Myrmidon (Naruto/Hunter x Hunter)

[Egleris]

@Parks_98: what you say is fully true; my point was that I cannot see a way for Meruem to be born, in the current circumstances, which is a direct result of Netero's willingly letting it happen, and how I feel that such a thing would most certainly cause a rift between Team 8 and the Hunters (and potentially, if it's made clear he did it, even among the Hunters themselves). All of which would make for great drama and a potentially excellent story; I'm not at all denying that.

My point was simply that cooperation between Team 8 and the Hunters is not just hard - there's a big possibility of it actually being impossible if any fault at all for Meruem's birth can be laid at the feet of Netero. And from where I'm standing, that's very likely. You said that you'd prefer if Netero had the chance of fighting Meruem; I am not disagreeing on how that'd be an awesome thing to read (it was in the original, so the potential is there for it to be so in this story as well), I'm saying that Team 8 would not let that willingly come to pass. Unless you disagree with that (ie, you think Team 8 would let Meruem be born if they had any chance at all to stop it), I don't think we're actually standing on different positions - merely considering different facets of a possible plot development for the story.

 

[Great Greedy Guts]

One thing to remember about Meruem's birth is that he's massively impatient about it. He tore his way out of the Queen well before he was supposed to, so they actually have substantially less time than they might think to make good on their attack.

 

[Egleris]

One thing to remember about Meruem's birth is that he's massively impatient about it. He tore his way out of the Queen well before he was supposed to

Click to shrink...

...I'd forgotten about that. Not the tearing his way out - that scene was memorable - but that it was before the proper time. Does anybody remembers how long the teams actually have, then? I do think that the birth was well after the third guard's birth, and that one should still be a long way to go, if I'm not misremembering again.

 

[00mega]

...I'd forgotten about that. Not the tearing his way out - that scene was memorable - but that it was before the proper time. Does anybody remembers how long the teams actually have, then? I do think that the birth was well after the third guard's birth, and that one should still be a long way to go, if I'm not misremembering again.

Click to shrink...

Their soonest estimate is two months. Meruem loses patience in one. Incidentally, Knuckle and Shoot arrive later that same day.

 

[Great Greedy Guts]

...I'd forgotten about that. Not the tearing his way out - that scene was memorable - but that it was before the proper time. Does anybody remembers how long the teams actually have, then? I do think that the birth was well after the third guard's birth, and that one should still be a long way to go, if I'm not misremembering again.

Click to shrink...

I think it was just a week or two, but with the rapid gestation period of the ants and the time planning an operation like this might take, that's a pretty significant reduction in time.

As much as I think Netero was lured there with the notion of a good fight, I also don't think he just allowed the King to be born for that reason alone. I don't think he was even fully conscious of just how frustrated he was with his life until that battle was underway. He went to stop the Ants because they needed stopping.

Now, some of the reasons for the delay are greatly reduced by Team 8's presence. More fighters, better intel, things like that. But there's very little reason to not wait a bit all the same, especially since they want to be sure to succeed and that'll require getting past a not-insignificant number of Ants that, while not Royal Guard level, can still prove to be effective at delaying even strong enemies. Plus, Pitou managed to detect Hinata, their ability to sense others beyond the range of their En is one of their strengths, and that makes a real, complete surprise almost as unlikely now as it was in canon.

 

[KickInator]

If the gestation period of Meruem is one month, can't the ninjas call for reinforcement from the portal? Cause I think the portal required a one month recharge period.

 

[Great Greedy Guts]

If the gestation period of Meruem is one month, can't the ninjas call for reinforcement from the portal? Cause I think the portal required a one month recharge period.

Click to shrink...

Two weeks of downtime per person, so six weeks left. Plus probably two weeks to recharge after the messenger is sent back. Assuming they return with three more ninja, that's then eight more weeks after the eight weeks they'd need to wait for reinforcements to arrive... followed by a full three months offline once all those ninja return.

It's not impossible for more ninja to get involved, but it won't be before Meruem is up and about by any means. Maybe before the assault on the palace happened in canon HxH they could bring others in, though even that is a toss-up given the time constraints.

 

[Parks_98]

As much as I think Netero was lured there with the notion of a good fight, I also don't think he just allowed the King to be born for that reason alone. I don't think he was even fully conscious of just how frustrated he was with his life until that battle was underway. He went to stop the Ants because they needed stopping.

Click to shrink...

Same here, I believe that the main reason that he came was because of the fact that these ants were from the dark continent. The same place that Netero avoided for the rest of his life after going there once. I think he knew that the ants could be ranked as a threat that could threaten all humanity and as we know Netero respects or downright loves humanity (the good, the bad and the uglyness of it) with all his heart.
It just so happens later on that it turns out that not only is he helping save humanity but also finally getting the fight which he desired so much.

 

[Ser_Serendipity]

Myrmidon Chapter 6

Paranoia​

It had been eight days since Morel had entered the NGL, and he'd spent every minute of them doing two things. The first had been the coldly satisfying and merciless business of killing Chimera Ants whenever he could. The second had been slightly more stimulating, though in a different way from combat, and that had been attempting to figure out the Extermination Team's unexpected and earnest companions.

The shinobi. The name alone was interesting, and carried peculiar implications. Morel had squirreled it out of Kiba Inuzuka several nights before, as they sat in a tree and ate cold soup together. The bearded man was an Enhancer through and through: strong, brash, and honest, almost painfully so. He'd paused after letting the title slip, an obvious sign to Morel that he had been internally reprimanding himself, before continuing as if nothing had happened. Whatever secrets Kiba and his comrades were hiding, they didn't count their profession as an especially dear one.

Shinobi were rare, but not impossible to find. The irony made Morel chuckle a little as he shifted his pipe beside him, smoke leaking out of his mouth at the slight tug of his lips. They mostly kept to themselves in their hidden compounds and villages, tucked away across the world, but if you knew the right person hiring their services wasn't especially complicated. It wasn't uncommon for the more skilled among them to become Hunters either, thanks to the obvious benefits of working with the Association.

Why this team of shinobi hadn't done just that was a mild curiosity to Morel, but one that was buried under everything else that was so peculiar about them.

Morel considered himself a clever man. He was sure that if that were not the case, he wouldn't be alive to believe it. Nevertheless, without enough information drawing together everything he knew about the shinobi to produce anything more than more questions was proving a challenge.

They were obviously used to working together: the way they coordinated in battle, knew the limits of each other's abilities, and acted in moments of quiet made that obvious. Morel pegged them all at somewhere in their mid thirties, around the same age as himself. He wouldn't have been at all surprised to learn that they'd been operating as a team from a very young age. Shinobi weren't known for that sort of cooperation. As far as Morel knew, they were rather solitary creatures.

Of course, shinobi also operated under as much secrecy as they could manage, so perhaps teams like this were simply a well-kept secret. The shinobi acted earnest, but Morel was no fool. It would be trivial for them to hide whatever they wished while still appearing honest. He and his fellow Hunters had been doing the same thing, after all.

The peculiarity of their well-rehearsed teamwork paled next to their Nen, however.

Morel had done his best to pin down each member of the group's natural ability based on what he had observed in combat; he'd been physically present for two skirmishes, and seen many more from a distance while using Deep Purple to ambush Ant patrols.

Kiba was an Enhancer, that much was plainly obvious. His sense of smell was stupendous, almost unbelievable, but after considering it for some time Morel had dismissed the notion it was some form of augmentation, or a Hatsu of its own. The dog-like man simply had an incredible sense of smell. Morel was sure his own ability to hold his breath for upwards of an hour would be similarly incredible to Kiba; when Nen entered the equation, the limits of ordinary humanity fell beneath consideration.

It was Shino Aburame and Hinata Hyuuga whose Nen was particularly pernicious.

Shino was an aberration. A cool man with hidden eyes, Morel consistently found him the most difficult to read of the shinobi. His abilities were equally difficult to understand. The man produced insects from within his clothes, vast swarms of small black bugs of various shapes and sizes, and assaulted the enemy with them.

Any Ants unfortunate enough to be overwhelmed by the attack quickly died without a mark. It was obvious the insects either injected some sort of poison, or drained aura from their targets directly. The latter possibility was frightening, but it explained how quickly Ants expired, and how their rudimentary Ren provided very little protection against the insect swarms.

Morel couldn't ascertain if the insects were a creepy manifestation of Shino's Nen or independent creatures. The first would probably mark the man with an Emission or Transmutation specialty. The latter would be impressive but simple manipulation. If it was Manipulation, Shin no doubt had been breeding the insects for many years; he would have had to be incredibly familiar and connected with them to control them as he did.

"Morel?"

His pondering was interrupted by Knov's head emerging from the side of the tree next to him. Morel glanced over, shifting his pipe around his mouth to make room for his tongue. He cracked a grin at the other Hunter's head sticking out of the tree's trunk. "Yo."

"Hello." Knov hopped out of his portal, settling in the tree next to Morel. "Doing well?"

It was obvious the man was asking about Morel's stamina. Keeping Deep Purple running throughout the forest as he had been for the last week could be tiring. He shrugged. "Just fine. A little thirsty."

"Hmm." Knov looked out at the forest. Somewhere out there, Ants were dying. Knov was probably more aware of exactly how than Morel, thanks to the utility of his Nen.

"Yourself?" Morel didn't know Knov that well: they moved in different circles. The man's incredible Hatsu made him of versatile use to the Association, which had him shuffled from assignment to assignment, while Morel was more used to working on his own. But regardless of their familiarity with one another, the other Hunter was polite and efficient, two traits that Morel respected.

"Fine," the man said, crossing his arms. "I haven't been on an assignment like this in a long time."

"Oh?" Morel rolled his neck, working out a kink, and chewed on his pipe. "You've done something like this before?"

Knov nodded. In their week and some of working together, they hadn't grown much closer, but Morel trusted the man more than ever. He was a welcome cool contrast to the Chairman's unreadable self, or his own students' peculiar mix of hot-bloodedness and timidity. "Not on this scale. I hope not to again." He frowned. "It's unsightly."

Morel grunted. He couldn't disagree. They weren't exactly engaged in clean work here. The Ants tended to bleed an impressive amount. Knov continued.

"But we're making good progress, especially thanks to the Chairman."

Morel leaned back with a chuckle. "He's certainly an efficient old man."

'Efficient' didn't cover the half of it. Knov was correct to say they'd been making good progress on the Chimera Ants. Morel estimated that over the last week the Extermination Team and their peculiar shinobi companions had been responsible for over seven-hundred slain Ants. He was positive that Isaac Netero could claim credit for more than half of them.

Morel, Knov, the shinobi: they rested, careful to only attack from an advantageous position, knowing it would only take one injury to greatly slow their deadly work. They set up cautious ambushes. Morel had only personally killed about two dozen Ants, when Deep Purple had failed to draw them into Knov's Hatsu.

The Chairman did none of that. Knov dropped enemies into the dimensional apartment Netero had been calling his home for the last week, and eventually body parts came back out. The old man had only slept once or twice by Morel's reckoning, and grudgingly at that. He was like a wheat thresher that used the Ant's blue blood as fuel. Morel was glad he was working with the man, but the Chairman's enthusiasm and ability was still outright frightening.

"And Hinata, of course," Knov amended, and Morel nodded in agreement. The woman's eyes were indispensable. Without the real-time updates she could provide, tracking the Ants around the nest would have been much more challenging; the certainty she'd provided had let the Hunters grow bolder in their ambushes.

"I was just thinking about her," he said quietly. He breathed out another puff of smoke, which resolved itself into two hawks that winged off into the forest. "Wondering about those eyes of hers."

"They're quite impressive," Knov acknowledged, and Morel's grip tightened on his pipe.

"They're more than that," he said. "Her companions make sense to me. Kiba is an Enhancer; Shino is either a Manipulator or an Emitter, I'm sure."

"I'm certain the insects are real," Knov said. "My guess would be a Manipulator as well. But that Byakugan…"

"Right," Morel said. "It's insane. She has to be some kind of Specialist. Not to mention the way she fights, with those spikes of Nen…"

"It's unusual, but nothing compared to her sight," Knov agreed. He glanced down at Morel. "What? It has you worried?"

Morel propped his other hand on his chin. "For a Hatsu that powerful, there must be an equally fierce Covenant to accompany it," he said. "That's all. I wonder what Hinata Hyuuga sacrificed to gain eyes like those."

"She may not have, if she is indeed a Specialist," Knov said, frowning. "It's uncommon, but not impossible that something like that arose out of necessity. Or engineering."

Morel snorted. "I was already wasting time speculating," he said. "There's no need to join in."

"It's amusing," Knov said, quirking an eyebrow. "They're curious people, and their abilities all the more so. I saw one of them turn into a bush yesterday."

That got a cough out of Morel. Smoke leaked from his nose. "A bush?"

"Shino," Knov said. "He disguised himself as a bush in an instant to get the drop on an Ant."

"Huh. That's a neat trick." Morel considered. "Perhaps his insects? If they are being manipulated, he could change their color to help with camouflage." Some of the smoke slowly issuing from his mouth gradually turned green, and Knov nodded.

"Possibly. At any rate, I'm inclined to think they are gifted amateurs; that would explain some of the roughness in their technique. I haven't seen any use of Ko or Gyo out of them."

Morel frowned. "But their In and Zetsu is incredible. Appropriate for shinobi, I guess. Maybe they just had an uneven education."

Knov shrugged. "Or their village doesn't pass on more advanced techniques till later?"

"They're in their thirties," Morel grinned. "You'd think by then they'd be trusted."

"Hm." Knov fell silent, and Morel along with him.

A little more than two minutes passed, and both Hunters occupied it listening to the sounds of the forest. Their senses strained. The most surreal thing about working with the shinobi was the complete lack of sound they produced on the move. If Morel put effort into listening to them ambush groups of Ants, there was rarely any sort of scuffle of combat: just the gradual cessation of sound. It was a little chilling, like the work of some deep-ocean predator that relied on stillness to catch its prey.

His phone rang, abruptly disturbing the calm. Morel huffed and picked up the call, shifting his pipe. He didn't bother to say hello. There was only one person who would be calling.

"This room is full again," Netero said, his aged voice warped by the slightly foggy connection that was inevitable from a call being received from another dimension. The Chairman sounded satisfied. "Knov will have to clean it out again." He chuckled. "I apologize for the mess."

Morel shook his head. The old man really was terrifying. He glanced at Knov, shaking the phone a little, and the smaller man's eyes widened in surprise, before he nodded and vanished into the same portal he'd emerged from. A moment later Netero slipped out of it, coming to rest on the tree next to Morel. He was sitting with his legs folded under him, his eyes closed.

The Chairman was slick with blood, some of it fresh but most of it old and crusted. It was in his beard and hair, even his eyebrows, clumped in small beads of dry blue, like dull sapphires. His clothes were rigid with it. The man clearly didn't care. If anything, he looked happier than Morel had ever seen him. There was a quiet contentment radiating off the man, matching the background noise of the forest. Despite the clear signs of violence drenching him, Netero was at peace.

The contrast made Morel grin in amusement, and the Chairman cracked one eye open, regarding him suspiciously.

"Something funny?" he asked, and Morel shrugged.

"Nothing," he said. "Finally loosened up, I hope?"

"Hmm." Netero rotated his right arm nearly three-hundred and sixty degrees, eliciting a series of pops. "There's a lot of rust on these bones. I had slacked off." He did the same to his hand. "And even now, I'll admit, I'm a little disappointed in these Ants. They don't put up much of a fight."

The man may have been terrifying, but he was also ridiculous, Morel mused. The Ants not putting up a struggle was a hell of a thing to complain about.

"What were you and Knov discussing?" Netero asked. "I interrupted something."

'How could he have known that?'

The Chairman definitely wouldn't give away his secret, Morel knew. The man delighted in intentional obfuscation. Maybe it had been something in Morel's voice, the cadence of his breath. Whatever it was, Netero had picked out that he'd called in the middle of another conversation.

"Our new friends, of course." Netero scratched his chin. "There's not much else to talk about out here."

"True," the Chairman considered, wrinkling his nose. "I don't suppose you've found out anything else."

"No," Morel admitted. He didn't like having to. The Hunters weren't going out of their way to find out everything about their erstwhile comrades, but their ignorance rankled all the same. "I was just considering what kind of Contract Hinata must have made for those eyes of hers."

The Chairman. "I doubt it's anything so crass as you're imagining," he croaked, and Morel snorted. "But…"

For the first time ever, at least so far as Morel knew, the Chairman hesitated.

"You are right to be concerned," he eventually said, the words obviously carefully selected.

Morel set his pipe down. "You know something we don't." It wasn't a question.

"I know nothing," Netero said, and the frank admission startled Morel. "I suspect many things. Some of them I could try to prove. The truth behind those shinobi is one of them."

"Knov is happy to work with them so long as they focus on the Ants," Morel said. It almost felt like tattling, childish as the notion was, but the Chairman was in many ways an enigma and hiding anything from him would be foolish. "I am as well; they're useful." He paused, considering what was really driving him to speak. "And good company besides."

Netero stroked his beard, giving no clue to his thoughts. He watched the forest without concern, like a bird watcher patiently waiting for his quarry to emerge from its nest.

"A place without victory." The Chairman spoke so softly, practically to himself, that Morel had to bend in to hear. He gave the older man an inquisitive look, for the phrase wasn't familiar to him. Netero suddenly looked up to him, locking gazes, and Morel had to fight the urge to draw his head back. Netero's beady brown eyes were horribly sharp, lacerating rocks hidden beneath calm water.

"It bleeds off of them," he said, each word quiet but articulated. "You two may not be able to tell, but I can. They're from somewhere else." He stood up, brushing blood off his palms and knees. The effort was futile: it just spread the thick blue liquid further. "Ultimately, they may spell more trouble than the Ants, no matter how innocent they appear."

'Be on your guard,' went unspoken, but it was still clearly heard. Morel found himself even more unsettled by the caginess of the Chairman.

"Chairman…" Morel said. "You can't expect to say something like that and not expect me to be curious."

"Oh, are you?" Netero asked, sounding deeply concerned. He stuck his tongue out, revealing that even it was marked by several minute splatters of blue blood. "Too bad! I can hardly go airing my suspicions before I'm sure of them. That would just be irresponsible!"

Morel found himself grinding his teeth. The man was terrifying, ridiculous, and above all, infuriating. And it couldn't be more obvious it was all intentional.

"Don't look so concerned," Netero laughed. "They're not going to stab us in the back. Well, unless I've completely misread them." He grinned. Morel felt his stomach twist a little. There was even blood on the man's teeth. "I'm just warning you. They're more than they appear."

"And what does that mean for us?" Morel asked, and Netero shrugged.

"They will help us until this business is ended. We can worry about them then."

The thought was pragmatic, and it matched Morel's, to the man's satisfaction. He grunted his assent, and the Chairman fell back into silence. With no one to talk to, Morel did the same.

With nothing to do but think, his mind turned over what Netero had said. It was all contentless content; without meaning without a particular context that Morel obviously wasn't privy to. Whatever the "place without victory" Netero had mentioned was key to it. It was an odd phrase.

Morel's considerations wandered back towards the oddity that was the Byakugan.

If the Chairman knew something he didn't, something that put him on guard, it was fully possible the eyes operated off some principle of Nen that Morel wasn't familiar with. The idea was even more frightening than the notion of a Covenant meaningful enough to grant the eyes' powers.

It was possible, Morel realized, that instead of Hinata making an unthinkable sacrifice for her eyes, she was fundamentally different from people in a way that rendered such a sacrifice unneeded in the first place. That her teammates were the same way.

If they came from somewhere else where everyone was like that, it could certainly be a "place without victory."

It was all wild guessing. Mostly baseless, too. While it amused Morel to go over suppositions like that, he was also aware it was mostly pointless. He wouldn't find his way to the root of the mystery without more to go on.

He wasn't that clever.

###

For the first week of Pitou's existence, Pitou had found peculiar things difficult.

Important things came easily to Pitou. Walking, learning, fighting. They were so simple for Pitou, and difficult for the Ants bumbling about the nest, that occasionally Pitou had to be reminded that the other creatures were in fact real. That Pitou wasn't the only real thing among them, a consciousness afloat in a world of stumbling, inefficient automata. The principles of Nen had bubbled up into Pitou's mind and Pitou had seized them with all the difficulty of a newborn taking their first breath. The human Pitou had killed soon after Pitou's birth, the man with long white hair…

That man had been Pitou's first clue that there was more to the world than Pitou and the King Pitou was sworn, down to the substratum of Pitou's DNA, to defend. That there were other creatures out there like Pitou, other beings that could think and comprehend the world and were more than boring, helpless children.

The revelation had set Pitou free. The revelation had given Pitou the first sense of explicable, comprehendible joy. Pitou had been so thankful to the man, so caught up in the sensation that had given Pitou a purpose beyond the one bound in Pitou's genes, that the man had been given the gift of new life with the same Nen that had so enthralled Pitou in the first place.

It was only now, a week after Pitou's birth, that Pitou had begun to consider the other troublesome implications of the revelation that had blinded Pitou with its joy.

Shaiapouf had been the first intrusion upon the comfortable world Pitou had constructed, the world that Pitou understood and stood atop, quietly content. Pitou's fellow Royal Guard had been born two days after Pitou, and while the other Guard's presence was a welcome one, for it made the security of the King that much less fragile, Pouf had unnerved Pitou in a way Pitou hadn't expected. Here was a creature nearly as intelligent as Pitou, nearly as strong as Pitou, able to breach the sanctity of Pitou's mind without effort, to read Pitou's thoughts, which until now had been inviolable within Pitou's own heart. Shaiapouf was an ally, perhaps even a sibling by some metric, but Pitou did not feel any affection towards the Guard; certainly not the way Pitou did towards the King.

That was proper, of course. Pitou could not feel the same emotions towards anyone as Pitou did about the King. If Pitou did Pitou would be a failure, an aberration of a Guard. If Pitou ever felt that were the case, Pitou would be recycled without hesitation.

But that was beside the point. Pouf's existence expanded Pitou's mind, and made Pitou consider the role of the Guard, the existence of the King, and the implications of other creatures like Pouf. There was another Royal Guard yet to be born, Menthuthuyoupi. With Pouf's precedence, that was fine. It made sense. It was others that were potentially problematic.

Others like the humans prowling through the lands around the nest, slaughtering Ants that wandered into their traps. At first, Pitou had put the casualties down to the characteristic ineptitude of the Ants. They were bumbling creatures at best. But as reports had filtered back to the nest and the scale of the problem had become apparent, Pitou had been forced to acknowledge the problem. Human resistance had been omnipresent throughout the Ants hunting of them. It was obvious the frail things didn't want to die, which was almost amusing considering how incapable they were of defending themselves. Less than fifty Ants had died since the Queen had birthed Colt, the first Squadron Leader, and before Pitou's birth. But in the week and three days since Pitou had begun existing, seven hundred and sixty-eight Chimera Ants had died.

"They're nearly worthless anyway." Pitou twitched, one ear tweaking at the sound. Pitou had known Pouf had been approaching from behind. The other Guard hadn't tried to mask their approach. But the sudden interruption was still irritating. Pitou wished that Pitou's thoughts were as impenetrable as they had been for the first two days of existence. "The Queen has more than enough food at the moment. It is of no concern to us if her other children suffer."

"Mmm." Pitou tried to explain the feeling, the one in Pitou's legs and arm joints, the feeling of unease. "You are right, and you are wrong." Pitou turned to look back at Pouf, who stood imperiously, butterfly wings folded. The taller guard's face was unconcerned. Pouf could not be arrogant because nothing was beyond it, and yet Pitou felt the expression inched close to the edge of the failure that was overestimation.

"Individually, the other Ants are not much, but they are as far above normal humans as we are above them." The words made sense. Pitou had just never bothered to say them out loud. "Whoever is killing so many of them is no doubt a threat to the Queen."

"If they come here we will just crush them."

Pitou's tail wagged back and forth, feeling the cool night air. It was a pleasant sensation. "You are right once more, but they will not." Pitou's nose scrunched up. "They are clever. They have stayed beyond the reach of my En. I am sure they can see it, and they are careful not to breach it. They must know what happened to their friend." The notion was becoming more and more entrenched in Pitou's mind, taking place alongside all the other certainties. "Whoever is out there killing soldiers is clever, and a threat. Not just to the Queen, but the King as well."

"We can't go hunting them." Pouf frowned. "We can't leave the King undefended. That would be foolish." The Guard sneered. "He is all seeing. He would know we had slacked in our defense of him. I couldn't stand that."

"All seeing?" Something about the term pricked at Pitou. She glanced back out at the forest. "What do you mean?"

"Pardon?" Pouf followed Pitou's line of sight. "The King. He has been watching, always. Since we were born. You've felt it, of course.

Pitou enjoyed the deeply unpleasant feeling running down from the tip of Pitou's ears to the end of Pitou's tail. Something between a shiver and an internal, boiling heat. It was like unease, but deeper and less kind. Maybe this was fear, or at least dismay? Pitou memorized the sensation.

"That is not the King." Pitou tried to speak kindly, but the words were inherently cruel. Shaiapouf took a step back in clumsy shock, wings unfurling.

"That's impossible. Then…"

"Someone else has been watching us." Pitou's eyes narrowed. Saying it out loud made the notion more onerous. "They began early on the day you were born, and they have only ceased their observation for several hours at a time since."

Shaiapouf was an elegant looking creature. Pitou did not have much experience in judging 'elegance,' but Pitou felt sure that Pouf had been designed to inspire awe and loyalty, a surety born from the same place her fealty to the King grew from. They were a symmetrical creature that appeared fragile but was as unyielding as stone and outsped the wind. That was it, that was the 'elegance' Pitou saw. The juxtaposition of fragility and undeniable power. But in the moment where Pouf underwent a revelation that Pitou knew was just as transformative as Pitou's understanding of existence and consciousness after the battle with the white-haired man, that elegance vanished.

Pouf was transformed into an unsightly thing, bristling and enraged. The Guard panted, overwhelmed by what Pitou had revealed.

Pitou understood, but could not sympathize. Pitou's revelation had been joy. Pouf's was terror; Pitou's world had been expanded, while Pouf's had been grotesquely upended.

"I will kill it." It was a snarl, a promise, and a declaration of despair all in one. Pitou was impressed by the eloquence of the proclamation. "I will track down whatever is watching us, watching the King, and I will kill it."

"You may." Pitou liked the idea. It was satisfying. "But we have to be careful about it. There's no question."

"How?" Pouf was nearly plaintive. The weakness was unattractive. "How do we hunt something that is always watching us?"

Pitou shrugged, answering honestly. "I do not know yet. But we must. That's all there is to it."

"We'll have to hide from it." Pouf considered. Calmed. The elegance returned. The Guard shifted, arms crossing. "The… Watcher." The word was peculiar and had too much significance assigned to it and yet, Pitou acknowledged, somehow ideal. In Pitou's mind, the King and the Watcher began to take on diametric positions. It was not an entirely conscious decision, but Pitou did not fight it."That's obvious."

"We cannot hide. You know that." Pitou watched the night-laden forest.

"No…" Pouf mused. "They avoid your En. They understand their frailty. We can use that."

"A trap?" Pitou giggled, and the innocent sound was born from gratitude. Gratitude and a sensation that Pitou was slowly beginning to recognize. It was something beyond anger, mixed with disgust. Rage, maybe? Pitou was resigned to perhaps never fully understanding the feeling. "That would be dangerous. It would be the first time I acted as prey."

"It would be unsightly." Pouf smiled.

"I do not mind." Pitou returned the look. Shaiapouf was a worthy Guard after all. "In the service of the King, there is no indignity we would not suffer."

###

AN: Too much tell, not enough show, but I figured I might as well upload even if I'm not 100% happy with the result. Apologies for the delay, especially given my previous update speed. Hopefully I'll get it back sooner or later. Hope you enjoyed it.

 

[ToothMaker]

Liked, but I agree it's a bit rough.

I'm not as concerned about the Tell/Show thing - the Hunters wondering about the Ninja's abilities is something that would happen - but I suspect it would come across better as Morel and Knov briefing the Chairman or other Hunters about Hinata, Kiba, and Shino rather than mostly being an internal monologue.

 

[Ser_Serendipity]

Myrmidon Chapter 7

Exhaustion​

Hinata hadn't realized she'd begun taking the shadow of Nen that surrounded the nest for granted until it vanished. When it did, it was like a breath of fresh air, or the sun coming out from behind choking clouds for the first time in weeks. Stuck in its jagged chill, the Hyuuga had adapted to the omnipresent malice that guarded the nest with the tireless determination of a seaside cliff.

The relief couldn't be honestly enjoyed, though. The absence of the Nen shadow, the barbed Enof the cat-like Royal Guard that brimmed with inhuman power, was almost as unsettling as its presence had been in the first place.

"I don't understand," Knov said. It had been eighteen days since the shinobi and Hunters had entered the NGL, and three since they'd all met as a single group. Since they'd arrived, the En had been on constant overwatch, the Ant's unknowing equal to the Byakugan. Today, in response to its disappearance, they had all come together again once more, on a cliff edge covered in wet grass and speckled with small stones: perfect seats. "There's no reason for them to stop using it."

"It's a trap," Morel said, and Netero pursed his lips, nodding. The man had some blue blood in his hair, a virulent streak that made him look a little wild for his age. "There's no doubt. That thing's dropped its En to draw us in."

"We thought so as well," Shino said. He was perched on a nearby rock, his legs crossed under him, his eyes, as ever, obscured by his visor. Hinata was glad to see the way Morel glanced at him; it wasn't a dismissive or doubting look, but rather one of pure inquiry. Her solemn teammate had built a quiet rapport with the large man. Two and a half weeks of cooperation and knocked down many of the wary barriers both teams had erected.

Hinata didn't feel the same connection, though. Perhaps it was because she spent so much time watching them all. Perhaps because she was the only woman. Whatever the reason, it didn't overly bother her; she was happy to work with the Hunters, regardless of how close she was to them.

"What changed your mind?" Morel asked, and Hinata took her cue.

"The Guard is gone," she said. Morel huffed and leaned in his pipe, but next to him, Knov blinked in shock. The slender man was leaning against a nearby tree, its bark dry with spots of rot.

"Gone?" he asked, and Hinata nodded.

"Gone. Since the En vanished last night, I've been scanning the whole nest," she said. She tried not to let her face twist in disgust and failed. "There's no sign of it. I've checked the forest as well."

"And no luck?" Netero asked.

"Nothing," Hinata said. "I have no idea what happened to that Ant. Its Nen is gone, and it's completely vanished as well."

A couple of seconds of silence followed Hinata's words as the assembled group thought them over. All Hinata had to fill the void were her own thoughts. As they often did recently, they turned to her family.

It had been just about three weeks, almost the longest Hinata had been separated from her children. She felt homesickness underneath her aching ribs; she'd been punched in the chest by a lucky Ant the other day, and though the only damage she'd suffered was a bruise to both her solar plexus and her pride, the occasional pulse of hollow pain seemed like just as much a reminder of the absence in her heart as the actual injury.

She missed her husband's touch, the warm and guileless hugs he gave her without warning. The sounds of Boruto's voice, even though he'd gotten into the habit of whining, and his father's eyes, beaming out of a face that stubbornly refused to shed its baby fat. Himawari's delighted squeaks as she experimented with chakra, sticking toys to her fingers for moments at a time and quietly padding across the wooden floor in the front entrance, entranced by the silence.

Hinata missed her home. If her teammates felt the same way, they hadn't betrayed it. She was sure she'd always been more sensitive than them, but now, on an unexpected mission like this, it felt uncomfortably like weakness.

"If it's truly gone," Netero said, "this is an unprecedented opportunity. We would be fools to pass it up."

"But the Guard would know that," Morel said. He wasn't willing to let go of the issue; Hinata respected his caution. "And there's no way it would abandon the Queen."

"And yet, it's gone," Kiba said, picking at one of his nails. "Hinata doesn't make mistakes." He snickered. "Maybe some of the other Ants ate it? They're running pretty low on food."

He was right; their marauding efforts had seriously reduced both the numbers of Ants in the hive and the creatures stockpile of meat. With less Ants came less consumption, but Hinata was sure the monsters were still hurting. Some of the smaller ones were becoming skinnier than usual. Slowly but surely, the shinobi and Hunters were transforming the depravity within the nest into desperation.

"There's no way their chain of command would break down that badly," Shino said. "Soldiers attacking Guards? I'd say it's almost physically impossible."

Kiba waved his hand dismissively. "Just joking, joking. No need to be too serious about it, Shino."

"One of our opponents, perhaps the most powerful of them, has vanished without a trace," Shino said. His stoic voice cut down Kiba's merry tone without mercy. "We have no idea where they are right now. Nothing within the nest could have destroyed them, in a reasonable world." He shifted. Hinata could hear a faint buzzing beneath his coat; his Kikaichu were agitated, which meant Shino was as well. "This is a very serious situation."

The man smiled at Kiba's downtrodden expression. "Nonetheless, Netero is correct. We would be fools to pass this opportunity up, because Hinata does not make mistakes. If she cannot locate the Royal Guard, it has most definitely disappeared."

"Your trust is touching," Netero said. "But we must make other considerations." He pointed a thumb at Knov, and the man started. "The Ants may have come into possession of a Hatsu much like one of our own."

"An Ant with something like Hide and Seek?" Knov sounded almost offended. "I don't find that very likely."

"Unlikely, but when it comes to these opponents, nothing is entirely impossible." The Chairman spoke with the patient clarity of an excellent teacher, but is words were laced with kindly condescension. "If that Ant is concealed within some other dimension, simply waiting to respond to any response we may make to their lapse in security..." He shrugged and smiled. "Well, that would be a messy situation, wouldn't it?"

It made sense to Hinata. Nothing had ever escaped the auger of her eyes so suddenly, and the novelty worried her. The other Hunters sometimes concealed themselves from the Ants, much the same as her teammates did, drawing their energy deep inside themselves and away from their oppositions prying senses. When they did, they flickered in Hinata's sight: she always had to put extra effort into keeping track of them. Whatever technique they used was something beyond ordinary shinobi stealth. It left them vulnerable.

But they didn't vanish, and the Ant had. It having escaped to some other place, beyond the NGL, seemed the most likely answer.

"Hinata?" Shino had been trying to get her attention, and Hinata started. She hadn't been getting enough sleep, staying up to watch the movement of the Ants. She could feel the weight below her eyes, and in the tingling in her chakra system.

"What?" she asked, shaking her head. Netero clicked his tongue.

"Have you ever encountered something like this?" he asked innocently. Every sentence the man spoke was like that: wheedling and curious, but earnestly delivered.

Tobi; Obito Uchiha. The Fourth Hokage, during the war. Her husband, once or twice, when he decided to abuse his speed. That was the only time someone had vanished from her sight like that. Hinata winced at the idea of the Ant sharing any ability with any of those options

"Several times," she said. "Due to speed, or esoteric transportation." She glanced at Knov. "Unless the Guard is more capable than we assumed, this is probably a case of the latter."

"So, let's assume the Ants have a Knov of their own," Morel said. "Ant-Knov." He frowned. "Antov?"

"Stop." Knov seemed like he was in physical pain. Kiba laughed.

"Some way of hiding beyond our senses, and in particular, Hinata's sight," Morel said with a chuckle. "What changes?"

"Nothing," Kiba declared, and Morel gave him a cockeyed look. "We just keep up what we're doing, and stay away from the nest. We've still got plenty of time before the King is born, and the Ants are hurting. We keep playing it safe, we'll starve them out."

"Hmm." Morel stroked his chin. "I assumed you would have been in favor of something more direct, Kiba."

Hinata sat back, gradually falling into a fugue. She could still see and hear everything, but her mind drifted as her eyes closed to rest.

"I've got no intention of goofing around here," Kiba said. "These things are dangerous, and my wife would kill me if I got messed up in another-" He paused, lip twitching. Shino crossed his arms, and Kiba scratched his forearm. "Country. She wouldn't stand for that. We stay back, we bleed them out. Simple as that."

"And if the Guard comes for us?" Morel asked. Shino stepped forward.

"You have a point. This could be a bluff," he said. He smiled. "Or a double bluff. The Guard drops the En, intending to lure us in. When we don't take the bait, they attack us directly. The Ants will be growing desperate; something that bold isn't out of the question anymore."

"Then maybe we bluff them ourselves," Knov offered from his crosslegged position. "Make to attack the Nest, but only to draw out the Guard. If they are waiting, they would have to take the bait." He smiled, a calculated and merciless grin. "And if they don't emerge, we simply attack the Nest without reservation."

"Putting ourselves at risk for a feint?" Netero asked. "That's unlike you, Knov."

Knov shrugged. "There's an opportunity here to deliver a decisive blow. You've said it yourself, chairman. This is an unprecedented opportunity. Even if it's a feint by the opponent, that can be turned to our advantage."

Hinata slowly blinked, feeling heavy lids drag over her eyes.

"Wouldn't have to-" she started to say, before trailing off. The Hunters looked to her.

"Something wrong?" Morel asked. Hinata shook her head, closing her eyes. She'd almost said something she probably shouldn't have.

So far, the shinobi hadn't shown the Hunters their full capabilities. Both so as to not incite suspicion, and to keep them from making any rash assumptions. Hinata had almost thoughtlessly broken that unspoken agreement with her team.

She really was tired.

She looked to Shino and Kiba; they were obviously thinking the same thing she was. Kiba shrugged. Maybe he thought the time for overt secrecy was past. Shino was clearly deep in thought. The Hunters were aware of the deliberation. Knov curiously glanced at Morel, while Netero's eyes remained locked on Hinata.

"Hmm." Shino said, standing up. "Hinata's right," he told Kiba, and the Inuzuka yawned, pulling himself to his feet alongside his teammate. "A feint would be very safe," Shino told Knov, and the man gave him a curious look.

"Attacking the nest? Safe?" It was almost a jeer, but delivered with good faith.

Morel shifted, leaning on his pipe. "You've got something up your sleeves, don't you." It wasn't a question.

"We've all been hiding things, the both of us" Shino said, and Morel chuckled. "It's only reasonable, when you meet dangerous people in a foreign land. But now, it would be irresponsible to maintain that secrecy."

Netero's eyes were flint, ready to spark. The intensity of his gaze unnerved Hinata.

"Kiba, if you would," Shino asked. Kiba obliged, languidly running through a series of handsigns.

Hinata had seen the Kage Bunshin thousands of times, but it was still remarkable to watch someone indistinguishable from a real person pop into existence with all the fanfare of a pierced balloon. With a puff of smoke, another Morel appeared beside Kiba. The clone appeared exactly the same as the original, down to the bruise on the man's left cheek. All it lacked was the enormous pipe.

Morel took a step back. "What?" There was some genuine concern in his voice.

"Don't freak," Kiba said, hands up in a placating gesture. "It's just a shadow clone." He knocked on the clone's shoulder, and the fake Morel swatted away his hand with annoyance. "Plus a little henge."

"You can make… 'clones?'" Knov asked. He stepped forward, inspecting the copy, looking back and forth between it and the real Morel.

"Indeed," the clone said, almost perfectly mimicking Morel's booming voice, and Knov flinched. The shadow clone laughed, and switched back to its natural voice: Kiba's. "Just as a good as the real thing. Just a little more fragile is all."

"Like your smoke constructs, Morel," Hinata said, words dragging over one another. "It's the same principle, a case of autonomous energy. This is just a more advanced technique."

Knov knocked on the clone's chest. "But Morel's smoke is… smoke. This is solid," he said, disturbed. "It feels like a shirt…" He poked the clone's face, and it frowned. "Like skin. How on earth…"

"They must be fragile," Morel said. "Everything has some kind of tradeoff. Can they even fight?"

Kiba and his clone shared a glance. The clone shrugged and wandered over towards a nearby tree. Kiba's gait was unsettling coming from a larger man. The tree was a heavy and healthy one, bursting with green and about as thick around as Hinata herself.

Without ceremony, the clone kicked it. Bark shattered, and the tree shuddered. The kick left a sizeable dent, and the clone walked back to Kiba, looking self-satisfied.

"I…" Knov blinked. "That's incredible."

Netero was still silent, watching. Hinata couldn't read him whatsoever.

"It's dangerous," Kiba said. "Both Hinata and I know this technique, but there's a reason we haven't used it against the Ants. Any time we make one of these clones it takes half of our… Nen, to maintain. And any more than that, the division gets more and more serious."

Knov looked slightly less awestruck, but it was Morel who spoke up. "Half, a fourth… so what, if you made four you'd be left with an eighth of your strength? That is dangerous."

"It's not that direct," Shino said. "The energy can be retrieved when the clone is destroyed." On cue, Kiba's clone disappeared in a puff of smoke. "Depending on how much was spent, most of it can be retrieved."

"With these, we could definitely fake an attack on the nest." Kiba picked up Shino's line with practiced ease. "Hinata and I make a couple each, we pretend to approach as a group, and then the Ant's jump nothing but shadows. We counterattack while they're extended…" He shrugged. "It's rough, but it could decide this thing."

"How…"

Netero finally broke his silence, and everyone turned to him. Hinata opened her eyes. The old man had his hands clasped behind his back, and his whole frame was bent slightly forward.

"Did you come into possession of a technique like that?"

Hinata couldn't read the man's body language, and his voice was calm, but she felt it in her heart that his suspicion was boiling over. Something about the shinobi had pricked at his instincts, better honed than any of theirs, and she wasn't sure how to soothe it. How much of the truth could they afford to give away? Was it even worth hiding anything at this point? She wished she had time to discuss it with her team.

"Hinata?" Shino asked, and she sighed. She was exhausted, but in a situation like this, she wasn't just a member of Team 8. She was the Hokage's wife, and that gave her some agency in a situation like this, insubstantial as it was.

"My husband taught me it," she said. Netero didn't move. It was almost like he was stiffening for a fight. "Kiba, I think learned it from his father." Her teammate nodded. "They both learned it from our village's Scroll of Seals: a list of techniques that are forbidden to learn without the approval of the Hokage."

"Hokage?" Netero tilted his head.

"Konohagakure's leader. The Fire Shadow." Hinata gathered her thoughts, her composure. She'd been sloppy these last few minutes: sloppy thinking, sloppy words, sloppy posture. She dragged herself back together into the woman she was supposed to be. "I think I understand your concern, Chairman, but please, trust me when I say this technique, and others, are not small things. We didn't conceal it out of malice. Just pragmatism."

She pursed her lips. "And the Kage Bunshin is just as dangerous as it is useful. There's no doubt of that."

"Hmm." Netero's arms slipped out from behind his back, and he paced forward.

He took a breath, and so did Hinata. The stiffness has slipped away from Netero. She no longer felt as though she had to keep her hands ready to block a potential strike. The tension was gone, replaced by… frustration. He was letting her read him.

The Association Chairman came to a stop next to Morel. Slowly, he seated himself.

"Very well then." He was resigned, but beneath that and the frustration, there was undeniable excitement. Hinata could see very well that whatever the source of his reservations, Netero had the heart of a killer; the prospect of attacking the nest sat well with him, no matter how he needled his subordinates.

He looked to both Knov and Morel. "Come on then. Let's put our heads together." Grinned. "And crush these insects."

###

"You sure we should have done that?"

"At this point, in that situation, it was the best option," Shino said. Kiba looked skeptical.

"They just suspect us more now, not less," he pointed out. "Hiding stuff like the shadow clones in the first place… I dunno."

"It doesn't make sense, from the perspective of Nen," Shino said.

"You don't know that," Kiba said. "You're just assuming it, because we haven't seen something along those lines. But maybe we were wrong. We're not the experts on this place. They are."

Hinata sat up. The meeting had been hours ago, and her teammates were still quietly bickering.

"What do you think?" Kiba asked her. The Hyuuga shrugged, feeling wet grass in her hair.

"There was no good option here," she said. "No matter what we concealed or how truthful we could be, our presence incites suspicion." Shino nodded, but Kiba looked dissatisfied. "For now, it doesn't matter. We'll finish these Ants, and worry about it the Hunters afterwards. Neither of us will stop working with the other over something like this; at this point, the situation is too dangerous."

"You sound a little cold about it," Kiba said. Hinata took a deep breath in through her nose.

"I am," she admitted after a moment. "Netero doesn't trust us, and me in particular. I'm sure you can tell. Morel and Knov are happy enough to work with us, but that man… he's worrying me."

'And I miss home.' She didn't say it loud, but her team heard her anyway.

"Well, yeah, but you said it yourself. No one here is dumb enough to stop giving their all over a little suspicion," Kiba said.

"Stop, no. But Hinata is right," Shino said. "It's troublesome. He'll be watching our back in the assault."

Kiba snorted. "Well, our 'backs.'"

"You know what I mean." Shino sighed. "Maybe we should just sort it out. Be as honest as we can."

"And what then? 'Oh, we are simply from another dimension. Worry not, we're not even using Nen, it's simply a completely different source of energy beyond your understanding,'" Kiba said, adopting a mocking tone, trying to imitate Shino's speech patterns.

"I don't sound like that."

"You get my point." Kiba shrugged. "It's not perfect. Nothing is. But for now, it works. That's what matters, right? It's how we're doing things back home." He fell back; the shinobi had retreated to talk privately several kilometers away high in the trees, and Kiba splayed himself out on the branch he'd chosen. He looked like a lazy teenager. "We take care of the Chimera, worry about the other shit after." He frowned. "After all, there's no way we can risk them reaching Gorteau."

Hinata nodded. There was nothing to say: the one nation that had contact with the Shinobi Union being overrun by Ants was an unacceptable possibility.

"Alright," Shino said. He pursed his lips. "I've been thinking."

"Oh?" Kiba popped up a little.

"We should get in contact with Mari," Shino said, and Kiba tilted his head.

"You think we need the help?" he asked. Shino frowned.

"Are you implying we don't? This is a dangerous situation," he said, ever logical. Hinata smiled. "She was a member of Kumo's Thunder Corp. If we're going to be assaulting the nest directly, bringing someone who can use…" He paused, turning to Hinata. "What did she call it?"

"Artillery Jutsu." For some reason, the thing that popped into Hinata's mind when she said that wasn't Mari's beaming face, but the Juubi's Bijuudama, huge and angry red. That would certainly have ended the situation with the Ants quickly.

"Of course. Someone who can directly support us from a distance will be invaluable." Shino grinned a little. "And she'll also be ideal for agitating the Ants."

"Hmm." Kiba scratched his nose. "I guess you're right. So which one of us runs back for her? Me or you? Hinata's eyes are too important."

"The Hunter's have cell phones," Hinata said, closing her eyes. "They might be able to get in contact with East Gorteau's government. Neither of you should leave unless it's necessary: that Royal Guard could still be setting some kind of trap, remember."

"Yeah, that's true. But then we're just back to the beginning of this," Kiba groused. "Bringing in more shinobi…"

"You know what," Hinata sighed. "If they ask, we'll be honest. But if they want to play this game of subterfuge, we'll go along, and damn their suspicions." She clenched her fist. Her hand was trembling a little. Her headache, which had plagued her since early morning, was only getting worse.

Kiba laughed. "Jeez, you need a nap. You're acting like when Boruto was just born."

Hinata almost snapped at him; all that stopped her was the sudden, embarrassing realization of her conduct. She was running on little sleep, dragging along the edge of chakra fatigue from the constant use of her eyes. It was making her unreasonable, irritable.

It really was like being a new mother. She smiled contritely, and Kiba grinned back.

"It's not a bad idea," he said. "Take a day off. For all of us, really. We draw back a little, let the Ants get comfortable. You're the worst off, but I'm sure everyone could use the rest."

"I concur," Shino said. "Get some sleep." He rose from his crouched position on his branch. "I'll speak to the Hunters and see if they can't get in contact with East Gorteau. And I'll inform them you're taking a rest period, and that we should as well."

Hinata felt an infuriating mix of gratitude and irrational irritation. Shino was being kind, not patronizing, but in her sleep deprived state, with her mind full of the Nest's atrocities, she still felt as though he was taking what should have been her responsibility.

But the irritation was irrational, and so Hinata did her best to discard it and meet her old friend's kindness with grace.

"Thank you, Shino." She took a deep breath, feeling her chest expand. Contract. Her bruise ached. "I think I'll do that."

She knew she wouldn't be able to sleep. The nest was too prevalent in her mind. But it couldn't hurt to close her eyes and lie down. Just for a little while. Close her eyes, and think of someplace better.

###

Normally, I don't bother to explain a break in updates: shit happens, and sometimes authors don't update for a while. In this case though, the break was so personally irritating that I feel compelled to talk at least briefly about why Myrmidon's stalled for nearly two months. In many ways, this chapter is still incomplete (much like the last one, lol), but I felt a serious need to move on from it: it was half complete when chapter six was published, but since then it's gone through three and a half serious revisions as my general outline of the fic changed.

And it has changed, quite a bit, hopefully for the better. Combine that with ongoing real-life commitments, and you get Myrmidon's schizophrenic update speed. I can't promise it will be steadier in the future, only that I have a better idea of where it's going.

At any rate, I hope you enjoyed the chapter. Till next time.

 

[Great Greedy Guts]

I'm very glad to see another update from you here, and will be no matter how long the next takes.

In particular, I want to thank you for the way you're handling Netero. He's probably my favourite character in the series, certainly the one I'm most fascinated by, and I feel like you do him a great deal of justice. The mixture of serious, playful, and curious... but with terrifying always lurking just under the surface. It's a rough balance to make work, and you do it well.

 

[ToothMaker]

A good chapter, and calling for reinforcements is a good idea.

 

[Ser_Serendipity]

Chapter 8

Faith and Fear​

Colt didn't have a minute tremble in his hands, a rolling in his gut, and that absence of fear was far more unnerving than its presence ever had been. The En of the Royal Guard, Neferpitou, had suffused every inch of the Nest for the last two weeks. The energy had been inescapable and momentous: to live in it was stifling. Every breath felt like a struggle, the desperate gasp of the nearly drowned.

But, as frightening as it had been, it had provided Colt and his squad a sense of security around the Nest. No foe would be able to even get near the Queen without Pitou's notice, and no foe would survive the full might of the Nest along with the Royal Guard's terrifying attention.

Now it was gone. Neferpitou had departed on a mission to hunt down the enemies that been attacking them. Colt felt a strange mixture of relief, sympathy, and fear at that. Relief, with the cessation of the En and the birth of the final Royal Guard, whose name he did not know. Sympathy for the enemies that had so cruelly hounded his fellow Chimaera, for even creatures as duplicitous and dangerous as they did not deserve whatever Neferpitou would inflict upon them.

Fear, though. Fear was omnipresent in the Nest. Though it shamed Colt to admit it, he was not the only one beset by it. The casualties inflicted by the humans outside had been worrying, far beyond what the Ants could have imagined given the pathetic resistance offered by the NGL's natives. Fear brought anger, anger brought pride, and that cocktail of damnable weakness and pathetic arrogance led to the lack of unity that now ate away at the Nest as surely as the murderous humans.

Before, the worst that happened was petty disobedience: the insubordination of selfish Ants like Rammot, or the indifference of his fellow squad leader Meloreon. Colt was no fool. He understood that sometimes the Ants under his command reported less food than they'd actually claimed, that only the unborn King could have prevented them from occasionally stealing bites of the Queen's meals but now, they were becoming more rebellious. The shortage of food for them was taking its toll, and many subordinate Ants had begun openly questioning the commands of their leaders. The only relief had ironically been the mounting casualties: less mouths to feed.

It was unthinkable, and yet, the obvious path. Colt was well aware of his own failure in the matter. If he and the other squad leaders could not direct an effective defense of the Nest, what good were they? The one time he'd laid eyes on the attackers from high in the sky he'd been chased away by a swarm of vicious insects, so thick they'd turned the sky around him black. The humiliation had been nearly as painful as the strips of carapace they'd torn from his legs and back.

Even worse, he heard rumors and whispers of leaving the Nest to hunt for themselves. Colt was disgusted at their selfishness. The Queen needed the unity of the Nest now more than ever with the King's birth being so close. They couldn't afford infighting, especially with numbers so low and enemies so close.

Problems upon problems. If Colt was a lesser being, he would have long since given up. But his Queen needed him and for her, he would do anything.

"You look troubled."

Colt opened his eyes: he'd been seated cross-legged atop a small jut of stone and bone, away from the main corridors of the Nest. A familiar face was before him. Peggy, a fellow commander, the short Ant's face level with Colt's seated form.

"Of course I am," Colt said, his tone level. "This is a troubling situation."

"No doubt of that," Peggy said. Colt wondered where the creature that had produced Peggy had come from. A penguin, he was sure. He had no idea where the word came from, but it seemed right to him. At any rate, he'd seen nothing like Peggy on any of his hunts. "Do you have a solution?"

"No." Peggy sat down. There was a book in one of his hands, clutched in the tiny articulate fingers at the end of his wings. "I retreated into the books we'd collected from the humans to try and find one, but so far, I've found nothing."

"Books?" Colt asked. "What good are books here? Our comrades are starving; leadership is crumbling." He reached out, taking the book Peggy held. The smaller commander didn't resist. "Paper won't save us here."

It was the first time Colt had used the word 'save,' and it disgusted him.

"They're more than paper," Peggy said patiently. He was thinner than usual, the puff in his chest diminished. "Humans pour all their knowledge, all their thoughts, into books. It's where they put them when they can't say them out loud, or are afraid to forget them." He shrugged, clicking his beak idly. "When beset by humans, perhaps it will be human wisdom that does us the most good."

"And? You just said you haven't found anything."

"That's true." Peggy smiled. "But it's still been helpful. I haven't found a solution, but I have found assistance." He tapped the book, which hung limply in Colt's hand. "Humans are obsessed with knowledge, and I wouldn't call this a flaw: 'Know thy enemy, know thyself.' If we're to survive, if the King is to prosper, we need to find out more about our opponents. So far, no one has been able to return complete reports on them."

"They're too dangerous to approach, and tricky even to observe," Colt pointed out. "We don't even have a positive idea of their exact numbers. The decimated squads put them somewhere between five and eight."

"Indeed. As I said, no solutions," Peggy admitted. "For now, we'll have to put all our hope in Neferpitou. I have faith she'll break this siege, and give us the opportunity we need."

Colt's eyes narrowed. "She must," he said, rising to his feet. "At this rate, those humans will kill Reina before we can mount a successful counter-offense."

"Reina?" Peggy cocked his head.

Colt looked back in confusion. "Reina?" he asked back. The word was alien to him.

"What?" Peggy blinked.

"What?" Colt asked, striding past the commander. "Forget it. I'm going to organize my squad, what's left of it. It's almost our turn to hunt." He blew out a frustrated breath. "Good luck with your books."

He left behind a confused Peggy, but carried his weakness with him.

####

Mari bit her lip, her fingers tightening around the phone. "Has the situation gotten that bad?"

"Worse," Shino said, his voice crackling over the line. The connection was terrible, and it added to Mari's anxiety. "The last of the Royal Guard has been born and we still haven't located the first one. However, the chance we have before us could very well be our only one. Tomorrow, or the day after, we can assault the nest and destroy the Queen. For that, we may need your skills."

Shino's reasoning was obvious. The jutsu the Thunder Corp had taught her would be undeniably helpful in attacking the 'nest,' laying siege at a safe distance and forcing the Ants into chaos.

However, the Kumo Shinobi couldn't help but think of the risks. Dying was a simple one, a natural and ignorable fear. The one that truly chilled her was failing her village. Her position in West Gorteau was highly important and one that she took with the utmost seriousness; as the Shinobi Union's representative, entering any local conflicts was a complicated and heretofore untested question.

"Shino, you understand that if I helped you, I'll be in a difficult position. Engaging the Ants would go against the trust of West Gorteau, and the mandate of my village," Mari replied with a careful tone. "I'm a diplomat now, not a soldier. I cannot go off into other countries and be bringing down lightning upon them. Helping you all into NGL was all I was allowed to do." She glanced to her right, where Sun Hanya stood with a dour look. He had brought the phone to her personally. The Chief Secretary looked even more like a grumpy tortoise than usual.

The voice on the other line was silence for a few seconds.

"I understand that," Shino eventually said. "That is why I'm asking you if you can help. We can figure out another plan if you choose not to, but your skills would make our attack safer. It would be much more likely to succeed with your support." He paused. "You are shinobi. I don't mean to show my age, but you cannot escape that reality. Regardless of your position, you are a soldier."

The Kumo Shinobi rolled that thought within her head. Shino was right; sitting behind a desk for most of the day didn't change the fact she was a walking artillery piece. It was more than that, too: in her short time with Team 8, she'd grown to like each member. Kiba was rough and brash but he never made her uncomfortable with his questions, Hinata was kinder than she imagined and Shino was quiet in a respectful way.

For a second, she imagined them going with a different plan, a riskier one, and the vision of its failure was as clear in her mind as the pain in her lip. The image of Team 8 falling thanks to her not being to help was terrifying; them joining the countless corpses already created by the Ants, enraging. The political repercussions were also overwhelming. Not only the death of shinobi on foreign soil in another world, but one of them being the wife of Naruto Uzumaki.

The thought made her shiver. Her time in the Thunder Corps kept her away from the battlefield and thus she rarely saw bodies, even less so with her new position. And though she was from Kumogakure, failing the Hokage who had played such a pivotal role in the Fourth War by letting his wife come to harm was a disturbing thought.

Mari found that she couldn't bear the phantom guilt.

"Alright," Mari said with a sigh. "I'll come and assist you. But!" She stamped her feet, leaning forward. "In return, I need you to promise the Hunters with you won't have big mouths."

She was sure Shino was smiling on the other end of the line. "You have my word that they won't speak."

"I'll meet you at the border tonight. Consider me a part of tomorrow's assault."

"Thank you." The call dropped, and Mari was left with a phone that suddenly seemed heavier.

"Sun," she said. "Will this be a problem?"

The man gave her a dour smile. "Not so long as you promptly return, Ms. Kansai. I understand these are extremely unusual circumstances. However…" His smile faded. "See that you do return. We've grown rather fond of you around here, after all."

Mari sighed. "I'll do my best."

###

A world of grey and blue, punctuated only by the heartbeat, the stifle of crushed grass below, the tickle of unaware insects. Slowly. Infinitely slowly. Two heartbeats a minute. Blood slow, painfully slow, a body of agony, every limb trembling with anticipation and pain. It was a lowly, crushing existence, devoted entirely to stealth and faith.

The Watcher could not see Pitou. If Pitou could smile, Pitou would have. Pitou was sure of it; the sensation of unwelcome sight had vanished, hadn't returned while Pitou was in this degrading state. The human Pitou had dissected had held knowledge of this state. Zetsu.

Another six inches. Pitou covered less than one a minute. As with everything but the King, Pitou was beyond Zetsu. This was something else, entirely too ridiculous for a human to contemplate. The cessation of self, folded into nature. The supreme engineering of the Queen, the instincts of the devoured animals she had subsumed, the unbreakable will of Pitou: they had all been folded into this desperate effort to avoid the sight of the Watcher.

Three heartbeats a minute. Pitou was getting too excited. Calm. Calm. Pitou's presence remained concealed. Pitou was nothing more than dirt, grass, trees. As unremarkable as the sky, as opaque as the sea. Ignored. Looked over. Familiar sight. Another six inches.

Pitou was nearly there. Nearly at Pitou's goal. There, all this indignity and pain would be worth it.

###

In the night, frozen in preparation and immune to the wind, cold, and darkness, Netero found sanctuary within himself.

It was usually like this before battle. Ever since he had come down off that mountain, Netero had always been most content alone. Battle engaged him, thrilled him, but it had been decades since one had challenged him. In that time, he'd come to appreciate simple things. In a time like this, burying anticipation in exchange for appreciation was always most appealing.

'What crap.'

The bitterness inside him, shaming the wind with its vitriol, pushed back against his rituals of gratitude. It pushed and pulled at his Nen as he gathered it in his core, shoving it out of his pores in flares of angry golden light. For the first time in three hours, Netero moved. It was just an errant twitch of his right index finger, but it still infuriated him.

The shinobi infuriated him. The uncertainty they carried infuriated him. Netero craved a direct confrontation, something to settle his suspicion and give him closure, but as ever the world did not obey his unconscious commands. He was not so foolish as to confront the shinobi in this situation, and they shared the same pragmatism, for whatever reason. He was sure they could have forced the issue by now, but had chosen not to.

It wasn't worth thinking about, not now. Netero reentered himself, returning to stillness. The golden emanations lessened in intensity, light glowing under his skin instead of spilling out. Preparing his Hatsu was far more important than worrying about what the future carried.

For now, he would have to find his catharsis in battle, as he always did. Perhaps one of the Royal Guard would try to kill him. That at least would be thrilling, instead of the constant doldrum inflicted upon him by the lesser Ants. And, even better, he would finally see what the shinobi were truly capable of. Tomorrow's assault would have no room for subtlety. Perhaps his suspicions would be vindicated.

He grinned, another failure, but one he didn't mind.

After all, it was fully possible that if he were wrong, they'd all end up dead.

I'm very glad to see another update from you here, and will be no matter how long the next takes.

In particular, I want to thank you for the way you're handling Netero. He's probably my favourite character in the series, certainly the one I'm most fascinated by, and I feel like you do him a great deal of justice. The mixture of serious, playful, and curious... but with terrifying always lurking just under the surface. It's a rough balance to make work, and you do it well.

Click to shrink...

Glad I'm still up to your standards, Guts. To you, and to everyone else who's reading this, a sincere thanks for the feedback and encouragement.

Now let's see if I can hit three-in-one.

 

[Ser_Serendipity]

Chapter 9

Royal Fury: Part 1​

Hinata wrinkled her nose: partly in amusement, partly in consternation. There was a light drizzle filling the air with thin, cold water. Nothing heavy, but it was the first rain she had seen since arriving in the NGL. Like most of the country, it was beautiful and deceptive. The clouds above spoke of thunder and a downpour, but what actually came down was closer to mist than rain. She ran her fingers through her hair. Damp, but only barely. Her thumb came to rest on the headset secured behind her ear.

A gift from Mari, brought by Shino's request. The girl from the Thunder Corp had carried eight radio headsets over the border, in defiance of the country's laws. One for everyone who had been hunting Ants, and one spare, just in case. For the assault on the nest, fast and reliable communication would be indispensable, and the radios were the perfect tool for that.

The Hunters had been quiet about Mari's arrival: to Hinata's surprise, they hadn't asked much about her or where she'd come from. Perhaps they just weren't in the mood to question more help. At any rate, it had been a welcome sign of trust.

She ran her finger over the frequency knob, ensuring she was on the right channel, took a deep breath, and then pressed down on the receiver. It was time.

"Everyone," she said. She could see them all perk up. Knov put a hand over his ear, isolating the sound of her voice. "You're all in position. Still no sign of the missing Guard."

"Is that a go?" Kiba asked playfully. Hinata rolled her eyes. Her teammate was smirking at her from more than four kilometers away.

"I'm not in charge here," she said. Coughed. "But yes, that's a 'go.'"

The Hunters and shinobi were widely arrayed in preparation for the assault. Hinata was the farthest from the action, a safe six thousand meters from the nest, atop a short hill festooned with thin trees and thorn-studded shrubs. Shino and Kiba were holding position four kilometers in front of her, in relative spitting position of the nest. They were accompanied by nine Kage Bunshin, four of which were Hinata's, and ten of Morel's smoke constructs. On their own, they represented a formidable assault force, but their true strength was speed and shock. The clones were insubstantial muscle.

However, with support from Morel and Knov, they were more of a threat. The two Hunters had taken up opposing positions around the nest, forming a rough triangle with the main assault team. Knov had placed an alarming amount of Hide and Seek portals around the forest, doubling as both traps for attacking Ants and a mobility option for the assault team and Morel. His and Morel's job was simple: distract and waylay any counterattack the Ants mounted. There were still far too many of them to fight directly, with over five-hundred inside the nest and at least another three hundred out foraging, but between Hide and Seek and Deep Purple, keeping even that number tied up wasn't impossible.

The real strength of the initial attack waited on the opposite end of the nest from Hinata, almost exactly the same distance as she was from it, for that matter. Mari Kansai and Isaac Netero sat next to each other, both cross-legged, both with their eyes closed. Hinata had been extremely surprised that Netero hadn't joined the assault team, but after he'd explained the reason for his positioning, she'd come to understand the man a little better.

His 'Hatsu' would let him strike at the nest from a distance, and it was inevitable that the Ant's anger would be primarily directed towards Mari due to her artillery assault. Thus, staying in a position where he could meet the majority of enemies head on, in defense of their long range attacker, was the ideal position for the Chairman.

At least, that was how he'd explained it. Hinata had a suspicion he just wanted an excuse to kill as many Ants as possible, both in the initial strike and the inevitable counterattack. She had no idea what his 'Hatsu' actually was, and she got the impression her ignorance was shared by his fellow Hunters. She was almost looking forward to finding out.

"Mari, you're up," Kiba said, and the woman nodded, bringing her hands together in something resembling prayer and closing her eyes. Hinata watched the flow of chakra beneath her skin with interest. She'd never seen Artillery Jutsu before. It was gathering in her core, rushing up from there into her chest and arms. The concentration of energy was impressive and volatile.

Beside her, Netero did the same thing, his aura suddenly pulsing. His hands flowed together, and Hinata blinked. While Mari's movement had been utilitarian and practiced, Netero's had been completely inhuman. It took her a moment to understand why: she hadn't even seen his hands come together. They'd been at his sides, and then suddenly clasped in front of him. The motion had been so fluid and so fast that even with the Byakugan, her mind had needed to provide an illusion of movement to fill in the gap in her perception.

Hinata felt a chill run down her spine, but at the same time, she couldn't hold back a small smile. It was a good thing the Chairman was on their side.

Her attention shifted back to Mari as the girl separated her hands, slowly lifting them above her head. Where Mari's hands came apart, electricity danced, slowly spreading like a bubble of lightning. As her hands came farther apart, the bubble grew, until Mari's arms were fully outstretched and a marble of solid-looking electricity hovered over her head, suspended above her hands. Rain evaporated instantly for several feet around the younger shinobi as she pushed out a deep breath, a bead of sweat rolling down her nose before it too became so much steam. Hinata was entranced by the play of chakra across the orb, the vibration deep in Mari's chest, until the girl pushed: her chakra flared, stabilized, becoming placid and tight, pulled taut without stretching. The ball of lightning soared up into the sky like a runaway balloon at high speed, suddenly coming to a stop about eight hundred meters above its creator. With the Byakugan, Hinata could see the thick thread of chakra connecting Mari to her jutsu.

Mari spoke into her headset, static crackling thickly across the connection. "Raiton: Tengoku Hogeki, ready."

"Impressive," Morel noted. Hinata saw him grin as he admired the floating lightning. "Let's get this started."

Mari carefully dropped one of her hands, keeping the other facing straight up at her jutsu. She formed it into a fist, extending it towards the nest. Beside her, Netero began glowing, a golden light emanating from beneath his skin.

Mari pointed.

The ball of energy high above her pulsed, one tiny point in the shell of chakra containing it collapsing, and a torrent of blinding energy ripped through the air with a hellish shriek accompanied by a sonic boom. The bolt of plasma slammed into the side of the nest and exploded, producing a fireball the size of a truck. The whole structure seemed to shudder, and when the smoke, mist, and fire cleared, a huge divot was revealed in its side: Mari's attack hadn't pierced its walls, but the damage was still obvious.

As Hinata watched, the Ants in the nest reacted as any insect did when someone kicked their home. There was a moment of panic and confusion, and then they began swarming, sprinting towards the exits. Hundreds of them: there were orders shouted, hateful looks cast. Out of the five-hundred and sixty-four Ants in the nest…

Hinata brought her hand up to her ear.

"That did it. There are… four hundred and seventy Ants preparing to counterattack. Both of the Royal Guard are staying where they are; as we thought, they won't leave the Queen." She paused. "Four-hundred and seventy, give or take. Some of them may be reinforcing the entrances."

The birth of the third Royal Guard had complicated their plans, but not curtailed them. With the catlike one still missing, their chances remained better than ever, even with increased numbers.

"That's all?" Knov asked dryly. "Well, no reason to worry then." He paced in his chunk of the forest, moving from tree to tree with practiced stealth. "How many are headed towards the Chairman?"

"Surely not enough," Netero said, his eyes closed. His wrinkled his lips, contorting his mustache. "Let's fix that."

The old man's aura expanded, the golden light pushing out of his body and into the world. It flexed, shimmered, and grew, exploding into being around Netero. Gradually, it took vague form; shining golden hands, dozens of them set on the end of sprawling arms with six or seven joints, a clean-shaven head with doll-like features, and ribs, forming a thin body below the head. Netero floated up, set in the middle of the golden Nen construct.

Hinata's mouth dropped a little. This must have been the Chairman's Hatsu: it reminded her eerily of the Uchiha Susano'o, only much brighter and thinner. She could see the man's essence pouring up out of him, forming a continuous loop of ethereal energy with the construct. He fed it, and it fed him.

It was more than just Nen, she realized. It was something closer to the man's life. Even his soul, perhaps. It was the ultimate expression of the old man's power, rearing up out of him to gaze upon the battlefield.

The physical manifestation of Netero's life of violence soundlessly reached out one of its many hands, both gently and fast as lightning, and plucked a nearby tree out of the ground with all the difficulty of someone pulling a hair off their clothes. With the same careful speed, it drew back, and then hurled the sizeable tree at the nest with impossible force.

Hinata couldn't help but grin at what she saw. It was entirely ridiculous, and yet undeniably incredible. The tree caught fire from the speed of the Chairman's throw, transforming it into a glowing destructive bolt. In the hands of the crystallization of Netero's martial spirit, simple tree trunks became spears from the heavens.

"Goodness," Shino unintentionally muttered over the radio as the tree slammed into the divot Mari's bombardment had created. The flaming log, much reduced from its original form but still sizeable, punched a hole through the weakened section of the nest, lodging itself in one of the structures many halls. The smoke from its flames began filling the corridor.

It had been about fourteen seconds since Mari had struck the nest: almost every one of the counter-attacking Ants were exiting it when Netero followed up. Of them, Hinata saw all but a few turn their attention towards the direction of the attack. They broke into desperate sprints in groups, some taking to the air, one or two even diving underground. As one, they converged in a great swarm on the Chairman's position.

"They're coming for you," she said, sure that everyone listening knew who she meant. "Almost all of them."

"Good." Hinata had never heard Netero sound so satisfied. "Begin the assault."

There was a flicker in the corner of Hinata's vision, and she instinctively turned her head slightly, frowning. She found herself looking at nothing, just more shrubs and grass. The Hyuuga shook her head, refocusing on the attack.

"Morel, a group of ten coming towards you, sixty feet to the south in three seconds," she directed, watching the big man amble off to ambush the unfortunate Ants. Smoke began filling the forest, obscuring everything. Hundreds of meters away, an Ant tripped and fell into another dimension, its comrade looking around in a panic. The assault team, including the clones of Hinata herself, began moving in, rapidly approaching the nearest entrance to the nest, a man-sized hole about four stories off the ground.

The forest as a whole erupted into pandemonium, suddenly filled with hundreds of Ants and dozens of humans, though the majority of the latter were illusions. Hinata muttered under her breath, a constant stream of directions and location updates. Mari and Netero continued to bombard the nest, driving more divots and logs into it until it somewhat resembled a pincushion. The Chairman steadily deforested the area around him, slowly but consistently moving forward, creating a buffer of clear space between the oncoming Ants, himself, and Mari. The first Ant to reach him, pushing far ahead of its comrades, died before it even realized what had happened: the Chairman's Hatsu squashed it with a single punch, utterly destroying its organs and sending a rogue limb or two skittering across the ground from the force of the strike.

Twenty-five seconds since Mari had bombarded the nest. The assault team had nearly reached the entrance. With Hinata's guidance and Kiba's nose, she was certain they'd be able to avoid the majority of the Ants inside and make their way to the Queen. They were committed now, but the situation seemed rather favorable. Hinata felt optimistic: this was their best chance, and they had chosen the right approach.

The assault team had its opening; the majority of the Ants had left the nest. Their feint was transforming into a fearsome attack, and with the third Royal Guard-

Right next to her.

Hinata's heart stopped. The world froze, the peculiar dilation of time accompanying chakra enhanced perception, adrenaline, and terror.

The third Royal Guard, firstborn, cat and human, tiny black shoes, glowing orange and red eyes-

Was right next to her.

Staring at her. Starting to move, even in the frozen time. It leapt at her side, ready to scythe her in half.

Hinata couldn't understand. She started to move too, no thought, just fear and confusion.

The Guard's sudden appearance was as impossible as its disappearance.

There hadn't been some sort of dimensional transfer, a flicker of speed. One moment there had been nothing, and then the Guard had been there. Even the Flying Thunder God had been more predictable. It was midway through its attack. Hinata's body went through the motions as her mind raced, but it was already obvious to her she couldn't evade it entirely. Too close, too fast.

Hinata's heart beat, once. The Guard's hand was three inches from her thigh. Its attack would take her leg off, she was sure.

It had always been there, she realized. Not always right next to her, but always in her Byakugan's sight. The Ant hadn't left the nest at all: it had merely disguised itself, impossibly concealing itself from her eye's perception. How? Hinata had no idea, could only conceive the Ant had pulled its energy so far inward that it had become a void, an eye-watering spot in a childish perception puzzle that her eyes had refused to acknowledge. It fit with what she was seeing. Had seen.

Two inches. Hinata grit her teeth. Spun.

The thing's claws sliced into her leg, instantly cutting a deep laceration in her left thigh. Chakra sprung from Hinata's pores, exploding out in a tsunami of purple energy. The Hyuuga reached down deep inside herself, feeling for the ancient, cold energy that she was so loathe to touch, no matter how useful it was.

She grasped it, feeling her hands turn to ice in a psychosomatic response, and pulled. The Kaiten was amplified, tripling in size, and the explosion of chakra threw the Ant back before it could continue its attack. Hinata was left gasping, a chunk of her leg torn away, hot blood soaking her suddenly cold skin.

She didn't have time. She was in danger. The Ant's eyes opened wide, its remorseless killing pressure boring her down. She might never see her husband or children again. The thought enraged her, replacing the cold in her bones with boiling fury.

The Ant spoke, a single word filled with as much hate as Hinata felt.

"Watcher."

"Guard!" Hinata barked back. Not at the Ant, but into her radio.

Then, with as much warning as the encounter had started, she was in a fight for her life.

###

When Kiba and Shino heard Hinata's voice over the radio, decades of familiarity let them immediately understand what she had said. The Hunters were slower, Knov most of all thanks to his focus on his Hatsu, but they all came to the same understanding as the shinobi in less than five seconds.

'Bad news.'

The missing Royal Guard had appeared, and it was attacking Hinata. The creature that both Netero and Hinata had agreed had the potential to kill the entire force opposing the Ants was facing the Hyuuga, alone. The realization stopped both Kiba and Shino cold as they entered the threshold of the nest, halting them at an invisible crossroad. They'd been drawn into a trap, despite their best attempts to avoid it.

'There's an Ant up there that could kill us all.'

The attack was suddenly incredibly delicate, even more so than before. The operation hinged on Hinata's sight. Netero was required to tie up the main assaulting Ants, Morel the stragglers. Knov, a safety net for the both of them. Falling back to help Hinata isn't even a question. The only uncertainty was who would go.

Fortunately, it only took a shared glance to purge that uncertainty. Kiba charged ahead, the coterie of clones following him. Shino turned.

Focused.

Ran.

The four seconds it took him to reach Hinata were some of the longest of both of their lives.

What followed took only two minutes.

 

[Linarka]

Was somewhat worried Mari would get killed right off, especially since we had some character building last chapter. Luckily Hinata has experience fighting people stronger than her so this should be an interesting fight.
Also it seems like you might be borrowing the multiple perspectives of the same time frame along with things happening very quickly subjectively but us as viewers being able to see these feats that are being performed at superhuman speeds.

 

[ToothMaker]

Also it seems like you might be borrowing the multiple perspectives of the same time frame along with things happening very quickly subjectively but us as viewers being able to see these feats that are being performed at superhuman speeds.

Click to shrink...

As I recall that was a feature of the original HxH manga. Unfortunately, it was taken to extremes during the Chimeric Ant arc with a few seconds worth of fighting taking up entire volumes as every move was analyzed like it was a chess match.

 

[Ser_Serendipity]

Also it seems like you might be borrowing the multiple perspectives of the same time frame along with things happening very quickly subjectively but us as viewers being able to see these feats that are being performed at superhuman speeds.

Click to shrink...

Indeed. Since the Palace Assault may or may not be happening in Myrmidon, I decided to do my best to pay tribute to one of my favorite arcs in any anime, hell, any medium, with as good a pale imitation as I could manage: a Nest Assault.

As I recall that was a feature of the original HxH manga. Unfortunately, it was taken to extremes during the Chimeric Ant arc with a few seconds worth of fighting taking up entire volumes as every move was analyzed like it was a chess match.

Click to shrink...

Of course, it won't be quite as slow as the Palace Assault: I may absolutely adore that narrative style, but I'm well aware it's not to everyone's taste.

 

[Ser_Serendipity]

Chapter 10

Royal Fury: Part 2​

It was the purpose of the Thunder Corp to contribute to the fight from far behind the front lines. The organization, and the jutsu associated with it, had been created with nothing but that in mind. When Mari had been receiving her training, mastering the complicated and deadly jutsu that would vaporize Cloud's enemies from a distance, her sensei, a squat dark-skinned woman with a messy scar across the length of her chin, had told her something she'd found ridiculous.

"When you're in a battle," she'd said, "you're worried about yourself, and the comrades next to you, but not much else. In the heat of the moment, all you can focus on is the situation you're presented with. You survive from fight to fight in service of a greater strategic goal." She'd frowned. "In the Thunder Corp, you won't have that luxury."

The idea had seemed silly to Mari. She'd giggled, shared an incredulous glance with one her friends. The 'luxury' of fighting for your life? It was ridiculous: just one of the things that older shinobi said that reminded Mari they came from a very different world. Hurling lightning from the backline was just as exciting as any spar, and incredibly novel. To Mari, it had been a dream assignment, at least until she'd grown discontent with the lack of action.

It was only now, besieging the nest and frying groups of closing Ants, that Mari understood what her teacher had meant.

This far back, she was completely detached from the consequences of both her actions and the enemies. She threw lightning, Ants died: there was no feedback, and ultimately, little sense of accomplishment. There were always more of the creatures, and they were threatening those she'd come to help protect. She'd heard Hinata's muffled warning over the radio, and now, trapped in her support role, she could nothing but imagine what was happening to the Hyuuga.

Despite the power of the lightning hovering above her and the clear affect it was having on the enemy, Mari Kansai felt helpless. But before her, Isaac Netero seemed unconcerned.

To Mari, the man seemed much like the old shinobi around Kumogakure, particularly the ones willing to talk about the Fourth War. Archaic and yet larger than life, old and deceptively strong. In this battle, he'd practically become the embodiment of that strength. The huge Nen construct surging up out of him that crushed the Ants that attacked him with abandon was absolutely terrifying, like something out of a legend, meant to match the Bijuu. And the Chairman of the Hunter's Association himself…

He was laughing. She could hear it despite the two hundred or so meters the man had created between them. A low, booming laugh, shaking his thin frame inside the golden construct. She couldn't dream as to why.

The Chairman had destroyed nearly one hundred Ants in the minute and a half since Mari had fired the first bombardment that had started the assault. Their numbers seemed endless despite Hinata's early assurances, and they had clearly learned from their fellow's mistakes. While the first couple dozen of the Chairman's kills had resulted from the Ants charging him in a blind bloodlust, the ones following them had been cleverer, trying to attack him from all sides and eventually learning to skirt around him, targeting Mari instead.

Her Tengoku Hogeki had destroyed the first several groups, tearing up great gashes gashes in the forest and halting their advance, but as more and more Ants had managed to slip by Netero, Mari had begun to realize that she may have no choice but to retreat. She couldn't hope to stand up to multiple Ants in close combat, and the Chairman was either unable or unwilling to fall back to cover her more comprehensively.

No, it wasn't that. The moment he fell back, more Ants would surge into the gap; if he drew closer to her now, it would only push more enemies into her. Mari realized that without speaking, the Chairman was creating an opening for her, expecting her to take it. Perhaps he hadn't realized she was less experienced than the other shinobi, or just didn't care. At any rate, the assault team was already inside the nest; it was definitely time to pack up.

The swarm of Ants were drawing closer: there were five or six in particular that would probably reach her before she could safely withdraw, including one towering creature that looked like the unfortunate melding of a man, a rabbit, and some sort of multicolored bird. It leapt across the barren earth, covered in its comrade's blood, saliva running freely from its wide, buck-toothed mouth.

Mari stood up from her cross-legged position, blood rushing back to her legs. She pulled her other arm back up over her head, focusing on the orb of chakra and lightning, and curled both hands into fists. The jutsu convulsed, widened. Static crackled in her ear: it sounded like a name. Her headset was useless while her technique was running. She hadn't expected that.

The Ant was screaming something about eating her, how delicious her bones would taste. Mari did her best to ignore the words, along with the shiver they sent up her spine. The monster was only thirty meters away when she slammed her hands down, her whole body following the motion into a crouch. Her fists blew a small crater in the dirt, the chakra surrounding them faintly glowing with blue energy.

Above her, the ball of lightning suddenly rocketed down, far faster than it had ascended. Jets of lightning skipped off of it. The Ant, just twenty feet from her, looked up, its eyes going wide, just in time to be struck by one thick beam. The electricity stopped it cold, its muscles spasming.

"Not again!" it had just enough time to scream, its body shaking uncontrollably, before the jutsu slammed directly into it with a thunderous BOOM. The explosion of energy sent out a huge wave of heat, blew a eerily spherical hole of crystallized dirt and rock in the ground, and sent Mari tumbling backwards, tossed away by the blast. She rode the shockwave and came to her feet, sprinting for the distant hills and the nearest of Knov's bizarre portals. The Ant had been completely destroyed, and its comrades following close behind it had either been partially fried or had paused in clear shock at the rabbit-like Ant's sudden and explosive death. A cloud of vaporized blood drifted across the crater before it was wiped away by the misty rain.

It gave her enough time to buy some distance, but in the end, one dead Ant wasn't going to make a huge difference. Kiba Inuzuka and Shino Aburame would decide whether the mission was a success or not; at this point, all she could do was keep herself safe.

###

The first Ant to get in Kiba's way had its head unceremoniously wrenched off. He moved on, the surviving clones falling in behind him. One of his stepped on the head in passing: it was still gnashing its teeth. They'd only been in the nest for twenty seconds, but already two of his clones and one of Hinata's had fallen. Only six left.

Kiba was in that peculiar state of mind that he figured for something like battlelust. A combination of panic, expressed through his pounding blood and jittering limbs, and razor focus, which drove him forward without uncertainty or mercy. He'd only felt it a few times before in his life, but he was glad this was one of them. He'd wanted to go back with Shino to help Hinata, but the both of them had known that would be foolishness. Abandoning the mission out of fear was silly, and between himself and Shino, he had the best chance of finding the Queen without the guidance of Hinata's eyes.

Eight Ants dead so far. It wasn't very many, but every slain monsters gave him a sense of deep satisfaction. This wasn't like fighting people. Each dead beast removed a direct threat to humanity; there was no ambiguity. And the Queen, the foul thing he could smell so clearly at the top of the nest, was the source of them all.

While Shino helped Hinata, Kiba would ensure that no other Ants would be created. It was the perfect compromise.

Well, Hinata was in danger, so not perfect, but she would be fine. He was sure of it. Hinata still had a trump card. Even if she hated it, she would have to use that terrifying lunar chakra if she were in real trouble. Kiba knew she would rather suffer it a thousand times than risk not seeing her family again.

Another ten seconds of frantic running, scrambling through the nest like the Ants occupying it. To Kiba's enhanced perception it was torturously long. Another Ant died, one of Hinata's clones driving a hand wreathed in chakra through one of its bulbous mantis eyes and splattering its skull and brains against the opposite wall. Kiba's nose led him true through the twisting passages, which relentlessly transitioned from horizontal to vertical without warning. The scents of maggot-chewed meat, old bones, pungent crossbreed Ants, thick smoke… they were all irrelevant. Kiba's senses cut through it all, focusing on the one thing that mattered.

But then, when a new smell entered the equation, Kiba was careful to take notice. This was unlike the other: sharper, more distinct, almost like that of the Queens. It smelled like lacquered leather and rotten sweets.

One of the Royal Guards, he was sure. His nose wasn't lying. There was no way to avoid it. There were only two paths up to the queen that wouldn't require backtracking through an unacceptable amount of Ants, and the Guard was standing watch over both of them.

Kiba had to acknowledge the things lived up to their titles. He made contact about three seconds later, bursting into the corridor junction, and the thing's sight.

It was certainly the most human looking of the Ants Kiba had seen. Were it not for the dark wings laying on its back like some sort of cape, its unnaturally pale and unblemished skin, or the antenna sticking out of its forehead, it would have been practically indistinguishable from a normal person. Even its clothes were ordinary enough, if frilly.

"Human," it said, its voice inexplicably cultured, the pronunciation precise. "You've made a terrible-"

"Gatsuga!"

Kiba launched into the technique without slowing down, transforming into a human bullet that roared down the corridor straight into the Ant. The Guard was fast though, maybe faster than Kiba himself. It reached out fearlessly and fastened one hand on Kiba's shoulder in the middle of the jutsu. Skin was scraped away and the Ant's wrist bent in an unsightly way, but Kiba was ground to a painful, jarring halt. The Ant punched out with its other hand, lightning fast, and struck Kiba in the face.

He howled, his nose shattering under the blow, and struck back on instinct: with his teeth. His mouth snapped shut, shearing off all of the Ant's fingers except its thumb. They tasted bizarre, and felt too light, and Kiba spat them out like bullets, trying to hurt the Ant with its own digits. But the detached fingers simply disappeared in a bizarre shimmer of golden light, melting away in microscopic particles that dusted the Ant's face.

The Guard looked enraged, but Kiba didn't give it time to attack again. He planted his feet and threw himself forward, body-slamming the thing back, and then scrambled past it, snorting blood through his shattered nose. It grabbed at his ankle, momentarily halting him, before his and Hinata's clones descended on it en-masse, slamming it to the ground with a muffled protest and tearing into it with Gentle Fist and bare claws. Kiba stumbled forward on all fours, picking up speed.

One of his clones died, suddenly transmitting information. The Guard was mostly undamaged and desperate to pursue him, but the clones were just as desperate to buy him seconds with their lives. The once normal looking Ant was steadily transforming into a deranged looking insect, lashing out without a hint of grace. Kiba didn't look back. He kept running, faster and faster. His nose had been shattered, and so his strongest sense had vanished, but the memory of the Queen's scent drove him forward with unerring accuracy. The pain did too, along with a boiling sense of indignation and rage.

His nose hurt terribly, like someone hammering a spike deep into his face.

'Fuck these things.'

The corridor stretched on forever, an infinite stretch of damp brown darkness.

'We'll kill them all.'

Was it a sunk cost thing at this point? He couldn't be sure. They'd already wasted blood and time dealing with these things. At this point, not finishing the job would be a joke.

And that all started with the Queen.

Two, three turns left? Kiba wasn't one-hundred percent sure. Just a little pain like a shattered nose fogging his memory? All this hunting, and he was still feeling a little rusty. It was more than embarrassing, it was pathetic. Right, left, up, left…

No, right. He spun on his heels, sprinting back, and made another turn, running halfway up the wall, unwilling to bleed speed.

There.

The Queen lay, fat, pulsating, defenseless. Disgusting. It, more than anything else in the nest, looked like a proper Ant, just impossibly huge and swollen. It had nothing resembling a human's expression, but Kiba could swear it almost looked afraid of him. Now he just needed to-

His radio spat static and choked words. "Knov! We need help!"

Hinata. She sounded terrified. A red fog descended on Kiba: he broke into a direct run for the Queen, unsheathing a kunai from his thigh. He'd put a single knife through the thing's face, and this whole thing would be as good as done. The Ants would destroy each other in their confusion, regardless of their intelligence. Shino had assured him of that.

His nose was useless, but there was something else keeping him safe. Kiba had no idea what it really was. Killer instinct? Canine intuition? Fate? Simple, reasonless luck? Later on, he would be sure it was the last.

Whatever it was, as he charged the Queen, he glanced left, away from the terrified creature so jealously guarding its enormous swollen stomach.

His vision was rapidly obscured by an enormous red fist.

Of course, he thought, his murderous intent grinding to a halt. His head was abruptly clear.

Of course the final guard is here, in this room. Where else would it be? What am I, retarded? I didn't see that coming?

He'd been blinded by his pain, eagerness, rage, fear, lingering rust, even after nearly a month of hunting Ants, Hinata's plight, his shattered nose, the inhumanity of the Ants, they'd all distracted him from thinking ahead, coming to the obvious conclusion that his nose had warned him about nearly a minute ago.

The third Royal Guard was standing guard over the Queen. It was a hulking red creature, a monstrous man-thing with cloven feet. Hinata had described it to him. What she hadn't told him was that it had a fist larger than him.

A fist that was about to make contact with his entire body at once.

Kiba almost laughed.

'Man,'' he thought, the black knife in his hand contrasted against the red fist. 'That's fucking dumb.'

The problem was obvious to him. Another crossroad, like the one he and Shino had faced. This time, the answer wasn't as obvious to him. He could kill the Queen now, he was sure of it. A flick of his wrist, and the kunai in his hand would be hurled through the monster's brain, killing it and the King it was gestating. Clean kill. Mission complete. Total success.

Well, mostly total, since Kiba was absolutely sure that if he took that opportunity, the fist that was so quickly and yet so slowly approaching would surely kill him in a single blow.

If he defended himself, there was a chance he'd live. If he didn't, he'd be deader than the First Hokage.

With some bemusement, Kiba found himself considering both options equally, and to his shame, he found himself reluctantly deciding on the second.

In truth, there was no time to think, only to react. Everything transpired in Kiba's head in less than a hundredth of a second.

Kiba screamed in both frustration and pain, bringing the kunai up in a half-guard position, and braced himself. The Royal Guard hit him with more force than a train: the singular blow picked Kiba up off the ground and hurled him into the walls of the nest. His body cut a faint path through the smoke that had infested every inch of the structure, and when he hit the wall, it provided little obstacle to him. The force of the Guard's punch that had broken Kiba's left arm and seven of his ribs–

pop pop pop pop POP

–shattered the wall of the Queen's chamber just as easily. Kiba found himself in the open air, hundreds of feet above the ground, hurtling earthward at an alarming speed and trailing blood and stone in his wake.

The forest spun by, a medley of green and blue and brown, and the world flashed black. Had he blinked, or was he about to pass out? Kiba wasn't sure. The agony in his arm and chest made his nose seem like a careless massage.

'Fuck,' he thought.

'FUCK.'

He needed to prepare himself for a landing. Even a shinobi could be harmed by a careless landing, and he was already in bad shape. He couldn't tell up from down. For some reason, he heard someone say "Now." Where was Akamaru? Why wasn't he here? Everything was spinning, spinning, falling-

Then, just as abruptly as it had started, the confusion stopped.

Kiba found himself suspended in the air, gently held between two enormous golden hands. He looked down, blood dribbling from his mouth and sliding off the glowing hands, and found himself looking into the grinning face of Netero. The old man had caught him with some kind of discount Susano'o. As Kiba watched in astonishment, Netero made a gesture of prayer and then a swipe with his right fist, and another of the construct's many, many hands lashed out, uppercutting an Ant that wandered too close to the Chairman. The monster's upper half was catapulted off into the horizon, while its legs collapsed, ownerless.

Kiba laughed, more blood spilling past his teeth and into the construct's hands. He looked back up, where he'd come from. Rain stung at his eyes. The Guard was there, a massive red figure, looking out of the hole in the nest.

It wouldn't pursue him. It couldn't leave the Queen's side. Kiba was forced to acknowledge, once more, that the Ants were smart.

For bugs.

His eyes slipped closed, black chasing across his sight. He lay in the land between consciousness for several seconds, struggling to stay awake, before giving in. His headset had been cracked when he'd slammed into the wall of the nest, but somehow, it was still partially transmitting. The last thing Kiba heard before he passed out was one of the Hunter's voices voice, barely discernible over the radio.

The only understandable word was 'medical.'

The fear it raised up carried him down into the darkness kicking and screaming.

###

Hmm, font seems to be fucked. Sorry about that.

 

[Milpy]

This fic is SO good. I find this last chapter writing style similar to the mangá, and it makes it really immersive for me.

 

[FixerUpper]

This is the kind of crossover I didn't know I needed until I read it. Great stuff!

When I first read the Chimera Ant arc in Hunter X Hunter I was mostly struck by how super decompressed fights are kind of ridiculous, even if some people spent a great deal of time analyzing how the ones in HxH are worlds apart from the usual shounen fare, but you've made the ones here gripping enough for me to want to reread it and see if my views have since changed.

 

[Ser_Serendipity]

Chapter 11

Royal Fury: Part 3​

In the four seconds it took Shino to reach Hinata Hyuuga, the Royal Guard attacked thirty seven times.

All of the attacks were defined by their vicious speed and singular purpose: the Ant turned itself into a living projectile, constantly leaping from the ground or nearby trees to attack from what seemed like multiple angles at once, each strike aimed for a vital organ. There was no attempt at subtly, elegance, or deception. The creature didn't try to block Hinata's counterstrikes. All that existed inside it was raw strength, speed, and hatred.

It aimed for her vital organs: her head, neck, and chest. Every attack was a potentially deadly one; the only exception were the strikes aimed for Hinata's wounded thigh, intended to capitalize on her leg's reduced mobility. Hinata didn't have the strength to directly block any of the Ant's attacks, and she didn't have the speed to entirely avoid them, so she was left with an unfavorable compromise: diverting them enough that she wouldn't take fatal damage. Her Shadow Clones helping Kiba, which left her with less chakra to work with, only worsened the situation.

The unfortunate and inevitable reality was, then, that every pass the Ant made resulted in more of Hinata's blood spilling to the ground.

The thirty-seventh attack was the most dramatic, perhaps because the Ant realized it was about to have two opponents instead of one. Flinging itself from the base of a nearby tree it had slammed into after its last leap, it soared directly at Hinata's heart, both hands clasped before it, extending its entire body into a spear.

It had taken thirty-six attacks and four seconds for Hinata to get a comprehensive enough read on her opponent's wild style, which left no room for hesitation or retreat. So despite bleeding from about thirty small wounds all over her body, she met the spear head-on. Her left foot dropped back, sliding along the ground that was slowly becoming muddier and muddier thanks to both the light rain and her own blood, and her right arm shot forward.

She tapped the Ant's hands aside, sending them to the outside of her guard, and for the first time in a fight that had been quite short but seemed like an eternity, the Royal Guard showed something like surprise. The paired hands slid by Hinata's side, opening up yet another long cut that ran the length of her forearm, skipped past her bicep, and took off a small slice of her right shoulder.

Hinata counterattacked. Her left hand came from below, a spear of its own. The Guard twisted, and instead of burying her fingers in its eyes, Hinata instead slammed her palm into its throat.

No tenketsu to seal there. Hinata focused instead on pushing the Guard back. The force of the palm strike wasn't enough on its own. She fired a Vacuum Palm from point blank range instead, the surge of chakra burning in her back and arm. The Ant was launched backwards as quickly as it had charged, slamming into and upending the tree it had fired itself from.

Shino arrived as the Guard spun back to its feet, apparently unharmed. It paused, watching the both of them. Not cautiously: an animal surveying new prey. Evaluating the situation. Hinata stumbled backwards, every inch of her body stinging and burning.

"Hinata." Shino sounded too calm for the situation. He circled, keeping both her and the Ant in sight. They formed a rough triangle. The Ant shifted, and he tensed. "Are you alright?"

"Fine," Hinata coughed. She wasn't so sure of that. She was losing more blood than she'd like. But the Ant hadn't done any critical damage. Despite the pain, she was still fully combat capable. That was something, at least. She settled into a loose Gentle Fist stance, ready for anything. The Guard continued to watch them, waiting for something. For them to drop their guard? Grow curious? Hinata didn't-

The Ant charged once more, using the tree's toppled trunk as a springboard. This time, Shino was its target, not Hinata. Its muscles tensing was all the warning it gave, but to Hinata's relief, it was just enough for her teammate. He sprung back, gaining distance as the Ant came directly for him, and Kikaichu flowed in a great wave of squirming black out of his sleeve. The Ant crashed through the insects, tumbling across the ground and scything at Shino's legs, but he leapt over the attack, barely clearing it. But in the air, he couldn't dodge the Ant's follow-up: it rolled forward, its legs coming up behind it with just as much articulation as its arms. The muscles in its thighs grotesquely swelled.

Both the Ant's feet slammed into Shino's arms, which he'd crossed to block the backwards-looking kick. The Aburame grunted and was thrown backwards: even off balance, the Ant's attack had tremendous force behind it. But before the Guard could roll to its feet, Hinata arrived at a full sprint. She dove into a slide across the muddy ground, slamming one foot into the monster's side and kicking it up into the air.

No leverage up there, Hinata thought, coming to her feet. She had a narrow window to attack where it couldn't leap away. Inside the nest, one of her clones popped, familiar memories and chakra rushing back to her.

She breathed out.

Eight Trigrams.

Her hands came up, and the Guard's vermillion eyes went wide; Hinata was sure it somehow understood what was coming. Was it reading her that well, with just her movement? Or was it some application of Nen?

Sixty-Four Palms.

Hinata launched all sixty-four attacks in less than a second. The Ant managed to block the first four, deflect the next seven, but then its arm was slammed aside, hand falling limp, and the last fifty-three strikes hit their mark. Hinata finished the technique with a pained grunt, adding an unorthodox move that her husband had inspired: she slammed her leg into the Ant's side with a classic and powerful roundhouse.

The kick should have sent the Ant skittering sideways, easily set up for a final attack.

That wasn't what happened.

Instead, to Hinata's horror, the Ant latched onto her leg, powerful thigh muscles curling around it, the pressure outright painful. Was it trying to shatter her leg? One of its hands came up, ready to remove her leg entirely, and the other lanced forward, aimed for the Hyuuga's face.

Somehow, it was still able to move after being struck by the Eight Trigrams.

Hinata's focus on the fight narrowed her vision. The world receded. Kiba sprinting through the nest, Netero destroying every Ant in range, Morel ambushes, Knov's infiltration, Mari's artillery, it all shrunk away, reality condensing down into a simple one-hundred meter circle. Shino, herself, and the Ant were all that existed.

She understood now that she wasn't trying to process everything at once. The Guard had deployed a thick screen of Nen over each of Hinata's targets. The premier technique of the Hyuuga Clan had been nullified by the equivalent of ablative armor, a shield of aura that was damaged by the Gentle Fist's hostile chakra instead of the Ant's tenketsu.

The Hunters did something like this in battle, focusing their Nen in certain places depending on whether they were attacking or defending, but this was above and beyond. The precision and strength of the aura, coupled with the speed needed to use it to counter the Eight Trigrams sixty-four unique attacks, was beyond belief. Hinata's mouth was dry.

The Royal Guard was a combat genius.

Hinata didn't have much time to worry about it. Two attacks to counter: one meant for her leg, the other her face. Her right hand lashed out, a Lion's Fist sparking into existence around it, and punched the Guard's left arm off course. Her left hand came up, trying to grab the strike meant for her face.

The Guard twisted its arm, throwing off Hinata's grip. She gasped, leaning back, and the Ant's hand rocketed past her face, chopping her bangs clean off. The claw opened, descended. She couldn't dodge from this angle. In a heartbeat, the Ant would tear her face off.

A dark blue beetle the size of a large dog landed on top of the Guard's hand, huge wings straining to lift it. The Guard was unable to complete the attack. The Ant looked at the giant insect without comprehension, emitting a soft noise just like that of a curious cat.

When five of its fellows landed on the Royal Guard's shoulders and back and began eating the aura shield reflexively raised at their presence, the Ant realized the danger. It lashed out, destroying three in a single swipe, their dark blood staining its clothes. But in its moment of distraction, Hinata pulled herself back up, both hands burning with angry purple chakra. The Lion Fist grew enormous, each emitted head the size of her torso, driven by the ancient chakra welling up inside her. She hopped, lowered the leg the Ant was still wrapped around, squeezing with increasing force, and settled into a boxer's pose.

In the nest, two of her clones died in the midst of a fight with another Royal Guard.

The Ant snarled, dismembering the last two of Shino's giant insects as more Kikaichu poured in from all sides, covering every inch of its skin. It lashed out at Hinata, and she struck back with just as much fury and force, crushing one of the Ant's hands with a Lion Fist. It fell back, some of the fingers bent in odd ways, and the Ant's defenses opened for an instant.

Hinata surged into the gap.

She threw punch after punch. Much like the Guard, she had abandoned finesse, simply trying to do as much damage as possible. The Ant did its best to block and counterattack, but Hinata's rage was overwhelming. The Lion's Fist smashed through the Guard's aura shields, both crushing and draining them of their energy. The stolen energy rushed into Hinata, cold and invigorating, and so as her efforts grew stronger, the Ant's defenses grew weaker. One of the punches finally broke through, smashing into the Ant's slender chest, and the thing wheezed, all the air driven out of its lungs.

Her last clone died, impaled from behind by a prehensile tail.

Hinata snarled, bringing one of her arms up for a hammer blow that would break the Ant's face, and it snarled back, a burst of murderous intent exploding out of it. Hinata's heart skipped a beat, and in that infinitesimal silence, the Ant's legs flexed, its monstrous muscles rippling with the effort.

Hinata's tibia fractured. She felt the bone break, a messy pop that made her sick to her stomach, and a moment later the pain surged up out of her leg, into her gut, running through her chest, and finally paused in her throat, gagging her and begging to be released. The Ant continued tightening its legs, grinding Hinata's broken bones against one another.

The pain escaped.

Hinata screamed, slamming both of her hands into the Ant's chest. The Lion Fist flared, transforming into an inhuman Vacuum Palm, a detonation of purple energy as big as a house. The Ant was blown backwards, off of Hinata's broken leg, tumbling without control along the ground. All of the Kikaichu attached to it instantly died, and the jutsu blew a ten meter wide hole in the forest, extending back beyond the range of Hinata's narrowed sight. Her leg was partially caught in the blast, but it was a small price to pay for escaping the Ant's grapple.

As Hinata stumbled backwards, hissing in agony as the pain of the dozens of small lacerations the Guard had inflicted on her faded in comparison to her shattered leg, Shino blew past her, surrounded by an impenetrable cloud of insects.

The Royal Guard had just managed to get back to its feet when Shino caught up with it. As Hinata limped forward, Shino leveled a kick at the Ant's face, thousands of his insects coming in from all sides to encase the monster. The Guard refused to retreat, trying to slice Shino's foot off with a swipe of its hand, but the Aburame was once more quick enough on his feet to dodge the attack, leaping into the air and kicking from the other side. His attack slammed into the Guard's face, sending it skipping over a small rock and off a nearby tree.

With less of her focus taken by the pain over time, Hinata realized the Ant was getting slower. Her flurry of Juken strikes hadn't seemed very damaging at first, but now it was obvious the Royal Guard had taken some serious internal damage. Its muscles were shredded; its heart labored. Even its bizarre internal biology and effective shields of Nen hadn't completely saved it from the most dangerous part of her attacks.

It was possible Shino would even be able to finish it off on its own. It couldn't move fast enough now to escape his swarms of destructive insects, and he was just as strong as her physically. Despite the Guard's incredible physical strength and ridiculous control of its Nen, the shinobi's greater experience and teamwork had carried the fight in their favor.

Shino drew back, leaving the Ant to his insects. It flailed about, killing hundreds with every motion, but the destructive creatures were seemingly limitless and hundreds more piled onto the Guard with every passing second. The Guard sprinted up the tree Shino had tossed it into, but the Kikaichu below it devoured the whole thing with impossible speed. The tree collapsed, writhing with black, and the Guard leapt to the next one, looking around; it had lost sight of Shino in the sea of insects, which had spread to cover a huge chunk of forest. The next tree it landed on was devoured just as surely as the last, and the one after that; over a dozen trees were entirely consumed by Shino's insects, the forest steadily growing more barren as the Guard ran out of places to orient itself or launch from.

The insects were weighing the thing down, along with the massive amount of energy they were draining from it. Shino advanced, with Hinata close behind. Even with her terrible limp, she had still caught up to the action. The Ant was fading. Like they had many of its peers, the Kikaichu were steadily working towards eating it alive.

Another tree fell, and the Ant tumbled to the ground, one of its legs giving out from under it. The creature was practically invisible under Shino's insects. It glanced up, noting that Hinata and Shino were close together, only twenty meters away. Its hand scrabbled in the dirt, seizing a small round stone and nearly crushing it. All that was visible under the Kikaichu were its glowing eyes.

Hinata's instincts screamed. That, along with the surge of Nen from deep within the creature, was the only warning. Beside her, Shino flinched.

A crimson ghost rose up out of the Ant's body, passing without care through the insects covering it. It loomed over the barren field, ten meters tall, strings of Nen wriggling down into the monster's limbs.

The Royal Guard leapt forward, as though it were entirely uninjured. No, Hinata realized as she instinctively jumped back, her leg protesting. It was worse than that. It was even faster than before. Shino's insects chewed at it to no avail: they were finally stripping away skin instead of Nen, but the Ant didn't slow down.

The Ant's hand came back, a perfect pitcher's pose.

The Nen construct was puppeting it. Hinata's eyes went wide. It was puppeting its own body. Too drained by the Kikaichu, its muscles shredded by the Gentle Fist, it had resorted to manipulating its own body with literal strings of Nen.

The Ant hurled the small stone it had plucked from the ground, and then tossed itself after it, its legs trailing lifelessly, one arm suspended before it. The projectile let out a sonic boom, far exceeding the speed of sound as it headed right for Hinata's face. Behind it, the Ant had transformed itself into a remorseless weapon.

She slid her leg back, preparing for a Kaiten. Chilling foreign chakra, a gift from a long dead ancestor, rushed up and inundated her entire body. She had to deflect both the stone and the Ant that followed so closely behind it. The first would merely be painful, but the second would be death.

The radio in her ear suddenly screamed, the sound almost deafening; it sounded like something being crushed. Her fractured leg buckled. Hinata wobbled, her concentration broken. More blood rushed from her many wounds; she felt lightheaded.

The stone struck her in the temple, and half the world went dark from the blow. The chakra directed to her left eye had been disrupted. She rocked backwards, losing her balance, death apparent in her peripheral vision.

'No.'

The Ant smiled, mouth full of knives, adjusting the angle of its attack.

'Please no.'

Shino came in from her blind spot.

She could see his eyes, warm and black, under the visor. He was looking at her, not their opponent.

Without hesitation, he pushed her aside.

There were times Hinata wished her eyes weren't quite so acute.

This was one of them.

The Royal Guard shredded through Shino's screen of insects without slowing down. Its first attack, which would have torn Hinata in half, cut through Shino's right knee like paper mache. As the Aburame started to fall, his dismembered foot tossed away by the force of the Ant's attack, the creature sliced upwards, aiming to take his head off.

Shino silently shifted his weight, and instead of decapitating him, the Ant's scything hand went through his right arm at the bicep, almost cleanly severing it. Only a thin string of bloody muscle and shattered bone kept it connected to Shino's body.

Until the Ant, not quite finished, grabbed the mostly severed arm and yanked it away, snapping the connecting muscle and bone with its impossible strength.

Hinata started screaming, Shino's blood landing on her cheek, hot and thick. Her teammate, however, was silent. He fell back, his eyes closing behind his visor, and thousands upon thousands of insects poured out of his dismembered limbs. They swarmed across the Royal Guard, which backed away in apparent surprise, their assault even fiercer than it had been before. They even began to devour the Nen construct animating the Ant itself, chewing on the strings linking it to the Guard.

The Guard opened its mouth to say something, and Shino's insects poured down its throat, crawled up its nose, bit at its eyes. It was encased in writhing black creatures, a ball of suicidal fury three times its size expanding around it, intent on eating it alive.

Shino's shorn limbs weren't even bleeding anymore: they'd been completely stuffed with his insects, their massed bodies forming impromptu tourniquets.

The Guard flailed in a panic, its composure lost, nearly blinded. It had dismembered one of its opponents, and that had only made it take more damage. Hinata saw it come to the conclusion as surely as she did Shino hitting the ground, landing on his back, his face contorted in agony. She shouted and rushed the Ant, desperate to keep it off her teammate, and almost tripped over her own broken leg. It still held Shino's arm; its Nen construct was fading, seeming more and more like the misty rain than a solid thing.

It looked at her, only its vibrant, hateful eyes visible under the carpet of insects. "You'll pay for this, Watcher," it gagged, somehow speaking even with its throat filled with Kikaichu. "The King will eat you alive."

Then it turned and ran, staggered, and finally jumped, its Nen puppet picking it up into the air and hurling it towards the nest before disappearing. Insects fell off of it in a rain of chittering black, looking around in confusion for another target. Hinata's perception expanded, following the Ant's arc. Two seconds later, it slammed into the side of the nest, flopping to the base of the structure and convulsing as it hacked up insects. It rolled across the ground lethargically, like something dying of thirst, trying to crush the insects covering its body. The whole time, it retained a deathly grip on Shino's lost arm.

An Ant that looked like a squat penguin, standing watch over one of the entrances, saw the Guard's struggle. It rushed over without hesitation and began batting the Kikaichu off of it. They attacked the new Chimera with just as much viciousness as they had the Guard, but with their attention split, both Ants were able to kill enough that the insects were merely dangerous instead of deadly. A couple seconds later, another joined it, and the Kikaichu's attention was split once more.

Despite Shino's best effort, Hinata realized, the Guard would probably survive.

She mirrored the penguin-like Ant, rushing to her friend's side.

"Shino!" she yelled. His heart was slowing down, going into shock. She laid her hand on his cheek and sent a jolt of chakra into his system. The Aburame's eyes shot open, and his heart beat with renewed energy, shock staved off.

"Stay awake!" Hinata shouted. She reached up, realized her headset had been destroyed by the rock the Guard had hurled.

She was alive. She was alive. The relief sunk into her chest, viciously at odds with her horror at Shino's injuries. She reached down and yanked the Aburame's own headset off, holding it up to her mouth. Her hand was covered in blood. Hers or Shino's, she couldn't tell. Her finger slipped off the receiver.

"Knov!" she shouted. Lightheaded. Foggy. She'd lost too much blood. She pressed down on the button. "Knov, we need help!" The man turned around in surprise, five kilometers away.

Hinata collapsed to her knees and one hand, the bloody mud below her imprinting itself on her pants and palm.

"Now."

###

For fifteen long seconds, Isaac Netero weighed the odds.

His heart was beating. Somewhat quickly. Sixty-four beats a minute. It hadn't gotten up there in decades. He savored the feeling, knowing it would be some time before he reached it again.

Every one of the shinobi was either heavily injured or, in the case of the mysterious new arrival Mari Kansai, retreating. Hounded by Ants, she would not have time to reestablish her technique. Kiba Inuzuka was in the very hands of his 100-Type Bodhisattva, and from the sound of it, both Hinata and Shino were in just as shameful a condition. Their force was halved, no, more than halved, because it was undeniable that Morel or Knov would not have survived a direct confrontation with the Royal Guard he had spied upon first laying eyes on the Chimaera's nest.

And yet despite those losses, Netero's warrior spirit pushed for him to continue the attack. With Morel and Knov, who had avoided the brunt of the Ant's hostilities, it was possible they could force their way in, murder the Queen, and end this.

Possible, but not likely.

Netero had not grown old by listening to the folly of his hungry heart: no matter how he loathed the necessity of this fight ending, it was the responsible thing to do. Attacking now would be an unforgivable risk.

Still, in the petty way only a senior could, he begrudged the shinobi for forcing him to. Perhaps if they'd been a bit hardier, a bit older, it wouldn't have gone this way.

"Chairman." Knov crackled over his headset. "I have the shinobi. They need medical care, immediately."

Command fell to him, it seemed. In situations like this people always seemed afraid to follow their own instincts, even Hunters. Even him.

He smiled. It was a shame that actions had consequences, but an unavoidable one.

"Fall back, then," he said. The 100-Type faded away, and with it his ardor. He suddenly felt his age once more. Kiba fell out of the sky, landing in his arms with a soft thud. He made his way north, towards a prepared point. "We'll finish this another day."

It was time to stay low and regroup, he thought. They still had a little more than a month before the earliest estimates of the King's birth, and they had dealt the Ants a heavy blow today. A portal opened up below him, and Isaac Netero fell into a smaller world, Kiba still hefted over his shoulder.

Though they had destroyed a satisfying number of Ants, the assault had failed.

 

[odlawzein]

That was a an amazing chapter.

I hope team 8 can, especially Shino can, get up from that battle.

I hoped they'd at least kill Nefelpitou; nevertheless we'll soon how the guard will fare from now.

 

[Blarglflargl]

The whole time, it retained a deathly grip on Shino's lost arm.

Click to shrink...

This was a great bit of misdirection. It was clear from the start that the king was gonna get chakra somehow, but I was 100% sure that getting nommed would be Mari's lot, so Shino's dismemberment came as a total surprise.

 

[Egleris]

Yeah, this was a much more total loss for the Hunter + Ninja team than they can possibly realize yet. Hinata's clone was almost certainly killed by Meruem (at least, he's the only one I can remember who has a scorpion tail), the ants now have access to Chakra, and while both Hinata and Shino have been wounded to a point that might well be irrecoverable, Neferpitou should be able to fully heal herself in time. And regardless of how many ants they killed, of the only four ants that actually matter (the king and his three guards) they have killed none. So, this one was a complete failure.

And an amazingly written one, at that. Really, the chapter was great, and I'm really looking forward to how things will develop from now on; I didn't expect the attack to the nest to fail so completely, and it'll be interesting to see where the story is going to go now.