Opening - Love Deterrence by Nana Mizuki
X
Izuna brought his sword down, and Itachi brought his shield up. The Yata Mirror qualified as an absolute defense against elemental ninjutsu, parrying wind with fire with water and so on. Against an attack with no elemental alignment the shield had one less advantage, but it held off the weight of the greatsword and saved Itachi's life.
"Hn," said Izuna, and lifted his sword to swing it at Sasuke this time. The younger Uchiha chose a less direct sort of counter; with sudden inspiration he held out his right hand toward the wine-red blade and wept blood. Yomotsu Hirasaka opened up the air between the living and dead Mangekyou wielders, caught the downward sweep of the sword and redirected it. Izuna's slash slammed into the back of his own Susanoo, and it lurched forward under the force of the blow.
Sasuke turned and sprinted headfirst out of his own Susanoo, snatched up Sakura from where she stood between him and Itachi, then kept running through his older brother's red-orange chakra avatar and came to a stop within its protection. Behind him the purple Susanoo began to fade without its pilot. Sakura jumped to her feet looking a bit flustered, then brushed down the front of her shirt and glared up at Izuna's Susanoo. "...Damn... do we have a plan?"
"I can't think of anything," said Itachi as he took two steps back, carrying Susanoo along with him. "The Yata Mirror can block that sword, but..."
"But it's all we can do to hide behind it," Sasuke finished. "What if I gave back the Sword of Totsuka?"
Itachi shook his head, then suddenly raised his shield to catch another experimental swipe from Izuna. This time his avatar's arm nearly buckled under the force of the blow. "H-Hn... I don't think that would accomplish much. At any rate, I overestimated how strong that sword really is. Even if it weren't damaged and my Susanoo equipped it, it'd never be enough to seal Izuna."
"The real problem is that we're stuck behind this shield," Sakura noted. "If we come out for a counterattack, Izuna will crush us. That sucks, 'cause I'm pretty sure I could punch a hole in that armor."
Sasuke glanced toward her, a gleam in his eyes and a smirk on his face. "I think I have an idea."
"Huh?" she blinked. "What are you looking at me for? Don't tell me it's something stupid like, I dunno, shooting me out of your bow... I can heal, but that's still a bit much."
"Nothing like that." his smirk widened as he turned to Itachi. "Niisan, if your Susanoo's armor was twice as thick as it is now, do you think we could survive a slash from that sword? If your shield arm was twice as strong, could you catch his attacks without flinching?"
"Most likely," he admitted. "But how...?"
"It's simple." Sasuke took a few steps to the front and center of Itachi's Susanoo. "We're gonna combine."
Itachi watched his little brother settle to a stop ahead of him and activate his Cursed Seal, utterly perplexed. "...Sasuke, I really don't think that's how this works." The younger Uchiha's blade-feathered wings sprouted from his back and swept downward, propelling him closer to Susanoo's head than its waist. Itachi glanced back at Sakura with a frown. "Can you guess what he's thinking?"
"Yeah," she admitted. "I didn't think he'd actually try this, but it could work..." her eyes widened and she pointed ahead. "Incoming!"
Itachi spun to face Izuna again and raised his shield to catch a third swipe of his huge sword, but this time his ancestor went on to add a fourth slash without pause. The smaller Susanoo reeled and Itachi stumbled back under the force of the two blows, and Izuna drew up his greatsword to continue. He added a stab from his off-hand dagger between a seventh and eighth slash of his sword, and after Itachi held off a tenth swing he decided to bring forth the chalice in Susanoo's final hand.
Sasuke drew the Sword of Totsuka and let it fly from his hand; the weapon dissolved into purple light almost instantly. An arc of that same light sliced through the air and struck Izuna's chalice, batting it away before it could fulfill its purpose. A few tiny splashes of perfectly clear liquid trickled over the side of the cup as it shifted, and Sasuke made careful note of this.
Then he swung his sword again, and with it the arm of translucent purple bone connecting it to the ribcage containing Itachi's complete Susanoo. Purple flames washed up over the incomplete skeleton, leaving behind fully materialized flesh and armor where they had passed. In form it appeared rather similar to Sasuke's normal Susanoo, but vastly taller and with a pulsing orange light in its chest that had been Itachi's Susanoo, now melted seamlessly together with Sasuke's larger one.
"Niisan!" Sasuke called down from Susanoo's head to Itachi in its chest. "I need the shield!"
"Hn!" With a thought Itachi detached the Yata Mirror from his Susanoo and plucked it from the air with his own hand. It was a perfectly smooth rectangular panel of golden metal with decorative script around its edges, but in a dead language impossible to decipher. On the back was a handle of ancient, worn wood, but Itachi grasped it by the edge and threw it to Sasuke more like a shuriken.
The younger Uchiha grabbed it and immediately felt a difference between it and the Sword of Totsuka; this weapon sang with power unlike anything else he had ever felt. It was like someone had stuffed a Kage-level chakra signature into the metal.
But he assigned it to Susanoo as he had the sword, and that feeling of power vanished from his hand. The Yata Mirror manifested as a round shield with jagged edges like flame and a swirling pattern over its face, just as it had in Itachi's hands, but scaled up to match the size of their dual-layered Susanoo.
That should do it. Sasuke blinked away a few more drops of blood and commanded Susanoo to raise both of its weapons. Izuna stayed on the offensive and slashed in from the right with his greatsword, then stabbed forward with his off-hand dagger while his sword met the Yata Mirror. The violet-orange Susanoo swayed off-balance under the surprising force of the blow, but Sasuke regained his balance in time to just barely lean aside of the knife aimed at his Susanoo's head.
He stabbed ahead with the Sword of Totsuka in return, but Izuna's Susanoo dodged to the right and brought up the greatsword again as it did. Sasuke hoisted the shield up over his head and held off the tremendous downward shove of Izuna's attack, but at the same time the pair of hands wielding the wine-red blade began to rise. In a matter of seconds Izuna's Susanoo had doubled in height thanks to a newly materialized pair of armored legs.
Sasuke drew back his sword and lunged up with it toward his opponent's head. Izuna took a short step back and dodged it easily, but behind his sword's momentum the rest of his Susanoo rose as well. Sasuke pushed more chakra through it and wept more blood; he completed his Susanoo and matched Izuna's height once again.
With the Sword of Totsuka still held high, Sasuke slashed down and aimed to cleave through the other Susanoo's chest starting at its right shoulder. Izuna parried with his thin dagger to Sasuke's surprise, and drew back the greatsword level with his shoulder then thrust forward with all of Susanoo's strength. Even though Sasuke swung the Yata Mirror into place to catch the stab, it was still enough force to send the violet giant back several of its massive steps.
The front of Izuna's Susanoo burst into black flame before his eyes, and at the same time Itachi wept blood. "Now, Sasuke!"
The little brother nodded and sent his Susanoo forward. He can counter Amaterasu with some kind of water jutsu. I need to move fast! He snapped forward with the Sword of Totsuka extended and aimed directly at Izuna. A wash of crystalline water swept over the flames and pushed them out of existence, but even with the Mangekyou Sharingan Izuna didn't have enough time to react.
Sasuke's blade punched through Susanoo's armor and Izuna himself, but then another arc of that same water shot forward like an arrow from Izuna's eye and sliced off the tip of the Sword of Totsuka. The water switched in shape and direction, turning into a blunt surface that shoved the sword and Susanoo's arm back through the punctured armor, which promptly smoothed over.
Sasuke followed through with the momentum of his stab, lunging directly at Izuna with Susanoo's whole body. He locked the wine-red titan in a bearhug, well past the effective range of the greatsword but not the dagger. Izuna stabbed into Susanoo's side under its arm, but Itachi and Sakura floated aside just in time to survive.
"Sakura!" Sasuke called down from its head. "Hit him!"
"On it!" She planted her feet firmly on the length of the dagger and stuck there with chakra control, letting go of the orange chakra embracing her to defy gravity on her behalf. The White Strength Seal unfolded across her face and glowed softly greenish-white; she gathered all of her strength and crouched against her launch platform with an emerald glare.
Then she was gone, along with Izuna and a sizable chunk of Susanoo's chest and back. Along her trajectory was a comet of glowing burgundy shards and flakes of white like snow, and at its head a brilliant star of green light.
The enemy's Susanoo began to wither and crumble into wisps of chakra, excluding its dagger which had already been obliterated by Sakura kicking off of it. She twisted in her flight and smirked with approval at her work, then felt a shock of fresh adrenaline as she realized how dangerous her landing would inevitably be.
A wash of empty black passed over her for a moment, and then she was flying up rather than forward. She breathed a sigh of relief lost under the roar of the wind. Her momentum just slightly began to slow, but she was already far above the streak of bloodred chakra she had painted through the air. As she began to feel herself slowing down more substantially, she noted the flakes of ash that were Izuna beginning to pull away from the wound in the sky, intent on reassembling.
She stopped entirely, and then began to fall back down. Another portal opened up just under her and she was through in an instant, just inches above the ground when she emerged. Sakura had excellent reflexes as one would expect of a ninja, but it was still sudden enough that she crumpled to her hands and knees rather than landing on her feet with dignity. Still, she hadn't hit the ground particularly hard thanks to Sasuke's intervention.
She recalled their battle with Kabuto in the Land of Iron and reminded herself that she would've survived even if she'd been falling at terminal velocity, as long as the impact had been vertical. Tumbling along the ground sidelong with the momentum of her White Strength punch, on the other hand, would at the very least have been horribly painful.
She stood upright next to Sasuke, who had taken back the Sword of Totsuka from his Susanoo and given back Itachi's control of his red-orange chakra avatar. "Thanks."
"Don't mention it," he answered with a slight shrug. "You should keep that seal open; he's already reforming."
"Yeah." she scowled at the streaks of ash and paper all floating toward a single point a few yards ahead, and raised her right hand to pull her glove tight against her knuckles. The tough leather ripped like paper under her grip, and she blinked with surprise down at it. "...Shit."
Izuna's body of ash had just now begun to coalesce into a misshapen grey lump, floating a few feet in the air ahead of Sasuke and Sakura. They each drew a sealing kunai and flipped it into a saber grip, then started forward to dispatch Izuna while he was defenseless.
The ball of ash smoothed over and changed color, now distinctly the upper-left piece of Izuna's face. The simple design of his Mangekyou Sharingan spun with his glare, and Sasuke threw forth a Yomotsu Hirasaka portal to block it acting purely on instinct.
"Watatsumi."
They stopped well short of Izuna and watched through the transparent back of the portal as his jutsu activated, a swirling orb of water clear as glass that materialized before his reassembled eye and grew outward into a barrier between himself and the Konoha-nin. \The rest of the Edo Tensei ash flew past the barrier and clumped around Izuna's face, but it would take longer for him to properly reassemble.
He folded back the barrier of water and wrapped it around himself, blocking attacks from every angle while he restored his body. It changed shape as he grew into it, became a mantle that covered his whole body with sleeves for his arms and a cowl over his head. The hood hung low and covered his face as well since it was transparent, but left his throat exposed to the air under his chin. That particular feature had been added while he was alive so he could breathe.
"So that's how he did it," Sasuke murmured. "A Water Release doujutsu, probably on the exact same level as my Amaterasu."
"Hn," said Izuna. "And my jutsu has the elemental advantage."
Sakura crouched and touched her fingertips to the cold ground, tensing every muscle in her body in preparation to fire herself at Izuna once more. "Your Susanoo didn't put up much resistance," she commented. "I'm guessing that water armor is tougher, but that's not saying much compared to punching through soggy paper."
Izuna's eyes narrowed and the lower edge of his water cloak flowed down to touch the ground. "Do your worst."
Once again she vanished completely from sight, impossible to track even in slow motion through the Sharingan. Her fist slammed into the water cloak over Izuna's face, lit with searing green light. Thunder cracked through the air in her wake and the earth shattered into gravel under her feet.
But Izuna didn't budge. Her eyes widened and she tugged her hand back, shredding what was left of her glove since the water had crept forward to grab it. She leaned back and crouched just slightly to spring back to safety, but Izuna used the same measure of time to send a blade of water from the front of his cloak through her chest.
She flinched and tasted blood, but there was no time to even register the pain. She jumped up and planted her feet on the front of Izuna's cloak, her weight supported by the lance of water impaling her. Arcs of green light spun out from the sides of her feet, cutting away the soles of her boots.
She kicked off of Izuna, launching herself back and leaving the soles attached to the water cloak where Izuna had grabbed them. She healed the stab wound even as she flew, and Sasuke caught her and skated back over the ground with her momentum.
She spat a mouthful of blood and glared even harder at Izuna. "Dammit." Once Sasuke set her down, she tossed aside what was left of her tattered glove and cut away the rest of her boots below the ankles with scalpels of chakra. "I take it back; that's hands-down the strongest defense I've ever seen."
"I'm guessing it's the same as Amaterasu," Sasuke mused. "My flames can't be extinguished or brushed off, and they won't burn anything I don't want them to. If his jutsu fits the same pattern, that water can't evaporate and it won't flow in any direction unless he tells it to."
"So how do we get around it? Earth has the edge over water, so if we had a strong enough earth jutsu..."
He shrugged. "Maybe. But we don't have one." He passed a spinning glare over Izuna's cloak. "...You still have a few of those poison bombs, right?"
Surprised, she glanced in his direction and found him looking back at her. For a split second he held her under Tsukuyomi, then turned back to Izuna and cast Yomotsu Hirasaka again. Halfway between the living and undead Uchiha, a huge square portal loomed as tall as Susanoo and blocked Izuna's line of sight.
Sasuke glared through its invisible back and opened another vastly smaller square in the air above Izuna, facing down. The other end of that portal appeared just ahead of Sakura as she produced another black egg and drew it back for a powerful throw.
She fired her weapon into her end of the portal as hard as she could without vaporizing its shell with its acceleration. It emerged on Izuna's end in the air just a few inches above and in front of his forehead, outside his field of vision. His Sharingan saw it, but he had no idea how to react to such an innocent-looking device while wrapped in Watatsumi's protection.
The egg struck the ground at his feet and exploded into ruby-red dust, a modified version of Sasori's preferred venom mixed in with Sakura's latest original creation. It filled the air around Izuna and glittered softly under the starlight, and he quickly realized his mistake.
He closed the opening in the water at his throat and wrapped the hem of his cloak close around each of his wrists and ankles; with no need to breathe he realized the openings were unnecessary and dangerous. But a few wisps of the floating powder had already passed through the weak points in his defense, and those he quickly washed out of the air.
As an Edo Tensei he couldn't feel pain, but otherwise his sense of touch was intact. There was something cold and hard creeping along his throat, and when he moved to look down he felt it crack and fall away in chunks. The same material also had turned his wrists and ankles a smooth, gleaming grey-black.
"Gotcha," Sakura grinned.
"Hn," Sasuke hummed, intrigued. "That's not a natural poison, is it?"
"Nope, it's chakra-based. It uses the Earth Release to transmute any paper it touches into stone." her grin broadened. "The effect spreads wherever it can, and there's no cure since it's not really a poison. And once it reaches his eyes..."
"...In theory, his water jutsu should fail," Sasuke realized. "I can't speak from experience, but I don't think I could keep using Amaterasu if my Sharingan turned to stone."
Izuna listened to this as he attempted to tear away the creeping stone shell over his throat. He used his hand first, stabbed his fingers in under the surface of the rock and tore away his own windpipe. But Sakura's jutsu had already wrapped around his neck and given him a collar of stone, and his fingers were afflicted by more of the poison which quickly spread into the wound and reached his spine.
He turned his attention back to the Konoha-nin and gathered his chakra, standing perfectly motionless as the dark wine-red flames of Susanoo swept up around his feet. His chakra avatar exploded into existence and lashed out with the chalice in its lower-left hand rather than its bladed weapons; the water inside hit the ground and surged up again as a massive tidal wave.
Sasuke activated his Cursed Seal and grabbed Sakura before taking off high into the air. A pitch-black wormhole opened under Itachi's feet where he stood ready inside Susanoo, and he fell through into the air next to Sasuke who caught him by the collar. The orange Susanoo collapsed into fading tongues of flame at the same time its violet counterpart assembled around the Konoha-nin.
Sasuke let Sakura and Itachi go, but they remained airborne thanks to Susanoo. There was a churning blue lake below them now, held in at its edges by frothing walls of seafoam rather than a natural shore. At the center of the lake stood Izuna's Susanoo, submerged to its waist but with its legs clearly glowing up through the water. Unable to move since his spine had been turned to stone, Izuna's feet stayed firmly on the ground.
Vast pillars of water rocketed up into the sky after Sasuke and Sakura; Susanoo dodged between them but it grew trickier as Izuna sent more and more attacks their way.
"Sasuke, how far can you send one end of your space-time jutsu?" Itachi asked.
"I don't know," he admitted. "Getting from here to the Land of Fire is no trouble though."
"Use that plan you came up with to redirect your Kirin," he instructed. "Cut a cross-section out of that water with a moving portal, and send it out over the ocean!"
"Hn," he nodded and wept fresh blood. He opened a rectangular black wormhole just past the edge of Izuna's lake and forced it to grow as wide as he could, then pushed it inward toward Izuna himself. Yomotsu Hirasaka swallowed up just under half of the lake and reached the arm of the dark red Susanoo before it collapsed; Sasuke clamped his eyes shut and screamed in pain.
He ran out of his own pure chakra and began tapping solely into the senjutsu chakra pouring out of his Cursed Seal, still clutching his eyes and groaning. When he opened them the fiery light of his Eternal Mangekyou was gone, his eyes bloodshot and colored their natural grey. There's a catch, he realized with a pained scowl. Of course this jutsu has some kind of limit... it looks like how far I send the portal doesn't matter much, but it'll drain more chakra the larger I open it. And damn, it hurts!
Izuna gathered up the remaining half of his water jutsu and sent a volley of spinning Water Bullets into the air; with Sasuke's guidance Susanoo dodged them all. Tapping into his senjutsu chakra, he reactivated his Sharingan and winced with the pain.
The mass of water left at Izuna's disposal began to swirl and rise up as a tornado built with Water Release instead of wind. Sasuke veered to the right and took Susanoo with him, but the growing whirlpool twisted to follow him and picked up speed. Izuna's water split apart into thousands of thin razor-sharp branches with the waterspout acting as a trunk for the tree, and the surviving Uchiha Clan found themselves surrounded by the blades.
"Hell no," he bit out and forced more chakra through his eyes. A Yomotsu Hirasaka portal opened over Susanoo's head and he looked up to shoot himself and his allies through it.
Izuna was faster. Several dozen water blades converged on the portal and shot through in a fraction of a second, and at the same time a similar number stabbed against Susanoo's armor from all sides. The shell of the chakra avatar held; only Izuna could force Watatsumi to flow but anyone could prevent it from flowing through a strong enough defense.
It wasn't an irresistible force, but it was still an immovable object. The blades were turned aside by Susanoo's protection but now absolutely held the avatar in place. The rest of the water branches spun around Susanoo and became a waterspout once more, which rapidly began to grow thinner until its walls ground against Susanoo's sides.
Not an irresistible force, merely a fearsome one. Sasuke felt and heard his chakra avatar begin to chip and crack under the force. He scowled and prepared to cast Yomotsu Hirasaka again despite the fiery sting of his active doujutsu still growing more pronounced. The Eternal Mangekyou would suffer no lasting damage no matter how far he pushed it, but the blood that gushed from his eyes every time he used his kekkei genkai still came with an appropriate spike of pain.
But just as the portal opened vertically behind himself, Itachi and Sakura, the crushing whirlpool around them destabilized and collapsed. Without guidance, the water spinning around them floated away a short distance with its momentum and then began to fall back to earth. Yomotsu Hirasaka zipped shut and immediately opened again, this time with a portal in front of Sasuke linking to the air just behind Izuna.
"Come on," he called and lunged through with his left hand reaching up to his collar. He emerged a few yards outside of Izuna's crumbling Susanoo and snapped open the clasp of his cloak. He half expected Izuna to turn and face him, repair his Susanoo and lash out with a water jutsu that at such close range would be near-impossible to dodge. But the ancient Uchiha stayed motionless and Sasuke's Chidori ripped a hole through the failing chakra avatar.
He whipped his cloak forward and slammed it into Izuna's back, wrapping the cloth around his midsection so he could avoid touching the water that no longer held a rigid form but still soaked Izuna from head to toe. "Sakura, hold him!"
She was there with a flash of green light, an aura like fire around her that winked out once she arrived. The ground in her wake loudly shattered behind her and a sonic boom split the air; she achieved her speed with brute force rather than a movement jutsu and this came with unusual side-effects. She wrapped Izuna in a crushing bear-hug and held him still while Sasuke drew back his right palm, alight with swirls of silvery eldritch script.
He struck Izuna's back between his shoulder blades and let loose the web of text, which spread across the cloak in a flash and went abruptly black as it took hold. "Eight Trigrams Seal!"
Izuna vanished and left behind the cloak he was wrapped in, allowing Sasuke a line of sight to Sakura's look of disbelief. "What the-!? Since when the hell are you a Kage-level sealscribe!?"
"I watched Jiraiya cast the Eight Trigrams on the First Hokage," he answered with a sly grin, "with my Sharingan on."
X
"...That's two down."
Kimimaro arrived next to Karin with a Pulse Step and lowered his weapons. Looking up at the whirling tornado of silvery metal, he whistled. "Is that really a fuinjutsu?"
"Yep. The seal itself should appear in a circle where my chains touch the ground, and everything inside is gonna fold into a pocket dimension under that circle."
She held out her right hand and balled it into a fist, and the chains began to contract into a thinner, more rapidly swirling storm. The ground turned a scorched black where it met the rim of the tornado, and the entire chakra construct abruptly turned a vivid turquoise.
"So what happens when it changes color?"
Karin cocked her head to the side slightly, a quintessential look of puzzlement. "...Honestly, I didn't expect it to change color..." The thing went up in flames, bright tongues of light colored to match the existing chains. "...Oh."
A huge double-edged blade of gleaming bronze shot out the side of the tornado, then scythed around toward Kimimaro and Karin. It shredded open the chains as it passed, but ground to a halt against Kimimaro's shield. The knight anticipated the backward push from the blade and sprinted toward it before it could meet his defense; he skidded back over the ground he'd crossed but his move had saved Karin as well as himself.
It was Yosuke Uzumaki; the blade at the end of his glaive had been extended to a comically excessive length by a deft application of his Asura Path. A Deva forcefield held it parallel to the ground where otherwise it would have flopped down under its own weight, and there were wisps of white mist running up and down the edge.
In composition if not in appearance, this was Naruto's Banshou Karu through to the core. Of course he hadn't been the first to invent it, not at the end of a line of Rinnegan-wielding Uzumaki stretching back a thousand years to its Ootsuki roots.
Next to him was Nozomi with her sword sheathed and her fingertips loosely held forward, flicking around a set of teal chakra chains that had eaten into and taken over Karin's network. Here was a sealmaster who knew what she was doing, who made her opponent look absolutely amateur.
Karin sighed as she loosed her swords, but it was less a resigned sigh and more a relaxed one. "Nothing's ever that easy, huh?" she whirled them once with a flick of each wrist, the blades of hard cortical bone softly whistling as they cut the air. "Alright then... Kimimaro, take the guy with the glaive. I'll deal with her."
Even as she said the words and took a step toward Nozomi, her ancestor drew forth her arming sword and aligned herself behind it. She flicked the tip of the blade toward herself lightly, invitingly. The message was as clear as it could possibly be, and it was received loud and clear.
"Oh," Karin laughed darkly, "if that's how you wanna play this..." she had no movement jutsu to speak of, so she simply sprinted at Nozomi who immediately reciprocated. "Bring it on!"
She met Nozomi's right-hand sword with her own and immediately followed up with a stab from her left. The older Uzumaki lightly hopped back and slapped away her cutlass by its harmless back-edge, then went back on the offensive with a few quick slashes that Karin backed away from instead of blocking. She jumped up and back into the air and crossed her white blades in imitation of the clone seal; she landed between a pair of shadow clones that charged toward Nozomi with her.
Nozomi crouched slightly and parried all of Karin's blades; her single sword flitted between Karin's cutlasses with speed comparable to a movement jutsu. The arming sword appeared as an amorphous blur only slightly less clear than the surrounding air, but it also gleamed with soft blue-green light slightly brighter than the stars above.
Karin and her two clones let go of all six swords in tandem; the blades were wrapped in one of Nozomi's aqua-green chains from left to right following the sweep of her sword. The disarmed clones jumped toward the genuine article and formed identical Tiger seals as they went, transforming into a fresh pair of cutlasses ready for Karin to snatch from the air.
Holy shit, that was fast! Nozomi went on the offensive and adrenaline poured into Karin's blood; the younger Uzumaki's swords became a thick white blur to match the elder's clear silver. She retreated several long steps and drew in a deep, sharp breath. How the hell am I gonna get out of this one!?
The lessons Nagato had drilled into her head over the past weeks all surfaced at once; she knew what to do when she started asking herself a question. Her boiling blood cooled slightly and her vision went clear as crystal. Nozomi's speed and skill didn't seem so formidable now; she was fast and strong but Karin still had one advantage. She turned her attention inward and disregarded the slow approach of the enemy's blade; she began to think.
How do I get out of this?
Obviously kenjutsu won't work here, she answered herself. It was odd how her tone seemed to match the one Nagato liked to lecture her with. She's just too fast with that sword. We need to hit her from a distance.
But she's stronger with chakra chains too! She picked apart that tornado like it was nothing!
We've got other ninjutsu besides chains. She settled rather easily into the rhythm of questioning her own thoughts, pointing out exactly the argument Nagato would use against her next if he were here. Perhaps that was why she found herself imitating his irksome voice. Shadow clones, duh. Just throw a few hundred clones at her.
Time resumed its normal flow and Nozomi shot toward Karin with her sword drawn fully back for a stab aimed at the living Uzumaki's throat. Karin flicked her right hand upward and let go of her sword's hilt; the shadow clone canceled its transformation and took the hit in place of the original. For a brief instant Nozomi's sword was stuck where it ran through the clone, and before it dispelled Karin threw her left-hand blade as well.
It whirled end over end and struck Nozomi's shoulder along its length; the sharp blade drew a line of ash through Nozomi's cloak but it was only a shallow cut. The real attack came when that blade as well returned to the form of a clone, and viciously punched Nozomi in the jaw. She fell at the exact moment the stabbed clone dissipated, allowing her to keep a hand on her arming sword for all the good it would do while she was pinned under the second clone.
The real Karin threw a kunai lightly over her shoulder, waited for it to land then Substituted with it for some distance. She crossed her empty hands and poured chakra through them, silently calling into being an army of six hundred shadow clones.
At the same time, her existing clone punched Nozomi a second and third time. The resurrected kunoichi aimed a withering blue-on-black glare at her opponent between the third and incoming fourth punch; she stopped resisting and spread her arms wide open under Karin. The clone was momentarily perplexed, but it followed through the next punch and felt something break under her knuckles. The words that left Nozomi's lips next were a bit slurred as a result.
"Adamantine Sealing: Fire-Wind Release." A ring of blue-green chain links appeared around Nozomi's throat, spinning slowly and contracting to fit snugly against her skin. Karin stopped short of a fifth punch, sensing something very wrong. Nozomi spat a tooth at the clone, which dissolved into ash mid-impact.
"Burn," she breathed, and the word came out as a deep sigh. But it was fire instead of air that left Nozomi's lungs, a huge reddish plume of it as hot as the sun. The shadow clone stood no chance at all, and Nozomi threw herself to her feet intent on burning the real Karin next.
And now she can breathe fire without hand seals. Great. She sighed and produced a cherry-sized smoke bomb, then lobbed it overhand at Nozomi. The bomb exploded well before reaching her and filled the air between the two kunoichi with a wall of rich black smoke.
The older Uzumaki irritably rolled her eyes and took a deep breath, then blew forth a red fireball that burned a hole cleanly through the cloud. The smoke left behind from her own jutsu appeared to blend with the leftovers from the bomb, but hers dissipated after a few seconds and left a huge circular window eaten through Karin's smokescreen.
But beyond that window were only two hundred shadow clones where before there had been six hundred. Nozomi could hardly read the exact numbers at a glance, but the group opposing her was clearly smaller. Her eyes narrowed and she brushed away a bit of soot from the corner of her mouth. "...Where'd the rest of you go?"
"I dunno what you mean," Karin grinned and twirled a kunai around her finger, an action mirrored by the rest of her army. "We're all right here, ya know!" The shadow clones threw their knives in a great upward arc toward Nozomi, who contemptuously spat a red-tinged Great Fireball at the massed attack. The kunai sizzled in the heat and were pushed aside by Nozomi's jutsu to safely land in a rough circle around her.
She glanced around at the scattered knives, hot enough to produce a hiss of steam on contact with the ice-cold ground. Already they were cooling down; they'd only touched her flames for a few seconds. "Adamantine Sealing, Wind-Fire Release." She held out her hands at her sides again, and this time a glowing chakra chain looped around each of her wrists. Smoke poured out of her arms from the elbow down, thick black clouds that swirled around her in a protective shell.
"I'm gonna have to learn that trick soon," Karin noted. "It looks like you're sealing a specific jutsu into each chain, so you can fire it just by charging up the seal with your chakra directly."
"You make it sound so simple," Nozomi cracked a slight smirk. "It took me years to make this work with two elements combined, ya know. Good luck learning it 'soon.'"
Karin shrugged. "I'm pretty rusty with my Wind Release anyway, and I can already make shadow clones without putting away my swords. Still, I'll give it a try sometime. See ya."
All at once and surrounding Nozomi from all sides, the scattered kunai transformed back into two hundred shadow clones each armed with a kunai of their own. Nozomi couldn't help but scoff as they threw the second volley of knives only to be caught up in her barrier of smoke and wind. She spent a moment watching them whirl around at a safe distance, then smirked at Karin again.
"There are explosive tags on the handles," she observed. "Fake ones. Your clones may have copies of all the gear you're carrying, but they're not functional replicas. At least that's the case for elemental clones... and I'm guessing your 'shadow clones' are no different seeing as I'm still in one piece."
The tags exploded. The rest of Karin's army resumed throwing kunai into the rising fireball en masse; they managed four volleys before a fresh wave of black smoke from Nozomi blew it apart. Her cloak was almost completely destroyed and what few tatters remained were on fire. The loose leather clothes she wore under it were scorched black and battered, but otherwise intact.
Shaken but still able-bodied, Nozomi raised up a fresh barrier of blackened wind much larger than the first. The clones surrounding her jumped back to safety and produced even more kunai. Her smirk was gone and her eyes were narrowed, and she stood expertly poised in a kenjutsu stance pouring killing intent into the air.
"You gave your clones kunai from your own pouch," she guessed. "Or at least the explosive tags; I doubt you carry two hundred explosive kunai in your hip pouch at all times." She scowled and shifted forward an inch. "That's what the smoke bomb was for, right?"
Two hundred of the discarded kunai on the ground, now well within Nozomi's huge smoke barrier, transformed back into the remaining division of Karin's shadow clones. The tornado of smoke abruptly caved inward and smashed the clones facefirst into the ground just as they began their charge. Now condensed low to the ground, the smoke blasted outward in a circular shockwave that tore the next two hundred off their feet and left Karin with only the first group still at her side.
"Anything else?"
Karin slumped forward with a sigh. "No, that was my best shot."
"Then it's my turn."
The entire battlefield stretched between Nozomi and Karin exploded upward in tiny bits, vaporized by the tens of thousands of chakra chains that suddenly began to furiously writhe under the surface. With the earth under her feet blown apart as well, Karin was shoved upward along with the rubble.
But only for a few moments, and then she began to fall.
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