“[Water Style: Thousand Water Bullets]”
“[Earth Style: Massive Earth Wall]”
A hail of pressurized water bullets shot towards Kakuzu, who blocked them by creating a massive earth wall in front of them.
He was just about to prepare his next jutsu when his eyes widened in surprise as he covered his right hand with his threads to block the incoming sword that was about to pierce his back.
*CLANG*
The tip of Hinata’s sword collided with Kakuzu’s hand, causing sparks to fly and Hinata to click her tongue. Her other hand, which was covered in water nature chakra shot towards Kakuzu as well, but before her attack could reach him, she had to pull back her hand and dodge away, as one of Kakuzu’s masked creatures started shooting fire at her.
While dodging the flames, the other creature started moving as well. It rained down a hail of wind bullets at her, forcing her to create a wall of water, which blocked all of them. Unfortunately, while she was creating that water wall, Kakuzu made a move as well and smashed a huge bundle of his black threads towards Hinata, breaking through her water wall and hitting her in the stomach, sending her crashing into a nearby tree.
“Seems like that was it for you, little girl.”
Hinata scoffed at Kakuzu’s words and effortlessly stood up, revealing that she was barely hurt, surprising Kakuzu quite a bit.
“I admit that that was quite the powerful attack, but did you seriously think you could take me out with a single attack?”
In fact, that was precisely what Kakuzu thought. Only very few could match him in physical strength, especially after enhancing his attack power with his threads. Since his opponent was already very proficient in stealth and water style, he assumed physical strength would be her weakness and that she wouldn’t have a strong body.
It was actually pretty common for female shinobi to put less effort into endurance and focus more on agility and dexterity instead, which, considering the differences in body types between man and woman, made sense in most cases.
However, Hinata was far from an ordinary female shinobi. She frequently fought Anko for the silliest things, and those fights were almost always pure taijutsu fights. Additionally, she would frequently spar with the other people in their little group, including endurance freaks like Yuna, Naruto, and Lee. Even if the attack she took was from Tsunade instead of Kakuzu, she could still continue fighting without a problem.
Suddenly, the atmosphere around Hinata changed as the skin around her eyes turned blue, causing Kakuzu to tense up. Although he had never seen someone using sage mode, he could at least tell that Hinata suddenly got significantly stronger.
“Guess I should have used this from the beginning. If I had, I might have actually gotten all your hearts with my first attack.”
As soon as Hinata finished speaking, ten water blobs started hovering around her, seemingly without her input. Moments later, all ten of them began to shoot highly pressurized water beams at Kakuzu, whose eyes widened due to the abruptness of the attack.
He went through a few hand signs at lightning speed and slammed his hands on the ground, causing another earth wall to rise. However, this time Hinata’s attack pierced through it after a very short delay, which Kakuzu barely managed to use to dodge out of the way.
While he was dodging, his two masked creatures combined into one. One mask shot a massive flame breath towards Hinata, and the other one used a wind jutsu to amplify the first one’s fire even further, resulting in a gigantic see of flames rushing towards Hinata.
Hinata lifted her sword as water chakra rushed into it, causing it to glow blue. She cautiously looked around to ensure that no one else was nearby and could hear and slashed down her sword just when the sea of flames was about to reach her while opening her mouth.
“[Water Sword Combination Style: Ocean Splitting Water Ray]”
A shudder went through Hinata’s body as she said her attack name out loud, while a light blush appeared on her face.
‘Damnit, although that was rather embarrassing, it felt amazing at the same time.’
While Hinata was contemplating what she had just done, a colossal water blade shot towards the sea of flames and easily split it apart, causing the fire to pass by Hinata’s sides without touching her harmlessly.
However, the power of her attack was barely diminished after coming in contact with Kakuzu’s attack and continued advancing towards the combined masked creature.
It wanted to dodge, but Hinata’s attack was too fast and too big for it to do so, so before it could do anything else, her attack reached it and tore it into shreds, taking out both masked at the same time while causing Kakuzu’s eyes to bulge in surprise.
‘What the f* was that!? I have fought Jinchuuriki before, and even they couldn’t produce such an attack. Although the scale is much smaller than what a Jinchuuriki could do, that destructive power is beyond ridiculous. My threads were cut apart like they were made of paper. And it was done by a water jutsu of all things! Wasn’t water supposed to be weak against earth!?”
Sweat was flowing down Kakuzu’s back like a river. Four of his five hearts were gone. At the start of this fight, he thought that the only reason Hinata managed to take out two of his hearts was because of her ridiculous stealth, but now he realized that he was wrong.
Hinata wasn’t a one-trick pony that only had stealth in her repertoire. She was a monstrous genius in water style, surpassing even the likes of Tobirama Senju, who was known for his ridiculous proficiency in water style.
Kakuzu had the hope that Hinata would be utterly exhausted after using such a ridiculous attack, but after the smoke cleared and he saw that her breathing was only slightly strained while her face was somewhat flushed, he immediately abandoned that hope.
‘I don’t think I can win this. I only have my earth chakra heart left and despite earth supposedly being strong against water, she can easily cut through my jutsu with her water. Should I run? Ridiculous, she has a Byakugan.’
While Kakuzu was pondering his next step, Hinata saw the intention to run away flicker across his face, making her frown. She sheathed her sword and clapped her hand together, amassing ridiculous amounts of chakra.
“[Water Cultivation Art: Water Domain Creation]”
The air around Hinata slightly wobbled, and moments later, a shockwave spread from Hinata’s position. Surprisingly, it didn’t deal any damage to the surroundings and only harmlessly passed through everything, including Kakuzu.
However, as soon as the shock wave washed over him, Kakuzu couldn’t help but tremble a little as he got the impression of being trapped within a cage.
He frantically looked around but couldn’t see any changes in his surroundings. Before he could do anything else, the small water blobs that Hinata previously used returned, but this time they covered a massive area all around him.
“Sorry, but I would rather not allow you to run away, so you will have to die now.”
Kakuzu gritted his teeth when he realized that he was utterly trapped in his opponent’s jutsu. No matter how he looked at it, there was no way out of this.
Hinata lifted her hand and was about to launch her jutsu when Kakuzu hastily lifted up his arms.
“Wait a moment, I surrender!”
Hinata hesitated for a moment when she heard that he wanted to surrender and looked at him with a questioning look.
“No need to be surprised; it’s not like I was ever loyal to Akatsuki. I joined them for the money and nothing else. Now that Zetsu has betrayed me, I have no second thoughts about crossing them.”
Hinata paused for a moment and pondered Kakuzu’s words before nodding her head in acknowledgment and tossing a sealing tag towards Kakuzu.
“This will temporarily seal you away. Put this on your body, and I will believe in your surrender.”
Kakuzu eyed the sealing tag Hinata just tossed at him with suspicion, but after letting his gaze wander of the hundreds of water blobs flying around him another time, he gritted his teeth and put the sealing tag on his body.
As soon as he did so, seals started covering his whole body at lightning speed, and a few seconds later, only a tiny toke with Seal ID042 written on it remained.
Hinata took a deep breath as she canceled her large-scale jutsu. Although she didn’t show it while preparing her last jutsu, it needed ridiculous amounts of chakra to use, and the only reason why she decided to use it was that she noticed that Kakuzu might want to run away.
If her enemy wanted to run, she might as well use her strongest jutsu that would undoubtedly exhaust her and try to defeat him before he could get away.
In the end, all of that was unnecessary, as Kakuzu decided to surrender instead. After being brought back to Konoha, Hinata had no clue what would happen to him, but she couldn’t care less either way. She never promised him to ave his life, after all, and only told him that she would accept his surrender..
