The mountain screamed. Not with sound, but with vibration. The Resonance Alarm Seals, tied to Saisei's deep roots and the mountain's spirit, thrummed a discordant, panicked frequency that vibrated through Kaito's bones. Gamakichi's warning – "The Hyūga! Broken!" – hung in the frigid air like a death knell.
<< Perception Overload! >> Kaito's << PER: 30 (Effective) >> was instantly flooded. Five chakra signatures, blazing with the distinctive, potent, and wrong energy of the Hyūga clan, tore through the lower perimeter. Their chakra wasn't the calm, focused flow of Gentle Fist masters. It was jagged, lashing, like live wires dipped in tar – the Byakugan's signature purity twisted by agony and rage. << Targets: Hyūga Operatives (Corrupted) - Estimated Level: High Chunin x4, Low Jonin x1 >> << Status: Genjutsu/Drug-Induced Berserk? Chakra Corruption Detected! >>
They moved with terrifying speed, but unnervingly wrong. Not the fluid grace of Hyūga taijutsu, but lurching, hyper-accelerated bursts, limbs snapping into precise strikes with robotic efficiency devoid of finesse. Their Byakugan eyes, visible even at distance in the moonlight, weren't the pristine, vein-less white. Veins bulged, pulsing with dark, corrupted chakra, and the whites were shot through with angry crimson streaks. They saw everything – Kaito knew they saw everything within their massive range – but their perception felt predatory, insane.
"Perimeter breach! Sector Gamma!" Gamakichi roared, abandoning stealth. His tanto gleamed as he surged forward, meeting the first corrupted Hyūga – a woman whose once-neat hair was wild, her face contorted in a silent scream – head-on. She flowed around his initial thrust, her palm lashing out in a Gentle Fist: Eight Trigrams Palms Revolving Heaven! But it wasn't defensive. It was a vortex of dark-chakra infused strikes aimed to shred.
Gamakichi bellowed, not in pain, but in fury. << Water Release: Gunshot! >> A focused torrent erupted from his mouth, not at the woman, but at the ground in front of her spinning defense. The impact blasted rock and mud upwards, disrupting her rotation's footing for a critical microsecond. Gamakichi's massive fist, wreathed in water chakra, slammed into her guard. CRACK! The sound of breaking bone was sickening. She flew back, her arm bent unnaturally, but scrambled up instantly, her corrupted Byakugan fixed on him with mindless hate, the broken limb already trying to realign with jerky, unnatural motions. << Target Damaged! Not Neutralized! >>
Kaito had no time to watch. Two corrupted Hyūga Chunin – men whose eyes wept trails of blackened blood – converged on him with insectile speed. Their fingers jabbed, aiming for tenketsu points with lethal precision, dark chakra hissing around their fingertips.
<< Void Step! >> Kaito vanished from the converging pincer, reappearing fifteen meters upslope near a cluster of boulders he'd pre-marked with Phantom Snare Traps. << Cooldown: 15s >> His breath came in sharp gasps. They see the traps. They see everything.
He was right. The lead Jonin – a tall man whose Hyūga crest was partially melted into his flesh like a brand – didn't even glance at the trapped ground. He pointed, a silent command. One Chunin veered instantly, avoiding the snare zone entirely, while the other charged through it, deliberately triggering a Phantom Snare.
FZZT-WHUMP! The Temporal Bind froze the charging Hyūga mid-lunge. The micro-teleport activated, yanking him sideways into the path of a Chakra Disruption Burst. The corrupted Hyūga spasmed violently as his already unstable chakra system went haywire. He screamed, a raw, guttural sound devoid of humanity, collapsing to writhe on the ground. << Target Neutralized! >> << EXP +400 >>
But it cost time. The other Chunin, avoiding the trap, was already upon Kaito, fingers like dark daggers stabbing for his heart chakra point. Kaito parried desperately with a kunai, the impact jarring his arm. << AGI: 35 >> allowed him to twist away from a follow-up strike aimed at his kidney, but the dark-chakra infused wind pressure from the near-miss seared his side. << HP: 420/450 >>
He couldn't match Gentle Fist speed head-on. Not corrupted Gentle Fist. He feinted left, then used << Earth Release: Knee-High Wall >> not as defense, but as a launch pad. He kicked off the instant earth rose, vaulting over the Hyūga's next strike. Mid-air, he flung a Chakra Drain Tag not at the man, but at the ground where he predicted the Hyūga would step next, guided by the Byakugan's predictive sight. The corrupted Chunin, locked onto Kaito's trajectory, stepped right onto it.
<< Chakra Drain Trap Triggered! >> The effect was immediate. The Hyūga stumbled, a flicker of confusion breaking through the berserk rage as his chakra reserves dipped sharply. Kaito landed, spun, and drove a chakra-enhanced knee into the man's solar plexus. << Critical Strike! >> Air exploded from the Hyūga's lungs. Before he could recover, Kaito followed with a nerve strike to the neck, leveraging every ounce of << CC: 33 >> to bypass the instinctively tightening muscles. The Chunin dropped like a sack. << Target Neutralized! >> << EXP +400 >>
A guttural roar tore Kaito's attention back to Gamakichi. The toad was surrounded. The woman with the broken arm fought with terrifying ferocity, ignoring the injury, her Gentle Fist strikes now wild, dark chakra flaying the air. The Jonin leader was a blur, his movements economical, his corrupted Byakugan tracking Gamakichi's every shift, his own Gentle Fist strikes precise and devastating despite the corruption. He landed a glancing blow on Gamakichi's wounded flank. << Gamakichi HP: 65% >> The toad bellowed, spitting a wide Water Release: Wild Water Wave!, forcing them back momentarily but expending precious chakra.
The fourth Chunin, held in reserve by the Jonin, lunged not at Gamakichi, but past him, towards Saisei! The little sapling pulsed frantically near Kaito's camp, its pure nature chakra a beacon to the corrupted senses. They want to destroy the anchor!
"No!" Kaito yelled. He had no Void Step ready. The Jonin leader saw his movement, a cold, calculating smirk twisting his corrupted features. He disengaged from Gamakichi, intercepting Kaito's path with impossible speed. Gentle Fist strikes, like poisoned needles, lanced towards Kaito's chakra network. << Certain Hit Predicted! >>
Instinct screamed. Hiraishin! But his markers were scattered, none close enough for a safe teleport. Except… the kunai he'd used to wound the ice-cold Jonin scout leader weeks ago. He'd marked it. And it was… somewhere in his pouch. << Hiraishin Marker Detected! >> But activating it blindly, mid-combat, against a Jonin?
He had no choice. He poured << Chakra: 450/450 >> → << 200/450 >> into the desperate fold. The Jonin's fingertips were millimeters from his chest. The world stretched, snapped.
He reappeared ten meters away, tumbling onto hard rock. Disoriented. Nauseous. But alive. He'd teleported away from the killing blow, but not to a marker – he'd used the marker's signature as a spatial anchor to warp himself randomly a short distance. << Hiraishin no Jutsu: Emergency Displacement! >> << Chakra Exhaustion: Moderate! >>
He looked up. The corrupted Jonin stood where Kaito had been, momentarily confused by the spatial ripple. But the fourth Chunin was almost upon Saisei, his palm raised, dark chakra coalescing.
Gamakichi, enraged, ignored the woman and lunged, his massive jaws snapping towards the Chunin threatening Saisei. But the Jonin leader recovered instantly. With a burst of corrupted speed, he intercepted Gamakichi, landing a brutal Gentle Fist: Thirty-Two Palms! strike sequence across the toad's chest. << Gamakichi HP: 40% >> CRITICAL! Gamakichi crashed down, a guttural groan escaping him.
The Chunin reached Saisei. His dark-chakra coated hand descended towards the tiny, vibrant sapling.
A sound like a thousand angry hornets split the night. Not from the mountain. From above.
A blinding white sphere of compressed, violently rotating chakra screamed down from the starry sky like a fallen star. It struck the ground between the descending Chunin and Saisei with cataclysmic force.
<< RASENGAN! >>
The explosion wasn't fire. It was pure, annihilating force. The corrupted Hyūga Chunin vanished in the maelstrom, ripped apart at the molecular level. Rock vaporized. The shockwave hurled the corrupted Jonin leader back, his defensive stance shattered. The other corrupted Hyūga were thrown like ragdolls.
Standing amidst the settling dust and vaporized rock, one hand still outstretched from the Rasengan's release, was Jiraiya. His face was etched with fury deeper than the mountain roots, his eyes blazing with the Sage's own righteous fire. His pristine white hair was stained with soot and something darker. He didn't look at Kaito or Gamakichi yet. His gaze, colder than the ice-cold Jonin's, was locked onto the corrupted Hyūga Jonin struggling to rise amidst the debris.
"Danzo," Jiraiya growled, the name a curse that seemed to shake the stones. "He doesn't just bury his sins. He weaponizes them." He clenched his fist, the air crackling with barely restrained power. "Time to burn out the rot."
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Author's Note:How do you think the story is going so far?I'd love to hear your thoughts, predictions, and reactions in the comments — your feedback might just influence how things unfold next. Don't hold back 😉