Long black hair. Golden eyes with purple pupils that extended toward the nose. Pale skin. Blue tomoe earrings. The image was too recognizable to mistake.
Yuji looked at Orochimaru standing in his room and felt no particular alarm register on his face.
"Shouldn't you be calling for reinforcements?" Orochimaru's smile carried its characteristic edge of sinister amusement, reading the calm expression across from him.
"No need to rush." Yuji climbed out of bed and stretched his arms above his head with the unhurried ease of someone waking from a nap. "To have a senior of your caliber personally handle this, honestly, I'm a little flattered."
He tilted his head. "It seems Konoha wants to accelerate the war with Sunagakure."
"Cunning little creature," Orochimaru said, licking his lips. "Accusing Konoha of instigating war, when it's the Sand Village stirring everything up?"
"This is the second time Konoha has tried to quietly eliminate me." Yuji began cycling chakra through his body as he spoke, the motion subtle. "I feel honored, and yet troubled. The style is familiar. This wasn't the Third Hokage's idea, was it. Danzo again."
"Who knows?" Orochimaru laughed softly, the sound carrying no real answer.
"You've been exposed, Senior. Shouldn't you be running? This is Sunagakure. If you wait much longer, you won't have the option."
The smile left Orochimaru's face.
His hands moved through seals at a speed that outdistanced any conventional response. A crushing mental pressure detonated outward, killing intent fused with genjutsu, the Narakumi technique hitting before any counter-measure could be formed.
Those with insufficient willpower would collapse instantly, their minds flooded with vivid imagery of their own death. The hand seal formation Yuji had started never completed.
Simultaneously, Orochimaru extended one hand. Snakes poured from his sleeve, thick and fast, wrapping around Yuji's suddenly rigid body.
The fangs landed.
And stopped.
Where the bites struck, a layer of hard crystalline material had formed across the skin, deep red, scale-like, the Blood Release manifesting as armor that the venomous fangs couldn't penetrate.
Orochimaru's eyes narrowed slightly.
A second later, what appeared to be Yuji smiled and raised one finger.
Blood droplets erupted outward in a dense rain, punching through the wall and driving through Orochimaru's body from multiple angles simultaneously.
Orochimaru's form dissolved into muddy slush and dropped.
A sound from behind, another snake, this one with a dagger held in its open mouth, already lunging for his head.
Orochimaru solidified behind him and released his grip. A blood blade materialized in Yuji's hand and met the attack, deflecting it cleanly. He severed the snake's head in the same motion and leaped clear.
A wind blade, thin enough to be invisible in the darkness, swept across at the moment of his dodge.
Orochimaru's expression shifted almost imperceptibly.
The sound of the impact rolled through the quiet village. Patrol guards throughout the streets stopped moving and turned toward the source.
"That's Lord Yuji's residence."
Shinobi converged from every direction at once.
Yuji and Orochimaru had already moved to the rooftop of a nearby building. Yuji's hands flew through seals and a column of water surged upward, shaping into a dragon that drove toward Orochimaru's position.
Orochimaru's seal speed was simply faster. His hands barely moved and a wind barrier expanded through the night sky, the force of it overwhelming the water dragon and tearing through the surrounding buildings in the same motion.
The debris field spread across the rooftop. Wind blades had left clean cuts through everything they touched. The destructive output of what had looked like a standard Wind Release was something else entirely, the kind of power that belonged to someone who had spent decades refining a single element to its furthest expression.
A layer of crystallized blood armor formed across Yuji's body, absorbing the wind pressure. Blood-red cords extended from his feet and drove into the structure beneath him, anchoring him against the force trying to send him airborne.
Around him the sandstorm that the wind had kicked up churned through the wreckage of the surrounding area.
Orochimaru had disappeared into the chaos.
Yuji's fused eyes were already working through the darkness and debris, reading the heat signatures and chakra traces that ordinary vision couldn't reach.
"Wind Release that carries this kind of destructive quality," he said quietly, pulling his arms back. "Worthy of a Legendary Sannin."
His arms extended. Blood condensed and shaped rapidly into a drawn bow configuration, arrows of compressed blood material held and aimed in rapid succession. He tracked the traces his senses provided and released.
The blood arrows crossed the chaotic darkness with tremendous force, each impact producing a heavy concussive sound.
He narrowed his eyes.
They had missed.
The Wind Release dissipated.
A shuriken came from behind, aimed at the back of his head.
Orochimaru reappeared, his expression carrying something that hadn't been there before, genuine attentiveness.
"I didn't realize you were also a sensory type."
His concealment had been found and sealed off almost immediately, cutting off the preparation he had been making to follow up the Wind Release from a position of advantage.
And the Blood Release's raw destructive output was on a different level from what his intelligence had suggested.
The shuriken reached a certain point in the air and Orochimaru pressed his palms together. The single shuriken multiplied into a dense black cloud spreading across the entire available space, Shuriken Shadow Clone Jutsu, one of Konoha's high-level techniques, the physical clone property breaking through the constraints of normal throwing capacity.
Yuji activated Winged King.
Rather than attempt to counter a wall of shuriken at this range, he moved. Counterattacking through that density would cost time and give Orochimaru exactly the window he needed to prepare whatever came next.
He broke from the position at speed.
Behind him, the entire rooftop detonated. The explosion drove thick smoke and flame upward in a column, the structure collapsing inward as the fire caught.
...
Bonus @400 PS