Disclaimer I do not own Naruto, Boruto, or any associated properties that may appear in this story. This is also an M rated story or 16 age rating in the UK. Due to excessive langue and violence.
This is a long one and the 2nd part of what is essentially the climax to The Southern War arc hope you enjoy and are looking forward to part 3 next week. Thanks for Reading.
Chapter 20 - A Beasts Vengeance part 2
Minutes earlier, an explosion rocks an emergent battlefield. Anko leaps back using her increased healing from being in Dragon Sage Mode to relocate her shoulder, her vengeful orange eyes look forward to her opponent. As she lands, Rock Lee and Shikamaru join her, both injured to varying degrees. They all glance around and see that Sai, Ten Ten, and Choji have all been injured and taken out of the fight.
"This is such a drag, but at least we don't have to actually beat him," Shikamaru says, his right eye bleeding and swollen.
"That's right we only have to hold him off, but the sixth gate hasn't worked at all against him," Rock Lee says through a pained tone.
"Listen, kids, let me take the lead, you two have a lot longer left in this world than I do, but can you back me up in the seventh gate Lee?" Anko says rolling her shoulder makes sure to work out the pain.
"Can do miss Anko-sensei," Lee says with renewed enthusiasm.
"I'll coordinate and try to hold him in place occasionally but won't hold for long," Shikamaru says preparing his shadow.
A cold, pompous yet animalist voice cuts through the air from the large crater in the center of the battlefield. "Are you three done planning or should I wait some more to put you down?" A tall physically toned man with long brown hair, in a grayish-blue jacket and attire, with similar color marking lining his face, highlighting pale white eyes walks out of the crater with only a couple of scuff marks to show he was engaged in a fierce battle moments ago. "I shall let you go first, leaf ninja," he continues with his last words filled with venom and hate.
Anko charges forward and engages the man in a fast-paced battle as a shadow darts around the battlefield to catch the man off guard to little effect. Lee psyches himself up and begins to open the seventh gate, his body shaking and causing the ground beneath him to crack. As soon as Lee finishes opening the seventh gate he almost disappears and reappears behind the man, the man kicks Anko in the face knocking her back, and spins just in time to block a bone-shaking kick from Lee.
The block causes him to be still for just long enough for Shikamaru to lock him down with a shadow. Lee then follows his momentum and kicks the man in the face with a spinning back kick, the force of which almost takes both the man and the attached Shikamaru off their feet. Shikamaru then forces him to stand straight as Lee's fist slams into the side of the man's face. After this tremendous blow, Anko calls out to Lee causing him to jump back.
"Hurry guys, I ... can't ... hold ... for ... much longer," Shikamaru says in a strained tone with sweat running down his brow.
The two charge full speed and plan to crush the man's head with a pair of jumping knees. Just as they are about to connect the hold on him breaks, and he moves away at high speeds causing the two to collide and knock each other flying. The man appears next to Shikamaru and breaks his leg, then he grabs the falling shinobi by the neck and goes to snap his neck.
A mental message goes out across the battlefield that stops the man and causes him to look up at a window where he sees a body of a foppish looking man in his mid-twenties fall out to the courtyard with a kunai embedded in his eye. The man lets go of Shikamaru, who passed out from behind choked in the hold of the man and begins to walk forward. As he starts walking away he sees Anko and Lee preparing to attack him once more or at least get in his way. Quickly turning to the Dragon sage his eyes begin to tense and bulge as he activates his Byakugan and launches a senjutsu enhanced air palm straight into Anko's left eye and then to the building above her burying the sage in the rubble as she screams in pain.
Rock Lee then charges forward and is easily dodged by the Byakugan wielding sage. In response to a flurry of strikes, the man attacks with two of his own that pushes Lee back and forces him down into the sixth gate to his surprise. The man then proceeds to attack Lee and dodges his ever slowing attacks in response. With each attack or two, Lee drops another gate until he is battered, bruised, and barely able to hold the first gate open. The man looks at Lee and begins shaking his head with disgust on his face, "You're pathetic," the man says as he places the tips of his fingers to Lee's chest before he hits Lee with a one-inch punch that all but shatters Lee's chest cavity and knocks him out of the first gate and into the crater near dead.
The man's pale white eyes pale filled with hate mirror a similar set of eyes with a similar disposition mere miles away. Hanabi looks on with a mix of anger and worry directed towards the dust cloud that fills the air where the bear sage Rai crashed into the ground.
"Well I don't think anyone could get up after that not gonna lie," Kasai says with a smile on his face breaking the tense moment.
"Even if he did I doubt he has more than half a face left after all that," Konohamaru responds. Hanabi's eyes however are still locked on the cloud with her Byakugan active.
Kazaki drops to a knee clearly wounded from the blows he received at the start of the fight. Kasai and Konohamaru go over to check on him, Hana meanwhile notices an uneasy feeling coming from Hanabi and matches her gaze at the cloud and activates her Rajingan as she does so.
"Lord Kazaki, we need to get you to the hospital camp," Kasai says, lifting the samurai to his feet with Konohamaru.
"We haven't confirmed he is dead, until that happens we are still in combat and I am just Kazaki," the proud samurai responds in anger, as he pushes them away and wipes blood out of his eyes.
The two kunoichi look at the cloud and block out the surroundings other than the now dissipating cloud. "Did you see that?" Hanabi asks, tightening her battle stance.
"No, I don't see any movement or anything," Hana responds, doing the same.
"That's the point, I can't properly see him with my Byakugan, I think I see a body but I can't tell without either getting higher or closer," Hanabi says furrowing her brow.
Hana also furrows her brow before saying, "I will stay alert down here, you can go up one of the pillars and get a good look down."
Hanabi nods and leaps into the air at one of the pillars. As she scans the area and looks down into the crater, her eyes go wide and she darts her head towards her comrades. A small crack in the ground opens between Kazaki's feet, Hanabi notices this and yells "Look out!"
As soon as her voice calls out two arms burst out from the ground and grab Kazaki's legs. Kazaki takes his katana in a reverse grip and stabs down, simultaneously he is pulled down into the ground. The blade slides into the earth until the hilt impacts with the earth. Kazaki by the time this happens only has his shoulders, right arm, and head above the earth. Kasai, Hana, and Konohamaru rush over to protect the immobile Kazaki.
"We won't let you past us, Rai, give up and leave while you can," Hana yells, her eyes darting around the battlefield.
"We can't let him get the drop on us," Konkhamaru says, glancing around as beads of sweat drip down his face and off his nose. A silence seeps over the battlefield the intensity of which grows every second and quickly becomes unbearable.
Kasai begins breathing heavily and as the seconds of silence go by, he begins to get visibly worked up and looks around in an even more sporadic manner than either Konohamaru and Hana. As the tension builds up in his mind the panic on Kasai's face gets deeper, he begins snapping to every tiny sound he perceives the majority of which don't exist.
A small breeze blows past Kasai, this is the final straw into his nerves as ye yells out "Fuck this!" and takes his focus off the ground and onto making hand signs.
As he prepares for a jutsu both Hana and Konohamaru look over to him and simultaneously shout "WHAT ARE YOU DOING!"
Kasai responds just as he finishes the hand signs "I am ending this shit!"
However just as he is about to bring his hands together and activate the jutsu the ground below his feet cracks and almost instantly Rai erupts from the ground, his skin on the left side of his head and neck melted away to the bone as the muscles and tissue knit themselves back together. His left arm also has a nasty and deep cut into it that doesn't seem to be healing or at least not as fast as his wounds once did. This injured state however doesn't spare Kasai from his fate, as Rai lands a brutal uppercut before Kasai can bring his hands together. The uppercut alone almost knocks Kasai out immediately, however before he is launched flying away Rai grabs Kasai's arm and pulls the dazed boy to him and then grabs Kasai's head with his right hand and slams it into the ground incapacitating the young shinobi.
Rai then lifts his lead up ready to stomp on the skull of Kasai. This is quickly interrupted as a Rasengan and Violet Bolt slam into his chest knocking him back several meters but not knocking him over as those attacks did earlier in the fight. Hanabi leaps off the pillar and also places herself between the incapacitated Kazaki and Kasai and the relentless assault Rai.
Rai looks to the shinobi in front of him, "I look at all of you and I see a drive, I see a fire that almost no other shinobi I have faced in this damn war has possessed. Even scorch boy over there he's got plenty of power, but he doesn't have that will, that drive, that flame behind the eyes to win at all cost and kill the enemy while defending your comrades."
"That's why we are gonna beat your ass," they all retort near simultaneously.
"No, It just means you know what you're dying for and that I respect," Rai says in a vicious tone as the final part of his nose reattaches itself.
Hanabi charges forward and darts to the left, Konohamaru uses this to form a Rasengan and charges at Rai with it. Hana rushes to the right and goes to strike at the left arm of the large sage. The Rasengan meets its mark and Hana cuts even deeper into the arm but neither are as successful as they would have liked. Konohamaru slams the Rasengan into his chest but receives a fist to the face for his trouble, Hana on the other hand slashes into Rai's arm and leaps back before the counter-attack, However she charges forward again and this time is caught by the wrist and is slammed into the dirt because of it. Rai once again lifts his leg up now to crush the skull of Hana but is knocked away by an Air palm from Hanabi.
Hana and Konohamaru both stand back up and the four prepare for round two, Rai places his right hand on the ground as stones crawl up it making an earth gauntlet. Konohamaru creates a wind style Rasengan cutting his hand in the process, Hana once again prepares a violet bolt through her tanto and Hanabi takes the rear firing off multiple air palms that Rai blocks using the gauntlet. Hana charges first once again slashes deep into the left arm now even cutting into its bone. Konohamaru once more goes for the full-frontal attack with the enhanced Rasengan, this time Rai meets him with a sage art enhanced stone gauntlet, the two attacks meet and the wind Rasengan begins to cut away at the gauntlet but is being compressed from the opposing force causing it to cut deeper into Konohamaru's hand. Hana prepares to attack from behind as Hanabi attacks with a couple more air palms into Rai's side.
Hana charges forward and prepares her blade to pierce into the exposed back of Rai, this, unfortunately, plays right into the sage's hands. He almost immediately as she charges releases the pressure against Konohamaru and jumps to the side. Konohamaru pushes forward and begins to fall so both he and Hana are in the path of each other's attacks. Hana moments before they collide and kill each other uses her training and newly found skill with the Raijingan to avoid Konohamaru with her blade and mostly avoid his attack only getting a cut into the shoulder and lower neck, a bad wound but not life-threatening. Konohamaru lands face-first into the ground and Hana stops herself several meters away.
Hana looks back to see if Konohamaru is alright however as she does so she is blindsided by Rai who slams his gauntleted fist into her face, cracking her jaw and knocking her out immediately. Hanabi tries to intercept Rai but is knocked back by a kick, Konohamaru just has time to stand as Rai brings his knee into the head of the young Sarutobi, after he does so he repeats a similar attack he did to Kasai by grabbing Konohamaru by the skull and smashing his head into the ground incapacitating him.
Hanabi wounded just from the kick alone sees the current predicament and predicts Rai's next move, she uses an air palm to knock Kasai out of the way and rushes over to the trapped and unconscious Kazaki whose already wounded head bounces off the ground as he was pulled into the earth. She arrives just in time to use rotation and even that barely manages to block a strike from Rai.
"So here we are again little Hyuga," Rai says with a sickening grin. "We have two paths ahead of us, I slowly wear down your rotation and overpower you and kill the helpless Lord Kazaki thus causing you to fail the mission, or I drag each of your friends here and watch as I use your defense to shear their heads off."
Hanabi turns a ghostly white and looks like she is about to vomit, as the memories of the first battle with Rai, and the slaughter of her team by Sasame before that return to the surface of her thoughts. Tears begin streaming down her face as she looks helplessly up at the menacing Rai.
The sage presses his gauntleted hand against the rotation and smiles looking at the crying girl, "So what's it be girly?"
As the potential thoughts of all her new friends dying because of her and she can't handle it. She drops the rotation, eliciting a sickening smile from Rai. "Good choice," he says right before punching Hanabi in the gut causing her to vomit blood and regular vomit.
The sage arrogantly walks over to the incapacitated Kazaki, he pulls out and kicks away the samurai's katana just to be on the safe side. With a sinister grin, he reaches down to the exposed head of Kazaki, planning to crush it in his bare hand as the gauntlet falls away. He places his hand on the skull of the samurai and slowly increases pressure causing blood to leak out the open wounds and run through his fingers. Rai is about to apply the final amount of pressure and feel the life of Kazai pass through his fingers when he hears a noise in the distance that causes him to stop.
Rai looks around and quickly notices a giant fireball larger than any he has ever seen flying through the air past him from the rubble of the tower. As Rai looks past the ball of flame to see the user of the jutsu a kick to the side of the head from what he didn't even register before he is sent flying into the fireball creating a giant explosion visible from miles away and one that clears over half the town of pillars.
Hanabi weakly looks up expecting Anko to somehow return to save them but finds a girl with dark blue and black hair in a ponytail wearing a mesh undersuit with a white shirt and a crimson skirt with gloves attached to forearm gauntlets and boots attached to metal greaves. The girl seems familiar to Hanabi for several seconds before she finally recognizes her savior. "Mari Senju?"