Chapter 24
"Washita, it has been a long time!" Yelled the deep-voiced toad, as he was sent flying through the air by the unexpectedly powerful punch by the senjutsu Monster.
Washita watched as Gamadoto flew past him, "Doto, what are you doing here?!" Roared the head of the Eagles, as he swung a steel-wing at the sage, knocking him off balance long enough for the toad to come flying in after his recovery, bodily slamming onto the sage, burying him under his tremendous girth.
"I was summoned, old friend." The toad called out, "but that is for later. We need to keep him occupied for as long as possible, Katsuyu will explain."
The slug? Washita blinked, before he noticed a small slug leap off of the toad with astonishing strength and speed, as the Toad yelled at the man crushed under his stomach, telling him that it would take a lot more than senjutsu chakra to lift him up. The miniscule thing landed on Washita's beak, and slithered onto his head.
"Washita, we have little time so I will be brief. The Jinchuriki of the nine tails is dying and you and Gamadoto need to buy Konoha as much time as possible to seal the beast into another container." She spoke in rapid fire.
The massive winged creature nodded with a grunt of affirmation, sensing in the distance several other Eagles entering the fray - Hibiki had finally followed his directions and summoned some combat-caste to fight with the Hawks. As he flapped his wings to keep him aloft, he noticed suddenly that Doto was slowly lifting off of the ground.
"Oh no, sonny, here we go!" Yelled out the toad before he was hit with such force that a massive, wave-like ripple was sent outwards across his rubbery skin. "Get ready, 'cause this little man's PIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIISED!" He screamed, before he was thrown to the north with such force that a crater was formed where he'd been thrown and where he landed.
Not wasting any time, Washita inhaled deeply and screeched as loud as he could - the noise was enough to shatter the ironwood trees and create fissures in the ground. If any ordinary human heard the raw force of these screams, their heads would implode and their hearts would explode out of their chests. The Monster clutched his head in pain, as blood leaked out of his nose - his body was too durable to start popping like bloody balloons, but that only meant he had to suffer longer.
In the distance, Washita saw Gamedoto land, and start hopping back to them. In that brief moment he took his eyes off of the monster, however, decided he'd had enough and, with a clenched gut, bit through the pain and leapt into the sky, sending a mountain-breaking punch straight into Washita's stomach. His roar was cut off instantly as all of the air left his lungs; the steel-wing technique was a very good defense mechanism, but the Monster had just proven himself to be strong enough to break through that almost literal ironclad defense. The Monster held out his hand and channeled so much chakra through it that the air glowed with green fire, before he slashed at Washita's stomach, drawing blood and sending Washita spinning down to the ground.
In those moments he fought the Eagle, however, he'd taken his eyes off of the toad, and the result was that he was covered in a river of thick oil, and barely a second after that he was set ablaze. Without any time to try and douse the flames, the Monster was hit again by a slash from the toad's massive sword, it too covered in oily fire. With the Monster pinned on the ground by the sword, the toad clenched his hands together and inhaled deeply. Inside the massive green and red toad, his lungs filled up with water, which he compressed with chakra and sheer muscle strength - not an easy feat, one most would call impossible. The toad, however, knew that compressed water could cut through anything, even Sages, so after he let the water build and press, he blasted the Monster's chest with the tight stream of water.
The force of impact carved straight through the monster's chest and through the ground, but the Monster - feeling the water stream come closer and closer to his heart - grabbed the massive blade with both hands and shoved it upwards, smashing the enormous toad in the jaw, forcing it to close, and forcing the water stream to cut straight through his mouth, slicing it open and dirtying the water with his blood. In the second it took the toad to cease the technique, the Monster had gotten to the feet and flipped the blade around so he was holding it by its handle. It was an awkward grip, given its enormous size, but he managed to swing it well enough, carving a deep gash in the toad's chest, and on the reverse swing, he smashed into the toad with the flat of the blade, sending him flying several meters, to crash into the ground and make a massive crater.
Without warning, Washita appeared again and had Doto's blade clenched in his talons, and with a rough jerk, he snapped it into pieces. The Monster didn't hesitate, he tossed the blade up a few inches, and with a rough kick, sent it flying upwards, where its jagged edge pierced his chest, sending blood streaming down its blade and through the eagle's plumage. Washita, stunned, couldn't keep himself airborne and fell to the ground, unintentionally sending the blade further into his chest.
Washita groaned, and Gamadoto slowly got himself to a sitting position. The toad shook his bleeding head, "how is he so strong?" He blubbered out through a mouthful of streaming bood, a slight lisp hampering his speech.
"I don't know..." Wheezed Washita, as he turned his head to look at the Monster, still enflamed, as he slowly strode over to the two. "Even senjutsu chakra should not grant this kind of strength... And he should not be able to absorb the energy of nature and remain mobile as he does." The eagle winced at the pain in his chest, several of his bones had been broken by the sword and the Monster's fists, and while most of his organs were bruised, he hadn't lost any to the stab wound, so when he returned to Amerigo, he would be fine.
"And he fought the Nine Tails' Jinchuriki before this..." Groaned Gamadoto as he got to his feet, "this thing... This monster... He is something else."
"I liken it to being like a force of nature." The man called out, gaining the attention of both summons, his hoarse voice calling out over the crackling of flames sticking to his skin. ""You... You animals with stolen intelligence. You creatures using power you do not understand. You dregs underneath my feet. You can hurt me, but you cannot kill me, because like the planet Earth, I am an undying, resolute, indomitable force. An immovable object." He said, as he gained ever closer, a slow grin crawling its way across his face. "And like the Atom Bomb, I am energy and strength limitless and unseen. An unstoppable force."
Gamadoto's eyes flickered up, and then back to the monster as he chuckled. "Son... You see, you've forgotten somethin' about us summons."
The Monster came to a halt. "Oh?"
From behind him, a new voice spoke. "They're always backed up by summoners." The Monster whipped around, and was greeted by a several foot tall, white-haired Sage, who had seated upon his shoulders two elderly toads. His nose was large and covered in warts, his hands ended in points and his musculature was overall increased.
"Jiraiya the Toad-Sage." Said the Monster, with a nod of respect.
"We meet at last..." Jiraiya drawled out, "... Guy..." He still received no response from the Monster, so he shook his head. "Nice to finally meet you, Washita of the Eagles." Jiraiya nodded to the massive bird, "I spoke to Hibiki, he gave you clearance to return to Amerigo if you felt you had to."
Washita nodded, "thank you, Jiraiya." And he vanished in a massive plume of smoke, followed soon by Gamadoto after a similar instruction. It was now just Jiraiya and the Monster.
The Monster sighed, "I can see from your companions that you do not simply wish for me to surrender."
Jiraiya grinned, and shrugged his shoulders, splaying his grotesque hands to the side in a submissive gesture. "I mean, that'd be nice." He said, "but given that you're strong enough to go toe-to-toe with a Jinchuriki, an Uchiha Jonin, and two boss-summons, something tells me that I won't be able to convince you to just up and leave."
The Monster shook his head, "all I want is the Jinchuriki. Specifically the Tailed Beast, you can keep the hag. Is that so much?"
"In the hands of a man like you... Yes." Said Jiraiya, as he rolled his shoulders and entered an odd combat stance. "But I will give you one chance to leave. That way you can't say I didn't try." He grinned a toothy smile.
The man stared at Jiraiya, unblinkingly, before he slowly brought his gaze up to the distance, in the direction of Konoha. Jiraiya saw realization dawning in the man's eyes. "You're distracting me." He said, just a second before he took off with a massive leap, and flew back towards Konoha.
"Shit!" Jiraiya leapt after him, "Katsuyu, tell them they're about to get company!" He called out.
"Yes, Jiraiya." Said a thumb-sized slug, "I have informed the Hokage. He is going to perform his technique and then he will engage, he requests your assistance."
"I'm on the way."
Without warning, the Hibiki army heard the roar of each and every demon in the six hundred and sixty six legions of hell. The force of the roar shook the very air of Konoha and sent many people to the ground as the earth quaked. One Hibiki dispelled after he saw the source of the demonic scream - a sky-scraper sized, gray-robed figure with a large devil's mask covering its face.
The entire war seemed to stop, as everyone fighting - from the Konoha forces to the invading militia - looked up in terror at the Forbidden Technique: Sacrificial Demon Statue. Like a machine, its jaw fell open almost in slow motion, stretching wide enough to fit two houses in, length-wise. One of the Hibikis, pressed back-to-back to another three clones as they fought several hawks and assisted the eagles flying about, felt a great sense of foreboding leaking from the enormous creature.
One Hibiki exchanged glances with another, the other shrugged, he hadn't gotten any updated orders, and so far as any of them remembered, they didn't have anything even resembling -
Another roar with no warning, but this time something exploded from its gaping maw. Rather, countless somethings - so many that the countless Hibikis couldn't count them - burst forth. Bright, glowing, gray beams bursting forth like missiles. They climbed high into the sky, so high that they were drowned out by the dark gray clouds. There was a bright golden flash in the dark clouds, and in the blink of an eye, all of the gray beams hurtled back towards the ground and slammed into the heads of the enemies in the village.
Several Hibikis burst in raw surprise, several others started jumping about as they tried to dodge, screaming profanities before they realized that the chakra-beams weren't going for him, or any of his dopplegangers, they slowed down, and watched as the beams continued streaming out with loud buzzing noises from the demon's maw. They all got a burst of memory from one that saw the effects of the beam first hand - it shot down from the sky like a bolt of lightning, and for the briefest moment they cut into an enemy gunman and extended dozens of large gray spikes, impaling the enemy infantry from the inside-out multiple times without pause, all in the briefest of moments, the blink of an eye.
Hibiki stared at the spectacle, the jutsu of mass, precise, destruction. It targeted specifically the enemy fighters - or, as the case was, gunners - and liquified them from the inside via death of a thousand spikes. Hibiki got another burst of memories - green beams were bursting from the enormous maw, and one of the Hibikis who had taken a few bullets had been hit by one, his wounds healed in seconds, boiling away into steam, the jagged, cut apart flesh, replaces by fully healthy tissue.
"What the fuck?" Said one Hibiki, as he rubbed the back of his head with a curse-mark covered hand. "What is that, why didn't we use it already, who the hell used it?" He thought, before he saw hurtle across the sky, the Monster that had plagued his memory-flashes for a good quarter of an hour.
"Oh boy... We got incoming." Said Hibiki in English, before he popped himself.
In the Hospital, there were three Senjus - Hibiki Alpha, a Hibiki Clone, and Tsunade Senju - and two of those three were in a hospital room, desperately trying to keep the lone Uzumaki alive. The Hibiki next to his adoptive mother, and the one in the sealed room with Orochimaru, both recoiled physically from the memory flash the lone clone sent back.
Oh shit. Thought the Hibiki in the basement, before he sent out a mental command to all of the clones in Konoha, save for the ones in the Hospital, to vanish. There wasn't a great increase in chakra for the two, but it was noticeable for both of them. Tsunade noticed it too, she perked her eyebrow at Hibiki as she kept her med-chakra coated hands pressed firmly on a seated Mito's bare back; her robes had been lowered so as to provide Tsunade easier access to her chakra system and her body, but also to protect her modesty in the presence of an eight-year-old. She was breathing heavily, the drain of Katsuyu leeching her chakra and her having to personally heal and perform operations on the various wounded was taking its toll, but she had to keep Mito alive for as long as it took.
"What is it?" Tsunade panted, beads of sweat pouring down her forehead and dripping off of her nose.
"Is it..." Mito coughed blood into her hands, "is it... Him?"
Hibiki nodded, but he was at a loss for what to do. Mito and her 'tenant' had failed, Dante had failed, and now Washita had failed - apparently even with assistance from one of Jiraiya's boss toads, according to the memories of several clones who'd seen the toad leap out - and even Jiraiya, who'd been glimpsed following them. Even with Orochimaru's seal giving him power, what hope did he have?
"Don't worry about it." Groaned Tsunade, "Katsuyu just let me know, the Hokage is on his way, he will stop him."
You seem to forget that dude's pretty much Superman, what the fuck will stop HIM?
"Will he be enough? He took on a Jonin, a Jinchuriki, two Boss Summons, and a Sannin, and he's coming back for more." He paused, thinking. "I've got an idea." He vanished.
The Monster halted on a dime, when he arrived at the hospital and saw, waiting for him, a crippled, bandaged old man with a cane lightly clenched in his right hand. The Monster inclined his head, and lowered himself down upon noticing the man's gaze was locked firmly upon his own. He landed with a small hop, and the old man gave him an appraising look.
"I have heard from our shinobi that you were powerful... But not... Nude." The man was more disgusted than whenever Dante Uchiha stepped into his office.
The Monster blinked his golden eyes, and looked down at himself. "Hm." He grunted, "I am." He'd taken so many explosions and been set aflame so many times he hadn't even realized he was nude. He looked to his left, and saw a dead shinobi. "One moment." He said with a nod.
"Oh, please. Clothe yourself." Said the old man, as he nodded towards the body.
The Monster nodded, and stole the pants off of the dead woman, caring not for the decency of the dead. After he was finished, he nodded, "thank you." He patted down the pants, "I've been trying to find a way to protect my clothing, but..." He shrugged, and ran a hand through his dark hair. "So, I hope you're here to make the formal surrender of Konoha." He said, stretching his back.
The Man shook his head. "I was hoping to get the same from you."
"You want me to surrender Konoha?" The Monster blinked, "yes. I surrender Konoha to me. Now kneel. Or give me the Jinchuriki of the nine tails."
"No." The old man stated firmly.
The Monster sighed, and started stepping forward. "I grow tired of your games, old man. I have needs that - " He was stopped wholesale by the wooden stick, the flimsy wooden stick.
"I said... I want you to leave." The old man stated, reaching up for the bandages covering half of his face, and with a small twitch, they all fell around his neck, revealing a scarred half, and a Sharingan eye.
The Monster slowly turned his head to look at the old man, the hatred and anger returning to his eyes as he readied for combat again. "Or... What?"
The old man turned to look at the Monster, the tomoe of his eye swirling into a single solid circle, with three thick lines branching inward to the center. "I'll convince you."
The Monster's head recoiled back as he felt the man's invasive chakra pour into his own system. He blinked, and sneezed. "Interesting eye, Old Man... You know, I've always wanted one for myself, I think I -" He was cut off by a brief blast of concussive force that blasted out in a tight beam from the old man's eye; the Monster was sent flying into a shattered, burning building, making the entire thing explode into rubble upon impact.
"I like the eye myself." Said the man. "The abilities unique to it might not suit my desires, but it has its uses." His voice was deep, filled with a youthful vigor that it had lacked moments earlier.
The Monster exploded out from the rubble, angry, but was sent right back, deeper into the earth, by another concussive blast.
"I myself like to leave the fighting to my Root." Said the old man, as he slowly began walking forward, the cane clicking with each step. "Though I can tell by the vibrancy of your chakra and its very color that no Root in existence could combat you and win." The Monster crawled out from the rubble, but again was blasted by a concussive pulse; he was able to keep his footing this time, however, and merely skidded back several feet. "To be honest with you, unless I am willing to sacrifice this eye, I myself believe that even I cannot defeat you." He admitted freely, ignoring the growls of the Monster, whose every footfall forward created a deep crater in the ground. The old man grinned, as the Monster growled. "But there is something I can do." He said, as he saw, in the distance, a blonde and a read-head leap across shattered rooftops and take the back-way to the hospital. He looked back to the Monster, who closed the gap between the two in an instant.
"Hm?" The Monster growled.
"I can buy time for this." Barely a second later, a Sannin appeared up from the ground, as if he melted through concrete. He vomited up a blade and then stabbed outwards, cutting through the man's chest in a shower of blood.
In a flash of movement, the Monster smashed the back of his hand into Orochimaru's head, and kicked backwards, smashing in Danzo's chest. Before he could follow up, a new fighter smashed both feet into him, burying him into the ground, and by proxy forcing the blade of kusanagi deeper through his chest. Jiraiya, his Senjutsu chakra putting him closer to the Monster's level, pummeled him deeper and deeper into the ground, his frog-techniques increasing the already awesome force of every blow. He roared loudly as he smashed the Monster deeper and deeper into the ground, bruising his already torn flesh and ripping more of the blade left, right, forward and back, up and down, causing more and more damage in the chink in his armor.
The Monster, quick as lightning and with about as much warning, grabbed both of Jiraiya's shoulders, and yanked downwards, piercing the second sage's chest on the blade sticking out of his own. He shoved upwards, and yanked downwards again, stabbing a second time. By the third stab, the two toads on Jiraiya's shoulders reacted, clenching their hands together and screeching loudly, deafening both wounded sages, but not stopping the Monster from punching Jiraiya in the chest and forcing the white-haired Sage off of him.
Growling deeply, the Sage forced himself to his feet, and with a powerful push, forced the blade to fly out from the back of his chest, which immediately started leaking blood as he stepped forward, slowly sealing itself up from the inside out. He sensed a large pulse of energy, and leaned his head to the side, dodging a concussive blast from the newly minted and recently proven Hokage. He sensed another burst and leaned backwards, Orochimaru flew over him, but instead of missing, his elbow drove down in a fierce blow that smashed into the Monster's stomach, knocking the wind out of his lungs, in time for a heavily wounded Jiraiya to throw a powerful hook, clobbering the Monster in the face with a massive cracking noise, as senjutsu-enhanced fist met face and the bones underneath cracked.
The Monster flew for a few feet and landed on the ground, digging a crater as he skidded along. He halted himself with a grunt, and was on his feet barely a second later, before he was blasted back several meters by another concussive wave from the Hokage's eye, as the Toad Sage and Snake Sannin both dashed towards him from the side, the Hokage in the center. Without breaking stride, Orochimaru leaned sideways as he ran and snatched up the Grass-Cutter, just as Jiraiya spat out multiple toad-oil fire bullets, each of which the Monster tanked.
With a deep growl, the Monster crossed both hands in front of his face, and then with a mighty roar, threw them both out in front of him - the raw force of these motions halted the Sannin with blasts of wind, and the strength of his voice sent the Hokage skidding back a few feet. The Monster turned and launched a powerful hook at the Toad Sage, who deflected it with his arm and smashed a fist into the Monster's gut, just as the Snake Sannin recovered and swung his blade in a wide arc, forcing the Monster to duck down, where he was met by Jiraiya's senjutsu-enhanced knee, which struck with enough force to break the skin on the man's nose and draw blood.
The Monster leapt into the air in a crouching motion, still between the two Sannin, before he thrust out both of his legs and his arms, smashing the Sannin with both sets of limbs and sending them flying back a few meters, before he himself was smashed by the Hokage's eye once again. With an enraged growl, the Monster soared torward the elderly Hokage, arm outstretched and a look that could melt steel set firmly on his face. He reached the Hokage, who blasted him twice more with his eye during his flight, but the Monster's momentum was just enough to keep him moving forward. Just as he clenched the Hokage's head in his hand, however, a flying eagle - much smaller than the one he'd fought earlier, but still unnaturally large - came flying in with a loud caw, before it sank its claws into his face and blasted him with a wind bullet, and took off again in a perfectly executed hit and run.
With a scowl, the Monster back-handed the Hokage and turned to face the retreating eagle, before he was accosted again by another eagle who took advantage of his lack of awareness. The flak-jacket clad eagle clawed at the man's back and cut at it with its steel wings and its razor-wind techniques, even trying to break the skin with its beak - though having to cut off that avenue of attack when he nearly broke his face open. With a pained bark, the Monster swung around, but missed the Eagle as it had predicted the attack and climbed back into the air before the man could even twitch - and as such, the Monster was left open for a running charge from the Snake Sannin, who slammed his grass-cutter blade into his mostly healed chest and twisted the blade, warm, red blood gushing out and down the blade.
The golden-eyed monster roared deafeningly in the Sannin's face, making it clear he felt no pain and took no damage from the attack. Orochimaru lifted an eyebrow before snakes crawled out from his sleeves and started lunging for the open chest wound, acid and poison practically leaking from every available surface. The Monster yelled out and swatted the snakes away as they tried to penetrate his wounds, and the Toad Sage appeared at his side and launched a rock-breaking haymaker punch at the man's wounded chest. The Monster caught the blow, though the force of it did cause the bones in his hand to bend and creak, and with his other hand he grabbed at the tail of one of the snakes in his chest, ripped the snake out, forced its jaw open, and jammed it on Jiraiya's head, before he leapt into the air and spin-kicked him away, only to be blasted by a massive concussive force from the recovered, if injured, Hokage, who physically was still as stoic and nonfeeling as he'd started the fight - as if the injuries he'd clearly sustained meant so little to him that he could ignore them outright, like a paper cut or a bug bite.
"That's... IIIIIIIIIIIIIT!" Screamed a livid beyond reason Monster, before he inhaled deeply, clenched his fist and made an 'L' shape with his fingers, pointed at a rushing Orochimaru, and yelped out, "BANG!" And the force of his yell, combined with the hand-sign made by his free hand, launched a wave of wind-chakra with countless razor-sharp blades at the Snake Sannin, shredding his skin and sending him flying back, far into the village.
For his trouble, the Monster got blasted in the face again by a seemingly nonchalant Hokage. The Monster turned his smoldering head and scowled at the man, before he turned to the elderly man and inhaled again, a deep, vibrant, fiery green aura starting from his feet and flowing upwards into his eyes as he braced both legs behind him and leaned his torso and head backwards. Just a second later his eyes flashed open and he thrust his front forward, and twin beams of bright green senjutsu chakra blasted forward, slamming into the elderly man's chest and smashing him through several homes.
The Monster turned to the hospital, and found in his way a wolf-masked Anbu, crouched low in a swordsman's stance, wielding a straight tanto with a circular guard, which seemed to radiate chakra. The Monster scowled, but that had been the starting gun for the fight between him and Wolf, who vanished and appeared right in front of him a second later, the tanto held in a reverse-grip and swinging in a vicious upward-slash, a streak of white chakra following in its wake. The Monster's hand shot up and deflected the blow, and before the blood could even begin seeping out of his slashed fingers, the Wolf vanished again, practically dancing in circles around the Monster as he slashed violently and quickly at the Monster's back, chest, legs and arms in what the Monster almost instantly recognized as the Thousand-Cut Blitz technique.
With a scowl, the Monster launched a spinning elbow, which caught the blade directly on the path to its next intended target, and he and the expresionless masked Anbu began a struggle of dominance, which the Monster almost instantly started winning, in direct spite to the stinging pain in his elbow where the tanto was digging in. With a brief flourish, the Monster yanked his elbow to the right, and followed up the parry with a wild superman punch from his left, catching Wolf in the face with a blow strong enough to send a shockwave out through the air. Wolf, to his credit, recovered quickly enough, switched from a reverse to a traditional grip, and stabbed upwards, managing to penetrate the Monster's gut and cut into his chest. Wolf found, however, that his sword was stuck fast by the man's clenched torso.
The Monster grabbed Wolf by his neck and started to squeeze, but Wolf burst into smoke - his sword vanishing from the Monster's gut in the process. Sensing chakra gathering behind him, the Monster swung around in a wide arc, catching the edge of Wolf's blade with the back of his forearm, as Wolf kept his hand on the flat of the blade and worked to keep the Monster immobilized.
A growling Monster roared out deafeningly, "I grow TIRED OF THESE GAMES!" He raised his free hand and gathered natural energy in it, before he shoved it forward and the senjutsu-technique's extended reach caught Wolf in the gut and sent him skidding back a few feet. The Monster clenched his fist and yanked it backwards, yanking Wolf right back towards him, where his mask met the full force of the Monster's straight right and shattered upon impact, along with the man's nose, several of his teeth, and a good portion of his skull as his momentum carried the lower half of his body forward, resulting in a somewhat pitiful upward curve and downward, unconscious flop onto the ground.
The dark-haired Monster, whose blade-made wounds had already begun sealing themselves up, stared at the profusely bleeding, silver-haired Anbu with contempt, before he turned back to the Hospital.
Again, he found his path blocked, this time by the curse-marked boy, who stood there, hands outstretched and locked together, with a diamond shape in the opening between them. The Monster stared at the boy, and the boy stared at him.
"Our Fath -"
"Ki-Ko-HO!" The boy interrupted him and a massive, surprisingly powerful wave of explosive chakra rushed forward and blasted away at the wounded Monster, who just grimaced and trudged forward, as the boy continuously repeated his attack, each blast of explosive energy buffetting the Monster, who continued forward, only slowed down by the boy's strongest ranged technique.
This continued until finally the Monster made it to the boy, smacked his hands away with a grunt, and grabbed him by the throat. "I said I am DONE! WITH! THESE GAMES!" The monster violently threw the boy to the side - not even noticing that he burst into smoke upon impact with the ground - and leapt forward, towards the largest concentration of chakra in the village, landing just outside of the hospital room with Mito Uzumaki, Tsunade Senju, Minato Namikaze, Kushina Uzumaki, and the Alpha Hibiki, who threw his hand down in a chopping motion.
"NOW!" He screamed as loud as he could, before Mito was enveloped in a massive, blood-red cloak with nine tails jutting out of the end.
The Monster realized what was happening too late, and was blasted, almost point-blank, in the face, with the full force of a nine-tails bijuu-dama. He felt the chakra burn at his wounds; he was sent flying as the cone of energy propelled him further and further through the air, ripping him apart through the many chinks in his armor. In the ten seconds the blast was sustained, he was sent dozens of kilometers through the sky, outside of Konoha.
When Mito finally couldn't keep it up any longer, the beam dissipated, and the chakra cloak vanished. The silence that followed was only broken by her exhausted panting, and the idle sound of the purple chakra radiating from Hibiki.
"Is he fucking gone yet? We're running out of badasses." Hibiki muttered, with a brief glance towards Tsunade.
Mito coughed, "he will not return." She said, "Kushina... Give me your hand... Tsunade, help me to the bed, please." She begged, feeling her life force fading away.
Kushina did as she was instructed, as Hibiki committed everything to memory - he knew exactly what he'd just seen, but now was not the time to mention it. As he turned from outside to look in, he caught in the corner of his vision moving figures, a large pale-white one and his clones picking up several others. Mito, with her hand clenching Kushina's, turned it ninety degrees. Instantly, contact-seals started snaking out from her hand outwards, coiling across Kushina's arm and snaking their way down her chest and towards her stomach.
"It is... Hasty... No room for flare... But it will do its job... Reliably" The panting, wheezing elder Uzumaki told the younger one, as she closed her eyes to concentrate. "One of you grab her, this next part will hurt." She said.
With little more instruction needed, Hibiki grabbed one shoulder, and Minato the other. Hibiki noticed a gasp of pain when he grabbed her - Orochimaru's seal was still coiling around his flesh, so his strength was still enhanced. With his Sharingan, he saw that the flow of Mito's blue chakra had halted around Kushina's stomach after a few moments, likely signifying the completion of the seal. With just a second's pause, the black, chakra-laced ink pulsed deeply, like a heart-beat, and grew blood red.
Kushina tensed against Minato and Hibiki, but they kept their grip, even after she partially deafened the both of them as she screamed loudly, desperately. The demonic chakra of the nine-tails flowed from the elder to the younger, and the two boys holding her had to brace their legs behind them she was struggling so much, trying to cut the link, trying anything. The pain was incomparable to anything she'd felt before - it felt as if liquid fire, jagged glass, and barbed wire all were dragging their way through her veins, it felt unnatural, it felt angry. She felt it all, despite Mito's best efforts, and it felt like eternity passed as the process went down - more than once Kushina pulsed bright red with the demonic chakra, but with a grimace, Mito suppressed each pulse, and her seal grew ever more complicated, showing her mastery of the art of fuinjutsu, by how easily it came to her to apply some of the most complex sealwork on the planet through touch alone.
The minutes passed by like hours, and the pain indicated by Kushina's wails only ever increased, before finally, it all ceased and she fell unconscious, slumping backwards in her friends' arms. Mito's arm went limp and swung freely over the edge of her bed, as finally all resistance to the cancer running through her body just dropped like a floodgate. There was nothing left to protect her from the killing growth, and she began coughing uncontrollably.
Despite herself, Tsunade shrieked, both at the sight of blood, and at the sudden realization that her only living relative - no matter how estranged they had been - was soon to leave the world. Mito, however, had one last duty to fulfill, and it took all of her strength to place her withered, shaking hand firmly upon Tsunade's head, silencing her cries, her pleas for the old woman not to die as so many had died before.
"Do not waste what time you have... Child." Whispered the hoarse, exhausted old woman. "I do not know what it was that I did to hurt you so... But I enjoyed what time we had together, and I shall enjoy telling your grandfather the stories I have heard. I apologize, and hope you can forgive me for leaving you." She said, as her voice trailed off, and her hand slipped away as easily as her life.
The room was dead silent, Tsunade from shock, Hibiki from respect, Minato from lack of a desire to bring attention to himself.