Pre-Chapter A/N: Here we go with another chapter. Next four chapters on my patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga)— same username as here and link in bio.
A breath and a single seal created a dome of swirling wind around him. The senbon were knocked in every which direction, a few of them even reflected back to the mirrors that had sent them before bouncing off after finding no purchase. Those that had hit the ground buried themselves in with little resistance though.
He noted then that the senbon were made of ice. Probably enhanced with chakra to increase their piercing ability. If that had hit, he would be a dead man. He noted the number of mirrors. Not shadow clones. Leaving aside the fact that it was a Konoha Kinjutsu, anyone who used the multi-shadow clone jutsu to this extent would be dead in seconds.
Water clones were an option, but a water clone was only a fraction of the original in every respect. Those movements had been identical. Of course, the original could have just slowed herself down to blend in with the clones, but that would mean that this was only a fraction of the woman's power. If that was the case, it was hard to imagine that she would not have been able to take Ame on her own.
His eyes moved across them, looking for a sign of what kind of clone jutsu he was dealing with here.
"You must be wondering what kind of clone technique this is," she said from a hundred mouths at once. And the sound came from all directions. Not a genjutsu, but he flared his chakra just in case. Yeah, still here.
"No. Wondering how anyone in this village manages to keep their hair in a good state. Your dome blocking the rain is making me realise just how much the rain weighs down my hair," he said with a chuckle.
Her eyes narrowed. She launched another barrage of senbon and once again, his wind dome dealt with them. He'd have to thank Sensei for letting him study the kaiten to perfect this simulation of the Hyuga jutsu when he got back to the village.
"Is that all you have?" he taunted, which some might have considered ill-advised, but he considered a key part of his psychological warfare.
Another barrage of senbon. These ones he scattered in all directions with even more force. That was the only ranged attack she had up her sleeve while in the mirrors most likely. A jutsu like this one had to be chakra intensive, so it was no surprise that she was unable to call upon any of the more powerful jutsu she had used earlier. As she herself had revealed, she felt that she would have to deal with Yaga after this fight here. That meant she would never go all out unless her life was at risk.
If she was never pushed to that point, then she would continue to hold back out of a misguided sense that she had some future opponent that she had to keep reserves in stock for. What a shame. He would have to give Sensei his apologies then. This was most likely all he would end up being able to find out about the ice release from a master. Perhaps he would try to capture her alive. The Yamanaka would extract whatever secrets she held.
Someone of her strength in the prisoner seal though? He'd have to take her close to the point of death. As close as he could manage without killing her.
He took a deep breath in, and when he breathed out next, it was like the world breathed with him. All the wind around him had become still, drawn into his wind release armour and held in his control. Some of those winds, he gathered into his palm, forming the core of a rasengan unlike any other that he had unleashed today. She had the good sense to see the danger that was coming her way, sending barrage after barrage of senbon his way, but the wind release armour functioned just like the domes he had used earlier, but much more powerful.
The inside of the dome was lousy with them now. Practically every bit of surface area had a senbon sticking out of it. The core of the rasengan formed, made of winds spinning as fast as he could make them. And he could make them plenty fast. He stabilised that with a spiralling shell of pure chakra. And then he shifted the shape of that sphere, adding four blades on the outside. He did not make them as large as Sensei did his—these only stuck out of the main jutsu by a few inches.
But they gave the rasengan the cutting edge he needed for the first part of his plan.
"I really do hope you survive this. I haven't the time to wait for you to run out of chakra," he said somewhat sadly. The jutsu had managed to take a regular rasengan with barely any damage. Hopefully, it would be sturdy enough to protect its user from the worst of what was coming. He picked one of the reflections almost entirely at random and hurled the jutsu. The second it left his hand, he began to sink into the ground. Even the wind release armour would struggle to handle what he had just unleashed in such a small space.
XXXXX- TOSHIRO TAKEHADA
His chakra senses were not the best in the world but with so many shinobi moving as one and none of them trying very hard to obfuscate it, it was child's play to figure out what Kiri was doing. They were moving to encircle the training ground and surround Shorirama. The five of them, shinobi of Konoha, were working to flee from the scene before they had no choice but to join what was surely turning into a clusterfuck.
Shori just had to delay for long enough. Hold a village on his own for long enough for Toshiro and his team to escape. They were already burning through their reserves to travel at full speed and were about to cross the walls of Kiri when he sensed a detachment separate from the main Kiri force and begin heading in their direction.
"Pursuers," he grunted towards his team and then increased his speed, finding the last embers of willpower he had and putting them to work. They did the same. It went against standard withdrawal tactics. It was almost always wiser to withdraw in good order so you could be able to fight at a moment's notice.
But there would be no fighting for them. If they got caught now, any fighting would end in their deaths, because even if they won, the delay would give the others the time to catch up to them. They reached the shore with their pursuers still some distance behind and began to run across the sea. It was wasteful, inefficient, but they were not going to risk trying to swim when they could end up facing a member of the Hozuki clan or something like that. They were the weakest now that they had ever been. If only Shorirama's flying raijin could take them all at the same time.
Without it, they had to make this journey.
They ran and when they were some distance from the shore, the Uzumaki took out a massive scroll that he spread out.
"A ship would be too slow," he warned and kept running. The Uzumaki boy was forced to close the scroll back and seal it away again.
"A ship would give us protection from enemy ninjutsu," Fumikage hissed in his ears. She probably felt just how exposed they were the same way he did. It was a niggling feeling in the back of his neck that he was going to die.
"The illusion of protection. I'd rather live with the uncomfortable truth. Now faster. If we can talk then we aren't going all out," he said, pushing the pace again. Water release did not travel as quickly or as far as lightning release. If they were fast enough, they would reach the other side of the sea before their chasers caught up with them. And on land, they would be in much less danger. Not safe though. Safety would not be a concept they would experience until they were firmly within Konoha's borders.
Those chasing them kept coming, and when they reached the water, Toshiro realised that he had miscalculated a fair bit. They were faster. A good deal faster. So much faster that it beggared belief.
"Change of plans. We have to fight," he said, turning around to face those who were coming. His team barely managed to react in time, stopping and turning as well.
Seconds later, the water in front of them rose to reveal a single man. A man whose picture Toshiro had seen in more intelligence briefings than he could count: Michizane Sugawara of the Hozuki Clan, Third Mizukage of the Village Hidden in the Mists.
"I apologise for the deception, but I had to ensure that you did not just double back to join that Kage of yours," he said. Toshiro tried his hardest not to sag on his feet. He was so tired already, and now a Kage? A Kage of all things? He had somehow managed to fool Toshiro's chakra sense into thinking he was a group of shinobi rather than the monster he actually was.
And he was right. If Toshiro had known a Kage was on their tail, he would have doubled back to Shori, damn the consequences. Even if the flying raijin would not have allowed him escape with all of them, at least Toshiro would have been able to hand over the mission objective. This was fucked. This was so fucking fucked.
He began signing with the hand held behind his back while he spoke.
"Shouldn't you be busy dealing with the Kage in your village walls rather than chasing after some lowly jounin?" he asked with his mouth.
'Uzumaki, escape with mission objective. The rest of us delay.'
"Shorirama Senju will get what is coming to him. The five of you have something of mine, and I do not much enjoy being stolen from," he said.
Toshiro took a deep breath, and placed a hand on the hilt of each of his blades. This was going to be it. He didn't have much hope of surviving this. Michizane had survived the first war and was the last remnant of a generation of Kage that had grown up in a different world. Shorirama had killed most of them, and it was just his luck that he would end up facing the one that had managed to miss his purge.
He body flickered forwards, already sensing Uzumaki's chakra begin to flare as he ran. The Mizukage blocked the first slash with his katana, catching it with his bare fingers, and then leaned out of the way of his tanto before slamming a foot into his chest. Isagi grew to his maximum size, catching him in one hand before he could fly too far. Fumikage and Fugaku struck as one next, their blades hungry for blood.
XXXXX- OROCHIMARU
Being a Snake Sage was everything he wanted and more, he thought as he practically flew through the obstacle course that the Great White Snake Sage had formed in one of the larger chambers in what Orochimaru had found was not just a single cave, but a network of them.
He spun around a pillar that rose from the ground and then curved his body underneath a newly created depression in the cave's ceiling. This was his seventh time running the course and each time, it got harder as well as stranger, but he never failed. Never mind that his eyes were fully closed throughout.
He could feel the world through his very skin. His feet told him about changes to the ground before he reached them. He jumped over a gorge that had not existed mere seconds ago and twisted around a pillar that fell from the ceiling before jumping over one that rose a few feet from the ground.
"Excellent. Sssssssimply splendid, boy. Keep going," the Great Snake Sage offered encouragement from the corner and in no time at all, Orochimaru was at the end of the hallway.
"Faster this time," he said, breathing deeply but not even feeling exhausted. He had been in excellent physical conditioning before this. His Sensei would not have anything less from him after all, but being a Sage was on a completely different level. He did not feel human anymore. He had been the very best of humans before becoming a Sage, and now he knew that he could run circles around his old self with ease.
This explained Shorirama Senju's arrogance. This was a cadre of power that few others had ever managed to knock on. Just he, Shorirama Senju, and Hashirama Senju. Mere mortals could not compare. There was nothing he could imagine that he could not do. He clenched his fist. His ninjutsu was most likely going to be levels beyond what it used to be. His chakra was denser and bent to his will even easier than it used to.
"That is the bare minimum expected from a Snake Sage. Now I can impart on you the technique that makes Snake Senjutsu greater than all the others," he said. Orochimaru nodded, eager to learn. If every form of Senjutsu came with its own subset of secret techniques, then he had to learn this and hope it compared favourably to whatever the whales had given his Senju rival.
"I am ready to learn, Great Snake Sage," he spoke when the snake still remained silent, showing that he wanted a response of some kind. Its tail rattled as it flicked from one side to the other.
"It is the technique I have been using to manipulate the shape of this cave. Running those gauntlets was not just to allow you acclimatise to the strength of being a Snake Sage, or even the senses. It was to allow you feel what it was I was doing," he said.
"Earth release?" Orochimaru asked, more than a little disappointed.
The tail flicked from side to side before shooting at him. He jumped to the side, avoiding the attack, and then had to weave around two spikes that rose from the ground where he had just been standing.
"Did that feel like earth release, boy?" he spoke like he had not just attempted to attack Orochimaru.
And at that, Orochimaru paused before speaking. He was right. Earth release, all elemental ninjutsu in truth, was usually matched with an outflow of chakra in the nature of the element being used. And while he could sense the Snake using chakra in some way, it was not earth natured chakra and neither was it going towards the ground. It was just chakra that was doing something. And whatever it was doing was causing the ground to move in accordance with his will.
Not just the ground, the whole cave. Actually, it reminded him more of how Suna's puppeteers controlled their puppets than it did of ninjutsu use.
"No. It didn't. Some sort of relationship between you and the cave that allows you to control it," he surmised, and enjoyed the brief silence that marked the Great Snake Sage's shock. Orochimaru was the student of the greatest master of jutsu the world had ever seen. He himself was no slouch when it came to understanding techniques when they were used against him. That understanding was key to learning the final thing Sensei had to teach him, after all, and Orochimaru was closer than ever to being ready.
"That is a sssssssomewhat satisfactory summation of it. The technique is known as Inorganic Reincarnation. It allows those who have the unique senjutsu of the Ryuchi cave to put their chakra in non-living beings and breathe some measure of life into them. That life allows us to enslave them and bring them under our full control." As he spoke, the cave shifted around them, pillars dropping down and then rising back up in unison before a platform rose beneath him and lifted him to the point where he loomed above Orochimaru.
"This technique is the true power of the Sages of Ryuchi cave, and is one of the two I will be entrusting you with today before you leave," he said.
"One of two?"
"The second reason I have had you practicing with only your Sage senses is that there is another technique that allows sages of the Ryuchi cave to rob our enemies of their senses. Only a sage of the cave who has properly mastered our technique may freely exist after that technique is used. Once you manage Inorganic Reincarnation, I will use White Rage on you three times. After that, you should be able to replicate the technique yourself and manage the drawbacks," he said, and that was it. Now he began instructing Orochimaru on how to impart his will on the earth.
Not just the earth, he corrected. Any inorganic material. His first practice target was a kunai he had brought with him. His first attempts failed, his chakra just enhancing the weapon, but doing nothing to grant it his will.
After several attempts under the tutelage of the Snake who got more and more enraged with each failure, Orochimaru decided to treat him the same way he treated his teachers from the academy. That was to say, he paid him no mind. He was trying to impart his will here, not just his chakra. He knew a technique that involved him splitting his consciousness, but in a different way: the shadow clone technique. He flexed his chakra to form a clone, and dispelled it a second later. There it was. Just to do this... and that... and then...
The kunai began floating in the air under his will, and then the metal shifted to separate in two different directions.
"Is this satisfactory to you?" he asked the Snake that had just been mocking his clone technique but had now fallen silent.
A/N: Rounding this one off with some time spent with our favourite Sannin (only living one, but you get the vibe). Snake Sage mode vastly increases his threat profile as you can probably already tell. He's still not on Shori's level, but now there's only one other sitting Kage able to beat him comfortably. Discount on patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga) for those interested (should be expired by Saturday so do hurry up if you are). Next chapter comes on here on Wednesday night/Thursday morning (depending on your timezone). Next four 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.