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Takuma's chest hurt from the hammering pace of his heart. He gripped Anko so hard that she cried in pain, but he wasn't listening. All of his being was consumed by the shadow that grew overhead, casting its vast darkness over the land. His head told him not to look and to only focus on getting as far as possible, but his heart made him look up.
The golden light looked majestic, divine even. But in that moment, Takuma perhaps understood what those with megalophobia—the fear of large things—felt, and he pushed himself faster than he thought he was capable of. As it reached its peak size, a vigorous gold shimmer replaced the dark shadows. It was truly a sight to behold, and if he wasn't trying to avoid being crushed, he would have stopped to take in the memory of a lifetime.
Though he knew it was coming, escaping it wasn't any easier. As he headed towards the gap between the index and thumb, tempest winds hit from behind, throwing him forward. He lost control of his body for a few seconds while hugging Anko close as they crashed into the ground a couple of times, but just as he managed to regain control, an opposing wind slammed him from the front. The palm was creating a localised, artificial storm that uprooted trees and pulverised bedrock. With no way to oppose the forces of nature, they were pulled up into the air and deeper into the canopy of the descending palm.
Anko pulled her arms free from the protective embrace and signed a short set of hand seals. Flames burst from her palms in the form of whips. Takuma squeezed his eyes shut in anticipation of the burning pain when one of them wrapped around him, recalling their spars, only to feel a gentle warmth. The other whip snapped around the jagged stump of a snapped tree before reeling back to the ground. Their positions switched; Takuma was now being carried on Anko's back. As she touched the ground, she finished a second set of hand seals, and the ground erupted below her feet.
Earth Release: Earth Flow Wave
The ground buckled under her feet before erupting into a jagged wave that flowed out of the giant palm's reach. With Anko racing on it, an increasingly intense pressure descended over them. Takuma had to grit his teeth to keep himself from shaking as he felt the deadly force inching closer.
Her control of the earth wave was just as exquisite as it was fast. She whisked them away as the palm came closer and closer until the sky finally became visible over their heads, which was when she cast her third ninjutsu and jumped off the wave higher into the sky. A gust of wind surrounded them, keeping them afloat as the palm finally struck the ground, decimating everything beneath with no distinction, leaving only a colossal scar on the terrain as though from the hand of a god.
And then Akimichi Choza landed on the ground, triggering a second series of earthquakes.
The shockwave hit the duo first, and then the exploding debris. The jutsu gave out soon after, and they went plummeting to the ground. Takuma slammed his hands on the ground and raised a curved dome with Earth Release: Earthen Dome around them to protect them from the rubble being blasted everywhere.
"Are you hurt anywhere, Chūnin Anko?" Takuma asked with one hand on the dome and the other on her shoulder. Her fire whip was still wrapped around him, but it had grown thin, dim, and room temperature—casting three ninjutsu in quick succession so soon after the heavy jutsu she had used on Orochimaru, all in a high-stress situation, was going to be tough on anyone.
The earth suddenly split underneath them, splitting the dome in half as well. Anko pushed herself and Takuma behind the larger section of the dome, which was suddenly assaulted by a large boulder, but remained standing.
"Chūnin Anko, is it?" she said with the tired expression of someone who had a long day behind her. "So, you are in the ANBU now?"
"Pardon?" Takuma asked, his heart skipping a beat. Did his mask break? That wasn't the case. Then how—
"No use changing your voice now. You already let it slip before."
Takuma opened his mouth, then closed it. It was very much possible that he had forgotten to modulate his voice with chakra during the stressful situation before. Normally, it wouldn't matter unless someone was intimately familiar with his voice to the point they could recognise it through the mask's natural muffle, which was exactly the case with Anko.
"Nothing to say? You aren't going to deny it now after all of this, are you?" Anko reached for his mask, causing him to instinctively grab her wrist. They stared at each other for a silent moment before he eased his grip and let her remove his mask. "Right. There you are…"
They stared at each other's faces in a situation neither of them had planned. "… Your energy imbalance was improving, why is it regressing now," she said with a small smile as she gently rested her hand on his face.
"That's the first thing you say?"
Takuma felt the tension drain from his body even though he could feel the ground shaking beneath him and hear the sounds of battle in the distance. Was it because she was nearby that he felt safe, knowing that he could trust his back to her? Or was it because another one of his loved ones knew about one of his secrets, and that lifted a burden? Perhaps it was both.
"I regret it," he said.
"Regret what?"
"Telling you that I would help you kill the snake bastard. If I knew this was going to happen, I would have told you to aim for Hokage as the condition for my help. Jōnin is too easy for what I was offering."
"Well, I would make an amazing Hokage." Anko broke into short laughter before despondency took over, with a hint of darkness swirling in her eyes. "I fear… he isn't dead." The words seemed to be difficult for her. "That despite all that we did, it wasn't enough and that he will still survive through this."
Takuma didn't say anything immediately. He, too, didn't think that Orochimaru was dead. If only things could be so easy.
"That doesn't mean what we did was useless. We now have the proof that he isn't unkillable. If we hit him intentionally rather than running into him incidentally, we can definitely kill him," Takuma said, thinking that an opportunity to do that would come soon when Orochimaru would willingly step into the Hidden Leaf Village.
Anko nodded, and though she looked like she wanted to say something, she chose not to speak from fatigue.
"How are you feeling?" she asked.
"Sweaty, grimy, exhausted."
Takuma wanted to go home, but the battles were still ongoing. He wondered if Itachi would run after Danzo and if he had it in him to follow him and contribute. He had used a significant amount of chakra, and his body felt sluggish, which wasn't a good sign.
"Not that. You looked like you recognised him, too," Anko said.
Suddenly, the thing he had put aside came rushing out. His chin trembled, and his hand went to his face, squeezing his brows and eyes in hopes that somehow it would stop the tears from trickling. Anko put a hand on his shoulder and let him get it out.
The problem was that he had already grieved and come to terms with Gouki's death. All of that was destroyed today. He didn't know how to feel about it, just that it felt absolutely terrible. What was he supposed to say to others in the Narcotics Taskforce and the people who were there at the farm raid? He doubted that the Hidden Leaf would make Orochimaru's new appearance public because that would mean opening a can of worms that the village would rather not show to outsiders.
Takuma apologised to her as he calmed down, and both of them got out from the cover of the dome. The terrain had stabilised alongside the destructive chaos. The lingering steam itself had been completely cleared because of the golden palm, fully revealing the carnage the shinobi had inflicted on nature.
It was utterly terrible.
"So, when did you become a mask?"
"After we returned from the war."
"Right after you extorted the ANBU out of information?"
"Uh-huh, apparently they like that kind of thing."
"That can't be true… Frankly, I knew you were in the ANBU."
"Huh? Why are you making shit up?"
"I'm not! You didn't think it was weird that you somehow managed to find the ROOT agent that killed Rikku, much less kill him, and then show up right after the ANBU raised the security level in the village and were kicking down doors everywhere?"
"Ah…" Thinking back on it, he didn't really do anything to hide his involvement. "… That was stupid of me."
"Or maybe you just wanted me to know," Anko said with a wink.
Takuma gazed at her as he mulled the statement, realising he didn't know if it was true or not. His attention was broken by a voice in his head.
"We're moving. They're saying it's safe to gather."
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Akimichi Choza, the size of a mountain, breathed out to calm down the rampaging chakra in his body while looking down at what he had done with a frown. It never felt good using an A-rank ninjutsu; sometimes, he felt scared of his ability to inflict such terrible harm on the world. It didn't feel like a power any one person should possess, and yet there were others—far too many in his opinion—in the village and abroad who could do similar things.
"Status!" he yelled internally, his voice coming out harsher than he meant to.
The combination of Super Multi-Size Jutsu and Hand of the Benevolent God wasn't easy to use in his youth, and he had only grown older since then. And it wasn't like one could regularly train with an A-rank ninjutsu; it had been over five years since he had last used it, and that was in the middle of a desert with no one in sight stretching to the horizon, just so he would do minimal damage. Yet, he had killed far too much desert fauna.
With such a large gap between uses, he often wondered if he even remembered how to use the jutsu; he had consulted the jutsu scroll before coming to the operation.
"He's alive… and rapidly fleeing!"
A frown marred Choza's face as the news that Orochimaru had survived was deeply upsetting, causing his anger to flare. He landed on the ground far more roughly than he intended and nearly slammed his staff down.
"Which direction?! If he's in range, I'll kill—!"
"No, please stand down, Lord Choza. It's over."
The words sobered him. He waited a couple more seconds to see if a second command would come before releasing the jutsu and felt the few seconds of the worst discomfort he had ever felt as his body returned from its giant stature to normal size, where he once again felt comfortable in his skin. The view of the scenery from his normal height was just as bad, as he could see the damage so much more up close, even if the bigger picture had disappeared—only from view, not memory.
"The plan worked," Choza said to himself, feeling surprised that it had gone without much problem. Keeping Orochimaru busy so he didn't notice a genjutsu cast by a chūnin just felt wrong on so many levels, especially with the knowledge that he had somehow gotten his hands on the Uchiha's Sharingan, but it had somehow worked.
"Is anyone injured? If so, tell me. I'll go fetch them," he informed Kawamochi while reminding himself to find the identity of the ANBU who had made the plan and cast the genjutsu on Orochimaru.
It wasn't going to be that difficult; it would just take using his connections and plying them with favors and gifts to get the information—but it seemed worth it.
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The link is in the synopsis!