Your Number's Up
[Outskirts of Kumogakure; The day before]
"Captain Shiroi," a cool voice whispered through the crisp night air. "The targets are training in the mountain range before us."
"Good work, Tarin. Tell the squad to drop on them. It's time we teach cloud a lesson."
The two individuals were sitting in a canopy three miles from said target, scoping the neighboring areas for any sign of other ninja. It wouldn't do to have eavesdroppers interrupt the coming war, nor have them run off to inform their leaders of the battle about to take place.
Both shinobi jumped from the tree they were in and began running to the meeting point, the sky above the two training jinchuriki of Kumogakure. The trees below them became a blur of motion as a pair of sharingan and byakugan eyes trailed the earth below to find any potential problems. Their eyes, however, found nothing out of the ordinary. Shiroi Uchiha and Tarin Hyuga, two of the strongest members of their respective clans, ripped through the night sky like lightning, flashing white lightning into the ground to mask their presence. They, like the other members of their squad, were covered in standard ANBU attire, but with a subtle twist. Their Konohagakure marks were instead modeled after Iwagakure. The plan was simple. Use earth techniques to kill the two demon containers to create a war between Kumo and Iwa. They were then meant to head to Kiri and end the bloodline war. Annexing Kiri would be a massive boon to their village's power. Yes, their Kage's advisors were indeed the most war heavy people.
As it stood, squad C was finally happy to have a Kage NOT be afraid of war. In the era of Shinobi, peace was never a viable strategy, and Kumo deserved this for what they did to Tarin's best friend. Soon, the world would know Konoha was always on top, even five years off being nearly killed by the Kyubi.
Shiroi and Tarin landed silently on the top of the mountain directly above the two demon containers, their other squad members crouching on a ledge just below them. With but a single tap to his right ear, Shiroi sent a message to them, then four of the ANBU jumped down from the ledge to create a barrier. Just before the four landed, a woman appeared between them and unleashed what looked like a wave of blue fire. They tried to shield their bodies with earth chakra, but the flames quickly melted through the thin armor and began burning against their skin.
"Shit!" Tarin yelled. "It's a trap! Split and attack individually. Don't let them tag you!"
Those orders fell on deaf ears, however, as a burly man dropped before him and cratered the ground. Chunks of stone pelted at his body, but he didn't have time to shield himself before a hulking fist slammed into his gut. The air in the man's lungs was forced out as it felt like his diaphragm was destroyed by the hit. His body was wrapped around the larger man's arm, but before he could be blasted back, the man's other hand reached out and grabbed Tarin by his ANBU mask. His tan fingers started clenching inward to cave Tarin's skull in, but before it could, Shiroi intervened by forming a quick earth wall between the two. As Tarin dropped to the ground in pain, Shiroi watched as his earth wall was violently destroyed by a lightning coated fist. He couldn't even react to the movement before he, too, had a fist ram into his own gut. Unfortunately, Tarin couldn't even see the second hand tear through his chest and annihilate his intestines and stomach. He only coughed up a glob of blood to match the pool around his form.
He quickly flashed through a few seals with his remaining strength and formed a barrier of white chakra around himself and his soon to be killer. Shiroi only looked on in horror as his rival started his suicide attack. A custom jutsu any Hyuga could do by sacrificing the power of their own eyes. Shiroi tried to move to stop his friend, but Tarin's voice cut through the air faster than his opponent could move to escape.
"White Phosphorous!"
The attack itself attached to the white barrier that formed on the skin of the target and the user, sending white chakra through their bodies and rapidly decaying their chakra network. The final move of the Hyuga, and only taught to main branch members because they didn't get the side branch seal. To use against stronger opponents, even the protective chakra shell of a Susano'o couldn't stop the move.
The attacker grunted in pain, but Tarin could only widen his dying eyes as his attack was simply shrugged off. Then he smiled as he remembered exactly who it is he was attacked by. The healing powers of a demon truly were something to behold. As the hulking form of the Eight Tails host stood to his full height, Tarin simply keeled over, already dead. Shiroi just stared at the spot his friend died, not fully coming to terms with the incredibly fast event. They had no warning; no time to prepare. He watched someone he believed to be stronger than himself die faster than he could react. It was simply unreal, but Shiroi didn't have more time to consider the death as his burly opponent started walking toward himself, lightning cloak burning through the dim of midnight. His tan skin looked like it was glowing, and as Shiroi looked up at the man, he couldn't even see his facial expression behind the thin white mustache and beard, let alone the black goggles. It was like his recent kill was just another day of his life.
Even with a bloodstained right arm, he didn't even seem to notice. Instead, the man reached toward his waistband and started pulling something from beneath it. As Shiroi backpedaled to put distance between himself and his foe, the huge man pulled out a small notebook and flipped through a few pages. As he stopped at a random page, he looked down on Shiroi.
"What rhymes with lightning?"
The innocent question rang through Shiroi's head. The man's voice sounded playful, like someone playing a game. The gruff and deep sound of it mixing with a high pitch sent Shiroi reeling, then he was quickly overtaken by anger. Anger at the man for killing his friend, but also anger at being overshadowed by a question that had nothing to do with his current situation. He could have asked why he was being attacked, or who Shiroi's squad was, or why Iwa had sent a hit squad to Kumo… but he asked about something else entirely. It was humiliating!
"You're not very helpful."
Shiroi's mind halted by the remark from the man. All his built-up anger vanished in the dark, but it was replaced by a calm fury.
He didn't even react anymore as he attacked, ghosting through the inky void of night and slicing down on his enemy from behind with a black metal tanto. His attack, though it hit, simply grazed across the tan behemoth's skin. Not even a shallow cut spread across, but Shiroi didn't care. He kept attacking the man with reckless abandon. Ten strikes became twenty, then twenty turned into fifty. His charcoal eyes bled into the three tomoe of a matured sharingan, and the fifty were overshadowed by three hundred slashes, but the man just kept writing in his small notebook. As Shiroi was about to slice down again, he was shunted aside by a burst of lightning chakra, and he slid to a stop to the left of Kumo's strongest jinchuriki.
"How does: White-Eyed prick couldn't handle the heat, as Master Eight counted down his heartbeat. Yeah!"
Shiroi's jaw slackened, but he quickly channeled fire chakra into his tanto and blurred from existence. The giant simply scratched off his new lines and went back to writing. As each new slice from Shiroi's tanto neared the man, he simply lifted his pen and deflected the attack away. First a cut aimed at his eyes that he flicked above his head, then a slash at the back of his neck that he shoved toward the ground. He did it all while writing different lines. Another three hundred attempts while he parried with the pen, then he saw the blade nearing his mouth at the same time he was about to lick the tip of his pen when the ink stopped coming out. Shiroi watched in glee as his blade approached the inside of the man's mouth, but his glee turned to bewilderment as he simply stopped the tanto with the tip of his own tongue.
His surprise turned to pain when his tanto was somehow pushed back against his soft grip and began pushing the skin of his wrist back. The hard steel was ripping his skin up, so he dropped it and bounced back on the tips of his sandals and held the big man with a hard gaze. Said man simply stuck his tongue back in his mouth and flipped through more pages of his notebook.
"Eight-o gonna break ya spine, yo!" He spoke.
Shiroi just gazed on in confusion as his mind tried to comprehend what he heard. He didn't have time to speak, though, as a large octopus tentacle grabbed him by the ankle and threw him through the sky and toward the water below the cliff, one-thousand feet below their current location. He attempted to right his free fall, but the tall man jumped to intercept his flailing body and rammed his shoulder into Shiroi's right side. He grit his teeth when he felt his right elbow snap backward, but that was the least of his worries. The shoulder check sent him careening to the next mountain. He flipped sideways so his feet would stop his collision with the mountain, but he was intercepted again when his opponent appeared above him. He couldn't even prepare a counter as the big man heel dropped onto Shiroi's shoulders and sent him rocketing down to the ocean. It wasn't a soft landing as the water felt like concrete to Shiroi's body. He felt his organs and bones shift from the collision, but he still surfaced in preparation for another assault. It came, but not from the body of his foe. A lightning dragon struck down from the sky and electrified his body. He could feel his blood get flash fried under the millions of volts, yet he persisted through the pain.
He couldn't fail his mission now; not when he watched his longtime ANBU friend get killed before him. He could feel the strain in his body to even stand, but he had to. He couldn't fail his mission. His musings were cut short, though, when more lightning dragons started falling from the sky like meteors. He dodged left and forward, rolling from each projectile so he wouldn't get cooked again. Already, his skin was peeling and blistering, but he continued. He had to kill the man, and he had to do it quickly. Kumo couldn't know it was Konoha that started the attack. As he slid forward again to dodge the last dragon, he had all of a microsecond to feel the next impact before he was thrown below the surface of the ocean at Mach speed.
"Killer-Bee can't be taken! Everyone who tries ends up mistaken! Whee!"
Of course, Shiroi couldn't even hear the taunt as he was hundreds of feet down in the ocean, cratered into the floor of it. His eyes were going in and out of consciousness, but his body fully gave in to the pain as he slowly floated to the top, unconscious. The man, Killer Bee, just looked down into the water before speeding off in the direction of his counterpart, Yugito Nii.
[Back on the cliff; 2 minutes ago]
The leaf ANBU watched as four of their members were burnt to ash under the fire of the two-tails jinchuriki. She wore an arrogant smirk on her face as the blue flame danced around her rather beautiful appearance. He long blonde hair sashayed in the night breeze, but her black eyes were calculating every move the ANBU around her could make.
One decided to act, her voice blasting through the night.
"Earth release: Impure Armor!"
The ANBU, a female with long purple hair down to her waist, covered herself in metals from the earth to negate the effects of the fire around herself. She then charged the blonde-haired woman. As soon as he got with reach, she sank into the earth and grabbed at her opponent's ankles. It would have been a bad move, but the technique could also be forced onto her opponent. As the powerhouse of her group, she was by far the strongest physically, so could withstand the weight of the metals shrouding her skin. Those same metals began converging on her enemy and began weighing her down. A grunt could be heard through the land, and another ANBU came within her range.
"Chain Earth: Hollow Point!" The new voice said, aiming his hand at the jinchuriki.
Bullets of tungsten started firing from his extended index fingers, travelling mach four. The jinchuriki barely had enough time to react before the bullets of metal pierced through her skin and slammed into the stone cliff behind her. Blood started rushing from her wounds, but the ANBU could see them beginning to close with a hiss of chakra. It didn't stop the woman from grunting in pain and taking her eyes off her assailants. Two more rushed her, one from the front and one from the back. The one behind her swiped her feet out from underneath her as the other grabbed her by the side of her head and slammed her face first into the unrelenting ground below. She didn't even have time to grunt in pain as the same woman from before ghosted from the cliff above her and dropped down onto her body.
"Earth release: Falling Star!" The falling woman yelled.
The jinchuriki felt all the three-thousand pounds of her opponent as the ground not only cratered, the entire mountain shook. All ANBU jumped away as blue fire came out of the downed woman's body and started healing her wounds. It even created two tails from her behind as she slowly dragged herself to her feet.
"My name is Yugito Nii," she growled out. "And this'll be the last day you hear the voice of anyone."
Chills down ran down each ANBUs body as the heat from the blue flames began melting the stone below the woman and turned the rock face into flowing lava. Before any of them could reply to her, they heard a scream to their right as Yugito held the face of one member until their head became a puddle of superheated lack of life. She threw the headless body away as a cat head of fire jumped from her stomach and snatched the limp ANBU in its fiery jaws. They all watched helplessly as the corpse became ash within a single second. The woman's once black eyes were also blue embers burning through the cruel whispers of the fire around her person.
One ANBU decided to make his attempt on her life as he charged with an armor of water chakra. He barely made it within ten feet of Yugito as all the water around his person superheated into vapor and boiled his skin off his body. He didn't even have a chance to scream as his body fell apart in a shower of gore. Another, a random Hyuga, blitzed into Yugito's body and began his dance of death to seal her chakra away, but with every chakra poke, he felt his fingers float away as ash in the night. His screams were surrendered as Yugito kicked a flaming hole through the center of his chest and cauterized the wound. As he fell backward, his cohorts could see Yugito's cold grin through his empty chest cavity. Before his body hit the ground, she jumped through the hole and burned away his remains in her charge toward the purple haired ANBU. She didn't get far when a snake of earth tore itself from the cliff face to her left and tried to swallow her. It did little to halt her advance as she bowled through the stone by turning it to lava.
That decision cost the ANBU as one of their members was bathed in the molten stone and turned into a statue of the soft rock. His mouth was open in a silent scream as they all saw him slowly freezing in place and not move again, entombed by the stone. Yugito didn't bat an eye at his misfortune as she struck at the ANBU before her, blue fire fist impacting the tungsten armor. She hissed in pain as her fist flattened against the metal and broke every finger in her hand. In her painful distraction, she missed as another ANBU appeared above her and stabbed down with a lightning coated tanto. His actions ended up in vain as Yugito simply gazed up and exhaled a brutal stream of fire that coated the man and burned him away in half a second.
The remaining ANBU, sans the woman, all converged on her as she was looking up. All seemingly agreeing to the same plan of attack, they coated their bodies in metal chakra and dogpiled Yugito to keep her in place as the last to drop on the stack flashed through a long chain of seals. As he watched his fellow men and women burn, he finished his chain and loudly yelled.
"Demon Tearing Seal!"
Yugito finally burned through the last of the agents and was about to do the same to the guy still above her, but she watched as her blue flames instantly vanished, and she lost connection to her tailed beast. She panicked when her trump card was torn from her and had no time to gaze up as a tungsten coated fist snapped her head backward. She backflipped ten time before slamming into the side of the mountain, but her anguish was cut short as she felt the other woman bullrush the area and plow her through the mountain to skip across the ocean. She skipped across the surface for a good hundred feet before sinking beneath, but her safety under the waves was cut short by the other ANBU flying through more seals and announcing.
"Element Erasure: Water!"
Yugito watched in alarm as the ocean a thousand feet around and below her disappeared into a seal above her and she started falling to the now barren sea floor. Before she hit the ground, her female opponent flashed above her and slammed her feet into Yugito's stomach. She folded around the feet as the two plummeted to the exposed ocean floor and slammed into it with as much force as a meteor from space. Corpses of fish and other aquatic species were blasted away from ground zero as Yugito felt her internal organs get eviscerated by the kick. Her eyes were as wide as the could be from the agony, and before she could scream, the female ANBU wrapped a hand around her mouth and silenced her noise.
"This is your burial for killing my friends," she said menacingly.
Right after, both women heard another voice screaming from above them, multiple thousands of feet above where the top of the ocean was.
"Element Release!"
Yugito watched as the female ANBU stared into her eyes as the full amount of the previously erased ocean began falling above them. She could only hope her friend, Killer-Bee, was alright during his fight as several million tons of water finally slammed onto the two. The female ANBU finally gave into her own chakra exhaustion as the weight of the water crushed both of their bodies, but her dying thoughts were interrupted when she found herself flashed onto the same cliff she was on before, next to her ANBU teammate. She knew the technique used to teleport her, but everyone knew the last user who could do it by themselves was long dead.
"Who are you?" She managed to croak out between coughing out drops of sea water.
The agent just gazed at her coolly before pointing at the approaching form of the eight-tails jinchuriki. He just gazed as the man slammed into the earth before the two, preparing to attack at a moment's notice. The ANBU looked down at his teammate again, blue eyes alight with sudden mischief.
"Just sit back and gather your strength. He seems to be angry."
The woman knew that voice, but it couldn't be him. Yet before her very eyes, he teleported toward the jinhcuriki and took him away from their current battlefield.
[Back with Shiroi; Floating on the water's surface]
His eyes shot open as he felt an abrupt surge of demonic energy ripping through his body. It was like the darkest, most despairing entity started trying to take over his body, but that's what was happening. As Shiroi took his last breath under the water, a long slumbering best had awoken. Its name is Moryo, the demon of hatred incarnate, and it was hungry for more. Purple chakra started leaking from Shiroi's body as his skin began turning black, and the ocean around him started wavering in fear. His eyes, a once charcoal of the Uchiha, quickly morphed into his very own mangekyo, a ten-pointed star, but the black color changed to a dark blue. He slowly stood atop the bubbling waves around himself as he clenched his fist. Yes, he could feel the world's hatred slowly merge into his body.
He turned around and watched just in time as two people flashed into existence, one a teammate from his hosts' squad, and the other the one they were hunting.
"Killer-Bee," the ANBU's voice was young, and it was the first time Shiroi's body had heard it. "I'll fight from the back. You take him head on."
The man in question just raised an eyebrow, but he didn't question it. Even he remembered the voice, and he knew a fight between the two of them was out of the question. The man behind the voice already proved he could defeat both him and his brother, and that was more than ten years ago. Though he and his brother were stronger now, that man was a prodigy among all prodigies. There would be no winning that fight. So, he only nodded once and charged up a new lightning armor, stronger than his last. His own version two looked like the form of a mini dragon, much different than the previous one he had. He just looked at the exposed sharingan of his old opponent, but that turned out to be a mistake. He found himself without his power and not being able to access his biju chakra. The sudden lack of strength nearly had him quit right there as the being before him began laughing. The ominous sound made the air around his person bleed, but it was halted rather suddenly by a seal array painting itself on his body.
Moryo just looked down at his skin as random white lines started appearing. His confusion turned to alarm as he felt his power halt where it currently was, stopping his power of hatred from increasing, and stopping his hold on the jinchuriki's power, by the world's negativity. He looked up again to catch his recent foe ram a biju powered fist through his chest and out his back, but he just laughed away the pain and threw his own jab. The connection he made with the mini eight-tails before himself felt delightful as he watched red coated man get blasted away from himself and skip across the water like a stone. As the hole in his chest healed over, he laughed again. To feel even a slight bit of pain was amazing. For too long, he was kept sealed by that blonde haired bastard!
"Wait a minute," he muttered to himself, then looked around to find the ANBU menace.
As he was about to speak, he heard a voice behind and felt his arms get grabbed. Then he heard a rather unsettling whisper that sent an odd sweeping fear through his mind.
"Flash Split."
He just gazed down at his body in wonder as his arms were teleported off his shoulders, and then the pain hit. He quickly regenerated the damage and swung behind himself with a twist of his new body, but the action did nothing. The blonde menace was gone. What wasn't gone was the bijudama dropped upon his head, forcing him beneath the water surface, then both him and the attack were teleported into the sky where he was instantly incinerated.
As the big ball of light dissipated, the blonde-haired ANBU and Killer-Bee watched as the demon regenerated all the damage dealt, though with great difficulty. With its power currently halted, it wasn't having a good time trying to keep up with the two of them. That was a worry for another time, though, as the demon burst with a speed only the yellow flash could react to. Killer-Bee just stood there as the entity tore his head from his shoulders before either could stop him, then ripped the demon from the man's dead body.
Yet the ANBU just looked on as Moryo ate the life essence of the jinchuriki and consumed the biju inside him. He didn't even move as Moryo's power grew exponentially. He just gazed on impassively as Moryo stood to his full height and forced his current sharingan eyes to evolve to a more fitting power. The ten-pointed star now had a ring around it that glowed a brilliant white, then his world broke under the power he gathered in the illusion. He was standing before the two… right before the fight started.
"How did you? And to me, THE DEMON!" He yelled toward them.
His yell went unanswered, though, but he wasn't ready for his power to be erased entirely. He couldn't feel a drop of hatred as more white lines danced across his skin, mocking him with their ability to nullify him. As his eyes closed and returned to their normal charcoal colour, and his skin pigmentation changed back to its usual pale, Moryo could only wonder how a man thought dead to the world could be alive still.
"I'll take him from here, Bee-san," the ANBU said as he walked over and began picking up the fallen form of his squad member. "Yugito-san is still alive, if only just. I teleported her to the top of mountain. You can get her medical attention if you go now. And remember, Bee-san. This was a training accident between you two. I'd rather not have to wipe out your village because you told them what happened here. I will know."
Killer-Bee just nodded and ripped across the land toward his jinchuriki teammate, leaving behind a softly smiling man. Said man vanished from his spot to gather his other squad member, then reappeared in their private barracks in the Konoha.
[Kirigakure; Same time]
A young man with olive green hair was standing above an older woman. She had long auburn hair and a lovely blue dress, but it was caked in her blood and her eyes were closed. The young man had a large black staff pinned through her heart, holding her down in death as he lightly shed a few tears for the loss of life over the years. All around him, he could see corpses of friends and foes alike, torn apart by the old man called war. He ripped his staff from her skewered body and flicked the blood off. It was time to gather the last people alive and rebuild his village from the ashes he created while under a genjutsu. If only he could find the person who freed him.
"Mei Terumi, you were a fine warrior. It's a shame you had to fight the me who could protect himself effectively, and not a soulless shell."
With those parting words, he started walking through the piles of bodies, stopping to pay his respects to Zabuza Momochi, Kisame Hoshigake, and Ao, the three who fought valiantly but suffered defeat in the end. Young, Yagura may be, but he wasn't a Kage because no one was available. He was the Kage because he could wipe the floor with his village and not feel a strain on himself.
Something every opponent he faced thought about as he snuffed their life out.