105. Sasuke Retrieval Arc, Part 6: Shino Vs. Sakon & Ukon!

“You’re not half-bad,” Sakon comments as we exchange blows again. He has blue-gray hair with bangs over one eye, teal lipstick, and a tunic with a white ‘yang-yang’ symbol prominently displaying an unbalanced mentality. That, or it’s the symbol for a gay 69. Weird flex for an evil organization, but I’m down. Ukon’s head sticks out of Sakon’s upper back, hanging limply with his hair covering his face. “But I’m better. Ninja Art: Double Demon Dance!”

He comes at me, Ukon manifesting two or three hands or feet with each of Sakon’s punches and kicks to double or triple their potency. It’s a powerful taijutsu technique I’m eager to record for posterity using my Sharingan.

However, as I hear the sounds of Hinata and Guren’s fight in the distance, I know I need to speedrun this duel!

“Secret Technique: Six-Limbed Metamorphosis: Insect Arms!”

I’m basically bullshitting here. This is just me compensating for my two-v-one disadvantage and limited swarm size (my Insect Cocoon breeding focused on Crystal-immune bugs that I can’t waste on this guy). I summon a partial Insect Clone and merge its arms onto my torso, giving the appearance of having six limbs.

It does the job, though.

They can’t completely bully me with taijutsu anymore now that I have two more independently moving limbs blocking and counterpunching. Whenever they do touch my Insect Clone limbs, a few of my Parasitic Insects hop aboard the enemy to start draining their chakra. On the other hand, their punches and kicks are stronger than mine, so I’ve still got to respect their damage output.

“Ninja Art: Multiple Fists Barrage!”

They throw a right hook at my face that morphs into a triple-threat as their flesh divides. I catch all three punches with three palms of my own, two of which disperse into a seething mass of bugs on contact. My left hand begins a series of movements that gradually escalates into a deadly dance.

“Eight Trigrams: Two Palms! Four Palms! Eight Palms! Sixteen Palms! Thirty-Two Palms! Sixty-Four Palms!”

Sakon and Ukon duck, dodge, and weave, but my assault is relentless. My technique was stolen from a genius, trained with a Hyuga sparring partner, and aided by my Sharingan’s visual prowess. They’re facing someone with all the advantages of Konoha’s two strongest clans! A few hits are bound to slip through their guard, which is all this insidious style needs to snowball.

In seconds, Sakon’s limbs go limp as I burst their tenketsu one after another. "How do you like my battle-acupuncture, punks?"

“Tch, the bug-bitch is forcing us to go this far…” Sakon snarls as he recedes, retreating inside his twin brother to heal using the Amalgam Kekkei Genkai, while Ukon comes to the fore with black dots spreading across their skin like a pox—the older brother compensating for his weaker strength by leaning on the Cursed Seal’s first stage.

Round two!

His punches hit harder, but Ukon is a bit slower and doesn’t have access to Sakon’s arms while they heal. They focus on footwork and kicks primarily since their feet still outnumber mine. I’m the one bobbing and evading as they go on the attack this time.

“We can feel you draining our chakra with those nasty insects,” Ukon brags, “But we have far more chakra than you can steal. It’s too little, too late.”

He kicks me in the chest, forcing me to block with crossed arms as three feet strike me simultaneously. I slide backward several meters, my heels digging into the ground as I skid to a halt. Shaking out my limbs, I reply, “Funny, I was thinking the same thing. Omae wa mou shindeiru.”

“Huh?”

Then several bulges appear across Ukon’s body, his features growing increasingly more panicked even as he activates his Cursed Seal’s second stage to buy time. His skin reddens, a horn grows from his head, his fingernails sharpen to claws, and half his body grows scales while the bulges twist and move. Beetles the size of grapefruit burst from his thigh, side, and shoulder as he screams in agony. He scrapes and claws at himself, but more insects emerge from his flesh in waves.

“Those are my Kidaichu, or flesh-eating miniature giant beetles. I slipped them onto you alongside my regular parasitic insects without your noticing a thing. They enter a host’s body while smaller than a grain of rice, rapidly consuming your flesh and chakra to increase their size until they’re too large for the host to bear. By then, there’s nothing you can do.”

That’s right—with the Byakugan to let me see my chakra flow and the Sharingan enhancing my visual recollection capability, I learned how to safely wield the Kidaichu years early! They’re one of the Aburame clan’s most potent and dangerous insects that we normally restrict to Chunin and above for good reason. They'll eat me too if I lose control of my chakra.

“Brother, help me!” Ukon begs from ravaged flesh as pain strains his voice to the breaking point.

A healed Sakon in his second stage form emerges from the ruined Ukon in a flash, Body Flickering towards me before I can blink, and dives for a patch of exposed skin. It’s all too fast for me to react, the younger brother invading my body on contact, fully merging with me in seconds.

“Parasite Demon Demolition Technique!”

I can feel him swimming inside me, his flesh intertwined with mine, his chakra network tangled in my tenketsu, his cells starting to war with my body. It’s both vile and violating. A defilement of my person. An intimate breaching of my boundaries by my enemy. I’m not defenseless, but my Amalgamation is adopted rather than native, and he has Senjutsu chakra. Simply struggling against him is an uphill battle.

Sakon’s head manifests from my shoulder to taunt me, “Ha ha ha! Idiot, you thought you could take us both on single-handed? How naïve! And sneaking your jutsu inside my poor brother; how arrogant! Don’t you know turnabout is fair play? Now, then, release Ukon-kun from that jutsu and I might make your death not so terribly painful.”

“Sorry, but I can’t do that.”

“W-wha?”

Ukon continues to writhe on the ground while his skin bulges with dozens of giant beetles consuming his flesh from the inside as we speak.

“They’re out of my control at this point. It takes intense concentration to keep them from devouring me while I host them. If you don’t stop your jutsu, and I lose the ability to regulate my chakra due to the pain, I can’t be held responsible for what happens next.” The way Kiba dealt with this technique in the Anime was to stab himself while merged with Ukon, the damage affecting both of them equally. Judging by the way Sakon shuts up and stops to ponder the situation tells me it’s still a credible threat.

I chuckle darkly, “Besides, you have worse things to worry about. Namely, you were dumb enough to enter the body of a Gentle Fist user. A very pissed-off Gentle Fist user. Revolving Heaven Palm Rotation!”

I turn the blender *ON*

If Kiba could hurt Ukon with a blind stab at his own gut in the Anime, imagine what I can do with my Byakugan. I look inside my body to find where Sakon’s tenketsu intertwine with mine and locate pockets of his cells manifesting to attack my flesh from the inside. With honed precision, I project chakra from dozens of my tenketsu while spinning, targeting the enemy within and forcing him out while striking from a hundred angles.

My chakra shreds through Sakon as if I hit him with a simultaneous three-hundred-sixty palms strike, bursting all his tenketsu, rupturing his organs as they manifest, and ejecting his pureed body from my pores in a fountain of gore. And all that while barely harming myself.

Gentle Fist kicks ass.

Nearby, Ukon stops moving and starts attracting flies hopeful to get a taste of whatever the giant beetles leave behind. They weren’t weaklings, but I had multiple techniques that countered their fighting style, assuring I could take the win with efficiency. By the time they realized they needed to rely on their second-stage transformation's superior taijutsu, I'd already checkmated them. I'll consider it a lesson in arrogance.

I just hope I didn’t waste too much time here.