Inside the massive crater,
szzzz.
Lightning crackled as Yotsuki Isao's eyes burned with killing intent. His heel ground down hard on Haori's red chakra-cloaked forearms, pinning them in place.
Chakra roared through his body and turned into thunder.
Haori refused to yield. Her chakra core trembled, and the deep blue chakra within her rapidly shifted into that eerie black and crimson energy, pushing back against the invading lightning.
Red and blue clashed wildly.
In the end, Isao's chakra proved stronger. The lightning pressed down over the red cloak and slowly crept toward Haori's true body.
The dazzling lightning was already close enough to touch her skin.
Haori's gaze sharpened.
Ping, pong, ping.
The lightning armor wrapped around Yotsuki Isao suddenly flared with sparks.
Invisible vacuum blades sprayed from every pore of Haori's body, shredding at his flesh and battering the Lightning Release Chakra Mode, making it rattle like metal balls bouncing on a board.
At the same time,
the wind howled. Silver hair whipped madly in the air.
A single strand of hair swept past his chest, grazing that prominent scar.
Isao's face changed sharply. He yanked his right leg back in an instant, then whipped it around in a vicious roundhouse aimed at Haori.
Whoosh.
The kick tore the air apart, vicious and sharp.
Haori's muscles tensed in an instant. Power flowed in one seamless chain down into her legs.
The tailed-beast cloak wrapped tightly around her shin.
She raised her leg.
"Leaf Strong Whirlwind!"
Boom.
One thick leg and one slender leg collided in midair.
A heartbeat later, the two of them were trading kicks in rapid succession.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
Red and blue auras slammed against each other, lightning and crimson chakra biting into one another.
The shockwaves rippled out.
Both of them were forced back several steps at the same time, boots grinding into the dirt as they pulled apart and stared each other down from a distance.
The beasts circled them, whining anxiously.
The drug clouding their minds was finally starting to wear off. A shred of reason had returned.
Roooar.
Even their roars gained a deeper, more cautious tone.
They prowled around the two fighters and surrounded them, but none dared step forward.
Szzzz.
Isao's lightning-wreathed hand chopped off the silver strand caught against his chest.
He twisted it around his finger and slowly pulled the embedded hair out of his flesh.
Staring at the slightly childish blind girl in front of him, the stabbing pain in his chest only poured oil on the blaze of his fury.
He had rushed here as fast as he could.
He was still late.
The "Beast" operative and the Elephant Bird had both been killed by this girl with that unknown jutsu of hers.
With the Elephant Bird, their living, human-sized transport, gone, the plan to snatch the Nine-Tails was already a failure.
And as the one who had slipped into Konoha alone, Isao knew he had no chance of leaving alive.
He did not care about that.
From the moment he went in alone, he had never counted on returning.
The final node of this operation was simple. If Konoha's reinforcements arrived, the "Beast" would retreat with the Byakugan and the jinchuriki, while Yotsuki Isao stayed behind as the fuse, covering their escape with his life.
Now everything was ruined.
A veteran spy who had been embedded for years with unique talents.
Three speed-type taijutsu jonin.
And one Elephant Bird, so rare it had practically become a legend of the Land of Lightning.
Kumogakure had put all of that into this plan, and the girl in front of him had erased it all with a single shot.
"You. Need. To. Die."
Isao glared at Haori and forced each word out one at a time.
Kill the Nine-Tails, and it could be revived.
Kill a Konoha prodigy, and they were gone for good.
Now that he knew he was dead either way, Yotsuki Isao no longer cared about the mission.
He would crush this girl to paste with lightning.
Steam rolled from Haori's mouth and nose, hot enough to shimmer.
Her muscle fibers seized their chance to heal the damage left behind by her earlier burst of power.
She had no idea where his killing intent came from or why it was so heavy, but she had no interest in figuring it out.
The best kind of enemy is a dead enemy.
Reasons are the least important thing in the world.
Her Byakugan peeled back the layer of skin and revealed the bones and flesh beneath.
A torrent of information poured into her mind.
Three kunai on his body.
Torn and scorched clothing.
Wind-release lacerations across his chest, together with burns that could only have come from Lightning Release or Fire Release. Clearly he had just gone through a vicious fight.
The charred meat on his chest had completely lost its vitality.
Even his Lightning Release Chakra Mode could not revitalize it, leaving a single weakness in what should have been a seamless armor of lightning across his body.
Analysis complete.
Shikamaru and the others getting away was good news.
They had only been a burden here, easily hurt and constantly getting in the way.
And with them around, she could not freely use certain hidden abilities.
For example,
that bloodline limit which only two people in the world possessed,
Shikotsumyaku.
Crack, crack.
Under the moonlight, above the blood-soaked earth,
plip.
Plip.
Tiny openings split across Haori's snow-white skin. Blood-streaked bone pushed out through her flesh under Yotsuki Isao's widening eyes.
Creak.
Bones rubbed together, making a teeth-aching sound as they grew like gnarled branches, casting twisted, broken shadows across the ground.
Clack.
The joints warped and locked, the ribs on both sides curving and meshing together.
In a few breaths, a mechanical-looking white exoskeleton wrapped itself around Haori's body.
Isao frowned at the girl now encased in bone.
First the black and red chakra cloak that had clashed evenly with his Lightning Release, so similar to Killer B's.
Then the hair that burrowed into his flesh like parasitic iron wires.
Human yet not quite human.
Like something that tried to imitate human form, but only managed to copy the surface. In the end, it became something neither human nor ghost.
Revulsion, disgust, fear.
Those strange emotions stirred in his genes, attacking his nerves and gnawing at his reason.
"What are you supposed to be?"
Haori said nothing. She simply kept changing.
The second-stage control over bone in the Shikotsumyaku clan was already something extremely rare, on par with the Mangekyo Sharingan.
Even Kirigakure's own people barely understood this power. Outsiders knew even less.
Every time she used Shikotsumyaku, someone would question whether she was even human.
After hearing it enough times, Haori herself sometimes doubted her own species.
Creak.
The exoskeleton grew over her head, forming a full helmet to protect the most vital target.
The tailed-beast cloak ate chakra at a terrifying rate. She had just launched a vacuum cannon that consumed nearly a third of her reserves.
She could not afford to maintain that noble power for this fight.
A diamond-shaped visor closed over her face.
Both arms stretched and hardened into long, curved bone blades.
Shiiiing.
The twin blades flared like wings as she raised them.
Wind chakra crawled along the edges, sharpening the already vicious bone until it hummed with a chilling note.
With her body wrapped in bone armor, Haori now looked like a weapon crafted purely for war and slaughter.
At this moment, the lightning covering Isao's chest finally burned away the chakra that had invaded him earlier.
He did not waste a single second.
A streak of blue tore open the night. Yotsuki Isao exploded forward, Lightning Release propelling him straight to Haori's face.
His arm swelled, black biceps bulging like tungsten steel harder than any diamond.
"Lightning Rampage: Horizontal Thousand Dance!"
His hand blade chopped down like a falling guillotine.
Haori's pupils shrank.
The extreme-speed taijutsu attack slowed a fraction in her eyes.
Her right-hand blade rose in a sharp uppercut.
The left blade surged forward, wind chakra igniting along its length, thrusting straight toward his chest.
"Taketori Style Twin Blades: Dance of Karma!"
Clang.
Her rising bone blade met his hand blade dead on.
The strike, infused with every ounce of Yotsuki Isao's power, was not something Haori could block with one hand.
The black hand edge slammed into the bone, smashing her right blade down into her own shoulder with terrifying force.
Crack.
Bone armor as hard as steel split under the strike, spiderweb cracks radiating out. The right-hand bone blade snapped off entirely.
Power surged down into her body. Haori's legs buckled and drove deep into the earth, stamping out two small craters.
The thrust that should have pierced his chest was knocked off course by that same impact.
The edge scraped past his right ribs.
Wind and lightning sparked in a shower of light.
Szzzz.
Lightning howled across Isao's body.
Arcs of electricity crawled wildly along Haori's blade, trying to surge down into her.
They failed.
The lethal current piled up on the bone edge and went no farther.
"I will teach you a bit of basic physics."
Her temper finally flared under his relentless assault.
Haori gritted her teeth and raised her remaining left blade, meeting the ever-increasing pressure of his hand strike head on.
"Bone is not a conductor."
The wind-wreathed blade lunged toward his chest again, stabbing straight for his heart.
Crackle.
Isao gathered lightning into his legs, flooding every muscle group with power.
His nerve reflexes spiked. With the broad, practiced ease of a man who had lived on battlefields, he slipped half a step back.
Just enough to move his torso a hair's breadth out of range.
The lightning in his legs did not go to waste either.
His left foot dug in, anchoring his weight.
His waist twisted, and his body snapped into a side kick.
Lightning poured into his right leg. The glow was bright enough to light up the whole forest.
Haori's lips curled in a cold smile.
The tip of her left blade suddenly elongated by two inches.
It punched straight into his chest.
"Ugh."
Blood sprayed.
Isao had not expected that. But experience forged over decades took over.
He ignored the pain in his chest and slammed his hands together, gripping the bone blade that had pierced him as if bare-handedly catching a sword.
He stopped it from driving any deeper.
Haori tried twice to force the blade through, but it did not budge.
Her eyes narrowed.
Wind chakra surged down the bone blade and into his body, aiming for his heart and lungs.
Szzzz.
Lightning burst from his palms, blocking the invading wind.
Isao's killing intent surged.
His grip shifted from blocking to seizing. He locked down the bone blade with both hands, hauling it deeper into his grasp.
At the same time, the side kick he had been holding in reserve abruptly changed into a straight, driving stomp.
Bad.
Alarm bells screamed in Haori's mind.
She tore her feet free from the gouged earth, trying to move.
Yotsuki Isao's taijutsu flowed like water, the moves chained together so fluidly he might have run them a thousand times.
His thigh muscles detonated like compressed springs.
He left her no time to react.
The straight kick slammed into the armor on her abdomen with brutal speed.
Boom.
The bone plates around her stomach shattered in an instant.
Her mind rang.
For a moment it felt like a giant elephant had stomped on her gut.
Her body flew backward, all stance and structure destroyed, her limbs nearly locked by the shock.
An opening.
A lifetime of combat had trained Yotsuki Isao to recognize chances like this in less than a heartbeat.
He did not let her go.
His hands still gripped the bone blade.
He jerked hard.
The airborne Haori was yanked straight back toward him, her entire body dragged forward.
His right knee came up again, leg cocked for another straight stomp.
She had no leverage in midair.
She could not dodge this kick.
Blue light flashed in Isao's eyes.
A stomp that had been at seventy percent power spiked to its full, lethal force.
Haori's arm was trapped in his hands. Her body was off the ground.
The lightning-clad foot enlarged in her vision with every fraction of a second, aimed squarely at the spot where he had just shattered her armor.
Adrenaline dumped into her blood.
Time seemed to slow.
His combat experience was terrifying.
She had been the one to find his weakness first.
Yet the gap in battlefield experience had flipped the entire situation.
Her arm was trapped.
There was no way he would waste that.
This straight stomp was just an appetizer.
If she failed to break free now, the next thing waiting for her would be a relentless chain of attacks until she completely lost the ability to fight.
She had no footing.
Even if she sacrificed the blade and snapped it herself, she still could not dodge this kick.
Her mind raced.
Lightning drew close enough to scorch her armor.
The stomp drove toward the broken bone plating like a spear, ready to impale her.
Tsk.
Chakra flooded into her osteogenic cells.
The bone blade suddenly extended again, pushing her entire body away from him.
The sure-hit stomp fell short by two inches. Lightning crackled in front of her instead of through her body, giving her the split second she needed to land.
Crack.
The bone sword shattered along its length.
Free of his grip at last, Haori hit the ground and sprang backward with everything she had, opening distance in a single leap.
At the same time, her now fully repaired right-hand blade flashed out in a sweeping arc, hurling a crescent of sword wind.
Wind and sharpened chakra fused into a wide vacuum slash that shredded the air and ripped toward Isao's face.
The battered Lightning Release armor flared once more.
Clang.
The slash failed to pierce his defense, but the impact forced him to halt and re-center, interrupting his pursuit.
Haori used that moment to pull back further.
Whoosh.
The wind whispered.
Thud, thud.
Heavy footsteps echoed across the battlefield.
The two of them circled each other slowly, searching for any sign of an opening.
Isao bit back a grunt as he tore the broken blade out of his chest.
His torso, already a roadmap of scars, gained one more bloody wound.
The fresh pain only stoked the flames of his fighting spirit.
He burned like a bonfire in the dark.
"Huff… huff…"
His left fist pressed against his wound.
His right hand rose, fingers together in a blade, and pointed at Haori.
He met the gaze of the pale bone figure in front of him, eyes carved with cold lines like knife cuts.
This girl's toolkit was absurdly broad and annoyingly cohesive.
Byakugan-like perception and tracking.
A black and crimson cloak that could wrestle evenly with his Lightning Release Chakra Mode.
Invisible winds slicing the air around her.
An exoskeleton that could transform, extend and attack while still serving as armor.
Even her hair could hurt people.
Her taijutsu needed no further comment. That was clearly her strongest point.
Aside from speed, where she lagged behind lightning, and combat experience, where she was slightly lacking, she had no obvious weaknesses at all.
How was he supposed to fight this kind of opponent?
Yotsuki Isao's head actually began to ache.
He had roamed the shinobi world for decades, but he had never faced anyone quite like Haori.
He did not have time to sit here and slowly probe for flaws.
He had to finish this quickly.
If Konoha's reinforcements arrived, Kumogakure's plan to steal the Byakugan would become a joke, and his own death would mean nothing.
He had only one option left.
Chakra gathered into his four extended fingers.
Isao locked onto Haori's body.
Frosted moonlight poured over the battlefield.
Lightning concentrated at his fingertips and erupted in a dazzling flare that outshone even the moon above.
Every cell in Haori's body crawled with goosebumps.
Her survival instincts screamed, warning her over and over of imminent danger.
They did not have to.
She had never taken her eyes off him.
The posture he shifted into was one she recognized at a glance.
She knew exactly what he was about to use.
The strongest spear of the Third Raikage.
Hell Stab Four-Finger Thrust.
Just who is this guy?
What kind of status did he have in Kumogakure to be allowed to learn the Third's signature technique?
You might as well just be the Raikage already.
Haori's eyes widened in genuine surprise.
The bulging veins at the edges of her Byakugan swelled further, almost spreading down her cheeks.
Chakra surged into her pupils like a tidal wave.
She had already suffered enough from his lightning speed.
She did not dare relax for even a moment.
Her muscles coiled tight.
The Byakugan tracked his every twitch.
Crack.
The caved-in bone plates over her stomach finally knit together completely.
Her regrown left arm did not reform into a blade this time.
Instead, it thickened into a diamond-shaped shield.
Her speed would never match Lightning Release, but her strength and durability were not much worse than his.
She raised the shield in front of her.
Together with the ribs and inner bone membrane under her skin, she now had three layers of defense.
Even so, she did not dare underestimate the legendary Hell Stab.
Three green points of light lit up on her body, at her brain, her chest and her lower abdomen.
They drew into a line along her meridians, one by one igniting the fourth point under her collarbone.
Eight Gates Formation, Fourth Gate, the Gate of Pain.
Open.
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