CH_6.24 (195)

CH_6.24 (195)

As Hiruzen took a step to push off the ground to dart toward Hiruzen, multiple ROOT-nin appeared from within the walls. Unfazed, Hiruzen ignored them all, aware of their presence all along. They had a Hyuga and a sensory-nin; an ambush was nigh impossible.

He was only focused on Danzo, leaving everything else to his ANBU-guard.

Hiruzen raised his bo-staff over his head and swung it down at Danzo, who calmly raised his cane and struck the bo-staff from the side. Hiruzen’s face twitched when an overwhelming force forcibly changed the trajectory. The cane shattered at first contact, but the bo-staff missed the target, cracking the ground beside Danzo’s feet. He remained calm as ice as the narrow space was plunged into a hostile battle.

Danzo stared down at Hiruzen. One moment, his eyes were tranquil as an undisturbed lake surface, but they flickered with killing intent in the same split second as he thrusted the broken end of the cane into Hiruzen’s chest. Hiruzen effortlessly parried the broken cane with a kunai and struck a counter-attack in the same movement. Danzo side-stepped the kunai. Smoke puffed from within his sleeve, and a tanto blade slid out into his hand. He swung it down towards the base of Hiruzen’s neck, who once again parried the blade.

Instead of building pressure, Hiruzen took a step back with his hands moving up to weave hand seals.

Danzo reacted by moving away from Hiruzen to create the most space. As he took a step back, the bo-staff transformed back into Enma with a large puff of smoke, and the Monkey King grabbed onto Danzo from behind and held him in place.

“Got you, you back-stabbing hyena,” Enma said, baring his sharp teeth at Danzo.

Thick currents of lightning sparked around Hiruzen’s arm as he pointed two fingers at Danzo.

Not a muscle changed on Danzo’s face as the lethal lightning from a B-rank jutsu reflected in his eyes. He watched the jutsu, knowing that Enma would have to free his hold not to get caught, but also realized that with the experience, coordination, and trust between the two, it would be too late for Danzo to do anything by the time Enma freed him.

The lightning currents grew in speed and volume. The moment Hiruzen stiffened his arm, Danzo knew Hiruzen couldn’t hold the jutsu any longer.

Danzo relaxed his body within Enma’s grasp before pushing chakra through his body to create a sudden spike of power. Monkey King Enma was known to be indestructible and unstoppable—which meant he had extremely high endurance—but in no way did that mean he couldn’t be moved around.

Danzo lifted Enma and flipped them both so Enma’s back now faced Hiruzen.

The timing was perfect, as Hiruzen could neither cancel the jutsu nor could he hold it any longer. Hiruzen raised his arm and thrust it towards the ceiling for a brutal arc of lightning to jolt out and rip through the metal, concrete, and the tons of ground above them.

The entire bunker shook in a terrifying manner. The metal around them groaned, signaling that the jutsu had caused immense structural damage. The light bulbs illuminating the space, half of which had already shattered from the fighting, all went down, plunging the entire room into darkness.

Everyone, ANBU and ROOT alike, paused for a moment as everyone understood that a massive weight of the ground above them could come crashing down at them at any moment. Their abilities made it so there was a high chance of survival even if the bunker caved, but no one was going to take a chance against nature itself, trying to bury them alive.

A strong gust of wind blasted into the room, and Enma was thrown back, forced to release Danzo because of the ninjutsu. Enma, uninjured, stamped his feet to the ground to stop and roared at Danzo.

Hiruzen strained his ears. He heard the muffled sound of Danzo’s slippers and a flutter of his clothes. Danzo was on the move. He asked Enma to follow, and they jumped down into a narrow tunnel. The tunnel stretched in one direction with a light at the end.

“We must hurry,” Enma said as he hurried along the tunnel.

Hiruzen nodded and followed Enma but stopped after a few steps.

“Wait,” he said, his voice echoing in the narrow space.

Hiruzen turned back towards the dead-end side of the tunnel. His fingers twitched as he breathed out a shaky breath. He joined his hand to create a release hand seal. The genjutsu shattered, and the dead-end suddenly extended into a tunnel going in the opposite direction. He could even pick up faint sounds from Danzo’s sandals.

“Crafty bastard, we almost fell for it,” Enma spat and stepped into the other direction when Hiruzen put a hand on his shoulder. Enma was shocked and blurted the first thought that came into his mind. “Are you letting him go!? I harshly disagree, Hiruzen! You must see through your old friendship for what all the man has done.”

It was much faster than he had anticipated. Father time hadn’t been kind to him.

He picked up his speed and headed towards one of the exits. They had built an underground branching maze with dead-ends and false-openings, filled with deadly traps, and only ROOT-nin knew the correct path to the true secret exit. He had noticed Hiruzen had brought a Hyuga along, which was an annoyance, but he had instructed his ROOT-nin to kill or at least occupy the Hyuga so his Byakugan wouldn’t be used to track him down.

As long as he lost Hiruzen and his summon, he would be able to escape.

Danzo had raised his hands to weave hand seals to create clones to jerk the tail of his scent, when he felt a faint rumble beneath his feet. He glanced up as dust fell from the ceiling of the tunnel. He glanced back—for a moment, he saw nothing of concern—but then things changed. The temperature rose, and then he felt the heat arrive on his skin, and before he could genuinely react, a dragon’s head made of fire hounded after, drowning everything behind it in fire.

He immediately used the Body Flicker Jutsu to shoot forward so as not to get eaten by the flames. He judged that he could keep ahead of the flames—but the moment that thought struck, the volume of flames rose, the fire grew hotter, and he could feel the intense heat assaulting his flames.

In an instant, he realized he wouldn’t be able to stay ahead.

‘Not even trying to take me alive now, are you, Hiruzen?’

Danzo jumped up towards the ceiling with lightning-quick hand seals and burrowed upward into the ground. He could no longer exit through the exit—creating a new emergency exit was the only option.

He never underestimated Hiruzen’s power. The man was stronger than him from the day they had met as little babies. The gap had only increased as they grew and Hiruzen came into as the God of Shinobi, a perfected living weapon of mass destruction. But Danzo didn’t think that Hiruzen would try to kill him—he was more valuable alive than dead. His ROOT network itself was enough reason for his capture because without him, it would take Hidden Leaf a decade to dismantle his operation.

The moment he breached the ground, the intense, pressured flames rose behind him, chasing after him as he hastily burrowed up. It didn’t take long for Danzo to gather that the flames were faster than him, and he was bound to be enveloped in them.

He focused on every tenketsu in his body and released chakra to create a pseudo-protective layer to protect himself. It was not Hyuga’s Eight Trigrams Palms Revolving Heaven—but it was the best option while he continued to burrow to the top so he could escape as soon as possible.

The flames enveloped him, burning away the chakra layer that Danzo continuously replenished. The fire burned his skin, the air burned, his lungs burned, and his eyes blurred until he was functionally blind, forcing him to close then— the ground around him heated, interfering with his ninjutsu that he was using to burrow up. He gritted his teeth as the fire ate at him.

He only took a breath when he emerged above ground and jumped out of the flames, rolling on the ground to put them out and extinguishing them with a burst of chakra from every tenketsu to snuff them out.

The smell of burnt hair and skin overwhelmed his senses as he got up to his feet to walk away.

‘Where is he?’

He hadn’t taken the risk of meeting Hiruzen without thought. He had an escape plan with contingencies set up to avoid capture.

“Surrender or die.”

Danzo stopped as the words reached his buzzing ears.

He stopped and turned back to see Hiruzen with his bo-staff.

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