Pre-Chapter A/N: So here we are back on our regular upload schedule. Sunday and Tuesday/Wednesday. I've put systems in place to ensure we don't fall behind again so yay. I look forward to stress-testing them as the madnesses of life stack up (Two days in and things are looking good). To celebrate the scale of our achievement, we've got a cheeky little discount for the whole month (code: MAY01) on patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga). Next five chapters on my patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga)— same username as here and link in bio.
The one to the left was the Nanabi jinchuriki. The wings made of chakra that spread from his back made it clear. He was one that A could not afford to kill carelessly— there were ways to extract the beast if the host was dead, but that was a much longer and riskier process. It was best if he did not put himself in that situation in the first place. The second man— the one to the right— Hadebana Hideoki, was the leader of this village. His chakra was bursting outwards from his body at a level that did not make sense at all. The last time A had seen someone with so much chakra was when he faced Konoha's Hachibi jinchuriki.
He grunted as he increased the output of his lightning release, accelerating to the very edge of the Stage 1 lightning release chakra mode. Stage 2 took more chakra and would be useful if he got the chance to end the fight in one quick go. Stage 3 was not an option. The only reason he had been able to use it against the Nibi had been because of the beast's natural durability being able to counteract the near fatal nature of the strikes he created with that technique.
The Nanabi led the attack. The wings blew behind him twice and he shot at A faster than most. The only ones A could think of as being faster were the Hachibi jinchuriki and her teammate, Minato Namikaze. The same echelon as the Butcher's students was good company, A knew. But he stood above them all. He was Raijin incarnated. He caught the punch that tried to take his head off with a single meaty thud. He wrenched the arm out of position and moved to strike his opponent's chest. He could have ended the fight right there and then, but Hideoki was in motion.
He body flickered to A's left and he tracked him all the while as his hands stopped their motion in the bird seal. A arced backwards in a lightning release body flicker, allowing the wind bullets to pass through the space he had just occupied. His opponent did not seem all that bothered by the miss, fingers already flying through another set of seals.
He tilted his head once the jutsu was complete, breathing out an arc of cutting wind. A was no stranger to fighting against wind release users. The Butcher was a master of the element, after all, and so a good portion of his retraining had been aimed at eliminating any deficiencies he could face in dealing with that element. He squatted underneath the arc.
One of the first things he had learned was to sharpen his senses to the point where he could anticipate just about any wind release technique in use— whether it be from the chakra used in the technique or from the disturbances in the air currents that using such a technique was marked with. Moving around shirtless did have its advantages, after all.
The Nanabi moved its feet and began to adjust its position even as Hideoki did the same to the other side, and A smirked. He could see the tactic. They were like wolves. Like the night time ambush predators his father had taken him out of the village to watch bring down their prey— thick skinned, powerful mammoths. They could take down the biggest prey by working together. The first few times, his father had said nothing. They just watched. He thought the goal was to learn from the wolves. He had been mistaken.
"Men who become Raikage are not the wolves, my son. We are the prey. We are the strong and powerful who lesser men will come together to kill. No Raikage has ever died in single combat. We are too great for that. Our enemies will come with the advantage of numbers because that is the only advantage they can have against us," his father had said once. The goal of those outings had been to learn from the prey and not the predators. Learn what the prey who died did and what those who survived did.
He breathed out once before turning on his side to keep both of them within view as much as possible. They did, of course, keep moving to frustrate his efforts, but he kept his feet constantly in motion, trying to lull them into a false sense of security. Some prey were careless, allowing themselves to be outmanoeuvred and killed. Others were smart and tried to keep the wolves in sight. But the type of prey who survived the most often were those who took their lives into their own hands. Those who claimed the initiative for their own. The aggressive ones. The Nanabi was the bigger threat, but he was also the more durable of the duo. He would be harder to kill.
A shifted his feet again, both the men surrounding him shifted, and when Hideoki's left foot left the ground, he struck. The lightning natured chakra he had been allowing to pool at his gut spread to his limbs and brain, coursing through his body and taking him from the edge of the first stage of the lightning release chakra cloak to the second one. He could not see his hair, but he could feel it spike upwards and defy gravity because of the charge running through it.
He shot at Hideoki with speed he was yet to display in this fight. To the Taki leader's credit, he managed to flip a single handseal and breathe out a storm of gale force winds. Too bad it was too little. He had lulled him into an even more dangerous false sense of security with his previous codes. He felt that A had no counter beyond just avoiding the attacks. Not a bad assumption to make— lightning was weak to wind, after all.
But A was not any ordinary lightning release user. He was the damn Raikage. And it was time for this man to realise what that title truly meant. Being the leader of a minor village meant nothing in the face of a Kage. The difference between them was as the difference between a mountain and an anthill. A was greater, and it was not close. He increased the amount of chakra in his armour, bracing for impact.
The wind release technique hit his armour and he thickened it even further, forming a wall of his chakra that took the attack head on. The wind threatened to tear through his armour even with his reinforcements, but he managed to hold out just for long enough. The elemental advantage did not matter when those who fought were far from equals.
The shocked look on Hideoki's face brought a savage smile to A's own. Behind him, he could sense the Nanabi already moving. Shooting at his turned form from behind faster than he had moved all fight. But it was too late. A had caught them both by surprise, he was faster than the Nanabi even with its desperation, and he'd both started from closer to the target and earlier than his opponent. The advantages were too many to surmount.
The jutsu cut off just as A muscled his way through. Hideoki was attempting to switch to another jutsu, fingers twisting already, but that was too little and it was much too late. A reached out, grabbing his opponent's smaller hands in his muscled fist and squeezing. He felt the creak of shattered bones as he dragged the man closer to him with his joined hands. A's fingers straightened into a knife hand and he stabbed it straight through Hideoki's neck. The warmth of the blood did not sully his hands. The lightning superheated and cauterised the wound even while A's hand was embedded in the throat.
He heaved, turning in one smooth motion and using the hand in his opponent's throat to throw the still warm corpse at his comrade. The throw was not as clean as he had wanted, the head coming half loose as the body flew at the Nanabi. He stopped, catching the body. A watched as Taki's leader's skin began to burn from contact with the caustic chakra of the tailed beast.
The Nanabi screamed and A braced himself as a nasty wind began to pick up. The air itself began to be saturated with the chakra of the beast. The two tails was nothing compared to this. He bent his knees, taking his stance and knowing that this would be one of the battles that would make his legend. The Butcher had the nine tails in his stomach. Seven tails was just a stumbling block on his way to that mountain.
The wings at the back of the Nanabi thickened, the chakra becoming a deep purple rather than blue as they split into six wings as opposed to the four that had been behind the beast earlier. The red chakra cloak thickened as well, becoming something that made it near impossible to gaze upon the man within.
"I'll fucking kill you for that," the beast snarled in a baritone that made A's bones vibrate. A just spread his arms out, welcoming the challenge even as he increased the amount of chakra in his armour. Stage 2 was as high as the lightning armour had been able to go before he had taken and integrated Mabui's heavenly transfer technique into his arsenal to make Stage 3. That meant increasing the output of Stage 2 did not risk knocking on the door of Stage 3. They were completely different mechanisms.
The Nanabi placed down the body in its grasp with unexpected gentleness. A waited for the creature to shoot at him. He had learned from fighting Konoha's Hachibi. In this state, the beast would be his better in strength. It was not a situation he was used to, but sparring with D without his lightning cloak had given him the tools necessary for dealing with such an event. No one knew what kind of physical strength the Butcher had, after all. A had to be ready to be outmatched in that metric.
When the beast reached him, all thoughts of the Butcher fled his mind. Focus on the here and now, he silently told himself as he reacted to the beast's lunge with a twist of his hips, redirecting the force as he grabbed the outstretched hand that led the charge around the wrist before wrenching with all his strength and then allowing the beast's momentum to complete the movement as he tossed it straight into the ground. It formed a deep indentation as its body was half buried in the earth.
That would not be enough to take it down, after all. The beast's other hand was up and arcing for A's throat before he had even fully hit the ground. A twisted his head backwards, allowing the claws to hit naught but air. A noted the way the limb had stretched far past the length of the host's arm. It could extend its striking range by using chakra to manipulate the cloak. Assumedly, the host's physical proportions remained the same and the only thing being altered was the cloak, but he could not tell one way or the other.
The Nanabi shot to its feet in a heartbeat and came at him again. A's hips twisted once more as he dodged the creature's lunge. As it passed, his hand stretched out, trying to stab into its side. His knife hand was slowed by the armour as it felt like trying to dig through jello. The beast twisted, the chakra cloak shifting as tendrils grew from the side his arm was stabbed into and trying to grab hold of him.
Being rendered stationary against an opponent of superior strength would be foolish, so he ripped his arm out with a single heave before smashing a straight kick into the beast's side. His foot, he reinforced with even more chakra this time. It slammed into the cloak and sent the beast flying, its body rolling across the ground before flying through a thatched hut.
The beast was rising even before it had fully formed its indentation into the ground. It had gone straight through the hut— in one wall and then out the other. A snarled a challenge and shot forwards. The beast's wings arced out, acting more like tails than wings as they stretched to reach him. At his speed, the beast did not even have a chance. He twisted around them, dodging the attempt to grab a hold of him before he reached the beast.
"Lariat," he snarled out as his bicep made contact with where a human's collarbone would have been. He felt the contact. Felt the bone shift and break under the force of the technique he himself had invented. He did not have his father's hell stab. He had figured out a different way to channel the force of the lightning armour into a technique that broke through any defence. His Lariat would be what would bring an end to the Butcher, he knew. He could feel it every time the technique brought him victory.
It took him a second too long to realise that this was not one of those times. A hand around his leg from an opponent whose chest had been shattered into pieces was a surprise. Said hand, with a single pull, disrupted A's footing, sending him crashing into the ground. The Nanabi wasted no time, rolling over and landing on top of A's form.
From this close, A was forced to look into those eyes. Were they even eyes at this point? They were more like soulless orbs of rage. An endless ocean lay beneath those eyes, deep, dark, and wrathful. The snarling and growling caught his attention next as he had to wrestle his hands upwards to stop the beast from taking a bite out of him. But like he had identified earlier, against beasts like this he would not have the advantage in strength.
His hands were pushed back towards him by the beast's neck as he tried to keep it at bay. And then it remembered it had hands. A screamed as claws began to dig into him from either side. His lightning armour had blunted most of the thrust, but he could still feel the grasping of the creature's claws as they pierced his skin. A flesh wound in most other contexts, but he had seen what that chakra did to human flesh.
With a muttered curse, he pushed into the third stage of the lightning armour. Flesh became lightning. He flickered and passed through the tailed beast's grip. It could heal from the Lariat. That meant that it could take this. A himself would only be able to rely on the first stage of the armour after pushing to the third stage twice in a single day already, but after this foe was felled, even that would be overkill.
In this form, he was a god among men. He did not exist as flesh and blood anymore. He was phenomena. And he was the most powerful phenomena of them all. Lightning. He did not breathe, he did not feel, he did not even move in truth.
His brain fired at speeds that made all the world feel like it crawled. And he used the word feel for a reason. He did not truly see. Lightning did not have eyes, after all. It was more like he could just sense everything around him. Within a human, he could feel the electricity within their bodies. He knew that if he passed his true form through another body, he could steal the electricity that kept them alive as he did so. He was not human anymore. He did not fight in this form. To use the word fight would be to imply a struggle. He did not struggle against his opponents— nay, victims.
He willed it and it was.
Let there be light, he thought with a mental chuckle. He soared into the skies above Takigakure. In this form, something as quaint as gravity had no hold over him. Godhood came with many advantages. He could feel the latent charge in the clouds as he passed through them. He shot from cloud to cloud, willing himself from one to the next and then the next so quickly that he might as well have touched them all at the same time. Who was to say that he did not.
The charge that lay dormant in each cloud followed him as he completed his path, and then he stopped at the final one, gathering even more. He stoked it with his chakra. How did he even have chakra without a body for it to flow through? He put that question away for another time. Perhaps C would know. The lightning grew at his side, and then like a spear, he held it before he decided a path it would follow.
The jinchuriki was still looking around in shock. All of A's actions had happened in seconds. He dropped from the sky like a… well, he literally was a lightning bolt. The charge from the clouds followed his path. Lightning chased lightning. He parted around the jinchuriki, reforming himself on the other side. Natural lightning had no such option, striking and dropping the man in one go. A felt the rest of the Taki shinobi. He still had chakra. Perhaps a minute left in this form before he had to return to mortality.
He felt for the stronger men. The ones whose presence sang out to him. He swept through them as the lightning he was. Where he passed, there was death. And when his time was up, he returned to his oldest friend before reforming as a human once more.
Taki's shinobi had been battered, but they had won the day. At least, that is what he had thought. Until a group of women who wore white robes began to approach. Six of them. They wore nothing beyond the robes that cloaked their nakedness. No shoes, no headbands. Were they even shinobi?
"What is this?" he wondered. He would not wonder for long. The pot that held the Nibi was brought forwards. Was this a peace offering, he chuckled. Surely they knew he was not here to be bargained with. He was here to end Taki as a village.
"What do you—" he began to ask before one of the women placed a hand on the pot. It began to shake.
"Don't—" C was the one who screamed, and that was the last thing A heard before chaos reigned. Another woman joined the one whose hand had been on the pot, and then it shattered.
A/N: I liked this delve into A's head, and doing some characterisation with the Kumo lot feels fun. Back to Konoha next chapter perhaps. Next five chapters up on patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga) (same username as here and link in bio), support me there and read them early. Discount available with the code MAY01– have fun.