The bamboo grove was a world of shadows and shifting green light. Ryusei moved through it like a ghost, his steps—borrowed from the dead Hiro—making no sound on the damp earth. Ahead, the special jonin, Rei, stood in a small clearing. His back was turned, his attention focused on a scroll he was unsealing. Ryusei could feel the man's chakra, a low, steady hum of controlled power. It was different from the chunin's—tighter, denser, like a coiled spring.
Ryusei considered a direct approach. Maybe a clever quip to distract him before the killing blow. He opened his borrowed mouth.
A blur of painted wood and whirring mechanisms shot from the jonin's side. A puppet. It moved with unnerving silence, its jointed limbs a creaking extension of its master's will. It launched itself at Ryusei like a spear, clawed hands outstretched.
Ryusei's body reacted before his mind fully processed the threat. He threw himself to the side in a graceless, frantic twist. The puppet's claws tore through the sleeve of Hiro's tunic, missing flesh by a hair's breadth. Ryusei landed in a crouch several feet away, his borrowed heart hammering against his ribs. He looked up, a kunai already in his hand.
The puppet hovered between them, suspended on invisible chakra strings. Its painted face, with its glowing red eye-slits, was a mockery of life.
Rei turned slowly. His expression was calm, but his dark eyes were sharp, dissecting.
Rei: You're not Hiro.
It wasn't a question. Ryusei clicked his tongue in irritation. Of course. The genjutsu, Echoes of the Phantom Veil, was a masterpiece of mental manipulation. But puppets had no minds to manipulate. They were just wood, metal, and chakra. A glaring, mechanical blind spot in his kit.
Rei gave a slight, almost imperceptible flick of his wrist. A second puppet unfolded from a storage scroll on his back with a series of sharp clicks. This one was larger, bulkier, with serrated blades where its fingers should be.
Rei: I brought spares. A wise precaution, it seems.
Ryusei felt a surge of frustration, but beneath it, a colder, sharper excitement. The tricks, the illusions, the subtlety… maybe it was time for something more direct. More honest.
Ryusei: Damn machines.
He focused inward, reaching past the flowing river of chakra he'd been using. He touched the deeper, wilder well. The youki. The intrinsic power of the fox. It responded eagerly, a warm, prickling surge that raced through his veins.
The transformation was not a puff of smoke. It was a melting, a reweaving. The borrowed form of Hiro sloughed away like old skin. Brown hair bled into shimmering silver, growing longer, messier. His eyes sharpened, the pupils elongating into vertical slits of piercing, glowing blue. His canines lengthened into subtle, sharp points. He rolled his shoulders, the new-old form feeling infinitely more natural.
Ryusei: The name's Ryusei. Chunin of Konoha. Not that the particulars matter to a dead man.
Rei's eyes narrowed, taking in the changed form. The fangs, the eyes, the unnatural aura. His expression hardened into desert granite.
Rei: You killed my team.
His fingers twitched, almost imperceptibly. The chakra strings hummed.
Ryusei gave a slow, fanged smile.
Ryusei: Yeah. Don't worry. You'll be seeing them soon.
The first puppet struck. It wasn't a lumbering charge. It was a violent, precise explosion of motion. Panels on its chest slid open, and a barrage of kunai and needle-thin senbon, their tips glistening a sickly green, whistled through the air towards Ryusei.
Ryusei didn't retreat. He stepped into the storm.
Ryusei: Bring it!
He concentrated wind-natured chakra onto his own kunai. The air around the blade compressed, whined, and sharpened until it hummed like a high-tension wire. He swung, not at the projectiles, but in a wide, horizontal arc in front of him.
A crescent of visible, distorted air—a Vacuum Blade—ripped forward. It met the cloud of metal and shredded it. Kunai were sheared in half; senbon were reduced to glittering dust. The shrapnel rained down harmlessly around him with a sound like falling hail.
Ryusei: Is that all?
Rei's response was another twitch of his fingers. The puppet's jaw unhinged with a click. Instead of weapons, a cloud of viscous, purple gas vomited forth, rolling towards Ryusei in a choking, acrid wave. The smell hit him even at a distance—cloying sweet, laced with the bite of poison.
Time to change the tempo.
Ryusei's hand flew through seals with practiced speed he'd never truly possessed until today.
Ryusei: Shadow Clone Technique!
A puff of smoke, and an identical copy of his silver-haired, fanged form stood beside him. They shared a glance, a perfect, wordless understanding.
Ryusei (to the clone): Cover me!
The clone nodded, its own hands already weaving a different sequence—Serpent, Ram, Monkey, Boar, Tiger.
Clone: Fire Release: Great Fireball Technique!
A massive orb of roiling orange flame erupted from the clone's mouth, roaring across the clearing with a heat that made the bamboo leaves curl and blacken.
Ryusei didn't wait. As the fireball flew, his own seals followed—Tiger, Dog, Boar, Snake.
Ryusei: Wind Release: Great Breakthrough!
He didn't aim at Rei. He aimed at the fireball. The hurricane-force gale from his palms hit the sphere of flame and fanned it. The fireball didn't just grow; it transformed. It became a tidal wave of fire, a rolling, twisting inferno that swallowed the clearing. The poison gas ignited in a secondary, violet flash. The heat was immense, a physical wall that blasted against Ryusei's face, forcing him to squint. Bamboo stalks not directly in the path crackled and burst into flame, painting the world in violent orange and black.
Through the curtain of fire and roar of combustion, Rei's voice came, eerily calm.
Rei: Impressive combination.
But he was already moving. Both hands now danced, fingers a blur. Three more storage scrolls unfurled from his person with snaps of cloth. From them, three new puppets materialized.
Two of them shot forward, their mouths opening to reveal not weapons, but nozzles. They unleashed torrents of pressurized water, not as a jutsu, but as a simple, brutal physical force. The twin jets slammed into the heart of the advancing firestorm. The conflict was elemental and deafening—a hissing, screaming battle of fire and water that filled the air with scalding steam.
The third puppet was different. Its panels shifted and reconfigured with a series of mechanical clunks, interlocking to form a large, rectangular shield. It planted itself in front of Rei just as the weakened but still-formidable wall of flame reached him. The fire washed over the shield with a sound like a forge, licking at its edges but finding no purchase.
The steam cleared, revealing a scorched, smoldering clearing. The air was thick and hot, heavy with the smell of wet ash and burnt wood. The two water-spewing puppets retracted, their tanks visibly depleted. The shield-puppet remained, a scorched but functional bulwark.
Ryusei wiped sweat and condensation from his forehead, his grin widening.
Ryusei: So you blocked it. Not bad for a sand rat.
Rei didn't rise to the bait. His puppets retracted around him, forming a defensive half-circle. His eyes, cold and analytical, scanned Ryusei up and down.
Rei: You are not an ordinary chunin. Your chakra nature… and that other energy. What are you?
Ryusei's grin turned predatory.
Ryusei: What gave it away? The ears? The tail?
As if on cue, the shield-puppet disassembled its defensive form and reverted to an offensive configuration, blades snapping out from its arms. It charged, not with the darting speed of the first, but with the heavy, grinding determination of a battering ram.
Ryusei didn't dodge this time. He focused the youki, not throughout his body, but into his right fist. The energy wasn't warm anymore. It was cold, sharp, and hungry. It coated his knuckles in a barely-visible, dark shimmer.
The puppet swung a blade-laden arm in a decapitating arc. Ryusei stepped inside the swing.
Shunshin no Jutsu.
He vanished from its front and reappeared above it, already in a downward punch. His youki-infused fist connected with the puppet's central chassis.
The sound was not of breaking wood. It was a deep, resonant CRACK, like a mountain splitting. The puppet didn't just break; it shattered. Wood exploded outward in a cloud of splinters. The metal blades warped and melted as if touched by acid. The corrosive youki ate through the remnants, reducing the intricate machinery to a smoking, dissolving pile of slag in seconds.
Rei staggered back a half-step, a flicker of something raw—shock, fear—finally breaking through his stoic mask. The chakra strings connected to the puppet snapped and whipped back uselessly.
Rei: What… what is that energy? I can't sense its nature!
Ryusei landed lightly, shaking fragments of wood from his hand. The youki was a mystery to chakra sensors. A weapon from an entirely different arsenal.
Ryusei: Wouldn't you like to know?
But the other two puppets were already in motion. They lunged in a pincer movement. Their mouths opened, not for water, but for a synchronized blast of high-pressure liquid—this time, Ryusei caught the sharp, metallic scent of mercury or some other heavy fluid, designed to weigh a target down.
Ryusei: Too predictable!
He flickered left, the twin streams slamming into the space he'd occupied, turning the ground into a treacherous, silvery mire. One of the puppets followed up, its finger joints parting to release a fan of poisoned senbon.
Ryusei twisted in mid-air, his kunai a blur as he parried several with sharp pings of metal on metal. But one needle, impossibly fast, grazed his forearm. A line of fire raced up his nerve. Poison. Potent and fast-acting.
Ryusei: Tch. Cheap shot.
He didn't panic. He pushed a pulse of youki to the site of the wound. The foreign toxin met the primordial fox energy and was simply… unraveled. The burning sensation ceased, the tiny wound sizzling briefly before closing.
Rei's puppets pressed the attack, now working in terrifying unison. One would fire a weighted net from its chest, the other would follow with a blade-strike the moment Ryusei was occupied. They were extensions of a single, brilliant mind.
Ryusei: Alright. Let's even the odds.
Another set of seals. Another puff of smoke. A second clone, dripping wet from the earlier steam, appeared beside him.
The clone didn't need instructions. It charged the net-launching puppet, its own kunai gleaming with wind chakra. It slashed at the puppet's knee joint, carving a deep gouge in the hardened wood. The puppet retracted, but as it did, it fired a point-blank jet of the heavy fluid directly into the clone's chest. The force was like being hit by a waterfall. The clone was thrown back, skidding through the mud.
Ryusei saw the opening. As the second puppet turned its blades toward the stunned clone, Ryusei and his original clone moved as one.
They didn't speak. They knew.
The original clone, shaking off the fluid, formed the fire seals again. Ryusei formed the wind. Another Fireball, another Great Breakthrough. The combination was less majestic this time, more focused—a spiraling lance of fire and air that speared towards the blade-puppet.
It tried to dodge, but its leg, damaged from the earlier combo, moved sluggishly. The flaming lance caught its shoulder. There was a screech of superheated metal and a burst of flame. The puppet's arm went limp, its internal mechanisms grinding to a halt, the wood blackened and smoking.
Rei let out a sharp, hissed breath. A crack in the facade.
Rei: Persistent little fox.
The word hung in the air. Ryusei's borrowed ears, now pointed and sensitive, twitched under his silver hair.
Ryusei: Fox? So you did notice.
Enraged or desperate, Rei sent the damaged puppet in a final, lurching charge, its one good arm extended to grab Ryusei in a crushing embrace.
Ryusei didn't sidestep. He met it. His youki-infused hands shot out and closed around the puppet's wrist. Where they touched, the wood didn't just break; it decayed. It turned brittle and black, crumbling like rotten timber. With a savage twist, Ryusei ripped the arm clean off at the shoulder, the corrosion spreading up the limb even as it separated.
Ryusei: Junk.
He tossed the disintegrating limb aside. The clone, having recovered, finished the net-puppet with a brutal efficiency—a body flicker to its blind spot, a kunai driven up through its jaw and into its "brain" compartment. It shuddered once and collapsed.
The clone looked at Ryusei, gave a curt nod, and dissolved into smoke. The experience of the kill—the resistance of the wood, the final shudder—flowed into Ryusei, filed away.
Rei was alone now. He took a step back, his forehead gleaming with sweat. Four puppets, his tools, his advantage, were scrap and ash around him.
Rei: You're no Konoha shinobi. What village claims you?
Ryusei laughed, a low, rumbling sound.
Ryusei: Village? I'm a solo act. Freelance problem-solver.
Rei's last intact puppet, the original water-blower, surged forward. It was a futile gesture, but one of principle. It unleashed a wide, sweeping arc of water, trying to blind Ryusei as it closed for a final slash.
Ryusei stepped through the spray. He didn't bother with fancy jutsu. A single, youki-charged palm strike to the puppet's chest. The strike didn't leave a dent; it left a crater. The puppet's core shattered, internal reservoirs rupturing and soaking Ryusei in a final, cold shower. It fell apart at his feet, a heap of dead wood.
Ryusei shook the water from his hair, his glowing blue eyes fixed on Rei.
Ryusei: Last toy broken. Now it's just you and me.
Rei drew his personal kunai. The blade was simple, unadorned, but it gleamed with a deadly promise. His stance shifted into something fluid and grounded, all economy of motion.
Rei: You think puppets are all a Suna jonin carries?
It was time to end the charade. Ryusei's tail, which had remained unseen and unused until now, lashed out from behind him. It wasn't a physical appendage of flesh and bone in this form; it was a construct of pure, solidified youki, invisible to chakra sight. It shot forward like a spear of condensed will, aimed directly for Rei's heart.
The jonin's reflexes were inhuman. He couldn't see the attack, but some deep, battle-honed instinct screamed at him. His kunai came up in a desperate, instinctive parry just as the tail-tip was about to strike.
CLANG!
The sound was like a blacksmith's hammer hitting an anvil. The force of the impact was colossal, transmitted through the invisible tail. Rei's kunai was knocked from his hand, his arm twisting at a sickening angle with a loud, wet SNAP. The force lifted him off his feet and sent him hurtling backward. He crashed through several bamboo stalks, which bowed and splintered before he finally slammed into the base of a thick tree, the air driven from his lungs in a pained gasp.
Ryusei retracted his tail, a flicker of respect cutting through his predatory focus. So this is the gap, he thought. Chunin react to what they see. A jonin reacts to what they feel coming.
Rei pushed himself up with his good arm. His right arm hung uselessly at his side, the bone clearly broken. His face was a mask of agony, but his eyes still burned with defiance.
Rei: Not… done yet…
With his left hand, he formed a single, clumsy seal.
Rei: Wind Release: Great Breakthrough!
It was a weaker version of Ryusei's own technique, but at point-blank range and fueled by desperation, it was still formidable. A torrent of wind erupted from his palm, not aimed to kill, but to create space, to blow Ryusei back and give him a moment to breathe.
The gale ripped leaves from trees and tore up clods of earth. Ryusei planted his feet, letting the youki anchor him to the ground like a mountain root. The wind roared around him, whipping his silver hair into a frenzy, but he didn't move an inch.
As the wind died, Rei charged through its aftermath, his good hand now holding a backup kunai. The strike was simple, direct, and born of decades of muscle memory—a thrust aimed for Ryusei's throat. Fast. Precise. Deadly.
Ryusei parried it with his own blade, the spark bright in the dim clearing. He immediately countered, driving his knee up into Rei's gut. The jonin blocked with his broken arm, using it as a shield. The sound of the impact was dull and terrible. Rei's face went white, but he didn't cry out.
Ryusei: Give it up. You're finished.
Ryusei pressed the attack, their kunais locked.
Rei: Never.
With a surge of adrenaline, the jonin twisted, breaking the lock and aiming a low sweep at Ryusei's legs. Ryusei jumped, and as he did, his tail whipped out again, invisible and silent. It cracked against Rei's ribs.
CRUNCH.
The sound was horribly distinct. Rei staggered, a spray of blood bursting from his lips.
Rei: What… what is hitting me?!
Ryusei flickered behind him.
Ryusei: A secret.
An elbow slammed into Rei's back. The jonin spun, somehow managing to block the follow-up kunai strike, but the sheer force sent him skidding backwards through the mud.
Rei was breathing in ragged, wet gasps now. Blood stained his teeth.
Rei: You're… enjoying this.
Ryusei tilted his head, his blue eyes glowing like cold stars.
Ryusei: A bit. But it's just business. You invaded my territory.
Rei coughed, a bubble of blood forming on his lips.
Rei: Your territory? This is the Land of Rice. Konoha's claim.
Ryusei's smile was all sharp edges.
With a final, monumental effort, Rei gathered chakra in his left palm, aiming for a close-range, concussive blast.
Ryusei didn't let him finish. The tail stabbed out again, this time piercing Rei's thigh and pinning him to the ground. The youki at the tip wasn't just sharp; it was corrosive. It seared the wound shut even as it made it, the flesh around it blackening and smoking.
Rei screamed, a raw, animal sound of pain. He dropped to his knees, the chakra in his palm dissipating.
Ryusei retracted the tail, watching the jonin clutch at the smoldering hole in his leg.
Ryusei: See? Jonin or genin… in the end, you all bleed the same.
Rei glared up, his face pale, his body broken, but his spirit not yet extinguished.
Rei: Then finish it.
Ryusei took a step closer, his tail swaying gently behind him like a serpent ready to strike.
Ryusei: Nah. Let's drag this out a little longer. I want to hear you beg.
With a guttural roar of pure hatred, Rei used the last of his strength to surge upwards, his kunai slashing in a wild, desperate arc.
Ryusei flowed around it like water. A chakra-enhanced punch to Rei's good shoulder dislocated it with a sickening pop. The jonin collapsed again, this time face-first into the mud.
Rei: Why… are you… fighting?
His voice was a broken whisper.
Ryusei looked down at him, the adrenaline cooling, leaving behind only the stark reality of the hunt.
Ryusei: Same reason you are. Survival.
One last, almost lazy flick of his tail. It whipped across Rei's back, opening a shallow, burning gash. The jonin didn't even scream this time. He just shuddered and went still, his breathing shallow and labored.
He was defeated.
The tail disappeared from view, dissolving back into pure energy. Ryusei stood over the broken form of the Suna jonin. The clearing was silent save for the crackle of dying embers and Rei's ragged breath. The fight was over.
The decision was simple. The jonin was next.