The forest reeked of sulfur and burning chitin.
Beyond the Hall of Spruce, the tree line abruptly died, bleeding into the Kochū breeding grounds. The Ash Flats stretched outward—a skeletal wasteland where dead, white trees stood like ghosts amidst a landscape of grey volcanic ash. Volcanic vents hissed from the cracked earth, sending pillars of hot, sulfurous steam into the freezing November air. The violent temperature fluctuation created a shimmering heat-haze that immediately distorted Neji's long-range Byakugan perception.
He stood at the edge of the ash, his breath coming in ragged, white plumes. His heart hammered a brutal rhythm against his ribs, a physical consequence of sustaining the Byakugan while repeatedly executing the Eight Trigrams Palms Revolving Heaven.
Behind him, deep in the dark of the spruce hall, the heavy, wet crunch of Kyodaigumo's mandibles echoed against the stone. Shibi and Shino had engaged the massive summon, their combined colonies creating a deafening, vibrating hum that drowned out the dying spiderlings. The Aburame had taken the vanguard, violently securing the perimeter to give Neji exactly one opening.
Neji didn't waste it.
He stared across the Ash Flats. Thirty yards away, Kidōmaru stood near a dead, pale tree. The Sound ninja's skin burned a bruised, demonic red, white horns protruding from his flesh. He held Tenten casually in two of his six arms, her body bound entirely in thick, white silk. Her right arm hung at a sickening, unnatural angle, the crushed metal of her gauntlet dripping fresh blood onto the grey ash.
Kidōmaru's third eye tracked Neji through the heat-haze. The monster inhaled deeply, the slit in his forehead narrowing as he tasted the air.
"You smell like ruptured blood vessels," Kidōmaru rasped, his elongated canines gleaming. "You spun too hard, prodigy. Your eyes are bleeding."
The Sound ninja didn't wait for a reply. He simply turned, lifting Tenten higher, and slammed her bound body roughly against the trunk of the dead tree. The impact shook the brittle branches. Kidōmaru spat a thick, viscous rope of webbing, adhering her to the pale wood, leaving her suspended and helpless above a hissing sulfur vent.
Then, the six-armed shinobi turned back, dropping into a wide, unnatural stance.
Neji's jaw locked. A cold, absolute clarity overrode the burning ache in his optic nerves. He didn't shout a threat. He didn't demand her release.
He lunged.
Neji crossed the thirty yards in a silent, perfectly measured blur. The volcanic ash puffed beneath his sandals as he closed the distance. He dropped his center of gravity, sliding beneath Kidōmaru's initial four-armed outward strike, and thrust his right palm toward the man's exposed diaphragm.
Gentle Fist.
His fingers didn't connect. Kidōmaru's two lower arms snapped upward, his thick red fingers catching Neji's wrist just millimeters from his skin. The physical strength of the Cursed Seal was monstrous; a jarring shockwave traveled up Neji's radius as his forward momentum hit a wall of raw, unyielding muscle.
Before Neji could redirect, Kidōmaru's upper four fists descended in a brutal, synchronized barrage.
Neji's Byakugan flared. He read the geometric trajectories of the strikes before they landed. He pulled his trapped wrist sharply, twisting his torso to deflect the first massive fist with his shoulder, narrowly dodging the second and third. He parried the fourth strike with his free hand, releasing a needle-thin burst of chakra from his palm that sliced through the hardened Spider Sticky Gold coating Kidōmaru's knuckles.
The parry bought him a half-second. Kidōmaru snarled, the heat of his breath washing over Neji's face. The Sound ninja didn't retreat; he surged forward, using his massive weight advantage.
Kidōmaru's two upper hands shot out, wrapping entirely around Neji's shoulders. The remaining four arms snaked around Neji's torso, locking his arms brutally against his sides.
A sharp, agonizing torque wrenched Neji's spine as the six limbs constricted. His ribs bowed inward under the crushing pressure. The remaining oxygen was forced from his lungs in a sudden, violent wheeze, the cartilage in his chest straining to the point of structural failure. Kidōmaru's chest pressed against his, the unnatural, burning heat of the Stage Two mutation searing through Neji's clothes and blistering the skin of his chest. His peripheral vision began to tunnel, closing in with a rapid, suffocating darkness.
"Spin now," Kidōmaru hissed, his jaw unhinging as thick, golden webbing began to pool in the back of his throat, aimed directly at Neji's face.
Neji couldn't draw breath. He couldn't form the hand seals. The constriction locked his joints into total immobility.
But the Hyūga clan did not require leverage to strike.
Neji ceased struggling against the suffocating hold. He closed his eyes for a fraction of a second, shifting his internal focus entirely to his chakra pathway system. He located the dense pressure points where Kidōmaru's arms pinned him.
He forcibly opened every tenketsu across his torso simultaneously.
Gentle Fist Art: One Body Blow.
A massive, concussive wave of pure chakra violently expelled from Neji's body. The point-blank detonation hit Kidōmaru with the force of a solid iron beam. The blast shattered the hold, throwing the massive Sound ninja backward, his six arms blown wide open.
Kidōmaru stumbled, his bare heels gouging deep trenches through the grey ash. He gasped, his diaphragm spasming as the concussive force disrupted his breathing.
Neji didn't let him recover. He pursued the stagger, stepping perfectly into the man's guard.
Palm Bottom.
Neji drove his right palm precisely into the center of Kidōmaru's sternum. He didn't use a needle of chakra; he unloaded a heavy, blunt-force surge directly into the organ cavity.
The impact cracked bone. Kidōmaru's eyes widened, the yellow iris of his third eye violently dilating. The golden webbing pooling in his throat reversed course as a sudden, violent cough wracked his chest. He spat the hardened webbing onto the ash, the metallic wad coated in dark, thick blood.
The Sound ninja staggered, but the Cursed Seal fought the internal damage, rapidly forcing his heart to pump through the trauma. Kidōmaru raised his six arms, preparing to counter-strike.
Neji's vision began to blur. The heat-haze, the sulfur, and the sheer metabolic tax of the sustained Byakugan pushed his ocular nerves past their breaking point. A hot, wet trickle of blood spilled from the corner of his left eye, running down his pale cheek.
He ignored it. He anchored his stance in the ash. A green, geometric divination field expanded outward from his feet, the sudden pressure of the technique bending the rising sulfur plumes outward and scattering the loose ash in a perfect circle around them.
"You are in my field of divination," Neji stated, his voice a low, raspy whisper.
Kidōmaru lunged, his six fists swinging wildly.
Eight Trigrams...
"Two Palms!"
Neji struck Kidōmaru's lower ribs, sealing the tenketsu. The Sound ninja flinched, his forward momentum faltering.
"Four Palms!"
Neji targeted the shoulders, his fingers blurring. Kidōmaru's upper arms spasmed, dropping uselessly to his sides as the chakra flow severed.
"Eight Palms! Sixteen Palms!"
The strikes accelerated, no longer single impacts but a continuous, flowing rhythm of devastating internal trauma. Neji pushed forward, driving the larger man backward across the Ash Flats. Kidōmaru's bare heels slid frantically through the dirt, kicking up a thick cloud of grey volcanic ash that plumed into Neji's bleeding eyes, stinging the ruptured sclera.
"Thirty-Two Palms! Sixty-Four Palms!"
Kidōmaru's remaining arms twitched and failed, his guard battered apart under the relentless precision. Every strike forced him further back. The Sound ninja couldn't breathe. He couldn't see. His back slammed hard into a sheer, jagged face of volcanic rock bordering the Sinking Trail, the rough stone scraping the bruised-red flesh from his spine.
"One Hundred... Twenty-Eight Palms!"
The final barrage hit Kidōmaru's chest and throat in a blinding flurry. The Sound ninja's body jerked violently against the stone, his skin turning a sickening, pale grey as the life force beneath his flesh simply stopped. His third eye rolled backward, the yellow iris vanishing.
Neji dropped his hands.
A heavy, suffocating stillness fell over the immediate clearing. The rhythmic impacts ceased. Kidōmaru hung limply against the volcanic rock, held upright only by the jagged protrusions digging into his clothes. Nothing moved.
Neji's lungs heaved, struggling to pull oxygen through the sulfur. A violent tremor wracked his hands, traveling all the way up his forearms to his shoulders. His heart skipped a jagged, painful beat, his chest fluttering dangerously as his exhausted system tried to process the sudden halt in action. The world tilted. A sudden flash of pure black static interrupted his vision.
He squeezed his eyes shut, forcing his breathing to stabilize. The fight was over.
Creak.
A faint, wet tension line snapped overhead. Neji opened his bloodshot eyes.
Ten yards away, Tenten hung from the dead tree. The heavy sulfur from the vent below her surged upward in a thick, yellow plume, completely displacing the oxygen around her face. Her lips carried a bruised, cyanotic tinge. An involuntary, dying muscle twitch spasmed in her neck.
Delay meant death.
Neji looked back at the Sound ninja slumped against the wall. His arms shook as he raised them again. Another flash of black static blinded him for a microsecond, the darkness lingering just a fraction too long. His trembling hands failed to align perfectly; his left arm dropped an inch, his tired deltoid refusing the command.
He grit his bloody teeth, forcing the muscle back into alignment. He recognized the geometric risk immediately: hitting the cliff at full force could trigger a wider collapse that might bury the Sinking Trail, and Tenten along with it. He adjusted his angle by a fraction of a degree, aiming the trajectory slightly upward.
He pulled the very last reserves of his chakra, draining the energy from his own weary muscles, and compressed it into his palms. The initial compression flickered, nearly collapsing under his shaky control, before he violently forced it to hold.
Eight Trigrams Mountain Crusher.
A massive, overwhelming wave of concussive chakra blasted from Neji's hands.
The shockwave hit Kidōmaru at point-blank range, driving his body backward into the volcanic rock face. The stone exploded outward in a shower of heavy debris, the cliff side collapsing inward in a deafening roar of fracturing geology. Kidōmaru's body vanished into the crater, instantly buried beneath tons of falling rock and volcanic ash.
The cliff answered.
The displaced air rebounded, hitting Neji in a violent pressure wall that popped his eardrums into a high-pitched, agonizing ring. A jagged shard of flying stone grazed his right shoulder, tearing his shirt and drawing blood. A thick, choking cloud of hot ash rushed backward, filling his lungs and severely spiking the ambient temperature.
Neji's arms dropped.
His quadriceps seized instantly, a sudden muscle lock that sent him crashing down to his right knee. A wave of intense nausea surged up his throat. He tried to draw a breath, but his diaphragm locked, refusing to expand against his bruised ribs. The world went completely black.
He planted his trembling hands into the hot ash, intending to push himself up. His elbows gave out. He collapsed forward, his face hitting the dirt.
He fought the nausea. He planted his palms a second time, gritting his teeth until he tasted copper, and forced his body upward. Every muscle fiber tore in protest, his knees buckling violently before he finally locked the joints into place.
His vision remained a dark, shifting haze, the ghost trees reduced to twisted grey shadows. A shrill, continuous tinnitus isolated him from the sounds of the forest. He didn't walk; he dragged his feet through the loose dirt. He tripped over a raised volcanic root, his wounded shoulder slamming into the ground, but he forced himself back up.
The heat radiating from the earth grew sharper as he neared the vent, the hot ash blistering the skin of his exposed knees with every stumble. The heavy stench of sulfur burned the open cuts around his eyes, forcing fresh tears to mix with the blood on his cheeks. A sudden wave of dizziness from the sulfur hypoxia nearly tipped him backward, but he shifted his weight, dragging his boots forward. He navigated the final few yards purely by memory, following the hissing vent. His numb, trembling fingers reached out and slipped uselessly off the heated silk once, twice, before he finally managed to grab the adhesive strands holding his teammate.