SFF: 073 - Compression (Patreon)

KONOHA

Earlier.

The meeting chamber with tense with sombre silence at Mito Uzumaki's declaration.

“Are you certain it would work, Mito-sobo?” Tsunade asked, uncertain.

“If I wasn’t why then would I bring it up in a meeting such as this?” Mito shot back calmly, her stern gaze coming to settle on her granddaughter. 

“A barrier-jutsu that would prevent the use of Hiraishin within its confines?” Tobirama mused. “I never thought such a thing was possible. How exactly would it work, Mito-san?” he asked.

“I am sure you are aware of how Hiraishin works,” Mito replied. “You did invent it after all. Hence, you must also be aware of the jutsu’s two fundamental weaknesses. The first is that users are required to first pinpoint the exact location of their marks before teleporting. The second is anything that the user is holding, contacting, or that is linked with their chakra will teleport with them. Of course, the additional mass requires additional chakra to move; as such, particularly large objects can require so much chakra as to place a limit on how far away the user can teleport. Of course, in normal scenarios, users can choose not to teleport any additional mass, but this technique is structured specifically to negate that."

The undead woman paused to display a scroll adorned with a dense layer of kanji.

“Rain dome exploits all of Hiraishin’s weaknesses in such a synergistic manner as to render it completely inoperable as long as the user is within a minimum operating distance. This jutsu agitates the natural cloud cover, forcing the coalescence and precipitation of airborne water droplets. The process impregnates the rain with the user’s chakra in such a manner that it forcibly intermingles with the chakra of others trapped within the downpour. Due to how crude the technique is, this mingling is mostly harmless, but it does interfere with a shinobi’s ability to detect distant signatures like the technique formulas essential for the use of Hiraishin, as well as forcibly tether the rainstorm and its user to its victim.”

“A tether?” Tobirama said, expression distant. “You mean to say every use of Hiraishin within this “Rain Dome” would force the user to teleport the rain and their opponents with them every single time? That’s a few dozen metric tons of water at the very least. Even if they somehow manage to find markers to teleport to the sheer burden involved would quickly dissuade even the most powerful from doing so.”

Mito nodded. “Essentially, yes,” she said. “And as you might have predicted, the effectiveness of this technique scales with how large the natural cloud cover is. So, if we choose our battlefield wisely, escaping via Hiraishin should be virtually impossible. Of course, the technique still has a lot of glaring weaknesses, one being the size of the cloud cover being impregnated is entirely dependent on the depth of the user's chakra pool. And while killing the user does not dispel the technique, simply escaping the vicinity on foot renders it entirely useless. There’s also the fact that the technique affects all within its range without discrimination.”

“...How complex is it to learn?” Hashirama asked, fixated more on the technique's utility than anything else. 

“It should be no greater than B-rank,” Mito replied. “At most, A-rank. Any Jonin with an affinity for Water Release worth their salt should be able to master it in a few days.”

Tsunade, nodded, content. “We will plan our strategy to eliminate Sasuke Uchiha and his proxies around this technique then. If we can keep him in place long enough, finally putting him down shouldn’t be an impossibility.”

“Right?”

***

Present.

Tsunade arrived at her mission location a few seconds later, skidding to a stop behind one seven-storey-tall building.

“...Four, three, two, one.” The mental countdown in her head ended and her hands blurred, smacking together to form a hand sign.

“Hitsuji! Ninja Art: Four Crimson Ray Formation!”

Her chakra halved as two perpendicular walls of translucent crimson spawned in front of her to join up with the other three corners rising in the distance. Tsunade gritted her teeth as her chakra halved further to mingle with the chakras of lord Hashirama, Mito-sobo and Jiraiya. 

***

Itachi held Sasuke’s gaze in a genjutsu duel even as barriers rose from the earth and in the clouds above all around them. Killing intent washed over him and he spoke before one of his former associates could do something foolish. ”I ought not to be the priority here,” he declared over the storm, warning Konan even as the bulk of his attention remained on his little brother. The woman said nothing in response, but he felt her attention slowly shift from him to Sasuke.

For a moment, no one moved. The next, however…

Kakuzu flickered to the left, lightning spewing from his mouth in a strafing run. 

Hidan punched down, shattering the bone skewer extending from Sasuke’s shoulder blade to hold him up in the air. The Missing-nin dropped to the ground in a crouch, swinging his scythe in a wide arc aimed at severing Sasuke's legs at the ankles.

Konan shot forward, paper wings sprouting from her back as a paper chakram formed in her hand poised to lop off Sasuke’s head in on fluid move. From Tobirama’s mouth came a barrage of hypersonic water bullets bracketing the younger Uchiha and cutting off all possible escape routes. 

In response, Sasuke smiled without breaking eye contact with Itachi, as an ethereal ribcage spawned into existence around him. Hidan’s lightning and Tobirama’s bullets splashed ineffectively on the defence. Konan’s chakram pinged off the armour’s angled surface and Hidan’s scythe struck with only a few cracks to the armour to show for their collective efforts. 

Tobi spawned into existence behind Sasuke, bypassing the defence of his Susanoo with alarming ease. Even then the younger Uchiha did not deem it necessary to ignore his brother if only momentarily. A veritable thicket of bones sprouted from his back to impale the unwanted intruder, all of which passed harmlessly through Tobi’s body. 

“What is this?” Sasuke spoke, his tone disinterested. “Is this the best you lot can muster?” He asked, spinning on his feet, finally breaking eye contact with Itachi to regard his other opponents. Lightning crackled to life in his palm as he struck through Obito’s intangibility at Hidan behind him with such speed that even Itachi’s eyes had trouble tracking. The immortal’s head exploded like a watermelon and he fell to the floor like a puppet with its strings cut.

With an arched brow, Sasuke rose to meet Kakuzu’s gaze in the distance even as the “bone forest” growing from his back continued to expand, forcing Konan onto the backfoot, and Tobi to remain intangible. Kakuzu scowled in response, spitting another storm of lightning at his opponent. Casually, the Uchiha batted aside the bolt of electricity with one chakra-coated palm, diverting it towards Tobi who was poised to strike from his flank. 

Forced back again into intangibility, the masked Uchiha could only watch, annoyed, as his younger kin flickered towards Kakuzu who urgently fled in the opposite direction. The bone forest broke away as Sasuke reappeared on a rooftop a few meters away from Kakuzu. The next moment, however, the teen was forced to flicker to another rooftop as a mass of black flames consumed the spot he previously occupied.  

With a smile and twin barrages of bone bullets launched from his fingertips to suppress Tobi and Konan, Sasuke spun to face Itachi.

“Relax, Nii-san,” he said, leaning out of the way of a high-pressure jet of water aimed at his head, courtesy of Tobirama.

“Please be patient. I will be with you in a moment.”

***

Guy and the squads under his command landed on the shores of Whirlpool. The island had previously been under the Fire Daimyo’s control, however indirect. But now, somehow, one of Sasuke Uchiha’s proxies had wrestled away control and was fast converting into a military installation manned by a veritable mob of Kiri-nin. Konoha’s intelligence suspected, that should they be allowed to continue unimpeded, they would be impossible to unseat in just a matter of days.

Predictably, Guy’s mission today was to ensure that doesn’t happen.

Their arrival however did not go unnoticed. Very quickly he spotted the dark-haired beauty who was one of the Uchiha’s proxies. 

“You must be Kage,” he said to her as both their groups prepared to square off. 

The woman said nothing as she pulled free a Tanto from a seal tattooed on her wrist, its naked edge gleaming with engineered virulence.