Somewhere in the Land of Grass approaching Land of Fire's border, 55 minutes after Konoha ambush
"Sensei, he's coming!!" Neji's sharp warning struck the Leaf team like a whip. Kabuto grinned quietly. Gai didn't hesitate, nor did Neji for that matter. Like a choreographed gym routine, the rear lookout put on a burst of speed, leaping vertically across tree trunks and positioning himself at the front of the formation. Simultaneously, Gai performed a reverse of the same maneuver traveling counter-clockwise, becoming the rear guard. Then, with an explosion of chakra, the three junior ninjas and their prisoner rocketed forward, leaving their now motionless mentor far behind. Might Gai stood alone, in a suddenly very quite forest, waiting for a creature whose skills vastly dwarfed his own. That's funny, Gai suddenly pondered, I never thought I would be nervous before a fight. Was it like this for Kakashi when he encountered him? Gai wondered if he would ever get a chance to ask. He had only managed to open the 5th gate when the monster fell upon on him.
Kabuto knew it was now or never. The speed they were traveling was fast, far faster than they had been going just a moment ago. The wind was pulling his skin taught and had his hair straight back, and at this rate they would be to the border within hours. Yet the speed also had its benefits; the more velocity they had, the more effective his escape plan would be. All he needed was an opening…
For just an instant, perhaps half a heartbeat, Lee hesitated. It was a muscle twitch really, part of him trying to look back, one last time for his mentor- a man who had just placed himself between his team and a monstrous evil. Kabuto didn't hesitate. In that instant of distraction, he struck like a coiled snake. There was a pressure point just under the upper arm, which the circulatory system used to relay the majority of blood to the appendage. Curling his unbound legs around in a lightening fast strike, Kabuto's knee found it by second nature and with crushing force gave Rock Lee received a sudden education in anatomy. There was an abrupt, unplanned exhalation of air on the part of the stunned chunnin, then, things seemed to slow down. Lee's arm was uncurling from his prisoner, releasing his firm hold on Kabuto's now very active form.
Several things happened at once. Though Kabuto couldn't be sure, he thought he heard Tenten gasp in surprise as he twisted off Lee's shoulder. Legs still in motion and throwing himself backwards headfirst, Kabuto made use of his incredible flexibility; the missing-nin struck the inside of his former jailer's knees with one leg while scissoring the front of his neck with his other. At this point, both were falling, Kabuto using the pressure of his legs to whip around the front of the stunned chunnin's form and forcing Lee's body to arch backward. Kabuto could hear Neji's voice on the wind calling out his imperiled comrade's name. Too late, gloated Kabuto inwardly. They had dropped no more than a meter, but Kabuto's scissoring legs had tightened around the points of contact with Lee's now airborne body, turning his fall into an angled dissent with his head facing a more sheer angle. It wasn't enough to turn Lee upside-down , but it was enough to angle his cranium into the path of a fairly solid branch directly below them on their speeding drop. Cthunk! Things seemed to suddenly speed back up as the back of Lee's bowl cut skull ricocheted off the branch and his bright startled eyes suddenly went dull. With amazing agility, Kabuto disentangled his legs from the now senseless shinobi and pushed his broken form away with an airborne kick.
Gotty-"oooff!" Kabuto's rejoice transitioned into an external grunt as his backside bounced off another branch. Arching his back, the nimble young nin slid around the limb like a serpent, pitching headfirst toward the ground, only to stop his decent with a sudden burst of chakra from his feet, sticking him upside-down to the bottom of the branch. Now he took stock of his surroundings.
A kunai knife had pinned Rock Lee's inert form to a nearby tree, roughly parallel Kabuto's position. The blade had passed through his chunnin vest and clothing making his appearance quite comical, with all four limbs hanging limply down, Kabuto had a brief mental image of a slaughtered calf. Tenten was moving toward the senseless Leaf-nin, and then there was the Hyugaa; he was coming straight at him like a guided missile, pupil-less eyes burning hole's into Kabuto's skull. Good. I want your full attention Hyugga, let's see how you've improved. An instant before the Leaf-nin would have impacted, Kabuto flooded his legs with chakra. Teleporting was actually a misnomer for the technique-- "high speed movement" was more applicable, but essentially, one instant Kabuto was there, the next he wasn't.
Neji Hyugga snarled in frustration, bouncing off a tree trunk, and angling toward the ground. Byakugan!. His penetrating gaze expanded, and as he struck the earth he already knew Kabuto was free from his bonds. The sound-nin had gone straight down, using an earth style technique to pass into the soil while ditching his chains on the surface. Neji gave his enemy a grudging bit of respect. Most opponents after a Gentle Fist attack, even one not meant to inflict lethal damage, were no longer able to manipulate their chakra at any type of skill level. Kabuto was still demonstrating the abilities of an expert. Neji briefly wondered where the fault lay. Had he failed somehow in his technique? Or was his opponent simply so advanced that even with a handicap he could perform at this level?
An explosion to the north ripped his thoughts in a completely different direction. The blast, perhaps one kilometer away, hurled knife-sized splinters of broken trees like shrapnel, and Neji instinctively kicked his rotational defense into play, skipping the debris over chakra-coated flesh. He hoped Tenten and Lee were in decent cover. The blast had come from the direction they had just left their sensei to face off with the Sound's leader. What is Master Gai doing?! He returned his gaze to the search for Kabuto. Simply being beneath the ground was no concealment from his eyes. "Tenten," he began to holler up orders into the trees, "get Lee awake, I'll need him down here to smash-yagh!"
Neji felt the tendon in his left ankle slice in two. His abilities saved him, channeling chakra to his right heel, he pushed off the ground, while with the other initiating a Gentle Fist attack and sending chakra into Kabuto's hand which had breached the soil beneath him and locked around his ankle. Neji shot up, partly pulling the ambusher from the earth he had been swimming through, exposing him to the waist. He saw his opponent's eye's then and shuddered. Blood crazed and violent, he had no doubt now that this man was quite unbalanced. Kabuto's hand was off his ankle, fingers burned from the chakra release, but his other was coming around with a kunai, the arc clearly meant to become a throw at the airborne Hyugga. Neji's reaction was again almost instinct; aiming his palm and expelling chakra, the force of the technique pitched Kabuto back head-over-heels, kunai blown away un-thrown. Kabuto rolled with it, seamlessly sliding back into the earth headfirst as if the ground was no more substantial than the air. Neji connected with a tree trunk behind him, stuck to it with his chakra from one hand and his uninjured foot, and cursed. How could I have been so stupid! he admonished himself. Right during the explosion I was distracted using my defense. He must have localized my position from the vibration of the spin through the ground and moved when my eyes were off him. Neji cursed again. With one leg down, I won't be able to rotate as effectively. Neji again had a fix on their would-be prisoner, two meters off the tree trunk and two meters beneath the surface. It seemed his chakra network was active around his injured hand, no doubt healing the damage that had been dealt him.
"Neji!" came a concerned cry from above.
"Tenten!' I'm all right!" he shouted back. "Stay elevated and watch the ground, he's using a doton, but he needs to break the surface to attack! When he does, you-"
For the second time that day, Neji Hyugga was cut short by a surprise his eyes failed to detect. His attacker's chakra network was not functioning. That was the first thing he thought as a young man he'd never seen before sprang at him with a makeshift club. Is that a tree branch?! Neji's startled mind verbalized as the zombie-like attacker threw itself at him, makeshift club arcing down. Neji knew he was in trouble as he pushed horizontally of the tree branch, barely dodging the attack. His only hope was to stay off the ground. This new opponent's attack had been fast, but not incredibly so; the real threat still lurked beneath the surface. What is going on? wondered Neji as he sailed through the air, Am I fighting a dead man? That seemed to be the only explanation for the lack of chakra in the corpse-thing pursuing him. No wonder I didn't see its approach, its chakra signature is so low, and I was focused on determining the whereabouts of an active network! Neji's sharp mind had his answer. Kabuto was summoning and using corpses via the Dead Soul technique! Then the ground beneath him exploded as four more corpse soldiers, and one very active chakra user hurtled skyward.
One kilometer north, Grass Country.
Orochimaru was having the time of his life. Might Gai was only appearing as light now- blurring across his peripheral vision whenever he was lucky enough to catch a glimpse of the red and green flash. Another pulverizing hit sent the Sannin flying backward, smashing his substitution body through three more trees and over a distance of approximately a kilometer. Oh-ho, still not tired of throwing me around Gai? Orochimaru chuckled to himself. To tell the truth, the display of speed and strength was quite impressive, a feat which was really starting to have an impact on his chakra reserves. He just could not keep replacing his forms at this rate, especially given the weakening of his host body. So be it. The snake lord had landed at an odd angle this time, somewhat on his head, his legs canted crazily back over his limp form. As he regurgitated his form anew his eyes fixed on his prey, the elite jonin squaring off in front of him, form wracked by heavy breathing. "Why Gai, I had know idea you had mastered the Eight Gates to this level. To still be able to stand after opening the Sixth? I admit, if I hadn't come in expecting that first attack, why, I wouldn't be here conversing with you. How lucky I am that you're so predictable."
The taunt triggered a reaction from the taijutsu master, a slight tick of his brows over his power-flooded eyes. "No words Gai? Are you getting tired? Frustrated? I hope those students of yours are more of a challenge-" here his voice went sinister and alien, "-but I doubt it."
To Orochimaru's surprise, Gai's breathing suddenly regulated. More chakra, as if from nowhere, was suddenly welling up inside and around Might Guy's form, as if his body could seemingly no longer contain it all. A mad vortex of energy that made the 6th Gate's release look like a mild gale was engulfing the Leaf-nin. Orochimaru's surprise turned to glee. Looks like this next attack could kill me as well. Orochimaru placed both thumbs in his mouth and bit down as he watched the 7th Gate release in Might Gai.
Four kilometer south, Grass Country
.
Almost there- Kabuto's thoughts were rapid and calculating as he pressed his palm down harder into the onrush of chakra Neji was using to protect his heart. Kabuto's chakra blade sliced a little further in, cutting a few more millimeters through the geyser of energy the Hyugga was exploding as a final defense against the severing of his ventricles. Kabuto had the jonin prone with both hands pinned the ground. One was trapped under Kabuto's right foot, the other pinned under the corpse of a twelve-year old, held firmly down with Kabuto's left hand. The medic-nin's pose was spider like, hunched over his wire-tangled prey from the left side, his chakra bladed right hand pressing down on Neji's very life force, his face roughly perpendicular with his victim's. The stance was not an easy one to maintain, but the Hyugga's main focus was on preventing the destruction of his cardiovascular system; as such he had little energy to devote to freeing his arms or employing other jutsu.
Kabuto slightly shifted some of the weight off his crouched left foot just underneath Neji's head in order to force more pressure into his offence. The Hyugga's eyes, while powerful, had not been prepared for Kabuto's trap. Knowledge of the Byakugan was a carefully guarded secret, but Kabuto and Lord Orochimaru both had some idea of its abilities, one of the benefits of living in the Leaf village most of their lives.
Neji was certainly capable of detecting nonliving objects underneath surfaces, but the Byakugan did suffer when attempting to distinguish those items that were the same temperature as the surrounding area (unless the user was specifically looking for it). Neji had also been concentrating on discerning the chakra network of an active opponent. An otherwise safe assumption invalidated by the Dead Soul's technique Kabuto had mastered in his youth. Summoning the corpses had been easy enough, Neji no doubt had mistaken his chakra increase as a healing jutsu. Once he had emplaced the bodies at a level deeper than his own, it had been a simple matter of provoking the Hyugga into the air with a feint from the first corpse. Airborne over the soft earth, Kabuto had triggered his undead army, sending them skyward like makeshift missiles homing in on their target. Having looked no deeper than his target, he had missed the elaborate trap that Kabuto had rigged just beneath his vision.
Neji had of course initiated an airborne rotation (one of the few places his technique would be unimpeded by his severed Achilles tendon), but that was what the wires Kabuto had wrapped around the cadavers' hands had been for. Tossing the bodies away from him with his rotation, the metal lines had caught and wound themselves around his form, slowing his defense at the exact time Kabuto had launched his final attack.
During his earth leap technique, Kabuto had secured the binding chains that had once held him with his leg, as well as one of the deactivated corpses on its return path to the ground. His attack had been flawless, striking out at the Hyugga at three points simultaneously, disabling his arms and shielding himself from further Gentle Fist attacks with dead flesh and iron. At the same time his free hand had struck for Neji's vitals. They had come down with a thud, the shock of the landing deactivating the Hyugga's Byakugan and knocking the air from his lungs. Only Neji's innate chakra projection abilities had prevented the end, holding off the killing blow with his very life force. Yet the expenditure was costly, both Kabuto and Neji realized that he was rapidly depleting his chakra to the point where he would be unable to resist in just a few seconds. Among a carpet of corpses, the two shinobi struggled.
Kabuto saw the desperation in his opponent's straining features, knew that he was just milliseconds away from attaining victory. You'll make an excellent specimen Neji, such a shame I won't be able to recover these eyes though… The whistling, much to the sociopath's disappointment, signaled he would not get his strike in. Instinctively he leapt back off the Hyugga, pulling the child corpse up in front of him as shield. The shower of kunai knives and needles that impacted the body was incredible, Kabuto grimaced realizing that this cadaver would no longer be suitable for his needs and now he would need to find a replacement. This became the least of his concerns as the exploding tags attached to the kunai detonated, shredding his shield of flesh and tossing him roughly against a tree trunk. Somewhere behind him another massive explosion took place, the force of this one bending the very tree trunks in the back blast. What is Lord Orochimaru doing? wondered Kabuto, as he sprang sideways behind nearby cover, just barely dodging several javelins that the weapons mistress had pulled from thin air.
Kabuto quickly considered his options behind a fallen log. He was starting to run low on chakra, but that was nothing a soldier pill couldn't solve for a short period of time. He certainly did not want retreat back to Lord Orochimaru, the battle behind him was reaching truly epic proportions. He was outnumbered here, but he still had hurt the Hyugga, probably incapacitated Lee. That only left Tenten. Kabuto had decided. These Leaf-nin were not about to slip away. As Kabuto cracked the soldier pill between his teeth, his hands began weaving the appropriate signs.