As normal as it gets
(Oh hey, didn't see you there. Let's just get right on into this one. Still don't own Naruto or Boruto. Enjoy.)
A shinobi has a tough life generally speaking, and sometimes they have to do something normal to wind down and relax from their usual stress. "So who's next?" Boy's night at a karaoke bar, that's where we find ourselves right now. Both the twins were there, Zeko, and oddly enough Yuuji tagged along. At the moment they were seated at the grill-table and were cooking their meat and veggies as desired since a song was just finished by Yuuji. The boys were all wearing their casual clothes, lighter shade tops and pants to bear the desert heat, save for Zeko who was still wearing his normal outfit.
Zeko piped in after getting a strip of beef into his mouth. "I'll go next, give me a few minutes." Rei nodded and started cycling through the songs, no they weren't picking their own songs cause where was the fun in that? Singing something you already know? Too easy. "How've you been Rei? My team's been too busy for a while and I haven't seen you."
Rei scratched his head and tousled some of his smooth blue hair in the process. "Funny that you ask, and it's funnier what happened. I got put on a team with Erumi-chan and wow… She's a real puncher, almost broke my newest puppet model."
Zeko's face fell once he heard that bit of information. "Is it one of those gay scientific ninja puppets?" Ran flicked a pebble at the youngest of them in spite since he still loved his 'gay' ninja tools.
"I see why you'd ask that but no it's not gay or a scientific thing… kinda." Ran selected the song and put the tablet facedown on the table. Zeko was finished eating his steak strips so he was just waiting for the explanation. "Your song is waiting for you so let me tell you about my hobby-"
"Puppets just aren't my thing Rei, sorry."
Rei rubbed the bridge of his nose and exhaled. He decided to add some more food to his plate before elaborating any further. "It's not even just puppets that I work with Zeko. I do a lot with chakra conductive materials, and that's where my newest puppet shows itself. It's a performance with three acts and I worked hard on making sure nothing could get out." Zeko raised an eyebrow at that last part.
"Get out of what? Are we still talking about puppets?" The boy cracked his knuckles and shook his hand idly while hearing Yuuji tell Ran about how much he liked working at the Kazekage's side.
"Don't worry about it. And the other person on my team is Touka."
Zeko definitely had questions on that one. "Didn't she already have a team? Why'd you and Erumi end up with her?"
"Apparently her sensei was one of the casualties in- Yeah… so she got put with us since she needed a team before she could try to be a chunin." The puppeteer brushed off the first half of his explanation but it still hit Zeko all the same, but who doesn't have things they don't like thinking about?
A somber but jazzy tune started playing and that was Zeko's cue. "Oh this is a good one." He grabbed the microphone and stepped up to the small stage. Ran rolled his eyes once his younger teammate got on stage. The screen started showing the lyrics but Zeko paid it no mind and looked either directly at his friends or somehow beyond them, he looked like he was in the zone to sing this one.
"Baka mitai, kodomo na no ne."
The others were surprised by the fact that Zeko could somehow sing, granted his young voice didn't match the tone of the song but it wasn't unpleasant to hear.
"Yume o otte kizutsuite."
"Uso ga heta na kuse ni, waraenai egao miseta."
'Of course he can sing too, why not just give him everything he'd want?' Ran thought while Yuuji was bobbing his head to the song.
"I love you, is something you never say."
"Kuchi beta de honma ni bukiyou. Na no ni, na no ni doushite."
"Wait, does he already know the song? We already said there was no fun if-" Rei started but Yuuji put his right hand over his mouth and shushed him.
"This is my favorite part!" He silently screamed.
"Sayonara wa ieta no."
Zeko clutched the right side of his chest as if he were holding his heart to gather all the emotion he could for the next line, and gather it he did because the next part would blow his friends away.
"Dame da ne! Dame yo. Dame na no yo!."
"Anta ga suki de suki sugite."
The delivery was perfect and the sadness of the lyrics hit the boys like a meteor. Yuuji was smiling with tears at the corners of his eyes, and the twins were both surprised with their own separate reasons as to why. One was shocked at the delivery and somber tone, and the other was speechless at how some people really can have everything.
"Dore dake tsuyoi osake demo."
"Yugamanai… Omoide ga… b-"
The music and lyrics cut off right before the most important line of the song which left Yuuji and Zeko looking around and ready for violence. "The hell Rei?! I wasn't done!"
"Yeah he wasn't done!" It wasn't often that Yuuji would raise his voice so imagine the surprise on Rei's face when he did. The puppeteer shook the surprise off his face and picked the tablet back up.
"We already said there's no fun in getting a song you know, how do you even know that one? It's older than all of us put together… I think." Rei looked to the side with a squint on that bit of math while Zeko sat back at his plate and started eating again.
The platinum blonde looked sad for a moment but he gave a slight smile after a moment. "My dad really liked it, and he always sang it out loud so it grew on me like a sand tick." Zeko looked over at the elder twin and saw that he was messing with his weapons. At this point it was almost a problem how much Zeko didn't like those things. "Still got those gay things."
Ran smirked which was a dead giveaway for what he was about to say. "You sure talk when you 'don't need to think about boobs' don't you?" Cue the stares, because that's what Rei and Yuuji were doing while Zeko just sat there stone faced. The fact that Ran either found out about that or just asked Hana concerned him since now more rumors would spread about his sexuality. "I'm gonna head back home. You guys have fun."
'He's really leaving me here after dropping that on my head.' Zeko, thankful for the momentary distraction, looked around for something to keep their minds off what just happened.
Rei called out as Ran opened the door to the room. "I'll stay out a while longer nii-san, I'll be home before it's too dark. Now what did he mean by- Zeko? Yuuji where'd he go?" The chunin was looking around equally shocked since the boy up and vanished.
"I don't know! He was right next to you, how'd he get away after that?"
"Well we aren't just going to drop that, I want answers." The two nodded at their unspoken agreement in finding out what the hell happened that made Zeko not like boobs. Truly a mystery…
"I'm home!" A blue haired adolescent called out once he entered the doorway. He took his sandals off and walked into their quaint living room where a woman was seated on a loveseat. "Kaa-san, Rei said he'd be in later."
"Good. At least you understood that you needed to set an example and got home early." Ran rolled his eyes and looked around but saw his father nowhere in the room.
"Where's tou-san? He set the curfew but isn't even here?" With that Kira looked at him with a glare.
"He's an adult of this house so he can be out drinking and gallivanting with hookers all I care. You're a child under our roof and we say be home before nine, you're home before nine. Do you understand?!"
Ran bit his tongue to hold back anything he would have responded with, not out of fear but out of some warped sense of responsibility. As the oldest he had an example to set and if he were to be kicked out then everything would fall on Rei, and despite only being older by a few minutes he was still the older brother so he felt responsible to keep Rei safe from anything… even their own parents. "I understand kaa-san."
"These kids… think that just cause they're a little strong they can disrespect their parents. I know Zeko never talked back to Akira, annoying as he was, he'd have been put back in the place a child belongs." How wrong she was in that wouldn't be known by her or her eldest since they didn't know how cool of a dad Akira was. Ran just cut his losses and went to his room without another word. The light of the setting sun practically illuminated his desk and the vial of viscous black fluid that was openly displayed.
Ran stared directly at the liquid and sucked his teeth in irritation. It taunted him as usual because it was too good to be true, something that would push him even further than he already was without having to train? Horseshit. He worked his ass off almost every day just to be put in the shadow of his teammate. Even the woman who gave birth to him was comparing him to Zeko. No. No… enough was enough. Everyone comparing him to Zeko, everyone overlooking him for Zeko, even Zeko saying he worked just as hard… 'He doesn't work for shit!'
The needle was in Ran's hand, his tendons were tense and his knuckles were pronounced with his hardened grip. The ichorous fluid sloshed around while his eyes held nothing but fury. Images of being overlooked by his teammate flashed through his head and he grit his teeth at each one.
"Fuck it!" It all happened so fast but the feeling of the needles piercing his left pectoral made him wince and the liquid that made his blood boil put him on the floor in fetal position while the concoction worked its way through his circulatory system. His right eye turned from brown to yellow while flame like markings spread from the injection point to the rest of his body. The most drastic thing was the fact that whatever was in that vial started forcing his body to produce cells at an alarming rate, bones practically broke themselves and grew from where they separated before healing again. Muscles tore apart and grew back together, every single nerve in his body was on fire with the input of pain he'd never experienced but he couldn't even scream in agony since his very voice was being changed at the same time.
In all Ran went from being pubescent to being entirely done with puberty. His hair was longer, he was much taller, and his clothes were in tatters from the sudden expansion of his body. His window opened and three figures came in while the fourth stayed outside and kept watch. "Took him long enough to use the damn thing. I thought we'd get him same day but no, he wants to wait a whole week!" A boy holding a scroll was complaining before another boy hit the back of his head.
"Jido you just want us to get caught don't you? Put the clothes on him." Jido started getting the torn clothes off Ran's writhing body and began to dress him the same way they were; sleeveless shirts, grey pants, and black sandals. "Seiya, anything nearby?" The boy outside the window nodded his head.
"Just a few people on a night walk. No other shinobi around Goji." Goji nodded and watched Ran start coming to.
"Wh- Who are you?" He stood up and fell right back down, the burning wasn't done running through his body and it overwhelmed his nerves again. The pain mixed with his sense of balance being completely off was too much for him and he couldn't properly stand yet. "What is this?!" The markings were all over his body and now he could see them as he stared at his hands and arms in awe of the moving tattoo-like markings.
Goji was irritated at how everyone just forgot that this was a stealth mission since they were in a hidden village and trying to properly get this kid… previously kid to defect. "Shut the hell up!" The girl of the group silently screamed and brought eyes to herself. "This is supposed to be a stealth mission! If we get caught they're gonna kill us!"
"You're louder than most of us were Akane…" Her head slowly turned to Jido and the look in her eyes made a shiver go down his spine but she didn't even get to speak since-
"Ran! What was that sound?" And with that they had to leave, not now but right now. They all went out the window with a surprising amount of speed since one of them was not used to moving in the body that he was currently in. The colors of the night looked more vibrant to his eyes, and the air smelled more crisp to his nose. Every noise almost seemed like it was right next to him.
"It's like my senses just got turned to eleven. What was in that vial?" He looked to Goji since he seemed to be the leader of the group that was escorting him.
Goji shook his head but had an explanation to give. "You haven't even been properly inducted, and I don't know what's in it but I know it's important enough that if you got it then you got potential." Ran was confused for a moment but Goji cleared it up as they hastily moved through the streets, rooftops being too obvious at this hour. "We're the third part of the Curse Mark Division. We have the basic types of the curse seal and we collect anyone picked for one. By the look of it I'd say your affinity is with fire, based on your markings at least." Ran looked at the flame like markings and nodded his head, deciding to save his questions for when they were out of the village. "Seiya, anything around?"
"Only thing I'm sensing is something as noticeable as a cat." With that they hurried through the streets, evading any light sources in their movements. Seiya was right in saying the only thing near them was a cat but how big this cat was is where the real detail mattered. Hana watched as the group made their way towards the eastern walls of the village and with a sense of urgency she went through the signs for a summoning and with a poof of smoke a dusty white cat appeared in front of her.
"I know that smell anywhere, they're kidnapping Ran!" She hurriedly scribbled on a note that she would pursue the kidnappers and leave a trail to follow with. "Get this to the police force, ANBU, someone! Hurry!" The cat took the note and ran off in the other direction while Hana took out a kunai and cut some of her hair off. The trail started there and she gave chase to the group that had her teammate. She followed them at a distance to stay unnoticed and she found out how they got in and out of the village once she came across a part of the wall that had a genjutsu cast on it. With a quick pulse of her chakra she revealed that there was a hole straight through the wall of sandstone and went right through it while dropping more hair. 'Ran's paying for my new hairstyle after this shit!'
"I still think you should've worn the mask we gave you." He wasn't wearing a mask because he viewed it as a coward's accessory, if he was going to do something he'd let his face be seen so they knew exactly who did it. "It was hard to model a tanuki mask."
"Hiro, only cowards wear a mask. A real man would show his face while he defaces a library." Hiro's masked gaze slowly turned to Zeko and beneath his blank accessory there was an accusing look.
"That poor librarian… You know the mission, go clear out the cave and free any hostages." With that Zeko leapt off their perch and headed towards the cave they were looking at. There were two guards outside just shooting the breeze so the boy made sure the black bow he strapped to his back was firmly on for what he was about to do.
"Hey. You ever wonder why we're here?" The left guard said to his associate.
"It's one of life's great mysteries isn't it? Why are we here? I mean, are we the product of some cosmic coincidence or… is there really a God watching everything? Y'know, with a plan for us and stuff. I dunno man keeps me up on nights like these." Right guard was stunned at the sudden philosophical questions and pondering that his partner suddenly dropped.
"What? I meant why are we out here, in the freezing cold instead of inside?"
Left guard was flustered at his mistake and didn't do himself any justice in clearing it up. "Oh uh… yeah."
"What was all that stuff about God?"
"Uh, hm, nothing."
Right guard just looked at his partner in a new light, he'd never seen him be so passionate over such ideas. "You wanna talk about it?"
"No."
"You sure?"
"Yeah."
"Seriously though, why are we out here? As far as I can tell we could just use an abandoned town or-" Zeko's foot crashed into the left guard's jaw and he spun to hit the right guard with his other heel, then he gave right guard a one-two punch and ended the combo with a kick to the jaw. Before the left guard could get up and try to fight against his assailant he found himself being choked by a bow while Zeko pulled the string back. The bow drew on his chakra and since he didn't choose which nature to channel into the shot it chose for him, and it seemed to like wind the most.
He let go of the string and a burst of wind punctured the brainstem of the guard giving him an instant departure from life. Zeko removed the bow from the below his victim's neck and watched as the pure wind chakra slowly began to dissipate, then finished off the other one in the same manner. Hiro watched the display from afar and allowed a small smile to cross his face. 'Kid's ruthless.'
"Since I don't wanna use real arrows these just go away after a couple seconds." He looked at the bow and walked into the cave with a shrug. "Costs a little more chakra if I don't have something as a base but doesn't matter to me, cool weapon." He stopped and took cover behind some weird obstruction of rebar right as two more bandits walked by. He spared no time in firing another shot that split into two and hit them both in the base of their necks. From there he started moving further along in the cave and heard voices along the way.
"Boss is setting up some kind of fight in a while, someone must've pissed him off." He could practically hear the shudder of that same person as he got closer, taking cover behind random objects all the way. "I feel bad for the guy who's fighting him." The voice and whoever he was talking to started moving further away but neither of them got very far since they wound up with blasts of wind through their necks like the last three.
After a minute of exploration, Zeko found himself at an overlook and could see a bar with some patrons right across from a pit that was around six feet deep and twenty feet wide. There was a kid in that pit that barely looked older than he did and he was the picture of fear. Zeko figured that this must be the guy that their boss was going against in a fit of anger. He looked up and saw a small crack in the ceiling with a droplet of water about to drip down and so he activated his sharingan.
The water droplet fell down and with it came the casting of a decent illusion that would make everyone at the bar think that the kid was still in that pit. The tricky part of the illusion was that it only worked on everyone who could see the droplet of water, by watching the droplet as it fell Zeko reflected his eyes in a three-sixty angle in all directions so the only flaw was that two people had their backs turned when he did it.
With that he had enough time to jump down, grab the kid by his shoulder, and bring them back to the overlook in a swirl of sand. "Don't throw up on me." Zeko pushed the kid away from him before he could empty his stomach anywhere near him, but he couldn't blame him since the body flicker was such a rapid movement from one place to another. By the time the kid had his guts under control Zeko was readying his bow again. This time there were five shots of pure lightning chakra primed and ready to fire, which they were. Once they made contact with their targets they dispersed across them, sending a lethal pulse of electricity through their bodies. "Follow the trail I left and get out of here." With that Zeko leapt off their overlook and walked down a carved hallway. He could hear the faint sounds of laughter and conversing so he slowed his pace to listen for voices.
"Sorry girls but I have more stress to blow off." All his powers of deduction led Zeko to believe that the boss was at the end of this hallway. "You two stay ready for me to-" There was no fight. There was no grand meeting or reveal of who and why either, one moment the missing nin was dressing himself and the next he collapsed with a spike of iron sand, coated with wind chakra, through his heart.
Needless to say that the two girls were horrified and expressed that through screaming bloody murder as Zeko left the shadows of the hallway. Seeing two girls with collars around their necks panicking and checking the dead body of a rogue chunin wasn't something Zeko ever anticipated to see but here it was in front of him. "Come with me and I'll get you back to-"
"You killed him?! Why?! Our big brother never did anything wrong!" One of the girls shouted at him while the other was crying over the corpse in the room.
'Wait a second, did they just say that was their brother?' Shukaku mused from within while Zeko absorbed the knowledge himself. 'Brat, come back to the world before she hits you.' The boy snapped back to reality to see that the girl who yelled at him was on her feet and clumsily approaching in the overly long robe she had on. Unfortunately for her she was now considered a threat and ended up being struck in the face with the black bow, which was being used as a club by Zeko. The second girl rose to her feet and was about to engage in a futile charge like her sister but she didn't get the chance. Hiro made his appearance and with his bandaged left hand, delivered a precise strike to a pressure point on the girl's neck. She fell unceremoniously to the ground while he turned around.
"Report." Zeko took a knee and put his weapon on his back.
"All threats have been dealt with and one hostage has been freed. The two here had a relationship with the main target." Hiro cocked an eyebrow and looked back at the corpse that had iron sand and blood pooling around him.
"What type of relationship?"
Zeko's eyes twitched at the question. He could tell that his mentor clearly knew exactly what type of relationship but just wanted to make him say it. "I think they were siblings… and it was sexual. After I killed him they displayed the signs of ste- stol- stoc- the one where you fall in love with someone who kidnapped you!" Hiro was smiling as a scorpion proofed onto his shoulder with a slip of paper in its claw. He took the piece of paper and read what was on it, at the same time part of his shoulder bulged then shrank. "It's from the Kazekage, get back to her office as fast-" He looked back and Zeko was gone from his sight, no matter how hard he strained his eye. Hiro looked back at the two girls and sighed at the fact that he was on cleanup and recovery alone. "At least he's Ganban material."
New Mission: A Deadly Pursuit
It was the crack of dawn and Yuno's office was more active than it would be most of the day, but it was for good reason. "It's too damn early for my head to hurt this much, Yuuji has all of your team gathered?" The teenager looked again but he didn't see the fifth member of the group he chose that was told to assemble here.
"I'm not sure where he could be, but he has to be on his way."
From the ceiling came a small figure with a bow strapped to its back, they landed behind the group and were only noticed by the Kazekage initially. "Hello there."
Yuuji and the team he gathered turned around with looks ranging from smirks to full smiles. "Zeko! Finally!" Yuuji turned back to Yuno and bowed. "My team is assembled." The newcomer needed to be caught up to speed but the powers of exposition were already at play.
"Alright you five, your mission is to pursue Nekoma Hanatsu who is already in pursuit of a four man team that has kidnapped Modare Ran. Yuuji will be team leader due to his rank as a chunin, and I know you're wondering why I didn't assign a jonin for this… well the only ones available are working at the hospital and I don't think it's a good choice to take any of them. Do you all understand your mission?" Yuuji nodded and looked back to his team. "The east wall was her last known location."
"Let's go team!" Yuuji ran out the door with Erumi and Rei in tow while Zeko and Touka looked at each other before jumping out the opened window.
The group was gathered by the eastern wall and were looking for any trail that Hana could've left, and in the early morning hours it wasn't easy to see anything notable… unless you had eyes that could see things in very enhanced detail. "Yuuji! I found some of Hana's hair!" The team came over to the wall and saw a clump of dirty blonde hair but the real surprise was when Zeko walked right through the wall. "It's a genjutsu just come on." With that the team was through the wall and in the desert.
Erumi noticed a major problem right off the bat. "It's been hours since they left, how are we supposed to catch up?" The group looked at her and realized that she had a point, they were hours behind and who knows how far their targets have gone by now. There was an easy solution for their problem and it's name was sand. The desert sand came in a wave and pushed them along the trail of scattered tufts of hair. "Sometimes god is on your side." One person frowned at that but he didn't bother reminding the girl who was doing this.
Something that would have taken them a few hours to even halfway accomplish only took half of one. The end of the desert and the start of the land of rivers was in sight but there was a minor problem as well. There was a guy in the way of their goal and the fact that he stood there with his arms crossed led them to think he planned on taking them all at once. With a wave of his hand, Zeko stopped the sand from pushing them any farther and they started running ahead. The guy charged and Erumi leapt ahead to land a punch against his cheek. "Lucky shot. But Jido ain't going down so easy little lady."
"I got this one, I'll catch up with you guys." The group spared no time in going ahead while Erumi cracked her knuckles.
They made it into the sparse forests and were crossing a river when the water rose and latched around their ankles like boneless limbs. From the water came a girl with dark skin and light blonde hair. "You dumbasses actually got past Jido? Well I'm sorry but you aren't going anywhere else but Hell now." She started going through hand seals but so did Touka and the crystals that burst out of the water forced the girl to drop her attack and set the group free. 'What type of earth style was that? This river's deeper than old lady pussy… where'd she get the earth from?' Touka stayed behind while the rest of her group got onto the river bank and ran off.
"Give us Ran back!" She ran through her hand seals and placed her hands onto the surface of the river, and a spire of blue crystal emerged from the water. 'Shoton: Shodan.'(Crystal release: Crystal Spear). The girl didn't do anything extraordinary or excessive to avoid being hit… she just dodged by sinking into the water.
"Don't yell at me. Your not so little friend is coming with us, but you'll be dead before you can see it."
Rei was looking at Zeko while they left the riverfront, and it was a look of confusion more than anything. "You've been staring for a few minutes. What's up?"
"Why were you using sand to stay right above the water back there?" That made the younger boy trip and smack face first into a tree. He pulled himself out and shook it off with a blank expression. "Wait a second…" Rei might not have been the brightest of their generation but he wasn't stupid. "You can't walk on water yet can you?"
"No I can't. Why would I need to walk on water when we live in a desert?" Rei was about to interject with the obvious but Yuuji coughed and got them to both look at the teenaged boy who was staring at them.
"Goji told me to kill anyone who made it this far, I'm sorry that you came all this way for your friend only to-" He stopped his monologue to avoid the ball of fire that got sent his way, courtesy of a humanoid puppet that Rei managed to reveal without anyone noticed beforehand. The puppet had a smoking mouth courtesy of the fireball and it only wore a brown cloak that went past its knees.
"Just go, this one's all mine." Chakra threads came from Rei's right hand and his left was relaxed at his side. Yuuji and Zeko leapt off without another word while Seiya threw a handful of shuriken and made a hand seal, five turned to twenty and twenty turned to dozens of spinning weapons. With just a flick of the wrist his puppet was in front of him and taking each of the throwables with no issue.
"I'll make sure this is quick." With that black lines started spreading across Seiya's skin, starting from his left bicep.
Rei was smirking internally but his face showed a calm expression, as if he had nothing to worry about. "Don't take my idea."
"Yuuji…" The teenager looked over at his last companion as they followed the trail of blonde hair that was spread across the ground. "I have a bad feeling about this mission." Yuuji looked over at Zeko and saw that the boy was adjusting the bow along his back, nervously at that, like an awkward stretch whenever someone was unsettled.
"Sometimes we have to follow a gut feeling. Maybe something will go wrong maybe not, who really knows? All we can really do is- DODGE!" One leapt away instinctively and the other watched what was happening before avoiding what was incoming.
"Sen'ei jashu!"(Striking Shadow Snakes). A cluster of brown snakes emerged from the canopy and tried their hardest to land a bite on Yuuji but he was too swift, and Zeko was way out of range once he knew to dodge. "I'm going for the wild guess that one of you is going to stay behind while the last one goes for the new guy? Sorry to say that neither of you are getting past me." His chest expanded and he opened his mouth to send a spray of purple mist towards Yuuji. The chunin saw that the few insects that were in the wrong place at the wrong time fell right out of the air, dead as a rock.
'Futon: Daitoppa.' (Wind Style: Great Breakthrough). No hand seals were used, all Yuuji did was inhale and use the move to blow the poisonous mist away, and once it was gone Zeko was by his side again. "We might not be able to split up here after all, that poison is a real problem."
"Name's Goji, I'm the leader of the band so do me a favor and just give up." He abandoned the branch he was standing on once an arrow of lightning came from Zeko's bow. "Alright fun way it is." With that, inky black marks spread from his neck all across his body. They spiraled and coiled around his flesh like the snakes he sent at them only moments ago. His entire body was marked with spiraling lines and he let a manic grin cross his face. "Ninpou: Doku kyū!"(Ninja art: Poison Sphere). This time instead of a mist he spat a glob of purple fluid that missed its mark, which was Zeko, on account of the mud wall he rose to block the attack.
The boy leapt back and in that same instant the wall shattered, courtesy of Goji's knee going through it. Goji didn't stop his assault and with speed that would've caught anyone unprepared off guard he was in Zeko's personal bubble, and he took his bow and flung it away like it was useless. Zeko watched a snake emerge from Goji's shoulder with its fangs dripping venom but he was a step ahead and the only thing that was bit was his bow. Yuuji came from the side and his left hand had a swirl of wind around it. "Fūton: Reppūshō!"(Wind style: Gale palm). He slammed his hand into Goji's side and sent the cursed teen flying. Yuuji glanced away and saw Zeko looking back with a scroll in his hand, from that scroll he unsealed a tanto and strapped it to his hip. The platinum blonde nodded at his team leader and ran off, the trail of hair wasn't done yet.
"Keep those eyes on me pretty boy!" More snakes came from Goji's arm and coiled around Yuuji with a vice grip. This time he was effectively trapped but a ninja always has a plan…
"Doton: Doryūdan." (Earth Style: Earth Dragon Bullet). The mud in front of Jido rose to his height and formed a dragon's head that shot pellets of mud at a charging Erumi. The girl broke her straight pattern and started to zig zag but the dragon head just turned to follow wherever she went, at the very least it was shooting where she was at and not where she was going to be. "Can you quit that dodging?!" Black lines started appearing on Jido's skin right as Erumi was close enough to land a hit, they were all straight and running down the length of his body so the source was hard to pinpoint. Right when the lines stopped spreading is when a fist landed in his stomach and knocked all the wind out of his body.
Erumi didn't have much to boast but that didn't make her a pushover. She had a decent pool of chakra and control to match, ever since she became a genin she worked on finding ways to push herself beyond anyone else and she managed to find something to set her place among her friend group. "Fly away!" She followed through with her strike and sent Jido careening into the ground with a trail of disturbed earth behind him.
Whatever his curse seal did definitely made sure that what she just pulled didn't blow his guts out of his body, and he wasn't happy with the fact that he was getting ragdolled so far. "How the hell are you doing that?! You're just a little princess trying to act like you're someone. Even my dumbass can sense that you had the second least chakra in your group!" He weaved some signs and slammed his hands on the ground and forced three walls to rise around the girl, she was cornered and he burst ahead to punish her. She raised her arms to defend herself against his blows but he flipped the script, swept a leg beneath her and sent off the ground, he then drove his elbow into her exposed torso and put her right on the ground.
The pain was intense but she wasn't going to give up just because life hurts. From where she was she could see that his cheek was still split from her very first strike on him and that gave her an idea. Erumi returned the favor and used her foot to kick Jido's ankle with an unreal amount of force, the sound of bone cracking was barely audible to her, and she spun and started delivered heavy strikes to the teen's face and chest before jumping in the air and sending him off with a double heeled kick to the chest. This time Jido didn't lose his footing but he did cough up some blood. 'This girl hits hard… hate to say it but I need to step it up…" With that his dark brown hair started turning black and his skin went from being light brown to copper brown, his eyes turned yellow and his body gained some mass. "Your lucky shots are done girly, nobody I fought in second form is still alive and kicking." He sank into the ground like it was water and Erumi was left to look around for any sign of him but there was none.
A hand breached the soil and grabbed her ankle, she couldn't even respond in time to prevent the pressure that was put onto her joints and with a sickening crunch her ankle was broken. An eye for an eye they say, but that hand let her know exactly where her enemy was and while she fell to the ground she made sure to slam her fist beneath her and shatter the earth below. The hand vanished and Erumi struggled to keep the tears out of her vision but they fell regardless. The cursed teen rose from the ground ten meters away with blood coursing down his head in time to see his opponent putting her hands over her injury and a light green aura was coming off of them. "Oh I get it, you're a medical ninja. Now I'm even more pissed off! They left me to fight the medic?" This time he rushed headfirst while Erumi was working herself to her feet, he threw a punch that she dodged by the skin of her teeth and she paid it back with one to his throat but instead of hitting flesh she only struck mud.
"A mud clone?! Shit where'd he go?!" She looked around but there was no sign of him until she remembered exactly what happened last time and she jumped off the ground right as a hand came up trying to repeat what it did before. She brought her foot down on the exposed hand and demolished every bone in it but she couldn't continue since her ankle decided to flare up in pain again. 'He's trying to disable me… he knows that if I get straight hits he won't be able to keep fighting.' The girl saw through the strategy with ease and she was rewarded with Jido fully emerging from the ground again, his injured hand revealing that this was the real deal.
"Little bitch!" This time he charged even faster than before with murder in his eyes but that was the problem, his anger made him sloppy. Erumi didn't dodge the hit this time, she took it for all it was worth and felt a cracking in at least two ribs. She flew into the walls that were put up to trap her and she was back to square one. "A medic of all things hurt me this bad, when you get to hell make sure that my room is already set up for when I get there." His undamaged hand coated itself in earth while he reeled it back and he drove it right where the girl was, key word being was. Next thing Jido knew, there was a girl wrapped around his body and she was squeezing hard.
"You don't heal faster from this thing!" Jido used his good hand to try and pry her off but her grip was too tight. "Whatever this is it just makes you tougher, you don't actually regenerate any quicker!" Erumi's grip was unrealistically powerful for someone her size, let alone age, and that's when Jido realized his mistake of underestimating a medic. With her level of chakra control the girl could enhance herself physically to push beyond her natural limits. Every time she landed a blow it was reinforced by chakra and every evasion was from a quick burst so she could manage to survive against him. "Every time I hit you earlier I made sure to aim for the bony parts of your body so I could fracture your bones…" She started squeezing even harder and Jido could feel things starting to give way under the pressure. "Those fractures were all I needed so I could squish you like a bug!" Jido was panicking and he used the walls he made to smash his back, and subsequently Erumi, against something but the girl didn't budge.
Blood started to seep from his eyes and he felt his rib cage give way and shatter like glass, his body was being forced to endure this pain because of the durability his curse seal gave him and he wasn't enjoying it. He flailed around like a fish on a reel but blood kept coming out of more and more orifices the more he thrashed. He suddenly stopped thrashing around like a madman when Erumi's strength reached her limit, if he didn't go down now then she was a sitting duck. He stood still for a moment… then toppled like a tower of wooden blocks. Erumi rolled off his back, panting all the while. She sat up and looked to where the team ran off and shook her head. "I'm no good right now, good luck everyone." She sat up against the stone wall and started making sure her ribs were aligned correctly, hopefully she didn't need surgery.
Right now Touka was behind a wall of crystal on the riverbank while being pelted by attacks but that wasn't the worst of it. 'This is stupid, why'd she have to use lightning style?' Right then a bolt blew a hole in the wall right beside the azure haired girl's head. Because her crystal release was composed of earth it was naturally weak to lightning and once her enemy figured it out she wasn't letting up on lightning style moves.
"You can't hide behind there forever. So you can either fight like a woman or die like a girl." With another few hand seals Akane sent even more lightning chakra through her hands and blew away more of the crystal wall. Touka had enough and decided to form a much smaller crystal wall to her left and in its reflection she could see her attacker readying another attack. She quickly made a large shuriken out of blue crystals and threw it around her wall.
Akane was about to fire off another round of lightning when a big shuriken made of crystal started heading her way, ripping through the surface of the water all the while. She made a last second choice to turn and blow it away with her attack and in doing so she left her guard open, and Touka appeared right behind her with a kunai made of the same crystals. With a jab it was rammed into her left kidney and she screamed in pain, but she had enough sense of mind to grab Touka's head and fling her away like trash. "Fuck that hurts!" Akane ripped the weapon out and let black markings emerge from her stomach and spread across her body, they were jagged and inconsistent with no real pattern. Her wound closed and she started weaving hand signs as Touka did the same. "You're a lucky little shit you know, with a bloodline like yours I'm not allowed to just kill you. I'm supposed to capture you by any means necessary but that doesn't mean you need to have all your limbs!"
"Shōton: Shōheki."(Crystal Release: Crystal wall). Another bit of cover on the riverbank while Akane still stood on the water, Touka needed time for what she was about to pull off and leeching her chakra into the ground didn't make it any easier for her focus.
"Ranton: Reizā Sākasu."(Gale Style: Laser Circus). A ring of blue chakra appeared around her hands and blasts of flowing lightning chakra burst out of them. They struck the wall and blew parts right off with only some resistance, and one was lucky enough to break right through and rip into Touka's right tricep. She clenched her arm and held back a cry of pain and focused on pushing more chakra into the ground before jumping away from the wall right before it shattered from the blasts. "Gale style is a bloodline that lets me mold lightning chakra like it was water, I can hunt you down wherever you run!" The remaining blasts changed direction and started following Touka with crippling intent.
'No no no! I need to use some of that chakra now if I want to live!' She started weaving hand seals and dropped to the ground once she was done, she wasn't fast enough to beat one of the lasers and it struck right into her right calf. 'Shōton: Akuma kesshō hansha.'(Crystal Release: Demonic Crystal Reflection). This time it was a mirror that broke through the ground and the rest of the blasts didn't break it at all, no, they went right into it.
Akane was surprised to say the least and she jumped off of the water back onto the riverbank with another laser circus at the ready. "How the fuck did you- Where'd my jutsu go?" She looked around but only saw the mirror crystal standing proudly across from her with its reflection showing her confused expression. A spire of crystal came from the ground and ripped through Akane's left foot, that gave Touka the chance to emerge from behind the mirror with her hands clasped together. Akane kicked things into high gear and sent her seal to the next level, her hair grew out to her lower back and turned ash white. While her skin didn't change her eyes did and turned a piercing blue with a minor glow behind them. She fired another laser circus but not only were there more blasts this time, they were more dense.
Touka dodged as best as she could but the sheer number of projectiles mixed with their tracking led to holes being put into her legs and arms, limiting her movements from then on. 'Almost done!' She was struggling to stand even as Akane dislodged her foot and watched the wound close, her sandal was not given the same treatment and now had a hole through the top of it. The crystal mirror sank back into the ground while Akane approached the wounded girl who tried her best to seem threatening but it wasn't working well considering her physical state.
"You win some you lose some I guess. At least any brats you can make'll be plenty strong." She reeled her hand back and chopped Touka's neck with enough force to knock her right out. The problem was that this was a replica that burst into pink crystals, but that wasn't all, a bright flash of blue revealed the blasts from the first laser circus volley… and the closest thing to them was Akane. The blasts of flowing lightning bore right into her body and just missed anything vital, the teen was shocked but more importantly she was hurt and bleeding.
"Shōton: Akuma kesshō no jiyū."(Crystal Release: Demonic Crystal Release). Touka was never one to slack off and that technique showed that she came a long way from making simple kunai with her bloodline. The first half of the technique absorbed some types of jutsu into the gaps between the crystalline formation of the mirror and held it there, then she would hide the mirror out of sight and shape it into a clone that she'd swap with when her enemy got too close for comfort and when they shattered the clone they'd release whatever was absorbed. The closer they were the better since there was no pattern to the jutsu being freed, it scattered like an explosion. 'It's ready!' Touka thought from below the ground, a perfect gap in the earth for her to start her finisher.
Akane's wounds closed enough for her to look around for Touka. "Capturing you is out the fucking window, you're fucking done!" She started another laser circus but this time it was colored black and instead of a light humming noise it sounded like distant screaming. She turned and fired once she heard a noise and the blasts roared to life and obliterated the ground they struck, at the cost of being much stronger she now couldn't control them. She wasn't ready for what happened next… the ground shook and a large dome of dark blue crystals encased her. Touka was right there and Akane wasted no time in firing another blast but instead of seeing a dead kid, she watched Touka's image distort and her attack disappear again… until it came from a reflection behind her and blew a hole into her back, putting her on her knees.
One image of Touka turned to dozens, they were on each surface that could display her and they all started weaving hand signs. "Don't waste your time breaking out, this is my Demonic Crystal Tomb for a reason." Akane snarled and fired another volley of black lightning but all that happened was it being absorbed and ripping off more of her clothing and flesh. Blast after blast she didn't give up on trying to break out of the prison, but it was all for nothing. Fifteen hand seals and each of Touka was done, every surface that had her on it quickly lost her image. "I hope you can hold your breath!" The dome started to move and Akane did her best to keep her footing until all her balance was suddenly thrown off and she was on the floor of the giant sphere.
She lifted her hand and felt water on it and once she looked around she saw water leaking into the dome at a frightening speed. "What the hell did you do?!"
Touka's image was covered in wounds but despite that she managed to grin at the fear in Akane's voice, she was eleven and this girl was terrified of something she did? Definitely inflated her head. "I called it a dome but it's more like a ball, and I rolled it into the river." Halfway full and Akane was pushing against the walls that encased her with all her might. "I was making holes all over it so it would flood when I rolled it into the water. Sorry but I'm not interested in losing to a girl like you, you're too basic to beat me." Akane was pounding the walls but since she was totally submerged it didn't make a difference, she started slowing down and exhaled the last of her air but there was none to take in.
Her body expired from lack of oxygen and her curse seal remained active even after she was dead. The dome shattered and her corpse rose to the surface of the water where it was fished out by an injured girl. The tables really turned on who would be capturing who. "I should go make sure Erumi's okay, both of these guys thought they could take on our whole group." She started to backtrack as quick as she could but stopped and fell to her rear, the pain in her body too much to fight against. "Damn it, looks like I'm stuck here." She decided to just wait where she was and hope for the best, nothing could go wrong with that right?
Seiya used his tools very effectively and Rei was experiencing it firsthand… sort of. Seiya was able to throw his weapons at a speed that Rei could barely follow, but he followed it enough to get his puppet to take the hits for him. "How the hell does he have so many weapons?" His puppet was starting to lock up from the amount of metal lodged all across its body and that wasn't something he needed to happen yet.
"Puppets are a close range option to fight with, you might have distance on me but your puppet has to get near me just to attack me." Seiya was about to eat his words since Rei's puppet opened its mouth and shot a fireball again, Seiya moved to dodge but he was tripped up by an outside source. The last thing he saw before the flames consumed him were blue chakra threads attached to his legs. Rei had a hunch and decided to unfurl a scroll and bite his thumb to draw blood across it. Seiya was up and in his second stage, and Rei wouldn't know it but he didn't really change much aside from his hair which was now bright red. His outfit was burnt and revealed his unchanged skin which had the occasional burn on it. "I hate to admit it, but I forgot about that."
"You aren't the first… what do you say we get this over with so I can make sure my friends are okay?" With a giant cloud of smoke whatever was in the scroll was now free and Seiya decided to strike first and he planned to strike hard. Quills started growing along Seiya's arms and as the smoke dispersed he swung his arms to send the needles of flesh straight at either Rei or his puppet. The sounds of well tended wood being shattered broke through the smoke and once it cleared Rei stood there holding his left shoulder, a quill was lodged in and the spines on it ensured that it wouldn't budge easily.
Seiya saw the fragments of the puppet and figured that whatever his quarry tried to summon got smashed when he flung his quills, there wasn't anything he could see that posed a threat. "Your arm, you can't properly control anything that would threaten me with just one. I'll make sure this doesn't hurt!" Seiya lunged with more quills adorning his forearms and Rei jumped back, his right hand twitched and the arm of his puppet moved to match. The arm launched into the air and nearly caught Seiya's throat with an exposed blade in the palm but his reflexes let him grab the offending object and snap it against his knee. The redhead landed where Rei had been and kept his eyes on the fragments around him, this kid was tricky enough to almost take him out then and there.
"I like to finish things off with a great performance, three acts and then it's done." There was something hidden between the lines on that but Seiya didn't have time to read through riddles so he got ready to close the distance and finish off Rei but something stopped him before he could, a pair of jagged jaws ripped through the ground and caught him in their grasp. "And you're perfect to help me test my newest model, Antlion!" The rest of the massive puppet rose from the earth while Seiya tried to push the jaws apart but their grip was unbreakable, it greatly resembled its namesake with its long jaws and oddly ovular body. "Act One: A captive audience!" Rei's fingers danced in the air and Antion's head spun around like a whirlwind and suddenly Seiya dropped past its jaws into its large body and the hole that swallowed him slammed shut.
There was loud banging coming from inside the prison that was Antlion's stomach since it's captive was not keen on whatever this show entailed and he made his displeasure known. "Why won't this thing break?! Let me out now!" If only he knew that there were parts that could open just fine. The fragments of Rei's first puppet rose into the air with a thread of chakra trailing from each one, from compartments came hidden blades that were almost a foot long for some. He closed his hand and they impaled straight into Antlion.
"Kurohigi Kikki Ippatsu…"(Secret Black Move: Iron Maiden). Seiya yelled in pain from inside of the impaled puppet, with a smirk Rei pulled his hand back and the blades withdrew with only the longer ones having blood dripping from them meaning it wasn't a fatal attack… unfortunate for Seiya. "Act Two: Main Event." Rei walked closer while slowly weaving the rat, dragon, and lastly boar sign. There was a spot on Antlion that had metal exposed, enough for a person to touch for some reason. "With chakra conducting metal lacing the inside of Antlion there's a lot that can be done with it, like this!" He put his hands onto the metal and focused his chakra through it and into the system inside of his puppet. "Katon: Suyaki no jutsu!"(Fire Style: Biscuit Firing Jutsu).
"AAAHHH!" The screams were barely muffled by the flames that were frying a man alive inside that puppet, and the best part was that the vent that let Seiya in would let him out… his screaming at least. The vent opened and a mixture of oxygen starved flames and steam flooded out and lit up the canopy above him. Rei was smiling at the success of his project which was whistling like a tea kettle.
"Act Three: Grand Finale." Rei felt an echo of pain go through his side and clutched it with his unharmed arm. He looked to where Yuuji and Zeko went then back to where the rest of the team was. Some quick mental math let him realize that there were four enemies kidnapping his brother and two people were fighting one while two were behind him in their own scraps. "The girls need my help more, I'll have to reseal Antlion and clean it later." He quickly managed to put the still smoking puppet back into storage then attached threads to the fragments of his first puppet and with a few motions it was reassembled, it was never broken just disassembled to seem like it was unusable. Rei backtracked with his puppet trailing right behind him, but his grin at the performance he gave wouldn't go away, granted nobody else saw it but that wasn't relevant to its beauty.
Goji let his guard down for a second and it really didn't go well for him. "Fucking damn it!" He had Yuuji wrapped entirely in snakes then some type of fire goes off and he took a second to move his eyes over to catch what it was and next thing he knew his snakes were dead and he was down a hand. Yuuji stood there with a kunai in his right hand but it was surrounded by a coating of wind chakra, giving it a deadly increase in cutting power.
"Maybe I should've left Zeko here so I could go get Ran, then again he'd have killed you twice by now." Oh hell no, he didn't just say that some little kid would've already left him dead. That was all the incentive that Goji needed to go into his second stage but he didn't just do it and wait for it to be done, no, he leapt forward with another spray of poison at the ready. Yuuji saw Goji's chest expand and knew what was coming so he inhaled to match it. 'Fūton: Daitoppa.'(Wind Style: Great Breakthrough).
"Ninpo-" The wind slammed right into his chest and threw off his attack, but Goji's plan wasn't to attack with his mist. Yuuji saw a cluster of dead snakes fall instead of a transforming Goji so he jumped back but he wasn't fast enough to avoid the fangs of a brown snake landing in his right forearm. Goji stood with a brown snake coming from his severed wrist, his body was dark grey and covered in scales and his eyes were yellow with larger pupils. "Did you know that snakes can still bite even after their heads are taken right off? You can never let your guard down even if they're dead. I'm just like them aren't I?" He used his remaining hand to weave a few signs and his neck started to elongate. "Only difference is that my bite will make sure you're dead!" His head rushed ahead to Yuuji's downed body in a disturbing visual.
Speechless is all you could say to describe Goji once Yuuji's left hand wrapped around his throat before he could land his lethal bite. "Does that make me a better snake since I caught you off guard?" His other hand wrapped around the rest of Goji's neck and he started spinning around, the long neck forcing the rest of Goji to follow and slam into a tree. He retracted his head back to where it belonged and the kunai that took his hand came back for seconds, wind chakra coated it again and there was almost no resistance as it sliced right through his shoulder and took the rest of his arm.
"Shit!" The wound closed and Goji pulled away from the tree to focus his eyes on Yuuji's arm. 'I know my snake got its fangs in there, how the fuck is he still standing?" He saw where the fangs penetrated the teen's arm but he also noticed how the wound didn't dip like skin would and he saw that no blood was coming from it either, and that's when he pieced everything together. "You have a prosthetic arm!" He got a thumbs up for his deduction and it didn't help that it was with said prosthetic.
"Custom made too." He drew a shuriken and held it out, he used his thumb to twirl it then a light hiss came from his false arm and a coating of wind chakra appeared around the weapon. The shuriken looked more like a fan with blades two feet long. "And it works even better than my real one did!" He flung the shuriken but Goji contorted his body inhumanly and dodged it, the tree he was against couldn't say the same and now it was toppled… so were the two or three still in the way. They rushed at each other and Yuuji landed a hit right into Goji's forehead then followed that with a kick but his leg was wrapped up by another snake midway into the attack. Goji threw a haymaker that made Yuuji see double for a second but he recovered and swiped his arm against the snake and separated it into two halves.
"How the-" A foot introduced itself to his throat and he was forced to kneel to fix himself but there was the problem of the chunin standing over him flexing his right hand. With all rationality out the window he extended his neck and went for a bite at point blank range but once again a hand wrapped around his throat while he snarled and bit at the air pointlessly. Another hiss and wind chakra came from a slit on Yuuji's palm in the shape of a blade. He squeezed harder and Goji slowed down and stopped his biting, his neck retracted and Yuuji let go as it did. "G- Go fuck… yourself."
"Why, when you're about to get penetrated?" He stabbed right into his heart, lifted his body overhead, and slammed him down mercilessly… all with one arm.
Goji laughed as he bled out. "That kid's gonna die… the newbie's stronger than me and Akane combined right- right now… and Kuzo w- won't let-" And he was gone, sentence unfinished and mystery in the air. Yuuji looked back and forth and decided to go after Zeko, he didn't know who the newbie was but Goji made it sound like there was more than one person left to fight and he'd be damned if he'd risk losing Ran and Zeko.
"I see what he meant by bad feeling."
The trail of hair was gone and now Zeko was close enough to follow smell, Hana's smell of cinnamon was strong in the air so he followed it and eventually it was at an apex. "Just over this hill and she should be watching over Ran, they had to leave him somewhere." He got to the top of the hill and saw someone on the- "No." He didn't even notice himself moving forward it was just automatic once he saw the blood. "Hana?" His voice was like a whisper but she heard it all the same.
"Zeko- You're here… I'm so- it's cold… I can't-" He shushed her and tried to do something but there wasn't anything he knew that could help this, even if he knew how to close a cut he didn't know how to attach a limb… that he couldn't find the rest of. "I'm sorry- I shoul- I ran in and he- he laughed and-"
"Hanatsu, I'm sorry… I wasn't here fast enough- I didn't get here for you- This is-"
"Two seconds to two minutes, eh Zeko?" That voice, that voice wasn't Ran… but it was. He didn't care for it right then, he had Hanatsu to worry about but she wasn't moving much if at all.
"Pr- Promise me you'll bring him back- Do- Don't let them take him- Don't let him get aw-" No. No no no no, just no. She couldn't be, she was like a ray of sunshine, the sun can't be extinguished… but her flame was out. And eyes turned red. Zeko stood up and summoned Chomusuke.
"Take her back the way I came from, if someone named Yuuji stops you, tell him to stay out of this. It's personal."
Chomusuke nodded and worked the girl onto his back carefully. "Be careful. His chakra is ominous, even to me." He sprinted off while Zeko took a few steps ahead and saw Ran at the bottom of the hill beside trees that were noticeably taller than the ones from a minute or two ago.
"How's Hana-chan doing? She wasn't looking too good when I saw her, but then again taking off someone's leg does a lot against them." He had his Red Flying Swallow on both hands and black markings all across his body but Zeko didn't care. He drew his tanto from his waist and held it in front of his crimson eyes with an expression that showed his rage all in his eyes alone. His vision picked up the scratch along a forehead protector and that was all the branding that he needed to not hold back.
His legs tensed, and then he jumped. He flowed through the air freely and Ran drew his weapons for a pincer slice. The tanto fell straight onto Ran's left knife and shattered it like it was glass, Ran narrowed his eyes and Zeko did the same as they locked gazes. "Your toy broke already?"
"Shut up." Zeko hit the ground and back flipped away while Ran adjusted his hand and rushed ready to stab, Zeko matched him and closed the distance with his weapon. The two were on top of each other but with a push of his malevolent chakra, Ran's weapon extended at the end and punctured the younger shinobi's chest and he slammed the boy onto the ground with a sick grin. He raised his left hand to Ran's face… then pointed two fingers to the right and Ran looked over to see-
"Having fun there?" Zeko was crouched and ready to fight. But what the hell was Ran- He jumped back to avoid being gored by iron sand from the mouth of fake Zeko.
"An iron sand clone, of course you'd be using your bloodline… your crutch! And what's with the red eyes? Some more shit that makes you important?" As he spoke the iron sand slowly returned to Zeko and layered itself onto him and turned back into his thin layer of armor.
"Didn't have anything to bring normal sand in and these eyes are my other bloodline." Ran's body shook with fury and for a moment he understood how Zeko felt at that moment.
"Oh so that's two! That's fucking two! No matter what you can't just sit back and let anyone else succeed can you? Not one but two bloodlines!" Zeko was confused but decided to hear the traitor out. "It doesn't matter. It doesn't fucking matter! I'm way past you now!" Zeko already noticed his former teammate's new look but he paid it no mind then, and he wouldn't pay it any now even as he went into the first stage of the Seven Heavenly Breaths.
Ran blitzed ahead and right then Zeko felt bad for anyone who didn't have the sharingan since he wouldn't have been able to keep up at this point otherwise. He deflected the oncoming blow with his blade but he left his side open and took a knee to the ribcage for it, and then a left hook that sent him rolling into a tree beside a puddle. "Katon: Gōkakyū No Jutsu!"(Fire Style: Great Fireball Jutsu). Ran blew a giant ball of fire and Zeko panicked at its size but he dipped a hand in the puddle beside himself and put some water into his mouth then weaved the tiger seal.
'Suiton: Teppōdama.'(Water Style: Liquid Bullet). He spat a ball of water that almost matched the fireball in size and once the two collided the entire area was coated in steam. Ran looked at where his former teammate had been but couldn't see anything, he did however hear and sidestepped the oncoming kunai headed his way.
"Nice try but some kunai aren't gonna do much against me right now!" He felt a flare of chakra and felt a presence right in front of him, and he felt a lot more once something hit his left side.
Zeko was right beside him with blood on his tanto. The reason Ran felt a flare of chakra was because the boy needed to move quick and catch him off guard, and he did with his attempt of an untraceable teleportation jutsu. "Shunshin Kōgeki!"(Body Flicker Strike). Ran felt something leaking out of his side and he hoped that his twin telepathy didn't decide to kick in at that moment, but Zeko wasn't done and he spun around and jumped to deliver a hard kick to the back of Ran's head. When the steam cleared Zeko could see that whatever was hanging outside of Ran's body for a moment was being pushed back inside and the wound closed off with a hiss.
The two closed the gap again and started their battle of attrition again, both were good with their weapons so this would come down to who had more endurance. Cuts started appearing across both of their bodies as they clashed weapons and right before an extension of the Flying Swallow managed to hit Zeko, he ducked and brought his tanto against it and looked straight at Ran to try a last ditch attempt to resolve this peacefully… the talk no jutsu.
"Ran, you don't have to do this!" The teen threw a kick that landed against a forearm and Zeko responded with two of his own, one of which landed and blurred Ran's vision for a few seconds. "Whatever these guys did to you isn't worth giving up everything!"
"Shut up…" He landed a punch to Zeko's stomach but the boy just grappled his arm and managed to flip the larger boy over to get his bearings again.
"You know you aren't second best to anyone, not even me! You can come back to the village!" Zeko blocked the ninja tool but his weapon was sent into the air so he responded with his own fists, he threw punches that had resounding impacts that would've been heard by any onlookers.
Ran was tanking hits left and right but his fighting spirit had to admit that it was badass when Zeko back flipped to kick him in the jaw and landed with his tanto in his hands again. "Shut up!" Their clash repeated with them being blade to blade and locking gazes. Something started to snap in Ran's mind and it was about to push him even further than he was.
"Hana's already dead! I don't want to kill you!" That pushed it and Ran snapped. His skin turned dark as coal and his hair turned ash grey to match, his eyes were a red that rivaled the sharingan and he was practically boiling from the sudden increase in heat around his body. This may not have been the original curse seal but it still had a due process to unlock the second stage and by doing so through sheer willpower, Ran wrote a check that he wouldn't be able to cash.
"SHUT UP!" With newfound strength he reeled back and shattered both his weapon and Zeko's with one punch, but he wasn't done and followed that with a blow to Zeko's head. "SHUT-" His knee embedded itself into Zeko's gut and if the boy had breakfast to lose, he'd have lost it. "UP!" Another devastating punch to the face that knocked the boy onto his back, his body yelling in horrible pain. "You can't change my mind about this! I got a taste of what it's like to be given something and I'll fucking use it! First things first, I'll kill you with it." He walked to the sprawled out boy, bent down and grabbed him by the collar. He raised his fist as steam came off his skin and drew it back with the intent to finish this fight now.
Two things happened as that fist came down. The first was that crimson eyes revealed themselves again and allowed their owner to dodge the fist by craning his neck. The second, and cooler event was the appearance of a cloak of red chakra that boosted Zeko to around Ran's level. Next thing the berserk teen knew his collar was the one being grabbed and Zeko's head crashed into his nose and knocked him backwards with blood pouring down his face. By the time his vision cleared up Zeko was in his face and he punched him with all the force of a falling meteor before grabbing him and throwing him into the air. "Katon: Goryūka no jutsu."(Fire Style: Fierce Dragon Flame). Ran responded with his own fireball in the air and created a beautiful show of light in the sky.
"Right behind you!" Zeko caught the shin that was about to slam into his head but he couldn't say the same for the second one that landed and sent him to the earth. He leapt up and the two clashed again but this time it was different, their normal fighting styles were gone and instead they looked more like animals fighting over territory. Zeko was low to the ground and attacking in long sweeps with his arms or rapid kicks, while Ran was using his height to increase his attack force by striking downwards at Zeko. "Daini Kassei!" With that extra force he managed to slam his fist into the back of the feral boy and push him into the ground again but in his excitement he forgot about the iron sand, and now there was a hole in his forearm. Zeko got up and swatted the nearby arm away then started a brutal series of punches all to Ran's chest, and he ended it with one last hit to his solar plexus. The wound in his arm closed and Ran tensed before coughing up blood. 'Shit that hurt too much!'
"Don't die before I can kill you, I might as well make sure both my teammates are dead today!" He started running through hand seals while Ran crossed his arms over his chest. An aura surrounding him even further while his coal colored body gained a slight red hue.
"Daisan Kassei!" The wind around him blew every twig, rock, and an unfortunate groundhog clear away right when Zeko finished his jutsu.
This time there were six orbs of deep blue lightning and they shot off at high speeds to catch Ran, but he dodged each one and blitzed Zeko with all his might. They didn't even clash since one of them lost ground in seconds and that let Ran deliver blow after blow to the younger boy. Right when he decided to knock Zeko away he changed his mind and grabbed his right arm, and furiously pushed his knee against it. The snapping echoed through the field and into the forests ahead of them and behind them, then and only then did he kick the boy away. "Does this make me stronger than a tailed beast?! To be kicking your ass up and down the field?!" He didn't notice it but he dropped out of the third activation and back into the first, his adrenaline was so high that it didn't matter anyway. For some reason a fly was buzzing around him and he made the mistake of swatting it, it quickly burst in a ball of lightning chakra.
Zeko recovered and clutched his arm while Ran was paralyzed for a few moments. 'A simple illusion but effective.' A simple genjutsu and one of the lightning balls was disguised as a fly so it was only a matter of time before it was swatted. The small amount of iron sand went to Zeko's arm and held the broken bone in place while Shukaku's chakra went there in droves to fix it enough for him to fight. Ran was about to recover and now was the best time to hit hard. The chakra cloak was gone and he was weaving hand seals in a blur despite the pain from his barely healed arm.
Ran finally recovered and his senses came back to him in a quick shot and his hearing was the one being used the most right then. The birds retreated from the area once they started their fight so Ran was surprised to hear chirping… a lot of chirping… as if a flock of birds gathered in that one spot just to test who was the loudest one of them. His eyes landed on Zeko and he saw lightning surrounding his left hand, skin peeling and burning from the contact as the chirping grew louder. He decided to match whatever this was by sending chakra into his right hand and the steam he was putting off grew even more, he also coughed up more blood and lost focus for a moment. Zeko stood up with a grim expression on his face, remembering the rule about this move.
"You're never to use this on an ally, it's a move made to kill."
'He's not my ally anymore dad…" They both stood there, watching, waiting for any trace of movement from one another. A droplet of rain fell and that was the signal. They broke into full sprints at the same time, both ready and poised to land a deciding blow against the other.
"Chidori!"(One Thousand Birds).
"Moeru hone!"(Burning Bone).
Two boys, two attacks… two hits. Zeko's shoulder was exposed from the heat, his shirt unable to withstand it. His skin was tinged red from the heat but the last second motion of some iron sand saved him from losing his life. And Ran had a hand lodged in his abdomen, his strike managed to prevent it from going deep enough to rip all the way through his liver like intended. "Get off me!" Ran kicked Zeko into a tree trunk where he stood and watched his former teammate cough up more blood and proceed to smile. "That wasn't enough to kill me…" He started walking towards Zeko and he drew a kunai as he approached. Zeko started to form a spike with his iron sand but he clutched his eyes and it fell to the ground as harmless black sand. His eyes were their normal black again and he panted while Ran grew closer and closer. He didn't have a proper rest since his mission so he didn't build his reserves back up, that and getting the entire group to pursue by cutting a trip down by some hours… he didn't even have the chakra to keep his sharingan active while Ran was still alive and holding the advantage. He was only a few steps away now and he raised the knife into the air. Zeko watched his lips move… his brain didn't even process what he said, his eyes locked onto the kunai approaching his neck. It fell forward… and embedded itself into the tree.
Ran's vibrant red eyes were dull and unfocused, his face was blank like a white canvas. He leaned forward and his head thudded against the tree before he fell to the ground motionless. The rain was pouring now, the influx of water vapor and heat from before sparked a cloudburst that washed the area of everything that happened in the last ten minutes. Zeko's eyes slowly trailed down to the body of his once living friend and a twinge of pain shot through them.
Two figures watched from the trees in the forest of larger trees. One of them was very familiar in the sense of his pale skin and white hair with a mask that hid his visage. "As expected. His body was dead the moment he forcefully unlocked the second stage of the curse seal. There's nothing here for us, let's go." His partner was surprised at that sudden statement.
"Kuzo we can't just leave! We need to recover that body and the other kid! He had two bloodlines tha-" Kuzo was suddenly in front of his masked partner with an arm below their throat.
"If I say we leave, we leave." A bone grew out of his forearm and pressed against his partner's neck. "Am I understood?" His partner nodded in fear and he removed his arm, they both left the area as Zeko sank to the ground and sat there staring at the corpse beside him.
His brain finally caught up and acknowledged the last sentence Ran had to say. "In the end you never beat me, I win." Zeko wracked all his brain and found the words that he didn't get to say before, it was just two that didn't even relate before what happened today.
"Baka mitai…"
The air went still when the team made it back to the village without two of the people they needed. "Where are they? Yuuji you were in charge."
"I apologize, Kazekage-sama, but Nekoma Rya was dead when I got there. Zeko gave me her body and told me he could retrieve Ran on his own." Yuno looked around and saw the battered form of Erumi, Touka's extensive wounds, Rei's shoulder, and Yuuji being relatively alright.
"Well where is he? He shouldn't be more than a few-" They all turned around and saw Zeko walking through the access tunnel for the village, in his arms was Ran's corpse. He approached them and laid the body down wordlessly. "What happened?" He didn't respond to her. He just kept walking past her even as Rei's eyes widened once he realized that his brother wasn't unconscious. "Zeko, what happened out there?" She said sternly, and he stopped walking. He lifted his hand and revealed Ran's forehead protector then dropped it to the ground. Everyone in the group saw the scratch along it and knew what it meant.
"I did what I had to do." With that he walked away and turned a corner while the rest of them stared at the body.
"The rest of them did something like this too. They were stronger and faster when they did." Yuuji said while Yuno examined the body and motioned for Shiroi to pick it up.
"You all have one hell of a report to give me."
Zeko walked through the streets and felt like something changed not something physical but something mental, spiritual even. He wanted to feel sad but didn't. Ran turned bad and he had to be stopped, he tried to end it without bloodshed but that didn't work. He never was the charismatic type. He turned a corner and ran right into Hiro, Ryu, and most importantly, Uso. "Welcome to Ganban."
Elsewhere in the same country that Ran took his last breath, two siblings were setting up their personal concert in their recreation room. They both had pale eyes and the elder sister had long dark brown hair while her brother had shorter and spiky brown hair. "Jenki make sure you get it right this time."
"I'm not the one who messed it up last time Hitomi. Start it up!" Hitomi pressed a button on a music player and a high energy song started playing.
Hitomi started the chorus, silently at first.
"JoJo, JoJo, JoJo... JoJo, JoJo, JoJo."
Jenki broke the calm with a yell of the first line.
"SORA. Koboreochita futatsu no hoshi gaaa."
His microphone near his mouth as he sang, Hitomi took the next line with glee.
"Hikari to yami no minamo suikomareteyuukuuu!"
They swapped out and her younger brother returned just as much energy.
"Hikaiau you ni kasanaru HAMOONN!"
BAM BAM, BAM BAM BAM, BAM BAM BAM BAM
Jenki resumed where it left off.
"Hokori no michi WO! Yuku mono ni taiyou no michibiki WO! YABOU no hate wo mezasu mono niiii!"
Hitomi took the closing line and posed with her hands beside her head.
"Ikenie wo!"
Jenki took the chorus this time and his energy bled into the song even more.
"JoJo! JoJo! JoJo! JoJo, JoJo, JoJo!"
Hitomi finally decided to match his energy and blared the next verse.
"Furueru hodo kokoro moetsukiru hodo AATSUKUU!"
Tag in and tag out, Jenki was next.
"SONO te kara hanate kodoOOUU! Karada minagiru yuuki dEEEE!"
Hitomi decided to take the next part so her brother wouldn't pass out from lack of air.
"Mayoi naki! Kakugo ni KASSAI WOOO!"
They both inhaled and got ready to scream the most important lyrics of the song, as they should.
"SONO CHI NO SADAME!"
"JOJO!"
They both struck ridiculous poses that showed their dedication to the song they flawlessly executed. Hitomi was poised with her microphone playfully by her chin, while Jenki had his legs apart with his hand and microphone covering his face. Both were out of breath from the sudden exertion of their lungs and Jenki smirked playfully. "Not bad onee-sama… You were almost as good as me this time." She didn't take that as well as he planned and once he heard the microphone drop he knew something was wrong. Hitomi dropped into a stance with her left arm leading and her right behind her back, two wisps of blue chakra formed in her hands and made cord-like designs.
"Eight Trigrams: Sixty four belts."
"Impossible! T-That technique was forbidden generations ago!" Jenki dropped his mic and was in shock at the casual use of their lost disciplinary technique.
"Eight Trigrams: Two belts!" She moved and spun with the chakra belts following her graceful movements.
"Generations ago!"
Whip cracks were heard all across the Hyuga compound that morning, nobody dared to investigate once they heard the sound of their Princess behind the noises. They just carried on with their day as normal.
Author's notes: Software problems made it so whatever I was going to add in at some point didn't make the cut... cause I forgot. If I forgot it then it probably didn't matter. I hope... Pm me if you have any questions, I hope you enjoyed. See ya next time.
