"We're not reporting back first," Sukuna said, watching the Kumo forward camp from the treeline half a mile out, torchlight flickering between rows of tents below. "By the time word reaches Tsume and orders come back down, it would be hours, and if they find out, relocating or reinforcing will be the least of our worries. No... we deal with this here and now."
"Finally," Kiyomi murmured, Sharingan already active, cataloguing the camp's layout with clinical interest. "Something worth the trip."
Neji's Byakugan swept the grounds in a slow, methodical circle. "Perimeter patrols, six visible. Command tent near the center, larger structure northeast — likely supply. I count roughly forty shinobi total. Most chūnin-level. A handful reading stronger." He paused. "Two, maybe three, reading significantly stronger than the rest."
"Elite jōnin," Sukuna said. "That tracks with staging numbers this size."
"And the plan?" Kiyomi asked.
"Speed and chaos," Sukuna said. "We hit fast and as hard as we can where it would cause the most chaos. Don't let them organize a response. Weaker targets, incapacitate if it's clean. Anything requiring lethal force—" his eyes flicked to both of them, "—make sure the body doesn't come back. We already know what happens otherwise."
"Understood," Neji said.
"Try to keep up," Kiyomi added, smirking.
"You first," Neji said, and they moved.
Sukuna's eyes crossed over the entire camp once again. There were a few strong shinobi inside for sure; he even recognized a few from the Bingo Book. However, he doubted any of them would be a problem for him.
He alone could handle the entire camp in under a minute or two, but that would bring more grumbling and complaints from the other two for not giving them a chance to fight.
So, he intended to let them handle the major fights here, while he cleared out any runaways. That would also give him a good baseline understanding of their powers and strength.
He had a good understanding of what Izumi was capable of since he occasionally fought with her. These two were a different case... and this was the right chance to test them out.
The perimeter patrols never stood a chance. Sukuna crossed the outer treeline in a blink, no space manipulation or teleportation, just pure speed. He couldn't lie, seeing Neji zap around the area kind of reminded him that he should work on his raw speed as well, just like how facing Izumi and the Raikage reminded him that he needed to get his reinforcement and Cleave more polished.
Original Ryomen Sukuna was a lot faster than him. Current him was faster, but only because he had things like Flying Thunder God and Kamui... however, his raw speed was not up to Ryomen's.
Perhaps in Curse Sage Mode, but that would be cheating, comparing base Ryomen to his Sage Mode state.
In a single touch to both of them, Cleave activated, and the two guards were down before their partners even registered the disturbance, cut into two halves in such a way that even the Sage of Six Paths couldn't join them together — it was a clean strike, efficient, the kind of violence that left no room for alarm to spread.
It was honestly sometimes baffling how both he and Ryomen had the same technique but both used the technique so differently.
By the time the camp's outer edge realized something was wrong, three tents were already burning and the chaos had a shape of its own.
Kiyomi tore through the eastern flank like something unleashed, cursed energy folding into liquid metal that poured from her hands in molten ribbons, hardening mid-motion into blades, spikes, whatever the moment demanded.
That was the same application of the Construction technique which Kiyomi previously couldn't figure out on her own, and now look at her. With Yorozu's skills and much more cursed energy, she was wreaking havoc on the battlefield.
Chūnin fell in twos and threes, some incapacitated cleanly, others reduced to something considerably messier once she remembered which of those options actually mattered here.
Even Sukuna stopped midway and, for a second or two, observed the liquid metal with his Sharingan. Naked eyes might not be able to realize how impressive that flowing metal was, but to him, it was very clear.
As his eyes flickered towards the other side, he saw Neji tear through the western flank with equal violence, Gentle Fist finding tenketsu with contemptuous ease against opponents who'd never trained against a Hyūga in their lives, Projection Sorcery collapsing distance whenever a target tried to create it. Weaker shinobi barely registered him before they were already down.
Of course, since Gentle Fist isn't very destructive to the body itself, he wasn't trying to kill them, just disarm them as fast as possible, the exact thing Gentle Fist and Projection Sorcery were famous for.
It was, for the first several minutes, embarrassingly easy.
Then the camp's actual defenders arrived. Jōnin and Elite Jōnin.
Neji felt the shift before he saw it — a presence moving faster than anything he'd cut through so far, chakra crackling with barely restrained lightning, closing on his position with a speed that actually made even his eyes widen.
He had to stop his motion midway, almost breaking his technique and becoming restrained for the next one second.
"Konoha Scum..." said the jōnin who dropped into the clearing across from him, lightning armor sparking faintly along his arms, a manic grin already spreading across his face. "Did you really think you could come in here alone and do as you wish? Konoha will have to pay for what they did to our Raikage..."
Neji scoffed at that.
"Lightning Chakra Armor, huh..." Neji said, Byakugan tracking the crackling chakra with genuine focus now. "I've heard about it. I thought only the Raikage of Kumo should know about this..." Neji's face slowly lit up with a grin.
"Well... well, and here I thought I wouldn't get a chance to see how fast this technique is... the best person to test it against surely would have been that Raikage of yours...
Such a shame, poor bastard. Well, in his stead, you have to do."
"You bastard." The jōnin vanished in a burst of lightning-augmented speed, anger clear on his face and in his tone.
Neji met him mid-air, Projection Sorcery folding space just enough to intercept an attack that should have been too fast to see coming, palms meeting in an exchange that cracked the air around them. The jōnin was fast — genuinely fast, faster than anyone Neji had faced since arriving in this body, lightning chakra shaving milliseconds off every movement in a way Gentle Fist's raw precision alone couldn't fully compensate for.
"Not bad," Neji admitted, blocking a strike that nearly got through, his own speed straining to match rather than simply outpace. A grin formed across his face, to think there were Ninja who were faster than him.
If only Neji (Naoya) had faced the Raikage or Minato. Unfortunately, or rather fortunately for him, this was just a Jōnin who knew basic techniques or Lightning Chakra Armor. He was nowhere near as fast as the Raikage.
"Not bad?" The jōnin laughed, pressing the advantage, lightning crackling along a fist that grazed Neji's shoulder hard enough to numb it briefly. "You're barely keeping up, kid."
Neji's expression didn't change, though something colder settled behind his eyes. He shifted his approach, Projection Sorcery folding distance not to close in directly this time, but to circle, forcing the lightning-fast jōnin to constantly reorient rather than simply chase in a straight line. Speed against speed was a losing exchange, especially when that lightning armor of the enemy was nullifying his attacking force.
But here was the thing: Naoya too was from a big jujutsu clan, and besides the inherited technique of his, there were other useful techniques passed down in the Zenin clan.
His cursed energy came alive around him, a secret technique passed down in the Big Three clans activating.
"Falling Blossom Emotion."
An anti-domain technique, passed down in the three major jujutsu clans. Typically, any anti-domain technique is useful to fight off a domain effect or to nullify a technique; however, in that case, 'Falling Blossom Emotion' was different.
This anti-domain technique creates a barrier of cursed energy around the user and repels anything with the user's cursed energy itself. Not just a domain or a cursed technique, but anything.
And that's why this technique was a very impressive defensive ability against most attacks. Something akin to a low-grade Lightning Armor itself.
And it worked, the incoming lightning-clad punch of the enemy was partially nullified as Neji's cursed energy itself repelled the lightning chakra of the enemy's technique.
"There," Neji murmured, catching the half-second of hesitation this bought him, and drove a palm directly into the man's chest, tenketsu sealing in a burst that cut the lightning chakra off mid-flow like a switch thrown.
The jōnin staggered, sparks dying along his arms. "What—"
"Huh... idiot," Neji said, and finished it before the man could recover, precise strikes ending the fight with the same clinical efficiency he brought to everything — though sweat had gathered at his temple by the time it was over, the closest thing to genuine exertion he had experienced until now.
Across the camp, Kiyomi had found her own problem.
The kunoichi who intercepted her moved like water, quite literally — some manner of fluid-manipulation technique that let her body bend and flow around strikes that should have landed clean, liquid coiling into blade-edges of her own to answer Kiyomi's constructed weapons blow for blow.
"Cute trick," Kiyomi said, molten metal solidifying into a curved blade in her hand.
"Cute is generous," the kunoichi answered, her own liquid weapon lashing out in a whip-like arc that Kiyomi barely deflected in time.
Sukuna, who observed the thing, even thought that this kunoichi might be from the Hozuki line from Kiri. You never know; Kumo was infamous for stealing bloodlines.
They traded strikes for a long, grinding stretch, neither gaining clean ground, Kiyomi's constructed weapons shattering against liquid that simply reformed around the damage instead of breaking, the kunoichi's attacks unable to fully punch through Kiyomi's own enhanced durability. It was, infuriatingly, close to even.
"You're better than the trash I've been cutting through," Kiyomi admitted, breathing harder than she wanted to.
"Wish I could say the same," the kunoichi shot back, liquid coiling for another strike.
Kiyomi's patience finally ran out. Instead of matching the fluid style directly, she shifted tactics — constructing not a single weapon but a dozen small, razor-thin discs all at once, flooding the space between them faster than the kunoichi's liquid defense could reform around all of them simultaneously. Most were deflected. Two weren't.
The kunoichi went down hard, liquid technique collapsing along with her concentration, and Kiyomi finished it decisively, making absolutely certain there'd be nothing left capable of hosting anything that might wander back through whatever door Sukuna's theory had opened.
"Sorry," she muttered, not sounding especially sorry. "Can't risk you coming back as someone else's problem."
Kiyomi's Sharingan morphed at that moment, from the simple three tomoe to the Mangekyō.
xXx
A/N : I guess I could have handled this fight much better. Not sure whether it was even needed or not. Actually, tell me if you guys like this kind of chapter focus on other characters. Honestly... tell me in the comments so I can improve my work, if I know what you guys like then I can either increase or remove content base on that. Focus more on what works and I like then what doesn't work and I don't like writing either.
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