Chaos erupted around them in every direction the moment they realised that the pink head had just cut down Hidan into Lego cubes.
If there even existed a slight chance of negotiation earlier, minuscule as it was, now there was none.
Naoya was the first one to move, obviously. And knowing him, he needed a shot at the big boss himself. Talk about punching above his weight class.
Fortunately or unfortunately, he never got to Pain. Before he could, tons of paper arrived in front of his path, creating a protective wall, and then Konan emerged from multiple collaging pieces of paper and manifested.
"You have to fight me before you can go after Pain," she stated with absolute lack of emotion, as she always did. And that somehow grated on Naoya's ego more than a woman stopping him.
"That wouldn't be much of a fight then, would it?" Naoya gave a cocky smirk, already ready to put the woman in her place.
"We'll see about that." Konan narrowed her eyes.
Elsewhere, Kimiyo already knew who she was targeting. It was her dear older brother all the way.
And to be honest, Itachi preferred that, cause he would hold back against his little sister; others wouldn't. Though, his eyes flickered to Sukuna for a second. That cutting power, it wasn't so similar to that person who he fought so many years ago.
Unknowingly, his one capable hand shifted to his other lost limb, recalling how he lost his other hand and his eyes once again falling to Sukuna. He didn't know, had no proof that it was Sukuna, but that technique to cut like that. It was remarkably similar.
And if Sukuna was really that man, then he might be the most dangerous person here, even more than Pain perhaps.
As for Sukuna himself, well, it was obvious, isn't it? Boss fight boss. He was grinning madly at Pain, and even Pain seemed to know that the pink-haired boy was the strongest between them, and thus, even when Naoya tried to attack him, he didn't even move a muscle. He had his eyes fixed on Sukuna.
And lastly, it was Izumi. It seemed that everyone already had their opponent locked in, so the only one she had left to fight was.
A Fish Man?
Kisame, for his part, had his grin widened toward her specifically, the rest of the battlefield might as well have vanished entirely.
"Been a while since I got to swing this around properly," he said, hefting Samehada off his shoulder, the bandaged blade practically vibrating with eagerness. "You'll do nicely."
"Flattering," Izumi said dryly, Sharingan already spinning to life, three tomoe settling into familiar focus.
Kisame didn't bother with an opening exchange of words beyond that. He surged forward instead, water already gathering around him from the perpetual rain, and the first jutsu came fast — a surging wave of compressed water aimed to crush rather than simply soak, more than enough force behind it to shatter stone.
Izumi rolled clear, Sharingan tracking the water's exact density and trajectory even as it crashed through the space she'd just occupied. That was the advantage of the eyes — nothing about Kisame's technique was actually fast enough to surprise her, not once she could read the shape of it coming.
The problem was there was a lot of it, and it kept coming.
"Water Style: Water Shark Bomb."
A shark-shaped mass of compressed water tore toward her, and she barely twisted aside in time, feeling the edge of it clip her shoulder hard enough to spin her half around. Another followed immediately after, then another, Kisame not giving her a single moment to close the distance, content to bombard her from range with technique after technique while Samehada stayed slung casually over his back.
"You're fast," Kisame admitted, watching her dodge a fourth attack by a hair's width. "But dodging will only get you so far, you know."
"Wasn't planning on just dodging," Izumi said.
She found her opening on the fifth wave — timed her dash forward through the collapsing edge of the water shark rather than around it, closing the gap before Kisame could reset his range. Star Rage gathered around her fist as she closed the final few feet, imaginary mass compounding density far beyond what her frame should have carried.
The punch that followed cracked audibly through the rain-soaked air, catching Kisame square in the ribs before he could fully pull Samehada around to block.
He went down hard, skidding several meters before crashing into a half-collapsed building, and for one long, suspended moment, Izumi genuinely thought that might have ended it right there.
It very nearly had.
Kisame coughed blood, ribs audibly cracked, chest caved in just slightly from the impact — the kind of hit that should have put most shinobi down permanently. He pushed himself back up anyway, groaning, one hand pressed flat against Samehada.
"That," he wheezed, "hurt a lot more than it should have."
Samehada's bandages rippled hungrily around the wound, chakra pouring from the blade directly into his body, knitting shattered bone and ruptured organs back together with unnatural speed. Within seconds, Kisame straightened fully again, breathing easier, the worst of the damage already gone.
Izumi's brow furrowed slightly. "That sword eats chakra."
"Best partner a man could ask for," Kisame said, grinning despite the blood still staining his teeth. "Whatever that was, though — that wasn't chakra. Never felt anything like it."
That got her attention properly. Samehada, still pulsing faintly against his shoulder, seemed almost to recoil where it touched him, bandages twitching with visible discomfort.
"Yeah," Kisame added, glancing down at his own sword with something like suspicion. "It doesn't like you much either."
Made sense, in hindsight. Whatever Samehada was built to feed on, cursed energy clearly wasn't it — not chakra, not anything the blade recognized as nourishment. If anything, the contact seemed to unsettle it.
Small comfort, given Kisame was already resetting into range, expression sharpening now with something more careful than his earlier confidence.
"Close range's clearly not working in my favor," he muttered, mostly to himself. "Fine then."
He backed off deliberately this time, putting proper distance between them before his hands blurred through seals again, water gathering in volumes too large to have come from the rain alone — pulling moisture from the very air, from the shattered pipes and flooded streets around them, condensing it into something considerably larger than anything he'd thrown so far.
"Water Style: Water Dragon Bullet Technique!"
A massive serpent of compressed water tore into being, roaring toward her with enough raw force to level an entire block. Izumi's Sharingan tracked its trajectory instantly, but tracking wasn't the same as surviving contact with something that size, and dodging around a target that expansive left considerably less room for error.
She barely cleared it, water clipping her leg hard enough to send her tumbling, and before she'd even fully recovered her footing, another dragon followed close behind the first, then a third, Kisame clearly done underestimating her and fully committed now to keeping her at a distance where her fists couldn't reach him.
Izumi's breathing came harder, blood mixing with rainwater along a shallow cut above her brow. Close range clearly wasn't sustainable against this kind of relentless bombardment, not without closing a distance she currently had no clean way to cross.
She had tried Genjutsu as well, but it seemed that the man had developed quite an immunity to normal genjutsu, most likely from staying together with Itachi. The fight was very similar to what happened with Terumi Mei, honestly.
Izumi trying to close the distance, trying Genjutsu since she had no other option in her arsenal anyways, however, Genjutsu could get her only so far after all.
She so dearly missed Garuda, that Shikigami was an all-in-one weapon for so many things when fighting.
Anyways, there wasn't really a choice left after that.
"Tck," she muttered, wiping blood from her eye. "At this point I'll be rendered as a one-move spammer or something." She grumbled but still raised her hands nonetheless. She knew that she wasn't facing just any ordinary shinobi either, this was one of the stronger members of Akatsuki, as Sukuna had previously informed everyone about the enemies they would most likely face.
So, what she meant is that, it almost makes it sensible that she is pulling her ultimate for this guy.
"Domain Expansion."
"Star Rage: Collapsing Orbit."
The world dissolved around them both, rain and ruined buildings replaced entirely by something vast and star-strewn, gravity itself bending unnaturally toward a singular point at her outstretched palm.
Kisame's eyes widened, some instinct screaming that whatever this was, it wasn't ordinary Genjutsu, wasn't anything he had a technique prepared to counter.
And unlike how it was for Terumi Mei, Izumi here didn't have any reduction in cursed energy output. And thus…
Kisame barely had time to register what was going on when a crushing mass slammed into him from every direction at once, gravity collapsing inward with lethal, guaranteed precision.
His regeneration rendered completely useless when his own body's mass was reaching astronomical levels.
No amount of healing was gonna save Kisame from this attack.
xXx
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