I do not own this story. It originally belongs to EvilFuzzy9 which was republished by Fpsroxas.

Naruto Shippuden belongs to Masashi Kishimoto

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Chou Baika no Jutsu!

The earth shook. Dust rose in great clouds and drifts, gravel and detritus kicked up by a massive force.

Giants waded through the forest, treading the writhing, grasping, garroting timber of arboreal genesis. Immense girth, armor plated torsos, eschuteons of gleaming steel branded with a stylized kanji heaved upon the rippling, swelling mass of muscle and fat.

Faces glared down upon the forest. Titans rose above the canopy, thundering through the wood. One brandished a spear, dragging the haft violently through the trees. It was a lever long enough to move the world which crashed through bark and lumber, hard and green.

Trees fought against them, like the limbs of some assymetric cellulose abomination, unnatural life and motion which battered their bellies and wrapped around their arms. Foliage as dense as steel and as close as a comb's teeth barred the passage of any shinobi, walls of squirming, wriggling wood which hedged them off from their allies.

Nikudan Sensha!

All about the feet of the two giants, Akimichi kunoichi rolled themselves up, swelling in size, rumbling to and fro like falling boulders, crashing into root and bough, shattering the hard wood and bending the green. Rotating bodies ripped up the turf, grinding against gnarled, knotted, horny bark.

At the center of the chaos stood three identical women, lithe and lovely, with silky sakura hair and piercing cerulean eyes. Thick roots tore up the ground at their feet, twisting trunks coiling like coniferous serpents around their naked bodies. Boughs and limbs snapped back and forth, batting away the tumbling, rolling, crashing bodies of bold or reckless Akimichi shinobi.

Branches like tentacles snared around prone forms, alight with the glow of chakra. Those trapped in their hold went suitably limp, powerless and exhausted, drained of their strength, the three Zoujou mokubunshin weaving their hands through myriad mudrā.

Chouko Akimichi, fifteenth head of the Akimichi clan, roared a terrible battle cry. Her feet stamped the ground, shaking it and cracking the bedrock. Deep set eyes kindled with a gleaming fire, and mighty arms crashed down upon the enemy.

Growing trees caught her blow, and wrapped around her arms. She struggled against their grasp, but a giant of wood formed from the melding foliage, arms reaching up to pin her own in a crushing grip. A sneering mockery of buddhist imagery crashed into her skull, the ten thousand hands of a wooden bodhisattva beating her down into the dust.

"Mom!" cried Choume Akimichi, struggling in the coils of a wooden dragon, watching in horror as blood flew from her mother's mouth, the woman's body broken and battered. "MOM!"

Chouko smiled at her daughter, crimson flecking her lips, ere she breathed her last.

A roar sounded out, unearthly, deafening, filled with anger and sorrow.

Wings like fire burst from Choume's back. The butterfly emerged from its chrysalis. Fat was burned, consumed in an instant.

Clothes and armor tore from the body of a giantess. Erupting power shredded her garments, leaving the blossomed beauty of Choume Akimichi bare for all to see. Firm buttocks, supple thighs. A flat stomach, toned and rippling with hidden muscle. Vast, heaving breasts, each one as large as a literal hill.

A lovely face, once rounded and girlish, now had the edge of a woman, lean and sharp. Eyes as bright as stars glared with a cold light.

Full, rosy lips parted, snarling as a deep and guttural roar rose from her abdomen. The air rushing from her lungs was like a hurricane, and the tromp of her feet like an earthquake. Qinglong shattered, and swift as a bolt of lightning she struck.

"CHOUDAN BAKUGEKI!"

Three clones vanished in a shower of splinters, a massive impact crater rupturing the planet's crust. Lifeblood of the earth bubbled and spilled from a deep, grievous wound.

Choume Akimichi, sixteenth head of the Akimichi clan, was on a rampage.

(^)(^)(^)(^)(^)

The woods absorbed all sound. Not a whisper or a breath of the Aburame clan's feats escaped beyond their clearing. Nary a rumor of their struggles or losses would be heard.

All they would say, when asked, was that all the trees in the world could not suffice to block their kikaichuu.

Why?

The reason was self-evident.

(^)(^)(^)(^)(^)

"Fuck you, you pink-haired bitch!"

Hana Inuzuka moved swiftly and fearlessly, leaping between branches. The Haimaru triplets followed her dauntlessly, transformed into perfect replicas of their master. Moving on all fours, their speed left them scarcely a blur, crashing heedlessly, furious and vengeful, through the foliage.

A wood clone of Zoujou Uzumaki sidestepped, seconds before the ground where she had been standing exploded. Dust and bits of rock showered her frame, the violently rotating forms of Tsume and Kuromaru chewing through bedrock and hardwood like they were nothing.

"Don't underestimate the Inuzuka, ya dumb broad!" crowed the matron of the clan, sneering with a wild expression at the mokubunshin.

Zoujou looked distinctly unimpressed, and clapped her hands together in a snake seal. A tree sprouted from the ground, widening and heightening, leaping up and reaching out with woody, leafy tendrils to grip and snare at Tsume's ankle.

The pinkette kunoichi smirked, and gestured for the limb to whip the Inuzuka head away. But a massive paw came crashing down, snapping the tree and forcing the wood clone to leap away.

"Inuzuka-Ryuu!" came a rumbling, growling voice in triple stereo. "Jinjuu Kongou Henge!"

The mokubunshin of Zoujou Uzumaki turned her head to stare, and the expression on her face showed something almost like fear.

Four thick, muscular, snowy-furred limbs. A bushy, erect tail. Six glinting, piercing, glaring eyes. Three dripping, drooling, slavering maws lined with massive, pointed, carnivorous fangs. An enormous, monstrous wolf eyed the woman like a slab of meat.

"Santourou."

Tsume leaped away, a grin curving her lips. She landed beside Kuromaru, who was transformed into a duplicate of herself, crouching on all fours. One Tsume jumped on the other's back, and both formed a hand sign.

In a puff of smoke they vanished, only to be replaced by a massive, black, two-headed wolf.

"Sotourou!"

Four identical Hana landed around the Zoujou look-alike, two on either side. They were grinning, their pupils mere slits.

Cerberus from behind, Orthrus to the rear, Romulus and Remus times two.

"Gatsuuga!" was in stereo shouted.

"Chou Garouga!" roared Tsume and Kuromaru as one.

"Ooiga Gatenga!" Kiba bellowed, voice echoing through the forest.

The wood clone was effectively reduced to its constituent atoms, and these bodies ripped through a goodly chunk of the woods.

(^)(^)(^)(^)(^)

Ninpou: Dokugiri

Purple smoke, a poisonous haze, seeped between close-knit branches. A mokubunshin retreated from the toxic fumes, weaving its hands through seals. Roots rose around the encroaching poison mist, slapping together with clods of dirt in a makeshift shell, and trapped the dangerous vapors.

Branches burst apart behind the wood clone, gleaming acupuncture needles shooting through the foliage. Three senbon found their way into the mokubunshin's back.

A minor inconvenience, at most. More irksome, however, was the gout of flame that erupted from the Zoujou replica's left, tongues of red and yellow licking at the tips of her fingers.

Fire Style: Flame Bombs!

Shizune Kato crashed through the brush, hands aglow with chakra. She landed behind the mokubunshin, scalpels of energy ready to make the incision. Her fingers traced a thin score across Zoujou's firm, pert buttocks.

The wood clone spun around, leg flying up, and caught Shizune in the flank with a crushing roundhouse kick. And in that moment Ruka Umino leaped from the bushes, forming the seals for a second flame bomb.

Zoujou caught the gout of fire in her hand, absorbing it, and a sapling burst from the ground at Ruka's feet, wrapping around her body and rapidly thickening.

A puff of smoke from the corner of her vision. Tetsuko Hagane leaped onto the scene, brandishing a shell-like mace, which smashed through the growing tree right before it could crush Ruka.

At the same time, Izumi Kamizuki body flickered behind Zoujou, wielding a pair of massive, curving kunai like scissor blades.

Roots leaped from the dirt, bashing into Izumi's solar plexus. The wind was knocked out of her lungs. Simultaneously, the trunk of the tree Tetsuko had broken burst violently apart, firing wooden shards in every direction.

Tetsuko and Ruka were riddled with kunai-sized splinters.

Shizune snarled, and tackled the wood clone. The aura surrounding her hands flared, and she rammed a chakra scalpel straight through the mokubunshin's sternum.

Izumi let out a yell and leaped, swinging the kunai swords and furiously decapitating the wood clone.

(^)(^)(^)(^)(^)

A matte-black sword scythed through a mesh of knotted branches, its wielder darting skillfully down the side of a writhing tree. Gnarled limbs curled in around the trunk, moving to entrap the scar-faced kunoichi.

Raiko Namiashi disappeared.

Akane Shiranui appeared in her place, forming the hand seals for a phoenix flower jutsu. She spat a dozen small fireballs from her mouth, spewing them around herself in an arc. The boughs caught aflame and recoiled, snapping and crackling as they burned.

Iwashi Tatami, at the same time, had a kunai in either hand, and was moving in conjunction with Anko Mitarashi, thrusting and parrying with the Zoujou wood clone in their part of the clearing.

Anko ducked beneath a fierce punch from the pinkette mokubunshin, and delivered a high kick. She caught the clone on the chin, and knocked her back a couple steps. Akane jumped down from the tree above them, spitting senbon at Zoujou.

Three hit their mark, becoming embedded in the wood clone's back.

Zoujou snarled, and a wood dragon tore from the ground. It rammed headlong into Iwashi, butting her into a nearby tree. Bark burst into spikes, penetrating the kunoichi's torso.

The wood dragon roared, and wheeled around. Akane spat a fireball jutsu at it, but the technique had no visible effect. Anko swung one of her hands out, and snakes burst from her sleeve.

Zoujou leapt back from the attack, and her wood dragon reared up to snap Akane into its maw. She raised one of her hands at Anko, her arm morphing into wood, bristling with a mass of razor sharp stakes.

Iwashi raised her hands, weakly forming a sequence of seals. Akane did the same, simultaneously.

Flying Thunder God Formation

Raiko Namiashi reappeared behind Zoujou, and her ebon sword ran the wood clone through.

(^)(^)(^)(^)(^)

Tiger. Boar. Ram.

"Scattering Thousand Crows!"

Harsh, croaking birdsong erupted as a murder of crows swarmed all around Midori Yamashiro. They flew in darting, wheeling motions, swooping here and there to obscure the foe's vision. The sunglasses-wearing jounin manipulated her summoned birds, directing them with her fingertips.

Tokubetsu jounin Ebiko moved swiftly amidst the flock, concealing her form among the many black avians. Alongside her was Hermione Gekko, katana drawn and glinting in the gloom.

Ebiko's hands weaved through a sequence of seals, the woman darting left and right in a zigzag pattern, controlling her breathing with perfect discipline. Hermione closed her eyes, and two kage bunshin appeared alongside her.

Leaping out of the way of a rising tree, Ebiko inhaled deeply.

Snake. Ram. Monkey. Boar. Horse. Tiger.

"Fire Style: Fireball Jutsu!"

A globe of flame shot from Ebiko's mouth, impacting the trunk of a tree. Zoujou was in the upper branches, trying to see through the swarming crows.

Hermione thrice over leaped up at Zoujou, each from a different direction. Their swords moved fluidly, an entrancing and graceful motion.

Their attacks were intercepted by the tree's branches, boughs lashing out and striking each of the Hermiones.

Two burst into smoke.

One coughed up blood and fell to the ground.

(^)(^)(^)(^)(^)

Throughout the forest, clans and other shinobi fought against the seemingly endless Zoujou wood clones. The Sarutobi, the Hyuuga, the Yamanaka, the Uchiha, and everyone in between. Trees as close together as the mesh of Anko's fishnet hedged them off from aid, splitting more dangerous shinobi from the rest of their group.

Mokubunshin of varying strength levels crawled out of the woodwork. For every one that was destroyed, two more would appear to take its place. The forest was alive with sound, howling and jibbering, roaring and booming, the unearthly groan of mighty oaks uprooting themselves, and the airy whisper of slender willows bending to and fro.

Branches like hands, sharp ends like talons, tore and scrabbled at the bodies of the Konoha kunoichi. Clothes were ripped from battered bodies, the wounded and unconscious drawn underground by sinuous roots.

Madara – Mari – Uchiha felt all of this, rinnegan eyes cold and stormy. She grit her teeth, grimacing, sensing through Hashirama's cells how the trees all around them were draining chakra from the Konoha shinobi, fueling the creation of ever more wood clones, which in turn slowly whittled down the Hidden Leaf's forces.

"Your daughter is cunning," Mari spoke, addressing Sakura Haruno, who ran in front of her and Shikamari. "Her stamina doesn't seem to be that great by itself... but she's continually replenishing her strength with the mokuton, absorbing the chakra of her enemies."

"She's using this forest – her jutsu – to split our forces into manageable groups," Shikamari muttered, her eyes narrowed. "And sending out wood clones to mop them up at her leisure."

"Hashirama himself could scarcely have used his mokuton more strategically," Mari agreed. "But her moves are too cautious, and her fighting style too defensive. She's pinning her hopes on winning the battle through sheer attrition."

Tsunade looked back at Mari and Shikamari, plowing through the forest with monstrous strength, felling lanky, verdant giants with mere flicks of her fingers.

"She's not attacking nearly as hard as she could be, right?" the Godaime guessed. "Almost like she's toying with them."

Sakura punched through a particularly thick oak, completely disintegrating its upper portion. Her face was lined with the markings of her mentor's Seal of a Hundred Strengths.

"That daughter of mine..." she growled, her eyes flashing. "...even if she is being manipulated by Kaguya, that girl has earned herself a spanking straight from hell!"

She clenched one of her fists, and shunshin'd forward, annihilating a goodly swathe of the woods with a single forward jab. If Naruto had lobbed a bijuudama rasenshuriken into the forest, it could scarcely have caused a more utter desolation.

And if Deidara had set off her C0 in the area, it could hardly have been more thunderous, more deafening in its decibel than the shout which tore from this pink-haired athena's lips.

"SHANNARO!"

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It was truly sublime.

A roaring inferno consumed her. Electricity raced up her spine, coursing through every fiber of her being. Shockwaves of force sent ripples across her flesh, even as charred and blackened skin slowly peeled away.

Flames licked at her nakedness. She felt it burn her up from within. Her womanhood caught alight, searing bliss as she came.

Jikoku Uzumaki screamed in ecstasy, for that was what she felt. The pain was blinding, to be sure, but it would not slay her. And simply to know that there were indeed foes strong enough to challenge her like this...

It was exhilarating.

Her nerves burned out, and her chakra flared. Sharingan eyes wheeled, and four magnetite pillars cracked. Lightning current ceased to flow, rock and ore crumbling away as the fire continued to rage.

It was being fed with fuuton jutsu, the flames roaring as they feasted on the oxygen given to them. A thunderous bellowing filled Jikoku's ears.

She leaped out of the fire, moving purely through force of will, chakra alone the only thing enabling her body to get up and escape the flames. She was more charcoal than woman. Were it not for the aspects of Hidan's power assimilated into herself – that immortality of the flesh which she had absorbed – Jikoku might have been finished off by that combination attack.

But she WAS alive, and she saw her attackers as clear as daylight.

Shizuka of the Nadeshiko village. Kagerou of the Fuuma clan. Guren of the Crystal Release.

Jikoku smiled.

"Hexagonal Crystal Shuriken!"

Fist-sized snowflakes of steel-hard crystal whistled through the air. Guren produced dozens of the projectiles, flinging them straight at the badly burned Uzumaki daughter.

"Nadeshiko-Style Aerial Dance!"

Shizuka leaped into the air, producing kunai from between her fingers. She tossed them quickly, darting from side to side, circling fluidly around Jikoku. Her eyes were cold as ice, and she moved with a predatory grace.

Throwing knives zipped past Jikoku's head, the woman seeming to almost lazily lean out of their way. Left, right, forward, backward. Not one of the blades hit their mark.

Guren's shuriken fared little better, and Jikoku even caught a few between her fingers to toss back at Shizuka's kunai, just to rub it in. The ruby-lipped bluenette snarled angrily, and her hands blurred through a sequence of nine seals.

"Hexagonal Crystal Shuriken: Wild Dance!"

Crystal dust appeared to flake off of Guren's form, glittering motes of detritus which levitated in the air around her. Particles drifted together, materializing into crystal shuriken which rotated at blinding speeds.

Guren loosed a blistering barrage of projectiles, and at the same time Shizuka began to spin, the second step of her dance performance. She threw her kunai in every direction, seemingly at random.

Jikoku hummed, and cracked her neck. The burnt parts of her body were crumbling away as new flesh grew back in, the woman rebuilding herself with sage transformation. Her sharingan blazed, and she plucked a pair of kunai from the air.

Reading the trajectories of Guren's many crystal shuriken, Jikoku proceeded to begin deflecting them. Mineral snowflakes glanced off of deftly wielded knives, the woman anticipating and blocking most of Guren and Shizuka's attacks.

She was so focused on them that she didn't even notice the body rising up from the ground beneath her. Not until she felt the tip of a kunai against her throat.

"Stand down, or I will kill you," Kagerou Fuuma whispered in a deathly low voice. Guren and Shizuka stilled their barrage, not wishing to hit their compatriot.

Jikoku smiled pleasantly despite the knife being held to her jugular, and let out a cheerful laugh.

"Ah... I can't believe I let myself fall for such an elementary trick," she mused, the last of her burned parts falling away as she finished regenerating. "But you must not be very bright if you think a dagger to the throat will do what that combo jutsu couldn't."

Kagerou narrowed her eyes, and pressed the knife that much closer to Jikoku's skin.

"You'd be surprised what we can do with a little preparation," she replied.

"I wonder about that..." Jikoku said, still smiling. "I've absorbed Hidan-chan's immortality, you realize. I can use the Hozuki clan's hydrification jutsu. I've got Uzumaki vitality and Takigakure's Earth Grudge technique, not to mention perfect sage transformation, as you have just seen. Why should I be afraid of one little kunai?"

Kagerou smirked.

"Who said I was referring to the kunai?"

Four wings of chakra burst from the woman's back. A shockwave rippled through Jikoku's form, and she was sent flying forward. Her body splattered on the ground, a splash of water, and it took her a second to reform, dazed by the sudden force of Kagerou's attack.

Jikoku turned to assess the Fuuma jounin, who levitated now in the air, cold eyes assessing her. Insectoid wings of light flickered behind the woman, her clothes burning away as chakra raged around her body.

Sharingan eyes penetrated Kagerou's ninpou.

"That much chakra, huh...?" the white-haired Uzumaki mused, grinning. "I'm impressed. You're even willing to use a technique like that in hopes of beating me..."

"Kouha Reppuuken!"

Shizuka's fist burst through through Jikoku's torso, a massive spray of water erupting from the woman's chest. Jikoku looked down at the hand sticking out of her chest, idly bemused.

"So you can coat parts of your body with wind chakra... That's a pretty impressive jutsu," she remarked.

"It's not the only one," said Shizuka, grinning savagely.

She withdrew her hand, and in the same motion performed a flip that brought one of her legs down on Jikoku's shoulder.

"Kouha Senkaigiri!" she shouted, her calf cutting through Jikoku's torso like a knife through warm butter. "Kouha Reppuu Tarenken!" she cried a second later, and a flurry of wind-style punches tore through Jikoku's body, forcing the woman to almost completely liquefy.

A half-water Jikoku jumped away from Shizuka, panting slightly. Her body had lost most of its definition, and was reforming only slowly.

Kagerou appeared behind her in an instant, smirking.

"The Hozuki clan's suika no jutsu... it's quite taxing, isn't it?" she commented.

Her wings blurred, and a massive blast of chakra hit Jikoku square in the back. She was blown forward, her body blasted into millions of separate droplets. She hit the ground as a puddle, and it took her a visible effort to reform.

"Rat... Dog... Horse..."

Guren's voice reached Jikoku's ears, the woman chanting the seals she formed.

"Ram... Boar... Dragon..."

Hands clapped together audibly with each formation, fingers twisting and contorting deftly.

"Rat... Ram... Boar...!"

Eyes snapped open, and ruby lips parted as a sharp cry rose into air.

"Crystal Style: Jade Wall Eighth Formation!"

The ground all around Jikoku was torn apart by crystals, a forest of geometric prisms which clashed and shivered as they grew, encasing everything in their path. Including her. Mineral spikes rose high, a bristling mass of color which pointed and gleamed in myriad angles.

Light played across scores of massive, bunched up crystals. A hill of jade spines glinted in the otherworldly light of an eclipse.

Guren let out a weak pant. A bead of sweat trickled down her brow.

"Finally... I think we've finally got her beat...!" she said, a glimmer of hope in her eyes.

The instant those words left her mouth, the jutsu cracked.

Above their heads, the sky turned blood red. Guren felt a deathly chill pierce her to the very bone. Her limbs froze up, body going rigid.

She couldn't move.

Insects began crawling from her mouth. They poured out over her lips, skittering up her throat, swarming in her stomach. She wanted to gag at the taste, the feeling, the awful, ungodly sensations.

Horrible monstrosities emerged from the ground all around her. They formed from rock as would a vase from clay, shaped by unseen hands. Squamous tentacles writhed all over their bodies, hundreds of insectoid, many-faceted eyes glinting with an alien intelligence. Shapeless, slavering maws rimmed with teeth like jagged stalactites gibbered and hooted in blasphemous, hateful tongues which no human could ever conceive or utter.

Guren's clothes melted from her body. Hands roamed over her flesh, foul and wrong in some visceral way, inhuman and unnatural, with too many fingers and too little warmth, moving erratically, jerkily, like stop motion horrors brought to terrible life.

The revelation struck her with a bolt of shame, humiliation at letting herself be trapped like this.

Genjutsu.

Kagerou and Shizuka were in similar predicaments. Cold, slimy, forked phalluses probed their bared entrances. Skeletal hands with leathery, discolored skin worn like an ill-fitting glove pinned their bodies in place, spreading their legs and their cheeks. Horrors too hideous and vile to be here described laid them down and violated them in every sense of the word.

Too late had these three women realized the truth. By the time they perceived the illusion engulfing them, Jikoku had already taken what she wanted.

Their minds – and their bodies – were hers.

(^)(^)(^)(^)(^)

Yondaime Raikage.

Lightning flashed across the battlefield. Thunder boomed, crashing and roaring as a wrathful Nubian goddess tore past her people with fury in her eyes, nearly as swift as the flying thunder-god.

Ay.

Fourth shadow cast by the flash of lightning, fourth echo of that first thunder to roll across the heavens, cowing the frail mortals below with rumor of a might beyond their ken.

She was the Alpha of her village, the strongest and most revered. Whether she be man or woman, her speed and power were without equal.

Her legs were long and shapely, flexing and shivering from the force of her feet striking the ground. Muscles tensed and relaxed with a timing practiced over decades of battle. Electricity coursed through her body, chakra overriding her nervous system, pure will driving her at speeds beyond the reach of flesh alone.

A nigh bottomless well of power, strength virtually inexhaustible, a heart and body mighty and unyielding before adversity. She was raikage, one of the primal forces which governed the world of shinobi. She would bow before no invader, bend her knees to no enemy.

Pride and righteous fury drove her. She was heaven's rebuke, a stroke of unimaginable power which smote the hills and split the mountains.

Every kick of her legs was like a bolt of lightning. Thunder boomed in her wake.

She was kage, strongest of the strong. She was one of five, a warrior whose strength utterly surpassed human comprehension. She was Ay, undying, immortal, a living vessel for kaminari no ishi, the philosophy which had driven her village and her people since time immemorial.

All things of this world were transient, ephemeral. Even lighting, among the mightiest and most awe-inspiring forces of nature, existed only for an instant, a flash of power, energy transferred swift as thought from one point to another. For a split second it would pierce the heavens, illuminating all of creation. But then it would fade, leaving aught but the swiftly fading roll of thunder to mark its passing.

Such was man. Such was shinobi.

She was not the person she had been at birth. Not the shinobi who had given so much in service of her village.

She was the Alpha of Kumogakure, fourth human to bear the title of Raikage, and the name of Ay. That immortal will passed down from master to pupil was within her breast, a heart which thrummed and crackled with the lightning of her forebears.

The glance of her eyes was as keen as a sword, penetrating and discerning in an instant. Her body moved at a speed unrivaled, bosom heaving and quaking with every deep, measured breath. Her nostrils flared, a darkly beautiful visage lit with a black anger.

Pale hair was tied back in corn rows, braids which fell no further than the nape of her neck. Smooth skin was illuminated with the glow of chakra, electricity dancing across her body. Bolts of power burst from her muscles, flashing over her form, and leaping swifter than the blink of an eye into the next set of muscles, contracting them instantly, before bursting out and letting them relax, moving on to the next set.

She moved her own body with mere thought, controlling the flow of her chakra through sheer force of will. A continuous current flowed across her skin, directing her limbs with precise, perfectly timed impulses. Like a marionette pulling the strings of a puppet, Ay overrode her own conscious nervous system, ruling the movements of her body at the speed of dreams.

Her awareness was dilated, her perception of time slowed to a crawl. No time for fear, hesitation, or second guesses. She acted on instinct, on the reflexes and disciplines drilled into her by her masters over a long and successful career as a shinobi. Her gait swallowed meters with every step, her body running forward on wings of thunder, lightning crackling in her wake.

She was Ay, goddess of storms, Fourth Lightning-Shadow of the Village Hidden in the Clouds. To battle she raced, flying in wrath to the enemy, eyes flashing and voice booming as she cried.

"DON'T UNDERESTIMATE THE RAIKAGE!"

Bones hard as iron clashed with a hand of steel. Lightning struck, and the ground shuddered and cracked, the earth rolling beneath two naked beauties, as gorgeous as they were terrible.

Between Uzumaki and Raikage, the battle was joined.

(^)(^)(^)(^)(^)

Lava flowed, and steam roiled in the air. Streams of water crashed into the earth, coursing and hissing in the heat. Blades of light scythed through air, contorting and bending around their target.

A body spun in the air, a whirlwind of chakra rotating around her. Waves crashed over it with no effect, and blades of light were sundered.

Hakkeshou Kaiten

Kunai were tossed, their handles wrapped with bombs. They glanced off the rotation, detonating immediately in midair.

Smoke was blown away by the kaiten, but the shockwave could not be so easily deflected. The rotation was thrown off kilter, faltering for an instant.

A slim young kunoichi leaped above the target's head. A buxom beauty darted below her feet.

Hiramekarei, the Glinting Flounder, was thrust. From the hole in its blade, chakra erupted, a battering ram which descended on the enemy. At the same moment, slim and skillful hands blurred through a six seal sequence.

"Youton: Youkai no Jutsu!"

Molten rock was spewed from Mei Terumi's mouth, a bubbling apparition which crashed into the kaiten from below. Caught between the hammer and the anvil, the eight trigrams palm rotation wavered further, before ceasing.

In the moment offered by that opening, Ao leaped up with a full salvo of bomb kunai in her hands, tossing the projectiles in a wide arc.

Scarlet hair fluttered in the breeze.

Byakugan eyes flashed.

"Shinra Tensei!" she cried, and the Mizukage and her group found their attacks nullified, blasted back at them.

Mei, Choujuuko, and Ao scattered, falling back in an instant.

Koumoku Uzumaki landed feet-first on the ground, seeming unbothered by the slowly cooling lava mere inches from her feet.

Ao cursed.

"Damn..." the seasoned veteran muttered. "She must have a secondary defensive technique..."

Veins bulged from the right side of the bluenette's face, her eyepatch covering a byakugan.

Koumoku frowned, her own byakugan penetrating the chakra networks of these new challengers. Her stance shifted, the buxom redhead bringing one hand up in front of her, palm facing forward.

Mei Terumi wove more seals, and expelled a thick acid haze from her mouth. Corrosive vapor quickly spread.

"This woman is dangerous," Choujuuko murmured, hefting Hiramekarei into a defensive position. "If she was able to incapacitate Haku-san..."

"We can't take her lightly, right?" said Mei, narrowing her eyes. "Yes, that seems prudent. This girl's defensive techniques are certainly formidable..."

"Not at all," spoke Koumoku. "Your attacks have merely been inadequate. I suppose you kunoichi of the Slutty Mist are too busy having sex with everything that moves to actually train." She smiled brightly. "I envy such carefree promiscuity. I really do!"

A vein throbbed over Mei's right eye. She hissed, a sharp intake of breath, and her nostrils flared.

"Chou-chan... Ao-chan..." said the Mizukage a little too sweetly. "Would you girls mind stepping back with Haku-chan? I wouldn't want you to get caught in the crossfire."

Her two attendants nodded, grabbing the Yuki prodigy and hightailing it a safe distance away from the Mizukage.

Koumoku smirked, and with a wave of her hand brushed aside Mei's acid mist.

"Are you going to fight me seriously, Mizukage-chan?" the redhead said, her eyes gleaming with amusement.

"Ohh... this is serious, alright..." Mei managed to growl out. "Very serious indeed."

Koumoku laughed, and disappeared in a flicker of shunshin.

Mei clapped her hands together, and the ground exploded.

"Youton: Kazan!"