On one side of the cavern, Saya's scythe gleamed under the dim light as she closed the gap with Tatsuma.
He shifted behind a veil of violet shimmer, the remaining and constantly generating new rinkaichū creeping unseen through the air, each cloud a certain silent death sentence if it touched her.
The poison still made him dangerous, even with his reserves partly drained already due to having to constantly feed them so much.
Saya knew it. She didn't rush headlong, not yet.
Her Ketsuryūgan glowed crimson, latching onto his brain chakra flow, through his eyes, tugging threads of his mind with each flicker.
Genjutsu was her first weapon, her favorite.
A single slip, a single heartbeat of distraction, and he was hers.
Tatsuma felt the pressure, jaw clenching.
He was trained to resist, Root conditioning hammering his mind into steel, but it wasn't enough. Even steel bends under constant strikes.
Meanwhile, there was no Junsaku to wake him up now.
However, her scythe danced, weaving arcs that never committed fully, baiting him.
Then she cut her own arm, blood spilling bright, and instantly twisted into form.
"Blood Dome."
Crimson fluid surged outward, encasing her in a semi-transparent barrier.
Tatsuma's violet shimmer touched it, but the dome thickened instantly, resisting corrosion, mending itself with her chakra.
She grinned through the haze.
"Now you can't keep me out."
She lunged.
Her scythe clashed against his sleeve, missing by inches as he shifted back, bugs dispersing across the floor.
But she wasn't chasing blindly.
Her Ketsuryūgan dug deeper, tugging, whispering, fraying his thoughts.
His hand twitched, not of his own will, and slightly injuring himself, drawing some blood outside, and in that instant, she struck.
"Coagulation Crush."
For a moment, where that small injury happened, his blood vessels locked like chains, breath hitching, arms jerking stiff.
He forced chakra outward, burning the effect away, but the shock brought her another step closer.
He tried to lower his gaze as if he were dealing with Sharingan, for reference, and not some unknown dojutsu.
He finally realized that she might need eyesight to work better, just like Sharingan, and that it was another unidentified, similar dojutsu generating that strange, unique genjutsu.
However, by this point, she snapped her fingers.
"Blood Shuriken Jutsu."
From her palm, hardened crimson discs spun through the haze.
They weren't steel; they bent unnaturally, tracing his chakra, striking from angles no normal weapon could.
Tatsuma's insects moved to intercept, but the chakra-infused blood tore through them, exploding on impact.
Purple and red haze collided in bursts of light and mist.
Tatsuma grimaced, his calm cracking.
He had never fought anything like this.
The Aburame were masters of poison, plague, and attrition, but Saya's blood turned every rule inside out.
Her own life force was a weapon, her own veins the forge.
His chakra pulsed again, a surge of bugs aiming to suffocate her dome, eat it away.
She got even closer and responded with a roar, slicing her palm wider.
"Crimson Spears!
Dozens of jagged lances shot outward from her dome, tearing through the haze, some pinning his cloak to the cavern wall.
He twisted free, insects bursting to cover his retreat, but the Ketsuryūgan was waiting.
Her eyes accidentally burned crimson, and suddenly, his perception fractured again, stronger this time, as she was getting closer.
He staggered. His insects swarmed in the wrong direction, crashing against ice instead of flesh.
Saya slipped through the gap, her scythe gleaming in one hand, her blood boiling in the other.
She smirked. "You're slower when I'm in your head, bug-man."
Tatsuma bit his tongue, blood running down his chin.
The pain cleared his vision for a heartbeat, just enough to parry a spear with his sleeve, his insects eating at the blood's edge.
But the cracks were spreading.
The Root discipline that had carried him this far was faltering under her constant pressure.
She pressed harder. "Sanguine Marionette."
A splash of her blood, flung against his arm, seeped in through a cut, from the previous blood spears, he hadn't even noticed.
His limbs jerked.
Tatsuma's breath rasped, his body trembling under the constant tug of the Ketsuryūgan.
Now she didn't even need direct eye contact for it to work perfectly.
For the first time, true desperation flickered in his eyes.
His hand slid across his sleeve, brushing the special compartment he never revealed unless there was no other choice.
Kidaichū.
The living plague of the Aburame, microscopic parasites that didn't just poison flesh, but devoured chakra itself.
A true trump card, forbidden to show casually, because once unleashed, they would kill friend and foe alike.
Saya's eyes narrowed.
Even through the haze, she saw it, his chakra threads winding in a way that screamed of something far more dangerous than the violet mist, like he was about to feed some beast.
Her pulse spiked.
If he released those things in this cavern, it wouldn't just be her in danger.
Even Kimimaro and the others would be caught.
Her Ketsuryūgan flared, bleeding crimson light into his mind.
She wrenched his focus sideways in an instant, twisting perception, collapsing his hand against the wall instead of the trigger point.
Tatsuma froze, his pupils flickering with resistance, but the moment was gone.
His chance to summon the swarm had slipped through his fingers, stolen by her will.
Instead, for an instant, his own hand rose against him, pulling his sleeve wide, opening his guard.
He was already too late, and she got too close.
Saya laughed low, savage, as her scythe carved across the opening.
The blade tore through his side, blood spraying.
He staggered back, clutching the wound, his swarm scattering wildly as his chakra control faltered.
She didn't let up. "Crimson Clone Technique."
From the blood dripping onto the stone, figures rose, three, four, all shaped from her own essence.
They darted at him, one exploding in a spray that disoriented his insects, another reforming behind his back.
He cut through them with a desperate wave of kunai, but every movement cost him more blood, more focus.
The Ketsuryūgan never let him breathe.
Every time he steadied, her genjutsu twisted again, forcing him to see doubles, dragging his reactions a beat too late.
He tried one last surge, the violet shimmer flaring bright, rinkaichū rushing in dense waves to corrode everything at once.
Saya responded with a hiss, her teeth bared, and exhaled a mist of her own.
"Crimson Mist."
Blood vapor flooded the chamber around them, mixing with the poison in a suffocating fog.
Vision blurred, senses distorted.
Tatsuma's bugs faltered, their link to him flickering.
His breath caught, lungs rebelling.
Through the haze, Saya emerged, her eyes burning red, scythe poised. "Checkmate."
The blade fell, cutting through his chest as the last of her genjutsu shackled his mind.
His insects scattered without command, the violet shimmer collapsing into silence.
Tatsuma's body hit the ground, blood pooling beneath him.
Her leftover blood was eerily automatically starting to devour and entrap him for the future ritual sealing ceremony.
His lips moved once, a silent curse, before the Ketsuryūgan's hold snapped him into darkness.
Saya exhaled hard, blood still dripping from her arm, her dome dissipating as her clones melted into puddles.
She grinned through the exhaustion, her breath ragged but victorious.
"Konoha or not… bugs die like the rest."
Until his last breath, Tatsuma Aburame wondered why Junsaku never came to his aid against that bizarre dojutsu's genjutsu.
It was nothing like the Sharingan he had studied, no need for direct eye contact, eventually, as he realised, no predictable trigger.
He finally understood it too late.
It could also draw its power through blood itself, binding life to life, the more her blood and his mixed together, powering the bloody illusions.
It was the most terrifying thing he had ever witnessed.
The only reason Tatsuma lasted as long as he did against the genjutsu was the thin layer of Kikaichū clustered near his brain, delivering faint jolts that barely managed to keep him conscious from time to time.
He was led by her unpredictable tempo and strange, bloody techniques from the beginning.
What he didn't know was that Junsaku had his own problems to deal with the entire time.
On the other side, Kimimaro's elongated, but quite thin whip snapped through the cavern air, circling relentlessly around Junsaku as the Yamanaka fired bolt after bolt from his spectral crossbow that Kimimaro skillfully dodged thanks to his sensory ability.
He no longer needed to tear his own spine out for such weapons; his mastery had grown past that.
Kimimaro moved with unsettling precision, the whip bending like a serpent, his other arm reshaped into a very sharp, pointy lance.
Then, a pulse flared beneath his feet.
The stone he stepped on thrummed with foreign chakra.
Kimimaro's senses immediately sharpened.
A planted Soul-Binding programmed trap, a very large previously planted arrow beam energy as a passive 'mine' beneath the rock itself - now hitting him directly as he just stepped on it.