Discordant frequencies rattled Chōji's bones.
The sound lanced past cartilage and skin, turning his ribs into a hollow chamber that vibrated with every jagged note. Each frequency dragged against his skeleton like a file, playing his internal frame with a jarring, discordant pressure.
Sandal soles gripped the treacherous mix of frost and wet ash. The sliding substrate threatened to shear under every shift of mass.
"Hold—!" Shikamaru's voice cut through, distorted and thin, swimming upstream through the flute's interference. "Triangle—now!"
Movement followed instinct, the geometry of the formation etched into his muscle memory. Ino to the rear, Shikamaru offset, Chōji forward. The structure held for half a heartbeat before the Doki punched through reality.
The club-wielder took a single step—the earth compacted several inches. The shockwave punched through Chōji's knees.
"Stagger—pivot right!" Shikamaru shouted, trying to salvage the coordination. "Rotating anchor!"
The turn failed as the monsters' proximity displaced the air so violently that Chōji's breath hitched. His heel caught a frozen root that gave way under the mass of the incoming threat. Before the team could find the rhythm to rotate, the triangle disintegrated, the spacing failing under the unnatural scale.
"I can't find the anchor!" Ino snapped, her hands flashing through seals only to drop as she staggered back.
The flute screamed. Chōji surged forward, mass redistributing as a defensive expansion erupted. His torso thickened, weight dropping until his feet bit through the frost and found the bedrock.
The club dropped—he caught it. His arms compressed—breath cut off mid-cycle. The ground cratered, mud displacing outward in a ring. He held, even as his vision jittered from the jarring impact.
A dark ribbon reached for the Doki's limb, but the monster didn't lock. It moved, and the shadow moved with it, hauling Shikamaru forward. Boots carved trenches into the ash as he was taken off-balance by his own technique.
"Fine!" Ino's consciousness surged outward, then she gasped, her eyes widening. "There's... nothing to grab! I can't feel a mind!"
The hit met no resistance. The thing didn't wait for him to counter; it didn't flinch. The club twisted in his grip at an unnatural angle. The blow skidded across his guard and tore through his side. Pain lanced hot, shoving him back three steps through the soot. He reset, breath coming in shallow pulls, while a second lateral sweep came in—late.
I need more.
His fingers closed around the small, matte-dark pill in his pouch. He popped it into his mouth and bit down. It tasted like ash and metal—a bitterness that crawled up his throat and sank hooks into his spine.
Click.
A gate in his spine unlocked. Chakra erupted through his coils, tearing heat into every muscle. He didn't grow; he erupted.
The world dropped as Chōji rose. Skeletal birch trunks snapped like brittle bones as his shoulders pushed through them, his rise displacing a column of steam that swirled into the canopy. Feet punched through the frost layer, rewriting the clearing's topography.
Motor jitter hit him instantly. His hands trembled with the unrefined surge. He reached for the first Doki's throat, but his proprioception failed to account for the scale; his hand overshot the mark by a foot, instead obliterating a spruce tree behind the monster.
He stood eye-to-eye with the giants. Skin was pulled taut, vascular strain branching across his expanded arms while his body pumped out a visible, shimmering heat.
"Okay," Chōji said, his voice carrying a physical weight. "Now it's fair."
The club came again. A crushing strike met it. The collision cracked the air, flattening the nearby brush and sending fine grit into a violent spiral.
It staggered.
Each massive step propagated a delayed collapse of the mud behind him as the compression reached the deeper layers. He isolated the club-wielder, slamming a fist into its torso. The Doki folded, its skin displacing without a bruise, the stitching on its waist groaning. The strike sank without rebound—no grunt of air—no tightening to meet the blow. Pressure went in; nothing came back.
Chōji felt the monster yield, its weight finally anchored against his own. Across the clearing, Tayuya's cheeks puffed with a desperate intake of air. Her jaw was set in a hard clench, her fingers dancing in a frantic correction. He saw her stumble over the holes—a clear, frantic gap in the melody that left the Doki frozen and unresponsive for two full heartbeats.
His grip tightened around the club-arm and squeezed, forcing a dead stop. Internal structures ground together, but the joint offered no recoil pattern. He held the grip, watching the Doki's arm strain against the holes in Tayuya's melody, the creature's response to her commands beginning to lag.
He pulled back for a finishing strike, the giants in front of him falling out of coordination.
Then the melody tightened.
The stitched mouth of the third Doki tore open, the thread snapping with a series of sharp pops. A wet, airless hiss emerged, lacking the depth of a roar. Translucent shapes spilled from the monster's throat.
"Insects?!" Chōji barked. He clapped—shockwave tearing outward through the steam and ash, obliterating the lingering maples in its wake. The translucent coils ignored the pressure wave entirely, weaving through it like light through water.
"No—they're—they aren't solid!" Shikamaru yelled. He flicked a seal, a desperate shadow-bind—but the shadow wouldn't catch. The technique shredded instantly as the spirits' frequency lanced through the dirt. "Shadow's failing—get back! Break the... break the song!"
Too late. The first spirit passed through Chōji's arm like cold smoke and bit.
Not his flesh. The drain lanced past muscle—into output.
Strength stuttered. A chunk of his presence just... vanished. He gasped, the sensation alien and immediate, like a muscle had been erased from his memory.
More followed, weaving through the air in patterns that defied anatomy. They passed through falling maple leaves without displacing them, but the sheets of steam warped and curled around their translucent frames.
Chōji swung a massive fist, but temporal lag hit his nervous system. He saw the opening, intended the strike, but his arm missed the timing. His coordination drifted. As the second wave passed through his hips, his internal sense of "up" dissolved; his center of mass misjudged the tilt of his own expanded frame, and he nearly tipped into the crater behind him.
"I can't... reach!" Chōji barked back, orientation instability making every step a gamble. A wave of spirits passed through his chest, and his body warmth vanished instantly.
The first Doki hit him from the side. Even at equal size, his ribs flexed inward past tolerance, folding him. He tried to lock his arms to defend, but his muscles failed to maintain structural tension.
Internal pressure dropped.
Massive limbs suddenly felt less heavy—the mass itself was being eaten. His breath hitched as vascular prominence on his arms began to fade, skin slackening. Inhale timing slipped under the drain. Chakra pushed outward—then stuttered at the gate in his spine, which burned with a dying, hollow output.
Across the clearing, the flute sang—relentless, beautiful, and cruel.
Chōji's massive form shuddered. The plume of steam from his skin dissipated as his internal temperature plummeted. He looked at his hands, watching the musculature lose its definition, the silhouette of his frame softening and losing its sharp tension.
The change started subtly—then didn't stop.
He shrank.