Jirobo: The Earthen Titan

(Kamui's Point of View)

'What the hell? Why didn't she teleport out of that? Knowing her, her first move would… have… been….' Her thoughts slowed to a halt. 'It would have been to teleport to Jirobo and kill him before he launched the technique, but she didn't do that. Maybe she couldn't? No, there's never been a counter to spatial techniques. How would he even do it?' She thought to herself frantically, nervous at the implications of that dangerous possibility.

'Kamui are you OK?' She asked through the link.

'I'm fine, just a little banged up.' Kamui muttered through the link.

As the dust started to clear, Yugao's eyes widened as she saw Kamui's left arm raised with an arrow ripping through it. The girl looked like she tried to create ice armor around her arm at the last minute with minimal success. Steel release would've probably been better, but the reaction was instinctual and steel release was too new.

Luckily, the arrow's tip stopped just before piercing her chest, so her move was effective enough at least. There were also sturdy pillars of ice that could be seen extending from the palm of her hand and her elbow down to the ground, likely to divert as much of the arrows force as possible. Lastly, her skin seemed to have turned a silvery-white; though, that characteristic was quickly receding, returning her skin to normal.

'If I hadn't pulled off that last minute move, I may have been a goner. They almost got me there.' Kamui communicated through the link; her voice soaked in fear and astonishment. Clearly, she was still shaken up by the whole ordeal.

'Why didn't you teleport out of the way?' Yugao asked, internally nervous at the theory she didn't want Kamui to confirm.

'I couldn't, they cut me off somehow.' Kamui grimly replied, eliciting a sinking feeling in the former ANBU.

'Lord Hokage must know about this immediately! This could change everything! If this method was released publicly, the other nations may get ideas…' Yugao thought to herself, not wanting to worry her student while in a clearly compromising situation.

Around them, the earth was growing around the pillars of chakra and was creating dense platforms of earth in various sizes. Above them, a ceiling of earth was forming, blocking out the sun and any view of the outside world. Once the structure finished forming, veins of highly dense midnight purple chakra could be seen covering the walls. The veins linked together in the form of barrier seals.

Once the transformation was finished, the walls began pouring a dense fog and began absorbing the light around them at the same time. In almost no time at all, the visibility in the area dropped to almost nothing. Based on what Kamui could see, the fog limited the visibility of her sharingan even further than the darkness already did, making it much harder to see the chakra around them.

In addition to the sudden drop in visibility, Kamui noticed that her earth pulse wasn't bringing back any usable information. There was too much activity in the surrounding earth to make out a clear picture and she wasn't skilled enough with the sense yet to bypass it. She needed to wait for a few minutes for things to settle down before she could rely on her geo-sense again.

As for Yugao, this situation wasn't as problematic as it was for Kamui. While she could barely see a few feet in front of her, she was much better accustomed to fighting under these conditions. Every ANBU was trained to be capable of bringing to bear the majority of their strength in absolute darkness.

Looking at the form of the previously stocky man, the two were shocked. While he was tall before, he was massive now. Standing at 9 feet tall was an ogre-like man with hulking muscles, crimson red skin, black sclera with sickly yellow irises, and two ivory curved horns stemming from his temples and extending in front of him.

"You were real idiots to come into this place. We've had months to set the stage so facing us here was the worst and last mistake you'll ever make. Each of the ogres forming the pillars of this earthen palace had swallowed scrolls containing chakra close to the full capacity of an elite jonin. Despite what you may have believed coming in, they're not meant for security. They're the foundation of this jutsu, a palace that allows me to control the battlefield with ease and fits our combat styles better than any other terrain. In short, as long as you're in here, we have the absolute advantage. You fell for one of the simplest traps in the book, hiding one's trump card in plain sight." Jirobo explained smugly.

Internally though he was furious.

'Why couldn't I finish the palace!? Stage three shouldn't have affected me that badly. I've done it before, why can't I now?' he thought in frustration. 'Without the chakra drain and resupply, the palace just lost half of its usefulness!'

"I couldn't have said it better myself. He may have missed it, but I didn't. Lord Orochimaru warned us about your ability to teleport. The fact that you couldn't do so just now will be great news to him. In fact, I sent him a message as soon as I saw you fail. He will be most pleased at the revelation that his decades of research weren't in vain. It will go a long way towards Konoha's destruction so thank you for your help. Hahaha!" a voice Kamui recognized as Kidomaru echoed in the earthen palace, clearly smug of the revelation, not that Kamui could blame him. It was indeed a massive revelation.

'Should I ask them how they did it…...?' Kamui pondered to herself.

Glancing at her sensei for the briefest moment, she noticed her shaking her head, to which Kamui nodded in agreement.

'No, sensei's right; that would be stupid. I have no idea whether they've really sent Orochimaru that message. My asking would only serve to confirm their assertion. In fact, I'm willing to bet they're still looking for confirmation with a theory as critical as this. Something like this could make or break any plan Orochimaru comes up with so they would need stronger evidence. It'll be safer just to force one of the two into a genjutsu to collect the information.' Kamui realized. Times like this reminded her of how much of a blessing it is to be born into the Uchiha clan.

'Kamui.' Yugao called out through the link.

'Yes Sensei?'

'We need to focus on Jirobo. Killing him is our best bet for bringing down this structure. Another thing to keep in mind, according to reports, the earth base predecessor to this jutsu drains chakra. I don't know why this palace isn't doing that, but we should kill him before he's able activate that function. With your abilities impaired, we need to stick together for now. Do you think you can focus on creating a barrier strong enough to protect against those arrows?' Yugao asked.

'Maybe. I don't know their maximum firepower. You probably noticed this before, but I only have around jonin level chakra available to me right now, so it'll be difficult to pull off. With my toolset being mostly offensive with most of my defenses and distance-closers relying on evasion and teleportation respectively, this will be difficult. I really should have invested more time in trying to learn steel release or even a speed-based technique. For now though, I'll focus on support and keeping the pressure off of you.' Kamui commented, annoyed that Orochimaru had planned so well against her.

Despite her shock to their teleportation counter, Yugao wasn't that surprised that sound four's new tools happened to counter the girl. Orochimaru's biggest ambitions in the past two decades were to destroy Konoha and acquire a sharingan. This dome looks like it was built to counter the latter, while the means of countering her father's teleportation clearly worked toward the former. It was simply unlucky that she lost access to the most powerful tools in her kit, and she just so happened to get that recent chakra restriction.

'You focus on defense, and I'll take out the big guy. If you get the chance, support me in the fight, but don't do so at the cost of your safety. We don't know everything these guys will have in store for us.' Yugao ordered,

Plans made, Yugao quickly accelerated to attack Jirobo only to be surprised when his fist skillfully intercepted her, forcing her to back off.

'Right!' Kamui acknowledged, while she watched Jirobo pursue her sensei.

'Yume, can I get some extra chakra.?' Kamui mentally asked.

["I can provide a bit, but that will take some time to prepare. The link is still new and therefore too unstable for larger amounts of chakra to flow through."] Yume replied, annoyed that something like this happened right when they were at their most vulnerable. This was supposed to be an easy fight after all.

'Damn. I'll make do then.' She cursed, annoyed that she would have to take the most conservative approach she's ever taken, an approach she hadn't trained for.

'Shadow clone jutsu' she thought as three clones popped into existence.

At the same time, she started whistling, while using wind release to carry the sound to Jirobo's ears.

'Wind Release: Distracting Sound.'

To an outside observer, nothing changed. In reality, it was a genjutsu based on sound that Kamui used to subtly focus Jirobo's attention on her sensei.

It was one of the derivatives she came up with from Danzo's genjutsu. Truth be told, it was actually designed to keep attention on her during escort missions so having to use it in this way was frustrating.

The three shadow clones rushed in opposite directions of each other in a triangle-like shape.

The first clone's task was creating and maintaining the barrier.

'Earth Release Barrier: Regenerating Earth Wall!' the clone called out. Walls of earth form in a large circle with Jirobo as the center. Kanji spread across the walls and locked in place after a few seconds.

The jutsu was easier than it looked. She combined a thick earth dome with a seal designed to maintain the barrier by absorbing chakra from the environment, converting it to earth release chakra, and using it to regenerate and strengthen the barrier. As complicated as it sounds, the jutsu itself is intermediate level at best and is taught to all chunin-level ninja who learn sealing jutsu and by extension, barrier ninjutsu.

Unfortunately, she hadn't gotten around to modifying it to incorporate steel release yet, so she was stuck with the earth variant, which she knew wouldn't be enough to keep Kidomaru out forever. Already, she could feel the vibrations from the arrows impacting the outside of the sphere.

'Silencing Barrier.'

She made sure to add a separate barrier to silence Kidomaru. The original Kamui's genjutsu is vulnerable to outside interference and she didn't want the man to snap Jirobo out of it with his words especially since Kidomaru would discover the genjutsu pretty quickly if the intel they received was any indication.

Putting her hands on the barrier, she temporarily modified it to open a hole at the top of the dome. Finally, the clone transformed into a rock, needing to stick around to more finely tune the barrier.

The second clone's goal was clearing the darkening fog.

'Wind Release: Rising Air Current' She thought as her right hand twirled in a circular motion. In tune with her motions, the wind inside the dome picked up in an ascending, spiraling motion, forcing the fog out of the dome. When the fog was pushed out, the clone would transform itself as well.

The final clone's goal was bringing light to the dome.

'Scorch Release: Scattered Fireflies.'

The clone's chakra came pouring out of it like steam. From that chakra, tens of tiny, superheated spheres were created. Finally, the clone transformed itself into a rock. It would control the spheres from this transformed state. The spheres weren't meant to attack, only light up the battlefield.

Luckily for Kamui, chakra constructs didn't require much if any chakra to maintain if they weren't hitting anything, so all she had to do was move them around with her mind. Finally, the clone transformed and went about its task of controlling the 'fireflies.'

With those tasks done, Kamui had already used a lot of her available chakra and decided to focus on maintaining what she already had up. The clones would manage their own particular jutsu, while she maintained and reapplied the genjutsu to Jirobo. The hardest part of all of this would be her increased blindness to Kidomaru's arrows.

At least, the barrier would slow them down before they broke through. Once the fog was cleared, the only thing that would cost her own chakra would be the genjutsu and that didn't take much. It was one of the best parts of the art.

While her sensei fought, she would wait for her opportunity. Hopefully her sensei didn't need it, but you never know.

(Yugao's Point of View)

*Smash*

All she could do was dodge. The demon crushed the earth beneath her in a manner akin to Tsunade. The difference being that this was pure physical strength. You'd think the man would be slow in his bulky form factor. Unfortunately, he wasn't.

"What's wrong!? Why are you running away!?" Jirobo roared as he continued his pursuit.

Her speed was what was saving her at the moment. Truthfully, she really had to thank Lord Fourth when she returned to the village. If it weren't for him, she wouldn't be nearly as fast as she is now.

"Don't tell me this is all the great Konoha can come up with, a washout shinobi too scared to face me!?"

Jirobo threw himself in the air toward Yugao, who quickly body flickered away, causing him to land where she previously stood. The second he landed, he didn't just land; he practically sunk into the earth as a massive wave of earth pushed out with him as the center.

"Earth Release Titan Quake!"

With the earth wave came a rough localized earthquake that shook the foundations of Kamui's earth dome. If it weren't for her ability to actively control and manipulate the earth comprising the barrier allowing her to hold it together with her sheer force will (or her clone's at least), it would have fallen.

Yugao, seeing all of this, felt beads of cold sweat fall down her face.

'What the hell has Orochimaru been doing!? How did he produce this….. thing?' She thought to herself in shock and horror. She needed to find a way to attack but doing so would be dangerous. She'd need to take this slow.

"Konoha trains shinobi. Clearly Orochimaru prefers rabid animals. Seriously, is brute force all you can do? She mocked, her eyes studiously taking in every detail of the abomination pursuing her. Any potential weaknesses would be caught and taken into consideration.

She was grateful for these 'fireflies' her student created and the lack of the blinding fog. Although she could bring most of her strength to bear in darkness, she could bring all of it in light and she definitely needed all of it in this fight.

"Oh? Looks like you've got a mouth on you, don't yah? You won't be talking like that after I get my hands on you!" He roared.

Deciding it was time to test the waters, Yugao lunged forward her sword swing aiming at his waist. Hiding a smirk, he let her do it, knowing the result in advance. Upon contact, her arm came to a sudden halt as his flesh refused to budge. In fact, her strike only served to penetrate half a centimeter into his skin. It didn't even draw blood.

Quickly realizing the horrible position, she was in, she forced as much chakra in her legs and body flickered backward, barely dodging the unstoppable fist threatening to pancake her. Seconds later, the pierced skin knitted itself back together, returning to a pristine state.

Before he could resume his pursuit, Yugao pulled out a shuriken and ran wind release chakra through it, coating it in a rotating, razor-like, white film. Without wasting a second, she threw it and made the clone sign.

'Wind Release: Shadow Shuriken Jutsu'

One became twenty as the shuriken sheered through his skin, tearing holes in his flesh that were inches deep. It didn't go all the way through, but it did cause some serious damage. Once they had done their work, the extra shadow clone shuriken disappeared.

Unfortunately, it didn't even take seconds for his skin to knit back together and for his muscular tissue to push out the shuriken that was still embedded in his skin.

Pulling out two more shuriken from her pouch, she covered them in another layer of wind and threw them. One went left while the other right. Forming the same hand sign as before, she cast the jutsu.

'Wind Release: Shadow Shuriken Jutsu'

As the shuriken curved around to attack him from both sides, they both gained wind blades and multiplied by 10.

Seeing the rapidly approaching threat, he almost instantly went through five hand signs, ending in the tiger seal. As he gathered the chakra to invoke the jutsu, Jirobo grit his teeth in agony at the pain from invoking the jutsu. It went unnoticed to the two Kunoichi, however.

'Earth Release Barrier: Juggernaut Armor.'

With that, his midnight purple chakra burst out of him and compressed itself on his skin. If one were to look closely, they'd see the armor take on the shape and texture of stone, carved into the shape of armor.

Almost immediately after the armor formed, he was pelted on both sides by the shuriken. They tore into to the armor relatively easily but were forced off course by the chakra. The armor's actual role was redirection. It may have only been a bit, but that was enough to save his life.

When the attack finished, the actual wounds on his body were negligible at best. There were a few deeper punctures, but those started healing almost immediately.

'What the hell? What kind of jutsu is that?' the two Kunoichi thought to themselves as they witnessed the sight.

Kamui was glad her sharingan was on to catch it; it was certainly a valuable technique with a simple but ingenious function, definitely something she would use.

"Hahaha!" Jirobo roared in laughter at the seemingly pathetic attempt made by the Kunoichi to injure him, the degradation of his sanity preventing him from realizing that the attack had actually been relatively successful. He continued, "Is that the best you can do!? This will be easy then aAAAAHHHH!" The mockery laced in his words was halted by a scream as the massive man started convulsing in pain.

With the scream, black cursed markings became visible on his skin once again and glowed a midnight purple. With their appearance, his muscles swelled, his skin thickened as thick, white, snake-like scales became visible on the surface, and the palace around them started to shake as its connection to its caster began to destabilize.

Another consequence of Jirobo's further descent into madness was the chakra-based armor collapsing, leaving his skin exposed once again.

There was also an increase in the strength and frequency of the attacks pelting Kamui's dome from the outside; clearly, Kidomaru wasn't liking what was happening.

'What the hell? Just when I get off an attack that works, he goes and evolves even further? Well, at least I know I can beat him now and the curse mark seems to be making him dumber as time passes. By the looks of it, the evolution made him unable to sustain the armor barrier jutsu. How convenient.

'With the seals Kamui put on my sword along with my new technique, I should be able to kill him, hopefully before he evolves again. I don't know how long Kamui can maintain the barrier and keep him focused on me.'

'Sensei, I think I know the reason he hasn't been using a lot of earth release jutsu. He probably can't. Putting up those barriers was probably all he could do. His soul's probably significantly injured at this point after I removed the two curse marks. Using his curse mark already eats at his mind and I don't think he accounted for the strain it's putting on him after those injuries. I imagine maintaining this earth palace is taxing as well, especially since he needs to control the barrier's seals.

'If I were to guess, drawing on the spiritual component of his chakra probably worsens his condition. Well, he may not have known, especially if he hasn't used this palace jutsu in combination with this transformation. I bet he's furious that he can't use his full repertoire since he probably would have taken us out by now.

'You need to kill him soon though. The curse mark is flooding him with power, and he may be able to out-speed you soon. If that happens, I don't think we'll be able to win. I'm already lower than I'd like on chakra. Holding this earth dome together and keeping Kidomaru out of this fight is the best I can manage right now. I'll have more soon but I'd like to save it for our move on Kidomaru.' Her student informed her through the link. Even though Kamui did her best to maintain a steady façade, Yugao could hear traces of exhaustion and fear in her voice.

'How is she so low on chakra? I didn't realize how chakra intensive her jutsu repertoire are. I wonder how much chakra she assigned to those shadow clones? We'll need to work on that when we get back, especially if this limit's going to be a long-term problem.' She thought to herself.

'Don't worry Kamui. I was just testing the waters, figuring out how tough his body is. Now you'll see the reason why I'm an elite jonin, one of the village's strongest shinobi. Watch. I'm going to teach this to you as soon as we get back to Konoha. With teleportation compromised, you need to get faster.' Yugao explained to her student.

'Right.' She heard through the link.

In truth, she was glad for this encounter. She needed a way to humble her student and this fight was perfect for it. This was probably the first time her student had to step back so she didn't get in the way.

'Secret Technique: Lightning Steps.'

Leaning forward, Yugao disappeared in a flash of speed.

In Jirobo's eyes appeared three Yugao's, one on the left, right, and the final above. Normally, the Yugao that attacked from above would be near impossible to see, but Jirobo's height made that a lot easier. There was an interesting difference though. Her blade was glowing in a silvery-blue aura that moved along the edge like a buzzsaw. Small arcs of electricity could be seen within the aura.

Seeing her sensei's move Kamui smiled at the sight, and focused on the sword, commanding a portion of the chakra she left in it during the seal's making to mix into the silvery-blue aura.

'Dance of the Crescent Moon Revised: Moonlight Sonata.'

"Hah! You think you can fool me with this!? Lord Orochimaru already planned for this!" Jirobo roared as he punched upward, knowing how the technique worked; it was one of Konoha's most famous sword techniques after all.

When his fist met the Yugao approaching from above, there was no impact; it just passed through.

"What!?"

"Well, it looks like he hasn't planned well enough." The Yugao on the left muttered as the one on the right's blade reached his arm, cutting through it like butter. The cut went through not only the arm but even went through his torso until it was a few inches away from the spine. Before she could finish the cut though, she flashed back to her original spot, barely dodging a blow from the other arm.

If Jirobo were their only opponent, the clones would have been solid, and he would have been dead with that strike. She had to conserve chakra though.

'Damn! I was so close! Did he just get faster? He shouldn't have been able to react in time. He definitely wasn't that fast before.' She thought to herself in frustration that she couldn't have ended the fight there.

Every moment in this fight costs a lot of chakra and she was starting to feel the drain. Due to Kamui not personally refining the chakra for the sword, using the seals on her sword cost quite a bit of chakra due to the interference from the natural energy in the atmosphere; it was good that maintaining it cost almost nothing. In terms of chakra consumption, it was comparable to using the Chidori two times. The shadow shuriken combinations she tried earlier cost her a bit as well. She would need to end this quickly before Jirobo powered up even more. She didn't know how much his body could handle, but they couldn't afford to wait.

"AAAHH, you sneaky bitch. Damn it! How'd you make that cut!?" He roared in pain and frustration. His emotions spiraled further and further into the extremes as the situations and, more importantly, the curse mark ate away at his rationality.

'Let's see if this works?' Kamui thought as she used the trace of her chakra in Jirobo's system for a quick genjutsu.

In his sight, Jirobo suddenly saw 'Yugao' move to Kamui's position prompting him to shift his attention and inadvertently look right into Kamui's eyes.

With as much power as she could push through her eyes, Kamui took that moment to rip as much intel as she could out of Jirobo's fragmented mind. The act paralyzed him in place. Luckily, his mind was in its most vulnerable state, so it was a quick process. She didn't watch anything herself; she let Yume do that and simply recorded it for later.

Seeing, what was going on, Yugao smiled at her student's quick thinking. Although it would have been nice to know, if she didn't, he wouldn't either. After waiting for about twenty seconds, she flashed behind him, plunged her sword into his heart, and swung up, bisecting him from his midsection upward.

Normally, she would have liked to give Kamui all the time she needed to get the intel, but with Kidomaru a real threat that could realistically kill either of them before they could react, she simply didn't have the time. Her student couldn't afford to be that off guard for that long.

Roughly pulled out of the mind rip due to the man's death, Kamui shook her head in resignation at the lost opportunity to gather intel and cull another part of the snake's soul.

Before she could think more on it though, she threw herself to her right as an arrow passed right through the place she was just standing. Taking a quick glance through the hole made in the dome from her current position, she briefly spotted a distant haze of crimson. She didn't know what it was aside from the fact that it was likely made by Kidomaru, but it reminded her of her own clan's eyes, as impossible as that sounded in her head.

"Looks like I made it in" She heard from the outside. Her silencing barrier had collapsed.

'Sigh… and we still have one more to go.' Kamui lamented through the link.

Yugao shook her head as well.

'Thanks for keeping him occupied. Your support work was excellent.' Yugao thanked over the link, happy with the outcome.

'Of course, though if I were to guess, the only reason the barrier held was Kidomaru's restrictions. Considering he's known to possess a dojutsu, I imagine he's having an even harder time than Jirobo though I can't imagine what else he's using that would put enough strain on him to keep him out. It shouldn't have taken him this long.' Right as Kamui transmitted that, an explosion of midnight purple chakra polluted by an ocean of killing intent washed over them.

"Jiroboooo!!!!!" They heard roared from the northern part of the village.

'Here's a lesson to you Kamui, if you can make an enemy furious enough, they'll start making stupid mistakes like the chump over there giving away his position' Yugao amusedly stated through the link.

'Agreed.' Kamui replied.

Before either of them could consider their next move, the sun grew in brightness as a beam of light descended from the heavens and crashed into the earth.