Opening - Revolution Dualism by Nana Mizuki and TM Revolution
X
The Swords of Kusanagi and Totsuka met, and nothing unusual at all resulted from the clash. Although he wasn't likely to admit it, Sasuke was somewhat disappointed by that. After a few milliseconds of consideration, he noted that it wouldn't have made much sense for the blades to react to each other in any way, even if against all odds the Kusanagi was another of Totsuka Uchiha's creations.
The aim of his Sharingan darted to his right so quickly that Kabuto was unable to follow the motion, as though his eyes had used a movement jutsu of their own. Sasuke whipped his blade away from Kabuto's, moving it into the path of the silvery snake in mid-flight toward his throat. The shorter teeth behind the snake's fangs dug into the shaped liquid blade, and as a result the snake was carried along with the sword when Sasuke locked it once more against the Kusanagi.
All of this happened so quickly that Kabuto didn't even get a chance to capitalize on the instant when Sasuke was completely exposed to the Kusanagi's edge. His pale eyes had been able to follow the incredibly fast chain of events, but his mind only registered them after the fact, after Sasuke had resumed their blade-lock and the golden oppurtunity to strike had passed.
Kabuto was unnerved by the display of speed, but at the same time his lust for a Sharingan of his own only grew. I want that power... He pulled back his Kusanagi to pelt Sasuke with a barrage of slashes, but in the instant before his first blow landed, the so-called Shinigami managed to flick his sword out to his right, dislodging and flinging away the snake biting it. He then parried each of Kabuto's attacks with a mostly calm expression, dissonantly paired with the intensity of his eyes following the silver blade.
He cut short his sequence of attacks upon registering Sakura's oncoming fist from his right flank, just beyond his natural line of sight and into the field of vision granted by his Byakugan. He let her get close before he spun up a Revolving Heaven to catch both Sasuke's next slash and her earth-shattering punch in the same moment.
Sasuke cast a mild glare of annoyance at the barrier, but then his heart rate spiked when he recalled that Kabuto was still holding his Kusanagi. With his scarlet eyes wide, he moved himself between Sakura and Kabuto with utmost haste. He held his sword rigidly parallel to the wall of the Revolving Heaven, facing opposite its clockwise spin.
An instant later, the Kusanagi's blade shot from within the chakra dome and spun in tandem with it, slamming into Sasuke's defense with incredible force. His feet momentarily lost traction on the ground, while Sakura remained where she was and only just began to react to the threat. With a brief glance, he realized she would certainly be too late.
Unacceptable.
His Cursed Seal burned black across his skin like the flames of Amaterasu in only the tiniest fragment of the briefest instant, and the emergence of his bladed wings took marginally longer. He wrapped them around Sakura protectively, and half a second later the Kusanagi bit into them and shoved the couple backward. They were flung violently across the rooftop, which was painful, but far less so than being cut in half.
"D-Damn..." Sakura rose to her hands and knees, gritting her teeth in both pain and anger. Her leather outfit had saved her from severe road rash, but she was still battered from her unpleasant flight. Her palms were scraped raw but not bleeding, and the formerly pink locks above her right temple were now damp and red. I should've been faster...
"Hn..." Sasuke, on the other hand, was wearing his own blood from wounds that were already mostly healed. His cloak had been torn away by the ground, revealing the short-sleeved shirt he wore under it and the specially cut holes in the back that allowed for his wings to emerge without tearing the shirt. Those wings had taken most of the damage from his tumble, but their wounds were healing rapidly, including the cut from the Kusanagi. ...I made it in time.
I'll kill him! Inner Sakura began her first rant in a few months, I'll kill him dead! I'll kill him DEADER THAN DEAD! CHA! Sakura's vision was filled by the image of a cartoonish silhouette of herself throwing what looked like a vending machine at Kabuto, and a similar caricature of the Otokage being reduced to paste by the impact.
To the real Sakura watching the mental image, it was satisfying but poorly timed. Oh dammit, not you again. Shut the hell up in there. Here. Whatever.
"Sakura?" Sasuke sized her up with a hint of confusion in his slowly spinning eyes. "What're you thinking about?"
"Just arguing with myself," Sakura answered honestly. "Nothing to worry about... why do you ask?"
Sasuke glanced warily back at the Revolving Heaven, prepared to defend against another attack. None came, however, and instead the blue light died down to reveal a dome of solid mossy wood underneath its surface. "...You looked pissed at first, then surprised by something, and then exasperated," he noted.
"I'll explain once we're done here," she answered. "It's actually a pretty funny story."
"Hn." Sasuke's eyes narrowed as they scrutinized the wooden dome around Kabuto. "...He hasn't come out yet." he glanced next at the silver snake coiled between them and Kabuto's defense. It eyed Sasuke and Sakura warily, but its attention was partially drawn to its master within the dome. "He's probably trying to enter Sage Mode," he realized aloud. "Amaterasu!"
With his active Byakugan, Kabuto saw the black flames crawling across his simple defensive wall, but most of his attention was drawn to the room formerly occupied by a Five Kage Summit, where he could see Naruto and Hinata currently engaging the Tsuchikage and Mizukage, both of whom were partially covered by an oily black shell that Kabuto took a moment to recognize as Black Zetsu.
Which was simply not possible. Zetsu was bar none the weakest member of Akatsuki, employed solely as a spy since his collection of offensive ninjutsu was limited to a few rudimentary and unnamed Wood Release jutsu, and Kabuto had yet to see him demonstrate any skill with taijutsu or genjutsu. Madara himself, the creator of both of Zetsu's halves, indicated that this was the case. Admittedly he hadn't said so in as few words, but he didn't need to.
Kabuto shook his head. It doesn't make sense. If Zetsu has the ability to take control of a Kage like a puppet, Madara would've told him to use it by now! We could've sent him to Kumo to capture the Eight-Tails last month!
Unless.
If Madara knew about Zetsu's newly revealed abilities, he would've made use of them. He wouldn't have kept them secret because he simply had nothing to gain. Even if he intended to betray Akatsuki for some incomprehensible reason, revealing Zetsu's powers by sending him after the Eight-Tails would still be advantageous. It was clear that Zetsu could sneak up on and possess multiple Kage at once, so a few Akatsuki members weren't likely to fend off such an attack even if they knew it could come at any moment.
In summary, Zetsu possessed an ability Madara was unaware of. This meant that Madara hadn't planned it during Zetsu's creation, and it also meant Zetsu hadn't informed Madara of it. This, in turn, meant that Zetsu wasn't loyal to Madara as he claimed, which made it extremely likely that Zetsu was not a 'manifestation of Madara's will,' as he also claimed.
And if Madara wasn't in control of Zetsu, the best-case scenario was that the liquid being had merely developed its own motives independently of Madara's. If Zetsu reported to someone else, plotting against Akatsuki and keeping even Madara in the dark about it all... if there was someone capable of so completely fooling Madara Uchiha, stringing him along as a pawn in an even greater game...
Kabuto shivered.
A moment later Sasuke's flames burned through his wooden shield. The fearful chill in his blood wasn't banished by the heat, but he did manage to forget it and focus on his current opponents. With a wave of his free left hand, he sent the burning dome flying away from himself in several pieces, each carried by a slender green stem growing from the stone under Kabuto's feet.
"Look at those purple marks around his eyes," Jakuzure murmured, drawing Sakura's attention. "He's in Sage Mode."
"I noticed; they're the same markings you have," she replied. "I'll be careful."
"Hn," Sasuke remarked thoughtfully. "Kabuto... is that fear I'm seeing in your eyes?"
The Otokage forced himself to relax his expression into a poker face, then layered a smug smirk over it. "I'm sorry to disappoint, but I'm not scared of you in the slightest."
"But you're still scared," Sasuke countered. "You can't hide it so easily."
"Tch," he scoffed, raising his hands as though to make a seal. "On the subject of fear... Sakura, I have something to show you." she tensed, watching with mild confusion as he pulled back his left sleeve to bare a snake tattoo coiling around his wrist. "You showed me something interesting with those eggs of yours... how can I not repay the favor?"
She understood what she was seeing then, and all but heard the click of her memories falling into alignment. That's a summoning tattoo! "He's going to summon Manda!"
"I know!" Sasuke blurred forth with his sword in hand, not quite fast enough to phase out of view but fast enough to appear as a solid black streak for a moment. "Get the scroll ready!" he called as his blade was caught by the Kusanagi. Kabuto braced his jian with the back of his left wrist, grinning cruelly back at Sasuke. He tugged his own blade a short distance across his wrist, producing a trickle of blood to trigger the fuinjutsu tattooed into his skin.
While Sasuke spun and searched for a way out of his own situation, this time Sakura was the first to make a move. She jumped up and backward, sailing away from the explosion of white smoke even as it began. She cleared the edge of the library's roof easily, and kept going across the street, passing over three two-story buildings before she landed in a crouch atop a four-story one.
She skidded backward over the stone and the crust of frost and snow coating it, reaching forward with her right hand to dig her fingers into the surface and pull herself to a stop. Without her chakra-enhanced strength, she would've likely dislocated and broken various bones in her arm, but with it she was able to stop her momentum with little trouble.
She stood up and flicked her wrist, casting away a few bits of ice and chips of stone that had broken away under her grip. A grimace crossed her features as she watched the library be crushed apart into two mangled halves by the sudden addition of Manda-Two's weight. Just then, the creature's head emerged from within the cloud of dust, stemming from both its summoning and the destruction of the library.
Its scales shone with a surprisingly deep violet color, shimmering in the overcast sunlight with as much intensity as polished obsidian. Its eyes, on the other hand, were staggeringly bright yellow for the greatest possible contrast with its natural armor. Its jaws opened to loose a roar, and Sakura idly noted that snakes weren't supposed to be capable of roaring.
She turned her gaze to Jakuzure, and asked mildly, "So he knows Sage Mode too?"
Jakuzure nodded solemnly. "And he's been modified since we last saw him. Makes sense, since I fried his head the last time he showed up. He's probably stronger now, even without Sage Mode."
Sakura rubbed her forehead, the center of which was itching again. The stronger the sensation grew, the more sure she became that the White Strength Seal would be finished in a matter of days. That was fortunate, but it would be days too late to help her get through this particular mess. With that in mind, she scanned the edges of the smoke cloud for Sasuke.
She spotted him soaring upward past the highest reaches of the cloud, his bladed wings pounding rythmically downward. He turned to glance in all directions while still ascending, searching for her with his Sharingan. Once they made eye contact across the considerable distance between them, Sakura pulled forth the scroll he'd given her and gave a nod, which at that distance Sasuke missed.
Sasuke did, however, understand the message she was trying to send him. He kept flying upward but turned his glowing gaze down, in time to see and dodge a lunge from Manda with his jaws open. He spun aside of the snake's head, noting the rows of small, serrated teeth behind the beast's monstrous fangs, all coated with the same oily blue-black venom.
"Hn." His Susanoo began to materialize around him, starting with its ribcage and immediately growing a right arm to swat Manda away. The snake roared again, but whether in anger, surprise or some other emotion, Sasuke couldn't tell.
He continued to form his Susanoo, completing its arms but not bothering to assemble legs for it as well. It was a skill he hadn't yet mastered, so he merely left his avatar to end in scraps of torn armor at the waist. In Susanoo's left hand, black flames bloomed outward and took the vague shape of a gently curved longbow, and a single arrow of similar composition took shape in its right hand.
Both weapons, however, were wrapped up in screeching blue lightning chakra a moment later. It solidified and took a smooth shape over both flames, and Sasuke set the arrow to his bow and drew it back.
This should do the trick.
Sasuke let the arrow fly, producing an earth-shaking thunderclap as it left his bow. The tail end of the arrow trailed a thin beam of Chidori light in its wake showing its unnaturally straight path through the air, contrasting with the way a normal arrow would've flexed and undulated in flight.
The arrow skewered through the top of Manda's head and emerged under his jaw, maintaining its pace toward the ground. Manda's head was consumed in black fire spreading outward from the entry wound, shortly before the arrow struck the ground Manda coiled over and exploded there. The great snake was swallowed up in a flash of blue light, and when it faded a moment later his entire body was alight with Amaterasu flames.
His Susanoo crumbled back into fading wisps of purple chakra, and he flew with haste to Sakura and the building she was perched on. He folded his wings and landed next to her, crouching slightly to absorb the impact. A moment after that, a somewhat confused expression crossed his features and he turned to her. "You... don't have a movement jutsu and you can't fly. How did you get over here?"
"I jumped," she answered with a shrug.
Sasuke's line of sight trailed along the distance Sakura had covered with her jump, and then to the shallow channel her fingers had ripped in the solid stone bricks when she decelerated. "...Hn."
"So... why an arrow? I mean, it was cool and all, but I didn't even know you could use a bow."
"Lightning Release jutsu work best when they're used to pierce a target, rather than cut or strike or anything like that," he replied. "My Chidori, for instance, uses the open shape of my hand as a blade. I could slash an opponent with it, but it's much more efficient if I stab them."
Sakura felt Jakuzure tense slightly over her shoulders, and she followed the snake's gaze to Manda's body. At first she didn't notice anything worrying; it was clearly nothing more than a charred corpse, but then her eyes went wide. "Sasuke-kun... I thought you said those flames only went out if you told them to."
Sasuke turned his attention back to Manda, wide-eyed. Kabuto flickered into view atop what remained of the snake's head, looking thoroughly unfazed. "...How...?" he went silent and gritted his teeth, spotting the much smaller serpent crawling toward the base of Manda's skull, its silver scales reflecting the daylight like steel.
"We need to know what that thing can really do," Jakuzure noted. "It's not an ordinary chakra absorbtion if it can suck up a jutsu on that scale so easily."
"...Sakura, get the scroll ready," Sasuke prompted. He pointed to Manda's charred remains, confusing Sakura for a moment. After that, however, she saw it move sluggishly.
"G-Got it," she replied with eminent shock. She unfurled the scroll through the air before herself, allowing it to fall to her feet completely opened. She knelt before it and brought her palm down on what looked like the core of the seal, pulsing in a bit of her chakra to trigger it.
Aoda's arrival closely mirrored Manda's, beginning with a plume of white smoke colossal enough to mask the snake himself. From inside that cloud, it felt less like an explosion and more like a simple but impressive gust of wind. Both Sasuke and Sakura felt the stone brick under their feet be replaced by a smoother surface, which then began to rise upward as Aoda emerged fully from the seal serving as his gateway into Iron's capital.
Unlike Manda, Aoda chose not to announce his presence with a furious roar. He considered lunging headfirst into the smoke cloud, but doing so would be dangerous since he didn't know exactly where or what his target was. Rather, he decided to remain hidden within the white haze and await Sasuke's direction.
It wasn't an unreasonable choice, but it still had its drawbacks.
The wind left Sakura's lungs as the first pair of Kabuto's Gentle Fist strikes struck her belly and collarbone simultaneously. The next two were consecutive; she felt his higher attack land on her throat before his lower one reached her left hip. The next sixty strikes, however, were all an increasingly intense blur of pain. She was able to see him even through the smoke at such close range, but by then she was unable to do anything but fall away from him.
Her first reaction was shock, even before she noticed and briefly focused on the pain flooding every inch of her body. Then came a moment of hopelessness, just after he finished his attack and she began to fall. When she saw Jakuzure blast Kabuto point-blank with an Echo Lightning Torrent which he still survived and escaped, her emotions settled into place mostly on fiery anger.
She landed on her back atop Aoda's own, still aiming a boiling green glare at Kabuto even as she collapsed and he retreated out of sight. Rather than immediately pursuing the Otokage, Sasuke first summoned a shadow clone to watch over her with eminent concern. "Sakura!? Can you hear me?"
"I can hear you just fine," Sakura hissed through her pain. The sensation of being lit on fire was by far at its strongest over her lower belly, so she instinctively tried to move her hands to the most serious injury and assess it, if not heal it outright. Frustratingly however, both of her arms refused to move. "He hit me with a full Sixty-Four Palms... it's a miracle he didn't shut down any of my organs..."
"You don't get it, do you, Pinky?" Sakura bristled but paid attention, noting the alarm in Jakuzure's voice. "You just got pumped full of Kabuto's senjutsu chakra... and you're not a Sage."
She might've panicked more fiercely if she hadn't been paralyzed already. In her current condition, all she could do to express her terror was breathe in sharply and stare with wide eyes at everything except her immobile body, which she wasn't prepared to see.
"...How bad is it?"
"Sasuke," Jakuzure ordered, "Turn off your seal and start pulsing chakra into her." the clone obeyed with haste, laying his hands over her right upper arm and hip to apply his chakra. "Listen up, Pinky. Without us containing the senjutsu chakra, you'll be turned to stone in about thirty seconds." she flinched with what few parts of her body she could move. "Fortunately, we're here for you. So don't panic; we're gonna get you out of this."
"How bad is it!?" she asked again, more insistent.
"You've started turning into a snake already," Jakuzure answered, darting her tail inside Sakura's jacket to touch her shoulder. Only then did the pinkette realize that her skin had been replaced there by reptilian scales. "Now, I'm gonna turn off my Sage Mode so I can use my normal chakra to stabilize you, but until I can do that, Sasuke needs to contain the senjutsu chakra for as long as he can."
"I don't think I'll last that long," the clone sighed shakily. "I was created in my Cursed Seal mode, and I'm mostly made up of its chakra. Now that I've sealed it all away and I'm just using blue chakra..."
"Shit."
Meanwhile, Kabuto and Sasuke pushed each other away with their legendary swords, with Kabuto landing atop the head of a rejuvenated Manda-Two and Sasuke flying higher into the sky with his momentum. "I expected you to fly into a murderous rage by this point," the Otokage mentioned casually. "If you weren't thinking clearly through your anger, it'd be easier for me to kill you and rip your eyes out."
"Sakura is dying," Sasuke replied with a growl, "which means right now my top priority is saving her. I don't care what happens to you either way." He glanced up momentarily, gauging the density of the greyish clouds above them. That's just not enough for me to use Kirin, he noted dismally.
He aimed a Tsukuyomi at Manda-Two, but the great snake showed little signs of fatigue even after three days of Sasuke's imaginative torture techniques. And that thing doesn't think like a normal sapient creature; torture won't do anything. To deal with him and Kabuto at the same time, I'll need Aoda. But that's where Sakura is, and I can't risk her getting thrown off during the fight...
That leaves me with one option.
Sasuke shoved forward with his fully extended wings, rocketing himself backward into the thinning remains of the smoke cloud around Aoda. He folded them behind his back and landed atop Aoda's head, skidding a short distance backward over the smooth surface. "Isou Susanoo," he commanded, gathering his chakra into what appeared to be purple flames and fragments of bone.
"...What... is this?" Aoda glanced around, intrigued. A long cord of purple chakra segments trailed down his spine from his head to the tip of his tail, and from there a set of ribs encased much of his body and connected over his belly. Next, a sheath of flexible armor plates expanded out of the rib bones and connected them all together, completely covering all of Aoda except for his head.
The armor was completed by a sleek, solid helmet similar in composition to Susanoo's bones, with a hinged plate under Aoda's jaw that protected his throat but still allowed him to bite an enemy. Within the helmet, Sasuke cast a glance over his shoulder to confirm that Sakura and Jakuzure were safely encased within one of Susanoo's vertebrae, at the nape of Aoda's neck.
"Blaze Release!" Sasuke called loudly, clapping his hands together in the Tiger seal and taking in a deep breath. "Great Fireball Jutsu!"
Manda lunged, twisting to the right even while he continued approaching Aoda with staggering speed. He slipped completely past the black fireball and reached Aoda's flank, but upon arrival his head was spontaneously set ablaze and he was caught in an expanding shockwave of screeching blue lightning. He hissed in pain and tried futilely to shake away Sasuke's Amaterasu, prompting the silver snake perched over his left brow to slither into the blaze and absorb it.
"Hn." Aoda took advantage of Manda's distraction, flashing into motion and arcing his armored body into the air over Manda's exposed one. Kabuto cast a pale glare up at Sasuke as the blue snake passed over the purple one, a glare that Sasuke met with his Eternal Mangekyou Sharingan and a particularly vicious Tsukuyomi.
From Kabuto's point of view, he fought through six hours of imaginative torture before he managed to tear himself free of the genjutsu, while in reality only a fraction of a second had passed. The Otokage was gritting his teeth and sweating heavily, but his resolve hadn't wavered at all.
Aoda turned back on Manda and opened his jaws wide, baring a set of fangs dripping clear lime-green poison. Manda hissed and arched his body upward, letting Aoda's lunge pass under his belly. Kabuto, however, immediately noted the problem with this, namely the tail end of Aoda's armored body already descending from above Manda.
Aoda tightened the loop of his own armored body around Manda's exposed one, then once more aimed his fangs at the captured serpent's flank. This time his attack connected, the venom drawing a fresh roar of pain from Manda.
"Aoda, just keep him here. It doesn't matter how much he struggles as long as he can't pull away," Sasuke ordered, glowering at Kabuto with his eyes still fully activated.
"Why only hold him in place?" Aoda questioned idly, withdrawing his fangs from Manda to do so. "Why not strike a killing blow?"
"Our real target is that little silver snake with Kabuto," Sasuke answered. "This thing has a powerful healing ability, so I'd need to use one of my strongest Blaze Release jutsu to burn him up completely. If I tried that now, the silver one would just absorb my ninjutsu. To defeat Kabuto and Manda, we need to kill it first, so just hold Manda still."
Jakuzure glanced up from her treatment of Sakura, surprised to see the real Sasuke appear in a blur before her. She was still in Sage Mode, so she sensed his intent before he actually made his approach. In comparison to most other variants of the technique, the Snake Sage Mode was faster to prepare but slower to deactivate, which might have cost Sakura her life if Sasuke hadn't arrived at this point.
"I can help her," he withdrew the senjutsu chakra flowing throgh his body back into the Cursed Seal, then stepped around to Sakura's left and knelt opposite his shadow clone, taking over the task of containing Kabuto's senjutsu chakra. "Get your Sage Mode back up to full power and kill that snake."
"Right," she bobbed her head and slithered away to Sakura's right, behind the faltering clone. Before she headed into battle, she glanced back and flicked out her tongue, hesitating momentarily. "...Are you sure you can handle this on your own, Gaki?"
"My chakra is already pure blue again. I can draw the natural energy out of her and into my seal." his clone popped into a thin and stunted cloud of smoke, leaving him alone with the task of helping Sakura. "From there, she should be able to force Kabuto's blue chakra out of her tenketsu."
"Damn right," Sakura tried to add with some measure of force, but it came out as more of a tired croak.
"Alright..." Jakuzure cracked a smirk and turned her gaze ahead once more. "I'm off then." She blurred away, tracing an ethereal line of shining pink along Aoda's back, onto Manda's flank, and up his spine as well before she stopped atop his head before the silver snake. Within the merest fraction of a second, far too quickly for an ordinary eye to even perceive, that trail of her motion was already gone and it appeared as though she'd teleported there.
Immediately after her arrival, she opened her mouth and fired a broad stream of liquid lightning directly at her target, who moved forward into it without hesitation. She lunged in the wake of her own attack, carefully watching the lightning fade and shrink into the silver snake's scales. He absorbs the jutsu... she twisted to her left as she charged, dodging the blast of sharp wind the snake chose as a counterattack. ...and always returns fire with the element above the one he's hit with... why?
She turned back to her right, aiming to bite the silver creature and inject him with a particularly virulent poison. She was only mildly surprised when it slipped backward hastily, almost sloppily. It's vulnerable to non-elemental attacks, possibly including poison... but I still don't know how its absorbtion ability works. Maybe if I try a non-elemental ninjutsu...
Heh... I know just the trick for this guy.
She drew away from the silver snake, coiling and tensing up her body at a safe distance from him, and cracked a venomous smirk. "Lightning Release," she began, then drew in a deep breath. As expected, Kabuto's snake braced for the impact and stared her down without fear, but Kabuto was casting a suspicious glare at her with his active Byakugan. Noting this, however, she only broadened her grin.
"Thundering Symphony!"
What sounded forth from Jakuzure's open mouth was not a glowing lightning attack, but an almost completely invisible shockwave that bloomed outward and forward through the air, slamming into Kabuto's snake and flinging it toward the stunned Otokage's feet.
"Heheh... so non-elemental jutsu can hurt you after all. That's nice."
"You... you called it a Lightning Release jutsu!" Kabuto snarled, raising his sword and slashing toward her with it. Although the blade's reach extended long enough to cut her, she simply dodged and laughed louder.
"I lied. It's a sound-based jutsu, something you should be pretty familiar with by now." she curled up again, taking a much deeper breath this time, and cast the jutsu once more at Kabuto and his snake together.
It took a moment for Kabuto to note that he and his pet, unlike before, hadn't been physically pushed by the sound waves this time. It took a moment longer for him to realize he was screaming and his ears were bleeding, and yet another moment after that for him to note that he was recoiling in horror and agony from a cheery and catchy piece of music, simply due to the weaponized volume of the sound.
At a safe distance and far outside the linear scope of the sound attack, Sasuke and Sakura were able to hear the song at a more comfortable volume. "...Hn," Sasuke murmured thoughtfully. The song began with dozens of drums setting the tempo for the upbeat tune, shortly followed by a broad variety of brass instruments and what sounded like an electric guitar layered in with them. Kabuto's screaming provided the vocals, and Sasuke was able to pick out a few short melodies played on a flute throughout the piece.
It stopped when Jakuzure ran out of breath, and a moment later she flickered into place before Sasuke and Sakura with a smug grin still spread across her face. "...So? What'd ya think?"
"Did you kill it?" Sasuke asked, declining to answer her question.
Her face fell from a proud grin into an annoyed scowl, and she flicked out her tongue momentarily. "Yes, Gaki, I killed the damn snake. Kabuto survived and he's probably trying to heal himself already, but his snake sort of... popped."
Sakura winced.
"...I... didn't think sound could do that," Sasuke commented, looking a bit green as well.
"Sound can't. Sound-based ninjutsu can." Jakuzure turned her attention to Sakura, who looked to be in significantly less pain than before. "Did you two deal with Kabuto's senjutsu chakra yet?"
"Hn," Sasuke nodded. "She's still immobilized though; Kabuto's blue chakra is still there."
"After the Hyuuga Coup, I practiced using my chakra control to clean out my tenketsu after a Gentle Fist strike," Sakura admitted. "I trained with Neji, and he's one of the best, but we never even tried it with a full Sixty-Four Palms. This is way harder than countering one or two hits; I need time."
As if on cue, the sound of a popping smoke cloud reached them. An instant later, Aoda lurched downward and threw Sasuke off-balance, while Jakuzure safely tucked herself close to Aoda's scales and Sakura remained where she lay. "He dispelled Manda," Sasuke noted with a frown.
"Which means he's alone now. Go kick his ass," Sakura prompted.
"Hn." Once more, he activated his Cursed Seal of Heaven and spread his otherworldly wings, pausing momentarily to allow Jakuzure to climb up his leg to his shoulders as she'd done with Sakura. He crouched and took off, sending out an omnidirectional gust of wind from his wings as he did. Sakura closed her eyes to keep her hair from being blown into them, then gritted her teeth and set to work attacking the foreign chakra in her system.
She peered upward through the glistening purple armor of Aoda's Susanoo, watching Sasuke fire off a black Chidori Great Fireball at Kabuto. It was shortly followed by an Echo Lightning Torrent from Jakuzure, but Kabuto dodged both attacks and clapped his hands together, gathering his potent senjutsu chakra.
Her view of Kabuto was blocked suddenly by one of many massive trees emerging from the earth and rubble at his feet. It started with a small grove of them, tremendous but few in number, but then dozens and hundreds exploded up out of the earth and lashed out at Sasuke. When he managed to weave safely through the attacks and ascend higher to safety, however, Kabuto turned his jutsu on Aoda and Sakura.
Oh shit. She closed her eyes and turned her attention inward, visualizing her chakra network as best she could. Come on, it's still the same jutsu, I just got hit by it multiple times. So if I can feel where he hit me, I can... she took a deep breath, solely paying attention to her sense of touch, feeling for each of the sixty-four points on her body where she felt the most discomfort, an eerie mixture of numbness, sharp piercing pain, and a duller throbbing ache under them both.
Now then... sixty-four of my tenketsu are blocked and inactive, but that leaves me with two hundred and ninety-seven more. Each one pumps my chakra through my body like another heart, and I can still use the intact ones. I just need to do it with enough force to dislodge the foreign chakra... so I'll use the two tenketsu adjacent to each of the blocked ones.
She opened her eyes in time to see roughly a dozen giant trees ripping Aoda's Susanoo apart, producing a sound like shearing metal and shattering glass at once. One of the trees then arced upward and aimed the sharpened tip of its trunk back down at her, ready to kill. Aoda tried to twist aside to save both of them, especially since the Wood Release attack was also poised to impale his head, but he was held in place by the rest of the forest.
Unfortunately for Kabuto, this intimidated Sakura far less than it infuriated her. With her signature battlecry, she threw herself to her feet and met the colossal attack with a simple punch. A hazy but colorless shockwave rippled away from the point of impact, resembling a sonic boom. The tree shattered into a myriad of fragments each no larger than one of Sakura's fingers.
"Why, the hell, is it always me?"
She turned an emerald glare on Kabuto with a heat to rival the sun's core, to say nothing of the Orochimaru-esque killing intent she was aiming at him. It didn't take long for his most recent prior memory of this much fury to float to the surface, and he saw Karin's identical hateful glare superimposed over Sakura's own.
He shuddered and made a valiant effort not to think about it, although his active Byakugan made sure he couldn't avoid seeing her wordless promise of abominable pain.
It was only a moment after that, however, that Sakura broke off her death glare to peer high up into the sky with a confused expression. Far above the uppermost reaches of Kabuto's forest, Sasuke had fired off a Chidori Stream together with his Blaze Release flames. He caught nothing but open air with his attack, leading Sakura to meet his gaze with a perplexed frown. The phrase What the hell? was plainly written across her face.
An instant later, she was standing in front of him within Tsukuyomi. "Sakura, you need to get out of this forest. Aoda too; neither of you would survive what I'm about to do."
For a moment she assumed he was about to use Kirin, but she frowned upon realizing that the dull grey clouds above Iron's capital were nowhere near sufficient to power it. She shrugged and nodded. "Leave a piece of him for me, okay?"
"If he survives, you'll have to finish him," he replied quickly. "I'll be using up all of the senjutsu chakra I have left for this attack."
It was only after Sasuke ended his genjutsu and their conversation that Sakura realized the implications of Sasuke's next move. If he used up the last of his senjutsu chakra, his body would revert from its Cursed Seal form back to normal. He would lose his wings and begin plummeting to a messy death on the cold ground far below, or possibly fall into the destruction being wrought by whatever jutsu he was preparing to unleash.
And judging from how he'd said absolutely nothing on this topic whatsoever, it seemed to have slipped Sasuke's mind.
Quick, bash the idiot's face in while he still has that healing factor! Prompted a seething voice deep within Sakura's mind, and she was sorely tempted. We both know you can jump that high! Cha!
I'm gonna have to, she answered herself, idly noting the absurdity of doing so. If I'm gonna save his life, I'll have to catch him before he starts falling with any speed. Otherwise he'd die from the impact with me instead of the ground.
Sakura punched one of several huge tree trunks binding Aoda helplessly in his current position. Apparently Kabuto was hesitating to aim another killing blow at him after Sakura effortlessly smashed the previous one and replied with a simple glare that still had him shivering, which bought her enough time to shatter two more trees before the Otokage's common sense trumped his fear and he aimed another grove of weaponized trees at them.
This time, however, Sakura was already free of his Sixty-Four Palms. Fully prepared to deal with an attack she knew was coming, she made certain to obliterate each of the trees before it connected with either herself or Aoda. The first of the trees was aimed at her head, but the majority after that were meant to pierce Aoda. For her own stress relief and little else, she drew a black egg from her pouch once she was done, tossed it lightly in her palm, then whipped it across the breadth of Kabuto's forest and squarely into his forehead.
She quickly blinked in surprise at her uninterrupted, direct hit, then noted that Kabuto had hesitated to use his Revolving Heaven to block the attack after what it'd done to him last time. Without the time-dilation effect of the Sharingan, a moment of indecision was more than enough. She grinned, watching the innocent-looking pink crystalline powder drift down over Kabuto. Now she had options, and one in particular appealed to her.
She appeared before Kabuto in a relaxed stance, amid a flurry of pink cherry petals with her head tilted down, shading her eyes under her hair. Thanks to the fact that this was a mere genjutsu, she was able to present a pair of hateful green lights within the unnatural darkness otherwise wreathing the upper half of her face.
"Hey there, Kabuto." Despite him knowing this was only a genjutsu, Kabuto's heart was pounding. These were still Sakura's words, and the odds were that she'd be able to inflict serious pain on him before he managed to dispel the illusion with a hand seal. "You know, getting hit in the face with a huge sharpened tree wouldn't have been a nice way to go, would it? And there's no question that a hit like that would've killed me."
He tried to raise his hands into a seal to break the genjutsu, but for some reason they felt too heavy for even his senjutsu-enhanced strength to budge them. "So you were hoping for me to suffer an especially violent and messy death. I guess that means that even if I do the same to you, you'll still deserve it. Which is nice, 'cause I really wanna punch something."
He was unable to move until Sakura's fist connected with his nose, but surprisingly this shattered the genjutsu instead of his skull. Immediately he noted that Aoda was absent from where he'd been bound by the forest, and Sakura was gone along with him. Now that his fear was fading in the absence of an imminent threat, Kabuto was rapidly filling its void with anger not unlike Sakura's own. He turned his gaze upward toward Sasuke, his only remaining opponent, and contemplated how best to eviscerate the boy without damaging his precious eyes.
Seeing the brilliant purple swell of Sasuke's senjutsu chakra gathering in his throat, Kabuto's mood only darkened, but all the same he quickly positioned himself to use his Revolving Heaven.
"Blaze Release: Great Fire Destruction!"
Past the outer edge of the forest, Sakura crouched with both hands on the cold ground and her eyes trained on Sasuke. She blinked, somewhat underwhelmed by the comparatively thin stream of black flames that shot from his mouth. She considered the possibility that Sasuke had already drained his Cursed Seal and that this was all he had left, but only for a few moments.
Then the pitch-black beam landed somewhere near the center of Kabuto's forest and exploded. She recoiled from the sudden and intense surge of heat, and nearly retreated back when she saw a wave of inky darkness rolling out toward the edge of the forest. Just as it reached that edge, however, it curved backward at its top and returned away from her.
Sakura listened patiently to the otherworldly high-pitched howl of the black flames, noting how lucky she was that Sasuke's Blaze Release didn't behave like an ordinary fire ninjutsu. The heat pouring off the black flames was intense, to be sure, but they didn't burn anything Sasuke didn't want them to. She was safe, able to watch contently as Kabuto's forest was reduced to cinders while her hair was merely rustled by a hot breeze.
When the flames died out several seconds later, there was nothing left of them but a layer of light grey, powdery ashes spread over the ground. Sakura's attention was instantly drawn to the vibrant green glow of Kabuto's Revolving Heaven, and even as a scowl crossed her face she was already wondering what caused the change in its color. Her first guess was that he was channeling Wood Release chakra to shape the dome, or perhaps it was his senjutsu chakra that gave it a different hue.
Either way, she disregarded it and brought forth her chakra-enhanced strength, kicking off the ground with enough force to leave craters in the shape of her feet in the frosty, stony earth. The wind whistled and screeched furiously past her ears, putting a frown of mild irritation on her face. This was promptly displaced by a grin when she saw Sasuke's open bewilderment at her approach.
His wings had gone limp and useless even before they retracted, and now he was just starting to fall. Sakura, however, was already well past halfway to him. She reached the apex of her jump, her momentum slowing to a complete stop for an instant before gravity started tugging her back down, and at this point she snatched Sasuke out of the air.
There was no wind deafening her for this brief moment, and so she was able to hear Sasuke quietly murmur, "Holy shit." A second grin lit up her face, and Sasuke visibly blushed upon realizing she'd heard him. Then gravity reasserted its dominance over them both, and they plummeted.
Sakura had intended to land on the opposite side of Kabuto's forest from where she'd started, but she didn't quite reach the edge of the field of ash. Instead she landed several yards short of the edge, kicking up a small cloud of the powder with her feet and Sasuke's back as she set him down.
Somewhat ruffled, Sasuke hesitated for a moment before he sat up and halfheartedly tried to brush some of the ash from his excessive mane of hair. "Thank you, Saku-"
He cut himself off upon realizing he was back on the ground and his face hurt. With his Sharingan deactivated to conserve what little chakra he had left, it took him a moment to realize she'd punched him in the face and knocked him out cold for a moment.
"-simpleton moron imbecile buffoon mouthbreather idiot halfwit bonehead pinhead dunderhead DUMBASS!" She paused and took in a deep breath, eyes alight with fury to match Tsunade on her worst day. "I just ran out of words to describe how stupid you just were, so sit here and wait for me to come up with some more while I beat the tar out of Kabuto. You hear me!? Don't move from this spot, CHA!"
"A-As ordered, Jounin Haruno," he nodded quickly, still a bit dazed.
An expression vaguely resembling satisfaction crossed her face, and she turned with a huff to see Kabuto still standing where his green Revolving Heaven had previously been shielding him. His Byakugan remained active, but the purple marks from his Sage Mode were gone. He was panting and looked a bit unsteady on his feet, likely dizzy from the use of his ultimate defense.
"Oh good. You can't turn me to stone anymore, so I can use taijutsu on you again." She pulled her right glove tight against her knuckles, bared her teeth in a particularly vicious smile, then lunged.
Kabuto deflected her first punch with the typical smooth grace of the Gentle Fist, only absorbing the smallest fraction of her attack's force while pushing the rest of it aside, and still he heard and felt his left forearm break. He bit back a howl and struck back, planting his right palm into her chest.
It was a direct hit into one of her tenketsu, and she took a faltering step backward while gritting her teeth in pain. Unable to strike with his left arm, Kabuto instead drew back his right and shot it forward once more, this time jabbing an open palm into her belly and applying the same injection of chakra.
She stumbled back a bit further, but this time Kabuto saw her chakra flare through her network and flush out both of the tenketsu he'd attacked. Her grimace of pain was once more twisted back into a murderous grin, and she spun up a kick with her right foot to plant it squarely into Kabuto's sternum.
He heard another crack, this one louder and much more painful, and then he found himself flying through the air. As he flew, he spat a mist of blood and gathered much of his remaining chakra reserves, modest though they were at this point. He used the Substitution he'd learned from Orochimaru to produce a new and unharmed body, which he swiftly piloted deep underground with a Hidden Mole Jutsu.
"OH YOU SON OF A BITCH-"
Merry Christmas!