Juzo peered at Sute down the length of Kubikiribocho, looming taller than ever over her kneeling form. Part of her felt numb as she stared up at him, her line of vision cleaved in two by the hovering bulk of the hooked blade so she could only see what lay above the glinting metal surface. Clouds blotted the setting sun behind his head and cast a gloomy air over the forest, quiet rumbles in the distance signaling a violent storm steadily heading their way.

"You have bad timing, Sute," the Swordsman declared gruffly. Dark shadows covered his face, shrouding his eyes from view and rendering them unreadable.

Something caught in her throat as she stared at him, her brain still slowly parsing the image before her. Only her grip on Ao's partially skinned hand, still steadily seeping blood into her own palms, kept her anchored to reality.

"D-dammit!" The blue-haired man coughed behind her, a wet noise signaling he'd coughed blood. She didn't respond to him, didn't even breathe as she kept her gaze trained on the Swordsman.

Once upon a time, Sute would call Juzo her favorite of the current Swordsmen. She had known nothing about him in her previous life, and the second she saw Kubikiribocho strapped to his back she knew he would die at some point. Even before she saw Raiga and realized the death sentence his existence meant for Ameyuri, before she saw Fuguki use Samehada for the first time and recognize the blade's true owner, she knew that Juzo had a definite expiration date so Zabuza could inherit the blade.

Yet even so, even knowing he would die one day and that she would let him in order to preserve Canon and the little value her knowledge of it gave her, she considered Juzo her favorite of the living Swordsmen.

For nine years the man had been a constant presence in her life, always grunting at her greetings and hurling half-hearted threats they knew he would never carry out. He had always been the one to drag her out when she got in over her head back during the war, like when the Yellow Flash nearly killed her. He'd survived when nearly all the others died against Maito Dai, he'd been the first to find her after the war ended to congratulate her for surviving, he had been the one to first shove the bokken back into her hands and tell her to give it another shot—

Biwa Juzo was not a friend. He was safety and security, always present in her life in some capacity and signaling everything would be okay.

And now, he had turned his blade towards her.

She swallowed quietly, blinking slowly as she stared up the blade's length. "Get up," he ordered gruffly. Sute sat still for a moment, just staring at the familiar man she called ally, but then she gave Ao's hand a tiny squeeze and let go. Juzo backed up half a step to give her space to clamber to her feet, the end of the blade lifting in tandem with her until finally settling to point at her neck.

She didn't turn her eyes away from his face, even as his gaze seemed to focus behind her. "Move," he ordered, but Sute remained in place. Her hands clenched into fists at her sides as she stared at him, smearing Ao's still-warm blood across her fingernails as they dug into her palms.

"You're defecting," she said. It wasn't a question, barely even an observation, just a fact.

"I am," Juzo confirmed shortly, still glaring behind her at Ao's crumpled form.

"Y-you," the Hunter-nin growled, his lone eye burning as he glared up at the swordsman.

"Move, Sute," Juzo repeated, glaring right back, and she slowly breathed through her nose.

"If I do, will you kill him?" she asked, and he scoffed, his eyes still too shadowed and dark to read his intent.

"Of course. You see that uniform, he's a Hunter-nin. Do you know what he's got under that eye patch?" When she gave her head a tiny shake, he continued grimly, "He's got a damn Byakugan there. Do you know what the Byakugan can do?"

"I do," she confirmed blandly. Just hearing the term "Byakugan" conjured memories of pale-eyed cartoon characters who could see through walls and skin despite having eyes that looked blind, able to read a person's chakra network like a book.

"Then you get why he's a threat."

Sute didn't bother responding to that comment. Her gaze shifted slightly to peer over her shoulder at the crumpled man below her, bright green eyes trained on the black eye patch. Ao's uncovered eye flickered and briefly met hers, full of a raging fire so much hotter than the cool blue hue seemed capable of possessing.

She wondered, briefly, what that other eye might be seeing right now. If it saw anything, or if he even had the chakra left to use it.

Sute turned her gaze back to Juzo. The wind picked up, a chilly gust blowing from the sea and sending her hair whipping around her face. She didn't bother trying to grab it though, just steadily stared up at him through the waving strands trying to obscure her vision.

"I can't let you do that, Juzo," she informed the Swordsman blandly, and for the first time since standing his gaze seemed to finally move from Ao and focus on her.

"You're kidding," he said flatly.

"D-dammit, Ringo!" Ao cursed behind her, and she could hear the crunch of mulch as he scrabbled against the ground to lift his torso. "J-just, get the hell out of here!"

"And leave you to die?" she quipped dryly, still staring Juzo dead on. "In case you haven't noticed, Juzo has the Kubikiribocho. And I'm pretty sure he doesn't plan on leaving it behind to pass onto the next generation."

"I don't," Juzo confirmed, eyes narrowing at her.

"And there you have it. I have every reason to stop him now."

"Dammit Ringo," Ao repeated, sounding more exasperated with her. Juzo just glared at her as his face twisted into a scowl, the red bars tattooed along his jaw stretching and pulling with the motion.

"Kid, are you really trying to play the hero now of all times?" he grunted, thoroughly irritated. But something cracked inside her at those words, and Sute threw back her head and laughed.

Her hysterical shrieks echoed through the ominous quiet, sharp and crisp and ringing over the thunder rumbling in the distance. Juzo stiffened at the abrupt outburst, looking ever so slightly more tense and wary, while she could feel Ao's gaze burrowing into her back. She ignored their wary looks as she ducked her head and ran a hair through her messy hair to try to smooth it out.

"Me? Play hero?" she cackled, peering at Juzo through her fingers. A manic grin stretched across her face, her eyes sparkling with a humor only she could understand. "That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard." Her laughter started up again, full of equal parts morbid humor and self-loathing.

She had never been the hero.

A hero would have told the police about what her father did in their basement. A hero would have tried to save them instead of sitting next to them taking meticulous notes of how their suffering. A hero would have done something—anything at all—tried to make things right somehow, even if it was something as small as sneaking them small treats to try to make their agony just a little less painful.

A hero wouldn't have sat by watching Nohara Rin get covered in scrawling seals to prepare for whatever ominous fate those men had in store for her.

Her giggles died out as she removed her hand from her face, her features shifting into a blank mask. "Let me assure you, my motivations are purely selfish," she told him bluntly, cold and emotionless. "I'm not a hero by a long shot." She'd long since accepted her lot in life. Sute would never be a hero, not in the last one, and most certainly not in this one either.

Juzo's eyes narrowed, his lips curling back. "You just have to make this hard, don't you," he grumbled. Raindrops began falling around them softly, one drop at a time spaced a few seconds apart. Storms didn't just dramatically roll in and release the heavens' pent-up showers all at once, they gathered strength gradually, drop by drop by drop. Some of them hit her, some missed her entirely.

A single drop landed on Sute's face and slid down her cheek, leaving a shiny streak like a tear.

Then Juzo moved, disappearing in a blur of movement.

Sute leaped into the air as Kubikiribocho sliced through the space her ankles had occupied, tumbling forward to press her hands on the flat of the blade while twisting and spinning to kick at Juzo's face. He leaned back, the soles of her sandals barely skidding across the edge of his cheek, and she pushed off the sword to tumble to the ground. She rolled into a crouch and grabbed her bokken as she tumbled past it, swiftly rising to her feet while gripping it in a standard kenjutsu stance.

Juzo was upon her within seconds, swinging his blade down with the blunt edge facing her. Sute swiftly raised her bokken horizontally above her head to block the blow, her left hand sliding along the shaft to support it and funneling chakra into the seals as it passed over them. The writing lit up bright white just before Kubikiribocho made contact, the force of the blow nearly enough to send her flying back if not for the chakra anchoring her feet to the ground. As it stood the sudden displacement of air shot outwards like a shockwave, Sute gritting her teeth as she stood her ground.

Above her the bokken remained strong and steady as it blocked Kubikiribocho, the wood perfectly firm and unyielding beneath her palms.

"Tch, you didn't play around with those seals," Juzo growled, and she grunted, her arms wavering as she continued to support her bokken. While the seals kept the bokken from being broken by the larger sword, that didn't change the power he put into the blow, and when it came to brute strength Juzo had the advantage.

"Not at all," she ground out, and then she twisted the bokken and ducked away from him, calling up a substitution with a nearby rock to escape the sword's range before it could crush her. The sudden lack of resistance on her end sent Juzo staggering forward, the giant cleaver swinging downwards and crashing through the small boulder with nearly no resistance. Sute leaped into a tree and jerked her emergency kunai from the pouch on her hip, squeezing the hilt and sending chakra into it before throwing it into the air while leaping to another tree.

Sute had designated the emergency kunai as such for a reason. Black writing appeared on the bandages wrapped around the handle even as it soared into the air, and the blade sparked white before exploding. A giant burst of light nearly as bright as the sun flashed above them, the world tinted painful featureless white for several long seconds before finally fading.

Even as the flash faded Sute landed on a branch and kicked off to jump to the next one, neatly dodging the barrage of water-based projectiles that flew her way and shattered the bark upon impact. Juzo cursed loudly below her, yelling, "Did you just use a fucking glorified flash bang!?"

She didn't bother responding, too busy jumping from tree to tree. She had never tested that particular variation of the seal before, but she knew the light from the massively overpowered flash bang would be visible for miles. Fuguki, Zabuza and Kisame should all be able to see it, and while the Swordsmen and Kiri as a whole may not particularly care about saving comrades in need, they would still come to clean up the mess because they never shied away from a fight.

It would still take time before any of them would arrive though. For all she knew they could all be caught up in battles at that very moment. At the very least Sute expected a minimum of five minutes before Kisame would arrive, which meant until then she had to survive against Juzo on her own.

Her gaze flitted to Ao briefly as she dropped from a tree to touch down on the ground, finding his eye focused on her. Their gazes locked for a brief moment, a silent understanding passing between them in the span of less than half a second. His face firmed with resolve and he began to drag himself deeper into the dense undergrowth even as she spun and took off, flashing through a rarely used set of hand seals.

Suiton: Hiding in Mist.

The rain had started to pick up by this point, casting a thin misty sheen over the forest that left the surroundings hazy. She pulled upon it and the mist thickened as her chakra permeated it, the air quickly filling with a foggy white hue even thicker than the natural fog in Kiri. Just as it filled out she heard Juzo's footsteps directly behind her, and she had to skip and twist her body to duck away from the swipe of his sword, the sharp hook on the blade's tip tearing her shirt but not touching her skin.

She surged forward, jumping onto the blade and swinging her bokken at his head. He jerked Kubikiribocho to fling her away, easily causing her swing to miss, and as she flew she tossed her bokken away and flipped through the air. Her hands clasped together for a brief moment before parting to rush through hand seals with her right hand, while simultaneously cupping her left around her mouth. A violent burst of water spewed forth, surging towards Juzo with the force and pressure of a fireman's hose.

Juzo shifted to dodge but then jolted in place, a startled expression flickering on his face briefly as his head snapped downward to stare at his feet. He barely had time to register the sight of roots loosely looped over his toes before the water hit him, the force of the blast tearing out the roots as his feet flew out from under him. Sute charged forward in the same moment, the bokken flying back into her waiting hands with a pull of chakra threads and the seals lighting up once more.

She remained perfectly silent as she leaped into the air and swung her blade down on him, the thick fog hiding her movements until the last second. Juzo barely, barely managed to duck out of the way this time, his grip on his sword going slack for the briefest of seconds. Seeing this, Sute wasted no time and kicked at the flat of the blade with both feet, the sharp edge scraping the soles of her sandals until she could nearly feel it, the edge just barely separated from her feet by a thin layer of rubber.

The kick was enough to tear the hilt from Juzo's hand, Kubikiribocho flying away. However, in a single fluid movement he redirected his body towards his blade and snatched up the hilt once more, twisting and swinging it at her with a roar. Sute landed and jumped back, but this time she didn't get enough distance and could feel the blade just barely bite into her right side for half a second, sharp and stinging as it drew a line of blood before she pulled out of its range.

She grit her teeth as she slid back several feet, muting her footsteps as she dodged to the side and leaped to the trees. As she jumped to another branch she felt an unconscious twinge of chakra near the cut, and then her flesh transformed for the briefest of moments. Her whole body went numb as she felt the injury seal shut, her skin returning to normal seconds later.

She winced slightly as she landed, eyes widening because shit, she did NOT mean to do that—

A rush of air ruffled her hair and she twisted her head just in time to see Juzo's blade swinging down at her, the metal cleaving through the mist as it descended.

Then brown filled her vision, and she heard the distinct sound of metal crashing into wood.

"What the hell?" Juzo sputtered. Neither of them moved as they stared at the obstacle suddenly separating them, a brief silence washing over them as he pulled back his sword. Through the thick fog she could spy glimpses of wooden grain, an interconnecting grid of bars blocking his sword without any sign of giving under its weight.

Stomach sinking, Sute's gaze flickered to her bokken to find wooden bars jutting out from the blade and vanishing into the mist, and everything below her wrists transformed into wood and melding directly with hilt.

Of course. Fucking Mokuton just HAD to activate and save her life.

Swallowing harshly, she flared her chakra and just like that her hands returned to normal, the wooden protrusions sharply receding back into the bokken as it snapped back to its original shape. At the same time she took a single step backwards and fell from the branch, throwing the bokken away as she flipped to the ground.

She flew through more hand seals and shot a high-powered burst of water where she knew Juzo had been, even more powerful than the last. She couldn't see him but she could hear Juzo curse as it caught him mid-fall, unable to reorient himself enough to dodge the spray before it hit. His grunt quickly faded into the distance as he was presumably shoved back, but she wasn't taking any chances.

The second her feet touched the ground she was moving again, this time racing towards the bay. Fighting in the forest had become too much of a liability now. The thick mist may have been able to keep Juzo from seeing what had stopped his blade—Kubikiribocho was ridiculously long, and the angle it'd been embedded suggested he would have been positioned just outside visual range of the wooden net—but Sute couldn't risk another unintentional flare-up of her mokuton. Especially with help on the way.

She grit her teeth as she broke through the tree line and reached the shore, the fog much thinner here and allowing her a perfect view of the sea. The storm had clearly placed its claim on it, the water tinted an opaque gray as waves crashed against the shore. Seashell fragments snapped and cracked under her sandals with each step as she ran, the dull roar of the sea ringing to her right and the silence from the forest to her left almost deafening.

She heard him before she saw him.

Metal suddenly appeared in her vision and she skidded to a halt, once again eye level with the end of Kubikiribocho. Behind it she could see Juzo glaring at her, his eyes narrowed and his jagged teeth almost glowing against his shadowed face.

"That's enough," he spat, and for the first time since the battle began Sute didn't move to flee or attack. She just felt her shoulders slump and stared back at him stonily, her eyes turning hollow and uncaring.

"Is this the part where you kill me?" she asked, voice light yet rimmed with a blunt edge void of any particular inflection.

"It's tempting," he replied, his tone not quite the same flat and unmoved quality hers held. "But I've wasted enough fucking time with you." He rotated the blade slightly, the change in orientation allowing the metal to obscure his face from her line of vision. "Turn around."

"Can't you even look at my face while killing me?" she questioned blandly, knowing full well she was walking a thin tight rope right now, but for once she felt apathetic to the risk. Now that she'd stopped moving the battle high which had fueled her had finally begun to fade, the adrenaline seeping away and letting the brunt of her exhaustion seep through to her awareness. Every part of her felt tired now, from her legs to her arms to even her own mind.

Juzo just scoffed, eyes dark and angry. "Do it," he growled, and after a moment she obediently turned. Straight ahead of her she could now see a dark silhouette rushing towards them from the distance, the waves churning more violently as it drew closer. "You're an annoying kid, Sute," Juzo grunted behind her. She felt the edge of his blade press against the side of her neck, the metal cold against her skin but not pressing deep enough to draw blood. "More annoying than Kiri. Hurry up and come to your senses and get out of this shit hole while you still can."

Sute stood perfectly motionless, acutely aware of the unspoken threat. She heard a yell from the approaching figure and then a large tidal wave suddenly sprouted from the ocean, the fringe bulging and convulsing as it rushed towards them.

Sharks made of water soared over her, crashing into Juzo and digging their teeth into him. A loud splash sounded and Kubikiribocho suddenly collapsed into a cascading shower of water that drenched her entire right side, and at that moment she felt her body sag. A water clone. Of course.

A loud curse sounded as the figure ahead of her zoomed forward with a sudden burst of speed, becoming little more than a blur. Within seconds a pair of familiar blue hands gripped her, beady white eyes boring into her.

"Sute, what the hell happened!?" Kisame demanded, squeezing her shoulders. Sute blinked and smiled up at him tiredly, her eyes devoid of any warmth or feeling.

"Shinobi Swordsman Biwa Juzo has defected from Kiri and taken Kubikiribocho with him."

And with those words, reality came crashing down upon her and her face crumpled, her eyes widening as a sudden chill washed over her.

She just fought Juzo.

Goodbye Canon.

Farewell Juzo.

Fight scenes are still tricky to write. Not 100% satisfied with this chapter, but I think it mostly turned out okay. More importantly though: congratulations to everyone who managed to predict/guess that Sute has mokuton! If anyone finds this development random and suddenly inserted, I've been dropping hints since the first chapter. If you go back and reread it, you'll find a LOT of places with her subtly using it. With this, only one major twist in Sute's backstory/abilities is left, and I can guarantee even she'll be surprised.

As always, thanks for reading and leaving reviews. I'll see you all next week!