Chapter 8: Gone Hunting

A lone ninja jumped from branch to branch of the massive trees that were native to his homeland while singing a merry tune. "A hunting we will go… A hunting we will go… High ho the… Fuck… Hi-ho, the uh… Die foe you hairy... doe? Damn it. The fucking song is stuck in my fucking head… AND I DON'T KNOW THE KAMI DAMNED WORDS!", Inuzuka Kaemon shouted his frustration to the heavens, scaring every bird in a quarter-mile as his last sentence echoed over the trees. The massive white wolf running beside Kaemon snickered as he listened to his summoner's babbling frustration.

"Shiro, I have not forgotten that it was you who taught me the song. It also has not escaped my notice that you have been humming it since we left the Naza river overlook two hours ago!", Kaemon growled at his lupine companion. To anyone else the growl, Shiro gave in reply would have sounded like a warning, but Kaemon knew the wolf was only laughing harder. Kaemon shook his head, he would deal with his companion after he retrieved his friend's eye.

Before dawn, Kaemon returned to where he saved Shisui the day before to once again pick up Danzo's trail, the distinctive scent of decaying wood and chemicals. Sadly the scent had faded enough over the course of the night to the point where even his inhuman nose couldn't pin it down, especially as it was only scarcely present on Shisui from his eye. So Kaemon was forced to call in an expert. Shiro was a skilled tracker and his primary summon from the wolf clan, but the white wolf also knew how to get on Kaemon's nerves like no other.

"Well? Are we close ya overgrown flee-bag?", Kaemon asked his companion. Shiro only began to laugh harder at his companion and lifted a paw, pointing at the clearing below.

Within the clearing was a small concrete ROOT safehouse that appeared to be the entrance to a larger compound below the surface. It was crawling with plainly masked ninja who previously were carrying supplies and rushing to empty the compound but were now all staring at the giant wolf and his blond companion that had just shouted his woes to the heavens.

"I hate you", Kaemon said with a frown as he pulled his wolf mask over his face and began gathering his chakra.

"I would say good luck, but if you die here, the pack will hunt you down in the afterlife and devour you", Shiro said with a snicker and disappeared in a cloud of white smoke.

"Fuck you too Shiro. Fuck you-", Kaemon's grumbling was interrupted by an inordinate amount of kunai and shuriken and at least five jutsu reduced the branch he was just previously standing on to oblivion. The ROOT ninja seeing the attacks land but no body falling to the ground all got into battle-ready stances ready for anything while one ran back into the building to sound the alarm.

"Alright, so can any of you tell me where your boss is? He stole something from my friend, and I would politely ask that he returns it", all of the ROOT agents swiftly turned to face the ninja now on the rough of the hidden laboratory and after a few seconds, once again threw several volleys of kunai and jutsu at the intruder.

The world slowed as Kaemon activated his jutsu with a thought, 'Raiton: Shinsoku (Lightning Release: godspeed)'. The world froze around Kaemon as lightning danced in his eyes and through his body. The previously speeding kunai and jutsu seemed to crawl through the air at a slug's pace while the ROOT ninja themselves were frozen in time.

From an outside point of view, what appeared to happen next, was as if a bomb went off in the clearing. Within an instant, a massive sonic boom erupted from the center of the group of ninja and all of the ROOT operatives were sent flying by an unknown force, instantly killed before any of the kunai and jutsu even landed on the roof of the safehouse. The dead silence after the bodies hit the floor was jarring after what had just taken place. After a silent minute, the vibrations in the ground and distant screams ceased and the forest animals began to tentatively move back into the area.

From Kaemon's point of reference, the world slowed to a crawl as he felt lightning chakra surge through his nervous system and musculature speeding his bodily functions up to impossible heights. His fingernails elongated into claws and his pupils dilated as he felt his clan's techniques also take effect. He could feel his inner wolf tense and ready to hunt and then the Raiton kicked in. Lightning coursed through his system speeding up the electrical pulses and chemical reactions throughout his body supercharging his musculature, nervous system, respiratory system, and circulatory system. The closest thing Kaemon could describe the feeling of his ultimate jutsu was simultaneously being struck by lightning and being injected with enough adrenaline to stop an elephant's heart.

He took a nanosecond to appreciate the jutsu he almost lost his life creating and grinned as he remembered all the fun he had developing it. He remembered the many months spent at the hospital and medic tents during the third shinobi war scouring medical-nin texts on neurons, muscle groups, and chemistry theorizing the potential use of raiton in speeding up his own body. All because Shisui was even better at the shunshin no jutsu than he was, and he was NOT going to let his rival be faster than he was.

If he was honest with himself, developing Raiton: Shinsoku (Lightning Release: godspeed) was a bitch. After coming up with the general idea of forcefully speeding up the electrical signals and reactions within his own body with lightning chakra after seeing the effect of the Raikage's Raiton: Chakra Manto (Lightning Chakra Cloak), Kaemon spent every waking hour possible to work on his jutsu and had plenty of friendly spars with Shisui to test its effectiveness. That being said, before his trip to the summoning realm, he was only able to speed himself up to the Raikage's level and he also lacked the defensive power of the chakra cloak.

When he finally got it working, mid-battle with Kumo, the face the Raikage made when Kaemon sport spanked him and blew a raspberry in his face was priceless, not to mention Shisui's face when he ran circles against him in their next spar. Well, it did make the Raikage angry enough that he sicked Killer-B on him the next day. The Bijudama (Tailed Beast Ball) was not exactly good for his health and only barely managed to reverse summon himself.

Kaemon gave a slight shiver, remembering his entrance into the summoning realm. His trespassing in wolf clan territory was not taken kindly especially when they saw him use a bastardized and inefficient version of their own wolf clan technique. After explaining that he was not a thief and that he did not know he was trespassing he managed to talk himself out of a quick death and was forced into making a contract with the great wolf clan as their next summoner as their clan arts could not be wielded by an outsider, even if it was a terrible imitation of the jutsu.

The jutsu of the wolf clan was meant only for those of the canine race, but being an Inuzuka he could become more beastlike. The combination of his early Shinsoku with the Inuzuka clan's Shiyaku no Jutsu (Beast Imitation Arts) further speed up his physicality. Without the help of the wolf clan, his Shinsoku would not have become what it was today, absolutely terrifying. Faster than anyone aside from his uncle the yellow flash. But he didn't count because not traveling through time-space and teleporting from one place to another is so totally cheating.

Kaemon shook himself out of the trip down memory lane and looked back down at the ninja who had unloaded a volley of kunai and jutsu. The more powerfully thrown kunai and jutsu had moved a foot or so during his musing.

"Well… I've seen worse ninja... But none of them are even close to even being able to see me when I'm this fast… Maybe going using Shinsoku was a little overkill?", Kaemon murmured to himself as he jumped from the roof and landed in the midst of the group of ninja who hadn't even begun showing signs of reacting to his extreme speed. "Nah, I'll just make this quick", Kaemon said with a hunter's grin.

Kaemon's hands quickly moved to strike the masked ninja as he strolled about the clearing. With a single tap of a finger moving at supersonic speeds Kaemon imparted huge amounts of force to the trachea of all of the masked ninja. The necks of each ROOT operative was immediately crushed by the force of Kaemon's hands. Bones shattered and spinal cords snapped as the immense force applied to the small area was resisted by the momentum of the rest of the body and then overcome in milliseconds.

Kaemon smiled as he watched the ROOT ninja begin floating into the air from the force of his blows. "It never gets old", Kaemon murmured to himself as he observed his handy work.

"Now if I could only get this song out of my head…", Kaemon said and stepped into the bunker. The concrete tunnel descending into the earth was obviously heavily trapped and Kaemon could tell that they had just been activated when he passed through the doorway.

"Hmmm... What a dilemma… This is why fuinjutsu users are so damned annoying!", Kaemon growled to himself as he stared down hundreds of fuinjutsu markings that have yet to fade after just recently being activated. Getting in with his speed would be easy, getting out after they had activated on his first pass would be more difficult.

"Fuck it. Danzo probably has a back door anyways. I'll sniff it out like I always do", Kaemon said aloud and paused. "Man I really have to stop talking to myself. The wolves all think I'm crazy and I'm sure Konoha won't think any differently…". Kaemon began his sprint through the ridiculous amount of traps.

Ninja wire, explosive tags, and hundreds of fuinjutsu marks activated in slow motion around him as Kaemon danced through the deadly storm of metal and chakra. It was an artful mad dash of perfect efficiency of movement and masterful spatial awareness that lasted less than half a second. Which was what brought down the rough of the underground compound as every trap in the main entrance was detonated at the same time.

The ROOT ninja at the end of the hall had only just stood up after noticing the traps in the main entrance activate to prepare for battle. Many ROOT nin continued their relocation efforts with renewed vigor knowing that the base would soon become a battlefield, but they were not expecting all hell to break loose. Throughout the compound, most thought they had died due to the many large explosions ripping through the compound, but only the most perceptive saw the blur that tore through the labyrinthine hallways and felt the claws that ripped through their necks before the traps went off. At the bottom of the ROOT safehouse, Danzo felt the room rock and heard a massive explosion go off above him. He stared at the doorway with a trace of fear in his eyes.

'What the hell was that? It sounded like thousands of paper bombs went off at the same time…', Danzo thought and stared at the doorway to the main entrance with a scowl. Konoha's response time was far too quick, and even his old rival the Kami no Shinobi was no longer powerful enough to pull off an attack that could sound and feel like that… Besides that point, he was not ready for a full confrontation against an unknown as assimilating Shisui's eye had taken a lot out of him.

"Guards step forward," Danzo said as he quickly made a plan of escape. He watched two porcelain masked ROOT agents seemingly step out of the shadowed walls of the room. "Lay traps as we exit the back door of the compound", the room shook with another blast from above, "Hurry". The old man said as he placed his palm on one of the stone walls of the broken laboratory. Fuinjutsu markings converged on his hand and a section of wall opened up. But he had not taken a single step before a singsong voice echoed into the lab from the outside hallway.

"A hunting we will go. A hunting we will go. Here I go to kill Danzo! A hunting we will go… Haha! That's definitely not the song but it totally works right now!", Kaemon said as he nonchalantly poked his head around the edge of the doorway, "And... I found the slimy bastard!".

"Kill him", Danzo said calmly and Shunshined out the backdoor. Danzo shook his head as he fled full speed down the darkened hallway, 'pity, those guards were fine shinobi'.

Back in the laboratory, Kaemon was gobsmacked. 'I thought the bad guys always monologue first and talk about how they will return or how they will get revenge…', Indignant Kaemon screamed in his head, 'YOU CAN'T EVEN BE A GOOD BAD GUY YOU BASTARD!'. Two supersonic bitch slaps later he took off down the darkened hallways following the scent of his prey. Which he found mid-shunshin halfway down the hall.

Danzo was startled as his new eye twitched sideways randomly and stared at a wolf mask that appeared out of a blur of motion. Before thoughts could be made he lost feeling in his body and the world began to darken. The last thing Danzo saw was a bloodied mask of a wolf and the face of the Shinigami reaching for him.