Reid didn't know what to make of this.
In the past, he had fought Taijutsu experts who could be considered monsters in their own right. Men and women who had pushed themselves beyond the imaged limit, beating reflexes into their body until they moved more like animals. Their bodies responding to stimulus far faster than their brains ever could.
But this was nothing like that.
The boy in front of him wasn't reacting upon reflexes. No, he was actually using his weird energy to surprise his secondary nervous system, preventing any action that didn't come directly from his mind, using his Chakra to speed up the messages through his nerve endings until his reactions were as fast as reflexes.
While not as fast as the Taijutsu experts' moves, every action he made was controlled and precise. His blades moving in a fluid motion to the exact position he wanted them to. The kind of training needed to achieve something like this was insane. It was a skill associated with true masters of Lightning Chakra, and considered a forbidden technique, as a single mistake could result in death. It was the kind of thing used by individuals who were on the Kage level, an A-rank Taijutsu. How in the world would a child be able to produce such a similar result.
The Jounin moved his blade in on an weak point in the boy's stance, only to find a blade had moved in to meet him. As if the boy had read his mind and knew his next move. What happened next had already happened at least fifty times, but was still as unbelievable as the first time he had noticed it.
The Kumogakure was well known for its chakra swords, and by extention, its Chakra Flow technique. Lightning Chakra, when moved through a chakra sword, produced a very potent effect. It accelerated the vibrations in the blade, turning it into something like a chain saw on nitro. Anyone who used this technique could easily cut through solid rock like butter.
Reid had first become a Jounin from his skill in this field, and had only improved it since. His control over the Chakra Flow was so strong, that he could cut through even other chakra blades. Anything that got in the way of his sword was usually killed in an instant. It was a nearly unstoppable style.
Yet as Reid's blade drew close, the boy moved his own sword up, sliding the blade next to it and then, when the two sides of the blades were in line, he flicked out his wrist, causing him to parry the blade without ever having to catch the sword's deadly edge.
The war veteran had never even heard of such a technique. His mind was spinning from thinking about how dangerous it was. If he didn't repulse the attack at the exact right moment, he would lose an arm at the very least. Such a thing was suicidal.
Even when Reid did manage to force him to take the edge of the sword, the blades that the boy had conjured up from the ether didn't cut easily, and once damaged were simply discarded and replaced by an exact replica a moment later.
The counterattack came without any hesitation, a swift step forward inside the attack range of Reid's long sword with a thrust of the second blade. Fast as the attack was, Reid was faster, and jumped out of the way, using a bit of Water Chakra Flow to put out the fire that leaked from the boy's sword. This process repeated itself again and again, each trying to gain a blow on the other.
Reid looked down into the child's golden eyes. They looked like the eyes of a hawk, focused on its prey. Even his breathing was controlled, never once quickening or slowing throughout the fight. How was it that Konoha breed such monsters?
Reid went through the list of bloodlines in his head, trying to find a match, but nothing could explain this child's jutsu. No hand signs or blood was used that could be used for a summoning. Steel Chakra wasn't right, it could only give existing materials the properties of steel, not conjure it out of the air. Not to mention the fact that such steel was not at the quality of a true Chakra Blade, and the arrows had been wooden. The Jounin was constantly checking himself to test and see if he was under some kind of Genjutsu, because he just couldn't believe that this was real.
He would have to take the body back with him to Kumo for study. Taking him alive would have been preferable, but too risky.
During a small window when the distance between the two of them had extended to a few meters, the boy throw his weapons towards the Kumo ninja's throat. The Jounin easily deflected the incoming blades and was still in stance in time for the follow up attack as the child produced another pair of the swords and closed the gap.
Another exchange accrued before the boy was forced back again. However, the first two blades he had thrown were being pulled back, coming around from behind the senor ninja to strike him in his back.
Reid let go of his sword with his left hand before positioning his blade behind his back, deflecting the returning blades without turning around to see them.
If the boy was surprised, he didn't show it. With the sword behind the old man there was a window. He moved forward in a dash, preparing to strike a finishing blow.
Reid had to control his facial expressions, not to grin. His left hand was masked from the boy behind his body and was beginning to form one handed signs.
Shirou noticed the change in the man's energy. The pressure in the air, like that before a large storm. He realized he was being drawn into a trap.
Quickly throwing both blades from his hand, he summoned up a large claymore in front of him, putting both palms on its surface, he pushed off of it to break his momentum and jump backwards, rapidly increasing the distance between him and the man.
The ninja barely had time to move out of the way of the twin swords as they left a small trail of fire during their flight. The fire nearly burning the man's face as it went by, only stopped by the Water Chakra that coated the man's skin. But it didn't stop the coming attack.
"Storm Release: Light Show!" The ninja's left hand blurred from a bright light surrounding it as he throw it up towards Shirou.
"Trace on!" Shirou shouted, tracing the massive stone slab used by Berserker. Most would hardly describe the stone as a sword. It was nearly twice the size of a full grown man and weighed multiple tons. The monstrous strength needed to wield such a thing made it hard to call a weapon of any kind. But even if Shirou had nowhere near the strength to use it as a sword, it provided a good shield.
A blast of pale blue light shot out of the man's hand striking the stone sword and causing the surface to heat up till it glowed a soft orange color.
Shirou face remained unchanged. He repressed his secondary nerves system during fights in order to stop his body from reacting to pain or stress. It also stopped him from expressing shock in the heat of battle. He had not been expecting for someone to throw a scaled down pranablast at him. Granted there were differences, but the similarities were still surprising.
It was a combination Chakra Transformation, lightning and water. The raw power of lightning was usually forced on a single spot and the user had to expend extra energy to guide it, but when water came into play, acting as a method for both expanding the area of effect and guiding the attack, the effect became much more powerful. The one handed jutsu had also been unexpected. Shirou would need to be more careful.
But if the attack had gotten Shirou's attention, that was nothing compared to what came next. "Damn, thought I had him there." The man said, his hand going to his face where the fire from Shirou's blades had burned the bandages around his left eye. The wrappings fell alway to reveal a very familiar white eye.
"The Byakugan." Shirou said, looking at the pupil-less white eye. The skin around the eye socket looked loose and the eye itself seemed a bit lazy, but there was no mistaking what it was.
"Oh, was that surprise? I guess that means you can't read my mind." The man said with a smirk. "I'll admit, the old thing has been passed around a bit and doesn't work the way it used to, but it tells me everything I need to know. Like for example, I know about those extra chakra paths you and the girl got. Not normal. Did someone experiment on the two of you? Turn you into freaks?"
Shirou didn't respond, he just raised his hands and traced another pair of swords. It didn't matter at all to him what the man could see if he didn't understand. He would be dead before he could figure anything out or tell anyone.
"Oh, did I strike a nerve? Well, doesn't matter. You'll be dead soon enough. Sorry kid, nothing personal." The man said, lifting his own sword. "Just to show you that there are no hard feelings, let me let you in on a little secret. All high ranking ninja got a trump card. Something they only ever bring out when the situation really calls for it. Something that they make sure no one knows about. So if any outsider sees it, they got to die." The man's Chakra was changing rapidly as he formed more and more of the Storm type Chakra by mixing Lightning and Water. "This is mine. Storm Release!"
The jagged sparks surrounding the blade began to become smooth as the Lightning Chakra was replaced with Storm. The Chakra manifested around the blade, causing it to covered in a bright blue glow so dense as to make it seem as though the blade was truly made out of the strange light. The light extended past where the natural ending point of the sword would be, continuing on until it had doubled its already impressive length.
The man moved, fast as ever. The increase in the blade's size had not been done through any added mass that would slow down the strikes. His weapons length had been increased, but not with any of the usual drawbacks that would come with having a longer sword. He didn't even bother to correct his swings to make sure that his blade wouldn't connect with the ground as the laser like edge of the sword effortlessly slide in and out of the soil, leaving deep cuts and scorch marks from its passing.
Shirou was made to retreat, trying to keep up with the man's movement speed. If it weren't for the small balance issues involved in slashing that slowed him down, there would have been no way for Shirou to avoid being hit. But the increased range was not the true danger of this technique, nor was it the even sharper edge of the blade.
As Shirou rolled out of the way of a high slash, the blade seemed to bend in flight, twisting out of its straight form so that the tip went for Shirou's head from outside his field of vision. It was only his enhanced hearing that gave him the extra moment's warning to avoid the hit. The edge of the beam slide past his forehead, close enough to leave a cut above his left brow and sever a few stray strains of hair that went fluttering in the open air while a small line of blood dripped down into his eye.
The tip came around again, this time aiming for the boy's heart. Shirou had to block the attack with both swords crossed in front of him, using the force from the attack to help him jump backwards. He was thrown up over ten yards into the air, but landed on his feet as if it was nothing, continuing to prepare himself for more attacks, waiting for some kind of opening.
The ninja had returned to performing his one handed jutsu signs before slapping his open palm on the bottom of his hilt. "Storm Release: Hydra Beam!"
The second half of his sword exploded into nine separate lasers in the shape of thin serpents that homed in on Shirou's position. "Trace on!" Shirou shouted, recreating another one of Berserker's stone swords to act as a shield. It intercepted most of the blasts, but four shots still twisted themselves around the barrier.
He managed to block two, dodge a third, but the fourth got him in the side, burning a hole right above his hip. Shirou called on his Unlimited Blade Works to patch up the hole with a network of interlocking blades right underneath the skin. It was going to be painful later, once he stopped surprising the pain, but it would let him keep moving.
He had to keep moving. He saw the edge of the sword coming around to strike at the side of Berserker's stone sword. The blade was stopped by the dense stone slab before slowly managing to cut its way through. Shirou jumped backwards to put some more distance between himself at the ninja, projecting three swords to be fired at him as the stone moved out of the way.
The swords were mundane and didn't even last for the blink of an eye before being destroyed by the Storm Sword.
A wide sweep of the long blade came towards Shirou's injured side. He had positioned his blades to intercept the attack, catching the beam before it could slice him in half. But while he was resisting to blades edge, the traced Kanshou and Bakuya began to crack. Shirou dived to the ground right as the trace gave way, dodging blade yet again.
Now injured, disarmed, and in a bad stance, he couldn't get away as the Kumo ninja came in for a finishing blow, raising his sword in a two handed finish strike, an old favorite of the man's that he had kept as a habit from his early training. It would be a devastating hit. The range and stance was perfect. Shirou had his opening.
"I am the bone of my sword!"
Reid didn't know what had happened. It was only quick reflexes making him jump back as hard as he could at the last second that saved his life.
His left hand clutched at a bloody wound on his side while his right leg gave out from a sliced calf. Looking down into his right hand, he saw the stump of what had once been his sword, cut so short that what was left of the blade could be compared to a pocket knife.
As his brain struggled to figure out how his sure win had suddenly turned to a total lose, he saw it. "That... that white light." He said, his eyes widening. The boy stood where he had been before, in each hand was a blade, short straight tantous completely identical to one and other. Both surrounded by an unmistakable white aura. "It can't be, the Hakkō Chakura Tō. How are there two of them?" The war veteran could remember the blade from the last great war. There was no doubt in his mind that these were that same blade.
"The Hakkō Chakura Tō can cut through any chakra. Without your chakra severed, your blade couldn't stand against mine." The boy said holding the swords at the ready.
"To think that you could make even that weapon." Reid said. Then his face light up a little. "Weapon... that it. Weapons!" He shouted, starting to laugh like a mad man. His laughter drew the attention of everyone in the clearing. Rin and Anko had killed two more ninja and were pushing the last three back into a corner. "I get it now! I know what you are, what you do! The power to create any weapon of war! It was one of the powers of legend, used by the Sage of the Six Paths himself, the Path of Asura!"
The shaking laughter hurt his side, but he couldn't help it. It felt so ironic, for him to have been chasing after the Byakugan eyes only to come across such a monster. The Path of Asura, one of six powers possessed by a literal god. It was described as the creation of weapons. A child born with such a power was far more valuable than the Byakugan eyes.
As he got his fit of laughter under control, he could only sigh. "It's too late now."
The forest around them was crawling. The sound of insects grew until it was nearly deafening, the leafs in the trees shifted and shadows danced. Here and there a dog stepped out of the tree line, growling low. Two giants whose heads were in line with the tops of the trees moved into the clearing.
An old man wearing a red hat baring the symbol of fire seemed to appear in a gust of leafs, a hard frown on his face. "I would most certainly say it is." The man said angrily.
The shadows jumped towards the remaining Kumo ninja, each one of them being frozen in place as the dark patches seemed to wrap around them, forcing them to the ground. Reid could hear his own men screaming at the same time as a presence forced itself into his head, trying to suppress his will.
"I sure hope that all our talks of peace were merely for you to attempt this." The third Hokage said, glaring down at Reid. "I suppose we will find out about that soon, won't we."
"Shirou!" The older of the Hyūga girls said as the two sisters went to the boy's side. She looked worriedly at him as she reached for his injured side, only for him to push her hands away gently.
The boy gave her a kind smile, seeming so different from the cold expression he had during his fight. "I'm fine. It'll heal."
Reid gritted his teeth. He couldn't let it end like this. He had failed his village, but even if he could not bring back the Hyūga girls, he would still make sure that such monsters would never grow up to become enemies of Kumo.
Giving out a cry, he pushed out as much chakra as he could. "Lightning Release!" He shouted as blue sparks of electricity jumped all over his body, pushing back the shadows that had been binding him. He lifted his right arm and drove the remains of his blade into his leg, using the increased pain to push out the mental invaders. Then, in the last moment before he would be mobbed by Konoha ninja, he formed his hand signs, pushing all the chakra he had left into one final jutsu, a forbidden S-rank jutsu. "Storm Release: Grand Spiral Finally!"
The Storm jutsu erupted from his hands, so intense that it burned the skin from his flesh and crushed the bones of his fingers. The energy spiraled together as it moved straight for the children.
"Trace on! Rho Aias!" The boy shouted, putting up both his hands in front of him. A bright pink three petaled flower made of light appeared in the air, three barriers appearing in front of it, one for every petal.
The attack struck the barrier head on, accompanied by an explosion of wind that rocked the surrounding trees. It only lasted for a second, but it seemed like ages. The cracks slowly forming in the first of the barriers before it broke along with one of the flower's petals. But that was as far as it got.
The attack fizzled out into nothing, having been stopped in its tracks. The boy stood there panting for a second before falling down to the ground, covered in blood. The two girls gave out cries of distress.
That was the last thing Reid would ever see in the world. Hiashi's fist landed squarely in his back, pushing him down into the ground and leaving a crater over ten feet across.
I feel like I'm getting lazy here, but honestly this is gone on as long as it needs to.
In Naruto canon, the Path of Asura involves having a mechanized body. Which if frankly just silly. I mean, did that kind of stuff even exist in the Great Sage's day? It was what, over a thousand years before the canon starts. Then again, they seemed to have some way of sending people to the moon back then. How the hell did they do that? Naruto canon is bullshit! Anyways, I feel no guilt in changing the Path of Asura from robot parts to simply creating instruments of war.
For those of you who don't know Asuras are supposed to be near-deity like beings with three faces and six arms who are supposed to be constantly too serious and war like and are punished for having too much bad karma.
Shirou, not at full power, can only use Rho Aias to a small degree of its total strength, thus the three petals instead of seven. So don't tell me I got the number wrong. And anyone who wants to talk about power levels can fuck off.
There seems to have been a bit of confusion involving what I said about the nervous system. Some people believing that I was referring to the unconscious muscles like the heart. Since you only really are told about the two types of muscle in normal high school biology, it is my fault for assuming that you would understand what I meant. So I am going to take a moment to explain.
When you touch something that is hot, two messages are sent through your nerves. One goes all the way to the brain and waits to be processed in order to receive instructions. The second goes to your spinal core before rebounding and returning to your nerves in order to tell your body that it is in danger and to let go of the hot object.
This is referred to as your reflexes or your secondary nervous system. It is faster because it does not depend upon the brain, but because it is reacting upon limited data, it doesn't always give the greatest results.
Normally, boxers and other fighters try to dampen their receptors through repeated hits in order to stop their body from telling them that they are in trouble. Giving them a greater degree of control in a fight.
Shirou, rather than conditioning his body against it through training, instead uses his magecraft on the nerves that would carry the return signal in order to dampen it, stopping him from instinctively reacting to pain or pressure. Which is relatively safe compared to what he has done with his nerves in the past. And considering some in the Naruto universe seem to use lightning to achieve the same results, it is a lot safer than that.
As the angry reviewer was a guest, I can't simply PM him about this stuff, so I'm just going to post it.
Normally I would just ignore an angry review who is talking about how I don't know canon, because they are probably right about me not knowing/caring about canon, but they questioned my knowledge of science, and I just can't have that. I might be a second rate fan, but I am still a pretty good scientist. "FOR SCIENCE!"
And for what feels like the hundredth time, Shirou and Rin aren't really Five. Yes they are physically five years old, but they are more like thirty and using skills that could let a full grown person lift up a truck and throw it with relative ease. They aren't just some kids, they are veterans of the Holy Grail War along with other tings.