My Two Side Plots Started Fighting

Raiga Kurosuki lay at the center of the lightning, his last trace of chakra exhausted. His eyes slowly closed.

Every hair on Shuofang Si's body stood on end. A moment later, his eyes went blank again. Ignoring the side effects, he forced his gene lock open.

The spectators in the distance cried out in alarm.

"Sakura, go treat Mr. Arasaka first. We can't let our employer die!" Kakashi ordered. Sakura could only grit her teeth and dash toward Shuofang Si.

Just then, a flash of lightning abruptly lit up the shadows of the woods.

A sound familiar to everyone from Konoha rang out-Chidori.

Kakashi instinctively turned and saw a familiar face illuminated by the lightning.

Chidori had pierced Kakuzu's chest from behind, shattering one of his masks.

The newcomer was Sasuke Uchiha.

His left hand, wrapped in blue-white lightning, had punched through the left side of Kakuzu's chest.

Kakuzu froze in place, the eerie green light in his eyes contracting sharply.

As though pulled by some force of fate, Naruto turned almost at the same instant as Kakashi.

"Sasuke!" His eyes went wide, his voice tearing through the night with surprise and excitement he had suppressed for far too long.

What? Sakura, who had been running toward Shuofang Si, looked as though she had been struck by lightning. She spun a full one hundred and eighty degrees, the force of her sudden stop gouging up a small clod of earth and sending it flying.

But Sasuke never even glanced at them. His gaze remained fixed on the man whose chest he had pierced.

The Sharingan in Sasuke's eyes spun wildly, three tomoe in one and two in the other. In the lightning's glow, they looked like two burning flames of blood.

"You've seen a man with these eyes in your organization, haven't you?"

Sasuke's voice was cold and calm, carrying murderous intent suppressed to its absolute limit.

"Tell me everything you know about him. Now. Otherwise..."

He withdrew his hand from Kakuzu's chest, and Kakuzu's body slammed hard into the ground.

Lightning flared in Sasuke's hand again, Chidori's current splitting into countless tiny bolts between his fingers.

The swirling air swept his long black hair away from his forehead, illuminating his savage face, twisted by hatred.

But Kakuzu lay motionless, as though he were dead.

"Stop pretending. Orochimaru has information on you. It's only one heart. That won't stop you, will it?"

"So it was that traitor." Kakuzu rose, looking at the hole Sasuke's arm had punched through his chest.

"The Sharingan." Kakuzu's voice was calm. "The same eyes as Itachi. So you're the last little Uchiha left."

"Still, I remember that last little Uchiha fetching quite a price on the underground black market." Excitement suddenly entered Kakuzu's voice. Countless black threads poured from the edges of the gaping hole in his chest, filling the wound.

An instant later, countless black threads stabbed toward Sasuke.

Sasuke's pupils contracted sharply. He swung the Chidori in his hand to defend himself, but Kakuzu's black threads reached him too, sending him flying.

Shuofang Si struggled to thrust a hand out of the scorched earth.

Caked in dirt and blood, that hand dug all five fingers into the ground and dragged his entire body out of the soil.

The instant Thunder Burial had struck, he had ignored the gene lock's backlash and forced his second-order gene lock open again.

In the end, he had used the Nine Yin White Bone Claw with every ounce of strength in his body to dig frantically, while simultaneously employing the Muscle and Bone Contraction Technique to compress himself to the limit. Like a pangolin, he had burrowed underground.

Fortunately, the center of the lightning strike had been a dozen meters away rather than directly on him. Had he taken that blow, imbued with the might of nature's lightning, head-on, he would probably have been reduced to charcoal on the spot.

He released the Muscle and Bone Contraction Technique. His bones gave a series of sharp clicks as his body stretched back out.

What he failed to notice was that the changes he had made to his face had also been undone.

Now, the price of repeatedly opening his second-order gene lock was ravaging his body. His muscles were abnormally swollen, and blue-black veins crawled over his limbs and neck like earthworms.

His body felt like a balloon inflated to its limit. Every muscle fiber seemed to groan under the unbearable strain.

The true qi of the Eight-Nine Mysterious Art circulated slowly through his body, while the cultivation method from the Nine Yin Manual's Healing Chapter worked on its own to repair his damaged meridians.

Ironically, when the residual current from Thunder Burial had rampaged through his body, it had also cleared several blood vessels blocked by the gene lock's side effects.

Shuofang Si walked over to Raiga Kurosuki's charred corpse, bent down, and picked up the twin Thunder Swords, Kiba, from among the rubble.

He held the Thunder Swords crossed in his hands. Through his true qi, he could still sense the residual Lightning Release chakra within the blades after that massive lightning strike.

Just then, the Main God's cold, mechanical, neutral electronic voice sounded in his mind.

"Raiga Kurosuki killed and the Thunder Swords acquired. Reward: two C-rank side plots and four thousand reward points."

Shuofang Si's spirits lifted. After risking his life in that fight, he finally had a substantial haul.

He hefted the Thunder Swords in his hands. Their weight was manageable, and the lingering Lightning Release chakra still left their edges slightly warm.

It seemed he could even use his true qi to trigger another strike.

Then something occurred to him, and he quickly focused on the distant battlefield. Kakuzu was still over there-he could try killing him too.

On the distant battlefield, the fighting was in full swing.

Even faced with his old bonds from Konoha, Sasuke paid them no attention.

His Sharingan spun wildly beneath the moonlight, focused solely on Kakuzu.

Crackling lightning burst from his hands. This time, it was not Chidori, but Chidori Stream.

Under the pressure of fighting a powerful enemy, many things that had previously stumped him suddenly clicked. Blue-white lightning spread from his arms.

Against an enemy this strong, I'm still not powerful enough.

His body began to change. Pitch-black cursed seal markings spread from the back of his neck like spilled ink, until they covered his entire body.

Unexpectedly, his attempt worked. His skin turned gray-brown, and a pair of enormous hand-shaped wings tore through his clothes and extended from his back. Membranes joined their keratinized sections, gleaming coldly beneath the moonlight.

It worked. The cursed seal's second form.

Sasuke's chakra surged in that instant.

I've mastered Chidori's shape transformation, and unlocked the cursed seal's second form. Who can stop me now?

He charged forward, gathering Chidori Stream in his palm into a somewhat unstable lightning spear. He thrust from a tricky angle, severing Kakuzu's left hand at the wrist.

Kakuzu's hand flew through the air, its five fingers still twitching from the momentum.

"Sasuke, come back! I don't care whether you're a rogue ninja or whatever! I'm going to beat him right now and bring you back to the village!" Naruto's voice interrupted Sasuke's pursuit.

Dozens of shadow clones swarmed Kakuzu from every direction. Some carried Rasengans, while others fought barehanded, attacking from different angles.

Kakuzu's masks were just about to unleash ninjutsu at the shadow clones when Sasuke's Chidori Stream stabbed toward him from another direction.

"Help Sasuke. We'll drive off this S-rank rogue ninja first." Seeing this, Kakashi put away Icha Icha Paradise and began forming hand seals.

Sigh. I'll just consider this something I owe this eye.

"Understood!" Neji and Tenten answered. He activated his Byakugan to track Kakuzu's chakra flow, while she opened a Ninja Tool Scroll to prepare ranged support.

Sakura, however, stood frozen. She suddenly remembered the things Sasuke had said to her before leaving the village.

She did not know how she should face Sasuke, but in the end, she gritted her teeth and followed them, completely forgetting Shuofang Si's condition.

Kakuzu watched Naruto's shadow clones swarm him from every direction. All four masks on his back floated up at once.

"So you're that brat from Konoha."

"Perfect. I'll collect the bounties on the Konoha Technician and the last Uchiha first, then take you, the jinchūriki, back to the organization."

Shuofang Si circulated his energy to heal himself while observing the situation on the battlefield.

At a glance, he could only marvel. Well, damn. My two side plots started fighting.