Industrious - Chapter 59 (Patreon)

I moved like lightning.

Every centimeter of the way, the flash of red followed at my heels.

“C'mon, boyo! I know you've got some fighting in you!”

Under other circumstances, I would have groaned or cursed at the jeer. In the current situation I found myself, that was just counterproductive. The breath in my lungs was better-used to run as fast as I could. And, believe me, I was fast. Synergistic factors in multiple skill sets I'd developed over the past few years meant the real issue wasn't speed, but control.

The Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu was a style that heavily emphasized speed.

Prana Bindu and Weirding Way did so as well, in an entirely different manner.

Then there were the 'Breathing Styles' taught by the Demon Slayer Corps, which required superhuman speed to fight inhuman monsters.

All of that, then, was added onto the basic building blocks of shinobi training. Which, contrary to my academy record, I wasn't a slouch regarding. My chakra control was beyond top-notch, likely edging into the realm of Tsunade at this point.

So when I say I was fast, I mean that I'd had to gerry-rig the body flicker technique into something that would allow me to actually turn corners without running into anything. As far as ninety-nine percent of the population of the Elemental Nations went, I had long-since passed the edge of what was regarded as human limits.

Monsters, however, don't care about anything so mundane as 'human limits.'

And Uzumaki Kushina?

She was definitely a monster.

I hit a wall in a crouch, hanging their from my momentum as I inhaled to the limits of my lungs. Kushina, appearing in a flash of red-tinted chakra and rictus-wide grin right in front of me, stopped as she thought I'd been cornered. Instead, I pushed hyper-oxygenated blood into artificially-strong leg muscles and bled off the slightest tinge of elementally-aligned chakra into the mix. In an instant, I was shooting forth in the jagged pattern of a bolt of raw lightning, my movements a precise mixture of the two different schools of physical training nevertheless combining into a masterpiece of poetic flow.

I barely dodged the flurry of blows sent my way.

Then I was gone in a burst of speed that might have made The Flash envious.

Unfortunately, Kushina was right behind me; mere fractions of a second behind me, to be precise.

“Look, I just wanna' shake off the rust, Kota-kun! All your girls are out of town! You can make time for a quick spar!”

Belatedly, it has occurred to me that I may, in fact, be both too intelligent and capable for my own good.

This was the third day Kushina had been chasing me around like this, abusing her new sandesvistan to a childish degree. That wouldn't have been so problematic had she still been confined to her wheelchair with muscles atrophy. However I had, in my incredible wisdom decided to overachieve once again and repaired that damage as well. Although, to her credit, it hadn't been all that difficult. Uzumaki lineage being as bullshit as it was, Kushina was much healthier overall than she should have been were she even a normal variety of ninja-bullshit chakra-using superhuman.

With the notes Rin had taken on the operation and the conversations we'd had during the short aftercare session, I think even she could have repaired the atrophied muscle groups without too much issue. The real issue was just the kind of knowledge base required to do something like that didn't really exist in this place and time. It was just one of the various blindspots in the shinobi medical fields given that long-term rehabilitative medical care wasn't a huge priority as opposed to combat-medicine and field surgery.

It was what it was.

Still, I had not expected what I now knew to be a very traditionally Uzumaki response to being in perfect health after a debilitating injury. In short, she'd decided to express her affection for the individual who had done that by having a little throw-down with him. Because the 'monk' who had performed the operation was nowhere to be found, Kushina had decided that I was the next best candidate as the individual who'd created the device now taking the place of her spine.

Which, on a side note, I'd over-engineered to a point I now regretted as well.

The sandesvistans of the world of Cyberpunk, much like all of their cyberware was... subpar. Extremely interesting and variable in their designs and applications, no doubt, but extremely suboptimal in their design and implementation with no inherent incentive to make a better product. With no inclination to offer something so obviously flawed to the mother of a friend, a powerful clan leader in the village at large, and a potential combatant who would help defend me on a personal level should such a situation arise...

Well, naturally I'd done a redesign.

After all, I was still going to have to 'reinvent the wheel' in transferring the futuristic technology over to a more sustainable ninja magitechnology supported by esoteric sealing. I might as well smooth out the potential for rejection, the interface between the implant and her mind, cut back on the potential damage it can do to her nervous system, and a few other things.

So, yes, if Dr. Frankenstein and I ever meet up in a potential future existence, we can bond over having accidentally created monsters.

Suddenly, as I was cutting through a training ground, I decided I'd had enough.

Deploying my altered body flicker, I spun on a ryo and ran directly back at Kushina. The woman's eyes widened dramatically at my unexpected move and she tried to avert her course. Still, it had only been three days since she'd had the thing implanted. Even with her life experience and seasoned shinobi status, there was still a learning curve. That curve, specifically, did not take into account someone with reaction times on par with your own executing a surprise trip attempt.

Stopping just as abruptly as I'd turned, I snorted at the tumbling form of Uzumaki Kushina flying head-over-heels until she impacted a rather large tree face-first.

Part of me wanted to cut and run at that moment. With how stunned she was, I could probably make it back to the shop and barricade myself in the basement before she figured out where I'd gone.

The other part of me, though? The one that won out...

It was sick of her shit.

No, I was sick of it.

I had shit to do that didn't involve running or hiding from a red-headed maniac.

“The day after your surgery, I intentionally led you to the Uchiha Compound and let you pick a fight with Shisui. The day after that, I took you on a merry chase to the Hokage Tower and duped you into fighting Itachi. I really, really think that those were better fights than I would offer if you're being honest about your intentions. So, Kushina... what the absolute fuck?”

Rolling over from where she'd fallen, groaning and cursing as she rubbed at her head, Kushina sighed. “Damn, brat... you can asshole with the best of them when you want to, you know?”

I stared at her, unmoved.

“Shit-alright, alright... you really are a weird one, you know? Most kids would at least decide to put up a fight before getting their asses kicked,” Kushina stated, cautiously getting back up and shaking off the grass and dirt she'd accumulated.

“Pick a date, set a time, and draw up rules if you want a spar. Chasing me around town is counterproductive if you want to fight me,” I replied stoically.

“Oh, and why's that?” Kushina asked. “I figured all I'd have to do is get you to the point where you'd stop running, and looks like I have, ya'know!”

My eyebrow twitched as she popped her knuckles.

“It's because I'm unwilling to exercise the amount of energy or variety of techniques it would take to put up a proper fight in a populated area,” I stated bluntly, reaching out with a hand and grasping a blade that hadn't been there a moment before.

Blue eyes blinked as her grin widened. “Careful there, boyo! Promises like that get me worked up!”

I took a measured breath and mentally ran through my stockpile of more esoteric tricks I was saving for a rainy day. The blade in my right hand was something I'd put together recently, a vast improvement on what I'd forged for Kurenai. For my left hand, though...

Eh, why not. It needs a test drive anyway.

Decision made, I reached out with my left hand and produced the second blade.

“Oh, two swords?” Kushina asked, bouncing on the balls of her feet. “Really making me feel special. So... when do you want to call it?”

I gave the blades a once-over. Both were full-length katana in the traditional style, neither looking as though they were anything special. Given that I wanted them available for use immediately, I hadn't even stored them sheathed, so they were bare to the world. Perfect, unblemished steel crafted with the newest version of my personal alloy formula. With tungsten in the mix, you didn't need to fold the steel very much, but I'd gone through the old process anyway.

After all, each fold gave me a new surface to engrave another seal on.

“Just... try not to die,” I advised her seriously, the statement lingering in the air for a heartbeat before-

-I pressed the curve of steel against her throat and the 'me' that had been speaking vanished. “Because I'm not holding back.”

Much.

Kushina's entire body was tense as her form flickered out of existence in a burst of speed as she vanished across the training ground to reappear where the illusion of me had been standing just a moment before. A thin line of blood was forming on her neck as she stared at me with a blank expression, reaching up to confirm the pain with a finger to gather the red liquid.

“What the fuck?” She whispered.

I moved, an illusion remaining where I was while I walked under a cloak of invisibility. The illusionary clone spoke, affecting a casualness as he swiped the blade in his right hand and threw off a few drops of crimson into the dirt. “Did you ever wonder why my swords command such a high price? Why I've taken commissions from jounin for special blades now? They aren't normal swords, Kushina. Each blade I make is special in a different way.”

Her breathing shuddered as I felt her chakra ignite into a tangible aura.

“Admittedly, some are just very nice blades which can cut boulders in half without taking a single scratch, but... most, most of them have a few tricks up their sleeve.” I looked down at the blade in my right hand. “This is Kyoka Suigetsu, and you're blind now.”

“Kai!” Kushina shouted, slapping her hands together as a visible pulse of energy shuddered through the clearing. There was a moment where the masterpiece illusion I'd cast held... then it lost the fight and shattered under the weight of Kushina's brute-force break.

Okay, maybe I didn't make her a monster, so much as make her a better one.

“Good to know you'll at least stand a chance,” I stated, drawing a deep breath and flashing out of existence just as Kushina's fist impacted the space my head had been in a moment before. Despite my bravado, I was worried. I pushed through that emotion, though, and let it fall away as I dodged a series of attacks and feints that shot my way at dizzying speeds.

Then she fired her sandesvistan and the work of a few seconds of interweaving fingers became instantaneous as three water dragons emerged from nothingness to flow my way.

My left sword came up.

Transmute and Manipulate, Tenchi.

Light blossomed.

Lifeless water dropped to the ground as the energy of the technique was drained away and a petal of pure chakra shone into existence, both shield and weapon. Even if I hadn't looked into recreating this specific pseudo-technology from the Jurian bloodline, I thought I'd done a pretty good job recreating it under an alternate system.

Kushina stared at me, shock dancing across her face as that same wild grin slowly took its place once more. Without saying anything, thick chains began to manifest along her arms, composed of pure chakra. Once they were fully formed and dancing like snakes in the air around her, she nodded. “Alright, boyo. Let's try this again.”

Proving Naruko came by her intelligence honestly, she fired the chain through the illusionary clone, attacking it again. Quickly to capitalize on the attack being ineffective, though, she began to sweep the chains across the field, but...

It was already too late.

They began to evaporate, small droplets of chakra being pulled away from the manifestations, which drew back towards her as if they'd felt real pain. Even with the retreat, I'd gotten enough energy to form a second glowing panel in the air. The diamond-shaped energy construct wasn't anywhere even close to a pale shadow of what its conceptual progenitor could do, but they aided greatly in absorbing the blows which came shortly thereafter, Kushina charging me with her fists. The impact was nearly enough to rattle my teeth from a foot away, a massive gust of wind knocking down small saplings behind me at the edge of the clearing.

“Now this is what I'm talking about!” Kushina cheered.

-and the fight was on in earnest.

Absently, I wondered how the girls were doing on their mission. When Satsuki and Yakumo had told me they were going to Wave of all places, having been hired by Gato of all people...

Well, I'd handed off their birthday presents early.

…

Satsuki was glad Kota had begun teaching her the strange breathing techniques he'd worked out. She knew enough not to buy the 'reconstructed from a technique in the chunin library' story he'd fed Obito for the sake of public consumption. She knew her sensei knew about the broad strokes of Kotaro's 'gift,' though precisely how many specifics he'd picked up was between himself, Itachi-nii, and the Hokage. As far as Satsuki herself was concerned, and Yakumo and Tenten for that matter, anything Kotaro told them of his bloodline fell firmly under the banner of clan secrets.

No matter what the official rules regarding those were.

Satsuki banished the intrusive thought with a burst of will as she sucked in another deep breath through her teeth, tying her chakra into the motion of her limbs as she shot forward in a burst of superhuman speed to impact the giant blade coming towards her.

The deflection was good, her strike skating along the edge in a cascade of sparks instead of taking the blow head-on.

The taller man she was fighting against, a Kiri missing-nin with a strike through his headband, chuckled. The action revealed his jagged teeth once again, something the Uchiha heiress had been told was a common enough trait in the Land of Water. The jagged cross-shaped scar on his right cheek and vertical red lines along the lower half of his face flexed with very motion of his mouth even as he hefted his enormous sword, turning it into a shield as he fluidly spun the blade. Even with her sharingan running full-speed and the tricks she'd learned to maximize reaction time, it was a challenge to dodge the massive bulk of steel.

“You're pretty good, Uchiha! Don't recognize the style, though!” The lanky missing-nin grinned.

“Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu,” Satsuki replied shortly, the banter unnecessary, but bought her time to catch her breath.

Biwa Juzo barked a laugh. “That's a hell of a name to live up to! Well, at least I don't have to worry about fighting some no-name dogshit style. Didn't even know Konoha had a new swordmaster, though.”

There was a tinge of curiosity to his tone and, once again, Satsuki wondered what was keeping Obito-sensei. The heavy mist around them, laden with chakra cut visibility and sensory perception dramatically, but their teacher was strong enough she could feel him moving about fighting another large chakra signature. Out of the simple process of elimination, it was almost certainly the leader of the Kiri hunter ninja.

Where had it all gone wrong?

Again, Satsuki didn't know, but she could guess. As one didn't just go around casually accusing their employer of harboring a renegade shinobi from an enemy nation, they'd had to poke around cautiously in order to ferret out the truth. Yakumo had, meanwhile, been working on an elaborate painting of the bridge to use as a conduit for her genjutsu. Given there was an enemy jounin in the area, they hadn't been able to take the 'quick and dirty' option and had, instead, needed the full power of anchor seals and a complete piece of art. It was just better not to take any chances, since the rest of the team was occupied anyway.

Then, a few hours ago, the cautious dancing around the hunter ninja had all fallen to bits when one of Naruko's clones, disguised as a member of Gato's staff, had discovered the secluded building they'd been housing the missing-ninja in.

Biwa Juzo.

A renegade elite swordsman who had taken the side of one of the lesser island confederations in Mist's latest brush fire of a civil war. Such things were fairly common every decade or two, given that the various islands enjoyed far greater autonomy than any similarly-sized region of the mainland. Every now and then, one or more of the many nobility decided to make a power play and some idiot shinobi would think this one had a chance of working out where all the others had failed. Biwa Juzo had, instead, betrayed the rebellion and stolen their entire treasury before fucking off entirely.

Or, at least, that was what the latest edition of the Bingo Book said.

Kiri would have probably just let him go for sabotaging their current enemy so thoroughly if he'd returned the legendary blade he wielded and kept his head down after that. Or, at the very least, they would have given him a significant head start.

Anyway, to make a long story very short, Biwa had realized there was something off about Naruko's clone, popped it, and thought the jig was up. He'd instantly decided to attack the nearest group of ninja, thinking that they were the ones specifically after him.

Unfortunately, the nearest group of ninja had been Satsuki's team, not the Kiri Hunter-nin.

Displaying all of the common sense and good judgment that had gotten him to where he was in life currently, Biwa had decided to double-down upon realizing they weren't hunter-nin, and actually employed by the same client, and also a team of relatively green genin. If Satsuki had to guess, he probably thought they'd be an easy mark to kill, loot their stuff, then frame Mist for the job. In the man's defense, it probably would have worked.

That was about the point where the actual Hunter-nin had arrived.

A thick chain of materialized chakra swept through the space Satsuki and Juzo were fighting, the Uchiha taking a desperate leap at the last second as they bloodline ability emerged from the thick mists. “Goddammit! Stick to your own fucking fight Naruko!”

“Sorry!” The blonde yelled out from somewhere beyond within the mist.

“Take your own advice, kid!” Juzo growled from right behind her-

Still in midair, Satsuki raised the sword behind her, but instead of attempting to block the strike, used the force of the coming attempt at decapitation to flip her. Then, using that spin, she landed on the side of the giant blade for a moment before jumping off and-

“Ryu Sui Sen!”

The words roared out of her mouth, chakra erupting from her body in a way that wasn't something Kotar had taught her, but an invention of her own. Given the panoply of mid-air moves within the Hiten Mitsurugi style, it was vital to be able to control your movement without leverage against the ground.

Juzo's eyes widened and he barely got the sword back up in an awkward block, but it was too late to prevent the monstrous blow of the impact as Satsuki rode the falling swordsman to the ground.

It's time. Roar and Devour!

“Jaou Ensatsu Ken!”

Instantly, the sword erupted in a painfully-bright blue glow flecked by poisonous black energy that curled outwards and took the shapes of long gaping jaws.

Then they hit the ground and Satsuki felt her sword cleave through the monstrous blade, black fire searing the edge of the legendary sword as the very tip of her own weapon managed to pierce Juzo's left arm.

Feeling chakra pulse in the precursor to a technique, she leapt away an instant before hurricane-force winds erupted from the ninja's mouth and resumed a ready stance standing a dozen meters away from the slowly-rising enemy. Jutzo was battered by the exchange, scrapes from the shattered rock he'd landed on leaving his clothes damaged and bloody scrapes showing through. A particularly bad gash left liquid crimson flowing down his face as he leveraged himself up with one hand on the giant blade, the other with a line of blue-black flames tracing the cut she'd given the man.

“Well, fuck... that's not good,” Juzo chuckled darkly, looking over the wound as his hand twitched and flesh sizzled. “Fuck!”

Satsuki merely readied herself for another strike.

“Don't guess you'd put this out, huh kid?” The Mist swordsman asked, giving her a 'harmless' grin. The teeth kind of ruined it, though.

“Do you surrender?” Satsuki asked, reading herself to take another breath as the chakra-consuming fire ate another inch of flesh along his arm.

“Thought not,” Juzo nodded, leaving the hand dangling as he one-handed the enormous cleaver, slipping the wounded arm into the hole at the end of the blade and jerking as Sastuki’s eyes widened.. “Well alright then! This fight just became more interesting!”

As the flame-covered arm fell to the earth, blood spurting from the wound, Juzo grinned maliciously as Kubikiribocho instantly recovered from the deep gouge she’d given the blade.

She really hoped the others were having a better time than she was.

~~~

Here's a new chapter of the OG Industrious! As promised, it's ALL COMBAT! A significant portion of the next chapter will likely be fighting as well, covering Naruko's fight with two of the hunter ninja, Yakumo's face off against a familiar young face, and Obito throwing down with the Demon of the Mist.

Look forward to that!

In the meantime, I've got another Winning Peace and Nexus Event coming up. One before the weekend and the other during it.

Thank you again for all the support and I hope you enjoy the chapter!