A/N: Deep apologies for the wait! When I said uploads would be slow, I didn't expect more than two months slow! Finally, here we have the Battle of Kirigakure.
Kirigakure was a breathtaking sight. Nestled within a mountain valley and surrounded by swampland, a collection of cylindrical buildings tipped with verdant rooftop gardens rose high above the ever-present mist. While there was an outer wall, it was neither as tall nor as thick as that of Konoha, though it would still serve as a difficult obstacle for the besieging forces, largely due to the deep and wide moat at its base, an excellent defensive measure for a village with such a high population of water users.
Mei's troops were readying themselves for battle, but I was not among them. Instead, I followed Mei herself along with Zabuza through the mist, looping around the outer perimeter of the village. We stalked through the swamp, our chakra allowing us to stride over thick mud as if it were a paved road.
"Here." The rebel leader held up a hand and gestured for us to stop. The area appeared unremarkable, with only a boulder sticking out of the mud to distinguish it from its surroundings. She whistled an imitation birdsong and the boulder slid aside to reveal a stairway that led down underground. An unremarkable shinobi in a Kiri flak jacket appeared from the passage.
"Mei-sama," he greeted with a salute, handing her a torch. "As expected, the bulk of Yagura's men are manning the walls. He only has his personal Anbu guard to protect him." We entered the passage, and the new arrival used an earth jutsu to close it behind us.
"You've done well, Takahiro-san," Mei told her insider. "Get your family to the shelters and keep them safe until the battle is over."
"Ma'am!" He rushed off into the darkness, and Mei turned to me with a semi-serious look on her face.
"Don't bother reporting on this tunnel to your Hokage," she warned, "we'll be filling it in anyway after today."
"Wouldn't dream of it." With that, we set off down the hidden tunnel, wary of potential traps.
With the civilian population sequestered away and all shinobi dedicated to wall defence, the streets of Kiri were eerily quiet. All around, there was evidence that the evacuation had come as a sudden surprise: lights were still on in buildings, shops still had signs marking them as open, market stalls were still full of fresh produce.
"Yagura will be in the Mizukage Tower in the village centre," Mei noted, "Let's move."
"Hold on one second." The two Mist ninja watched me bite my thumb and perform the summoning jutsu, conjuring Kitsuhime in a puff of smoke.
"It's time then?"
"It is." The fox nodded her understanding, and I looked to my allies, both of whom appeared sceptical. "What?"
"...It's pink," commented Zabuza. Kitsuhime glared at the swordsman, killing intent filling the air.
"She is pink," she corrected. "Do you doubt my ability based only on my appearance, kit? Must I teach you to respect your elders?" Zabuza actually took a step back, and I could swear a bead of sweat formed on his face.
"No, ma'am! Sorry ma'am!" Instantly the malicious aura vanished, and the fox looked away dismissively. Mei recovered quickly and took charge once more.
"We're wasting time. Let's get moving, slowly. Keep watch for ambushes." With that, we fell into formation and proceeded through the empty village, eyes darting about and ears straining to catch even the slightest sound.
The battle started slow, with the men and women on the front lines of the invasion slinging explosive kunai and long-range ninjutsu at eachother, each side trying to feel out the other's strength. The invaders had used earth ninjutsu to set up ramparts, trenches, bunkers, and other earthworks to defend themselves, and already runners were carrying wounded shinobi back to the medical tents in the rear. Fire and lightning streaked across the space between the opposing armies, water dragons rose and crashed down on the attackers, globs of lava and acid mist from the bloodline users melted the flesh of the defenders from their bones in a gruesome display of violence that shook the morale of those manning the walls.
Ao surveyed the battlefield with his Byakugan and nodded to himself – everything was proceeding as expected. He would give the skirmishers up front some more time to soften up the defence a little before having the genjutsu users sow some fear throughout the enemy ranks. Then the assault would begin, the Swordsmen leading shock troops up the walls to secure a path into the village. At that point, the fighting would be house-to-house, street-to-street, clearing the loyalists out in what would no doubt be the bloodiest, costliest part of the battle by far.
He hoped Mei's team worked fast. The sooner they could claim Yagura's head, the sooner the defending force would collapse, and the fewer of his countrymen would have to die.
Something between fascination and horror filled me at the sight of Mei's corrosive mist dissolving the Anbu outside the Mizukage Tower. Their agonised, terrified screams at their skin, tendons and muscles sloughing off their bones in a crimson slurry filled the air. Their eyes were melting, blood flowed from every orifice, and soon their screams turned to hacking coughs as their lungs were seared and liquefied by the potent acid. Truly, this particular application of Boil Release was easily the most disturbing form of ninjutsu I had ever seen, a nightmare of chemical warfare the likes of which my old world had not seen since the First World War.
Soon enough, the men fell silent, and Mei dismissed her jutsu with a hand seal before ordering us onward. We had scarcely taken a step when the air was filled with fog, this cloud mercifully non-toxic yet perhaps even more intimidating than Mei's in the presence it heralded. My companions fell into combat stances immediately, and I followed suit.
"Really, Mei-chan, such a waste of perfectly good Anbu," chided a voice that was sounded far too young and innocent for the monster that produced it. The mist condensed into a solid-looking pillar, then dissipated to reveal our target.
Looking at the Fourth Mizukage, one would be forgiven for assuming he was a teen boy, barely older than my physical body. No one would guess that he was actually in his early twenties. He did not look particularly impressive, being short with little muscle and bearing soft features. But the wave of immense killing intent that came after would quickly dispel that illusion for even the most shallow of observers. Had I not already faced down Shukaku a year prior, I would have had difficulty keeping my composure. Perhaps most disconcerting about his appearance was the emptiness behind his eyes. There was no life there, no joy or sorrow or hate. Whatever technique Obito had used to control him had clearly left him a mere puppet, a shell of his former self. Still, I knew this puppet's power had not been diminished one bit. There would be no playing around here, no stalling and no careful observation. If I did not go all out from the beginning, he would kill me on the spot. I readied my Mangekyou.
"We don't have to do this, Yagura," Mei pleaded even though she must have known it was useless. "Surrender. Step down and let me end these pointless purges." Yagura cocked his head innocently.
"Surrender? Why would I do that when I could just kill you and end your rebellion?" He looked to me next, carefully avoiding direct eye contact. "And you, Uchiha-san. Your village's interference will not be tolerated. Consider this a declaration of war. Suiton: Suishouha (Water Release: Water Colliding Wave)."
"Doton: Doryuuheki (Earth Release: Earth Style Wall)."
The powerful wave produced by Yagura's jutsu was stopped dead when Kitsuhime blurred forwards and brought forth a wall of stone that spanned the entire width of the street we we were standing in.
"Hurry! Make your preparations!" she shouted at me before a large hole was blasted through the wall by some kind of water projectile, allowing Yagura to casually stroll through onto our side.
"Preparations?" Mei asked while simultaneously weaving hand seals to launch a sphere of lava at Yagura, which was stopped and cooled into stone by a Water Wall. Meanwhile, I used the water that came through the wall to produce a clone and tossed her a scroll from my pouch.
"A contingency," I lied, launching a brace of shuriken to try and manoeuvre our enemy towards a charging Zabuza while my clone retreated a little way behind us so as not to get in the way. "In case we need to deal with the Sanbi." Of course, this was no backup tactic, it was my Plan A. If we simply killed Yagura, Isobu would die with him only to reform elsewhere, leaving them vulnerable to Akatsuki. That could not be allowed to happen. I drew my sword and moved in to fight alongside Zabuza, who was trading blows with Yagura's odd hooked staff that somehow held up against the sheer weight and power of the Executioner's Blade.
Clone Makoto swiftly opened the scroll the original had given her and unsealed the necessary supplies for her plan: four special sealing tags pre-charged with chakra, a large jar of pure squid ink (among the best media for seals, short of blood or pure chakra), and a set of brushes. The tags she hurried to set out equidistant from eachother before activating with a half ram seal. With the four tags acting as corners, a giant cubic box of translucent golden energy sprang up around her, one that would be nigh-impregnable as long as the chakra stored within did not run out. Nothing short of a full-powered Tailed Beast Bomb would breach it, and one of those would most likely destroy the entire village and everyone inside anyway. Safe inside her intangible bunker, she opened her jar and got to work on drawing the intricate sealing array that would be the key to their victory.
Behind the battle lines, Sakura was rushing about and shouting directions to the medics at the tents, keeping everything running like a well-oiled machine. She stepped in to personally heal the most severely injured who might not otherwise make it, but for the most part, she was managing the other healers rather than patching people up herself. It was stressful, mentally taxing work, but this was her domain. There was no hesitation, no worry that she may not be up to the task, no second-guessing her decisions. She had just finished treating a serious spinal injury (the man would thankfully make a full recovery, thanks to Tsunade's lessons) when there came the sound of screams from outside.
Someone got hit this far from the front lines? She questioned internally, striding out to assess the damage.
What met her was not damage from a long-range strike.
Three loyalist Anbu had managed to infiltrate the camp in what was no doubt intended to be a crippling strike that would wipe out their medical corps, preventing them from recovering their casualties. Sakura narrowed her eyes. Targetting medics and the injured was a rational tactic, yes, but it was one that disgusted her. She did not hesitate. Her hands came together in a tiger seal.
"Genjutsu: Kokuangyo no Jutsu (Genjutsu: Bringer of Darkness Jutsu)." Immediately, the Anbu froze, no doubt shocked by the sudden loss of their sight. Of course they would recover soon, either fighting by sound and scent or dispelling the jutsu. She would not give them the opportunity. She snapped the first one's neck with a single brisk motion, shoved a kunai into the second's temple, and struck the third with a chakra-enhanced punch that shattered their ribs, sent them flying, and turned their organs to paste. The medics that had been scrambling to flee now stood frozen in awe. "What are you staring at?" she barked. "Get back to work, we have more wounded to tend to!" Activity quickly picked back up, and Sakura herself was soon smiling gently at a wounded woman as she closed up a slash wound that had nearly gutted her patient.
Cresting the wall at the head of a formation, Suigetsu found the defenders in a state of panic, fumbling their hand seals and hesitating to attack thanks to the genjutsu stimulating the fear and anxiety centres in their brains. This slowed their reactions enough for him to casually raise his left hand in a finger gun and blow sizeable holes in three men's heads with his Water Gun Jutsu before taking Nuibari and impaling another through the heart. The razor-sharp wire trailing behind, animated by his chakra, slit the throats of another two foes just as his followers began to reach the top and charge the defenders. Soon enough, his designated section of the wall was taken with only single-digit casualties, and he could see similar results on other sections of the wall where the other rebel members of the Seven Swordsmen, as well as several elite jounin and Anbu operatives, were leading their own assaults.
"Well, that wasn't too hard." He allowed himself a chuckle and a grin before looking down into the village proper, where retreating loyalists were already taking up defensive positions, making ready to fight for every centimetre of ground. An eyebrow raised when he saw, right near the village centre, a great golden barrier cube rise from one of the streets. Mei's group were clearly doing their job, so he needed to do his. He took a swig of water before leading his soldiers down into the village.
Yagura was an exceptional close-quarters combatant. His staff whirled and swung out in a constant flow of motion, batting aside both mine and Zabuza's blades, occasionally kicking out or sweeping at our legs. My first strike had chipped his weapon, and from then on he had only parried and dodged my strikes, never allowing the edge of Kusanagi to meet it. However, Zabuza was able to take advantage of his superior experience and trap the staff against the ground. I moved in to slash his Achilles tendons, only for Yagura to spit a sealless Teppoudama at my face, forcing me to Shunshin out of the way lest I lose my head. Dropping his staff, he stepped back and clapped his hands for another Water Colliding Wave, forcing the four of us fighters to leap up the walls of the nearby buildings while he retrieved his weapon.
"Doton: Chidoukaku (Earth Release: Moving Earth Core)!" Kitsuhime dropped and slammed a paw into the ground, causing the earth around Yagura to descend with him stood on it, leaving him in a deep square pit. Mei, Zabuza, and I all followed up with ranged attacks.
"Suiton: Suiryuudan no Jutsu!"
Three great serpents struck simultaneously, their power widening and flooding the gaping hole in the ground, turning it into a pond. A moment passed before the water began to bubble and boil, an ominous red light glowing from its depths, accompanied by fresh waves of killing intent that pressed down on us like lead. Then the new pond exploded, a red streak flying out of it and landing on the shore, revealing Yagura in his Version 2 Bijuu cloak, body completely concealed by shifting chakra. Mei and Zabuza both went pale at the sight.
"Amaterasu!" The jinchuriki let out an unearthly howl and thrashed around as the black flames engulfed him. This was enough for the two Mist shinobi to shake off their shock, and we all dropped back to street level. Against most opponents, this would be checkmate, but for Yagura it was merely an inconvenience – his chakra cloak shifted and began to peel away from his body, carrying the fire with it as it did so. It was as if he had simply removed a burning coat and tossed it aside. Once it was away from his body, the chakra dissipated, and since the flames no longer had a target to burn, they flickered out as well. Then another red cloak formed around him, and it was as if nothing had happened. My eyes narrowed. My clone should be done soon, I thought, pooling chakra behind my eyes and bracing myself for the coming agony. She'd better be, anyway. I don't know how long we can hold him off in this form. My nerves erupted in hellish burning pain as the spectral upper body of an armoured tengu warrior formed around me, shedding a ghostly purple light on my surroundings.
The Water Clone felt the spike in her original's chakra and the accompanying dark aura that signified the use of the Susano'o and looked up from her sealing. Original Makoto had pulled out the full armoured form of the technique, which was keeping Yagura on the defensive with a combination of sword and bow while her three partners peppered it with long-range ninjutsu. Yagura himself was countering with powerful water jutsu and strange projectiles of purple coral, yet his attacks all failed to scratch the mighty apparition, like waves breaking harmlessly upon the shore. From long experience with Clone training, she knew that the armoured Susano'o could not be sustained for long – it took fifteen minutes to go from full chakra to empty using this technique, and that was assuming no other jutsu were used. Seeing as Original Makoto had already been fighting a high-intensity battle before using it and needed to maintain a decent level of chakra to seal Isobu, she estimated that she had maybe three minutes to finish her part in this.
She redoubled her efforts, drawing the seal as quickly as possible without risking any mistakes.
Kakashi slashed one woman's throat, then used his Sharingan to cast a paralysis genjutsu on her partner before tossing his knife into her throat and drawing another. A barrage of ice needles flew past him and riddled a third loyalist's vital points. He glanced at the masked form of Haku and acknowledged him with a nod before turning back and readying himself to assault an occupied building, but froze when a monstrous killing intent flooded the entire village. Around him, those with visible skin could be seen paling at the sensation.
The Sanbi. A sinking feeling settled in his gut. It was not quite the same as the Kyuubi's aura – that had burned with hate and malice, while this felt cold and detached, as if the deaths of all who stood before it were a natural inevitability. It weighed down on the world like the pressure of the deep ocean. There was no fury here, the entity that produced it had simply decided that someone had to die. She can handle it, he told himself. She said she had a plan. Finish your mission. Beside him, Haku stiffened and gazed out towards the village centre.
"Zabuza-sama," the boy breathed.
Fuck it, Kakashi thought. "Haku-san, we're going after them. The rest of the division can handle this." Haku hesitated, then nodded, and the two rushed off towards the source of the demonic chakra.
I grit my teeth as Yagura hit my Susano'o with a palm strike, causing a mass of coral to spread over its front, obscuring my vision. I had the ghostly warrior shatter it with a pommel strike, revealing that the jinchuriki had left my field of vision.
"Youton: Youryuudan no Jutsu (Lava Release: Lava Dragon Jutsu)!" Looking to the source of the shout, my eyes widened in awe at the sight of Mei spewing out a river of lava that quickly took the form of a massive, snarling serpent. The beast crashed into Yagura, who had been moving to attack me from the left, apparently under the erroneous belief that the Susano'o was weaker at the sides. A sudden cloud of expanding steam indicated that he had protected himself with a water technique, but it was enough of a distraction for me to bring down the fist of my chakra construct in a mighty crash that sent shards of volcanic rock and glass flying. It was not enough to stop or even really slow Yagura, though, who had slipped out from underneath just before the blow landed.
"Suiton: Daibakufu no Jutsu!"
"Doton: Doryuuheki!" Simultaneously, a thick wall of stone curved up behind Yagura and a whirling vortex of water slammed into him, crushing him against it. Zabuza and Kitsuhime both stepped up beside me, just beyond the barrier of my construct's armour. Yagura stepped out of the crater in the wall he'd been blasted into and roared.
"Damnit, can't keep this up much longer," I lamented, breathing hard from the pain and chakra expenditure.
"You don't have to."
My Clone had appeared beside us in a Shunshin, her own Mangekyou active. "It's ready," she told me confidently, and I felt the relief flood my body. Allowing the Susano'o to fade, I hit Yagura with one last blast of Amaterasus as a distraction before letting my Sharingan drop completely. At the same time, the Clone raised her own Susano'o and took my place at the front.
"Zabuza-san, Mei-dono, I just need a little more time. Kitsuhime-sensei and my clone know their parts, follow their lead!"
With that order, I Body Flickered back to the barrier and dropped it with a single hand seal, threw aside my haori and kimono top, and sat cross-legged in the centre of the sealing array. Taking a kunai, I stabbed myself in the left palm and used the blood to draw an enclosed spiral on my stomach, where the final seal would appear. I breathed deeply, ignoring the sounds of combat, and ran through the sequence of hand seals I'd been practising for this moment.
"Uzumaki Fuuinjutsu: Hakke Fuuin (Uzumaki Sealing Jutsu: Eight Trigrams Seal)."
Upon feeling the activation of the seal tugging on her chakra, Clone Makoto shouted out to the fox.
"Now!"
"Doton: Doryuuheki!" Three extremely thick walls rose around Yagura, angled to create a square-base pyramid with one face open. Immediately after, the sword of the Susano'o was thrust into the opening, piercing right through the jinchuriki and allowing the seal to do its work.
Unlike other Clone techniques, Water Clones had a connection to their user that constantly fed them with chakra. The Susano'o was also an extension of the user's chakra. Therefore, when the Susano'o pierced Yagura's body, there was an indirect direct connection between my chakra and Yagura's, and by extension Isobu's, and this would allow the seal to rip Isobu's chakra out of Yagura, through the Susano'o, into my Clone, and through our connection back to me.
This idea had been entirely theoretical on account of Water Clones being too fragile for anyone to bother trying it before. Without the protection of the Susano'o, there was no way to keep the Clone alive long enough to pull it off. Fortunately, the theory turned out to be sound.
Unfortunately, I had neglected to consider that the feeling of having demonic chakra flood into my body would bring a level of hellish agony that would make the armoured Susano'o seem mildly uncomfortable by comparison.
Mei and Zabuza watched, eyes wide, as the blood-red chakra of the Sanbi flowed like water up through the spectral blade that pierced his chest, into the Clone, then seemed to be sucked out again in a whirling torrent that flew towards the real Uchiha behind. Both kunoichi, true and Clone, were screaming out a litany of curses, bodies hunched over, muscles taut in their suffering, yet each maintained enough focus to hold their techniques. Two pairs of eyes, one set crimson pinwheels and the other midnight pools, burned with the single-minded will to finish what they had started.
The process was surprisingly quick, and soon enough the flow of red energy had abated, the horrible killing intent of the Sanbi gone with it. The Clone immediately collapsed into a puddle, her armoured projection vanishing without a trace, and the original toppled to one side, chest heaving but otherwise unmoving, the complex array that had been painted onto the road around her now nowhere to be seen.
"She stole the Sanbi from us," Mei mumbled. Her expression darkened. "She stole the Sanbi."
"Fox summoners," Zabuza grunted, hefting his sword onto his shoulder. "We kill her now, we can grab the Sanbi when it reforms later. Tell the Leaf she died in battle. I like the kid, so it'll leave a bad taste in my mouth, but if you give the order…"
"You will not touch my student." The pink fox stood between them and the downed Uchiha. With a flick of her tail, a blob of ink sailed from its tip and splattered into the shape of an explosive seal at Zabuza's feet. "Make an attempt, and I'll give you a lesson in fuuinjutsu." The swordsman huffed, but made no move.
"You were holding back during the fight. Made us think all you had was some mid-level Earth Release."
"I thought you might take exception to my student's plan, so I held back my strength just in case. It seems I was justified, Demon of the Mist."
"Enough, Zabuza. Stand down," ordered Mei, sighing. "As much as I hate to admit it, she outplayed us. Konoha can have the Sanbi for now. Besides, we are not the Bloody Mist anymore. We don't kill our allies." Zabuza put away his sword and turned to the corpse of the Mizukage.
"Alright then. What do we do with him?"
"Take the head and show his followers what awaits them if they don't surrender. Then we give him a proper funeral." Mei looked down at the body of her old friend, sorrow briefly overtaking her otherwise steely expression. "I'm sorry, Yagura-kun."
Kakashi's heart felt like it skipped a beat when the Sanbi's aura vanished. The fight was over, his student was either victorious or dead, and he hadn't been there in time to help. He pushed on, praying to whatever kami would listen, until he reached the main street leading to the Mizukage Tower and came to a stop, taking in the devastation that lay before him.
The place looked like a warzone, and he had been in the middle of enough to know. The road was riddled with craters, cracks, and scorch marks. Buildings had collapsed or had whole segments gouged out of them. Tall stone walls were scattered about the place, most with holes blasted through them. Pools of water and half-cooled lava dotted the landscape. A strange, open-faced pyramid structure stood not far from a particularly massive wall.
And a short distance opposite it, a figure lay in the road, half of her pale skin bare, watched over by a pink fox.
"Makoto!" A Shunshin brought him to his student's side, and what he saw left a lump in his throat. Physically she was largely unharmed. Some cuts and bruises, but considering who she had been fighting, it was damn near miraculous that that was the extent of her injuries. No, what worried him was what his Sharingan showed: the usual deep blue of her chakra was shot through with wisps of red. He gently moved her onto her back, bracing himself for a sight he dreaded. There, on her stomach, intermittently pulsing red under his donated eye, was a complex swirling seal array. "You didn't," he breathed. Kakashi was no seal master, but as a student of the Fourth, he knew enough to recognise what he was looking at. His gaze turned to the fox. "You let my student seal a bijuu into herself!?" The creature looked down her snout at him in condescension.
"I taught my student how to do it, on her own request I might add. And I'd say she did a marvellous job of it, too."
"She could have died in the attempt!"
"Are you impugning my skill as a teacher, or hers as a student?" The fox asked pointedly. "Or perhaps the Yondaime's skill as a sealer, since the method was partially based on his work?" His glare seemed to roll off the fox like water off a duck's back. Realising the futility of further argument, he carefully picked up the unconscious kunoichi. He was going to speak to the Kiri nin about next steps, but seeing as Zabuza was currently having his wounds fussed over by Haku and Mei was in the process of hacking off Yagura's head with a kunai, he elected to rush back to the medical tents and leave them to handle finishing the battle.