The sealmistress's legs exploded, flinging her into the air and away. Noburi was far enough away that he only felt a faint puff of air on his face from the blast, but the pure shock of it still made his brain stutter for an instant.

Not Hazō, though. The taijutsu specialist looked immediately at Inoue-sensei. "Are we going after her, sensei?"

She rolled her eyes. "It's that or be killed by Jiraiya. Suggestion?"

Noburi watched as Hazō did that thing he did—ideas flicking through his brain so fast you could almost see them, intuitively calculating angles and spinning the problem around sideways. A faint surge of envy brushed against Noburi's heart. The idea that he would never be able to do that, that he would never have what it took to be a leader...it was a hard thing to look at, but as time went on he was having more trouble keeping his mind's eye averted.

"We need to split up so we can surround her," Hazō said. (And so she can only kill a few of us with any single attack, Noburi mentally added.) "Three teams. Me and Noburi, Keiko and Kagome, Inoue-sensei and Akane. Split up, thirty meters between teams. Keiko, you're in the middle, I'll go left. Chakra boost to chase her. Sensei, when we get her in sight use your Wind Wall to let us catch up. Do you think you can bluff her into surrender?"

Inoue-sensei laughed. "Who's bluffing?"

"Right," Hazō nodded. "Seagull Yellow, Syrup Trap, Earth Wall. Clones to pin, drain when we've got her. Go!" He leaped away, angling left; Noburi fell in on his teammate, immediately dropping into shield formation: half a step behind Hazō and on his left. The other pairs spread out as indicated, racing at maximum boost for where they had heard Arikada land.

They were fighting a jōnin-level insane sealmistress who loved collateral damage and was apparently willing and able to blow herself up without taking significant harm. There was absolutely no good reason for feeling happy about any of this...and yet, a tiny whisper of pride flickered in Noburi's heart. Hazō had chosen him for a teammate. Not Keiko, despite the fact that close-in taijutsu specialist and long-range sharpshooter was a great combination. (At least, if the sharpshooter was sharp enough to fire into a melee without hitting the wrong person. Which Keiko was.) Nor had he chosen Kagome, the paranoid explosive master whose closest tie in the world was to Hazō. Nor had he chosen his disciple Akane, the beautiful young girl who practically worshipped the ground Mr. Mew walked on.

No, when Hazō sent them off to fight probably the most dangerous opponent they'd every face, he had chosen the fat kid with the giant barrel to back him up in a life-or-death fight. That felt good.

The team broke out of the mist to see Arikada a few dozen meters away, kneeling beside a trio of bodies. The sealmistress glanced up and saw them coming; she froze for just a moment, then went back to what she had been doing, hands cutting seals with furious haste.

"Edo Tensei no Jutsu!" she shouted, slapping a hand on the back of each corpse in turn. No sooner had she touched the third and last before she was on her feet and racing away. The mountainous flab of her torso and arms looked incongruous supported by the newly-normal dimensions of her legs, but it didn't seem to slow her down at all.

The three corpses surged to their feet and spread out to engage each pair of team members; the one closest to Hazō carried daishou—paired swords, small and large. The second corpse was swinging a meteor hammer and the third was bare-handed.

Noburi calculated the angles; there was no way they were going to be able to get around their just-recently-a-corpse attacker and still catch Arikada before she reached the town.

Sudden dismay shot through through him as he remembered something critical: Arikada didn't even need to reach the town itself. The mayor had said that the team wasn't allowed to engage inside 'the town or its territory', which included the area in a one-mile circle around the town proper. At the speed the sealmistress was moving she would be inside the protected area in about five minutes. For that matter, if she could get enough distance she could go to ground; the plains were mostly flat, but there was enough topography to hide in if you wanted to. And that wasn't even allowing for any escape jutsu she might have.

He glanced at Hazō and saw that the other boy had done the same math. If they tried to avoid the corpse-warrior it would stay inside them, keeping them from following its creator. The only choice was to go through it.

There was no need to talk; Noburi slowed his steps a fraction, dropping farther back and circling to Hazō's right. Hazō shot ahead, angling in from the attacker's right side to force it to turn slightly away from his Water-Whip-wielding ally.

Their opponent was a dead man. Dead about three days, based on the slight decomposition and the white film over the eyes. The body had definitely been through a storage seal; it was torn up, bits of flesh crushed or even ripped off by the stresses. The damage was mostly superficial; the actual cause of death was readily apparent: someone had hammered a spike through the left ear canal and into the brain. About an inch of the spike was still sticking out.

Even as he noticed this, Noburi was pulling chakra out of his barrel, dragging the water along with it and shaping it into his signature Whip. As thick as his thumb, four meters long, and powerful enough to tear flesh. Between the two of them they would finish this zombie off in a heartbeat and catch up to its mistress. Right, that was definitely the way to think. Totally.

While Noburi was casting his jutsu, Hazō went in at full speed. Noburi watched his teammate charge, the confusing muscle twitches and barely percetible weight shifts of his Roki style in full force, and watched the zombie's reaction. His heart rose slightly; the enemy's eyes were shifting back and forth over Hazō's form, clearly trying to make sense of what it was seeing. Still, confused or not, the dead body in front of them charged forward to meet the genin.

The corpse's blades gleamed in the late afternoon sun as they spun a net of steel around their wielder...but every net has a pattern. If you can see the pattern, you can pass through it.

The first attack was from the katana in the right hand, cutting diagonally from the zombie's top left to bottom right. The wakazashi was held reversed and close to the body as a parrying tool. The actions were smooth and practiced, all the skill of a senior ninja brought back into the rotting flesh controlled by the fleeing sealmistress.

Noburi waited for his chance. It was Hazō's job to create the opening for Noburi's attack. Depending on what was open Noburi could either kill, cripple, or just distract the enemy while Hazō finished it.

Noburi was definitely aiming for 'kill'.

Hazō shortened his stride for a moment, changing the timing of the engagement just enough that the katana went past him instead of cutting him into giblets. Noburi winced at how close it had come; Hazō was clearly desperate to end this quickly—as he should be. Come on, man, open him up!

The zombie's shorter blade slashed up and Hazō tumbled left in front of it, grabbing the corpse's calf and hugging it to his chest as he went by. The corpse warrior was yanked forward, dropping to one knee and windmilling its arms as it tried to catch its balance.

Noburi's Water Whip struck like a snake, slicing through the air in a strike that would carve the enemy's head neatly from top of spine to front of forehead, just like the clan master had taught. Simultaneously, Hazō kicked back and up, catching his enemy under the jaw with his heel and rolling his toes forward to crush the larynx. The strike would have killed a living human instantly, but the corpse shook it off and stabbed downwards with the katana while casually cutting half of Noburi's Water Whip off with a sideways cut of the wakazashi. The no-longer-controlled water sprayed uselessly across both combatants.

Noburi snarled and shouted to distract the enemy even as he pulled more water out of his barrel, extending the Whip back to full length. He could rebuild the jutsu as a chakra construct, but then he wouldn't be able to drain through it. He really wanted to wind his Whip around Arikada's throat and choke her out while simultaneously draining the bitch dry. Blowing people up, fine. Bringing them back from the dead to fight for you? That was just wrong.

Hazō rolled frantically to the side, avoiding the stab of the katana by a whisker, pushing himself to his feet and frantically leaping back from the imagined yet almost audible shiiing of the wakazashi.

The corpse stood up; its lower jaw had been crushed by Hazō's kick and flopped uselessly below its face. Its neck bones had been snapped, so it had trouble turning its head. Despite all that, it didn't seem to have been significantly impaired.

Noburi watched Hazō set himself, his face dropping into that total stillness that he had only seen when Hazō was about to do something insanely stupid. Cursing, Noburi circled to the right, closing in and looking for an opportunity.

Hazō went in ahead of the katana strike, one hand parrying his enemy's right wrist to interrupt the attack. Hazō's other hand latched onto his opponent's left, shutting down the gutting stroke from the wakazashi. The genin battered at the corpse with furious leg sweeps and stamping kicks to the inside of the knee as Noburi slashed away with the Whip. Neither of them could get in a decisive blow; the creature moved with their attacks in perfect sync, feet circling back and away from the kicks, refusing to get tangled up in the sweeps, and twisting to dodge the Whip or to shift Hazō into the way so Noburi had to abort.

Hazō misread his opponent and shifted the wrong way, losing control of his opponent's hands and letting the blades come back into play. The zombie warrior tried to jump back, give itself the range to use its weapons, but it made a bad choice: it jumped clear of Hazō, giving Noburi all the time in the world to cut the goddamn monster in half. His Whip slashed out—

It was a feint.

The zombie pivoted to the left and dropped to one knee, lunging forward in a thrust that would have gutted Noburi if he hadn't managed to deflect the blade with a surge of chakra-controlled water even as he swayed to the side. Instead of killing him the katana sliced through the Whip a fingerlength in front of Noburi's hand, drew a shallow cut along his hip, and tunked into the barrel behind him. The point caught and the energy of the thrust threw the genin to the ground.

Sheer panic tore through the water user's mind. The injury had broken his focus and all the water he'd been holding was gone, soaking into his clothes or the ground. Recasting his jutsu would take too long; in another breath the zombie would rise up, step forward, and drive thirty-four inches of steel through his head.

Fortunately, Noburi wasn't fighting alone. The zombie had had to turn away from Hazō to make the strike, and that was all the opening Hazō needed. He took one step forward, planted his left foot and spun into a side kick that took the zombie in the spine and drove it face-first into the ground. Noburi scrambled to his feet even as Hazō followed the zombie down, pouring a flurry of strikes into it. Against a human he would have punched through the back of the head, but against this pile of animated flesh he crushed the shoulders instead. No matter how tough it might be, it wasn't going to be doing much fighting without its sh—

Noburi would never be quite certain what gave him the clue. Was there a clicking sound, or a brief pulse of light? He didn't know, but he still shouted "MOVE!" and threw himself backwards. A giant smacked him in the face with an invisible pillow; he rode the shockwave of the explosion and landed on his feet, lightly singed but mostly unhurt.

Mr. Mew's godsdamned cheating bloodline reflexes had gotten him out without a visible scratch. There was some zombie-pus in his hair and he was covered in dirt from the dive he'd taken, but other than that he was fine.

"You okay?" Hazō asked.

"Yeah. Ears are ringing, but that's about it. C'mon, lets go get that bitch." This time it was Noburi who moved first, Hazō dropping in behind him as they headed for where a crimson-haired comet was streaking across the landscape to their east.

o-o-o-o​

Mari refused to glance to either side where undead warriors were charging after her kids. They could look after themselves and she had to let them, no matter how much she wanted to go to their aid. They would be fine. They had soaked up everything she'd ever taught them, they had great teamwork, and they were amazingly powerful for their ages. They'd be fine, really.

Sure.

The corpse came in, spinning one end of its meteor hammer while keeping the other coiled up. Both weapon and wielder were big—the chain on the meteor hammer was probably ten meters long and the massive weights on either end of the chain were almost gratuitously large, bigger than both of Mari's fists put together. The zombie that wielded the thing towered over her—almost as tall as Captain Zabuza himself, and even wider and more muscular. Granted, a lot of the muscles were rotting or torn up by storage stress, but the point remained: this thing was bloody huge.

Mari's lips peeled back in a fierce wolf-smile. She'd been fighting bigger opponents her entire life—as tiny as she was, pretty much every opponent was bigger. Truth be told, she really, really enjoyed beating the holy everloving crap out of some giant bully like this. Another time, another day, when the team wasn't trapped between an insane sealmistress and an angry Sannin, she could really have had some fun with this fight.

Not today.

The outer hammer went spinning past, the obvious distraction, as the inner one licked straight out in a surprise move that would have crushed Mari's chest had it landed. Unfortunately for the zombie, Mari had fought hammer-wielders before. She twirled around the attack, her hair whipping out in a circle, and grabbed the chain. Her feet chakra-locked to the ground for stability, she yanked with everything she had.

Mari was a tiny little thing to look at, but she was also a world-class martial artist. Her small frame concealed physical strength that would have shocked a civilian. Add chakra boost to that and what you got was insane.

The zombie was pulled right off its feet and came flying face-first into a sidekick that crushed its head in and knocked it back three meters. Mari snorted to herself in satisfaction.

And then the thing got up.

For just a moment, Mari stared in shock. How the hell did you kill something that wouldn't stay dead? It was stumbling, the entire front of its head had been crushed flat and one eye had been completely destroyed, but it was already starting to gather up the chain of its meteor hammer.

"YOOOOOOUUUUUTTTTHHHHHHHHHH!" Akane cried, charging forward and leaping into the air. The zombie had just barely started dodging when the Human Path's only disciple of the Youthful Fist of the Mythological Beast That is Really Strong and Tough punched down through the oval of its collarbones until her arm was buried in it almost up to the shoulder. The impact knocked the zombie back; Akane rode it down to the ground and somersaulted forward without removing her hand from where it was wrapped around the monster's pubic bone.

The durability of undead bones competed with strength born of alien jutsu and came up short. As Akane rolled forward her arm tore its way through the zombie's organs, exploded its ribs, and erupted out through its skin, gutting it like a trout.

Mari stared down at the now-quiescent corpse. You probably could have done more damage by forcing someone to swallow an explosive tag, but it would have been a close thing.

"Come, sensei!" Akane said, bouncing to her feet with a brilliant smile and disgusting black juices dripping off her arm, "we must stop the most unyouthful Arikada from escaping!" With an excited yell she raced off in the direction of their quarry.

Mari shook her head and laughed even as she took off after her most youthful student.

o-o-o-o​

"Right," Hazō nodded. "Seagull Yellow, Syrup Trap, Earth Wall. Clones to pin, drain when we've got her. Go!"

Kagome was on the move before Hazō had finished the word 'Go'. There was an insane sealmistress, and there was his team. The sooner he got to the first, the safer would be the second. Sure, they'd all agreed that they'd try for live capture and only go lethal if it was absolutely necessary, but 'necessary' was such a wonderfully flexible word. Besides, Jiraiya would understand if the stinking sealmistress was missing a couple of legs, right? They could just claim it was self-inflicted after the explosion. For that matter a small implosion bomb wouldn't even kill her if he placed it just so; if she were right on the edge she'd probably just be a little mauled. A little mauling between friends was no big deal, right?

Kagome burst out of the mist, all too aware of Keiko on his right. Her smooth grace made it seem that she was flowing across the landscape like the shadow of a cloud. It made him self-conscious about his own lurching, clumsy gait. Still. He might not be as graceful, but he was even better than she was at killing things. She lacked the viciousness that he had learned over the decades, and he was absolutely determined that she would never learn it.

Just ahead of them, Arikada was crouched over three bodies. Kagome's hand went instinctively to one of the disks on his belt before he aborted the gesture. Right, they needed to try for live capture, drat it. Stupid stinking idea. Stupid stinking idiot Jiraiya and his stinking idiot ideas.

The sealmistress leaped to her feet and raced off as the corpses rolled up and charged at the team. Kagome forced himself not to react to the two weapons-wielding zombies that were going after the other members of his team. They were tough, all of them, and with everyone moving around so fast he wasn't sure if he could tag the zombies without also tagging those who were engaged with them.

He wouldn't trade his team for anything in the world, but there were times when having to worry about friendly fire was really frustrating.

The corpse coming for them was moving as fast as any ninja Kagome had ever seen. He raised his hands, thumbs slipping into the grooves of his ringboxes. Just a little closer...three...two....

A storm of raiton energy erupted from the zombie and it accelerated into a blur, coming straight at him, a rigid spike of condensed lightning boiling out of its hand.

With pinpoint precision, a storm of kunai went over Kagome's right shoulder and grouped themselves in the center of the zombie's face. The force of the throw sank the blades in right up to the hilts, split the skull open from crown to septum, and actually rocked the zombie back.

The zombie staggered, caught its balance, and turned towards Keiko. The zombie's fists came up as it shifted its weight forward—

"Die, you stinker!" Kagome shrieked, thrusting both hands towards the enemy in what would have been a double-fist strike from anyone else. The zombie didn't react at all; Kagome was too far away to land a kick, much less a punch.

Kagome wasn't really big on punching people. He was really more about explosions, to be honest.

The blast from Kagome's right hand was a cone so narrow that at this range it was nearly a blade. It hit the undead ninja in the chest and tore it in half, killing it instantly. Which didn't really matter, since the wide-angle blast from Kagome's left hand turned the thing into finely-ground hamburger and spread it out over the landscape in an arc of unpleasantly sticky red goo.

"HAH!" Kagome shouted, not slowing down as his pounding feet spurned the zombie-guts-squelching ground. "FEAR THE EXPLOSIONS, YOU STINKER!"

A step behind him, he heard Keiko snort in amusement, then fall silent again as they both poured on the speed. Arikada was ahead of them, but they were closing in fast.

Kagome's lips peeled back in a fierce wolf-smile. Twelve years of being picked on by the other kids because he was smart but not strong, because he always lost at sparring practice. More years of seal training, and then the factory. Mocked by other sealmasters for the 'unnecessarily paranoid' care he took with the precautions. Well, he was alive and they weren't. And he was going to show this disgusting, zombie-summoning, companion-killing seal-using stinker what it meant to face a properly paranoid sealmaster. She might think she was hot stuff with her bioseals, but Kagome had a few seals he wanted to show her. Yeah, show them to her reaaaalllly close. Like, up her stinking nose close. That would keep her quiet. And the team was almost there, too. Only about two minutes from the interdicted zone, but there was enough time. They would catch her.

The mountainous flab of Arikada's arms, and a giant strip of meat from her back, peeled themselves off her body and squished downwards into a trio of massive tentacles. The meat-limbs lifted her off the ground and carried her away with giant strides, widening the gap rapidly. For a moment, Kagome's heart leapt as he realized that his team wouldn't have to deal with the stinker. Then it plummeted as he realized that they'd have to deal with an angry Sannin instead. You know, the Land of Snow was supposed to be beautiful this time of year....

"Wind Element Technique: Wind Wall!" Mari shouted from his right. Ahead of them the air shimmered and danced as a vertical windstorm fountained out of the ground, throwing grass and dirt into the sky.

Kagome sighed as the Crimson Comet stopped lollygagging along and really put on the speed. Mari had been sticking with the others until now, not wanting to separate the team, but there was an escaping enemy to catch and she had clearly decided that it was time to show the kids what being a jōnin meant. She left them completely in the dust as she sprinted ahead and dove into the Wind Wall, letting it shoot her forward like an arrow from a bow.

Arikada's meat-limb tripod was ridiculously fast, but Mari went past her like she was standing still, then spun around, her feet digging grooves in the ground as she used chakra to go from 'faster-than-a-racehorse' to 'dead stop' in the space of two meters.

"Listen to the job offer or we bury you right here," Mari declared, her trained voice carrying easily across the grass of the plains.

Arikada halted, her flesh tentacles pivoting her from side to side so she could see the other five oncoming ninja.

"You might be able to take me, but I'll drag every one of you with me to hell," Arikada snarled. "I bet I can get a good part of the town, too. Bring all the clans down on you and whoever is paying you. Your bosses wouldn't like that too much, would they?"

"Look, you stupid bitch, we aren't here to fight you," Mari said as Kagome and Keiko arrived, Hazō and Akane seconds behind. "We came here to make you a damn job offer. Now, would you sit the hell down and shut up for a minute so we can make our pitch, or should we just put you in the ground and tell the boss you weren't interested?"

Kagome's hands were coming up, hoping desperately to get the shot off before Arikada lunged at Mari. What was Mari doing? Mouthing off like that wasn't how you talked someone down, that was how you got them pissed off enough to kick your feet out from under you and pound you until three of your ribs broke and you had to have your jaw wired shut for a week!

Incredibly, Arikada lowered herself to the ground, her meat-tendrils going flaccid as she stood on her feet again. "I'm listening," she said, arms folded and a sneer on her face.

"We're here from Leaf," Mari said. "They've got some kind of medical issue that they can't deal with. Jiraiya told us to find you and tell you that they'll pay you three hundred thousand ryo for what will probably be a week's work, plus another five hundred thousand if the outcome is successful." She snorted. "Personally, I think he's just hedging his bets. Lady Tsunade is the greatest med-nin in the world and Jiraiya is the best sealmaster. Whatever this is, if they can't fix it, some two-bit body horror fetishist like you isn't going to. Still, I'm just the messenger girl. We get paid as long as we bring in proof that we found you and made the offer."

"And what if I say no?" Arikada asked suspiciously.

Mari shrugged. "Jiraiya told us 'alive and unharmed' or 'head on a plate'. I'm easy."

Arikada barked a laugh. "You think you can beat me that easily, huh? Trust me, you haven't even seen the beginning of what I can do if I really cut loose."

Mari shot her the same kind of look that parents give very small and very stupid children. "Look, Ari," she said, "see the muck on my apprentice's arm? That's where she punched through one of your zombies the long way. I broke your guard like a twig and then dodged your little exploding-head trick when it went off physically in my hands. My other young lady? The minute we stop talking, she's going to call up a giant spiked ball of death that is very pissed off with you for unsummoning her before. My twitchy friend over there? He likes explosions. I mean really likes them. It took a fair amount of work to convince him that we shouldn't just blow you up to start with and take the smaller bounty."

"We still could!" Kagome called hopefully. "Boom! Squish! So much easier! And I bet I can miss the head!"

Mari waved him down without looking, her eyes still locked on Arikada's. "How many more of those exploding leg tricks have you got?"

"Enough," Arikada said. Was there a little less certainty in her voice than before? It was so hard to tell with people! Why couldn't they be simple and straightforward like seals were? (Well, in comparison.)

Mari rolled her eyes. "Yeah, well, however many it is, I very much doubt it's enough to take out all six of us and the aforementioned giant spiky ball of death. Face facts, Ari: you're not walking away from this unless we say so, and we can't afford to say so. Jiraiya will kill us if we don't bring him your head, but he'd really prefer it if the rest of you was attached. Like, 'an extra hundred thousand for each of the six of us' prefer it." She studied Arikada measuringly. "I have no idea what could be going on in Konoha that they'd be willing to shell out this kind of money to collect a freakshow like you, but I also don't care. Take the job or we put you in the ground. Those are the choices."

"Even if you could put me in the ground, which I really doubt, there wouldn't be enough left of me to identify, or of you to bury."

"Stop being a brat," Mari said, sounding tired. "I'm not in the mood. Almost three quarters of a million ryo buys a lot of patience, but there's still a limit. We only get fifty kay if we bring your head by itself, but act like an idiot much longer and I'll decide that that's good enough. I really wish you would take the job, though. Mr. Explosions over there bet me dishes for a week that we're going to have to kill you, and I hate doing dishes." She grimaced. "Of course, given what an arrogant prick you seem to be, I'm not sure I'd enjoy bringing you in anyway. Jiraiya made it clear that, if we do manage to bring you in alive, he needs you happy. Right now that's seeming like wayyy too much trouble."

"Hap—" Kagome cut himself off as Keiko's hand closed on his arm like a vice.

Arikada raised an eyebrow. "Happy, huh?"

"Yeah," Mari said, sighing. "Happy. Don't get too excited, because 'happy' is a fairly flexible term, and there's always the 'head on a plate' bounty. Still, if you come willingly we've been told that we need to be 'courteous, solicitous, and helpful.'" She snorted. "Stupid idea, if you ask me. Half my team wants to beat you into the ground and haul your unconscious body back to Leaf on a stretcher. The other half thinks that 'head on a plate' is a lot easier to carry and fifty thousand ryo is plenty. Me personally, I'm the one who has to do the team finances. I'm the one who knows that we could really use the money or we're going to have to do some of the less savory jobs that I'd rather the kids not get exposed to for a couple more years. So what do you say? Want to make everyone's life easier, get the most powerful nation in the world on your side, and help all of us get stinking rich?"

Arikada turned her head, always keeping Mari in her peripheral vision as she surveyed the other four team members. Finally she seemed to make a decision; she faced back to Mari and nodded.

"Okay, I'm in," she said. "Let's—"

Arikada cut herself off and whipped around at the sound of heavy-footed steps in the grass behind her. Her tendrils rose up above her, waving back and forth like snakes as she spun to face—

Noburi. Who was moving no faster than a tired civilian.

"Stupid zombie punched a hole in my barrel," he grumbled. "What did I miss?"