Meanwhile, as all of this was going on, Hanabi reached the crash site according to the directions that Ino had given her.
"There it is," she spoke to herself after jumping on top of a rock formation. A huge crater was just in front of her, at the end of which a blimp had crashed in the middle of the forest.
'You know, Brother-in-law. If not for your dick-measuring contest against that organization, we could've sent a covert jōnin cell to take care of this entire mission. Or better yet, let Sasuke handle the whole thing instead of mobilizing the entire village's elite combatants.'
"Let's see … black container, right?" Looking around with her Byakugan, Hanabi quickly located the container inside the airship. "There it is … no tracks to follow from that. It's like whatever was inside sucked away all nearby chakra. I'll have to look around …"
Hanabi spent a few minutes taking advantage of the penetrating vision of her Byakugan to look around for any traces of the survivors of the crash. Because the blimp itself was completely empty. It seemed as if the person inside the black container was all that was being transported in such a huge transport vessel.
"Puppets…" Soon, she located a broken-down puppet a few kilometers away from the crashed blimp. Jumping from her spot, she sped toward it, reaching the broken puppet in less than a minute.
"They were attacked … Was that the reason for the blimp's crash? No, that would mean our target is already gone. I can't sense the slightest presence of a person's chakra around here. As if it was all sucked away."
She looked around further and noticed that there were more and more broken-down puppets in her path.
"It's as if the vessel we're looking for was the one who did all this. Fighting their way through this many puppets shows a remarkable level of skill …"
Finally, as the puppets started lowering, she knew that she was close to her target.
As she lightly kicked a puppet to examine its face, it whirred to life.
"Woah … These aren't puppets at all …" She couldn't see any chakra strings connected to the puppets. "Fully mechanical beings? Were the others the same?"
She didn't have to speculate too much as more puppets rose from the ground, even the ones with torn-off limbs and heads. The only ones who weren't getting up were the ones whose torsos had been pierced or destroyed.
"Hearts, huh?" Hanabi took up a battle stance that supported her Gentle Fist technique before using her back foot to vault to the nearest mechanical puppet. Her open palm pierced through its chest, destroying its core. "Easy peasy."
Hanabi didn't even break a sweat as she effortlessly weaved between the attacks of the automated mechanical puppets, who had low mobility and intelligence without a controller. She easily saw through every single one of their attacks with her perfect 360-degree vision save for a single blind spot — of which the puppets had no idea. In less than a few minutes, she destroyed all of the puppets' cores, moving through them with the grace of a dancer as their parts formed piles of scrap metal around her.
"Phew …" She wiped some nonexistent sweat off her brow. "Now that that's taken care of. Let's see what the deal with this vessel is."
She calmly made her way in a specific direction, having noticed a human silhouette with her Byakugan that had normal chakra pathways and everything. For all intents and purposes, that was a completely normal person with possibly some ninja training, going by how active their chakra was.
Soon, Hanabi was close enough to look directly at the target.
"No wonder the puppets closer to him were all depowered instead of being destroyed." The fainted person's surroundings were all destroyed, with the trees having fallen away and the grass scorched. It was as if an explosion had been released from him before he lost consciousness. "Do you also have a trick to suck away a person's chakra? You don't look modified. Exhausted, yes."
Hanabi was cautious and first touched the unconscious person with her chakra, only getting closer once she had confirmed that he would suddenly suck her to death.
"Miss Ino, I have the target. He's a sixteen-something-year-old kid. Should I head to you?"
"Amazing work, Hanabi. Bring him to me. Sasuke is already here. Once you two head toward Konoha, I'll order a retreat. For now, let them think that we still haven't found the target."
"Understood …"
Hanabi picked the unconscious kid up and flung him over her shoulder, firmly grasping him with one hand. She burst into a run, approaching Ino's position as quickly as possible.
Suddenly, Hanabi felt her foot sink slightly in the dirt and jumped to the side, veering off her path. At the same time, there was a massive explosion of flames that erupted from the ground that was underneath her moments ago. Despite her quick response, she was thrown off balance, colliding against a tree as the vessel was thrown off of her shoulder.
"Damn," she groaned. "I swear, if Brother-in-law doesn't give me a satisfactory reward after this mission, I'm going to throw such a tantrum in front of Onee-chan …"
"So you finally found him, Konoha-nin." An Outer of Kara appeared from amidst the trees. "Pity, we wanted to take down more of you before you realized that this was bait."
"You already knew about his location?" Hanabi was surprised.
"Miss Ino, we may have a problem."
"You don't have to tell me. Almost all of the Outers are converging in your direction. Our shinobi are right behind them, but you are about to be sieged."
"Great …" Hanabi stood up with an annoyed expression. She raised her fists as they glowed blue, forming faint blue silhouettes of lion maws made of chakra, and charged at the Outer, who quickly pulled back, releasing a water jutsu to hinder her movements.
Hanabi used compressed chakra on the soles of her sandals to aid her before jumping. She shot forward with incredible momentum, unaffected by the water in her path as she struck the Outer in the abdomen, forcing him to collide against a tree.
Just as she moved toward the kid to pick him back up, she sensed another presence in her vicinity, followed by another on the opposite side, boxing her in. Just as she sensed them, she released chakra from her tenketsu and spun, activating Revolving Heaven. As the absolute defense dome formed, multiple attacks collided with it— two flaming needles that were far more powerful compared to her previous battle and a massive shuriken that exploded on contact with her dome and splattered poison all over the surroundings.
Without a delay, Hanabi deactivated her dome and shot multiple Wind Needles in the direction of the two assailants, interrupting their follow-up attacks.
"How long until I get some support, Miss Ino? I sense a third presence hiding from me. Probably a sealing master. I'll be done for if he isn't interrupted."
"Rock Lee is close by and will be there in another couple of seconds. Sasuke will be there in just a few more seconds after that."
"Fine …" Hanabi exhaled tiredly. Two uses of Revolving Heaven within the span of an hour had not only taken a lot of chakra out of her but also left her mentally drained.
The two Outers whose attacks Hanabi had interrupted quickly recovered and were preparing another long-range attack. She wasn't going to let them get the drop on her again and boosted herself with chakra to target the one who had shot flaming needles at her. He tried to dodge her attack, but her fist still pierced through half his arm and grazed his torso. All she needed was to spin and kick the Outer to put him down for good.
Due to her giving her all in attacking one of them, the other had free reign to prepare his attack and shot multiple shuriken at her from all directions, showing an impressive display of shurikenjutsu— almost comparable to an Uchiha as the projectiles all bounced among the trees and boxed her in from all directions. She didn't have the time or the chakra to activate Revolving Heaven again, so she went with the next best thing. She covered her palms in a thick coat of chakra and started parrying the projectiles with the use of Eight Trigrams Palms to target the approaching shuriken instead of an opponent's tenketsu. The downside of using the technique against this particular opponent was that Hanabi had to deal with the splashing poison as well. Every time she parried a projectile, she had to push away the poison, forcing her to push her concentration and her Dōjutsu to its limits. If she had the mental capacity to keep count, she would've crossed the two-hundred mark on the number of strikes she made.
Her eyes bled as she bent forward, huffing violently. "Fuck, man …" She spoke with a hoarse voice. "I swear, I'm going to learn some more long-range jutsu. Father and his Gentle Fist can go fuck himself…"
She didn't have the energy or mental capacity to battle any further, but she didn't need to.
Because the successor to the Green Beast of Konoha had reached her location.
Rock Lee was glowing with a blue aura as he burst through the clearing and pummeled Hanabi's attacker to death with a single kick and reached her position.
"Do you need any help?" He asked.
"Nah, I'm good …" Hanabi said, still breathing heavily, but nowhere near as bad. "Though I need a bit of a break to continue fighting."
"Bring the Vessel in my direction. Sasuke will meet you halfway, Hanabi. Lee can handle things there."
Hanabi and Rock Lee shared a look before Hanabi straightened up and moved to the kid she had been forced to drop some distance away.
***
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