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In the middle of the village, Rinji opened his eyes. The tiny dust particles jumped near his feet from the rhythmic thrum coming from the ground beneath. The ROOT jōnin looked up ahead to see an army charging his way.
He sat there, admiring the scene of the enemy closing in by the second. How many times would a man get to see this in his lifetime? How many times would they be in such a situation? It felt like he was facing the entire army alone, which wasn't exactly false. He was the rear guard, buying time and safety for everyone else fleeing. He got up and moved to grab his staff, but reconsidered at the last moment.
Fire Release: Peaceful Lotus Bloom
A concentrated spark of white-hot chakra ignited in his open palm as he finished the hand seals and then condensed into the shape of a palm-sized lotus, its petals carved from orange-and-white fire. He softly blew on the flower and allowed it to drift upwards into the hot afternoon air. As it rose, the lotus fed on his chakra, swelling violently. By the time it reached its peak, it was the size of a mature oak—a massive, multi-layered construct of pressurised flame. The air grew dry and heavy, smelling of scorched ozone.
A single petal, glowing with the intensity of molten iron, detached from the main body. It didn't flutter; it plummeted towards the approaching Leaf army. The other petals quickly followed and fell like slabs of sun. The army didn't break stride, but five chūnin slammed their hands together.
A massive wall of churning water surged upwards to meet the falling petals. The first wave of petals was doused, but it turned the water into boiling liquid and vapour that obscured the battlefield in front of the village. The second wave of petals remained, but just as they broke the cloud of vapour, they exploded inward, causing a carpet of flames to spread as though the sky were on fire, before it broke down, and blotches of fire fell into the cloud of steam.
Rinji's eyes narrowed. He saw it—thin lines appearing on the petals a split second before they exploded. They were cuts. Someone had made his jutsu explode before its time, but that would've caused his boiling chakra in the petals to rain down on the army. It would've stuck to the shinobi, setting them on fire. But that didn't happen. The cuts were placed in a way that caused the jutsu to consume his chakra—the fuel—in the air, causing an intimidating show of fire that didn't cause any comparable damage.
A loud cheer erupted as the army broke through the vaporous steam. However, instead of charging into the village, the army had split into two, and the flanks ran around the village like a rock splitting the current.
"Oh, that's smart," he muttered to himself as he grabbed his staff, which stood slightly taller than him, and was about to swing it to release a powerful bojutsu to hinder and injure them when a blade tore through the steam and appeared at his neck.
A grating screech sparked as the sword met the metal staff. His eyes widened a fraction when he saw the Sharingan staring at him with the scent of bloodlust in the air. He pushed the woman and her sword away and took a few steps back himself.
"Uchiha Sayuri," he said, addressing the kunoichi facing him. "So it was you."
She had cut his jutsu and manipulated it to minimise the damage. This was bad. Fighting an Uchiha was never good. He stared at the three tomoe spinning in a pair of angry eyes at him and knew that the clock had begun. The longer he spent in front of those eyes, the worse the fight would become for him. He glanced at the army running around him and knew they were going after Lord Danzō and the others. However, that didn't concern him much. It wasn't his job to stop them. Stopping one Leaf jōnin from pursuing them was already a great relief for the others.
His job was to deny the Hidden Leaf command over the village for as long as possible. The village held more value than just being a place for hostages.
As the mist began to lift, he saw a smaller group at the foot of the village. They were the support arm of the army, consisting of iryō-nin, fūin-nin, logistics, and runners. They needed a place to set up their base, and the village gave them flat land, easy access to water, pre-existing buildings, and a location easily identifiable to all their frontline fighters.
He gripped his staff, and it began to thrum.
"If I'm to die here, then I want to have some fun on my way out."
———
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"If I may disturb you, Jōnin Utsuse."
Utsuse briefly opened her eyes and steeled her expression as she looked at her partner for the mission. No matter how many times she saw it, looking inside an Aburame was never a pleasant experience. Their clan's hiden jutsu turned their bodies into incubators for their bugs. It was an irreversible process that slowly repurposed everything from flesh to bone to organs for the purposes of breeding bugs.
"I would like to proceed as planned," said Shibi, the head of the Aburame clan. She had no idea what he was thinking behind his blackout shades, despite being able to literally see his heart beating and cold-read him based on his bodily responses.
A part of her duties was to work together with Yamanaka Kawamochi and provide the troops with information as the battlefield developed. For that, she had to adjust her position so that she could see the largest number of troops, and thus couldn't pursue her target alongside Shibi.
"In that direction, Lord Aburame," she said, pointing him towards the target nearest to them. "I'll continue to provide you with direction through Kawamochi if you stray. I'm sure you won't need it, but rest assured, I'll rush to your side if I see the battle go south."
She was slightly concerned that Shibi would be offended, but the taciturn clan head nodded and took off with his men. Utsuse closed her eyes and began instructing her own troops to spread out as support for others when a cold shiver went down her spine as something terrifying entered her vision. She physically turned her head towards Shibi's direction and just stared at the sight for a moment before returning her focus to instructing.
"Utsuse, I'm getting reports of some buzzing."
"It's Lord Aburame," she replied to Kawamochi.
"Ah…"
A few kilometres away, ROOT jōnin Gobo looked over his shoulder at the forest behind him. The afternoon sun pierced through the canopy, providing enough light to see any pursuers. He looked for them, but failed, and he almost missed it—but there was a darkness at the edge of his vision. He blinked, and the darkness remained, but then his eyes widened as he realised that the darkness had actually moved closer amid the endless span of trees.
"Formation F3," Gobo ordered his subordinates, who looked confused, causing him to yell at them as the darkness quickly enveloped everything behind them and brought about a horrifying buzzing. "Do it now!"
A row of his subordinates turned around to see the darkness, which had now come close enough to reveal its true identity in the form of a cloud of insects. Their hands blurred through a shared sequence of signs and movements as they exhaled simultaneously, weaving six individual streams of flame into a solid barricade of orange heat. The infernal fire consumed the trees and ground and then collided with the darkness with enough heat to turn any swarm into ash.
Behind the darkness, the swarm's master pulled his hands out of his pockets and weaved a quick set of hand seals, sending a command through a subtle shift of chakra.
The swarm hit the wall of fire, but there was no sound of burning chitin. Instead, a high-pitched hiss erupted when the flame met the En'ōchū, Thermal-Absorbent Insects. Their obsidian carapaces began to glow a dull, earthen grey as they flew directly into the blazing sea. Rather than succumbing to the heat, the insects hungrily ate the heat until they were full before venting it through the microscopic pores in their wings. It was instantaneous.
Water-natured chakra burst out from the En'ōchū, taking the absorbed heat with it. For every degree of heat absorbed, a massive volume of pressurised, white-hot steam was sent out. Within seconds, the wall of fire was eaten from the inside out and then smothered by a rapidly expanding bank of steam.
A controlled but firm gust of wind pushed the hot, wet, suffocating blanket of steam that masked all movement. There was an eerie silence for a moment before a kunai pierced holes through the steam, with explosive tags riding its tail.
Gobo weaved hand seals and clapped his hands together, his fingers facing front. A silver gust hit the kunai just as the explosive tags triggered. The blast hit an invisible wall of wind that absorbed the entirety of the impact, rendering the attack useless. At the same time, the silver gust pushed the opaque steam out, revealing Hidden Leaf forces, but just at that moment, a figure blurred with the steam stuck to him.
Who is it? Gobo thought as his hands weaved hand seals. Who had the Aburame clan sent?
Aburame Shibi, the Pride of Aburame, appeared out of the fog.
"Seriously," he cursed.
Shibi stepped on the head of an agent, who crumbled under his foot, and shot towards Gobo at full speed. The clan head raised his hand towards him, and more bugs flowed out of the gourd on his back, but as the man neared, Gobo's jutsu was ready.
Wind Release: Sorrow's Blade
Three wind cutters went straight through Shibi… only for the man to break down into hundreds of insects. The wind cutters didn't disappear and ripped forward. The chūnin of the ground stepped up and created a large earthen wall to defend themselves. The walls perished under the cutters, but were sapped of their power and killed only one while injuring a few others.
Many insects making up Shibi's clone died, falling to the ground, but the unharmed majority picked up speed. Gobo immediately leapt back—disregarding the formation and putting his subordinates in danger—but it didn't work as the insects swarmed his hands.
His heart leapt in his chest, but he steeled his will and ignored the insects climbing up his arms to weave hand seals.
Kikaichū, Parasitic Giant Insects—the Aburame's signature breed that consumed chakra as food, allowing the insect users to drain an opponent's chakra. Letting them swarm was considered a death sentence because, if not shaken off, they would suck their target dry. For Gobo, if it were an ordinary Aburame, it would've been an annoyance; a jōnin would've made it a threat, but this was Aburame Shibi—the Kikaichū he bred were notorious for being able to consume not only faster but at a greater capacity than those of his peers. Once caught, the only way to get rid of them was to use a strong jutsu to push them off the body. And if someone didn't have an appropriate jutsu? They could just accept death.
Fortunately, he knew of a Wind Release ninjutsu that would kill all the bugs on his body. The question was how much chakra he needed to push into the ninjutsu. Even now, he could feel them draining him of his chakra. He had to guess carefully because the insects would pounce on the gathered chakra. If the remaining chakra ended up being less than required, his jutsu would fail, and he would be defenceless against Shibi's next attack. But if he put in too much, he would be wasting his chakra, and that was a lethal risk considering his enemy was known for chakra-draining insects.
At least twice the amount of the B-rank ninjutsu I was planning to use. Maybe closer to thrice, just to be utterly sure.
Gobo decided to err on the side of caution and put in three times the chakra. However, contrary to all of his expectations, the Kikaichū didn't touch the grounded chakra. In fact, the insects that had gone beyond his shoulders and were simultaneously going down his chest and up his neck stopped draining his chakra.
And in that moment, he felt a sensation akin to that of a needle prick digging deeper into his body on the right edge of his middle back. A second after the Kikaichū stopped draining his chakra, he felt the gathered chakra drain from the point of the prick on his back. For a moment, he ignored the sensation, thinking that the Kikaichū were preparing to quickly suck the gathered chakra before he could convert it into his ninjutsu. However, as he finished the last hand seal, he felt a pain originating from his back. And that pain made a particular piece of information about the Aburame clan surface in his mind.
The jutsu completed, he released a fury of wind from every part of his body, which Gobo would've directed at the enemy, but it slipped out of control as his sense of self-preservation took over. The Kikaichū were thrown off his body by violent winds, successfully completing their purpose, but the winds continued to blow and struck some of his men standing nearby.
Kidaichū, Giant Parasitic Beetles, were insects that, when provided with incorrect amounts of chakra, grew at an exponential, grotesque rate, eventually consuming the host from the inside out and bursting from his body.
He took out a kunai and stabbed the point of the prick that had swollen to the size of a cantaloupe. Blood spurted out and continued to leak as the wound spread to reveal an ugly bug trying to dig deeper into the body to access more chakra pathways.
Gobo looked up and saw Shibi standing in the distance with his hands in his pockets as more and more insects flew out of the gourd on his back.
———
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On the opposite side of the battle, the only group of three jōnin from the Leaf side made contact. Only it was not their target. In the middle of the forest, they faced a cloaked young man with long black hair and a sash around his forehead, all beneath a conical straw hat that cast a shadow over the upper half of his face.
The young man was leaning against the tree until they arrived, then stepped away to face them, as though he had been waiting for them.
The three jōnin heard the Yamanaka's voice in their heads.
'Danzo is getting away. If you don't hurry, he'll slip out of Utsuse's range.'
"Step aside," Itachi said.
An amused smile appeared on the young man's face. He even chuckled before saying,
"Make me."
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