Chapter 97   - Ch97. Punishment

Rei finally spotted Ringo and his being was flooded by even more rage. Her body was powerlessly lying on the ground while A was about to land a finishing punch which made Rei quickly send a Water Release: Water Jet at the burly man, dispersing his lightning armor because of the highly concentrated and finely controlled water chakra in the water. It drew the actual lighting away from A's body, canceling the Chakra Mode in that particular part of his body. The waterjet went straight through the lighting armor and impacted A's side before he could finish the punch, sending him rolling on the floor for some tens of meters.

A was utterly flabbergasted from the sudden attack that completely neutralized his strongest defense and inwardly thanked God that the waterjet was not highly pressurized otherwise it would go through him like a knife through butter. The fact his fist was descending onto Ringo saved him because Rei decided to lessen the danger to Ringo by pushing him away rather than killing him and risk him somewhat landing the last punch.

A's body tensed in preparation for a fight but when he raised his gaze to the mysterious attacker, he relaxed seeing that the man, Rei, prioritized checking up on the redhead rather than do a follow-up attack. Many things swirled through A's mind, the prevalent one being the direction from which the man came. Like everyone on the island, A could also hear the sounds of a massive battle in the distance. The explosions, the 'visual effects', the large pillars of scarlet flames, the bijuu damas... Yes, A knew B had a tough fight but he had his own one and focused fully on it. But the second he realized the man who interrupted him came from the direction of B's fight, his heart chilled in worry for his surrogate brother.

Fortunately for A's peace of mind, B landed next to him in his human form because rather than going on land, he used his immense strength in the Hachibi form to jump into the sky, and then changed into human form, becoming lighter, therefore covering more distance.

"Ya fine, brother? Cuz this will be quite a bother!" B said but his tone held an undertone of seriousness that put A on edge. To him, it was obvious B was not playing around anymore.

"Who is it, B?" A asked as he watched Rei kneel next to Ringo and assess her injuries.

"That's Rei of Kiri, bro. We gotta be careful an' stop him being wrathful, oh." B rapped.

The second A heard Rei's identity, his head snapped in the direction of his troops and his eyes widened in realization. "B! Where is Konan of Kiri?" He shouted in distress.

"Konan of Kiri, oi, yo?" B asked as his face scrunched in confusion, making A almost have a heart attack. "O~! There was a woman with him at first, kono yaro. But she was only a jonin level, baka yaro." As B said, and A really felt his heart jump to his throat. A possible S-rank destructive threat might be with his troops while he was lured away!

"B we have to retu-" A started with distress but was interrupted...

Ignoring the discussion of the brothers, Rei leaned above Ringo's unconscious form as he gently turned her over to see her injuries. He winced when he saw the multiple deep gashes along her face and thanked God he could heal her with his nature energy mixed with healing chakra enough so she wouldn't scar despite not being able to heal everything on the spot. He would have to get her to a proper medic-nin asap. Pushing his meager medical chakra into her, he quickly found out that Ringo was lucky. Whatever she did, saved her as the front of her skull was cracked in more places than Rei bothered to count but there was no clean break nor anything immediately life-threatening. Concussion... yes. But at least her face was not caved in. Rei let out a small relieved sigh as he raised his head towards the man who caused this.

Sure, this was a war but Ringo was precious to Rei and he still felt angry at A for almost killing her. As his eyes landed on A's form, his killing intent flooded the surroundings.

A and B quieted down as they could suddenly feel themselves be drenched in a cold sweat as the massive killing intent engulfed them. B had a better time as he was used to Hachibi's killing intent while A was frowning at how his instincts screamed at him to run. But both were shinobi and facing killing intent was normal for them. They stood their ground.

"So you are the bastard who almost killed my dear student." Rei coldly stated as he looked towards A, his chakra flaring.

Out of nowhere, the molecules of water in the air started gathering and in a moment, a strong water current formed in the air, not unlike Water Dragon Jutsu. What baffled A and B was that Rei didn't use any hand signs nor needed a body of water. Above them, in the sky, a massive body of water that could easily create a big lake compressed into ten Water Tendrils was flying, just waiting to be released at them.

"I think now is a good time to change, B." A said with a frown as lightning armor reformed on his body. B seriously nodded and his form started growing until he was again in full Hachibi mode, preparing for the upcoming battle.

Rei looked at their nervous stances and smiled. "Good, you are prepared to face your punishment." He said, trying to act arrogant. Despite his anger, his head was cool and he would like nothing more than to be labeled as powerful but with exploitable arrogance. "You will be good guinea pigs for my new Jutsu. Especially you, lightning swine!" He shouted and the world... rippled.

The water tendrils in the air started to rotate at high-speed white moving like a snake made out of the water, quickly aiming to crush both A and B. The tendril aimed at A missed as the man just sidestepped it but his arm brushed the edge of the water because the water sped up by almost five times before the impact so he miscalculated his evade. As the chakra in the water and A's lighting armor met, a violent reaction happened, making A scream bloody murder as his lightning armor was completely negated and his arm gained multiple long gashes. This Jutsu was a perfect counter to Lightning Based Ninjutsu, after all.

B was not faring any better since his form was big. Too big to evade water tendrils rotating at high speeds like a tornado. His form was not fast enough to evade and the nine remaining tendrils all aimed at him. He tried to block them with his tails and eight tails intercepted eight water tendrils, only for the last one to impact his chest. B miscalculated as pain engulfed him and Gyuki, sensing B's panic, pushed a lot of his chakra out to shield the impact locations and defend against the shredding tendrils of water.

'Pull yourself together, B, or you will die. We gotta rotate!' Gyuki shouted, and B, still shaken from the pain, quickly wrapped his tails around himself and started to rotate his bijuu body, creating a move like Kaiten, only it was on a massively larger scale. This proved to be the right choice as the water tendrils were being deflected before returning and hitting the revolving body of the Hachibi again and again, only to be deflected every time, sending water raining everywhere.

During all this time, A was doing his damnedest to ignore the pain in his arm as he evaded the singular tendril of high-speed water that chased him. His Lightning Mode was certainly far below his father but he never thought there would be a technique capable of almost matching his speed. Fortunately for him, he was just a bit faster.

For a normal bystander, the tendrils and A would seem like a flash or blurs as their speed was staggering. A was appearing and reappearing through the battlefield only for the water tendril to flash into his position a split of a second later and create a lot of destruction in its wake.

Rei smirked as he turned his back towards the battle and focused on flooding Ringo's body with his medical and soothing water chakras. She was far more important than the victory or the battle itself to him. The Jutsu he performed was his best counter to Konan. Strong, hard-hitting, massive, and insanely fast while being made of Water. Much to her dismay, Konan didn't yet come up with an idea of how the Jutsu worked or how to counter it as it was completely autonomous. Rei chose to use this Jutsu in particular so he could tend to Ringo while being sure his opponents were preoccupied enough.

Water Release: Susanoo

For a long time, Rei wanted something like Shadow Clones and after Tsunade brought the technique itself alongside a lot of material about it straight from the Senju Library, he instantly started researching it. There were even notes of the Second Hokage too! But in the end, Rei decided to make something else. Clones were good and the group indeed did use them to perfect Jutsu, train control, and so on but Rei and Konan were more used to their own variety of Rock and Paper clones. They just added the memory function into them and were good to go.

In the center of each Water Tendril was a half-formed water clone with the sentience of shadow-clones, therefore able to perform their own tasks and think for themselves while also gathering information about the enemy in case the Tendril is destroyed. These clones are then wrapped in insane amounts of water chakra mixed with wind chakra and stabilized with nature energy, wearing it like armor. That was the primary reason why Rei called it 'Susanoo' as it made a mockery of Uchiha's Susanoo. While the entire thing looks like a huge water snake or tendril, just a touch of the water could shred chakra-enhanced iron and the swirling water tended to pull things inside while the rotation increased its speed only to be enhanced even more by the wind chakra, resulting in a flying incredible high-speed shredding current. This was one of his more ingenious techniques… despite its unimpressive but deceptive appearance.

Rei heaved Ringo up on his arms into a princess carry and turned towards the battlefield that instantly stilled as the Water Tendrils stopped in their places. Both A and B were bloodied with multiple deep cuts all over their bodies, panting hard with wide eyes as they could feel the despair and fear of death that loomed above them. They knew... this technique was utterly unable to be avoided. A tried to run away multiple times only for one tendril to stop focusing on B and the second he had two on himself, he was pushed back, guided back towards the battlefield by being forced to dodge in its direction.

B tried to fire multiple bijuu damas into it but the tendrils mostly avoided it. He only managed to hit one tendril in its center which then burst into a shower of water that spilled on the country below, flooding it in water and mowing down a forest due to the sharpness of the water. The tendril didn't reform and B was starting to form ideas on how to counter this Jutsu... Alas, by that point he was too exhausted.

Rei watched their bloodied and beaten forms with satisfaction. 'That's what you get for hurting my girl, humph.' He vindictively thought, regretting he couldn't put them out of their misery for it. A was a stubborn idiot who would mix the waters of the Elemental Nation with his retarded plans while B was a good deterrent and a focus of either Akatsuki or the other Shinobi Villages. Simply, he was too good of a distraction from whatever Rei would secretly try to do in the future. No, these two would be more useful alive.

"Now then," Rei's voice rang through the destroyed battlefield as the two burly men forced themselves to raise their heads despite the apparent exhaustion on their faces. "This was your punishment for hurting Ringo. I must sadly inform you that your forces were massacred and there is no longer any Kumo ninja alive except you two on this island. My partner, Konan of Kiri, has seen to that." Konan didn't really help all that much, mostly watched out to prevent the death of any Kiri shinobi but they didn't need to know that. "Killing you two can bring short-term gains but it will forever sour relations with Kumo so you got lucky, I guess." Rei shrugged at the bullshit he was spewing and turned around, walking away with Ringo in his arms. It was time for her meeting with a medic-nin.

Both B and A just powerlessly flopped onto the ground, unconscious, the last thing on their mind was regret at being too arrogant to take another S-rank with them despite being offered multiple times. Now… their entire force was completely wiped out.