"How about your shinobi support her and her goals? Oh! I want to take Nadare, Mizore and Fubuki back with me so they won't be staying. Should you win I will fully submit to you and whatever you have planned for me. I will become exactly what you want me to and throw my full being into making your goals a reality. How's that for a wager?"
I stuff my hands into my pants pockets.
...
"All I must do is survive?" Doto asks for clarification. "Even if I'm wounded I win, no matter how severely?"
"Correct." I assure him. "As long as you survive you win. You can dodge, you can block, you can take it, you can counter it, whatever you want to do."
"Doto-sama you can't possibly be considering this." Nadare says with a sneer. "Just let me beat him into submission."
"No, this sounds fun." Doto rubs his hands together. "It has been so long since I've actually had to accomplish something with my own two hands. This is a perfect opportunity, he knows nothing about me or what I'm capable of. All I have to do is survive. Then he's mine."
"So… do you accept?" I ask Doto.
"I do." He raises himself to his full height which towers over me.
"And you three." I turn to Nadare, Mizore and Fubuki. "You're part of this as well. You will uphold your end, yes? Should I win you will be coming with me."
"Not like you're going to win." Nadare scoffs out. "Fine."
"Meh. Why not?" Mizore shrugs.
"Sure." Fubuki agrees too. "It'll be interesting to have you around. You liven things up."
"Glad that's all cleared up." I turn back to Doto. "So you ready? Need to go get anything?"
"You wish to do this now?" Doto raises an eyebrow at me in surprise. "Acceptable. I am always ready."
Good. That means he's in his armor. I'm going to use that against him.
"Sweet. So uh… no one stand behind him that doesn't want to die. I will not be held responsible for any accidental deaths." I take my hands out of my pockets, they're curled into fists.
"This attack of yours won't destroy my warship will it?" Doto asks as he falls into a combat ready stance. It's one that highly maneuverable, he's ready to spring out of the way the second something goes wrong for him.
"Nah." I tell him. "It won't destroy your blimp."
I slowly begin to go through hand signs, so slowly that most genin are capable of going faster than me. It's not that I have to go this slow, it's that I want Doto to assume I'm using ninjutsu.
"Earth Release." After the final hand sign I rear back my right arm like a pitcher. I channel a staggering amount of chakra to my arm, beefing it up as much as possible.
"Ninjutsu?" Doto relaxes as he hears my words, sees my actions, and feels my chakra. He straightens out of his combat stance and spreads his arms wide. "Come, I shall receive it! Do your worst!"
"TINY PEBBLE OF DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!" I roar out as I winde back even further. Then I throw the pebble with every scrap of strength I can muster.
The pebble rockets out of my hand with twice the velocity of a bullet. It flies straight and true to its target, then goes through it, then goes through the far wall to to disappear off in the distance.
Doto's head exploded. A chunky shower of gore splattered across the far wall. His head is just gone, it's been ripped to shreds by the pebble.
"Holy shit." I say to myself. "I didn't think it would just be gone. I expected a hole not that."
Doto's body falls to its knees for a brief moment then collapses to the ground. He's well and truly dead.
"It's… it's over?" Koyuki softly asks herself.
"That's right Princess. It's over." I confirm. "Congratulations on becoming the new Leader of the Land of Snow by the way."
"D-Doto-sama?" Nadare stares at his headless boss in denial.
"He's… dead?" Mizore refuses to accept it. But the longer he stares at the cooling corpse the less he can deny that it has happened.
"But you used ninjutsu!" Fubuki shouts at me. "Doto's armor should have absorbed it! His is way better than ours! His can take in an insane amount of chakra before it has to be drained, way more than you used! So how!"
"Oh that's simple." I dust my hands off. "I didn't use ninjutsu."
"Bullshit!" Fubuki shouts at me. She's the only one out of the three that isn't still in shock. "I felt that chakra! I'm not even a sensor that's how much you pumped into it! You made the hand signs! You called it out! It was ninjutsu!"
"This is the best example I'll ever have to prove this point." My words pulls everyone's attention to me. "Two points really, the first is that information is powerful. I knew that he had chakra armor since before I saw a single snowflake. I've had days to come up with a way to work around it. That was just one of them. The second is that misdirection can be very powerful. In this case deadly."
"What?" Nadare asks me. "Misdirection?"
"Yes. Misdirection." I'm in lecturing mode which is quite interesting since I'm the youngest one here, if anything they should be lecturing me. Oh well minor details. "That pebble wasn't created using a jutsu. It wasn't made up of chakra. It was a plain pebble that I picked up off the ground. There was nothing special about it. I didn't put a single drop of chakra into the pebble, it all went into strengthening my arm. The chakra armor you all wear stops chakra based techniques and projectiles. My pebble was the perfect solution, all I had to do was throw it hard enough at a spot not protected by armor. The head."
"You see, you all assumed that I was prepping for a jutsu. I lead you to make that assumption because I knew that Doto, hell all of you, are proud of your chakra armor. But above that you're reliant on it. You use it all the time, it's your first line of defense when it really should be your last. Today that assumption - my misdirection - cost Doto his life. I played him from the moment I walked in here. I took what he thought was his biggest strength and made it his most glaring weakness."
"You found a way around the armor that easily?" Mizore has finally accepted everything that has happened.
"Yep." I stroll over to Doto's body. "By they way I'm taking his armor. If that bothers you then fuck off."
"I don't believe it." Nadare looks at me, then down to Doto's corpse, then back to me again. "You just waltzed in here and killed him."
He slowly walks over to stand behind me.
"Yeah. Wasn't even that hard." I unclasp the chestpiece from Doto's corpse. "Huh, this one is black. Your's are white. Whatever I prefer black. Looks more menacing."
"There's just one flaw with your grand plan." Nadare says from behind me. "You didn't expect us to betray you. You've let your guard down."
Nadare lunges at my unprotected back with a kunai aimed at the base of my neck. He intends to sever my spine and kill me in one quick blow.
He's greeted with a spear of black threads that pierces his heart, killing him instantly.
"I never let my guard down." I darkly say as I continue unstrapping Doto's armor from his corpse. "I can't afford to, not when I'm living with Orochimaru."
"Nadare!" Mizore darts to my left side while rearing back his metal plated fist to crush my skull.
"You will die for what you have done today!" Fubuki darts to my right side with a pair of kunai in hand.
Black threads spear out of my shoulders like the world's most demented pauldrons. They intercept each attack with ease and wrap around the hands of both offenders.
"This is your own fault." I tell them with a hint of sadness and regret in my voice. "None of you had to die. I gave you all an out, you just had to come with me. You couldn't stay here so I gave you the next best thing, a chance at a new village. A chance to live. But you've thrown my generosity away for the petty revenge of a mad tyrant. I will not apologize for killing you. I am not sorry about it. I am just disappointed that I have to."
"Fuck you!" Mizore shouts in my face as he struggles to free himself from the black threads that are slithering up his body. "What the hell is this?"
"That is the Jiongu, more specifically Sureddo. It is also what's going to kill you." I don't mince my words. They picked this fate. I gave them an out. I did more for them than what was expected of me.
"Get these stupid things off of me!" Fubuki yells at me as the threads wrap around her neck. "You fucking basta-"
CRACK
"You killed Fubuki!" Mizore snarls at me in rage as he renews his struggle. It's too late, the black threads are wrapped around his neck already.
CRACK
The two bodies flop lifelessly to the ground, never to move again.
"Did you all think I was joking when I said that I can flatten everyone on this ship with ease?" I stare down at them in disappointment. "I could blast this thing out of the sky whenever I want to. I can slaughter everyone here like it's a stroll through a park. It wouldn't even make me break a sweat."
I look up from the corpses and turn my gaze on the horrified crew on the bridge.
"Anyone else want to try and kill me?" I call out to them. No one steps forwards. "Then land the fucking blimp. I want off this thing. And if one of you calls this thing a warship I will throw you out a fucking window!"
...
A/N:
If we hit 400 Power Stones by the end of this week, I'll drop an extra chapter as a thank-you!
Thanks for the support! ;)
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