Pre-Chapter A/N:Welcome to September, guys! Let's smash whatever goals we've set ourselves this year. 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.
"They're in the village" Uraume said as we reached the bottom of Iwa's mountain.
"Still in combat?" I asked
"Yes. Some duo— a woman and a man are holding off the Raikage now but his people are securing the rest of the village." She said.
"Good. We'll be right in time to fuck them in the arse"
"Language" She scolded and Uzume barked a harsh laugh.
I turned to them. The army I'd brought here. It was time.
"Kumo is inside Iwa right now. The village is being taken. Now, we're no friends of Iwa, and we're no friends of Kumo either. What do you say we go in there and fuck em both in the arse" Uraume's facepalm was drowned by the cheers.
"Victory or Death" I said and then I turned to the mountain.
"Race you to the top" I heard Uzume whisper and then she was gone, climbing the first few feet in a matter of seconds. I chuckled. If She thought this would go any better for her than the last time we raced, then she was wrong. I allowed the nature chakra I'd been storing away in my seal bleed into my reserves, giving me the barest edge of sage mode, and I was off.
I practically flew up the wall. My hands only paused for seconds on each hand hold, each one acting as a platform for me to throw myself up and further upwards. Uzume did her best to preserve her lead… for a few seconds. And then I was past her. And seconds letter I was at the top of the mountain. She joined me close to half a minute later. I looked back down with my byakugan and noted that we had left the army in our dust…by a lot. They weren't even a quarter of the way up. I could make out the deadpan on Uraume's face as she climbed with one hand. I tossed her a wink I knew she'd see and the flat expression on her face, if it was possible, somehow got even flatter.
"Do we wait for them?""
"We have to. If we go in there half-cocked, they'd bury us in numbers. I'd ordinarily not care much about that, but with the Raikage out and about, it's always best to be safe rather than sorry." I said.
She nodded. I dropped to the floor in the lotus position. There was nature energy aplenty here, and it was best I filled up my seal as much as I could. Thankfully, Kurama hadn't minded the modifications made to his seal to allow it function as a sort of strength of a hundred seal for nature energy for me. I used it for storing pure nature energy rather than nature chakra because it meant I could feed the nature energy into my system at whatever ratio I wanted to create various degrees of sage mode.
It was something I wondered if Naruto had been able to do. His sage mode seemed to be either on or off, but then that could have just been a simplification for the manga and internally, there could have been all sorts of things going on. There was also the chance that Naruto had just been maxing it out, not really seeing the use for a watered down version of sage mode in the same way I did.
Sage mode— the full version of it I could access— where I had my chakra and nature energy in a 50:50 ratio was more like a hammer than anything else. When I got to that level, I was a walking signal to every sensor within range. My steps could crack the ground I walked on if I was not careful. I could punch through a human with little effort— I'd checked, and I was fast enough to fool Uzume's sharingan on more than one instance. Of course, the cheating eyes had adapted to that level of speed after she'd lose the first five or so spars and we were back to even. Or at least as close to even as we could get with me unable to hurt her and her unable to land a decisive blow on me.
The logical next step was to see what happened if I allowed the balance to shift in the other direction. Too little nature energy meant watered down sage mode. Too much? What happened if I tweaked the ratio to 45:55? Canon said I'd turn to stone. I didn't think I would, but there wasn't really a safe way to test. Clones wouldn't work for it for some reason. They seemed to be stuck on all or nothing sage mode. Even the watered down version couldn't happen with them.
Maybe it was because they were inherently chakra constructs, but there was no way to tell. I felt Uzume's hand on my shoulder, and returned to reality. The seal was almost full already so that was good. I pushed myself to my feet as I noticed the army had amassed around me.
"Uraume?" I asked.
"They have some sort of sensor. He seems to have begun reacting the second you climbed the mountain. They're ready for us." She said. I sighed. How disappointing. But then again, it was better. It meant they'd all be in one place and ready for the slaughter, not divided all over the village. Should make things simpler by some margin.
"Straight ahead?" I asked.
"Just about."
"Good" I opened the seal just as I closed my eyes and began balancing the chakra. Chosen ratio? 60:40. I felt my body begin to swell as I grew a few odd inches. My armour bulged as my muscles grew and thickened until they were almost cartoonishly large.
Uzume whistled even as I lifted both my arms to the heavens and began to focus. Rotation, Power, Containment, Nature energy. This one's for you, Naruto, I thought as I introduced the world to the Rasenshuriken in its truest form.
They formed so close together that it was almost impossible to tell which formed first. Of course, I knew it was the one in my left hand.. May chakra control in that part of my body was just slightly better. They announced themselves with a whirring sound that got louder as they grew bigger and bigger.
"Cho Odama Rasenchuriken" I decreed to both gods and man as I tossed the first one— the one in my left, and then a second later the right. Aiming both straight ahead. The first tore through the gates of Iwa, not even losing any speed as it did so. The second slipped through the opening it created.
"Fuck me" I heard Uzume whisper when I clenched my fist and forced the both of them to expand, the explosions so massive that we could see them from here.
"Let's go. The Raikage is mine" I said, having no doubts that he had survived that. I body flickered forward, and then began to run. The wall presented no resistance. I just ran straight through it, feeling like the juggernaut and smiling through my teeth as I did so. Of course, as I jumped in, it was to find a fist aimed straight at my face.
'He's fast', I thought as I barely managed to duck underneath the attack. My return blow to his kidney felt like punching steel. There was no give. Nothing. And then my head was near taken off as his elbow came straight for me. I backpedaled, breaking through the wall again as I felt my army jump into the city, passing me by. Good. I was here for this man.
"You'll die for that" I heard hum grunt.
"What? Did I kill someone you liked?" I asked as his next punch sailed past my head. I kneed him in the chest. Once again, unbent, unbroken. His fighting style was trippy, I noticed. Adapting to it would take some time because he didn't fight like anyone else did. He didn't fight with the same instincts the rest of us did. He'd either beaten them out of himself or just never had them. I danced backwards to avoid a grasping blow, and with a flick of my wrist shot two shuriken at his eyes.
Even that instinct he'd beaten off. He didn't attempt to defend it, allowing them to fail against his lightning armour like everything else did. There was a flicker of space next to me, and Uzume was there, attempting to slice through his armour with her wind enhanced gunbai. She'd forced the both of us to advance our wind release to their theoretical peaks, and even then the gunbai cracked against the Raikage's armour, not making any headway. I grabbed her and body flickered backwards in a straight line.
"How are things going?" I asked. Fighting the Raikage had taken my full attention. The landscape of the battlefield was all but unknown to me. If I turned my attention away from him for a second, he would take my head off and go kill everyone else.
"Too early to say. Hasn't even been a minute yet" She said.
"Fighting him makes every second feel like hours"
"I can imagine. It's a nightmare keeping up with how quickly you change locations."
"Why's he just watching us?" I asked, referring to the Raikage who just stood there, head tilted to the side, watching us talk.
"He's not. He's getting some sort of report. There's a trail of yin chakra running from him into the city"
"Yeah, no. Uzume, go hunting. I'll hold him off until you're done" I said, cracking my neck.
"We agreed to fight him together" If I didn't know any better, I'd say she sounded petulant. But I did know better so those words would remain in my head, better left unsaid.
"He's not going all out for now. Probably trying to force me to tire myself out. If I'm gauging things correctly, he's still on the first stage of that armour of his. I can do this all day. Go hunting. Prevent his S-ranks from slaughtering our army, and help Uzume kill that Sora bastard while you're at it." I said, leaving unspoken the instruction to prevent our friend from dying in combat.
"When you're done, come back, and we'll see how much punishment that armour can take" I said.
"Deal" She said, and I was off.
I jumped right back into the thick of things, knee aimed straight for his head. The height difference between us was so intense I was practically jumping to my full height and then some. Instead of dodging or blocking, the bastard looked at my oncoming knee and said bet. He swung his head backwards, meeting my force, and making my bones creak.
Well fuck.
And then his hand was around my ankle. He swung me into the ground first, the force he used hurting more than the impact against the ground as the stone parted before rock hard skin. He kept the grip on my ankle, lifting me up and swinging me into the ground again. And then again. And again. And then the next time lifted me, I contorted my body, blowing a storm of hurricane force wind into his face. He didn't even budge, swinging me into the ground again.
I fire a kunai at his head. Two into the sky. The first clattered against his shield, did nothing. The other two flew upwards and away. He swung me into the ground, and then we were airborne. I twisted from his suddenly loosened grip. His widened eyes met mine. My wind release enhanced kunai broke against his armour as my attempt to knife him in the neck failed. He snarled, reaching for me. I teleported to the other kunai, sending four more in his direction. His eyes tracked them.
Figuring out the jutsu had taken him less time than most, but what did it matter? We'd seen this before. Hiraishin versus Raikage had only one winner. I teleported to one of them, and he reacted almost instantly, contorting his body in the air to deliver a savage axe kick. That one would have hurt for sure…if it hit. I teleported off to the side and then above him.
"Cho Odama Rasengan" I screamed it to the heavens as I smashed the giant jutsu down on him. I felt the grinding edges of the chakra treads that made up the rasengan wear against the Raikage's impenetrable armour, until the jutsu exploded, pushing us apart.
He was half buried in the ground, but he pushed himself out of it none the worse for wear. How convenient. I had the way to take him down. Redirect his own attacks upon him, but he hadn't brought out the hell stab yet. Part of me was offended that it was because he did not consider me worthy of it. The rest of me agreed it was probably best for him not to yet. If he dully committed, then this fight would end in a matter of minutes, and in that case whoever won would win the war. It was just that simple. If he beat me here, then he was going to run roughshod over y army with almost no hindrance.
Uzume could delay him for a while with her stasis, but that would end up being a battle of endurance, and Uzume would lose that a thousand times. Because the Raikage was a monster. A fucking monster, and I had no idea how he had figured out what he was doing, but when I killed him, his body would have so many secrets for me. For one, there was the fact that there was something strange about his chakra.
His reserves were massive already. They dwarfed mine as a matter of fact. And then worse than that, he was taking in nature energy constantly. With every movement. Moving sage mode. But not really. He wasn't creating Sage chakra. He was allowing natural energy refill his reserves almost directly. There was only one clan that was supposed to have that ability. And they'd been wiped out bar one by the time canon rolled around. Could the Raikage be a member of Jugo's clan? Their progenitor?
I ducked underneath a straight jab as he got bored of us staring at each other. I slammed my hand into the ground as I got close enough and turned the entire thing to mud. Let's see how fast he could be with no surface to push off of. The mud surrounded him, empowered by my sage mode and dragged him straight down to the depths. As it did so, I piled more and more mud atop his position. It should have been impossible to escape. There was literally nothing to physically push off of. Using chakra adhesion with my mud was impossible unless I specifically allowed it. It would reject every chakra signature that was not mine automatically.
And yet, the Raikage pushed himself with one movement. The armour around his body spiked as he tore through near a dozen layers of mud. Probably tons of the stuff in terms of weight in one movement and jumped out to his feet.
His armour was sparking now. This was the second stage of the lightning armour. It took him less time to reach me this time than I could have anticipated. It was all I could do to teleport off to the side. And then he was on me again. Again, I teleported to the side. I reached into my pocket, retrieving close to a dozen kunai and tossing them all about the place. The kunai had barely left my hand when there was a massive fist right in my face. I teleported to one— right next to him.
Sage empowered muscles came to my aid as I contorted my body and slammed a spartan kick into his head. The ground around us shattered, a shockwave flew out, destabilizing most of the kunai I'd tossed a second earlier. He, the Raikage, did not move. He stubbornly pushed his head against my foot until his face was looking at me. And then there was a smirk. How interesting. He reached out for me, but I was gone again.
The hell stab. I had to wait for the fucking hell stab. I didn't have anything that could pierce that armour. Or did I? Naruto hadn't. The Eight tails hadn't. But why was I marrying myself to their limits. I was better. I had to be better than a tailed beast and an oaf whose only special characteristic had been the tailed beast put in his gut and the fact that he was the reincarnation of ninja Jesus. Well, the last one was pretty important but still.
"Ready to fight and stop running, boy?"
"I'm teleporting, you idiot. You're the one running. But then again who would expect a Raikage— famously the dumbest of the Kage— to appreciate nuance" Taunting came easily to me, I realised. Even when there was no fucking need to get the man that already wanted to kill me even more interested in doing so. I teleported to avoid the next hit, but then I noticed he hadn't committed, pausing on a dime and then twisting towards me so quickly that it was like a flash of space. I was off again, and the same thing.
Of course. Senjutsu allowed better senses than most could have. It was the combination of senjutsu and my byakugan that allowed me react to his speed after all. What were the chances that he couldn't do the same with his own sage mode.
"Fighting you is annoying" I said. He smirked, and still kept coming.
"Much more annoying than your predecessor. He died without much of a struggle." I continued, enjoying the way the smirk died on his face— perhaps a bit too much. And then the armour on his body spiked again. This time, I didn't react in time. The fist slammed straight into my chest. Train, meet body.
A/N: And so the fight we've been building towards begins. Don't expect a quick ending for this one, kids. 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.