A blast shook the ground, swayed the branches where Genma hid. A score of meters to Genma's right, yellow-edged, fire-lit smoke mushroomed up in what he had to hope was one of Rina's detonating seals. Another bolt of lightning rent the sky, illuminating shadows, tearing limbs from trees, and the icy rain turned to hail again. He raced towards the dying fireball, flickering through translocations with more precision now.

There! There in the trees, a silhouette: a dark, demon-like woman with jagged marks on her ebony cheeks, lit by another flicker of lightning that crashed perilously close to a running figure. The woman in the trees weaved her hands together, and called up another answer from the clouds.

Bloodline limit, it had to be. A ninjutsu evolved in Lightning Country's chaotic weather, its deadly storms. A ninjutsu to harness the power of the tempest. If no one from Konoha had catalogued it before, he'd be shocked. Perhaps in a land with fewer storms, it just wasn't as much of a threat.

Not that it mattered. What mattered was grounding those bolts away from Rina. For that, Genma had jutsu of his own. Dangerous jutsu, desperate jutsu, but desperate times called for desperate measures, and he and Rina were hopelessly outmatched. He called up his own chakra, a blend of the still-screaming tide of soldier pill chakra, and life energy from his very core, and formed a metal jutsu.

Metal was everywhere. Traces from the enemy ninja's weapons. Rina's weapons. The kunai at his own side. Copper from the very earth itself. He drew it into the jutsu, atom by atom, reformed it, and sent the whole molten ball spinning at the lightning-casting ninja just as she unleashed the storm's fury once more.

The lightning sought ground with unerring precision, earthing itself in the conductive target. The Kumo woman was lifted into the air, thrown back ten meters trailing smoke, and lay unmoving. In the dying flashes of lightning, Genma could see a copper-plated sheen obliterating the woman's face.