does next.
Banshou Ten'in.
The two kunoichi are pulled bodily toward Koumoku, impacting her outstretched palms. She pushes chakra into their bodies. Tenketsu flare around their hearts.
Cardiovascular activity ceases at once.
The eldest and strongest of the three Yuki – nearly twenty year old Haku, mother of Byakko, grandmother of Yukiko – stares at Koumoku with horror and grief, via deep anatomical insight perceiving at once the effect of the Hyuuga descendant's attack.
Haku's chakra flares immensely, and spears of ice erupt from the ground in a pathway leading straight for the redhead. A sword of cold white, long and slender, forms in her main hand. Her free hand flicks deftly and swiftly through a flurry of one-handed seals. She is visibly enraged.
"Damn you!" she snarls.
Koumoku idly wonders why the woman is so furious.
Is not death meaningless, in a world where Kaguya-sama and her father exist?
Mina Namikaze was never in one place for more than a second or two. Frequently she popped in and out as quickly as the blink of an eye. Iwa kunoichi dropped like flies wherever she appeared, struck with hard blows and fast, beaten down ruthlessly and efficiently.
Konoha's Yellow Flash was every bit as terrifying to Kurotsuchi as her father's tales had made him out to be. Except both were now women.
And the Yellow Flash was naked.
Under other circumstances, Kurotsuchi might have possessed the capacity for amusement at the new level of meaning this gave to the infamous Namikaze's epithet. As it was though, all she could do was stare helplessly as a horde of cicada-sized slugs clung to the bodies of her people, spitting acid here and there, each and every one of them bearing a copy of Mina's lightning rod seal.
A giant toad was trampling dozens of kunoichi, spitting water and oil, infrequently igniting quantities of the latter with hot ashes from its pipe. A tremendous snake also slithered this way and that, biting and devouring, tents and stone fortifications alike instantly collapsing beneath its ponderous bulk.
Kurotsuchi couldn't do anything but curse her own relative weakness as she watched Kitsuchi and Akatsuchi engage the snake and toad summons.
She tried vainly to engage Mina in combat, attempting to provoke her fellow Yondaime into a one-on-one duel. But Mina ignored her, and Kurotsuchi felt a hint of fear at the markings on the woman's face.
Red pigment traced intricate figures over the blonde's cheeks and around her mouth. Coloration like eyeshadow in purple and orange could just barely be made out around Mina's left and right eye, respectively. Her skin was also several shades darker than it had been in any photo Kurotsuchi had ever seen, and the sclera of her eyes was black, with piercing gold irises.
A single glance from those cross-shaped pupils was enough to paralyze Kurotsuchi with dread. Her lava-style ninjutsu was good, but there was no way she could hope to hit Mina with it. She didn't have the speed or reflexes to land a hit on the woman with any precision techniques, most of her wide-range jutsu were focused on immobilization and detainment – just the north side of useless against a master of space-time ninjutsu.
Kurotsuchi watched helplessly, poignantly aware of a kage's burden, as the scarlet lifeblood of Kitsuchi and Akatsuchi stained the ground.
She was not her grandmother.
Not even close.
She bit her lip, feeling anger and bitterness well up from the pit of her stomach.
We must be unbending and immovable. We are many. We are mighty. If one falls, there will always be another to take their place. We yield to no will but our own.
No power can force us from the path we have chosen for ourselves. We are hewn from the inviolate bedrock of Iwagakure no sato.
This is the Will of Stone, Kurotsuchi – our village's cherished ishi no ishi.
Kitsuchi lay bloodied and gray on the field of battle, bitten by the great and terrible Manda.
Akatsuchi fell, nearly bisected, from the blade of fearsome and warlike Gamabunta.
The Yellow Flash ran riot through the forces of Iwa, virtually unopposed.
Kurotsuchi clenched her fists. She trembled, tears trickling down her cheeks.
She was not her grandmother—her grandfather—not the Sandaime Tsuchikage. Kurotsuchi did not have a fraction of the Fence-Sitter's strength. She wasn't even as strong as Deidara-neechan.
Kurotsuchi thought back on all the times she had tried to learn her grandmother's jinton, all her attempts to prove herself worthy of inheriting Ohnoki's famed kekkei touta. Her eyes burned.
"Damn you..." she hissed. "Damn you... damn you..."
Pebbles began to tremble on the ground at Kurotsuchi's feet. She snarled, tears streaming down her cheeks, and raised her hands. There was a look of desperate anger in his eyes.
Motes of light manifested between her splayed, outstretched fingers. They coalesced, beginning to take shape. Lines spread out, intersecting and joining.
She held a pyramid of translucent white between her hands, with a dense spherical luminescence at its core.
"DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL!"
Everything was light and noise. Heat and pain. Their clothes were charred, skin seared.
Their vision went black. The ringing in their ears was deafening.
For the first few seconds, Temari and Kanakuro were convinced that they were dead. Certainly this seemed to be the only logical result of... whatever the attacker had done. Sanshou's defenses were obliterated so quickly they didn't even realize it until they felt the flames licking their skin.
Light blinded them. Noise deafened them. Shock left them numb for several moments.
Devoid of sensation, save for smell and taste. And all they could smell was charred wood and burnt ozone, whilst all they could taste was acrid smoke and copper.
"Pathetic."
That was the first thing they heard. A voice smooth as silk, calm and aloof.
Kanakuro was the first to blink her eyes open, squinting through the flashes and dark spots inside her own retina to see a dully gleaming mass of black. It had a fine, granular texture as well as a distinctly metallic sheen.
"Iron sand...?" she murmured, vaguely recognizing the technique.
"It was the Sandaime's specialty," the voice said blandly. "Quite useful, in my personal experience."
Temari looked in the speaker's direction behind her and Kanakuro. She saw a young redhead in a cloak which bore the heraldry of scarlet clouds on a sable field – the Akatsuki's charge. Narrowing her eyes, the blonde perceived the faintest shimmer of chakra threads protruding from their rescuer's fingers.
A puppet in black robes levitated beside the redhead, bearing marked resemblance to pictures Temari had seen of this illusionary world's hypothetical Third Kazekage. Lovely but stern, graceful and imposing.
"Akasuna no Sasori," Kanakuro breathed. She coughed, a hot and painful itch in her lungs. "Why... are you here...?"
Sasori looked up over the wall of iron sand she had just recently erected, narrowly shielding Gaara's sisters and attendants from Sanshou's explosion. Temari and Kanakuro followed her gaze.
They saw a woman with golden hair who stood upon a mass of iron sand, her eyes a piercing yellow. She was naked, voluptuous and honestly gorgeous, with a striked resemblance to Gaara's daughter.
It took Temari and Kanakuro a second to realize that this probably was Gaara's daughter. Which, of course, meant she was also their niece.
Tamon Uzumaki.
"I could ask the same question," the woman said, her voice coming down to them from on high.
"Why are you here, Scorpion of the Red Sands?"
Sasori closed her eyes.
"I am here to repay a debt," she said. Her tone was soft, but there was an unyielding firmness in her words. "In exchange for reminding me what really mattered..."
She flourished her hands, and the puppet of the Third Kazekage took an appropriately menacing position, flying up to interpose itself between Sasori and Tamon. Iron sand flowed from hidden apertures beneath the puppet's cloak, stored within sealed compartments to supply the Sandaime marionette with a practically limitless supply of ferric shavings.
The iron sand manipulated by Sasori shifted, forming into solid shapes. A half dozen cubes, cones, and spheres of varying sizes were produced, floating protectively between the Kazekage puppet and Tamon.
A quantity thrice that expelled by Sasori's human puppet swelled up behind Tamon, the blonde lazily gesturing to the geometric shapes under the ex-Suna nin's control.
"And what would that be?" Tamon inquired, an almost taunting tone to her voice. "Freedom? Liberty? Sorority?"
Sasori smiled and shook her head, as though merely amused by Tamon's show of intimidation.
"No," she said, one of her fingers twitching. "Legacy. Integrity. Posterity.
Countless metric tons of iron sand came roaring down, as black as a starless night.
Opposing geometry collided, then shattered.
"Satetsu Kaihou," spake Sasori of the Red Sands.
A world of iron thorns blossomed. The wave of night crashed into black, metallic barbs with a noise like oceans falling upon the mountains, pouring over the fractal spines of Sasori's inescapable jutsu.
The tug of war began.
Spikes of bone as hard as iron ripped through white flak vests, tearing and shredding the clothes underneath. Osseous long swords shivered and rang, clashing simultaneously with two forged steel katana.
Karui's garments hung in tatters from a lithe and slender frame. Signs of arousal were faintly evident as she parried and foyned with the surprisingly skillful Kushina, her nipples brown and puffy, stiff in the open air.
Omoi was in a similar state of undress, her clothes torn to pieces by Kushina's uniquely masterful kenjutsu. Her modest bosom heaved with every labored breath, beads of sweat glistening temptingly as they trickled into her cleavage.
Samui was the only one of the three whose clothes were not torn. No, the blonde's garb lay willfully removed and folded at her feet, the buxom beauty guessing shrewdly at the best way to stop Kushina's rampage.
The battered, half-naked bodies of Cloud kunoichi lay all around them. Many were only dazed or unconscious, but the injuries they'd received were nonetheless enough to put them out of commission
for the forseeable future. Which probably wouldn't be very long at all if Samui and her teammates failed to calm Kushina down.
Samui had to admit she was greatly impressed (and more than a little turned on) as she watched Kushina, with a sword of bone in either hand, handily keep both Omoi and Karui at bay. It was clear from watching the proceedings that the Uzumaki matron was fully in control of the duel, despite the considerable abilities of Karui and Omoi, effortlessly parrying their attacks and slicing up their clothes.
The blonde's nipples were hard as rock, and her pussy leaked a hot and heady nectar. From being sealed inside of Benihisago by Kinkaku and Ginkaku alongside her brother, she had been fully aware of the illusion's true nature from the veru beginning. Raikage-sama and Darui had also known, both of them having used the Sage's sealing jar before.
From the very beginning, her team's mission had been to find out the cause of the illusion, and look for a way to revert things to normal. They had let themselves be captured by Konoha patrols in order to get close to Naruto, the alleged "only man alive" naturally being a prime suspect.
Samui had enjoyed it, to be sure. Sex with Naruto had been fantastic, and while she did not divulge the truth of her mission during that interrogation, she was fully conscious and consenting when she offered herself to him as a concubine. There may have been ulterior motives at the start, but Samui had also loved her new station.
In no small part, this was thanks to Kushina. The woman was gorgeous and strong-willed, masterful and sensual. Samui and her teammates had gladly accepted the woman as their mistress, coming quickly to adore her like few others.
Even now, Samui's thoughts wandered back to the weeks she had spent as an Uzumaki concubine, an exotic dancer and main attraction at the Playful Fox strip club. It thrilled and aroused her just to recall all those eyes on her body, eagerly drinking up every nook and cranny of her hot and sweaty nakedness.
A shiver raced up the blonde's spine, and she bit her lip, only barely resisting the nagging urge between her legs. The time would come soon enough, she told herself, but they needed to wait for an opening.
They needed to wait...
There.
The bone swords flew from Kushina's hands, Omoi and Karui having successfully accomplished the first step of their gambit: luring Kushina into a duel, and disarming her.
"Kushina-sama!" Samui declared, flexing her legs and kicking off. Chakra rushed from her feet, the woman making her way up to the Uzumaki matron in a flicker of shunshin. "Kushina-sama!"
She embraced the woman from behind, pressing her bosom tightly against Kushina's back. She cupped Kushina's breasts and breathed suggestively, hot and humid, against the woman's ears. Even as Karui and Omoi discarded their swords and joined Samui in embracing Kushina, naked as the day they were born, the blonde whispered huskily into the Uzumaki matron's ear.
"Please come back to us, mistress."
Karui and Omoi lewdly moaned, grinding themselves lustfully against Kushina, trailing worshipful kisses up and down the woman's body.
"We love you, Kushina-sama~❤" they all cooed together.
Kushina's face reddened for a moment. Her eyes drooped, body slumping.
"K...r...O...oi...S...mui..."
For a moment, recognition flickered in Kushina's eyes. She seemed to relax, accepting the embrace.
Then her body jerked like a marionette being violently yanked by its strings, and bones erupted from every inch of her. Sharp, osseous spines burst in a shower of blood through the naked, sweaty bodies of Samui, Omoi, and Karui.
Kushina's eyes went wide, some of that blood splattering across her face. A light dimmed behind those steely pools. The Cloud trio's naked bodies fell, lifeless and perforated, at Kushina's feet.
She stepped over Karui, her expression blank.
Tears stained Kushina's cheeks.
Shuriken whistled through the air. Quick and precise, they zipped toward a fair and womanly face. A branch grew in the path of the throwing stars, wood intercepting the iron darts.
Mikoto kicked off of a tree trunk behind her, flipping over and spinning through the air. Her sharingan was blazing. Kunai appeared between her fingers, before she jerked her arms and threw the knives.
The pinkette target of her attacks leaned her head slightly to one side, the branch which had guarded her cheek continuing to grow further, thickening and curving overhead to shield the woman from above.
Smaller shoots branched off from the main trunk which coiled around Zoujou Uzumaki's naked body, extending outward to curl around invisible wires. The woody green limbs tightened, tugging and snapping the ninja wire with uncanny force. Mikoto continued through the air, landing on the trunk of another tree.
She kicked off before the branches could try to snatch her.
At the same time, Fugako Uchiha threw two kunai at Zoujou. Branches extended, growing swiftly to cross the expected trajectory of the knives. Mikoto flung three kunai, but only one of them looked like it would hit. The other two were apparent misses.
Simultaneously to this, Itami and Shimizu also threw one kunai each, a paper bomb wrapped around either one's hilt. Both of their throws were off, and looked like they would cleanly miss.
Mikoto landed on the opposite side of Zouojou from Fugako and spun, her hands weaving through seals. Fugako, Itami, and Shimizu did the same, copying the woman's movements flawlessly.
Katon: Goukakyu no Jutsu!
Each of the four Uchiha spat a fireball at Zoujou from a different direction. The base of the tree growing around her widened, thick roots breaking out of the ground to rise up and catch the flames with smothering clumps of moist, fertile earth.
The roar of the flames, roots cracking and popping noisily as they intercepted the coordinated fire jutsu, almost completely covered up the sharp clang of metal striking metal.
Itami and Shimizu's kunai each deflected off one of Fugaku's, the trajectories of all four altered. Fugako's kunai then proceeded to graze Mikoto's two apparent misses, while Itami and Shimizu's bomb-strapped knives embedded themselves up to the hilt at the base of each of the growing tree's two main branches.
This included the branch which would have intercepted Mikoto's third kunai.
Itami and Shimizu each formed the seal of confrontation, the explosive notes on their knives detonating. The blast knocked aside the two main branches which had been growing out to shield Zoujou from their projectile attacks, and furthermore sent Fugako and Mikoto's nearest kunai spinning.
Before Zoujou could move out of the way or grow more branches to guard herself, five kunai embedded themselves into her form. One in her skull, one between her left floating ribs, one through her throat, one into her thigh, and one into her bicep.
All of this took place in under a second.
Zoujou's movements stilled. Her flesh discolored. The sakura-haired woman's body revealed itself to be comprised of animated wood.
"Just a clone, eh...?" Fugako muttered, narrowing her eyes. "Hmph. So where's the real one?"
Mikoto scanned the canopy with her sharingan. Itami and Shimizu both glared into the surrounding foliage with their respective mangekyo.
Laughter and sounds of battle echoed throughout the forest.
"Fire Style: Searing Migraine!"
Jikoku spat out a fireball, and it shot quickly towards its target. A quartet of Ame kunoichi let out screams when it detonated at their feet. Three of them jumped out of the way in time to avoid the worst of the damage.
One did not.
A rain of acupuncture needles came Jikoku's way, the three surviving Ame nin plus several of their comrades unleashing a combined senbon shower. Jikoku scoffed, and her bare skin barely even rippled as the needles passed harmlessly through.
A score of Kusa-nin came at her with sickles and weighted chains. Takigakure kunoichi flung kunai with explosive notes. Shinobi of the Hidden Star attacked with a variety of shuriken great and small.
"Mere peons," Jikoku scoffed. "Not even worth the time it would take to kill them."
With a flick of her fingers, the woman summoned a fuuma shuriken in a puff of smoke. Unfolding the lethal throwing star with a single fluid twist, Jikoku spun it and threw.
Immediately, her hands flew through the seals for her next technique.
Ushi. Inu. Tatsu. Ne. Inu. I. Mi. Tora.
Shuriken Shadow Clone Jutsu.
The single fuuma shuriken became thousands, a mass of gleaming razor steel spinning through the
air. Like a cavalry charge of old the shuriken crashed into enemy lines, mowing down entire rows of shinobi.
Utterly brutal efficiency.
Jikoku sighed, surveying the killing field before her. Fallen bodies littered the earth, blood seeping from their wounds. At least half of those knocked down by her attack were already dead, and half of the rest were dying.
Only a quarter of those who had suffered the assault got back to their feet, and most of those had been further back than the others.
"Too weak," Jikoku sighed. "My sisters get to take on the five great villages while I'm stuck with the dregs? Hmph. I'll never prove my worth to father fighting such weaklings."
As expected, Jikoku's words galled those who heard them. Anger at being dismissed, and a burning desire to prove the worth of their homes kindled in most of the present kunoichi. They charged en masse, fury in their eyes.
The slightest hint of a smile quirked the corners of Jikoku's lips. Her eyes flashed with an eagerness for the coming fight.
Heh. That's more like it... she thought.
Wings like scaly, webbed human hands flapped, and Jikoku Uzumaki took flight. Lightning flashed in her hands, and she darted forward. Like a scythe among ranks of wheat, she fell upon the allied force.
Swords and knives and fists struck futile blows at Jikoku's body. Those who did not miss or pass harmlessly through liquefied flesh found the minor injuries they dealt healed almost right away with a plainly insulting ease. They couldn't even scratch her without the woman using sage transformation to close the nick right back up.
Almost, one could have claimed that Jikoku was toying with them. She seemed to have an uncanny sense for people who could provide her a good fight, and almost invariably sought those ones out with a frightening singlemindedness.
Those whom she deemed weak or unworthy were ruthlessly dispatched. Sasame Fuuma was one of the latter, killed with a single lightning channeled kunai. The so-called "Hoshikage" and her entourage, Jikoku eliminated through use of the Jashinist curse jutsu.
A combination of Kakuzu's Searing Migraine and Pressure Damage incinerated dozens at once. Massive suiton ninjutsu crashed into the enemy ranks, throwing them to and fro, with pulses raiton chakra conducted to devastating effect.
Secondary application of shuriken kagebunshin no jutsu from the air served as an effective mercy kill for those who could no longer stand, and a good way to wrap up round one.
Landing back on the ground, Jikoku's sharingan was immediately able to pick out those who had been either strong, lucky, or skilled enough to survive her initial onslaught.
Something she did NOT immediately notice were the four pillars of rock that rose up from the ground around her. Not until she was trapped in a violent electrical field.
"Lightning Style: Four Pillar Bind!"
As Jikoku's vision filled with white, she mused that it felt very good to find some decent opponents.
This thought lasted only until a certain Kagerou Fuuma spat some thick, hazy gas at her while Shizuka, the leader of Nadeshiko village, exhaled a fierce wind jutsu.
"Fire Style: Mist Blaze Dance Jutsu!"
"Ressenpuu!"
The wind jutsu fed into the gas, fanning it out and spreading it wider. And the gas promptly ignited the instant it came into contact with the electrical sparks produced by that four pillar bind.
The subsequent blaze was absolutely massive, with an electrically bound and paralyzed Jikoku at the very heart.
Her screams of bliss were ear-splitting.
Shards of ice spun through the air. Frost coated the ground, a thin sheet of cold white, and a biting chill dug into Koumoku's flesh.
Haku Yuki was enraged. Even through her mask, it was clear that the woman was livid, absolutely furious. Her hands blurred through dozens of seals, fluid ice dancing across the distance between her and the enemy.
Scarlet tresses fluttered as they fell to the ground, three fine hairs shaved from the head of Koumoku Uzumaki by the near miss of a frozen-water shuriken. Ice flew around her in a myriad of shapes; needles, knives, and stars all crystalline and cold.
Fingers swept through the air, trailing beams of light. Precisely molded streams of chakra intercepted the projectiles which roared around the redhead, a storm of icy blades. Shuriken, senbon, and kunai bounced back wherever they connected with the curving lines of energy, dragged back into the ninja tool vortex which swirled around Koumoku.
Countless dozens of impacts occured with every tenth of a second, hundreds of projectiles deflected by Koumoku's sixty-four palm guard only to rejoin the others and come back for her soon enough. It was an effective stalemate, despite both parties' best efforts. Neither offense nor defense entirely prevaled.
Not until ten seconds had passed since the death of Haku's daughter and granddaughter. "Shinra Tensei!"
An invisible wave passed outward from Koumoku's body. Kinetic force scattered the thousands of icy shards, breaking the stalemated cycle of attack and defense.
Haku's jutsu was disrupted, perhaps terminally so. The brunette stilled her hands, weaving signs no more. She eyed Koumoku curiously, recognizing this technique from its earlier use.
"Repulsive force..." Haku murmured. "Something entirely different from the Hyuuga's normal defensive jutsu."
She drew a fistful of acupuncture needles from a hidden pocket within her sleeves, and prepared to throw them. This technique of Koumoku's seemed to be very powerful, but it also appeared to have limitations... Haku needed more information to determine the exact parameters.
Counting the seconds from the pulse that broke her jutsu, Haku formed one-handed signs, generating a prison of ice mirrors around Koumoku.
Three seconds.
She passed into the mirrors, and began to travel between them. Her speed was blinding, and she tossed senbon at Koumoku. The redhead resumed her sixty-four palm guard, but the sheer speed of Haku's attacks made it difficult for even the Hyuuga-descended woman to block all of them.
Haku was aware of the byakugan's theoretical blindspot from conversations with Ao, but also guessed that Koumoku would have a defense in order if she seemed to be focusing her attacks there. So she bombarded Koumoku from every direction, and for every few dozen that the woman blocked, one or two managed to slip through her defenses – but even these merely grazed her skin, pushed off course by some unseen resistance.
Seven seconds.
Likely the woman was pushing chakra out from her body, even apart from what chakra she expelled from her fingertips. This forced Haku's senbon to slide away from their intended trajectories, such that even attacks aimed for vital points wound up merely scratching the surface of Koumoku's skin.
The barrage of needles continued, Haku ruthlessly bombarding her opponent with a seemingly endless hail of steel. She was only managing one or two instances of negligible, superficial damage for every three score of senbon she spent, but Haku was patient.
Ten seconds.
Again, Koumoku ceased her sixty-four palm guard and stretched out her hands. Haku's needles were repelled by a wave of force, and the Kiri hunter-nin scarcely managed to escape her mirrors before they were shattered.
Haku staggered back, then, feeling as though a heavy blow struck her chest. Blood flecked her lips behind the porcelain mask, and she went weak in the knees.
"Eight Trigrams: Air Palm."
A pressurized bullet of air slammed into Haku's body, an open palm strike delivered to her gut from a distance of five meters. The Yuki grimaced, tearing off her mask as more blood bubbled up from her lips. She coughed, spitting metallic crimson life-fluid onto the frosty, cold ground.
Koumoku advanced, cocking her left hand back. Haku was prone on the ground, suffering from the effects of two devastating gentle fist strikes.
"It's over," the Uzumaki spoke, before thrusting her palm forward.
"Water Style: Water Wall!"
Koumoku's attack was intercepted by a crashing wave which passed in between her and Haku. Her eyes widened infinitesimally, and she ducked just in time to avoid decapitation by a sharp blade of chakra.
Koumoku sprang back, and lava impacted the ground where she had been standing, steam rising up from molten rock. She frowned, appearing mildly vexed.
Ao, Choujuuko, and Mei Terumi had come to Haku's rescue.
Light flashed from Kurotsuchi's hands, lines racing out to define a boundary. A pyramidal barrier of chakra briefly encompassed the battlefield before her, before fracturing with the noise of a thunderclap.
"Particle Style: Detachment of the Primitive World!"
In an instant, the earth was carved out. A deep chasm with impossibly smooth sides was gouged into soil and bedrock. Thousands of slugs were immediately disintegrated.
Kurotsuchi's shoulders heaved, her hands shaking. Her breath came in pants and she was sweating bullets, but her face was the picture of grim determination. Teeth were bared, and eyes as hard and cold as steel glared at the enemy.
"Don't you dare underestimate us...!" she roared at the summons and Mina alike. Her feet started to rise off the ground, Kurotsuchi beginning to levitate. "This Will of Stone is something no adversity can break!"
Manda and Gamabunta turned to face the Yondaime Tsuchikage. Mina ceased her teleportation across the battlefield, mini-Katsuyu fragments swarming over the ground and beginning to coalesce.
"Ss... impudent child."
Manda's eyes flashed, and the terrible serpent lunged. Its squamous girth rippled with the flexing of innumerable, massive muscles. Jaws opened wide, fangs dripping with venom.
Kurotsuchi grit her teeth, and flicked her hands through a sequence of three seals.
Rat. Boar. Snake.
Her hands splayed apart, fingers spreading. A hexagonal prism of light encompassed a sphere of dense, indescribable radiance.
Jinton: Genkai Hakuri no Jutsu
Chakra lanced through the air, the barrier spreading out before Kurotsuchi. A region of space was defined, intersecting Manda's trajectory. The giant snake's open mouth lined up unwittingly with the boundary of Kurotsuchi's jutsu.
Light flashed, a deafening luminescence. The upper portion of Manda's skull was gone in the blink of an eye, and the summon promptly disappeared in a burst of smoke.
Gamabunta spat oil at Kurotsuchi, and the amalgamated Katsuyu spewed a powerful hydrochloric acid from its orifice.
Light flashed once more, this time in a barrier around Kurotsuchi. The fluids were destroyed before they could ever touch the Tsuchikage, and two more beams of destruction lanced out from her hands.
The two remaining summons dispelled, grazed by Kurotsuchi's ninjutsu.
The Lady Fourth Tsuchikage whipped around, looking visibly drained, to glare at a bemused Mina.
The Yellow Flash stood amidst the insensate forms of countless Iwa kunoichi.
"Impressive," Mina remarked. "I did not expect you to have mastered Ohnoki's jinton so quickly." Kurotsuchi attempted a grin. It came out more like a grimace.
"I told you already... to never underestimate us...!"
Once more she formed the hand seals, and once more a barrier of light encompassed the targeted area. Her chakra was at its limits, and the boundaries of her atomic dismantling jutsu wavered visibly. The sphere of light detonated, smashing everything within the barrier.
Kurotsuchi toppled over, her eyes closing. She fell facedown on the ground, utterly spent.
Seconds later, Mina Namikaze appeared on the girl's back, missing her right arm.
"Admirable technique on the start up," the blonde remarked. "But the overall execution is still lacking a certain something."
She pressed the palm of her hand to the nape of Kurotsuchi's neck. Large, supple breasts receded from the blonde's chest, even as the endowments of the brunette beneath her swelled considerably. At the same time, Kurotsuchi's right arm shrinks back into her shoulder, at the same time that a new right arm begins to sprout from Mina's.
The Yellow Flash, once more possessing two arms, and also now completely flat-chested, stepped back and smiled at Kurotsuchi, whose bosom had swelled to a size slightly larger than even Mina's former endowments.
"Mm... as much as Kaguya-sama enjoys my figure," the blonde commented, "it is quite hard to fight with those things dangling from my chest. I suppose I should thank you for taking those monster tits off my hands."
She let out a laugh. A three-pronged kunai appeared in her right hand.
"But Kaguya-sama was very clear on my orders," she added, shaking her head. Mina's smile faded, her expression becoming cold. "Anyone who defies my son must be eliminated."
The knife fell.
Iron sand roared. Sharp grains flowed over razor spines, a chaotic framework of iron sand growing and spreading, branching out and weaving together. It was an awe-inspiring sight, the sheer weight of this clash shivering Temari and Kanakuro down to their very bones.
The contest of wills between the Red Sand Scorpion and Tamon Uzumaki was indescribable. No words exist which could sufficiently paint the picture of their jutsu crashing together.
Sasori flicked her fingers, and the Sandaime Kazekage puppet gestured gracefully, fluidly. Magnetic fields invisible to the naked eye twisted and contorted in impossible ways, the laws of nature warping to the will of these ungodly powerful kunoichi.
Tamon's iron sand was of a far greater quantity than the Sandaime's. But Sasori was more experienced, and the Third Kazekage more skilled in life. Raw power struggled to crush the careful, deliberate arrangement of crossbeams, a spiked ferrous matrix pushing up against the overwhelming weight of Tamon's onslaught.
Brute force buckled the earth beneath their feet, even the slightest shifting of metal shavings like a great booming of thunder. Iron sand wrestled in mid air, flowing and branching, grinding and crashing like a terrible battle of giants.
The matrix of Sasori's satetsu kaihou groaned, bending and beginning to falter. The puppet mistress
flourished her hands, chakra threads visibly flaring. The Sandaime marionette shuddered, the powerful magnetic fields emanating from its core starting to fatigue even the non-ferric construction of its frame.
Iron sand fell from Sasori's defense, and countless tons of iron sand began to pour through the gap. It came crashing down like the fist of God, the ground cratering and fracturing beneath the force of its impact.
"Dammit...!" Sasori hissed. She cast off her cloak, and aimed one of her hands at the encroaching sand. Chakra threads sprang from the core of her puppet body, attaching to the Sandaime Kazekage to pick up the slack.
Fire shot from the palm of Sasori's hand, napalm bursting out in a raging stream of reds and yellows.
Tongues of flame licked the crashing grains of iron, a scorching inferno reddening the metallic sand.
Sasori scorched the iron sand which had leaked from the opening in her defenses, even as the Kazekage puppet strove to close the gap back up. Streamers and tendrils of iron sand protruded from the central mass, only to be caught in Sasori's flames. The reddened, semi-molten grains fused together and ceased to move.
Kanakuro's eyes widened.
"Of course!" she exclaimed, unfurling a scroll from her waist. "Why didn't I think of it earlier...? Fire! With sufficient temperatures, we can demagnetize Tamon's iron sand."
In a puff of smoke, Karasu appeared. Its maw opened up, and a clacking of mechanisms could be heard from within its core.
"Temari!" Kanakuro said. "Give Sasori-dono a hand!"
The blonde blinked, before nodding, realizing the import of what her sister was saying. Temari brandished her fan, unfolding it and swinging.
"Fuuton: Ookamaitachi no Jutsu!"
Wind fanned the flames spewed from Sasori's hand, spreading them out and tripling their destructive power. The cutting edges of Temari's gust sent flaming vorpal blades tearing through the mass of Tamon's iron sand, gouging and melting, fusing and demagnetizing.
Karasu shot balls of bundled up paper bombs into the heart of the raging inferno, detonating from the heat and further spreading the flames. The framework of satetsu kaihou crumbled, and more iron sand seeped through, but the combined efforts of Sasori, Temari, and Kanakuro scorched and melted the iron sand into a single, coherent mass, unresponsive and immovable.
Tamon scowled, seeing that Temari, Sasori, and Kanakuro had all but neutralized her iron sand manipulation. She lowered herself in the air, moving around behind the trio. The flames concealed her movement from view.
"We can win this!" Temari shouted, swinging her fan and sending gusts of razor wind this way and that. "We almost have her...!"
Tamon's eyes narrowed. She crossed her arms over an ample bosom, and her shoulders shifted. Skin spread out, protrusions emerging from her shoulders. Metallic cylinders burst from the extending flesh, glowing a hot red at the base.
At the same time, an aperture opened in Tamon's navel. A black void was lit by motes of light, a gathering mass of energy growing denser and denser.
Missiles launched from Tamon's shoulders. A pulse laser fired from her navel. The trio of Sand ninja didn't even see the attack coming.
But someone else must have, for specks of white intercepted her missiles, detonating them prematurely. Her pulse laser was intercepted by a mass of wooden pylons. Burning splinters erupted from the defense, but a wall of flowing sand block the fire from striking Sasori, Kanakuro, or Temari.
"Ninpou: Choujuu Giga."
Tamon narrowly avoided getting barreled over by a pair of muscular, black and white gods. Steel flashed, and a falling sword nearly cut the blonde's left arm clean off.
Reinforcements had arrived.