"Got ya B!t$h!"

'Rura…they seem to want to kill me….just….not me? Or rather me. But not that God persona I put up earlier….'

'What! That's not-'

'Calm dow-'

'How can I calm down! Teleport me there or I'll kill you once you're back even if-'

'Hold on now….I will teleport you…..just have to do it in a smart way…..a little away from the battle field….since I don't want to reveal my teleportation abilities just yet….their future sight is more composed of prophecies than any real future seeing….their entire plan seems to be entirely based just on the fact that I'd be there….not something more complicated.'

'....what do you mean away from the battlefield?'

'Like a kilometer away?'

'Half.'

'Fine.'

'Shit! I should've asked for two fifty meters…..'

'Haha! You're bad luck….but….you ready to beat them up?'

'Make sure to stay alive..'

'Not a flag at all!'

'....I'll see you so-'

'-Stop raising flags!!!'

'.....'

Megumi focused back on the fight as he jumped through the air onto another branch, since the snake coming out of the ground had ended up destroying his tree, causing it to slowly begin tilting.

"I can sssss~mell the fear radiating off you." Orochimaru spoke with a gleam in his eyes.

"I mean….anyone'd be afraid if someone suddenly started raising flags before a fight…."

A stumbling silence took over for a few moments before the lightning on Megumi's body began *crackling* for the first time and a frown made itself apparent on his face when he looked down at his own hands, mumbling out loud, "Hmm….my ability to stay in control is still shorter than I thought…."

Thoughts rushed through Megumi's head as his eyes turned cold and calculative. His focus dialed up to eleven as he began to plan out his fight.

'I can't reveal my trump cards.'

'I can't beat all of them up.'

'I need to survive for a minute of so.'

'I need to set the plate up for Rura to come and clean up.'

'I need to let her kill at least one of them.'

'Who'd be the most optimal to kill?'

'Danzo? A person as devious as him would no doubt be the best to get rid off…and he's also the only one that can die here…given he's the real body….'

'I need to lull them into a false sense of security….I need to be strong…but not strong enough to alert them….weak…..but not weak enough to seem like I can be pushed around…..'

'I wonder how Hagoromo will interfere….will he just stand by? Does he even have any abilities he can reveal? Will he use an elemental nature transforma-'

Megumi dodged back in the middle of his thoughts as Orochimaru's tongue extended with a sword attached to it, trying to drill through Megumi's body.

"What are you, a frog? Using your tongue? I thought the snakes hated the toads…."

A rush of wind made Megumi use his chakra technique to slide to the underside of the branch as he watched the upper part of the entire tree get blown away when Danzo's vacuum palm jutsu came in contact with it.

"It's three against one little boy, you should give up."

'Ha! As if I'll fall for such a-'

Dodging the poisoned needles being launched out of the baby puppet that Gakushi held, Megumi swung around the branch and catapulted himself into the air where he appeared face to face with the Sage of Six paths as their eyes met each others. Peering into the depths of each other's experiences to figure out what was going on inside their heads.

With a slice of his katana Megumi looked like he aimed to cut away Hagoromo's head off but just as he was about to dodge, Megumi landed on the branch above Hagoromo as he swung down towards his back once again, drawing blood, just not Hagoromo's.

"Tsk. Missed getting that annoying thing. I get why Kaguya hates them so much…I wonder what you did to trap her, though…" Megumi mumbled as Hagormo's eyes narrowed at the information.

"You know Kaguya?"

"Huh? You don't? I thought everyone knew about Kaguya….haven't you seen the Kaguya-hime play in the Haruno Store book? The toads revealed her personal life info through a prophecy and turned everyone to annoy her….didn't they?" Megumi asked as he noticed Hagoromo's breathing hitch slightly.

For any other person, Megumi would've chalked up this hike in breathing to simply being old or being tired from having used a large amount of chakra to create a domain. But Hagoromo? No, for Hagoromo, Megumi knew he'd discovered something, a weakness.

"You aimed for the Toad because of a story in a book?" Hagoromo asked.

"Huh? Isn't that why you read books? To learn? Why do you read books? Oh…you probably read books that aren't informative at all….probably something like Jiraya's pervy books…."

"....."

"I wonder though…what does Amegakure gain from attacking a simple store…." Megumi asked as he held eye contact with Hagoromo.

Orochimaru interrupted the discussion, arriving behind Megumi after jumping up from a branch below, his neck elongated and twisted around Megumi while two fangs protruded out of his unhinged jaw that inched toward Megumi's neck who unsealed a piece of wood right under his feet and jumped using it as a foothold, completing a substitution jutsu to get out of Orochimaru's slithering neck and aimed to immediately slice his wide open neck instead but was only able to get to the tips of the fangs in time as it retracted back into his body.

"Ha! The poisonous snake lost its fangs!" Megumi taunted Orochimaru who just looked amused in spite of the blood leaking out of his mouth from the several tiny cuts that the lightning wrapped around Megumi's blade had caused around the inside of his lips and mouth and retorted with, "Even then, you're only barely able to dodge my simplest blowssss~"

A purple mist slowly spread around and blanketed the base of the sealed dome, covering the dense flora and the little fauna under it, screeches of several small animals filled the area as most scampered to climb trees in a hurry but began falling back into the depths of the climbing poisonous mist soon after, the additional smell of burning plants and flesh being produced, only further gave it an abhorrent touch.

"Neurotoxins? And something to give me chemical pneumonia….."

'The infinity should keep me safe from the poison since I activated it when I was on the ship….but I should definitely make it seem like something is affecting me…'

'For now….let's stick to the plan….'

'Rura….be ready to heal yourself….they released a ton of poisonous gas here.'

'Are you alright?'

'Never been better.'

Megumi looked at Hagoromo and rushed to attack him once again, as he began to pull his attacks and attack with his entire body, using momentum to increase the force of his attacks instead of using his new fighting style that relied on quick and efficient maneuvers.

"Getting worried now, are we?" Hagoromo asked in a kind voice as he created a stone elemental sword in his hands and used it to hold off Megumi's continuous body swings.

"Who wouldn't!? I'm getting ganged up on by four old people in a line of work where people usually die young." Megumi said as he retracted his sword and spun his entire body around with it as he first brought down his prosthetic leg to push weight onto Hagoromo's stone stick, unbalancing his stance on the tree branch.

"That is why you should've just listened and given us what we needed." Hagormo said calmly as he let his left leg slip off the branch to let Megumi lose any ideas of using his blunt stone sword for leverage.

"Ha! As if that'd have made any difference." Megumi exclaimed while both he and Hagoromo fell around the branch, with Hagoromo's right leg stuck to it when Megumi suddenly threw four kunai tied to metal wires from both his hands in the opposite direction, holding his sword in his mouth, as he pulled on both of them to cause them to swing around in an arc and wrap around various branches all around himself and pulled him away from Hagoromo just as his blunt stone stick sword began to sprout thorns to stab and trap his prosthetic leg in it.

Before Megumi could get rest, however, Orochimaru who was above him used a hand seal to split into a shower of snakes that each had their venomous fangs gleaming, ready to bite into him.

'Can Orochimaru substitute himself with any of those snakes?' Megumi wondered, looking at the raining snakes from above. Coming up with an instantaneous plan, Megumi vanished from the spot he was handing in using the strings he was tied to the kunai with and appeared elsewhere, behind Hagoromo to be precise.

Megumi watched Hagoromo stiffen for a second before reacting to the kunai that he had thrown right at the back of his head as soon as he had teleported to his new spot.

Right when the Kunai passed in front of Hagoromo's eyes, they widened, recognizing the seal drawn on them and made all the effort his body could make to jump, but Megumi teleported to the kunai instantly, his hand holding the handle with the seal as his body rotated as fast as it could in the air, lodging the sharp metallic tip of the kunai deep into his skull through his eyeball.

Using his wrist along with his footing of standing upside down on the tree branch, Megumi threw Hagoromo at the snakes as he slapped a seal onto the back of his body at the last second before release.

*BOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMM*

A loud explosion caused a shower of flesh and wood shrapnel as Megumi took cover under the wide branch he was standing upside down on.

A snake head passed by him due to the force of the explosion, causing his brain to fire up as he instantly recognized the lively gaze that the snake's eyes held and instantly teleported away from it to another kunai before leaving another explosion seal behind.

*BOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMM*

With another explosion, Megumi saw Orochimaru stop himself from flying into the rising poisonous fog below by wrapping his neck around the tree branch and swinging himself upward.

The branch Megumi was standing on morphed as Megumi swung his glowing katana backward, which clashed with the sharp tree spikes that appeared along with Danzo who had morphed into the tree.

"Nice try old man….but you gotta do better….or you'll end up like your other friend there…." Megumi said as he pointed at Hagoromo's head with the kunai that was now working as the prosthetic eye, courtesy to Megumi, that had separated from his body because of it blowing up, also courtesy to Megumi.

"Hmpf." Danzo grunted as he began sending hordes of branches towards Megumi, trying to trap him with quantity and not quality.

Megumi dodged and weaved all the spontaneously growing flora as he pushed himself through the gaps between them when ever he could and cut through them other times, steadily enacting his plan by occasionally throwing out explosion tags attached to kunai with his free hand while his main hand held the katana that held of and blocked the poisonous needles that occasionally shot out of the rising poisonous mist.

Danzo focused completely on trapping Megumi began blocking his escape to the top of the trees as he kept blocking his upward exits by growing more and more thorns over them, turning it into a thick bed made up of thick thorny branches growing on which were flowering plants that seemed to exude their own poisonous gas that seemed to be working on slowing down Megumi's reaction.

It seemed to have worked, as a cut suddenly appeared on Megumi's normal arm when his Katana failed to block one of the senbon that had appeared from his blind spots.

Soon, more cuts began to appear as Megumi's leg suddenly slipped as he fell toward the center of the web of thorns that Danzo had trapped him in.

Maintaining the same stoic face, Danzo finally made eye contact with Megumi through his mask, through the gaps among the layers of thorns as he clapped his hands together, sending a pulse of chakra through the entire overgrowth causing all the thorns in them to spike towards the center. 

This was when he recognized something within Megumi's eyes that instantly sent his experienced senses that formed his instincts on full alert, ringing alarm bells that he only felt before imminent danger.

The blade of Megumi's katana glowed once more as it suddenly amplified and acted as a flash bang that caused everyone in the area to shut their eyes before they heard Danzo's wooden structure collapse onto itself like the crumple of paper, nothing like the meaty sound it would've sounded like if there was human stuck inside it that had been shish kebab'ed.

Before anyone could react, a loud explosion went off as everyone felt searing heat rush over their bodies, into their nostrils, filling their lungs, burning into their ears, through to their brains as the ringing sounds in their ears made them disorientated.

When they opened their eyes though, all they each saw was the rising poisonous fog that had turned into a messy swirling fiery tornado, sipping like a hurricane, stripping the leaves off of trees and sometimes even their branches with them.

Hagoromo, who had already fully regenerated, looked at the scene with sadness in his eyes, as Orochimaru looked on with interest. Gakushi on the other hand looked awed and afraid of ever trying to take down Megumi alone.

Seeing the domain held, Orochimaru and Gakushi looked content since that meant Megumi had just inhaled tons of hot poison that would've disabled him, making their work easier, since although they were stronger than him, Megumi just had too many tricks, and it might just take a little longer for them to defeat him.

Hagoromo on the other hand, along with the new toad on his shoulder, looked amused for the first time since the fight had started, as if there was something specific he wanted to laugh at, but he didn't.

"Thank you for helping me out." Gakushi thanked as he bowed down to Hagoromo when he suddenly noticed a kunai with Megumi's tag behind him, "Watch-"

Before he could finish though, Megumi appeared behind Hagoromo, but before his entire body could manifest, Hagoromo grabbed hold of Megumi's neck and looked him in the eye, as just Megumi defiantly stared back and smirked as he spoke, except his voice didn't sound like it actually came from his vocal cords, sounding as if it just appeared from inside his mouth, "Got ya b!t$h."

Hagoromo's eyes suddenly widened, and before he could let Megumi go, Megumi burst into an explosion of lighting and fire.

*BOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMM*

Orochimaru shielded himself from the explosion using a Rashomon gate he immediately summoned, as Gakushi shielded himself behind him.

-------------------------

Thank you for reading!

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