Author's Note: Welcome back, everyone! As this is my first story I welcome constructive criticisms, flaming and trolling will be ignored.
Disclaimer: Naruto and Inuyasha belong to their respective owners.
Dialogue Legend:
"Unforgivable" – Normal dialogue
'Unforgivable' – character's thoughts/speaking to Inner Demon/Inner Spirit through a seal
"Unforgivable" – Jutsu name; Inner Demon/Inner Spirit/Supernatural Being speaking to someone directly.
'Unforgivable' – Inner Demon/Inner Spirit/Supernatural Being speaking to someone through a seal
Chapter 30 – Jirobo of the South, Kidomaru of the East
Konoha Outer Gate – 6:00 AM
"Naruto-kun, Shikamaru-kun, I don't mean to question your authority, but are you sure it's a good idea to bring a Kiri Shinobi along for this mission?" Kiba asked once all six members of the Sasuke Retrieval Team had assembled.
"Not gonna lie, I have the same concern, but Naruto-kun made a good case for her being here, and having her along is an act of good faith on Konoha's part to Kiri." Shikamaru shrugged.
"I assure you, your trust in me – and by extension, Kiri – is not misplaced. Nor will it be forgotten." Tetsuisshi vowed.
"Excellent," Hinata smiled and then turned to Shikamaru and Naruto, "what will our strategy be for this mission?"
"No sense in sugar-coating it; we're up against Orochimaru's elite guard." Naruto began. "They're skilled enough to not only infiltrate Konoha during a period of full wartime alert status, but also to monitor an Anbu unit long enough to fully analyze their patterns without getting caught. For this mission, speed is more important than stealth."
"The odds of us being able to sneak up on them undetected are near zero." Shikamaru picked up where Naruto left off. "Chances are that they've run into at least one of the Anbu or Jonin squads that Tsunade sent out. Even if they haven't, they'll be expecting pursuers. We'll be using an arrow formation; a single-line formation designed to react instantly to an assault."
"Logical," Tetsuisshi approved, "what will our positions in the arrow be?"
"Kiba-chan, you're the forward guard." Naruto answered. "Once we're on the move, I'll give you some of Sasuke's spare clothes so that you and Akamaru-kun can track his scent. More than that, the Inuzuka Clan routinely sends their Genin out of survey missions in Konoha's outer territories. Safe to say no one on this team knows the lay of the land better than you. Most important of all, though, is that a big weakness of the arrow formation is frontal attacks. With both you and Akamaru-kun up front, we'll have double the protection."
"It's a big job, but me and Akamaru-kun won't let you down!" Kiba promised.
"After Kiba-chan, I'm next in the formation." Shikamaru continued. "No matter what comes our way, I can directly give Kiba-chan an appropriate response and use hand signals to relay orders to the rest of the team. Naruto-kun and Tetsuisshi-san will occupy the center of the formation. Naruto-kun's Fuuton Jutsu and Kage Bushin make him the most versatile member of the team, allowing him to support both the front and the back, depending on the current need. Same goes for Tetsuisshi-san; her archery-based Suiton Jutsu gives her the longest attack range on the team and allows her to also support both the front and back from the center. Naruto-kun will be placed right behind me, followed by Tetsuisshi-san."
"You're up after Tetsuisshi-san, Choji-kun." Naruto proceeded. "You're the slowest member of the team, but you pack the biggest punch. After Kiba-chan, Shikamaru-kun, Tetsuisshi-san, and I soften the enemy up, your job is to hammer them into the ground! Last, but never least, is Hinata. The rear-guard is the toughest job in the formation because you have to watch out for surprise attacks, but your Byakugan guarantees that there won't be any blind spots!"
"Take a look at this diagram." Shikamaru laid a paper on the ground for the whole team to see. "These are your assigned fields of vision for this mission. Kiba-chan and I: forward area; Naruto: left; Tetsuisshi-san: alternate between left and right; Choji: right; Hinata-hime: backward area."
Naruto turned to Tetsuisshi. "You're also a Chunnin, and the moves you used in the Chuunin Exams speak volumes of your combat experience. Are there any recommendations you have regarding our strategy so far?"
Tetsuisshi shook her head. "Without knowing anything of our prey's capabilities, or even their number, I have no issues with the strategy you and Shikamaru-san have made. My only advice is this: speed is paramount to the success of this mission, but we should not move so quickly as to abandon stealth entirely."
"Good point." Naruto agreed before sending a pulse of Youki through his armor. The gray-black variant of Sesshomaru's armor shifted in color, becoming a blend of greens and browns that would allow Naruto to blend into the sea of trees surrounding Konoha almost as well as a chameleon. Even the garnet-colored sash he used to hold his ninja tools, Tokijin, and Tenseiga changed its hue to match the rest of the armor.
"Nice trick!" Kiba praised.
"For the sake of developing additional plans down the road, I need to know what weapons and tools we're bringing into this. Naruto-kun, start us off." Shikamaru ordered.
"As you just saw, the armor I'm wearing can change its color to blend into the surroundings. I can freely choose what colors it takes on, and even set it up to constantly shift colors to blend in automatically, but that eats up Youki like a swarm of locusts, so I won't be doing that for this mission unless I have to." Naruto explained.
"Youki?" Choji raised an eyebrow at the strange term. "Don't you mean Chakra?"
"Nope," Naruto sighed, "this'll probably come out during the mission anyways, so there's no point in concealing it now; I'm a Daiyoukai."
"Heh-heh, stop pulling our legs, Naruto-kun! You're crazy, sure, but you're no demon lord!" Choji tried to laugh it off.
"It's true, Choji-kun." Kiba growled in annoyance. "Both Naruto-kun's clan and mine are descended from Youkai, and some of our clans' treasures run on Youki instead of Chakra."
Choji's jaw hit the floor. "Is that why a lot of the civilians hate your guts, Naruto-kun?"
"No, they hate me for something else, though, at this point, I've won most of them over." Naruto replied. "The reason for their hatred is an S-Rank secret, so I can't tell anyone without the Hokage's permission. Moving onto the rest of my gear, I've got plenty of standard-issue kunai, shuriken, and paper bombs. My two swords are named Tokijin and Tenseiga. Tenseiga probably won't see any action on this mission. She was made to cut purely spiritual beings, and therefore is mostly useless against mortal foes."
Naruto avoided mentioning Tenseiga's resurrection power because he didn't want his teammates to get overconfident. "Tokijin, on the other hand, can fire off blasts of demonic lightning and will see plenty of use on this mission."
"Useful; you're next, Kiba-chan." Shikamaru commanded.
"Aside from the standard-issue gear Naruto-kun mentioned, all I got is this." Kiba patted Tessaiga's hilt, which was held in a black sash Kiba had tied around her waist; her Shinobi tool pouch was also tied to the sash.
"Tessaiga-dono, the brother-blade to Tenseiga." Naruto spoke reverently. "According to the Namikaze Clan records, he rarely acknowledges anyone of the Inuzuka Clan, but everyone who has been accepted by him became legendary Shinobi."
"Got that right!" Kiba lapped up Naruto's praise. "He didn't acknowledge Okaa-san, so Tessaiga's been passed down to me early. As for what he can do, I'm sad to say I don't really know since I slept through most of my lessons on the Inuzuka Clan's ancient history."
The other four members of the team turned to Naruto for an explanation of Tessaiga's powers.
"It's not my place to say; Tessaiga-dono is an Inuzuka Clan treasure, so its abilities should only be disclosed by one of their members." Naruto shrugged. "Especially since we don't know when, or if, Kiba-chan will be acknowledged by him. What I will say is that, even in its dormant state, Tessaiga-dono's sharpness is nearly unrivaled and should be able to cut through just about anything like butter. Same goes for its durability, damn-near nothing should even be able to scratch Tessaiga-dono."
"Good enough for me; Choji, you're next." Shikamaru moved on.
"No paper bombs or shuriken, and the kunai I got on me are meant to be used for my Clan's Jutsu, so don't expect me to throw them around. Instead, I've got plenty of ninja rations to replenish our Chakra. Aside from that, I have the Akimichi Clan's Three-Colored Pills!" Choji pulled a small glass case out of his pocket that was divided into three compartments; each compartment contained a spherical pill slightly smaller than a golf ball.
"I'm glad to see you're taking this seriously, Choji, but put those away. Just looking at them gives me a bad feeling." Shikamaru pleaded.
"Why?" Tetsuisshi asked as Choji put the three pills back in his pocket.
Shikamaru looked into his teammate's eyes, silently asking for permission to answer Tetsuisshi's question. Choji's brow furrowed slightly for a few seconds, and then relaxed as he nodded in approval.
"Those pills are the Akimichi Clan's secret weapon; they forcibly amplify the user's metabolic rate several times over, converting their stored fat into Chakra." Shikamaru was giving a clinical description of the pills' effects, so he wasn't worried about triggering Choji by speaking the taboo word. "Of course, tampering with the body's metabolism like that comes at a price. High pain for the first pill, astronomical pain for the second pill and –"
" – Death for the third pill?" Tetsuisshi's eyes flashed with fright.
Shikamaru and Choji looked down at the ground, wordlessly giving the answer Tetsuisshi feared. The conversation halted everyone contemplated the resolve Choji would need to bring such a suicidal thing on this mission.
"Moving onto me," Hinata broke the silence, "I also have no paper bombs, though I have several kunai and shuriken."
"Heh, surprised the Taijutsu-only Hyuuga clan lets you use even those." Kiba laughed half-heartedly.
"My clan is steadily abandoning the traditions that have crippled it." Hinata said in response.
"I have no kunai, shuriken, or paper bombs," Tetsuisshi spoke up to finish this part of the meeting, "though I have several dozen of these." The Kiri sniper unfurled a storage scroll and summoned a quiver from it. She pulled an arrow out of the quiver for the team to look at; the arrow was covered in seals.
"These arrows amplify the potency of any Suiton Chakra channeled through them, and fly through the air faster than sound." Tetsuisshi summoned a second quiver and strapped both to her back. "The bow created by my Yumiya no Jutsu demands a considerable amount of Chakra initially, but does not require any additional Chakra to sustain. In another storage scroll, I have one of Kiri's infamous Seven Swords."
Shikamaru's jaw dropped. "You're one of the Seven Swordsmen?"
"I attained the position after being acknowledged by one of the blades shortly after Kiri's most recent civil war. Kiri tradition prohibits Genin from wielding the swords, so I could not acquire mine until becoming a Chuunin." Tetsuisshi explained. "My Kenjutsu skill is currently only slightly higher than a novice, so I shall avoid using my new sword unless circumstances demand otherwise."
Naruto's eyes narrowed. "We're going into this chase assuming the worst; the circumstances you mentioned will come to pass, so we need to know what your sword can do."
Tetsuisshi bowed, her head nearly touching the ground. "My deepest apologies, but I cannot speak of my sword without violating the oath I swore upon receiving it. The Seven Swords are national treasures of Kiri, so their abilities cannot be disclosed to foreign Shinobi unless absolutely necessary. Not even Kiri's alliance with Konoha supersedes my oath."
"Troublesome, but fine." Shikamaru acquiesced. "Now, if there's nothing else, we really need to get go –"
"WAIT!" Two girls' voices cried in unison from the street leading into Konoha. The Sasuke Retrieval Team turned to see Sakura and Ino. The pink-haired kunoichi had tears in her eyes but was preventing them from falling down her face with sheer will. Her blond future sister-wife, however, lacked the same resolve and her tears were flooding down her face.
"We heard what happened from Asuma-san and Kurenai-sensei after they were told by Tsunade-sama when they returned from their latest mission. They need time to rest, so they can't help bring Sasuke-kun back." Sakura said in a tightly controlled voice. "I'm strong, especially for a civilian-turned-Shinobi, but, right now, I'm not strong enough to help you on this mission."
"N-Neither am I!" Ino sobbed. "Naruto-kun, Shikamaru, this is the wish of a lifetime: please kill those Oto bastards and bring our Sasuke-kun home!"
"Sure thing; after all, that's the whole point." Shikamaru agreed lazily.
Naruto pulled off the gauntlet protecting his right hand and let it fall to the ground. Ino was a Clan Heir, and, despite her less-than-formal phrasing, she had just made a dire request of another clan's head. Shikamaru's lazy response was acceptable given the preexisting alliance between the Nara and Yamanaka Clans, but the Namikaze Clan had no such alliance with the Yamanaka. Thus, Ino's plea for aid required an appropriate response.
With his left hand, Naruto drew Tokijin and slashed his right palm. His blood spilled onto the street for several seconds before his accelerated healing closed the wound. "As the current Lord of both the Namikaze Clan and the Uzumaki Clan, I – Naruto Namikaze-Uzumaki – vow with all that I am to aid Ino Yamanaka – Heiress to her Clan – in her time of greatest need. Will all present as witness: should I fail in this duty, my life is forfeit."
Ino's eyes all but leaped out of her head as she realized, too late, the ramifications of her words. "N-Naruto, NO! You don't need to go that far!"
"Perhaps not, but the vow has been spoken, and cannot be recalled." Naruto picked up his gauntlet and placed it back on his hand. "A 'promise of a lifetime' is not lightly stated or accepted, especially not from one Clan Heir to another, and even less so from a Clan Heir to a Clan Head."
"We need to tell Tsunade-sama about this." Sakura laid a comforting hand on Ino's shoulder. As the pair turned around to head for the Hokage's tower, Sakura looked at Naruto and whispered "Thank you." The whisper was more than audible to the Daiyoukai's superhuman hearing, and Naruto nodded in response. Sakura caught the gesture in the corner of her eye just as she and Ino were facing completely away from the Sasuke Retrieval Team.
"I see your political education is progressing quite smoothly." Hinata smiled. "Kage Bushin, especially in your hands, are a marvel."
"I had a great teacher for the fundamentals." Naruto smiled back.
"Kami-damn it! You're teaching me that Jutsu the first chance you get, Naruto-kun!" Kiba yelled. "It's not much to write home about compared to the Uzumaki, but the Inuzuka Clan has a strong Yang affinity too! As long as I don't go too crazy with it, I can abuse the Kage no Bushin Jutsu as well!"
"As I recall from the Namikaze archives, Inuyasha-dono's vitality was rather tenacious." Naruto agreed. "Make peace with Hinata, and I'll consider it."
"Done!" Kiba agreed without hesitation and turned to Hinata. "What do I need to do to show that I'm worthy?"
"Agreeing to make amends so quickly is an excellent start. The promised reward notwithstanding, it shows that you were already willing to change your ways." Hinata replied. "As for what remains to be done, I would prefer not to distract you with such details until our current mission is complete."
"Fair enough." Kiba sighed.
"Can we go now!?" Shikamaru shouted.
Kiba answered by running into the forest, trailed closely by the rest of the team. Seconds later, they fell into a synchronized pace and assumed their agreed-upon positions and duties. The chase was on!
Konoha Forest – 8:00 AM
"Fucking damn it all to Hell! I can't believe two Jonin forced all four of us to bust out our Second Stage!" Tayuya screamed.
"Control your words," Jirobo rebuked, "our First Stages would likely have sufficed if Sasuke-dono had not broken free halfway through the battle."
"Got that right;" Kidomaru chuckled, "those flaming claws nearly got me. Who'd have thought that the Sasuke Game had a hidden level?!"
"Enough, all of you!" Sakon yelled after replacing the last of the Chakra-sealing tags that had burned away when Sasuke invoked his Hanyou transformation. Kidomaru had already re-webbed the last Uchiha after Jirobo knocked him out. "Thanks to Sasuke-san's sudden outburst, we're now out of Chakra Sealing Tags. We need to guarantee that he won't break free again!"
Tayuya stomped the ground. "We already need to rest after that fiasco of a fight, if we seal Sasuke like you're suggesting, we'll be out of commission for even longer!"
"What choice do we have?" Jirobo countered.
"None;" Kidomaru sighed, "In the first level, we caught Sasuke completely off guard. In the second level, he had no clue what we could do aside from Tayuya's Genjutsu. If this game progresses to Level 3, we might not be able to stop him from running away. Then, Orochimaru-sama will have all our heads."
"Let's get this over with!" Sakon unfurled a storage scroll and summoned a cylindrical coffin from it. Jirobo placed Sasuke's body inside the coffin, and then the Sound Four surrounded the coffin in a square formation and flashed through a series of hand seals.
"Shikokumujin!" (Four Black Fogs Formation) A thick, black fog bank manifested above the Sound Four and swirled into the coffin. It filled the coffin to the brim like an evil soup, and the top of the vile mist solidified to form a perfect lid. Once the fog had stabilized, Sakon bit his thumb and used his blood to write a seal onto five tags, which he then threw at the coffin.
"Fukoku Houin!" (Black Sealing Method) The blood seals were drawn to the fog-lid like bits of iron to magnets and bound it to the coffin, preventing it from dissipating.
"With the exception of the burst of Chakra that happens when a Cursed Seal evolves into its second stage, Fukoku Houin can only be broken from the outside!" Sakon smirked. "Even if Sasuke somehow breaks out of the suspended animation forced on him by Shikokumujin, he'll be trapped in there until we get back to Otogakure!"
"Great, great, now let's get some goddamned rest so we can hurry up and get out of here!" Tayuya lay against a nearby tree and went to sleep. Sakon and Jirobo followed suit. Kidomaru laid hundreds of traps around their position as quickly as possible, rigged wires around his fingers, and entered a half-conscious state that would allow him to wake up almost instantly if his traps were triggered. He knew his fellow Sound Four members were sleeping lightly; it would only take one loud word from him to wake them all up.
Otogakure – Medical Wing
Kimimaro sat up in his bed, feeling better than he had in months. All he could recall in recent memory was indescribable pain as his terminal illness eroded his body. Now, however, that pain was gone. The young man looked at the numerous IVs dripping chemicals into several parts of his body and marveled that the fluid, typically green, had been replaced by an azure blue. As Kimimaro did some minor exercises in his bed to ascertain his current limits, Orochimaru entered his room. "Welcome back to the realm of the living, Kimimaro-kun. How are you feeling?"
"My body is still weak, Orochimaru-sama, but it no longer suffers unbearable agony." Kimimaro replied. "I can only assume that Kabuto-sensei has made a breakthrough regarding my illness."
"In a manner of speaking." Orochimaru confirmed. "Kabuto always possessed the knowledge needed to cure your disease; he only needed to alter his methodology and approach the problem from a different perspective. It is truly regrettable that he took as long as he did to realize this, but your life is no longer in danger, and that is all that matters."
Kimimaro got out of bed and prostrated himself on the floor. "Then how may I be of service, Orochimaru-sama?"
Orochimaru raised his hand, granting Kimimaro permission to rise. "With your illness cured, you are no longer useless to me, but the damage that infernal disease inflicted is not easy to reverse. Kabuto is currently in the archives researching a method to fully restore you; I have ordered him not to leave until he has, at least, a starting point for that endeavor. With Kabuto indisposed, you are the only one I can trust for the mission I am about to give you."
Kimimaro's eyes shone with unshakable resolve. "Name it, Orochimaru-sama, and it shall be done."
The Snake Sannin gave his servant a wicked smile. "In your current state, you are not fit to be my vessel. The Sound Four have retrieved my next vessel – Sasuke Uchiha – from Konoha and are currently en route. Konoha will undoubtedly send its top agents to rescue Sasuke-kun. You are to depart for Konoha immediately, acquire Sasuke-kun, and return here with all haste. The Sound Four are expendable; with your full recovery only a matter of time, I no longer need them."
"Your will is law, Orochimaru-sama." Kimimaro spoke with fanatical fervor. He delayed his departure only long enough to fully clothe himself.
Shortly after Kimimaro left the room, Orochimaru made a single hand seal. His body and clothes shifted in color to a uniform blue hue. With a loud pop, his body lost all cohesion and became nothing more than a puddle of water on the floor. No one was present in the Medical Wing to notice the dispelling of Orochimaru's Mizu Bushin.
1 Hour Later
Kiba slowed down as new scents assailed her nose. "Aside from Sasuke-kun I've been four other scents for a while now. Recently, two new scents, along with the scent of blood, joined the original five. Now, those first five scents have left the blood zone."
"Our prey encountered opposition, which they have bested, and have resumed their retreat." Tetsuisshi surmised.
"Most likely," Shikamaru agreed, "be ready for anything, team; we haven't run into any traps yet, but we will soon."
Hinata expanded her Byakugan to its maximum range, currently just under one hundred meters, and alerted the team of several tags attached to various trees. The team moved quickly, but safely through the gauntlet. Eventually, they came to an area where dozens of ninja wires were stretched just above the ground.
"Guys, wait a minute." Naruto focused his gaze on the wires before him and noticed that over half of them were dyed green to blend in almost perfectly with the undergrowth below them. "Kiba-chan, let me take point for a bit; the ground is covered in green wires, and even my superhuman sight can barely make them out. We'll be safe if all of you step exactly where I do."
"A double-trap, how troublesome!" Shikamaru tsked. Naruto moved to the front of the formation, and the team mimicked his movements through the maze of verdant wires. Choji, the least dexterous member of the team, nearly lost his balance twice but Shikmaru's Kagemane no Jutsu prevented him from tripping any of the wires.
After seven minutes that felt more like seven hours, the team was past all the wire traps, and Kiba and Naruto moved to their assigned spots in the formation.
"I've spotted our targets, roughly twenty meters east of our position!" Hinata spoke just loud enough for the whole team to hear.
"At this point, stealth must take precedence over speed; we have the element of surprise and cannot afford to squander it." Tetsuisshi warned, getting nods from the rest of the team.
The Sound Four's position was a small circle of trees surrounded by dozens of small bushes. As Konoha Shinobi, all members of the team aside from Tetsuisshi could glide through this forest as silently as a ghost, and the Kiri sniper had similar experience due to her ambushes against Kiri assassins. Nearly every Shinobi in Kiri had some degree of superhuman hearing; moving silently regardless of terrain was essential to surviving the civil war.
Despite being able to move as quietly as a ghost, the team's members were not as intangible as one. They could not avoid rustling the bushes as they moved through them, which triggered some of the spider webs Kidomaru had scattered in the area!
"Ambush! Seven meters to the west!" Kidomaru hissed just loud enough to awaken his teammates. Sakon immediately responded by throwing a volley of bomb kunai at the designated area. After they exploded, Tayuya used Yin Release to sense if the Konoha scum survived, but she found no Chakra signatures in the blast radius! Before she could warn her team, Kidomaru grabbed a web each in all six of his hands and yanked on them with all his might. In the next instant, the entire Sasuke Retrieval Team was dumped unceremoniously on the ground about twenty feet away from the Sound Four.
"Fools, my threads are all over this place! You never stood a chance of sneaking up on us!" Kidomaru cackled.
"A triple-trap is quite troublesome," Shikamaru agreed, "but not as troublesome as this." Normally, the Kagemane no Jutsu requires only a single hand seal, and Shikamaru had mastered the basic form of it, meaning he needed no hand seals to project his shadow short distances as long as the paths created were in straight lines. The Sound Four were close enough to meet those criteria, so they had no warning when the Nara Heir's shadow darted away from him and split into four branches. Their shadows were invaded by Shikamaru's in less than half a second.
"The Nara Clan and their shadows. Orochimaru-sama warned us about your powers, boy, meaning we have a little something cooked up just for you!" From outside the circle of trees, a shuriken volley flew toward Shikamaru's head and heart. The Nara Heir shifted his body to dodge, but the sudden movement broke his concentration on the Kagemane no Jutsu. Since he had cast it without a hand seal, the Chakra used to form the Jutsu was not as refined as it would have been otherwise and Shikamaru needed more focus than normal to maintain its existence. The unexpected dodge flustered him enough to dispel the Jutsu, and Sound Four wasted no time in exploiting the young Chuunin's lapse.
Jirobo squatted and placed his hands on the ground, and the earth all around the Sasuke Retrieval Team was upheaved and restructured into a dome before any of them could react. "Doton Kekkai: Dorou Doumu!" (Earth Release Barrier: Earth Prison Dome of Magnificent Nothingness)
"Damn it!" Shikamaru swore.
"Continue the mission." Jirobo told his teammates, "I'll catch up once I've eaten my fill."
"Make it quick!" Sakon ordered as Kidomaru placed Sasuke's coffin on his back.
"Rasengan!" Naruto wasted no time in using his strongest Jutsu to blast a hole in the dome. Before he could hit the closest wall, the Rasengan warbled dangerously as Chakra began to leak out of it!
"Shit!" Naruto tightened his control over the Jutsu and managed to stabilize it, but its power was reduced by over two-thirds before he could hit the wall and made only a large dent.
"Tsuuga!" Kiba used the one-man variant of her clan's signature Ninjutsu and managed to make a much larger dent in the part of the wall she aimed at, but the damage was still largely superficial. Within seconds, both Naruto's and Kiba's wall sections repaired themselves.
"He's draining our Chakra!" Hinata gasped as she noticed the team's Chakra signatures dim unnaturally while Jirobo's signature brightened. "A large percentage of our siphoned Chakra is being funneled back into the dome to repair it, but the amount he drains from us is larger than what he is using to restore the dome!"
"Then we are trapped in the grasp of the proverbial snake." Tetsuisshi mused. "As we continue to struggle, the constrictor's grip tightens evermore."
"Fuck that!" Kiba drew Tessaiga and hacked at the closest wall with a powerful two-handed swing. The impact sent shivers up her spine, and the wall was unharmed.
"WHAT THE HELL, NARUTO-KUN?!" Kiba roared. "You said Tessaiga could cut through anything, even in his sealed state!"
"Almost anything," Naruto corrected, "and Chakra-reinforced, constantly regenerating earthen walls are clearly one of the exceptions! Not to mention that, since Tessaiga-dono isn't a Namikaze Clan treasure, the information my archives have on him may be exaggerated!"
The Namikaze Lord let out a huge sigh. "I really hoped that I wouldn't need to play this card so soon into the mission, but beggars can't be choosers. Everyone, stop trying to break the dome. Choji-kun, divide those ninja rations into six portions and give one to all of us; keep the last portion for yourself. As soon as I crack the dome open like an egg. We'll all eat our portion to restore our Chakra."
"Naruto-kun, what are you – " Shikamaru's question died on his lips as the entire dome was suffocated by Naruto's killing intent. The Namikaze Lord softly urged his Youki core into its active state, forcing a gradual transition into his Daiyoukai form instead of his typical near-instantaneous transformation.
"By Lord Poseidon!" Tetsuisshi swore, and Kiba's, Choji's, and Shikamaru's shocked faces mirrored her sentiment. Naruto's fingernails transformed into claws, his hair transmuted from blond to silver and cascaded down his back to just above his waist, his eyes shifted in color from azure blue to sun gold, and two magenta stripes appeared on each side of his face; the first set just below his eyes and the second set halfway down his face, at the same height as his earlobes.
"T-This is a Daiyoukai?" Kiba shuddered.
"Yeah," Naruto grinned, "but you ain't seen nothing yet!" The descendant of Sesshomaru drew Tokijin and channeled a fifth of his Youki into it. 'Hey Tokijin, feel like running wild?'
'You're still not worthy of more than ten percent of my full power, but that amount is free for you to use as you see fit!' The Youkai blade reminded Naruto.
'That's PLENTY!' Naruto broke the sound barrier and, the next instant, slashed at the nearest wall with Tokijin. The accursed earth dome shattered like paper against the combined might of Naruto and Tokijin. For this attack, Naruto kept Tokijin's lightning contained within the blade, amplifying the force of the strike exponentially. Once the whole team was safely out of the sphere, Naruto reverted to his human form.
"Hmph! So you broke free of my Jutsu. That's pretty good, kids." Jirobo praised as the Sasuke Retrieval Team quickly devoured their assigned ninja rations. "And you brought Ninja rations to regain the Chakra I ate from all of you. Better and better, but still nowhere near enough! "Doton: Doryou Dango!" (Earth Release: Earth Mausoleum Sphere)
Jirobo slammed a hand to the ground, causing a localized earthquake that unearthed a huge lump of dirt that Jirobo grabbed and hurled at the Sasuke Retrieval Team.
"Nikudan Sensha!" Choji swelled to over twice his normal height and assumed a spherical shape before rolling toward the massive earth heap. He plunged through the giant mound, shattering it to pieces, and rammed into Jirobo!
Unfortunately for Choji, most of his momentum was depleted by his impact with the gargantuan earth sphere, so Jirobo had little trouble halting Choji's momentum with his bare hands and kicking him away. He rushed to Choji to continue his assault, but Tetsuisshi launched two water arrows at him!
"Thanks for the meal!" Jirobo said kindly as he stretched out his hands and drained the Suiton Jutsu's Chakra.
"You can drain Jutsu in addition to raw Chakra; such a monstrous ability befits a cruel giant such as yourself." Tetsuisshi observed.
"I'll take that as a compliment. Physically, I'm the strongest out of the Sound Four!" Jirobo bragged.
"Then the other three members of your group are superior to you in other aspects?" A small smile played across Tetsuisshi's stoic face.
"Grrr, you'll die slowly for that!" Jirobo vowed, conceding the Kiri sniper's point.
"Not on my watch, she won't!" Choji declared, now recovered from Jirobo's kick.
"Shikamaru-san and Naruto-san, please allow the two of us to deal with this brute." Tetsuisshi requested. "The majority of our team members are close-combat specialists, making them poor matches against an enemy who can drain Chakra through his hands. My long-range attacks offer the best opportunity of circumventing his technique. With Choji-kun as support, I can bring this foe to his knees!"
"Then kick his ass and catch up to us quickly!" Naruto barked. "Kiba-chan, get us back on these bastards' trail! On the double, missy!"
"Y-Yes sir!" Kiba sniffed the air for a few seconds before taking off in the direction taken by the rest of the Sound Four. Jirobo didn't bother trying to intercept them; as much as he hated to admit it, he was, overall, the weakest member of the Sound Four, and he knew the rest of Konoha's team were doomed the second they ran into his betters.
"You've proven to be tough enough food for me to bother remembering your names. I am Jirobo of the South Gate, personal bodyguard to Orochimaru-sama!"
"Choji of the Akimichi Clan, though you probably guessed that already after seeing my Jutsu, since your buddy knew about Shikamaru's clan." Choji quickly withdrew the glass case containing his clan's secret pills and ate the green one.
"Tetsuisshi, of Kiri's Umino Clan." The Kiri sniper softly introduced herself.
"I don't know your Clan, but your Chakra is delicious, like freshly grilled fish! Between both of you, I'll eat well today!" Jirobo charged at Choji who countered with a charge of his own. With his Chakra and physical prowess amplified by the green spinach pill, Choji proved to have superior initiative and was able to lift Jirobo up and throw him with so much force he slammed into a tree hundreds of feet away!
'Impossible! I lost in a contest of strength?!' Jirobo barely managed to stand before a giant water arrow streaked toward him.
"Useless!" Jirobo stretched out his hands to absorb the Jutsu, but the huge arrow scattered into hundreds of smaller arrows that pierced him all over his body!
"ENOUGH!" Jirobo's Chakra flared, and the arrows were forced out of him before they could cause any real damage. Blood dripped from dozens of tiny wounds but the damage was superficial, at best.
Another pair of arrows flew toward the angry giant. In his fury, he instinctively raised his hands to absorb them. The arrow that struck his left hand was absorbed without incident, but he screamed in pain when its twin struck his right hand! After the Suiton Chakra dissipated, Jirobo noticed that his right hand was impaled by an actual arrow.
"Two of my three hypotheses have been confirmed." Tetsuisshi grinned. "Though the answer seemed somewhat obvious, I needed to verify if you could only absorb Chakra and Jutsu through your hands. The scattershot affirmed that you are, in fact, limited to doing precisely that. The second hypothesis concerns your durability; the Jutsu you use to drain Chakra does not augment the durability of your hands, as was shown by my arrow piercing one of them."
"You worthless piece of scum! I'll rip you to p – ARRRGGHHH!" Jirobo's threat was halted by a tremendous surge of pain from his left arm.
"Ah, the third hypothesis is now also confirmed." Tetsuisshi's smile now threatened to tear her face in half. "Just as a sponge can only absorb so much water before becoming unable to do so, there must be a limit on how much Chakra you can safely absorb at any given point in time. If that limit is exceeded, even for an instant, your body suffers. Now, I wonder, how much Chakra oversaturation your body can withstand before your cells disintegrate?"
Choji took a half-step away from Tetsuisshi, who was standing right next to him. "Tetsuisshi-chan, you're scary when you're mad."
"I am not angry," Tetsuisshi said coolly, "the scientific method is an ideal means to decipher an enemy's techniques. Experimentation is essential, and rarely ends in the target's survival."
"Y-yeah, that's not helping." Choji gulped just before pain wracked his entire body. 'Shit! Just the first pill hurts this much?!'
"Choji-kun!" Tetsuisshi yelled as Choji's pain decreased to a somewhat manageable level.
"I'm fine, Tetsuisshi-chan, but this needs to end now!" The Akimichi Heir reached into his ninja pouch and withdrew two long wires with dozens of kunai attached to them. He wrapped the wires around his body and then swelled to enormous size once more.
"Nikudan Hari Sensha!" (Spiked Human Bullet Tank) Choji's human-boulder form once again launched at Jirobo, the kunai he had wrapped around himself now served as spikes that drastically improved his traction and destructive force.
"Hmph! Doton: Doruku Gaeshi!" (Earth Release: Earth Shore Return) Jirobo slammed his hand against the ground, and a slab of earth nearly twice as large as him was torn off the ground and forced to stand upright, forming a huge wall. Just before Choji impacted the wall, thirty water arrows bombarded it from angles that were guaranteed not to intersect with Choji's trajectory. They lacked the power to destroy the earth wall but they weakened more than enough for Choji to plow through it while retaining almost all of his speed!
Jirobo grunted in pain as Choji's spiked-ball form carved into his flesh! "You've pushed your luck long enough, scumbag!" Black arrowhead marks spread across his body, and the Jirobo's enhanced strength allowed him to knock Choji back with ease.
"So this is the Cursed Seal Naruto-san warned us about. I have never encountered Chakra that felt so fundamentally wrong!"
"Insult Orochimaru-sama's gift all you want, it doesn't change the fact that the two of you are trash!" Jirobo shouted.
Choji tensed up, quivering with rage.
Jirobo smirked, "Touched a nerve there, did I?" His smile faded as Choji started laughing.
"Me, trash?" The young man chuckled. "Could trash teach someone how to overcome a nutritional deficit, winning their heart while they're at it?"
Tetsuisshi blushed fiercely upon hearing that, but didn't interrupt.
"No, fatso, you're the only trash heap around here. And it's high-time someone cleaned you out!" Choji pulled out his glass case for the second time and ate the yellow curry pill."Bubun Baika no Jutsu!" Choji's right arm swelled tremendously and pinned Jirobo to the ground.
"I'm through playing around, scum!" Jirobo broke free of Choji's grip and punched him into the sky. Tetsuisshi launched twenty of her special arrows at him, but they bounced off his skin!
"In my First State, my strength and durability are tripled. Your puny arrows can't hurt me anymore, Kiri scum!"
"Then try this on for size!" Choji yelled as he fell toward the ground. "Chou Baika no Jutsu!" (Super Multi-Size Technique) Choji swelled to the height of a small mountain and crashed into Jirobo. Tetsuisshi barely managed to leap out of the impact site in time and was still buffeted by the shockwave produced by the attack. She was able to right herself before she crashed into the ground and landed on her feet far away from the impact site.
Still in his super-expanded form, Choji's eyes widened in terror as he felt his gargantuan body get pushed off the ground.
"I never thought a loser like you could force me into my Second State." Jirobo growled. With a mighty palm thrust, Jirobo cast Choji into the sky once more. His Jutsu dispersed when he crashed back to the ground, reducing him to human size once more. He struggled to stand as the aftereffects of the yellow pilled made it almost too painful to move.
"You're finished. My Second State is ten times more powerful than my First State. While using it eats up a tremendous amount of Chakra, until it wears off, I'm invincible." Jirobo's Second State was horrifying to Choji. The giant's mohawk had grown into a long spiky mane that reached his shoulders, his skin was now the color of rust, and his eyes now had yellow irises and black sclera. Most disgusting of all, he had various warts all over his face, shoulders, and forehead.
'I guess this is my last day with Tetsuisshi-chan.' Choji struggled to fish his glass case out of his pocket one last time. 'Sorry, Tetsuisshi-chan, I really wanted to meet your dad.' As Jirobo stalked toward him, Choji grabbed the red chili pepper pill with trembling fingers.
In the split second between Choji taking the fatal pill out of his case and popping it into his mouth, he felt a rush of wind assail his face. He blinked in surprise, and then froze in horror. The chili pepper pill was gone! He turned his head in the direction the wind had blown and saw one of Tetsuisshi's special arrows on the ground next to the shattered remnants of his pill.
"Choji Akimichi, Heir of your Clan, you are not permitted to die!" Tetsuisshi stomped toward her lover with the fury of a tidal wave. "You have laid claim to my heart, and must survive long enough to take responsibility for your actions!" The Kiri sniper dispelled her water bow and unfurled a storage scroll. She used one of her arrows to pierce her thumb and smeared blood on the scroll. With a puff of smoke, a sword resembling a large needle appeared in her left hand. A long length of wire thinner than fishing line was tied to a rectangular hole at the base of the blade's hilt.
"Jirobo of the South Gate, I now fight you no longer as a member of the Sasuke Retrieval Team, but as Tetsuisshi Umino, wielder of Nuibari, and a proud member of Kiri's Seven Swordsmen!"
"Kiri gave garbage like you one of the Seven Swords? They must really be scraping the bottom of the barrel if you're the best new recruit they have." Jirobo spat. "Fine, it doesn't matter to me which of you dies first!" The enraged giant lunged at Tetsuisshi, who channeled a large portion of her remaining Chakra to her legs, leaped nimbly out of the way, and then immediately counterattacked. Nuibari pierced his Chakra-empowered skin like tissue paper and bit deeply into his right shoulder.
"WHAT?!" Jirobo gasped, but Tetsuisshi was far from done. She danced around him like a pack of wolves, piercing every joint and organ she could reach, which was most of them given Nuibari's length. Jirobo flailed around in savage fury, but couldn't hit the lithe Kiri Chunnin.
"RRRRAAAAGHHH!" Jirobo's Chakra exploded around him, leaving craters in the earth. Tetsuisshi barely managed to Shunshin out of the Doton Chakra's blast radius in time to avoid being crushed. She appeared next to Choji and nearly dropped Nuibari as she collapsed in pain.
"My Chakra is depleted, and that last attack fractured my legs. I can no longer fight." Tetsuisshi panted.
"Don't worry, the pain from the second pill's mostly worn off, but a decent chunk of the Chakra it provided me with is still in my system! I can finish this!" Choji weaved a set of hand seals familiar to Tetsuisshi. "When we fought in the Chunnin Exams, I was still getting a handle on this Jutsu. Now, I've mastered it! Katon: Enetsu Suika!" The air shimmered around Choji, just like it had when he deflected her water arrows in a fight that seemed to be a lifetime ago. Heat was rolling off Choji like the sun.
"YOU'RE BOTH DEAD!" Jirobo charged at the pair.
"With how many times my girlfriend stuck you with her sword, your vital organs must be full of holes! Your rage is the only thing keeping you alive, and I'm going to blast it right out of you!" Choji concentrated his Jutsu on his right fist, and the air around it ignited. The Akimichi Heir met Jirobo's charge head-on and punched a fiery hole in his chest! Like a marionette whose strings had been cut, Jirobo's body went limp and fell, never to rise again.
"Take that, you ugly, fat bastard!" Choji coughed as he also collapsed.
"CHOJI-KUN!" Tetsuisshi limped to Choji's side as quickly as possible.
"Relax, Tetsuisshi-chan, I'm not dying. Though it sure feels like I am at the moment." Choji reassured her. "Remember when Shikamaru said that the pills convert my fat into Chakra? Well, Enetsu Suika does the same thing. Not to anywhere near the same degree as the red pill, but it's enough to make using Enetsu Suika on the same day as eating the first two pills a really dumb idea. Imagine if I ate a second yellow pill; not enough to kill me, but I'll be in a world of hurt for at least two weeks."
"Idiocy," Tetsuisshi smiled, "but your capacity for logical thought is not what won my heart." The Kiri sniper gave up on trying to stand in that moment and fell onto Choji. Before the young man could protest, her lips slammed into his.
'I hope the rest of the team has a better time fighting these bastards than we did.' Choji begged any god who was listening as he returned the kiss.
"Heads up team, we'll be right on top of them soon!" Kiba warned, grateful that the Sound Four hadn't bothered to lay any traps since the team was imprisoned by Jirobo.
"Should I use a Henge and try to trick them into thinking we're all dead?" Naruto asked Shikamaru.
"Bad idea when we have no clue about the huge guy's mannerisms, or how he usually speaks with his teammates." Shikamaru answered. "We're better off just launching a surprise attack."
Before anyone on the team could respond, a volley of giant spider webs pinned the entire team to the tree branches they were standing on!
"I told you earlier, my threads are all over this forest! We've known you were following us for ages now!" Kidomaru smirked.
Hinata's eyes widened as a huge amount of Chakra manifested in Kidomaru's mouth. He reached into his mouth with all six of his hands and pulled golden spider thread out, which quickly congealed into claw-like clubs!
"Now then, which of you should I kill first?" Kidomaru aimed a club at Naruto. "Tag, your IT, blue-eyed brat!" The six-armed Shinobi hurled one of his clubs at Naruto.
"Wrong choice, fucker! Daitoppa!" With numerous Kage Bushin, Naruto was able to further refine his Fuuton mastery while also training under Haku and Kurama what they needed to teach him. His Fuuton prowess had progressed to the point that he could use C-Rank or lower Fuuton Jutsu without hand seals. The gust he produced had a wind speed comparable to an F1 tornado. Kidomaru's club was flung right back at him at nearly triple its original speed. He dodged quickly enough to avoid direct hits from both his own club and the wind blast, but he was still sideswiped by the Jutsu and dropped his remaining clubs.
As soon as Kidomaru leaped away, Naruto shifted into his Daiyoukai form just long enough to use its immense strength to break free of his web prison. Once free, he channeled Fuuton Chakra through one of his kunai and cut the rest of the team free of their webs.
"Naruto, Shikamaru-kun, please allow me to deal with this pest!" Hinata demanded. "He surprised us before, but his webs are Chakra constructs, which are useless against the Juuken! Of all of us here assembled, I am the best match to his Jutsu that we have!"
"Then show him what my future bride can do!" Naruto consented.
"I have no complaints. Once you're done here, double back to Choji and Tetsuisshi-san's position. Shikamaru ordered. "The enemy is only in front of us and seems keen on escaping first and killing us second, so a rear-guard is redundant at this point in the mission."
Leaving Hinata behind, the remaining three members of the Sasuke Retrieval Team continued to follow the enemy's scent.
"Like Hell you're getting away!" Kidomaru fired three giant webs at the fleeing Konoha Shinobi, but they were intercepted by Hinata, who used several chopping strikes to sever the webs.
"Nice moves, girl, you must be the strongest of the bunch! I really want to play with you now. Let's take this game nice and slow; you've riled me up, so I need to toy with you for at least three minutes before you die!" Hinata saw Chakra build up in Kidomaru's mouth before he fired sixteen webs at her! She dodged most of them, but the last two caught her and pinned her to a tree trunk. Kidomaru fired several more webs, completely covering her arms.
"Orochimaru-sama warned us about all the clans with powerful Jutsu that your precious Hokage might send after us. Above all else, he said to be really careful about the Hyuuga and their Juuken, but, personally, I don't see what the big deal is." Kidomaru sighed. Your whole clan is a bunch of Taijutsu specialists. If I get your arms, you can't do anything to my threads. It's only been a minute, but I'm already bored of you. Once you figure out the strategy needed to beat a game, it's no longer any fun. Die! Kumo Nenkin!" (Spider Sticky Gold)
Kidomaru vomited a golden spear, which would have impaled Hinata if she hadn't radiated Chakra from all of her Tenketsu to break out of his webs. She fell off the tree trunk just before Kidomaru's spear hit.
"What!?" Kidomaru gawked.
"The Juuken grants the Hyuuga the capacity to emit Chakra from any point on our bodies. What should concern you far more, at this point, is that you are within range of my divination. Hakke Rokujuumon Shou!" Hinata unleashed the Hyuuga's ultimate technique upon Kidomaru. Sixty-four strikes rained down on his Tenketsu, but Hinata felt like she was hitting metal with each strike. After her final set of thirty-two strikes blasted Kidomaru through the tree they were fighting on. Her suspicions were confirmed when a golden carapace fell off of Kidomaru's body.
"Golden skin? So you also can emit your signature Jutsu from any point of your body." The Hyuuga princess' eyes narrowed.
"You guessed it! My Kumo Nenkin can be secreted from my sweat glands, allowing me to cover my entire body with it in a heartbeat. As you've no doubt noticed, it's resistant to Chakra. Your precious Juuken can't break through it!" Kidomaru taunted before Shunshining into the forest.
Hinata began increasing her Byakugan's range to its maximum. As she reached the halfway point, a bomb kunai landed at her feet. She leaped away from it, only to have almost three dozen gold spikes come at her from all directions!
"Hakkeshou Kaiten!" Hinata invoked her clan's signature defensive technique, and a swirling dome of Chakra swatted the spikes away.
"No way! She not only saw all the spikes but used an omnidirectional defense to block them all?!" Kidomaru's shock nearly cost him his life as Hinata threw a kunai straight at him!
"There's no sense in hiding. Your golden armor may protect you from my Juuken's strikes, but your Chakra signature is still clear as day to my eyes." Hinata glared at the spider Shinobi.
"Very well, young lady, I'll admit that this game has a rather high level of difficulty!" Kidomaru hung upside down from a tree branch, suspended by his threads. Vine-like lines spread across his body as he entered his First State. "I am Kidomaru of the East Gate, personal bodyguard to Orochimaru-sama!"
"Hinata Hyuuga, first-born daughter of Hisashi Hyuuga, head of my clan." Hinata returned the courtesy while observing the increase to Kidomaru's Chakra. 'The seal spreading over his body has tripled his Chakra reserves and feels similar to the seal Orochimaru-san inflicted upon Sasuke-kun. I need to be on my guard!'
"Wow, a clan princess? No wonder you're such a fun toy. I'll enjoy breaking you!" Kidomaru laughed while weaving a set of hand seals with two of his hands as he spun a spider web between another set of his hands. "Kuchiyose no Jutsu!" Kidomaru slammed his hand into the spider web, and a giant spider web spread across the trees above him. A similarly massive spider was conjured along with the web, and Kidomaru was using Chakra to stick to its back.
"Just you wait, Hinata-chan! I'll find the perfect way to take you down!" The spider secreted a giant web sack, which quickly opened to reveal hundreds of spiders roughly the size of a small dog. As the baby spiders swarmed Hinata, Kidomaru created another golden spike.
'He's testing me. Then I'll put on a show!' Hinata once again used her clan's legendary defense to swat the spiders away, but their webs clung to the spinning dome and slowed it drastically, forcing Hinata's spin to stop prematurely. A second wave of spiders spit more webs at Hinata. As she twisted to avoid them, Kidomaru launched the spear he made earlier, but she managed to alter its trajectory by emitting a high concentration of Chakra and barely dodged what would have otherwise been a fatal strike.
"Tsk! Almost had her!" Kidomaru cursed.
Hinata gazed at the spiders all around her. 'I must concede that Kidomaru-san is quite brilliant. Clogging the Hakkeshou Kaiten with Chakra webs would spell certain doom for any Hyuuga lacking the means to kill the spiders from a distance, which is most of them.' As the spiders closed in on her once more, lighting began to crackle between her fingers.
"It doesn't matter what she's planning, she has no long-range Jutsu and her defensive technique can't stop all the spiders!" Kidomaru cackled.
"DENSHURIKEN NO JUTSU!" Hinata yelled before making throwing motions with her hands in all directions. Hundreds of lightning shuriken flew from her fingers. Within seconds, every baby spider was dead.
"IMPOSSIBLE! Orochimaru-sama never warned us about this!" Kidomaru shrieked.
"Your master's data regarding my clan is sorely obsolete." Hinata glared at Kidomaru before launching a giant lightning shuriken at the spider matriarch, killing it instantly. "The traditional Hyuuga arts are powerful, but are known to many outside of Konoha. Did you truly believe the Hyuuga would do nothing while the Elemental Nations devised countermeasures to our techniques?" Granted, said innovations were still in their infancy, but Kidomaru didn't need to know that.
"My my, Hinata-chan, you really are a handful!" Kidomaru's cursed seal spread even further across his body before his skin began deepening from light-brown to dark-red. His eyes gained the same yellow irises and black sclera as Jirobo, his canine teeth and fingernails elongated, with the latter turning black in color, and his hair flooded down his back and shifted in color from black to gray. In addition, he grew horns on his forehead, shoulders, and elbows, and his mouth stretched wider. Most unsettling of all, his forehead protector fell off, revealing a third eye with the same alterations as the two beneath it.
Hinata allowed Kidomaru's transformation to his Second Stage to occur without incident; she had her own preparations to make. 'This will be the first time I've used my new Juuken form in combat of any kind!'
Hinata began circulating Raiton Chakra through her legs, slowly and in small increments at first, then with gradually increasing speed and quantity. While she was finishing her preparations, Kidomaru forged a golden bow from his signature gum. One of his hands held the bow, a second grabbed the string, another three grasped threads holding him in place, and his last hand wrapped around a tree trunk to anchor him in place. His feet were planted on the bow, keeping it in place, and he nocked a golden arrow with his teeth.
"Striking Accuracy: 100 percent! Destructive Power: Maximum!" Kidomaru shouted as best he could with an arrow between his teeth. "DIE!" The golden arrow streaked toward Hinata.
"Rai no Juuken: Shun!" (Lightning's Gentle Fist: Speed) Hinata vanished from sight so quickly that Kidomaru mistook it for a Shunshin and barely managed to catch sight of Hinata again before she appeared right in front of him and landed a devastating roundhouse kick with an electrified leg! Kidomaru fell from his tree and didn't even have time to hit the ground before Hinata launched at him and landed three more kicks before his face hit the dirt.
"You BITCH!" Kidomaru screamed as he struggled to stand, but the Raiton Chakra surging through Hinata's legs hindered his efforts.
'Damn it! My golden armor conducts electricity! She's turned my ultimate defense against me!' While the spider Shinobi struggled to stand, Hinata inhaled deeply and shifted her Jutsu into the upper portion of her body.
"Rai no Juuken: Sei!" (Lightning's Gentle Fist: Force) Now, Hinata's upper body, especially her arms and hands, crackled with lightning as she lunged at Kidomaru. Still recovering from the Hyuuga princess' brutal barrage of kicks, could barely defend himself from the fusillade of Juuken strikes. Despite having six arms, an anatomical trait that would lend itself perfectly to Taijutsu, Kidomaru had always preferred long-range combat and neglected his Taijutsu skills. Still, having six arms granted him just enough leeway to prevent Hinata from striking any Tenketsu connected to his vital organs.
After several seconds, Hinata leaped away from Kidomaru and coughed up a small amount of blood.
"Ha! That Jutsu puts your life in jeopardy, and it looks like you're nearly at your limit!" Kidomaru laughed.
"You are in no position to talk; your arms are all but paralyzed by my attacks, and you can no longer secret your precious golden armor through them! This ends now!" Hinata rushed at her prey, using an ill-favored Juuken stance that emphasized maximum destruction to Tenketsu over the speed and precision the Hyuuga were known for. "Rai no Juuken: Hakke Juuroku Shou!" (Lightning's Gentle Fist: Eight Trigrams Sixteen Palms) Hinata's assault, while sluggish compared to the strikes that preceded it, was still too fast for Kidomaru to dodge or counter. His arms were ravaged, and his speed was crippled by all the electric attacks he had previously endured. He tried to block with the one arm he had that could still move, and the arm was broken with a single strike.
The destructive force of the remaining fifteen strikes was more reminiscent of Guy's Gouken (Strong Fist) style than anything commonly associated with the Hyuuga. Kidomaru's torso was decimated and had visible dents in several areas. If, by some miracle, the pulverization of nearly every organ held in a human's thorax and abdomen didn't kill Kidomaru, the utter annihilation of the Tenketsu connected to those organs guaranteed the spider Shinobi's demise.
Her task complete, Hinata canceled her Jutsu as she coughed up more blood. "Two minutes and thirty-eight seconds. That was far too close when my maximum survivable limit with the Rai no Juuken is two minutes and forty-five seconds. I sincerely hope that Choji-kun and Tetsuisshi-san have already bested their foe. If not, I shall be more hindrance than help in my present state."
Chapter End
Two members of the Sound Five down, three to go! In canon, Choji and Neji only survived their battles against the Sound Four due to plot armor, so I changed things to allow Choji and Hinata to win more organically. Naruto broke the team out of Jirobo's prison much earlier than they managed to bust themselves out in canon. Between that and the ninja rations, the whole team is rocking close to full Chakra for their fights. Choji had long-range support, something the entire canon-Sasuke Retrieval Team lacked, and Nuibari is stated to have the greatest piercing power of the Seven Swords. So even with his durability amplified by his Second Stage, Jirobo's body would likely be unable to tank Nuibari.
Since he's shown remotely draining an entire team's Chakra while they were trapped in a confined space, it's not much of a stretch IMO to assume that Jirobo can absorb Jutsu as well, albeit with much less efficiency and far more risk than the Rinnegan's Preda Path.
Kidomaru was a hard counter to Neji in canon. Neji had no long-range offensive Jutsu at the time and his Hakkeshou Kaiten could be neutralized by Kidomaru's spider summons. Here, Hinata had the means to kill the spiders without relying on Hakkeshou Kaiten, meaning that she didn't have to waste time killing them one by one, so Kidomaru didn't have the luxury of analyzing her movements to discover the Byakugan's blind spot like he did with Neji. The Rai no Juuken was inspired by a review left by savitarsurffer, who suggested that Hinata could learn to imbue the Juuken with her element. She's been training like crazy since Naruto was rendered comatose, and the Hakkeshou Kaiten, Hakke Rokujuumon Shou, and the two variants of the Rai no Juuken are the fruits of her labor.
For any wondering, gold is the third-most conductive metal, at least as far as electrical conductivity is concerned; copper is second highest and silver is the most electrically conductive. For the purposes of this fanfic, I'm assuming that Kidomaru's armor has the properties of real gold, so any Raiton user would have an absolute field day against it.
Youki, despite being compatible with Chakra under the right circumstances, is still a completely different type of energy and doesn't interact with Chakra in the same way that Chakra interacts with itself. Tokijin's lightning does not enjoy the same advantage over Doton Jutsu that Raiton Chakra does. That's why Naruto invested one-fifth of his Youki into the attack that destroyed the prison; he wanted to make damn sure the prison couldn't withstand his attack.
And, yes, the Namikaze archives are very wrong about what Tessaiga can do in its dormant state. While it's still incredibly sharp compared to most other weapons and would be able to cut through them with repeated strikes, its cutting power is nowhere near absolute and a Doton Jutsu on the level of Jirobo's prison would have no problem tanking dormant-Tessaiga's slashes.
Curse Mark Stage Two is stated by Jirobo to be ten times stronger than Stage One, but there's no canon multiplier given for the Stage One Cursed Seal, and it's probably different for each version since the Earth and Heaven variants of the Cursed Seal are stated to be tied for the strongest version Orochimaru has created. For this story, the Stage One Cursed Seals all have a x3 multiplier, but they amplify different things. Jirobo's Cursed Seal augmented his strength and durability, while Kidomaru's enhanced the potency of his golden spider gum constructs (for all the good it did him).
The reason why Orochimaru used a Mizu Bushin to give Kimimaro his orders delves into major spoiler territory. It will come into play soon enough.
Thank you for reading!
Rai no Juuken: Lightning's Gentle Fist (A to S-Rank) – A variant of the Juuken invented by Hinata to take advantage of her powerful Raiton affinity. To use it, she must emit Raiton Chakra from as many Tenketsu as possible. At present, she can only safely emit Raiton Chakra from fifty percent of her Tenketsu at any given time, a limitation she weaponized by creating two variants of the Rai no Juuken. The Shun (Speed) variant emits Raiton Chakra from her legs, exponentially increasing her running speed and the power of her kicks. The Sei (Force) variant emits Raiton Chakra from her torso, arms, and hands; this allows her to imbue the conventional Juuken with the Raiton element, making it a perfect countermeasure against Doton specialists and combatants wearing metal armor. At present, Hinata can only sustain the Rai no Juuken for two minutes and forty-five seconds before the strain on her body becomes lethal. Even in its imperfect state, however, the Rai no Juuken is incredibly powerful and will be classified as an S-Rank Jutsu once perfected.
Rai no Juuken: Hakke Juuroku Shou: Lightning's Gentle Fist: Eight Trigrams Sixteen Palms (B to A-Rank) – A variant of the Juuken's Hakke Rokujuumon Shou that sacrifices speed, precision, and three-quarters of the strikes of its parent Jutsu in exchange for overwhelming destructive power more akin to other, external, Taijutsu styles. Any Tenketsu struck by this technique are completely crushed and can never be reopened again. Due to its imprecise nature, several Tenketsu are hit with each strike. Each strike also inflicts immense physical damage to the affected body part, decimating the target anatomically as well as through their Chakra Network. With training, the Jutsu's destructive output can refined to limit anatomical damage to its bare minimum while retaining its full effectiveness against Tenketsu, and its precision can be improved as well. Once the training needed to fully refine the Jutsu is complete, it is considered an A-Rank technique.