I was standing on the arena's outer walls, my body hidden under a standard light brown cloak and my butterfly-Anbu mask hiding my face.
I suspected that such a mask had been chosen as some sort of punishment towards poor old me.
Among the other things, being in sage mode places your chakra network in a state of extreme saturation: in short, unless it's another sage performing it, genjutsu just do not stick.
That was why, when the big ass genjutsu hit the arena and worked as a signal to the invasion to begin, It took me a second to recognize the reason behind why people suddenly started dropping asleep.
I had my orders.
For all that I believed the Sandaime to be wimp wristed when dealing with his students ( cough "Nepotism!" cough ), he had known about Suna's plans for weeks.
The fact that Kabuto had managed to escape Anbu before any serious interrogation was carried through had been orchestrated to perfection.
I didn't know the specifics, but it was clear to me that his escape had been ordered by the Hokage only to reassure Orochimaru that his plan was still running smoothly despite my intervention in the Forest of Death.
I did not doubt that several soldiers had been thrown at Kabuto only to sell the fact that his escape wasn't organized by Konoha's higher-ups. But such was the life of a patriot in the Elemental Nations.
From a tactical point of view, I could understand, feign ignorance of an attack and then turn an enemy assault into a striking victory.
My skillset had been deemed the best to face Rasa, since Suiton could easily slow down his golden sand, turning it into an even better conductor for my admittedly limited Raiton knowledge.
I didn't know what roles the Sandaime and Jiraya had, but I suspected that Sarutobi was to face Onoki in case he revealed himself to be allied with Suna and Oto, while the Toad Sage was to hammer down his old teammate as soon as he slithered out of the rocks.
It was unfortunate, but Orochimaru's skill in wearing other people's faces made it impossible for me to sense him.
I had known the Kazekage was the Snake Sannin in disguise, but only based on my previous knowledge, which was revealing itself more and more wobbling as the years went by.
Surprisingly enough, it had been Kurotsuchi's act of kindness to clue the Sandaime towards a possible betrayal from Iwa. I wanted to believe she had simply chosen to follow the lead I had provided during my chunin exams, but in the eyes of the Kage, it was suspicious.
After all, didn't I spare a child only to kill a jinchuriki immediately after?
I crouched for a second, my heart started beating again, and with a push, I barreled through the arena, slamming into Orochimaru disguised as the Kazekage, and pummeled us both to the warehouse right behind the Kage's booth.
Basically, I had become a human bowling ball with sticky hands. I had slammed my hand on Orochimaru's face and slammed us both through the stone walls that separated us from our designed ring.
Distractedly, while I was passing, I felt/saw/perceived Sarutobi deliver a butterfly kick on Onoki, skyrocketing him towards the extensive training grounds of Konohagakure no Sato.
I took off my Anbu mask, letting it fall by my side, and started acting as a shepherd for the dozen of tsuchi bunshin Orochimaru had hidden amongst.
His first action was obvious, a kawarimi is easy to detect, and not extremely fast, unless performed with a clone. Somehow, swapling yourself with a mass that held a dose of your chakra made the techniques several times faster.
In my first years, I had wrongly believed the Kawarimi to be some form of space-time ninjutsu. Nothing could be further from the truth.
It was the equivalent of a rail gun.
The why still escaped me, but the hand signs for a kawarimi created a circular flow of 'force' which had as diameter the distance between you and the target you were substituting yourself with.
Somehow, at the sides of the circular 'force' flow, it developed two circular rails of chakra. They were as thin as a hair, and went in opposite directions, acting like rails in a rail gun.
Only, instead of shooting yourself forward, the technique propelled the user along the circular pattern, attracted to the side of the object you were kawariming with, and repelled by the side you weren't facing.
The same happened to the object you were kawariming with.
It created a sort of circular particle accelerator in which you and the object you were kawariming with were the only particles. It was fast.
It explained why one couldn't kawarimi with an object with a higher volume than the user unless dumping a shitload of chakra to enlarge the distance between the two chakra rails.
Somehow, kawariming with something alive ( read with flowing chakra ) didn't work, because of their being alive clashing and breaking the chakra rails.
The passive nature of plant life was apparently enough to allow a shinobi to swap himself with a log. I still had to figure out why every exchange happened in a clockwise spin... But at least I knew that the first step for the Kawarimi was the same for the reverse summoning, your body and the one of your target became 'chakra'.
Or some ethereal substance that felt like chakra but was something completely different. I had no clue.
And if there was a mass imbibed with your own chakra, the kawarimi resulted faster because the two chakra rails that defined the path of the technique were there as soon as one thought them.
I believed the chakra of the user somehow resonated with the tsuchi bunshin, but experimenting that shit to check my theories had been difficult.
Kage bunshin didn't work as a target to swap with, because they were pure chakra.
Chakra was magic, maddening and marvelous, and knowing its inner workings as I did, allowed me to pinpoint Orochimaru's swapping as soon as the rails started forming.
Anyone with sufficient experience in chakra sensing could feel the circle that acted as a track. I was also fast enough to anticipate the Snake Sannin.
He hissed in rage and flared his chakra in a very specific pattern once he noticed the ANBU closing in.
His four lackeys wasted no time and immediately I witnessed the purple barrier rising around us.
I felt him form a new clone and I smirked when I felt the telltale shaping of chakra into a kage bunshin.
I Ignored it and kept closing in on my real opponent, not giving him any occasion to take a breather.
"A kage bunshin, really?" I asked, an open palm strike skyrocketing him into the raised part of the roof.
"Kukuku... insolent child..." He hissed, and I ducked under an impossibly fast jab from the Kusanagi.
Then I felt it.
A twist in the chakra behind me.
A summoning. I realized.
I didn't have time to curse, but 'Shit' was my first thought.
I turned on myself, my hands blurring through hand seals and my chakra turning heavy, solid and unyielding I slammed my foot on the ground, aiming to the three coffins Orochimaru's kage bunshin had summoned.
I had an idea that the third one was Madara already, so I really wanted to keep them closed.
"Iwayari!" ( stone spear ) from the ground under my foot three spears made of rock rocketed towards my opponent, acting as a nail on the coffins.
At least, one did.
The Tsuchi bunshin I hadn't bothered with before stopped the others from reaching their target.
I was about to charge ahead when I was forced to throw myself aside to avoid another deadly jab from the divine sword, Orochimaru was using it like Ichimaru Gin from Bleach.
I knew that the first thing to do was to take away Orochimsru's toys. Luckily, I was prepared for this.
I placed my fingers in a familiar cross-shaped hand seal and summoned a Kage Bunshin before returning my whole attention to the original Orochimaru.
I dropped in front of my opponent like a meteor crashing on the ground. The reinforced roof of the warehouse almost gave in under the force that I had exercised over it. I lashed forward with a knee thrust, my right hand clenching over the wrist holding the Kusanagi no Tsurgi like a hydraulic press.
The bones under my fingers were reduced to a fine powder, while the parry hastily executed by Orochimaru's leg saw my knee break his fibula, the energy behind my blow carrying over the rest of his body.
Something moved behind me, I dropped low, my hand never leaving the wrist of the renegade sannin, and twirled on myself. My free arm coming on my second opponent in a backhanded punch strong enough to shatter rocks.
My eyes recognized the fucking Nidaime Hokage, who had jumped back, far enough to avoid the senchakra surrounding me from landing a blow. He jumped forward, trying to slam a kunai through the weak point of my armor. Before he could reach me, I used my momentum to slam Orochimaru on him, using him as a make-shift wooden club.
I heard ligaments tearing along with muscles and saw Orochimaru's shoulder getting dislocated. Immediately, my free hand clamped near my other one, and with a grunt signaling my effort, I twisted and tore the hand holding the Kusanagi from its original master before flinging him away.
Then the wood slammed into my back, trying to spear through me. My toughened skin turned the lethal attack into a very strong push. I'm a motherfucking Sage, bitch!
Instead of using chakra to stick on the ground, I let myself being flung away.
I was no swordmaster, and keeping the Kusanagi in the game was plain stupid. I brought the sword over the summoning contract tattooed on my arm, and channeling chakra into it I whispered: "Kuchiyose no jutsu." sending the divine blade to the Elephants.
I was still spinning mid-air, and I adjusted my arms in order to balance myself and land on my feet.
I was upside down with an outstretched arm when fucking Hashirama, of all people, targeted me.
He grabbed my outstretched arm and moved as to snap it, sure of his target, since pulling away my arm would bring the Shodai on my face and I couldn't push him away.
Then a spiraling blue sphere formed into my hand and ground away from the Shodai's torso, blowing him away. I landed safely, Rasengan in my hand, and glanced on my opponents.
My clone was busy burning all the results of the Mokuton, the white-hot firebird flying everywhere the Shodai attempted to attack with his unbelievably overpowered signature element.
Orochimaru shed his skin and emerged from his own mouth, an enraged expression on his face, while the Nidaime charged me while Hashirama was busy rebuilding its destroyed body.
The Katon-futon hybrid technique directed by my clone flew over us in that moment. From the lower of my back, I unsealed a scroll as tall as me and tossed it towards the body of Hashirama, before reaching with my chakra to the Hinokami and taking control of the technique.
My clone left it to me and, grabbing the scroll I tossed, immediately set himself to seal away the Edo Tensei of the Shodaime Hokage.
In the space of a heartbeat, Tobirama closed half of the distance that had been separating us and the Hinokami flew to me, warping itself in a tight spiral that joined my Rasengan.
Which went from being a blue football-sized sphere to twice the size of a basketball, looking like the sun, red and yellow, with occasional elliptic bridges of white-hot fire continuously sprouting and collapsing on its surface.
My chakra surged forward to keep it contained, stabilizing the crazy difficult jutsu.
Tobirama brought forward his hands in a ram seal and inhaled, ready to blast me with a single seal 'Suiton: Suiryūdan no Jutsu' (Water Dragon Bullet) and I shot my hand forward.
Holding my wrist with the other one, carefully balancing the chakra output and overcharging the jutsu as much as I could: "Senpō: Hinokami Saigo no Uta!" (Last Song of The Fire God).
Then I could only hear the otherworldly solo made of howling wind and crackling fire, over a soundtrack of melting tiles, vaporizing water, and dismayed scream of Orochimaru.
From my hand, an over-glorified flamethrower engulfed the side of the roof occupied by my still active opponents, developing in a growing cone, the jutsu swinging between white and blue.
Tobirama had turned his attack into defense and rose out of nowhere his Suiton: Suijinheki (water wall).
My jutsu couldn't care less.
...
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