Roshi stood balanced on the rolling sea, chakra flowing beneath his feet as if anchoring him to an invisible reef.
Across from him, Shoshi also stood on the waves, his black chestplate catching the pale light of the sky with a cold, metallic sheen.
With a flick of his wrist, Roshi summoned the scroll Wasabi Jirocho had entrusted to him—the damning evidence of the Chayama Gang's crimes, along with the letter to the Daimyō. Meeting Shoshi's piercing gaze, his voice cut through the roar of the tide:
"There are two copies. One with the messenger, one with me. If you strike that ship, I'll head for Naqi Island and deliver this straight to the Daimyō myself. Or…" his tone sharpened, "…we settle this here. I promise that ship won't budge until one of us falls."
Shoshi's lone visible eye narrowed. A low, metallic rasp escaped his throat, halfway between a chuckle and the grind of rusted gears. "A Konoha ninja… so your aim is me. Interesting." He tilted his head, vertebrae clicking like clashing blades.
"Good. Saves me the trouble. As you wish."
The instant the words left his lips, he moved. Not forward—sideways, unnaturally fluid. A black blur ripped across the waves between them.
His right arm.
It had stretched grotesquely long, skin a bluish-grey, ending in hooked claws with nails like obsidian. The air itself seemed to sour with a sickly-sweet stench as it streaked for Roshi's face.
The strike was so fast it left only a warped afterimage.
Roshi's pupils contracted. Chakra flared at his soles, propelling him diagonally across the water in a sharp glide. The claws grazed his vest—shhht—tearing a thin line across the fabric.
Missed.
But Shoshi's eyes didn't flicker. His elongated arm twisted in mid-air like a whip without bones, snapping back at a sharper, crueler angle—straight for Roshi's exposed back. At the same time, Shoshi's own body skimmed over the waves, drawn forward by the arm's momentum, gliding like a phantom.
Suspended in mid-air with nothing to brace against, Roshi exhaled. His core muscles coiled, twisting his body mid-flight. His right hand snapped into his pouch—three kunai flashing between his fingers. With a single whip of his wrist, he launched them not at Shoshi, but precisely at the joint of the grotesque arm.
Clang!
The kunai bit, but the arm was like striking an oil-hardened vine. Only shallow marks scored its hide before the blades were knocked aside, vanishing into the sea. The whip-arm barely slowed, carving forward.
Hard as iron…
Roshi landed on the water, chakra locking him steady. His hands blurred into seals.
"Water Release: Water Shockwave!"
The ocean itself surged at his call. The sea roared upward, a towering wall of water crashing forward with crushing force. It swallowed Shoshi whole, arm and all, in a foaming deluge.
BOOM!
The waves detonated in spray, drowning the battlefield in white mist.
Rule of shinobi combat: never assume the enemy is down. Don't stand and admire your strike. Don't get greedy. Move.
Roshi had already begun his retreat when—
"Gurrrgggghhhh…"
A guttural, inhuman rasp vibrated just above him.
A shadow burst from the collapsing wall of water.
Not an arm. A head.
Shoshi's neck had stretched as grotesquely as his limb, extending several meters. His face lunged like a chained flail, jaws wide. The stench hit first, rotten-sweet and suffocating.
The mask loomed inches away, its single eye burning cold green. His mouth yawned open, two rows of serrated teeth bared, dripping with strands of viscous, greenish fluid.
Roshi's body arched backward, almost parallel to the sea's surface. At the last instant, his left palm slapped the waves, chakra exploding beneath it. The recoil shot him skimming backward across the water like a silver fish. His right hand whipped up, kunai flashing.
Pfft!
The blade drove into the side of Shoshi's outstretched neck. But instead of the clean give of flesh and bone, Roshi felt resistance like stabbing into slick, unyielding rubber. The kunai sank barely an inch before locking in place, the texture both revolting and unnatural.
The strike knocked Shoshi's head off balance, but those eerie green eyes never wavered. They fixed on Roshi with a predator's hunger, and the stench rolling from his fanged maw thickened in the air.
"Hiss—!"
The sound was inhuman, scraping from deep within his throat. His neck twisted violently around the embedded kunai, serpentine and grotesque, jaws snapping at Roshi from an impossible angle.
Roshi didn't cling to the weapon. He released it instantly, retreating on the momentum, fingers already flashing into seals.
"Water Release: Water Dragon Bullet!"
The sea answered his call with a furious roar. Water churned and surged upward, condensing into a colossal dragon of raging current. Scales of spray glittered in the dim light as it coiled high, bellowing before it dove. Its cavernous jaws crashed down toward Shoshi's lunging head—and the twisted body behind it.
RUMBLE—!!!
The impact tore across the sea like a natural disaster. A towering column of water erupted skyward, waves collapsing outward in a torrential downpour. Foam and shattered spray pelted everything within reach, while the ocean itself was gouged into a vast crater of whitewater and turbulence.
But as the mist thinned, Roshi's eyes narrowed.
Shoshi was still there. Standing. Unmoved.
His grotesque arm and elongated neck recoiled with unsettling flexibility, shrinking back into place as if nothing had happened. At his throat, the kunai's wound peeled open to reveal bluish-purple flesh—yet no blood spilled. Instead, a viscous black tar oozed from the edges, writhing like living sludge as it stitched the gash shut before Roshi's eyes.
His chestplate bore only shallow dents and chalky white scratches from the dragon's crushing blow. Hardly more than cosmetic.
Shoshi raised a hand, smearing the black liquid from his healing wound across his fingertip. He stared at it for a moment, then dragged his crimson tongue over it with slow, deliberate malice. The gesture was utterly wrong—bestial, obscene. When his gaze lifted again, the mocking coldness was gone. In its place burned raw cruelty, the thrill of a predator that had just found its prey.
"Konoha's ninjutsu…" his voice rasped, low and jagged, "…is nothing special. I wonder—" his teeth glinted in a twisted grin, "—what your blood will taste like."
He leaned forward, arms loose at his sides, black nails extending like hooked talons. Every joint in his body ticked with quiet, dreadful clacks, like weapons being primed.
Roshi's expression remained unreadable, but his thoughts raced. So resilient… Water Release barely dents him, and even direct cuts won't pierce that altered flesh. His skin, his organs—engineered for endurance, for survival. But…
His eyes flicked once more to the dark breastplate covering Shoshi's chest, the only part of him that hadn't flexed and healed like the rest.
That armor… it may be the key.
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