The four emerald points of light linked into a straight line.
Every cell in Haori's body was wrung for all its worth, life force squeezed out and poured into the seed at the core of her heart under the power of the Eight Gates.
Her vision went bright.
It felt as if a door had been flung open in her mind.
Her heart turned into a spring in the mountains, gushing out deep blue chakra without end. It rushed along her chakra pathways like a river bursting its banks, flooding the channels that had felt hollow just a moment ago.
Glug.
Glug.
Translucent bubbles of chakra swelled up and spilled from her skin, drifting lightly into the air.
A strange, pale red cloak crawled over her bone armor like winding vines.
The stark white exoskeleton seemed to be filled with flesh and blood, becoming full and heavy, while the excess chakra pooled at her back, coalescing into a phantom flame-red tail.
Whoooosh.
The wind roared.
Her silver hair whipped and danced like snakes.
With the Gate of Pain thrown open and the Tailed Beast Cloak driven to full power at the same time, Haori revealed her complete battle form to the shinobi world for the very first time.
A faint blush shone beneath the bone armor. The life she was burning became a flood of chakra, feeding the absurd consumption of the Tailed Beast Cloak.
Power filled her limbs without end. Haori felt stronger than she had ever been.
The swollen chakra spun through her like a tornado. It felt ready to shatter the shackles of her flesh and annihilate everything around her.
Even her Byakugan struggled to keep up.
The cloak around her body surged like living flame, bubbling with chakra.
Moisture in the air gathered above, thick enough to promise an artificial rainstorm at any moment.
"Tailed Beast Cloak? You are a jinchuriki?"
Yotsuki Isao recognized the state in an instant.
He had personally joined the pursuit of the most heinous criminals in Kumogakure's history, the Gold and Silver Brothers, Kinkaku and Ginkaku.
He had watched, from beginning to end, as the Third Raikage fought the rampaging Eight-Tails one on one.
He had known both generations of Eight-Tails jinchuriki, from their predecessor to Killer B himself. He was even classmates and friends with the first.
Isao knew the standard toolkit of a jinchuriki's Tailed Beast Cloak better than some jinchuriki knew their own power.
Now he was finally certain.
The red chakra that had clashed with his Lightning Release earlier had been the power of a tailed beast.
So was the intel on "Beast" wrong?
Was the "monster boy" that all of Konoha cursed and hunted just a decoy, and this girl, who only looked human on the surface but was anything except normal, the true Nine-Tails jinchuriki?
Or was she something like Kinkaku and Ginkaku, a false jinchuriki created by devouring tailed beast flesh?
He watched the Tailed Beast Cloak swirl around her with absolute ease, her expression untouched by any loss of control despite the tailed beast chakra.
A veteran killer like Isao could already guess the truth.
To use tailed beast chakra so freely, she had to be either a pseudo-jinchuriki like the Gold and Silver Brothers, or one of those legendary perfect jinchuriki.
If she were a perfect jinchuriki, there was no way this fight would have dragged on so long.
She would have crushed him with borrowed might by now.
Which meant there was only one possibility left.
"A pseudo-jinchuriki who devoured tailed beast flesh?"
He phrased it as a question, but his tone was almost certain.
Now that he had seen through her background, Isao did not dare hold anything back.
The four extended fingers of his Hell Stab folded to three. Limitless lightning built at his fingertips, turning them into blades of pure destruction. Whatever secrets she carried, she would die under his Hell Stab.
Haori's brows lifted slightly.
Shield in her left hand, blade in her right, she tucked herself carefully behind her guard.
The very first time she revealed this power in front of an enemy, they immediately called out exactly what she was.
She could not help feeling a bit embarrassed.
This old man knew the techniques of both the Third and Fourth Raikage, and even casually mentioned pseudo-jinchuriki created by devouring tailed beast flesh.
He had to be one of the true core figures of Kumogakure.
What was someone of that level doing in Konoha, trading his life for hers?
The more she thought about it, the less sense it made.
At the same time, all she could do was curse her luck and hide even more tightly behind her shield.
The shield did more than boost her defense.
More importantly, it blocked his view.
Not everyone had x-ray vision like Haori. When your sight was blocked, your margin for error jumped, and your attacks could no longer be infinitely precise.
And Hell Stab was no omnipotent miracle.
Once it entered its charge and rush, even the Third Raikage himself could not just casually twist in midair.
She refused to believe Yotsuki Isao could do any better.
With Shikotsumyaku's regeneration, as long as she was not hit in a fatal spot, she could patch herself back up with chakra.
His life might not be worth much to him.
Hers was.
There was no need to trade lives with him.
All she had to do was stall and wait for Konoha's reinforcements.
If not for the simple fact that lightning users were too fast to outrun, Haori would already have cut her losses and bailed.
The air went utterly still.
Haori focused completely, burning every inch of Yotsuki Isao's silhouette into her mind.
The strongest spear condensed in his hand.
The Lightning Release seemed tamed by it, meekly gathering at his fingertips. It no longer looked like the savage element so infamous on the battlefield, but the chakra inside grew more and more terrifying.
Time crawled.
One blue and one red figure faced each other under the moon like statues.
Even their breathing seemed to pause.
Sweat slid down both their foreheads at nearly the same moment.
Roar.
The beasts encircling them let out low howls.
Neither Haori nor Isao spared them a glance.
To ordinary people, these tigers and wolves were deadly enough.
To the two of them, they were no different from the weeds on the forest floor.
If either of them walked through the herd while fighting, the beasts would be turned into mincemeat without even slowing their steps.
Suddenly,
a mass of chakra as intense as the noonday sun flared at the edge of Haori's vision.
Her three-hundred-and-sixty-degree field of view flicked instinctively in that direction.
Crap.
The instant her attention slipped, Haori cursed herself.
Her left-hand shield snapped up, covering her face and throat.
Szzzz.
Lightning exploded.
Yotsuki Isao's roar tore through the air.
His body turned into a bolt of lightning streaking straight toward her.
Every step he took gouged craters into the earth.
Hell Stab Three-Finger Thrust lunged at her skull, intent on ending the fight with a single blow.
In that moment,
his speed climbed another level.
Haori's vision blurred.
In the next heartbeat, the man who had been dozens of meters away was right in front of her, wrapped in thunder.
His burly black arm flexed, muscles like knotted cables.
The dazzling light at his fingertips swallowed up her world.
A stabbing pain pricked between her brows, warning her of danger.
Her head felt stuffed with lead.
Even her thoughts stuttered.
Boom.
The instant the lightning spear touched her shield, it punched through.
There was almost no resistance at all.
Shattered bone fragments sprayed outward.
They tore through the nearby beasts like bullets, punching holes through flesh wherever they flew.
The spear of lightning blew past the broken shield and slammed into the Tailed Beast Cloak over her armor, gouging into it with unstoppable force.
But a cloak spread over her whole body could not compare with a single, condensed point.
In less than half a second, the cloak around her chest gave way and split.
Chakra churned inside Haori like a storm.
The precious time the cloak had bought her finally allowed her brain to catch up.
She did not dare meet that unstoppable spear head on.
Haori twisted her body with desperate effort, slipping her head out of the line that would have taken it clean off.
The lightning spear swept past her cheek, severing several strands of silver hair.
Then it plowed onward, smashing through trunk after trunk before finally losing its force.
Boom.
Only then did the sound of his last step, stomping into the ground, roll across the battlefield from far behind.
His speed was already beyond the speed of sound by an unknown margin.
Drip.
Drip.
Blood slid down under the pull of gravity, painting her bone armor crimson.
Haori raised her head.
Half of her helmet was gone.
On her exposed cheek, delicate features had been ripped open, the flesh laid back to reveal the white teeth beneath.
She cut off her pain receptors.
Expressionless, she stared at the hulking figure in the distance, lightning gathering on his fingertips once again.
The strongest spear of the Third Raikage was truly terrifying.
At a speed beyond sound, there was no time to react at all.
Its penetrating power was so great that even her steel-hard bone armor might as well have been paper.
The spear had only grazed her helmet, and it had shattered completely.
The force of the impact had driven her own bone fragments into her face, tearing half of it to shreds.
If not for the subcutaneous bone membrane protecting her skull, those fragments would have punched straight through into her brain.
She would already be dead, killed by her own bones.
Tick.
Tick.
The blood that had been running down suddenly turned around.
It reversed midair, streaming back into the torn flesh.
The mangled meat writhed, squeezing the bone splinters out, while countless tiny tendrils of new tissue reached for each other and knit together.
Tsss.
Steam hissed from her face.
The ruin of her cheek regenerated into tender pink flesh before his eyes.
"Control over blood and accelerated regeneration, huh."
Watching from start to finish, Yotsuki Isao bared his teeth in a humorless grin and raised his hand again, pointing his fingers at the monster ahead.
Every exchange forced her to reveal something new.
But her ceiling was already exposed.
Too many abilities with too little raw power.
She could neither dodge nor block Hell Stab.
It was only a matter of time.
Isao had already issued her a death notice in his heart.
Haori knew it too.
She had a lot of tricks, but nothing that could truly contend with Hell Stab.
Her "Single Stroke: Rending the Heavens" was specialized for piercing armor. It had a chance of breaking through Lightning Release Chakra Mode, but trying to clash with Hell Stab head on would be suicide.
The vacuum cannon she had just created needed time to charge. It was not suited for someone whose talent lay in high-speed Lightning Release.
Water Release was too slow and conducted electricity besides.
Ordinary Wind Release did not have the cutting force to penetrate his armor.
Shikotsumyaku and the Tailed Beast Cloak did not have enough defensive power.
For the first time, Haori, with all her options, found herself at the end of her rope.
What rotten luck.
Any other elite jonin with average defenses would have been shredded the moment they stepped into the buffeting winds around her.
Instead, she just had to run into someone who had mastered Lightning Release Chakra Mode and Hell Stab both.
Raw power breaks all techniques.
If she could not intercept the lightning-fast thrust, she barely had time to realize what was happening, let alone counterattack. That was a fantasy.
The weakness in Hell Stab was already clear to her.
No technique that required chakra could hide from the Byakugan.
Hell Stab worked by gathering all chakra into his hand, forming that spear of Lightning Release.
With a fixed amount of chakra, the more he put into his hand, the less he had for the rest of his body.
The stronger the spear, the weaker the armor.
The so-called strongest spear and strongest shield was a contradiction for a reason.
Those two jutsu could not truly coexist.
But even a weakened Lightning Release armor was not something ordinary attacks could break.
Unless she deliberately refused to dodge, using Single Stroke: Rending the Heavens to trade her life for his, she would never find an opening.
Tch. What now?
Her mind raced, hunting desperately for a way out.
Her Byakugan's all-round vision finally settled on a small, childish body in the distance, wrapped in a vast mass of chakra.
The culprit who had distracted her earlier.
And now, possibly, her last lifeline.
Yotsuki Isao did not give her much time to think.
His left hand clamped over the wound on his chest.
Lightning flared around his right hand again, dazzling and deadly.
Whooosh.
The Tailed Beast Cloak surged once more.
The chakra provided by the Eight Gates was still flowing.
With the cloak to blunt Hell Stab's damage, her life was not in immediate danger.
Maybe she could afford one risky gambit.
Haori's eyes hardened.
She had already made up her mind.
On her skin,
the writhing bone plates of her exoskeleton broke apart and withdrew.
Wind pressed the grass flat to the ground.
A heavy explosion boomed through the clearing, shockwaves rippling outward.
Naruto clung to the tree, fingers digging anxiously into the bark as his gaze followed the clash of blue and red at the center of the battlefield.
In his eyes, the world had narrowed to the wolf-fox silhouette wrapped in crimson chakra.
He had returned.
Because of their injuries, Shikamaru and the others were moving slowly.
They could not break out of the training field quickly, and they had no idea where to find a teacher.
At the brink of despair,
Naruto had thought of a plan that even he could not be sure of.
Boom.
In the distance,
the razor-fast bolt of lightning pierced the crimson chakra yet again.
Haori tumbled out of the wolf-fox cloak, rolling to put distance between herself and the thrust.
Blood poured from who knew how many wounds, soaking her clothes.
The red defense around her flickered, growing dimmer and dimmer.
Everything in front of Naruto's eyes screamed the same truth.
His best friend in the academy, the one person there who did not hate him,
was about to die.
He hesitated no longer.
Naruto pushed himself up and jumped down from the tree.
If Haori died, there would be one less person in this world who did not despise him.
And that was something he could never accept.
Crunch.
Crunch.
Dry branches and dead leaves cracked under his sandals as he walked, gathering his courage with every step toward the blue figure standing in the center of the battlefield.
Yotsuki Isao panted lightly, one hand pressed to his chest.
The wound was worsening.
On top of that, every Hell Stab he unleashed drained his stamina and chakra further.
But the girl in front of him was in far worse shape.
Her cloak was torn to pieces.
Blood covered her from head to toe.
The Tailed Beast Cloak had thinned to almost nothing, barely a translucent shimmer over her skin.
Her chakra was nearly spent.
One more Hell Stab would be enough to finish her.
Lightning lit his fingertips once more.
Then,
an orange figure dashed between them, throwing his arms wide to shield the blood-soaked girl behind him.
Bright blue eyes glared up at Yotsuki Isao with blazing resolve.
He did not say a word.
He did not need to.
His outstretched arms said everything for him.
Haori, dripping blood and barely able to stand, looked at the whirlpool symbol on his back and felt a small, quiet warmth in her chest.
So it had not been for nothing.
All that effort suppressing her regeneration, forcing herself to bleed that much,
had finally paid off.
Naruto, or rather the Nine-Tails, had entered the field.
He was still young.
Even if the Nine-Tails broke loose through him, the power would not be at full strength.
Haori did not dare hope they could simply use the Nine-Tails to kill the enemy outright.
She just needed Naruto to split his attention.
If she could land a perfect Single Stroke: Rending the Heavens on the right tenketsu at that moment, it would be enough.
Once the wind detonated from within his body,
no matter how terrifying Lightning Release Chakra Mode was,
it could only sit there and wait to die.
That was the only way she could see to break this deadlock.
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