Part 6
Harukoo stood up from the pile of wood and ashes and called out to the back up squad that Roguhanta had provided.
"Kuria! Satomi! Kenshi! Are you guys okay?" The trio from Roguhanta and the Himitsu clan had been protected by Kenshi's Wind Style: Sphere Jutsu.
"Yeah, we're fine...but you're going to have to call in your ANBU...all of them." said Kenshi. He turned to his sister, Satomi Himitsu.
"I know you want to fight but you've got to run back to headquarters. Tell them it's code red."
"Bu-"
"Satomi we are not having this conversation. GO." The young medic stood up and ran off, cursing underneath her breath. The chakra beast had already set alight several surrounding buildings as Kazuki removed himself from the rubble.
"Ken! Pick me up!" demanded Kazuki.
"KAZUKI!" roared Kuria, rushing toward his brother "How dare you leave!"
"My oh my Kuria, it's been a while hasn't it?" said Kazuki, as he dodged the first kick from Kuria. "Still focusing on the Taijutsu I see?" Kuria's response was a flurry of punches that forced Kazuki to retreat.
"Hmph. You've gotten better." sneered Kazuki, Kuria spat on the ground in response.
"This is not going to be a repeat of the last time we met" said Kuria. A cloak of green surrounded him as he activated his Inner Gates. Ken targeted the chakra beast towards Kuria and it released a humongous roar of fire. Harukoo cast Earth Dome over Kuria, trapping Kazuki in the process. The blast hit the Earth Dome, melting part of the Earth, Haruko responded by casting another Earth Dome with one hand, using his other hand to cast an earth clone to go call for help.
Kenshi had climbed to the top of a nearby building and jumped onto the chakra beast, throwing several shuriken in the process. Ken dodged at the last moment, but failed as one hit him in his right shoulder.
"Tsk. Kenshi, I'm guessing you're here to bring me back too?"
"No. I'm here to kill you." replied Kenshi with a stone cold glare.
"Aaaaah, so that's why you sent away sis." said Ken, nodding as if in thought.
"She's not your sister. Not anymore." Ken laughed at that and shook his head, before grabbing two swords from seemingly nothing and plunging towards his brother. Kenshi dodged easily and jumped over a blade as Ken swung backwards. Kenshi threw down several more shuriken and infused them with lightning to increase the shuriken's speed and damage. Ken dodged all of the shuriken and began casting a justu as Kenshi threw more shuriken with one hand and started casting with the other.
"Behold...brother, my Water Style: Body Armour" smiled Ken as his body was covered by a moving yet thick layer of water. Kenshi threw even more shuriken and withdrew his sword from its sheath. He raised it above his head as a bolt of lightning struck it. Almost instantaneously, Kenshi ran to Ken, his speed greatly enhanced by the jutsu.
As the brother's charged, Ken's Water Armour fell apart from his body, surging forward to pummel into Kenshi. At the last second, Kenshi threw his weight to the side, dodging the majority of water and planting his sword into Ken's arm. As he was still soaked on the right side, Kenshi stopped the current from leaving his blade, not wanting to get shocked in the backlash of his own jutsu.
Both brothers stepped back with each other having plunged a sword into the other's arm. Kenshi threw more shuriken, Ken dodged, took out the sword in his arm and threw it back at his brother in one swift motion. Kenshi failed to dodge and ended up with two swords in his right arm, he fell to his knees before throwing one more shuriken, the shuriken missed horribly. Ken laughed as he walked over to his brother, Kenshi grimacing in pain as he removed the two blades from his arm.
"You and your shuriken...it's almost pitiful brother." taunted Ken.
As Kenshi finished some clothe around his wounds, he looked up as his brother stepped into position. With a smirk in response, he pulled on a wire connected to the last shuriken. Almost instantaneously, several other wires were cut and all the shuriken that Kenshi had thrown at Ken retracted, surrounding Ken in a flurry of undodgeable metal.
"Water Sphere!" shouted Ken, raising a sphere of water to protect himself, the shuriken merely crashed into the sphere, their momentum absorbed and the trajectory changed they now simply swam around in the same circular motion as the water.
'As always, he's obsessed with his water jutsu.' thought Kenshi to himself.
"Shocking Shuriken!" grinned Kenshi. A jolt of electricity passed through the wires, arriving and amplifying at the metal shuriken, almost as soon as Kenshi had finished casting his jutsu; the voltage dissipated throughout the Water Sphere, causing the defense to become charged and shocking Ken in the process, the sheer force of his jutsu impoding, causing him to be blown off the back of the chakra beast.
"Chidori!" said Kenshi through gritted teeth as he plunged his left hand into the back of the beast. His hand passed through the fur with ease but was met with a flames of incredibly searing temperatures. He pulled back his hand, shouting in agony and fell back as he saw burn marks up to his elbow. In response to the attack, the chakra beast let out a huge fire ball in the direction of the Kage Building before charging towards the Arena in a rampage. Kenshi fell off the beast but was caught by Haruko's Earth Style: Earth Arm Jutsu. Haruko lowered him to the ground safely and went back to maintaining the Earth Dome that currently trapped Kuria and Kazuki Himitsu.
"Ken! Where's Ken?!" exclaimed Kenshi as he looked around. He couldn't see his brother anywhere and feared that he had run off mid-battle again.
"No...not again...KEN! Stop running dammit and fight me fair and square!"
"I don't want to kill you." whispered Ken into the ear of his older brother. Kenshi tried to turn around but Ken knocked him out a swing from his Water Style: Arm Hammer.
Haruko used his Earth Arm Jutsu in an attempt to grab Ken but he simply crushed it with his Ice Fist. Ken cast several water clones to distract Haruko in order to get him to drop the Earth Dome but it wasn't needed as Kazuki came flying through it. Kuria walked out of the Kazuki shaped hole, surrounded by an aura of blue chakra; a sign he had unlocked several of his Inner Gates. In a flash of blue, Kuria ran towards the lying Kazuki and delivered a downwards punch that rammed Kazuki into a 4 foot deep crater. Ken made a start towards Kuria to protect his comrade but Haruko cast an enormous Earth Dome, trapping himself and Ken inside, he then softened the ground near Ken's feet, sinking him waist deep into the ground. Ken looked over with a face of controlled rage.
"I am not in the mood." he said in a low voice. Despite every cell in his body telling him to run, Haruko stood his ground. He took a deep breath and mustered up all the courage he had to reply.
"Come at me...bitch."
Taiga Himitsu stood over the wreckage of Shika Kirishima's Palace. Both the tyrant and his building were a scattered mess, amongst which stood a wooden pole carrying the tyrant's bloodied, bruised and beaten head. The look on the tyrant's face was one of heart-aching fear; to any who hadn't suffered under his rule, the expression might evoke pity. As Taiga bent over to pick up the torn Kage's cloak, a personalised kunai grabbed his attention. Taiga picked up the kunai, pocketing it to sell on later. Weapons of former tyrants were rather popular in the black market.
"Is this enough?" asked a voice behind him. Taiga turned to face a small gathering crown of Hidden Ash citizens. On the floor, was a bag full of gold coins.
"Woah, that's far more than we agreed" said an embarassed Taiga. He emptied half the bag onto the floor.
"Oh please, we insist. We will get far more money back from selling the artifacts in the wreckage." said a village elder. But Taiga wasn't having any of it.
"It's heavy enough as it is, I couldn't possibly carry anymore. And besides, I had a score to settle with him." There was a whistling sound and a dull thud. A kunai zipped right past where Taiga had just been standing and connected with the head of the elder he was in conversation with. There was a look of surprise on the elder's face as his fell to his knees and collapsed onto the floor. After a second of shocked silence, the gathering crowd descended into anarchy as several more kunais whistled through the air. Taiga picked himself off the floor to dodge a second, third and fourth kunai before casting Wind Style: Circular Sphere Jutsu. He held the jutsu as the raining of kunais continued, giving him enough time to look around at the carnage happening around him. Bodies dropped like flies as dozens, hundreds of kunais hit homes, animals, shops and villagers. Several village ninja had taken up similar stances, casting defensive jutsu on themselves and familes.
If the outside of the small village wasn't surrounded in a perpetual, descending layer of ash, Taiga would have been able to identify the attackers. He could make out several figures on a cliff towards the East but he wouldn't be able to drop his jutsu and get there without being hit by a kunai.
"Conspiracy to commit treason alone is punishable by death. Let alone actually going through with it." said a female voice. A young, mid-late 30's woman emerged from the ashes, bearing the clothing of the Hidden Ash ANBU. Taiga gritted his teeth. He had originally come to the Hidden Ash to murder both the Kage and Head of ANBU but had had to settle with just the Kage when he discovered that the ANBU were out on a mission.
"Well well well, guess who it is. Taiga Himitsu, we've literally just been looking for you. My name is Kamiko, I'm Head of The Hidden Ash ANBU and I'm the last face you're ever going to see."
"How did you know I was alive?" asked Taiga, visibly struggling to hold in his rage. The woman laughed.
"Our spies couldn't find a grave with your name on it so we knew that Onimaro had helped you escaped. Our leader may have been an utter imbecile, but that doesn't mean his surbodinates are." Taiga dropped the Wind Sphere jutsu and dozens of kunai clattered to the ground around him.
"I understand your interest in me, but why the villagers?" asked Taiga. The woman cocked her head to one side, genuinely curious as to why anyone, in a situation like this one, would care for villagers they have nothing to do with. She shrugged it off, she had learnt that emotions were weakness and until proven otherwise will stick to that.
"Well weren't you listening. Treason is punishable by death." She smiled and snapped her fingers and in one simultaneous blast, the kunais that were scattered around the village exploded. Having been surrounded by them, Taiga should have died but as the smoke cleared, she couldn't make out a corpse where there should have been one.
"Dammit, how did he escape. ANBU! Close in on the village, he must still be there."
The Hidden Ash was a small village located in a valley. The valley was surrounded on all sides not just by volcanoes in perpetual eruption, but by a thick, ash cloud. Many fabled battles had raged where the village now stood; man against man, beast against man and beast against beast had all etched itself into the landscape, resulting in a village with more history than presence. As the smallest Hidden Village, the majority of the missions involved leading individuals across the treacherous terrain, mainly to and from the trading metropolis of the Hidden Volcano. The poverty of the village also made it's shinobi notorious for taking shady missions, members of the Hidden Ash ANBU were wanted worldwide for question for a number of cases.
"If the price is right, they'll take the life" was a common rhyme used to define the shinobi of the Hidden Ash.
From all sides emerged Hidden Ash ANBU, over 100 shinobi in total appeared from the ash closing in on what many of them call home. Commotion started up towards the South of the village and a fireball collided with 3 of her ANBU, roasting one instantly and setting another alight. By the time Kamiko arrived, Taiga was resting against a flattened building, completely surrounded by ANBU, with over a dozen unidentifiable casualties strewn about. Panting, he turned to her and said;
"If I hadn't...sent away...that chakra beast...you'd all be dead." Despite surviving the explosion, Taiga's left leg was missing from the knee down. He had tied his vest around the stump to stop the bleeding but it was soaked through with blood. Most of his clothes were burned and the black cloak he wore that bore the Heathen logo had had been lost in the blast. Under his open vest Kamiko could spot that his bare chest and entire left arm was badly burnt. There was a maze of cuts over his head, leaving his face half covered in blood and half his right ear was missing.
"Looking at you, I wouldn't suggest that you throw about any threats. In your state you should be making a run for it." Taiga gestured to the devastation around him, wincing as he lifted up his left arm.
"And leave all these people to your rule? I wouldn't dream of it."
"Why do you care so much for them?!?" shouted Kamiko. The frustration for an answer had got to her and she wanted to know. She needed to know, it had been bugging her all her life. She had been taught to lock away her emotions as they were supposed to be a weakness but she had just witnessed a dying man with one leg dispatch over a dozen of her best trained men.
"You don't even know their names!! What kind of shinobi cares for villagers when their own life is hanging by a thread?!?"
Taiga slid to the ground and laughed.
"The kind of shinobi that is trying to better the world." he coughed and his nose started to bleed. "Killing innocent villagers, supporting a tyranical Kage, destroying my entire organisation because you were told to...and this...I doubt even you can justify that."
In the following silence, cries and screams of agony could be heard across the village. The resulting fires from the explosions were burning down buildings in all directions. People were crowding the streets, pulling barely breathing bodies through badly burnt bodies. Some of the ANBU had taken off their masks and turned to look at what they had done to their own home. A young child with severe burns ran up to one of the ANBU and hugged her around the waist.
"Mommy!" screamed the girl. The girl looked up and pointed at another ANBU who had their mask on. "Mommy! Look m-m-monsters!!" The young girl burst into tears. "T-t-t-they...D-d-d-daddy" The mother shushed her child, hugged her tight and threw the mask that she held in her hand into the distance. The Hidden Ash ANBU, who had been trained to the point where they could take their own life in a moment's notice if need be, one by one took their masks off, throwing them into a pile by their leader's feet. They walked off into various directions, consoling and helping the wounded, a noticeable hunch in their shoulders as the gravity of their actions hit them.
"O...orders...they were orders." whispered Kamiko. Taiga turned to her and looked her in the eyes.
"Orders that lead mothers to harm their children. Are they truly the orders you should be following?" Kamiko nodded to herself. She took off her mask, dumping it onto the pile.
"...Stay here....Taiga. We'll take care of you." She looked around as her eyes filled with tears. "I'll...I'll stop this...I swear I'll stop this" said Kamiko.
Hearing no response from Taiga, she turned to him. His eyes were closed, a slight smile on his face.
"M...Medic!" shouted Kamiko, she gently picked up Taiga, noticing how sticky he was from blood. She frantically looked around for a medic but in the aftermath there was none to come. Kamiko heard a humming sound and turned to see the personalised kunai that Shika Kirishima always kept on himself on the floor. She slung Taiga against her shoulder and bent to pick up the kunai. She pocketed the kunai and stepped back to find herself in a dimly lit room.
On the floor were markings often used in sealing techniques. She stepped out of a marking labelled "Ash". She looked around to see Kage in various clothing appearing in markings that associated with their villages. To the front of the room was a circle with 7 more markings, in the middle was the writing "Yugure of Katakiuchi". On the wall, were two large banners bearing the Kirishima banner and Katakiuchi banner side by side.
"Oh shit." was all Kamiko said before she was knocked out from behind.
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Topic: Manuster *******-Tsukegami (Chapter 19) (Read 123840 times)
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