A vibration rattled up through Anko's tabi boots, the air pressure tightening like a vice around her ears a fraction of a second before the sky above Ouza Island fractured into a splintered web of white-hot plasma. The ozone stinging her throat carried the metallic, ionized taint of manipulated chakra. Standing atop the slick stone steps, Aoi Rokushō held the Sword of the Thunder God aloft, the translucent yellow blade crackling with pure, volatile energy.
"GET BLOWN AWAY, LEAF!" Aoi screamed.
"Move!" Kakashi's voice vanished into the roar of the wind.
Anko blurred. She pumped her bare arms, the interlocking rings of her metal chainmail clinking and trapping the sudden spike of body heat against her skin-toned undershirt. Her burnt-orange mini-skirt whipped against her thighs as she vaulted forward. Lightning fell in blinding folds behind her, ripping across the volcanic ground and throwing up geysers of superheated mud.
Her gaze wavered, failing to catch the brats in time.
It didn't matter.
Her eyes locked onto the Amegakure defector.
The pressure in Anko's ears popped. The horizontal rain vanished mid-drop. The deafening roar of the hurricane zeroed out, plunging the ridge into a profound, suffocating vacuum.
Stagnant heat clamped down on the stone steps. Anko's lungs fought a sudden resistance—pulling damp, warm wool in, but struggling to push the air back out. Her chainmail felt ten pounds heavier, the trapped humidity actively resisting her chakra flow.
Aoi dropped from the high ground, his dark teal spikes slicing through the mist. The metallic forehead protector across his brow hid the starburst scar of his past, but his piercing violet eyes locked onto hers with absolute, arrogant superiority.
"Jodan!" Aoi announced, his voice echoing in the eerie silence.
Upper-level target. A declared strike. The cadence of structured sparring triggered Anko's muscle memory. The yellow blade thrust forward, a crackling spear of golden light aimed directly at her face.
Anko didn't block. She sidestepped, letting the sheer heat of the plasma singe the ends of her purple hair. Her tabi boots slid a fraction of an inch on the lava-slicked stone, fighting the treacherous lack of traction.
She countered instantly, executing the opening of the Ring Snake Kick. The metal rings of her chainmail pinched at her shoulders as her bare arm whipped out, a kunai slashing toward his exposed neck. Aoi leaned back, his lean physique bending with unnatural fluidity. The white linen bandages wrapping his left wrist and hand absorbed the sudden shift in momentum without restricting his joints. His movement—the smug confidence, the violet eyes tracking her failure—sent a phantom spike of fever-heat into the back of Anko's neck.
He moves like him.
Anko's peripheral vision tunneled. A micro-hesitation stalled her synapses, causing her to overcommit her weight on the wet stone. She dropped her center of gravity a beat too late, sweeping her leg toward his ankles wrapped in white linen. Aoi bounded over the sweep, landing lightly on the cracked granite riser.
"Too wide, Mitarashi," Aoi mocked. The slate-grey and navy-blue panels of his sleeveless jumpsuit shifted as he adjusted his grip on the ornate hilt. "You swing like a desperate academy student. Getting tired already? Let's see if you can guard your ribs."
Anko shifted her weight, bracing for a chudan strike, her muscles twitching in anticipation of the structural cadence to continue.
Aoi didn't step. He lunged without a word. For a terrifying half-beat, Anko's nervous system still fired defensive signals for a mid-level block as the unannounced blade snapped in a vicious, horizontal arc aimed at her knees.
Anko pushed off the stone, flipping backward to gain distance and frantically correcting her misread. "Worry about your own race, traitor."
Aoi laughed, "Fukusuke sits in a hot spring right now, enjoying the local women while the storm does his work. The race ended before it began."
Anko landed. Her breath hitched, the sudden spike of jaw tension sending a dull ache into her temples as her targeting focus violently shifted from his blade to his center of mass. She focused the cursed energy in her fingertips, molding it into a serpentine explosion that shot toward Aoi's feet.
She flicked her wrist. A tiny, targeted explosive molded from chakra shaped like a serpent shot toward Aoi's feet. Simultaneously, her sleeves erupted. Fire Style: Segmented Snake String. A chain of explosives disguised as striking vipers launched across the gap, waiting for the Fanged Leader to trigger the fuse.
Humidity strangled the sequence, choking the chain of explosions.
The scent of sulfur and partial combustion soured the thick air. The leader hit the wet stone and fizzled, the visual flash arriving a half-second before a mis-timed pressure shock hammered against Anko's ribs. The segmented string ignited unevenly. An auditory desync scrambled Anko's tracking as concussive blasts shattered the stone steps in a chaotic, unpredictable rhythm, sending jagged shrapnel flying into the mist without harming her target.
Aoi seized the misfire without hesitation
He swept the Sword of the Thunder God across the slurry of rainwater and mud pooling on the steps.
The surface of the puddles micro-rippled, distorting violently a millisecond before yellow electricity arced through the water, a serrated web of voltage snapping toward Anko's boots. She scrambled, the rings of her chainmail biting into her skin as she pivoted.
The metal screamed, catching the electrical current. A violent shock tore through her bare arms. Her hand clamped shut involuntarily, the muscles misfiring and locking her fingers around the electrified rail. She bit her lip until copper flooded her tongue, forcing the spasming tendons to release before the voltage paralyzed her heart. Her boots skidded on the ice-slick stone, forcing a hasty adjustment.
She tried to mold chakra to steady her trembling legs, pulling on a standard evasion technique, but the network sputtered, rejecting the command. The electrical trauma had scrambled her pathways.
Aoi stalked forward. "Konoha rots from the inside. You defend a corpse."
A ragged breath caught in Anko's throat. She pushed herself up to one knee, her posture sagging for a fraction of a second as a deep, radiating throb originated from her neck. The numbness in her hands retreated, devoured by the icy, spreading venom of the dormant Curse Mark at her collarbone. The seal pulsed, overriding her nervous system in a violent surge of feverish infection.
"Then I'll be the bacteria that protects it," Anko rasped.
Black ink stretched across her neck like a spreading pathogen. Her pulse erraticized into a frantic flutter, a sickening heat washing over her skin and bleeding directly into her internal organs. Cold sweat chilled her spine, and spatial distortion caused the stone steps to tilt in her peripheral vision. Her posture hunched involuntarily, her muscles cramping as her chakra spiked, growing dense and suffocating.
She slammed her hands together.
The Black Powder Knot erupted, fire and carbon surging into the surrounding air.
Intense overpressure swelled in her forearms, bleeding heat into the surrounding air as the infected chakra struggled to shape itself. The jet-black snakes erupted from the cracks in the stone with a slight, stuttering delay, their bodies overproducing volatile carbon and sulfur. They surged up Aoi's legs, wrapping around his linen-bound ankles and the black sleeve of his right arm with uneven, frantic tension, pinning him to the spot.
Aoi's violet eyes widened, the self-satisfied superiority fracturing.
Anko didn't hesitate. Black Match.
A single, entirely black snake shot from her wrist, acting as the living fuse. It slithered across the wet stone at blinding speed, immune to the ambient moisture, racing directly toward the knot entangling Aoi.
The wind tore at her skin, each gust sharp as shattered glass. A blast of the dry, freezing wind slammed into the clearing, stealing the breath from Anko's lungs in a harsh gasp. A tremor shook her soles, the sky snapping with violent tension. The sudden temperature shift flash-froze the rainwater pooling on the steps, the acoustic signature of the clearing changing instantly as the new ice absorbed rather than reflected the howling wind. Anko felt her skin tighten instantly, the damp fabric of her skin-toned undershirt stiffening against her ribs. Her next exhale plumed into thick, white fog.
Aoi reacted with desperate precision. He reached over his shoulder with his free hand. His shoulder alignment shifted dramatically, dropping his hips to compensate for the sudden loss of back-weight as he ripped the large, black-ribbed umbrella from its sturdy tan leather strap.
He hurled it open.
The canopy locked, triggering the internal mechanisms. A massive displacement of air rushed outward as a storm of senbon needles erupted from the ribs, blotting out the pale light. The sound layered over the howling wind—not a roar, but the hissing staccato of steel rain. A phantom prickle of anticipation raced across the exposed skin of Anko's arms before the first needle even fell. Hundreds of steel pins rained down in a deadly, inescapable spread.
The flash-frozen stone betrayed her footing as she lunged to finish the move.
Her traction vanished.
Her lead leg skidded laterally, dropping her center of gravity and throwing her evasion trajectory directly into the path of the senbon barrage.
Ten seconds.
The needles would shred her unarmored arms and face.
She forced her falling momentum into a forward slide, ignoring the ice scraping her bare thighs while the interlocking rings of her chainmail dragged and bit painfully into her torso. She channeled the dense, cursed chakra into her right arm. Blade Snake Shadow. An illusion layered over her strike, disguising her extended arm as a massive, lunging serpent. Beneath the genjutsu, her fingers locked around a physical kunai, aimed directly at the center of Aoi's stiff collar.
Aoi braced, his muscles corded as he swung the crackling yellow blade of the Thunder God down in a desperate, two-handed arc to cleave the approaching snake.
The freezing wind howled, the muscles along Anko's spine knotting in excruciating anticipation as the steel senbon whistled through the fog directly toward her unprotected back, her hidden kunai closing the final inch toward Aoi's throat.