She finished her jutsu first. Sasori was not surprised. Noel was skilled, but she weaved seals faster than anyone he'd seen except from Itachi and Kisame. That team of absolute monsters could weave seals so quickly it was like their fingers were blurs even to his eyes. Nii Yugito was only a bit slower than that.
Her jutsu's completion was marked by her fingers rising towards her mouth while in the ram seal. She spat out several balls of bright blue flame that scorched the air as they flew right at his partner's form.
They bathed the hall in an eerie blue glow. His partner's voice rang out next, "Suiton: Suijinheki" he said as he spat out a massive amount of water that rose to form a wall. Both jutsu clashed with a hissing sound that grated on his ears as the fire prevailed. The fireballs continued on their path, while the water turned to naught but quick spreading steam. Noel was able to dodge them with ease, body twisting to allow the fireballs to miss him by a wide margin. The woman showed her creativity as the fireballs spun in the air, reorienting themselves to strike at her opponent from his blindspot.
To exactly no one's surprise, the cheap trick didn't kill the S-rank missing nin. He twisted at the last minute and spat out a tight, compressed lance of water that drilled straight through the fireballs, one after another. A ninjutsu master with little in the way of peers, was the language Leader-sama had sed to describe him during his introduction, and Sasori could see it. Clear as day.
Noel lifted his hand, and all that marked the activation of his jutsu to Sasori's senses was a telltale feeling of static in the air. Nii Yugito dove to the floor with no hesitation, and where there had been previously castle walls behind her, there was now nothing but a view of the outside world. Again, there was static in the air, and again the woman jumped out of the way. Once again, where there'd been something, there was now nothing.
"I've gotten much stronger, Yugito. Don't underestimate me" He said with laughter in his voice.
"Hmph. A hundred times zero is still zero, Noel-chan." She smugly replied before closing the distance, not giving him the time to reply to her barb. He dodged out of the way of the first swipe. This time, however, with the blue chakra that surrounded her getting more intense, her speed has seen a notable jump. Where before, he might have had an easy time keeping ahead of her attacks, Noel was now thoroughly on the Blackfoot. It was all he could do to stay ahead. That was why, this time, he was the one to retreat from close quarters. He did it with style as well, planting his hands on the ground before thrusting at her with a mule kick that she blocked. In the same movement, he executed a swift backflip that took him out of her range.
Even before he'd landed, there was a stream of pure blue flames heading for him. I watched as instead of forming multiple seals, he formed only a single one as his chakra output nearly tripled. The fire washed over him a second later, and when it all cleared, I was left with a view of my partner in his undersuit, and a clear cloak of lightning natured chakra surrounding him.
"You dare use that jutsu? After all you've done" Yugito was the one who sounded furious now. Not furious, Sasori amended, apoplectic. The blue chakra surrounding her thickened as an intangible weight began to settle on the room. The fire shifted, moving into the appearance of a cat's head, before it swelled and began to rise from the floor as the rest of the Nibi's body began to form.
"I don't know what organisation you belong to, but you both die here and now" She said before she moved. He'd been wrong with his previous descriptions. She wasn't fast before. Now, this. This was speed. She moved faster than he could track, and both her and Noel clashed in the middle of the hall. The force of their bodies hitting each other was enough to cause a shockwave that sent everything that wasn't bolted to the ground flying. It also caused a spiderweb of cracks on the floor. Sasori could already tell that there wouldn't be much of a castle left by the time they finally finished with each other.
The cracks spread as they hit each other again, with one tail of the Nibi slamming right into Noel's outstretched fist. With his cloak gone, Sasori could see the musculature that the Akatsuki cloak had hidden from view. Noel Yatsuki was absolutely massive, with a body that reminded one of the Raikage at their fittest. It was impressive how he'd managed to achieve such a constitution, especially considering the Raikage had genetics to help them get there. Sasori had needed to study the human body to a startling degree to perfect his human puppet project, and those studies told him just how much effort would have been required to build a body like that.
Sasori enjoyed the view as both beast and man clashed over and over again. He could already tell that while he was putting up a valiant fight, his partner was already being pushed back, slowly but surely. Man was not made to strive against tailed beasts like this. He could already see what would happen soon enough, and began to execute his plan. Within Hiruko, his fingers twitched with muscle memory, even though he no longer needed them so. He guided multiple balls across the room, making sure that everything was done when both beast and man were distracted. And then he pulled with his chakra, triggering the trap. Nothing happened. Nothing that either of the fighters would notice, at least.
The poison that was spreading across the air was virtually undetectable. He might have been more hesitant about using this particular poison if he hadn't gotten to use the time they spent in close proximity to each other during the journey to help his partner build a resistance without his knowledge.
Sasori watched the next clash between the two of them carefully as the tailed beast exerted itself in its combat with the smaller human. On an ordinary day, with things being equal, he wouldn't expect even a tailed beast as weak as the two tails to lose out to poison, but he hoped that with the exertion from engaging in combat with someone on relatively the same level of power would sway things in his favour even more. Besides, he'd read thew briefings on Nii Yugito cover to cover, multiple times. She wasn't a perfect jinchuriki like Killer Bee. She had a time limit to the transformation, and was limited in what she could do. According to Kumo's own intelligence, even, this wasn't a true transformation where the body of the human was replaced with that of the tailed beast, but her body was in there somewhere.
They clashed again, except this time, the Nibi's tails overpowered her human opponent and slammed him right into the wall. The giant cat scoffed audibly and rested on its haunches, waiting for its opponent to reveal itself again. Sasori almost smiled as he saw what it was doing. When Noel flew right out of the wall like a bat from hell and slammed into another tail that tossed him into the ground, it was all he could do to prevent himself from bursting into laughter at the sight. The Nibi seemed keen on humiliating the human before her.
He rose again, but it was only for the Nibi to rear back and unleash a roar that Sasori smartly prevented from affecting him by disabling his auditory function the moment the first hint of the sound got to him. With a lowly human body of flesh and bone, his partner didn't have such an ability and was sent right to his knees, head clutched right in his hands. Sasori couldn't hear, but from what he could see, the sound was torture of some sort. Noel, normally the stoic sort, was on his knees screaming, with blood leaking from his hands as it escaped his eardrums. Fascinating. The pain on his face was something of legend. In all his years of testing pain causing poisons, not a single one had managed to get that kind of effect from a jounin-level ninja with the training to match.
Noel was finished. Sasori knew it. Even the poison hadn't been enough to make the man a match for the beast. It was a saddening fact, but there was simply nothing the puppet master could do about it. Instead, he decided to honour his partner's last words by allowing him to fall in combat with his pride intact. His puppets began to spread into the floor as he prepared himself to do battle against the mighty Nibi. His body dropped into the ground with the _subterranean voyage_ technique as he continued to see through Hiruko's eyes. A puppet body came with hundreds of advantages over a purely human one. One aspect of that was that he could turn off vision in his main body completely and focus on seeing through Hiruko's eyes. The files had said that the Nibi would be incapable of calling upon the mighty bijudama as an imperfect jinchuriki, but he was not going to test it with his life on the line. He was well aware of how incomplete information could mean the difference between life and death.
He watched as the beast reached down. Not with its claws or tails, but with its mouth. It intended to eat the man, Sasori thought with a mixture of revulsion and intrigue. Fascinating. He wondered if he should poison Noel's body now to see if it would have more profound effects on the tailed beast than the airborne poison that seemed to be doing a good amount of nothing. When it was about to snap its teeth around his body, Noel lifted his head suddenly, and there was a strange feeling in the air. Not something he could perceive through Hiruko, but even underground he could feel it. He watched as Noel's armour, previously a calm blue cloak, began to spark and sizzle. "Finally" He shouted, probably much louder than he'd intended to, considering the busted eardrums. He caught the Nibi's teeth right in his hands, using his strength and that alone to prevent said teeth from turning him into dinner. He fought against the strength of the beast's jaws for a second or two before the jaws clamped down on thin air. He'd escaped, faster than he'd previously been moving.
"Storm Release Armour: Complete" He said, with an audibly smug tone.
"Hahaha. He said it was impossible. They all said it was impossible. Of course, it was. Impossible for them. Never me. I'm better. This proves it" He said, going on about the seeming achievement endlessly. If Sasori's suspicions were correct, then the pride would be understandable. Nay, even expected. This was a new form of the lightning armour that matched nothing he'd read about the Raikage. First of all, he could not a single thing about the man's body within the cloak. It was like the lightning cloak had become his body. In the same deep blue colour that marked his storm release jutsu, this new form of the lightning cloak had a distinctively inhuman feeling to it. This time, when the man moved, the tailed beast was too slow to react. It was not even a blink to Sasori's eyes. All he knew was that in one instant, Noel had been standing at least a hundred metres away, and in the next, his fist was buried in the Nibi's flame cloaked face. The Nibi did not move, the beast too strong to be shaken by the strength of the human, but it did feel the attack. At the very least, the speed had surprised the creature.
When its tails swept out, trying to smash the one who dared lay hands on it, Noel was gone. He dodged the barrage of attacks with ease. With movements that Sasori's eyes failed to track. All while weaving seals and humming to himself. It was disrespectful. And if it was designed to irritate the jinchuriki, then it accomplished its goal. Every swipe of the twin tails tore through the ground now. Tearing deep rents as the beast put all its strength into it. Nothing changed for Noel as he dodged the attacks with ease. Eventually, the Jinchuriki gave up and lifted its head up. Balls of red and black chakra began to gather, and Sasori needed no other hint to know just what Noel had foolishly unleashed on them all. The tailed beast was going to destroy the entire castle. Nay, the whole mountain. Just to take them out. He'd have been flattered if it wouldn't have meant his death. Always one with a backup on top of a backup, Sasori kept watching the fight through Hiruko's eyes while his real body swam deeper and deeper into the ground at an angle. He was certain that by the time the attack landed, he would be well out of its radius. The puppets he'd already spread were of little consequence. Each one had a copy on his person already, and more back at the base. Nothing of value would be lost, and he knew the beast would be exhausted after the attack, so he'd have an even easier time taking out Nii Yugito. It was just a shame that his partner had to perish in the attempt.
Through Hiruko's eyes and ears, he heard Noel burst into laughter. Laughter that his cloak converted into barely intelligible static. He disappeared from his previous position before appearing right in front of the forming tailed beast bomb. "Take this, bitch" He screamed as he completed whatever seals he'd been forming and threw forth his hands.
"Hidden Jutsu: Storm Release: Roar of the Storm God" He screamed to the heavens as he executed an impossibly impressive jutsu. Hiruko's eyes had been carefully calibrated to function in all forms of lighting, but this jutsu managed to blind said eyes for a second. The entire jutsu was a flash, as a veritable pillar of light slammed into the half formed tailed beast bomb before destabilising it and pushing it right into its creator.
Sasori's retreat proved to be the right move, as the entire castle's foundation shook from the impact as it began to collapse. Hiruko's feed ended as the puppet perished from the jutsu's blast radius. "He'd better get that woman's body with him" Sasori said to himself in irritation as he kept swimming through the ground. That escapade had taken his number of Hiruko bodies down to five. He'd have to make at least two more to replenish his supply and ensure he didn't run out any time soon. He could already imagine the griping he'd get from that cheapskate Kakuzu when he'd send him the bill for the supplies and the new Akatsuki cloak custom-made to fit Hiruko's form.
XXXXX- JIRAIYA OF THE SANNIN
He did his best not to blink as they were guided down the waterfall and the twisting turns that marked the entrance to the Village hidden in the Waterfalls. He couldn't see a thing, bound as his head was, but what he could do was prevent himself from giving in entirely. It was his own little bit of rebellion. He could already feel that both his teammates were nothing short of indignant at the reality of the situation.
Even when they were mere genin, they'd been the students of the Hokage and thus gotten to use the more dignified entrance that was made for visiting dignitaries. Those days were long passed, though. The present situation — this insult was a representation of how far they'd sunk in the world with things going wrong and wrong.
Perhaps also contributing to their indignity was the fact that they knew that the only reason they were being subjected to this was a power-play. They were the supplicants here, and the ever grasping council of the Village Hidden in the Waterfalls would not cease to remind them of that. They'd spent months in the Fire Lord's court after recruiting Tsunade to their purpose, but they'd been forced to accept the reality that the man was going to equivocate and obfuscate until they got bored with asking him to pick a side. He could understand the man's position, however. Having been the one actually connected to the village in the past ten years, he knew that the village and the Daimyo had scarcely been more distant, and he probably wasn't too keen on meddling with an intra-village matter on the behalf of either side. If he ended up supporting the wrong side, the winner would have all the motivation to see him hang next to their enemies. But if he remained neutral, neither aiding nor hindering any side, then he denied the prospective winners of any legitimacy in attacking him.
He was probably right. No village would have the audacity to kill a sitting Daimyo, That was one way to ensure that the other four nations turned on you. It was expected at this point that the second a Daimyo was killed, the other four would band together to do whatever was necessary to ensure that those who'd done it would never be able to get away with it. It was both out of a sense of familial duty, for they were all related in one way or the other, and a sense of self-preservation. If the death of a Daimyo was met with serious consequences, then no one would dare. It was most of the reason the shinobi didn't just jettison the entire Daimyo-led feudal system to replace it with a 'might makes right' kind of approach that was in common within the Shinobi villages themselves. The consequences spelt of a form of mutually assured destruction. Besides, the armies of thousands that each Daimyo controlled had some minor role to play in the matter.
They travelled, and he kept a good sense of Naruto's position next to him. It was one of the worries of travelling with Orochimaru. You had to make sure he didn't get much of an opportunity to give into his base instincts. He still remembered their first. Conversation with Tsunade all; those months ago.
_"Hey"_
_"Go away" She said, half asleep and slumped over in front of a table with an empty glass in front of her. They'd watched over the hours as the bar had emptied of patrons, but she'd kept drinking and drinking. Even the bartender had simply given up, handed the keys over to her apprentice, Dan's niece, and told them to lock up when they finished. It made me wonder how much she had already paid for them to get that kind of trust, _
_"Tsunade-sama?" Said apprentice called, whispering into her ears while she just maintained her half asleep posture. Those were the first words she'd managed to utter after having been rendered speechless by what must have been a sudden appearance to her. _
_"Yes?" She said, at least speaking to Dan's niece in a much better tone than what she'd used when disregarding them._
_"It's Jiraiya-sama" She said, pointing to him, and as if her skin was not already pale enough, it got even paler as she pointed at the man next to him. _
_"And Orochimaru" She said, making the idiot next to him burst into his ever familiar laughter. _
_If there was anything that would return Tsunade to wakefulness, it would be those words, and return she did, She bolted upright instantly. Using reflexes that he would never have expected her to have while drunk to leap to her feet and connect an uppercut with Orochimaru's head. It erupted into mud as he used a substitution to escape at the last moment, while Tsunade did not even wait to notice that her attack did not succeed- because she never truly expected it to- before she turned around, gathered her apprentice in her hands in a feat of co-ordination and strength that bellied her drunken state as she jumped away from him at a simultaneously impressive and uninspiring speed. He was in front of her before her drink-addled brain could plot what to do next, and he rendered her unconscious with a quick usage of Frog Kumite. _
_Having some of the benefits of sage mode without even triggering the transformation had been pretty much the only upside to having Danzo take over their village. Apparently, when the Great Elders flooded his brain with senjutsu to get rid of the genjutsu that had taken such a complete hold on his mind, and that had done wonders for his potential with the skill after he got off the combat high. Once he'd calmed down, he'd noticed that several of the benefits normally associated with sage mode had stayed over, even ion his base state. The best part was that he now had access to perfect sage mode when he meditated on his own. Time to train the skill had been sparse with them having to move so fast to keep ahead of Danzo's plan, but he could taste the potential._
_"You know Sensei being dead is almost entirely his fault, right?" She'd said after returning to consciousness and being calmed down, pointing at Orochimaru. _
_"Sensei had decades of life left, even if that life would not have been as an active Ninja. Danzo was the one who took that from him." He'd replied almost instantly. _
_"The only way Danzo would have gotten that opportunity was thanks to his damned invasion. I don't see why you can trust this man and work with him, Jiraiya" _
_"Are we going to keep talking about me like I'm not in the damn room?" Orochimaru piped out from the other side of the admittedly luxurious hotel room. _
_"Yes We are" He said in reply, while Tsunade settled for glaring at him. _
_"Never-mind me then. I'll just remain here trying to tempt your respective apprentices to my nefarious ways" He replied sarcastically, but remained content to sit in his previous position, next to a glaring Naruto and a skittish Shizune. _
_"How can you even trust him?" She asked._
_"That's easy." He replied, rolling up his left sleeve to reveal a set of seals that the uninitiated could have mistaken for extremely ceremonial tattoos. _
_" I got the idea from Danzo himself. Juinjutsu." He explained to her as she went over the script with a keen eye. _
_"This is stupid, Jiraiya" She said to him as she read through the seals to understand their meanings. It was not an extremely well-known fact, but each and every one of them had a more than passable understanding of the art. Tsunade was not known for it for some reason, and most people seemed to ignore the fact that she literally had one of the most impressive pieces of fuinjutsu on her forehead. The Strength of a hundred seal did not come to bear that name by accident. She'd made the seal herself, designed after the seal that her own grandmother had borne to contain the Kyubi no Kitsune. _
_"It's necessary" He said to her. _
_"No it's not. You don't need him, and going to this length to secure his alliance is the most brain-dead thing I've ever seen you do" She'd said with what he thought was worry in her eyes. He killed the very thought before it could rear into something ugly. He'd been down that road too many times to count. It only ended in one way. There was nothing but pain for him there. _
_"I disagree. I do need him. And I need you as well. Danzo killed Sensei. He has Konoha" He knew that with those last three sentences, he had her. He also knew that she was going to resist and make him work for it. But he knew he had her. She loved Konoha just as much as he did. _
Getting the team together had been for both selfish and selfless reasons. Yes, Tsunade was probably right. The two of them could probably manage what they needed to do without involving Orochimaru, but part of him couldn't deny the truth. He wanted his best friend back. And for the moment, it felt like he had that.
XXXXXX
"What do you mean I should wait behind?" Naruto asked with ever present indignity in his voice. "Jiji was my hokage too, you know" He said, raging at the decision to keep him out of the negotiations with the council of Taki. In truth, Jiraiya would have loved to have the boy tag along for the experience so he got some actual context on just how thing were when it came to the interactions between different villages and their interests- villages because he would never consider himself anything other than a ninja of Konoha. Even if she didn't know it yet, Tsunade was his kage. They were merely in temporary exile while insurgents took control of their home.
"I mean you should follow the nice Lady to our living accommodations while we begin the negotiations, brat" Tsunade said, brash as ever. The decision was hers. He would not disagree with it. Not now. He agreed with part of the rationale, but felt that she was underestimating the Gaki. She felt that the Taki bastards would say something rude and that Naruto would be unable to keep himself from replying them in kind, leading to a break down in negotiations. She was giving him less credit than he deserved, but it was not Jiraiya's place to argue with his Kage. Whether she knew herself as such or not.
"But why? I promise to behave" He said, still resisting.
"Naruto" He said, stepping in. It was like mentioning the boy's name was the signal for things to begin to go wrong, as there was an explosion within the village. Suddenly, a girl came flying past them, with ethereal wings sprouted from her back. That was the Nanabi Jinchuriki, no doubt, he casually assessed as he turned to see a detached hand stretch out and grab the girl by the ankle before slamming her to the ground. He followed the line of black threads(?) that connected the hand to find a man with a face mask, and a dead looking appearance to his eyes. Nothing took more of Jiraiya's notice than the cloak of black and red that the man sported, however. Akatsuki.
"Kukukuku. Isn't this such a coincidence" Orochimaru cackled out loud, drawing the man's attention away from the Jinchuriki on the floor to their party of seven - the four of them and their three escorts. Most worryingly was the way the bounty hunter- for who else could it be but Kakuzu the Immortal- kept his eyes on Naruto.
"The Jinchuriki of the Kyubi no Kitsune in the company of the Densestu no Sannin" His voice had a rough quality to it. Like his vocal cords were made of sandpaper and not flesh and blood. With the information Orochimaru had given on the man's abilities, that would not be much of a surprise.
"Between the four of you, I can see Five Hundred Million Ryo. Do well to die peacefully" The man said before he began weaving seals.
Orochimaru wasted no time in matching him, seal for seal, while Tsunade took place as the tip of the spear with practiced ease as she ran forwards, taking all of his attention to her. "Lightning Release: False Darkness" He said, before pointing his hands forwards and letting loose with a blast of lightning natured energy.
The jutsu did little as, with speed that would have caught most by surprise, Naruto appeared in front of Tsunade and clapped his hands. The gesture was more than enough to mark the trigger of a powerful wind release jutsu that tore the lightning jutsu to nothingness as it continued towards the bounty hunter. His skin darkened a shade, and the barely visible blades of wind tore into his cloak without doing anything to his body. Tsunade wove around Naruto's form with ease as her speed quadrupled, smelling blood in the water. Kakuzu was barely able to lift his hand to block the attack in time, but that gesture proved fruitless as the force of the punch tore through his earth release armour and ripped the hand from the body.
Another person jumped at Tsunade from behind Kakuzu's form, trying to prevent her from getting her due. She never even looked at the flying body as it was consumed by flames from Orochimaru's fire release jutsu. Jiraiya almost cried at the display of simple teamwork. This is what had made them famous, and it was good to see that it was not gone completely. He did his part by forming a single seal with his clasped hands. As Kakuzu tried to backpedal, he found his feet trapped in stone. Tsunade took great pleasure in the punch she unleashed on his midsection, tearing most of it to pieces.
"So that is Akatsuki? Nothing impressive at all" She said, turning away from her dead opponent to face him.
It was in that second that she showed that all was not well with them. They were sloppy after so long away from the battlefield. Tsunade of old would never have turned her back on an enemy like that. Not even a dead one. People were fond of faking their deaths when they arrived at the battlefield, so they'd grown to expect it. That caution was nowhere to be found as the man who had been caught by Orochimaru's fire release jutsu lifted himself from the floor with skin caked in charcoal and a crazed smile on his face. As he lifted his scythe to bring it down on an unaware Tsunade, Jiraiya began to move without even thinking.
His hands formed a seal they hadn't formed in over a decade as their special substitution activated. Tsunade did not fight his jutsu as they switched places. He bent underneath the swipe of the scythe, and rose with the fury of a storm god himself. In his right hand lay his improved version of his student's technique. "Odama Rasengan" He shouted as he slammed the grinding ball of chakra against the man's body. Unlike what his young apprentice favoured, this was not the non-lethal version of the technique designed to blow enemies away. No, this was the meat grinder that had put Minato's name on the map even before the Flying Thunder God was a twinkle in his eyes. It lived up to the name the shinobi of Iwa gave it, as it ground the man's body so thoroughly that the head popped off with a distinct sound. He deactivated the jutsu then. That was his mistake.
In turning his attention to the one who had threatened Tsunade, he had removed his attention from every other facet of his surroundings. In keeping the rasengan active for much longer than he'd needed to, he'd given his enemy the privilege of time. He felt a squeezing sensation right as he stood up, and it was the realisation that there was a hand in his chest that kept him still.
"The three of you. You are scary. Especially the woman. Took four of my hearts with one punch. If I didn't start sending my earth heart into the ground after I got trapped, then I'd be dead now." A voice said in his ear, from right behind him. Jiraiya figured that that was where the immortal part of the man's epithet came in. To think that it would be something as inelegant as having multiple hearts. One for each of the elements, Jiraiya suspected.
He turned his neck to get a view of his assailant and felt the squeezing sensation around his precious organ intensify as the man squeezed. He was squeezing lightly. Perhaps he intended to use Jiraiya's life as a bargaining chip. He would never get to find out if that would have worked as the man's own chest was stabbed clean through. Jiraiya could recognise the sword of Kusanagi anywhere as Orochimaru let go of the sword to hold on to Kakuzu's body, most especially the hand that was inside Jiraiya's chest. "How careless of you" The snake summoner tutted as Tsunade rushed towards them.
"We've gotten rusty" He said as both of his teammates worked to put his body down and extract Kakuzu's hand from his chest.
"Stop talking, you fool" Tsunade admonished.
"Tell Naruto, I will always be proud of him" Jiraiya said, trying to come up with the perfect last words. It almost saddened him that he'd never thought to write his own last words ahead of today.
"Shut up, you idiot. You're not dying" Orochimaru said with a chuckle.
"I'm not?" He asked, surprised.
"The bastard didn't cause anything more than superficial damage with that stunt of his. Nothing I can't fix up in a few minutes." She said with a bright smile on her face. He wasn't fooled, though. The fact that it was going to take her minutes was a sign that Kakuzu had caused much more damage than she was saying. There were scarcely any things Tsunade could not heal in a matter of seconds. Especially when it came to his body. She was more familiar with it than he himself was, after all.
"Oi Kakuzu! Come get me my body" They heard suddenly.
XXXXX- GAARA OF THE DESERT
He smiled as he came to. That was precisely what he needed. A nap. Of course, he was still pissed that the Four Tails managed to knock him out so quickly but that was water under the bridge. He had an idea. As he watched Han's body get slammed through a building by one of the Yonbi's massive tails, he completed the rest of the plan in his mind. It all came from a single thought he'd had as he fell into the Morpheus' grasp. 'How is that so loud?' For some reason, it had prompted his brain to begin thinking about sound.
Sound is nothing more than a series of vibrations through a medium. In this case, the medium was the air. The funky part of it was that sound could change when it came into contact with different mediums. Like how Dosu's technique worked. It was fine over the air, but once it got into the ears, it began to mess up toe complex internal operations. The fact that something like that was possible with wind release gave him an idea. Could he use the wind to amplify the sound? Change the frequency? Could he weaponise something as simple as snapping his fingers? He had to test it, and where would he ever find testing grounds as ripe as this one.
First of all, precautions. He lifted his hands to his ears and used a simple medical ninjutsu to deactivate his auditory nerves. He then tested it out by snapping his fingers. He could hear nothing. Good. The next step was trying to feel the sound as it travelled through the air. He clapped his hands. There was something there. Focusing all his energy and attention on trying to feel it gave him results quickly. His high wind affinity made it much easier than it probably should have been for him to feel the sound as it escaped has clasped fingers. It wasn't so much feeling the sound itself, as it was feeling it travel through the air, he corrected himself. He clapped again, to make sure he could feel it. He could.
Feeling it wasn't the goal, though. The goal was manipulation. 'First of all, make it travel the air faster', he thought to himself. He clapped and then when he felt the sound leave his fingers, he hurried it along, making it travel through the air faster. Perfect, he self congratulated. But that still wasn't the goal. He wanted to give the four tails a taste of its medicine because that roar thing it was fond of pulling out was so fucking annoying. He clapped again. He could feel the sound. He could even manipulate where it went and how.
All he now needed to do was sue out how to manipulate the frequency of the sound itself. He knew that the higher pitched a sound went-passed a certain point-the less detectable it became to humans and the more potential it had to annoy or irritate animals. Considering the Four Tails was a monkey, I assumed its frequency response was going to be somewhat similar to ours. I clapped again. Feeling the sound, but failing to manipulate it. It was fundamentally different from manipulating the air. I tried it again, and again. Working to make it work, but nothing I tried to do let me achieve more than I could just do. I then wondered if I could use the wind it travelled through to amplify the sound itself.
In this, I was more successful. But only by the barest margin. I could tweak it a bit. Trying to use the air to stretch it and expand it. But even that was negligible. It didn't fight me every step of the way, in so much as it just remained unchanged regardless of what I tried. Whatever changes I managed were minute. All of that stopped mattering as I saw something out of the corner of my eyes. I turned to it and almost gulped at the sight. It was a fucking Tsunami. Not a small one, either. It was so big that it made what Mei had conjured back in our fight back then look like a kiddie splash.
I lifted my hands to my ears to restore my hearing, and that it when I began to hear the cackling. I traced it to the surface of the Tsunami. Even from this distance, I could pick out the black cloak with red clouds. Akatsuki. Kisame Hoshigaki. Needless to say, I did the sensible thing. Where one went, the other would follow, and fighting Clankiller Itachi and the Tailless Tailed Beast at the same time was way beyond my pay grade. Either of those men was a Kage-killer on their own, and I had no interest in being the one that proved it.
So, I did the thing anyone with a brain would. I tucked tail and ran like the hounds of hell were at my heels. Not before leaving a clone behind to watch the fight, of course. I still wanted the entertainment. When I flew above the cloud cover, I summoned more sand from my inventory to create a wide enough platform before I bit my finger and went through a familiar set of seals. "Kuchiyose no jutsu" I whispered as all the ninja who had joined me on this mission appeared on the platform in a puff of smoke. Not all of them, I amended, as I noticed that two backpacks had come without being attached to their owners.
"Report" I ordered sharply.
XXXX- CLONE GAARA (BECAUSE I KNOW YOU WANT TO SEE ITACHI AND KISAME GET IT DONE)
It was like night and day. The difference between the battlefield before and after they arrived. Kisame rode in on a massive tsunami that quenched most of the lava flowing through the village before it crashed into the Four Tails. The tailed beast tried to evaporate the water with just its body heat, but that was insufficient, and then it was forced under. I almost choked at the sight. The four tails was in a physical battle, and it was losing.
The second that Kismet managed to force it under the water with his water manipulation, the shape of the tsunami changed. The water that had crashed to the ground suddenly rose again before slamming into the larger mass. Suddenly, like it had taken seconds, there was no a massive dome of water over a third of Iwa with the Four Tails right in the middle. It tried to scream, but just ended up swallowing water. It was then I spotted Kisame's form in the water. He looked even more shark like than usual as he chased the creature as it tried to stumble out of the water. He was upon it before it could make any progress, and he latched on.
I could tell that the fight was over from there. I turned my attention to the other fight.
Han had recognised Itachi the moment the Uchiha had pulled up on him, and you could see it in how his approach to combat changed. He moved back from wide ranged, massive attacks to a simpler style. When he and the Uchiha clashed in hand-to-hand combat, Gaara could see it from the very first punch. The difference between them was night and day. Even with the chakra of a tailed beast amplifying his strength and speed to levels that Gaara would never have been able to dream of, Itachi maintained a comfortable advantage over him. Every attack he made was foreseen and reacted to before the Jinchuriki could even dream of landing it. Han gained distance for a second or two before suddenly switching tacks and jumping right at the Uchiha with a massive burst of speed. Itachi dodged the dive with so much grace that it was like Han had been moving in slow motion, giving the dark-haired assassin all the time in the world.
Watching Itachi fight was enough for Gaara to decide that they were wrong. All the people who had considered him a prodigy as great as the Uchiha Clankiller had clearly never seen the man fight. His taijutsu was graceful. Not just graceful, it was perfect. Not a single strand of hair went where he did not wish it to as he demonstrated masterful control of his body. This was what the power of the Sharingan really was. He watched as Han struggled to lay a single finer on the agile Uchiha, and it was only because of the amount of attention he paid to the situation that he could tell when things suddenly shifted.
Itachi moved backwards, and he brought his hands together for a few seconds, where he weaved seals so quickly that the only way Gaara was able to predict his next jutsu was because of his knowledge of the jutsu itself. He let loose with a fireball that was large enough to consume the Jinchuriki whole. Spinning his tails around himself, Han weathered the jutsu with no sustained damage, but when Itachi closed the distance this time, it was different. After their first exchange, against all rhyme and reason, Han opened his eyes for a quick second. That brief second of eye contact was all that was needed as the Jinchuriki suddenly went still.
As Itachi looked up at him, the clone dispelled himself immediately.
Itachi is one scary motherfucker, Gaara said to himself as his clone dispelled itself, ending his stream of information from the fight between the Akatsuki and the two jinchuriki. Watching that had taught him one key thing. As he stood now, Itachi and Kisame would run circles around him. It didn't matter whether he was one of the strongest active kage or not. All that mattered was that the Akatsuki would kill him the m moment they decided to get serious about him. Both he and Han had struggled to contain Son Goku, and Kisame had done it all with one manoeuvre. Tailless tailed beast, indeed. Han was one of the deadliest taijutsu fighters, Gaara had ever got the chance of witnessing, and Itachi ran circles at him before catching him in genjutsu and ending the fight there.
It would have been impressive if it weren't so scary at the same time. He zoned out of the conversations between his strike team as they flew back to Suna. The truth was that he couldn't bring himself to care about how their experiences in Suna had gone when his mind was consumed with one single thought; how do I get stronger? He knew that he wasn't born with the same benefits as demigods like Naruto and Sasuke. But the reason he'd stayed away from selecting either of those bodies was because he didn't want to have to deal with the destiny baggage that came with living either of those lives.
Hagoromo had clearly been watching the reincarnations of his sons for a while, and the last thing he'd want was Ninja-Jesus on his tail. Besides, Gaara knew the fact that his life would be less his own than it would belong to others was going to piss me off. Still, he had a plan. He'd said so for so long. And only held himself back from implementing it out of a desire to get to the upper limit of what he could achieve on his own. Sure, he wasn't there yet. He had leaps and bounds left to grow by before he'd be knocking at the door of his full potential. But he no longer had the time to let the slow march of progress take its course.
For whatever reason, good or ill, the Akatsuki had made the decision to go after the tailed beasts earlier than they did in canon. If Gaara could be certain that Sasori would be the one sent after him, then he'd sleep easily, but the fact that Deidara was dead threw one hell of a wrench into things. The fact that he would not be certain who he was facing until they were face to face with him meant that he had to become strong enough to tell the lot of them to fuck off. Yes, that included Pain. And so Operation: Rebirth was born.
XXXXXXX- ONE MONTH LATER
"Are you sure about it?" She asked for the seventh time in the past hour. Gaara knew that she only did it out of concern for him but that still didn't mean that he was blessed with the patience to deal with having his motivations and decisions questioned at every turn.
"If I wasn't, we wouldn't be here. Now get it over with" He replied tersely, patience long worn thin. In the month since he'd returned from Iwa, Gaara had spent every spare second studying a single thing. The Sharingan. Kakashi Hatake's Sharingan, if we were being more specific. Well, more like Obito Uchiha's, but there was no need to split hairs over such a minor matter. A month of study, and while I was nowhere near an expert on the Sharingan, I knew much more than I did at first. I was also pretty certain that the eye was not going to go blind by the time I began using its mangekyou ability. My theory regarding how Obito could use his ability nonstop was that Hashirama cells let him heal almost constantly from the Mangekyou's desire to blind itself.
For myself, my plan was to let my new seal do the job for me. It wasn't anywhere near the strength of a hundred seal that Tsunade had on her forehead but I'd been working on it for a while now, and it was something to be proud of. Near instant regeneration of the eye was the main function of the seal. The connection between the eye I'd be implanting and my chakra network would run through the seal first. The complex display of years of fuinjutsu training sat on my forehead as an unobtrusive black dot. The Blessed Seal of Theótita. It had four key functions. Firstly was that it was going to act as a bit of a dam for my chakra. It had the passive ability to leach on my chakra reserves, taking the unused excess for itself, but just like Tsunade's strength of a hundred seal, I could funnel my chakra into it as necessary. Its second function was that it could heal the sharingan I was going to implant in my skull. How? Well, I had to rethink healing as a whole.
When a healer healed, they encouraged the body's natural healing with chakra. That was why even after healing some wounds, scars would remain to show that the wound had once been there. A rare few, Tsunade and her apprentices among them, had the power to heal by promoting cell division to heal beyond the bodies natural limits. That was more regeneration than pure healing, so to speak. There was a third, lesser known and rarely implemented means of healing that I was implementing with the Blessed Seal. Where other forms of healing pushed the body forwards, this one dragged it back. The Seal of Theótita had two functions to aid this- one, it could scan the target completely, in this case, Kakashi's eye- two, it could reject any damage or change done to the target, seemingly reversing the flow of time to return it to its original state. It wasn't an easy thing. The more damage the eye took at a go, the more chakra the seal required to pull off what it was doing.
That was the key reason why the seal was still considered incomplete in its present state. Presently, it only fed on my reserves. My eventual goal was to acquire a cursed seal for study so I could figure out how the things managed to drag in nature chakra to power their functions. Once I had that, the Seal of Theótita would have a source of virtually unending chakra at its beck and call to ensure that nothing ever overcame its power and managed to damage the eye. Currently, according to my calculations, the seal could heal all the damage that consistent use of the mangekyou's ability would cause, but would drain me to death if someone ever managed to slash the eye in half or whatever.
Now, the question I got from Chiyo when I gave her the rundown was why wasn't I just using the seal for my entire body. The answer was obvious to anyone who looked at it for longer than a second. The seal returned things to status quo. If I used it on my body, then any gains from training would be turned to naught instantly.
The final two functions of the Blessed seal were that it could both power the Sharingan's constant drain with its chakra so I left my reserves delightfully unmolested, and serve as a power source for ninjutsu if I ever needed it to.
"Are you ready?" Chiyo asked, and I settled for glaring at her. She took that as my reply and her hands glowed green as she reached down and plucked out my left eye. I felt none of the pain as the numbing effects of medical ninjutsu kicked in almost instantly.
She reached down again, and began the simple surgery to connect the sharingan to my optical nerve and get it up and running. What really needed to be studies was just how doujutsu worked in this world. For some reason, they were extremely easy to just plug and play. It was almost like they'd been engineered to be as easy to transplant as possible.
That proved to be true in this case as the moment the eye was installed and plugged in, so to speak, I could see right out of it. It was something to get used to. My right eye was leagues behind my left as the sharingan rendered everything in a startling high definition. I could pick out specks of dust as they flew behind the screen we'd sanitised for the surgery. I could pick out the most minute expressions on Chiyo's face as thoughts ran through. It almost felt like I could just reach out and pluck the thoughts right out of her head. Thankfully, before I could succumb to the temptation to try, a blue screen overtook my vision.
_NOTICE: Foreign Intrusion Detected. _
_Player has implanted a sharingan in his left eye socket. Perception + 10; Wet Tinkering + 20; Intelligence + 5; Genjutsu + 60; Endurance -10. _
I read through the notification and dismissed it immediately after, turning back to Chiyo. "I assume that everything has gone according to plan". I said.
"See for yourself" She replied, tossing me a mirror.
Staring across from me was my face as it had always been, free from marking or scar. The only difference was that where my right eye was a calm teal, the left was a fiery red, glowing with the passion that the rest of the world had learned to associate with sharingan wielders.
"Perfect" I replied. Now, it was time to test this bitch out. Before that, though "What do you think of the formulas I submitted to you?" I asked her.
"The idea is ambitious, but I am not so sure about the side effects, and risk of crippling yourself permanently by going down that route."
"It's fine. While I was in the throes of your amnesia, I had an idea or two. I should be able to blunt most of the side effects with some further fine-tuning" I said to her. 20 extra points in wet tinkering was nothing to scoff at. I could already see dozens of ways that I could have been better, more precise, with transplanting the Dead bone pulse into Shira. I could see even more ways of harnessing the explosion release kekkei genkai I'd stolen from Iwa. Transplanting it to promising academy students would be just the tip of the iceberg.
It took all that I had to resist the urge to collapse into uncontrollable cackling. Chiyo might try to kill me again if I did.
XXXXXX- JIRAIYA OF THE SANNIN
He wasn't expecting a parade or anything. Certainly not a festival or national holiday in their name, but he would have at least expected some more gratefulness on the part of the detestable Taki elders. They'd saved the village's sole claim to fame and here they were being cantankerous old codgers- he had Tsunade to thank for that delightful bit of phrasing.
They'd left Orochimaru with Naruto and Shizune at the hotel room to avoid causing offence, and now the bastards left them waiting outside the meeting room. He could already tell that by the time the clock struck twelve, signifying that they'd spent an hour waiting, Tsunade was going to break the door open and barge in. The patience she was presently displaying was impressive but any idiot could tell it was wearing thin.
"Legendary Sannin?" A head poked out of the council chambers five minutes before the clock struck twelve.
As they were literally the only ones in the waiting room, neither of them bothered to reply. "Please come in. The Elders will see you now." In an eye blink, Tsunade had covered half the distance between them and the door to the meeting room, dragging him along for the ride.
"Introducing, Jiraiya the Gallant, one and only Toad Sage, and Tsunade the Legendary Healer- Two of the Students of Hiruzen the Professor, Late Third Hokage of the Village Hidden in the Leaves" The secretary said as they walked in. He almost preened at the flattering introduction.
He stared across the table at the elders of Takigakure. Right from the beginning of the meeting, things had been set for failure. First of all, he hadn't noticed it at the time, but the announcer had failed to recognise them as the valid envoys of Konohagakure. Even worse, their obvious leader was spilling a bunch of bullshit that wanted to make Jiraiya pull out his hair and stab the man with it.
The village leader in name only, Shibuki, was content sit back and watch as they got insulted buy his council of advisors. What a fucking coward, Jiraiya assessed in head.
"So what exactly are you saying?" Tsunade asked, a clenched fist being the only sign of her very obvious fury. It took a lot of audacity for these village elders to do what they were doing. Pissing off S-rank shinobi with nothing to lose was a surefire way to end up in a shallow grave with a painful journey there.
"What I am saying in exact and unequivocal terms is that we cannot support you in this civil war of yours, to supplant the Hokage of Konohagakure. It is only even out of respect for your previous deeds that we have not sent word down to the Hokage himself and agreed to take this meeting" The one who went by Hizuki said in a voice that made Jiraiya itch to separate his head from his shoulders.
"Have you not listened to a word we've said? Danzo killed Hiruzen. He's no rightful Kage of Konohagakure. You would be taking the right side in this" Tsunade said, arguing. She was always the more determined of them. Jiraiya could already tell that there was nothing they would be getting from here. Nothing useful, definitely. Just another rejection out of the near dozen they'd managed to stack up.
"We only have your word for that, and even if he did, he has still been confirmed as the Hokage by the Daimyo, has he not?" The same man asked again.
"So you will not be helping us" Tsunade surmised
"Even if we could, we would not be able to. Shall we send dozens of our Jounin off with you to die in an ill-thought civil war in exchange for nothing? Based on your promises alone? Surely you see that there is nothing we can do for you" Another council stepped in here, perhaps sensing that there would be no stopping Tsunade's fury if that idiot opened his mouth another time.
"Is that your word on this Shibuki?" She asked, turning to the actual leader of the village.
"May-maybe you should ask one of the major villages. We really can't help you with this." Tsunade scoffed audibly and stood up. Jiraiya joined her.
"We will not be forgetting that Taki broke faith this day" She said as she turned to march away with him hot on her heels.
"So what's the next step?" He asked her when they'd finally put some serious distance between them and the village government building that housed the council's meeting room. Under the shade of the great tree, he could not get as good a view of her eyes as he should have, but he could still see a glint in them. A very familiar glint. People always remembered him for being the prankster of the lot, but little who lived in their younger days could deny the existence of Tsunade's mischievous streak.
"We seek a major village, of course. One of the big 5. Or big 4, since we can't really head back to Konoha to look for help in overthrowing the damn Hokage." She said. He was about to reply to her when a tadpole suddenly appeared at the corner of his vision. That was the code that he and Naruto had developed for communicating with each other when they were separated.
"Back to the hotel. Now" He told Tsunade before disappearing in a body flicker. Keeping to civilian speeds had been a concession made for the peace of mind of those who watched them, but after how that meeting had gone, he couldn't really care less about that. Especially not when Naruto was trying to get his attention. Logically, Jiraiya knew that it was not an emergency. The code they had for emergencies was a much more visible thing. No one would ever manage to miss Gamabunta appearing in the middle of a village.
Nevertheless, they made it to the hotel in good time, diving through the open windows to land in Orochimaru's room in unison. His room was where both Naruto and Shizune had set up shop in their masters' absence since he was the most secure place to be in the village apart from aforementioned masters.
"I got a letter, Ero-sennin" Naruto said at their entrance, already far more used to their antics than he'd been a scarce few months ago. Jiraiya, against his will, smiled at the nickname even as Tsunade chuckled and walked forwards to ruffle the boy's hair and pick up the letter.
"It's for me, you brat" He said on noticing the code in which it was written. Looking at the ink smudges on the edge of the paper, it was clear that this missive had been written with some amount of haste. It was also written in the most basic version of the coded language he used with his spies in Tsuchi no kuni.
"What does it say?" Tsunade asked, clearly reading something on his face as he read through the letter for the second time to make sure he hadn't made any mistakes in deciphering the code. He knew he couldn't have- so familiar was he with the code that he could have written it while half asleep and high on enough intoxicants to drug an elephant, don't ask questions. But still, the news was just that surprising. He didn't answer until he had completed his third read as he used this one to try to gather his thoughts so he could deliver the news in the most efficient way possible.
"The Fifth Kazekage, Gaara of the Desert, led an attack on the Village Hidden in the Stone. He maimed the fourth Tsuchikage, Kitsuchi, and in a fight against the Village's Jinchuriki managed to cause the release of the Yonbi. Much of the Hidden Stone village was consumed in the conflict. The infrastructure repair costs are estimated to be in the billions of yen" He said briefly, not mentioning the bit about two men with cloaks of black and red being seen leaving the area with both of Iwa's jinchuriki. He'd assured Naruto that he would have time to prepare, and there was nothing to be gained from making the boy feel unnecessary panic. He'd tell Tsunade and Orochimaru about it once they put him to bed.
"So what do we do next? The number of great villages we can seek out just went down to three." Tsunade said, making Orochimaru scoff.
"I maintain that we don't need any of them. I have an army back in the hidden sound village that can help us with what we need. The three of us working together would make short work of that old cripple" He said, tone haughty and slimy as ever.
"I agree, but how would we match up against the Second Tsuchikage? Or the third? Especially under edo tensei? It wouldn't be a fight" Jiraiya said with a long suffering expression on his face. This was not the first time they would be having this argument.
"I doubt that whatever stooge he's had learning the jutsu would be good enough to bring them back at anywhere even remotely close to the peak of their powers. Besides, if you're so worried about that, you shouldn't have forced me to release the jutsu in the first place" The snake said, rising from his previously relaxed position on the couch to get in Jiraiya's face.
The toad sage assessed the situation with an easy sigh before saying, "I wouldn't have made you do that if you'd told me that Danzo forced you to teach the jutsu to his Root agents, would I? Besides, that jutsu is an aberration, a mockery of nature and all that I stand for. I could not abide having it cast by one in my vicinity." He said, refusing to back down from his teammate.
"If you two are not going to fight it out, then you might as well step back from each other" Tsunade said, stepping in between them and defusing the situation with the ease that came from having spent decades as the only thing between the both of them and all out combat. They heeded her orders and she smiled in satisfaction.
If there was one thing she'd noticed in this team reunion was just how the dynamics had changed. Instead of Jiraiya being the one who constantly attempted to pick a fight with Orochimaru, it was the other way around. She placed the blame for that squarely on the seal that both men bore on the right side of their upper bodies. Not the seal itself, but how it got there. She hadn't gotten a real answer from either man, but piecing the brat's words together gave her enough of an idea.
After Jiraiya released Orochimaru from Danzo's fuingenjutsu, he had them both returned to the Toad realm. Freshly released, Orochimaru wasted no time in trying to claim his freedom and Jiraiya's life on the way to it. Everything she'd heard and deduced about that fight told her that it had been as one-sided as a fight could be. Already in that famed sage mode of his, Jiraiya unleashed the beating of his life on the Snake summoner. Even when Orochimaru had been going for the kill and Jiraiya had been fighting merely to disable, the Toad Sage had handily claimed victory. After that, binding them both with the seal had been easy for him.
Tsunade herself knew that if she and Jiraiya fought while going all out, then the Toad Sage would invariably come out the victor. While she'd spent years wandering the countryside, and Orochimaru spent the time on his sick experiments, Jiraiya had become the most successful active shinobi in Konoha history, completing hundreds of S-rank missions where most Jounin failed to complete even one across their entire career. That experience had given him strength. Enough strength that the dead-last from the academy was now the most powerful of them all. Their Hokage, she'd sworn. Both she and Orochimaru were in agreement on that one fact. Jiraiya, as the one who brought them together, had shown that he was willing to do whatever was necessary for Konoha's future. He was the one that the Jounin, Chunin, and Genin of the village would lay down their lives for. He was the inheritor of Sensei's will of fire, whether he liked it or not.
"The question still remains, where do we go to seek for help?" Jiraiya asked, getting them back on topic.
"If it's a choice between Cloud, Mist, and Sand, then there isn't much of a choice, is there? And no, Orochimaru, Sound isn't an option. Even with Stone's help and the element of surprise, you still failed to take the village." She said, shutting down her teammate's idea before he got to voice it a second time. He scowled, but the lack of retort showed that he understood.
"I still don't trust the Kazekage brat" Jiraiya said, needing no time to figure out her proposed course of action.
"I know. But we aren't exactly spoilt for choice. He already has reason enough to have a bone to pick with Danzo and he's clearly shown that he's strong enough to hang with the best of them and come out swinging. He has strength, motive, and he's also young. He's the perfect choice."
"I know you think he'll be easy to manipulate, but trust me Tsunade, there is something foul in those eyes of his"
"I don't care. We need help. He'll give it to us. Orochimaru, your vote?"
XXXXX- TEMARI OF THE DESERT- TWO MONTHS LATER
"Faster" She heard him bark out as he weaved around Shira's stabs. She scowled and opened both her hand fans to their maximum before sweeping them at him, causing a swarm of invisible wind blades to get sent at her annoying little brother. She hoped that being stuck in the middle of an exchange with Shira, he would be unable to dodge in time, but those hopes were all for naught as he leaned out of the way of one of Shira's bone blades before slamming a palm into her teammate's midsection before he could react in time.
Shira was sent flying off, out of range of the attack, and Gaara merely smirked at her before he did the bloody impossible for what felt like the seventieth time in this training session. He jumped in the air and contorted his body in such a way that not a single one of the invisible blades touched him. The glowing red eye in his left socket spun at them, as if it were mocking them.
XXXX
"Kai" She heard from beside her and turned to see Kankuro with his hand on her shoulder as Shira and Gaara fought each other a few metres away.
"Sharingan genjutsu?" She asked Kankuro, already knowing the answer to her question. Her brother settled for a nod as she scowled in annoyance. It was the seventh time she was getting caught like that, and even Kankuro who often hid behind his puppets had been caught a few times already.
She'd thought that getting him to make the concession of not using his sand manipulation or any of his ninjutsu would give them anything close to a fair fight, but even that was not enough. The glowing red eye he sported as he fought Shira to a standstill using nothing but pure taijutsu was just the ultimate cheat code. Even with Shira's new ability to control his bones, it was all he could do to remain in the fight as Gaara refused to allow himself to be pressured by the older boy.
"Is this how the Senju felt? Fighting against the Uchiha?" She heard Kankuro ask. It was probably a rhetorical question, but one that she still felt the need to answer.
"Very few Uchiha got as good with the Sharingan in their entire lives as Gaara has managed to in the past two months. Add to that the fact that his sharingan is fully evolved where most Uchiha never lived long enough to achieve that, and you'd get a thoroughly different state of affairs." She explained, making him nod. From the moment Gaara had shown up at home with a different person's eye in his socket, she'd torn into all the information they had on the clan and their famous doujutsu. Not immediately, of course. She'd dedicated some time for chastising him for undergoing life altering surgery without even so much as informing them of what was going to happen. They were his siblings, damn it.
Not for the first time, Temari cursed her father for forcing Gaara to grow up without them
He never learned the value of family as a child, so focused and used to working on his own. He'd been confused as to why they'd been upset at him for not telling them. Yes, there was nothing they could have done to help with the procedure, but there was still some peace of mind that would come from having it be known to her that her brother would inform her whenever that kind of thing had to happen. Terrible situation or not, the implanted Sharingan had been one hell of a boon for Gaara's combat ability. She had no doubts that Gaara was one of the strongest people in the world even before getting the fancy new eye, but implanting it had taken his combat process to whole new levels. His growth was nothing short of explosive. She got the privilege of watching some of his kenjutsu lessons with the ANBU Commander, and the word 'lesson' seemed to fit the situation less and less with each passing day. At first, they had been evenly matched, with the ANBU Commander holding back by some fair margin. That margin had now more or less disappeared, and when they crossed blades, they did so as equals.
It was a bit scary to watch how he could easily match and nearly surpass someone who had spent their whole life training the craft just with a few more lessons with those fancy eyes. Watching Gaara had made her realise one key thing. Itachi Uchiha needed an award of some sort. The Uchiha clan wrote truly too dangerous to have been allowed to live. Even if just a mere 10% of their number showed as much skill with the Sharingan as Gaara did, then they'd be in for a world of hurt.
She watched as Gaara shuffled backwards, looking for all the world like he was dancing with his opponent to avoid the multitude of stabs that came from Shira's movements as he wielded bone blades that stuck out from both his fists, elbows, and chest. Shira's new kekkei genkai had also been another matter of contention. She couldn't believe that Gaara had somehow figured out how to transplant kekkei genkai, and then used it on her classmate who had not a single drop of ninjutsu talent. For some reason, that lack of ninjutsu or genjutsu talent had no bearings on Shira's ability to use the _Dead bone pulse_. He wielded the powerful kekkei genkai like he was born with it.
Being completely honest, Temari had never had many doubts about Shira being the strongest of them all but that gap had grown in just a few months since he got released from the hospital. She looked down at her hands, and the fans clutched in them. Kankuro was shaping up to being a legendary seal master of renown; Shira had a kekkei genkai that allowed him fight almost evenly with Gaara who had a sharingan. Both her teammates were leaving her behind, and it felt like there was nothing she could do about it. Sure, she had her fans. Yes, Gaara made them to be legendary weapons on par with the legendary blades of the Hidden Mist, but a weapon would only ever be as powerful as its wielder, and she was thoroughly lacking in that regard.
Her moments of reflecting prevented her from seeing the conclusion to the fight between them, but she heard the sound of bone breaking ver clearly. She looked up and found Gaara holding one of Shira's bone blades to his neck with the latter on his back on the sandy floor.
"You held back" Her teammate grouched. Her brother merely smiled in return.
"Using genjutsu on you when you have such little resistance or even potential for resistance felt too much like cheating, so I had to do things the old fashioned way" He said while tossing the bone blade away before reaching down with his hand to help Shira to his own feet. Accepting the peace offering, Shira took the hand and was returned to his standing position almost immediately.
"That bone sure did heal quickly" Gaara mused idly.
"It was a clean fracture." Shira said, hand on his chin. "You stamped on it at an angle to make sure that the break would be as clean as possible. The bone probably began melding pretty much immediately after I landed on the floor" he theorised.
"So, what do you think you did wrong?" Gaara asked, getting to her least favourite part of these sparring sessions.
Whenever Gaara beat them regardless of what restriction they placed on him, he'd add salt to the wound by insisting they went over their preferred strategies and the happenings of the fight immediately afterwards.
"I didn't guard my feet well enough" Shira said, making Gaara chuckle.
"No. To this eye of mine, you were full of openings. If you'd guarded your feet, I'd have gone somewhere else instead. What you did wrong was the same thing you've done wrong in almost every practice session in the three months we've spent working together on getting your combat up to snuff. You're reinventing your entire fighting style to take advantage of the dead bone pulse, and while I don't condemn you for that, you also have to realise that you can't use both fighting styles at the same time. You can't fight in the way you did before getting the dead bone pulse. The differences caused by four protruding bones on each of your extremities means that you have to switch things up a bit…" She zoned out as Gaara got into more and more detail on taijutsu. Sure, she knew that hand-to-hand combat was a key skill for every shinobi to learn, but she'd never excelled at it. And she also couldn't deny the truth. Taijutsu bored her. It had too much repetition, too much effort required for even the most minute improvements, and nowhere near the amount of flair that good ninjutsu could display.
Her other gripe with it was that she was shit at it, but that was neither here nor there. Gaara was calling her attention.
"What I did wrong is obvious, I kept meeting your eye." She said, hoping with all her heart for him to just nod and move on after her admission of fault.
"Wrong. Funny enough, what I used against you today was a trick I saw Itachi Uchiha use on the five-tail Jinchuriki back in Iwa. You see, Han is- or was- an experienced shinobi. He'd definitely fought more than a few Uchiha in his lifetime. He knew not to meet the Clankiller's yes, and yet he did precisely that. It's confused me for a while but now I have a theory. Right before their eyes met, the Uchiha blasted the Jinchuriki with a fireball jutsu that the hardy jinchuriki walked right through. It confused me. It wouldn't take a genius to figure out that the Gobi Jinchuriki would be highly resistant to fire release. Itachi clearly didn't have enough chakra to just waste it on futile efforts. So now I have a theory on how he did what he did and why. The fireball jutsu was both a distraction, a taunt, and a hook. He expected Han to walk through it. He anticipated it, in fact. That's why the fireball was laced with a genjutsu. Not anything ambitious. Just a minor genjutsu that made the Gobi jinchuriki meet his opponent's eyes for a split second. It was enough to end the fight there…"
"That's what you did to me" She cut in, interrupting the tangent that Gaara had begun to go on after realising just exactly what he was getting at.
"Precisely. Unlike Itachi, I have the reserves to just spread my chakra all about my surroundings. And the best part is that since all you were looking for was sharingan genjutsu, then you paid little attention to your chakra network when our eyes did not meet. Once I could get you to meet my eyes, however, there was little you could do about that on your own. Sharingan genjutsu is an effective, insidious thing. I don't even have to put in much effort to force you into a mental sleep. Or force you to replay a moment ad infinitum until you either realised, collapsed from mental strain, or got rescued by someone else." He said, rubbing a hand over the eyelid that now covered that red eye of his. When he opened the eye again, it took a phenomenal application of mental will to resist flinching at the sight. Yet, Gaara still noticed if the way his gaze on her softened was any indication.
"What else did you do wrong?" He asked her, changing the topic and moving on.
Temari sat still on the ground as she reviewed the fight mentally. Trying to figure out where she could have acted differently or where she could have been more effective with her actions.
"I can't find anything else" She said to him, expecting some form of criticism or condemnation from daring to suggest that she'd only made a single mistake. Instead, his smile widened and he looked upon her with such fondness and affection that she felt her cheeks light up in a bright red. This was the first time he was looking at her like that, and he walked forwards to plop a hand down on her shoulder.
"Neither can I. You fulfilled your role with perfection. There's not much more that you could have done with the arsenal at your disposal. That does mean that we need to work to widen said arsenal, but that's neither here nor there. You were amazing today, almost the polar opposite of our brother who's trying his hardest to blend in with the sand" He said, turning his attention from her to Kankuro seamlessly.
"Your head wasn't in it today…."
XXXXX- NEJI OF THE BYAKUGAN
"West, three hundred metres" He said, identifying their quarry with ease. There was nothing that could hide from these eyes of his, and after Danzo-sama took him under his wing, that statement had become more and more true with time as his range expanded nearly constantly.
"On it" His partner said, moving in a blur of speed that would have made Rock Lee envious. He cleared his mind of thoughts of his previous team. Danzo-sama would not be pleased with thoughts like that popping up while they were on a mission. Especially one of this level of importance.
He tracked his partner as the younger boy ran through the trees while leaving almost no sign of his presence of passing. When he finally arrived right above their targets, he executed his movements with a fluidity that would have made Neji's previous self jealous. He jumped right at one of them with a kunai clutched in his right hand. His other hand reached into the shrunken pouch at his waist and tossed five of the throwing stars at the other.
The tossed stars moved in such a way that it was nearly impossible for the Kusagakure Chunin to dodge them without abandoning his previous position and retreating. That retreat put him in no position to help his partner as he clashed with the Uchiha prodigy in a dance of furious taijutsu. Sasuke Uchiha picked apart the Kusa chunin, making the man look like an academy student. Flashing red eyes tracked every movement as he kept his opponent on the back foot. Neji turned his attention away from that fight, the conclusion already decided by destiny, and sought out the last target. The third scout had taken a less direct route back to his home village, hoping that would hide him from the Byakugan. What utter foolishness. Neji decided on a path for interception and moved.
In a matter of minutes, he'd caught up to the man. "Eight Trigrams: Vacuum Palm" He whispered, executing the jutsu seamlessly. The man, mid-jump, slumped down to the ground dead as the attack tore through his heart.
"I take it that you succeeded in the mission" Their immediate Commanding Officer said in greeting as they appeared in the command tent and executed flawless salutes in unison. All around them, the tent was abuzz with motion as dozens of chunin and genin scrambled to perform various administrative tasks. Sending a whole nation to war was not the easiest of things to do, and required so much administration that it hurt even Neji's genius mind to consider.
"Yes we did. All who saw the encampment now rest in the halls of Naraka" His partner, Sasuke, said. Neji leaned heavily on the emotional control that had been quite literally beat into him to prevent himself from rolling his eyes at his partner's need to use the most dramatic phrasing for every sentence. Neji was the Hyuga here, and Sasuke clearly had even him beat in terms of sheer dramatism.
"Perfect. We must be ready to move in the next 12 hours. Go get some rest and prepare yourselves. Your roles in the invasion are of paramount importance" The Yamanaka said, blond hair flipping over his shoulders as he turned to the rest of the room after dismissing them. He was one of the few hundred shinobi that Neji had seen appear out of nowhere in the aftermath of Danzo's ascension as Kage and take up positions of authority within the village.
If he gave the whispers in the wind any iota of serious consideration, then he'd believe the rumours that Danzo-sama had been in charge of some secret division of Anbu that were out of the control of Lord Third, and only after taking over the position had he decided to integrate them in the standard hierarchy. The idea was stupid beyond stupid, and he'd told TenTen so the moment she'd made mention of it. Lord third was undoubtedly the greatest Hokage that Konoha had ever had, and it was ridiculous to suggest that he'd ever be foolish enough to allow a whole division of special operatives beyond his control.
It was much more likely that Danzo was pulling his people from the more obscure areas of Konoha' military and promoting them to replace the people that the previous Hokage had relied on. It was reasonable, as well.
"Neji" He heard from besides him as he walked out of the tent. He turned to his new partner and teammate, Sasuke Uchiha.
"Hm?" He grunted at him, waiting for the Uchiha to explain what he wanted.
"I'll be at the stream if I'm needed" he said before disappearing in a shunshin. Neji wondered why he'd been told. Did the Uchiha honestly believe that there was anywhere in the vicinity of the camp that he would have gone to that Neji would not be able to locate him in a matter of seconds. Putting the thought from his mind, Neji jumped upwards to one of the large trees that hid the camp from view. One of the commanding officers, a man by the name of Tenzo, with the rare ability to use the First Hokage's kekkei genkai had created the cover that their entire camp relied on.
He was another example of commanding officers that had come out of the woodwork after Lord Fifth's ascension. It was a strange thing. To think that a kekkei genkai as storied as the wood release would have managed to lay under the radar so thoroughly.
Tenzo was no Senju, Neji knew this for a fact. Even as a branch family member, his lessons were comprehensive enough to tell him that there were no more Senjus beyond Tsunade, Hashirama's granddaughter. As a display of the kind of unity he wanted from the village, lord First had enacted two policies for his clan that saw them more tightly integrated into Konoha than any other. First of all, Senju clanswomen, more than any other, intermarried with the other clans, and even the civilians. At this point, virtually every clan that called the village home had some manner of Senju blood in their line. Not the Hyuga, but that was because of strict breeding requirements the main branch mandated to maintain the purity of the byakugan. The second policy was that the Senju, more than any other, occupied the front lines when it came time for war. Not even the Uchiha had as many clansmen on the lines for the First two great shinobi wars.
When the Second Great War went as far as it did, it was Senju genin that were sent out first. Famously on Lord Second's orders. Neji admired the selflessness and devotion, but the Senju clan was no more. Whatever he had against the main branch, he could not imagine a world without the Hyuga clan. "I heard you and Sasuke would be part of the first charge" Tenten said as a manner of greeting. He acknowledged her presence with a nod, before thinking over her statement that was really a question.
"Indeed. Lord Fifth wants us to gain valuable experience fighting shinobi from a hidden village. As the Village Hidden in the Grass is not one of the Great Five, even their Jounin would be nowhere near as powerful as the ones from back home" He said in explanation, answering both unasked questions.
"But what I really can't see is why we're even doing this in the first place. Iwa were the ones who broke faith during the Chunin exams and conspired with Orochimaru to destroy the village and Suna were the ones who snuck their Kage into the village and blew up most of it. If we were going after either of those two, I'd understand. But why are we going after Kusa?" She asked, looking genuinely confused. Neji weighed his options. What he knew had been told to him in confidence, but he'd also never been told not to divulge the information to others. As a fellow Chunin of Konoha, did Tenten not have as much of a right to know as he did?
"Iwa is gone. For the most part, at least. The Kazekage led a team of Jounin there, and in a fight with both of Iwa's Jinchuriki managed to destroy the bulk of the village. They are rebuilding but aren't going to be a threat for years. Suna, on the other hand, are strong. The Kazekage fought off the fully manifested Yonbi without sustaining any injuries. It goes without saying that we don't want to risk fighting Gaara of the Desert in the desert until our position is as strong as it could be. Taking Kusa is just one of the first steps in a longer war effort. We'll be in position to quickly advance on Iwa if they prove a threat, and it also lets us warn Suna that we won't sit idly by while they make moves" he explained.
"Suna is in the entirely other direction" She said, and Neji struggled to find the words that explained why their actions here would matter to Suna miles away. He wouldn't have understood it if not for years of lessons with the clan, and now with Danzo. He looked at his old teammate's face, black hair framing dark eyes and was saved from replying by a whistle.
"Change of plans" Someone shouted at him from below.
He acknowledged the summons and nodded to Tenten before leaving her side to the command tent.
A/N; Progress, progress, progress. That's the name of the game. Yes, Jiraiya is the strongest Sannin in this story. That's both my headcanon and pretty well-established in canon. Itachi beat Orochimaru with ease, but said that if both he and Kisame fought Jiraiya, the best they'd bet would be a stalemate. Next 2/3 chapters up on patreon now.