"What's going on?"
Kyuseishu murmured trying to see through the set of trees in front of him as a sweat drop rolled down slowly on the side of his head. He pulled out a Kunai from his weapon pouch and jogged forward through the massive rocks scattered on the grass right and left.
The strange melodies that he kept hearing from Tayuya's direction were making his ears twitch and sending bizarre chills down his spine.
Katsumi blinked and spun on her heels around herself towards him regarding him with a worried expression.
"Kyuseishu!"
She yelped and turned her head to look back in Tayuya's direction with disgust.
"These melodies are creepy... Is this her special technique or whatever? If the purpose of these melodies was to manipulate her Warriors then she even might be able to manipulate anyone she wants as well..."
She muttered as her eyes finally detected Tayuya within the trees. Her eyebrows frowned, she was only able to see a part her back because of the thick branches and leaves spreaded along the line of her vision although she was almost at the same height with her since she was standing ontop of her Carnivore.
"..."
Tayuya distanced between her feet and narrowed her eyes as she firmly glared at Orochimaru.
"Time to end this crap!"
She uttered and lifted her index and middle fingers of the hand that wasn't holding the flute, forming half handseal. She twirled the flute swiftly with her fingers before putting it back on her lips and started to blow into it again. This time it was a different tone.
Orochimaru continued to pant heavily as he stood up glaring in the direction that he presumed the next attack will come from. The bushy trees helped to keep Tayuya hidden for him at least for the time being.
"Guuu"
He groaned and the pale skin of his face started to crack suddenly and turn colourless. His widened golden orbs nearly popped out from their sockets as his body began to tremble. He lifted his head up skyward as a line of saliva ran out from his widely opened mouth.
"Guaaaaaahhhhhhh!"
A human arm started to emerge from his mouth then a complete human body slipped out and fell onto the branch; a new reborn Orochimaru . He was totally coated by saliva.
"Hngh..."
He propped himself on his fours as his former body crumbled down over his feet like an empty shell. He continued to pant heavily due to the huge amount of Chakra he just drained to expell a new body. A new body just to slaughter Tayuya and the other two brats.
"!?"
He winced as he inhaled the third breathe of air into his empty lungs. His body started to shudder all in a sudden like if he was tossed into an icy pool.
"What the...!?"
His widened eyes turned bloody red like two swamps of blood. He couldn't figure out what's going on until he realised that his body got completely paralysed like if he has been tied up with invisible ropes.
"AHHHHHHH!... Tayuya! I'll make you ride my cock like you used to do in front of those two rats before slaughtering you... Urgh..."
He growled maniacally as his body kept trembling from head to toe. Soon his whole face was covered with blood flowing massively out from his eyes and ears.
"TAYUYA!"
He screamed out loudly with a voice filled with wrath. The scream ripped the silence of the forest and made Kyuseishu flinch as he stopped running through the trees.
"What the hell is going on? I can't hear the melodies anymore even though I am closer from Tayuya than before..."
He looked over through his shoulder to where Tayuya was standing and snickered in irritation. Tayuya continued to manipulate the stream of sound coming out from her flute with high skill and concentration. Her sharpened glare was still fixed on Orochimaru.
In this moment her melodies were deeper and more intense than any previous time, she sent all of them towards Orochimaru's ears with extraordinaire accuracy attempting to affect his brain cells and destroy his nervous system. She have decided to be merciless and that is just what Orochimaru deserved.
"!"
The moment Kyuseishu appeared in her field of vision she blinked and regarded him with cold look without shifting her attention from her flute. It will be the end of her plan if she gets distracted by anything even for a second.
"Stay back or you will also get trapped in my sound Genjutsu!"
She shouted at him nervously. Kyuseishu grimaced but he blinked as he noticed the flute in her hands for the first time.
"Sound Genjutsu!? Tayuya you..."
"I already trapped him like a hare..."
Tayuya whispered. Her voice becoming more frail like if she was facing breathing troubles. A sweat drop rolled down across the back of her bare neck where the tiny symbol of her cursed seal was carved. She was draining a large amount of Chakra to cast her Genjutsu but she decided that she will never escort to use the dark powers that Orochimaru granted her, because she believed that she can defeat him without them. Yes she can do it relying just on her original powers and her skills.
The corner of her swollen lips curled into a mischievous grin.
"Even Orochimaru himself... Even Orochimaru himself can't dispel my illusion once he gets trapped in it... But forgive me, I'm putting an end to your legend right here..."
She murmured but her grin vanished suddenly. A stunned expression overshadowed her face as her eyes went wide with disbelief.
"!?"
The wheezing whistle of her flute stopped as Orochimaru stopped trembling and rose to stand upon his feet. He rolled his terrifying eyes around lowering his head and panted heavily like if he had just lifted a heavy burden off his chest. Shedding a new body wasn't always a smooth operation but
the light began to return slowly to his laden face.
"Tayuya... Ugh..."
He stuttered and groaned either from pain or exhaustion as the familiar sarcastic grin started to crawl into his pale lips.
"I am disappointed in your weak performance..."
His voice was loud enough for Tayuya to hear whom her face darkened more as she watched him hold up his slightly throbbing arms in front of his chest as he looked in her direction with furious look glinting with anger.
"Ngh... I thought you could at least bind me for five minutes... You should've released that seal on your neck huehuehue..."
He chuckled obnoxiously and Tayuya widened her eyes more from anxiety as her fingers shivered nearly dropping the flute from her grip.
"Now I realise why I wasn't impressed when you got beaten to a pulp by that Sand Kunoichi... You only survived so I can smear my own hands with your blood now..."
His voice was poisonous. Tayuya squinted as her breathes faded away and she completely stopped blowing in her flute, reaching the brink of her stamina.
"Damn it! I can't... use it now..."
She stuttered faintly and held her flute down her hip, staring downwards at her feet. She was desperate and lost. She realised that she just messed up everything she worked for the past several years.
"Humph..."
Orochimaru sighed as he clapped his hands together in front of his chest fixing his murderous glare on Tayuya. His body continued to shake slightly even after the Genjutsu affect had been disrupted.
"Heh... The last thing I have expected from you is to underestimate me Tayuya! Now it's time you face my wrath!"
He yelled effortlessly.
'Damn it... her Genjutsu affected my brain badly even though it didn't last that long... I still can't control my chakra flow properly. Besides, it will take time for my body to start reacting swiftly. But one move is enough to finish her off so there's nothing to worry about...'
He whispered to himself and at this certain moment he spotted Kyuseishu dashing forward in his direction through the trees but he gave him no attention and continued to eye Tayuya aggressively.
Kyuseishu was about thirty feet away from Orochimaru when he halted and quickly wove a couple of handseals with his both hands as he glared towards Orochimaru coldly paying no attention to the fact that he just made from himself an exposed target.
"It's my only chance now to step forth.
SUMMONING JUTSU!"
He murmured under his breathe fixing his fierce glare on the field above Orochimaru where a fragile thread suddenly appeared and dangled down over his head.
"!?"
Orochimaru blinked incongruously but then he flinched as a massive white Spider fell from nowhere and landed on him crushing him down against the branch he was standing upon.
The large spider that dangled down from the white thread was three times bigger than a matured Tiger. It fell down on Orochimaru smacking him brutally against the tree branch and then the ground in a loud thud stirred up a large cloud of dust. Tayuya's eyes twitched, She was motionless for a while. Not everyday she gets to see Orochimaru getting consecutively assaulted with this brutality.
The spider squashed Orochimaru's body onto the ground mercilessly before quickly curling it's firm limbs around him preventing him from struggling and then started to suck his blood up like if he was a helpless fly.
Orochimaru didn't even struggle or writhe. He was whimpering faintly and flailing his head under the Spider's weight feeling his warm blood leaving his body. In the heat and extreme pressure some of his ribs started to shatter and you could hear the bones being cracked. He panted heavily struggling to swallow another gulp of air.
"... Ahhhh.. Bast...ard..."
Tayuya heard him stutter but she wasn't able to see clearly what's going on. She felt like if her body has been frozen from the shower of cold sweet pouring profusely from her skin. But she was aware that Orochimaru wasn't having a good time or he might even be dying.
"What did just happen... Is Kyuseishu still alive..."
...
Katsumi dissummoned her Dinosaur with a swift flick of her fingers and jumped down to the ground landing softly on her feet. She looked forward in Tayuya's direction holding her palm over her eyes horizontally although there was no sunlight to blur her eyevision.
"Is the battle already over? Where's Kyuseishu... This silence that occured all in a sudden..."
She murmured and started to walk forward with regulated steps feeling the fragile twigs dumped on the ground cracking underneath her heels. There were a couple of black birds passing by on the sky in the same direction of her walking path she hadn't notice them but Kyuseishu did, then in the next second he noticed her approaching him slowly from behind.
"Katsumi?"
He whispered as he glanced at her through his shoulder catching the meaning of the look that adorned her face.
She walked up to him and planted her hands on her hips like if she was waiting for him to say something first, but when he didn't stutter any word she started to scan the environment around them cautiously furrowing her brows.
"... Where is Orochimaru?"
She heard him sigh as he patted her left shoulder with his palm and stared at her face blankly. His lips moved to answer her question but the word he was intending to utter came from another mouth.
"-"
"DIED!"
Tayuya said as she stepped closer from Katsumi and gazed up towards the place where Orochimaru just spilled out his last breathes. He turned into an empty shell without a single blood drop left on him. It happened faster than the human brain could believe.
"... He didn't even struggle."
Tayuya added. Her face was brooding like it had been carved from stone.
"Maybe he knew it is his fate to die with this terrible way... Even more brutal than his own killing methods..."
Katsumi felt bizarre tingles down her stomach as her stare fell on Orochimaru's remains on the ground.
"...!?"
She felt disgusted and panicked at a time... and sorry. Her mind was now filled with several hilarious methods of murdering.
Tayuya tilted her head to the side and looked back to the ground as a strangled sigh fled from her lips.
"... Rest in peace Lord Orochimaru... I didn't even imagine we could take you out so easily..."
She eventually decided that she had to be glad that Orochimaru won't appear again in front of her in any other place from this earth. But there was something else she kept fighting to blow it off her mind, The guilt.
"Kyuseishu..."
She whispered never lifting her stare from the ground. The thought of turning down Orochimaru was suffocating her slowly. Kyuseishu blinked and looked at her as he lifted his hand from Katsumi's shoulder.
"What is it?"
He asked. Katsumi immediately realised that her turn is over and stepped to the side from Kyuseishu leaving a space for him to face Tayuya as she regarded her meaningfully.
"..."
Tayuya lifted her eyes from the ground slowly but she didn't look back at Katsumi, she stared at Kyuseishu's face for an extended moment of time forcing a smile into her lips.
"Thank you..."
Kyuseishu stared at her face with scrutiny only an old friend could get away with and shrugged his shoulders.
"... I think it's time for us to leave."
He forced himself to say something. Katsumi shook her head and shouldered past Kyuseishu fixing her stare on an unknown horizon ahead of her.
"I was unable to do anything without the opportunity you gave me... Thanks for sheltering us... For a while"
He said and bowed his head sympathetically in front of her. He didn't know if he did the right thing to express his grateful feelings to her or he only made her feel more guiltiness...
"WHA...!"
A loud shriek suddenly snapped Kyuseishu out from his thoughts and sent him back to the world of reality. He was confident it was Katsumi who just disappeared into the woods and the bell of danger rang on his head. He blinked and without thinking he turned to run in the direction that Katsumi went in.
"Katsumi!"
He shouted anxiously and started to run into the woods disappearing from Tayuya's field of vision in a couple of seconds. Tayuya hid the flute underneath her gown and sighed feeling for the first time some sort of inner peace. She then jogged after Kyuseishu.
'It can't be Orochimaru...'
Kyuseishu's eyes twitched as he landed in a crouch on Katsumi's left and looked surprisingly in the direction where she has been looking.
"W-what's that!?"
He asked. Katsumi was covering her mouth with her both hands to prevent another shriek from coming out. She stared awfully at the ground in front of her feet.
"..."
When Tayuya halted on Katsumi's right her eyes widened with shock before she took any step further. Orochimaru's corpse was dumped on the ground beneath a tree trunk and for their dismay the corpse was intact.
"Oro... chimaru..."
Tayuya whispered lowly with disbelief. The corpse was reeked and it's terrible scent was already filling the air. The body was unharmed but the eyes were widely opened like two dark holes.
Katsumi swallowed in irritation and held her hands over her waist. She struggled to remain calm after the terror she just witnessed.
"Was he already died..."
She said under her breathe watching Kyuseishu crouch over the head of the corpse and press his forefingers lightly against the side of it's bare neck to find any pulse.
"..."
He stared at the corpse for a while longer observing it closely before glancing back across his shoulder towards the two females.
"... I'm pretty sure he died around three hours ago from now... This couldn't be a fake corpse."
Tayuya looked downwards at the ground for a moment grasping the meaning of Kyuseishu's words. The shocked expression began to disappear from her face but another mysterious feel made her want to disappear from the existence forever. She sighed heavily.
"..."
She glanced forward trying to mask the guilty expression that surfaced on her face and pressed her lips together. She was holding her tears from rolling down, not from sadness but because of other reasons only God knows about them.
"You mean he was dead before we even started to attack him... But how could that be possible!? Were we fighting a copy of him or something?"
Katsumi murmured without shifting her eyes away from the corpse. Kyuseishu stood up and shrugged his shoulders giving the corpse a last look.
"It's impossible for him to create a copy of him while he is already dead... But my Spider didn't devour a copy or a clone as well, it was a real person..."
He said realising that he is just going to make the issue even more complicated if he doesn't find a clear explanation for this bizarre phenomenon.
"... Let's say that Orochimaru knew that he was dying so he used a dead corpse and applied the transformation Jutsu on it to make it look similar to him then manipulated it to fight us instead of him so he can die in peace elsewhere... But if Orochimaru was already dead before three hours then the copy would have disappeared the moment he died. Besides, a normal copy can't survive a direct hit and we landed several blows on him..."
Kyuseishu spoke and suddenly widened his eyes as he looked back towards Katsumi with appealing look.
"Is it possible that he fled away?Katsumi, can you feel any Chakra source around us despite ours?"
Katsumi narrowed her eyes slightly and shook her head.
"... I am reassured that there's no other Chakra on the field around here... Even those who are able to conceal their Chakra can't hide their spiritual energies. Well it's the first time I met Orochimaru face on but I'm pretty sure that this is Orochimaru's real corpse and the other one was probably a mere trickery..."
/