Despite the helplessness building in her chest, Mei couldn’t simply give up. In desperation, she started going through hand seals, the intruders momentarily forgotten in favor of a much bigger existential threat.

Her mind flashed through her jutsu repertoire, trying and failing to come up with a technique that could stop a freaking meteor. She was an offense-oriented kunoichi, dammit!

In the end, she had decided to go for a thin, highly-pressurized stream of water from her mouth and angled her head up, shooting it straight toward the left side of the meteor while turning her head from left to right.

Mei’s chakra pool instantly emptied as she pumped everything into her technique. She wasn’t as good with water release as she was with her bloodlines and other affinities. She had trained the least with it. Unfortunately, she couldn’t think of anything else that would work against a meteorite.

Her pressurized water stream flew through the sky, and in one fell swoop, the meteor split apart into two parts, bisected right in the middle. The two parts separated, and their trajectory veered off to different sides.

It wasn’t great. It was nowhere near enough for the big chunk of rock to stop being an existential threat to her village, but Mei still felt a spark of hope.

If the Jonin of her village followed her example, they might reduce the size even more and make the impact survivable!

“Impressive!” The deep voice of the armored man resounded through the surroundings, and Mei stiffened, suddenly keenly aware of the enemies that were still standing nearby, watching her.

‘Ah, I am screwed, aren’t I?’ Mei wryly thought as her pupils constricted.

She had barely five percent of her chakra reserves left. For a ninjutsu specialist like her, that was a death sentence in a fight with somebody who can summon a freaking meteor.

The armored man gave her an acknowledging nod before his lips settled into a smirk once more. He raised an eyebrow at her, “So? How are you going to deal with the second one?”

“The second-?” Mei’s mind blanked for a second before it whipped back up, toward the sky, where the two parts of the split meteorite separated enough to reveal a glimpse at the second meteorite behind it.

Mei’s knees became weak enough to fail her, and before she realized it, she found her legs collapse from underneath her as she fell into a sitting position on the ground, staring at her and her village’s approaching doom with a helpless, sour expression.

“Hoh~. It seems the Mizukage can do only this much.” The man spoke again, “How disappointing.”

Hearing him, Mei turned her eyes, burning with hatred toward him, and shakily stood up. She had decided. She was most likely going to die here. But at least, she wanted to try to kill the bastard first. Ao was a good commander. The village’s forces were going to do their best in his hands.

And indeed, more streams of pressurized water shot into the air, trying to damage the meteor. Unfortunately, most of them came short of the power of her own technique simply because her chakra was more potent than any random Jonin from her village. Their techniques were damaging the parts of the first meteor with varying degrees of success.

It wasn’t going to be nearly enough.

But… even if it was hopeless, her ninjas were not giving up. So, how could she, their Kage, stop fighting? That would be just shameful. Even if her chakra was almost empty, even if it was going to kill her, she was going to fight!

Snarling, Mei pulled out a kunai from her pouch, gripped it tightly in her hand, and prepared to engage the smug bastard in front of her when the sound of deafening explosions resounded from above.

Mei’s gaze snapped back up, toward the meteors, only to see…

“Paper?” Her expression became weird.

Countless slips of paper burst into existence from what Mei noticed were kunai, and these pieces of paper started to rapidly glue themselves to the closest surface of the meteor. In the blink of an eye, a lot of the underside of the sliced meteor was covered. Then, a moment later, a massive pulse of chakra was released from the paper, and with a fascinated horror written on her face, Mei realized that every single piece of paper there contained a seal.

There must have been millions!

Right in front of Mei’s astonished eyes, the meteorite quickly started turning, from bottom to top, into an enormous amount of salt now threatening to fall and bury Kirigakure underneath itself.

“What?” Both Mei and the armored man exclaimed in disbelief at the unbelievable spectacle.

The Kiri ninjas quickly adapted, realizing that the threat of this salt was much more manageable than the threat of a falling, village-sized rock. They promptly started using water release and began shooting wave after wave of water at the falling salt, slowly but surely washing it away, to the side just enough that the salt and the waves of water would fall outside of the village’s premises.

…

On a balcony of a house near the center of Kirigakure stood two people clad in black cloaks, watching as the frantic Kiri ninjas were shooting water techniques into the sky.

“Are you alright?” Ren asked Konan, putting a hand on her shoulder in concern.

She was slightly hunched over, and her breathing was more labored than usual after she had to control the hundreds of thousands of salt-transmuting paper tags and spread them all over the underside of the first meteorite.

“I am fine.” She muttered with a clear strain, and Ren sighed.

He could feel her pain. His heart was bleeding and hurting, too. All those paper tags! It took him a lot of effort and resources to make them, and now they are gone, with even more to go because there was one more meteor in the sky.

‘Fucking Madara.’ Ren mentally grumbled.

“I’d like to tell you that you don’t have to push yourself, but…” Ren wryly said before trailing off. At the same time, he and Konan chuckled at the thought.

Yeah. If she didn’t push herself here, Kirigakure would be shortly flattened. That kind of wasn’t an option.

“Don’t worry. I can do this.” Konan said, putting her hand on top of Ren’s, and for a moment, they silently stared each other in the eyes, ignoring all the mayhem going on around them.

Then, an explosion resounded from somewhere, and the magical moment was broken.

“Ahem. Right. Yes.” Ren awkwardly cleared his throat, inwardly admonishing himself. “I should go. Preferably before the Mizukage is made into a pancake.”

Konan averted her gaze, “Go do your job while I do mine.” She impassively said, but her cheeks were slightly flushed.

Ren’s lips twitched. He had spent two weeks with the woman, training, eating, and devising strategies together. He was dreading introducing her to Ino because he could already hear her jokes about the sexual tension in the air.

Shaking his head, Ren jumped off the balcony and ran toward the place where Terumi Mei was having her not-so-last stand, if he had anything to say about it.

In the last month, Ren decided to squeeze his seals for all they were worth. He now had long-lasting clones stationed in every capital city and every hidden village. His transportation seal network was spread all over the world.

Through it, he regularly helped Ino’s clones infiltrate Kumo and Iwa in her quest to gather intel. It wasn’t going very well just yet, but the girl was making at least some progress.

Ren also had his seals spread across every major military base of Suna and Konoha. Hinata had one, Tsunade had one, Temari, Kankuro, and Gaara had one each, and every Suna commander also carried one, even though they had no idea what it was for.

Ren had no idea where Madara was going to attack next, so he wanted to be prepared.

Imagine his surprise when, a few minutes ago, his clone in Kirigakure alerted him about Madara’s attack. He quickly grabbed Konan and thanked his ingrained loot-goblin gamer habits for having several storage seals packed to the brim with pre-prepared seals, before he teleported with her to Kirigakure.

This whole thing was unexpected for them, and because of that, Konan had to quickly imbue her chakra into all paper tags in the storage scrolls, which almost made her keel over on the spot.

It took her a minute. For all hundreds of thousands of them. Ren’s jaw hit the floor, and he was not ashamed to admit it. The woman was awesome.

Ren chuckled as he hopped across the rooftops. Seeing the meteor gradually dissolve into salt in real time was so worth it.

Reaching the place where Mei was… flailing around under the half-hearted attacks of Obito, blood seeping out of many cuts across her body, while Madara glared at the sky, watching and waiting to see if his second meteorite would also be countered.

‘Right. Obito has this grudge against Kirigakure.’ Ren reminded himself.

This thing he was doing with Mei, it wasn’t a fight. The man was simply torturing her, prolonging her suffering while making sure she felt helpless. The woman was already barely standing on her feet, bleeding all over the place.

The second Ren flickered onto the battlefield, and all three of the ninjas present snapped their heads toward him, making him smile and wave.

“Yahoo, bitches!” Ren exclaimed as a kunai was already on its way toward Madara, who casually caught it, giving Ren a contemptuous look.

He opened his mouth to no doubt give some snarky remarks when the kunai let out a quiet click. Madara’s eyes widened; his instincts screamed at him. A blue ribcage of chakra started forming a defensive layer around him as the kunai exploded, sending his body crashing back with enough force for him to create a trench as it was dragged across the ground.

Ren grinned. Fitting a hidden exploding tag inside the slightly hollowed kunai with his intangibility seal was a pain in the ass, but just for that wide-eyed expression of Madara, he would do it again.

But Madara was not his target right now.

Obito’s attention snapped toward Madara the second the man was blasted back, and Ren instantly used the Substitution technique to swap places with the startled Mei, suddenly appearing right in front of Obito.

He grabbed the man’s wrist, his grin widening into a shit-eating one as Obito’s head snapped back toward him, and Ren could see his wide, frightened eye behind his mask as he realized he had fucked up.

But it was too late.

With his free hand, Ren brutally drove a kunai deep into Obito’s gut, almost all the way to its handle.

“Sayonara, Rin-fucker.” He winked at Obito as he let both his wrist and the kunai handle go, instantly going intangible. A split second later, the kunai exploded, smearing Obito across the ground in pieces.

Even Ren had a hard time believing he got the bastard with it. He half-expected Obito to puff out of existence, showing that he was just a clone.

Ren had an entire time-plus-exploding-seals combo prepared for him after spending thousands of hours figuring out how to interrupt intangibility for a moment.

Obito ketchup suddenly disappeared from the ground, however, and the man reappeared next to Madara, who had calmly walked out of a cloud of dust a bit further away, watching Ren with a rising interest.

Ren’s lips twitched in disappointment before he let out a resigned sigh. ‘Well, yeah. That’s more like it. Of course, the bastard would have Izanagi or Izanami or Izana-whatever-it-is-called technique that would save his ass. Because why not? Silly me for thinking otherwise.’

“You-!” Obito growled at Ren, who instantly interrupted his upcoming anger-filled rant.

“Tsk.” Ren clicked his tongue before rudely speaking in an irreverent, loud voice, “And here I put so much effort into reuniting you with your beloved Rin-chan. Aren’t you ashamed of ruining my efforts, Obito-kun?”

Sadly, Ren’s good intentions were answered by an even angrier growl from the seething Obito. As far as attempts to kill him with an aneurysm went, it was a good one. Shame that it didn’t work.

—

AN:

Sorry, guys. This is where this journey unfortunately ends.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep