Moroi had been chasing down the suspects for a while now. It took a few days of waiting and boredom until they had finally showed up, but he at least had a trail.
The three individuals moved through the forest while carrying a body of young man with them. Besides them moved two strange creatures. Chimeras, as Hiro had called them. They were dogs with weird modifications on their bodies and with hardened, armorlike skin.
Moroi wasn’t confident in taking all of them out, and thankfully it wasn’t his job either. He just had to follow them and wait until the boss arrived. He had already reported that he detected a movement, and from the quick notice he received, it seemed this mission was quite the priority.
For another hour, the chase continued. The enemy kept moving towards the point where he first detected them, and it wouldn’t be long until they would lead him straight to their base. But it seemed that he was too hopeful, as suddenly the three of them split and ran in different directions while the dogs turned towards him and launched spearheads from their shoulders. Moroi quickly reacted and jumped away. He whistled as he saw a tree which was blasted open by the projectiles. He landed on the ground and shot a kunai towards each dog. As expected, they managed to jump away, swiftly drawing back the spearheads to their bodies through the strange elastic tissue that was conneceted at the spears’ end, and readied themselves for the next attack. The attack though, never came. Morori wasn’t here to deal with the enemy, that would be too much to ask of him. Maybe he could win against one of the three, but all of them together was not possible. Shafowing them and reporting their location was a different matter he was far more proficient in, and the enemy seemed to have realized that as well. They probably suspected that he was waiting for the reinforcements and had split up to buy time.
Moroi went after the man who carried the body while he sent a signal through the chakra pathway. He only managed to advance only a hundred meters before dogs had caught up and cut him off. It seems he had underestimated how fast they could move. The chimeras showed no sign of exhaustion even though they had been constantly on the run for over three hours.
Moroi decided to change his approach. He dashed towards the dogs and riled up his chakra inside his arms. The spears came flying at him again, but he managed to dodge them and appeared right in front of the chimera dogs. The dogs tried to jump away, but Moroi didn’t let them. His forearms bulged and the black tentacles came flying out of them. They stretched out for several meters in both directions and caught the dogs midair.
Moroi twisted his torso and dodged the spear heads that flew back into dogs shoulders. He used the force generated from the movement to drag the dogs closer and infused lightning nature chakra into the tentacles. Moroi smirked as he saw the dogs struggling and failing to escape. The octopus would have nothing on him. Electric current was discharged right from the tentacles and scorched the dogs to the point that their flesh begun to melt. A pungent smell filled the air as the dogs dropped dead. Those had been some tough puppies. The fight had cost him quite the amount of chakra, and he had little hope in catching up to the three. Well, at least he could bring those corpses to Hiroshi.
Moroi bagged the corpses into the storage scroll and quickly continued the chase. Even if he lost them, they were bound to leave trail in haste. He could capitalize on that.
Thankfully, after half an hour of relentless chase, he somehow managed to catch up to one of them. It wasn’t the one carrying a body, but he couldn’t be concerned about that. Unfortunately, tailing him quietly proved to be an impossible task. Now that the enemy knew they were being followed, they were on full alert. And since they increased their speed to maximum, the haste made concealing one’s presence harder.
In short, the moment the enemy detected that he had once again was being followed, he turned around and sent shuriken flying towards Moroi. And before Moroi blocked them and got close, the man had completed a summoning jutsu.
The creature that he summoned was a huge, double-headed snake. It circled around the man and hissed as he glared at attacker.
“So, that’s how we are going to play?” Moroi asked as he formed several hand seals. “Fine by me.”
“Water Style: Giant Vortex Jutsu!”
A wave of water flew towards the man, but the snake encircled him as he jumped away. The water that splashed on him failed to do any substantial damage.
“Don’t think that you amount to much just because you are little fast. You should learn your place, weakling!” the man kept arrogantly staring Moroi in eyes as he ordered his snake to attack.
“Snake Net.”
The order was followed by the snake raising its heads and opening both of its mouths. From each of them, a smaller double-headed snake emerged, in turn, smaller snakes also opened their mouths and identical snakes spawned from them. This caused a chain reaction. Two turned into four, four into eight, then sixteen and in a few seconds hundreds of snakes were upon Moroi.
“Just give me a second, I’m almost done.” Moroi whistled at the incoming snake wave and finished forming the hand signs. “Water Style: Water Dragon!”
A huge water serpent rose beside him and moved to meet the wave of snakes.
“A bit fitting, isn’t it?” Moroi smirked as he watched his jutsu annihilate dozens of snakes in each second, but the damn things just kept multiplying. “But well, mine’s bigger, so I win.”
Another water dragon rose as Moroi finished recasting the jutsu. He was forced to hold his hands together to keep the first jutsu active, but there was an ingenious solution to that issue. Another set of arms were molded from the threads and were positioned below his original two.
Moroi thought he would hate what his body had been turned into without his consent. He hated even more how useful it was in most given situations.
The man furrowed his brows in frustration when he saw his snakes getting overwhelmed and, on top of that, now another jutsu was heading towards him. No good, that was dangerous.
“It really is convenient, you know? And not only in combat too. Some girls go crazy over this. Now, if that guy would teach me how to grow a proper pair as well… I’ll be a happy man.”
The man ignored his rambling and directed the snakes to stop attacking. He needed to stop the dragon at all costs. The snakes split off. Half tried to delay the water dragon for even a second while rest circled around the man’s body, shrouding him into layers of cocoon.
The two dragons collided into it the next second, slowly going through each layer. But before they could fully destroy the cocoon, they slowly lost the momentum. Moroi was rapidly losing chakra and his reserves were having a hard time keeping up.
Realizing that attack would fail to penetrate and leave him defenseless against an opponent brimming with chakra, Moroi made a quick decision. He dispelled the first jutsu and water simply lost its force, splashing over the mass of snakes. Then, he used the freed-up hands to cast another jutsu. He then put those hands into the tail of the water dragon and released the lightning nature chakra into it.
The electricity travelled through the dragon and transferred into the cocoon of snakes drenched in water.
The smell of scorched meat rose in the air. The snakes spasmed and after losing control of their muscles, fell away. The cocoon fell apart, and the water dragon finally managed to drive itself through it. Moroi felt no resistance, and there was no movement after the attack. Moroi sighed. It was shame that he couldn’t capture the man alive, but his corpse had to do. If anything was even left of it.
As Moroi moved towards the place the corpse was supposed to be, suddenly, a ground behind him opened up and man emerged surrounded by snakes. It pointed his arm, that had somehow fused into a snake’s head, at him, and said something in a condescending tone. Moroi couldn’t hear him, as he failed to react in time and a loud bang echoed from the arm. Then, something slammed into him with great force.
