A/N- Hey guys. Here's the chappy. Expect the next update on Wednesday next week and know you could skip the wait and read the next three chapters as well as continuous updates on Pa-treon right now. Since I now qualify as an unemployed member of society, all subscribers on my pa-treon are much appreciated. If you enjoy my writing, then please don't hesitate to support it if you can. For Pa Treon, you can remove the hyphen between Pa and Treon and Google it, then search for my username—Oghenevwogaga. Or you could copy the link in my bio and remove the spaces before pasting it in your address bar. Note: Please subscribe to my pa-treon using the website directly instead of using the IOS app. It's cheaper on the website.
We were late. I could see it the moment we arrived. Granduncle Tobirama had made three clones and drawn a giant seal beneath our feet to use the flying thunder god jutsu to teleport us to the clan head's house. The first sign that we were late was the fact that I could see the Night sky without even activating my doujutsu. I'd learned my lesson from the Kuchiyose and didn't think while teleporting into an active war zone was the right time to check what I could or couldn't see. I activated it immediately after and paled at the scale of the destruction my eyes showed me.
"Three Bijou. The eight, six, and three tails are all within the village proper. Both the eight and six tails are fully transformed. The three tails remains at the beast cloak level," Uncle Hiroshi relayed the pressing facts to Granduncle Tobirama in a clipped tone.
"Numerous casualties. At least hundreds. Organised resistance at both East, West, and South. Northwards, resistance is falling apart under the onslaught of the transformed Seven tails. Hostiles recognised as the Mizukage and Raikage are both present. Latter is to the North, former is to the South…." He continued to relay even more and more information as I tried to keep track of everything in my head. When he finished, Tobirama squatted and pressed two fingers against the ground. He was both thinking and sensing, I knew.
"Myself, Kagami, and Shorirama will go North. Saru, you and your team should head South. Danzo, lead a team of six and mop up the aggression to the West. Hiroshi, I will entrust you with another team of six. Head East and work with the resistance there in disabling the Three tails. May the Will of Fire guide our paths" He said next, and everyone nodded before moving out at rapid speeds.
I nodded at Tsunade to get going when it seemed like she was going to disobey orders and drag me along with her. I could understand her worry, though. North was the major battlefront it seemed. It was slightly insane that Granduncle Tobirama had gone from not wanting me on the field at all to wanting to have me right in the thick of things.
"Keep up" He told us as he disappeared in a shunshin once everyone had left. We did the same, matching his speed.
"The Eight tails is rampaging out of control. It is tearing holes in the Uzu lines and allowing the Raikage and his men to move without contest. I will engage it with my water release once we arrive. I chose the both of you because you have the best chances of being able to react to and comprehend the Raikage's speed. While I deal with the Eight Tails, your job will be keeping him busy" He said, and I nodded at his words while trying to ignore the feeling of my heart dropping to share space with my stomach. First real fight in almost a year and it was against the Raikage of all people.
When Tobirama entered the fight, everyone and their cousin knew. The Northern front was right off the coast, and they were succeeding in pushing their way into the Island proper with every minute that passed. Tobirama weaved a set of seals faster than my eyes could truly comprehend and in a second, more water than I'd ever seen in motion rose from the sea and slammed into the massive Eight tails. The beast's killing intent was almost cut off for a second as it was blanketed by the water and pushed far backwards.
"Your move" Tobirama said to the both of us, and I nodded and unsealed my bow while Kagami body flickered in a blur of red. The fan fiction theories that said that Shisui was related to Kagami began to make sense to me as I watched the man land on the battlefield. He did not go straight for the Raikage. In fact, he seemed to almost ignore the massive dark-skinned tank of a man. A man who thankfully was the size of a big man and not a true giant like his successors would be. Even the lightning cloak that surrounded him seemed basic in comparison to theirs. I eagerly deconstructed the jutsu as I kept the rest of my attention on Kagami's path.
He moved quickly, barely staying still for longer than a second. Those who met his eyes froze in place for seconds. Those who didn't, died all the same to his deadly taijutsu. He wielded a kunai in each hand, and he seemed keen to dye them red with Kumo blood. For me, I stayed still and gave him all the support I could with my arrows. I'd fought in concert with Uzume for most of my ninja career, and she was truly the closest comparison for what working with Kagami felt like. Except that everything with Kagami was dialed up to 11.
Uzume knew my every move from practice and habit. Kagami just knew what I would do next because he did. Sharingan bullshit, I suspected. He was never in the way of any arrows I sent. In fact, not a single one of my arrows missed a vital area. It was like he knew where I would be targeting next, and moved there ahead of time to disable them and leave them easy pickings. It was like shooting fish in a barrel. Sport, and not combat.
That changed quickly, however. The Raikage took the bait after he'd lost enough of his men, just like Kagami knew he would. He barreled into the red-eyed man with a diagonal charge that happened in a blink. Too fast to follow, but not too fast for two doujutsu users who had been waiting for it. Kagami and I swapped places in an instant. Kawarimi no jutsu, successful. So instead of a sharingan user, he ended up in close combat with a byakugan user. In our brief scramble along the ground's muddy surface, I managed to close three of his chakra points, but he managed to just notice in time and toss me over his shoulder before taking to his feet.
I did the same with a smirk. Tobirama's briefing before we'd arrived had been correct. The Raikage was a smart man. That was what even inspired Kagami's plan. A basic bait and switch. We set up a pattern that would be too effective to ignore, and then allow him to observe it. He'd figure out a means to deal with it sooner or later, and only when he did it would he attack. When he bit the bait, we did the switch, quite literally.
After chuckling to myself at the pun, I took stock off my situation with a grim smile. Only three chakra points. The Raikage was a beast of a man. The moment he barreled into me, he was already working to separate us. It took all I had to manage to tag him thrice in that time frame. Sixty-four of the right chakra points could end a fight. To be fair, just 16 of them could a fight, but those 16 tended to also be the hardest to close because every shinobi, even children, knew to guard them with their lives. They coincided with some of the most vital areas in the body, so even non-gentle fist strikes could end a fight there. I wasn't betting on getting at any of them with the Raikage. Wasn't betting on getting sixty-four clean hits either.
As much as it pained me to admit it, I wasn't the main event of this plan. No, the finishing blow would be Kagami's. My job would be getting him in a position where he could deliver the coup de grâce, and hopefully not die in the process. An arrow flew through the space between the two of us, and the Raikage was already moving. I flexed my chakra to shatter the genjutsu and then leaned backwards at almost 180 degrees to avoid a flying dive from the man cloaked in lighting. I scoffed at the thought of trying to ensnare me in genjutsu. It seemed that the mishap against Izuku in the chunin exams had given this man a wrongful estimation of where my skills in the illusory arts lay. Good. That would be useful.
I body flickered at him, even as he used the famed lighting straight to jump right at me. We met in the middle, his raised leg was blocked by the first two fingers of my left hand, and my right hand moved in a flash. Two tenketsu fell under my ministrations, but that victory did not matter for long when he moved his leg and smashed it into my head in a blur too fast for me to react to.
Only Kagami's constant rain of wind release empowered arrows prevented the Raikage from taking the most direct route to my prone form, and the seconds he managed to give me spelled the difference between life and death for me. I spun around and jumped right over the low charge he attempted to crash into my body that had barely been held upright by the boulder I'd been leaning on. He stopped right before crashing and turned right in time to smash a powerful left hook into my airborne form. The substitution happened just in time and my body dissolved in water. Water that stuck to the raikage. I body flickered towards him and ducked under a punch from his right hand before I formed a single seal and breathed out a torrent of mist aimed at his left arm. The water droplets that had managed to stick to it froze instantly, but were then easily shattered by his lightning armour.
Still, the distraction allowed me to land four more strikes with the gentle fist to his unprotected shoulders. I waited for the leg I knew would come up and allowed it to chase me backwards.
This was doable. I could do it. I could beat the Raikage. I allowed myself to exhale, and felt some of the pent-up tension that had built across my body to relax. I just had to follow the plan and make sure I did my bit, and this would be easy. Okay, not easy, I silently amended as I was forced to move into a body flicker to dodge away from another lightning straight. After that, I ducked underneath a kick that had come from virtually nowhere as he predicted my route of escape and moved to close down on me in the window, where most would have been disoriented from the use of the body flicker. His eyes moved from side to side, assessing, judging, and silent. I knew that with every exchange, he got closer and closer to figuring me out. I just had to make sure that didn't happen before we'd won this.
Both arrows Kagami sent at him hit nothing but air. He was upon me once again, and this time he was not letting up. I blocked a punch that made my forearms rattle in one second, and the next, I had to drop to my knees to avoid a kick that would surely have decapitated me in one swoop. The second after, I was skating backwards along the ground with my back as his other foot came up with a kick that almost smashed through my guard. I rolled to the side by instinct as he jumped upwards and smashed into the ground where I'd stood with a massive stomp. I breathed out again. I could do this.
I took my gentle fist stance, and he came again. The first blow was mine. "Eight Trigrams:…" I began, after I managed to land the first six without contest, but on hearing the words, he seemed to become even more locked in and exhaled an actual lightning storm in my direction. 'False Darkness', I recognised the jutsu as while I instantly released chakra from all my tenketsu, and then began to spin. "Revolving Heaven" I announced once I stood still once again.
The ground around me had been worn down by the jutsu, and the Raikage himself had been forced to retreat lest the jutsu send him flying backwards, or worse, grind into him with its rotary power. I smiled at that. A bright one. Once again, lighting straight. This time, I trusted my body to react in time. I jumped.
In midair, his punch missed my just a whisker as I oriented my body at the very last second to allow him pass beneath me unobstructed rather than to meet his advance like I'd initially mimed. As he passed beneath me, I felt the rasengan form into being with a smile on my face and used my other hand to push off against the air with wind release and slammed the rasengan right into his back. The A-ranked jutsu sent him right into the ground, face first with the force alone, and I pressed the jutsu in deeper and deeper, trying to overcome the defence of the lighting armour. Perhaps I would have succeeded. I never ended up finding out as a massive tentacle slammed into my body full force and sent me sailing into the ocean. Even bracing for the impact by releasing chakra from the tenketsu where the blow would have come from had done nothing to hinder the massive tentacle's force.
XXXXXXX- TSUNADE
A tailed beast. A force of nature. Beyond her lessons in the academy, and theoretical lessons with Sarutobi-sensei where they discussed strategies for countering Jinchuriki in case the war ever did break out, and they were forced to confront them, she knew virtually nothing about them. Food thing was she was not the one taking lead in this case. As they dashed towards the rampaging six-tails, Sarutobi-Sensei weaved seals at a rapid pace. Sh recognised them without trouble, and so did not react when Enma appeared in their midst in a barely detectable puff of smoke. Once again, she marveled at her Sensei's chakra control, but was forced to abandon that line of thinking when Enma began to speak. "Doing this now, Saru?" The Monkey King asked, and her Sensei nodded with a grim look on his face.
A tiger seal later, and Enma took on his second form, the adamantium staff. "Remember, the Six tails seal functions just like that of the other Jinchuriki. We don't need to bother beating the tailed beast at full power. We just need to either tire it out enough, or deal enough damage so that the beast is no longer able to sustain its presence out of the seal. Either of those outcomes would be preferable, but the latter has a higher chance of us leaving here without being atomised by a tailed beast bomb.
"Extend:Enma" He commanded, while pointing his star at the massive lumbering form of the white Six tailed slug in the distance. Unlike in their training sessions, this time she wasn't even able to track Enma's movements as the staff extended multiple times faster than it ever had to crash into the centre-mass of the beast. It hit it, and then against all odds, pushed it backwards. In one attack, Sensei had managed to push the Six-tails towards the edge of the island.
"Jiraiya, what do you know of the Six-tails?"
"The Six tailed slug. Property of Kirigakure no Sato. It has an affinity for water release, and is able to release corrosive substances capable of melting entire islands. It also has better healing than the other tailed beasts, except maybe the Ichibi no shukaku."
"Well done, Tsunade tell me what he missed," Her sensei turned to her next while they still remained perched some distance away and watched the few Kiri jounin that had been fighting alongside the tailed beast being cut down by their Uzu counterparts now that they did not have to worry about the giant mass of malice in their midst.
"The Six tailed slug is also capable of spewing other acidic substances, and its healing uses its body body mass to take effect, so the more it heals, the more body mass and thus energy it loses"
"Precisely. Leave the Kiri Jounin to the Uzu shinobi. We will focus on the six tails. Follow my lead. For now, Formation 4," Sensei spoke in a whisper before body appearing at the other end of the staff with his and Enma's special replacement jutsu with a gigantic rasengan building in his grasp. For a second, she wondered what he had to give Shori to get that particular jutsu, but was forced to abandon that line of thinking as her teammates blurred into movement.
Formation 4 was heavy in ninjutsu. Sensei took the lead and acted as the first spear in the thrust, but he was more or less a distraction. A veritable tsunami of acid washed over his position as Orochimaru body flickered to the left and began weaving seals. Jiraiya did the same to the right. Jiraiya's jutsu, by design, finished first. The earth quaked and trembled as its very core moved in accordance with her teammate's will. Shaking ground destabilised the Six tails and left it unable to react as the ground beneath its feet turned into mud from the Swamp of the Underworld technique.
Not to be left behind, she pushed down with all her strength and sailed into the air while weaving seals. When she struck, it was with all the wrath of Kami. She took a shallow breath, felt her heartbeat. One beat, two beats. She felt for the signals that moved all across her body. The natural electricity that allowed her to move. Her chakra came next. She felt it. The seemingly bottomless pool that rested in her core. As always, it was quick to heed her wishes, She brought it forth to her fist and then shifted it. In a blink, it turned from chakra into that electricity that her body was used to using to move.
"Lightning release: Thunderstrike" She punched at the air and the lightning moved in the direction her fist had, before continuing onwards and striking the stationary tailed beast.
A/N; Movement. As I said earlier, the next chapter comes up next week Wednesday or skip the wait and read the next three along with daily uploads on pa-treon. For the pa-treon, you can remove the hyphen between pa and treon and google it then search for my username- Oghenevwogaga. Or you could copy the link in my bio and remove the spaces before pasting in your address bar.