Opening - Courage by Haruka Tomatsu
X
After liquefying the bodies of the four samurai, Zetsu took their cloaks and stitched them together into a larger one he could drape around his entire body. His face was wreathed in shadow under a hood of the same heavy tan fabric; his glowing yellow eyes were the only visible part of his body.
For the past two hours cold rainwater had been soaking through the modified cloak, but Zetsu failed to even notice the chill. He kept walking, and the downpour only grew more intense as he neared the source. He stopped after scaling a particularly high hill several miles away from Ame, sizing up the walls of ice that were now just beginning to rise over Nagato's city.
That looks like... an Ice Release jutsu...
The monster stood motionlessly in place, watching and thinking. Definitely a kekkei genkai, yes. It's unlikely that Nagato has access to a minion with such an ability, so I doubt this is some kind of shield meant to defend Ame. It's Naruto's fifth squad member, then...
Streams of water began gathering from the falling rain in the air, just outside the rising walls around Ame. They rose to the edges of the growing ice and froze there, helping the jutsu along. Zetsu nodded at this confirmation of his theory, then flicked out his cloak while falling into a seated position at the top of the hill.
Around it the earth was starting to flood with the nonstop rain, but that wouldn't bother him since was seated on higher ground. And even if he'd been immersed up to his waist in frigid rainwater, Zetsu wouldn't be bothered. He himself was made of a different liquid that repelled water at a touch; not even weather this horrid could trouble him.
So I'm not just in time; I'm early enough to sit back and watch the show. Good. Now all I have to do is...
His right arm emerged from beneath his cloak and began tracing a line through the soaked earth, marking it with the same oily black hue making up his body. He worked swiftly to draw the seal, one that he had relied on to spy on Bijuu several times in the past.
Of the nine Tailed Beasts, Kurama was the only one confirmed to be capable of detecting negative emotions from hundreds of miles away, but there was no reason why the other eight shouldn't have the same ability. It wouldn't make sense for Hagoromo to have singled out only the Nine-Tails from his siblings to have such an ability, one that could save them time and again from anything or anyone nearing them with ill will.
With that in mind, Zetsu had made a point of using this seal whenever he was sent by Akatsuki to spy in the vicinity of a Jinchuuriki. The first time he'd encountered Naruto during the boy's mock-battle with Itachi Uchiha in Tanzaku, it had been active and still he felt as though he'd been spotted for a moment. But neither Naruto nor Kurama had raised any fuss, so he carried on with his plans expecting the seal to work.
The network of glistening black marks making up the seal was all gathered on the ground in front of Zetsu, with a thinner line of script wrapped around his seat in a perfect circle. As he knew from experience, this would be enough to hide himself from Kurama's and possibly Shukaku's sixth senses. There was still the matter of slipping under the radar of two users of Sage Mode, but his exceptional stealth ability combined with the fact that he was motionless and several miles away would likely be enough for him to remain undetected.
Satisfied that he was safe as he could be given the circumstances, he settled comfortably into his seat and tuned out the sound of rain, watching the ice dome shatter into a billion pieces from liberal use of explosive seal tags. It was unmistakably Konan's work, which meant the show was about to get started.
X
"Well, shit."
All five of the Alliance team's members hesitated, processing the return of the pouring rain to their shoulders, Konan's sights firmly locked on them, and the unanimously monumental sentiment of oh crap all five of them shared. It was only for a moment, but one long enough for Konan to start moving. She folded her paper wings back and shot toward her targets, spraying to her sides explosive tags that picked up speed and passed her.
Haku was the first to react, collecting tens of thousands of raindrops and freezing them before pushing them en masse at Konan. He expected her to pull up and dodge the attack, slowing her approach in the process, but she kept going and was completely vaporized by his attack.
Tiny shreds of paper emerged in a sizable cloud through Haku's ice attack, reforming into an unharmed Konan. If he had been in almost any other situation whatsoever, Haku might've openly sighed in relief that he hadn't accidentally killed her, but this was an S-rank kunoichi aiming to kill him and his teammates if Pain didn't arrive to back her up first. As it was, he simply massed more frozen raindrops and tried to think of a next move.
"She's priming more explosive tags!" Tenten called a moment before several dozen slips of paper broke away from Konan's wings and rocketed toward them. "Dodge!" Naruto, Haku and Hinata all flicked away with an Empty Wind in rapid succession, leaving Konan to direct her barrage of explosives at Tenten and Gaara.
The inventress moved toward the attack, placing herself between it and Gaara. His shield of sand halted its instinctive movements and he had a moment to gape as Tenten spread her arms wide. On the back of each of her palms a small seal glowed white and released a massive constuct of scarlet-painted metal, notably lacking a burst of obstructive chakra smoke.
They were mechanical arms somewhat smaller than the original Sasuhonou's, sleeker and more accurately matched to Tenten's own dimensions. She dropped into a crouch as the arms appeared, and Gaara instinctively followed her example and lowered his own head. A moment later curved plates of red steel were ejected from Sasuhonou's shoulders, biting into the ground and meshing together in front of and behind Tenten to form the upper half of Sasuhonou's torso.
The pitch-blackness inside the newly designed cockpit lasted only a moment, then the view seals outside the armor flared to life and showed Konan's bombs exploding in perfect clarity. The sound was muffled to a tolerable level, although she and Gaara both squinted at the flash of vivid light before it was replaced with black smoke.
He saw that Tenten's wrists were still encased within the walls of the cockpit, likely to control Sasuhonou's much larger arms. She was more dextrous with them now; the control system of the mech had clearly been improved. Sasuhonou reached up to its right shoulder and unsealed a massive jian, properly proportioned but scaled up to match its hand.
First she slashed diagonally with the blade, but Konan soared back past the end of her reach and prepared more explosives to batter Sasuhonou's armor. This time Gaara closed his eyes before the attack landed, but Tenten momentarily darkened the screens to cope instead.
On her glass visor, the orange reticle around Konan's image flashed brighter yellow for an instant. "Gotcha." A pair of flat metal panels rose out of slots from the top of Sasuhonou's shoulders, and the seals covering the fronts of them ejected dozens of missiles each four feet long, all of which homed in on Konan with frightening speed.
She dodged, leaning backward and pounding her wings forward to execute a swooping backflip that pushed her under and past the array of missiles. They curved through the air and followed her even as she neared Sasuhonou itself, so this time she broke apart into a sparse cloud of paper strips. No longer able to track Konan, they instead kept going in a straight line into Sasuhonou's chest.
Again the cockpit's screens dimmed to cope with the bright explosions, but this time Gaara felt and heard the ground crack in two under his feet from the damage it was suffering outside. "...Tenten?"
"I know," she answered quickly. "Don't worry about it." The edge of Sasuhonou's jian lit up a fiery orange and Tenten whipped it forward. The weapon caught fire as it arced through Konan's cloud of paper tags, burning hundreds to ash before she recoiled and pulled away what remained of her jutsu. She flew upward, far past what she took to be Tenten's effective range, and partially reformed her body there.
A hatch opened in the back of Sasuhonou's cockpit and Tenten glanced over her shoulder at Gaara. "I'm about to take off, and this thing doesn't have an extra seat for you this time. Sorry, Gaara."
He nodded shortly and stepped outside, hearing the hatch shut itself behind him a moment later. Sasuhonou's oversized jian went back into the seal on its shoulder, and to Gaara's surprise the rest of the machine vanished back into Tenten's armor altogether.
Bands of her armor were now glowing orange in a very familiar way; it only took him a moment to recognize the molten glass wrapped around her wrists, ankles and waist, along with a pair of loops crossing over her chest and back in an X. She shot into the air, pulled up by her own control of the glass, and she aimed herself to spear headlong through Konan's paper cloud.
Konan dodged, splitting up her paper swarm into five smaller clouds all of which Tenten missed. This time not one scrap of her paper was burned away, but Tenten grinned nonetheless. So burning your paper can hurt you... alright then!
She spread out her arms and legs, this time lighting up a pair of seals on the soles of her feet as well as the ones on her palms. In an instant too brief to be seen, Sasuhonou's sleek red arms and legs appeared with her own hands and feet encased within them. Panels of armor extended forth from each of Sasuhonou's four pieces, snapping together to form the torso of the mecha around Tenten, and a final seal glowed over the machine's right shoulder unsealing its head.
Her armor stiffened somewhat to better hold her in position, since she was now suspended by her arms and legs within the spherical cockpit of the mecha. It remained flexible enough to absorb shock, but for the most part she would be firmly and safely held in place. The new control system was a more direct extension of her own movements than the original prototype had been, and careful testing had proven that she'd be able to use Sasuhonou's movement jutsu without bouncing around in the cockpit this time.
Konan reassembled herself within the cloud of paper and aimed her right arm up at Tenten. More of the paper tags flocked to her extended arm and solidified there, building a solid structure out of hundreds of tags each now marked with an explosive seal. They took the shape of a six-foot-long missile with Konan's arm reshaped into a launcher for it.
Sasuhonou produced its jian once more and lunged, leaning aside to dodge the missile Konan promptly fired in return. It broke apart into its thousands of still-deadly pieces and swerved, wrapping Sasuhonou up in explosives on all sides. Tenten paled but continued through her own move, slicing Konan in two with her glass-edged sword that ignited vigorously on contact with Konan's very flammable body.
She pulled up and shot high into the sky at Sasuhonou's top speed, using the wind and rain to brush off some of the explosive tags. Next she prepared the molten glass over her armor and resealed Sasuhonou's limbs, which left her flying upward along with a cloud of freely floating bombs set to go off in less than a second.
She put out one final burst of speed, pushing past the top of the explosive swarm just before they went off and threw her still higher into the sky. For a few seconds she spun aimlessly and helplessly, but then she crashed upward into a sheet of black sand that slowed her ascent somewhat, shortly followed by a second and third impact with layers of air in between.
With the protection offered by her armor and the way Gaara had shaped the sand to float loose and light, Tenten was able to shrug off the force of the crashes and reassert her controlled flight after emerging through the top of Gaara's construct. She unsealed and assembled Sasuhonou once more, drawing its sword and preparing its shoulder rockets before she even spotted Konan inside her paper jutsu.
"Tenten, can you hear me in there?"
She glanced to her left and found Gaara floating there, arms crossed and standing atop a small platform of carbon powder. "Yeah, I can hear you just fine. Nice save by the way."
Gaara glanced up, surprised that Tenten's voice had come roughly from where Sasuhonou's mouth would be if it had one. As it was, the outside of the armor was uniformly unmarked scarlet, without any of the embellishments she no doubt intended to add. Its face was blank; even the speaker projecting Tenten's voice was hidden under an armor plate.
"...So her weakness is fire, then." he turned back to where Konan had once again reassembled herself, hovering far below them and building two more paper missiles.
"Her only weakness, as far as I can tell." She marked Konan as a target for her homing bombs again, frowning. "Any attack could rip her paper tags apart, but she can still use 'em even if they're shredded completely. The only way to take away her jutsu is to burn the tags to ash."
"Then that's what we'll do." He drew his wakizashi in a reverse grip as usual, then flipped it into a proper one and pointed the blade away from himself, down toward Konan. "Inverse Flame Seal: Release. Stain, Kuroshi."
A wave of carbon sand exploded out of the weapon's guard, a wall of black that curved forward at its outermost reaches and split into serpentine arms all reaching for Konan. She fluttered backward along with the bulk of her paper cloud, firing her missiles into the sand pursuing her. Gaara twisted them all aside so the missiles could pass unhindered into the open air between him and his attacks.
Once they were in place, Tenten pointed her sword straight at them and activated one of the seals along its blade. Soujihonou's beam of orange light shot forth and burned through one of the paper missiles in an instant, then swept to the right and reduced the second to ash as well. A moment after that she extended her reach further, lancing into one of Gaara's sand tendrils before Konan could react, even if she knew how to do so.
It wouldn't quite fit to call the result an explosion, but the flames that engulfed the black sand spread with tremendous speed and flared outward angrily, catching alight a swath of Konan's paper cloud. She sharply pulled back the rest of her tags, shocked. A huge cloud of black smoke now lay between herself and her opponents, obstructing her direct view of them.
But the rain still came pounding down on Gaara's and Sasuhonou's shoulders, carrying Nagato's and her chakra with it. She reached out and felt through the rain to find them, still on the other side of the smoke cloud. They hadn't decided to launch a sneak attack while she couldn't directly see them, which could only mean they were still planning one out instead.
Konan froze perfectly still and her heart began to pound twice as fast. ...No. Please no. She looked down with steadily widening, horrified eyes, and failed to spot the three Konoha-nin below her. She pinpointed their locations through the falling rain, less shocked now but still heartbroken. As she guessed, the three had scattered in different directions across Ame, far beyond where she could trap them while still occupied by Gaara and Tenten.
Her secret weapon arrived through a network of repurposed sewer pipes, too late to be of much use. The Hokage and his allies were loose in Ame, with Pain not present to catch and stop them.
She called it into battle anyway, turning her attention back to the cloud of smoke between herself and the enemy. Almost six hundred times her current supply of paper tags exploded up through sewer grates and manholes, sending their covers flying up along with them.
She would fight even if it was hopeless, even if she had no chance of intercepting all five of them in time, because giving up was hardly a better option.
She started by forming three paper clones and assigning each of them control of one-fifth of her supply of paper, leaving her with the remaining two-fifths. She was left with roughly one hundred and twenty times the amount of paper she had been using against Gaara and Tenten thus far, and she would put every scrap to use.
With a colossal tendril of massed paper tags, she whipped a manhole cover like a shuriken at Sasuhonou's chest. The crash of metal on metal and Tenten's cry of surprise through distant speakers gave her the tiniest moment of satisfaction. It was enough for her to crack a smirk, even as she was faced with imminent defeat and death.
X
Meanwhile in Konoha, the Asura Path fired a barrage of missiles into the face of Nawaki's Wood Dragon. The monster called off its charge and turned its head aside, roaring in pain. This perplexed Nagato; the thing was a golem constructed of plant matter and had no reason to flinch away from his attacks. It couldn't have been an oversight on Nawaki's part; including a sense of touch so the creature could feel pain would only add complexity to the dragon's form. He couldn't have forgotten not to do it.
He turned his red and purple gaze on Nawaki, more specifically the battleaxe in his left hand. A vibrant green vine extended from the bottom end of the weapon and connected to the dragon somewhere near the middle of its back, between its wings. The boy was controlling it through the weapon while his own body remained motionless.
He's using the dragon the same way I use this body, Pain deduced. It looks as though he can't move his own at the same time, otherwise he'd be attacking me together with the dragon... so in theory I could target him and he wouldn't be able to react. He ejected a cannon barrel from the center of the Asura Path's chest, noting the irony that he was currently faced with Juugo's identical weapon outside the village.
On the other hand, he sees what the dragon sees. I might be able to hit him before he can switch bodies and dodge, but he'll at least see my attack coming and try to counter it... the dragon snarled at him, revealing an eerie green mist floating behind its sharpened wooden fangs. Pain's eyes widened slightly, his Sharingan examining the gas in slow motion. ...That's definitely an attack.
The dragon pulled back, lifting its front legs from the ground and drawing in a deep breath. The Asura Path brought up its arms and formed the hands into chakra cannons while simultaneously extending a collection of missile launchers from each wrist.
Both of the proxy bodies fired their attacks at the same time, but while Pain dodged clockwise the dragon stood its ground and took a barrage of missiles to the face. Its own attack shot toward the open space Pain had previously filled, a condensed ball of roiling neon green mist.
It exploded, but Pain was already past its area of effect. He straightened out of his rolling dodge and raised his assortment of arm cannons to attack the beast again, but then he was blindsided by a second explosion adjacent to the first one. He flew, and took a moment to question this as he did.
Another breath attack? No, I would've seen him fire it... He twisted his head around to look at the aftermath of Nawaki's attack, piecing together what had happened. The first blast triggered another pair of explosions to either side; he expected me to dodge...
He tumbled to a stop and almost immediately stood again; he had no trouble shrugging off the impact with a predominantly metal body that couldn't feel pain. He sprouted two more robotic arms on each side of his torso and aimed chakra cannons and missiles with all six of them, adding in a seventh and eighth cluster of barrels from his chest and forehead.
But I won't fall for that twice.
Pain began unloading blasts of chakra and volleys of explosive missiles, focusing all of his aim on the dragon's head. If it's like my Paths, killing it won't harm him. But destroying the head is a better strategy than attacking the body; even if I can't kill it that way I can still take out its eyes.
The dragon roared, loud enough that Pain nearly raised his hands to his ears. It took significant effort to suppress that instinct, but it helped him to remember that his arms had currently been twisted into clusters of cannons spewing a consistent stream of death and destruction. Holding them over his ears in such a state wouldn't be the best idea.
The thing fell silent and drew itself up again, visibly taking a deep breath. Pain leaned forward, ready to dodge past the attack and open fire while the monster recoiled from the force of its own breath attack. He stopped only at the last second when he saw that the dragon wasn't firing the same attack as before; the blast of glowing mist that shot from its mouth was smaller and set to miss Pain entirely.
It fired two more, one shot to each side of the first. Pain dodged the second since it was aimed directly at him, then began opening fire again with his own cannons. One missile in particular landed in the middle of the dragon's face and exploded there, ripping a deep gash into the bark armor covering the beast and exposing paler wood beneath.
There. That's progress.
Nagato stopped just short of opening up another volley of chakra blasts at the dragon, instead sizing up the small gash in the outermost layer of its armor. ...Progress... He frowned, both with the Asura Path's face and his own. I am an idiot. The cannon barrels at the ends of his six arms twisted and shifted around, with the missiles capping most of them retracting out of place.
I was seriously about to throw missiles at this thing until I'd smashed its head to bits, which could take hours and it's entirely possible that Nawaki can repair it over time. There's no word for that better than idiocy.
The dragon shook its head and snarled, healing over the split in its outer armor just as Pain had expected. He thought he could see Nawaki's consciousness behind the thing's uniformly leaf-green eyes, some glimpse of the boy recognizing that Pain was about to switch tactics in a grand way. He even hesitated to let off another blast of its breath weapon, perhaps guessing that it would backfire if he did so.
Pain unloaded seven broad streams of napalm from his larger arm and chest cannons, while also peppering the dragon with chakra blasts from the smaller barrels attached to his wrists. He kept up his attack until the entire front half of the dragon was wrapped in an inferno persistent enough that the dragon wouldn't be able to shake it off in any way.
Then he disregarded it entirely and started sprinting past it, all six of its arm cannons raised to aim at Nawaki himself the moment the boy came into sight. The dragon was currently blinded by the flames over its face, and Nawaki's own eyes were closed while he controlled the dragon instead. He wouldn't see the attack coming.
Two of his mechanical limbs twisted out of shape and meshed together into a single larger cannon, from the depths of which glowed a blue light as vivid as the sun. Pain fired, letting loose a blast of chakra broad enough to completely wipe Nawaki away and leave no trace of even the ground he stood on. Behind him the burning Wood Dragon crashed to the ground lifelessly, and he took this as a sign that his attack had landed.
He heard a crack, loud enough to reach him even through the sound of his chakra cannon. He let the torrent of blue energy die down, and far away the real Nagato swore under his breath. There was a domed wall of wood between himself and Nawaki, scorched black and badly cracked but still standing.
Pain turned back to the Wood Dragon, spotting Nawaki standing next to it. There was once more a vine connecting his axe to the construct, although the dragon's end was also on fire. "...You switched places with a wood clone, just in case my attack broke through your shield."
Nawaki remained eerily silent, giving no indication of having even heard Pain. The armor of burning bark covering the Wood Dragon began to split into pieces, falling away from the gold-white wood underneath and taking the flames with it. The wings broke away from the golem's body entirely, but a new pair quickly sprouted from the same place on its back and spread wide. They came down with a massive rush of wind, scattering the burning shell of the dragon in all directions.
"You do realize I can simply set it on fire again, don't you?" Pain took aim with five flamethrowers and one larger chakra cannon. "This is useless."
Nawaki jumped from the ground to the dragon's back, vanishing into the solid wood through some mechanism Pain couldn't see from his stance on the ground. A moment later the dragon took off, soaring straight up into the sky. He tracked its movement with his aim, letting loose four streams of fire from his arms and a fifth from his chest cannon.
The wood turned a scorched, glistening black on contact with his flames, but they didn't take hold. The dragon stopped ascending and hovered high above Pain, glaring straight down at him and drawing in a breath for another of its green mist attacks.
Nagato couldn't quite explain why, perhaps his Sharingan was picking up some subtle difference in the dragon's movement that his conscious mind couldn't place, but there was an uncomfortable certainty arcing through his mind that he had to dodge this attack, else the Asura Path would die horribly.
He met the dragon's polished green eyes with his own mismatched ones, his Sharingan analyzing its aim in exquisite detail. It's not looking at me. He twisted his arm cannons once more out of shape to serve a new purpose. It's looking at the ground in front of me. There's only one explanation I can think of for that!
The Asura Path jumped straight up just as Nawaki's dragon fired an orb of shaped glowing spores so dense as to appear solid. It passed by Pain and shot into the earth just ahead of where he'd been standing, kicking up a tiny cloud of dust and pressing a crater into the dirt.
Glancing down, Pain took a brief moment to nod imperceptibly at his correct guess that Nawaki's attack was meant for a large area of effect. That brief moment was all it took for his entire world to be engulfed in green light and the sensation that would've been pain had Nagato been present to experience it in person. He had been correct about the nature of the attack and entirely wrong about its scale.
But even among the Six Paths of Pain, the Asura Path was unique in its capacity to ignore severe damage. Converted inside and out into a mechanized replica of a human body, it had no vitals to be targeted and destroyed. The Asura Path could keep fighting until its body was broken apart, a step well beyond the endurance of the other Pains.
He weathered the explosion and fought to keep his position in the air, activating the thrusters at the ends of his arms. His robe and skin were ripped open in various places to reveal the metal frame just beneath the surface, which was also now gashed and bent but at least in one piece.
Before Pain could see the dragon coming through the aftermath of the Wood Release explosion, much less react in time in save himself, it divebombed him and bit down on the upper half of the Asura Path's body intent on chewing it in two.
One of its arm cannons morphed back into a proper hand, taking on the same skin tone disguising the rest of Pain's body. The dragon's teeth, deceptively strong and sharp despite being made of wood, sawed through that limb along with two of his left arms and his right leg. Even so, Pain had time to fire the reshaped fist as a rocket just before the limb backing it was chewed off.
The dragon had no trouble following the missile's flight, and through its eyes Nawaki saw Pain's detached fist swerve back toward its face. At this distance he had no chance of dodging, and even if he did the missile was tracking him; it would simply turn around and aim itself again if it passed him. Dodging was out of the question, which left Nawaki with only one obvious choice.
He threw Pain toward his own attack.
It was only a full second after the Asura Path left the dragon's jaws that Nawaki realized his mistake, the missile attack had been too obvious and it likely wasn't even powerful enough to bring down the dragon, let alone wound Nawaki hidden inside it. And as he watched Pain fly free through the air with one leg and three arms remaining, he realized that this was what Pain had intended, his goal had only been to get away from Nawaki and he had succeeded.
The Asura Path twisted as best he could in midair, facing the oncoming missile. It slowed drastically and swung around, magnetically snapping back into place and becoming an ordinary robotic arm once more. Pain fired a smoke bomb through a barrel that emerged from his back past the tattered remains of his black robe, hitting Nawaki's dragon squarely in the face with it.
The dragon's tremendous wingbeats scattered the smoke quickly, but it had bought Pain enough time to grow new metal limbs and fly a solid distance away from Nawaki under his own power. He came to a stop facing the dragon once more, hovering in place using his arm cannons which left only the one in his chest free to attack Nawaki.
I need to think of something better than this, Nagato uncomfortably mused, otherwise I'm going to lose this fight. The best idea I had was to set that thing on fire, and that only worked once before he fireproofed it.
To this end Nagato began thinking in two roles, to suggest possible courses of action and play devil's advocate against them at the same time, try to find flaws in all of his plans until he thought of one he couldn't fault, one he could use. He was no stranger to thinking as multiple entities at once.
First problem, he began. Attacking the dragon won't neutralize Nawaki.
Probably won't, he corrected himself. We can't entirely rule it out, and Nawaki will fall out of the sky without it.
...First plan, he thought next. Attack the wings.
With what? Our chakra cannons and missiles can't cut through this thing at all.
A close-quarters attack, maybe? A punch or a bladed weapon?
And Nawaki's response would immediately be to use those huge, fast and incredibly solid wings to attack us once we got close. Attacking the wings is a nice start, but doing it up close is stupid.
We have the option of self-destructing; that would mean sacrificing the Asura Path to blow off one of the dragon's wings. That's a last resort though, obviously... attacking from a distance then. Clearly our usual explosive spam isn't going to accomplish anything here, so what if we tried a different kind of projectile? Solid metal shots to the wing membrane?
...Worth a try, he conceded, and a moment later the Asura Path was moving. The single large cannon barrel on its chest was replaced by a cluster of smaller guns, and with those prepared to fire he flew in a long arc over the dragon's back. He took aim in midflight and let loose a barrage of heavy-caliber bullets on the monster's right wing.
We forgot something pretty important, the devil's advocate chimed in helpfully. You can't see whether there are bullet holes at this distance. You can't get closer without him trying to swat you out of the sky, and he's about to make a move anyway-
The dragon pounded its wings and shot straight upward with alarming speed, nearly slamming its back into the Asura Path who just barely flew past the length of its body before then. Its tail whipped to the side and caught Pain's belly, firing him diagonally downward with the force of the blow.
-chance look now Sharingan-
Pain caught a glimpse of sunlight through the holes in the dragon's right wing.
That went well.
...Kind of? I mean, holes in the wings of that size aren't going to bring down the dragon very quickly. It's entirely possible that Nawaki will notice and repair them long before he falls out of the sky, probable even.
Damn.
Believe it.
Pain didn't cringe at the use of an Uzumaki verbal tic he had spent decades trying to suppress, but it was close. So, second problem. The holes we blow in the wings have to be bigger. We can't use heated shots to burn through; this thing is fireproof.
Acid, the devil's advocate replied quickly. Sulfuric or fluoroantimonic acid won't have any problems eating through those wings, the problem is how to deliver it. You'll have to line your cannon barrels with teflon and contain the acid into shots solid enough to retain their shape in flight. Shape transformation may or may not do the trick; it hasn't worked in the past but maybe this time...
Worth a try, Nagato echoed himself and took aim.
The result was a spray of colorless mist that fell far short of reaching Nawaki. He could almost see a perplexed look in the dragon's eyes the way they narrowed slightly. The phrase epic fail momentarily came to mind, but that wasn't something Nagato would ever say even to himself.
...Okay, acid formed into liquid bullets through shape transformation isn't going to work. The second problem still stands. It's fireproof and can shrug off direct hits from missiles and chakra bursts. Large solid bullets have enough piercing power to cut through the wings, but the resulting damage is still insignificant. Acid may or may not be able to wound it, but I still can't apply shape transformation to Asura-synthesized liquids.
Suggestions?
Switch from a cannon barrel to a crossbow or slingshot design. Encase fluroantimonic acid in teflon-lined glass spheres and catapult them at the dragon.
A wrist-mounted crossbow wouldn't have the power to throw a projectile like that with enough speed to reliably hit the dragon's wings before they beat up or down. If this is seriously the best way we have to deliver an acid-based attack, let's think of something else.
Okay, ignoring the idea of acid, let's go for the obvious idea we should've thought of first. Solid bullets can pierce the wings, so use a bigger solid bullet. A rapid burst of two-inch-broad metal slugs with hollow points through a rotating gatling cannon should do the trick.
...We seriously debated acid, crossbows, and self-destructing before this?
stop arguing with yourself and shoot him he's already moving
Pain rocketed backward, fleeing from Nawaki's dragon which was now roaring after him and spitting out bursts of green explosive dust for him to carefully dodge. It seemed that Nawaki had spent the same amount of time as Nagato thinking of a next course of attack, and just as Nagato had concluded that approaching the dragon was a bad idea, Nawaki had decided that forcing the battle into closer quarters would be a good one.
The Asura Path formed a gatling machine gun with six broad barrels emerging from his chest, letting loose a hail of metal slugs some of which ripped into the dragon's left wing, but far more of which missed their moving target. The dragon started returning fire with spherical wooden missiles that cracked wide open as they passed by Pain, sending out clouds of explosive pollen for him to further dodge.
Nagato switched tactics, flinging himself forward through the air with no warning. He managed to weave between Nawaki's Wood Release attacks only with the help of the Sharingan, making sure to swoop far lower than the reach of the dragon's wings as he passed under them. He turned around to keep facing the dragon only once he passed it, and that was when he saw the airborne wooden clone that had been silently pursuing him with its axe sweeping forward-
X
"Damn it."
Nagato opened his own real eyes and blinked in the darkness.
Nawaki probably thought I knew that clone was there; it would've been meant to attack my blind spot while I was flying backward. When I switched directions he probably thought I was running from it. But how did he even make a clone behind us in the sky?
The shells of the wooden missiles, the devil's advocate answered without hesitation. He knew his explosives weren't going to hit us, so he tried something else.
He sighed in mounting frustration. That's two of them down, now. The Preta and Asura Paths are dead.
You really shouldn't have split Pain up into more than two groups, said the second copy of his voice, which no longer really filled the role of a devil's advocate. Keeping Deva, Asura and Human together as a three-man cell would've won you the fight by now.
I'm tempted to think that it's still not a problem, thought Nagato, except this is a waste of time and I don't have much time left. The Hokage is headed for Ame already; he moved out two days ago so he's probably almost here. Even my ace in the hole won't do any good in Konoha if Naruto brings me down here.
The door to the lightless room opened suddenly and violently, and Nagato looked up at the sound of rain and approaching footsteps. There was only one person who would enter this room so fearlessly, even the Hokage would breach into the room with some kind of strategy in mind. Konan, however, just opened the door and crossed it toward him.
"N-Nagato." she was shaking and so was her voice; a glance with his Rinnegan and Sharingan revealed that she was only a paper clone. "Nagato, they're here."
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