Chapter 187: Summoning Jutsu! Summoning Jutsu! Summoning Jutsu!
"Water Release — Water Dragon Bullet!"
Mei moved with sharp, controlled speed, and a water dragon tore from her mouth at full force, devastating in scale, sweeping across a wide front of Sand shinobi in a single pass.
A heartbeat later, more seals — the dragon collapsed and reformed into a whip in her grip. One crack of it, and the sound that followed was almost thunderclap-loud, scattering the next wave of attackers in pieces. Whether they survived was an open question.
Mei's eyes had gone hard and cold.
For Kiri. For the village she loved.
She'd accepted the label of traitor to do this — using Konoha's strength to cut the rot out of her own village's leadership from the outside. The path ahead was going to be difficult, painful, and largely unappreciated by the people she was actually trying to save.
But—
There wasn't another option. Not unless she genuinely gave up on Kiri.
And that wasn't something she could do.
For Kiri, she'd pay any price this required.
"Fire Release — Searing Migraine!"
"Wind Release — Pressure Damage!"
Wind fed the flame, flame rode the wind — a wave of fire rolled toward Mei like a tsunami, devouring everything in its path.
Several Konoha shinobi screamed and vanished into it. Mei's expression went sharp. She swung her water-whip directly into the incoming wave, both hands already running through a second set of seals.
"Water Release — Water Pillar Formation!"
A wall of water erupted from the whip, meeting the flame head-on and holding it back.
"Everyone — fall back!"
She raised one hand, signaling the surrounding Konoha forces.
They hesitated for half a second, then retreated, ceding the ground to her.
Fire met water. Steam rolled across the field in dense sheets. Through the mist, a figure resolved.
Kakuzu. The Undying Mercenary.
"Didn't expect a Kiri shinobi to be fighting on Konoha's behalf."
The voice came out low, heavy. Mei's expression cooled further.
He knows what village I'm from.
Kirigakure had spent years isolated under the Fourth Mizukage's closed-door policy. Nobody outside had reliable intelligence on its internal structure.
If Kakuzu knew, then whoever was controlling Kiri from the shadows was confirmed.
What had been suspicion before — now confirmed.
Akatsuki.
Something close to open killing intent surfaced in Mei's eyes.
Every last one of them deserved to die.
No further words needed. She moved straight into seals.
"Boil Release — Skilled Mist Technique!"
Thick acidic mist poured from her mouth, dense enough to swallow the already-fogged battlefield entirely.
Someone tried to push through to support Kakuzu and made contact with the mist mid-step — flesh dissolved on contact, the body collapsing into a wet red ruin, hair and skin and muscle and bone all coming apart together.
Everyone nearby recoiled and pulled clear of the death-fog as fast as they could move.
Kakuzu's Akatsuki cloak had already corroded off his body, his skin reduced to something liquid and wrong, and still he didn't fall. Black tendrils, dozens of them, held his frame upright and functional.
His core technique. Earth Grudge Fear — the secret that had kept him alive and combat-active for nearly a century.
"Interesting. A beautiful heart."
Kakuzu's voice, distorted through the mist, carried a particular relish.
He wasn't recognizable as human anymore. A mass of black tendrils wound into a single writhing shape. The four masks on his back had been specially constructed to resist even this acid.
"Monster."
Mei's voice was flat and cold, looking at the twisted black thing in front of her.
"Heh. A monster, am I?"
"If appearance alone is enough to make that judgment, you're more naive than I expected."
"People are vicious underneath. Plenty of perfectly human-looking faces hide things worse than mine. Killing colleagues for power. Rape and pillage for appetite. Atrocity after atrocity in pursuit of immortality. Slaughtering children for personal convenience. Burning entire nations down for the sake of some twisted internal conviction."
"Aren't those people monsters too?"
"Me? I do it for money. That's the whole story."
"Which makes me more honest than most of the species. Pay me, I do the job. Simple."
The skin still left on his face continued dissolving under the mist as he spoke, his voice fraying into something thin and sharp by the end of the sentence.
What stood there now was entirely the tendril-mass, nothing recognizably human left in the shape at all.
"That's a sophist's argument."
"If a butcher like you counts as honorable, then I'm a saint by comparison."
"Acid Release — Acid Monster Technique!"
A thick, cream-colored fluid surged from Mei's mouth, rolling forward to engulf him entirely.
The four mask-creatures emerged from Kakuzu's back, indifferent to the wave of acid bearing down on them.
"Heh. Little girl."
"This is the real world. Time to wake up from whatever dream you've been living in."
Whatever Kakuzu had for eyes was impossible to locate anymore, but Mei could still feel the contempt directed at her.
"Earth Release — Tectonic Core."
One of the four masks fired the technique without bothering to form seals. The ground beneath Kakuzu lurched upward, lifting him and all four masks clear of the acid wave entirely.
"You hate me." Kakuzu looked down at her from above. "But all I did was carry out something for Akatsuki. What does that have to do with me personally?"
"And take a look at this battlefield."
Two arms made of writhing tendrils lifted, spreading wide as if to embrace the whole landscape.
"War. The Five Great Villages. If you're counting bodies, no single person, no single faction on this earth, has ever matched what the Five Villages produce on their own."
"And me?"
The tendrils formed something like two fingers, pressed together.
"This much. A fraction."
"And even that, somebody else paid me to do."
"Compared to the Five Great Villages, I can look you in the eye and say it plainly."
"I might not be a good man. But I am not the villain in this room."
The writhing black thing gestured wide, almost theatrical, like it was indicting the whole world at once.
"This is a rotten world. Betrayal everywhere you look."
"Time to wake up, little girl."
"Wind Release — Pressure Damage!"
A massive gust tore loose and rolled through the battlefield, dragging the acid mist skyward in a wide column.
In that same instant, lightning flashed, and a low, fast shape cut through the haze toward the elevated platform Kakuzu now occupied.
Kakashi.
"This world is rotten. Betrayal is everywhere. You're right about that much."
"But it's exactly because of that — that people keep getting up and trying anyway."
Chidori Blade caught one of the mask's lightning-streams head-on, sparks scattering across his arm. He kept his eyes locked on Kakuzu, expression unmoved.
"Cutting away war. Cutting away injustice. Cutting away chaos."
"Heh. Hearing that out of a Konoha shinobi's mouth — somehow that's the funniest part of this entire conversation."
Kakuzu kicked him squarely in the chest.
Kakashi went airborne, twisted mid-flight, and landed in a controlled crouch beside Mei.
"Kakashi. Don't forget where this war actually started."
A tendril swung pointedly toward the distant pink figure across the field.
"You Konoha shinobi started this. Hearing you lecture me about justice, from up on your moral high ground — it's grating."
Kakashi glanced toward Sakura's distant position, then steadied himself.
"All of this was a necessary cost."
"A cost?" Kakuzu's voice cracked sharp. "Then why isn't the cost falling on Konoha?"
"Why isn't this all on her shoulders? On someone else's? Why doesn't Konoha get to be the one paying it?"
!
The instant the sentence finished, Kakuzu's instincts screamed danger.
He dropped low without thinking. Several of the tendrils across his shoulder snapped clean off anyway.
Sakura stood in her throw stance some distance off, watching him without expression.
"Simple reason. I have the ability to."
"You don't."
!!!
What is Rasa doing?!
He can't even pin her down enough to stop her from throwing a kunai at me from across the field?!
Kakuzu's irritation flared, but there wasn't time to follow that thought further.
Because—
"Lightning Release — Thunder Tiger Annihilation!"
"Water Release — Water Dragon Bullet!"
"Combination Technique — Lightning-Water Dragon Bullet!"
Mei and Kakashi, already in sync from coordinating against the Eight-Tails before, fired the combination jutsu in perfect timing.
A water dragon laced with lightning roared forward, devastating in scale, surging toward Kakuzu.
"Exactly as Sakura said!"
"We have the ability. You don't."
"So do everyone a favor and die."
Kakashi kept feeding chakra into the technique, voice cold.
"HAHAHAHA!"
"In the end, whoever's fist is bigger gets to decide what's right!"
"All of you are just hypocrites!"
"Fine. Let me show you exactly what kind of opponent Hashirama Senju was dealing with back in the day!"
All four masks behind Kakuzu opened in unison.
"Lightning Release — False Darkness!"
"Wind Release — Pressure Damage!"
"Water Release — Water Curtain!"
"Fire Release — Searing Migraine!"
Four separate elemental releases, each fired from a different mask, converging on Kakashi and Mei simultaneously.
Lightning screaming. Wind blades tearing through air. Water surging like a flood. Fire rolling in like a wave.
"This kind of combination—"
Mei moved to counter on instinct.
"I've got it!"
Kakashi threw out his shadow clones — three of them appearing in front of Mei in an instant — and the original plus all three immediately ran through different seal sequences.
"Wind Release — Great Breakthrough!"
"Fire Release — Great Fireball!"
"Earth Release — Earth-Style Wall!"
"Water Release — Water Severing Wave!"
Wind beats lightning. Fire beats wind. Earth beats water. Water beats fire.
Where Kakuzu pulled different elemental affinities from the hearts he'd harvested, Kakashi carried all five — wind, lightning, water, fire, earth — in a single body.
The exchange detonated across the field, the two of them trading technique for technique like a full coordinated squad rather than two individuals.
The wind off the collision tore through Mei's brown hair, whipping it wild.
She stared at the man holding the line in front of her.
This man—
The moment didn't last. Five techniques, one of them a shadow clone split — running on chakra he didn't have to spare — and Kakashi sank to one knee, visibly drained.
This man is actually interesting.
Mei watched him falter, allowed herself a small, controlled smile, suppressed the impulse to think about it further, and stepped forward to stand between him and the field.
She wasn't the type of woman who hid behind a man.
"Recover your chakra. I've got this."
Kakashi, seeing her plant herself in front of him, pulled out a leftover Haruno soldier pill from the Eight-Tails engagement, yanked his mask down, and threw it back without ceremony.
Chew. Chew.
The taste was as terrible as advertised, but he had to admit — Sakura's pill genuinely worked.
Phew.
Handsome, this one.
Mei had gotten an unintended look at his face beneath the mask, and her mouth curved upward slightly before she could stop it.
A woman with her own composure didn't get to embarrass herself in front of a good-looking man.
Her expression sharpened back into focus, and she launched forward alone.
Kakuzu still hadn't deployed the nanotech parasites — clear evidence he'd already worked out that her Boil Release neutralized them completely. No reason to hold back now.
"Water Release — Water Surface Slicing!"
Sakura glanced once at the Mei-Kakashi-Kakuzu engagement, then turned her attention back to the one-armed man and the red-haired boy standing some distance off.
The Fourth Kazekage, Rasa. And the One-Tail jinchūriki, Gaara.
The moment Rasa had sensed real danger, Gaara had arrived on the field too, dispatched at Chiyo's direction specifically to handle Sakura.
"Have you two worked out a plan for me yet?" Sakura asked, looking at Rasa. "That Kakuzu over there seems to have some opinions about you."
"Gaara. Draw on the One-Tail."
Rasa gave the order without hesitation.
"Yes, Father."
There was no longer room for ambiguity. Rasa had fully accepted that alone, he posed no credible threat to this girl. Only with the One-Tail's strength layered in did he have any realistic path to doing meaningful damage.
Gaara looked once at the pink-haired girl across the field.
Haruno Sakura. Uzumaki Naruto's companion.
Your road ends here, then.
No one beats Father and the One-Tail working together.
The ground began to shake. Sand rose from beneath Gaara's feet in a slow column, winding up his body, violet markings spreading across the grains as the transformation took hold.
His frame expanded rapidly, climbing toward full beast form.
A massive sand tanuki, dozens of meters tall, rose onto the battlefield.
Rasa leapt to its head and called down to the beast beneath him.
"Gaara. How long can you hold this form?"
"Twenty minutes."
Gaara's own consciousness still held control of the One-Tail's power, for now. Once the clock ran out, the beast's mind would begin overtaking his own.
"Twenty minutes."
"That's enough."
Sakura crossed her arms, watching father and son with mild interest, entirely unbothered.
Shukaku held a respectable position among the tailed beasts in raw capability. But that was Shukaku alone — not Shukaku riding a transformed Gaara, with all the constraints that implied. And if Shukaku ever broke containment entirely, the first thing it would do was turn on Rasa, not her.
"Alright. Let's begin, Gaara."
Rasa stood on the beast's head, eyes locked on Sakura, hands coming together in a seal.
"Golden Sand Drizzle!"
"Sand Drizzle!"
Countless gold and ordinary sand fused together, forming a storm of spikes that surged toward Sakura.
"Interesting. Shame the gold's mixed with grit."
Sakura raised one hand, fingers shaped into a blade, pointed at her own chest.
Rasa's eyes narrowed at the gesture.
That seal—
Earth release? Water release?
She withdrew the blade-hand and closed it into a fist.
Rasa's stomach dropped at the shape of it, an absurd thought surfacing before he could stop it.
No.
It couldn't be—
In Rasa's disbelieving sightline, the pink fist came down and slammed into the ground.
!!!
BOOM.
The earth shook like something ancient turning over beneath it.
One punch, and the ground itself rose into a wall.
The earth split open. Tens of meters of stone tore upward, forming an instant barrier directly in front of her.
Yang Release Body Technique — Superhuman Strength.
Augmented, fully scaled, this version of her strength had crossed into something no taijutsu specialist in recorded shinobi history had ever produced through raw physical force alone.
The wall of gold spikes hit the risen barrier in a hammering rain.
BOOM.
A sound like thunder. The entire stretch of ground shattered into pieces.
Sakura launched off the wreckage, climbing fast — covering a hundred meters of altitude in seconds, closing directly on Rasa and the One-Tail.
"Gaara!"
Rasa's scalp went cold.
Gaara reacted immediately, running through seals at speed.
"Wind Release — Unlimited Sand Dust Great Breakthrough!"
The beast's belly inflated like an enormous balloon, the cavernous mouth opening wide, and a violent column of wind and sand-grit erupted from it.
"Cute trick."
"Summoning Jutsu!"
Sakura bit her thumb, slammed her palm down through the air, and a massive sealing array bloomed outward from her hand.
A towering iron gate, carved with a demon's face, materialized between her and the One-Tail.
"Demon-Gate Barrier!"
With Yang Release active and Superhuman Strength fully online, Sakura — on Tobirama's suggestion — had picked up this particular summon technique fast, taking what was traditionally a purely defensive jutsu and repurposing it as an offensive one.
"FLY FOR ME!"
She kicked the multi-story iron gate at full force.
It launched backward toward the One-Tail like a thrown discus.
"Magnetic Release — Golden Sand Hand!"
Rasa, dead last among the Kage or not, was still a Kage. He produced the technique near-instantly — two massive hands formed entirely of golden sand, slamming into the incoming gate to brace it.
Gaara raised the One-Tail's own arms simultaneously, pressing against the gate from the other side.
The combined force drove the beast backward, dragging a long gouge through the earth as it skidded — backward, backward, backward.
That strength.
Gaara watched the falling pink figure with something approaching disbelief.
Power, in his experience, scaled with size. He couldn't reconcile what he was watching with the small frame producing it.
It was beginning to look like even the One-Tail's strength might fall short of hers.
Sakura watched the father-son pair successfully hold the gate and let a faint smile cross her face.
Not done yet.
The blood on her thumb still hadn't dried. She kept moving through seals.
"Summoning Jutsu — Slug Crush Slab Technique!"
A second massive seal bloomed above the One-Tail's head.
A colossal slug fell from the open sky.
"What?!"
Rasa looked up and his eyes nearly tore themselves apart at what he saw.
No time to react. Gaara wrenched the One-Tail's arms protectively around him, bracing to take the impact directly.
Did she think that was it?
Sakura was already running another seal sequence.
"Summoning Jutsu — Great Demon Monkey King!"
No time to explain further. She moved straight into the follow-through.
"Adamantine Staff — Grow for me!"
Enma read the instruction instantly, shifting form, becoming the familiar staff — and then expanding, length surging outward in seconds, until it had become a fifty-meter iron pillar.
Sakura landed on it.
One kick.
The staff spun, a high-speed rotation producing a sound like screaming wind, and shot directly toward the One-Tail.
BOOM.
The slug came down first, crushing into the One-Tail's frame, knocking it flat to the ground.
Smaller slugs scattered outward from the impact in a wave of pale blue-white.
And in the same instant, the rotating staff arrived.
Gaara's eyes went wide with pure instinct.
"Shield of Sand!"
A massive dome of sand rose, encasing the One-Tail's huge frame entirely.
But—
CRACK.
The sound Gaara would remember for a while.
The instant the staff made contact with the Sand Shield, the outcome was already decided.
The dome shattered completely, swept aside by the staff's force without resistance.
Sand exploded outward in every direction.
"Sakura — could you maybe summon me normally, just once~~~"
A small slug landed on Sakura's shoulder, sighing.
The first time the slugs had met her, they'd assumed — given her gentle exterior — that underneath it would be a sweet, soft-hearted girl.
Instead—
That gentle, soft exterior was apparently wrapped around something close to pure, unfiltered violence.
"Understood, Lady Slug. Next time, definitely."
The slug heard this answer and produced something close to a cold sweat.
She'd heard that promise before. Several times, in fact.
She wanted to keep going on the topic, but registered, sharply, the yang-release chakra Sakura was practically radiating now, impossible to hide.
The slug stared at her, briefly thrown off balance.
This child.
She actually finished it.
Sakura, paying no attention to whatever the Slug Sage was processing on her shoulder, hit the ground and pushed off again immediately.
The earth shattered under her feet a second time.
Her pink shape launched skyward, straight at the One-Tail's still-recovering form.
She caught up within seconds.
Blue, pink, and gold chakra flame ignited around her fist at once.
Three chakra colors converging into a single point, made physical, roaring like something alive.
This punch was going to exceed anything she'd thrown before — by a wide margin.
If she wanted to, she could put as much force into this single strike as Guy unleashing the Daytime Tiger from the Seventh Gate.
The chakra gathered tighter, spreading outward across her whole body, taking shape as something enormous and predatory — a tiger, fifteen meters tall, jaws open, mid-leap.
"Yang Release — Mountain Lord."
☆☆☆
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