(Serios Pt. 3)
Tsubaki frowned as the group laid eyes on the place where the very edge of the Fallen's barrier lay.
The barrage of Light spears that had been constantly launching at them from all directions the moment they took to the air, had ceased a handful of seconds ago. It had only been a minute or two of the hidden Fallen Angels' attacks, but even that much was more than double the expected travel time, due to the necessary evasive maneuvers cutting down on speed and increasing straight-line travel distance.
Despite the slowdown, it had been child's play for all of her fellow peerage members to evade injury. If even a handful of the ambushers had sallied out to engage in melee, it would likely have stalled them for drastically longer, yet none did.
Now that they were in sight of their destination, Tsubaki realized why.
There was a massive group of fallen guarding the edge of the barrier, dozens strong. The majority were two-winged Fallen with a smattering of four-wingers, arrayed loosely in the air with a few remaining stragglers still scurrying to join, from the trees and sky both.
The problem? They were on the other side.
While the two exorcists were strong, strong enough to take out that many weak Fallen on their own if in peak condition, the Devil's couldn't cross the barrier with them to fight, and it would take a while for the two to finish fighting all the Fallen off to get the emergency message out to the Maou, at which point it could be too late anyway.
The ambushers were simply trying to slow down her group for long enough to let their fellows form a defensive at the border, in order to stall them even further.
"That's a lot of Fallen." Saji muttered, barely loud enough to hear.
"They don't really think they can stop us, do they?" Tomoe asked cheerfully. "There's a lot, but they're pretty weak! We could take them out with like, no sweat if they attack!"
"Beating them isn't the issue, it's beating them quickly enough," Tsubaki corrected. "You may not sense it, but they are on the other side of the barrier. It would be too dangerous to try the main plan. We're going with plan B. Saji, use [Absorption Line] to weaken a segment of the barrier while we protect you. When you've weakened it sufficiently we will-"
Two more high-level powers appeared in the sky far behind them, and she glanced back sharply. While one with a shining purple aura shot straight for the school, the other one, a dark red that was almost reminiscent of the Power of Destruction in color, simply grew brighter, heading straight for them.
The dozens of Fallen Angels surged towards them, over a hundred Light spears filling up the sky
"Vice-prez-? Oh, oh shit."
Tsubaki grimaced, internally agreeing with the sentiment.
A small army at the front, and a lieutenant at the rear. It wasn't looking good.
Tsubaki's eyes widened as the red Light faded, and with it, she lost track of the rapidly approaching Fallen's energy signature.
"Everyone, to the ground! Stick together and watch each other's backs, keep your eyes peeled!"
If they couldn't sense the Fallen's approach, they needed to eliminate as many directions of approach as possible for a stealth-based attacker.
'That still leaves the army as an issue!' Tsubaki thought, mentally racing through options as she set Xenovia down, eyeing the two wielders of the most versatile Holy Sword, and the strongest intact one. 'If I can guard these two, could the rest of the peerage handle the big one-?'
The sheer power from Gomeisa the previous night made her shake her head. If this one was anything like him, her [Mirror Alice] and the Holy Swords where the only thing that stood a real chance of taking the newcomer down, maybeSaji's [Absorption Line] if they got lucky with a perfectly executed plan.
The Light spears launched on an unknown signal, falling like a rain of arrows towards the devils.
As she was turning to cast a generic defensive barrier, the choice taken out of her hands, a flash of movement from behind her reflected off of her glasses.
"[Mirror Alice]!" She shouted, forming the reflective surface behind her and Xenovia.
She spun around.
Nothing was there.
Luckily, neither of Sona's [Bishops] were novice casters, and they formed a barrier together in her stead, blocking the initial barrage with some signs of strain.
Tsubaki looked up.
"I am Aludra, soon to be Furud."
A Fallen with three pairs of wings floated above them, dressed in a concealing all-black robe with multiple belts criss-crossing his waist, red eyes peering out of his hood with a half-mask covering his mouth. He wasn't far away in the slightest, yet she couldn't sense him at all.
"I'll be taking those Holy Swords off your hands. Don't worry, you won't be missing them much. In fact, you won't even notice they're gone."
Absorption Line shot at him from below, a valiant attempt, but the man faded like mist as it wrapped around his leg, as if he wasn't even there in the first place.
Koneko darted in behind Kiba as the [Knight] stabbed at Wezen with a ridiculously pointy rapier, jumping over her clubmate with a spinning kick toward the face. After batting the sword aside so hard it snapped in half, the Fallen met her with an elbow strike, and she stuck to the limb for a splint second twist around and slam her other heel into his head, but he managed to lessen the impact by dropping his arm and twisting his head to the side.
She jumped off with a backflip as his other hand came up to grab her ankle, and she swung her arms across her chest throwing out a shotgun spray of chakra claws that peppered his blocking forearms with shallow scratches. Issei swung in and landed a punch to his abs that made him take a step back, just for him to stomp his back foot into the ground and shatter the earth in a cone behind him for a dozen meters. Kiba's footing was disrupted while he was mid-thrust with another sword, causing the supernaturally sharp blade to shift just enough to slice a shallow wound across his side instead of punching through his lung.
Before Wezen could retaliate, Kiba was already falling back, focusing on maximizing his speed advantage with rogue tactics while Koneko occupied the main aggro role, Issei.
To that end, Koneko dashed back in with a haymaker charged with chakra.
The air shook on impact when her knuckles landed on the shallow cut, but the kinetic force blasted past the Fallen with no effect, his planted foot anchoring his still body to the ground.
He moved.
"Hnn!" Koneko jumped back with a grunt as the meaty fist slammed into her crossed forearms with a boom, and sent her shooting back-first into a tree fast enough to shatter the trunk without noticeably slowing, toppling it. Even moving with the blow to reduce the impact, the punch was still powerful enough to leave bruising later, she knew.
She landed on her feet in a skid at the same time that the falling tree exploded into pulped woodchips, the hulking Fallen flying through it like it was paper mache.
There was a streak of white, and then a small blue-white explosion occurred at his head height before Wezen was even fully visible again, but the man continued charging straight through that too, revealing his own forearm that was lifted to protect his eyes, his skin completely unscratched, his form towering over her as he ate up the distance with a visible pearly-white grin.
Koneko would have clicked her teeth if she actually expected it to work, but she was in the process of swerving around the other open-hand swipe that came roaring down towards her head. Twisting at the waist as she slid backwards, she felt the air itself being displaced as the massive hand passed by her face and chest by inches, the ends of her hair being pulled in with the air being sucked back in his hand's wake.
Koneko used the opening to swing for his gut, which happened to be near chin-level for her, her fist coated in the fiery glow of excess chakra that was leaking from her control in the heat of the moment. The arm that had covered his eyes was already lowering, his open palm interposing between her fist and his abs to catch her blow.
They never made contact, Koneko released all the gathered chakra early in a point-blank explosion, halting his forward motion while pushing her further back for dozens of meters distance. She narrowly dodged slamming her back into two more trees with quick, light hops as she maintained her backwards momentum, but the impacts would have been barely noticeable to her in the first place with how juiced her body was right now.
"Haha!" Wezen burst from the smoke, charging forward in a loping run. "For all the power packed into that miniscule body of yours, you're a real slippery one! A true balance of raw power, speed, and skill, much more entertaining than the other two!"
Koneko sent chakra to the balls of her feet as she landed again to stop her backwards slide, bending her knees and dashing forward to meet him.
With the amount of power and speed their bodies moved with, every step they took threatened to either push them up off the ground, or lose traction and skid out. It was a problem with hundreds, if not thousands of solutions in the supernatural world. While Wezen bounded over the dirt with powerful leaps, using the power of flight from his three pairs of wings to push himself back down, Koneko sprinted low to the ground at a breakneck pace with rapid pumps of her legs, cycling chakra back and forth to the soles of her feet with perfect timing, using tree-walking to substitute for any needed downforce while her arms were outstretched behind her in a ninja run.
Half a football-field's worth of distance closed in almost the blink of an eye.
Koneko's eyes narrowed, blasting towards him with a hand shooting forward, fingers trailing with chakra.
Wezen's grin widened, using his wings to turn his run into an arms-spread flying tackle, backed by the mass of a pickup truck.
She reacted instantly, ducking into a slide underneath the missile of a man and as her outstretched fingers brushed up against his arm while he flew past.
–A pitch-black tendril of pure darkness lunged from the forest out of the Fallen's sight, piercing straight through his neck with zero resistance.
Koneko didn't have time to see his expression as his body, wings included, suddenly stopped obeying his orders and he lost control of his trajectory.
[Boost!]
"[DRAGON IMPACT!]"
Koneko righted herself as she twisted back to her feet, sensing the spike of Issei's power doubling again before she even saw the perverted [Pawn] shoot down through the canopy to slam a two-handed hammer fist into the back of the Fallen's bald head. A pair of booms rang out back-to-back, the impact of the strike followed by Wezen's body being spiked into the ground hard enough to make a new crater, knocking over an unlucky tree in the process.
Koneko sensed the Fallen's Light surge, overloading Kiba's [Impulse Stealer] and shattering the shadow weapon with a flash of light off to the side within the trees.
"Annoying…" Koneko grunted as she dashed in to try and keep up the pressure alongside Issei.
She had wanted to try trading hits with Wezen, using the window where he was mid attack– and thus, not focusing his ki into a practically invulnerable shell, if her guess on the limit of his ki control was correct– to go blow for blow, see exactly how tough he was without his ki defense up. He'd blocked her very first attack in the fight without it and been fine, and taken several normal or glancing strikes from all three of them without issue, just a few minor nicks and bruises along his arms, but any time they'd tried to get him with a big attack, he'd no-sold them with his basic but potent ki defense.
Because he seemed to need to lock his muscles in place to effectively coat his skin with his aura, she had assumed that meant he could only use it defensively.
She'd only noticed at the last second– before Kiba attempted to give her an opening– that he had coated his body with ki mid-flight, right before they would have traded blows.
'Damn super armor abuse,' she grouched in her head.
He didn't just use it defensively, he also used it like the invincibility frames an ultimate move gives you in fighting games– ensuring that even if the enemy hit you while you were mid-attack, you couldn't be stunned out of your ult. Sure, he couldn't move his body while using it, but that didn't stop him from throwing himself at you first and thenarmor locking.
"Eat this!" Issei had followed down into the crater to try and wail on the grounded Fallen, but Wezen had already spun up to his feet in a surprisingly fluid move for his size by the time the [Pawn] reached him, his aura radiating annoyance at himself. He blocked the amateurly thrown punch with his palm, with apparent ease despite the multiple-times Boosted power of a [Queen] promotion behind it. "Huh-? Gah!"
"Try hiding behind that girl this time, Pipsqueak Dragon Emperor!" Wezen exclaimed while rearing his fist back. The Fallen's giant fingers had wrapped around Issei's gauntleted fist before the boy could react.
Wezen yanked Issei up by his arm as the boy scrambled to try and free himself, before slamming his fist into his gut in an uppercut that rang out like a thunderclap, blowing back the dust.
"Guh-uh!" Issei folded in half around the fist and coughed out a spray of blood, dropping to his knees.
His arm was still being held up in Wezen's grip though as the Fallen reared back again.
Koneko slammed her front foot deep into the earth at the edge of the crater for leverage and secured herself with chakra, gripping her fists together and pulling with all her might right as the man began to swing.
Wezen's fist swung forward and slowed, stopping inches from Issei's wide-eyed face, before rebounding back to its cocked-back position with a snap, getting them both to blink in shock. "What in the Hell-?!"
Five thick ropes of brightly glowing chakra were attached to the skin of his forearm and elbow as he strained.
"What kind of nonsense is this?" Wezen looked back at her incredulously as he tried and failed to swing his fist more than a foot forward with the elastic tethers pulling him back.
Koneko's muscles bulged beneath her skin as she struggled to restrain him, and chakra surged both throughout her limbs as well as the chakra threads that she had snuck onto the man as he'd passed her.
"Bungee-… gum…" Koneko bit out through grit teeth as the earth around her feet began cracking under the forces involved. "Has properties… of rubber and gum."
"'Rubber and gum'?" The bald giant balked. "That's the dumbest thing I've ever-!"
His and Koneko's heads both snapped upwards in surprise, and the sky shattered, glimmering shards of Light dissipating as the barrier broke apart. '... Was that supposed to happen like that?'
Wezen seemed almost as surprised, though for different reasons, if the amused chuckle was anything to go by.
He suddenly tensed, and Koneko sensed the flow of his ki surging to the surface right as Kiba's sword blurred towards the back of his neck.
The blade bloomed with flames right before impact, and the moment the edge made contact with a meaty thump that was incongruent with bladed weaponry meeting flesh, those flames burst outward into a searing blaze that engulfed the Fallen's upper body and hid it from view.
The set of his aura seemed a little bit more annoyed, even if unconcerned, at the presence of the fire, so that was another thing that she crossed off on her mental list of 'things that might get past his ki,' though it stayed on her 'things that might be useful' list, especially because he stayed turtles up well after the blade itself was stopped dead.
A punch with all the force of a grenade might not get through his base durability, but it seemed heat-type attacks could still work.
"Issei-kun! Your Gear!" Kiba called out in a hurry, pumping more and more demonic power into his [Flame Sword] to keep the heat coming.
"H-huh? O-oh, right…!" [Boosted Gear] disappeared with a flash of emerald light, allowing Issei to fly back when his fist slipped loosely from his captors frozen grip. As soon as he was free, wincing and clutching at his stomach, the Sacred Gear reappeared and Issei wasted no time starting to Boost up again.
Kiba was beginning to sweat from the building heat, the closest trees catching fire by proximity, including the downed one lying a few meters away.
"We need a plan," he declared calmly despite his discomfort.
"He can still hear us," Koneko reminded the older teen. "It's not like he's frozen or something, he's just tensing really hard to lock his body in position." She could literally feel the man's amusement at their predicament radiating off of him, soothing whatever the earlier annoyance he felt was a tiny bit. He seemed content to let Kiba continue spending his energy to barely inconvenience him while she and Issei watched, unable to do anything but wait.
Koneko heard dogs barking in the distance, but put it out of her mind to focus.
Koneko stared at the giant burning man, considering next moves now that Issei was out of potential harm's way. She could barely spot Wezen's still-open eyes, only just visible beneath the flickering inferno, and studying her in return with a totally controlled stillness and intent that she could feel through her own fledgling aura.
'The first time I aimed for his eyes-' she realized with anticipation coiling in her gut, '-he closed them beforeraising his aura. Either it was just a reflex…'
Or his eyes were still a weak spot, even with his aura armor making him seemingly invulnerable to everything they'd thrown at him so far. After all, their punches and kicks and sword swings cut still push his skin down when it was up, the flesh was just more durable. Put enough force behind a strike, and you should be able to get through. The same should go for the eyes, the most delicate visible organs on the body.
The ground vibrated, cracking more to the point of almost loosening her footing despite her chakra sticking.
Koneko pulled a hand away from her ripoff Bungee Gum tethers and formed a set of claws as sharp and tough as she possibly could. She then released the chakra anchoring her to the ground, sling-shotting her towards the flaming bald man.
Koneko felt the instant he decided he wasn't going to let her do as she pleased.
The aura dropped for a split second and his hand shot up, his muscles tensing in place to bring his aura up again the instant before her claws would reach him. With all her weight and the force of her slingshot behind it, she stabbed into his palm. She felt the sudden give of puncturing through a tough membrane, felt his torn skin on her fingertips, but didn't get any further than that.
She quickly kicked off of his arm, launching herself back out of the flames with the equivalent of a strong sunburn.
The moment Wezen let go of armor mode again, he ducked forward away from the blade edge and spun around with an upwards palm-strike. Kiba stepped back, but Wezen still made contact with [Flame Sword] and shattered it, extinguishing the flames with the shockwave, revealing a slightly reddened upper body from that split second of direct, unprotected exposure to the fire, as well as a palm with five bloody little holes and a thin, shallow cut on the back of his neck from the moment he release his ki.
All that speed and sharpness, and she could barely punch more than a centimeter deep.
Still, it was better than nothing. She found a potential weakness, too.
Wezen grunted as he went on the attack on Kiba, his eyes blinking rapidly while using an unrelenting combo of wide swipes and quick jabs that still had enough force to produce shockwaves, forcing the blond to continuously backpedal and sidestep instead of giving him the opportunity to truly accelerate to make use of his [Knight] speed. He had a higher upper end for sure, but Wezen had so much explosive strength that he could accelerate much faster in those instant-action, close range moments.
Koneko dashed in behind the Fallen and jumped, aiming a karate kick right for the back of the neck.
Wezen didn't forget her though, spinning around with a backhand. Koneko flapped her wings, angled forward and downward, effectively double jumping over the counterattack with a flip that let her swing her heel down at the back of his head.
Wezen slammed his head backwards.
Pop!
Koneko winced as she landed in a skid a few yards away, testing her weight on her heel as she watched the Fallen also staggering a little. 'Definitely sprained, pretty badly. Maybe dislocated, too,' she nodded to herself. There was a large purple bruise forming on the back of Wezen's head, having formed way too quickly to have been caused by her hit just now. 'So when…?'
"[Dragon Shot!]"
An emerald beam engulfed the man from above, pounding down into the earth from the sky like the Hammer of Dawn and spewing out huge amounts of suddenly relocated dirt
'Oh.' Koneko suddenly recalled that Issei had landed a massive hit in that very spot, even though he'd been using his ki armor. 'Or was he?' She didn't remember sensing his aura dropping, but it's entirely possible she missed it. She was still far from an expert. On top of that, Wezen's defensive aura seemed to rely on him manually tensing all of the muscles in his body at once to force his ki to the surface. The only explanation for how Issei's hit, about as strong as her second kick in the entire fight, could have broken through…
Impulse Stealer was still paralyzing him from the neck down when Issei hit him.
'Got you.' Koneko's lips twitched into a tiny smile. "Kiba! Impulse Stealer works!" She called out over the din.
Her voice was almost drowned out by the roar of the attack, but Kiba shot her a thumbs up and created the weapon, its void blade fully retracted.
The Dragon Shot slowly began to dissipate, revealing Wezen's silhouette kneeling within the crater with his arms raised and covering his head. The crater he was in wasn't as deep as it should have been, if not for the fact that most of the Dragon Shot's energy was tanked directly by his body.
Kiba sped forward, the nerve disrupting sword lunging forward in one hand, and his [Destruction Sword] cocked back in the other.
But Koneko's instincts screamed at her as the silhouette lifted his arms further up, Light surging through his body towards his fists. Wezen wasn't trying to use his ki, [Impulse Stealer] wouldn't do anything but overload in an instant and break with the amount of Light being channeled.
"Get back!" She yelled a warning to her teammate in a panic.
Kiba reacted instantly despite his surprise and pivoted sharply to dash away, but it was too late. Wezen's fists came down.
BOOOM!
The woods vanished in an explosion of purple Light, dirt flying in the howling wind and trees snapping and falling outwardly in a wide ring around the epicenter, dozens of meters in radius.
Koneko dug her good foot into the dirt as she was sent skidding back with grit teeth and aching ears, arms raised in front of her squinting eyes as even her chakra sticking wasn't enough to hold steady, the earth beneath her feet literally crumbling under the force of the shockwave.
Kiba was launched to the far end of the brand new clearing, his smoking body smashing through one of the last standing trees before the main school yard, just to tumble another handful of meters before sliding to a stop in a heap on the sandy field.
"Senpai!" Koneko yelled in worry as she watched him struggle to push himself up. One of his feet was twisted the wrong way while one of his arms hung limply below him, and as he got to his hand and knees, he gave a hacking cough that dripped blood. Steam rose from the exposed skin that got a direct dose of a Fallen Angel's Light.
'Too- Damn- SLOW! Again!' Koneko grit her teeth, tail flicking in frustration as she tried not to let the rage overtake her and lose sight of things like last time. 'Dammit… Dammit!'
She knew she wasn't succeeding very well, the amount of natural energy that was beginning to concentrate in the area was almost more than she could stop herself from taking for herself, damn the consequences.
"Heh. Damn dragon brat, that's twice now I've fucked up and given you an opening for a decent lick. Too focused on trying to use my new tricks." Wezen shook his head out as he stood back up, glancing at the destruction around him. "Now that the tricky sword kid is dealt with, sticking to what's familiar should be more than enough for the two of you. I need more practice with that 'Fighting Spirit' shit before it's ready for the field I guess, I'm too slow with it as it is."
The man looked worse for wear, sporting patches on his back, sides, and arms where the skin had been scraped away until bloody raw. The previously minor cuts along the man's arms having been forcefully opened more by the torrent of firepower Issei had unleashed, to the point there was a steady drip falling from his elbows as he pressed a fist into his palm to crack his knuckles. He twisted his neck to the side with a pop at the same time.
"YOU BASTARD! I'll make you pay for that!"
[Boost!]
Issei shot down like a comet and Wezen jumped up with a flap of his wings to meet him, both swinging their fists.
Light flashed where their knuckles met and Issei was thrown back, but so was Wezen this time, even if not as far.
The fallen bellowed out a laugh. "That's it, more like the girl! This is the kinda fight I've been looking for!"
Issei wasn't done yet, and he was faster than the Fallen now too.
He swooped down and they met in the air again a few feet above the ground to trade a flurry of blows that sent shockwaves vibrating through the upturned dirt.
The ground began shaking, and the sound of crackling flames began to rise. Which didn't make sense, since every fire in the vicinity had been blown out.
"LOOK OUT, COMING THROUGH!" A particular voice shouted out as its owner shot into the newly-formed clearing, jumping past the flattened perimeter of trees and grabbing the momentary attention of the brawling fighters as they separated for a moment.
"Uzumaki?! Get out of here man, this guy is dangerous!"
Naruto ignored Issei as he soared right past the Fallen Angel. A trail of falling trees followed in the whiskered teen's path and deafening barks and howls rang out.
"You!" The Fallen swung a crudely formed purple hammer of Light at the boy as he passed, but Naruto twisted around in mid air, and slapped a palm down on the man's massive forearm to flip over it.
At the same time, jets of hellish flames shot into the clearing hot on his heels
"Grrrah!" Wezen growled in pain as he jerked away, his arm blistering and blood steaming from the brief exposure "Stupid fucking mutt!"
"Bad dog, bad! No burning down the woods!" Naruto yelled out behind him as he hit the ground running, speeding to one side of the clearing.
"Damned brat! Where's the Excalibur!?" Wezen bellowed out as Issei blocked him from giving chase.
"Hell if I know, jackass! Does it look like I have it!?" Naruto called as he disappeared back into the woods.
An absolutely gigantic dog, dwarfing even the 'giant' Fallen Angel, burst into the clearing with a spray of foliage, taking up a solid third of the available space. Two of its three heads growled as they searched the area, The third flopping around limp and bleeding from its destroyed eye socket while the cerberus ignored the three other people in the clearing.
Bam!
The middle head yelped and the right head howled as Wezen's thrown hammer slammed into the center head with a painful sounding impact.
"He ran into the woods, you dumb animal!" Wezen pointed at the tree line. "Go fucking fetch!" He turned his attention back to Issei just in time to catch the fist in his palm and pivot, throwing the brown-haired teen down into the cratered ground and shooting down after him feet-first with a flash of his purple Light aura. Issei managed to roll away before Wezen hit the ground like a missile and the fight resumed with the teen on the backfoot, already nearing his limit for how many Boosts his body could hold onto for a sustained fight.
As the hellhound ran in the direction given with a low whine, completely missing as the sneaky boy slipped past its blind right side to circle the clearing, Koneko sensed someone new arrive nearby and begin helping Kiba move away from the battle, and let herself release some of the tension in her shoulders in relief.
She dropped to all fours to compensate for her injured foot, her hands and feet beginning to glow a hazy light blue.
She was faster like this anyway, even if there were other downsides to the movement style.
Koneko raced forwards and pounced with a burst of chakra from her limbs, crossing the distance in a split second and throwing her fist towards the Fallen's injured side while he was pressuring Issei with a series of shockingly fluid kicks.
The instant before she made contact, one of his wings swung forwards and smacked her wrist, deflecting her fist beside his abs where the raging torrent of chakra exploded from her knuckles to miss him completely, continuing on past to blast apart a line of trees.
Then the rest of her body slammed into him in a shoulder-check. Because of their relative sizes, he barely staggered a foot or so to the side before his flight compensated for him, but it made him whiff his high kick, while giving Issei the opening to slam a downwards hook right into his jaw.
[Boost!]
Wezen was slammed back into the ground from the relatively sudden punch, and Koneko saw Issei wince, his body shaking as it failed to safely contain the power without damaging himself.
Koneko looked back down at the Fallen as he rolled back into a three point stance.
Wezen started standing up again with a grin, Light raging around him as he shaped it into a pair of giant hammers so poorly made that they looked more like misshapen clubs. Poor construction or not, they were densely packed with a ton of power that just kept on flowing, making them seem more like some dark purple alien metal than Light constructs.
She was certain now. While his battle instinct was good enough to save him from obvious openings as long as he was aware of a threat, his actual perception, his senses, were atrocious. He was barely good enough at manipulating his own Light to imitate the shape of a rectangle on a stick, let alone good enough to sense other people- and the same went for his physical energy. It was incredibly potent, and passively strengthened him without his direct effort, but when it was time to use one of the most basic, well known uses of it… he sucked ass with it.
Koneko let her chakra blaze visibly around her as she formed her chakra claws again, letting the ends of them grow up to her elbows.
It was completely wasteful, and didn't do anything at all to make her stronger.
But it drew his eyes, made him think she was readying a big attack
He crouched, wings lifting as he prepared to jump forward at them–
–and then the fight was over.
Wezen dropped like a puppet with his strings cut, collapsing forward as his muscles all relaxed at once, his hammers slipping from his grasp and dispersing into motes of purple light before they even hit the ground. Standing behind the face-down Fallen Angel was Naruto, his cane sword held out in a two-handed stab and dripping blood.
Crimson poured from the back of the dead man's head in spurts, where the base of the skull met the spine.
Koneko lowered the last few feet to the ground, pulling back her chakra to reabsorb as much as she could before it fully left her influence.
She hadn't even seen him sneak up, even though she knewhe was still in the area because she sensed his borrowed life-force. She definitely didn't hear him, and the scents in the area were way too muddled to make any sort of accurate conclusion in the heat of the moment.
'I know he's a ninja, but if this is what he can do when he tries, what the hell does Transparency even really do for him?' is the thought that went through her head. Yeah, it could make him actually invisible, but did he even really need that with skill like that?
"Uzumaki?!" Issei sputtered. "But you ran the other way!"
"Yeah, I did." Naruto nodded with a tilt of his head. "And then I ran back here. Ninja, remember?"
"Wait. It's over, just like that?" Issei questioned as it dawned on him, lowering his guard.
"That's usually how it happens for most people, yeah. Most of the time, a blade in the back of the skull when you're not expecting it is just as deadly as getting hit with Explosion magic." Naruto explained while flicking the blood off his sword, before shrugging sheepishly. "To be honest though, I'm also pretty surprised it was this easy. Basically all of my serious fights in the past have been the second type."
Naruto glanced towards the school field just visible through the trees left standing. "Oh, and Kiba's being taken care of." He tapped his ear, showing off a sleek earpiece. "Some of my new friends are bringing some friends of their own to help out with all the fights, and Kiba's being brought to Asia-chan right now."
He crouched down, and began turning over Wezen's body with a grunt.
Issei let out a sigh. "Man, that's a relief. He was coughing out blood from that last hit."
"So were you earlier." Koneko reminded him blandly.
"Really?" Issei blinked, slowly patting his stomach testingly with a tense hand. "I didn't notice, I guess."
Naruto brushed his palm over the bald man's face now that the body was lying on its back. When his hand slipped past, the eyes were shut.
"Are you guys good to go? Caught your breaths from the warmup, ready for the main boss?" He asked mostly for Issei's benefit as he stood up. "You should hold on to those Boosts, Issei. Don't let them go just yet, 'cuz Red could probably use some of that dragon juice right about now."
Koneko snorted, while Issei choked on air, his expression quickly twisting into a perverted grin as his imagination ran wild.
"Er…" Naruto realized how what he said could be taken, and rubbed the back of his head awkwardly. "... Ya'know what, pretend I didn't say that. You know what I meant."