No. 3 Mining Site.
Screams and wails replaced the mechanical clamor that used to fill the valley, so loud that even the furious thunder overhead could not drown them out.
Along the brown yellow rock face on the hillside, several guard shinobi wearing Kumogakure forehead protectors were chained by all four limbs, their heads separated from their bodies.
Three shuriken pinned each corpse in place, striking brain, heart, and abdomen, nailing them to the wall like grotesque specimens. Blood ran down the earthen rock in wide streaks, turning it into a vast brown red canvas.
Miners fled in all directions.
Behind them, masked black figures swept in, blades in hand, tearing into the crowd like wolves.
A knife flashed across a miner's throat. Blood sprayed across the ground. The eerie patterns on a Root mask seemed to twist as the shinobi seized the falling head, slammed it down, and stepped over the corpse without pause to continue the hunt.
No words.
No battle cries.
Only cold, mechanical killing.
No, not killing.
Erasing.
Like wiping grime from a room, a cleanup carried out without the slightest emotional ripple.
Slash.
A keen edge cut through the air. Just watching it made the spine go cold.
Pff.
A young Kumogakure shinobi holding a long blade shuddered. He looked down.
His entire abdomen had been opened.
A huge, raw gash spilled dark, sticky blood. His intestines slid out like noodles slipping through a funnel, inch by inch.
"Nngh!"
He forced himself not to collapse from the agony. His left hand clutched the torn flesh of his lower belly to keep his guts from spilling further, while his right hand swung the long blade at the shinobi wearing a mask patterned in green.
Arashi's mouth curled into a cold smile.
He flicked the blood and grease from his short blade and hopped back, widening the gap.
Clang!
The long blade hacked into gravel and stone, shrieking as it struck.
The Kumogakure shinobi braced himself with the sword like a cane, panting hard. One hand protected his abdomen as thick blood dripped between his fingers.
Arashi paced around him, never pressing in, like a hyena waiting for the right moment.
Despair bled into the young special jōnin's eyes.
Then his gaze dulled, and he stood there blankly, as if his soul had already stepped away.
Arashi did not waste the opening.
He launched forward, reverse grip.
Bzzzz!
A harsh whine like a chainsaw starting up.
Wind Release clung to the blade as it lifted the carotid open.
The Kumogakure shinobi's dead eyes snapped awake, but it was already too late.
Blood fountained into the air.
Arashi grabbed the man by the crown of the skull, spun aside to avoid the spray, and with the same motion twisted the head clean off.
Back in the Uchiha ancestral grounds, he had trained that move until it was smooth. Brains and eyes could be preserved perfectly.
A purple mask appeared silently behind Arashi.
"I already cut his intestines open. No need to waste chakra."
Arashi sealed the young man's head away.
Chō's eyes flickered with faint light. Her hands kept forming seals without pause.
In the distance, another special jōnin froze in place, and the Root shinobi locked with him took the chance to cut him down.
"We don't know what's happening on Yato's side. Kill faster."
"And that monster… at this point, it's a question whether there's anyone alive in the No. 1 mining site at all."
Arashi put away the scroll and wiped his blade on the enemy's clothing, utterly unconcerned.
Only someone who had fought Konome Taketori could understand that kind of terror.
After being erased in an instant, he had replayed that corridor scene in his head countless nights, never finding a way through. In the end, the only possibility was to lure her into a trap and use sealing arts. Even then, the chance was thin.
"The captain said No. 1 has two jōnin, and one of them is an elite jōnin. Yato might not come out ahead. And the captain's side has run into trouble too. He needs us."
Arashi froze.
"There's an elite jōnin here too?"
As an old, established elite jōnin, Aburame Ryūma was Root's second in command.
If even he needed support against a single jōnin, then something was wrong.
"Not an elite jōnin. That woman specializes in Lightning Release Armor. It hard counters the captain's insect techniques."
"I and Iwato have already handled No. 4 and No. 5. We left a few people to clean the battlefield there."
"This side is mine for now. You go to No. 2 and help the captain."
"Understood."
Arashi put away his short blade and sprinted uphill.
No. 2 and No. 3 weren't far apart. Cutting straight along the ridgeline and steep cliff path, he arrived in short order.
Rattle!
Before he even climbed onto the ledge, pebbles began to tumble down.
A wrinkled, withered arm clawed weakly at the cliff edge.
Countless black kikaichū chewed open fingertips and poured out.
Arashi twisted aside from the falling stones at the cliff edge and sprang up onto the ridge.
Only then did he see the battle at No. 2.
At the center of the mining camp, a blurred figure wrapped in crackling lightning tore through the storm clouds. Each charge sent the sky's black swarm falling like dumplings, carpeting the ground with charred insect corpses.
Iwato stood at Aburame Ryūma's side. Earth Release chakra surged through him, swelling his frame larger. His bear mask had been shattered, and half his face had been carbonized by lightning.
Aburame Ryūma stood with both arms spread, palms raised to the sky. Chakra surged.
On the bodies of countless dried corpses wearing Kumogakure forehead protectors, lumps swelled like little wind blisters.
Sharp mouthparts thrust outward.
Pff, pff!
Inside the corpses, insect eggs fed on chakra, split their shells, and burst out.
The kikaichū swarmed over one another, climbed, sprouted wings.
In moments, the sky became dense and black again.
"Captain!"
Arashi rushed to Ryūma's side in two steps, standing with Iwato like twin guardians.
"Good timing."
Ryūma pointed at the lightning inside the black cloud.
"That woman's Lightning Armor is nearly impossible for the kikaichū to pierce. If they get close, they burn to death. Even Iwato's defense can't hold against it."
"Other than Konome Taketori, only you have a chance to break her defenses."
"What do I do?"
Arashi nodded quickly.
The Aburame style's power lay in mass warfare. Tens of thousands of insects, each stealing a sliver of chakra, could drain an enemy dry.
The weakness was just as clear.
If the enemy's defense was too high, or their attacks had too wide a range, the swarm failed.
Lightning Armor had no blind spots in defense, and its electricity could conduct through the insects.
It hit both weaknesses at once.
That was why even Ryūma, an elite jōnin, found it troublesome.
"Try your Wind Release. See if it can break through."
"Yes."
No wasted words.
Arashi held his blade in one hand and formed seals with the other. Wind Release chakra flowed along the edge like a spinning chainsaw.
Ryūma lifted a hand and dispersed the insect technique that had been interfering with sight and sensing.
Crackle.
The enemy finally revealed herself.
A dark skinned woman with thick lips and large eyes.
White cloth wrapped her chest. Her oiled, muscular body threw off arcs of electricity, her abs laid out like neat rows of chocolate.
"Filthy insects!"
As the lightning around her body knocked the swarm away, the jōnin's bandage wrapped fists tightened around her knuckle guards. She looked at the subordinates on the ground reduced into breeding fodder for insects, and her voice carried a different kind of killing intent.
Slash.
Arashi and Iwato stomped forward in unison.
Years of accumulated coordination snapped into place. No words were needed.
Wind blade and rock fist, left and right, low and high, sealed off her space completely.
Eighty percent of shinobi would have panicked and fled under that kind of pressure.
But what they faced was Kumogakure's secret art, Lightning Armor.
Against Iwato, she didn't even dodge. She turned her back to him.
Her left hand met the wind blade while the lightning wrapped knuckle guard drove toward Arashi's face.
Whoosh!
The iron fist came fast. The brutal wind pressure blew Arashi's hair back.
Clang! Clang!
Arashi and Iwato had the initiative. Their strikes landed first.
Iwato's heavy rock fist smashed into the woman's neck from behind. Lightning surged in retaliation, canceling the impact and punching clean through the outermost layer of his Earth Release chakra.
Arashi's cut was far more vicious.
His blade severed the lightning arc and slammed into her left hand's knuckle guard, sparks screaming from metal.
The double impact made her body stutter.
Her posture warped. The chain of force through her muscles broke. The iron fist she swung veered slightly.
Arashi dropped low and slid under the lethal blow.
She had thrown that punch with terrifying weight. Missing it left her movement stiff for a split second.
An opening.
Both Arashi and Iwato seized it.
Ignoring the lightning raging over her body, Iwato thickened the Earth Release in front of him and locked his arms around her from behind.
Crackle!
Lightning Armor triggered violently. Arcs pierced the earth coating, tearing Iwato's flesh open.
His expression did not change.
His forearm cinched across her throat, holding her dead tight.
Hum.
A flick of Arashi's wrist.
The chainsaw wind edge curved like a crescent moon and hacked into her side.
Rattle, rattle, rattle!
Crackle!
A concentrated wind blade and Lightning Armor collided again and again.
Arashi felt like he wasn't cutting human skin.
He was hacking into a lightning spear with terrifying penetration.
The woman recovered at last. Her fist became an elbow, smashing viciously toward Arashi's skull.
"Back!"
The insect swarm finally arrived, surging in like a tide to engulf her.
Arashi and Iwato withdrew at once, blade sheathed and grip released, retreating to Ryūma's side.
Crackle.
Electricity conducted through the swarm. In an instant, thousands of kikaichū were scorched black.
A nauseating burnt stench flooded the air.
Ryūma used the swarm to block the enemy's advance.
"How bad?"
"I'm fine."
Iwato's body was split and raw. He casually scooped up a handful of dirt, pressed it to the side of his face, then smeared it across the charred flesh.
The soil reshaped, filling torn skin.
Within moments, the blackened wounds turned into earth colored stone.
Iwato rolled his shoulders.
The horrific injuries had been temporarily sealed.
Earth Release: Mud Mend False Union.
Iwato's signature technique, a combination of Yang Release and Earth Release.
It used common soil to patch injuries and stop them from worsening. Rumor said the shinobi who created it could keep fighting at full strength even if only the brain remained.
Ryūma turned to Arashi.
"Can you break her defense?"
"I can, but…"
Arashi raised his precious chakra short blade.
At the very tip, less than a millimeter, there was blood.
"Only a tiny bit."
"Then we have no choice."
Chō, who had finished cleaning No. 3, leapt up the cliff and landed beside them.
"If we can't crack her defense, we grind her down. Wait until her chakra runs out."
Crackle!
Lightning tore through the black cloud. The woman exploded out of the swarm and slammed toward the four gathered shinobi.
"What about Konome Taketori's side?"
The four of them scattered smoothly, seals flashing.
Genjutsu, Earth Release, Wind Release, insects, all struck from every direction and drowned her again.
She was still just a jōnin.
Yes, she could survive by abusing elemental advantage and overwhelming defense, but counterkilling them was fantasy.
"She's fine for now."
Ryūma lifted his head toward the fog at the mountain peak.
The fog had been blown aside by Wind Release, rippling in circles across the sky.
But the kikaichū left on the summit to monitor still hadn't returned.
That meant Konome Taketori's chakra was still strong, without the slightest sign of decline.
"An elite jōnin and a jōnin, and she's still fine?"
Arashi couldn't help clicking his tongue.
The four of them had no clean solution against a single jōnin.
Yet Konome Taketori could hold back an elite jōnin and another jōnin.
"Because she's the strongest monster the village has ever produced."
Chō looked up at the peak, her voice filled with complicated awe.
Black clouds pressed down over the horizon. The fog at the summit fused with the sky, locking the mountain in place like a gigantic white prison.
Thunder rumbled.
Fog swallowed the summit. Lightning struck like rain onto the lightning rods, flashing over the shattered bodies scattered across the ground.
At the central warehouse on the summit.
Konome Taketori stared at the two men outside the Lightning and Fire prison, their fury blazing, and felt genuinely puzzled.
They seemed to have misunderstood her.
"Why did you abduct the miners? What are you plotting inside Thunder Drum Mountain? Speak!"
Yotsuki Tsuyoshi and Dākui demanded, voices shaking with rage.
"I only kill. I don't kidnap."
Konome explained seriously, only to watch the glowing points of anger above their heads flare brighter.
"Slaughtering civilians and Kumogakure shinobi… is Kirigakure trying to start a war?"
Yotsuki Tsuyoshi's eyes overflowed with killing intent.
Dākui, believing he had seen through the enemy and that his own plan had gotten their people killed, was drowning in regret and fury.
Konome looked at the two of them, righteous outrage blazing as they interrogated her, and she found it laughable.
When Kumogakure sent people to attack academy students, did they worry about Konoha's civilians and shinobi?
Did they consider what price they would pay when Konoha struck back?
Greedy.
Arrogant.
Hypocritical.
She thought of Kazama Etsu, mutilated and dying, his arm gone.
She thought of the two shinobi beaten into pulp, Kōtetsu Hagane and Izumo Kamizuki.
She thought of the torture tools found in that female spy's home, and the human hair still undigested in a rat's stomach.
If she wanted, Konome could summon a thousand polished excuses in a breath.
But she didn't.
She spread her hands and met their furious stares head on.
"They annoyed me, so I killed them."
She knew she wasn't righteous.
She didn't come here for Konoha. She didn't come here for the victims.
She pitied Kazama Etsu's injuries, but crossing countries just to avenge him was impossible.
Kōtetsu and Izumo had only met her once.
That missing old gatekeeper… she had never even seen him.
To claim she came here to avenge the village would be pure hypocrisy.
She was here to complete Root's mission and claim the reward Danzō had promised, to treat her condition.
Pretty words could fool outsiders.
They couldn't fool her own heart.
And she didn't need noble reasons to cover what she chose to do.
"Bastard! What do you think life is?"
Dākui roared, his rage exploding. He pressed his hands together.
The chakra core in his heart surged outward, pouring energy into the warehouse.
Layer upon layer of sealing formulas lit up in blue and red.
Crackle!
The laser like steel prison spat sparks and began to contract inward.
The scorching lines drew closer, shrieking with friction. Even the alloy floor of the warehouse was sliced open as if it were paper.
Not even Lightning Armor could endure that.
Inside the cage, the small figure had only one ending.
To be cut into minced flesh.
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