Chapter 190: Ghosts in the Mist (Part-12) [Tag, You’re Dead]

Chapter 190 - Ghosts in the Mist (Part-12) [Tag, You’re Dead] While the others were busy with their missions, Ren, of course, couldn't just sit around doing nothing. He was constantly leaping through the trees and darting across swamps, leading the hunter-nin on the wildest chase they'd probably ever had. At least fifty or sixty of them were on him at all times, and every so often, more would spring from hidden spots hoping to catch him off guard. Not a single one came close. Ren didn't even need to tap fully into his Hyperfocus, his regular reflexes were more than enough to dodge every swing, trap, or jutsu they threw at him. And whenever too many looked like they might break off to hunt the rest of his team, he'd put on a little act, show signs of tiring out, take a few hits that wouldn't really hurt him, and make it look like they were wearing him down. That always did the trick and they'd refocus on him, eyes gleaming with the thought they could finally pin him down. After a while, though, it honestly started to feel repetitive. He was starting to get bored, but the Mist didn't disappoint him for long. They sent someone a lot bigger, someone Ren had been hoping might show up just for the thrill of it. He stopped on a thick branch and grinned, eyes locked on the shark-like man standing a few paces away. "Who'd have thought the Mist would send out their demon for me?" Ren called out, voice casual, grin wide. "Aren't you guys overestimating me a bit? I'm just a harmless little kid playing tag with his friends." The shark-toothed man bared his teeth in a grin of his own. "That's what I told them, brat. But you've got these guys running in circles. They were taking too long, so they sent me to play instead. Do you dare play with me?" Ren laughed and rolled his shoulders, undoing the heavy training seal he'd kept on the whole time. It felt good to stretch for real. He swung his arms, bounced on his heels, then cracked his neck. "So what do you want, Kisame? Fighting while running? Or just running? I'm good with either, you pick." Kisame watched him, amused by this little leaf runt who clearly knew how outmatched he was but still ran his mouth anyway. Kisame found himself liking this kid way more than most of the brats back home. "Keep running for now," Kisame said with a shark-like grin. "But the second I catch you, you'd better be ready to fight, or I'll feed you to Samehada." Ren flashed him a huge thumbs-up and a grin so big and toothy it would've made Might Guy proud, mostly because he knew Kisame hated Guy's guts. "Alright then! I'll show you the power of youth!" Without another word, Ren flared his chakra, opening the first gate, then the second, third, and fourth in quick succession. The boost hit him like a spark and he vanished from the branch in a blur of speed, wind whipping through the trees behind him. Kisame didn't waste another second either. He swung Samehada over his shoulder, cracked his neck, and shot off after Ren, and just like that, the biggest game of tag in the Land of Water had just leveled up. The remaining hunter-nin were about to pull back and split up to hunt the rest of the Leaf team when they suddenly heard a voice above them, it was casual, almost teasing. "Why are you hounds running off so soon? Come on, stay a bit longer. Let me have some more fun." All of them turned at once, eyes narrowing. Up on a thick tree branch stood Ren, grinning down at them like he didn't have a care in the world. It didn't take them long to figure it out, this had to be a clone, left behind to slow them down. One of the hunter-nin clicked his tongue behind his mask and gave a sharp order. "Don't fall for it. He wants to tie us up here with a clone while the others slip away. Everyone spread out. Find the other Leaf shinobi. Kisame-sama will take care of this brat." Without wasting another second, the hunter-nin scattered into the mist, slipping between trees, branches, and fog like wraiths. The Ren clone perched on the branch watched them break apart and just smiled to himself, shaking his head a little. He muttered under his breath, "What would I do if I didn't have my clones ready for this, Sensei?" There was no answer, of course, but in the shadows around the swamp, figures flickered to life. Dozens more of Ren's clones sprang out from hiding and shot after the hunter-nin who thought they were in the clear. Ren had made sure to prepare plenty of them while leading the chase earlier as he'd known this moment would come. Each clone didn't just chase, either, they made more of themselves when needed, doubling and tripling the confusion. For a while, the usually silent, misty swamp seemed dotted with flashes of blue as Ren's clones bounced through the trees, cutting off hunters one by one. It didn't last long. The clones weren't trying to drag things out, once a clone found and cornered a hunter-nin, it finished the job quickly and dispelled itself. The less time they lingered, the less chance there was for a counterattack or any mess that could backfire on the main team. In the end, the so-called "hunters" found themselves the hunted instead, and all across the swamp, the roles flipped in an instant. ~~~ In the swamps outside the border of the Mist Village, two blurs zigzagged through the misty trees, one light blue, the other dark blue. The light blue was Ren, the other Kisame. Ren had been leading Kisame on this chase for quite a while now, darting from tree to tree, skimming over swamp water, always just out of reach. He knew he couldn't keep this up forever. Even though his modified Fourth Gate didn't tear his body apart like the normal version, it still taxed him if he overdid it too much and Kisame wasn't exactly giving him room to breathe. Ren twisted around mid-step and shot Kisame a mocking grin. "What's the matter, old shark? Out of breath already?" He clicked his tongue and made a tsk sound, "Tsk tsk, if even you, one of the best the Mist has, can't keep up with a little brat like me... maybe you guys should spend less time killing kids and more time training, huh?" Behind him, Kisame's laughter rumbled like a growl. "Heh! Why are you flapping your gums so much now, brat? Didn't you beg me to play with you first? If you get tired this fast, I'll just gut you and feed you to Samehada to pay for wasting my time." Ren scoffed, "I can do this all day, fish face." With that, he shot ahead again, branches snapping under his feet. But inside, his mind was spinning. 'Damn monster. Even in his base form he can keep up with me when I'm at full speed with the Fourth Gate open. He's not even trying that hard yet.' He risked a glance back and focused on Kisame and his observe pinged Kisame's level as 91 which made Ren click his tongue again. 'Figures. He's already real Kage-level beast. If he wanted to, he could catch me in one good burst. I have to lose him before my body starts feeling the strain.' Ren's own lowest stat, his Strength, was at 78 now, but his Agility had pushed past 81, and with the boost from the Fourth Gate he could match most top-tier S-rank speedsters. Just not a monster like Kisame, not head-on. He did have a trump card, the Flying Thunder God. It wasn't perfect yet, but he could teleport away if he really needed to. Still... 'Too wasteful. It's not worth burning that advantage now, not when I have other options.' Ren shifted direction, weaving through thicker swamp trees. He steered them toward an area where his shadow clones were still hunting down stray Hunter-nin. Kisame easily kept pace behind him, Samehada bouncing on his shoulder like an eager predator. Ren made sure Kisame got a good look at the blue blurs darting through the fog ahead, his clones slitting throats, taking out the stragglers one by one. He wanted Kisame to see it, that even while running, he could still make the Hunter-nin bleed. He shot Kisame another grin over his shoulder, eyes glinting. "You guys should've brought more dogs. I bite harder." As expected, once Kisame saw more and more Hunter-nin getting slaughtered by Ren's clones, he finally showed a reaction, even if it was mild. The shark-like man let out a low sigh, voice rumbling behind that toothy grin. "What a nasty little brat you are... I was just starting to enjoy this chase, and you had to go ruin it." He shrugged those broad shoulders, rolling his neck as if he were warming up. "Though I don't really care for these weaklings, if too many of them die, those old fart elders are gonna get in my face. And I can't even kill them as they're Yagura's favorite ass-lickers." Ren glanced back at him mid-step and let out a giggle that was half-mocking, half-childish. "Hehe, if you wanna help 'em, you're free to go, big fish." Kisame flashed those jagged teeth again, voice carrying that deep, amused edge. "Keke... nah. It'd be a pain to explain, so they'll get just a bit of help, but I can't let 'you' run off. You're still my favorite toy tonight." With that, Kisame formed a single hand seal. He sucked in a deep breath, hands pressed together, and then brought his palms to his mouth, unleashing a massive torrent of water. It surged out like a dam bursting open, ready to drown the whole swamp in seconds. But Ren had been waiting for this exact moment. The second Kisame started spewing water, Ren dropped his Fourth Gate, let his body stabilize for a heartbeat, and slammed his palms forward. [Wind Release: Cyclone Burst Palm!] A concentrated blast of wind chakra, loaded with oxygen, exploded outward in the shape of a giant palm. It hit dead-center in front of Kisame's open jaws, slamming into the flood of water just as it gushed out. The collision made the water swirl violently and then Ren snapped his fingers. BOOM! The oxygen-rich wind met Kisame's jutsu and detonated in a massive blast. A shockwave ripped through the trees, vaporizing much of the spewed water and throwing up a thick wall of steam and mist that swallowed the swamp whole. Ren knew better than to think it would actually hurt Kisame, that shark was probably just annoyed at best. He didn't waste even a breath admiring his work. He took a single step back, feet crackling with blue sparks. [Lightning Style: Thunderstep Blitz.] His whole body turned into pure lightning for an instant. In the next blink, he vanished from the broken branches and flashed to another tree. Each step sparked off the ground with a small thunderclap, chakra burning fast. He chained the jutsu again and again, each burst moving him a huge distance, it wasn't teleportation, but it was the next best thing. Once he'd put enough distance between himself and Kisame, Ren dropped out of the lightning form, breathing steady. He reopened the Fourth Gate, ignoring the sting in his muscles, and sprinted through the fog-covered swamp. He didn't look back. He knew Kisame wouldn't be catching him tonight, not with that much mist, noise, and distance in between. ~ Back at the scene of the explosion, Ren's guess had proven right, the blast hadn't done much to Kisame at all. His mouth was bleeding a little where the wind blast had hit him point-blank, and there were a few minor scratches and singe marks on his skin, but that was it. For a monster like him, it was barely enough to even be annoying. He wiped the blood off the corner of his lips with the back of his hand, then glanced down at the massive Samehada resting on his shoulder. He clicked his tongue. "Tch... you really are useless for big flashy stuff like this, huh?" Samehada let out a low, irritated vibration, its scales shifting restlessly in protest. Kisame snorted at the living blade's attitude. "Hah! You even know how to complain. You're one weird sword." It hadn't been that long since Kisame had killed his superior and taken Samehada for himself, a year or two atmost, so he was still figuring out what the sword could really do. He knew it could eat chakra straight from a shinobi's body, or suck up jutsu on direct contact, but for large-scale elemental blasts like that wind detonation, it didn't do a damn thing. Still, he didn't have time to stand around thinking about it. The steam was already thinning, and Ren's trail was vanishing fast. Kisame flexed his jaw once, testing the sting, then grinned his shark-like grin. "That brat's quick... but he's not gettin' away. If he slips through my fingers, I'll never hear the end of it from Yagura." He hefted Samehada up with one hand, swung it across his shoulder, and with a faint splash of water underfoot, vanished into the mist after Ren's scent. ~~~~~ {I told you guys before that some of the enemies might be stronger than the canon and Kisame would be one of them. Though he was already a Kage level shinobi by the time canon rolled around, here, he's at that level earlier, so who knows what would happen by the time canon arrives.} {Also, wasn't the mist a bit too OP during this time, I mean at this time, they had all the seven swordsman, Yagura himself and even Mei too, and who knows other hidden stuff, if it wasn't for Obito, the mist might have given a tough competition to Leaf and Cloud for the strongest.} {If you want, you can support me on pat-reon} { h t t p s : / / w w w . p a t r e o n . c o m / Z e e n o n } {You know what else} {280 Stones = Extra Chapter} {STONES!!!!}