'Finally, he made a move.' Maki's lips curved into a sharp smile, satisfaction flashing across her face.
She couldn't see what was happening with Akura and the others - Kisame had lured her too far across the battlefield for that - but her senses reached farther than sight. Her chakra perception spread like a net, every ripple in the distance telling her what her eyes could not. And at last, she felt it: Akura had received a help.
Kisame, by contrast, had been doing nothing but stalling. Every jutsu he used was precise, efficient, designed not to kill her but to bleed away time. She knew it, had known it from the very first exchange, but that knowledge didn't grant her the means to end it quickly.
Her hand tightened, and her chakra pulsed through her body.
'If I channel more into Predator's Pact, the strain on my body will multiply. It'll force me to stop using the technique sooner than this battle might last. Right now, even if I can't crush him fast, I can keep fighting long enough that stalling for time becomes useless.'
She was confident in her eventual victory, but unease still pressed on her mind like a shadow she couldn't shake. Kisame should have been faltering by now. Samehada drank chakra endlessly, and he'd already unleashed technique after technique to keep her at bay. He should have been winded, his reserves fraying. But instead, the shark-faced rogue stood tall, his breathing steady, his grin unbroken.
And when Utakata's chakra suddenly tore free in the distance, blazing red with the fury of the Six-Tails, Maki's stomach sank. The answer was obvious now. Kisame hadn't been buying time for himself. He'd been waiting for Utakata.
"It's time we get serious, don't you think, Lady Suikage?" Kisame sneered, his teeth bared as he surged forward.
Maki dropped her stance, preparing for the clash. But Kisame didn't close the distance. No. He stopped just short, positioning himself perfectly - too close for her to comfortably evade, yet far enough to drown her in projectiles.
His chest swelled.
"Water Release: Water Bullet!"
Water bullets exploded from his mouth in rapid succession, tearing through the air with deadly speed. Maki twisted aside, her body weaving between them as streams of water hissed past her ears. A few she batted away, the pressure of her chakra deflecting them into harmless spray. The ground behind her shattered, riddled with craters where each bullet struck.
The moment she saw the gap in his barrage, she moved.
Her foot slammed into the earth, the ground cracking beneath her weight as she launched forward. She blurred into Kisame's space, Samehada already arcing downward in a brutal swing.
But Kisame's grin widened.
His chest swelled once more, and instead of bullets, a flood erupted.
A torrent of water burst from his mouth, not in projectiles but in an overwhelming surge that swallowed the battlefield. In an instant, the dry ground became a roiling ocean, currents crashing outward in all directions.
'Shit, I didn't expect this!' Maki's eyes widened.
She pivoted hard, twisting her body to slip past the initial surge before it crushed her under its weight. The water still caught her legs, dragging at her as she retreated, forcing her to skid back across the newly made lake.
And Kisame stood at its center, waist-deep in the water he had conjured, his element now wrapped around him like a living fortress.
The shark-man's grin faltered, slipping into something harder. His plan to trap her in the artificial lake had failed. He had wanted to drag her down into the depths, where his element ruled and where he would be able to fight her in close quarters. But the tide was already receding, thinning as he stopped feeding it with chakra. He had wasted a massive portion of his reserves, and Maki could see it.
'The water's stopped. I can press him again.'
Her body blurred forward, feet striking the surface with a sharp smack as she dashed across the water's skin, refusing to submerge herself into the weakening tide. Every ripple cracked beneath her feet like glass, each step propelling her faster as she surged to meet him.
Predator's Pact made her faster, sharper, stronger than most shinobi could ever hope to match. But it bound her too. Her body thrummed with raw strength, yet her chakra became uncontrollable, barring her from ninjutsu. The trade-off had been clear from the start. To keep her power, she had to fight in melee, to close the distance and strike where no technique could shield her foes.
There was still one trump card. Merging with Samehada could push her power into monstrous territory. But Maki knew the cost. The last time she had attempted the fusion in the battle, her body had nearly torn itself apart after ten minutes. Not even months of brutal training had stretched the limit beyond fifteen. And fifteen minutes, in a battle between shinobi of Kage level, was nothing. Barely enough to test each other, let alone decide a victor.
But her opponent right now was no Kage.
Her eyes narrowed. Kisame had to know. He had to feel the inevitability pressing down on him - the truth that eventually, she would break through and carve him open. So why was he still grinning, still forcing the fight into stalemates instead of retreat?
'He must know he can't win. So why…'
Maki's pace faltered. Her eyes widened, head snapping toward the surge she felt in the distance. The six-tailed chakra she had sensed before… there was someone else, someone whose presence was overwhelming even from such a distance.
Her stomach knotted.
Before she could decide what to do, two sharp chakra signatures flickered toward her, closing the gap fast. Jonin-level.
'Two of them. Not stronger than this guy, but together… they'll cost me too much time.'
Decision came instantly. Maki pivoted sharply, her heel striking the surface like a hammer. Water detonated upward in a plume as her form blurred, vanishing into the spray. When the droplets fell back to the surface, she was already gone.
Her body soared into the treeline, feet landing on bark as she leapt branch to branch. Leaves shredded in her wake, the canopy bending under her speed as her senses locked forward.
The first chakra was close. Too close.
She dropped from above, Samehada already anticipating the taste of chakra in her grip. The blade tore through the shinobi's neck with savage precision.
The body fell limp, head tumbling.
And then flared.
A clone.
It exploded before the corpse could hit the earth, the blast ripping through the forest in a violent wave. Bark shredded. Branches splintered. Leaves ignited into ash.
But Maki was already gone. The moment her blade met the clone, her instincts screamed. She twisted, retreating from the detonation before it could swallow her.
Her chakra senses had betrayed her. The clones were perfectly masked, impossible to see them as fakes.
Her lips curled. Fine.
If chakra could lie, scent could not.
The air was thick with the sharp tang of sweat, the copper bite of fresh blood. Predator's Pact heightened her every sense, and now her nose was like a hunting hound's. She caught them both, two distinct trails threading through the forest.
Her head tilted. A savage gleam sparked in her eyes.
The hunt had begun.
The restraint on her bloodlust vanished the instant she felt that monstrous presence. It was as if the gnawing unease inside her finally had an answer, a target that demanded her full fury.
'I'll kill these men quickly… then I'll help the Six-Tails.'
She didn't need details. She didn't even need to see. That presence was stronger than Utakata's, far heavier, far more suffocating. And that alone made her more worried than she had been a moment ago.
Her strikes grew sharper. Her movements faster. The battlefield trembled beneath the full weight of her resolve.
Her nose caught Juzo's trail. Injured, slower, his blood carried a scent too distinct to miss. Unlike Onari, he couldn't mask himself well. By the time Juzo sensed her closing in, it was already too late. He raised his blade out of sheer reflex, but bracing against the Suikage's assault was nothing like fighting Akura.
The moment Samehada clashed with his weapon, the impact hurled Juzo through the air. His body smashed through tree after tree, splintering trunks before crumpling against the earth. His frame bent at odd angles, mangled by the collision.
But Maki was already moving.
'Traps.'
Her eyes flicked to the ground as she ran, her senses catching faint distortions in the landscape. Seal marks hidden beneath soil, subtle shifts in chakra. Onari's work. But she could read the land as clearly as a scroll. She slipped past them, her movements weaving effortlessly between danger.
She descended on Juzo again. Samehada's jagged surface tore into his abdomen, ripping flesh open with ease. Blood sprayed across the dirt, his body convulsing before going limp.
'One down.'
In her mind, they weren't individuals anymore. They were only numbers standing between her and that presence.
She spun, nostrils flaring as she locked onto Onari's scent. Yet something was wrong. He wasn't advancing. He was retreating.
Her eyes narrowed.
'That sharklike bastard is gone too…' Kisame's scent had vanished from the battlefield entirely.
Her thoughts raced, each piece of the puzzle pressing harder into her skull until the conclusion was too obvious to ignore.
'So that's it. All of this… everything… was just to keep me away from the Six-Tails. If that's true, then that presence…'
Her breath caught.
A low buzzing filled her head, a pressure that made the world around her blur as she broke into a sprint. She didn't stop. She couldn't. Her heart pounded with one thought alone as she pictured what she might find.
'Don't die, Akura.'
Her legs drove harder against the ground as she braced herself for the sight she feared most.
One final leap carried her onto the battlefield, and at once she realized this was no longer a place of life. Not a single patch of green remained. The air was thick with dust, choking the light, and the earth was scarred with craters of every size, each one a mark of violence.
Maki's sharp eyes swept the clearing, instinct forcing her to search before her mind could even settle. Above, Maru clashed with a strange bird, their wings carving the sky as Akura supported from below, streams of water bullets cutting upward to break its flight.
'Thank god…' Relief loosened her chest for a moment. Her gaze shifted, searching now for the true reason she had come - the Six-Tails.
And then she saw him.
Utakata lay broken on the ground. His body was no longer whole, his hand and leg torn away. Even with a jinchūriki's monstrous regeneration, the wounds looked beyond salvation. His breathing was shallow, his skin pale, his chakra leaking weakly into the soil. Against the foe he had faced, even a tailed beast's resilience had been rendered meaningless.
Maki's lungs filled, not from need but to steady herself. Her breath stretched slow, controlled, as she sharpened her sense of smell, drawing the battlefield into her body.
Her head snapped up.
'Six…?' Her nose burned as the realization struck, her eyes narrowing. She locked on to the one figure that stood out, the chakra that coiled wrong, that pressed heavier than the rest.
'I only sensed him before… but why? Why only him?'
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