Pre-Chapter A/N: So here we are back on our regular upload schedule. Sunday and Tuesday/Wednesday. I've put systems in place to ensure we don't fall behind again so yay. I look forward to stress-testing them as the madnesses of life stack up. To celebrate the scale of our achievement, we've got a cheeky little discount for the whole month (code: MAY01) on patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga). Next five chapters on my patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga)— same username as here and link in bio.
XXXXXX – D OF KUMOGAKURE
The Two Tails was a bitch to fight. Its body was shrouded with fire that could burn through steel in a matter of minutes, and its breath could turn anything it was directed against into ash in even less time. It had few weaknesses. E's lightning release did nothing to it most of the time—and that was only when the blasts actually managed to hit, because apart from all those other advantages, it also happened to be wickedly fast.
Not so fast that keeping track of its movements was a problem the way it could be with Ay when he decided to take their spars seriously, but fast enough that their hits were more likely to miss than not. Because when an attack was sent, it was likely that the beast could be anywhere else by the time it ought to have landed.
E had probably expended a good quarter of his reserves on jutsu that would never hit. D was having the exact opposite problem. He had burns running up both arms and part of his eyes from the last time he had managed a blow, because of the fiery shroud that encased the beast and protected it from physical confrontation.
The only ones having a passable time of it were Ay and the squad of Jounin with water release affinities that had been brought along for this battle. The water release users showered the Two Tails with a consistent barrage of their techniques, and even when they missed, they still added more and more water to the battlefield that should have made it harder for the Two Tails to bring its fire release to bear.
And then there was Ay himself. D had never seen the gap between himself and his oldest friend as clearly as he saw it today. Ay was singlehandedly keeping them in this fight. There was actually a very good chance that he did not even need them here at all. Not for this part of the plan at least. D resisted the urge to look around their surroundings and try to spot the shinobi that he had been informed would be watching them but could not sense. He returned his attention to watching Ay to take his mind off the temptation, and it was not a tall ask at all.
Ay was a blur even to those used to keeping track of him in combat. His lightning armour allowed him to brush off the creature's fiery attacks and ignore its shroud when he struck with punches that could crush stone. And he used it to full effect, blurring between offence and defence at the drop of a hat. It was only a matter of time.
The Two Tails breathed out several fireballs, each one flowing from its mouth in a matter of seconds and firing across the space that separated it from its attackers. D jumped backwards. The water style users created a combination jutsu—a water wall—that, despite their skill with the element and the natural advantage it had over the tailed beast's element, was turned to steam, barely managing to block the fire. E had taken shelter behind them.
A did the exact opposite of the rest of them. He did not cower or take shelter or dodge. He dove through the fire, the lightning armour around his body thickening to a level that made it difficult to even see his body through it. The defence was sufficient. And he was able to tear his way through the fireball and come out of the other side, more or less unscathed, and catch the beast by surprise.
A single punch to the side of the beast's head sent it reeling. He landed on the ground and shot off at the beast, moving like a lightning bolt. He hit the beast straight in its chest, sending it careening backwards. It hit the ground, shattering the trees it landed on top of and then causing a small earthquake. It was already beginning to stir.
Ay saw the chance for victory though. And D was given the chance to witness his friend's greatest technique once more. Flesh turned to lightning as A pushed the lightning armour farther than any Raikage had taken it before. At this level, he ascended beyond his father, beyond even Lord First who had invented the lightning armour.
He shot into the air like the reverse of a lightning bolt striking the ground, suffusing the clouds with his own charge and then turning to flesh right above the clouds. He was too far for D to see him. But he knew what his friend was doing now. He'd had the jutsu explained to him more than once. There was the sound of a thunderclap, and that was the only warning D needed to know to close his eyes. He did so as he spotted E warning the water style users to do the same.
Thunder clapped once more, and even with his lids shut, the lightning that struck the tailed beast still pierced his vision. When he opened his eyes, he was blinking spots out of them. The smell of burnt flesh had spread across the battlefield. The tailed beast lay still. It was not moving at all. A smaller lightning bolt hit the ground next to him, and it took all his self-control to avoid flinching at the impact.
A's body returned to flesh and blood, and he chuckled before clapping D on the back.
"Now on with the sealing," he said. Those who had come with them but kept a good distance from the battlefield came forward. A blessed pot created by their best fuinjutsu masters would hold the tailed beast for a day but no longer as they transported it back to Kumo for the sealing. At least that was what those who had come with them thought would happen. D was one of the few who knew what the true purpose of this mission was.
D waited for the seal masters to come forward, and then they got to work. The pot was opened. They drew kanji on the ground and even on the beast's unconscious body. Without its fiery shroud, the Two Tails was a regular cat in a lot of ways. Well, a cat taller than every building in Kumo other than the Kage tower. A cat with bright blue fur that looked well cared for. In fact, the fur was pristine with the sole exception of one blackened patch right above where its heart would have been.
"You didn't hold back at all," he commented with a whistle. A tailed beast knocked straight unconscious. He had wondered how Kumo would do it. Even from when he was a chunin, he had known that they would have to go to war with Konoha eventually. Kumo needed its revenge on the Butcher. They could not leave him alone to live his life. Not after he had killed two Raikages. Their pride as a village had made it a certainty that a man who had killed two generations of their leadership could not be allowed to live. They had a duty to kill him, and being completely honest, the duty was more likely to fall on A than anyone else.
And that had bothered him for a time. The way the elders, the older jounin, everyone, said it. *When you are old enough, you will face Shorirama Senju on the battlefield,* they said, as if they themselves would do it if asked. As if they would face the man who had killed a Kage before even leaving his pre-teen years. The man who had cut a village in half with a single jutsu. The man who had fought both the Gold and Silver Brothers and killed them in seconds. That was the kind of monster they told A he would face, and while D had felt it a stupid amount of pressure to place on anyone at all, A had borne it well.
He held the burden, and more than that, he thrived under it. He had become so strong.
"Oh, I definitely did. The beast is alive, isn't it? If I didn't hold back it'd be dead," he said with an easy chuckle before walking off to the seal masters as they were about to begin their work.
When they finished the scribbling, all of them had to contribute their chakra to the seal as it took the tailed beast and sealed it into a pot that was much too small to contain something of that size. But D had learned early enough not to ask too many questions about fuinjutsu. It would make his head hurt if he looked too deeply into it.
When the beast was fully sealed and the pot was closed, the anticipated attack began. The Waterfall shinobi came from the treeline and ground in their dozens. It was a small army. D fought those who came close to him, but not at his full capacity. He feigned tiredness from the sealing, and allowed the shinobi from the Hidden Waterfall to outmanoeuvre him.
The fighting only lasted a few minutes. The jounin closest to the pot had his throat split open with a single flick of his opponent's wrist, and D watched the man closely, memorising that face. He would get revenge for his comrade when the time came. Once they had grabbed hold of the pot, the Waterfall shinobi had dropped smoke bombs and faded into the treeline they had come from. He turned to look at A, who was staring into the distance with narrowed eyes.
"Form up," A ordered, stepping away from the man next to him to grab hold of another woman and pull her to her feet. A blade had been buried in her gut. A left it inserted in her to avoid accelerating the bleeding and moved towards C, who was already working on another wounded man. The blond-haired medic and sensor looked up as A approached, directing his Kage to drop the body on the ground next to the other man. Then he did something D had never seen any other medic attempt. He removed one hand from the man he was working on and placed it on the woman that A had taken over, beginning to heal both of them at the same time.
In little time, the bodies of those that were dead were destroyed and the injured were healed. Those who were too badly injured to be able to continue in combat were sent back to the village with a smaller escort while the rest of them stood in rows.
There were twelve of them left able to continue on in combat. A force too small to challenge a village—even a minor one like Waterfall. But that was where the second part of their plan came in. A spoke to C in whispers before turning to a member of the sealing team. He could not hear them, but he had a good guess what they were speaking about. They were planning the rendezvous with the main force.
"Move out," A ordered, and they got to work, running along the treeline and following A's lead. First they would head around like they were leaving Waterfall as a whole, but they would only head so far as to meet with the main force of Anbu and jounin. It would look to Waterfall that they were not even attempting to pursue for the pot, that they had given up on it. They would normally be suspicious, but the fact that it was a tailed beast would force them to put that caution to the side. They needed to move as quickly as possible to seal the beast in a host of their own. That haste would be their mistake.
A seal had been placed on the pot that would make it possible for them to trace it no matter where it was taken to. That was the point of the trap. Feeding information to Waterfall that they had found the Two Tails and would be moving to capture it made their intervention inevitable. They had gotten bold since Kumo lost most of its army in the Battle of Iwa and the Butcher had killed the Third. They were making a push to replace Iwa as one of the Big Five, and an opportunity for another tailed beast in addition to the Seven Tails was one they could not resist.
D raced along with their small force and was surprised to sense several chakra signatures approaching them. When they finally reached the point where they could see those who approached, he breathed a small sigh of relief to see it was the main force. Little was shared beyond a nod of recognition between A and their leader, Kawaguchi-san. Kawaguchi-san had been two years above them in the academy, and had just barely been too young to fight in the last war. A fact that he lamented whenever he got the chance. He was one of those who pushed the most to face Konoha again. Of course it was easy to do so from his end when he was not the one that people expected to fight the Butcher in single combat.
They changed directions and began to head deeper into the Land of Waterfall's forests. C kept his fingers clasped together, sensing across their surroundings and sending small groups after the patrol groups they would have encountered. The plan was to catch their enemy completely off guard, and that was what they were going to do.
It took half an hour for them to finally reach a cave. C led them to a pool before directing one of the Anbu to dive in. The man did so and returned some minutes later with a thumbs up in their direction. A was the next down. Kawaguchi followed, and D himself was the third in the water. It had a bone-chilling cold to it, like it was fighting his attempt to swim through it. He pushed through though, and in less time than he expected he surfaced from another pool.
He looked around and near gasped. The Hidden Waterfall made for quite a sight. Picturesque streets straight out of a painting with houses sitting astride the cobblestone pathways. All of it nestled in the shade of the biggest tree he had ever seen. He rose from the water and stepped out even as more of their shinobi came in after he did so. He stepped on dry land and the alarm had already begun ringing. A was cutting a bloody swathe through the first shinobi to respond to the left. Kawaguchi was doing the same to the right. D cracked his fists and jumped into the fray, searching out his quarry.
The first man to reach him wore a chunin vest. He had a wide chest, broad shoulders, and arms that told a story of hard work on his physique. Those biceps made even D's impressive musculature look puny. The headband worn around the arm drew attention to those muscles even more. However, they were shinobi, and for them strength did not come from the muscles. Their fists met. And it was not D who yielded. He smashed his head into his opponent's, making the man's head snap backwards. *And that is why you wore your headband on your head,* he thought with an internal chuckle.
His fingers stretched out, grabbing the back of the man's head and then bringing it back down so it met his knee with an even more satisfying chunk. He kept his grip tight and then added another hand to the hold, snapping the neck with a single movement, not stopping to admire his work as he moved on to the next opponent. This one was a jounin. His frame was more reasonable for a shinobi.
D felt a tendril of chakra slip into his own chakra flow and smirked before disturbing it without using a seal. He had grown up with C, and while their generation's C was more focused on medical ninjutsu than genjutsu, he had still inherited the designation for a reason. He was nothing less than a master. D shot at his opponent, who was already weaving seals. He spat out a wave of cutting water that D twisted underneath. His feet searched out for his opponent's, and he swept the man off his feet. From there, it was a formality. His fingers found his opponent's neck, and with a flex of chakra-enhanced strength, he had ripped out his throat and was on to the next.
Around him, chaos reigned. The Waterfall shinobi fought with all they had. If they had ever felt that this would be an easy fight to win, then they were proven wrong in the first few minutes. D could see it. Their tide had initially been like a tsunami washing across their enemy's defences, but eventually, the momentum had stalled. Like a cliff face, the Waterfall shinobi had borne their pressure and now stalled them where they were.
A long battle was to their detriment. If Waterfall was able to bring the full force of their superior numbers down on them, then it would mean defeat. But they had come with a plan for precisely that eventuality. D flared his chakra to tell C that it was time for the plan to move to Stage Two. Surely the other man would have seen the deadlock by now. But his signal was ignored. Nothing was happening.
And it was only when D turned to look towards A that he realised why his signal had been ignored. A was being stopped. Two men, one of them with the chakra shroud of a tailed beast he had seen described in so many books, and the other with no tailed beast aura but still projecting so much chakra that it was doubtful that he was human. How did Waterfall hide a monster like this?
A/N: Of course, if you invade the Hidden Waterfall, expect the Hero's Water to be used against you, and Kumo didn't come prepared for that. Adaptability is an essential skill, however, so we shall see how it goes. Next five chapters up on patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga) (same username as here and link in bio), support me there and read them early. Discount available with the code MAY01– have fun.