One after another, massive boulders plastered with explosive tags plumted toward the warehouses. Suddenly, row upon row of fireballs surged from the ground, intercepting the stones with surgical precision. The resulting mid-air detonations neutralized the bombardnt before a single rock could touch the roof.
"Hm?" A bald ninja standing at the edge of the fortress let out a small grunt of surprise as he observed the failure of the bombing run. "Every single one intercepted? As expected of Leaf shinobi."
He turned to his subordinates and barked an order: "Continue the attack. This ti, only pri every tenth stone with a tag. Let's test their rhythm."
Over the next few minutes, four successive waves of boulders were accurately picked out of the sky. By now, the entire Sky Ninja contingent had mobilized; so lined the parapets of the fortress, while others took to the air on their flight rigs.
"So many powerful Fire Style users... could it be the Uchiha clan?"
"It has to be them."
"The Uchiha... we've finally run into them. The 'Noble Clan' that has reigned supre for centuries is truly as formidable as the legends say."
The bald commander did what all bald n eventually do: he rubbed the smooth crown of his head thoughtfully. "What is this location?" he asked.
His crew scrambled. So checked maps, others flipped through intelligence files, and a group huddled in a frantic debate before finally answering, "According to our intel, sir, it's just a standard warehouse complex. Nothing special."
"Incorrect. Does a 'standard warehouse' rit an entire company of Uchiha guards?"
Beside the commander, a youth with an aggressively healthy head of hair clapped his hands together. "There must be a secret here. A very important one!"
The logic clicked for the rest of the Sky Ninjas, and a chorus of praise erupted.
"Makes sense. That makes total sense!"
"Little Seven is brilliant! Truly a worthy disciple of the Commander."
"Lord Toseven is the best!" cheered a cluster of younger recruits.
The bald commander smiled, raising a hand to silence the adulation. "It seems our luck is holding. We've stumbled onto one of the Hidden Leaf's vital organs."
"In that case, let's not be polite. Level it."
"Sky Ninja Corps! Strike Battalions Three and Four, deploy! Eliminate the Uchiha!"
"Bombardnt Squad, pri the Chakra Fortress Cannon! Coordinate your fire with the Strike Battalions!"
"YES, SIR!!"
Abura Tetsumaru sat perfectly still forty-five ters beneath the surface. He was carefully sensing every movent of the Sky Ninjas above; through his mastery of chakra runes, he could already identify the specific jutsus they were prepping.
On the surface, Tetsumaru's Shadow Clone spoke into a communication snail: "The enemy attack is incoming. Everyone, prep the jutsu: Wind Reflection."
"Understood."
"Roger that."
Tetsumaru counted four beats in his head, then began the countdown: "Ready... Release on zero. Ten, nine... two, one, ZERO!"
Wind Style: Wind Reflection!
A wall of rebounding air slamd into the two hundred incoming Wind Style jutsus. The timing was perfect; the Sky Ninjas' own attacks were reflected straight back at them, shattering their formation in a heartbeat.
Caught completely off guard, the Sky Ninjas scrambled to dodge their own redirected jutsus. In the chaos, multiple flight rigs collided mid-air. Those who weren't crushed by their allies were swept away by the reflected wind, sending blood, severed limbs, and chanical debris raining from the sky.
Tetsumaru noticed that the panic had caused the remaining two hundred Sky Ninjas to lose altitude rapidly. They had dipped past the "halfway line" between the ground and their fortress.
He didn't hesitate. "Now! Giant Insect Squad, release all units! Surround them! Bring them down!"
Flight-Locusts, Great-Eyed Moths, wasps, Camouflage Butterflies, and Black Burial Beetles surged into the sky. They coalesced into thick, black "smoke tentacles," lashing out at the airborne ninjas.
Having never faced an aerial insect assault, the Sky Ninjas fumbled. Many of the Genin forgot their training entirely, frantically swatting at the swarm with their bare hands.
So had their palms impaled by the iron-tipped locusts, the spikes driving through to their eyes. Others inhaled the hallucinogenic scales of the butterflies, losing their sense of "up" and "down." Many more were simply stung into anaphylactic shock by the wasps.
The Sky Ninjas fell like stones. They hit the ground with sickening thuds, their bodies bursting upon impact.
A few "lucky" souls fell into pits Tetsumaru had specifically excavated and filled with soft hay. The padding absorbed the shock, saving their lives—only for them to be imdiately dragged away by Konoha Anbu.
...Whether they were actually "lucky" remained to be seen.
The pace of aerial combat was frantic. The last Sky Ninja attempting a desperate climb back to the fortress was ramd by a swarm of locusts. The razor-sharp chitin fouled his flight rig's engine; his high-pitched scream echoed across the clearing for three seconds before he too was claid by the earth.
Tetsumaru checked his ntal clock. Two minutes and thirty-seven seconds. Over two hundred Sky Ninjas—annihilated.
"Maintain the montum! Attack the Aerial Fortress! Don't let it escape!"
"Hiro, Yoshito, O—launch the Explosive Flight-Locusts!"
"Yes, Sensei!"
A massive black cloud rolled upward, charging toward the stone stronghold. However, the ascent was noticeably slower this ti.
Once they passed the 300-ter mark, the swarm lost the benefit of ground-level thermal updrafts. The insects were forced to spiral upward to gain altitude. By the ti they hit 500 ters, the crosswinds intensified, forcing the bugs to expend more energy just to stay on course.
The Aerial Fortress wasn't empty. Under the bald commander's orders, more Sky Ninjas poured out of the launch bays to intercept the rising columns of insects.
Wind Style was a nightmare for flying bugs. A single Wind Blade could shear through dozens of insects; a Wind Cannon blast created localized turbulence that caused thousands to stall and plumt in a disorganized heap.
But Tetsumaru had organized the swarm into thirty distinct columns. It was like playing a ga of "Whack-a-Mole" in the sky; every ti the Sky Ninjas suppressed one column, two more grew higher.
As the distance closed, the Sky Ninjas began to waver.
When the swarm reached within thirty-five ters, a Wind Cannon blast accidentally threw a single locust upward at high speed. The bug slamd directly into a Sky Ninja's flight rig.
He fell helplessly into the heart of the swarm. Amidst his agonizing shrieks, he was subrged in a sea of mandibles. When he finally hit the ground, he looked like a discarded ragdoll—bristling with forty locusts and countless stingers, his human form completely unrecognizable.
The Sky Ninjas were terrified. They began to pull back, and the swarm drew ever closer to the fortress walls.
Suddenly, a blinding arc of lightning swept across the sky. It tore through the swarm, severing all thirty columns in a single stroke. Through his Domain Field Barrier, Tetsumaru felt at least forty thousand bugs incinerated into ash in an instant. Another twenty thousand lost their wings and began to fall.
The lightning beam didn't stop. It punched through the swarm and hit the ground, carving a deep, smoking trench into the earth. The furrow breached a nearby riverbank, and the roar of the rushing water echoed through the forest—a sound that sent a chill through the heart of every Konoha ninja.
"This... this is impossible."
"What do we do? Can we even fight that thing?"
"Only the Nine-Tails could take on a fortress like that... but they're so high up. How!?"
The communication snails were filled with the terrified babble of the Leaf ninjas. They were so rattled they hadn't even realized they were broadcasting their panic.
The Aerial Fortress's primary weapon was on the level of a Tailed Beast Bomb. While its raw destructive power was slightly lower, its precision and control were far higher, making it a much more direct threat to shinobi.
"Tetsumaru, what's the plan?"
"Stay calm. We only lost sixty thousand units. It doesn't affect the offensive."
Tetsumaru's mind raced. He linked with eighty Explosive Flight-Locusts already in the air and adjusted the flight paths of twenty. Their target: the glowing muzzle of the main cannon.
"Giant Insect Squad, continue the assault!" Tetsumaru roared. He personally seized control of fourteen columns, instantly restoring half of the swarm's offensive pressure.
His three disciples followed suit, and within a minute, all thirty columns were back in the air, pushing upward.
The bald commander was horrified. From his perspective, the Leaf ninjas had taken a hit from a Fortress Cannon and recovered in ten seconds. They showed zero signs of discouragent.
The swarm returned to its previous altitude within a minute. The fortress's main cannon, however, couldn't fire continuously. Even the commander didn't know when it would be ready for a second shot.
"Retreat! Full retreat!"
"Non-combat personnel, get to the parapets! Open the internal traps! Help the guards fend off the bugs!"
BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.
Explosions began to rock the exterior. Explosive Flight-Locusts, trailing long plus of white smoke, slamd into the outer hull. The violent blasts shook the massive stone structure, and several fires broke out.
Before the Sky Ninjas could react, a second wave hit. This ti, the locusts were equipped with smoke and incendiary payloads. The northwest side of the fortress was soon engulfed in rolling black smoke and towering flas.
"Stop those giant bugs! Stop them at all costs!!" the bald commander scread, taking to the air himself. "If they keep this up, the fortress is going to fall!"
The Aerial Fortress was more than a weapon to them; it was their capital, their ho, and where their families lived.
"Northwest! Giant locusts!" an eagle-eyed ninja shouted.
The Sky Ninjas sward the third wave, using Wind Style and explosive tags to intercept them. So of the weaker ninjas simply threw themselves at the bugs, hacking at them with blades or stabbing them with kunai.
Explosive Flight-Locusts were the definition of a "glass cannon"—powerful payload, fragile shell. They detonated in mid-air or snapped in half, falling in erratic arcs.
Just as the Sky Ninjas downed the last of the third wave, the main beetle swarm finally reached the fortress's altitude. They spread out horizontally, swarming over the stone surface and engaging the defenders hand-to-hand.
The Sky Ninjas knew how dangerous those hand-sized locusts were; a single hit to their gear ant a death sentence. They scrambled to reach the "solid ground" of the fortress's deck, hoping that standing on stone would neutralize the threat of the small fliers.
It was then that the twenty "special" locusts Tetsumaru had redirected made their move. They approached from a low angle, then pitched up, driving straight through the hollow center of a swarm column—aiming directly for the Aerial Fortress's "exhaust."
The Konoha ninjas on the ground watched with dropped jaws. They had practiced the drills, but the reality was a spectacle beyond imagination. The sky was a vertical battleground of stone and insects, and now twenty white trails were streaking like lances toward the heart of the enemy.
The hope in the camp was palpable. This is it. We're actually going to bring it down.
In reality, it was an illusion of perspective. Tetsumaru wasn't naive enough to think forty explosive bugs could sink a flying continent.
This thing was far more robust than the S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarriers from his past life. Without exposed rotors or engines, superficial damage ant nothing. Unless he hit the core, he was just helping it "lose weight," which would only make the rock fly faster and higher.
His target was the weapon that had fired the lightning beam. A weapon of that power had to have low durability. If he could break the gun, he could win the battle.
Of course, he mused, there's a tiny chance the main gun is linked directly to the power core. If I destroy one, I might trigger a chain reaction... a total 'one-shot' kill.
Nah. I'm not that lucky.
"All Abura ninjas—this is your chance! Plant the female bugs on the hull! They're too busy to check their own gear!"
"Understood!"
"On it!"
"Already done."
" too."
"Sa..."
Tch. My relatives are all old foxes. I'm stating the obvious.
The twenty white trails broke cover, reaching the base of the fortress. They didn't hit it head-on; instead, they fanned out at an 18-degree angle, hugging the underside and streaking toward the outer rim.
Once at the edge, the locusts perford a high-G vertical turn, hugging the rock walls. They cleared the deck height and executed a third sharp turn, diving for the main cannon.
By the ti they reached the target, nine had already snapped apart from the sheer torque of the maneuvers.
But it was enough. Masked by the fortress's own bulk, the strike went undetected. Eleven explosions blossod simultaneously on the muzzle of the Fortress Cannon.
The Aerial Fortress seed to expand for a fraction of a second. Every crack and seam in the stone spat out massive plus of dust. Along the line of the main cannon, a pillar of fire erupted outward. To Tetsumaru, it looked exactly like the muzzle blast of a Yamato-class battleship's 460mm guns—magnified ten tis over.
As boulders began to break off and fall from every corner of the fortress, the seams began to vent white smoke. A few minutes later, the smoke turned oily black, and jets of fire began to lick out of the vents.
What excited Tetsumaru most was the tilt. The force of the explosion had knocked the fortress off-balance, and it wasn't righting itself.
The entire stronghold hung crooked in the air. With a chorus of screeching tal and grinding stone, it began to lose altitude. n who had lost their flight rigs plumted to the ground, screaming.
"Should we go in and grab so prisoners?" a particularly dim-witted ninja asked over the snails.
Tetsumaru stared at the burning, smoking wreck. It looked like a falling star.
"Prisoners? Are you insane!? Retreat! Everyone, RETREAT! NOW!"
"If that thing hits the ground, the impact will be worse than a Tailed Beast Bomb! If you aren't five miles away when it hits, you're going to be part of the crater!"
"RUN! GO!"
The Konoha ninjas scrambled, putting nearly six kiloters between themselves and the "Ground Zero."
But then, the impossible happened. After shedding a massive chunk of its lower superstructure, the Aerial Fortress stabilized itself just fifty ters above the ground.
Crooked, smoking, and wreathed in flas, it groaned as it slowly—painfully—began to climb. It wobbled through the air, gaining height, before limping away into the distance.
Tetsumaru felt a vein throb in his forehead. Rare was the day his "luck" actually manifested, and apparently, it still wasn't strong enough.
The "cooked duck" had quite literally flown away.
He was speechless.
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