The forest was still smoking.
Jiraiya leaped through the blackened canopy, his sandals finding purchase on branches that had been stripped of their bark by the shockwave of Kagerō's Ephemeral blast. The air smelled of charcoal, ozone, and the sickly-sweet scent of vaporized sap. Ash drifted down like gray snow, dissolving into smears of soot the moment it touched his sweaty skin.
He was moving fast, heading back toward Saisei. The "herding" attempt had failed, but it had done its job: it had wasted his time.
Snap.
A vibration ripple through the natural energy of the forest.
Jiraiya skidded to a halt on a thick oak branch. He didn't turn around. He just closed his eyes, letting his sensory perception expand.
To his left, the click of a metal pincer.
Above him, the rustle of eight-legged movement. It was a dry, scratching sound—skritch-skritch—like dry leaves being dragged over sandpaper.
"You're persistent," Jiraiya grumbled. "I'll give you that."
Two figures emerged from the gloom.
Kamikiri, his right arm replaced by the massive mechanical pincer, dropped onto a rock, shattering the mossy stone. Hydraulic fluid leaked from the joint of his pincer, sizzling as it hit the hot stone, smelling of burnt hair and motor oil.
Jigumo, crouching on a vertical trunk, hissed as spiders spilled from his sleeves, weaving a net across the escape route.
They were battered. Kamikiri's pincer was bent from their earlier skirmish. Jigumo was bleeding from a cut on his forehead. But their eyes were glazed with a fanatical desperation.
"You don't leave," Kamikiri rasped, snapping his claw. CLACK. "Not until the Master is safe."
"Where's the girl?" Jiraiya asked, scanning the perimeter. "The one with the wings."
"She is gone," Jigumo spat, a spider dropping from his mouth to dangle by a thread. "We are the wall now."
Jiraiya sighed. He looked at the moon, barely visible through the smog that drifted from the factory town.
"I don't have time to dance with you idiots," Jiraiya said. "So I'm going to end this. Now."
Jiraiya clasped his hands together. He didn't summon the Toads. He didn't need the song. He just opened the floodgates. The wind died instantly, the forest falling into a vacuum of silence as the pressure around him dropped.
He inhaled.
The air around him rushed into his pores—the gritty taste of the Sound smog, the heat of the dying forest, the weight of the stone. The wooden soles of his geta groaned, sinking an inch into the dirt as his physical mass seemed to double without changing size.
Balance.
His appearance shifted instantly. His nose swelled, bulbous and warty. Deep red markings painted themselves under his eyes. His pupils turned into horizontal bars.
Sage Mode.
It wasn't the perfected form he could achieve with Ma and Pa, but for two Jōnin-level thugs? It was overkill.
"Frog Kata," Jiraiya croaked, his voice deepening into a resonant bass.
Kamikiri lunged, the pincer aiming to sever Jiraiya's waist.
Jiraiya didn't dodge. He stepped into the strike.
He punched the air.
His fist stopped six inches from Kamikiri's chest. The air between his knuckles and the armor warped, shimmering like heat haze a split second before the impact.
BOOM.
The natural energy surrounding his fist acted as an extension of his body. The invisible shockwave slammed into Kamikiri, caving in his chest armor. The sound wasn't a thud; it was a thunderclap, a sonic boom that shook the remaining dead leaves from the trees.
"Gah!" Kamikiri's eyes bugged out. He flew backward, smashing through three trees before hitting the dirt, unconscious.
Jigumo shrieked, unleashing a torrent of webs.
Jiraiya vanished.
He reappeared behind the spider-user, hanging upside down from the same branch.
"Too slow," Jiraiya whispered.
He chopped the back of Jigumo's neck.
CRACK.
It was a controlled strike. Precise. Jigumo went limp instantly, tumbling from the tree to land in a heap next to his partner. A few stunned spiders scurried away from Jigumo's sleeves, confused by the sudden lack of chakra command.
Jiraiya dropped to the ground. The red markings faded from his face as he exhaled the natural energy. He looked at the two fallen Fūma. They were breathing—ragged, painful breaths—but they were alive.
"Sleep it off," Jiraiya muttered.
He looked north, toward the mountains where Kagerō must have fled. Then he looked south, toward the factory town glowing with toxic neon light.
The girl went to the hideout, he realized. She fled to warn Orochimaru. These two stayed to die.
A cold knot formed in his stomach.
They're stalling me. Orochimaru is trying to move.
"Hang on, kids," Jiraiya whispered.
He pushed chakra into his legs and blurred out of existence, racing back toward the lights of Saisei.
The forest was quiet again. The only sound was the wheezing breath of the unconscious Kamikiri and Jigumo.
A shadow detached itself from the darkness of a hollowed-out tree.
He moved silently, his footsteps leaving no impression on the mulch. A toad nearby let out a single croak, then fell abruptly silent, sensing a predator that didn't belong in the food chain. He wore a green tunic with white sleeves, and his long, purple hair hung over his eyes.
He stopped over the bodies of his cousins. His grey eyes were devoid of warmth. They looked like slate—hard and cold. The wind shifted, carrying the metallic tang of blood, but Arashi didn't even blink.
"You failed," Arashi said softly.
Kamikiri groaned, shifting in his unconscious state.
Arashi knelt. He placed a hand on Kamikiri's forehead. He placed his other hand on Jigumo's chest.
"But the Fūma do not waste resources," Arashi whispered.
He didn't use a kunai. He didn't use poison.
He flexed his chakra.
SNAP. SNAP.
Two quick pulses of chakra severed their brain stems. The wheezing stopped. The forest went dead silent. Their bodies went slack with a synchronized, heavy slump, the finality of it echoing in the quiet clearing.
Arashi stood up. He wove a complex string of hand seals.
"Forbidden Art: Casualty Puppet."
The air around him warped. A sickly, dark red chakra began to ooze from his skin, coating his arms like tar. The chakra bubbled audibly—blup, blup—like boiling mud, smelling faintly of sulfur and raw meat.
He reached down.
The sound was wet. Schluck.
He didn't pick the bodies up. He sank his hands into them. It sounded like stepping into deep mud—a wet, sucking squelch that made the gorge rise.
The flesh of his cousins began to ripple. It lost its solidity, turning into a viscous, red slurry that flowed up Arashi's arms. It was a horrific, biological absorption. Bones dissolved into chakra. Muscles knit into new patterns.
Kamikiri's body deflated like an empty wineskin, sucking into Arashi's right shoulder. The skin on Arashi's neck stretched tight, translucent for a second, revealing a pulse that was beating far too fast to be human.
Jigumo's body dissolved into Arashi's back.
Arashi threw his head back, his neck veins bulging as the foreign chakra flooded his system. His body twisted, bones cracking and reforming to accommodate the new mass. His spine elongated with a wet pop, forcing him to arch his back as his center of gravity shifted violently.
For a second, a spider leg burst from his ribs, twitching, before being absorbed back into his skin. A patch of metal scales rippled across his forearm.
Arashi exhaled. His breath steamed in the cold night air.
He looked at his hands. They felt strong. They felt crowded.
"We are together now," Arashi murmured, his voice layering over itself—a chorus of three souls in one throat. One of his eyes rolled back independently of the other, revealing a flash of white sclera before snapping back to focus.
He turned toward the north, toward the hidden caves.
"The master is waiting."