Pakura stood beside Yugito Nii, both keeping their senses sharp against the blind expanse ahead. A few steps behind them, Itachi Uchiha remained motionless as his three-tomoe Sharingan spun slowly in his eyes... a tragic upgrade during the skirmish against Konoha's battalion that had cost his dearest friend, an event that had driven his visual powers to evolve right before he slaughtered every last ninja involved.
Trying to get intelligence from the animals, Jugo knelt and tried to connect with the local wildlife, but the forest was completely devoid of animal life as they either ran away in fear at the impending clash or were dead.
He held out his arms as a few desperate birds descended from the sky, but their minds were rattled in panic; they possessed no usable information, fleeing again almost as quickly as they had landed.
"The fog is too dense to pierce to see," Itachi noted quietly. He formed a quick rat hand seal, his form instantly dispersing into a swirling murder of dark crows that scattered into the mist to scout ahead.
Beside him, Pakura tapped into her blood limit, Scorch Style as heat bloomed around her as several blazing orbs manifested. The intense heat instantly vaporized the moisture around her team, creating a dry bubble roughly twenty meters in diameter as they began to march forward.
Far deeper near the east coast, Ao's Byakugan caught the faint blue chakra signatures carving through the fog. "Two two-star shinobi are forcing their way inside," Ao reported to the elite strike force gathered around Mei Terumi.
Mei's eyes narrowed. "We aren't going to drag this out. Overwhelm them immediately, don't waste any time or chakra playing around. Utakata, Mangetsu, Kisame, Zabuza... I will leave them to you."
As the strike squad prepared to move, Ao hesitated, his visible eye widening slightly. "Mei-sama, one of those two-star shinobi is the Two-Tails Jinchuriki. Should we focus on capture, or..."
"Our sole priority is securing advantage through dominance," Mei interrupted ruthlessly. "Kill her on sight and ensure there isn't enough DNA tissue left behind for any reanimation jutsu to ever make use of her." She reached into her pouch and tossed a small container forward. "Utakata, you're leading this team and take these pills."
With four of Ao's mirror clones acting as guides, the elite Kirigakure squad set off. They moved with familiarity through the terrain, swiftly closing the distance toward the Kumo reconnaissance unit while Ao kept a watchful eye on a cluster of unusually persistent crows gliding overhead.
A brief moment later, the crows materialized back into Itachi beside his comrades, his face grim. "The fog obscures any long-range vision, even for the Sharingan."
Before they could adjust, Kaien's already activated Byakugan as his vision cut through a few kilometers of dense mist. His expression dropped instantly. "Yugito-san! A Kiri elite unit is bearing down on us fast. They're being led by a Byakugan user, the Six-Tails Jinchuriki, and Kisame Hoshigaki... the one wielding Samehada. He can shave and absorb chakra."
Hearing this, Yugito didn't hesitate as red and blue chakra burst from her as she entered her full Matatabi cloak mode (MCM). Her jaws snapped open, gathering positive and negative chakra into a dense super-compressed orb.
"Two o'clock, roughly three kilometers out!" Kaien shouted over the rising gale of her chakra. He paused, his eye twitching as he watched the enemy's movements. "Their Byakugan user has realized what you're doing... and their Jinchuuriki is charging a counter-attack!"
Two colossal blasts of compressed Biju bomb detonated towards each other as they struck in the mid-air space separating the two sides.
The resulting shockwave tore through the forest, an inferno spread over a kilometer in every direction. The heat generated has incinerated the trees and instantly scorched the thick mist out of existence for two kilometers. Both squads were hammered back by the blast wave, as they dug their feet into the ground in an attempt to halt as Kaien raised a humongous Earth wall to block any debri.
As the smoke began to clear, Yugito's hands blurred into a sequence of hand seals. The air around her grew instantly turned suffocating with terrifying heat.
"Fire Release: Deadly Blue Flame!" she roared as she unleashed an agonizingly bright wall of sapphire fire.
Simultaneously, Pakura willed her floating scorch orbs into a single dense mass of heat, hurling it into Yugito's blue flames. The combined offensive triggered a massive torrent creating a pressure wave of superheated steam that completely eradicated the remaining mist, restoring crystal-clear visibility near them.
"Scorch Release: Great Steaming Explosive Blast"
"Yugito-sensei is incredible..." Guren muttered, holding her arm up to shield her face from the blinding light and heat.
On the other side, Utakata growled. "Damn it". He lowered his bubble pipe, having just dropped his Water Release: Bubbles Technique — Broad Defence, which had managed to preserve his squad from the twin Biju explosions. "Kumo no longer cares about confronting us, they are more interested in clearing out the mist."
Without wasting another second, Utakata crafted a giant floating soap bubble. Mangetsu, Zabuza, and Kisame stepped inside, and the sphere accelerated through the sky toward Kumo's unit. As they reached above them, Utakata's skin flared into a dark corrosive deep-blue version 2 tailed-beast form. The moment the bubble popped, he hit the ground with a thud.
By Kiri's metric, Utakata was a terrifying force... a high three-star shinobi capable of decimating an entire squad unassisted.
The moment his feet touched the ground, Itachi's Sharingan locked onto his wild eyes, casting a high-level illusion to freeze the Jinchuriki. But Utakata shrieked manically, clutching his head as the acidic chakra of the Six-Tails violently ruptured the genjutsu's control in a split second.
Pakura seized the opening, hurling her Extremely Steaming Murder orbs straight at him. Utakata's mutated body moved unnaturally, twisting from side to side with terrifying speed as he lunged right through the heat waves toward her.
"Lava Release: Lava Fist!" Kaien stepped in to intercept. He swung his molten fist toward Utakata's flank, but Mangetsu acted faster. Utilizing his Hydrification Technique, Mangetsu enlarged his watery form to engulf Kaien's arm, instantly absorbing the kinetic impact while the cool water rapidly hardened the outer layer of Kaien's lava as Mangetsu grunted in pain, which left Kaien to nothing more than mudded dirt.
Meanwhile, Yugito clashed head-on with Kisame. Every blue flame she threw was devoured by Samehada, the living blade squirming and swelling with delighted gurgles as it siphoned off her Tailed Beast chakra with every swing.
Before Pakura could recast her defensive barrier, Utakata closed the gap completely. He slammed into her, coiling his deep-blue V2 form tightly around her body like a snake. From his skin, a thick alkaline liquid oozed directly onto her flesh.
"Leech Gap!"
Pakura's blood-curdling scream echoed as the horrifying acid dissolved her clothes, burned through her skin, and melted her internal organs in a matter of seconds. She collapsed into a lifeless smoldering heap of an acidic paste.
Seeing his teammate fall, Kaien tried to disengage, but Mangetsu lifted his fingers, forming a hand-gun shape. "Water Gun Technique!" high-pressure droplets whipped toward Kaien's skull.
Kaien wove a single seal with hand still inside Mangetsu's Hydrification, unleashing a rapid Water Drill Bullet to collide with his attack mid-air, the two high-pressure water jutsu detonated between them.
~~
A/N: Pakura dies a horrifying death against Utakata. Her journey started from Suna to Konoha to Kumo to finally die against Kiri, such an ironic fate.
One down, guess who is next? You thought Kumo is coming out of this with no issues? Haha... got 'ye.
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