The sea that had just thrown up a catastrophic tsunami was now smooth as a mirror, so quiet it felt unnatural.
Kakashi, Naruto, and Sasuke held their ground with the shoreline at their backs, watching Hidan with painstaking caution. Their positioning sealed off every angle from which he could approach land.
Konome Taketori's intel had never been wrong. They would not give him even the slightest chance.
"Surrender," Naruto said, raising the huge scythe in one hand and pointing it at Hidan. The cut on his arm had already healed on its own.
With the Nine Tails chakra and his Sage like physique, unless his brain or heart was destroyed, he was closer to immortality than even Kakuzu and Hidan.
"Surrender?"
Hidan's arms were gone, yet his tone stayed foul and arrogant. He relied on his undying body, so even at a massive disadvantage he still acted like he was the one holding all the cards.
"Kakuzu's going to kill your teammate. And then I'll sacrifice all of you to the Great Jashin."
"Konome won't lose," Naruto shot back, eyes hard as steel.
"Oh? Her name's Konome, huh?"
Hidan's grin widened. "What a pretty name. Her screams right before she dies will probably be gorgeous too. Ahh, ahh!"
He even pitched his voice into a mock, syrupy moan, licking his lips as if he were already tasting her blood.
Kakashi and Sasuke both stared at him, their caution turning into outright shock.
This guy had guts.
Then they remembered the terrifying silver haired demon standing on the coast. Instead of getting angry, their eyes held a flicker of sympathy.
Hidan noticed their strange expressions and felt a chill creep up his spine. Even his stream of trash talk faltered for a heartbeat.
"I've changed my mind."
Naruto's face sank. He lifted the blood red three bladed scythe high. "A thing like you shouldn't exist in this world."
"Hahahaha! Jashin is with me! You can't kill me!" Hidan roared with laughter, though the corner of his mouth twitched in a way that betrayed him.
Whoosh!
Naruto swung.
The scythe cut across for Hidan's neck, heavy and decisive. No one doubted it could take his head clean off.
Hidan, missing both arms, didn't dodge. He snapped his jaws at the blade as if making one last desperate struggle.
Naruto's arm swelled. The scythe's power surged again.
"Gah!"
Blood stained teeth flew.
Hidan failed to clamp down on the blade. The curved edge split his cheek wide open. Several teeth shattered, torn flesh dangling from the side of his face as blood ran down his chin.
He looked like a living corpse, feral and butchered.
"You fell for it, you little brat!"
Even with half his face ruined, Hidan laughed wildly. Black and white markings crawled across his face and body, and Kakashi and Sasuke's Sharingan could see chakra inside him surging like a flood.
"Back off!" Kakashi and Sasuke shouted at the same time.
Naruto was already retreating the instant he saw the change. Kakashi and Sasuke also pulled back toward the shore, guarding against whatever strike might follow.
But nothing happened.
Hidan, fully painted in black and white, only kept laughing.
No ninjutsu traces. No visible phenomenon. The frightening chakra their Sharingan had seen felt like a hallucination.
What?
Before they could process it, Hidan, who had used the threat of Death Possession Blood to freeze them in place, glared at Naruto with bloodshot eyes and turned to sprint into the open sea.
A huge question mark might as well have popped above their heads.
He was running?
Naruto and Sasuke were stunned, watching him shrink into a distant dot.
Wasn't he brave a second ago?
Wasn't he fearless?
Twice now their lack of real combat experience had nearly gotten them killed. They were tense enough to snap. And now the enemy just feinted once and fled?
Shinobi outside the village really were all rotten.
Even Kakashi couldn't make sense of it at first.
That abnormal transformation had to be the activation of a technique. The chakra cost was higher than three Chidori. It was almost certainly an S rank jutsu.
Could the effect really be just turning his body a different color?
Impossible.
And the direction he was fleeing toward...
Kakashi's eyes went wide. Every hair on his arm stood up.
"No. He's heading for the Great Bridge. Konome said we can't let him reach land. Chase him!"
Lightning surged through Kakashi's leg muscles. He became a blur, racing after Hidan. Naruto and Sasuke recalled Konome's warning too, their hearts tightening as they launched forward.
In an instant, the scene flipped.
One in front, three behind.
Hidan, once the hunter, became the one running for his life, while Team Seven became the pursuers.
Their footfalls slapped the water faster and faster. Ripples fanned out across the sea.
With no arms, Hidan struggled to keep balance. He twisted his shoulders as he ran. When the massive bridge pillars came into view, he couldn't suppress the grin stretching across his black and white face.
He had cut the blond brat with the scythe earlier.
That meant the scythe carried Naruto's blood.
Death Possession Blood did not require swallowing the blood. As long as an opponent's blood entered his body, the curse could be activated.
So he had provoked Naruto with filth until Naruto snapped, then successfully secured the blond's blood.
Now all he needed was to reach that place.
Draw the ritual circle.
Activate the full version of Death Possession Blood, the curse rebound.
The blond was dead.
Behind him, the three chased like mad.
Kakashi and Sasuke used Lightning Release to accelerate, running at the front. Naruto, face flushed and breathing like a bellows, trailed behind them.
The closer they got to the bridge, the heavier Naruto's dread became. It felt like he was standing on the lip of a cliff. One wrong step and it was a plunge into an abyss.
Faster.
He had to be faster.
He could not let Hidan reach the bridge.
Decision made.
Naruto slammed to a stop. His blue shinobi sandals carved a long skid mark across the sea.
He drew the scythe lightly along his arm and behind his knee. The bandages binding his limbs loosened, revealing pitch black leg wraps and wrist guards underneath.
They were special weights Might Guy had given him for his birthday, forged from a rare ore called Heavy Stone Crystal. With chakra input, they became absurdly heavy.
Naruto formed seals.
Seal.
The bandages unwound. The sealing script hidden within flashed with chakra, and the leg weights and scythe vanished in a puff of white smoke.
The bandages, capable of holding sealing formulas, were Sasuke's birthday gift. The script itself had been written by Konome Taketori. Even someone with terrible chakra control could use it.
I'm not an orphan with nothing anymore.
Naruto carefully rewrapped the bandages around his arms and calves. In his mind, a green tinted gate burst open, and chakra boiled like a blazing sun.
I cannot die.
Boom!
Sasuke heard the thunderous blast from behind and instinctively paused.
What?
Whoosh!
A streak of orange tore past his side, wind like, slamming toward Hidan.
Naruto.
Sasuke's mouth curled into a faint smile. Naruto had finally dropped his weights and entered full power.
They had fought countless times in five years. Sasuke knew Naruto's real strength better than anyone.
An iron will, a frightening body, and Guy's relentless instruction.
Naruto's taijutsu improved daily.
Once he removed the weights and opened the First Gate and the Second Gate, his speed could spike into something terrifying for a short time. It was precisely because Sasuke could not track that high speed taijutsu in battle that his Sharingan had evolved into two tomoe.
Watching the orange blur catch up to Kakashi, Sasuke calmed his mind and pushed his own Lightning Release stimulation to the limit.
He would never say it out loud, but he had long acknowledged Naruto's strength, seeing him as a crucial friend and a lifelong rival.
Konome Taketori was a monster. Fine.
But Sasuke refused to lose to Naruto.
Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh!
Several figures cut across the sea.
As jōnin level shinobi, their movement speed exceeded all common sense. In only a short time they were closing in on the Great Bridge.
"Chidori!"
Kakashi, the elite Lightning Release jōnin, was still faster by a step.
His three tomoe Sharingan locked onto the runner ahead. With the burst acceleration of Chidori, he caught Hidan.
Screech!
The violet blue thrust punched through Hidan's back. Lightning spread through his body, making him spasm, his speed visibly dropping.
Lightning Release pierced and it paralyzed.
"Gah! Jashin will always favor me! Get ready to be sacrificed, you bastard!"
With the bridge right in front of him, Hidan coughed blood despite his heart being pierced. He forced his body off the Chidori and leapt toward the massive bridge pillar below.
The paralysis barely seemed to matter against that abnormal body.
Only then did Kakashi fully realize how high Hidan's resistance to ninjutsu was. The sea of fire had only charred him black.
"Hah!"
Hidan landed on the pillar and let out an excited roar. Chakra gathered under his feet, sticking him to the surface. Like a human banner, he stood there without using his hands at all.
Blood streamed from the hole in his heart, falling toward the sea, yet he caught it with the tip of his foot.
Then he stamped against the pillar.
No hands needed. Like muscle memory, in less than a second he drew a crimson ritual circle and stood on it.
Curse Technique: Death Possession Blood, complete.
Screee!
Kakashi shot down the pillar, Chidori blazing. The thrust screamed with a sharp bird cry, the modified Chidori no longer chaotic like a thousand chirps, but condensed into a single, razor focused peal of lightning.
Good.
Come.
Hidan lifted his chin, chest wide, deliberately exposing every vital point. A smile he could not suppress twisted across his face.
One hit.
And the blond brat would die.
He could already imagine the shock, regret, and agony that would flood the enemy's expression.
His pierced heart felt like it was beating again.
Great Jashin, I hope you enjoy this special offering.
The world seemed to fall silent.
Beneath the great bridge.
One man charged with lightning in his hand, blood red eyes burning.
One man stood tall, smiling as if welcoming death.
Thud.
Kakashi's right arm thrust forward. Lightning speared straight through Hidan's chest.
At the same instant, Naruto, sprinting in, clutched his own chest, spat out a mouthful of blood, and fell into the sea.
That was the last thing Sasuke saw as he arrived.
His two tomoe spun wildly, dyed the color of blood.
At the same time.
Back at the plaza in the Land of Waves, built with extravagant funds.
Bzzzzz.
A bright red, diamond shaped barrier pulsed again and again, firing torrents into the sky. Razor thin high pressure water blades sliced the low clouds with neat precision, revealing several extremely fine slits of brilliant gold.
The gale shoved the clouds onward.
Kakuzu, flying at high speed, made one mistake and a beam raked across him, cutting him in two. A pale ox mask opened its mouth and hurled a violent lightning spear from afar.
The red barrier and the lightning wrestled without end. Violet chakra flowed over the barrier's surface. Sky and earth mirrored each other in dazzling light.
If the people of the Land of Waves had seen it, they might have believed two gods were fighting.
And they wouldn't have been far off.
Kakuzu had abandoned his human body and become an enormous Earth Grudge Fear. "Living as long as heaven and earth" was exaggerated, but surviving hundreds or even a thousand years was not impossible.
And Konome Taketori, who had reversed the Eight Gates and gained inexhaustible vitality, was evolving through Wood Release, her body shifting toward something like Hashirama's cells. The limit of human cell division was being broken.
Her lifespan had no end.
Ageless. Deathless.
Able to call down lightning or summon a tsunami with a casual motion.
In ancient times, that was the profile of immortals and gods. Their clash could be called a divine war and recorded in religious texts.
Inside the barrier, Konome Taketori watched Kakuzu's showy flight patterns with boredom.
His movements were flashy, but as long as he could not break her barrier, it was all show, a waste of time. Getting his hearts pierced was only a matter of when.
But why wasn't he running?
Konome Taketori genuinely didn't understand.
Wind sniper bullets struggled to hit the heart core. Mass fire was countered by Fire Release. The wind water drill stream couldn't kill him fast enough right now.
By all logic, he should have escaped on flight alone.
So why was he insisting on fighting to the death?
What Konome Taketori didn't know was that Kakuzu could not bear to leave.
Buzz!
Yet again, after being sliced into fragments, Kakuzu's hearts surged chakra, spinning tendrils to support his body as he dodged another beam.
His eyes flicked down, almost involuntarily, toward the twin blades behind the girl.
The Thunder Blade: Kiba.
A living Uzumaki and a living Uchiha.
Kakashi's head and his three tomoe Sharingan.
Zabuza's head and the Executioner's Blade.
He had even seen Kurosuki Raiga's corpse in the plaza.
How much was that worth?
With all his focus on avoiding the high speed beams, Kakuzu couldn't even calculate the total. He only knew this would be the most profitable job of his entire life.
And most importantly.
If he failed to kill the girl below, everything above vanished. On top of that, he had already sunk time in the Land of Waves, risked his mission completion rate, and lost two elite jōnin level hearts.
The sunk cost was too high.
The enemy had to die.
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