Naruto Chapter 108
The seal was gone one hour after the ANBU teams got inside. It turned out that Badger had had some trouble underground, but managed to circumvent a defence against exactly what he had done, attacking the pods from below.
There had been a number of much smaller seeds in the ground that could grow into vine spears at high speed, impaling a careless attacker. Not at all a bad scheme. Had Badger not been on the lookout for something like that from the beginning, he would be dead now.
Just when Dove wanted to call the mission a success, Naruto started cursing, loudly.
"We have a problem. I sent a few shadow clones out to scout if there was a second seal, as I pondered what I would have done to make sure that an important event like this would go off without a hitch. I came to the conclusion that I would set up a second seal, in a location a good distance away from here," Naruto told Dove.
"The results?" Dove asked.
"I was right. There is a second seal twenty kilometres in that direction," He pointed towards it, "And they even went further than I would have gone. They are ready to perform the ritual. My clone overheard Hidan boast that he had been right in preparing a second group of sacrifices, just in case some heretics were to interfere. The ritual is about to start."
"Shit, we won't get there in time!" Dove cursed, "Can your clone do anything?"
"No, it was noticed and killed," Naruto shook his head, "And the others are too far away to do anything. We would need about ten minutes at full speed to get there and by then the reaper spirit will be out and entering Mala."
"We can't allow for them to succeed. We don't need another shinobi war," Bear declared.
"No, we can't, but we have no way to get there in time," Naruto replied, cursing the fact that he didn't have a flying thundergod seal there.
Then he had an idea.
"We can probably cut the time to get there down to five minutes. That way we might at least have a chance to prevent the unison between Mala and the reaper spirit. Here, I developed these flying devices for the invasion of Konoha.
They are tested and I have four of them sealed on my person. If half of us took them to fly ahead and the others ran there, we might be able to interfere at least," Naruto told them and unsealed the flying devices.
"How do they work?" Dove asked.
"Just channel chakra into them and it will be turned into wind chakra, which will propel you," Naruto answered.
"I have been put onto the flying unit and I have my own device and am proficient in using it," Seagull stated.
"I have at least some training in using one of them, but I wasn't made part of the unit," Cheetah added.
"Then you two are going to be part of the advance team for sure. Dark Phoenix will need to go as well, as much as I want to keep him out of the heated part of the battle.
If the seal is activated, we need his abilities as a seal master to stop them from going through with things. Kraken and I will take the last devices and the others will head to the targets' location at top speed. Dark Phoenix, leave them a shadow clone to lead them there," Dove ordered.
"Yes," Naruto said and made two clones, one dispelling immediately to inform the other transformed clones to head to the second seal to run interference where they could.
It would be a race against time. They all just hoped, when the five members of the advance team took off, that they would be just in time to prevent the worst.
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The group had needed six minutes to reach the second site. The sight they found was horrible. All around the seal were dead people, men, women and even children, that had been slaughtered by cutting their jugular veins and arteries to make them bleed out fast.
There was a definite dark presence around and Mala was lying on an altar made of black vines in the middle of the seal, which was glowing an eerie red.
What disturbed them most was that Mala looked ecstatic while the being seemingly was in the middle of the process of entering her body. They had to dodge a volley of kunai, which Hidan had shot at them.
"You pests! You can't stop the ritual anymore!" He yelled at them, "Mala is nearly united with the Reaper Spirit. You lost. God Jashin will soon be reborn into the world and his glorious reign will last forever!" He laughed darkly at that.
"Can you do something, Dark Phoenix?" Dove asked.
"Not from up here and I don't know how to get down there with Hidan doing his best to stop us. He only has to keep us busy after all. He has the advantage of being able to ignore all kinds of injuries and only needs to nick us to draw blood to use his connection curse jutsu.
I would need to set up a counter seal to draw the reaper spirit out again, but that depends on the battle of wills between the one being possessed and the one drawing the spirit out.
And I don't know if there still is time. Nobody actually knows how long it takes after the spirit is here. I have no idea how they managed to draw it out this fast. I thought we had more time," Naruto answered.
"Shit! We will have to take a different course of action then. We need to separate them permanently. Then they can't create the offspring into which Jashin can slip," Dove decided.
"Easier said than done," Badger commented.
"But not impossible," Naruto stated, "They can only have that baby if Mala is capable of conceiving. If we irrevocably destroy her womb, or her ovaries, they can do it all they like, it wouldn't lead to a baby.
While two high priest Jashinists are a major problem, they would be the lesser evil than an insane god set on destruction and murder being born into this world."
"Might work, but don't their bodies always recover from all kinds of injuries?" Cheetah asked.
"Normal injuries from weapons, yes, but perhaps poison or acid," Dove pondered, "We can at least try. Nothing else to do now that they got the drop on us. Hit them with your best long-distance jutsus. We don't have to hold back and consider hostages anymore. Hit them with all you have. Dark Phoenix, stay in the background and only act if you are safe from direct retaliation. This is now fully an ANBU mission."
The others confirmed the orders and Naruto took to a higher altitude, trying to figure out a way to assist without placing himself into danger. He used the chakra beam seals to give range support to the ANBU.
It worked fairly well and it seemed as if Hidan realised the danger of those beams, as he regularly intercepted them with thrown boulders to prevent them hitting Mala. After three minutes of intense battle, Mala let out an ecstatic scream and rose from the altar.
"Finally. I'm a fully inaugurated high priestess of God Jashin!" She exclaimed loudly and her formerly brown scythe turned blood red for a short while when she took it and then changed back, but there was a dark chakra coming from it now.
"Now I'll punish the rats that thought they could go against God Jashin!" She declared and vines shot out from the ground again and chased the flying squad. Thankfully that was the time when the second part of the team led by Naruto's shadow clone arrived.
It forced them to split their attention into two directions and the fight was on. The group of eight ANBU split into their two normal teams of four and each took on one of the Jashinists.
Jutsus of all elements, both in solo form and combinations, were used by the ANBU to corral the Jashinists away from each other, but they were good. Especially as Mala could use her control over the vines to intercept attacks on her or even Hidan. And Hidan was devilishly fast.
Not to mention that he had perfected his fighting style that built up on the fact that he was unkillable. He also knew that if he just got a drop of blood from any of the ANBU, he could take that one out of the fight quickly. But the ANBU weren't the elite for nothing.
While Mantis was nicked in the shoulder by Hidan and he took in his blood, the others prevented that he could use his jutsu, which seemingly demanded him to stand inside the circle he had drawn from his own blood in the middle of the fight.
It became clear that one of the ANBU was a Nara, when he connected his shadow to Hidan's and forced him to leave the circle and drop his scythe.
Hidan cursed the man colourfully, but it didn't help him anything. The other ANBU used the chance that Cheetah had given them to land some very powerful jutsus, but sadly it didn't do much to Hidan, as Cheetah had to let the jutsu go to not get hit by the backlash.
"What do we have to do to bring him down?" Cheetah growled after having caught him for the second time, this time had been much harder to achieve, as Hidan was looking out for the shadows more.
"I suggest cutting him apart into little bits to prevent that he can attack again," Naruto called from above.
"Hm, that might just work," Badger agreed, "But who has a jutsu that can accomplish it quickly to not waste Cheetah's shadow possession jutsu. I doubt we would manage to catch him a third time."
"Leave that to me," Naruto replied and flew down and put a number of seals onto Hidan's body and one onto the ground between his feet, "I suggest you get a bit away, as this will be messy."
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