Chapter 50: Neji: Between You and Me, Distance Is Meaningless
With a slight shake of his head, Neji looked up at the green lid descending from the sky and threw a powerful Divine Air Strike at it.
Crack!
There was no earth-shattering boom. The lid shattered like glass, breaking into countless pieces of stone.
Neji glanced at the four stone pillars surrounding him, and then, in a flash, he was outside the binding formation.
"The Dropping Lid was destroyed! That power... was that taijutsu?"
"The Lightning Release Chakra Mode?!"
"And is that... the Third Raikage's secret technique, Black Lightning?!"
The four Root ninja who had created the sealing jutsu were stunned. They immediately began to retreat.
"He's a close-range fighter! Use long-range ninjutsu!" one of them shouted.
Swoosh!
In his Lightning Release Chakra Mode, Neji's physical abilities were pushed to their absolute limit. He appeared behind the man in an instant.
"Between you and me," he whispered, "distance is meaningless."
Shlick!
As the last word left his lips, the man's heart was pierced through.
"That's... the Jinchūriki of the Two-Tails?"
On the other side of the battlefield, the information relayed by his kikaichū insects made a cold sweat break out on Aburame Torune's forehead.
Unlike Konoha's Jinchūriki, Uzumaki Kushina, who was unable to properly control the Nine-Tails' power and had to be "protected" by the ANBU, the Jinchūriki of the Two-Tails had been on the battlefield in the later stages of the Third Great War and had a glorious record of killing more than ten elite Jōnin. Root ninja had even caught glimpses of a blue, cat-like phantom on the battlefield. Even in a partial Tailed Beast state, her power was on a completely different level.
A rare look of fear appeared on Torune's normally deadpan face.
The appearance of the Jinchūriki of the Two-Tails had completely disrupted his plans.
But there was no turning back now.
If he failed his mission, death was the only thing waiting for him back at Root.
Danzō only cared about results.
He didn't care what they had to go through to achieve them.
"I'll take care of the Jinchūriki. You deal with the kid," Torune said to Aoyama Hideomi.
Without waiting for a reply, he and a team of Root ninja moved to surround Yugito.
Hearing him so casually declare that he was going to "take care of" the Jinchūriki, Aoyama had to suppress a laugh.
"Fox squad, with me," he said with a sigh, looking at the Root ninja behind him. He then led the last of the group toward Neji.
Shlick!
Yugito retracted her claws. A Root ninja collapsed to the ground, blood pouring from the wound in his chest.
Suddenly, she looked up at the night sky.
A massive swarm of black insects was flying toward her. The dark cloud of bugs was almost impossible to see in the night, the only sign of their approach a faint, ominous buzzing.
"Aburame Torune?"
A look of disgust crossed Yugito's face.
Of all the clans in Konoha, the Uchiha were the most feared. With Wood Release all but extinct, only the Sharingan could truly suppress a Jinchūriki.
But the most detestable were the Aburame.
It was hard to imagine a clan that would turn their own bodies into insect hives.
"So, the plan is to take me out first?"
Yugito's eyes narrowed, a smile playing on her lips.
Good.
If Torune died, the rest of these Root ninja would be a headless swarm, no real threat at all.
As the tide of insects drew closer, Yugito retracted her claws and formed a single hand sign: Tiger.
Most fire-style jutsu ended with the Tiger sign. Before becoming a Jinchūriki, Yugito had been renowned in the Hidden Cloud for her fire techniques. She could bypass the complex series of hand signs and unleash a powerful jutsu with just that one sign.
"Fire Release: Great Fire Annihilation!"
It was her signature technique. Its range and destructive power were determined by the amount of chakra the user poured into it. And as a Jinchūriki, Yugito had no shortage of chakra.
Her cheeks puffed out like a squirrel's, and she unleashed a massive wave of fire that engulfed the ten-meter-wide cloud of insects.
In less than a breath, tens of thousands of them were incinerated.
"Mind Body Switch Technique!"
Just then, an attack came from out of nowhere.
An invisible soul shot out and took control of Yugito's body.
"It's good to let this one suffer a little," Matatabi, the Two-Tails, purred from within Yugito's mind, glancing at the Yamanaka clan ninja who had just appeared before closing its eyes for a nap.
She was not yet a perfect Jinchūriki, after all.
"Secret Technique: Insect Sphere!"
Torune, who had been hiding underground, leaped out and commanded the insects from the surrounding rocks and grass to form a massive, dark cloud that swarmed toward the now-immobilized Yugito.
In just three seconds, the Jinchūriki of the Two-Tails would be devoured. The Yamanaka clan member would also die in the process, but it was a worthy sacrifice.
"Earth Release: Headhunt—"
Shlick!
A Root ninja had just poked his head out of the ground when Neji's sword lopped it off.
Just then, Neji sensed an astonishing surge of chakra. The blue, cat-like patterns of the Two-Tails appeared clearly in his Tenseigan's vision.
It was Yugito. She had entered her partial Tailed Beast state.
The terrifying chakra of Matatabi was like a beacon in the night.
Neji couldn't help but feel a little envious. He was only six, but with his Tenseigan at its second level, his own chakra was already on par with an elite Jōnin. But compared to a Tailed Beast, it was nothing. It meant that he couldn't use chakra-intensive techniques like the Lightning Release Chakra Mode or the Chakra Receiver Rosary with abandon.
To increase my chakra, I can either train for a long, long time, or... I can deal with the Tailed Beasts.
As he was thinking, he used the Body Flicker Technique to charge at another Root ninja.
He threw a Divine Air Strike with his left hand, crushing the man's head from a distance.
"Secret Technique: Shadow Imitation Jutsu."
A shadow, like a venomous snake, shot out from under the moonlight and latched onto Neji's own shadow, which was cast from the tree stump he was standing on. An invisible force bound him, controlling his limbs like a puppet on a string.
"He's here?"
Neji was frozen in the middle of a sword strike.
And in that moment of vulnerability, two more black figures leaped from the surrounding bushes. They were fast, masters of close-quarters combat.
They flanked him, their swords aimed at his kidneys.
"Idiots! Don't underestimate me!"
His voice was unaffected. The Shadow Imitation could only control his body, not his mouth, and certainly not his chakra.
The two attackers saw a mocking smile reflected in Neji's chakra blade.
Black Lightning: Chidori Current!
A Lightning Release ninjutsu that could be unleashed without any hand signs.