A slow, composed sigh escaped Sakura's mouth as she gazed at the watery expanse ahead. Standing atop the surface of a pond in a remote training ground, she spun to face the water's edge and flew through a short sequence that ended with the ram seal, generating a swirling mass of water in her hand that she underhand pitched toward the shore. The Ripping Torrent Jutsu carved into the surface of the pond as it sped toward dry land, picking up masses of water along the way and quickly swelling into a towering vortex. The raging whirlpool skidded across the remaining length of the pond and didn't slow down even when it finally made land, scraping across the dirt and obliterating a wooden training post. Wet shards of wood blown every which way were swiftly followed by trees being uprooted and brought down like a popsicle stick tower on the rampaging maelstrom's path of destruction. The jutsu traveled a little further into the trees before Sakura performed the ram seal once more, activating the chakra within and collapsing the vortex into a powerful wave that washed away the wreckage previously left behind.
"Hell yeah!" Sakura joyously fist-pumped, splashing atop the surface of the pond in her excitement.
She'd been trying to get the remote activation down for months. Learning the Ripping Torrent Jutsu was the easy part, whereas building up her chakra reserves enough to use it effectively was taxing but still doable. Improving upon the jutsu to make it a two-part area-of-effect attack, however, was a task she thought was well beyond her capabilities. Taking an existing jutsu and transforming it into something even better was a feat only managed by geniuses like Kakashi-sensei, or even Sasuke.
Speaking of Kakashi-sensei, he thought differently. He was not only convinced that she could improve the Ripping Torrent, but he even challenged her to do so and have it mastered before he got back from the Kage Summit. The beaming, victorious grin developing on her face at the fact that she actually accomplished it couldn't have been stemmed even if she wanted it to be. She couldn't wait to show him once he returned; maybe they could practice some collaborative jutsus? Water and lightning were a pretty deadly combo, after all.
Unfortunately, her attention quickly shifted to a sudden, massive cloud of smoke appearing out of nowhere a long way past the trees in her periphery. "What the…"
The questions racing through her mind were swiftly answered by a towering snake emerging from the smoke and making a beeline toward the village.
"The hell??" She balked in confusion, her mind now frantic with even more questions. From what little she knew of the woman, Anko almost never summoned anything that large, nor was there a woman wearing a trench coat on the snake's head, so this wasn't her doing…
Then, the distinct sounds of a careless stampede through the woods reached her, followed by maniacal laughter bouncing around the trees. She sprinted from the center of the pond back to dry land, and as she reached the shore, she twisted to evade a missile-like swipe from a grotesque, grey-skinned creature. A kunai appeared in her hand in that same instant, and she drove it into the skull of what she now gathered was a monster of a man, briefly giving him a third horn before tearing the kunai out of his head. She was granted no breathing room, though, as another beast tackled her to the ground and pressed down on her chest with his monstrous, winged paw.
She got a brief glimpse of the long, shaggy mane of orange hair adorning his jagged, horned face before she slammed the kunai into his jugular, momentarily halting the unquenchable thirst for blood in his wild gaze. She capitalized by ripping the kunai out and driving it into his temple not once, not twice, but three times for good measure.
Kakashi-sensei lived by the double tap, and so would she.
Hearing yet more of these monsters converging on her, she stashed the kunai between her teeth and kicked the dead man off of her, using that motion to spring into a series of backflips that took her back to the center of the pond's surface. Now back on her feet, she surveyed the scene, taking stock of the dozen or so slobbering creatures that were milling about the shore. Each one was even uglier than the last, and all of them reminded her of that bone-wielding man she and Tenten fought years back…
Fuck, was Orochimaru back? Did he somehow survive that enormous explosion?? Questions for later; she needed to eliminate these pests and get back to the village.
The group of monsters must have had the same idea, as they began to charge her, liquid terrain be damned. Many of them fell right into the water and splashed around, while others had enough control of their faculties to run on the water's surface. It wouldn't matter either way; three hand seals later, a second Ripping Torrent Jutsu formed in her hand, and she launched it at the incoming horde. The vortex formed as expected, swallowing up the pond's water and the unlucky creatures floating within. The unhinged howling that followed and the steady reddening of the vortex told her that the high-pressure jets of water that made up the jutsu were doing their job and carving up whatever and whoever was swept up into the jutsu's clutches.
Meanwhile, the now towering maelstrom made land and carved right through the remaining few that were lagging behind. Once all of the beasts were enduring a watery hell, Sakura allowed them to fester in their fate before she finally detonated the jutsu, and the vortex burst into yet another powerful wave that was dyed crimson with the blood of her attackers. Limbs of all kinds were scattered every which way, but the mangled bodies of the horde mostly stayed together on the shore like a macabre art piece. Most of them were unmoving, but a few writhed and squirmed like flies with their wings clipped.
She was internally thankful for this brief reprieve; she only had a couple of those Ripping Torrents in her before she seriously needed a nap. Still living by the double tap, nonetheless, Sakura retrieved a small storage scroll from her pouch and unsealed a straight-bladed tanto with a small, circular handguard, spitting the kunai from her mouth all the while. Kakashi-sensei bestowed upon her his father's very own signature weapon during their training trip, but she hadn't felt worthy of using it up to now. However, if anything was going to ensure these animals stayed down, it was the White Fang's White Light Chakra Sabre. All she had to do was make sure it didn't break… again.
Dashing to the shore with the sabre in hand, she appeared before every single creature and plunged the blade between their eyes or through the backs of their heads, assuming they still had one. White streaks of chakra trailed off the blade with each stab, giving the tanto its name; she still had no idea how it did that, and Kakashi-sensei honestly didn't either. Putting that out of her mind, though, she finished off the last of them and then darted back to the village as fast as she could.
"How the hell did I get stuck doing this…" Anko grumbled as she slowly chipped away at the stack of paperwork on the Hokage's desk. "I don't even have the fucking clearance for half of this!"
Well, that wasn't technically true anymore. She did have the clearance for all of it as of a week ago when the Hokage summoned her to his office. She figured it was just for another routine mission, probably tracking down and eliminating one of the gangs taking advantage of the chaos in Tsuchi or something. Instead…
"Special Jonin Anko Mitarashi, congratulations, you're being promoted to the full rank of jonin."
"…What?"
"Double congratulations, you've been drafted into my inner circle. You're now one of my de facto advisors."
"…What??"
"What this means is that in the event of the extended absences of myself, Tsunade, and Kakashi in that order, say for a Kage Summit, you will be acting Hokage."
While Anko's brain was still blue-screening, Jiraiya summoned a small, red toad to his desk. "Alright, Kosuke, I'm trusting you to alert Mt. Myoboku in the event of a catastrophe while I'm gone."
"You got it, boss," Kosuke saluted as Jiraiya exited the office through the window."
"Fucking skeevy dickhead," Anko hissed at the memory, angrily signing off and stamping a mission to investigate the slaughter of Tonika Village.
"Could be worse," Kosuke chipped in from the edge of the desk.
"What the hell could be worse than doing a friggin' mountain of stupid ass paperwork, Kermit?!" Anko irritably retorted with a little more venom than necessary.
"Kosuke," the toad pointedly corrected. "And you could be stuck doing paperwork and overseeing a boring council meeting."
Anko groaned, her forehead plopping to the desk. "Yeah, I guess you're right. You guys have to deal with shitty bureaucracy, too?"
"Like you wouldn't believe," Kosuke chuckled. "You'd think that a bunch of traditionalist clans would be able to skirt all the officialism and red tape that comes with an organized government, but there are a lot of factions with a lot of different interests, some in alignment, many not. That's part of why the Frog debacle even happened."
"I heard about that," Anko hummed, thinking back to casual conversations she'd had with her smaller snakes about summon clan society in the past. "I think something similar is happening with the Snakes right now."
"Oh?" Kosuke perked up, turning to Anko fully and placing his chin on his hands. "Do tell."
Anko was beginning to learn a little about this toad, chief among them being that alongside being a trusted messenger and supremely fast, he was also a bit of a gossip. "Well, ever since Orochimaru croaked and Kabuto apparently went MIA, there's been some… discord in their ranks. Manda is, well, Manda. Even though he hated Orochimaru, he's still a piece of work in his own right, and a lot of the snakes aren't super fond of him."
"So, a civil war's brewing about what direction to take the clan into in the future," Kosuke surmised.
"More or less," Anko confirmed. "A lot of them wanna step out of the darkness Orochimaru cast over them, while Manda wants to hold on to power and maintain the status quo. The old White Snake is staying out of it; whatever side she joined would win by default, and she doesn't really care either way."
A thought occurred to her, and she met Kosuke's gaze directly. "…You think the Toads would have any interest in voicing their support for a particular side like the Salamanders did?"
Kosuke hummed, taking a long moment to really consider the idea. "Well, it is on sight between Chief Gamabunta and Manda…"
A thunderous crash shook him out of that thought, followed by several more crashes of similar ferocity.
"The fuck?!" Anko said, leaping out of her chair and rushing to the window.
The sight she was met with gave her a sickening sense of deja vu. Several giant snakes were smashing through the village's walls, one of them speeding through the hole they made and already wreaking havoc on the village's interior.
"Go!" She ordered Kosuke behind her.
"Right!" was all he said before vanishing back to Mt. Myoboku.
Anko opened the window and prepared to leap out, but she was halted by a strange, scaly powder blanketing the village from above. She tried to get a better look at the figure hovering above them, but the sunlight reflecting off the scale powder hit her eyes like a punch from Lady Tsunade, forcing her back into the office with a colorful string of profanity. Biting her thumb as her eyes recovered from the unexpected flashbang, she summoned a small, red rat snake on the desk.
"Yamada," she addressed, thumbing to the window as she continued wiping her eyes. "Whose side are those three on?"
She lowered her arm, allowing Yamada to slither up her sleeve and poke his head out of her collar to take a good look at the snakes attacking Konoha.
"They're loyal to Manda," he hissed.
"And you?"
"Aoda 'till I fuckin' die."
"Awesome. Let's go make ourselves some boots."
Inhuman cackling acted as the psychotic soundtrack to the pandemonium in the village. The unsuspecting shinobi patrolling the outer perimeter of Konoha stood no chance against a force as monstrous as this, and those that escaped the slaughter were allowed little to no time to sound the alarm before they were hunted down and gutted by ROOT. The army of cursed seal experiments poured through the streets with reckless abandon, leaving behind a bloody trail of viscera in their wake. Blinded by the obscenely reflective scale powder blanketing the village, civilians and shinobi alike were ravaged like pieces of meat on the ground, meanwhile, the ANBU and the more resourceful of Konoha's forces were on the roofs preoccupied with ROOT-nin popping out of the woodwork like cockroaches.
To make matters even worse, one of the snakes was significantly more slippery than the others, destructively cruising through the village and shrugging off the spattering of ninjutsu blasted at it without a care in the world. At least, that was the case until he found himself being punched into the tenth dimension out of nowhere, his giant head driven into a nearby building under the weight of Sakura's hard-as-diamond fist empowered by a full-body application of the Earth Spear Jutsu. The snake needed a moment to regain his bearings before he hissed in rage at the impudent human who dared to strike him, but his hunger for delicious retribution was quite literally slashed when a white trail of chakra sliced across his left eye, simultaneously acting in tandem with the scale powder to blind his other eye.
Sakura, meanwhile, grinned at the profanity-laden hiss that preempted the snake's return to Ryuchi Cave. That grin fell as a barrage of shuriken clanked uselessly off of her hardened skin, and she turned to spot a group of ROOT advancing through the scale powder toward her with a few of those monstrosities following behind them. Or rather, it was more accurate to say she saw their feet approaching her, as that's what she was looking directly at. Kakashi-sensei's suggestion to predict her opponent's movements by carefully watching their feet to compensate for the Sharingan's illusory capabilities was frankly ludicrous, but given that very little could actually harm her so long as she maintained the Earth Spear, she could risk it in such a low visibility situation.
However, she didn't need to lift a finger to defend herself before a huge, purple cloud of poison fog blasted past her, cutting through the scale powder and engulfing her attackers in one fell swoop. It barely even took a few seconds for the ROOT-nin to fall over in convulsing heaps, whereas the experiments twisted into even uglier facsimiles of humans, foaming at the mouth and succumbing to the toxic miasma with wide open gapes.
"Thanks, Ino!" Sakura shouted, waving in the general direction the poison mist came from.
Ino sent back a mostly unseen two-finger salute, proud that her apprenticeship under Shizune was bearing so much fruit. "Do you have any idea what the hell is going on?!"
"Not a clue!" Sakura shouted back, ducking a sneak attack and clashing the chakra sabre with her newest attacker's tanto as a feint to cave in their chest with her free hand. "Does it even matter?"
"Not really, just…" Ino trailed off with her eyes shut and her sensory prowess working overtime to pinpoint any and every hostile chakra signature in the vicinity. When throwing poisoned senbon at them didn't seem to be working that well, she found that kunai armed to the teeth in explosive tags were substantially more effective. "That massive chakra hanging over the village is making me really nervous!"
"Massive chakra?" Sakura muttered, reflexively looking upward to check out what Ino meant only for fortune to betray her when the scale powder flashbanged her, as well. "Goddamnit!"
Konohamaru was quickly coming to the realization that he perhaps wasn't built for this. The infamous Chunin Exam invasion that robbed him of his grandfather was the scariest day of his life, but nothing could have prepared him for finally being on the other side of it. Experiencing an invasion as a defacto noncombatant was infinitely different from actively fighting one off as a fully fledged shinobi, and even as a rookie genin, his task of rescuing and safely escorting civilians to the shelters through a proverbial minefield of flashing lights was shaping up to be a nearly impossible task. The confusion wrought by the scale powder only exacerbated the chaos of the fighting, leaving the many unlucky civilians out on the street sitting ducks to the ravenous horde of nightmarish creatures stampeding through the village.
Even still, Konohamaru was determined to not see these search and rescue missions become body recovery missions if he could help it, so he did his best to stomach the fear that had already swallowed him whole and corral as many people in need as he encountered in the direction of safety. Clearing a path in front of him whenever needed with the few wind jutsu he managed to learn from his uncle was simple enough.
Turning a corner and being bum-rushed by one such monster, though, was much less so. As if the panicked gasps of his charges weren't enough, something hard slammed into Konohamaru's gut and nearly knocked the wind out of him. When he looked down to inspect it, he froze.
It was a head.
It was Ebisu-sensei's severed head.
The rest of the world fell away, his entire being captured by his sensei's lifeless eyes peeking over the rim of his shades right at him. To say he was frozen was an understatement; Konohamaru was barely even present anymore. The palpable horror of the civilians behind him and the maniacal cackling of the beast in front of him faded into the background as he stared at his sensei's head in his hands. He was numb to the gust of wind that blew past him accompanied by a faraway sounding, "Leaf Hurricane!" There he sat, crumbling to dust as yet another important fixture of his life was ruthlessly taken away from him, but he was snatched out of his descent by two bandaged hands clamping tightly on his shoulders.
"Konohamaru!" Rock Lee shouted. "You must pull yourself together! Now is not the time to freeze up!"
He blinked, still not fully there until Rock Lee firmly shook him, and then he was staring right into the intensity pouring out of Lee's eyes.
"Be an even greater shinobi than your grandfather!" Rock Lee urged. "Pick yourself up and escort these civilians to safety! I will clean up here!"
Konohamaru couldn't muster up any words if he tried, but the fiery intensity in both Rock Lee's gaze and voice compelled him to nod and shakily stand up, his scarf sliding off of his neck as he beckoned for the scared-stiff civilians to follow him. He stumbled forward, his gaze trailing back down to Ebisu's head still tucked tightly in his grasp. He silently wrapped his sensei's head in his scarf before finally pressing onward in his mission.
Meanwhile, Lee was merciless in his assault on the gaggle of cursed seal experiments that split off from the main horde to pile into this street, most likely attracted to the sounds of battle. They were rabid, relentless beasts without a shred of mental acuity to speak of, so their wild, senseless charges were as animalistic as they were predictable. He had long since abandoned his leg weights and opened the first two gates to put down these invaders at top speed, but every bone-shattering punch and organ-rupturing kick only seemed to excite the creatures that much more, sending them into an even greater frenzy.
The fact that Tenten fought someone just like this years ago was a testament to the sheer enormity of her flames of youth. She would be so annoyed to have missed this battle.
Unfortunately for Lee, though, as more butt-ugly attackers filed in to meet his unspoken challenge, many of them managed to leap past Lee entirely, and the telltale howling of a bloodthirsty charge toward easier targets in the form of Konohamaru and the civilians running away drowned out the sounds of battle. Lee's skin was already burning red as he forced open the Fifth Gate to intercept them, but a complete curveball zoomed into the fray and cut off their attack.
"Eight Trigrams Palm Rotation!" Neji bellowed, spinning into a furious blur and projecting a thick dome of chakra to voice the charging beasts away like pinballs.
Lee's surprise quickly bloomed into unbridled joy. "Neji! I thought you were still undergoing physical therapy!"
Finally coming to a halt, Neji ensured the group had finally escaped before sending Lee a small smirk. "It has been going well. I am not yet cleared for active duty, but I'm more than capable of defending myself against these lowlives."
Then, his smirk twisted into a grimace. "If Lady Tsunade finds out about this, she'll sever my spinal cord herself."
"Then we will take this to our graves!" Lee declared, leaping ahead to stand back-to-back with Neji as the cursed seal experiments surrounded them. "Sixth Gate: Gate of Joy, OPEN!"
Choza Akimichi's titanic form towering over the village and wrestling one of the snakes to the ground was a rallying cry for the denizens of Konoha. Even those who couldn't see it past the scale powder felt the thunderous reverberations of the bereaved patriarch of the Akimichi Clan valiantly body-slamming a giant boa constrictor. The preexisting fire in the hearts of every Konoha-nin that compelled them to protect their home to their dying breaths erupted into an unquenchable inferno, and that inferno burned no brighter than in the chaos of the Inuzuka Compound.
Because of the necessity for space, the Inuzuka, like the Nara, were located a bit out of the way from the village center, so when a particular snake smashed the village's walls with ROOT trailing behind him, he thought he struck gold by stumbling upon a buffet of red meat. The Inuzuka Clan, on the other hand, were not fucking food, and they emphatically made that known by meeting the incursion head-on with an equally ravenous defense. It was a vicious, bloody brawl, Tunneling Fangs shredding through the air every which way to fend off both the snake and the ROOT-nin emerging from the cracks like roaches, and in the center of the chaos was Tsume and Kuromaru quite literally fighting tooth and nail. While a veritable army of Fang Over Fangs was effective enough at cutting down the numbers of ROOT, it wasn't quite as sufficient to pierce the snake's tough scales, so Tsume and Kuromaru opted to kick things up a notch or seven.
It was simply good fortune that her two kids, naturally being as unhinged as her, had the same idea as her.
"Man Beast Transformation Combo: Two/Four-Headed Wolf!" The trio bellowed, and out from the resulting puffs of smoke came three giant canines.
On the left stood the familiar sight of a two-headed wolf whose fur was as white as Akamaru's. Beside them was a taller, bulkier, and even more feral-looking wolf with black fur. The eyepatch on one of them indicated that this was Tsume and Kuromaru's fusion. The third wolf, however, towered over both of them. A messy coat of brown fur and four vicious heads stared the enormous serpent down before unleashing a primal, full-throated roar in unison. The hellish cacophony stilled all activity in the compound, Inuzuka and ROOT alike turning to behold the magnificence before them.
Even Tsume was struck silent by the transformation. Her very own daughter was emanating power she didn't think was achievable. It was as if Sesshomaru himself had touched down from the Pure World and hushed them all with his presence alone. It filled her with an unfathomable amount of pride that her children had grown so much. It was no longer a matter of who would eventually succeed her when the time came, but simply a matter of when she would finally be ready to kick her feet up at a beach somewhere in Tsuki.
With that in mind, there was one thing that she should probably put out in the open in case the worst were to happen today…
"By the way, Hana," the wolf head that was Tsume spoke up in her direction, "the Yondaime is your biological father."
"Wait, what?!" all four heads barked in shock, but Tsume had already charged the snake.
"Talk later, fight now!"
As Fu hovered in the sky above the bloody pandemonium on the ground, she internally had to concede to her master. She had her doubts about the invasion for sure, but it had so far gone without a hitch seemingly despite itself. Lord Danzo was correct that there was going to be an immediate response from within once they breached the sensory barrier around the village; that was simply unavoidable. However, once the hornets' nest was kicked, the collaborative summoning of the snakes by the ROOT-nin would draw their attention to an attack evocative of the one they experienced previously at the hands of Orochimaru, which would predictably get them into a frenzy. They wouldn't have been expecting the large-scale use of her Scale Powder Jutsu, something very few people would have ever encountered, much less had a counter for, which would leave them discombobulated and scrambling when the cursed seal horde carved their way into the village proper.
It was still sort of a ridiculous plot that reeked of unchecked hubris and barely concealed desperation, but the end goal wasn't the total annihilation of Konoha, so perhaps it would be enough. She wasn't ever compelled to explore those kinds of thoughts against Lord Danzo in any event, for whatever reason. Nonetheless, she played her role as instructed, creating even more chaos among the existing bedlam by unleashing hell upon every building of significance she could until she happened upon one or more of her targets. Whoever it was that jumped out of what she assumed was the Hokage's office wasn't anyone on her list, so while she disregarded her, Fu still brought down the Hokage Tower with a Vacuum Wave Barrage and ensured that the Academy went down with it by lighting up the lower levels with an unforgiving storm of Vacuum Bullets.
The Konoha-nin clearly weren't fans of that, as many of those who were competent enough to bypass the scale powder came at her with murder in their tiny eyes. Jonin, chunin, ANBU, it truly mattered little to her; they were ruthlessly cut down all the same with liberal use of the Vacuum Blade Jutsu applied to her wings. She even tried to lighten the mood by making a show out of it, gracefully twirling in the glittery sky around them as her sharpened wings hacked them to bits. One asshole that was chewing a senbon didn't too much appreciate her generosity, though, so she caved in his skull with a punch thoroughly enhanced by the power of the Nanabi. She might keep his squashed head as a trophy; she hadn't decided yet.
When that inevitably got boring and none of her targets showed themselves, it was time to hunt them down. She started at the hospital, filling her lungs with air before expelling it in a ferocious Vacuum Bomb that slammed into the building, plowing through it and those holed up inside like wet tissue. The horrified and agonized screams of unlucky patients and shinobi on guard fell on deaf ears as the seconds ticked on, Fu simply hovering in the air and waiting for any emergence of a legendary medic. She frowned when none came, effectively ruling out one of her targets from being in the village to begin with. That simply left Kakashi Hatake and Might Guy, and she was hoping at least one of them would be present. She rarely ever got to get out and stretch her legs like this, so she wanted to make the most of it.
A twinkle in her periphery spurred her to fly out of the path of a storm of senbon that lanced through the space she had just occupied, her only warning being the brief reflections of light off the senbon due to the scale powder. However, all she accomplished was flying right into the path of a purple cloud of what she was sure was poison, and it was only a split-second Great Breakthrough that saved her life, safely dispersing the cloud in every other direction than hers. With the poison mist and some of the scale powder now out of the way, she met the downright venomous glare of the disheveled, black-haired medic-nin standing in what was left of the hospital with a baleful glare of her own. Cleaving straight through her and every other poor sap still in that wreckage with a Vacuum Wave Jutsu would suffice.
…That is, it would have, if not for the missile that launched out of the scale powder at damn near light speed and kicked her right in the jaw.
"Dynamic Entry!" Might Guy bellowed, practically swatting Fu out of the air and sending her crashing into a nearby building. She only had mere moments of reprieve to shake the debris off before a fist slammed into her face, blasting her out of the other side of the building and careening her into the street like a torpedo.
A furious explosion of chakra violently cleared the scale powder away, blasting any and everyone in the vicinity away and leaving a scowling Fu wreathed in the Nanabi's chakra. The wings she had already manifested were now melded entirely with the noxious chakra cloak, showcasing four much larger insect wings flapping dangerously behind her.
"Might Guy," Fu icily addressed. "Figured I'd find you eventually."
Guy's gaze simply narrowed, his expression as hard as stone. "I do not know who you are, but for your heinous actions today, for all the innocent lives you've taken, for everyone you and your army stormed our home to slaughter in the street like dogs…"
His skin burned a deep red, and his pupils all but vanished, leaving behind only the haunting whites of his eyes shining within the green aura surrounding him.
"You will be forgotten."
And then he was off like a rocket, appearing before Fu in the blink of an eye and slamming another kick right in her jaw that sent her flying yet again. Fu was ready for this one, though, quickly recovering in midair and shooting back to the ground with a thunderous crash. The blanket of scale powder over the village was already starting to thin by now, and the furious flapping of her wings and flexing of the Nanabi's chakra was only expediting the process. On the other hand, the ruckus was acting as a beacon for any rampaging experiments in the area, and they began spilling into the street behind her right as Might Guy landed ahead of her.
If there was one thing Danzo had beaten into her (aside from unbending loyalty), it was to capitalize on every situation, and capitalize Fu did, as once the horde sprang into action, she snatched one of them by the head and launched him at Guy. Guy easily batted the creature away, but he quickly had to do the same for the next five that were also thrown his way as easily as rocks. It was her turn to take off, blitzing him while he was preoccupied and slamming a haymaker into his jaw to return the favor, but she was taken by surprise when he hooked her arm and plowed his knee into her gut. The wind thoroughly knocked out of her, she was helpless as he rolled backward and pistoned her into the air with a third thunderous kick.
Recovering in midair once again with a furious growl, Fu took to the skies, zipping upward to hover above the buildings. Her scowl deepened when Guy leaped into the air after her, even going as far as to summon a turtle to use as a launch pad to reach her. Flying through a set of seals and inhaling, she opted to cut him off (figuratively and literally) by spitting another Vacuum Wave Barrage. He wouldn't be able to dodge this without anything to kick off of, and even if he did, the wind blades would simply cut down anyone in their path below them, which he'd have on his conscience for the rest of the fight and inevitably make him sloppy.
So, naturally, she was shocked when the green aura burning off of him flared even brighter and he started punching the air so fast that the friction ignited the air around him, blasting a storm of fireballs right at her that practically tore through the Vacuum Wave Barrage and were even bolstered by the wind blades. Fu tried to evade the incoming firestorm, but the enormity of the attack's range and the speed at which it was trailing her made that impossible, so she was forced to shield with her arms and brace herself for the impact.
She was not prepared for the impact in question to feel like a thousand freight trains slamming into her at once, the force of each punch relentlessly battering her in tandem with the ungodly heat of the flames. She was blown out of the air and sent careening far past those four gaudy stone faces into the woods overlooking the village. Her landing was just as ungraceful, pinballing off the trees she didn't slam through entirely on her way to carving a trench in the dirt when she finally torpedoed into the ground.
Her body was screaming in pain. Her jaw was already cracked from the first kick, but now it was practically shattered, as were many of her bones. Not even the biju chakra cloak could protect her from ending up battered, bruised, and bloody, and while the Nanabi's chakra was already hard at work mending her to make it as if nothing had ever happened, it wasn't going to mend the damage to her pride. Her target wasn't simply getting the best of her, he was thrashing her.
That would not do.
Her indignation festered into rage, allowing the Nanabi's chakra to surge through her. The translucent cloak deepened to a dark crimson before swelling into a bulbous exoskeleton, and she hopped back to her feet and unleashed an ear-piercing roar. She was going to tear this bushy-browed asshole limb from fucking limb.
Guy could already feel the strain of the Sixth Gate wreaking havoc on his body, but the job was not yet finished. Descending from the air and landing on his feet with a loud thud, he surveyed the destruction left from his opponent's crash landing. He wanted to be optimistic that the Asakujaku had taken her down, but he knew not to leave anything up to chance, especially when dealing with a clearly trained jinchuriki. This one was far deadlier than Gaara from years prior, and even he required the efforts of Lord Jiraiya and Tenzo to properly put down.
Now, Lord Hokage wasn't around, and Tenzo had been assumed dead, taking with him his Mokuton. The only thing standing between the village and certain destruction was Konoha's Noble Green Beast-
A shrill, haunting roar bellowed from ahead, accompanied by a wave of overbearing chakra. Guy knew exactly what was coming, so he braced himself.
"Seventh Gate of Shock, OPEN!" he shouted, and the green aura surrounding him burned a bright blue from his thick, evaporating perspiration. He could feel his muscle fibers rupturing in real-time, but he held firm and prepared for the inevitable charge.
That charge came fast and wild, six chakra-coated wings a blur above her as she zoomed straight for him with deadly intent, and he met her charge head-on, cratering the ground as he blasted off to lock horns with her. Beginning with a test of strength, the volatile chakra coating her burned and ate away at the skin on his palms, but he was unyielding, forcing her back with all of his might before she suddenly disengaged and shot backward. The brief stumble gave her just enough of a window to rocket back toward him and slice across his face with a glancing kick that carved a jagged, diagonal wound from his left cheek up to his right eyebrow, very nearly hitting his eye.
She looped around a tree and zoomed at him once more, but Guy was more than ready for her return, ducking under as she whizzed by before pivoting and slamming a crushing backfist into her skull that knocked her well off course. Pressing his advantage, he blurred after her and spun, leveling an even more devastating Severe Leaf Hurricane that launched her like a cannonball through the trees and even deeper into the woods. Fighting through the pain, Guy darted after her with the intent of finishing this once and for all. However, what he saw when he made it to her stilled his blood: her mouth was wide open, and a small, dense ball of chakra was coalescing in front of it.
He knew exactly what that was, and with the village behind him, dodging was firmly out of the question. There was only one option to take, and he knew just what to do to accomplish it. With one palm facing the forming bijudama, he struck it with his other fist, unleashing an ungodly amount of air pressure that he instinctively molded into a tiger with his hands in the blink of an eye.
"Hirudora!" Guy bellowed, and the enormous form of a white tiger blasted from his hands right as she fired the bijudama.
The hulking, unstoppable Hirudora carved through the terrain like the hellish incarnation of weaponized air pressure it was, not buckling for a single nanosecond once it made contact with the bijudama. In fact, it pushed the ball of biju chakra backward along with it, swiftly returning it to sender as the Hirudora and bijudama slammed into the apoplectic jinchuriki. Guy leaped backward as hard and as far as he could to vacate the impending blast radius, but the ensuing explosion was even more titanic than he was anticipating. The dregs of the blast still slammed into him like one of Sora no Kuni's flying machines, sending him tumbling so far away from the battlefield that he eventually crashed into one of the lookout towers sitting above Hokage Rock.
His legs hung lamely out of the hole he so youthfully created, and he groaned, briefly allowing the wave of pain from the Seventh Gate to wrack his body like lava in his veins. However, as much as he wished to stay and rest for a moment longer in the shaking building, he willed himself into a kip-up and landed gracefully on his feet, tremors be damned. He did take a second to marvel at the towering, white dome that was steadily dying down on the horizon, though, but once it finally had, he wasted no more time and booked it to the blast zone to confirm the kill. There was no possible way that anyone, even a jinchuriki, could endure the combined might of the Hirudora and a bijudama-
His thoughts were silenced by yet another explosion of chakra, and this time, his heart truly sank. Rising above the remaining trees from the crater left behind from the blast was the last thing Guy or anyone in Konoha wanted to see. A giant, blue rhinoceros beetle emerged from the ashes, its six wings fanning brilliantly behind it. The Nanabi in its full glory was here, and Konoha was in its sights.
Guy closed his eyes and sighed. There was no way that he was going to be able to contend with a fully manifested biju, especially one of a higher level of tails, with simply the Seventh Gate. It just wasn't feasible. He knew what he needed to do.
"To protect something precious enough to give your life for," he resolutely muttered, his thumb extended to pierce his chest and open the final gate. "Kakashi, Lee, Neji, Tenten, live on for me. See this village's Flames of Youth burn for eternity."
With his will hardened and his ultimate goal set in stone, Guy prepared to jam his thumb into his heart, but a sudden burst of white smoke in the air above the Nanabi followed by a giant, red toad dropping straight onto the beast halted him. He immediately recognized the toad as Gamabunta, the chief of the Toads, and accompanying him in equally thunderous crashes nearby were a magenta toad wielding a sasumata and a light blue toad with two swords on his back.
"Lord Hokage has returned," he initially muttered in relief, but something was off, as that didn't look like Jiraiya standing atop Gamabunta's head. There were scrolls on their back, but the long, white mane was absent.
Then, his eyes widened, and his breath hitched. "I can't believe it…!"
Standing on the head of the Chief Toad was Tenten, and the orange markings around her eyes filled Guy with a truly unquantifiable amount of pride and joy.
The constant, enormous fluctuations of ungodly chakra had every sensor in the village on edge as it was, and the explosions and tremors that accompanied them were cluing in everyone else on the battle raging between Might Guy and the flying invader. Their jinchuriki status was pretty easy to pick up on for those who were around for the Third Shinobi World War and the Kyubi Attack, and even those who only bore witness to Gaara's rampage during the chunin exam invasion were introduced to the destructive power of a jinchuriki running wild.
So, naturally, Ino was stressed the fuck out when she could feel Guy-sensei going toe to toe with a jinchuriki that just kept releasing more and more of their chakra. Once the area below them was secure and she could drag Sakura to a nearby roof, she focused her senses as best as she could to feel out just how dangerous the girl with wings was, and when it became apparent to her that Guy was going all out to take her down, she could only settle somewhere between cautious optimism and a bloodcurdling panic. The giant explosion past Hokage Rock that everyone felt helped put her mind at ease because the jinchuriki's chakra presence faded almost into near nonexistence…
Then, it came back, and it came back with a fucking vengeance. Everyone in the village, sensor or otherwise, stopped and turned when the Nanabi emerged. It was a horrific reminder of days gone for multiple generations, only this time, there was no Sandaime, no Yondaime, and no Godaime to handle it. It was just them, battling a devastating force from one end and faced with an overwhelming monstrosity on the other.
"Ino," Sakura's voice cut through her thoughts, and it was only when Sakura's hand landed on her shoulder that Ino realized she was shaking. "We're going to be okay."
"How can you say that?!" Ino hissed, and she winced when she realized how panicked that came out.
Sakura, and Log only knows how the hell she did so, maintained some semblance of calm as she stared right at her with those infuriatingly adorable green eyes of hers. "Kakashi-sensei told me a lot about the Eight Gates. If Guy-sensei is still up there, then…"
She hesitated as if she was wrestling with the thought but still held on to the calmness that Ino had found herself subconsciously bathing her senses in. "…Then I think we'll be okay. He has a pretty unstoppable trump card."
Ino blinked in confusion, clearly not nearly as informed about the Eight Gates as the others of her generation were. "What do you-"
She was cut off by the appearance of three giant toads landing on and around the Nanabi, and she, like most of everyone else in the village, immediately assumed that the Hokage had returned in the nick of time to take on the biju. At least, that was her initial assumption, but feeling out the chakra a little bit more threw her off. She was not yet the sensor that her father was, so she couldn't make out who had just arrived exactly (especially at that distance), but it still felt familiar, far more familiar than the Hokage's chakra was to her.
"Lord Hokage's back!" Sakura sighed, and Ino could practically hear the smile in her tone. "There's no way that he and Guy-sensei can't handle this together."
"That's not Lord Hokage," Ino muttered, her confusion growing by the second. "Come on, let's get closer and help out wherever needed along the way."
"This is the third goddamn biju this village has had me fight, damnit!" Gamabunta groused as he sat atop the writhing Nanabi. "I'm gonna start charging for this!"
"Um, I'll take that up with Jiraiya-sensei," Tenten nervously chuckled before focusing on the village, idly noting that there was something peculiar in his tone that Tenten couldn't quite parse before she spotted the snake summons that weren't either being suplexed by Choza or torn apart by a trio of hellhounds. "Hey, Gamahiro, Gamaken, you guys deal with those snakes in the village. Chief and I will handle things here."
"You got it!" Gamahiro saluted, unsheathing his swords before leaping into action.
"Forgive me if I'm ungraceful," Gamaken preemptively apologized before following suit.
"Get the hell OFF!" the Nanabi rumbled, muscling Gamabunta off of him and springing back up from the ground. "It's been way too long since I've gotten to stretch my wings! Lucky Seven is free to rule the skies once again-"
The biju's excited monologue was cut off by a massive tongue lashing at him as quick as lightning, and he just nearly hovered out of the way of the attack.
"Dude, what the fuck-" he indignantly began before evading another tongue lashing from Gamabunta. "Stop that!"
The ominous, ravenous chuckle that rumbled from Gamabunta's throat in tandem with him slowly unsheathing his blade indicated that he was not going to do that. "I came all this way to stop an invasion, and now I'm being presented with a prime meal on a silver platter. There's no way in hell I'm passing this up, biju or not! Come to Papa!"
"Like hell!" the irate Nanabi buzzed, and without a second thought, he launched himself at Gamabunta horn-first. Gamabunta attempted to swing his blade to meet his charge, but the Nanabi was (unsurprisingly) blindingly fast and blitzed him without any hassle. It was only due to Gamabunta getting the broadside of his blade up in time that prevented him from being gored to hell and back, simply settling for being sent tumbling away like a discarded child with a snapped sword and knocking Tenten off his head along the way.
Now, in the few years she had known of the Chief of the Toads (and the even shorter period since she'd actually met him in person), Tenten had pegged him to be a stubborn, ornery jackass, but she felt she could trust his battle instincts implicitly. He'd even been the one to impress upon her the importance of knowing where your limits lay, especially in comparison to the capabilities of your opponent, when she was in the heat of getting a decent grasp of Sage Mode and still getting smacked around by Lord Fukasaku. So, it was definitely a surprise to her that he'd been so willing to throw hands with a third biju as he mentioned, but she was willing to go to war alongside him if he truly believed they could take down the Nanabi.
She now knew that to be a horrible mistake foolishly brought upon by the desire for a five-star meal. Still, her Chief was going to go out like this over her dead body, so when the Nanabi repositioned himself for another charge, she sprang into action. The Nanabi became a blur once more, scuttling straight toward the recovering Gamabunta to skewer him before he could blink, but Tenten threw herself right in the path and snatched him by his horn. The surprise threw the titanic rhinoceros beetle off just enough for her to plant her feet in the dirt, halting the Nanabi's momentum entirely. With the strength of a thousand toad statues behind her, she hoisted him into the air and twirled, spinning the frazzled insect around before throwing him over the trees, sending him crashing into the forest with an enormous thud.
She could idly sense Guy-sensei gawking at her from the other edge of the clearing, and she couldn't help but smile at that. Her attention shifted to the enormous rumble of Gamabunta picking himself up from the ground.
"I may have made a gross miscalculation today," he begrudgingly muttered, dusting himself off and silently lamenting his broken tanto.
"No way, really??" she snarked, and her smile grew deliciously vindictive when Gamabunta could do nothing but angrily grumble in concession.
"Tenten!" Guy, still with the Seventh Gate active, excitedly addressed as he landed beside her. "You've completed your training!"
"Hi, Guy-sensei!" she greeted, but her attention split to the Nanabi rolling himself over to get back to his feet. "No time to chat; I can only keep this up for five minutes, and we've got a biju to take down."
Right as she said that, the tremendous thrum of the Nanabi's wings filled the battlefield as he slowly rose into the air. His mandibles snapped open, and mild panic lanced through both Gamabunta and Guy as chakra began to coalesce into a dense ball in his mouth. Tenten could feel Guy's resolve harden to stone, and she spun around and snatched his wrist before he could even think about it, shooting him an even harder glare.
"Don't," she commanded with all the authority she could muster in the face of her impossibly powerful sensei, mentor, and father figure. "I got this."
Not giving him any chance to rebut, she turned back around and slid up her left sleeve, revealing a storage seal tattooed on her forearm that she activated to summon the Kusanagi into her grasp. Her amphibious glare narrowed dangerously, and her grip on the now glowing Kusanagi tightened as she streamed senjutsu chakra through the sentient blade for her riskiest gambit to date. Sparing the other two no further glance, she darted past Gamabunta toward the impending devastation, ignoring her sensei getting in position for the Hirudora as well as the Chief preparing himself to leap in at a moment's notice. She only had one goal in mind: knocking this bijudama out of the fucking park.
The Nanabi finally fired the bijudama once it ballooned to the size of a small house, and that was her cue to swing for the fences, the mythical, senjutsu-boosted blade extended like a power pole to cut off the death ball's approach midair. The Kusanagi struck true, and Tenten swiftly found herself in the most intense power struggle of her life, battling back the enormous might of the bijudama with every fiber of her being. She strained herself to the deepest pits of her heart and soul, forcing all of her might into a single heave to overpower the bijudama and batter it back at the Nanabi. The Nanabi promptly evaded the ball, allowing it to sail right past him and blast off into the horizon until it finally collided with the ground. The resulting explosion shook the village to its core without remorse, though it was just one of who knew how many tremors that day. She could only hope and pray that no one was in the vicinity of that blast.
Gamabunta recovered from the shock first, leaping back into the fray and firing a series of Liquid Bullets at the evasive Nanabi. "You're a fucking psychopath, kid!"
One bullet managed to hit the Nanabi and knock him out of the air, but his chitin shell wasn't simply for show, so the water itself had little effect. However, it did leave him stunned just a microsecond long enough for a second Hirudora to plow into him like a tornado against an impossibly spacious barn.
"I must agree, Tenten, though I am no less starstruck from your bursting youth!" Guy added, though the strain in his voice was as apparent as it was strangled.
"Scold me when we're not dead!" she shouted back, sprinting against the force of the ensuing explosion toward the dome of volatile air that housed a momentarily downed biju in order to set up the trap that would hopefully keep him contained for as long as they needed to seal him away.
Rolling up her other sleeve, she procured four special scrolls from the storage seals on her other arm, and after chomping down on her thumb to get past her severely enhanced durability, she smeared her blood across all four scrolls. Then, she attached two of them to kunai before throwing them past the furiously buzzing biju. Finally, she dropped the third one where she was standing before sprinting a considerable distance laterally to set up the final scroll. With all four roughly in place, she activated the chakra within the blood on all four scrolls, which in turn activated the seals inscribed on the parchment, and before anyone could blink, masses of chains with seals of their own etched onto them shot out of the scrolls and wrapped around the nearest chakra signature like moths to a flame. It just so happened that the literal beacon of chakra that was the Nanabi was surrounded on four sides, and these chains fashioned with intricate chakra suppression seals pounced on their target with great prejudice.
She'd have to thank Naruto for the idea of weaponizing chains the next time she saw him, when or if that day ever came. For now, she took pleasure in watching one of her proudest creations ensnare the third most powerful biju.
At least, it did so for a solid three seconds before he flexed out of the chains as if they were paper maché, lifting back off the ground while fixing her with what she just knew was a smug grin on his stupid, insect face.
"You despicable human scum won't keep Lucky Seven chained up any longer!" the Nanabi almost maniacally laughed as he lifted off the ground once more.
Tenten was having none of it. In a split-second decision, she retrieved the Kusanagi once more before throwing it like a lance straight at the fluttering Nanabi. The sword glowed and then grew, zipping through the air like a blade possessed before zooming around the Nanabi and slicing through the base of his seven tails, relieving him of his six wings and unceremoniously plopping him back to the ground with a pathetic thud. Tenten snatched the Kusanagi as it dutifully returned to her, a face-splitting grin in full force that spoke of nothing but the purest, most vindictive self-satisfaction imaginable. The goal was simply to remove the Nanabi's most troublesome advantage, that being his flight, but leveling a measure of payback for making a mockery of her own original jutsu was definitely icing on the cake.
The Nanabi, however, did not share in this satisfaction. For the briefest of moments, time seemed to freeze as the newfound lightness he felt behind him sank in. His already indecipherable gaze somehow fixed itself on her and her alone, and she honestly had to admit that a considerable amount of her bravado was steadily leaving her.
"Did… did you just cut off my wings?!" the Nanabi began, his initially blank tone swiftly rising to match his blinding apoplexy in full, and Tenten now truly felt her stomach drop to the pits of her colon under the concentrated wrath of a furious biju. "You putrid fucking wretch, DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW LONG IT WILL TAKE TO REFORM THOSE?!?! I'LL SWALLOW YOUR FUCKING SOUL!!"
Without any further thought, he stretched his mandibles as wide as they would allow and then some, forming a massive bijudama that dwarfed any that anyone present had ever seen twice over. Tenten, thoroughly in acknowledgement that she, too, made a gross miscalculation, snapped around to throw a frantic look Gamabunta's way.
"CHIEF, GET THE OTHERS!" she damn near commanded in a panic, and it was only the urgency of the situation and the fact that she was a Sage that kept him from being pissy about her practically giving him an order. A long, loud whistle from Gamabunta followed, and within moments, Gamaken and Gamahiro landed beside them.
"FOUR CRIMSON RAY FORMATION!" she ordered, already expecting the collective "WHAT?!" she received from the three toads. "JUST DO IT!"
With that all but settled (and the Kusanagi literally hovering at Guy's throat to prevent him from unlocking the Eighth Gate), the four denizens of Mt. Myoboku each took a position in a square around the seething Nanabi wielding a giant, evergrowing ball of unquantifiable destruction in its jaws. Said Nanabi was seeing far too much red to care what these lowlife mortals were scheming because it would have meant exactly nothing in around five seconds. Five seconds was all the amphibious quartet needed, though, as with an extraordinary, synchronous heave from all four of them, a crimson barrier flared to life around the Nanabi.
Undeterred and unconcerned, the Nanabi fired, unleashing the mother of all bijudamas at the haphazardly erected cube of chakra surrounding him, fully intent on smashing through the paltry-looking barrier and annihilating every mortal for miles for the crimes against his wings. However, rather than be plowed straight through, the wall bulged and stretched around the sheer girth of the bijudama before promptly slingshotting the ball right back at the Nanabi at point-blank range. The bijudama slammed into his face and detonated, unleashing yet another hellish explosion that was thankfully contained and directed upward by the barrier formation.
…Well, the bulk of it was, anyway. The kickback of the boom was more than enough to topple Guy behind them, and the four maintaining the barrier barely held on long enough for the worst of it to die down before they, too, were blown back. Gamabunta, Gamaken, and Gamahiro were sent rolling away like the round mounds of sound they were, flattening the forested terrain on their paths to unpleasant unconsciousness.
Gamabunta, in particular, groaned when he finally came to a stop. "Ugh, I'm gonna feel that one for the rest of my life…"
Then, he vanished in a puff of smoke, returning home alongside Gamahiro and Gamaken due to both severe chakra exhaustion and the beating they had just taken in one fell swoop. Meanwhile, Tenten was left tumbling back toward Hokage Rock in a thoroughly drained heap. In fact, drained didn't even begin to describe the state she was in. Her Sage Mode had all but vanished, and her chakra reserves had practically been zapped dry by the enormous cost of the Four Crimson Ray Formation. She finally came to a rest at the foot of a building directly beneath a suspiciously Guy-shaped hole.
The real sight to see rested in the epicenter of the explosion, however. The groaning, wingless Nanabi lay defeated on his back, his legs ever so slowly curling inward.
"…I may have made a gross miscalculation today," the Nanabi muttered, and then he started shrinking. "Tag back in, human, I need to recover."
In only a matter of seconds, the Nanabi was gone, fully retreating into his half-dead vessel to play life support while he licked his wounds. Tenten, on the other hand, was only vaguely cognizant of this happening as she did her best to not accidentally slip into a coma. Approaching footsteps provided a much-needed distraction, and her gaze trailed over to see a sight that never failed to bring a smile to her face, even if it was currently just a pained facsimile of one.
"Hey, sensei," she greeted again with a failed attempt at a wave. "Did we get 'em?"
"You got 'em, Tenten," Guy replied, the proudest smile she had ever seen adorning his face. "You got 'em."
"Awesome…" she exhaled, nearly succumbing to the encroaching darkness before she was hoisted into a piggyback carry.
"Here, eat this," he said, plopping a soldier pill into her mouth. "It'll keep your reserves out of the red for now."
"Thanks," she muttered, eating the pill and feeling the immediate effects of her chakra replenishing and her energy returning bit by bit.
The two then set off for the former resting place of the Nanabi. Both of them knew that killing a biju wasn't as simple as it sounded, and a single point-blank bijudama, regardless of how powerful it was, wasn't likely to accomplish that. They had to be sealed away for a reason. Given that he just retreated into his vessel, they had to find and apprehend them before they managed to escape.
They eventually came upon the sight of a tan-skinned girl with minty hair sprawled almost lifelessly in a massive crater. Guy slid down the pit and cautiously approached her, and it was at this point that they were joined by the hurried shuffling of a few squads of ANBU followed closely behind by a frazzled Anko Mitarashi.
"Guy, holy shit!" Anko shouted, her expression nearly manic. "How many fucking Hirudoras can you throw around?!"
"Where's Lord Hokage?" an operative in a cat mask with striking purple hair that Tenten knows she's seen somewhere before questioned. "When the toads arrived, we assumed it was him."
"Did you make all these fucking craters?!" Anko piped up again.
"Ah, I can't take all the credit for today," her sensei began, and she bemusedly chuckled, well aware that he was about to start gushing again. "My student was the star of the show! Such youthful exuberance unseen since the day the Yondaime faced down the wrath of the Kyubi!"
"…Which time?" one of the ANBU, clearly the oldest of the bunch, inquired.
"Yes!" Guy answered, and Tenten groaned.
"Wait, you mean the brat did all this??" Anko incredulously asked, pointing at and eyeing her with unhidden disbelief.
"That's Sage Brat to you, thank you very much!" Tenten emphatically corrected, which only served to exponentially increase Anko's incredulity.
"Is she still alive?" one of the ANBU questioned the operative checking the jinchuriki's pulse.
"Barely," he answered.
"Acting Hokage?" The purple-haired ANBU looked to Anko for direction, which threw Tenten for a mountain of loops.
"Tie her up and dump her in the most secure cell we have until it's time to get some info out of her," Anko ordered, and to Tenten's further surprise, they acquiesced without a moment's hesitation. "Sealing her chakra will probably kill her, and I wanna know who the hell was behind this attack."
Rumors of this story's demise have been greatly exaggerated
In all seriousness, I wanted to post this chapter and the next one within a few days of each other to surprise y'all with a quick update after the length between this one and the last one, but life smacked the dogshit out of me lmao. For brevity's sake, time is just no longer something I have, and finding (or just making) that time and energy to sit down and write at all (much less for three fics) is a serious challenge these days. So, rather than sitting on this chapter for even longer while I desperately cling onto the fading hopes of a double upload, here it is now.
That does not mean I'm stepping away or putting any of these fics on ice. I'm seeing each of them to the bitter end because I'm a psychopath, especially with this one finally being in the homestretch. What that does mean, though, is that I am not doing two to three fics at once in the future lmfao
In much less irl news, I know that Tsume isn't canonically the clan head, and we have no idea who the actual leader of the Inuzuka is. Don't worry about it, it's fine, I took canon behind the woodshed a long time ago
Thanks for reading. You're all rad as hell.