Let's get this trainwreck moving.
"They seem to have figured out we were coming," Yuurei mused. Several paces ahead of them, far enough to be safe from all but the most incredible of Yuurei's attacks, a coalition of shinobi had gathered. Their expressions were tense and terse, brooking no equals or superiors. Yuurei had come to lay waste to their homeland, and they knew it; the demon appreciated their resolve, since they were so eager to die before the rest of their comrades.
And still, the real anger in their eyes was reserved for Yugito. Kin to the Raikage, traitor to her family and her nation, there was no comparable hatred that they could levy against anyone else.
"Then all they've done is accept their deaths," the blonde hissed, ripping her long-carried hitai-ate off of her head. Holding it in her right hand, she lifted her left to reach out to it. The nail of her seal-marked ring finger penetrated the metal, carving a groove down the middle of the headband in a straight line. While the insult to the village was clear enough, Tayuya privately thought that her companion's symbolism couldn't be more heavy-handed—only to be proven wrong in the following seconds. Yugito threw her old headband away before drawing out a new one from the holster on her thigh, which had held shuriken before she walked Yuurei's path.
The spiral of a whirlpool adorned Yugito's forehead after she finished putting the hitai-ate on, the symbol of a city with a family tree that she'd bound and been bound to. "Together forever," Yuurei had told her after the advent of her demonhood. Those words had been like a wedding promise for the ceremony she'd dreaded for most of her life. Only beside that tyrant, the king of all the demons who would find their way in the new age, did she find the comfort of a true life partner. And if multicolored bands of the Mark of the Beast were her wedding ring, then the Uzushio hitai-ate would be her queenly bridal crown—and the two tail-ends that swayed in the breeze, dangling past the knot she'd tied, were the train that followed behind her as she walked towards her ancestral home.
She'd wondered how she'd feel when she finally came home again, if joy or anger would boil over from the depths of her lungs. As she looked into the crowd of self-appointed "gate guardians," she saw faces that she'd known for years. Some of them had been her comrades on missions, and plenty of others had shared a practice field with her. Two of them had even gone through Kumogakure's academy with her, and had made names for themselves after graduating. Getting closer, looking in their eyes, she understood what she was seeing: those people that she recognized were actively refusing to recognize her. In the moment of that realization, Yugito's feelings crystalized, and apathy towards her native village overwhelmed her. This was how she'd always been treated, and they'd just removed the veil over the hostility. Why did she care if they lived or died? A full-chested chuckle left her throat before she could think about stopping it.
"You will bow to my husband," the blonde woman declared imperiously, and only the strongest of wills kept Tayuya from breaking her neck to look in Yugito's direction. "In death."
Five of the Kumo-nin charged out at that provocation, holding the confidence that only a numerical advantage could bring. They'd heard of how Yuurei had fought the Raikage's sons in single combat; even if he was strong, they reasoned, there was a limit to his abilities. They put no real stock in the stories that came from Kiri, refusing to believe that one man was enough to shift the balance so heavily between the former Mizukage's loyalists and the collective of the rebellion. As a black wind swept over them, bringing corrosive youki that dissolved their flesh before their very eyes, they realized how wrong those assumptions might have been. Their companions watched in horror as the five brave shinobi died. No blood was spilled, no bones were left, and Yuurei simply kept walking forward. As he did, a string of bloody characters flashed through the air in front of him; the remaining ninja guarding Kumo's gate nearly collapsed under the pressure that his seals unleashed.
Tayuya kept her snicker to herself, but she never got tired of seeing normal people's expressions when they were confronted with real power. Any thoughts of questioning Yugito's terminology were gone in the moment she brought her flute to her hands, a youki-powered leap lifting her into the sky before her feathered wings began flapping to maintain her place. Low notes pierced the battlefield as they left her instrument, but no oni were summoned; half technique, half funeral dirge, she played a somber melody that wrapped and warped the world around her. She could feel the rest of the music as it left her lips, as if her heart knew where the drums and brass were supposed to join in. A song of overwhelming, incontestable victory.
Yuurei walked forward, weaponless, not bothering to dodge as one of the ninja at the forefront attempted to stab him through the heart with a wakizashi. With a dismissive stare, he simply watched the weapon buckle, fold, and crumple into itself; the man wielding it didn't even process what had happened until he pulled the hilt back. The Kumo-nin simply stared at the ruins of the blade, dumbfounded, and failed to process Yuurei's youki-powered slap to his temple. The soldier's eyes popped like bubblegum in an instant, his skull turning to dust while his brain was flash-fried. As wisps of light filtered into Yuurei's body, the shinobi's form slowly began degrading.
"You'll need a better weapon than that," the demon said, his tone humorless. There was some killing that he took joy in, but the massacre he'd begun was just a chore—just like mowing the grass or washing the walls in his childhood home, he would complete the task and move on. Walking forward leisurely, a wave of his hand sent spikes of iridescent youki into the crowd. Yuurei watched as one particular young man was struck in the leg, and held onto a woman until he was nothing but a corroding torso. She couldn't move her arms, and her gaze was fixed on the young man's face. She didn't see the sandworm tooth that pierced the back of her head, killing her, but he did. Yuurei watched him dying, watched him dry-heaving because he no longer had a stomach to puke between his wailing sobs, and simply left him there to let his life end.
Bare-chested and bold, the nine-tailed demon was unhurried and unburdened as more and more of Kumo's soldiers came to attack him. The more who screamed in agony, the more who came to meet their own demise. Someone more philosophical than Yuurei was might have wondered about the nature of the human condition, and about the way that mankind's desire to help one another could so easily be used against them. For his part, the young Kyuubi was unconcerned; whether they would die sooner or later, it didn't change the fact that they would die. There were no gods to save them, and no prayers that would dissuade him.
He was a professional, after all.
Yugito's technique was far more hands-on than her lover's, hellfire radiating off of the clawed hands that she now aimed against her homeland. The scar that circled around her neck and throat was throbbing with her heartbeat, leaving her nearly deaf as she pressed forward. For the first time in nearly a year, she felt liberated to fight at her full strength. It was nothing like before, when she'd been human—she felt limitless, intoxicated by her own potential, and every kill made her even stronger. She felt like she understood Yuurei, more than she ever had. The war they fought was personal to her, but the joy she felt with the heat of battle was real. As the Nibi's Jinchuriki, she'd played host to a fount of power that lifted her beyond most ninja. Now, as a true demon, she was wielding a strength that went beyond all other strengths. She had power, and she would kill with power.
Heads exploded. Corpses burst into flame. Beneath the heat, and the sound of blood thrumming in her eardrums, she could hear the faintest whispers of her victims' death throes. Faceless skulls stared at her, accusatory. She didn't care. As long as she had Yuurei to love her, as long as she had Tayuya and Mei and Temari to walk with him beside her, she didn't care. No matter what happened to the world, no matter what happened to her, she would be fine. With every twisted, corrupted, fiery fiber of her being, she believed that. And so, she burned onward.
Eventually, Tayuya did finally summon her oni to fight. As her demonhood had advanced, her powers had grown along with it—first geometrically, and then exponentially. Practically coming from thin air, the monsters appeared on the growing battlefield to wreak havoc. Twenty of them arrived, including her three original summons and the eight she'd first accessed in Sunagakure. That left nine newcomers, though she'd gotten accustomed to them by now. Those nine were nearly human in size and stature, their faces less gaunt than the rest, and she thought they almost seemed alive at times. As the three original titans grouped around her, warding off any attacks that came her way, the other eleven oni fanned out to begin laying waste to the village's buildings. Yuurei and Yugito could murder to their heart's content; Tayuya didn't mind killing the ninja who made it their mission to get in her way, but she'd decided that the best use of her talents was to raze Kumogakure to the ground.
Buildings collapsed into rubble as Tayuya's oni slaughtered forward, and she didn't bother worrying about the Kumo-nin who were able to discern that her monstrous summons were controlled by sound. Even if she couldn't make them move past a certain distance, even if they managed to dispel them, did they think that would make her vulnerable? Did they think that would leave her unable to fight? She remembered something Yuurei had mentioned during the months they spent traveling here, about how he'd chosen his name. It was no secret, at least not to her or Yugito, that the man they loved had been well-known by a name he no longer used—and that they never had. In the City of the Dead, which she'd roughly figured to be the ruins of Uzushiogakure, he'd been told: "...you are not the first of the new demons. You're the ghost of the old ones." It was a thought that had stuck with Tayuya ever since, not quite bothering her while it refused to leave her mind.
The response back to that thought, of course, was that she, Yugito, Temari, and Mei were the first of the new demons. Who else could be? Yuurei was the Kyuubi, the strongest of all the demons she'd ever heard of, the destined ruler of Makai when that man from "another universe" finished repairing it. As those who stood beside him, who loved and embraced him, Tayuya and the other three women would be rulers themselves. She was more than a soldier, more than a servant, she was a demon—and even beyond that, she was a demon queen. Underneath her black wings, the pale body of a young woman belied her true power. She'd known all manner of horrors and terrors while she was forced to work for Orochimaru, as distant as that life seemed now. What could these people offer her that would match those fears? The idea almost made her break her focus to laugh.
Yuurei took in the world around him, watching Tayuya destroy while Yugito maimed and killed. His nine iridescent tails moved in the wind of his wake, and the ground shook when he slammed them against the street. Once, twice, three times; the mountain shuddered with every blow, and its people fell to meet it. Buildings crumbled in the distance, a not-so-subtle sign to Tayuya that she was fine to go on the offensive, and his hands came up into a crossed position as a sign that he was tired of dealing with the logistics of the situation. Youki bled from his body, and clones began to fade into the world after innumerable plumes of smoke appeared. First in dozens, then in scores, then in hundreds—the Tajuu Kage Bunshin no Jutsu only knew the limits Yuurei imposed on it, a singularly formidable technique in his capable hands.
The clones launched themselves into combat, and some launched each other. Death rode on Yuurei's shoulder, just as surely as it breathed in his tempest. The soldiers and civilians of Kumo began to despair as blood flowed through the streets like rainwater runoff, and more than a handful made a break for the village's lone exit. Yuurei made a token show of killing a few of them, inspiring others to run harder, but otherwise continued pressing forward. The maze he'd made would keep the fleeing villagers occupied for far longer than it would take him to annihilate their home, even in his most wildly pessimistic calculations. Put bluntly, they would need to kill him in order to avoid their own deaths.
Hot wind whistled around Yuurei's ears as his tails bristled and shook, a thin miasma stripping the air of oxygen and choking at least a dozen ninja. He heard them gasp and gurgle, and he could smell their lungs burning as they started to corrode from the inside out. At an unspoken command, each of his thousand clones raised a single kunai; moments later, a magnanimous Raigen'ya tore through the crowd to grant the mercy of a swift death. As those clones disappeared into the void, they carried the souls of the slain back to Yuurei, whose power continued to grow as the slaughter continued. Corpses littered the sidewalks and rubble, like a nest of cockroaches that had been sprayed with pesticide. This was his doing, and his alone; it was his funeral gift to Gaara's soul, his declaration of devotion to Temari.
A tumultuous mass of youki gathered in the demon's right hand, and he wondered if he should say a few words in Kumogakure's memory. Deciding against it as that youki condensed into a destructive ball, believing that they hadn't proven themselves worthy of a eulogy, he shattered reality with a screaming explosion. Scorched fragments of stone flew through the air, an entire district of the city buckling at its foundation after the seismic damage he'd inflicted earlier. Just a little more effort, and a third of the hidden village would collapse into a sinkhole that hadn't existed a few hours ago.
Spiteful, hateful, and hungry for blood, only the most hardened of reflexes kept Yuurei sensitive enough to feel the danger coming at him from a distance. A tall, powerfully-built man wielded a golden bow, its brilliance only further accentuated by his dark skin. The bow loosed an arrow formed of chakra, and Yuurei didn't need to be told that the Raikage had finally come to find fault with him. Sidestepping the arrow as it approached him, Yuurei was taken aback by the pressure he felt from its sonic shockwave—the bow was a weapon from the age of gods, and the Heavenly Throne's power writhed inside of it. Instinctively, he understood: As long as the Raikage could fire off a clean shot, Yuurei's life would be in danger.
How long had it been since the last time he'd tasted the fear of death? A second bolt flew in his direction, and Yuurei actively dodged it. Diving into the crowd of Kumo-nin, his whirlwind of claws killed scores before he felt the third arrow come his way. Lightning pierced his left ankle, the force carrying him to the ground, and he felt himself bleeding. For the first time since he'd left the Speargod's hall, he'd been wounded—he wasn't immortal, and had never claimed to be, but Yuurei still found himself thinking bitterly about the words he'd said to the first Kumo-nin at the village's gate. His big mouth did have a habit of getting him in trouble.
Ripping the arrow out from the hole it had made in the back of his foot, Yuurei hissed in annoyance at the pain. The wound closed, slowly, and Yuurei rolled his eyes. Of course, as an anti-demon weapon, it would stall his regeneration.
"Not to be egotistical, but you must not know who's fucking with you," the demon said, summoning a sandworm tooth and swinging it to deflect the fourth arrow. To Tayuya and Yugito's surprise, because they knew the weapons' origin, the razored blade was melted in half after it redirected the blow. Yuurei threw the ruined tooth in the Raikage's direction despite knowing it would never reach the swarthy man, admitting to himself that he was no longer doing this just for Temari's sake. The tomoe in his Sharingan began to spin faster, and only continued to speed up; his natural eye's pupil began to thin at the middle, slowly sharpening into a beastlier appearance. Generations of genetic hatred told him, without reservation, that he needed to destroy that bow—and anyone who used it. If it could hurt him, then it could hurt Yugito and Tayuya. He would keep the Raikage occupied, and wait for his chance to kill the man.
He would do it until the whole host of Kumogakure was dead, or until his infernal violence overtook him.