Author's Notes: Aaargh! I did it again! I forgot to post a chapter. Sorry
everyone. Well, then I'll cut to the chase and get on with some serious
ninja violence in the heart of Hidden Waterfall. How's that for a solution?
My thanks to all reviewers!
Winds of the Grave
The sun sets behind three dragon ninja as they stand below the cliffs that guard the western approach to Hidden Waterfall. High above them stand tall walls and walk wary guards, ready to pounce on anything that dares to climb those invincible walls. Behind those walls, surrounded by those who have long since finished their service, and those who are his tools, waits Mehize Kizen, one of the nine Akatsuki.
A group that will soon become eight. Draci Neji decides as he looks up at those walls. No one could climb them, but this is not to be climbing. He smiles as he looks at Shiren, as she tugs the last loop of wire into place. Everything is ready.
"It is time." Neji says, and steps forward.
Shiren and Dar step forward with him.
"I still can't believe we're doing this." Dar remarks. "But it will be something to remember if it works."
So they ran.
It was two hundred steps to the cliff face, just enough distance to get up speed.
Three ninja streaked out from behind the shrubs below the cliffs, and high above the waterfall guards saw them, a ninja in blue, one in brown, and one in white, they charged the cliffs as fast as their legs would take them. The guards were puzzled, but they readied their weapons.
Neji saw the cliff face approach, watched as the ground changed direction. He felt the chakra within him, and he channeled it, so that without any loss of speed he changed direction, orienting himself upward, pouring chakra out of his feet, adapting to the wet and slick stone, and continuing to run.
Shiren and Dar followed, less smoothly, but they ran, up a wall of stone and water that only a dragon ninja could dare ascend, only that precision and that brazenness.
Shouts broke out above, and spears came raining down, but they went far behind the dragon ninja, thrown by men who expected the slow pace of climbers, who could not believe what their eyes were showing them, and could not predict the path.
Up and up, they zigzagged, constantly mindful of the chakra flow in their feet, forcing themselves to not lose the grip, to keep going.
It took only moments, that swift climb, hundreds of feet upwards, and then they were there. A horrified Waterfall guard threw a kunai past Neji's head, and then was slammed back as Neji connected with him, throwing him to the ground, far below the wall.
Neji and Dar turned, and blocked a few weapons that came from the side, but the other guards were too far, they had not had time to converge to this point on the wall, and so they were out of position.
"Now Shiren!" Neji called.
Shiren crested the wall and wire spun out from about her waist, strand after strand, becoming incredibly long, and then she threw the kunai.
The weapon flew across the village of waterfall, propelled by Shiren's chakra and her uncanny aim to stick into one of the buildings that marked the edge of the Square of Challenge.
"Let's Go!" Dar shouted, as he struck aside a kunai with his sword.
Neji went first, dashing out onto that wire, running full tilt as before. Shiren followed, having taken only a single step atop the wall, and last came Dar.
More shocked calls followed as they dashed across a wire above the streets of Hidden Waterfall, and many weapons followed, but the reactions were all too slow, behind the dragon ninja, no one was ready to counter that approach.
Neji hit the end and leapt onto the rooftop, taking placing a single foot down, before vaulting into the square, the Byakugan revealing everything before him. Shiren followed, taking a kunai in each hand, ready to strike. Last came Dar, and he slashed through the wire as he left it, sending it spinning to the ground, and cutting off pursuit.
They landed less than a second apart in the square of challenge, and there lay the working of Mehize Kizen.
The whole square was covered in it, a grand pattern drawn in old blood, marking out a complex symbol that none of the dragon ninja recognized, though they could see the symbols of all the shinobi countries within it. At each point of that grand symbol lay an ancient skeleton, clad in the unmarked gear that these ninja had worn, no markings of countries upon them, only the loyalty to their families to carry them forward. They were quiet in repose, but something about that tableau horrified the mind. This is despicable, what defilement is this? These men and women have had their peace, have earned it, why do you disturb them? What villainy is so great as to unearth these ninja and place them here, to be used for some wretched purpose? Neji could not fathom it. Never before had something seemed so terrible to him, and he immediately lost all sense of mercy toward this Akatsuki he had never met. You will pay for this Mehize Kizen, and may the dragons take you to your deserving place after we are done.
Mehize Kizen stood in the center of the grand display, wearing the red-clouded robes of the Akatsuki, chanting grimly, and drawing seals in blood upon the earth.
Neji took a step forward, and he looked up.
"You?" Kizen looked at Neji, and then his gaze drifted to Shiren, and then Dar. "And you, and you? You three are alive?" He seemed disgusted. "I entrusted only a simple thing to the grass ninja, and they failed even in that." His face screwed up and he appeared incensed. "You have disrupted the equilibrium of my working, ruining everything done this day. I don't know how you got in here, but I am certain you will not leave." Kizen stood slowly. "Guards." He ordered. "Kill these interlopers."
The order hung unanswered in the air. Kizen revealed a single moment of surprise, and then he grinned viscously. "So, the Mizuho master has betrayed me, he thinks to have the whole pie for himself does he? What a fool, I am in my stronghold, and I am not so foolish as to be unprepared for attack."
"Shut up." Neji demanded. "You've said enough for your last words." He advanced.
Kizen almost laughed, but he brought his hands together into a seal. "Subsume the Dead Soul Infusion."
Three bodies lay behind Kizen, and these were not the aged skeletons of the great ninja wars, these were three more recent dead, wearing the garb of stone. The slid to their feet then, in a crumpling movement that a living man could not have made, and as they emerged they transformed into duplicates of Mehize Kizen.
"Clones will not save you, Akatsuki." Neji remarked.
"Clones?" Kizen laughed. "You think these are clones? They are far more. I have placed a little bit of my essence into them. They have all my energy and powers, taken by controlling their own souls and forging them again. Their new life will be very short, but enough to finish you. After all, three on three should be fair odds, yes?"
The three dead Kizen's advanced.
Damn! Neji considered the situation, speaking aloud. "He said they are alive, so they can die like the living. Work together, and we can defeat them." Neji stepped forward.
The clones began to form seals. Neji rushed the center clone, drawing his nekode, Shiren the left hand one, and Dar the right hand.
"Sandstorm flesh cutter!" The three clones each performed the same jutsu. Shear blasts of sand, with the strength to rip flesh off bones, projected from their hands, and cut through the air.
"Rose Facet Spin!" Dar shouted, swirling about, cutting away everything in front of him.
"Kaiten!"
"Dragon wind!"
Each attack was blocked suddenly, and the clones moved to strike once more. "Shiren!" Neji called, and motioned her towards him.
Shiren ran across, as the clone in front of her sent shuriken flying in her direction.
She jumped directly at Neji.
"Kaiten!" Neji spun again, blocking the pursuing shuriken, and Shiren hit the arc of his spin just so, so that she was launched behind him, flashing past Dar.
"Lightning element: Multiple Spark Star no Jutsu!" Weapons flew from Shiren's hands as she came flying by, faster than she could have moved on her own.
"Sandstorm shield!" The missiles impacted against a swirling blast of sand, falling to the ground.
Dar's sword came in through that storm, there was only enough distance to extend the blade through that whirling sand blast to touch his enemy, but that was enough. Chakra burst down the blade. "Dragon fang!"
A hole two inches around punched through the chest of the clone, and it fell back, sand shield gone.
Dar took off its head. The body reverted to a stone ninja's when it struck the ground.
The central clone, sensing Dar's vulnerability as he completed the move, charged in.
"Clawing whirlwind!" Neji spun in front of him and was there, and the sword that came down was slashed apart into tiny pieces, and then the rending claws came out and shredded the body.
The left hand clone formed its hand seals. A blade of incorporeal wind, sharp as the sharpest razor blade, slashed through the air, seeking Neji's head.
Dar's thrown sword cleaved through that blade of wind, cutting it into nothing. His weapon able to cut anything.
Shiren dashed across the square, a kunai in each hand. "Thunder and Lightning strike!"
She moved fast enough to vanish, one side, then the other, then she leapt above.
The clone projected that spinning and cutting shield of sand, but a clap of thunder split the air, and the shield vanished, even as Shiren's body pivoted, and she came around to pierce the heart of her foe.
This clone fell into the square and reverted as well. She reached down and threw Dar his sword. The stone ninja caught it by the hilt easily.
"Sand trap no jutsu!"
Sand flooded up from the ground beneath the three dragon ninja. It grabbed their legs and hardened suddenly, taking on the consistency of stone, immobilizing them.
Mehize Kizen emerged from the place of one of the skeletons, and clapped slowly and steadily. "Most impressive I admit, your teamwork appears very capable, but then I was never very good at fighting in the open any way." He gave them a grim smile. "I much prefer to act with more cunning."
"Cunning? You think this will hold me?" Dar moved to slash through the stony sand about his feet.
"Ha!" Kizen laughed. "Of course not, but it has served its purpose by distracting your for a few final moments so that my Chakra Leech can complete its work."
"Chakra Leech?" Shiren wondered. "No..."
"Can you feel any chakra little lightning girl, in your arms or legs?" Kizen looked at Shiren, amused. "It is all gone, it has been slowly draining out of you all throughout that impressive little display, I have taken it to power my working, it makes my task so much easier."
No chakra? Neji thought rapidly, and he looked down at himself. No, he is wrong, the Byakugan is still on my eyes, and I can see, I have chakra, but there is none in the tenkentsu below the neck, he is draining us from the bottom down. Neji thought fast. I can rechannel it, I can see where he is leeching it, but I only have enough for one move. Can I kill him that quickly?
"It seems I win now." Kizen remarked. "Hmm...which of you should I kill first? I want to maximize your agony you see. Perhaps the lightning girl? Or maybe I should kill the leader first, eh, Draci Neji?" Kizen moved to the edge of that sandy binding.
"You are mistaken, Mehize Kizen." Neji answered in his coldest voice, one he had learned from Xi. "You are the one who dies now." I know how to do this, it will work, and it must work. Neji recalled the image he needed, the one that had stared up in his nightmares for so long, the red eyes of the T'ien Lung, Wusashu, the dragon's eyes. He felt the chakra in his head, and he channeled it, past places where it was not meant to go, summoning up that alien image into his eyes, letting the dragon take his face as he unleashed the killing jutsu. He formed the seals with his hands, ending on Ryu, the dragon. The red energy flooded his eyes, but there was more, Xi had told Neji what to expect, the ability to see currents of fear and emotion, to have vision leap great distances and brush aside all obstacles, but Xi had not reckoned on the Byakugan.
Neji's eyes shifted, the crystallized pupils of the Byakugan dipping down, elongating even as those white eyes turned red upon red. The pupils connected with the bottom of Neji's eyes, forming the red inner fang that characterized the dragon's eye, and Neji realized he could see.
Not just fear or chakra, I can see into Mizain and direct this fear, this alien force, I see the points of vulnerability in him. It struck Neji suddenly just what had happened, the power he had unleashed. I can see into his soul!
This is beyond the Byakugan, beyond the Dragon's Eye, what is this? A name came to Neji then, one that it seemed was whispered into the back of his mind by a cutting inhuman voice, one similar to Wusashu's, but different, more mature, ancient voice of unearthly power.
"All Seeing Eyes of the Heavens." Neji intoned, and his eyes opened and looked into those of Mehize Kizen.
The Akatsuki's head slammed backwards, his neck cracking with the force. He did not scream, but his mouth distended as if he wished to. His legs tried to move backward, but they found no purchase on the ground, as if he was held in the air by fear and agony. His eyes screamed their own pain, as Neji saw the images inflict themselves upon Kizen, and the former sand ninja's soul crumbled as the aged warriors of the past stood up in their skeletal majesty and struck him, slamming blade after blade into him, cutting until their weary souls were satisfied.
Around Neji the sand at his feet crumpled, and he reached down to his kunai holster, never taking his eyes from Kizen's, and drew forth a single kunai. It is not necessary, he will die soon, but this torment is enough for even him. Neji took the kunai in his right hand and threw.
It buried itself in the Akatsuki's heart.
Mehize Kizen pitched forward and slammed into the stone. The moment he hit his body began to break down, crumpling slowly to dust, along with his robes and gear, until only the forehead protector, with the slashed symbol of Hidden Sand on it, remained.
When Kizen was gone Neji felt his chakra return, even as his eyes returned to normal with a frightful suddenness, leaving him feeling drained and awed. I must be very careful with this power, or I will be punished for it. He recognized. I will be careful.
"Neji, my chakra is back, what was left after the fight anyway." Shiren remarked. "Dar?"
The stone ninja nodded.
"Then quickly, before the Mizain comes." Neji remarked. He formed the seals with his hands, calling as much chakra as remained to him. He bit his left forefinger and placed his hands on the ground. "Dragon summoning no Jutsu!" Three ninja spoke at once.
A great wind blew up upon that square, enough to blow the dragon ninja to the ground. When it was done all the ancient skeletons were gone, and three dragons floated in the air, large and powerful. The Chiang Lung, Elisylni, the Pan Lung Giraltiej, and the T'ien Lung Wusashu. "You have summoned us here, as we wished." Wusashu spoke. "Now, what is your request, dragon ninja?"
Neji did not hesitate. "Carry us to Konoha, and from there to the border of the Country of Lightning."
"As we are summoned we are bound to serve, but the debt will be light, since a great service has been done." Wusahu intoned. "Come, we shall fly."
My thanks to all reviewers!
Winds of the Grave
The sun sets behind three dragon ninja as they stand below the cliffs that guard the western approach to Hidden Waterfall. High above them stand tall walls and walk wary guards, ready to pounce on anything that dares to climb those invincible walls. Behind those walls, surrounded by those who have long since finished their service, and those who are his tools, waits Mehize Kizen, one of the nine Akatsuki.
A group that will soon become eight. Draci Neji decides as he looks up at those walls. No one could climb them, but this is not to be climbing. He smiles as he looks at Shiren, as she tugs the last loop of wire into place. Everything is ready.
"It is time." Neji says, and steps forward.
Shiren and Dar step forward with him.
"I still can't believe we're doing this." Dar remarks. "But it will be something to remember if it works."
So they ran.
It was two hundred steps to the cliff face, just enough distance to get up speed.
Three ninja streaked out from behind the shrubs below the cliffs, and high above the waterfall guards saw them, a ninja in blue, one in brown, and one in white, they charged the cliffs as fast as their legs would take them. The guards were puzzled, but they readied their weapons.
Neji saw the cliff face approach, watched as the ground changed direction. He felt the chakra within him, and he channeled it, so that without any loss of speed he changed direction, orienting himself upward, pouring chakra out of his feet, adapting to the wet and slick stone, and continuing to run.
Shiren and Dar followed, less smoothly, but they ran, up a wall of stone and water that only a dragon ninja could dare ascend, only that precision and that brazenness.
Shouts broke out above, and spears came raining down, but they went far behind the dragon ninja, thrown by men who expected the slow pace of climbers, who could not believe what their eyes were showing them, and could not predict the path.
Up and up, they zigzagged, constantly mindful of the chakra flow in their feet, forcing themselves to not lose the grip, to keep going.
It took only moments, that swift climb, hundreds of feet upwards, and then they were there. A horrified Waterfall guard threw a kunai past Neji's head, and then was slammed back as Neji connected with him, throwing him to the ground, far below the wall.
Neji and Dar turned, and blocked a few weapons that came from the side, but the other guards were too far, they had not had time to converge to this point on the wall, and so they were out of position.
"Now Shiren!" Neji called.
Shiren crested the wall and wire spun out from about her waist, strand after strand, becoming incredibly long, and then she threw the kunai.
The weapon flew across the village of waterfall, propelled by Shiren's chakra and her uncanny aim to stick into one of the buildings that marked the edge of the Square of Challenge.
"Let's Go!" Dar shouted, as he struck aside a kunai with his sword.
Neji went first, dashing out onto that wire, running full tilt as before. Shiren followed, having taken only a single step atop the wall, and last came Dar.
More shocked calls followed as they dashed across a wire above the streets of Hidden Waterfall, and many weapons followed, but the reactions were all too slow, behind the dragon ninja, no one was ready to counter that approach.
Neji hit the end and leapt onto the rooftop, taking placing a single foot down, before vaulting into the square, the Byakugan revealing everything before him. Shiren followed, taking a kunai in each hand, ready to strike. Last came Dar, and he slashed through the wire as he left it, sending it spinning to the ground, and cutting off pursuit.
They landed less than a second apart in the square of challenge, and there lay the working of Mehize Kizen.
The whole square was covered in it, a grand pattern drawn in old blood, marking out a complex symbol that none of the dragon ninja recognized, though they could see the symbols of all the shinobi countries within it. At each point of that grand symbol lay an ancient skeleton, clad in the unmarked gear that these ninja had worn, no markings of countries upon them, only the loyalty to their families to carry them forward. They were quiet in repose, but something about that tableau horrified the mind. This is despicable, what defilement is this? These men and women have had their peace, have earned it, why do you disturb them? What villainy is so great as to unearth these ninja and place them here, to be used for some wretched purpose? Neji could not fathom it. Never before had something seemed so terrible to him, and he immediately lost all sense of mercy toward this Akatsuki he had never met. You will pay for this Mehize Kizen, and may the dragons take you to your deserving place after we are done.
Mehize Kizen stood in the center of the grand display, wearing the red-clouded robes of the Akatsuki, chanting grimly, and drawing seals in blood upon the earth.
Neji took a step forward, and he looked up.
"You?" Kizen looked at Neji, and then his gaze drifted to Shiren, and then Dar. "And you, and you? You three are alive?" He seemed disgusted. "I entrusted only a simple thing to the grass ninja, and they failed even in that." His face screwed up and he appeared incensed. "You have disrupted the equilibrium of my working, ruining everything done this day. I don't know how you got in here, but I am certain you will not leave." Kizen stood slowly. "Guards." He ordered. "Kill these interlopers."
The order hung unanswered in the air. Kizen revealed a single moment of surprise, and then he grinned viscously. "So, the Mizuho master has betrayed me, he thinks to have the whole pie for himself does he? What a fool, I am in my stronghold, and I am not so foolish as to be unprepared for attack."
"Shut up." Neji demanded. "You've said enough for your last words." He advanced.
Kizen almost laughed, but he brought his hands together into a seal. "Subsume the Dead Soul Infusion."
Three bodies lay behind Kizen, and these were not the aged skeletons of the great ninja wars, these were three more recent dead, wearing the garb of stone. The slid to their feet then, in a crumpling movement that a living man could not have made, and as they emerged they transformed into duplicates of Mehize Kizen.
"Clones will not save you, Akatsuki." Neji remarked.
"Clones?" Kizen laughed. "You think these are clones? They are far more. I have placed a little bit of my essence into them. They have all my energy and powers, taken by controlling their own souls and forging them again. Their new life will be very short, but enough to finish you. After all, three on three should be fair odds, yes?"
The three dead Kizen's advanced.
Damn! Neji considered the situation, speaking aloud. "He said they are alive, so they can die like the living. Work together, and we can defeat them." Neji stepped forward.
The clones began to form seals. Neji rushed the center clone, drawing his nekode, Shiren the left hand one, and Dar the right hand.
"Sandstorm flesh cutter!" The three clones each performed the same jutsu. Shear blasts of sand, with the strength to rip flesh off bones, projected from their hands, and cut through the air.
"Rose Facet Spin!" Dar shouted, swirling about, cutting away everything in front of him.
"Kaiten!"
"Dragon wind!"
Each attack was blocked suddenly, and the clones moved to strike once more. "Shiren!" Neji called, and motioned her towards him.
Shiren ran across, as the clone in front of her sent shuriken flying in her direction.
She jumped directly at Neji.
"Kaiten!" Neji spun again, blocking the pursuing shuriken, and Shiren hit the arc of his spin just so, so that she was launched behind him, flashing past Dar.
"Lightning element: Multiple Spark Star no Jutsu!" Weapons flew from Shiren's hands as she came flying by, faster than she could have moved on her own.
"Sandstorm shield!" The missiles impacted against a swirling blast of sand, falling to the ground.
Dar's sword came in through that storm, there was only enough distance to extend the blade through that whirling sand blast to touch his enemy, but that was enough. Chakra burst down the blade. "Dragon fang!"
A hole two inches around punched through the chest of the clone, and it fell back, sand shield gone.
Dar took off its head. The body reverted to a stone ninja's when it struck the ground.
The central clone, sensing Dar's vulnerability as he completed the move, charged in.
"Clawing whirlwind!" Neji spun in front of him and was there, and the sword that came down was slashed apart into tiny pieces, and then the rending claws came out and shredded the body.
The left hand clone formed its hand seals. A blade of incorporeal wind, sharp as the sharpest razor blade, slashed through the air, seeking Neji's head.
Dar's thrown sword cleaved through that blade of wind, cutting it into nothing. His weapon able to cut anything.
Shiren dashed across the square, a kunai in each hand. "Thunder and Lightning strike!"
She moved fast enough to vanish, one side, then the other, then she leapt above.
The clone projected that spinning and cutting shield of sand, but a clap of thunder split the air, and the shield vanished, even as Shiren's body pivoted, and she came around to pierce the heart of her foe.
This clone fell into the square and reverted as well. She reached down and threw Dar his sword. The stone ninja caught it by the hilt easily.
"Sand trap no jutsu!"
Sand flooded up from the ground beneath the three dragon ninja. It grabbed their legs and hardened suddenly, taking on the consistency of stone, immobilizing them.
Mehize Kizen emerged from the place of one of the skeletons, and clapped slowly and steadily. "Most impressive I admit, your teamwork appears very capable, but then I was never very good at fighting in the open any way." He gave them a grim smile. "I much prefer to act with more cunning."
"Cunning? You think this will hold me?" Dar moved to slash through the stony sand about his feet.
"Ha!" Kizen laughed. "Of course not, but it has served its purpose by distracting your for a few final moments so that my Chakra Leech can complete its work."
"Chakra Leech?" Shiren wondered. "No..."
"Can you feel any chakra little lightning girl, in your arms or legs?" Kizen looked at Shiren, amused. "It is all gone, it has been slowly draining out of you all throughout that impressive little display, I have taken it to power my working, it makes my task so much easier."
No chakra? Neji thought rapidly, and he looked down at himself. No, he is wrong, the Byakugan is still on my eyes, and I can see, I have chakra, but there is none in the tenkentsu below the neck, he is draining us from the bottom down. Neji thought fast. I can rechannel it, I can see where he is leeching it, but I only have enough for one move. Can I kill him that quickly?
"It seems I win now." Kizen remarked. "Hmm...which of you should I kill first? I want to maximize your agony you see. Perhaps the lightning girl? Or maybe I should kill the leader first, eh, Draci Neji?" Kizen moved to the edge of that sandy binding.
"You are mistaken, Mehize Kizen." Neji answered in his coldest voice, one he had learned from Xi. "You are the one who dies now." I know how to do this, it will work, and it must work. Neji recalled the image he needed, the one that had stared up in his nightmares for so long, the red eyes of the T'ien Lung, Wusashu, the dragon's eyes. He felt the chakra in his head, and he channeled it, past places where it was not meant to go, summoning up that alien image into his eyes, letting the dragon take his face as he unleashed the killing jutsu. He formed the seals with his hands, ending on Ryu, the dragon. The red energy flooded his eyes, but there was more, Xi had told Neji what to expect, the ability to see currents of fear and emotion, to have vision leap great distances and brush aside all obstacles, but Xi had not reckoned on the Byakugan.
Neji's eyes shifted, the crystallized pupils of the Byakugan dipping down, elongating even as those white eyes turned red upon red. The pupils connected with the bottom of Neji's eyes, forming the red inner fang that characterized the dragon's eye, and Neji realized he could see.
Not just fear or chakra, I can see into Mizain and direct this fear, this alien force, I see the points of vulnerability in him. It struck Neji suddenly just what had happened, the power he had unleashed. I can see into his soul!
This is beyond the Byakugan, beyond the Dragon's Eye, what is this? A name came to Neji then, one that it seemed was whispered into the back of his mind by a cutting inhuman voice, one similar to Wusashu's, but different, more mature, ancient voice of unearthly power.
"All Seeing Eyes of the Heavens." Neji intoned, and his eyes opened and looked into those of Mehize Kizen.
The Akatsuki's head slammed backwards, his neck cracking with the force. He did not scream, but his mouth distended as if he wished to. His legs tried to move backward, but they found no purchase on the ground, as if he was held in the air by fear and agony. His eyes screamed their own pain, as Neji saw the images inflict themselves upon Kizen, and the former sand ninja's soul crumbled as the aged warriors of the past stood up in their skeletal majesty and struck him, slamming blade after blade into him, cutting until their weary souls were satisfied.
Around Neji the sand at his feet crumpled, and he reached down to his kunai holster, never taking his eyes from Kizen's, and drew forth a single kunai. It is not necessary, he will die soon, but this torment is enough for even him. Neji took the kunai in his right hand and threw.
It buried itself in the Akatsuki's heart.
Mehize Kizen pitched forward and slammed into the stone. The moment he hit his body began to break down, crumpling slowly to dust, along with his robes and gear, until only the forehead protector, with the slashed symbol of Hidden Sand on it, remained.
When Kizen was gone Neji felt his chakra return, even as his eyes returned to normal with a frightful suddenness, leaving him feeling drained and awed. I must be very careful with this power, or I will be punished for it. He recognized. I will be careful.
"Neji, my chakra is back, what was left after the fight anyway." Shiren remarked. "Dar?"
The stone ninja nodded.
"Then quickly, before the Mizain comes." Neji remarked. He formed the seals with his hands, calling as much chakra as remained to him. He bit his left forefinger and placed his hands on the ground. "Dragon summoning no Jutsu!" Three ninja spoke at once.
A great wind blew up upon that square, enough to blow the dragon ninja to the ground. When it was done all the ancient skeletons were gone, and three dragons floated in the air, large and powerful. The Chiang Lung, Elisylni, the Pan Lung Giraltiej, and the T'ien Lung Wusashu. "You have summoned us here, as we wished." Wusashu spoke. "Now, what is your request, dragon ninja?"
Neji did not hesitate. "Carry us to Konoha, and from there to the border of the Country of Lightning."
"As we are summoned we are bound to serve, but the debt will be light, since a great service has been done." Wusahu intoned. "Come, we shall fly."