27 Night of a Thousand Wolves

"Hello there, filthy geezer." I greeted the man, cutting through the dread his presence created in my team, "Are you talking to us?"

"Hohoho." chuckled the Great Shinobi Owl as he crossed his arms over his feather clad chest, "Such a sharp tongue. Words will not deliver you from what's to come."

"Come here Blue Two, this old crow needs new eyes. He seems to think you are a princess, because he obviously didn't mistake internationally famous actress Yukie Fujikaze for someone else." I instructed Sakura, who slowly shifted to my side.

I then smacked her to the ground without looking away from the man, "See that ya crusty fossil? No princess. Just another kunoichi."

The giant man's eyes sparkled under his heavy gray brows and a slight upturn of his grizzled lips betrayed his enjoyment of some gender equality.

"Yukie Fujikaze is Koyuki Kazahana." Owl revealed, "The actress is an identity she took up after her father was ousted." the man fixed his hardened gaze on the emotionally frozen woman, "Sotetsu Kazahana was a coward and a fool, who nearly drove this rich country into destitution, starvation, and the freezing cold. When the Samurai Clans rose up they demanded he commit Seppuku to restore the squandered honor of the Daimyo Clan. He passed out from the pain after driving just the tip of the blade into himself and could do no more. When they roused him he shook so fiercely that his second failed to make the cut, and took his head clean off. The man brought shame upon everyone, even during ritual suicide."

The entire time he narrated the event we both watched Koyuki's face. She never once emoted anything except discomfort from the cold and apathetic boredom.

"Perhaps I was wrong." Owl grimaced, "For surely a princess would never abide such disrespect to her father's memory. Alas, the young Doto is sure that you are his niece and that by coming back into these lands you have violated the terms of your exile. Only your life now will appease him, and the Village Hidden in the Snow must not disappoint. So what will you do now, bodyguards? What do you want, young wolf?"

I drew my sword and answered, "Blood."

"Captain no!" Naruto shouted, "You can't kill Santa!"

"Dude, he isn't Santa." I replied as Owl and I continued our stare down.

"Look at him!" Naruto insisted, "And that laugh! Yukigakure must be his workshop! If you kill him, you'll ruin Christmas forever!"

I wanted to sigh, but somehow Christmas - that loathsome soulless consumer driven holiday - had survived the apocalypse, the arrival of aliens, and everyone getting superpowers. But if whiny brat like Boruto can beat Momoshiki then I can believe this dirty hobo is Santa.

"Now listen here Santa," I shouted and pointed my sword at him, "It'd be a shame to kill you."

"I don't think this fight will go like you think it will." Owl laughed then leapt in the air with his hands flying through hand signs.

I prepared to raise a mudwall to catch whatever he planned, but the dude turned into a giant gray owl in a burst of smoke and flew up into the sky.

"Run, young wolf. For the moment you descend this mountain the full might of Yukigakure will hunt you all." The giant Owl shouted down to us as he took off over the mountain, disappearing from my sensory ability again mid flight, "Run knowing that every step could be your last."

"Holy shit!" Naruto shouted in glee, "I thought he needed his reindeer to fly. Santa is so much cooler than I thought."

"Fuck you, Oni Leader." Sakura gritted out between clenched teeth.

"Maybe when you are older." I grinned then flew through new hand signs preparing another Earth Release Jutsu while my body bloated under my hood and my mask shifted with the growth of a snout pushing my mask up under the wide brimmed straw hat my chakra kept stuck to my head.

Brown fur sprouted over my body and with a growl I pumped my chakra into the mountain announcing the name of my technique to pick up a nifty ten percent power up, "Sage Art: Fuck You, Your Mountain Is Mine Jutsu!"

Thunderous cracks sounded, resonating up the entire mountain. The snow fell from the trees and several avalanches carried it all off into the valley below and the forest beyond.

"You'll hunt us once we descend the mountain, then we'll ride the mountain all the way to the sea and if you try attacking me while I hold this jutsu I'll launch this rock down with all my might and wipe your pathetic country off the map." I laughed wickedly, "This is what you get when you fuck with the masters of the earth!"

With that misdirect out of the way, I lifted the mountain even higher into the sky and began floating it south. Hopefully the film crew is still alive and catching this shit, cause it must be cinematic as fuck from the ground. The elevation made breathing a difficult task, because unlike the moon the upper atmosphere has very thin oxygen supply.

"Naruto, use wind release. Draw the air to us, make more. Fucking do something so this sucks less." I ordered him while I used my chakra to propel us many miles an hour across the Land of Snow in a feat that should at least convince some people to put down their Ninshu and get to some Ninjutsu training.

Fortunately Ninja Jesus mastered wind release in like a week tops to the point that he finished the Rasengan that his genius father and Kakashi couldn't. Drawing in a bunch of breathable air for us was child's play.

Down below I felt the thousands of Yukigakure Shinobi as they followed the mountain, hundreds in the air born aloft by feathered gliders and wind release techniques. Owl hadn't been kidding when he said we would face the full might of the Village Hidden in the Snow.

As the sun set in the west we approached the ocean and our ship still off shore.

"Blue One." I got Naruto's attention away from the horizon, "I'll touch down on the shore. You and the others will run Fujikaze out to the boat. Send in a bunch of clones and kill anyone on it, we don't have time to check if they aren't Yuki Ninja in disguise. Then you and the team sail that boat back to the Land of Iron. I'll catch up."

"Ahh… man. This totally sounds like something out of a Princess Gale movie." Naruto complained, "One of her companions has to stay behind to by them time to get away, then shows up later in the movie to save the day. Just don't kill too many of Santa's elves. Or Santa."

"Deal. I'll put her down gently so I don't cause any tidal waves or something. So start running… right about… NOW!" I shouted as soon as the mountain settled on the ground once more.

Naruto and the team took off and Sage Mode slipped away, restoring my wimpy human form after hours being a terachad wolfman. My chakra grew my clothes with me, so I didn't have any incredible Hulk issues as I shrunk. A few moments after I shifted back a giant gray owl landed about thirty yards away from me and turned into a man in a burst of smoke.

"Not bad, young wolf." the man greeted me with a wide smile on his face, "Not even your Tsuchikage could have kept a jutsu like that up for long, but how will your companions get away with only a tired out rear guard and the Nightjar Ninja closing in?"

"Well, ya ancient nasty bastard, I have one more mean trick to pay you and your band of elves." I grinned under my hat and oni mask, "You see, my chakra is still in this mountain… It's my pack now. And while the lone wolf might not be feared… what comes next will carve terror so deep in your cultural memory that even ta hundred years from now they will fear the howls in the night."

I leapt away from the Great Shinobi Owl as he sought to cleave me with his giant scaled longsword, my feet far faster than his elderly pair could hope to be. He screamed his rage as my hands flew through a long sequence of seals at blistering speed and I shouted, "Sage Art: Night of a Thousand Wolves Jutsu!"

With the name shouted the mountain under us exploded as hundreds of Earth Release: Homing Wolf Bullets shot into the sky. The Nightjar Ninja took evasive maneuvers, but the living stone empowered by Sage Chakra ensured that all the flying shinobi met their end in great jaws of stone. Below us, hundreds of giant stone wolves formed, also brought to life by my Werewolf Sage Mode.

Owl transformed back into an owl and tried to deliver himself to the front line of the Snow Ninja vs Stone Wolves battle, but I quickly transformed my arm into that of the Werewolf Sage and launched tendrils of hair at the man which he dodged with great airborne agility.

"Wonderful." I complimented his beautiful rolls and swoops, "But tell me, oh Great Shinobi Owl. While you were dodging all of my visible hair attacks, did you also dodged the monomolecular strands?"

In response to my question, the Great Shinobi Owl burst apart in a rain of anime blood.

"I guess… you were already dead."

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"Hey Kiba!" Naruto shouted and waved as I landed on the deck of the southbound ship, "I saw the mountain explode, but couldn't see anything else. Is everything cool? Did Santa and the elves give up?"

I took off my mask and smiled at the kid, "Don't worry man. Christmas is safe for another year."

"Alright!" Naruto yelled and pumped his fist in the air, "I did not want to have to tell my kids that Uncle Kiba killed Christmas."

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So Kiba's powers as the Werewolf Sage are revealed. He can bring wolf shaped elemental release jutsu to life, use partial transformations very quickly, and create monomolecular hair strands with Sage Chakra that can't be sensed and work like Walter's Wires from Hellsing - chopping up everyone unfortunate enough to come into contact with them.

He can also saturate rocks and soil with his Sage Chakra like a giant battery and use Sage Arts while in base using it. This only works with his natural affinity Earth, so no Night of a Thousand Wind Wolves or Water Wolves. Just Earth Wolf Jutsu.

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