Opening - Love Deterrence by Nana Mizuki
X
While the Second Mizukage blasted the Alliance wall with his favorite water jutsu, he was patiently watched by an old man leaning forward to rest his weight on a staff of battered, gnarled driftwood. The First was greybearded and wrinkled even as an Edo Tensei, evidence that he'd grown stronger decades after retirement than he'd been during his reign over Kiri.
He wore a coat of navy oilcloth bearing the standard pinstripe pattern of Kiri's uniforms for the better part of the past century. It reached a bit past his knees and was largely undecorated, marked only by its dim gold pinstripes and four buttons of ivory across the front. Byakuren currently fumbled at the second of these with just his left hand.
"Bah," he gave up and clasped his staff with both hands once more. "Gengetsu, help me with this damned thing."
The Second stopped firing at the wall and its sentries immediately. He turned and unbuttoned the coat without a word, but frowned slightly as he did. "Mizukage-sama," he began, "I thought you stopped using this coat to get one with magnetic snaps instead."
"Three things, Gengetsu." The old man held up his fingers, then shrugged out of the heavy coat with a groan. "Ah. First, I haven't been the Mizukage in a very long time. Second, I did switch to magnets, but this isn't the coat I had when I died. It's made of ash, same as us. Isn't that right?"
Gengetsu nodded. "I see."
"...And third..." Byakuren raised his left hand to the bare tattoo of a kraken over his heart, gingerly plucking off a small circle of metal that stuck to the skin there. "Please don't make it sound like I'm too feeble to undo a few buttons. It's the weight," he explained with a roll of his shoulders. "It makes my hands shake something awful."
A small seal flashed white on his chest, the spot formerly covered by the silvery magnet. Byakuren straightened out of his hunch instantly, sighing in relief as he did. The staff in his hands crumbled to bits as he made a pair of fists, fragile as driftwood always was.
His bare forearms bore countless overlapping scars from where he'd used them to block swords and kunai. Eventually they'd stopped breaking the skin entirely, but not before the scars meshed together beyond all recognition. His hands were also callused front and back from decades of taijutsu strikes, but aside from these and the tattoo on his chest, the rest of the Mizukage's body was unmarked.
The coat had been specially cut to fit him loosely and hide his frame. Now that it and his slouch were both gone, the First loomed almost seven feet tall and carried himself with a strength one could expect more from a Tailed Beast than a mortal man.
Despite how close they were, Gengetsu had always been intimidated by his teacher. It was justified; he could only imagine what fear Byakuren must have struck in the hearts of his enemies by reputation alone. His battle with the First Tsuchikage had been the stuff of legend, much embellished over the years to have supposedly lasted over six hours.
Gengetsu had been there along with Byakuren's other two Genin students, the only true witnesses of the event. It had ended with one punch; there hadn't been much left of Ishikawa afterward.
The old man hopped a few inches off the ground and landed light on his feet. "Ah, that's the way. Stand back, son." He walked up to the wall, and as he did he cracked each knuckle of both hands by pulling on one finger at a time. Gengetsu did as instructed and left the First standing before the wall alone, fully expecting to see his sensei blow a hole through it with a single blow.
He rapped his knuckles lightly against the rock, then drew back his fist and punched it. The earth shook briefly and he left a circular scorch mark on the wall, but it was otherwise undamaged. Byakuren simply smiled. "It really must've taken some doing. That wasn't my best effort, but I don't think I can punch through this wall."
Gengetsu blinked. Kami... a seal that strong on a structure this huge... it must've taken all the ninja in the world to make this happen!
"If they went to this much trouble..." Byakuren reached out and ran his fingers over the stone. "Sealed against tree-walking too, yes. Hm..." he scratched his chin through the beard and peered up to the top of the wall. "Let's give this a try then."
It took Gengetsu a long moment to realize what the First intended; he only clued in when the old man crouched spryly low to the ground. "Sensei, I think that might be a bit much even for you."
Byakuren chuckled lightly and jumped. In total defiance of gravity he soared, two and three and four times the height of a Tailed Beast without slowing. He came to the top of the wall and shot well past it before gravity finally caught him, and he swayed forward just slightly to land on the edge of the cliff instead of falling past it.
"Apparently not," he murmured, still smiling without a care. He turned and peered over the Land of Frost's side of the wall for a moment; he couldn't help but whistle at the awesome view. He thought of standing there for a few seconds longer but the Edo Tensei tag in his head insisted that he continue to take action, so he looked back to the top of the wall and searched for a good spot to punch through.
It stood to reason that the top and back of the wall were less reinforced with fuinjutsu, possibly not sealed at all. The time, labor and chakra supply it must have taken to prepare just the front of the wall was a step beyond anything ninjutsu had ever accomplished before, a project that had effectively called for the cooperation of the entire known world, and it was to be done a total of three times. A first attempt at anything of this scale couldn't be perfect.
Byakuren didn't quite get to test that theory. Just he knelt down to punch a hole through the roof of the Alliance fortress, another fist connected instead with his jaw and hauled him off the edge of the wall into an open morning sky.
A second punch blasted into his sternum, a surprise since he was still flying southwest with the force behind the first attack. He caught a glimpse of his opponent then, a sleek figure clad in a pale pink shell with only onrdistinguishing mark, a length of chain made of the same material and attached to the armor like a tail currently wound about Byakuren's throat.
The enemy drew him in and smashed him with a headbutt that promptly shoved him back again through the sky. The chain-tail released his neck but was nigh instantly replaced by a crook of polished black material that cupped it from the back. Byakuren saw it was attached to the end of a similarly colored polearm in the pink figure's hand.
His attacker swung the esoteric weapon and took him along for the ride. He twisted aside the hook to free Byakuren's neck with very specific timing; the First Mizukage hit the ground at a perfect ninety-degree angle. His body and the force behind it shattered the icy earth and sent house-sized chunks of it to take his place in the sky. The snow was scattered upward as well into a cloud of white fog over the point of impact.
Yagura appeared at the center of the frozen rubble and spun his staff once before stabbing down with the blunt outer curve of the hook. A faintly visible white shockwave washed out over the earth from where it crashed into Byakuren's palm.
An uncharacteristically mocking grin spread across the old man's face, hidden by the rock covering it. "My my. You really aren't taking any chances this time, Yagura."
"No," the younger ex-Mizukage replied coolly. "I learned my lesson from you in Taki."
"Ah, good times. I hit you with a Sharingan genjutsu, turned you against your friends and then stole your Tailed Beast. It must've stung."
A burst of three water droplets struck Yagura's back and plinked away harmlessly. He glanced over his shoulder at Gengetsu, shrugged and returned his attention to the First. He hauled upward on his staff but Byakuren kept his grip and was pulled from the earth as well. He spun up a reverse-roundhouse kick that Yagura dodged by turning and flash-stepping to his right, leaving his weapon behind.
Byakuren took it with both hands and bent the cold black material until it snapped in two. "So much for psychological warfare," he noted sadly. "They usually fall for that one." He threw the splintered halves of the weapon at Yagura with full force but the ex-Jinchuuriki's dodge was almost casual. On the other side of the country, Kabuto chuckled. "I have a few more plans though. For instance, I understand you have an unpleasant history with genjutsu."
"Another Uchiha?" Yagura quickly glanced around to his sides, and at the same time the helm of polished coral over his face clinked softly. The slim eyeholes in the armor sealed themselves shut with a pink film thin enough to be transparent, but through them Yagura spotted only the two undead Mizukage on the battlefield. His eyes narrowed and he flicked his gaze back to Byakuren.
All at once the air was filled with thick grey fog, breaking Yagura's line of sight to both Edo Tensei. He shifted back two short steps and held himself ready to catch an incoming punch or kick.
"Yagura, dodge!"
He turned around in time to see Byakuren's fist flying for his head, but not quite in time to escape. The punch met his face and passed through him harmlessly; only then did he realize what he was up against. The real Byakuren landed a flying kick squarely on the back of Yagura's neck and launched him away through the fog.
He tumbled and tore a trench through the snow and rock as he flew, but after a few long seconds he stabbed his hands into the earth as a makeshift brake. He came to a stop on all fours, his tail lashing slowly as he made ready to counterattack with a Pulse Step.
"No! Jump!" Fuu called again, and this time he looked up to see her hovering well above the fog. She held out her left hand to reach for him while her right cradled a compressed Tailed Beast Ball no larger than a cherry. He gauged the distance carefully before he leapt to grab her hand just at the apex of his jump.
She dipped momentarily with the added weight, but her wings vibrated faster to compensate and she righted herself quickly. She popped the chakra orb into her mouth, sucked in a deep breath and spat out a beam of blood-red light that vaporized a ten-foot shaft into the ground it first touched. She swept her aim about to cut through more of the mist but stopped her attack when it became clear she wouldn't hit anything important.
"Regroup?" Yagura suggested.
"Yep!" Fuu turned away from the field of mist and flew toward the Alliance wall as fast as she could while still carrying Yagura. He let go once they cleared the edge of the fog, hit the ground with a roll and activated the Pulse Step to keep pace with her. They stopped deep in the shadow of the Alliance wall with Yagura in front and Fuu just behind.
He clapped his hands together in a Snake seal; the snow under their feet melted and almost instantly splashed upward to form a quivering dome of water around them. "It doesn't look like much, but it should buy us some time," he noted. "Now as much as I appreciate your help... Fuu, what are you doing here?"
"You looked like you could use some backup." She formed another tiny Tailed Beast Ball and pinched it lightly between two fingers. "You just ran out here alone against two Mizukage, so I'm not even the only one you've got worried."
Yagura glanced with interest at the little sphere and how casually she held it. "It was Naruto, wasn't it? He talked to you."
"Yeah. I mean he didn't tell me to follow you out here or anything, but we talked." She peered past him at the curtain of water. "Can I throw this, or will it bounce off your water jutsu and blow us up in here?"
"You're clear." She flicked the ball through his shield and into the mist, where it detonated in hopes of destroying Gengetsu's mirage. The fog lit up with seething firelight for a few seconds but then went dark again, mostly intact. "I'm fine, Fuu. I understand Naruto is... busy at the moment, but when this is over I'll tell him as well."
"You've gotta understand how this looks, right? Think about it. First Akatsuki took Isobu, and when you found out you had a total meltdown in Konoha. Then you disappeared and no one heard anything from you during the Summit or even when Konoha was attacked. Now you show up for the war and just pick a fight with two unkillable Kage, alone. If it was someone else, what would you think of that?"
"A suicidal impulse," Yagura answered flatly. There was a pause as he searched for any sign of Kabuto's next move and found nothing. "If it were someone else, I'd think that person had lost the will to live."
Fuu nodded. "Yeah. That's exactly how it looks."
"But we're not talking about someone else," he went on. "Isobu is alive but imprisoned, likely suffering. He's my friend, so I have to help him... and suicide on the battlefield won't solve that problem. Even if the thought ever occured to me, I'd disregard it immediately."
He held out his right hand and called a branch of coral to grow from his palm. It twisted out and straightened into a smooth polearm tipped with a menacing hook, its inner curve sharpened to a razor's edge.
"I left Konoha to train without Isobu to protect me. I'll continue that training now by defeating the strongest of the Mizukage in single combat. You need to keep your distance because these are Kage and you aren't a shinobi at all, as you freely admit."
Fuu shook her head in disbelief. "Hey, hold the hell up!"
"I'm not telling you to do nothing; I know you wouldn't listen. But you need to stay well back and attack with only long-range ninjutsu if you want to help at all. Even then, keep in mind that you're holding your life in your hands right now. Try to bring down that mirage genjutsu if you can; the Second is generating it with a giant clam summon. Kill it."
For a moment she scratched her hair above her right ear, thinking of a reply. "...Alright, jeez. I'll get up in the sky and blow 'em to hell; it's what I'm good at anyway. But you know, you're kind of a dick."
"I've heard."
She chuckled while at the same time resisting an urge to throttle him. "Bye, Yagura."
"Get ready... now." Yagura's Water Release shield evaporated in an instant, and behind him Fuu immediately started flying straight upward. She was barely in the air when the First Mizukage blurred out of the mist and punched the Fourth in the face. They both passed under Fuu, their speed nearly impossible to track, but on pure instinct she turned to see how Yagura had responded to the hit.
They were moving too quickly for her to follow, a pair of pale pink and grey flashes bouncing across the battlefield in all directions. Each time they met a plume of snow and rock burst into the air, tall as a boss summon at least. Those she could track, but it was still impossible to tell who had the upper hand. She turned her focus back to the mirage genjutsu and soared up and away from it.
A volley of tiny water bullets narrowly missed her as she rose; from such distance she couldn't see where they had come from within the fog cloud. "Oh, you wanna play that game!? Fine!" She swept her wings upward and out; a huge storm of golden dust burst from them and hung in the air around her shaped vaguely like another pair of wings. These were jagged and spread wide, easily matching if not exceeding Choumei's own reach when she was fully unsealed.
As the morning light struck Fuu's creation, it reflected away as if from an absolutely perfect mirror and bathed the entire battlefield in gold. For a moment the light even cut through Gengetsu's mist and laid bare the ground underneath, along with two drastically different living shapes formerly kept hidden by it.
There's the clam summon! She flicked open the fingers of her right hand and sprayed loose a shower of chakra spheres with the same motion, then just as quickly crushed them into a single mass she threw into the bank of fog. It appeared to turn dark grey again just before her shot struck home, but this she knew to be another mirage genjutsu to hide the caster's location inside. From the other end her sunlight would still be pouring down relentlessly; Gengetsu couldn't return fire if he couldn't look at her to take aim.
But when the Tailed Beast Ball exploded on impact, the fog stayed in the air undamaged. Shit. It must've dodged, which means it has a movement jutsu of some kind. She swept her hand up in an arc from her side to above her head, shedding more chakra orbs with the motion. By clenching her fists she bundled them together into seven manageably small Tailed Beast Balls, and a flick of the wrist later they were on their way to Gengetsu.
They all struck at once in a loose cluster centered on where Fuu had seen the clam summon, and when they detonated she swept both her hands downward. Mid-explosion, the roiling gold-orange chakra was only barely stable enough to respond to her command. Guided by shape transformation, the flames, chakra and molten rock spun outward into broader discs that ate through far more of Gengetsu's mist before they died down.
Come on... she squinted down into the holes freshly torn through Gengetsu's cover, but failed to spot him and the clam summon both. Shit. She blinked and glanced to the edges of the fog cloud; she found it had begun to creep closer to the Alliance wall and by extension Yagura's ongoing battle with Byakuren. Oh, you bastard!
She heard a water bullet whip past her and immediately ascended thirty feet diagonally left to throw off Gengetsu's aim. Alright, looks like there's only way I'll be able to end this. I'll take out that whole genjutsu with one shot!
She held out her hands at her sides, lit her right with murky red chakra and her left with clear blue. She clapped her palms together and let the two colors mesh and melt into each other, swelling up into a perfect bubble of molten orange and black over her hands. She pulled them apart under the surface just enough to ball her fists.
Yeah, this'll do it... huh?
She felt something thump into her right leg with surprising force. It felt as though she'd been punched, but when she went to look she saw blood. Only then did she realize she could feel that too, sticky and hot as it dripped down her leg. Instead of horrible pain, she felt only a slight tickle from the blood.
Oh shit. Oh shit shit shit!
She had no knowledge of medical ninjutsu, but still she knew that pain was coming. She couldn't land to take cover from Gengetsu, much less have her wound treated. That left her with one other course of action; she opened her fists as planned and the Tailed Beast Ball over them turned brilliant glowing red.
"Lucky Seven Lance!"
She let it fly as a tremendous scarlet beam, its size and intensity such that the Nine-Tails would be unable to match it. There was a limit to how much chakra a Tailed Beast could safely compress and swallow before firing, but by using her hands instead Fuu had no such concern.
Seething waves of blood-red and ghostly white washed out over the ground in every direction, Gengetsu's mist finally being swept away by Fuu's last onslaught. At the same time the orb over her hands shrank as it was used up to fuel the jutsu. She kept it up as long as she could, and when the ground at last went dark again she was panting and lightheaded, her fingers wrapped in curls of harsh dark smoke.
But the mist was gone, the clam summon and Gengetsu himself vaporized with it. She swayed off-balance for a moment as she began her flight down; her leg was painted with blood now and singing a song of purest agony.
No way I can put any weight on it. She came to a stop hovering just above the ground instead of standing on her wounded leg. Now where...? She looked around at the scorched earth for a gleam of steel or a wisp of airborne ash. Some twenty feet ahead Gengetsu's seal tag lay thankfully in plain sight, surrounded by loose grey swirls on the wind. She went after him and drew a kunai from behind her back, hands cold and slightly shaking.
"Gotcha," she murmured and snatched up the little ingot. It began to heat up rapidly as soon as she touched it, but that pain was nothing compared to the wound in her leg. It only prompted her to stab her kunai against it with a bit of extra haste. Gengetsu hadn't gone quietly, but with that last move he was nonetheless gone.
It wasn't safe on the ground with Yagura and Byakuren still fighting, and on some level Fuu knew that but she couldn't bring herself to take off again. I probably can't even fly like this... I'm too tired; I'll crash. It might've been true or it might've been rationalization, but either way her wings slowed and she set herself down as gently as possible.
She couldn't put any weight on her right leg but also couldn't lift it with the same wounded muscles, so she let her sole touch the earth but stayed balanced on just her left foot. Even that light touch was enough to cover her vision with stars and there was worse yet to come. She fell forward onto her hands with the sudden pain, wide awake again for the moment.
Just get it over with! Like pulling a tooth, quicker so it hurts less...!
She pivoted on one leg and both hands, let her weight fall sideways and turn her so she hit the ground already in a seated position. The jolt to her leg this time drew a scream, but she didn't pass out. "Now where the hell... is the other one...?"
Sitting down and bleeding into the dirt, Fuu held one hand ready to form an attack while she looked for the remaining two ex-Mizukage. There was no sign of them, no more blasts of snow and rock where they exchanged blows, nothing at all. She briefly wondered if she might have caught them both with her final attack, but then Yagura reappeared and Byakuren didn't.
"No!" He turned toward her, having hit the brakes while facing the Alliance wall instead. Fuu had just enough time to recognize the threat before Yagura was gone again, invisibly headed her way with a Pulse Step.
For all the good it would do, she threw herself into a sidelong roll away from what she assumed to be Byakuren's trajectory. The problem was that the First could apparently steer while he ran whereas Yagura had to brake completely to adjust his aim. She never saw which Mizukage reached her first; the blood loss and the pain of that last sudden movement was too much. She passed out.
Yagura reappeared first, his stave held out at its full length ahead of him. Byakuren went on for a moment longer despite the hook of the staff wrapped about his throat. He only slipped back into visibility once his head was sliced free of his shoulders and his momentum started to wear down without it. He fell and smashed against the ground but kept going, just barely past Fuu thanks to her last dodge. Gradually his body broke down into a gust of ash and paper, pursued still by Yagura.
Only once he sifted through the dust and sealed away Byakuren's tag did he turn back to Fuu. Still she bled from the wound in her leg, though much more sluggishly now. It's her femoral artery. We don't have long, Isobu.
Isobu? He blinked just once under his helm, face blank. I'm alone... I forgot for a moment. He bent and picked her up as gently as he could, wrapping her in a cradle of pale pink mesh to hold her steady. "Hang on, Fuu."
Then they both vanished.
X
A tan hull deep and wide, three towering masts with pale blue sails full of nonexistent wind, a functional keel and rudder and all the assorted components necessary to let a ship function as it should over water. It all looked a bit odd looming high in the air over a landlocked winter battlefield, held there with eldritch fuinjutsu and needing nothing else. In place of weaponry, the sides of the vessel were lined with a tapering strip of lime-green light from which sprouted hundreds of chakra strings familiar to any Suna-nin, also green.
Each string touched the nape of a puppet on the ground below, made of off-white stone and garbed in plate armor of a style that had been popular during the centuries of civil war that died as Konoha was born. They were built to look plainly humanoid, each given a slightly lengthened katana and a kunai as a sidearm.
The ship was only one half of an identical pair, both ships guided by one chakra string of their own leading back to a sleek tower of silvery granite. Within that structure, the Second Kazekage led his army comfortably.
The ship to his right, however, was held firm by the grasp of several tons of black sand draped across the middle of the hull in a single great loop. "That's enough," said the Fifth Kazekage. He made a fist and the ship imploded, falling to earth in two useless clumps barely shaped like the fore and aft halves of the craft. As they fell, so too did roughly half of Shamon's puppet infantry.
Numbered among the casualties were a majority of the stone soldiers encircling Tenten. Armed only with a black ceramic kunai, she took her chance to escape from the remaining threats around her. She cleared theur broken circle quickly enough but was forced to to switch tactics when a mass of gold dust came sweeping in toward her as a great wave.
"Shit!" She held out her left hand at arm's length and unsealed Umiyou with a puff of smoke. "Umiyou Yuurei!" she called and let spill a river of molten glass from the tip of the blade. It formed up into a loose humanoid avatar that easily held back the gold, but at the same time the falchion's edge flew for Tenten's throat with a mind of its own.
She sealed away the blade just before it could cut her, scowling. "Gaara, we gotta shut that bastard down somehow!"
"I'll do what I can!" he called back and held his right hand high. "Kurojin!" in place of the wakizashi he'd been forced to seal inside a kunai, Gaara gathered a mountain of black sand and crushed it down into a slender katana. He brought the blade down in Horoi's direction, but the Third Kazekage had ample time to react with his own black sand.
Hundreds of twisted iron rods crossed between the two Kazekage forming a single wall of deadly thorns. An invisible edge of carbon sand was cast from Gaara's downward chop but struck the iron instead of its wielder. He adapted smoothly and immediately, switching his grip on the length of compressed sand and reshaping it into a short javelin he threw overhand at Horoi's defenses.
"Kurosekai!" The spear exploded before it touched iron, filling the air with a harsh black gale. Some of that airborne sand settled over Tenten in place of her steel armor, a layer of protection identical to Gaara's own. "Go. I'll cover you."
She spun the ring of Yashamaru's kunai about her finger and flipped it from a reverse to a saber grip. Her eyes gleamed with orange light reflected from her mask's tracking feature, through which Horoi's silhouette was lit up like fire despite the sandstorm. She took off at a full sprint, leaving behind her molten glass avatar to distract Tsurugi.
Jagged whips of iron lashed through Gaara's sand by the hundreds, searching for her. It was the one notable weakness of Horoi's Magnet Release; his iron could only be wielded as a rigid prism and never a loose cloud. That was all Tenten needed; three years of practice against Gaara's more flexible defenses had given her the agility she needed to weave between these barbs as long as they remained blind.
But when she got close enough to see Horoi through the sandstorm without her mask, she knew he could see her just as clearly. It would come down to timing and luck. The Third's iron thorns converged on Tenten, who at the same time unsealed her steel armor and called it to wrap over Gaara's carbon. The combined resistance from that sand and her own barrier ninjutsu would be enough to keep Horoi from instantly crushing the plates with her inside.
Only for a moment. She could already hear the metal creaking as Horoi made a fist, and when she made to raise her right arm she found it wouldn't budge. Still she lit up the kunai with angry red fire chakra for extra piercing force, and under her mask she grimaced. This is gonna suck.
"Gate of Opening!" she screamed, a slight tremor in her voice. "Kai!"
The weight binding her in place ceased to matter instantly. She raised her hand high and threw the red-hot kunai squarely into Horoi's forehead. It tore through the iron sand branches, a smoother layer of metal covering his face, and then the Edo Tensei ash itself with no trouble. The tag sustaining his presence was sealed away the instant it touched her kunai; with it went the rest of his body unbroken.
The price hit Tenten quickly enough, awful pain pulsing through her whole arm up to the shoulder with every beat of her heart. She snarled and shut the Gate hastily; at least with her weapons now free she could rely on Sasuhonou's hands without using her own.
Horoi's iron sand fell at once and sank into the trampled snow of the battlefield; at the same time Tenten's grand powered armor finished assembling and turned to face the Second Kazekage's tower. Within it Shamon himself traced a simple kanji onto the floor he stood on. San. "Summoning Jutsu."
A third tall ship appeared in the air where the first had fallen, with not a plume of smoke but a flash of green light matching Shamon's chakra. Hundreds of ninja puppets leapt from the deck to the earth below, all covered in a heavy layer of dust. Chakra strings ran from all of them back to the ship, and from the ship back to the tower and the Kazekage inside.
"You've gotta be kidding me with this crap." Tenten sighed angrily inside her armor and turned to address Gaara. "How many of these things does he have!?"
"I don't know," he called back from behind a wall of sand impaled with dozens of stout aluminium rods. "Probably too many."
The First Kazekage swung his six-foot Fuuma shuriken from where he floated high above the battle, and with the motion he unsealed and launched almost a hundred more silvery spears. Thanks to his own Magnet Release he could easily guide them around Gaara's current shield, but his descendant's eyes gleamed black and gold with all of the One-Tail's ancient malevolence.
"Shukaku, let's do this."
As the form of a gigantic black racoon grew to tower over the chaotic battlefield, Tenten turned her attention back to the lifeless army swarming around her. The puppets had begun to climb Sasuhonou's legs and cling to her in dozens, their kunai searching for any weaker surface exposed between the seams of her armor.
"Glass," she ordered. A pair of swirling seals lit up yellow-orange over Sasuhonou's hips, sending forth twin rivers of molten glass that washed away the puppets surrounding her. She drew the liquid up into a ball with a wave of her machine's hand, then flicked it aside to quench in the snow.
A scaled-up jian was unsealed into Sasuhonou's waiting hand, painted vibrant red to match the hull of the armor itself. Now properly armed, Tenten sprinted headlong through the puppet army toward the Second Kazekage inside his tower. Her sword gleamed orange with focused fire chakra as she swept it left and right mid-run, at once cleaving and burning through Shamon's soldiers.
She only sprinted halfway to her target; she cleared the second half with a running leap that saw her crash hard near the summit of the tower, all of her armor's weight following behind the tip of her scarlet sword. The thrust pierced stone as easily as paper, skewered completely through Shamon's protective chamber and emerged from the other side of the building. She let go of the hilt and forced her mechanical fingers into the hole her blade had produced.
Kabuto rose to her challenge; Shamon squared his shoulders and gave a mocking smirk back at her on command. "You know, this might not have been your best idea." The fingers of the puppeteer Kage twitched inward to his chest, and Tenten saw the twin ships answer the call by steering directly toward their master.
Her attention was next drawn to the incoming wave of golden sand behind her, a serious threat but still one she could react to. The metal plates covering the front of Sasuhonou's cockpit retracted, revealing Tenten with her wrists and legs embedded in its controls. "No, but it's definitely up there. You should know; you've seen what it can do." she sneered back at him, completely undaunted. "Sasuhonou, engage autopilot and defend this tower."
"Acknowleged," the machine answered with a voice synthesized from samples of Temari's. "Good luck!"
The mounts holding Tenten's limbs sprang open and she lunged out of the cockpit into Shamon's tower. Sasuhonou soared away under its own power just as Tenten threw her first punch, a straight shot to the Second's face that was unfortunately sidestepped.
The chakra strings flowing from his hands snapped as he was forced to fight back; an annoyed frown crossed his face when the two ships failed to crash as per his last instruction. Instead they were wrapped in coils of molten glass, set ablaze by its touch. Grasping a stream of lava in each hand, Sasuhonou whipped one ship and then the next at Tsurugi. They crashed and shattered against a wave of gold he raised in defense, but then Sasuhonou swept up a matching flood of glass to attack the gold itself, useless if melted.
Gaara watched the full exchange through Shukaku's eyes, patiently brushing aside the First's halfhearted attacks as he did. Reto was distinctly no match for the Kazekage who followed after him, unable to overwhelm the Fifth's defenses with force. He tried instead to slip smaller attacks into any weak points he saw, sending silver-white spears after the racoon's eyes but that too failed.
The One-Tail opened his mouth wide and produced an orb of black and orange significantly larger than its own head; it rose taller with a great intake of breath and spat the attack at Tsurugi supported by a tremendous gust of wind chakra.
Sasuhonou reacted to the attack immediately, granted sight in all directions by the seals across its hull. It leapt up and back from its conflict with the Fourth, but already it had torn deep into his defenses and now there was gold in every direction. Kabuto brought it all down on the machine, burying it and holding it still. "I don't think so. Gold Sand Coffin."
The dust pulsed inward for a moment, but the burst of pressure was nowhere near enough to crush Sasuhonou. Its hand tore free of the gold and flicked a whip of lava around the exposed Kazekage's waist to pull him in close. "It looks like we'll be destroyed together then," it observed, voice clear despite the sand that should've muffled it. "It's a fair trade."
A moment later, Tenten felt the earth shudder horribly under her feet just as she lunged for Shamon's face with her kunai. He began to dodge but was thrown off-balance as she was. They both fell and her blade scratched a thin ashen line across his cheek; the weight of his head came down on her wrist and momentarily pinned it.
Unfazed, the Second Kazekage brought up his right hand aimed a kunai of his own to stab for Tenten's head. She snapped up her free left arm to catch the tip of the blade on her armored wrist. She yanked back her right arm from under his head, letting go of the kunai to grasp the back of his skull and squeeze. Her armor did the work of crushing it, leaving her to casually get up and stab the tag that had been buried inside it.
But she frowned despite the victory, as her mask relayed a disappointing message in gleaming orange script. Unit 3-Sasuhonou unresponsive. "Fuck you, Kabuto."
Scowling, she peered out of the tower in time to see the huge tendrils of Shukaku's archaic sealscript reach across the blasted ground and snatch up Tsurugi's Edo Tensei tag, along with the arm of smoking mangled steel that still clutched it. Tenten nodded with approval, then looked to the sky where the last of the Edo Tensei still hovered.
Reto didn't stand much of a chance alone, but still he raised high his aluminium shuriken and filled it with chakra. A heavy white cloud momentarily filled the air; when it passed all of the First's Magnet Release ammunition was unsealed and fully on display.
Reto himself was gone, buried deep inside a nest of jagged tentacles wrought from aluminium rods and electromagnetic charge. Thin blue arcs of lightning crackled between the countless fragments of metal, showing the construct inside and out, banishing the illusion that it was solid. The thing was clearly intended to resemble some kind of monster from a cosmic horror story.
It would absolutely be enough to terrify an army of foot soldiers no matter how massive, but the enemy below was far less impressed. Shukaku sneered up at it; the Tailed Beasts had largely inspired humanity's fascination with tentacled extradimensional monsters and he recognized the irony.
"Would you mind handling this one?" Tenten called. "I still have my swords, but you blew up my mech so...?"
"Yep." The One-Tail chuckled dismissively and raised his right fist. "Wind beats lightning, right?"
It does, Gaara admitted, but the Magnet Release uses Earth and Wind chakra.
That looks like lightning to me, Shukaku gestured subtly to the flashes of blue coursing through Reto's weaponry. 'Sides, when you take chakra out of it electricity and magnetism are the same force. The racoon brought his fist down on his belly, blasting out an orb of wind from his mouth. "Drilling Air Bullet!"
The attack was similar in size to a Tailed Beast Ball, but instead of exploding in all directions on impact, it tore through the metal construct and sent its pieces spinning away in a ring formation. The Magnet Release lights winked out as the pieces scattered, and at the middle of the circle hung a loose cloud of sand and ash whirling with the same speed. Shukaku's sand flashed white as he set off the sealscript flowing through it, then it vanished and took along the First Kazekage into the void.
"That was quick," Tenten noted, slightly surprised.
"Meh." Shukaku shrugged and glanced around at the battlefield, blasted and burned but now silent. "Let's get outta here."
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