Naruto: The Outsider's Resolve: CH_414: Ratel vs Bandits: "Rowdy"

Earth Release: Earth Spear

It was like opening the stopper at the bottom of the pool. A constant stream of chakra was mixed, transformed, and spread to every nook and cranny of the body. Takuma felt his body grow heavier as the bones grew sturdier, muscles became denser, and skin turned onyx. Every time he had used the jutsu in training, he felt a sense of power being imbued into his body.

The cautious ROOT agents instantly turned alert.

Takuma knew he had breached the barrier.

Almost any jutsu could be used to kill if the conditions were right, but most D-rank jutsu, and to some extent, even C-rank jutsu, weren't considered lethal. That changed with B-rank jutsu; all offensive ninjutsu were killing weapons. Chūnin who knew B-rank jutsu tried to end fights without using them because using one justified the enemy to use them as well. It instantly raised the severity of the fight. Avoiding the big guns was a way to keep oneself safe.

Of course, exceptions always existed. There were no hard and fast rules in battles of life and death. Some followed the school of combat that believed in opening with B-rank ninjutsu as a rush and overwhelm tactic. Some used them when they knew their opponent couldn't use them. Some couldn't handle their egos bruised and used them in an attempt to uphold their pride, like Bishop.

The ground under Takuma's feet cracked as he turned into a blur.

The agent moved just as fast and switched their formation. The kenjutsu agent, who was the nearest to Takuma, moved laterally and grabbed the sword that had been previously tied to the ground by the water chain. The moment he grabbed the sword, it came to life and thrummed with power.

The agent's sword left behind a trail as it tried to behead Takuma, who directly blocked it with his arm. In any other situation, the action would've been seen as asking for an amputation, but instead of blood spurting, the impact caused sparks to fly, accompanied by the sound of a sharp blade grinding against stone.

Takuma aimed for the liver with a body shot. The agent blocked by sticking his arm in the way. His face turned red as the force travelled through his arm and penetrated his torso, knocking the air out of his lungs. He almost dropped his sword as his arm instantly turned numb.

"Graah!"

The agent glared at Takuma as he roared through the pain and kicked him in the stomach, sending him flying into a tree that cracked against his back. He immediately rolled away as the agent flashed in front of him. The blade went clean through the trunk, slicing the tree in half. The other sword moved just as fast and passed through the trunk like it was nothing.

Takuma kicked the agent in the knee and the calf with two quick kicks, destroying his balance, before bringing down a haymaker for his head. The agent, unable to move, let himself fall. The fist smashed through another tree, causing the trunk to explode. The agent rolled away as Takuma's foot smashed a crater into the ground.

Each strike from Takuma and slash from the agent caused damage as they moved at lightning speed around the road, leaving destruction in their wake. However, the difference was that the agent's swords didn't draw blood, while Takuma's strikes did heavy damage.

He knew he couldn't allow the agent any opportunity to change the kenjutsu running through his swords. The cutters he used to slice through the dome before would be able to cut through Earth Spear's defences to leave shallow damages that could become a problem if they piled up.

Of course, the agent knew that as well and was trying to back away. However, Takuma wasn't going to let that happen. Unfortunately, the agent had help.

Takuma jumped back when he saw a light in his periphery a moment before a cone of fire lit up where he was standing. The agent who was previously sent flying rejoined the battle. His jaw was still shattered, causing the lower half of his face to be swollen and bruised, but he seemed to be unaffected.

'Soldier pill,' Takuma thought when he saw veins on the man's forehead and the shiny pallor of his skin.

The agent's arms were covered in flames. When Takuma tried to close in on the kenjutsu agent, he was blocked and had to deal with his new opponent. He glanced at the third agent, who seemed to be on standby while intently gazing at him. He recognised that now that he had used Earth Spear, they would retaliate as well. At least one of the agents had to know a B-rank jutsu. If he were in their position, he would create a scenario where he couldn't avoid whatever they were planning to throw at him.

Two of them would confront him while the remaining one would keep an eye out for an opportunity.

But...

'If all of you couldn't handle me before, what makes you think two of you can handle me now?'

The two fists struck each other head-on as Takuma confronted the agent with the flaming arms. Their clothes fluttered violently from the force. Another collision caused the ground around them to crack. Their knuckles smashed against each other, and on the third impact, the flames around the agent's arm exploded, flooding Takuma with fire. They immediately rolled out of the way and avoided a kick to the chest. Even though he couldn't see Takuma through the fire, he knew one successful attack wouldn't slow him down.

Takuma sprinted out of the fire unharmed and headed straight for the agent, ready to strike him down.

The flames on the agent's arms roared as though gas had been pumped into them before they gathered into his fist. Takuma noticed it but didn't stop because he was confident in being unharmed. However, the agent didn't aim at him but instead at the ground that exploded, causing Takuma to lose balance. The flames, on the other hand, concentrated on his fist.

Takuma felt the full force of whatever jutsu the agent was using right in the face. It didn't hurt at all, but he felt the Earth Spear suck more chakra.

"Clear!" yelled someone.

Takuma couldn't track who said it, but he immediately tried to grab the agent, who tried to jump away, and failed. At that moment, four tagged kunai dug into his body, only to bounce off his hardened skin. The tags went off regardless, and the collective force sent him flying. It didn't hurt, but he once again felt a spike in the chakra drain graph in his mind. The moment he stood up, he looked up to track the agents, only to see two of them. His eyes widened when he couldn't spot the third. At that same moment, a glowing sword slashed against his neck to behead him, while another cut him across his back. Both of them failed to do any damage, but he felt his chakra reserves take a nose dive.

He turned around to see the kenjutsu agent, noticing that both of his swords had stopped glowing, and he appeared fatigued. Takuma didn't think he had used too much chakra; it had to be because he had taken too much damage.

It was the right opportunity to finish him off. He just needed a few good, non-lethal hits to put him down for good. Takuma zapped towards him. The agent was tough, but with his kenjutsu, he wasn't that much of a threat. Takuma landed an augmented kick to the calf to disable his legs, and then a chain of normal punches to the liver, kidney, and head to knock him out without threatening his life.

"Huh?"

A cold chill sparked down his spine when Takuma suddenly felt the temperature around him rise. He looked back to see a fireball in the shape of a dragon's head straight towards him. He instantly recognised it because it was the most popular B-rank ninjutsu in the Hidden Leaf.

Fire Release: Great Dragon Fire Jutsu

He couldn't believe they were doing it. They were sacrificing one of their own. He had become aware of ROOT's methods since joining Itachi's initiative and gaining access to the department's knowledge about ROOT. Sacrificing agents wasn't unseen for ROOT, but it was rare because agents weren't in unlimited supply; each one was measurably valuable. Sacrificing agents was for a mission that required success regardless of cost. Killing him, by any means, shouldn't be something they needed to sacrifice an agent for. If they thought they were going to lose, they should've tried to escape first.

"Fuck."

Takuma faced the dragon's head, taking a stance that pulled his fist in and flooded chakra into his right arm.

While he had gained mastery over Earth Spear to make it combat viable, the jutsu required him to stream chakra throughout his body constantly. Disregarding the large amount of chakra it took to do that, the other obstacle was that it made using other jutsu alongside it extremely difficult. Using other jutsu required him to divide the focus needed to keep Earth Spear active. He had made decent progress on it, but the failure rate was still too high.

In the face of the B-rank ninjutsu, he couldn't risk losing Earth Spear's protection. Especially when he knew that even Earth Spear, running at full speed, wouldn't be able to protect him against what was coming at him. The jutsu's defences were geared toward enduring anything under a certain threshold, which was substantially higher than any C-rank jutsu, but not as high as tanking a B-rank jutsu that used all of its resources into a "single-charge" attack.

He was going to take damage regardless of the dragon's head.

However, there was one jutsu he could use with perfect success rate.

Takuma's arm began to glow blue as chakra began to gather in his tenketsu pathway. The colour darkened as he began to compress more chakra into a smaller space. All that chakra then got pushed towards the fist.

He was going to punch a B-rank jutsu with the strongest single-charge attack he had.

He didn't think of it as a special form like the ranged second-form augmentation, but it incorporated everything he knew when it came to chakra theory and shape transformation.

Chakra Augmentation: All-Out Punch

Takuma punched out as hard as he could. Normally, it would've blown his arm to a gore of flesh, but because Earth Spear was reinforcing every part of his body, he could handle the droves of chakra flowing through his arm.

If Earth Spear's defence threshold was lower, then he just needed to lower the attack's damage to that threshold.

The small fist collided with the large dragon's head, causing a thunderous roar. The B-rank jutsu was much more powerful than his augmentation, and drowned it out almost immediately, but not before the concentrated force pierced through the dragon's head and disturbed its core. The excited chakra that was holding the fire together lost its hold, and the concentrated fire dispersed.

A great amount of melting fire hit him. Takuma felt his heart beat faster and faster as he felt his chakra drain as the heat tried to devour him. Fire consumed everything, even his vision, as the blinding light of the jutsu engulfed his sight.

———
.

"He has to be dead."

The agent who had used the B-rank jutsu felt exhausted as the jutsu had sucked most of his chakra out of him. He looked at the trees on fire around him. The forest around them was healthy, lowering the chances of a forest fire, but the rising smoke was sure to attract attention.

Soon, shinobi would arrive at their location, and in their condition, their chances of escape or survival would be low. He looked at his teammate, who didn't look good. They needed to escape before the soldier's pill wore off and his condition plummeted.

"We need to—"

Something shot out of the blaze of fire into the air. He looked in surprise and horror as they saw the ANBU descend from the sky towards his teammates' location. Not only was he alive, but he looked uninjured, and his skin remained onyx from the Earth Release: Earth Spear.

"How?" he asked himself. Their sensory-nin had informed them that their target had large chakra reserves, but it was unclear how the target was still maintaining a jutsu infamous for draining chakra like no other.

The moment he saw his teammate go down from a single kick to the face, he turned around to escape. They had missed their last chance; there was no value in staying around. He had to escape and report this.

"I let one of yours escape from me before. You are not him."

The agent's spine stiffened when he heard the voice near his ear. He was hit on the head with such force that it quadrupled his vision and made him want to vomit from the vertigo before his legs were swept and his face was smashed into the ground. He knew it was over and tried to trigger his seal, but his head was stomped into the ground twice, causing him to lose control of his chakra.

That was when he realised he had failed the mission, and the moment he woke up next, he would be actively putting ROOT at risk.