Lead gray clouds blanketed the sky. Laser beams chased a black shadow, carving the heavens into fine, gold threadlike lines.
Twelve… eleven…
Kakuzu kept dodging the light cannons rising from below, silently counting down as he released chakra through his black tendrils to sense the world.
After a long stretch of observation and near death evasions, he had fully grasped his enemy's ability.
That jutsu, beyond S rank, had two forms.
The first was the air-bullet mode: dense rate of fire, extreme range, but a single attribute. He had already countered it with Fire Release. For now, it was not a real threat.
The second was the laser form: bottomless power, nearly impossible to block. The projectile velocity was so fast it could not be reacted to, but the firing frequency was low. Each jet could last at most 15.6 seconds. After it ran dry, it had to stop and recharge for 1.4 seconds, and then the turret needed about 0.3 seconds to spin up before firing again.
After several brushes with death, he had begun to adapt to the high speed beams, and had even found a perfect response.
The lasers were fast, yes. Once locked on, his body would be pierced before he could think. But the warning signs were obvious.
As long as he saw the pupil like muzzle rotate and open, he could predict the timing and direction of the attack. With Lightning Release boosting his neural reflexes, he could dodge in advance.
If he avoided that very first, impossible to react shot, the slower cutting sweep afterward was no threat at all.
He could recite the pattern from memory now. The moment a barrel lifted and turned, every attack path was already calculated.
Next, he only needed to break that layer of defense.
And the enemy would be dead.
Kakuzu looked down at the arrogant girl, standing in place like a queen behind an invincible barrier while controlling water cannons to bombard him at will. The only intact part of his face, his mouth, curled into a cold smile.
He had seen plenty like her. Usually they came from Bloodline clans of the Five Great Villages.
Still wet behind the ears, they inherited a Kekkei Genkai, a secret art, some special ability, and immediately believed themselves superior. In battle, they only knew how to swing chakra around like a gorilla waving a fire poker.
Ignorant. Arrogant. Confident for no reason at all.
Only when their "invincible" jutsu was overturned by a shinobi armed with a kunai and the Three Body Technique, relying on experience and grit, did they finally understand:
A shinobi's life and death struggle was never a simple contest of who had more power. Fighting was like making money. You needed both brains and brawn.
Nine… seven… two…
His lips lifted higher as he counted, steady, certain of victory.
When he reached two, chakra surged inside his three remaining hearts.
Byakugan's sensing needed no explanation. The instant Kakuzu activated chakra, Konome Taketori saw his move.
Her lotus pale arm flicked lightly.
Buzz.
The rapidly spinning water shuttles shifted sideways. The vertical pupil muzzles pivoted like living eyes. Six lasers crossed and swept through the air, scouring empty space.
In the sky, the two attribute masks that had been weaving frantically suddenly halted, then turned and flew straight toward Kakuzu's Lightning Release main body.
The pursuing lasers seized the opening, cutting down toward the grotesque masks.
Those were the Earth Grudge Fear's most fatal points.
The hearts.
But the masks did not perform any brilliant flight maneuvers. It was as if they had suddenly lost all intelligence, charging straight for Kakuzu.
The low hum of the water shuttles turned chaotic.
Just as Kakuzu predicted, the chakra inside them drained to nothing.
The straight jets instantly lost force. Gravity bent and warped them. Before the reconverging Earth Grudge Fear, they scattered like rain.
Recharge time: 1.7 seconds.
Kakuzu's black tendrils whipped in excitement. Wind and Fire masks emerged from his shoulders, mouths snapping open.
He stared at the beautiful girl below, who had stood in the same spot since the fight began, too proud to move even one step. Black threads wriggled at the corners of his mouth as his voice sank, dense with killing intent.
"Composite Ninjutsu: Strange Mask Explosive Flame!"
Boom!
Wind and Fire released terrifying chakra at the same time, the same advanced techniques he had refined for decades: Pressure Damage and Searing Pain.
A vacuum wave compressed to the extreme blasted outward, but this time it did not bloom into a sea of fire like it had over the ocean. Instead, it curled the flames into a gigantic bomb and hurled it straight at the barrier.
Strange Mask Explosive Flame and Flame Wind Wild Waves were both Wind and Fire combinations, yet their shape transformations were completely different.
Flame Wind Wild Waves used Wind Release to spread Fire Release, pushing temperature and area to the limit, summoning a fire sea to erase everything.
Strange Mask Explosive Flame used the vacuum wave to condense the flames, then launched it with Wind Release's extreme speed to create a devastating detonation.
The former was broader, perfect for clearing a battlefield.
The latter was stronger, built for cracking fortifications.
Perfect for dealing with a fortress like barrier.
Boom!
He timed it perfectly for the gap when the water cannons were in recharge mode, unable to fire.
The wind fire bomb moved too fast.
Konome Taketori had no time to release a counter jutsu.
The explosion smashed into the barrier.
Crack. Crack.
Like an iceberg struck by a massive ship, the barrier bloomed with deep fractures in an instant. Violent flames drilled through and swallowed the girl amid her water shuttles whole.
Success.
Kakuzu hovered in midair, only half his face remaining. His black whisker tendrils hung from his waist, shredded by repeated cuts. Two white masks on his shoulders wore eerie smiles.
Fire Release had countless flaws.
It burned hot but could not last. It devoured chakra. Its attack speed was inferior to Wind and Lightning.
But one fact was unquestionable.
It was the most offensively lethal of all elemental releases.
Lightning only surpassed it in penetration.
Now Fire, enhanced by Wind, was like a tiger with wings. Its power multiplied severalfold.
No living thing could survive inside that blast.
She was dead.
Dead to her own arrogance.
Kakuzu could not suppress the upward curl of his mouth. Losing the chance to take her heart was a slight pity, but when he imagined the harvest waiting for him, he could no longer hide his joy.
Crackle.
Flames devoured the ground with popping sounds, turning the sky red.
His sensing technique no longer functioned. Any chaotic chakra currents drifting through would ignite and become fuel for the fire.
He descended slowly, cautiously. Countless savage tendrils groped through the air like venomous snakes tasting for prey.
He was searching for the Thunder Blade: Kiba.
The temperature from Strange Mask Explosive Flame was extreme. If it stayed in the blaze too long, even chakra metal would melt.
Forty million would be gone.
His tendrils writhed, more frantic than the fire itself.
Thud.
What was that?
Kakuzu's heart jolted. He thought he heard something like a drum being struck.
He listened again.
Only the crackle of burning.
Probably my imagination.
Thud.
It was real.
All three hearts inside him rippled at once. Kakuzu snapped his gaze to the center of the firestorm.
The flames there were at their fiercest, surging dozens of meters high, hiding everything within.
But he was certain.
That drumbeat came from inside.
What is it?
A nameless fear rose in his chest, an emotion so strong he had not felt in decades. It was like being thrown alone into a sea of fire, restless and scorching.
Thud.
Another drumbeat.
Kakuzu trembled. Even his tendrils seemed to knot.
This time the sound was unmistakably clear, and horrifyingly familiar.
A heartbeat.
His body nearly jumped.
A heartbeat, the very sound that used to thrill him, fresh with life and vitality, now sounded like a nightmare.
What kind of creature had a heartbeat this huge?
A giant out of legend?
As terror twisted through his mind, the drum sounded again.
Then a slightly fuller silhouette stepped slowly out of the flames.
Bare white feet tread on wind and lightning, stamping deep prints into ground that had crystallized from heat.
Crack.
Thigh thick fissures crawled outward with every step. Malice and killing intent tangled in the air. Even that life filled chakra carried a shocking greed, like a ferocious beast escaping its cage to devour whoever it found.
"Hah."
Hot steam poured from her breath. A violent airflow pressed the raging fire down.
That was not Wind Release chakra that could be ignited.
It was pure force, without a trace of impurity.
The ground shuddered, splitting layer by layer.
A valkyrie wrapped in wind and lightning armor stood in the plaza. Her white kimono was gone.
Violet black Lightning Release armor sealed around her full figure. A tearing gale twisted along the surface of that armor. Four slender wind wings, each with turbine like vortex cores, extended behind her. Even the fire sea was shredded apart by the violent storm and thunder.
The girl's once gentle silver hair, previously tied up, now danced in the gale. When the strands swept the ground, they left knife carved cracks.
"I hate fighting in such an undignified way."
Her clothing and even the cloth covering her eyes had been torn apart by surging chakra.
Konome Taketori, clad in wind thunder armor, stared at Kakuzu, whose tendrils were trembling. Her ash gray eyes shone like stars, filled with killing intent.
"Your Earth Grudge Fear better be worth something."
Her deeper, calmer voice carried crushing pressure.
Fear clawed into Kakuzu's nerves. His lips trembled. No words came.
He did not understand what the monster from the flames was.
He only felt like he had been thrown back to that afternoon when he tried to assassinate the First Hokage.
Whoosh.
His tendrils exploded outward to generate lift.
He did not hesitate. He no longer cared about the weapon in the fire.
Kakuzu leapt like a spooked cat, fleeing in the opposite direction from Konome Taketori without thought of destination.
Three hearts pumped chakra in panic.
Thump thump.
Warped black whiskers reshaped into a human outline. For an instant, his back looked like a boy's again.
A man who had long abandoned his humanity seemed to find it for one fleeting moment.
By losing everything.
Boom!
A deafening blast erupted near his ear, like a buried bomb detonating. The ground in his vision exploded apart. A terrifying shockwave expanded across the plaza, shredding trees, buildings, even the coffins, burying everything under debris.
The sheer scale tore Kakuzu's mind apart.
He forced chakra outward, trying to escape, but realized he had not moved at all.
Not even a fraction.
Even his Earth Grudge Fear, which should obey his will, refused to respond.
A warm shaft of sunlight fell.
Kakuzu shook like he had dropped into an ice hell.
Right in front of him.
The sky split open.
Clouds stretching for countless kilometers were torn into a canyon like rift. A massive golden sun wheel rose slowly from within, like the eye of a god.
He lowered his gaze, as if sensing something.
His body, once packed with black tendrils, had already been erased by wind and lightning.
A hand that looked warm and soft like jade was gently toying with his last remaining heart.
Only then did he understand.
Before he even heard that boom, his Wind and Fire hearts had already been pulverized. The force that punched through his body had even shattered the sky.
"So… so fast… what… what jutsu is this?"
At death's edge, Kakuzu trembled, trying to turn and look at the enemy who had killed him, but his crumbling body could not support the motion.
"Chasing the Sun Style: First Form, Sky-Splitting. It's more of a taijutsu technique," Konome Taketori said.
"Sky… splitting… taijutsu…"
He mouthed the unfamiliar name with effort. Kakuzu had never imagined taijutsu could create such terrifying destruction.
How ridiculous.
He had just assumed she was a so called genius relying on secret arts and bloodlines.
The truth was simply that he was unworthy of seeing this violent form earlier.
She was a taijutsu specialist.
"You're not bad either. Even among all the shinobi I've met, you were the most troublesome," Konome Taketori said, watching Kakuzu disperse like powder into the wind.
It was sincere.
Kakuzu's experience and technique were too deep. Five elemental releases refined to extremes, combined freely. Flight. Area attacks. An undying body. A toolbox of rare abilities.
Even Uchiha Obito had been less annoying than this old monster.
"To be praised… by the new God of Shinobi… what an… honor…"
"What a shame. I'm not that guy's opponent yet. And I'm only a shadow clone."
Konome Taketori's voice stayed cold. Her five fingers closed around the single Lightning Release heart.
Yin Release tangled with lightning, birthing terrifying black thunder that attacked the soul itself.
Sizzle.
The black tendrils she had deliberately preserved thrashed wildly. At point blank range, the black lightning tore into the last remnants of Kakuzu's consciousness.
He was already barely alive. One heart. A thin scrap of Earth Grudge Fear.
Now he was struck by black lightning, a perfect counter to spirit and mind.
It did not take long.
Pff.
A sound like air leaking out.
The tendrils collapsed, finally going limp beneath the black thunder.
Buzz.
A vivid green chakra glow rose from her palm, repairing the heart and its pathways. Ruptured vessels reconnected. The chakra seed and black tendrils regained vitality.
If Kakuzu had known she was also a medical nin, he would have died even more unwillingly.
Thump.
The heart beat rapidly in her hand.
Black tendrils coiled around Konome Taketori's arm like little snakes, black and white interwoven, holiness and evil existing together.
She could feel it.
Kakuzu's final trace of consciousness had been erased.
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