Kenji didn't waste time with conversation.
His body blurred forward, covering the distance in an instant. The tantō on his back flashed free of its sheath, and swept toward Kakuzu's neck.
The blade was centimeters from Kakuzu's throat when it stopped dead.
CLANG!
The tantō had collided with Kakuzu's raised palm.
Kenji pushed harder, channeling chakra through his arms. The tantō didn't advance even a millimeter.
Kakuzu looked down at the blade pressed against his palm.
"That was a clean strike," he said calmly. "I appreciate the directness."
Earth Release: Earth Spear.
Kenji recognized it immediately. He knew this technique himself, using earth chakra to dramatically increase defensive capability. But the same jutsu performed at different skill levels produced vastly different results.
Kakuzu was a ninja who'd survived since the time of the First Hokage. He'd mastered all five chakra natures to a degree most ninjas would never achieve. In his hands, Earth Spear became something approaching absolute defense.
In the original timeline, this technique had allowed him to withstand direct attacks from the Two-Tails and explosive tags detonating at point-blank range. None of them had left so much as a scratch.
Kenji disengaged, pulling back and resetting his stance.
Kakuzu didn't pursue. He simply rotated his wrist, checking the skin where the tantō had struck.
They both moved at the same instant.
The fight exploded into close-quarters combat. Kenji's tantō became a blur, slashing and stabbing from every angle. Kakuzu countered, using his hardened body as both weapon and shield.
A kunai appeared in Kakuzu's hand. He thrust it toward Kenji's ribs. Kenji twisted, the blade grazing his vest instead of penetrating flesh. He retaliated with an elbow strike aimed at Kakuzu's temple. Kakuzu blocked with his forearm.
They separated and clashed again.
The forest around them suffered from their movements. Branches shattered when they used them for leverage. Leaves trembled and fell as shockwaves from their strikes rippled outward. The ground cracked under their footfalls.
Kenji quickly realized he was at a disadvantage.
Kakuzu's combat experience was insane. Every attack he threw, the older ninja had seen variations of a hundred times before. He knew where openings would appear before Kenji created them. His counters came with perfect timing, forcing Kenji onto the defensive again and again.
If not for his speed and enhanced mental processing from his Yamanaka training, he would already be losing badly. As it was, he could barely hold his own.
This was someone who'd survived since the First Hokage's era. That wasn't just talk. That was decades upon decades of combat experience, refined through countless life-or-death battles.
In the original story, Kakuzu had fought Kakashi and dominated the entire exchange even after Kakashi activated his Sharingan. He'd nearly torn Kakashi's heart from his chest before backup arrived.
Living that long meant accumulating knowledge that simply couldn't be matched through talent alone.
Kenji made a decision. He needed to create distance and change the dynamics of this fight.
He ducked under a kunai thrust aimed at his face and blocked the follow-up kick with his forearm, using the impact to spring backward.
The instant he jumped away to create distance, Kakuzu's left hand shot out from his arm. It flew through the air with fingers spread like a claw, reaching for Kenji's head while he was still airborne.
Black tendrils stretched behind it, linking the hand to Kakuzu's arm like grotesque puppet strings. This was Earth Grudge Fear, Kakuzu's signature technique. Almost nothing inside his body remained truly human.
Kenji twisted his spine at an unnatural angle to avoid the grasping fingers. He hadn't even landed when the detached hand changed direction. The threads pulled it back before launching it again toward his throat from behind.
"Got you."
Kenji's hand snapped out and caught Kakuzu's wrist. Instead of resisting the pull, he used the momentum to stabilize his landing, touching down.
The captured hand exploded with movement.
Dozens of black threads erupted from the wrist and palm, writhing like living things as they tried to wrap around Kenji's arm. If they got a solid grip, they'd pierce through his flesh and start burrowing toward his heart.
Kenji released the wrist and kicked off backward, moving faster than the threads could strike. They passed through the space his arm had occupied a split-second earlier and stabbed into the dirt instead, leaving dozens of small holes in the ground.
Kakuzu retracted his arm. The detached hand slid back along the path of the threads like it was being reeled in, reconnecting to his wrist.
He flexed the reattached hand, testing its mobility.
"You're worth one hundred million ryō after all. Seeing that Konoha headband reminds me of the old days, when I fought against the First Hokage."
"If you fought the First Hokage and lived to tell about it," Kenji said with a smile, "then your greatest talent must be running away."
His hand slid along the length of his tantō. Wind chakra spread across the blade like frost forming on glass.
"Good timing. I'm done warming up. Time to get a bit serious."
His words hadn't even finished echoing when his form vanished from where he stood.
Kakuzu's pupils contracted sharply. He started forming the seal for Earth Spear to reinforce his defense, but pain tore through his body before the technique activated.
Kenji had appeared at his side. The wind-enhanced tantō cut through Kakuzu's torso, slashing diagonally from left shoulder to right abdomen. The blade separated flesh and thread alike, cleaving his body cleanly in two.
Kakuzu's upper half slid downward along the cut.
The fallen body suddenly swelled.
Countless black threads burst through Kakuzu's skin from the inside, exploding outward in a spray aimed at Kenji's position. But just before they could strike, Kenji's form vanished again and reappeared several meters away, completely untouched.
SPLAT!
The threads hit empty ground. At the same moment, four masked creatures crawled out of Kakuzu's bisected torso. Their bodies were masses of writhing black tendrils, each one centered around a grotesque mask representing a different chakra nature.
But one of the masks had a crack running across its face from left to right. As it emerged, the crack widened. The mask split apart and the creature dissolved into a puddle of foul-smelling blood and slime.
"I only got one heart?"
Kenji stood atop a nearby tree, frowning at the dissolved remains. His slash had definitely cut through Kakuzu's entire body. He'd felt the blade pass through multiple points of resistance. But somehow, only one of the five hearts had been destroyed. The others had been moved or protected at the last instant.
Kakuzu's body was already rebuilding itself. Black threads stitched his torso back together, pulling the severed halves toward each other and weaving them seamlessly. Within seconds he looked whole again, though his expression had turned serious for the first time since the fight began.
"That speed..." His eyes tracked Kenji's position carefully. "The Body Flicker Technique? No. That was far too instantaneous. So... it's space-time ninjutsu."
As he spoke, his gaze shifted to his left arm. Now that he looked closely, he noticed the seal marked on his wrist. It was the Flying Thunder God mark, identical to the one used by the Fourth Hokage.
Without hesitation, he grabbed his own left arm and ripped it off.
The limb ripped free as black threads stretched and snapped apart. He tossed it aside into the forest. Fresh threads were already emerging from the stump, twisting together as they began forming a replacement.
"The Flying Thunder God Technique," he said calmly. "I didn't expect anyone in Konoha besides Minato to have mastered it."
Kenji watched this without trying to stop him. Instead, he glanced down at the ground beneath his own feet. Then he suddenly lifted his right leg and stomped down.
Chakra burst outward from the impact point like a violent shockwave. The earth cracked and split open as fissures spread across the battlefield. Within the newly opened crevices, severed black threads writhed helplessly, cut off from Kakuzu's control.
He raised his arm toward Kakuzu.
The ground beneath Kakuzu's feet suddenly churned. Iron sand burst from the earth and surged upward, rushing toward him in a dense wave that sought to wrap around his body and crush him.
Kakuzu's eyes widened. He leaped into the air and avoided the initial surge.
"You have the Third Kazekage's bloodline limit?" he asked as he dodged the pursuing iron sand.
He landed next to his three remaining masked creatures. Without speaking, he willed them to act.
The creature with blue markings on its mask suddenly swelled. Its abdomen expanded grotesquely before it expelled a massive sphere of compressed wind chakra. The attack screamed through the air as it expanded, tearing up soil and debris as it rushed toward Kenji.
A smile crossed Kenji's face.
"Got you."
His right hand already held a Flying Thunder God kunai. Sealings unfolded in front of him like a door opening, forming a barrier that swallowed the wind attack whole. The technique vanished into the void.
At the same moment, identical sealings appeared on the ground beneath the blue masked creature.
The Wind Release technique erupted from the seal without warning. It slammed into the creature's chest with its full original power.
Boom.
A violent tornado exploded in the center of the forest. Trees as thick as a man's torso were ripped from the ground. Stones and shattered branches became deadly projectiles in the raging wind.
Kenji raised an arm to shield himself from the flying debris. Through the storm of destruction, he watched the masked creature being torn apart by its own attack.
"Your ninjutsu works much better when you are the one taking it."
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50 Advance Chapters!
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