Ryuko's victory was short-lived; just as the mist was getting away, his byakugan flared up. So many jutsus were triggered at the same time that it was almost overpowering. The sheer amount of information only this section of the village made Ryuko take a fraction of a second instead of an instant to understand everything that was happening. He activated his two tail mode in an instant, and even in that case, the range of his byakugan was not enough to cover the whole village, but the whole arena and a few more blocks.
His first action was keeping his new bitch safe; a water clone to grab her and chuck her somewhere safe was his first hand seal. Then, the white feathers began to fall all over the arena.
A complex genjutsu that could put anybody to sleep if they were careful, but the slugs inside his girls and the talent of other ninjas like Kakashi and Guy kept them from falling into that trap. Even Sakura managed to overcome this test and Satsuki, who was waiting for her turn against the winner of this round, was able to overpower it.
From all the chaos that began to reign, there was one particular thing that triggered Ryuko's attention. There was someone with a strange chakra; well, there were a lot of people with strange chakras. From ones that were like Yakumo to something older, stranger.
"They are attacking! Let's—" Naruko yelled, and then she saw it.
A single woman was standing on the opposite side of the arena, the spirals on that orange mask that covered her whole face dragged Naruko attention toward that red eye for an instant, an instant too long.
"Hello there," she said. Now she and Naruko were in a familiar black void.
She stood a head taller than the kunoichi, wearing a black trench coat. Her long black hair looked familiar, not the cut but the texture and color. It reminded her of Satsuki.
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"What? How are you doing this?! A genjutsu?!" Naruko yelled, trying to understand what was happening, but it was already too late.
"This . . . is going to be problematic," the fragment of Orochi inside Naruko mumbled, watching the scene from afar. The snake needed to act quickly, surprised by her other self decision to do this.
She raised a finger, pointing to the big red cage made out of wood behind her. "Not for you, for you, for it," the masked woman said with a playful tone, her index finger aimed at the seal on the door.
A loud screech made all the arena rumble; the concrete where Naruko stood began to crack as red chakra began to consume her, so blazing hot that it started to burn away the chakra of her cursed mark.
A tail burst out of her back, then another and another. Four tails exploded, and the chakra around her was starting to condense into a thick layer of red, almost black flesh as another screech just shook the whole place so hard it began to collapse that wall of the arena. Not even the slug inside her could survive the boiling heat of that chakra.
"Ryuko! Naruko went berserk!" Fuu immediately yelled at Ryuko; he saw the chakra of the nine tails getting unplugged as if someone was opening the seal. However, another seal on top of her original one was slowly slowing the chakra and saving the seal from completely breaking.
"A genjutsu?! But how?!" Ryuko exclaimed, trying to understand what was happening, the culprits already far gone.
"This . . . this is impossible!" Katsuyu said, her tone rising, something extremely rare for her that made Ryuko understand how bad the situation was.
"It is Fukaku's Mangekyō Sharingan!" She yelled at Ryuko. The ancient slug had seen that power before during the previous war, the power to control the nine tails if necessary.
"Explain!" Ryuko yelled, jumping out of the fog and now watching the whole damage of the invasion as he floated in the air for an instant. From the Hokage quickly charging against what was the true body of Orochimaru to Guy and Kakashi making their way toward him to assist.
"Right eye power! It is a genjutsu that targets seals, using chakra to edit them!" The elder slug finally yelled.
The realization struck Ryuko like lightning. Someone had ruined the seal inside Naruko, and now the nine tails was getting unleashed. There were only three people in the village who could fix it: Tsunade, him, or Gaara.
Five seconds had passed since the start of the invasion.
"Gaara! Shukaku! Keep Naruko's seal; Fuu and Chomei help her!" Ryuko ordered two of his most powerful allies to keep Naruko at bay. He would go himself, but there were more pressing matters to take care of. Also, there was another important detail: those two were Kurama's sisters, and after all that happened, they might be able to calm her without that much brute force.
"First, take her out of the populated area!" Fu yelled, activating her wings and exuding a thick layer of green chakra that quickly covered her body as armor.
"On it," Gaara muttered from the waiting room under the arena, where Ryuko told her to wait until the moment was right. An explosion of sand struck the half-baked from under her.
The geyser made Naruko fly in the air as she grasped at the particles for a second, taken by surprise by the attack, before Fuu rammed her side at full speed. Shooting her through the air in an attempt to push her off the city. However, the dual combo only took the berserker fox to the thick part of the river that crossed the village, making the water boil.
Meanwhile, at the stadium, the fight between Orochimaru and the Hokage proceeded to where the two were inside a square barrier created by four of the snake's most loyal followers. That left them defenseless against anybody trying to attack while they held the purple walls of chakra in place.
"Tsk, those four made a barrier around the Hokage!" Kakashi yelled, his reaction time lagging for a second as he saw the pile of ANBU corpses on the rooftop.
Guy, with his skin already blazing red and exuding pure chakra from each of his pores from opening six gates, jumped forward. "Not for too long!" He yelled and charged forward as Kakashi just weaved hand seals to rush a chidori toward the static target. The combo attack would be more than enough to kill two of the ninjas keeping the barrier, freeing the Hokage.
Guy was the first to react, lowering his head just enough to avoid the blade that cut a few hairs off his forehead.
It was a Tanto, moving so fast that even for those trained eyes, it looked more like a white blur that stopped the second it blocked Kakashi's chidori. The wind around the ninja and the blade overpowered the duo with pure speed.
"Wait . . . this is . . ." Kakashi mumbled as he saw his own father.
A mockery of him, with grey, cracked skin like old paint, and black eyes, but it was him. Tall, with a white mane tied in a ponytail, an older version of Kakashi wearing the armor he used during the war before he took his own life.
"Sakumo Hatake! White Fang of the Leaf!" Guy yelled and, without wasting a single instant, tried to kick that puppet on the arm, not to kill it, but to disarm it. It was not an action out of pity or compassion. As someone who had seen him fight on the battlefield, Guy knew that disarming was the only way out of this situation.
Sakumo vanished, his speed unreal as the wind around him twisted around him like a cloak. "Let's not talk; you know why I am here . . . " he muttered, his tone low and raspy. After all, the second Hokage had used this jutsu so many times that it was etched in the memory of the village. However, it was the first time they saw it being used against them.
Ryuko found himself paralyzed by the experience. It was the first time that it had happened to him this way. Too many choices, too many fights, so many experiences that he could have had. Shadow clones would not do the trick; they would only give a fragment of a memory, and the redhead wanted the full brunt of this experience.
The boy floating on the air, the light blue of his tails burning into a bright and dark shade of purple as the cursed mark in his body flared up, the tattoo consuming his skin as he opened not only that but the gates. Each sliver of himself was pushed toward the limit as a black sun dawned over the village.
With the same rules that take water down a mountain or rain to the ground, Ryuko searched and flew toward the strongest's chakra signature that was not Orochi. Since she was already busy fighting the Kage.
Rasa, the Kazekage of Suna, was floating just a few hundred meters away from the arena. The second that the invasion started, he rushed toward the Hokage Tower, summoning a big cloud of gold dust to move around. He was this lanky, pale man with short red hair, looking a little bit like Gaara, but, well, male and older.
"Ryuko Kuroi, you have the guts to steal my tailed beast, and now you show up to me with a smile . . ." The man snarled, floating on his golden cloud of gold as the boy landed just on the rooftop in front of him.
"So sorry!" He mumbled, his tone nervous, and smiled like a little kid.
"Too late for apologies!" he yelled at him, a blast of golden sand shooting in his direction.
Ryuko jumped out of the way, easily dodging it. "Oh? No, no, no, I apologize for being nervous! It is my first time fighting with a kage! I am so excited! Come! Show me what you can do!" He exclaimed, opening his arms and welcoming this man to try to kill him.
Raza flew back, creating some distance from Ryuko, his eyes squinting in as the man began to weave hand seals. The sand around him began to twist and reshape; there were no longer those big and simple balls of dust that he shot; they were small, too small . . . like mosquitoes.
A swarm of golden bugs was shot toward Ryuko's direction. The boy smirked, double jumping out of the way thanks to his tenketsu burst, but the projectiles followed him. Well, there was a way to fix that.
There was a simple solution to this: just rush toward him with all your speed and strangle him. Forcing him to dismiss the jutsu or it would affect both of them.
The boy's speed was ridiculous, closing the distance in the blink of an eye.
"Come on! You are a kage! You can do better than this!" The redhead yelled at him, his hand gripping the man's neck, and seeing the perfect golden sand armor stopping his grip from just crushing the kage's neck. Toxic vapors began to ooze from the contact point as the powerful acid that had made his hand was melting away the gold.
There was only one second before the kage could actually make a decent counter. He flipped one of his prosthetic nails, unleashing the seal. For a ninja like him with so many years of experience and failures, missing some parts in the battlefield was more of an when than an if.
The kage unsealed a tricky mixture of various chemicals and components. At first, Ryuko thought that it was just a standard cloud of black poison, but then he saw the sparks on it. The massive electric explosion made him retreat; it was a weaponized thundercloud.
Ryuko jumped back, just ten meters, as he landed on a nearby home, a little bit tingling from the electric burst that he mostly managed to nullify by turning his body into oil at the last second.
"Ghhhhhhhh ah! Bastard!" Raza yelled at him, gasping for air as the gold around him save him by making the electricity pass around him rather than inside him.
Ryuko smirked, now really having some interest in him. He could see his artificial parts thanks to his byakugan, but the boy just didn't want to spoil the fun and think too hard about them. "Now we are talking!" He exclaimed and weaved dozens of hand signs at the same time, and a second later, a total of ten acid clones were summoned around him unsealing some acid from multiple points in his body.
"I will increase the difficulty! Don't disappoint me!" Ryuko yelled and just sent his groups of copies charging directly into Raza, trying to probe and see what other tricks the man had up his sleeve.
The kage clenched his teeth and weaved another series of hand seals. "Don't look down on me! Did you think that I would not be ready for your tricks?!" He snarled, and then five rings of gold sand were formed around him, creating a multilayer security area of just sharp protection.
Ryuko chuckled at first, thinking that it was a waste of precious gold, but then, he raised an eyebrow as his eyes could see the chakra flowing into them by the second jutsu.
They expanded; what were 5-meter-radius circles got stretched by bursts of electricity to the point they just cut the whole village block. The motes of gold dust became just simple guidelines for the electricity that the man was pouring into them, quickly destroying all the clones with a massive attack that consumed just a little bit of his precious dust.
"Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh! Interesting! And I thought you were just a one-trick pony!" Ryuko exclaimed, clapping his hands multiple times and wondering how much chakra that jutsu used.
"You are not the first jinchuriki that I made plans to deal with!" Raza yelled, his fingers curling as the rings around him gave some protection from the onslaught of jutsus that Ryuko could do. However, victory was not something that he could get by just defending.
Ryuko took a deep breath, the curse mark chakra mixing with Saiken energies to just power up his eyes to the point where he could see the path toward the man in constant spinning rings. "Come on! I am letting you live for as long as you are interesting! Show me all your tricks!" He finally yelled and charged forward, making sure to change his body to oil.
The boy's body just weaved between the electric blades, less like a ninja and more like a drop of water sliding between rock cracks. Ryuko was not only predicting the pattern of movement but also stretching his vision to the limit.
Crack, the sound of Ryuko landing a spinning kick on Raza. So hard that the golden rings were forced to be broken as the man was shot directly toward them. Now there was steam oozing from the redhead's body as the attack hit Raza so hard on the chest that he could feel his flesh burning from the extreme hot water. However, he wasn't just waiting for the boy with his arms crossed.
Another seal was opened, and another jutsu was woven as the angle of Ryuko sank in his chest. Two scrolls made of a paper-thin sheet of steel came out Raza prosthetic legs as he was flying through the air; the magnet release kept them in his grasp while his hand pressed the seals on their surface.
Ryuko widened his eyes; his fuinjutsu was good enough to recognize a summoning ritual.
Two colossal sandworms that remind him of Saiken came out of them. The twin strings of flesh the size of houses took two different tasks. The purple one swallowed Raza, taking him away from harm's way, while the red one tried to swallow Ryuko with its huge maw.
Ryuko could see it, the red pit of flaming fire that was the worm's mouth. It was hotter than a furnace; the interior of that thing had an ungodly amount of fire blazing nonstop that quickly swallowed him, wanting to burn him alive. It wasn't even normal flames; the chakra of that fire was tainted with something that made him worried a little bit. They had senjutsu, the natural enemy of any absorption technique, making it even if the ninja could absorb the flames, a sure death.
For Ryuko? It reminds him of the cauldron ritual that gave him the hydrification power the first time.
Before Raza could think that his trap would counter the regeneration of the boy, the whole village rumbled as the red worm exploded, just destroying the whole block it was in.
The redhead made sure to unleash an absurd amount of water inside the creature, water that turned into steam and worm pressure until eventually, it made the creature pop up like a pipe bomb as he empowered the vapor with his own burst of steam.
"Begone, you monster!" Raza yelled inside the purple worm's mouth, weaving another long sequence of hand seals while Ryuko was slowly falling on the ground, his body covered in chunks of gore as all his burns were healed in seconds.
A blast of purple venom with golden streaks was shot directly toward the ninja. He was no stranger to the lethal toxin, but the streaks of metal made him worried, worried enough to dodge it. They weren't simple specks of gold to give the blast extra piercing power.
Ryuko managed to analyze the nature of this attack in the last second, dodging the branching beam of pure poison that came out of the side of the initial blast. Raza sealed part of the jutsu mid-casting to land a surprise attack.
"Using magnet release to add seals to your jutsu! Well, that was impressive!" He yelled, and before Raza could do another attack, Ryuko was in front of him.
The boy didn't want to wait anymore; he wanted to try that trick, and for that, he needed magnet release.
Ryuko charged the tip of his fingers with energy, creating a scalpel that was also imbued with the acidic nature of his chakra. A precise and deadly blow to his chest that managed to pierce the already damaged golden armor in the same place he had kicked before.
Before the purple worm could do anything to aid the man getting his heart grabbed by the boy, dozens of small Katsuyu that were planted in this part of the town began to attach to it. Eating it from the outside like a swarm of hungry piranhas.
"Well, this was fun. See you again when I figure out how to revive you!" Ryuko mumbled, his wrist deep into the man's chest.
"Do-" Raza was about to say something, but the boy cut him short by just ripping out his heart.
The ninja quickly assimilated the heart into his body, his fingers already tingling with a new type of release as his mind was already boiling with ideas about what to do with it. "There we go! Thanks!" He said and then jumped out of the half-eaten worm's mouth as it collapsed on the street.
[Ryuko gains 300 exp + 75 exp (thanks, Fighting Junkie) from the fight.
Ryuko gains:
Raza heart: A heart that has the lightning, magnet, water, wind, and earth release.]
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The second that the invasion started, ten Chunin ninjas from the leaf were killed in less than a second.
This group was just rushing to help whatever was happening in the arena, being guards located on the outside wall just in case, but as they tried to move toward it, their bodies just dropped to the floor. Just a single small sphere of radiant orange light touching their skin was enough to suck each single drop of water out of their bodies, turning them into dried husks.
Pakura came from the ground just between the pile of corpses, her sneaky attack being just a warm-up for the kunoichi.
The woman was tall, with piercing yellow eyes, green hair tied into a knot, and two long bangs where her hair turned into a shade of orange. Wearing a simple black kunoichi outfit, she didn't look dangerous. Or that would be for her except for the three massive orbs materializing behind her, miniature suns that just sucked the moisture in the air, creating big plumes of steam.
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"Tsk . . . we need to hurry up," she grunted to herself, looking at the lack of targets around her. There was a place where the woman could be more useful, and she knew it, but she was sent to just take care of reinforcements; Rasa wanted to get all the glory for himself.
Pakura's eyes widened, and the hairs on the back of her neck stood up. It was nothing related to her normal senses, but more something that she had honed during decades on the battlefield. A gut instinct that told her that danger was coming.
Instinctively, the kunoichi dodged to the left, trying to avoid whatever was in her direction. On the dirty street, a few houses were giving her some cover. For a ninja of this level, wood, concrete, and stone were nothing against high-grade ninjutsu, but the sound of them breaking would give her a fundamental moment to react.
Dozens of stone bullets were shot in her direction, fast, but nothing that she could not dodge out of the way. At that instant, she saw Kurenai from a few meters away using her jutsu.
"Kai!" She yelled, snapping out of the genjutsu and dispelling the illusion before it could take hold. Pakura knew full well that Kurenai was a genjutsu expert, and this kind of trick was normal for her. However, the moment she did, only half of the bullets disappeared, forcing her to do a backflip to dodge out of the way.
Then the world twisted, the street became liquid, and the houses around them began to stretch far beyond her comprehension. Things began to fold into themselves, one time, two times, three times; just understanding what was happening around her was making her brain burn.
Multiplied layered genjutsu to overpower the brain senses with information, a branch of offensive genjutsu that she had trained to withstand. Normal ninjas would already be having a stroke, but she snapped out of it at the end of the second when the technique was cast on her.
Just enough time for Anko to sneak and launch dozens of snakes that attacked from under the ground, from the top, and from the sides; it was an omnidirectional attack that could not be dodged. The blue snakes carrying a mixture of acid and poison in their mouths were not just suicidal but also unblockable. A single one exploding or turned into dust would create a rain of toxic fluids that would still affect the kunoichi. Even the particles of them, in case of insertion, could burn her lungs if inhaled.
Pakura would have died in that moment if it weren't for her automatic defenses. One of her orbs of chakra immediately bent and twisted, creating a shield around her made out of pure scorch element, destroying each single snake the second that they went near her. Just as she was realizing what would happen, a second orb inside his fire sphere boiled all the moisture she had accumulated from the air to create a counter explosion of steam. Giving her just a small window while the nasty particles were getting blown out of the way for her to move.
She didn't even land on the floor, as her mind was still burning from Kurenai's attack, and long strings of blood came out of her ears, nose, and eyes, making everything a strange blur. However, the kunoichi remembered how dangerous Orochimaru was, and so was her student.
The second that Pakura exploded out of Anko's trap, Kurenai felt the recoil of that jutsu. It was a jagged, white-hot pain stabbing her mind; after all, the mental load of doing that technique was huge. Her brain needed to focus on creating that mental image, and even after all these months of training, she was barely able to withstand it.
Her knees gave up, a metallic flavor filled her mouth, and her vision blurred. The slug inside her immediately went into healing mode to fix the damage inside her brain, but still, these were seconds she was out of commission, and those seconds were too precious in a fight of this level.
Anko's voice reached her before Pakura's attack. "Kurenai! Move!" the kunoichi yelled, still looking normal for her as she reserved her curse mark mode for later.
The third orb of Scorch release was already heading in her direction. A blazing sun that, even if it was just five meters away, she could feel her sweat boiling. The ironic thing was that not even dodging would save her; that orb of scorch release was made to deal with tricky ninjas, able to follow her to the corner of the village if it was necessary to kill her.
Kurenai was dead; there was no way to avoid that attack.
That would be if it wasn't for a three-meter-tall slug that jumped just in front of her to tank the attack, turning into ashes in an instant. The Katsuyu inside the woman had already triggered the other slugs nearby to get into the fight and save the kunoichi from certain death. However, that took out a lot of them just to extinguish a single sun from their enemy, an orb that was already conjured back in her back.
"That slug!" Pakura yelled as she landed on the rooftop. She knew them. Too big, too wet, and the most annoying counter for her jutsu.
"You let your guard down!" Anko snarled, slamming her palms onto the cracked rooftop tiles. A massive summoning seal exploded from the connection point, and from that, a huge explosion of smoke.
The ground trembled as she fully summoned her secret weapon and new companion. Katsuyu and Manda's offspring burst out of the seal. Uwabami emerged in all her pale blue glory; the giant multi-headed snakes had grown a lot from the last time that her mother had seen her. The colossal fusion between the two monsters had the head of a snake but the body of a slug that elongated like a reptile.
Pakura threw a rain of miniature balls of pure scorch towards the monster, trying to kill it in the act, but the second it came closer to her, hundreds of tiny snakes came out of the contact point of the attack, sacrificing themselves to block the jutsu.
"What is that abomination?!" She cursed as now there was another of those annoyed slugs that messed with her jutsus.
"Something that not even Orochi could get her hands on!" Anko yelled, and the monstrosity convulsed, her body splitting down the middle with a loud, wet tearing sound.
Then, she kept splitting; one became two, two became four, and four became eight, each new hybrid vomiting not only a duplicate but also massive squirts of poison and acid toward the kunoichi.
The kunoichi's eyes moved all over the place, trying to find an opening, but for the first time in this fight, she was not sure how to counter this attack. Burning the constant deluge of toxic waste that the snake was producing only created more dangerous particles in the air that could kill her. Killing her was more trouble than it was worth, and her brain was still recoiling from the damage of Kurenai's jutsu.
"Katsuyu, are you done?!"Kurenai yelled, already feeling her brain getting into a state where she could at least support Anko from afar.
"Try not to overdo it; the damage can become permanent!" The slug answered, trying her best to keep up in all this chaos.
Pakura nodded as she landed in the middle of a desert street. "Fine! Let's do this!" The kunoichi yelled as she pushed into showing Anko why Rasa feared her so much. She began to quickly weave hand seals, and then . . . the natural yellow light of the sun was overtaken by a sickly white radiance.
A looming figure emerged as her presence alone was just turning everything around her into ashes. There was not even fire, just so much heat that even the wood and stone were getting vaporized.