Seeing Red [Naruto]

Contact 8.4

The dust began to settle and Hisana could sense movement all through the warren of tunnels that comprised the base. Her chakra capacity was only somewhat drained, and her Final Hurricane seal was untouched - so she was good for even a major fight against multiple powerful opponents.

Then she felt it. A powerful, malignant chakra. It burned in her mind, repulsive and stinking of death and decay. She nearly stumbled at the mere feeling of it - the only worse thing she'd sensed was the Kyuubi when Naruto had drawn on his chakra.

"What - what is that?" Sasuke asked. Hisana shivered as he spoke - if his own much duller senses were picking it up...

"I don't know, but nothing good," Jiraiya said.

"It's strong. Very strong," Hisana said, and it was true. It was not the angry god of the Nine-Tails, not rage made manifest, but for a moment she had thought Orochimaru was actually here and not days away.

"Location?" Jiraiya asked Hisana.

"Dead centre," she answered. A chakra signature that powerful, with no attempt to conceal it, was easy to track.

"Right. You lot spread out and search for the prisoners - Hisana, cut off their retreat if you sense someone heading for an exit. Let me deal with whatever's at the heart of this place," he said.

"Gotcha, Pervy Sage. C'mon, Sasame, we've got people to rescue," Naruto said, and he, Sasuke, and Sasme dashed off.

Jiraiya bit his thumb and slammed his hand into the ground. The blood was transfused into seal-ink and a complex circular seal appeared on the ground. Chakra smoke swirled, and Hisana felt just how much power Jiraiya was putting into the summoning. With a bang of displaced air, time and space were warped, summoning something thousands of miles from Mt Myōboku.

The smoke cleared, and for one moment Hisana thought that the jutsu had failed. Then she looked down and saw the two diminutive toads he'd summoned. Each was about a metre tall and looked old and wizened. Though they looked elderly, Hisana could sense their immense power - each was almost radiating chakra.

"Augh and my beetle stew was almost ready," the female toad - Hisana didn't remember her name - said.

"Beetle stew, my boy, a whole big pot of it - whatever you pulled us here for better be... do you smell that, Shima?" the male toad asked.

"Something foul on the wind, Fukasaku," Shima said, her expression becoming instantly serious.

"We may not have much time, so if you'd get up here..." Jiraiya said, gesturing towards the toads. They leapt onto his shoulders, and Hisana felt the world shift around them. She felt the flow of natural chakra - vast and yet also quiet enough to fade into the background - shift. She felt it swirl around the toads.

She could almost reach out and touch it but drew her eyes away at the last moment. She wasn't ready for it, not by a long shot. If she tried to use it, it'd almost certainly turn her to stone. Natural energy was not to be played with.

That didn't mean that observing a Sage gathering natural energy hadn't given her ideas. A spiral to gather the energy, reinforced pseudo-conduits to safely channel and convert it...

A group of chakra signatures was heading in the opposite direction of the entrance. Hisana's task was at hand. She looked away from the toads, activated her lightning blood seal, and began to move.

No normal ninja could use the body flicker like this - no normal ninja could take advantage of its compression of space to move so quickly through a confined space. Hisana's seal used precise genjutsu formulas to alter her own perception of time, allowing her to react fast enough to copy the technique of Shisui of the Shunshin. Wisps of crimson chakra surrounded her as she flew through the twisting halls of the base, her chakra shroud and flight jutsu allowing her to push her speed even further.

She arrived at the exit just as the signatures she'd detected passed through it - a narrow tunnel leading out onto the other side of the mountain. What had once been one weak signature and a number of more faint ones was now a number of strong signatures - strong, familiar signatures. Sickening, distorted chakra.

Hisana made her decision. She blurred through the exit tunnel and slapped the open with her hand as she passed it. Ink extended from her touch and as her Lightning Blood seal faded, the opening exploded in a burst of smoke and fire. Nobody else would get out that way - at least not without being detected. She had to stop what she was sure were more battle puppets from leaving.

The side of the mountain was low enough to be covered in brilliantly green grass and blooming trees. No trace of the snow that capped the mountain was visible here - only a verdant lushness that made the sight in front of Hisana all the more disturbing.

A woman with bright green hair, glasses, and a labcoat stood there, some distance below Hisana, surrounded by battle puppets. These were not the bone-white wood creations of the Fuma Clan. They were rotting corpses held together by wrought iron frames and strings of paper tags. Eight of them were simply a body encased in iron, but two were huge amalgamations of dozens of corpses. Where the bodies had once had eyes were pools of malevolent purple chakra.

The woman's sound headband only confirmed what Hisana already knew - these were the product of Sound reverse-engineering the Fuma technique.

"I see you find my creations disturbing, Uchiha. What hypocrisy!" the woman said, her hands resting on a slim wooden cane; the wood covered in matte black lacquer.

"Your creations are an affront to life itself. Can't you feel how disgusting they are?"

"You find them revolting because you know the truth. My corpse puppets will end the age of ninja and finally crush your power. I have turned chakra into a tool that may be wielded by anyone with the will to do what must be done, not just those of some rarefied caste!" she shouted.

"Yeah, you're right. The problem with the world is that power doesn't lie exclusively in the hands of insane mass-murdering necromancers. That'll fix everything that's broken!" Hisana shouted back.

Her Lightning Blood seal was ready again.

The woman tapped her cane, and a hexagonal pillar of purple chakra rose out of the ground to shield her. Hisana knew that it would attempt to destroy whatever touched it.

"Kill the whelp," the woman ordered, and the corpse puppets moved forward. The man-sized ones had iron claws hammered into their rotting hands, glowing with purple chakra. The two larger amalgamations had huge iron clubs, burning with purple fire. They moved with incredible speed - even the huge ones. Easily equal to your average chunin.

Hisana wasn't you're average chunin. Lines of red ink spread across her face, and all across, as pseudo-coils expanded her chakra network. So much power pumped through it that there was a faint red haze in the air. The corpse puppets had made it a fourth of the way to her. She put her hand on her sword, gathering herself in a perfect iaido stance. They had made it a third of the way to her. Crimson chakra enveloped her as she activated her chakra shroud.

Then, as the corpse puppets made it halfway to Hisana, her Lightning Blood seal activated. She blurred forward, outrunning the sound of her approach even through the compressed space of the body flicker. She drew her sword and cut into the first corpse puppet in one smooth motion, chakra flow racing up the blade as she drew it. She used the network of seals across her body to momentarily imbue herself with far greater strength as she cut into the corpse puppet; the blow sending shockwaves through the air as her cut annihilated it.

She struck again and again, dancing between the molasses-slow movements of the corpse puppets. Her blade trailed flame as she cut, so fast and forceful was each strike. As her seal cut out and she blurred backwards, all eight of the man-sized corpse puppets were lying in small pieces across the mountainside.

"I thought your reputation to be the fawning of the ignorant for dying legends, Uchiha. Now I see it is well earnt. A pity that I must kill you, for your sealing is truly unique. Now, dead men, hear my command!"

The woman tapped her cane once more, and purple fire engulfed the shattered remains of the man-sized corpse puppets. They flew through the air towards the amalgamations, even as they touch their psalm to one another. Light engulfed them, and Hisana felt a wave of sickening chakra wash over her. Now that she was closer to it, she could tell what was powering the jutsu - not the woman's own meagre chakra, but natural energy twisted into something evil and malevolent.

Black, noxious chakra smoke exploded from the amalgamations, and from it emerged a twisted giant of wrought iron and dead flesh. It was only a little larger than the amalgamations were individually, but Hisana could feel its power. This would not fall as easily as the others, she knew.

She took her stance, the Sword of Spring burning bright crimson as her chakra flow ran through it. The giant corpse puppet clutched its warclub, bits of iron melting from the noxious purple chakra running through it.

Hisana saw it move before it did, a foreimage springing to life in her red-tinted vision. She saw the chakra rush through its dead coils, saw it concentrate in the warclub. She made pseudo-handseals with her sword, gathering her chakra in its Yang Release forged blade.

"Wind Release: Beast-Slaying Vacuum Blade!" Hisana shouted as power exploded from her sword, the ground cracking under her feet as she moved to swing.

They swung at the same time, the giant's warclub sending out a crescent of purple chakra even as Hisana's blade sent out a slash of crimson wind. The two A-Rank ninjutsu smashed into each other and exploded on contact; smaller blades of wind and blobs of burning purple chakra flew in every direction. Whatever the purple chakra touched began to melt.

Where the two jutsu clashed, there was a huge crater, partially melted and still somewhat liquid. The giant raised its warclub again and only Hisana's Sharingan saved her as it moved with a body flicker almost as fast as her own. She leapt up and over the strike, using her flight jutsu to mauver in mid-air.
The warclub smashed the ground where Hisana had been standing to pieces, and her foot smashed into the giant's head in a chakra-burst-enhanced kick. Her kick sent it stumbling, but even the sheer force her chakra burst could manage only dented the thing's rotting skull and bent the iron frame nailed into it.

Then it swung again and again. Hisana used her chakra burst to parry each blow, giving her a moment of incredible strength at the instant of contact. Her sword shattered each time, but the Sword of Spring - Princess Koiyuki's priceless gift to her - repaired itself in an instant.

Hisana could find no opening to attack in the face of the giant's onslaught, even as the mountain shook from some battle deeper in. Then the giant roared, a massive beam of chakra shooting from its mouth that Hisana only barely dodged. The beam impacted the ground behind her in a massive explosion - but it was only her finely honed chakra sense that saved Hisana as the beam transmuted into a dragon formed of that same burning purple chakra.

It flew towards her and Hisana took to the sky to dodge. Her lightning blood seal reactivated, and she blurred across the sky leaving sonic booms in her wake. The dragon blew apart once more, turning this time into a hundred pencil-thin beams of chakra. They raced after Hisana with clear homing intent, even as she used every trick in her arsenal to increase her speed.

She saw the foreimages and knew it wouldn't be enough. She crossed her arms and activated the seals on her forearm guards, two hexagonal shields of orange chakra forming. She dodged every beam but one.

The beam of chakra slammed into her shields, ripping through them like they weren't there. She saw the chakra melt through her reactive chakra armour and then her left forearm. She saw it punch through her chest. An inch to the left, and it would have hit her heart.

Without her seal accelerating her mind, that inch would have done nothing to save her - for she had only moments to get over her shock and repair the damage. She fell through the air as her body flicker and chakra shroud failed. Her chakra system flickered. She had only moments to right herself before she fell.

She generated healing chakra in her coils but didn't guide it through her hands. She didn't have the time. Hisana pushed it through her chakra network, mending the vein that had been served along with her damaged tenketsu. It chewed through her chakra, almost as much as using the Chidori, but it worked.

The flicker in her chakra stopped, she was no longer spraying blood across the sky. What had once been the melted hole through her left forearm became unscarred skin. She was an instant from hitting the ground.

She activated her flight jutsu, but she was falling fast enough that it could only soften the landing rather than stop it. Hisana landed with a sickening crunch as a bone in her right leg snapped. She screamed in agony as all the pain caught up to her at once.

She stood on one good leg and her sword. Her hands trembled from the effort, every nerve in her body afire with pain, but she pushed the white jut on bone extending out of her skin back into place and gathered medical chakra. She had only a few moments to knit everything back together, and she knew she hadn't done a worthwhile job. They'd have to rebreak and heal her leg again in Konoha.

Hisana could stand on both her legs now, even as the pain of doing so made her hands tremble. She knew that she had to end this fight now. She had one more strike with her Lightning Blood seal left before it had to cut off for a time, she thought. She would have to put her all into this one strike.

"Gate of Opening: Release!" Hisana screamed as she opened the first of her Inner Gates. Power flooded through her as every muscle, every chakra coil in her body roared to their maximum power.

Then, as she made pseudo-handseals with her sword, she moved. She leapt forward with her chakra burst, compressed the space with her body flicker, and flew through the air as her chakra shroud surrounded her. The ground beneath her feet exploded as the shockwave of her leap rippled through it.

Chakra rushed through her sword, forming a blade of crimson light far larger than her earlier attack for just a moment before it began to compress. The blade of chakra shrunk and shrunk and shrunk, until at the last possible moment her own A-rank ninjutsu formed - the Beast Slaying Vacuum Talon.

The giant tried to parry, but with the first gate open Hisana was just fast enough. She flew under its giant warclub, and slashed her sword up into its chest. Her chakra burst network screamed as she activated it, her sword moving so fast that the air behind it burst into flames.

Hisana's jutsu cut deep into the giant, even as she felt its immensely tough flesh resist the blade of superdense wind chakra. It would not cut through the beast, it would not be a telling blow.

She detonated the chakra flow, the jutsu formula painted onto the Sword of Spring sending fire chakra into it. It reacted with the immense amounts of wind chakra surrounding the blade, and then it was only her reactive chakra armour and the great bulk of the giant that saved Hisana's life.

The titanic explosion engulfed her utterly, but it was blunted by the giant's innards, and Hisana's reactive chakra armour shielded her from the blast. She was still blown back into the hillside, but she landed with only a grunt of pain as her seal cut off and the explosion faded. Fired roared all around her, and bits of the giant rained down. Her chakra sense confirmed that it was truly destroyed, and she smiled grimly as the woman's barrier failed.

She had only a tenth of her chakra remaining, but the fight was over. She walked towards the woman, her sword held steady even as she struggled to walk on her poorly healed leg. The woman in the labcoat held out her cane as if to fight Hisana, but she clearly knew as well as Hisana did that she had no chance, even now.

Does Hisana...

[x] Cut the woman down. Her creations are too dangerous for anyone to know about.

[x] Take the woman prisoner. Hisana can't guarantee that the research wasn't already passed on, or that the woman is the sole inverter. Konoha needs to know how to counter these corpse puppets.