章 58: Stage 3
Toa's Shattered House
'Reina, Naga, due to the sudden attack, I'm separating our channels. Don't' worry, I'll maintain the connection, but you'll only be able to talk to each other. I'll transmit information if there's anything you need to know.' Kamui sent through the link, receiving silent acknowledgements in response.
"So, what gave us away? Our stealth should have been perfect." Kamui asked the ambushers.
"The house was bugged you granny-haired bitch." Tayuya answered condescendingly.
"Tayuya, seriously?" Jirobo asked, annoyed at the young woman's lack of composure.
"Shut up Fatso!" Tayuya roared in response, though her eyes didn't leave the Konoha squad. Regardless of her taunts, she knew that underestimating the group would be fatal.
"Granny-haired bitch? I've never heard that one before." Kamui mumbled to herself, annoyed at the insult at one of the traits she took the most pride in and the fact that her sensei was currently chuckling.
"I'm surprised such a juvenile insult bothered you." Yugao commented with a smugness that irritated the genin.
Glancing at her sensei, Kamui irritably replied, "It's just new. I've been called worse, especially when my mom's trying to rile me up during training. That said, I'm a little irritated that I didn't catch what I can only assume to be wire taps."
Shaking her head, Yugao calmly replied, "I should have caught it too. I should have asked you to put a barrier up. I must have gotten a little too reliant on your senses."
Then, Yugao switched to the thought transmission. 'Thinking on it now, physical bugs like that would be much harder to detect without the byakugan. With your current methods, non-chakra-based small devices might as well be invisible. We'll address it in training later.'
"I agree." Kamui verbally acknowledged both statements while not giving away the second.
"Done talking amongst yourselves? We don't mind giving you a little more time. After all, Uchiha, this will be the last time you'll ever see your sensei. You'll be getting real comfortable on Lord Orochimaru's operating table." Sakon asked condescendingly.
"Kidnapping children? Who would have thought the snake's lapdogs would be so heinous?" Kamui sarcastically mocked, eliciting sneers from their ambushers. She continued, "I am surprised though. I know that Jirobo's really here and Kidomaru's clearly on range support, but where are the other two? Surely you didn't think these clones could fool us, did you?
"You're smarter than you look. If you must know, they're taking good care of your friends." Jirobo evenly stated.
"What?" Kamui asked, Yugao equally confused.
"People as smart as you must have read our profiles. You didn't honestly think running a few miles into the forest would be enough to escape us, did you? With Kidomaru's third eye, finding them is a cake walk and with his bow, reaching them is even easier." As Jirobo said this, they all heard a sharp whistle that came and went in an instant.
"What was that?" Yugao asked, confusedly looking into the sky for the source.
"It looks like Kidomaru found them. He must have sent our two teammates to deal with them quickly." Jirobo stated with a smile.
'If I were to guess, he sent Tayuya and Sakon over as arrows. Actually, it's a strategy I proposed to Hinata for her longbow training.' Kamui commented through the link. She also made sure to send a warning to the other two as well, even if it was too later to make much of a difference.
'That's…. actually a good idea. We'll have to explore it more when we get back to the village. It gives the byakugan yet another function to explore. I'm sure the Hyuga clan will be thrilled, assuming Hinata hasn't already told them.' Yugao commented.
'I doubt she did. I haven't spent too much time with her, but if my intuition is correct, she doesn't like her clan very much.' Kamui commented.
'I'm not surprised.' Yugao succinctly replied, cutting off the conversation so they could focus.
"Tayuya, Sakon, dispel so the originals know we're starting on our side. I'm going straight into stage 3. These wimps will be the perfect test subjects for our new forms. I'm sure Kidomaru has the same idea." Jirobo stated, confident in his power.
The two shadow clones nodded toward their comrade and dispelled.
"Are you sure that was wise? Even if they're fragile, they would've still been perfect distractions." Yugao asked, confused at why the enemy would waste shadow clones like that.
"Oh, I'm sure. Open those ignorant eyes and witness the power Lord Orochimaru blessed us with." With that, black markings spread across his body, eliciting an unfamiliar searing pain in his mind.
Jirobo gritted his teeth at a pain far greater than any he had experienced any other time he had transformed; it far surpassed what he felt the last time he used the curse mark. What's worse was that, as he started moulding his chakra into the earth element, the pain increased exponentially.
Still though, he silently endured.
With that resolution made, he slammed his hands on the ground, prompting Kamui and Yugao to take distance in caution.
"Earth Release Barrier: Earth Palace of Infinite Nothingness!" Jirobo shouted, doing well to mask the agony he was experiencing.
With that, a massive pulse of chakra spread across the village, eventually reaching the summoned ogres that were currently towing the perimeter. Once it hit them, pillars of chakra burst from their bodies reaching approximately 100 feet in the air.
Once that happened, the earth under the village shook with the force of a cataclysmic earthquake. Quickly, walls of solid stone flew out of the earth.
Kamui, feeling the massive shifts through her currently dulled seismic sense (she was currently using her sharingan), decided to take quick action. Looking in Jirobo's direction, she pushed chakra through her eyes, expecting to teleport as she would normally. Oddly enough, something strange happened.
She didn't teleport.
There was an odd resistance hindering her ability to manipulate the space around her, one she had never felt before. Even as a kid there was never a point where manipulating the space around her felt challenging. Her father had and her brother was currently working through it, but she never had the same problem. According to Yume, she had her predecessor's expertise with spatial techniques to thank for that.
For the first time though, she couldn't pierce the veil of the world around her. Sure, she could force the spatial energy within about a foot of her, but she only had enough chakra at the moment to force smaller items out her sash. At least, that would be the best outcome and one she would be counting on in the coming fight. If she tried anything more, the results would be anyone's guess and her father had stressed to her that experiments with space should be done in a controlled setting, not in death matches.
In the moment of shock, it took her a little too long to react to the blaring feeling of her instincts screaming at her to move.
"Kamui!" Yugao shouted as the fastest arrow she had ever seen slammed into a shocked Kamui. As the attack hit, a massive cloud of dust rose to obscure her view.
(Tayuya's Point of View) (Time: Start of the Ambush)
"What a bunch of idiots. Weren't these ass hats supposed to be skilled? Wasn't one of them supposed to be former ANBU?" Tayuya asked in confusion. How could an ANBU make such a basic mistake.
"Don't you remember what Lord Orochimaru told us. 'When one wields a powerful and convenient weapon, it's easy for one's skills to dull.' In this case, by becoming over reliant on her pupil, the lady clearly didn't realize that whatever means the girl uses to scan the area around her isn't perfect. It's a good lesson we ourselves shouldn't repeat. We too have new powers after all." Sakon explained.
"Good advice. I really do hope that they'll be able to put up a good fight; haven't had one in months. Anyway, are you two ready? I didn't expect the teleport, so we'll have to move fast. I've already found where the group was teleported to. It's a little far, but I can still reach it." Kidomaru stated, receiving nods from both his companions. As he said this, his curse mark spread across his body, causing his chakra to turn a progressively darker shade of purple.
With a puff of smoke, both Sakon and Tayuya transformed into arrows. Like most of the ones he preferred to use in the past few years, the arrow's shaft was long, golden, and the tip was shaped like a corkscrew. They were his most powerful arrows, though in this case, the transformation was just so the two could reach their destination quicker.
Moments later, Kidomaru was ready in stage 3 of his curse mark. In his current form, his skin was pitch black, his forehead grew two times its size to accommodate three extra sets of eyes, with his third eye becoming one of them; one set grew below the current set, while the other two grew above it. Every eye had black sclera while the irises were an assortment of different bloodlines. The bottommost set were a set of byakugan, the next set were sharingan, the set above that were the Kocho clan's compound eyes, and the topmost set consisted of a single yellow ring as the irises. His upper body grew to seven feet tall, while the muscles grew in definition. From his temples, two thin horns formed, though if one looked closely, joints could be seen at the base and in the middle, making them more akin to web spinners. Finally, mouths formed on the palms of his hands and the soles of his feat, which were now free of their sandals.
This was his stage three, the pinnacle of Orochimaru's research into the height one can achieve with implanted ocular dojutsu. He was Orochimaru's attempt to see if an Uchiha's body is truly needed or better than his own. His current form also heralded the greatest change in the snake's ambitions, something Konoha would be finding out very soon.
The mouths of his hands opened, releasing a golden liquid. He clapped his hands together and pulled them apart in a way as to form a solid bow made of the golden liquid, which quickly hardened. Then, he made a bowstring using another hand.
When the bow was done, he knocked back one of arrows and fired, almost immediately doing the same with the second. In his youth, he used to have all sorts of ways to fire the bow, but now, all he needed was his hands for maximum effect. In fact, in stage three, he didn't even need the bow anymore. The mouths could shoot out finished arrows with far greater power than the bow can manage. He just used the bow in this case since his two comrades refused to be stuffed inside of his body, regardless of the option's practicality.
Turning his head, he felt Jirobo's chakra surge and their beloved hunting ground form around them.
'This is going to be so much fun!' Kidomaru thought with glee.
(Naga's Point of View)
"So, I'm guessing negotiations broke down." Naga commented absentmindedly at the sudden teleport.
She received no response. In fact, all she received were confused mutters by the clan members who had suddenly been displaced from their daily lives. Before she could say anything to get their attention, she was beat to it.
"Excuse me! Can I get your attention!?" A voice she recognized as Reina called out.
Hearing this, the crowd started to quiet down and looked to the source of the familiar voice.
"Reina!" "Heiress!" "Young Lady!" they called out. Some started asking questions, while others just smiled and waited for her to speak.
"Please be silent!" She ordered, silencing the crowd. "We don't have much time. I'll explain it later, but we need to take some distance. As of now, I'm assuming the position of clan head. Due to special circumstances related to Orochimaru that will be explained later, the clan head has already been transported to Konoha. The plan is to bring the whole clan there, but we need to deal with the sound four first."
Out of the group of villagers, an older man with peppered purple hair stepped out of the crowd.
"Reina has Konoha arrived to save us?" he asked, remembering the clan's contingency in the event of an emergency like this. He made sure to avoid the vague explanation of where their chieftain was. He had an idea of what it might be, but that would only be a distraction now, so it was best to put that conversation off until they were safe.
"They have. Right now, they're fighting the sound four as we speak, but we need to take some distance in case one of them breaks off from the group. Right now, we need to move to retrieve the other clansmen. I don't know how long the confrontation with the sound four will take, but – " Reina hurriedly replied.
Before she could finish, however, she was interrupted by a sudden movement from Naga.
Hearing a high-pitched sound incoming from the direction of the village. She grabbed the prisoner's scroll she had on her person and threw it.
In the air, the scroll was pierced by one of the arrows, which was subsequently bound and teleported in an instant.
Just then, Kamui's warning came through, though it was clearly too late to matter.
The other arrow was unhindered and transformed into a furious Tayuya.
"Bitch! What did you do!? Where's two face!?" She screamed, confused on what just happened.
"Did you forget? I know how your little team works. I already knew you would use the transformed arrow trick. After all, it's worked for you too many times not to. You must have forgotten Orochimaru's warning. Being an arrow traveling at that speed leaves you vulnerable to interception. In this case, knowing you'd use this trick, I only had to wait until you used it." Naga replied smugly, confusing the nearby Kocho clan members.
They were confused at what just happened. They hadn't noticed Naga before just now, so the move was unexpected. From the sound of it, the mysterious girl just managed to take out one of the Sound Four. The part that concerned a few of the more experienced members though, was the relationship the lady clearly had with the group and from the sound of their conversation, it wasn't a simple one.
Seeing the situation under control, Reina quickly started giving her clan silent signals to follow her. They needed to regroup with the rest of the clan and get away from this fight. Most of the villagers here would stand no chance once Tayuya started using her flute.
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