Pre-Chapter A/N:Another chapter on time? Guess my lock-in is going pretty well. If you haven't already, I recommend turning on notifications for my stuff so you can see when new stuff drops right as it drops. More chapters on my patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga)— same username as here and link in bio. Since I just started a new story, there's a cheeky discount on said patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga) page for anyone interested.
XXXXX- KUSHINA UZUMAKI
She thought the Uchiha woman would keep arguing, but instead she sighed and said, "Fine, fine. I'll let the kids take the win."
By her side, she could hear Minato release a breath he had been holding. Uzume-san looked over to her again, and Kushina was no longer in Konoha.
"You wanted to test out a full transformation, didn't you?" Uzume asked.
"What? How do you know that?"
"These eyes of mine see many things, girl. I'll release your beast from my genjutsu so you can make your attempt," she said.
"His name is Gyuki. He's no beast," she said, feeling a rush of rage at the description.
"Whatever you say, Kushina-chan," she said, and then she was gone. Kushina remained in her inner world now and watched as Gyuki began to stir. The chains that held him still had withered with her departure.
"What—what happened?" he asked. She stretched out a fist for him to bump, and when he did so, she watched his eyes as he went through her memories of what had just happened.
"That damn Uchiha," he growled.
"'Damn Uchiha,'" she agreed.
"Do you still want to go ahead with it? She's annoying, but she's clearly strong enough to take care of us if we lost control of ourselves during the transformation," she said.
"I already told you that there's no chance of you losing control. That isn't something you should worry about," he said in that strict baritone of his that normally brought so much assurance to her heart. This time, it didn't fail either. She felt like she could do anything with him on her side.
So she returned to the outside world with a start. She could feel the power of Gyuki clearly flowing through her body, lighting every nerve and receptor on fire. It felt like jumping into an onsen at the end of a cold winter night.
XXXXXX- MINATO NAMIKAZE
He was no stranger to Tailed Beasts. That was a strange sentence, but it was the truth. Konoha as a village had three jinchuriki to her name, and Minato was on the same team as two of them. Well, Sensei rarely ever used the power of the Nine-Tails around them, so most of his exposure to the power of a jinchuriki came from watching Kushina and how she gained control over the Eight-Tails over time.
First, it was the chakra aura, or the Version 1 state as Sensei called it. He watched it form on her body now. One tail, then two, then three, and then four and five in quick succession. Version 1 gave her increased strength, speed, durability, and healing. It was what Sensei defined as the basic jinchuriki package. Then the chakra around her thickened and rose until it reached a crescendo.
The chakra became a darker red. So dark that it was impossible to see the outline of Kushina within the chakra cloak. Sensei said at this point her skin itself was being burnt off by the poisonous chakra of the Tailed Beast. Normally a painful process, Kushina bore it well. Only screaming in the beginning. The first time she had reached it, she had screamed so much that her vocal cords had torn themselves from the strain. That was one of Minato's worse memories. He had watched it happen, and he could do nothing about it. Because it was natural. The burden a jinchuriki bore.
The tails that grew from her lower back had thickened now to become more like actual physical appendages. He knew getting hit by one of those was basically a one-way ticket to the hospital if she was holding back. It was death if she wasn't. She'd broken through boulders with that thing. In this state now, Kushina went from being just a powerful kunoichi to one of the strongest people in Konoha.
He had seen Sensei play around with her in this state—treat it all like a game and fight her off while still fending both him and Mikoto off with ease. But he had seen what she could do in this state when faced against a regular Jonin—not the strongest shinobi of his generation like Sensei was.
The Iwa Kill Squad hadn't even been able to understand what had done them in, in the end. Just that they had played with things and forces far beyond their ken. Six tails, and then before the seventh tail grew, bones began to grow along her body and form into a kind of exoskeleton. This was the farthest Sensei had ever allowed things to go. At this point, Minato knew he'd be no match. Even Sensei stopped playing around as much as he usually did when she got like this. He started hitting with punches that could shatter mountains, and she took them and gave as good as she got. It was the kind of sight that inspired Minato to train until his knees shook and his palms could no longer clench to form fists.
And still she went further. Six tails became seven. A skull and horns began to grow out from her head. The red that formed the cloak began to darken even further until it became the red of flesh. Her body began to shift and expand. To grow. From within, the power surged until it had covered every aspect of her. The Eight-Tails' purple skin was the first thing he saw. It came in the form of tails that stretched, each one the size of the mightiest of Hashirama's great trees, going back to the source. The source that was all muscle. Purple muscle that covered a titanic form that made mountains seem small. It stretched up towards the sky, blotting out the sun and casting Minato in its shadow.
"Are you in control, girl?" he heard Uzume ask, and then he remembered what he was here for.
"Weee," the sound of the beast's voice made Minato's very bones vibrate.
"Kushina?" he called out next. This could be bad. This could be very, very bad. If she had lost control to the Tailed Beast, they would probably have to beat it before he could reach her seal to work on it. His call was met with silence at first. He looked at Uzume-san to see she'd unsealed her gunbai already. He began spinning his chakra in preparation for forming a Rasengan.
"Yes, Minato? Can you see me? I bet I look awesomeeee." He breathed out a sigh of relief at that one. It was still Kushina at the very least.
"You look very good," he agreed.
"Grandma? Can you see me?"
"Yes, I can see you, Kushina-chan. Very impressive," she said.
XXXXXXX- KAERU OF THE NEW STONE
"It's way too tight," she heard the man by her side say.
"Shut up," his teammate hissed at him.
"You'd be complaining too if you had this thing chafing at your balls all the time. Can't even move without needing to adjust it," he said again.
"Shut up, both of you," she hissed. "If we get made, I'll kill all fucking four of you myself." The other two looked at her in alarm. She just nodded her head to show she was being serious.
She weaved a series of seals and from her sleeves came a horde of bees. Each one as silent as the dead night they moved through, they searched out the Aburame insects. The damn bug user thought he was wise with his spread, but she had been able to pick out each of them in a matter of hours of observation. Her bees sought them out and then killed each one before they could move back to their source to warn him of the coming attack. With that handled, she weaved another set of seals.
The Konoha shinobi were arrogant, she thought with no small amount of disdain. Two guards. That was all they bothered using to keep watch.
One of them was the Aburame. He would be harder to take out with her bees. The second was a Hyuga though, and that was doable. She had her bees move just like natural creatures, the Hyuga man not even noticing anything unusual about them until one was on his neck. He moved and managed to kill it in time, but that left him unable to react to the second. A single sting, and he began shaking where he stood before slumping against the tree.
He would be dead in a matter of seconds. The Aburame noticed something off somehow and managed to yell out. That was the last thing he ever did. Kaeru, after weaving a single seal, spat out a mass of honey that slammed into him and stuck him to the tree. The other members of the Konoha squad were awake now, so there went the initial plan to do this quietly.
"Kill them all," she ordered.
"Almost thought you'd never say." The one that had been complaining all night chuckled by her side before he Body Flickered forwards.
The Konoha camp was arranged around a clearing. None of them actually slept within it, with their sleeping forms arrayed on the trees that surrounded the clearing. One would have expected the tree huggers to sleep hugging the trees they loved so much, and that was the case for the most part.
And so Kaito ended his Body Flicker in the middle of the clearing. There was a flash as he moved his hammer to deflect a kunai that had come from one of the recently awakened Konoha nin. Impressive that they were able to start fighting so quickly. Kaito slammed his hammer into the ground, and the ground began to quake. The trees the Konoha nin had taken refuge in began to splinter and crack as they were felled by his single motion. Ren, his friend, was following in his wake. He engaged one of the first Konoha nin to abandon his tree and jump at Kaito.
The Konoha nin managed to turn in mid-air, his blond hair whipping through the air, and block Ren's kunai thrust, but the force of Ren's charge took them into the foliage. Kaeru trusted Ren to get the job done. This was a specially chosen kill squad for a reason. A mist fell on the clearing that was no longer quite a clearing as Yumi weaved seals. Aiko Body Flickered next to Kaito and stood back-to-back with him as they fended off a Konoha duo. There was only one Konoha nin left.
Kaeru stilled as she felt a blade on her throat.
"The Hokage will want to see these suits of yours. Able to fool even the Byakugan, hmm. That's how you snuck up on us, yes?" The voice whispered in her ear.
"H-how?" she whispered as the cold steel pressed closer against her throat.
"The absence of chakra is just as suspicious as its presence to a competent enough sensor," her assailant replied.
"Thank you for the note," she said, and then she pushed forward, pressing her neck against the blade. The clone died, honey exploding outwards and covering the assailant.
She weaved seals from her new hiding place and took control of her assailant's body through the honey that now surrounded it. She commanded her to jump in the middle of the fight brewing in the clearing that was no longer a clearing.
The Fireball Jutsu that had been about to hit Kaito put an end to her assailant. Kaeru turned the rest of her attention to the wider battlefield. Body clad in earth, Kaito barreled through another Fire Release jutsu, and then his hammer put an end to the source. Yumi formed from the mist like a whisper behind the one fighting Aiko and pressed two kunai in his neck.
Ren walked out of the foliage with a body held over his shoulder.
"Good work, everyone," she said.
Kaito grunted. The rest remained silent.
"We burn the bodies and get going," she said.
They dragged the bodies together, and then with a whispered jutsu, Ren set them all alight. She used another jutsu to prevent the smoke from traveling and giving away their position. Well, giving it away any more than the sound of violence had.
Once it was all ash, she weaved seals to bury said ash, and they covered the rest of their tracks and any trace of the Konoha team having been here before moving to find their next target. Her brother's orders had been clear—make Konoha regret entering the Land of Stone again. When every soul they sent into the mountains failed to return, they would stop trying.
She summoned another bee from her sleeves and allowed it to lead them to their next target. There wasn't any Aburame in this group. Even easier pickings.
XXXXX- SHORIRAMA SENJU
Of course, Hashirama had no idea how to explain a jutsu. He could tell stories with the best of them, but what the hell did the phrase 'infuse your chakra with more chakra to increase the pressure and then apply it to the target' mean to anyone who had a complete brain to work with? Because clearly this could not have made any sense to anyone working with more than two brain cells to rub together. What the actual fuck?
I sighed and put the scroll down. He was the only one who actually outlined how the technique worked, and that was all that he said about how to do it. Tobirama only mentioned using Hashirama's technique and how it improved his kenjutsu to the point where he could now equal Izuna's fully mature Sharingan. And then Izuna would go on to awaken the Mangekyo, and Tobirama would kill him with the Flying Raijin.
I turned to look at Tobirama's own accounts and found that I hadn't actually looked at his more recent writings. I'd been there for most of them, so there was a good chance that there wasn't anything new there at all, but he did have a tendency to theorize improvements to techniques he had already mastered. If he ever spoke about that, then that would be a good place to get information about the technique. It would at least give me something more useful than infusing my chakra with more chakra to increase the pressure and then apply it to the target. Just saying the nonsense made me want to set Hashirama's scrolls on fire.
I picked up the scroll and began to read.
The first few months were boring stuff. Negotiations with the Daimyo and him thinking about creating a seal that allowed him to use the Flying Raijin on two independent targets without actually applying the technique to himself. He didn't quite manage to figure it out, and trying to think it through myself, there didn't seem to be a way to do that. Maybe one remote teleportation would be possible with the Flying Raijin barrier, but teleporting one marked object to another without teleporting oneself seemed to be beyond the pale.
I kept reading on though, and then I found something that looked familiar. It was his notes from the period he'd grown obsessed with the Sage's tools. He'd been having dreams about them? Interesting. A boy with white hair and pupilless eyes using the Sword of Nunobuko to cleave Konoha in half with a single swing. I felt my breath catch in my throat. I went back to the beginning of the paragraph to read it again.
_"I saw it then, the village as different as she has ever been, but still undoubtedly Konoha. The buildings were taller, the houses more numerous, but the soul of the village was still there. At least it was there before he came. From a rift in space-time as black as night, the boy appeared. Younger than young Shorirama is now, he gazed down upon my village with disdain and then a blade appeared in his hand. A blade that I would have been able to recognize anywhere—such was the way it resonated with my soul. The same blade that the Sage of Six Paths had used to forge the world. With a single swing, he cut the village in half. From the mountain that frames her to this very tower I sit in, to the great gates my brother himself forged and hewed from his own Wood Release which have never been breached."_
That… that was a dangerous coincidence. What were the chances that the boy I saw in that dream and the one who Tobirama saw cut the village in half were different people? It was possible, but it wasn't fucking likely. And if it wasn't likely, then it meant the threat was real. I breathed out through my nose twice and then in with my mouth to keep my emotions in check.
Not yet. If the boy was going to be a threat, it couldn't be soon. Because if it was soon, I would have no chance, and there was no point even trying. I'd fight like hell to save this village, but I had felt his power when he had held me down. If he wielded a weapon that could cut the village in half with a single swing, there was no way for me to stop him using it. The dream had spooked Tobirama. To be fair, if I had gone to bed for weeks and only seen the exact same thing whenever I closed my eyes, I would have been worried as well. This is what made him decide to look for the tools of the Sage of Six Paths. The true tools. I had one with me now. I twisted my fingers and unsealed the Pot of Unending Water.
A device capable of creating infinite amounts of water. And compared to the Sword of Nunobuko, it was nothing but a cute trinket. I had to complete Tobirama's mission, I realized. I had to find the rest of them.
A/N: New Arc set up proceeding well? Next five up on patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga) (same username as here and link in bio), support me there and read them early. Started a new story, so there's a discount for the rest of the month on patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga): feel free to check that out as well.