Pre-Chapter A/N: More chapters on my Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga) – same username as here and link in bio.
The black lightning did not just cover him from head to toe like his old lightning cloak did. It felt in some ways like he had transformed himself into the lightning. His body became much more amorphous and difficult to place. Sarutobi began the next phase of the duel with wind release so powerful that it scared the ground as it flew towards its intended target. The raikage would have had an easy time of dodging the attack, but almost like he was making a statement, he chose to go through rather than around. Encased in black lightning, he shot through the wind release and went straight for the Hokage.
The good news was that he was not much faster in this state than he used to be. The bad news came when his fist clashed with the Hokage's adamantium staff and the ground around the both of them exploded from the force he had used. He was stronger. An order of magnitude stronger, she suspected, as even the Hokage showed shock at the difference. He moved, his knee moving to cave in the Hokage's chest, and the staff was there again. Another shockwave. Each attack was delivered with so much strength that she had a hard time believing it was not Shori's cousin doing the attacking.
Sensei's clone melded with the shadows for a second, and body flickered behind his quarry. The Raikage did not even need to turn to dodge the attack. The arc of chakra flew at the Hokage instead, and the monkey summoner was forced to abandon the attack he had been moving to defend against to block the arc of cutting force. The Raikage's foot slipped out, and he dragged the Hokage on to the floor.
As he fell, he formed a one-handed handseal and instead of landing on the ground, he sunk into it. Hiding like a mole jutsu, she recognised. The Raikage stabbed his hand up to his elbow into the ground trying to reach after him, but the plan clearly failed as his hand came up empty. Sensei moved in on the attack but the Raikage just stabbed a hand through his chest faster than he could react. He fell apart in water, and her eyes tracked him across the distance, slumped against a tree and trying to heal himself of the wounds he suffered from the strike that had sent him out of the fight.
He formed another set of handseals and two clones of his rose from the blood he was leaking freely and jumped into the fray. She had to figure out how he was doing that. She hadn't been able to copy the jutsu on seeing it, so that meant he hadn't used all the seals, but she could see that he was somehow using blood and water from the air to form clones of himself. Except they weren't perfect clones. They inherited none of the damage he had sustained in the battle, like an ordinary clone would have.
She watched as the Raikage looked around himself, waiting to see if the Hokage would pop back up, before his gaze snapped to hers. She instantly ensnared him in a genjutsu, but he broke it in a second and turned his gaze into a glare aimed right at her forehead. In the space between blinks, he was right upon her. She substituted with one of Shori's newest inventions, and watched as the clone he barreled through exploded the instant it was destroyed. He remained unscathed, and she lashed out with a set of ten shuriken from her pouch. She focused her chakra, allowing wind natured chakra to run through the shuriken before she fired them in his direction.
There was a disturbance in the ground next to her, and her ten shuriken instantly became over a hundred.
"Sorry, Uzume-chan. Had to enhance your jutsu a bit with one of mine" The Hokage said, poking a head out of the ground for a second to speak to her before he dove back underneath. Once again, the Raikage moved through the attack rather than around like a sane person would have, and another of Sensei's unique clones was waiting for him with blade prepared. In a flash, the clone's head popped like a balloon. The other managed to use the opportunity to get close enough to swing at the Muscled Kage, but the man lifted a single hand and caught the blade. He used it to swing the clone around until the clone let go of the blade and dove at the Raikage with a rasengan building in his hand. The Raikage took Shori's invented jutsu to the chest and then confronted the clone with a headbutt that ended its short lifespan.
Once more, he came at her but this time the ground around him shifted, spikes rising to block the route. Predictable as ever, he settled for storming through the earthen spikes but as he was about to hit the last one, the Hokage's upper body shot from the spear right at him, a rasengan with wind natured chakra surrounding it held in his left hand and his spear held in his right. Shori should definitely have charged more for that jutsu, she thought to herself as it hit the Raikage and drove him backwards, almost farther than the eye could see before it exploded in a storm of microscopic wind blades that would atomize everything in its range.
Yet, when the dust settled and the smoke cleared, she was almost unsurprised to see him standing there unscathed. Cloaked in black lightning as ever, he looked like one of Shori's strongest jutsu hadn't even managed to land a scratch on him. What an absolute monster.
XXXXXX- SHORIRAMA SENJU
I considered my options now. I had sage mode, at least I was sure that I would once the hero water ran its course. I could feel the nature chakra all around me now, and sure I might need to speak to the Whales about properly balancing it with my internal reserves to avoid turning to stone or whatever, but that was probably the easier bit of the puzzle. I was on my way to being stronger than ever, and that tempted me to continue into Kusa. I had accomplished my mission here, and to go farther would be tantamount to going rogue, but who was Hiruzen to presume to order me around like some servant.
The truth was that the only question that mattered was whether I wanted to do it or not, and I was leaning more towards the latter than the former. There was nothing to gain from fighting what paltry forces Iwa had in Kusa. Sure, I could increase my reputation by doing so, but I would gain even more if I let them run roughshod and only intervened when they made their way into the Land of Fire. And in that case, Hiruzen's decision to leave them unmolested would backfire on him, while I got to reap the fruits of bringing things to a close.
"What now, Captain?" One of the Nara walked forwards to ask me. I considered the options for a final time before I shrugged.
"Our orders said to drive Iwa out. We've done that. We have no duty to stay and remain as bodyguards. If Iwa return, we will do the same" I said, turning to leave.
I could see Shino breathe a sigh of relief at that and smiled. To him, it must have seemed like I was considering the merits of choosing to stay as opposed to leaving. I could see why it would have seemed so. The average shinobi had expansionist dreams in their pockets. Everyone wanted to see their village getting bigger, and stronger. By asking for our help, Taki had taken a calculated risk. But part of their calculations must have included us losing a substantial force in taking out Iwa and being in no place to push for ownership of their land. Except that I had managed to secure victory with little in the way of casualties, and that meant we had the leeway to decide to stay.
Still, I felt like Konoha had more than enough land it was in charge of and seizing the land of waterfalls did little to benefit us. The small nations might not have come to realise it yet, but we benefited immensely from their existence. They meant we had no borders with the other large nations, and also meant that when situations like this arose, we had convenient battlefields that we would not have to spend money cleaning up or making habitable. We could show up, fight to our hearts' content, and leave the mess for someone else to clean up. It was a good deal, a better deal than if we shared direct borders that we would have to spend man-hours on tightly policing and all that other crap.
I turned to the men that I had led here, and directed them to move out with a series of hand motions.
—
We practically crawled through the treeline, taking a much slower pace to account for the injured, the weary, and the bereaved. These people were family in some cases, and so any losses hit harder than it would have in any traditional squad. Most Captains would not have tolerated the delay, but considering we'd completed the mission faster than anyone could have reasonably expected, I felt it was fine. It did endear me to them even more. If I ever needed to depose Hiruzen, I would need the support of the rank and file if I didn't want it to devolve into some sort of Civil War, and this was how something like that could start up.
I deactivated my byakugan as we entered an even more relaxed pace. A pace relaxed enough that I could afford to retreat into my head, and consider the half tail of Kokuo's chakra I had within me. It was stored within Kurama's seal and since the seal was open, I could access it just about as readily as I could access his own chakra. I didn't take it for the power it had. Kurama's power was miles away from being comparable to it. I took it for the nature release it had— steam release.
Where did I get the idea? Naruto, of course. Lava Release: Rasenshuriken, Steam Release: Rasenshuriken, and Magnet Release: Rasengan, were jutsu that he had only been able to use after having the chakra of those tailed beasts within him. Since now, I had Kokuo's chakra, I just had to train my chakra to replicate the feeling of Kokuo's chakra and use the Kekkei Genkai as if it were my own. My natural affinities didn't include fire, half of the component of boil release but since I'd gotten my control of fire natured chakra to basic mastery then that should be less of an issue. Affinities were an interesting thing, even. You could learn all the natures with enough discipline and chakra control, but the limits of your skill were basically inbuilt. I could use wind release: armour, but I'd struggle to do the same with lightning release, even if I had trained to mastery with it. I just didn't have the natural talent for it— my ceiling was lower with the elements I lacked affinities for.
And not just that, even. When it came to affinities, there were primary, secondary, and tertiary affinities in my case. Not all three elements were equally open to me. From what I had been able to find, my primary affinity was wind, my secondary was earth, and my tertiary was water. It was why, even with all of Granduncle's training, I couldn't summon tsunamis from thin air like he could. I would—
My thoughts were cut off then as Kurama screamed for me to move. I braced against the tree I'd landed against and pushed myself backwards with all my strength. Kurama's chakra bubbled from the seal without me even asking and encased me in a cloak. That was the only thing that allowed me to survive the explosion that spread from the tree I'd just landed on.
I shielded my face with my cloaked hand and let the shockwave from the explosion push me into the ground. I touched the ground with my back, and turned the whole thing into mud that encased me and shielded me from the explosion of senbon that followed the fiery explosion that had driven me off in the first place. I activated my byakugan, getting a good view of the puppet that stood in the middle of the chaotic clearing the explosion had created.
"Thank you, Kurama" I said mentally even as I moved his chakra back within the seal and pushed myself back to the muddy surface with nothing but my chakra. I reached out for the feeling of my flying raijin seals and noted that the two I'd placed on the Hyuga and Uchiha leaders respectively were gone— blasted to smithereens. How the fuck had she managed to sneak up on us? I wondered as I looked at the woman standing in the middle of the chaos, puppets around her.
"Shorirama Senju. A pleasure to make your acquaintance. Now die" She exclaimed, and the puppets swarmed me. The first one had blades for hands and danced through the air so quickly that it would have been a blur to most. To me, it was just quick enough that it wasn't something easily ignored, but not fast enough to be a real threat. I backflipped away from its first slash and the mud on the ground rose to encase it.
Another puppet opened its mouth and I forced myself to the ground as it created a sound so hideously jarring that it felt like it was driving me insane just from hearing it. I forced the mud to take me within its grasp again, but another puppet was waiting. From its hands came canisters that rolled along the ground, falling into the mud.
They were too many to smother at once, especially with how disoriented I was. For the second time, Kurama saved my life as his chakra surrounded me from head to toe as he took us straight to the four-tailed state. The canisters blew up, and I was left in the middle of a large crater. All my mud was gone, and the little that still existed had been instantly baked into clay. Fuck. I stared at the puppets as they swarmed my position.
"Jinchuriki" the woman who had to be Chiyo spat the word like it was the foulest of curses. "To think that Senju blood would find itself soiled in such a manner. Hashirama and Tobirama would thank me for doing the world this favour" She said like she knew them. I scoffed at what was clearly an attempt at a mind game. If only she knew that Hashirama had spent most of his life clapping Jinchuriki cheeks.
"Are we going to fight or not?" I growled in her direction, and then not giving her time to reply, I shot into her space, moving past the puppets and heading straight for her at full speed.
Two puppets appeared from the ground, invisible until they were literally within my line of sight, and from them came an avalanche of needles that glowed a deep, worrying purple. Poison. Might even be the same poison that had killed Choni. I pulled at Kurama's power and screamed with raw power that sent all the needles flying away from me, moving in a random pattern. I noticed some bury themselves into the still bodies of some of my comrades, but allowed it to distract me little as I kept for her.
Another one, the one with the blades for hands, came in my way again, and this time, I snatched it and forced it to stay still with two of my tails before grinding it to pieces with a rasengan that formed in my hand in the blink of an eye. Another puppet was there before I could make it to her, and only then did I notice the ninja wire surrounding me. What the fuck was going on with my vision. I based myself again as I was buffeted with the force of another point-blank explosion.
"I think I need to deal with this one myself" I told Kurama as I shoved his chakra back into the seal, abandoning the chakra cloak and the protection it granted. I wasn't that kind of fighter. I didn't rely on overwhelming power to beat my foes. I outsmarted and outfought them, yeah, but that was about more than just power. It was about a thousand other things that went into making a shinobi what they were.
I tapped my hand against my sleeve, unsealing a set of twelve kunai. Seemingly at random, I tossed them about the clearing. Shurikenjutsu had been one of the few areas where Uzume had been my better in the academy. That didn't make me terrible at it, though. I just didn't have the brain for angles and vectors the way she did that let her instinctively curve shuriken and Kunai through the air or even bounce them off against each other at precise angles to hit far-flung targets.
I counted the puppets I could see and took a breath. There were seven of them. Looking at her fingers showed ten chakra strings, though. The only issue is that I could only trace seven of them. When I tried to follow the other three, the chakra strings went underground for a bit before suddenly disappearing. It wasn't my range. Probably the same technique she had used to succeed with a sneak attack on a team with several Hyuga and Uchiha.
"Admiring my babies?" She asked.
"They look interesting." I admitted, looking at the varied appearances and abilities of the puppets.
"Thank you. My Grandson is far too young to begin building on his own, but he's more than motivated to come up with ideas for puppets specifically designed to eliminate you. I call this my Senju Extinction Brigade." She said with a flourish while I almost facepalmed. What was with people in this world and silly names?
A/N: Yeah, we get Chiyo looking for revenge a bit earlier than you might expect. As for the puppets, I like to believe that Chiyo on her own was a gifted puppet maker, while Sasori was a genius beyond his peers. Here we have a younger Sasori contributing ideas for a Chiyo determined to get stronger to take out the person who killed her Grandson and humiliated her village. Next three up on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga(same username as here and link in bio), support me there and read them early.