Part II
*****
Inside the compound, Kushina stood completely still, a single kunai gripped tightly in her hand. Through the creeping mist, she watched the distant flashes of explosions light up the surrounding mountain forest.
She had positioned herself dead center in the garden, acting as the final line of defense in front of the main building where her aunt was currently giving birth. Reaching out with her senses, she could feel the chakra signatures of her team already engaged in fierce, scattered combat across the forest perimeter.
Suddenly, her eyes narrowed. She spun sharply on her toes—
Clink-clink-clink!
—flawlessly deflecting three incoming kunai with her own blade, before tilting her head just a fraction of an inch to let a fourth whisper past her ear.
She immediately swept her gaze across the misty garden, her sensory abilities flaring to life.
Four enemy ninja materialized from the mist. No—eight in total. Four standing in the open, and three more heavily concealed in the surrounding shadows.
As for the last one...
Kushina rapidly condensed a massive surge of chakra into her leg and—
Boom.
She violently stomped the ground, instantly cratering the solid stone and crushing the tunneling assassin directly beneath her heel.
With a fluid, practiced motion, she slammed her hands together, locking her fingers into a familiar cross-shaped seal.
"Multi Shadow Clone Technique!"
With a massive, synchronized chorus of poofs and thick clouds of white smoke, eight identical Kushinas erupted into existence, completely surrounding the remaining assassins.
A fierce, bloodthirsty grin spread across the real Kushina's face as the smoke cleared.
"Now," she growled, her violet eyes flashing dangerously in the mist. "Let me show you exactly what it means to attack an Uzumaki in their own home."
Without waiting for a response, all nine Kushinas launched themselves forward, and the garden erupted into absolute chaos.
The Kirigakure shinobi had been absurdly confident that their chakra thick mist would completely mask their presence. To their credit, if Kushina had relied solely on her innate sensing abilities, she might have actually struggled to track them. But the shinobi had forgotten one fatal detail: they were standing inside a fortified Uzumaki compound rigged with countless sensory and defensive seals.
They paid for that ignorance with their lives.
In a matter of minutes, the real Kushina ruthlessly drove her kunai through the chest of the final assassin who had foolishly entered the courtyard. The mist began to clear, revealing a garden littered with bodies.
"Tch... these were supposed to be the 'elites' that Sensei was preparing us for?" one of Kushina's clones scoffed in irritation, flicking the blood from her blade.
To be fair to the dead assassins, they were elite by the standard military metrics of other hidden villages—a lethal strike team comprised entirely of hardened Chunin and high-Chunin veterans. But Saki had spent years brutally training Kushina to fight true Jonin-level threats toe-to-toe.
Compared to the brutal training Saki threw at her on a daily basis, Kushina's sheer disappointment was entirely justified.
*********
The true powerhouses were finally engaging in their own desperate battles.
At the base of the mountain, Shoto's Independent Clone and a squad of his clones were locked in a stalemate with over ten enemy Jonin, physically barring their path to the compound.
*********
Near the village perimeter, Akamitsu was tearing a bloody path through the enemy lines.
Having just effortlessly butchered several Jonin-led squads on his way toward the center of the conflict, the two Konoha squads following him could only stare at his back in horror. Since when did they have a powerhouse like this among them?
The moment he had separated from Tsunade's team, Akamitsu's entire existence had shifted. The polite, quiet "Akimitsu" was gone. In his place stood a man whose eyes were cold with focused slaughter, leaking a killing intent so dense it physically warped the air around him.
When he reached the Village Gate—the towering monument he had watched being built before his very eyes decades ago—he stopped.
The gates were in shambles. The walls collapsed into heaps of rubble, where a few battered Uzumaki squads were still fighting tooth and nail against hundreds of invaders.
Akamitsu's blood boiled.
He flared his chakra with his killing intent, unleashing a tidal wave of murderous intent that swept across the ruins.
Both the Uzushio defenders and the invading shinobi completely froze, their bodies refusing to move under the sheer, suffocating pressure of his presence.
Akamitsu didn't give them a chance to breathe.
Massive, glowing chakra chains violently erupted from his back. With a deafening, metallic shriek, they lashed out like serpents, piercing through the frozen enemy ranks one by one and flinging their broken bodies into the distance like discarded dolls.
He glanced over his shoulder at the Konoha shinobi who was with him.
"Sweep the entire village," he commanded, his voice as cold as ice. "I will handle things here."
"Hai!" came the hurried synchronized reply before the squads flickered away, venturing deeper into the ruined streets.
Akamitsu's eyes flicked toward the towering mountain in the center of Uzushio. The sheer concentration of ambient chakra gathering there was astonishing.
But his hands were currently full. He turned his attention back to the shattered gates as fresh, massive waves of Kiri and Iwa shinobi began pouring through the breach. He let out a heavy sigh.
"It's been quite some time since these old bones had to move like this."
Raising his hands, he locked his fingers into a familiar cross-shaped seal. With a massive, echoing puff of smoke, ten identical copies of him erupted into existence, their golden chains already manifesting.
"Truly," Akamitsu chuckled, remembering a joke Shoto had made about Tobirama years ago. "You just have to tell Tobirama that a jutsu counters the Uchiha, and he'll make it happen."
*****
Kushina was staring daggers at the clone who had just spoken. She and her big mouth.
"Ehh... why are you looking at me like that, boss?" the clone asked, tilting her head.
"Tch..." Kushina loudly clicked her tongue in annoyance.
She and her big mouth.
She looked past the annoying copy of herself. More than fifty enemy ninja were rapidly closing in from all sides, completely surrounding the garden.
"Hahaha! Come, you mongrels! This shall be your grave, dattebane!" the clone laughed, shouting haughtily at the approaching army.
The real Kushina refused to acknowledge that thing as her clone.
Without another word, all nine of them launched into action. The real Kushina was the first to clash. As her kunai violently sparked against an enemy's blade, she pivoted sharply on her heel, slipping flawlessly into his blind spot. With a flick of her wrist, a second kunai slid from her hidden guard into her empty hand, and she seamlessly plunged it into his neck.
Without pausing, she executed a flawless backflip, narrowly dodging a pincer attack from two more assassins. Suspended mid-air, she launched a rapid barrage of shuriken down at them.
Suddenly, another attack came at her exposed back. But Kushina didn't panic, or even flinch, because—
Shk!
A kunai violently pierced straight through the attacker's skull. Her clone landed heavily on his collapsing body, already locking her eyes onto her next target.
Kushina didn't linger to watch. Hitting the ground cleanly, she instantly launched herself toward another group of enemies.
Across the entire compound garden, the air was suddenly filled with the relentless, ringing sparks of metal clashing against metal.
As Kushina was just starting to get comfortable slaughtering them, her ears caught a distinct, high-pitched buzzing. Before her mind could even analyze the sound, her instincts—honed by years of barely surviving her Sensei's brutal training—flared violently.
Her perception instantly slowed to a crawl.
Before she could consciously react, her body moved on its own. She raised her right arm just as the fabric of her kimono sleeve was sliced cleanly open. A massive, concentrated impact struck her metal wrist guard. Sensing that the sheer force of the blow would break straight through her defense, Kushina rotated her wrist slightly to the left and violently pushed herself backward.
The blinding stab deflected off her guard in a shower of sparks.
As time snapped back to normal, a blue flash tore past her, skidding to a halt a few meters away. The figure turned, staring at her in absolute shock.
But Kushina's jaw was clenched tight.
She had let her guard down for a single second. She wanted to punch herself; that tiny mistake could have cost her far more than a ruined sleeve.
The Kumogakure ninja, who had launched the attack with absolute confidence in a one-hit kill, stared at her in shock. Then, his eyes narrowed.
'There is armor underneath that kimono,' he realized, analyzing the heavy vibration from their clash. 'High-quality armor.'
That thrust was his signature jutsu, a deadly technique inspired by the Third Raikage's infamous Hell Stab. He knew exactly how much concentrated piercing power it held, yet this girl—who couldn't be older than eight—had just bloc—
No. She hadn't blocked it. She had deflected it.
His expression hardened into a scowl. He had to finish her right here, no matter the cost. If she survived tonight, she would grow into an absolute threat to his village in the future.
They locked eyes for a second.
Then, they vanished. The Kumo ninja disappeared in a crackle of blue lightning, while Kushina became nothing but a blinding blur of motion.
A microsecond later, they materialized in each other's previous positions, their backs turned to one another.
Blood sprayed heavily through the mist. The Kumo ninja's left eye had been completely gouged out by a precise kunai strike. But several meters away, Kushina stood perfectly still, the assassin's short tanto driven forcefully through her chest and protruding from her back, a large amount of blood pooling rapidly on the ground.
Clutching his ruined eye, the Kumo ninja turned, his breathing ragged.
He narrowed his single remaining eye when he saw a bloodthirsty grin slowly split the young girl's face, as if she were outright mocking him.
Then, he froze.
He looked down. From the ground pitch-black sealing formulas were rapidly crawling up his legs, spreading across his entire body like vines freezing his body.
In the next instant, his vision spun violently through the air. For one fleeting second, he caught a glimpse of red hair and his own headless body standing upright in the mist.
Then, darkness claimed him.
Thud.
As his headless body hit the ground, Kushina—whose lungs were still pierced—calmly gripped the tanto in her chest and ripped it out. The sharp coat of Wind chakra around her hidden kunai dissipated into the air.
Suddenly, she looked up at the night sky.
A second later—BOOM!
The entire compound—no, the entire mountain—violently shook. Kushina had to instantly channel chakra to the soles of her feet just to keep from being flung away by the sheer force of the shockwave.
The surrounding skirmish instantly ground to a halt. Every single eye in the garden turned toward the massive dust cloud rising just outside the compound walls.
In the next second, a blinding crimson streak shot down from the skies like an arrow and—
BOOM!
A second, infinitely larger crater formed. This time, the compound walls couldn't take the abuse. The stone walls collapsed like a house of cards, and the surrounding outer buildings splintered, on the verge of entirely caving in.
Kushina immediately whipped her head toward the main building where her aunt was giving birth, letting out a breath of relief.
Thanks to its heavy barrier seals, it had surprisingly taken very little damage.
Then, she turned to look at what had caused the shockwaves. Well, she already knew who caused them. But this was the very first time she was seeing it with her own eyes.
Her teacher—Saki Uzumaki—stood tall atop the massive, red-furred beast, whose face was currently buried deep into the crushed earth.
What surprised Kushina the most wasn't that her teacher's clothes were shredded and barely covering her modesty, or that her injuries were visibly healing the very next instant.
It was the seals. An intricate, sprawling network of sealing formulas covered Saki's entire body, glowing fiercely in the dark night and contrasting sharply with her steaming, blood-red skin. Atop her head, the glowing matrix converged, resting upon her like a radiant crown.
The sheer density of the chakra flowing through those seals was so dense, it was sickening.
Standing atop the Four-Tails' massive head, Saki frowned deeply.
'He's on the verge of transforming,' she thought, her eyes tracking the thick red fur that was rapidly starting to sprout across his massive body.
She couldn't even use her chakra chains to restrain him. She could feel it in her very bones—if she forcefully manifested her chains right now, the incredibly fragile equilibrium holding her mind and body together would shatter. And she had zero desire to find out what would happen to her if that happens.
The same rule applied to her standard ninjutsu. Right now, she was strictly limited to her fūinjutsu, her raw physical strength, and her weapons.
Sweeping her gaze across the ruined courtyard, she paused as a familiar chakra signature brushed against her senses.
She saw Kushina—her little troublemaker of a disciple—staring up at her with a mixture of absolute awe, and some fear?
'Well, at least she's alive.'
Saki's gaze then shifted toward the still-standing main building. The chakra gathering around it was unnatural, thick, and suffocating. Even her hyper-elevated senses couldn't peer through that abnormal, swirling chakra shroud.
Suddenly, her senses flared, catching se
veral new, highly powerful signatures rapidly approaching the area. But before she could analyze them, the massive beast beneath her boots let out a low, rumbling growl.
He was starting to move, his monstrous vitality already shrugging off the massive concussion she had just delivered to his skull.
She clamped her hands onto the beast's massive head in a vice-like grip. The muscles in her arms bulged, the strain immense as she pivoted sharply on her heel. Using the momentum of her entire body, she hurled him directly into the path of the incoming blue streak.
They collided mid-air with a deafening sonic boom, the sheer kinetic force sending them both hurtling violently out of the village perimeter.
Saki glanced down at her arms. They were bleeding, the muscle fibers literally torn apart by the impossible weight she had just thrown. Yet, in the very next instant, the wounds began to rapidly knit back together—without her even needing to Bite herself.
But her internal organs were a completely different story.
Cough. Cough.
She violently coughed up a mouthful of blood and liquefied parts of her organs. The instant the fluid left her lips and the open wounds on her arms, the terrifying, radiating heat of her body instantly vaporized it into a hissing cloud of bloody mist.
Kushina watched her Sensei cough up blood, her eyes widening as the liquid instantly vaporized in the oppressive heat. She took half a step forward, her mouth opening to say something, anything.
But before the words could even form, Saki snatched her massive odachi from the crushed earth and vanished, leaving behind nothing but a cloud of red mist.
A wave of searing heat washed over Kushina.
A few seconds later, a deafening sonic boom ripped through the air as she watched a blinding crimson streak rapidly ascending back into the night sky.
When Kushina finally lowered her gaze and scanned the ruined courtyard again, a wry, exhausted smile touched her lips.
most of the truly powerful presences that had been approaching were simply gone. Saki had swept them all away in her wake.
But her Sensei had intentionally left behind just enough of the high-tier elites for her to handle. Barely. Only if she fought with everything she had.
"You're heartless, Sensei," Kushina muttered to herself, gripping her kunai tighter.
*******
Well this is second part third is almost over.
After that an aftermath chapter or something like that.
By the I am dropping hints this whole time. I hope some of u find them and connect the dots. 😄😄
See you in next chapter!!