Pre-Chapter A/N: More chapters on my patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga)— same username as here and link in bio. Experimenting with two chapters a week, we'll see how long I can keep this up for.
As I stared down the metaphorical barrel of a gun, I felt my options count down until there was only one remaining. Teleport back home and let Tsunade and Mito deal with this. I could already think of a basic ritual to flush my chakra system that had a good chance of working. Between the two of them, they'd come up with something guaranteed to work for sure. But that felt too much like giving up, like throwing in the towel, and the very thought of it was making me want to retch. Against Hanzo, I'd had no choice, and it felt like it was much the same here. But I just didn't want to. Was it pride? Maybe. Scratch that, hell yes, it was. But was that a bad thing? All my hard work and I still couldn't beat this dude? I was stronger than him, I had to be. I'd just been outmaneuvered and now I was going to lose this fight because of that.
I could feel the earth beneath my feet as the jutsu above me fully formed itself. I couldn't move. This was the last hiraishin marker I had on the battlefield. Any further teleportations meant retreating. I didn't want to fucking retreat. I wanted to fight this to the bitter end. I wanted to fucking win. But how could I do that? I couldn't even move a fucking thing.
"You have two options," I heard Kurama's growl in my ear.
"What are they?"
"Am I here to hold your hand? Solve it for yourself or die." I felt him close his eyes within the seal, like whatever happened next was not his concern. I had to fight without moving. It was impossible. But Kurama said it was possible. How could I do it? There was something, definitely something. I could feel it at the tip of my tongue. What were my advantages? Boil release, Kurama's chakra, sage mode, mud—fucking mud release, I thought as the dust release technique finally fired.
The ground around me turned to mud and ferried me over to the right, allowing Onoki's jutsu to miss thoroughly. I still had my chakra. And I was being forced to stay still... Mud release didn't need any handsigns from me. Just focus and a connection to the earth. I could do this. I could fucking do this.
"Why do you insist on prolonging the inevitable? Let's get this over and done with, boy," he said.
"You're going to die today, Fencesitter. I will take joy in that," I said, and began to focus and pull in natural energy even as half my attention was left to the battlefield, turning the ground to mud and overwhelming whatever control Onoki attempted to assert over the earth. Earth release was my thing. Mine.
"The last gasp of a dying man. How quaint. Bring your best, Shorirama Senju. I hope your Grandfather is bearing witness to this," he said with a malicious smile. I had this. I fucking had this. I just had to deliver.
He sent another blast of dust release. My mass of mud ferried me out of the way even as I made more and more mud around us. I was drawing in nature energy, turning it into sage chakra and then using it to fuel my mud release as quickly as I could. It was a cycle that led to me forming my own golem out of mud. At least the very beginnings of it, until Onoki cut off my legs from under me with a blast of dust release. I reformed them as quickly as I could, but I had to realize that I was under an inherent disadvantage. As if he wanted to drive the point home, Onoki actually allowed me to approach with my reformed and reconstituted mud golem.
The only issue was that the second I got more than a few feet close to it, his own golem struck out with a punch that seemed to smite the chest off my golem. The second hit came for the head where I was ensconced. It took all I had to harden the mud enough that the punch merely knocked me back to the ground rather than turning me to dust.
"This is disgraceful," Kurama said with a growl.
"Well, I'm open to ideas if you don't mind," I asked.
"Am I here to..."
"Yeah yeah, you're not here to hold my hand so either help or shut the fuck up while I figure this out," I said.
The nine-tailed fox seemed to growl within my mind before he finally spoke, his voice low. "Use Kokuo's chakra. All of it. It should give you enough physical power to manage the added weight for long enough to end the fight."
"Yeah, but I was saving that for the Raikage." I didn't like Kurama's idea much. It involved using one of my finite trump cards to the end.
"If you die here, then the Raikage would be the least of your problems because I can promise you that I will find some way to bring you back to life before I kill you myself," he growled.
He was right. Damn him to all the hells, but he was right. It was stupid keeping a trump card in reserve when I wasn't even guaranteed to win the fight I was presently in and that grated at me. Onoki was not my better. No. In fact, I was certain that I was the stronger of the two of us. It had just been a lapse of judgment. Go through with that attack, destroy the clone and then find the slippery bastard wherever he had gone hiding. That had been my plan only for the clone to leave a parting gift in the form of this jutsu that for the life of me, I could not seem to shake.
"Do it now and stop stalling," Kurama growled in my ears. I nodded, even as I saw Onoki begin charging up another dust release technique between his hands. I focus and pull at the massive amount of chakra in my gut. Separate from me, separate from Kurama, and shockingly close to the amount of chakra that I had in my whole body. All the chakra rushed into my body as I felt my own chakra begin to heat up when it came into contact with the tailed beast chakra.
Kokuo's chakra was always boiling. When I used it usually, it was either to give me access to boil release for a single jutsu or two, or using some of his own chakra to heat up my own to get to a boil. I thought of it like mixing some hot water with some cold water to get warm water. What I was doing now, though, was using an equal amount of hot water and cold water, where before only a drop or two of hot water had been able to get me to the point I needed to be.
When I forced my body to move, I could still feel my additional weight but where before it had been near suffocating with the effects it had on me, now, it was more like the weight of carrying a backpack for a trip. Still there, yes. But nothing crippling.
Even if it hadn't been the only way to win this, using the last of Kokuo's chakra was probably worth it because of the look that was painted on Onoki's face. The man could not believe his eyes as I pushed myself up from the ground and to my feet.
"H-how?" he asked, but I was already gone. I smashed a punch into his golem's knee and it was just gone. I felt my knuckles brush the stone, and then the force I used just blasted the stone to dust in an instant. Of fucking course. That was why his golem hit so hard. He was increasing the weight right before it struck, and lightening it to get it to move as quickly as it did. Now I didn't have the advantage of the lightness. What I did have was the ability to move despite the weight and that meant that every attack I unleashed had the full mass of Onoki's jutsu applied to it. This was going to be fun.
Missing one leg, the golem suddenly lurched forward, teetering over and about to smash into the ground. I looked up at it as it fell and pressed my feet against the ground before I pushed up with all my strength. I created a crater behind me but it did not matter as I punched through the golem's chest and just like with the leg, its entire midsection was gone in a single punch. Onoki began to float away from the head as it fell to the ground, and I tossed several kunai into the air before I drew my bow. This was not the lightning release bow that Grandma Mito had given me when I set off for war. This one was much more simple, and instead of firing bolts of lightning, it fired actual arrows. Arrows that I had painstakingly etched with seals designed to do all sorts of things, ranging from the hiraishin to static electricity fields that shocked everything that ended up within their range.
As Onoki flew, I fired one arrow straight at him. He dodged it, flying in another direction. I teleported over to one of my kunai in the air and fired from there. He dodged again, even if this time it was closer. I teleported to another one, and he sent a cylinder of dust release at me as I arrived. I teleported to another kunai and aimed this arrow for between his shoulder blades. He managed to turn in time to dodge it. But he made a mistake. It was close, too close.
I teleported to the marker on the arrow as it brushed past the Tsuchikage. His eyes went wide open as he stared at me, shocked at my arrival. He even began moving, but it was too little and too late. I drove the rasengan that formed in my hand into his chest, angling us so we landed on the ground with me on top of him, my hand buried in his chest. Or what remained of it, at least. The Rasengan was not a pretty jutsu when used on a human.
"Avenge the Tsuchikage," one of the few surviving Iwa nin screamed and they ran at me in their hundreds. I felt the effect of the weighted boulder jutsu subside and now with Kokuo's chakra coursing unabashed through my veins, it felt like I could jump to the moon if I wanted to. I looked up from Onoki's body to see them running at me, and reached into my kunai pouch with both hands. One sent a rain of kunai at them that multiplied in mid-air, while the second came out with a scroll I spread over Onoki's body, sealing him away.
The Kunai landed amongst them and from their position watching the fight, they had surely been able to figure out just what my kunai could do at this point so I wasn't surprised to note that they were all jumping away before the kunai had even fully landed. Still, it was too late. The kunai were a mere distraction. With how fast I was right now, there was no need to teleport. Not when facing foes like this, at least.
I pushed off the ground, and then I was in their midst. The first man I faced wore a chunin vest. He never even noticed me in front of him till I tapped him once on the chest, bursting his heart with a focused lance of chakra, and continuing the fight. The next person to draw my attention was a woman—she wielded a katana. And to her credit, she actually managed to swing it in response to my sudden appearance. Unfortunately for her, however, she never got to complete her swing. I stepped into her guard, planted my finger on her head, scrambling her brain and sending her to the floor.
The next two also failed to react in time. One tap to the heart, another to a lung, and both men were falling to the ground as I continued forwards. One man somehow managed to get a jutsu off to his credit. At least he did not shame the jounin vest he wore like so many others did. Regardless, I stared at the earth pillar coming my way and tilted my body at the last possible second to let it sail past before I was in his guard like nothing had happened. His heart was in pieces before the jutsu he sent even managed to find a target. My next foe had clad his hands in rock gauntlets and uniquely enough set out to use them for defense rather than offense, covering his vitals.
What a waste of time. The Raijin no ken appeared in my grip with a flick of my wrist and both his hands fell, cut off at the wrists a second later. His screaming only lasted a second or two as his head joined his hands on the floor in no time. The legendary blade returned to my seal with another twist of my wrist as I continued forward. I felt several genjutsu attempt to ensnare my senses at the same time. A coordinated attack to be sure. That was the only reason I even felt it. Most users were so weak that I never even noticed their pitiful attempts to take on one so much greater than they.
My byakugan sought them out and in the space between seconds, I was within their midst. I wondered if this is what it felt like to be a god. To be so above mortals that no matter what they did, they could never hope to harm you. The best they could hope for was this, a quick death at your hands after doing an admirable job of drawing your attention. That was what I delivered to them in the end. The first rose with a kunai aimed at my head, I slapped it to the side, tapped him in the neck and severed the carotid. The second was attempting to rise when I tapped her in the forehead, headband and all, and scrambled her brain like a set of eggs. The third, to my immense amusement, tried to run. But one does not run from death. I was in front of him in the time it took him to take his first step, and he was dead in the time it took the fourth to finish the jutsu he had been preparing.
He ended at the snake seal and began to dive into the ground. Silly. I stepped over there and shoved my hand into the ground, catching his foot before he could make it far and dragged him out before he joined the others on the floor in short order—dead.
With the four of them gone, it seemed that there was some sort of unspoken signal that went off. The Iwa nin fell into two categories. Those who saw their death and ran in the opposite direction, fleeing the Land of Fire with all they could, and those who saw their death and decided to run right at it.
The former—the former I enjoyed killing immensely. It was like a dance from my earliest gentle fist lessons as I weaved through their clumsy attempts at taijutsu. Every hit I landed was fatal. "There are eight killing points in the human body," I said in a sing-song voice as I danced about them.
"Eight points: Larynx, spine, lungs, liver, jugular, subclavian artery, kidneys, heart. Now, which will be my attack point? Oh yes, add the brain as well," I sang as I ducked underneath a kunai slash and tapped a man in the forehead. Another took a hit to the kidney from two of my fingers. I popped a third's lungs like a pair of balloons and I almost clapped as I watched him fall to the ground, struggling to breathe. Sadly, I could not stay still for long and see how that ended in detail. There was another one taking his space the second he dropped.
There weren't very strong ninja but quantity was a quality all of its own, and now they were having the common sense to come at me in groups of three or four instead of one at once. It meant that it took me about five or six seconds to kill them all rather than less than a second per ninja so there was at least some progress being made.
One woman stepped in front of her comrade and managed to block my outstretched fingers with the flat of her blade. A blade that I heated into slag from the few seconds of contact I had with it thanks to what was essentially a souped-up fire affinity granted by Kokuo's chakra. The blade was only a useful shield for a second but it gave her comrade the time and space to reorient himself and turn in my direction with his fingers splayed apart for a jutsu. With my byakugan, I could see tiny bits of chakra spread from his hands and attach to various things all around me, and I shot at him even as my entire surroundings exploded in one fell swoop. He tried to turn into my path with outstretched fists but I could see a million flaws in his form in a second even while his teammate managed to get herself in between us as I held back from attacking.
Her taijutsu was at least passable. It might even have been impressive if I hadn't been raised to be a prodigy of the Hyuga clan essentially from the day I'd been born. I slapped aside her pitiful attacks with all the contemptuous ease before I blocked half her chakra points in less than a minute and moved past her to her teammate—the one with the explosion release. He managed a punch and fell to the ground unconscious a second later, his kekkei genkai being the only reason I abstained from removing his head and being done with it. Taking them out had convinced the last of the stragglers and I watched them flee the land of fire with a sigh.
One down. Now I just had to deal with Kumo, Suna, and Kiri.
A/N: And so the Stone breaks. Of course, Iwa is more than just Onoki and a thousand of their best shinobi. They're not out, but severely wounded to the point of being near crippled. Their S-rank threats are done with and now they've lost their Kage without even the semblance of a clear succession in place. In short, they're in worse position than even Konoha was when Hiruzen fell in Frost— except without Shorirama Senju to pick up the pieces. Next five up on patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga) (same username as here and link in bio), support me there and read them early.