The air between Ren and Kakuzu crackled with the fading remnants of lightning and steam. The terrain was completely ruined, chunks of earth carved open, air hazed with smoke, the smell of scorched soil hanging heavy.
Kakuzu stood a few meters away, black threads writhing faintly under his tattered cloak, two masks floating behind him like vultures. His eyes narrowed in irritation. Ren, meanwhile, stood still for the first time since the battle began, chest rising steadily, eyes half-lidded as if calculating something unseen.
The last wave of elemental chaos had momentarily died down. Both men knew it was temporary.
Ren exhaled softly, the faint shimmer of chakra tracing over his arms. 'It's time to begin laying out the formation, however before that, he thought, watching the threads subtly repairing minor cuts on Kakuzu's arms. 'I need to do something so that he wouldn't notice me doing something strange. Direct defense? No, he'd easily see through it, it'd be better to play with his mind.'
Without a word, he raised his hand, chakra flaring sharply.
[Fire Style: Scorching Barrage.]
A dozen searing fireballs erupted in rapid succession, each trailing heat ripples through the smoky air. Kakuzu immediately countered as the Wind Mask flared to life and blasted compressed gusts that split and scattered the flames but Ren didn't stop. The next instant, his palms slammed into the ground.
[Earth Style: Tearing Rift.]
The battlefield cracked, fissures spreading like veins beneath Kakuzu's feet. He jumped back, threads extending to anchor himself, and retaliated with a direct [Fire Style: Flame Bullet] a molten stream surging across the ground.
Ren's next move came without pause. He inhaled sharply as he channeled the water nature chakra.
[Water Style: Torrent Blast.]
A geyser of water erupted beneath the flame stream, clashing midair and exploding into a heavy cloud of steam that blanketed the area in blinding mist. The blast sent debris flying, bark, stones, dust all scattering in the pressure wave.
Kakuzu's chakra flared through the haze. His wind mask howled, cutting through the fog with precision gusts meant to disperse cover, but by the time the smoke cleared, Ren was gone.
At least, that's what it looked like.
A blur moved across the periphery, too low to the ground for a frontal assault. Kakuzu twisted, his Earth Spear activating again, his arm darkening as it intercepted a high-speed punch that cracked the air. Ren had appeared beside him, using the brief gap to test the defense again. The impact reverberated up his arm, the sensation was like striking solid metal.
Ren gritted his teeth as he glanced at Kakuzu and he thought, 'I have to make him take the offense, that way my erratic movement wouldn't raise suspicions.'
He disengaged with a sharp pivot, sliding back through the dirt. His palms brushed against the ground, it was just a light touch, barely noticeable. A faint ripple of chakra spread across the soil, disappearing under the layer of dust.
Kakuzu didn't notice and didn't have the time as Ren was upon him again.
Kakuzu too advanced immediately, firing another [Wind Style: Pressure Bullets] to suppress Ren's movement. Ren sidestepped each burst, weaving between them with efficient, minimal motions. Every time his foot hit the ground, every time his hand deflected debris or redirected a thread whip, another faint sigil appeared, invisible beneath the chaos.
The tempo shifted again. Kakuzu pressed harder, emboldened by Ren's apparent retreat.
'What's this brat planning, his chakra shouldn't be so low that he'd be retreating already.'
"What game are you playing brat?"
Ren didn't answer. He merely flicked his wrist, sending a thin arc of electricity snapping through the air.
[Lightning Style: Arc Palm.]
The strike grazed Kakuzu's shoulder, forcing a half-step back. The next instant, Ren vanished again, reappearing at another flank with a sudden flurry of strikes. Kakuzu blocked most, countered one, and forced Ren to leap backward once more.
And again, Ren's fingers brushed the ground.
To an observer, it looked random but there was rhythm beneath it. Each contact point built into a pattern, invisible lines weaving a lattice around the field. Every seal placement synced with the natural rhythm of combat as if the markings were simply part of Ren's dodges. Even the moments he got pushed back or sent rolling across the ground were deliberate, just mere opportunities to extend the area of influence.
A lesser shinobi would have noticed nothing. But even Kakuzu, with his centuries of battle instinct, was being played into rhythm, not because he wasn't sensitive to chakra, but because Ren's mastery of both Fuinjutsu and Chakra control was so high, that if he wanted to hide something, then if one wasn't comparable to him, they wouldn't sense anything at all,
However Kakuzu was still wary. The old mercenary's mind tracked the battle in probabilities, 'His apparent chakra level is reducing slowly but if compared to the start he's already at less than half of his chakra, his movements sharp but slightly defensive. It looks like a calculated retreat or maybe it is exhaustion disguised as one. Either way, there are only things that could happen, either he is truly conserving energy, or he's feigning everything and it's all a play. I need to be cautious either way.'
That thought, that small spark of confusion was exactly what Ren wanted.
'Perfect, now that he's thinking more, he would have less time to focus on subtle signatures even less with me pressing him.' Ren thought, ducking under a whip strike, chakra condensing along his arm. He countered with a [Lightning Style: Ripple Burst], sending a wave through the threads and forcing Kakuzu to retract them instantly. 'He's getting more aggressive, so now's the time, the formation needs only a few more anchor points.'
Another seal pressed underfoot.
Another pattern closed.
Minutes passed this way, attacks, counters, half-dodges, near-misses. The fight's noise grew rhythmic, a staccato of strikes and detonations, until Kakuzu's irritation began to creep in.
The earth under Ren's feet began to quake. Kakuzu's threads burrowed underground, emerging behind Ren like serpents. Ren turned sharply, chakra flooding his limbs.
[Hardening]
The surface of his forearm glowed faintly with earthen chakra as he blocked the strike head-on. The threads clashed against him with a metallic clang, unable to pierce. Ren twisted, grabbed one strand, and sent a current through it forcing Kakuzu to sever it immediately.
The small pause was enough for Ren to retreat again, sliding back across the dirt, his palm brushing over another tree root, chakra flowing briefly into it.
Almost done.
Kakuzu couldn't tell what was wrong, but something about Ren's steady pace made him uneasy. Despite being on the apparent defensive, the younger shinobi's body language carried no panic, no uncertainty, only patience. It was the look of someone playing for time.
It had to be said, even though Ren was playing his part perfectly, the senses of someone who's been a shinobi for nearly a century still had extraordinary instincts.
Ren's breathing was calm now. Hyperfocus pulsed quietly behind his vision, processing the terrain, the lines of his sealwork, and the distances between points. Everything was falling into place.
'All right,' he thought, ducking one more blast of compressed wind, chakra surging into his fingertips as he planted the final mark under the veil of dust. 'Formation is ready. Just a bit longer.'
Out loud, he muttered, "Fighting with you is making my head hurt old man.""
Kakuzu focused as Ren once again began talking, he didn't bother replying but his thoughts churned, 'Why's he talking again, has he thought of what to do or has he already done it.'
The older shinobi extended his senses to cover the entire battlefield however he couldn't find anything out of place, however this complete safety made him feel even more insecure.
Ren smiled faintly. "You shouldn't think so much, your head will hurt if you keep doing that."
The old mercenary's scowl deepened. He lunged forward again, Earth Spear coating his limbs for another crushing blow and Ren met it, his hardened fist colliding with Kakuzu's forearm, the impact echoing through the trees.
The trap was ready, buried beneath the chaos, now Ren just needed the right moment to close it.
Across from him, Kakuzu's glare deepened. His instincts, honed by nearly a century of bloodshed screamed that something was wrong. The fight wasn't following the usual rhythm. His attacks weren't landing. His opponent's retreat, that careful ebb and flow, felt too deliberate.
He flexed his fingers, threads twitching like nervous veins. "You're hiding something," he muttered, his voice a low growl. "I don't know what game you're playing, but I'm ending it now."
Without hesitation, his cloak split apart at the seams as all four masks erupted into the open, Wind, Fire, Lightning, and Water, black tendrils tethering them to his body. They fanned out instantly, circling Ren from every direction like predators closing in. Each mask flared with distinct chakra signatures, painting the field in violent color.
Ren's lips curved.
Finally.
The flicker in his eyes wasn't surprise, it was satisfaction. The moment he'd been waiting for had arrived.
'All the hearts are on the field now,' he thought, scanning their spacing through Hyperfocus. 'Perfect. Now I can finally blast them one by one.'
Then the world exploded.
Wind shrieked, fire roared, lightning cracked, and water surged, four natures unleashed in a synchronized onslaught. The ground beneath Ren shattered under the sheer force of the combined elemental barrage.
But Ren was already gone.
A faint afterimage shimmered in the explosion's wake, dispersing like mist. The real Ren darted through the chaos, his movements so clean they barely disturbed the debris. His entire body flowed through each shift, duck, slide, turn, pivot, conserving every fraction of effort.
Lightning hummed around his skin, crackling across his legs and arms as he accelerated.
The Fire Mask fired a second volley of flame bullets, but Ren cut across its trajectory with a sweeping motion, [Water Style: Flowing Wall.] summoning a spiraling shield of water that not only extinguished the attack but redirected the residual steam upward, concealing his path.
From the left, a barrage of slicing wind blades converged. Ren's fingers twitched. Thin blades of flames spread launched at them as he slashed the air in front of him.
The fire blades met the wind, scattering it into harmless currents. Ren twisted midair, his foot barely grazing a falling log as he flipped over a surge of water from the opposite side.
Each movement was measured, precise and efficient and even surgical.
'This feels familiar,' Ren thought, the faintest smile tugging at his mouth as he recalled the fight he had with Hiruzen long ago in the forest of death, 'When Hiruzen did this to me, it was maddening. Now that I'm the one doing it… it's actually kind of fun.'
Every technique Kakuzu's masks threw at him, Ren answered in kind but not through brute force. His responses were always minimal, the exact element or counter required, nothing more.
A wall of fire? He conjured just enough water to neutralize it.
Compressed wind blades? Similar number of fire blades to disrupt their cohesion.
Surging torrent? Earth to redirect.
Booming thunder? A well timed wind blast did the job.
Everything clicked in sequence, as if the world itself was moving to his rhythm.
Kakuzu snarled, threads whipping wildly. "Stop running!"
But Ren wasn't running. He was moving deliberately and fluidly, shrinking the distance with every exchange. His movements carved invisible angles through the battlefield, each step closing the circle, each counter baiting a mask slightly out of position.
The Wind Mask, furthest from Kakuzu's main body, floated just a bit higher now, its attacks predictable, its rotations repetitive. Ren's focus sharpened on it.
'There.'
Kakuzu sensed it an instant too late.
Ren vanished as his body exploding forward in a streak of lightning, faster than Kakuzu could react.
[Lightning Style: Thunderblitz!]
The world cracked.
A deafening boom tore through the air as Ren blurred into motion, chakra surging explosively through his legs and spine, the terrain behind him fracturing under the raw discharge. In an instant, he closed the fifty-meter gap to the Wind Mask, his right arm enveloped in flames.
The mask barely had time to pivot. Kakuzu's threads shot out to pull it back but Ren was faster.
He twisted mid-stride, planting his foot and swinging with a compact, brutal hook, the fire chakra condensed to a razor point in his knuckles as a huge flaming lion appeared on his fist and he launched it at the wind mask.
The blow landed dead center on the Wind Mask's core.
The impact detonated like thunder.
The mask shattered into fragments, the flames consuming it entirely. The explosion sent shockwaves rippling through the clearing, a surge of raw chakra tearing the nearby earth open.
Kakuzu stumbled as a sharp pain tore through his body, one heart gone. His breath caught; his threads spasmed.
Ren stood over the collapsing remnants of the mask, flames still flickering faintly around his arm. Smoke curled from his knuckles, the faint scent of scorched iron lingering.
He looked up, meeting Kakuzu's stunned glare across the field and spoke with a grin.
"One of five."
The words were soft but they cut through the sound of destruction like a whisper in still air.
Kakuzu's expression darkened, the corners of his mouth twisting into fury. The remaining masks screeched in unison, chakra flaring violently as they regrouped.
Ren simply shook his wrist once, flexing his fingers to scatter the flames. His gaze was calm and unhurried.
"Come on," he murmured, stepping forward through the smoke. "I was an honor student, can't get anything less than 5 on 5 or Utakata-Sensei would scold me."
~~~~~
{1/5}
{Also, I have finally decided the outcome of the fight and I think it'd be the best one, so wait for it.}
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{ h t t p s : / / w w w . p a t r e o n . c o m / Z e e n o n }
{You know what else}
{STONES!!!!}