The air warped around Tayuya as her Cursed Seal Stage 1 activated, the dissonant notes from her flute no longer just a mental assault but a physical force that made the very air vibrate. Ryuu felt the sound waves boring into his mind, trying to tear apart his concentration.
"Cover your ears!" Unit 007's voice was sharp, her voice carrying a hint of worry. It was futile, he knew. This was a Genjutsu that attacked the brain directly through auditory chakra. Still, the intent was clear, find a way to counter or endure.
Beside her, Sakon and Ukon, their forms now monstrous and grey, their Cursed Seal sigils glowing, launched themselves forward. They moved with disturbing speed, their chakra output having multiplied. Kidōmaru, hanging from the roof by a web, prepared another, larger golden arrow, the chakra condensing at its tip glowing with chakra.
Ryuu's mind raced, trying to recall how the cursed seals worked.
Cursed Seal Stage 1. Enhanced physical abilities, magnified chakra, but at the cost of rationality and with a higher chakra consumption rate. They were stronger, but also more predictable. Their attack patterns would become more direct, less subtle. Tayuya's Genjutsu was the primary threat. Without her coordination, the others were just individual powerhouses.
He had to sever the source.
Ryuu didn't try to outlast the sonic attack. He started weaving hand seals, pulling moisture from the humid air.
"Hyōton: Ryūko no Hōkō!" (Ice Release: Dragon Tiger Roar!)
He didn't form a dragon of ice. Instead, he released a focused, concussive blast of super-chilled air, filled with microscopic ice crystals.
The blast didn't aim at Tayuya, but at the air directly in front of her flute. The hyper-cold wave met the superheated, chakra-infused sound waves. The result was instantaneous. A localized flash-freeze, followed by a concussive implosion of air as the colliding temperatures created a vacuum.
WHOOMPF!
A sphere of dead silence erupted outwards from Tayuya's position. The jarring melody from her flute was snuffed out, replaced by a disorienting, absolute lack of sound. Tayuya herself was blasted backward by the implosion of air, her flute clattering to the ground, her ears ringing from the sudden pressure change, her Genjutsu shattering. She looked up, stunned, a trickle of blood leaking from her nose.
"What—?!"
The moment the sound died, Unit 007 acted. "My turn." She flickered through seals with impossible speed.
"Magen-gun: Shō Maika no jutsu(Evil Illusion: Dancing Blossom Swarm Jutsu"
Her hands finished the sequence with a soft clap that seemed deafening in the sudden silence. Instantly, the world around Sakon, Ukon, and Kidōmaru warped. The courtyard vanished, replaced by a swirling vortex of blood-red cherry blossom petals. The illusion was overpowering, a direct assault on the senses that went beyond mere sight, carrying with it a phantom scent of cherry blossoms.
Kidōmaru, perched on his web, shook his head violently, trying to clear his vision.
"Pathetic Genjutsu!" he snarled, but his aim wavered.
Sakon and Ukon, caught mid-lunge, stumbled to a halt, looking around in confusion. "Where did they go?! Break it, Sakon!" Ukon's voice hissed from his brother's side.
This was no ordinary illusion. As a descendant of the Kurama clan, Unit 007's Genjutsu operated on a higher level. It didn't just create false images, it directly hijacked the target's five senses, turning their own mind into a prison.
The petals they saw felt real against their skin and the disorienting swirl made maintaining balance a conscious, difficult effort. They were, for a few crucial seconds, completely removed from the real battlefield.
Ryuu didn't need a command. This was the opening.
He exploded into motion, targeting the most dangerous immediate threat, Kidōmaru, the strategist and long-range attacker. Ryuu used the momentary chaos, running vertically up a wall and dashing towards him. Kidōmaru, still trapped within the genjutsu, only registered Ryuu's approach as a faint flicker. It was too late.
Ryuu launched himself from the wall, his ninjato gleaming. He slashed, managing to cut off two of his arms in one swift motion.
Kidōmaru howled from the pain, however thanks to it he was able to break through the genjutsu. The swirling cherry blossoms vanished from his vision, replaced by the grim reality of a white-masked shinobi bearing down on him, blade dripping with his own blood.
The two severed arms, still clutching a half-formed golden bow, dropped to the courtyard floor with a wet slap.
Ryuu didn't give him a moment to recover. He knew from his memories that Kidōmaru was incredibly durable and resourceful. Leaving him wounded was not an option.
Ryuu twisted in mid-air, his movements fluid and economical. He landed silently behind him, his ninjato held in a reverse grip. Before Kidōmaru could even fully turn or harden his skin with his secreted gold, Ryuu drove the blade upwards with precision, a single, deep thrust that punctured a lung and pierced the heart from behind.
Kidōmaru shuddered violently, a choked gasp escaping his lips, and collapsed, his extra limbs twitching uselessly before falling still.
At the same instant, Sakon and Ukon finally broke free from the Dancing Blossom Swarm, their expression betraying their rage.
"You bastard!" Sakon roared, "Ukon, let's show them our real power!"
"Parasite Demon Demolition Technique!"
Their bodies began to grotesquely contort as Ukon started to merge more fully with Sakon. Ryuu knew this was their most dangerous close-range ability. He had to keep his distance.
But Unit 007 was already moving, her target switching flawlessly. The moment she saw Kidōmaru fall and the twins begin their technique, she formed a new set of hand seals.
"The mind is weakest when the body is in flux," she stated simply, her voice colder than before. "Kurama Clan Genjutsu: Five Senses Shutdown!"
The attack slid directly into Sakon and Ukon's minds just as they were mid-transformation. For a single, critical second, every sense they possessed – sight, sound, smell, touch, taste – was plunged into a void of absolute nothingness. The link to the outside world, and even to their own bodies, was severed.
Their transformation stuttered, their conjoined bodies freezing in a half-merged, monstrous state. They were utterly blind, deaf, and disconnected.
Ryuu needed no further prompting.
Things had gone way beyond control. This wasn't a an examination test at this point, the Konoha ANBU had clearly messed up when giving them this test. It was more than likely that the two of them could die here if they didn't go all out.
'Just why did they give such a dangerous test to new recruits… just what are they thinking, those guys."
He moved like a phantom, closing the distance to the twins. His hands blurred.
This was a skill he had designed based on a very famous ice power user from one of his acquired memories. (cough- Aokiji - cough)
"Hyōton: Kōri Tatchi" (Ice Release: Ice Touch).
He channeled his ice chakra directly into his palms. He slammed his left hand onto the conjoined back of Sakon and his right hand onto Ukon's shoulder. An intense, biting frost spread instantly from the points of contact, not just freezing the surface but driving deep, a localized flash-freeze targeting their chakra networks and internal organs.
The moisture in their bodies crystallized instantly. They didn't even have time to register the cold before their biological functions ceased. They remained frozen in their grotesque, mid-transformation pose.
Glancing at the statue, Ryuu breathed deeply. His chakra reserves were already more than half way gone. He couldn't let the battle go on much longer. With Sakon and Ukon dead, only Tayuya was left.
Having recovered from the initial blast, she stared in horror and disbelief at her fallen comrades. In less than thirty seconds, three of them had been eliminated. Her arrogance evaporated, replaced by raw, primal fear.
She snatched her flute from the ground. She needed to summon her Doki, her three giant oni-like summons. It was her only chance.
As she brought the flute to her lips, Unit 007 appeared directly in front of her with a body flicker. The tall, blonde-haired operative didn't bother with another genjutsu. Tayuya was a genjutsu specialist herself, tricking her again would be difficult and time-consuming.
Instead, 007 engaged her with taijutsu. Her movements were graceful, like a deadly dancer, each strike aimed not with brute force, but with a terrifying knowledge of the human body.
Tayuya, a long-range fighter, was completely outclassed in close quarters. She stumbled back, gasping, trying to create distance, but 007 was relentless.
Ryuu moved to flank her, his ninjato now coated in a thick, impossibly sharp layer of ice. The trap was sprung. There was nowhere for Tayuya to run.
"Wait!" she gasped, dropping the flute, her eyes wide with terror as she looked between the two silent, white-masked figures closing in. "I surrender! I can give you information!"
This was what Ryuu had been waiting for. One survivor for interrogation.
"Stay your hand, 007," Ryuu commanded, his voice perfectly level, a stark contrast to the carnage surrounding them. "This one is valuable."
Unit 007, poised to deliver a disabling strike, halted instantly, deferring to his field judgment. She flickered backward, her mission now shifting to providing cover and watching for any further tricks.
But before Ryuu could move to secure their frantic, surrendering prisoner, a new presence emerged from the deeper shadows of the facility. The chakra signature was unlike the others – it was calm, placid, almost unnervingly serene, yet it radiated a potency that dwarfed the members of the Sound Four combined.
A boy, younger than Ryuu, perhaps only nine years old, stepped into the dim light of the courtyard. His hair was stark white, his skin deathly pale, and his face was a mask of indifference. Two crimson dots were marked with ceremonial precision above his eyebrows.
Kaguya Kimimaro.
The name flashed in Ryuu's mind, a bolt of pure, unadulterated shock. His memory supplied the context, Orochimaru's most prized vessel, the sole survivor of the Kaguya clan, a genius wielder of the Shikotsumyaku.
Kimimaro surveyed the scene with an almost lazy disinterest. He glanced at the frozen statues of Sakon and Ukon, the still bodies of Kidōmaru and Jirōbō, and the terrified, weeping Tayuya. His teal eyes showed no anger, no grief. He registered the death of his comrades as nothing more than a passing thought.
"You have made a mess," Kimimaro stated, his voice monotone, devoid of any emotion. He looked at Ryuu and Unit 007. "Lord Orochimaru wished for you to be captured. These four simply failed, so they deserve death."
Ryuu's mind raced, adrenaline a cold fire in his veins. If Orochimaru was here, then things were far worse than he could image.
"007, secure the prisoner," Ryuu commanded, his voice breaking slightly. "Do not let her move. Or speak."
He drew a fresh kunai, his eyes settling to a calm certainty. This was it. The true gauge. Even if Kimimaro was younger than him, he was still considered an unparalleled combat genius. Fighting against him would surely give him a measure as to how strong he actually was.
"You possess an interesting chakra," Kimimaro noted, his head tilting with detached curiosity. "It is… somewhat cold." He took a single, fluid step forward. From the palm of his hand, a sharp, white bone blade slid out with a faint, sickening schlick.
The ensuing battle was brutal. Kimimaro's taijutsu was perfect, a fusion of grace and lethality that Ryuu couldn't match up to. Every movement flowed into the next, each strike of his bone blades aimed at vital points. There were no wasted steps at all.
Ryuu was immediately on the defensive, his body screaming with exertion. He moved with speed and agility, but he was merely reacting. Kimimaro was dictating the entire flow of the fight.
After all, Ryuu's weakest aspect was taijutsu, even if he had trained relentlessly.
"Hyōton: Kōri Heki!" Ryuu slammed his palm down, erupting a jagged wall of ice between them.
Kimimaro didn't even slow. With a flick of his wrist, his extended bone blade shot forward like a spear, punching clean through the ice wall as if it were paper, forcing Ryuu to twist his body into an unnatural angle to avoid impalement.
"Dance of the Larch!" Kimimaro called. Spikes of razor-sharp bone erupted from his body in every direction.
Ryuu threw himself backward, using a blast of wind from his palm to gain distance, the bone spikes shredding the air where he had just been.
Meanwhile, Unit 007 had secured Tayuya, her hands moving in a blur, applying a sequence of chakra suppressing seals, rendering the Sound kunoichi unconscious and unable to mold chakra. Seeing Ryuu being relentlessly pushed back, she understood they could not win a battle of attrition.
"003, we must retreat!" she projected, her voice laced with an urgency it hadn't held before.
"No escape," Kimimaro stated simply. He launched himself forward, closing the distance in an instant. His fingers jabbed forward. "Ten-Finger Drilling Bullets!"
Hardened bone fragments, fired from his fingertips, ripped through the air like machine gun fire. Ryuu frantically wove one-handed seals, while using the other hand to block the bone fragments with a kunai.
"Hyōton: Makyō Hyōshō (Ice Release: Demonic Mirroring Ice Crystals)"
It was a desperate move. Nine shimmering ice mirrors formed around him. The bone remaining bullets slammed into them, cracking and shattering several mirrors on impact. Ryuu's own image flickered within the remaining mirrors, attempting a counter-assault with ice clones.
Kimimaro ignored them. His teal eyes, possessing a frightening clarity, locked onto the real Ryuu through the chaotic reflections. "A clever trick. But a trick nonetheless."
He moved, faster than Ryuu could track, phasing through the shattered remnants of his own illusion, his bone sword aimed directly for Ryuu's heart. This was it. The killing blow.
There was no time to dodge, no chakra left for a powerful defensive jutsu. He was going to die.
The thought didn't bring fear. It brought an explosive, primal rage. A rage against his own weakness. A rage that he couldn't overcome.
He couldn't die here. Not like this.
This place wasn't going to be his end. He had so much he wanted to accomplish.
He screamed, a raw, guttural scream that could only be called animalistic.
And deep within him, something answered.
A searing, unimaginable pain shot through his body, starting from his bones and erupting outwards. It was a feeling of being torn apart and remade from the inside out. His entire skeleton screamed, his own body betraying him, rearranging itself.
Kimimaro's descending bone blade, inches from Ryuu's chest, was met with a grating shriek of bone on bone.
From Ryuu's own sternum, a thick, serrated ribcage of dense, ivory-colored bone had erupted outwards, forming a horrifying shield. The impact threw both of them back.
The force of the impact, combined with the explosive awakening, shattered Ryuu's porcelain mask. It fell away in pieces, revealing his face to the cavern's dim light. His skin was pale, his crimson eyes wide with a mixture of agony, disbelief, and terror. Above his eyebrows, two crimson dots, identical to Kimimaro's, had manifested as if painted in fresh blood.
Thin, sharp red markings, looking like he had applied eyeliner, appeared under his eyes.
He stared at the bone armor encasing his own chest, then at his hands, where smaller, sharper bone blades were now protruding from his knuckles.
His mind reeled. What is this? How? This… this power… Kaa-san, what didn't you tell me?!
Kimimaro landed gracefully, his impassive face for the first time completely shattered by utter, profound shock. "Shikotsumyaku… impossible. My clan… it was annihilated. Who are you?"
The awakening, the raw pain, the overwhelming confusion, was too much. Ryuu's vision swam, black spots dancing at the edges. He staggered, his newfound bone armor receding back into his body with another wave of agonizing pain. He dropped to his knees, gasping.
"A Kaguya…" Kimimaro whispered, his shock morphing into a predatory, obsessive gleam. "A new specimen. Stronger. Unforeseen. Lord Orochimaru must have you."
He moved to seize the collapsing Ryuu.
"Kukuku… no need to be so hasty, Kimimaro-kun."
The voice, silky, sibilant, and dripping with evil, echoed from the cavern entrance. The temperature in the room seemed to drop further, seemingly from the malice emanating from the man.
Orochimaru stood there, his long black hair framing his pale face. His golden eyes, slitted like a snake's, were fixed on Ryuu with possessive desire. He licked his lips with an unnaturally long tongue.
"A Yuki… and a Kaguya," Orochimaru purred, his voice making Ryuu's skin crawl. "Such a rare, beautiful combination. I have searched for you my entire life, a good vessel. To think you would simply walk into my home."
Unit 007, her own face a mask of cold dread, stood protectively over Ryuu, kunai in hand, but she knew. They were dead.
Facing one of the Legendary Sannin, the most notorious missing-nin of their generation… there was no escape.
"Surrender, little birds," Orochimaru hissed playfully. "I will be… gentle."
But as he took a step forward, two figures flickered into existence between him and the two ANBU candidates. The first was a man wearing a kitsune mask with gravity-defying silver hair and eyes sharp with killing intent. The other was a figure a weasel-masked ANBU with black hair and distinct red eyes.
"Kakashi Hatake," Orochimaru's grin widened. "And the Uchiha prodigy, Itachi. Kukuku, what a delightful party."
"It seems you were busy, Orochimaru," Kakashi's drawl was laced with disdain. "We were... delayed dealing with some of your other… pets outside." His visible eye flickered towards Ryuu, taking in the Kaguya markings, the shattered mask, the boy's near-catatonic state of shock.
'Dammit, Minato-sensei… what have we gotten him into? This isn't a test meant for trainees…' The ANBU commanders had made a catastrophic miscalculation.
Itachi stood motionless, his Mangekyo Sharingan already spinning beneath his mask, his oppressive chakra pressing down on Orochimaru. He said nothing, but his intent was absolute.
"Such promising young leaves," Orochimaru mused, eyeing the two ANBU. "But can two of Konoha's finest truly stop me from claiming what is rightfully mine?" He started to weave hand seals.
"Now, Kakashi-taichou!" Itachi's voice was sharp, his body ready for action.
Kakashi's hand crackled to life with the chirping sound of a thousand birds. "Raikiri!"
He didn't charge Orochimaru. He slammed his hand into the ground, and a web of pure lightning shot outwards, creating an intense momentary distraction, both blinding and deafening.
In that single moment, Itachi was a blur. He appeared beside the kneeling Ryuu and unconscious Tayuya. He grabbed them, his other hand gripping Unit 007's shoulder.
"The mission is compromised beyond all acceptable parameters," Itachi stated, his voice ringing in Ryuu's ears, "Orochimaru has appeared. This is now an S-rank extraction under direct Hokage authority. Please follow this clone and exit immediately."
"Clone?"
Before Ryuu could even understand the situation, he saw another Itachi attack Orochimaru from behind, while also activating Amaterasu to cover the sanin in black flames.