Naruto: Stormbreaker

Chapter 194: The Hunt Part 6

Kaen POVSena approached as I kept my eyes on Owl, who was still bleeding from the earlier slash. Heron’s body lay a few steps away, twisted and broken, the shattered mask pressed halfway into the mud. Steam rose faintly from the blood pooling around him, the smell of iron thick in the air. I glanced at Sena and saw the exhaustion on her face, her chakra barely a flicker in my vision.

She stopped beside me and asked quietly, “How much chakra does he still have?”

I focused my Sharingan on Owl, watching his chakra pulse and flow. “Very little,” I said. “Maybe one strong jutsu or two weak ones.”

The fog had thinned, revealing the full weight of the battlefield. Heron’s corpse, the cracked ground, and the smeared blood were all reminders of how narrow the line between life and death really was. I clenched my teeth. It bothered me that Owl’s chakra wasn’t distorted like ours. “Do you know how they’re fine using so many jutsu without any trouble?” I asked.

Sena sighed, her eyes narrowing. “It’s probably a seal that’s doing that for them. And they’re familiar with the area, so they’ve likely adapted to it. This was a setup.”

Her words made my stomach tighten. One of the few things I trusted without question was Sena’s intelligence, and if she said it was a trap, then it was.

She continued, “If Noa were here, he would have confirmed the seal theory. Let’s hope he can help Sensei.”

I nodded. I wanted to finish this quickly and go help too. Even without chakra, I would not have minded throwing my life away if it meant protecting someone like Shisui sensei, a treasure of our clan, second only to Fugaku sama.

Owl didn’t seem to mind us talking as he circled us slowly, observing every twitch in our movement. Our training kept us sharp enough not to show an opening, but his eyes searched for one anyway. Sena spoke with a slightly raised voice, calm but firm. “Kaen, keep him occupied. I’m going to end this.”

Before she could finish her hand seals, Owl moved. He charged toward us with heavy, deliberate steps, his chakra flaring wildly. As his hands flashed through a quick sequence of seals, the remaining chakra in his body erupted into earthen energy. A thick coat of stone spread over his body, hardening into a jagged shell. His face became a mask of rock, and he came at us like some monster from the deep earth.

When he struck the ground with both fists, the impact tore through the terrain, sending a shockwave of shattered soil outward. Sena and I jumped in opposite directions, debris raining around us.

I lost my footing for a moment as I landed, my eyes reflexively scanning the ground beneath me for a stable spot to regain balance, and Owl was already on me. His fist came crashing down, faster than I expected. I crossed my forearms just in time to block, but the impact drove the air out of my lungs. I was thrown back, coughing blood, my arms throbbing with pain even through the guard.

Sena flicked a kunai toward him, aiming for his extended arm. The weapon struck the hardened stone and bounced off as if it had hit solid steel. Owl lunged at her immediately, his stone-coated arm swinging toward her head.

Sena moved with terrifying precision. Her body twisted in a motion that looked almost like a dance, graceful and impossible to follow. As she slipped past his strike, she slapped an explosive tag onto his arm and jumped back. Her hand snapped through a seal. “Release.”hrough her hair, then deeper, a streak of red appearing as the edge drew closer to her eyes. Her arms shook violently, her muscles failing under the pressure. His leg, still encased in stone, drove forward as he pinned her down completely, growling through blood and rage.

The moment I saw his blade cut into her, something inside me erupted. Rage flooded every thought and breath until all that remained was the need to kill that bastard.

The world narrowed to sound and color, the rush of blood in my ears, the pounding of my heart, the red flare of my Sharingan burning through the pain. I screamed, raw and furious, as chakra exploded out of me. My remaining eye spun violently, the pattern sharpening until everything moved in slow motion.

I did not think. I flickered.

A sword materialized in my hand from a storage seal, the surge of chakra tearing through the distortion field as I forced myself forward. The backlash made my vision pulse and darken, but I did not stop. I could see every detail, the broken lines in Owl’s armor, the exact rhythm of his heartbeat, the weak spot between the cracks in the stone.

I slammed the blade through his exposed back, driving it straight into his heart. The sound was thick and wet.

Owl screamed, a guttural animal sound that tore through the air. Blood sprayed across my arm as he kept pressing down, his dying strength still trying to reach Sena. I roared, twisted the blade, and drove it deeper until I sliced his heart. His body convulsed, then collapsed forward in a heap, blood spreading fast across the ground. I fell with him, panting, vision dimming as the Sharingan faded. The world smelled of iron and ash. My hand stayed locked around the sword’s hilt buried in his chest, trembling.

A/N: And with that, we end the battle against the two chunin. Brutal, I know, but Sena and Kaen used every bit of training and every trick they had to survive this one. I cannot wait to read your comments on the battle as a whole and how it ended. Do not be shy and leave a comment ;)