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"I hope you won't take offence, but I find myself unusually angry; however, you did just kill my squad…"
Kinoto didn't reply and bolted into the swampland forest. He didn't want to fight before, and that hadn't changed.
Going back to Fune was an option beneficial to him if he could hold civilians hostage; Itachi would have to hold back if there were civilians around who might get accidentally hurt. However, he didn't want to take his chances with the Leaf jōnin stationed at Fune, who would be similarly angry at him for causing so much chaos in the city. Running deep into the forest was dangerous because he could get lost, but it also meant that Itachi could get lost. The question was: how long was Itachi willing to follow him, risk getting lost himself, and stay away from his team?
However, just as he turned around to run, he caught a glimpse of Itachi weaving hand seals. He put more strength into his legs to get out of the range of whatever ninjutsu was coming his way, only to feel an intense heat as his surroundings were suddenly lit in yellow.
Kinoto didn't need to look back to know that he wasn't getting out of range.
He pumped chakra into his sword, causing it to burst into lightning, and then turned around to see a colossal, dragon-head-shaped fireball hurtling towards him, consuming everything in its way. The water boiled over and turned into steam; the trees and vines—those that grew in a swamp and thus were full of water—turned into dry, burnt husks, crumbling into ash.
Fire Release: Great Dragon Fire Technique
Kinoto knew it to be a B-rank ninjutsu, and yet the size, the intensity of the flames, and the compression of chakra bundled inside the fireball had already surpassed the limits of what was considered a B-rank jutsu even by jōnin standards.
If a B-rank ninjutsu was like this, he didn't want to imagine what an A-rank ninjutsu from him would be like.
He swung his sword at the fireball, and instantly the difference in class became evident because, unlike the Water Dragon Bullet Jutsu, the fireball was barely bisected, with flames only mere metres away from him on both sides. The bisected fireball, still containing volatile chakra, exploded around him.
Kinoto already had his tantō in hand. He spun around while launching two simultaneous horizontal swings, creating two full circles, one atop the other. The flames were snuffed the moment they came in contact with the circle, and the remaining mass was suddenly pushed away, leaving him largely unharmed except for some pain in his legs.
As the flames cleared, his gaze fell upon Itachi, and he was careful to avoid the Sharingan and instead focused on his hands that were signing hand seals. He was barely able to make out what he was casting despite the speed and managed to deduce another Fire Release ninjutsu, only for the swamp underneath to swallow him.
It was as though the swamp wasn't just misplaced mud; it seemed like a malignant, sentient slurry, as no matter what he did, nothing worked. He kneaded chakra into his feet, wanting to stand up on the mire, but as though laughing, the mud not only failed to support him, but viscous tongues of sludge wrapped around his ankles and pulled him as though it wasn't a swamp but a demon wanting to pull him down to hell. He was pulled down with a violent jerk. His knees, then his waist, and within a matter of seconds, his chest was under the surface.
He released his swords to free his hands, but as his hands dipped into the surface, the mud thickened into the consistency of cooling lead. He summoned his chakra, but to his horror, the mud fed on it. He had heard of such jutsu and felt cold as more of his chakra was stolen.
Then, the world went black.
The transition from the frantic air of combat to the crushing silence of the deep was instantaneous. As his head slipped beneath the surface, the swamp packed itself into his ears and nostrils. It was gritty and suffocating. The deeper he sank, the colder it got as the swamp transformed from liquid to solid.
Liquid? Cold?
"Hmm?"
Just a moment ago, the entire swamp around him was literally boiling from Itachi's Fire Release ninjutsu to the point that it hurt his feet, so then why was the water around him cold?
For a moment, his vision cleared, sound returned to his ears, and the pressure against his lungs vanished, and he could breathe once more. But it was only for a moment, like it was a figment of his imagination caused by the absence of oxygen. And this time, an oppressive heat appeared over everything else.
Kinoto felt for his hand and gripped the tantō, which was on the verge of slipping out, and swung it.
"Ugh!"
Blood splattered as the tantō grazed through his side just a little too deeply, and the lightning-natured chakra flooded his body, disrupting everything from muscle balance, blood flow, and the movement of chakra through his body.
Just like the darkness, the return to his true senses was instantaneous as the Genjutsu shattered, and he was back to reality.
However, that was the least of his problems as Itachi was now running towards him.
His body felt weak from the cut and chakra drain, but his mind was sharper than ever as adrenaline coursed through him in droves. When was the last time he was this focused? Maybe the last time he was in a situation where he was only a step away from death.
The tantō was firmly in his hand, but the katana had slipped away. The enemy was running towards him. Confront him? He wouldn't be able to reach the sword in time to do anything with it, and perhaps taking on the Sharingan at melee range was a poor choice and would only end up tying him up. If he wanted to escape, he needed something big, or the Uchiha wasn't going to let him go.
Was his body ready for it? Not at all. It would hurt. However, pain was much better than death.
He pumped chakra into the tantō and chucked it towards Itachi to slow him down before jumping behind a nearby tree and slapping a set of short-fuse explosive tags he could get his hands on in the moment, before jumping away while weaving hand seals. The tree exploded, and Kinoto ran as far as he could for a few seconds before turning around. It was the right decision, because a shuriken covered in flame almost stabbed him in the back. He dodged it and looked up to see a dozen more flaming shuriken around him. If that was all, it wouldn't have been a problem, but the shuriken bounced off each other, confusing him as a portion of his focus was occupied by weaving hand seals.
He managed to avoid all but one that struck the back of his shoulder, causing such sharp pain as the fire-natured chakra penetrated his skin through the wound and burned everything it touched.
However, it seemed that he had just played into his enemy's hand because as he moved to avoid the shuriken, he was moving to where Itachi wanted him to go. By the time he noticed what he was doing, it was already too late as a wide-headed arrow burned a hole through a tree and then went right through him.
Itachi stepped around the tree and charged at Kinoto with his sword covered in fire. However, only a couple of steps later, his eyes widened as he stopped and leapt back as far as he could.
Fire Release: Vengeful Phoenix's Wail
In an instant, the air became unbreathable, stripped of oxygen in a heartbeat as the jutsu detonated with a terrifying sound that could be described as the angry wail of a phoenix. The creator of the jutsu described it as the "white-out", as in the first second, the reeds, trees, vines, and the shuriken that had been thrown—they simply ceased to be. They were calcified and rendered into fine, grey ash before a single flame could even be visible. The air caught fire, a swirling vortex of incandescent orange and white that turned the world into a monochromatic hellscape. The swamp turned into a desert wasteland as the heat wave flash-evaporated all water, and that state itself was temporary as the land completely surrendered; soil and stone reached their melting point in seconds, turning into a viscous, bubbling sludge of glowing lava.
Everything ceased to exist—everything bar one.
It was the same colour as the hellscape surrounding it, so it almost seemed to blend in perfectly, but a reddish-orange skeleton of a giant, its own ethereal flames surrounding it, stood as the only unaffected thing in the area.
Itachi, with a pained look on his face as every cell in his body seemed to protest, looked around the difficult-to-distinguish surroundings and failed to find Kinoto anywhere. He tried to stay longer to look more before being forced by his own eyes and body to rush out of the jutsu's area of influence.
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Kinoto floated in the middle of the river, letting the flow carry him. His face was marred with pain as not one portion of his body was uninjured. The skin on his torso had suffered horrific burns, while his internal organs were in such a state of harm that it was a miracle that he was conscious.
However, that was just the injuries he had suffered at the enemy's hand. Every inch of his chakra pathway system was in screeching pain from chakra burn. Where B-rank ninjutsu made people feel a rush of power, A-rank ninjutsu were a tremendous burden on the body. Humans weren't built to handle that amount of chakra, which would cause harm to the chakra pathways. To prepare the body for such a burden, it had to be slowly pushed with an ever-larger amount of chakra. Kinoto didn't have the time to do that and was now suffering the consequences. Even the natural flow of chakra was causing him pain, and the chakra he was sending to his organs to keep them from getting worse was like pumping magma through his veins. He didn't think he had it in him to use anything above a C-rank ninjutsu.
'This is a problem… Getting home is going to be difficult,' he managed to think when his brain wasn't striking in pain.
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In Fune, a cloaked figure, standing over a building far away from the chaos that was happening, peered through a pair of binoculars. She looked at the port, which was covered in smoke, and then looked at the fiery hellscape along the river some way outside the city. She swallowed nervously after seeing the latter, with a slight shake in her hands because of what it might mean.
After some time, she put her binoculars down, wrote an encrypted message on a thin roll of paper, put it in the container attached to the leg of a very special pigeon, and let it fly. She watched it until the bird disappeared from her sight.
She then got up and slowly began moving towards the port.
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