They all nodded, no hesitation, no panic, stepping into their practiced pattern around him.
Orochimaru's first clone struck at Akane.
Her Sharingan flared, already figuring out his patterns and reading the angle before the blade even descended. She twisted, slipping past it, slashing through the illusion and two snakes that lunged at her heel.
Another clone went for Emi.
Her Byakugan's enhanced processing speed, full 360-degree field, and x-ray acuity caught the subtle chakra spike instantly.
Gentle Fist lanced forward to meet it directly and force it back, while her Vacuum Palm detonated the snakes beneath her feet.
Saya met hers head-on.
She swung her scythe in wide, murderous arcs, slicing serpents apart, her blood traps splattering across the field and forcing the clone to halt mid-advance before she shredded it.
Reika moved last, hands weaving, and unleashed a B-rank Glacier Wave that froze half the snakes tunneling toward her ankles.
The battlefield erupted into mist, frost, blood-arcs, and bone dust.
Kimimaro stepped forward, Yang Seal, now decently filled after all this time, already blooming on his own forehead.
He cracked his neck once.
"Here he comes," Kimimaro said calmly.
He then opened the first two Inner Gates he had mastered only by this point, without hesitation.
And then he sprinted to meet Orochimaru head-on.
By now, slipping into that boosted state felt natural — like loosening a limiter rather than tearing something open, and he could perform his bone dances at the same time perfectly, despite the micro stress, as he had trained for countless hours.
Even so, he kept his movements deceptively simple.
One bone blade.
Only the Dance of the Camellia.
He wanted Orochimaru to read a pattern… right until the moment he broke it with Willow and Larch.
That would be the strike that mattered.
Orochimaru lunged.
His real body flickered, tail whipping, sword thrusts blurring faster than most shinobi could even register.
Kimimaro barely met him thanks to his enhanced Inner Gate reflexes, always quick brain, and very advanced close-range sensory net he purposely developed over time.
Kusanagi screamed against bone.
The clash sent sparks flashing across the field — but it was the legendary blade that chipped ever so slightly, which surprised even Orochimar for a split second.
Kimimaro also felt the vibration through his arm at the same time.
'Good. My bone density is nearing obsidian-tier now. Even Kusanagi won't keep its edge.'
Kimimaro knew the frightening sharpness just now wasn't only from his growing mastery over Shikotsumyaku, of his ever-increasing control of calcium content, osteoblasts, and osteoclasts.
Two additional layers had transformed his smaller, more manageable, most refined bone forms into something far more deceptive.
He had even learned how to weave elemental flows into them by this point.
Earth Release to harden and lighten the structure at once, tightening density, durability, and pressure without slowing speed.
Water Release refined the edge itself, thinning it to a translucent, glasslike film that slipped into a target before the true cut even landed.
It didn't replace the blade; it layered over it, a silent first strike that let the sharpened bone bite deeper a heartbeat later.
Individually, those tricks would have been impressive.
But together, with his improved chakra control refining the balance automatically, the result was something far beyond Orochimaru's expectations.
A simple bone piece that looked almost delicate, almost harmless, yet could carve with pressure and sharpness no metal in this world could mimic.
Deceptive.
Deadly.
And getting sharper every exchange.
However, again, from below, three snakes burst from the soil, fangs wide.
But Kimimaro had also stockpiled an entire arsenal of C-rank earth and water ninjutsu in his spare hours, over the last few years, quietly polishing them until each one slipped into his movements as naturally as breath.
So, he stamped down, releasing a wave of Earth Release stonespikes.
A Water Release whip surged from his other hand, severing the rest.
His senses stayed entirely on Orochimaru's true chakra thread — a shifting, serpentine streak weaving through the battlefield.
Then Orochimaru changed the rhythm again.
His body elongated unnaturally, torso stretching, spine unraveling like a rope.
Even his neck elongated like a pale spear, head thrusting forward mid-air further, and the Kusanagi clenched between his teeth, turning his entire upper body into a lunging projectile.
A swarm of exploding snakes constantly burst from his sleeves.
A half-dozen unpredictable replacements and patterns in their swarm followed.
One shedding skin, another dissolving into even more snakes entirely.
Meanwhile, Orochimaru presented only:
Fake openings.
Fake weaknesses.
Fake angles.
However, eventually, Kimimaro still saw the one real opening first and struck back to take control.
A dozen razor-thin bone blades erupted from his shoulders, elbows, ribs, and knees.
A perfect counteroffensive meant to hit a target who thought he understood Kimimaro's range.
For the first time, Orochimaru's expression shifted, ever so slightly.
After all, even he could admit those bones of the brat were among the sharpest substances he had ever encountered, sharp enough that even his transformed white-snake body, layered with modifications and defenses, might suffer if one of them struck too cleanly.
Even the Kusanagi, that famed blade that cut through almost anything, in his experience, came away from their brief clash with faint cracks along its edge.
But he still reacted in time.
His body split open down the center, sloughing off an entire layer of skin and muscle like a discarded coat.
His signature snake-shedding evasion.
Kimimaro's blades shredded the vacated shell cleanly… but the real Orochimaru had already slipped out of its mouth, uncoiling a meter away with a hiss.
'Tsch…' Kimimaro clicked his tongue, irritation threading through the focus in his eyes.
He already knew the theoretical solution to the snake in front.
That modified, half-fluid serpent anatomy of his, the one that let him slither out of being skewered by the Totsuka blade itself, shrug off Tsunade's enhanced punches as if they were taps, disperse and recombine like a hive of snakes… it made him infuriatingly hard to finish.
He couldn't be crushed.
He couldn't be torn.
He simply slipped damage like an eel through water.
But Kimimaro also understood the difference here.
Orochimaru had never faced anything like his bones.
Not raw force, no.
Force could be dispersed. Broken. Absorbed.
But sharpness, real sharpness, was another matter entirely.
His bones, refined over years, shaped through Yang seal growth and obsessive control, honed into obsidian-killing edges, were sharp enough to etch through snake-flesh that didn't behave like flesh at all.
It was the first thing that ever felt capable of carving through that disgusting, elastic body.
If only he had the speed to apply it cleanly.
That was the real bottleneck.
Sharpness he had.
Killing intent he had.
But catching a serpent who flowed like pure chakra wrapped in skin… that was the part still out of reach.
Not to mention that even if he did land a clean cut, Kimimaro knew it wouldn't be enough.
A shallow wound was meaningless.
Even a deep wound wasn't a victory.
Because Orochimaru could also always stitch himself back together in seconds with those grotesque body modifications.
Limbs reattached as if glued by instinct. Torn muscle re-knit. Venomous organs slid back into place with obscene ease.
And if the damage was too severe, if Kimimaro somehow managed to bisect him outright…
Then Orochimaru would simply vomit out a fresh, fully healed body like shedding old skin, as seen in the original series.
A rebirth on command.
A glitch layered on top of another glitch.
It wasn't a battle where one clean strike ended things.
It was a nightmare setting on maximum difficulty, where even the right hit wasn't the end; it was only the beginning of whatever came next.
Perhaps only a full-body crucifixion of strikes — every vital point pierced at the same instant, every organ pinned before he could slither apart — would be enough to truly halt him.
But that was a fantasy.
Landing one perfect hit on Orochimaru was already bordering on impossible.
Landing dozens simultaneously, before his body dispersed, shed, or regenerated…
That was the kind of task only mythology bothered pretending was feasible.
Kimimaro also inadvertently found himself asking the question he least wanted to ask.
What did Orochimaru even use to forge a body like that?
It was not like their ritualistic Yin-Yang 'immortality surgery'.
No single path Orochimaru walked explained it, strangely, as well.
Senjutsu alone couldn't do it.
Fūinjutsu alone couldn't either.
Pure Yang? Hard.
Science? Not at that scale.
Whatever this was… it was likely an unholy fusion of all of those or something entirely outside his current level of understanding.
Kimimaro realized he had no clear working theory at all.
He just now knew that Orochimaru was comprehensively definitely far beyond anything Kimimaro's memories had prepared him for.
'Knowing' him from canon was one thing, watching those bizarre snake contortions from a safe screen, half-laughing at the theatrics.
Experiencing them in reality — the suffocating speed, the sensory overload, the killing intent woven into every impossible angle his body could take — was something else entirely.
Kimimaro had still underestimated him, even after all his preparations, even after carrying the original boy's trauma like a scar inside his own fused soul.
Orochimaru was never just an enemy.
He was the lingering "heart demon" Kimimaro had inherited, the shadow that had once driven the original Kimimaro into the ground, bone by bone, until he could barely walk.
And yet even with all that context, he had still misjudged him.
He just hadn't grasped how terrifying Orochimaru truly was until now.
But facing Orochimaru directly made one truth brutally clear:
The man wasn't a clown with snake tricks and strange acrobatics.
He was a storm in human skin.
'He's definitely a beast of a different breed… Offensively, too...'
He begrudgingly, completely admitted, jaw tightening as he promptly slid back into stance.
'Not because of some raw power. Because he has a counter for everything. A trick for every angle. Offense, defense, misdirection… an endless toolbox honed by decades of experience. You can think you're safe one heartbeat and be dead in the next.'
It struck him with a heavy clarity.
Orochimaru wasn't a High-Kage threat because he could overwhelm you.
He was a High-Kage threat also because you could never predict him.
For a close-quarters fighter like Kimimaro, it was the worst possible opponent.
Someone you couldn't outmaneuver.
Someone you couldn't out-trick.
The only true solution was overwhelming firepower, enough to crush every trick at once.
And Kimimaro didn't have that yet.
He felt it even more sharply when he caught flashes of the girls' struggles through his sensory field, each holding their ground, but only barely.
After all, every one of them, Kimimaro included, was still an infant before Orochimaru in terms of battlefield experience.
And he clearly intended to exploit that gap, pressing in with a confident and ruthless, close-quarters momentum from the beginning.
A quiet conclusion settled over Kimimaro like a weight.
This increasingly felt like an uphill battle.