As Kakuzu and Jūzō Biwa retreated, they dashed directly toward Kumogakure's main gates.
Jūzō followed closely behind Kakuzu, resting his Executioner's Blade over his shoulder. Weaving through the panicked crowds on the street, he raised his voice, "Hey, don't we need to wait for that Kabuto guy?"
"No need," Kakuzu replied, keeping his eyes locked straight ahead. "He retreated before us and took a completely different route. His combat strength is far too weak; if he tagged along with us, the risks would skyrocket. By launching a direct breakthrough right through the main gates, we'll draw the enemy's attention right to us, clearing a smooth path for his covert escape."
"You strategists really love your complex web of calculations," Jūzō muttered, smacking his lips.
"Brainless fools like you are the true minority," Kakuzu scoffed.
"What did you just say, you old bastard? Say that again!" An angry spark flared in Jūzō's eyes. "We don't have our hands tied by restrictions right now. Believe it or not, I will literally beat you to death this instant!"
"Beat me to death? Do you even possess the competence?" Kakuzu sneered with utter disdain. "When this old man was conquering the shinobi world, your parents hadn't even conceived you yet."
"I absolutely loathe fossils who lord their age over everyone!" Jūzō cursed. In a flash of temper, he swung the massive Executioner's Blade downward, aiming a lethal strike directly at Kakuzu's back.
"You short-tempered idiot!" Sensing the oncoming wind from Jūzō's assault, Kakuzu accelerated violently, narrowly dodging the blade.
The instant his feet touched the ground, his fingers snapped into a precise sequence of hand signs.
"Wind Release: Wind Cutter Technique!" Kakuzu barked.
A razor-sharp blade formed of dense atmospheric pressure shot straight toward Jūzō.
True to his ferocious nature, Jūzō didn't even bother to dodge. He channeled chakra into the Executioner's Blade, which seemed to subtly hum with a bizarre, intangible pressure. With a brutal forward cleave, he met the incoming wind blade head-on, cleanly shattering the Wind Cutter Technique into harmless currents.
"Armament Haki?!" Kakuzu's eyes widened slightly as he stared at Jūzō's heavy blade.
"Surprised, aren't you?" Jūzō roared with laughter. Exploding with a sudden burst of speed, he lunged forward and launched a heavy kick directly at Kakuzu. As his leg extended, brilliant arcs of electricity erupted around his form; he had completely activated his Lightning Release chakra!
Kakuzu retreated via a rapid backstep, forcing a massive swarm of Earth Grudge Fear black threads to burst from the ground, twisting like serpents to ensnare Jūzō.
And just like that, the two comrades traded lethal blows all the way across the village, destroying everything in their path as they surged toward Kumogakure's main gates.
Because of the massive scale of the structural chaos within the village, Kumogakure's main gates had long since been locked down. Entry and exit were completely prohibited, and a massive garrison of shinobi stood in tight, defensive formations across the plaza.
"Who goes there?!" the commander of the gate defense force demanded, looking utterly baffled as he watched two figures rapidly approaching in a blur of high-intensity combat.
"One of them appears to be a Kumo operative, perhaps one of Raikage-sama's personal retainers! Look at that technique, it's the Lightning Release Chakra Mode!" a nearby sentry reported hastily.
"The other one is hunting him down, which means he must be the infiltrator! Captain, what are our orders?!" another shinobi asked urgently.
The Lightning Release Chakra Mode was a signature nintaijutsu form. Within the Cloud, it was universally understood that only the Raikage's lineage and his highly classified personal guard could ever hope to master it. Although rumors had circulated throughout the wider world that the technique had leaked following the death of the Third Raikage, the Cloud shinobi naturally assumed that the one cloaked in lightning was their own kin.
It was the only logical conclusion that fit their understanding.
"Then we intercept the other one!" the defense captain commanded, his voice hardening.
"Earth Release: Great Collapse!" Kakuzu completed a swift hand sign and barked his command.
His silhouette evaded the trajectory of Jūzō's Executioner's Blade by a mere hair's breadth. Immediately after, a devastating Earth Release technique erupted from beneath his feet like a localized mountain collapse. The ground splintered into a web of deep fissures resembling a shattered tortoise shell, generating violent, high-magnitude shockwaves.
This destructive seismic wave ripped across the stone tiles, surging directly toward the Kumogakure defense garrison.
"Lightning Release: Lightning Excavation!" The shinobi of the defense force unleashed the exact same countermeasure in perfect unison.
As elite operatives tasked with guarding the village's primary threshold, they were naturally trained in specific corporate techniques designed to neutralize sudden structural breaches. They had conducted countless defensive drills simulating scenarios where an invading force attempted to breach the gates via earth-shattering techniques. After all, jutsu capable of fracturing terrain, such as the Earth Moving Core, were fairly common in high-level warfare. It would be a catastrophic failure if they hadn't prepared a contingency for it.
Sure enough, just as the terraforming fissures were about to rip through the shinobi lines, five defense specialists slammed their palms firmly against the ground. An immense reservoir of Lightning Release chakra exploded outward.
In the elemental cycle of chakra, Lightning Release held a natural, absolute supremacy over Earth Release.
The descending surge of lightning functioned exactly like a plasma saw, slicing through the bedrock and precisely arresting the momentum of the earth tremors right at the elemental boundary.
Right at that exact microsecond, Jūzō delivered a brutal kick square into the back of Kakuzu, who was momentarily unable to maneuver while resetting his stance. The impact launched Kakuzu airborne, sending his body hurtling straight toward the defensive line of the Cloud shinobi.
The defense captain instantly drew a short sword from his waist. The blade was instantly enveloped in a crackling shroud of electrical current. Aiming directly for Kakuzu's exposed chest, he lunged forward with a lethal thrust.
"Die, infiltrator!!!" the captain roared.
Yet, just as the electrified point of the short sword was a fraction of an inch from piercing Kakuzu's heart, a cold, mocking smirk played upon the latter's lips.
In the very next instant, a massive torrent of lightning chakra exploded from Kakuzu's body. He had instantly activated his own version of the Lightning Release Chakra Mode! The captain's short sword struck the hyper-dense armor of lightning, grinding to a violent halt without piercing even a millimeter of flesh. It was completely deflected by the absolute defense!
"What?!" The captain's eyes widened in profound shock and utter disbelief.
How the hell does this guy know the Lightning Release Chakra Mode too?!
Furthermore, at this extreme proximity, he could finally view the attacker's attire clearly. Black cloaks with red clouds... This is the damn Yorozuya!
Though the thrust had failed to penetrate Kakuzu's flesh, it provided him with the perfect fulcrum. Kakuzu's hand snapped out like an iron vice, clamping firmly onto the razor-sharp edge of the blade. Disregarding the cutting edge entirely under the protection of his lightning armor, he used the captain's grip to perform a violent, 180-degree mid-air pivot. The rotational velocity was so blistering that the captain could not even register the movement.
"Drop Kick!" Kakuzu bellowed savagely.
The mid-air inversion had perfectly aligned his center of gravity. With his roar, his leg descended in a devastating, axe-like drop heel strike, smashing with pinpoint accuracy right onto the captain's shoulder.
Crunch!
Without encountering a shred of resistance, the captain's entire shoulder structure collapsed. Had anyone been able to see past the flesh, they would have witnessed his scapula being ground into fine powder.
"Arrgh!" the captain shrieked in agony.
The tremendous kinetic force did not dissipate there. As the shoulder shattered, the residual Lightning Release chakra exploded inward, triggering a secondary shockwave that tore through the captain's internal structure, detonating his cervical vertebrae and entire spinal column into fragments.
A clean, single-strike execution!
Jūzō, who had ostensibly been pursuing Kakuzu, whipped his arm forward. The Executioner's Blade spun through the air like a localized hurricane, slicing horizontally across the plaza. This time, its trajectory was no longer locked onto Kakuzu, but targeted directly at the clustered defense shinobi.
The moment the heavy blade left his grip, Jūzō's feet planted firmly on the ground. Interlocking his fingers into a hand sign, he drew a massive breath, causing his chest cavity to expand to its physical limit.
"Wind Release: Great Breakthrough!!!" Jūzō roared.
As his voice echoed, a violent gale erupted from his mouth, transforming instantly into an oppressive hurricane that swept across the field.
The tactical synergy between Kakuzu and Jūzō was flawless. The moment the Great Breakthrough manifested, several Earth Grudge Fear black threads ripped through Kakuzu's cloak, manifesting two monstrous mask entities over his shoulders.
One of the masked heads unhinged its jaw and spewed a massive torrent of fluid. Any seasoned Fire Release user would recognize it instantly; this was specialized fuel refined purely from fire-natured chakra! It was the exact primer used to amplify devastating techniques like the Flame Bullet or Fire Release: Big Flame Bullet.
Simultaneously, the second masked head opened its jaws to unleash a concentrated, high-velocity stream of flame.
Fire Release: Dragon Fire Technique!
Wind, fire, and highly volatile oil synchronized in a fraction of a second, triggering a catastrophic chain reaction. A literal ocean of fire materialized instantly, completely engulfing the defensive shinobi before they could formulate a coherent response to the shifting elements.
Everything simply transpired too fast. The baseline coordination between Jūzō and Kakuzu was terrifyingly instinctual. From the exact microsecond the defense captain had thrust his blade at Kakuzu to the moment the raging inferno consumed the plaza, a total of barely three to five seconds had elapsed.
It was an absolute, flawless blitzkrieg.
"Move!" Kakuzu barked, plunging headfirst into the wall of flames without a second look.
Jūzō didn't hesitate for a single heartbeat, diving right in after him. It was as though their previous life-and-death struggle on the road to the gates had never even occurred.
For this specific pair of partners, such volatile interactions were completely routine. They would fly into a murderous rage over a minor dispute, trade lethal blows, and then bizarrely return to perfect harmony as if nothing had happened. To outsiders, they looked like unhinged psychopaths, but to them, it was just another day on the job.
Over the years, the rapid growth of their individual combat prowess and their seamless tactical synergy was heavily attributed to these frequent, unbridled deathmatches against one another.
Sprinting through the inferno, Jūzō's hand snapped out, retrieving the Executioner's Blade as it baked within the flames. Since both he and Kakuzu were currently shrouded in the protective layer of the Lightning Release Chakra Mode, the environment was merely uncomfortably hot and stifling rather than lethal; they faced no actual risk of sustaining burn injuries.
With a singular, brutal cleave, Jūzō severed the massive iron locking bar securing the main gates.
As Jūzō threw the heavy doors open, a satisfied grin began to surface on Kakuzu's face.
However, in that exact microsecond, the expressions of both men warped in unison!
"Did you think you could escape, you little rats?!" a sharp, commanding female voice echoed through the roar of the flames.
Kakuzu and Jūzō whipped their heads toward the source of the sound. Through the wall of fire, a silhouette appeared, moving at a speed so extreme it defied visual tracking, blitzing directly toward them.
The acceleration was truly monstrous. Even with their Lightning Release Chakra Mode fully activated, which should have granted them the absolute pinnacle of velocity, both Yorozuya operatives found themselves completely unable to formulate a timely evasion. Before Jūzō could even raise the Executioner's Blade to form a defensive guard, a suffocating, lethal intent had already slammed into his face.
"Get out of the way!" Kakuzu roared. He delivered a brutal kick straight into Jūzō's midsection, forcefully throwing his partner out of the attack path.
This violent intervention was the only reason Jūzō survived the encounter unscathed. A massive claw-like strike, resembling the swipe of an apex predator, tore through the exact coordinate his torso had occupied a millisecond prior.
In the next breath, Kakuzu was sent flying backward by the sheer kinetic impact. His Yorozuya cloak exploded into shreds, and his Lightning Release armor failed to absorb the full intensity of the blow. A gruesome, horrifying claw wound ruptured across his torso, tearing from his abdomen all the way up to his chest.
Five deep, ragged lacerations oozed blood, looking as though he had been savaged by a colossal wild beast.
Only now did the speed of the assailant finally normalize. Jūzō let out a slow, mental breath of relief. Damn, that's more like it. That insane speed from before must have been a momentary burst of maximum physical output.
If she could sustain that level of velocity as her default movement standard, he and Kakuzu would be in severe trouble.
As the dust settled, he finally identified the identity of their attacker.
It was a young woman with long, pale blonde hair tied back into a high ponytail that cascaded down her back. She wore the standard armor of the Kumogakure Anbu, though her face was completely bare of any mask, exposing her features to the world. She possessed an undeniably striking beauty, yet she carried a distinct, imperious aura of a sovereign ruler.
Furthermore, a malevolent, ghostly blue chakra burned intensely across her entire form, radiating a deeply ominous and savage pressure.
The nails on her five fingers were slowly retracting, returning to their natural length. There was absolutely no doubt, the 'talons' that had just ripped Kakuzu's chest open belonged to her.
"Nii Yugito!" Jūzō recognized her instantly.
She was one of Kumogakure's ultimate strategic assets, the Perfect Jinchūriki of the Two-Tails, Nii Yugito! Despite her youth, her name commanded immense terror across the shinobi nations. After all, individuals who could perfectly master and command the full, unbridled might of a Tailed Beast like Matatabi were a rare breed.
"Only one left standing?" Yugito remarked, her voice laced with an arrogant edge as she appraised them. "Judging by your cloaks, you must be from the Yorozuya. To think that an organization like yours would possess something resembling comradery. Your partner chose to save your life right before his demise. I must admit, I'm slightly surprised."
Her demeanor was undeniably haughty, not necessarily in her day-to-day life, but certainly when she commanded the battlefield. It was a natural consequence of her circumstances. She was a young woman under twenty who possessed immense personal power and absolute control over a Tailed Beast. Anyone in her position would naturally harbor a degree of supreme confidence.
"Right before his demise?" Jūzō let out a low chuckle, his lips curling upward. "Hey, lady... haven't you misunderstood something here?"
The moment the words left Jūzō's mouth, Kakuzu, whose torso had been thoroughly ripped open, slowly and deliberately pushed himself up from the ground. He dusted off his shredded clothes, his voice dripping with profound annoyance.
"That actually hurt... you arrogant brat."