The enemy ninja shot balls of light from his tails to rain down on the tigers, and they quickly returned to ink. But from behind the ink, Ino appeared, kunai in hand.
The tigers were pawns. The real thing was Ino’s kunai attack. An attack with one of Magire’s own poison kunai.
But Magire didn’t flinch. He waved a tail, and it hit Ino hard in the stomach.
“Ngh!” She went flying and slammed into the ground.
And then she stopped moving.
“Ino!” Sai shouted, leaping at Magire. He closed in on his enemy, kunai backward in his hand. Magire tried to defend with a tail, but in that instant, the Sai leaping at him turned to ink. An ink clone.
“Hrk!” The ink splattered onto Magire’s face.
The real Sai threw himself at the momentarily off-guard Magire. He tried to bring the kunai in his hand toward the man’s chest, but Magire’s tails waved from side to side, providing a screen.
Sai leapt backward, and was trying to get closer again when the six tails shot countless balls of light directly at him.
He couldn’t completely evade the shower of bullets. He took several in one side, and a painful warmth bloomed and spread from the site of the injury. Sai dropped to his knees.
“Although I praise the courage required to launch waves of attacks mentally prepared for death,” Magire announced, expressionless, “it was simply too ill-advised. That is all.”
“Oh, I’m just happy to get your praise.” The words were no sooner out of his mouth than Sai was kicking at the ground and charging toward his enemy.
Magire welcomed him with direct attacks and light balls.
Enduring the pain, Sai dodged them all.
“You truly are persistent. That is all.” Magire split his six tails into groups of three. The tips of these transformed into something like hands and grabbed on to Sai from both sides.
His reaction time slowed because of the wound in his side, Sai was held fast by those six tails. He twisted and writhed, but he couldn’t move an inch.
“That really…is all,” Magire said, and one tail let go of Sai, the tip sliding up to rest in front of Sai’s eyes.
In that tip sat the tiny glow, a warning of the ball of light to come.
At that moment, Sai saw a single falcon fly in behind Magire.
The falcon had a kunai in its talons. One of Magire’s poison kunai.
Magire noticed the bird’s approach and looked back over his shoulder.
Immediately before the falcon crashed into Magire’s back, it changed course. It shifted back up to the sky, almost scraping along the man, and the kunai was gone.
Plunged into Magire’s back.
“Release!”
Ino returned from the falcon to her own body. She quickly leapt up from where she had fallen facedown and raced over to Sai.
“You…!” For the first time, Magire showed signs of being shaken.
“We made it look like waves of attacks mentally prepared for death, but it was a trick play which used a wild bird. That is all,” Sai said, smiling faintly. They had been right to go along with Ino’s idea of pretending to lose consciousness and entering the falcon.
“You dodged the kunai Sai threw, instead of repelling it with your chakra cloak,” Ino said. “Which means that the cloak will let a kunai through. So I figured we could try catching you off guard and hitting you with one of those poison kunai.”
“Heh,” Magire laughed. “It’s quite fine to be filled with your own self-importance, but you’re forgetting something crucial. Those who use poison carry the antidote to that poison, lest they themselves die from it. If I take that antidote now—”
“Gosh, I sure hope that antidote works.” Ino smiled boldly.
Magire looked confused.
“The kunai in that back of yours. While it’s true we borrowed the kunai itself from you, we replaced the poison inside with my own anesthetic.”
“…What?” Magire finally said.
When they made the smoke curtain, Sai had readied the tigers and his clone, while Ino worked on switching out the contents of the kunai.
Her anesthetic now began to take effect, and Magire’s body started shaking.
“Foolish, this kind of foolish method…” As he shook, the chakra cloak covering his body also began to destabilize. It swelled up and then deflated, before swelling up again.
Sai decided to settle things.
He got out his scroll and brush and began to draw two large figures once more.
Fujin! Raijin!
The enormous images that appeared looked down at Magire. In their shadow, a look of fear came over Magire’s face. The six tails, only recently raging so ferociously, were slumped and stretched out on the ground.
Raijin shook a foot.
The anesthetic had already stolen Magire’s ability to move, so he couldn’t get out of the way. Kicked like a tiny pebble, he bounced several times on the ground before tumbling to a stop.
Fujin’s foot came down where he stopped. The ground shook for a moment and then was still.
That should have finished it once and for all.
Sai and Ino raced over to Fujin’s foot.
When the giant lifted it up, they saw Magire sunk into the earth. He was completely unconscious, and the Tailed Beast chakra was also gone. But...
“He’s not dead, huh? Just barely, but still,” Ino said.
“We have to hurry up and get to Sakura,” Sai said, and returned the two giants to ink.
At that moment, one black shadow after another hit the ground nearby, and they reflexively jumped into defensive postures, thinking it was Kido’s reinforcements.
But that was not the case.
“Master! And Naruto! And Hinata!” Ino cried out.
It was Kakashi, Naruto, and Hinata, all in uniform.
“Hinata and me were going to visit Neji’s grave when we saw Master Kakashi not in his Hokage uniform, right?” Naruto said. “So we figured something was up and followed him.”
“After I talked with the Raikage, I thought I’d come offer some support. These two spotted me on my way here. And, you know, I wondered whether a dangerous mission was such a good idea given that they’re going to be married soon. But they’d just come anyway, if I told them not to. You know how they are,” Kakashi told them with a wry smile, and turned his gaze to the ground. “So that’s Magire, hm? He’s been nicely pressed.”
“How did you know we were here?” Sai asked.
Kakashi lifted his face. “I knew there were some serious chakra slamming up against each other. So I had a general idea of where you were. The rest was Hinata’s byakugan.”
“Where’s Sakura?” Hinata asked, looking uneasy.
“She’s fighting Kido right now,” Ino replied.
Kakashi turned his eyes toward the forest. “Over there? Let’s go.”