Funamushi's water-coated blade came at Lee in a horizontal arc that would have cut him in half if he had been standing still. Lee was not standing still. He swapped his tonfas for his nunchaku and they came up in a cross-block that caught the blade between the two batons, redirecting the strike upward and to the side. Lee's left foot pivoted in the same motion, his right knee driving toward Funamushi's stomach.
Funamushi was unable to completely block that knee with his forearm, some of his bones fracturing just with that one hit! His eyes widened in shock. What kind of freakish genin has a body strong enough to break the bones of someone like him who's even killed jonin-level foes?!
Disgusting Konoha freaks! He shouted as he slashed out in frustration.
Lee did not retreat. He flowed around the slashes and came back at Funamushi from a different angle, the nunchaku spinning in his hands in patterns that the pirate's eyes had to actively track. One baton came in high, the other low, the two arcs intersecting at his sword arm.
Funamushi caught the high baton on his blade. The low baton hit him in the ribs.
He grunted.
Tenten moved from behind.
The Marlin Harpoon was in her hands. She had fed it chakra on the approach to the central ship, and it had responded by growing. The marlin-shaped skeleton at its head had swelled into something closer to a full-bodied fish, metallic, sharp, the jaw opening and closing in small hungry motions. The weapon was alive and it wanted to eat.
Funamushi saw it before she thrust.
His entire body locked. His sword arm froze mid-recovery. His eyes fixed on the weapon in the girl's hands with a recognition that hit him somewhere deeper than combat instinct.
"That's..." His voice cracked. "That's Lord Araumi's..."
He knew every curve of that harpoon. He had watched Araumi wield it for decades. He had watched it drink the chakra of enemy shinobi and rival pirates and anyone fool enough to stand in the Funato's way. He had seen it calm in Araumi's hands a thousand times, the marlin head resting, satisfied, loyal to the man who fed it.
It was not resting now. It was opening its jaw at him.
And the girl who had killed its previous master was holding it like she owned it.
"You." Funamushi's grief turned to fury so fast the transition was invisible. "You stole his weapon. You killed him and you took his weapon."
"It chose me," Tenten corrected him. "After I killed him."
She thrust.
Tenten pressed forward. The harpoon thrust several times over, and Funamushi had to dodge entirely this time because his water sheath was not going to stop it. The marlin sharp tip pierced at the air where his chest had been, its point stabbing nothing.
Lee was already on him from the front. Nunchaku cracking against Funamushi's sword arm before he could bring the blade fully around. A spinning kick followed, catching Funamushi in the ribs. The cracking sound was audible.
The pirate snarled.
He could see what they were doing. The boy in green was the front pressure. Constant, in his face, never giving him room to set up a technique. The girl was working from his flanks with that weapon, that cursed weapon that was eating every technique that had a smidgen of chakra.
Funamushi's teeth gnashed. He weaved through hand signs before he slammed his hand into the deck.
"Water Style: Water Spikes!"
Spikes of compressed water erupted from the deck around Lee and Tenten's position. Lee grabbed Tenten and launched them both skyward. Tenten, mid-air, swept the harpoon downward through the nearest spike. The marlin tip slashed into the water construct and drained it dry, the spike collapsing into a harmless splash before it could reach them.
They landed together. Lee pushed forward. Tenten circled wide with the harpoon extended, forcing Funamushi to track two threats he could not use water to block.
Funamushi's free hand formed seals.
"Water Style: Water Whip!"
Three tendrils of water lashed from the ocean. The first swept toward Lee. He jumped it. The second came at Tenten. She planted the harpoon in the deck and the tendril hit its torso. The chakra drained. The water went limp and splashed harmlessly across the wood. The third tendril caught Lee across the ribs from behind.
He turned the skid into momentum and came back with a spinning kick. Funamushi blocked with the flat of his blade but the force sent him sliding across the wet deck and cracked his sword!
Tenten threw three kunai from her free hand, angled to pin Funamushi's retreating feet. He dodged two and the third clipped his ankle. She followed with the harpoon, thrust at his sword arm.
He parried with his blade.
The moment the water sheath touched the harpoon's surface, it was gone. Consumed. His blade shattered on impact.
Funamushi looked at the hilt of his blade.
He looked at the girl holding the weapon that had just stripped his greatest advantage from him.
He roared while weaving through hand signs. His hand slammed into the deck. Water from the harbor responded.
"Water Style: Furious Roaring Tornado!"
The ocean rose around him in a spiraling column. Hundreds of gallons of water spun upward from the harbor surface, the column thickening as it climbed, the rotation accelerating, the spray turning into a violent wind that shook the ship beneath their feet. Lee was thrown backward by the initial pressure wave.
Funamushi disappeared into the tornado.
Inside the column, he controlled everything. The rotation, the speed, the direction. He could see out but no attack could reach in. The tornado was a fortress and a weapon at the same time.
He started moving the column toward Lee's position.
"Lee!" Tenten shouted over the wind. "Get behind me!"
Lee disengaged and rolled backward. Tenten stepped forward, the harpoon in both hands, and drove it into the tornado's outer wall.
The harpoon stabbed out repeatedly.
It began to feed.
The tornado's rotation faltered at the point of contact. A section of the spinning water went dark as the chakra was pulled from it, the organized rotation collapsing into ordinary water that fell to the deck in a heavy splash. The dead zone spread outward from the harpoon's contact point, eating into the tornado's structure.
Funamushi felt it. His tornado was being consumed from the outside in.
He poured more chakra into the technique. The column thickened, the rotation accelerating to compensate for the drain. But the harpoon was faster. The marlin head was swelling as it fed, the metallic body growing, its jaw opening wider, pulling more water into its consumption field.
The tornado shrank. Five meters of spinning water became four. Three. Two.
Funamushi was exposed.
The last of the tornado collapsed around him in a heavy downpour. He stood on the flooded deck, drenched, his sword in his hand, his chakra reserves visibly lower. The water around his feet tried to respond to his will. The harpoon's residual drain made it sluggish, the ocean's response delayed by a fraction of a second.
A fraction was enough.
Lee was on him before the water could rise.
His fist hit Funamushi in the sternum. The pirate folded forward. A knee drove into his jaw on the way down. Funamushi's head snapped back. Blood sprayed from his mouth. His body left the deck.
Tenten was waiting.
She swung the harpoon in a rising arc that caught Funamushi mid-air. The marlin torso slashed across his side and the chakra drain hit him at the same time as the physical impact. She could feel the harpoon pulling from him, drinking his reserves through contact, his chakra flowing into the weapon in a rush.
Funamushi hit the mast. The wood cracked. He slid down it, leaving a smear of blood on the timber.
He tried to weave through multiple hand signs.
Nothing happened.
The harpoon had taken too much. His reserves were at the bottom. The water around the ship's hull sat flat and dead, no longer responding to his will. The ocean was just the ocean again.
"No." Funamushi's voice was a rasp. "Lord Araumi's weapon... serving the girl who killed him..."
"It's mine now, pirate jerk." Tenten had a cheeky grin.
Funamushi looked up at her. At the girl holding his dead lord's weapon. At the marlin head that was still opening and closing, still hungry, still wanting more.
He spat blood onto the deck.
"Then finish it."
Lee appeared beside Tenten. His nunchaku were at his waist. His fists were up.
"Together?" Lee asked quietly.
"Together."
Lee stepped forward and drove his fist into Funamushi's chest. The impact cratered the mast behind him, the wood splintering outward. Funamushi's ribs broke under the strike, the sound carrying across the ship.
Tenten stepped forward and drove the harpoon through his stomach.
The marlin head punched through his body and into the mast behind him, pinning him to the wood. The harpoon's drain activated on contact with his flesh, pulling the last of his chakra from his body in a rush.
Funamushi's mouth opened. His eyes dulled.
"Lord... Araumi… I'm sorry."
His head dropped.
[Taijutsu Proficiency +638 points!]
[Nunchaku Mastery Proficiency +340 points!]
[Tonfa Mastery has reached the next level!]
[Tonfa Mastery has reached the next level!]
[Tonfa Mastery Proficiency +118 points!]
[Chakra Control Proficiency +274 points!]
[Inspire Proficiency +28 points!]
The harbor was silent for one beat.
Lee and Tenten stood in front of the dead man pinned to the mast of his own ship. The harpoon hummed softly, satisfied. The ocean sat flat and quiet around the hull.
Lee did not celebrate.
Tenten pulled the harpoon free. Funamushi's body slid down the ruined mast and crumpled onto the deck.
She looked at the weapon in her hands. The marlin head had settled into a contented dormancy, its jaw closed, the metallic body still slightly enlarged from the feeding. She could feel the stored chakra inside it, available to her at any time.
You did good. She thought to the harpoon.
It didn't respond but she could feel that it was satisfied with the meal.
The harbor had gone quiet in the time it took for them to kill Funamushi.
The Funato pirates were dead. Every single one of them. The Kiri team and Aoba and Hana had finished the bulk of them while Lee and Tenten had been engaged with the commander. The docks were red. The water in the inlet was red. Bodies floated in the harbor and slumped on the planks and lay scattered across the ship decks.
Lee and Tenten jumped from their ship to the central dock.
They saw the Kiri shinobi immediately.
Four figures with the wave-symbol forehead protectors, standing among the dead, their weapons drawn but not raised. The one with the massive sword had it propped on his shoulder. The older one was wiping a kunai clean on a pirate's vest. The kunoichi with the tanto had hers sheathed. The sensor was standing with his eyes closed.
Lee and Tenten stayed guarded. They did not attack. But neither of them lowered their stances.
Aoba was already approaching. Hana was beside him, the Haimaru Brothers panting at her heels, blood on their muzzles. The crow cloud had dispersed. The remaining crows sat in scattered groups on the dock pilings.
"They're with us." Aoba spoke before Lee or Tenten could ask. "Kirigakure ninjas on a mission. They were sent to deal with Funato remnants. They arrived mid-battle and offered assistance."
The older Kiri shinobi, the commander, stepped forward. He kept his hands visible.
"Konoha team. Our mission is complete here. The Funato Clan's remaining forces have been wiped out." His eyes moved across the four of them and three dogs. "Thank you for your cooperation. We will be returning to our village."
Aoba nodded once.
"Thanks for the help."
He meant it. Without the Kiri team taking the pressure off them, the pirates would have been harder to kill.
The Kiri jonin returned the nod.
Chojuro, the young one with the massive sword, looked at Lee and Tenten one more time. His expression behind the black-rimmed glasses did not change.
The boy in green and the girl with the weird harpoon. The girl had already killed Araumi before that. The boy had killed a tailed beast before that. They were what Konoha was producing.
Chojuro adjusted his glasses and followed his team into the mist. They had a lot of work to do to keep up with freaks like that… Him being a holder of one of the seven mystical swords wasn't enough. He had to train even harder.
Tenten was the first to lower her guard.
She walked to the edge of the dock, out onto the water's surface, and dropped onto her back on the ocean.
She floated there.
"I'm done." Her voice was hoarse. "I am completely done. Don't talk to me. Don't look at me. Don't ask me to do anything for the next twelve hours."
Lee crouched beside her on the water. "I can carry you! I would be honored to carry our hero of the Funato battle on my back all the way to-"
"Don't you touch me, Lee." Tenten's eyes were closed. "I'll be fine in a minute. I just need to breathe."
The harpoon lay across her chest in its dormant form, the marlin skeleton quiet, the weapon resting with its master.
"Take your second." Aoba had joined them on the water's surface. His sunglasses were still cracked. A crow was riding his shoulder. "But not too long. We need to get moving soon."
"There is nothing else coming for us." Tenten's eyes remained closed. "Araumi is dead. Funamushi is dead. The Funato Clan is done."
"Never relax that quickly during a mission." Aoba's voice took on a teaching edge. "Vigilance until the moment you cross your village's gate. Especially after a victory. That's when people get careless."
Tenten cracked one eye open. She looked up at him.
"You're right. I'm sorry, Aoba-san."
"Don't be sorry. Just remember it."
Tenten closed her eye again. She exhaled.
Hana was checking the Haimaru Brothers for injuries on the dock, her hands glowing green as she ran the Mystical Palm over a cut on the smallest dog's shoulder. Lee was stretching his arms, working the tension out of his muscles. Aoba was sending his remaining crows out on a final sweep of the harbor.
Nobody was watching the water directly beneath Tenten.
The shape rushed forward.
It came from below the dock, where it had been pressed against the underside of the stone pilings in a layer so thin it was indistinguishable from the wet surface. Kobanza had not been with the forty-three Funato who had fought in the harbor. Kobanza had been underneath the harbor. Waiting. Patient.
The shape slid through the water without disturbing the surface. It moved beneath Tenten's floating body in silence.
Then it moved upward.
Tenten felt something cold touch her back. She opened her mouth to speak.
The water entered before the word could form.
It poured into her throat in a rush, cold and thick and wrong, filling her airway, flooding her lungs, but it was not drowning her. It was not killing her. It was taking her over. The water spread through her body in streams that found her limbs and her muscles and her nervous system, wrapping around every nerve, every tendon, every joint, and settling in like a second skeleton made of liquid.
Tenten's body seized.
Her eyes snapped open. They were hers and they were not hers. Her right hand twitched. Then her left. Then her fingers curled around the harpoon on her chest and gripped it with a strength that did not belong to a girl who had just said she was done fighting.
She stood up on the water.
The motion was wrong. The way she rose was too smooth, too fluid, her body moving like a puppet being lifted by strings that were inside her rather than above her. Her head turned toward Lee with a rotation that no human neck performed that naturally.
Lee saw it.
"Tenten?"
Her mouth opened. A voice came out. It was her voice, but the words were not hers.
"She can't hear you." Kobanza spoke through Tenten's lips. The voice had her pitch but his cadence. "I'm inside her now. Every muscle. Every nerve. She's still alive in here. Conscious, even. She can feel everything I'm doing with her body."
Lee's blood went cold.
"Let her go." His voice had dropped to something none of them had heard from him before.
"I don't think I will." Kobanza made Tenten's body rotate the harpoon in her hands. "Lord Funamushi is dead. Lord Araumi is dead. The clan is finished. All I have left is revenge, and I'm going to take it by making you watch your friend kill herself."
Tenten's body raised the harpoon. The marlin head oriented toward her own throat.
"Stop!" Lee lunged forward.
Tenten's body sidestepped. A water tendril lashed from the harbor surface and caught Lee across the chest, shoving him back.
"Touch this body and I'll slit her throat from the inside." Kobanza's words came from Tenten's mouth. "I can collapse her trachea with a thought. Try me."
Aoba's hand was frozen halfway to his kunai pouch. Hana had stopped healing the dog. The Haimaru Brothers were growling, low and continuous, but they did not advance.
Lee stood on the water with his fists at his sides and murder in his eyes as he began to think. What did he have available to him at this moment that could save his best friend?
"There has to be a way," Hana said through her teeth. "If he's made of water inside her, I could try to-"
"Touch her and I crush her lungs." Kobanza made Tenten's finger tap her own chest. "Water pressure. From the inside. Her organs would rupture before your medical jutsu could do anything about it."
A standoff.
Tenten's body stood on the water with the harpoon in her hands and Kobanza's will controlling every movement. Her eyes were open. Behind them, somewhere, the real Tenten was screaming.
Then the harpoon moved.
Not because Kobanza moved it. It moved on its own.
The harpoon awakened. It reached the water inside her and found it.
Found the chakra sustaining it.
And began to feed.
Kobanza felt it immediately.
"What-" Tenten's mouth formed the word. Then her face contorted. Tenten's features twisted into an expression of shock and pain that did not belong to her. "What is the lord's weapon doing?! Stop! STOP! I'M AVENGING YOUR MASTER!"
The harpoon's drain accelerated. It was pulling chakra from inside Tenten's body, but it was not pulling from Tenten. It was pulling from the water. From Kobanza. From the jutsu that was sustaining his possession. The harpoon knew the difference between its master's chakra and the foreign chakra infesting her. It had bonded with Tenten when she sealed it. Her chakra was its home. Kobanza's chakra was food.
The water inside Tenten's body began to lose its cohesion.
Kobanza's control over her limbs flickered. Her right arm twitched. Her left hand loosened on the harpoon shaft. The smooth, fluid movements became jerky, interrupted, the puppet's strings being cut one by one from the inside.
"No!" Kobanza screamed through Tenten's mouth. "No, no, NO!"
He tried to flee.
The water rushed up through Tenten's chest, through her throat, and poured from her mouth in a torrent. Kobanza's liquid form streaming out of her body as fast as it could move, the harpoon's drain chasing him out, consuming his chakra as he retreated through the same path he had entered.
Tenten collapsed onto the water's surface, coughing, gasping, her body wracking as the last of the foreign water left her system. The harpoon clattered beside her, still humming, still hungry.
The water that had left her body pooled on the surface a meter away, shivering, trying to reform.
"Aoba-san!" Lee shouted.
Aoba was already moving.
"Fire Style: Fire Dragon Bomb!"
The flames hit the water pool before Kobanza could fully reconstitute. The heat forced the water to evaporate at the edges, disrupting the jutsu's structure, and the pain of it drove Kobanza out of his liquid state. His body snapped back into solid form on the water's surface, a tall, burly man with a fish-like face, bald, pointy teeth, the purple clan marks on the left side of his head. His skin was steaming. Burns covered his arms where the fire had caught him mid-transition. His chakra was gutted, the harpoon having drained most of what he had left.
He was on his hands and knees on the water.
He looked up.
Gate of Wonder Lee was already above him.
There was no smile on Lee's face. There was no warmth. There was no enthusiasm, no thumbs up, no declaration about youth or effort or the power of friendship. His eyes were clear and focused and the only thing behind them was the image of his teammate being held at the mercy of an enemy.
Kobanza saw the fist, saw the image of death taking the form of a young boy, and knew his fate.
He did not see it land or feel anything after.
Lee's punch hit Kobanza in the stomach with every ounce of force the boy could muster. The impact did not send Kobanza flying. It sent him down. Through the surface of the water. Through the harbor. The force of the blow compressed the ocean beneath Kobanza's body into a column of displaced water that shot outward in a ring, and Kobanza's body plunged into the depths at an incredible speed.
His ribcage shattered on contact. His spine compressed. Several organs that had been in the correct position before the punch were reduced to a pulp.
The water closed over him.
He sank deep into the waters. Down, down, and even further below until he reached the bottom.
He did not come back up.
Lee stood on the water's surface with his fist still extended downward, his arm trembling.
He breathed, closing the gates.
He lowered his fist.
[Eight Gates Proficiency +540 points!]
[Taijutsu Proficiency +300 points!]
[Chakra Control Proficiency +150 points!]
He turned as the bones in his arm healed rapidly. Lee walked to where Tenten was coughing on the water's surface and crouched beside her.
"Tenten." His voice was quiet. Lee was back. "Are you okay? Can you breathe?"
"I can-" She coughed up some water that was still in her lungs. "I can breathe. That was... he was inside me, Lee. I could feel him moving. I could feel him using my body and I couldn't stop him."
Her hands were shaking.
Hana was there. Her palms glowed green. She pressed them to Tenten's chest and began scanning for internal damage, checking the lungs, the airway, the organs that Kobanza's water form had been pressed against.
"Some fluid in your lungs still. Minor tissue irritation in your trachea. No serious damage." Hana's assessment was quick. "You're going to cough for a while but you'll be fine."
"The harpoon saved me," Tenten said. She reached for the weapon beside her. Her fingers found the shaft and the weapon told her it was not a fan of that guy's chakra compared to Tenten. "It knew. It knew he was inside me and it started draining him on its own."
"Lucky you, huh?" Hana looked at the harpoon with an expression that was equal parts respect and unease. "Without it, I don't think you'd be with us anymore."
"Yeah..." Tenten's fingers tightened on the shaft. "I know..."
Aoba stood over them. His remaining crow sat on his shoulder. He looked at Tenten.
"Vigilance," Aoba said quietly. "Until the gate."
The young genin did not argue this time.
"Yes sir…" Tenten coughed.