Hinata's attack left a stark silence where the mountain had stood. The colossal boulder simply ceased to be, crumbling into a hissing waterfall of fine dust and pebbles that cascaded into the cave's entrance. The air hung thick with the scent of superheated stone.
A concussive WHOOSH of displaced air ripped through the sudden quiet.
From the newly opened entrance, a flash of yellow hair on a colossal, white clay bird burst forth, banking sharply into the sky. Slung over the bird's tail, limp and unconscious, was the crimson-haired form of Gaara.
"GAARA!" Naruto's raw, desperate shout tore through the air.
His cry was answered by a sound like a river of grinding steel. From the shadowy depths of the cave, a relentless, unending storm of metal erupted, thousands upon thousands of kunai and senbon, a chittering, shimmering torrent aimed to flay them to the bone.
Before the first projectile could cross the threshold, Hinata acted. A storm of dozens of glistening black tendrils erupted from her back, each one a blur of impossible speed. Her hands, wreathed in the pulsing, cerulean glow of her chakra, began to move, weaving in with the symbiotic limbs. The blur of her movements formed a shimmering, semi-translucent dome protecting the cave entrance. The surface of the shield rippled and shimmered as new layers of the Klyntar-chakra weave were continuously laid down, a living, self-repairing barrier against the storm.
CLANG-CLANG-CLANG-THUMP-CLANG!
The metallic river hammered against the dome, the impacts a deafening, continuous roar that vibrated through the very soles of their feet. The air inside the shield was a storm of redirected kinetic energy and the high-pitched whine of Hinata's tendrils moving faster than sound.
Inside the protective sphere, Naruto was a caged tiger, his entire being fixated on the distant, retreating shape of the clay bird. "Hinata, we have to go after him! We have to!"
"Go," her stereophonic voice was a calm, unshakeable command in the heart of the storm. A section of the dome behind them rippled and opened, a temporary archway. "Kakashi-sensei. With him. We will handle this one."
"Right!" Kakashi's single visible eye hardened. He and Naruto shot through the opening, becoming blurs as they launched themselves into the trees in hot pursuit.
The archway sealed behind them, the weaving never ceasing. Sakura stared, her mind struggling to process the sheer skill on display. The perfect, instantaneous defense, the calm command… This was a force of nature. Snapping back to the present, she pressed a finger to her earpiece. "Team Guy, this is Sakura! We've breached the entrance! What's your status?"
The reply was a crackle of static and Guy's frantic, winded voice. "We're… engaged! The seals… they created copies of us! We're fighting ourselves! Youthful vigor has never been so inconvenient!" The background was a chaotic din of clashing metal and Naruto's clones yelling tactical, nonsensical advices.
Sakura swore under her breath. "They're pinned down. Chiyo-sama, Hinata, what's the plan?"
Hinata's conscious mind, freed from the immediate need for defense, focused entirely on their opponent. Venom's consciousness, a silent co-processor, took over the strain of maintaining the dome, its alien intellect holding the shield in place with effortless precision.
With her Byakugan, Hinata pierced the gloom. She saw the Akatsuki member step into the light, a short, hunched figure that walked on four limbs, its back a grotesque, armored shell. But that was merely the surface. Her senses, a perfect fusion of Hyuuga insight and Klyntar analysis, peeled back the layers.
"He is not what he seems," Hinata's voice was low, analytical. "The outer form is a puppet. A shell. There is a chakra signature inside."
Her vision sharpened, the symbiote feeding her senses with a stream of impossible data.
"Wait… the one inside… it is also a puppet. Hollow. All of it is hollow, except for a single point in the chest. A small, dense, living core. That is the source of the chakra. That is the true body."
Chiyo gasped, her aged face paling. "No… it cannot be. He wouldn't…"
"Elaborate, Chiyo-sama!" Sakura demanded, her green eyes wide with alarm.
"My grandson… Sasori of the Red Sand… he was a master of turning his defeated foes into human puppets," Chiyo's voice was a grief-stricken whisper. "To think… he would perform such an abomination on himself…"
A crude form of cybernetics, Venom's thought was a cold, clinical hiss in Hinata's mind. He has replaced his organic chassis with inferior mechanical parts. The level of self-mutilation is… extensive. Disgusting.
The grief in Chiyo's eyes was instantly replaced by the hard, unforgiving glare of a veteran warrior. "A puppet is a puppet. And all puppets have strings that can be cut." Two scrolls unfurled in her hands, erupting in smoke to reveal a pair of masterfully crafted puppets, one male and one female, that hovered at her sides. "Hinata-dono! Take the offensive! Shatter his shell!"
"Hai."
In a single, fluid motion, two things happened at once. Her hair, a cascade of midnight-blue silk, coiled and knotted itself into a tight, severe bun at the back of Hinata's head, her prehensile hair clearing her field of view. Simultaneously, a smooth, ovoid helmet of black-obsidian appeared with two subtle, swept-back crests from the temples.
The air inside the dome crackled. The exterior of the shield began to spark and hiss as raw, untamed lightning coiled around its surface.
"Hakkeshō…" she began, her voice a low growl.
The dome, her ultimate defense, warped, elongating into a colossal, grinding cone of pure, white-hot lightning.
"…Raikō Kaiten!"
With a sound like a star tearing in half, she fired it. The massive lightning drill launched itself forward at impossible speed, a guided meteorite of pure, grinding destruction. As it tore through the air, it met the unending river of steel head-on. The incoming kunai and senbon shattered and vaporized on contact with the rotating field of lightning. The attack cleared its own path, an unstoppable force aimed directly at the puppet master. The sheer velocity of the attack forced Sasori to abandon his assault and leap aside, but he wasn't quite fast enough. The grinding edge of the lightning vortex caught the articulated scorpion tail of his Hiruko puppet, shattering it into a spray of jagged splinters and molten metal. The battle had begun.
The air, still vibrating from the force of Hinata's assault, was instantly filled with a chittering hiss. Sasori's damaged Hiruko puppet, far from being crippled, scrabbled sideways on its multiple legs with an unnatural, insectoid speed. Its grotesque mouth-port opened, spitting a dense cloud of projectiles, a storm of metal that blanketed the area.
"Poison!" Sakura yelled, her medic-nin eyes catching the sickly violet sheen on every single tip. "Don't let them scratch you!"
There was no need for a command. On a shared, unspoken instinct, the three kunoichi exploded outwards, creating a three-pronged front that forced the puppet's attention to constantly, frantically shift.
To the left, Chiyo was a whirlwind of calm precision. Her Mother and Father puppets danced on invisible strings, their movements a fluid, deadly ballet. They wove a defensive net of chakra threads, catching dozens of the poisoned senbon and flinging them back at their source with ease. The Father puppet crouched low, its reinforced wooden body acting as a mobile shield for Sakura's movements.
To the right, Sakura was a pink flash of controlled chaos. She used explosive bursts of chakra at her feet to blast herself from side to side, the ground cracking with each impossible dodge. Her hands were a blur, sending a steady stream of explosive-tagged kunai arcing towards the scuttling puppet. Each one detonated with a concussive THUMP, kicking up clouds of dust and shrapnel that further obscured the battlefield.
And in the center, Hinata was an immovable object. She didn't bother to dodge. The poisoned projectiles that slipped past the maelstrom simply impacted against her midnight-blue armor with a series of sharp, metallic pings, bouncing off harmlessly. Her helmeted face was a featureless void, but her intent was a palpable force.
A crude neurotoxin, Venom observed with clinical detachment. Designed to induce rapid muscular paralysis. Pathetic. Our systems would purge it in seconds.
Hinata's hands became a blur, her body a living turret that switched between devastating elemental assaults. A rapid-fire volley of white-hot fire pellets, Hōsenka: Kikan Sōsha (Phoenix Fire: Machine Gun Sweep), peppered Hiruko's armored carapace, superheating the wood and metal. Before the puppet could adjust, she switched, launching a swarm of fist-sized spheres of crackling lightning, Raijin Senkōdan (Thunder God Flash Bullets), that slammed into its legs, causing the mechanisms to spark and seize.
Fire. Lightning. Fire. Lightning. The barrage was relentless, a perfectly aimed storm of annihilation that forced the puppet master into a desperate, skittering dance of evasion. Sasori's initial offensive had been completely nullified. He was now purely on the defensive, trying to find an angle, an opening, a single moment of respite that Hinata refused to grant him.
He dodged another searing fire-pellet, lurching to his left, and found himself directly in the path Chiyo had been herding him toward. The Mother puppet lunged from the dust cloud, a flash of polished steel in its hand. The sword strike aimed to cripple. It sliced deep into Hiruko's primary shoulder joint, severing the connection to its main offensive arm.
With a grinding screech of tearing wood and snapping wires, Sasori was forced to retreat, leaping backwards to gain distance.
He landed directly in front of Sakura.
She had been waiting for this exact moment. Her face was a mask of furious concentration, her green eyes blazing. "SHANNARO!"
Her chakra-infused fist slammed into Hiruko's back. Her hit was devastating. A deep, wet CRACK-CRUNCH echoed across the clearing as the puppet's entire armored shell was obliterated. Wood splintered, mechanisms snapped, and the internal framework shattered into a thousand pieces, the force of the blow turning the once-formidable weapon into little more than a pile of broken, smoking junk.
A fine display of kinetic force, Venom purred in approval. The pink-haired one is a useful tool for demolition.
Silence descended once more, broken only by the panting of Sakura and the soft hiss of the smoldering wreckage. The threat of Hiruko was gone.
A dry, rhythmic click-clack… click-clack… echoed from within the smoldering pile of wreckage. It was the sound of a puppet's joints, a sound of unnatural life where there should have been only silence. With a violent shudder, a black-robed figure burst forth from the splintered remains of Hiruko, landing with a light, unnerving tap on the scorched earth.
Chiyo's hands snapped back quickly. The Mother puppet shot backward, and Sakura, to her own astonishment, felt an invisible force yank her backward with it, a jarring, involuntary leap that pulled her clear of the wreckage.
"Your movements are far too precise for a chuunin, girl," a cold, boyish voice, muffled by cloth, emanated from the figure. His head swiveled towards Chiyo. "You pull her strings as well as any puppet, Grandmother."
His gaze then settled on Hinata, a long, analytical stare that seemed to pierce her armor. "So, the rumors are true," he stated, a hint of professional appreciation in his tone. "Konoha's Giant Kunoichi. They spoke of a monster in midnight armor who commands the storm. I see they were not exaggerating."
With a slow, deliberate motion, he reached up and pulled back the cowl covering his face. Sakura gasped. The face that stared back was impossibly young, a porcelain mask of smooth skin and soft features, framed by red hair. Only the eyes were wrong, wide and dead and fixed with a chillingly detached focus. Chiyo's expression hardened into one of deep sorrow, while behind Hinata's emotionless helmet, a grim understanding settled.
"From that look," Sasori noted, his voice losing its muffled quality, "I can tell you already know, don't you? What this body of mine truly is."
While Sasori spoke, Hinata's mind were running calculations. The boyish frame was a lie, a construct of articulated joints and seamless plates designed to mimic a living being. The true horror lay in his chest, a chamber her Byakugan and Venom's senses could pierce with sickening clarity. A pulsating, grotesque fusion of biology and mechanics. A beating heart, caged in a crystalline lattice, twisted with other vital organs into a single, nightmarish core that served as an anchor for a dense, glowing web of chakra strings that threaded through his entire body. The body was not quite hollow, it was a loaded weapon, every limb packed with hidden blades, poison dispensers, and dormant sealing formulas.
"Now then…" Sasori's voice dripped with bored impatience. "Time to get serious." He produced a thick scroll from within his robes, unrolling it with a flick of his wrist.
POOF!
A colossal plume of smoke erupted, obscuring him completely. As it began to clear, a new, far larger puppet began to materialize, wrapping around his smaller form like a demonic exoskeleton. It was humanoid, with long, dark hair and the tattered remains of a Kage's robes.
"Impossible!" Chiyo whispered, her voice cracking with horrified disbelief. "That can't be… That's…"
"Chiyo-sama, what is that thing?!" Sakura demanded, her stance wide and ready.
"That… is the Third Kazekage."
Hinata's mind was already racing, her senses at maximum output. This new puppet was a world apart from Hiruko. It wasn't just wood and steel, but a complex bio-mechanical framework, its chakra pathways still eerily intact.
It contains a powerful electromagnetic flux coil, Venom's thought was a sharp, clinical report. A device designed to manipulate metallic particles on a massive scale.
The connection clicked in Hinata's mind. Academy history lessons, filed and cross-referenced by the symbiote's perfect memory. The Third Kazekage, lauded as the strongest in Suna's history, feared and respected across the nations. Famous for one unique ability: his control over Iron Sand.
Sasori's voice, now amplified by the Kazekage puppet's resonance, echoed across the battlefield. "Now… which one of you will I add to my collection first?"
With a grating shriek of metal and a surge of malevolent chakra, the puppet of the Third Kazekage activated, and the true battle has began.
Sasori's new puppet, a grotesque and hollow mockery of a once-great Kage, lunged forward. It simply appeared before Sakura, crossing the distance in a flicker of movement that defied physics. Its right arm had already warped, into a fan of a dozen wicked, curved blades ready to snap shut and cleave her in half at the waist.
Sakura's mind went blank with shock. There was no time to dodge, no time to block. The blades were a blur of silver, already closing in.
Just as the metal was about to bite into her flesh, Chiyo's fingers twitched with imperceptible speed. Sakura's body contorted violently, an impossible, back-breaking arc that bent her spine until her hands slapped the dusty stone floor behind her. She felt the wind of that gigantic blades passing over her bent stomach. With another twitch from the old woman, Sakura's arms shoved, launching her backwards and away from the attack just as the Kazekage's blades snapped shut with a vicious SHIIIIINNNNGGG. The Mother puppet was already there, its own sword a flash of light that deflected the bladed hand with a deafening CLANG.
Sasori's mind, a machine of pure calculation, registered the failure. The old hag is controlling her. A liability. He was already dodging, a searing, white-hot ball of fire punching a hole through the air where his head had been a second before. He landed lightly, only for the ground he'd just vacated to erupt in a much wider, white-hot explosion.
BOOM!
He leaped again, suspended in the air for a fraction of a second, his chakra strings snapping taut to recall the Kazekage puppet. A new plan was needed. As the puppet shot back towards him, he saw the first white fire-bullet, the one he had dodged, miraculously halt its trajectory, pivot a full one-hundred-and-eighty degrees, and scream back towards him.
Impossible!
The attack forced his hand. With a sound of tearing cloth and whirring mechanics, bladed propellers burst from his back, shredding his Akatsuki cloak. They spun to life, providing just enough thrust to push him higher, out of the projectile's path. The fire-bullet slammed into the ground below, detonating with the force of a high-explosive shell.
Hinata's intent was a laser focused. The puppet is a distraction. The core is the target. The moment Sasori used his own body to maneuver, she knew she had him. She became a blur of black and blue, moving in an erratic, high-speed zigzag pattern, closing the distance while constantly changing her vector. Her hands were a continuous storm of destruction, launching a relentless barrage of fire drills and fire bullets of varying sizes, speeds, and trajectories.
"Kasen no Tama (Bullet of the Fire Drill)! Rendan Kasen! (Barrage of Fire Drills)" her amplified voice boomed, each declaration followed by a fresh wave of pyrotechnic fury.
She saw his chakra strings, humming with a frantic, high-frequency energy as he tried to coordinate his own evasion with the Kazekage puppet's defense. The explosions were a smokescreen, a chaotic symphony to mask her true attack. As she continued her high-speed advance, she spat a dozen smaller, more complex fireballs from a Klyntar maw that formed and vanished on her shoulder.
"Katon: Tentai no Tsuiseki-sha! (Fire Release: Celestial Trackers!)"
Homing protocols engaged, Venom purred. They will not miss.
Unlike the straight-line projectiles, these twelve glowing orbs began to weave and arc, tracking Sasori's movements with intelligent predictions. The combined assault was too much. The constant explosions, the falling rock from the cave ceiling, and now, a swarm of guided missiles, forced Sasori to fully commit to his aerial evasion. He was a red-haired hornet, buzzing through the enclosed space, but the cave was a cage, not an open sky.
FWOOM! One of the trackers slammed into the ceiling directly above him, sending a shower of massive boulders crashing down. He juked left, only for another two trackers to correct their course and slam into the wall beside him. He countered, his own puppet hands flashing through seals. High-pressure streams of water shot from his fingertips, slicing through her fireballs and carving deep gouges into the stone, but he couldn't land a single hit on the zigzagging blur that was Hinata.
She was getting closer. Her assault was not letting up. And then, her Byakugan saw it: the chakra strings flowing from his core changed their primary target. The Kazekage puppet, disengaging from Chiyo and Sakura, shot towards her, its own electromagnetic coil flaring to life. The ground around her erupted as a forest of razor-sharp iron sand spears and thorns grew with impossible speed, a cage designed to constrict and impale her from all sides.
The moment the iron touched the air, she switched.
"Hakkeshō… Raikō Kaiten!" (Lightning Drill Vortex)
A sphere of grinding, white-hot lightning erupted around her, instantly dissolving the closest spears. The sphere then collapsed inward and detonated outward in a massive, omnidirectional blast of pure electricity.
"Raiton: Hakai Shōgekiha! (Lightning Release: Destructive Shockwave!)"
CRACK-KABOOOM! The entire iron sand forest was blasted apart, the magnetic cohesion of the particles shattered by the raw voltage. The Kazekage puppet staggered back, its systems shorting out. At that same instant, a half-dozen cannon-like arrays of Klyntar biomass sprouted from Hinata's back and shoulders.
"Dai-Raijin Hōgyoku! (Great Thunder God Cannonball!)"
A volley of massive, swirling lightning spheres launched at Sasori's cornered position high in the cave. Simultaneously, her legs coiled with thick bands of symbiotic muscle and crackling energy. She became the drill. She launched herself forward.
Sasori saw it all. The lightning cannonballs detonating around him, the electrical energy arcing through the air, making his own chakra strings fizz and sputter, his control momentarily faltering. He saw the living projectile screaming towards him. He had one last defense. With a final, desperate command, the Kazekage puppet formed a dense, final lattice of iron sand thorns directly in Hinata's path. His calculating mind knew it was perfect. The thorns would manifest in a fraction of a second. She had no time. She would be impaled.
In the frozen moment of his perceived victory, he saw her body, already surrounded by the forming spikes, pulse once.
A silent, concussive shockwave of pure force erupted from her, shattering the nascent thorns into metallic dust. Her entire body was then wreathed in a crackling, blindingly white aura of pure lightning.
"Raiton no Yoroi! (Lightning Release Armor!)"
He had time to register one final image: her massive, armored breastplate, filling his entire field of vision.
Then, a universe of light and sound.
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!
The explosion was colossal, a contained supernova that shook the very foundations of the mountain. Sasori's world went black.
It felt like an eternity, but in reality, it had been less than a minute. Sakura stood beside Chiyo, her heart still hammering in her chest. One moment, the horrifying Kazekage puppet was about to turn her and Chiyo's own creations to scrap. The next, it had disengaged and flown off.
"He's going after Hinata!" she had realized, a jolt of panic in her chest. "She needs help!"
Then the world became a symphony of destruction. Explosions. Falling rocks. The blinding flash of lightning, and finally, one great, deafening detonation that made her ears ring. Sakura was just glad the roof hadn't caved in completely.
When the dust began to settle, she saw her. Hinata. Standing atop a newly formed mountain of rubble, holding something small in one hand.
"Hinata!" Sakura scrambled over the broken stone. "Are you okay?!"
There was no immediate answer. For a few tense seconds, Hinata's helmeted head swiveled, assessing the darkness for any remaining threats. Then, with a faint, hydraulic hiss, her entire posture softened. Her helmet flowed back into her armor, resealing itself as if it had never been there, revealing her face. Her midnight-blue hair was still held in its tight, severe bun.
"I am fine, Sakura-san," her resonant voice was calm, reassuring.
Sakura finally reached her, Chiyo arriving a moment later. "Where's Sasori?"
Hinata lifted her hand, presenting a grotesque, pulsating purple cylinder of flesh and metal. "Sasori is not a threat anymore."
Sakura and Chiyo looked past her, up into the high, shadowy corner of the cave. There, pinned to the wall by a combination of melted slag and its own shattered propeller blades, was the broken, doll-like body of Sasori, missing its right arm and the entire core of its chest.
"Is that…" Sakura whispered, her stomach turning. "Is that what I think it is?"
"Hai," Hinata confirmed, her gaze fixed on the cylinder. "This is the real Sasori. His living core." As if to prove her point, a dozen fine, black tendrils shot from her gauntlet and stabbed into the cylinder, causing it to twitch violently. "He is still attempting to form chakra strings. A futile resistance." She pulsed her own chakra, and the twitching stopped.
Sakura stared in awed silence, but Chiyo's gaze was distant, thoughtful, fixed on the last remnant of her grandson.
"Chiyo-sama," Hinata said, her voice softening with genuine respect. "With your permission, I would like to take him as a prisoner of Konoha."
After a long, heavy moment, Chiyo gave a slow, tired nod.
Hinata covered the core in a layer of flowing black biomass, then formed a series of complex hand seals. The cylinder vanished in a swirl of dark energy.
"What did you do with it?" Sakura asked, her curiosity overriding her shock.
"I used my summoning jutsu," Hinata explained simply. "I have sent him to my summoning realm. They are… very good at containing things like this."
After a moment to catch their breath, they began to move towards the exit. "I hope the Suna shinobi can salvage something from all this," Sakura mused, looking at the devastation.
Suddenly, Hinata stopped. Lying half-buried in the rubble was a puppet's arm, cleanly severed at the shoulder. It was from Sasori's own body. And on its finger, she saw it: a ring, bearing the kanji for "Jewel" (玉). She and Venom remembered. The Akatsuki. The horrifying jutsu that drained Gaara's life had been channeled through these rings.
A communication and chakra-channeling nexus, Venom confirmed. Fashioned from the same bio-crystalline material as the Husk. It is dormant now. This requires further research. We must return to Klyntar for a deeper analysis.
Hinata blinked, a fleeting thought crossing her mind. Sometimes he sounds like a scholar, other times… like a beast. Shaking it off, she strode over to the arm, and with a sharp tug that snapped the puppet's finger joints, she ripped the ring free and pocketed it.
Sakura's earpiece crackled to life.
"Sasori is neutralized," Sakura reported, a tremor of disbelief still in her voice. "We've won."
She relayed the updates. Team Guy was finishing up their copies. Then, Kakashi's voice, rushed and strained, cut through the static. "We've forced him down! The bomber is grounded! Engaging now!"
Hinata's head snapped up. "They need us."
With a shared nod, the three kunoichi burst from the shattered cave mouth, running towards the sound of a new battle.
Several minutes ago, as Hinata's attack turned the cave entrance to dust, the chase had begun.
Naruto and Kakashi were a blur of orange and green, tearing through the dense forest. High above, the white clay bird soared, a mocking speck against the blue sky.
"He's getting away!" Naruto roared, his voice already tight with frustration. He landed on a thick branch, his entire body thrumming with a new, potent energy. Orange pigment exploded around his eyes like a sunburst, his pupils elongating into the horizontal bars of a toad.
FWOOSH! FWOOSH! FWOOSH!
A dozen Shadow Clones erupted around him, each one glowing with the same vibrant, natural energy. "Let's go!" the original yelled, and the clones responded with a unified battle cry. They became a living ladder, one clone using a wind-enhanced leap to launch another even higher, a chain reaction of explosive jumps that sent a single, determined Naruto rocketing into the sky, closing the distance to the bird.
SHING! SHING! SHING!
He and his aerial clones rained a storm of wind-infused kunai upwards, each one a miniature green razor that hissed through the air. They were followed by sharp blasts of air, Fūton: Shinkūdan (Wind Release: Vacuum Bullets), that punched holes in the clouds around Deidara.
The blonde Akatsuki member looked down, a smirk of arrogant amusement on his face. He formed a single hand sign. With a series of soft plop sounds, a dozen small, spider-like clay bombs dropped from his bird, descending into the swarm of airborne clones.
BOOM! BOOM-BOOM-BOOM! BOOM!
The explosions tore through the clones, a chain reaction of smoke and concussive force that sent the few remaining tumbling back to the earth. From the ground, Kakashi's Sharingan spun, capturing the flicker of the hand sign, the flow of chakra, the precise, practiced nature of the jutsu.
Deidara's bird began to climb, gaining altitude, preparing to soar out of their reach for good.
"Oh no you don't!" the real Naruto snarled, still airborne from his last, powerful leap. He brought his right hand up, pouring his own chakra and the raw power of nature into his palm. A swirling sphere of incandescent energy formed, a miniature hurricane held in his hand, a high-pitched, soul-grating SHREEEEEEE tearing at the air. With a final, furious roar, he threw it.
Deidara sneered. The extraction of the One-Tailed was paramount. This Jinchuriki brat was a nuisance, but ultimately, a predictable one. Wind Release? Against his explosive clay? The fool was practically feeding his art, the rapid expansion of air from the wind jutsu only serving to enhance the blast radius of his bombs. A true amateur. He would simply out-fly them, retreat to the secondary hideout, and let Sasori-danna clean up the mess.
He urged his bird higher, feeling the satisfying pull of the ascent. Then he heard it. A screeching, whistling sound that was not wind. It was the sound of reality being torn apart. He barely had time to glance down before his eyes widened. A shimmering, spinning vortex of impossible energy was screaming towards him. Instinct, pure and primal, took over.
"WHOA!" he yelled, violently wrenching his bird's reins. The clay creature obeyed, lurching hard to the right in a sickening, ungraceful turn.
He wasn't fast enough.
SHREEE-CRACK!
The Rasenshuriken clipped the bird's left wing. It disintegrated it, shredding the clay on a molecular level. The explosive force of the impact sent them into a violent, uncontrolled tumble, spiraling down towards the forest canopy.
"T-THAT F-FUCKER!!" Deidara screamed, fighting to regain control. His clay bird held onto Gaara's limp body with a death grip, his one good hand frantically shoving a wad of clay into his mouth. The hand-mouth chewed with manic speed. As he wrestled with the controls, his senses, honed by a hundred battles, screamed a new warning. Another projectile. He jerked his head to the side just as a colossal, tree-trunk-thick object studded with metal spikes roared past his face.
WHOOOOOOSH!
The wind from its passage whipped his blonde hair across his eyes. The spikes nicked a few stray strands. His eyes bulged in utter disbelief. Is that a freaking KANABO he just threw at me?!
Finally, the clay was ready. The hand-mouth spat out a glob of processed material, and Deidara slapped it onto the stump of the bird's wing, expertly reshaping it. The new wing solidified, and with a heavy lurch, his flight stabilized. He was still high, still out of their immediate reach. He let out a long, comical sigh of relief. Finally. Now, to get to the rendezvous point. Sasori-danna could handle the rest.
As he pondered this, a shadow fell over him. It was sudden, absolute, and impossibly close. Shocked, he craned his neck to look up.
It was already there. Naruto, golden eyes blazing with sage-fire, was descending upon him like a vengeful god, that same gargantuan Kanabo held high over his head.
"Surprise motherfucker!" Naruto bellowed.
THWACK!
The metal side of the war club connected squarely with Deidara's face. The impact was so immense that for a single, silent, ludicrous moment, Deidara's features stretched and flattened over the weapon's surface, his eyes bugging out like a cartoon character. The blow launched him from his bird, sending him plummeting like a stone into the dense forest below.
Naruto's feet planted firmly on that weird bird, that is still keep flying. He looked down at the falling Akatsuki bastard, a grim satisfaction on his face. The plan had worked perfectly. Distract him with clones. Force him to dodge with the Rasenshuriken. Then, the real trick. As Deidara scrambled to recover, another he had himself transformed into the Kanabo. Another clone, waiting on the ground, had used an enhanced wind-blast to launch the "Kanabo" not at him, but past him, a deliberate miss to gain altitude. Mid-flight, the transformation had dispelled, becoming himself high above the battle. He'd unsealed his real Kanabo, used a burst of wind to kill his upward momentum and begin a controlled, dive-bombing descent, and introduced the bastard's face to some good, old-fashioned Uzumaki hospitality.
His face looked pretty funny for a second there, though, he thought, a grin tugging at his lips.
He snapped back to the mission. His golden, toad-like eyes locked onto the clay bird's tail. Gaara. He could see the faint, steady pulse of his chakra. He was alive.
With a short exhale, Naruto sealed the Kanabo away. He drew a kunai, channeled a sliver of wind through it, and with a flick of his wrist, sent it spinning through the air. The blade cleanly severed the clay holding Gaara's body. As his friend began to fall, Naruto leaped from the bird, catching him effortlessly. He wrapped one arm around Gaara's torso, using his own wind jutsu to slow their descent, expertly steering them towards Kakashi's position in the trees below.
Pain.
A masterpiece of it, yeah. The world was a smear of green and brown, tilted at a disgusting angle. A low, continuous ringing sound filled his ears, and he could taste blood and dirt. With a groan that felt like it tore something loose in his chest, Deidara heaved himself onto his elbows. The world swam violently.
"Fucking… Jinchuriki…" he slurred, spitting a gob of bloody saliva onto a patch of moss. He staggered to his feet, swaying like a drunk, every muscle screaming in protest. His entire body felt like a poorly sculpted, dropped piece of art. But the true epicenter of the agony was his face.
He tentatively reached up and touched it. His nose… his perfect, aristocratic nose, was a mangled, sideways disaster. A grotesque, asymmetrical mess that offended his very soul.
"Oh, you have got to be kidding me, yeah," he seethed. He gripped the bridge of it with his thumb and forefinger, took a deep, shuddering breath, and yanked.
CRUUUUNCH!
"SHIT! FUUUUCK!" he screamed, the sound echoing through the clearing as a fresh, blinding wave of pain washed over him. His eyes watered, blurring his vision again. He blinked furiously, shaking his head to clear it.
He was in a wide clearing, a small valley floor where the forest gave way to a rushing river. And there, pressed into the soft earth where he had landed, was the most insulting thing he had ever seen. It wasn't just a crater. It was a perfect, humiliating outline of his body, arms and legs splayed out in a posture of utter defeat. A crude, artless, Deidara-shaped hole in the ground.
He didn't have time to fully appreciate the insult.
FWOOM-FWOOM-FWOOM!
Without warning, the air around him shredded. The ground where he stood erupted in a series of violent, overlapping geysers of dirt and razor-sharp wind. He moved, a purely instinctual dive to the side, rolling as shrapnel and blades of compressed air tore through the space he had just occupied.
Hinata, Sakura, and Chiyo were jumping through the forest canopy that bordered the river valley. Sakura's voice was a clipped, professional staccato in their ears, a lifeline to the wider chaos.
"Team Guy, report!"
Guy's voice crackled back, strained but triumphant. "The imposter youths have been vanquished! We are proceeding to your coordinates!" The sound of Naruto's clones dispelling followed, a series of soft puffs that signified their purpose was served.
"Copy that, Guy-sensei," Sakura acknowledged. "Rendezvous with Team Kakashi's position. We're moving in to support them now."
While Sakura coordinated the battlefield, Hinata's senses were a far away, focused entirely on the swirling vortex of combat ahead. Her primary scan was for the Kazekage. She found him instantly, a small, still island of red and black held in a protective cradle of Naruto's shadow clones, not far away from the fighting. He is alive. Good.
With that priority confirmed, she focused on the battle. It was a maelstrom of elemental fury. Naruto had switched from pummeling the area with wind to dousing it with waves of water drawn from the river, creating a muddy, treacherous quagmire. Kakashi, in contrast, was using pure lightning, his attacks precise, targeted.
Their opponent was a frantic, snarling thing. Hinata's enhanced senses peeled back the layers of his being. His body had many crude modifications. The arm Gaara had torn off was a ragged stump. The other hand had a grotesque, twitching mouth in its palm, and a larger, stitched maw was sewn shut across his chest.
Pointless biological modifications, Venom's thought was a sneer of pure contempt. What is the purpose of such appendages? He could have attached claws. Blades. Something functional. This is merely… decorative horror. Inefficient.
Hinata's focus narrowed on the hand-mouth. It was chewing. The spectral signature of the substance it masticated was a perfect match for the white bird. Explosive clay. Mixed with his own chakra. She watched as Deidara spat out a series of small, bird-like drones that took flight, diving towards his opponents. They were infused with his Earth-natured chakra. Kakashi had already figured it out. Every time a clay drone got close, a flicker of his Raikiri would arc out, the lightning instantly neutralizing the earth-based chakra and causing the drone to crumble into inert mud.
Hinata's head swiveled, her helmeted face turning to her two companions without breaking stride. A rapid-fire burst of tactical data followed, her stereophonic voice cutting through the sounds of their sprint.
"Gaara is secure, protected by Naruto's clones. The target is the bomber. His projectiles are earth-based, explosive clay. Kakashi-sensei is neutralizing them with Raiton. Naruto is controlling the terrain with Suiton. We need to end this now."
She activated her own comms, though her helmet. "Kakashi-sensei, Naruto-kun, this is Hinata. Closing in. Am preparing long-range fire support. Target is too erratic for a precision strike. Danger of friendly fire is too high."
She glanced at Sakura and Chiyo. "Continue your advance. I will provide support from above."
Without waiting for a reply, her legs coiled with a visible surge of Klyntar biomass and chakra, launching her into the sky like a cannonball. As she reached the apex of her jump, her ascent didn't slow. A ripple of black, living biomass flowed from the seams of her armor. Multiple sets of vast, leathery wings erupted from her back, catching the air with a sound like tearing silk.
Yesss… The sky is ours… Let us show them how a true predator hunts.
A single, powerful flap of the biomechanical wings sent her rocketing forward, soaring high above the battlefield. Her arms warped and changed, the sleek midnight-blue plates peeling back to reveal two snarling, maw-like cannons of Klyntar biomass, their interiors glowing with nascent power. Within each maw, a ball of pure, white-hot lightning began to coalesce, crackling with unimaginable energy.
With a silent, mental command, she fired. Two guided projectiles of raw destruction, Dai-Raijin Hōgyoku (Great Thunder God Cannonball), screamed from the cannons, arcing down towards the battlefield, her own chakra a pair of invisible tethers guiding them to their target.
Deidara was having a very, very bad day.
The Jinchuriki brat was a relentless, infuriating force of nature. Just when Deidara had the rhythm of his wind attacks figured out, the moron had switched tactics entirely. A colossal, roaring dragon of pure water, Suiton: Suiryūdan no Jutsu (Water Style: Water Dragon Bullet Technique!), had erupted from the river, washing away his latest batch of clay spiders before they could even detonate.
"A little help, Sensei!" Naruto yelled.
Kakashi's hand was already a blur of seals, a crackling sphere of lightning forming in his palm. He slammed his hand into the water dragon's tail. "Raiton: Jibashiri! (Lightning Release: Earth Flash)"
The entire water construct became a supercharged conduit. A web of pure, white-hot lightning raced through the dragon, electrifying it completely. The combined attack slammed into Deidara's position, with a massive, area-of-effect jolt that made his clay bombs twitch, seize, and crumble into inert mud.
Before the last spark had faded, Naruto was on him, a swirling, snarling Rasengan the size of a melon held in his hand, ready to grind him into paste.
Deidara's eyes widened. He switched.
POOF!
The Deidara that Naruto's Rasengan was about to hit became a lump of pale, featureless clay, already bloating and glowing with imminent, catastrophic energy. It was a perfect trap, a point-blank C3 explosion that would vaporize the brat.
But Kakashi was already moving, his hand a piercing, screaming blade of pure lightning.
"Raikiri!"
The Lightning Blade stabbed through the clay doll, the raw Raiton disrupting its explosive chakra core a split second before detonation. The doll spasmed, deflated, and fell to the ground as a useless lump.
The real Deidara reappeared a dozen meters away, his clothes torn, his face a swollen, bruised mess, panting heavily. It didn't make sense. Every feint, every substitution, every attempt to use the terrain for cover, the brat found him instantly. He looked at the Jinchuriki's eyes, truly looked at them for the first time. They weren't blue. They were a brilliant, burning gold, with strange, toad-like pupils. This wasn't in any of the intel.
With a desperate snarl, he shoved wads of clay into his own mouth and his hand-mouth, chewing with frantic, erratic speed. A half-dozen crude clay dolls sprouted from the ground around him, a makeshift, last-ditch shield.
"You don't understand!" he screamed, his voice raw with a zealot's fury, spitting bits of clay as he spoke. "My art is an EXPLOSION! It is a fleeting, beautiful moment of absolute power! I will show you! I will show you all true art! I just need a little more ti—"
KRAKA-THOOOOOOOOOM!
A colossal sphere of lightning detonated directly overhead. The concussive blast and the wave of raw electricity washed over his position. His protective clay dolls seized and crumbled into dust. The shock jolted through his own body, making his teeth clamp down painfully and his muscles lock up. His desperate monologue was cut short, replaced by a strangled gasp.
He forced his protesting limbs to move, leaping back just as a second lightning ball slammed into the ground where he'd been, the resulting explosion sending him tumbling. The pain was immense, a full-body muscle spasms that left him momentarily paralyzed.
He looked up, and Naruto was there, his golden eyes cold and hard. A Rasengan slammed into his chest, launching him backwards with a sickening crunch of ribs.
WHAM!
He hit the ground, bounced, and another Naruto was there, hitting him with another Rasengan from the side.
WHAM!
"My art… is…" WHAM! another Rasengan to the gut. "…absolute…" WHAM! another one, this time to his back as he was thrown past a third clone. He tried to scream, to curse, to finish his goddamn sentence.
"FOR FUCK'S SAKE, LET ME FINISH MY FUCKING SENT—"
WHAM!
A final, massive Rasengan from the original Naruto caught him square in the jaw, sending him spiraling high into the air. The impact was so violent it forced his jaw shut, and with a painful, final gulp, he accidentally swallowed the massive, C4-laced wad of clay he'd been chewing in his own mouth.
His battered body registered nothing but a dizzying spin against a backdrop of blue sky. As he tumbled end over end, he saw a black shape hurtling towards him, closing the distance with impossible speed. It was the armored woman. One of her arms had morphed into a single, massive, sharp blade.
His last, fleeting, utterly confused thought as the blade closed in was, Are her boobs really that big, or am I just concussed?
Then, all he saw was his own back, the tattered black cloak with its mocking red clouds, as his head was neatly and silently severed from his neck.
The black, living biomass that formed Hinata's wings and scythe flowed back into the seams of her armor, retracting with a soft, organic hiss. Her flight path ended in a silent, controlled landing, her steel-toed shoes barely making a sound as they touched the muddy, cratered earth.
"Hinata!" Naruto's voice was a joyous bark. He scrambled over to her, his sage-mode eyes still blazing gold. She saw the happiness in them, the relief, but knew duty came first. Her helmet flowed away, revealing her own calm, focused expression, her hair still held in its tight bun.
Sakura's voice crackled through their comms, a welcome wave of relief. "We've secured the Kazekage. He's stable, just suffering from extreme chakra exhaustion."
The tension in Naruto's shoulders visibly eased.
A moment later, Team Guy arrived, a whirlwind of green and grim determination. Guy immediately joined Kakashi, their low, urgent voices a murmur of debriefing in the background. Lee, Neji, and Tenten approached, their eyes fixed on the headless corpse of the Akatsuki bomber.
"Magnificent!" Lee shouted, his fist punching the air. "You have vanquished this most un-youthful foe with the fires of your passion! A truly splendid victory!"
Neji offered a single, curt nod, his Byakugan already scanning the body for any hidden seals or traps. It was the highest form of praise he was capable of giving. Tenten simply let out a long, weary sigh and came to a stop beside Naruto, her new Kiba blades still humming with latent energy on her back.
Hinata ignored the praise. Her attention was on the kill. She gave Deidara's remaining arm a nudge with her foot, then knelt, her armored fingers deftly working the ring from his cold, stiff hand. It was identical in material to Sasori's, a piece of that same strange, bio-crystalline substance, but this one bore the kanji for "Azure" (青). Another piece of the puzzle, she thought.
"Whoa, hey, check this out," Naruto said, pointing. He and Tenten were both staring at the twitching mouth on Deidara's palm. "That's… super weird."
"Bizarre is the word for it," Tenten agreed, a wrinkle of disgust on her nose.
"I mean, how'd this guy even live like that?" Naruto mused, scratching his cheek. "Imagine trying to, you know… go to the bathroom. Would he have to wear gloves all the time? What if he forgot?"
"Ew, Naruto, that's disgusting!" Tenten retorted, shoving him playfully.
Hinata pocketed the second ring and rose to her full, towering height. Her shadow fell over Naruto and the members of Team Guy, a sudden, eclipsing presence that made them all subconsciously take a half-step back.
And then, she felt it.
The same presence from before. The statistical impossibility. The ghost that had been shadowing them for hours. It had no chakra signature, no heat.
And it was no longer watching from a distance.
It was close. Very close.
Hinata's eyes narrowed, a subtle, almost imperceptible shift that only another sensor would catch. She gave a single, slow blink, their prearranged signal for a silent, unseen threat. Across the clearing, she saw Kakashi's visible eye tighten. Guy tensed, his jovial demeanor evaporating. Naruto's golden eyes were already scanning, his head cocked to one side as if listening to a sound no one else could hear. Neji's veins bulged at his temples, his Byakugan flaring to life as he swept the area. To any outside observer, they were a group of victorious shinobi standing over a kill, but to each other, they were a coiled spring, every muscle screaming with tension.
This was wrong. A profound, fundamental wrongness. Venom's mind, was running a thousand diagnostic threads at once, but the data was contradictory. Her Byakugan saw nothing. No chakra. No physical form. And yet… her Klyntar senses screamed otherwise. She could feel the subtle warping of bio-electric fields, a ghost-like signature moving from the treeline towards the riverbank. Her chemo-receptors tasted a bizarre, alien scent on the air, something like rotting fungus and ancient, sterile stone.
It was getting closer, moving with a reckless confidence, as if it believed itself utterly undetectable. It wanted a better look at Deidara's corpse, and at them.
And that was its mistake.
The combined data streams from her Hyuuga and Klyntar senses finally converged, cross-referencing and triangulating. There. A specific patch of deep shadow where the forest met the muddy riverbank, thirty meters out. She locked eyes with Naruto. His golden gaze was fixed on the exact same spot. He knew.
Hinata made a minute, almost invisible hand gesture, a flick of two fingers that indicated a confirmed target and an imminent strike. She saw the others subtly shift their weight, ready to move.
Her hands, held calmly at her sides, rippled. Black, living biomass flowed over them, warping them into two snarling, maw-like cannons.
"Katon: Dai-Kasen! (Fire Release: Great Fire Drill!)" she roared, her voice a thunderclap that shattered the quiet.
Two colossal, swirling vortexes of white-hot fire erupted from the maws, screaming across the valley floor. At the exact same instant, Naruto thrust his own hand forward, a screeching, reality-tearing shuriken of pure wind and chakra already formed.
"Fūton: Rasenshuriken!"
KRAKA-THOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMM!
The combined attacks hit the same point in space at the same time. The result was a cataclysm. The firestorm of Hinata's jutsu and the million microscopic blades of Naruto's technique fused into a single, annihilating explosion that vaporized the ancient trees at the forest's edge, boiled the river water in a flash of steam, and tore a massive, shallow crater in the earth, sending a shockwave of superheated air and mud washing over them.
When the smoke and dust began to clear, they saw it.
"What… what in the hell is that?!" Tenten breathed, her voice tight with horrified disbelief.
"My eyes…" Neji stammered, his Byakugan wide with shock. "They can see it now… It was as if it didn't exist a moment ago."
Hinata and Naruto remained perfectly still, their focus absolute. The creature that stood, disheveled and genuinely shocked in the center of the crater, was a violation of nature. It was humanoid, but split down the middle. One half was a sickly, mottled green, like a pitcher plant given flesh. The other was a swirling, abyssal black, with a single, baleful yellow eye. Parts of its green, plant-like side were charred and smoking, the combined attack having caught it completely off-guard.
Even now, as her Byakugan saw its strange, dual-colored chakra system for the first time, her other senses were screaming a more revealing truth.
Confirmed, Venom's thought was a cold, hard spike of data. The green sector is a complex plant-based organism. The black sector… its bio-signature is a perfect match for the Husk. It is a piece of the great predator. They are two separate entities, fused into one.
The creature was already recovering. Its form began to ripple, to blur, its edges seeming to dissolve and merge with the surrounding shadows and churned-up earth.
"It's trying to escape!" Neji shouted. "It's phasing out of my vision again!"
"Long-range fire and lightning only!" Hinata commanded, her voice cutting through the rising panic. "Do not let it submerge!"
Naruto was already forming another Rasenshuriken, this one even larger and more violent than the last. Hinata's hands blazed, a new, even more massive vortex of white plasma coalescing between them. Kakashi's hand crackled to life with a piercing shriek of lightning. Tenten planted her feet, the Kiba blades in her hands humming as she poured raw Raiton chakra into them.
A colossal, shrieking hurricane of wind. A miniature, roaring sun. A focused, blinding lance of pure lightning. Two jagged, crackling swords of thunder.
All four attacks launched at once, converging on the fading creature in a beautiful, terrifying storm of absolute destruction.
KRAKA-THOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMM!
The second explosion was a even stronger. The very ground trembled, a deep, seismic shudder that rippled out for miles, the sound explosion that could likely be heard back in Suna. A mushroom cloud of superheated steam, pulverized rock, and elemental energy billowed into the sky, momentarily blotting out the sun.
The deafening roar slowly subsided, replaced by the hiss of cooling stone and the crackle of burning foliage. Naruto's sage-enhanced senses, honed to a razor's edge, twitched.
"He's still there!" he yelled, his golden eyes locked on a point further down the valley. "The plant-man is getting away!"
There was no hesitation. The entire group moved quickly, a hunter-killer group in perfect sync, tearing across the blasted landscape in pursuit. This spy would not escape.
Sakura's frantic voice erupted from their comms. "What in the world was that?! Are you all okay? It sounded like the whole valley just blew up!"
"We've made contact with a second Akatsuki operative, Sakura!" Kakashi's voice was strained but steady. "A stealth type! We're in pursuit!"
They rounded a bend in the river and saw it. The creature was half-submerged in the muddy bank, looking far worse for wear. Its green, plant-like side was a melted, slagged mess, dripping a foul-smelling ichor onto the ground. The black side, however, remained eerily intact, its single yellow eye glaring at them with a mixture of shock and cold fury. It was already sinking, its form blurring as it attempted to merge with the earth itself.
"It's phasing out again!" Neji confirmed, his Byakugan straining.
"Then we shall uproot this most un-youthful weed!" Guy roared, his body already tensing for a dynamic, high-speed charge, with Lee mirroring his stance a perfect half-beat behind him.
"Stand down!" Hinata's command was absolute, stopping them both in their tracks. "It is expelling a massive cloud of microscopic spores. Keep your distance!"
Kakashi was already moving, his hands a blur of seals. "Katon: Hōsenka no Jutsu!" A volley of small fireballs shot forward, incinerating the air around the creature. To Hinata's surprise, Naruto mirrored the technique, spitting his own stream of fireballs, a cruder but no less effective application.
It's learning… so fast.
Her own mind, had already reached a conclusion. The ground was its escape route. The ground had to be denied. She slammed her palm flat onto the earth.
"Doton: Tsuchi Kekkai no Mai! (Earth Release: Dance of the Earth Spike Barricade!)"
While she had no natural affinity for the element, her perfect chakra control and the raw power at her command were more than enough. The earth directly beneath the creature bucked and groaned. A single, colossal, perfectly cylindrical pillar of solid rock erupted upwards, lifting the Akatsuki spy a dozen meters into the air, isolating it from its escape route. But it was already adapting, its black, fluid half beginning to flow and merge with the stone pillar itself.
"It will not be enough!" Hinata declared, her voice echoing with absolute authority. "Combined elemental assault! On my mark! Overwhelm it!"
A torrent of black, living biomass flowed down her right arm, the plates of her armor peeling back to form a single, massive, maw-like cannon, its interior glowing with a furious, white-hot light.
Naruto, understanding that wind would only scatter the spores, switched his focus, a ball of roiling flame forming in his hands. Kakashi's own hand became a screaming spear of lightning. Tenten planted her feet, the Kiba blades in her hands crackling, ready to unleash their own storm.
"Raikōhō! (Lightning Cannon!)" Hinata bellowed.
"Katon: Dai Endan! (Fire Release: Great Flame Bullet!)" Naruto roared.
"Raikiri Eiso! (Lightning Blade: Sharp Spear!)" Kakashi commanded.
"Raiga! (Lightning Fang!)" Tenten screamed.
A continuous, searing beam of pure white lightning. A massive, roaring fireball. A piercing lance of focused electricity. And two jagged, crackling swords of thunder.
All four attacks screamed through the air, converging on the trapped, helpless figure high atop the stone pillar.
The combined elemental fury struck the pillar in a singular, world-shattering instant.
KRAKA-THOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMM!
The sound was a loud deafening roar that rolled across the valley and shook the very mountains. The pillar of rock sublimated, turning to incandescent dust in a blinding flash of white light and elemental chaos. For a moment, the entire world was nothing but overwhelming power.
When vision returned, the sight was unsettling. There, in the center of a new, glassy crater, lay the creature. The pillar was gone. The torrent of elemental jutsu was gone. And yet, it remained. Its black side was pristine, seemingly untouched, but the green, plant-like half was a melted, bubbling ruin. And even as they watched, new, sickly green tendrils began to sprout from the slag, the regeneration happening at a visible, horrifying rate.
"It… it survived that?" Neji breathed, his voice laced with pure shock. "How is that even possible?"
All around him, shinobi tensed, chakra flaring as they prepared for another, even more desperate assault.
Hinata's mind was running quick thoughts. The creature was regenerating far too quickly. They were burning through their chakra reserves on a target that simply refused to die. It would slip away. This required a different approach. A more… surgical one. Her fused senses, a combination of the Byakugan's spiritual insight and the Klyntar's bio-analysis, looked deeper. And then she saw it. It was a connection. A dense, shimmering web of ethereal, spiritual threads linked the green half to the black half. It was so intricate, so tightly woven, that she had initially mistaken it for a single, unified entity.
The connection is the key, Venom's thought was a blade of pure logic in her mind. They are not one. They are a parasite and a symbiote. The black half, the fragment of the Husk, is the parasite. It is the puppeteer, feeding spiritual energy and commands into the green half, the puppet. Sever the link. The puppet will fall.
But to do that, she needed to get it off the ground. Again.
As if in answer to her silent prayer, help arrived.
Rivers of rust-colored sand, flowing with impossible speed, erupted from the forest's edge, converging on the crater. They swirled around the regenerating creature, a silent, grinding vortex.
"Gaara!" Naruto shouted, a look of relief on his face.
He was there. Standing shakily at the treeline, his face pale and beaded with sweat, but his eyes burning with a cold, clear focus. Sakura and Chiyo were supporting him, one on each side.
"He insisted," Sakura explained, her voice tight with worry.
The sand did not crush. It carefully, deliberately engulfed the creature, lifting it from the ground and sealing it within a dense, perfectly spherical prison of churning, high-speed sand. But the creature was still fighting. It tried to flow, to merge with the sand and seep back into the earth, but Gaara's control was absolute. He continuously rotated the sphere, shifting the sand from top to bottom, denying it any purchase, any hope of escape.
Distorted, screaming faces, both green and black, would momentarily press against the inner surface of the sand ball before being ground back into the maelstrom.
"What in the world is that thing?" Sakura asked, horrified.
"I have never seen its like," Chiyo admitted, her ancient eyes wide with a mixture of fear and academic fascination.
"Whatever you are planning…" Gaara grunted, a trickle of blood dripping from his nose from the strain. "…do it now!"
Our combined fire and lightning aura should be sufficient to neutralize the spore dispersal, Venom stated. The objective is clear. Cut the connection.
"Everyone!" Hinata's command cut through the air like a razor, her voice a resonant, absolute authority. "Prepare your strongest long-range jutsu! On my signal, after I make the cut, you will fire!"
A wave of tense, focused energy washed over the group as they began to channel their power, their gazes locked on the churning sphere of sand.
Hinata's own body became the epicenter of a new storm. First, a crackling, white-hot aura of pure lightning, her Raiton no Yoroi (Lightning Release Armor), erupted around her. Then, she forced a second layer into existence, a shimmering, incandescent cloak of pure heat, the Katon: Jōka no Hagoromo (Fire Release: Robe of Purification). Venom's mind, a biological supercomputer, acted as the harmonizer, weaving the two opposing forces together into something new. A roiling, incandescent aura of pure, white-hot plasma, her Stellar Cloak, pulsed around her, warping the very air.
Her right arm flowed and changed, elongating into a single, elegant, three-meter-long blade, humming with the contained fury of a star, the perfect balance of fire and lightning. She saw her team, a line of living weapons, all focused, all channeling, ready to unleash hell on her command.
Without another word, she launched herself into the air, a living star streaking towards the trapped abomination.
This was hell.
A churning, grinding, suffocating hell of sand. The white half was a constant, shrieking chorus of pure panic in their shared mind, its physical form threatening to destabilize from the sheer terror. It hurts it hurts it hurts make it stop! The black half, a sliver of ancient, cold will, held them together through sheer force of purpose. Endure. They will exhaust themselves. And then we will slip away. We will have our revenge.
And then, the world outside the grinding sand went brighter than noon. The churning sphere parted like a curtain, revealing a silhouette that burned itself into his ancient consciousness, a figure wreathed in the blinding light of a star and the absolute darkness of the void, her colossal form blocking out the setting sun.
It was the Hyuuga girl. The monster.
Hinata hung in the air, her plasma cloak a roiling, incandescent aura. She raised her single, three-meter blade of pure, white-hot energy, the light from it casting long, dancing shadows across the valley.
As the light illuminated her face, a shock jolted through Black Zetsu's being. Her glowing, cerulean eyes, so much brighter and more intense than any Byakugan he had ever witnessed. The regal, otherworldly perfection of her features. The long, midnight-blue hair that floated around her like a celestial corona, no longer bound in its bun. The sheer, overwhelming presence of her. It was… familiar. A familiarity so deep, so primal, it shook the very foundations of his long, patient existence. He saw the face of the one for whom he had schemed for a millennium, the very reason for his being.
A single, soundless word escaped his ancient consciousness, a whisper lost in the grinding of the sand.
"Mother?"
SCHRRRRIIIIIIIIIIING!
The world dissolved into a sensation beyond pain. He felt it as a tearing. A soundless, soul-deep RRRRIIIIIP as a billion microscopic, spiritual tethers, the very roots of his existence that bound him to the white half, were cauterized and severed at once. It was the feeling of an eternity of connection being ripped away, of a part of his very soul being broken off and cast into the void. A cold, empty space now existed where his other half had been, a phantom limb of pure, screaming agony.
Her plasma blade met the churning sphere of sand with a searing, sizzling hiss. It sliced through the grinding prison as if it were water, the superheated energy parting the grains and turning them to glass in its wake.
Inside, her blade found its target.
The instant the plasma touched the spiritual tethers linking the two halves, the world erupted in a chorus of pure agony.
SKREEEEEEEEEEEE!
The white, plant-like half let out a high-pitched, desperate shriek that vibrated in the very air, a sound of pure terror and pain. A massive cloud of black spores burst from its dissolving form, only to be instantly vaporized by the incandescent aura of Hinata's stellar cloak.
GRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!
The black, parasitic half let out a deep, ancient howl of pure, soul-tearing rage. Hinata felt the psychic backlash, a wave of pure hatred and despair that washed over her, only to be met and consumed by Venom's cold, unyielding will. She saw the silver-black threads, a billion tiny connections, snapping and disintegrating in the blade's path.
Her first cut was complete, bisecting them vertically. Without pausing, she twisted, the long blade swinging in a final, contemptuous horizontal arc that carved deep into the black half's core, eliciting another guttural, furious roar.
Her work was done. A new set of leathery wings erupted from her back, and with a single, powerful flap, she launched herself backwards, landing softly on the ground a hundred meters away. Her plasma cloak blazed, her armored form a beacon of terrible power.
She raised her free hand, a single, unshakeable command that needed no words.
"NOW!"
The world answered.
From the ground, Gaara gave a final, guttural roar, the sand sphere compressing with the force of a collapsing mountain, the grinding sound reaching a deafening crescendo.
Sakura, her face a mask of pure will, slammed her fists together and punched the air, a shimmering, invisible cannonball of pure kinetic force screaming towards the target.
Guy and Lee, their bodies wreathed in the blistering green aura of the Fifth Gate of Opening, threw a thousand punches at the air, each strike so fast it didn't throw wind, but ignited it, launching twin comets of emerald fire.
Chiyo's hands were a frantic, masterful blur. All ten of her puppets appeared at once, a chaotic, multi-elemental storm of fire, wind, lightning, and water, a proof of a lifetime of war unleashed in a single, final volley.
Tenten planted her feet, the Kiba blades in her hands screaming as she unleashed a brilliant, forked dragon of pure, white-hot lightning.
Neji thrust his palms forward, unleashing a single, colossal palm of shimmering, translucent blue chakra, an unstoppable tide of pure, disruptive force.
Kakashi's hand became a piercing, screaming spear of pure lightning, extending impossibly far, a needle of divine punishment.
Naruto roared, hurling his own attack, a sound that tore reality apart, a miniature, screaming hurricane of a million microscopic blades that shredded the very air it traveled through.
And finally, Hinata. Her arm cannon, already formed, locked onto the target. The interior of the maw glowed with the light of a newborn sun. A silent, perfect, needle-thin beam of pure white light, her Kōseiton: Hoshi no Shisen (Stellar Release: Gaze of the Star), shot forth, the final, killing blow in the symphony of destruction.
The nine attacks converged.
In the single, infinitesimal point in space where the creature was trapped, the world ceased to be sound and fury and became only light. A blinding, absolute white that washed over the valley, erasing shadows, silencing the screams of wind and lightning, consuming all in its silent, perfect, and total annihilation. It was brighter than a sun born a hand's breadth from their eyes.