Note: You might want to check out my profile. For once I have something other than web addresses there. Really, if you're into this story, I would be grateful if you read that.
Naruto Genkyouien
- ナルト- 幻脅威宴
Chapter Twenty-two: Phantom Menace Party – Bhava-agra of Youkai and Humans (Part Seven)
"Man…" he then said. "I'd make, like, the shittiest Hokage ever."
Many people blinked. Sayoko, the only one who had not moved from her former spot two steps behind Naruto, sidestepped a swaying flame tail to stand next to the boy.
"Well, you are a child, Naruto-sama," she pointed out. "I would be more worried if you already held the mindset of a Hokage, if I'm allowed to be honest."
"Ah, no, I didn't mean it like…" Another sigh. "It's hard to explain."
Destruction is absolutely objective. The moment the flame became one with him, Naruto experienced that awful clarity of absolute objectivity, and saw himself reflected through that lens.
It lasted only for a vestige of an instant, but it was quite the eye-opening experience.
"Maaaaaaan…" Naruto repeated. "This feels really weird."
"Oh, how does Naruto-sama feel right now?"
"Like…fire," he confessed. "Like I can destroy absolutely anything and everything, until I snuff out and just…disappear."
"Yes, you might not want to keep that power for too long."
"Yeah," Naruto agreed, not even bothering feeling surprised by Sayoko's unexplainable wisdom anymore. "I feel it burning my soul as we speak." It was a flame, after all. No matter how much it loved Naruto, its nature was to destroy things without restraint or discrimination. "By the way, Sayuri? Having your soul on fire? It really really hurts!"
"Muu…Sayuri doesn't mind…"
"Because your soul is the fire!"
"Mugyuu…but, onii-chan's not angwy; Sayuri can tell."
"Well, no, I'm not really angry; I kinda asked for this."
"Ehehe~ Sayuri's back inside onii-chan~"
"Right. But this time you're not staying too long, okay?"
"Um!"
Nodding to himself, Naruto then turned to Sayoko.
"So, how are we doing this, Sayoko-san? I defer to your ancient wisdom."
"Aah, mou! I don't need your help to feel old, really. More importantly, how's your compatibility?"
Naruto wanted to laugh. "Sayuri's been part of me for almost thirteen years. Her chakra's pretty much engraved in my soul already."
Sayoko nodded. "So she's your Avalon."
"Huh?"
"Don't mind me. In fact, I have to take care of our audience here…" Naruto and Sayoko glanced around, at the throng of humans and youkai watching the surreal scene of Naruto's transformation and the pre-battle banter. "Things will get quite messy and I cannot promise I can protect every person here. We cannot have our precious people here caught in the crossfire, right?"
"Uh, right," Naruto agreed. "So, what's the plan—?"
"Kuuton Kuchiyose," Sayoko said, planting her hands on the ground.
"Kokuyou no Kurosaki no Saiden."
Like that, the crowd was reduced to four people, only one of them human. A gob-smacked Uzumaki Naruto was staring at the hole in the ground where Konohagakure no Sato had stood until a moment ago. The colossal dome of darkness had disappeared together with the Great Spirit Clan, revealing only a huge crater between Naruto and the far away Hokage Monument—or what was left of it.
Sayoko sighed briefly, like a housewife who has to clean her husband's mess on a Sunday morning.
"Oooo-kay, you just…reverse-summoned Konoha away…somewhere," Naruto said while shaking his head in a sad attempt at dismissing the unbelievable. "How does that work?"
Naruto knew very well that Kuchiyose no Jutsu could not summon creatures against their will.
"It just does," Sayoko dismissively replied, and that was the end of that topic. Naruto took it as yet another step into the depths of Kurosaki Sayoko's brokenness.
"So, where did they go?"
"A safe place…as long as they do not wander off," she said. "Not a place I wanted to show them, but I do not get to be picky. More importantly…"
She presented the two Kyuubi to Naruto.
"There are two of them, and there are two of us. We are not familiar enough with each other to fight cooperatively, so…"
Also, that would unnecessarily stretch the word count, so please spare me.
"I'll fight Fubuki," Naruto declared. "I won't be satisfied if I don't…"
"Very well," Sayoko accepted. "Your powers are not a good match for Kougon-kun, so I would have suggested you face Fubuki as well. Allow me, then, to offer you a piece of advice."
The purple-clad kitsune willed her shadow to swirl and twirl like black flame by her feet, and a piece of Void Flame jumped to the tip of her tail to the space above her open right palm. She leaned closer to Naruto, to make sure she was heard only by the young human.
"The Void is Nothingness, the absence of concept. Do you understand that, Naruto-sama?"
Flakes of dying flame like cinders off a bonfire leapt from Naruto's cheek when he scratched it nervously.
"Well, I kind of understand the words, but…" He said, frowning.
"The Void is Nothingness, yet it hungers, and actively seeks the end of all things," Sayoko continued. "Think of that contradiction, and of what it implies."
"Yeah, yeah, I know."
That Sayoko did not expect. "You do?"
"Sure," Naruto said calmly. "I mean, I'm kind of an idiot, but even I get it when I get enough hints. I mean, it got me thinking when we talked with the other Sayuri at the Memorial Stone…"
Sayoko's eyes grew widely. Yes, that Sayuri from another timeline had said it…!
Naruto grinned. "The rest I got from watching Yuriyo. So, I've got the Void pretty much figured out."
Sayoko smiled at the boy's unnatural confidence. "So, you think you can counter it?"
"Ni-shi-shi~" Naruto chuckled mischievously. "Don't you know, Sayoko-san? There's nothing in this world Sayuri can't burn!"
"Yup!"
With that said, Sayoko placed her attention of Shinkirou Kougon, who had seemingly used the time to restore his utter calmness and his complete lack of expression. Kougon's tremendous presence still permeated the entire place, but none of the present would be subjected to its pressure.
"I had expected you to attempt to reeducate Fubuki, Kurosaki Sayoko."
"She will not learn anything more from me," Sayoko sadly admitted. "But there are a thing or two she can learn from Uzumaki Naruto and Higashiyama Sayuri-sama."
"So, you intend to educate me instead?"
"Hmm…" Sayoko's smile retained its usual, natural placidity. "I think complete and utter defeat will be enough of a lesson for you. It is something everybody experiences at one point; it is about time you stop being the exception, Bodhisattva of Shinkirou."
"You know the plan; right, Sayuri?"
"Um!"
"Just burn it the moment she throws something at us."
While Naruto showed himself to be acting natural and collected, the nine tails of flame betrayed his edgy nature by twitching and jerking nervously with the slightest sound and movement.
"Weapon of the Soul," Fubuki pointed out the obvious. "A nine-tails should not debase herself to that level."
"Don't ramble about things you haven't even tried out," Naruto retorted, and immediately paused to grimace. "Yes, I know this makes me a hypocrite for complaining every time somebody says or does something perverted. Bite me. But really, what do you know? Sayuri, how's it feel in there?"
"Aweshum! Evwythin's, like, whoosh! And fire! And warm! It's the best!"
"See? She said it's 'aweshum'."
Seizing the initiative was impossible: Naruto had no doubts about who was the strongest, fastest and smartest of the two. He had one single plan on which the foundation of his entire assault relied. If it worked, he would have an opening for a decisive blow—or so he hoped. If it failed, well, he would be dead. Or annihilated, whatever.
At the moment, there was no difference between Higashiyama Sayuri and Uzumaki Naruto. He was effectively a 'Kyuubi'. Thus, he would rely in his newly acquired 'Kyuubi-level' reaction speed.
"Do you honestly believe that flame can harm me?" Fubuki stated, gesturing towards the twitchy tails of flame growing out of the small of Naruto's back. Void-stuff swirled out of her shadow, like ribbons of darkness manipulated by an invisible gymnast. "They will be devoured, just like everything else."
Naruto chuckled, doing his very best not to sound nervous. His body, however, was poised to leap at any time.
"Well, we can give it a try and see what happens."
Fubuki gave no warning. The ribbons of darkness shot towards Naruto, aiming to dice him to pieces before swallowing him and Sayuri into Oblivion.
They were set on fire.
And they stopped.
The Void spears were still there, unharmed by Sayuri's flame, for how could even the Flame of Destruction destroy nothingness? So, yes, Sayuri's flame did in no way diminish Fubuki's attack. It simply stopped it, for a reason the Void Kyuubi could not understand at first glance.
"Wha—"
"Kokonoe…"
It was not the time to provide Fubuki with a detailed explanation of why her attack had failed to work.
"…Maiyouko."
She saw only nine flashes of red and orange flame before being consumed by the same number of explosions, as Naruto's fiery form dashed past the black nine-tails while unleashing his technique: Ninefold Dancing Spirit Fox.
"Waaaaaaaaai!"
Wiggle, wiggle.
Fire and shockwaves rocked the uneven ground of devastated Konoha—the location Konohagakure had stood—, wrecking the geography and sending rocks and trees flying before the flames consumed them. After the dash, Naruto turned around and slammed both hands and feet on the ground, sliding until the friction broke his momentum.
"Fire!" He yelled, just in time to intercept the spears of Voidstuff shot from within the raised smoke and dust. Just like before, they stopped in the air the moment the flames touched them.
"Onii-chan's shadow!"
"Burn it!"
Naruto's shadow had been replaced by an abnormally dark circle under his feet. The boy did not even know when Fubuki did it, but he just willed it to combust. After that the very flames that concealed Fubuki's form were set on fire as well. Countless bubbles of high-density chakra burst out of the fiery tails, freezing in midair before starting to coalesce on the place the tips of those same tails met in front of Naruto.
"We're going all out, Sayuri!"
"Waaaaai!"
Naruto's high-power bombardment plan was interrupted by the swirling sphere of pure nothingness that emerged from within the smoke and flames, devouring them all and almost swallowing the young shinobi. The sphere grew the good part of fifty meters in less than two seconds, obliterating everything within that volume.
"Guh!" Naruto grunted, forcing chakra to his feet to resist the pull of the vacuum created when the Void sphere receded. Fubuki stood at the bottom of a crater; a perfectly smooth bowl carved into the ground by her Void release. Unharmed, the Queen of Oblivion glanced up at Naruto with cold hate in her eyes.
"Tell me, boy," she spoke just as coldly. "How are you doing that?"
Naruto could not read her face enough to realize she was only looking for confirmation of what she already knew. It had been clear the moment the Whispers in her head were silenced.
"Like I'd just go and tell you, idiot!" He shouted back. "Really, it should be obvious. There's only one thing that Void of yours can do."
To annihilate. To erase from existence. The Void, the absence of concept, can only impose that condition on everything it interacts with. It is perfect for it can only annihilate completely. Thus, it is also perfectly static, perfectly lifeless and perfectly uncaring. Something else must thus drive it to move, something so hollow, profane, alien and twisted it can move the perfectly static, point it towards everything else and drive it to actively reach to consume the world.
Whatever that something is, Sayuri's flame can burn it.
So, Naruto could stop her attacks from reaching him, but she could just as easily erase his attacks from existence with a static defense like Aegis, like she had done just before.
"It's a stalemate—"
Naruto had to engulf himself in flames to stop the Void-coated black tail descending on his back like a hammer. The tail stopped before it could catch flames, allowing Naruto to leap away desperately.
When did she move!?
"Onii—!"
Again, self-immolation as a means of defense. Naruto could not follow her with his eyes; it was only the honed instincts of human and youkai working together that urged him to set himself on fire to protect his body from attacks he could not keep up with. He could not see her, but he could feel her breath on his neck no matter where he moved to. Anybody watching him would see a boy leaping around desperately, while Fubuki chased him without taking a single step.
Naruto realized it was not high-speed like Shunshin, or some weird space-time thing like his Banshou Tanho.
"She is a Void Kitsune, Naruto-sama," the familiar voice of Kurosaki Sayoko echoed in the depths of his mind. "And her Void can only annihilate."
"So, onii-chan, the bwack mweanie is…umm…"
"She's…annihilating the distance between us?"
A distance away from the battle to which speed no longer applied, Sayoko allowed herself the slightest of smiles. She looked down at her opponent.
"That boy…is developing the right mindset. Fubuki could really learn from him. However…"
Naruto allowed himself to steal a little glance at Sayoko's and Kougon's fight…and froze lamely on the stop.
"When the hell did that happe—wah!"
"Tch." Fubuki clicked her tongue upon meeting with failure one more time. However, she too was stunned into stillness when she glanced in the same direction.
Sayoko looking down had nothing to do with a difference in body height.
"When…when did she…?" Fubuki mumbled pointlessly.
Shinkirou Kougon lay on the punished ground. He looked unharmed by all means, but his body made no movement, and his face carried the expression of a man defeated. He simply lay there, unmoving, and exhausted beyond reason after only mere seconds.
"…Kougon?" A person unfamiliar with Fubuki would think she was worried. "How…?"
"At his current level, it was a waste of time to waste words on this…engagement," Sayoko calmly declared, and her lazy tone managed to somehow not sound arrogant. It sounded like there had not been a fight in the first place, and those were precisely Kougon's next words.
"There was…not even a…"
This was not some sort of shounen manga metaphor to compare power levels. Kougon's words were literal: a fight never took place.
The Celestial Kyuubi reproduced the events in his mind. One moment, he was standing before Sayoko, his chakra poised to unleash his Kouton Jutsu on the ancient Void user. The next, he was laying there, incapable of even thinking of doing anything else.
He was defeated.
"What…what did you do…?" Fubuki whispered, before quickly raising her voice to alarming levels. "What did you do!?"
Sayoko minded not the words, and instead pointed to Fubuki's right.
"Kokonoe Maiyouko!"
Sayoko's Aegis protected her and Kougon from the barrage of explosions that swallowed Fubuki one more time. With a swipe of her hand, the dust raised by the attack was dispersed around them, and Sayoko returned her attention to her fallen opponent.
"He has to finish it before Fubuki stops underestimating him," she said, casually sitting down next to Kougon's unmoving form.
"You…honestly believe he can defeat her."
Sayoko made a second gesture and Kougon found himself painlessly pinned to the ground by stakes of Void. The fact he was not being destroyed by the black tools puzzled him, and for once it showed on his face.
"A safety measure."
Sayoko did not bother explaining that the Void stakes annihilated the flow in Kougon's chakra pathways. The chakra inside his body had become as hopelessly still as his anatomy on the ground.
She then looked at some place in the sky over fifty meters away, where Naruto's chakra tails were being swallowed by Fubuki's impenetrable Aegis. Either had yet to inflict harm on the other.
"There are a number of ways he could do it despite Fubuki being superior to him in every way, just like there were a number of ways I could have defeated you. I am more interested in witnessing which one he has figured out," Sayoko pondered. "But he will have to create an opening…"
Kougon slowly turned his head in the direction of the other battle, but he found out he just did not care that much anymore.
"What…did you do to me?"
"To you, nothing," Sayoko said. "I simply annihilated the probability of you defeating me."
She quickly covered her mouth to stifle a yawn.
"…my apologies."
Kougon's eyes quivered.
"Wha…?"
"We now live in a world where Kurosaki Sayoko cannot be defeated by Shinkirou Kougon."
Her shoulders slumped forward. Then again, she always looked a bit tired.
"Do not be mistaken; this is much more difficult than I make it seem. It is worth the effort, however."
Kougon's eyes for once reflected his thoughts and feelings. It was a welcome change to Sayoko.
"You…you cannot…you cannot do that…"
They remained in silence for several seconds, letting their irises speak for them while fire and nothingness collided and swallowed each other all over the place.
Several thousand tendrils of Voidstuff lunged from Fubuki's shadow like a swollen maw out to swallow the world. Naruto's beastly roar unleashed a torrent of the whitest flame, which became a wall which halted the advancing darkness. Nine fiery tails lashed out at Fubuki, only to be consumed by the utmost blackness of her spherical Aegis. The Void Kyuubi was already gritting her teeth with impatience: she was fighting a human; she should not be taking this long. However…
"Aaaah, this is annoying!" She roared, and her shadow swelled to paint the sky black. For a moment, Naruto feared everything from the distant horizon upwards would become the same color, and his heart shriveled in primal fear of the dark. However, he had to fight. He had to stop her.
A pillar of flames spread wider than the Emissary of Oblivion and stretched upwards into the darkening sky. Naruto held his hands together and his arms raised high, as if the pillar of flames were a sword he wielded.
"Okuzankuusou!" Fubuki conjured A Hundred Million Decapitating Void Spears, wildly swinging her left arm in front of her as if to erase the disgusting thing in her sight.
"Tenmitasu Myoujouken!"
"Pwetty Swohd, yay!"
And when Naruto swung down his Sky-Filling Morning Star Sword (aka "Pretty Sword"), fire and Void met in the grandest clash this world had seen since the Second Shinobi War. The flames fell upon what trees remained like a tidal wave, and Sayoko had to spread her Void barrier to protect Kougon who could not use his chakra.
"My, how wasteful," Sayoko commented. "He needs to take the decisive step before Fubuki does."
"Why…do you not help him…?" Kougon wondered. "With your powers, you could…"
"End this immediately," Sayoko completed. "Perhaps. But that would be the repetition of the tragedy of my clan."
A sad, bitter smile framed Sayoko's small face, made all the bitterer by her dull eyes.
"What do you think happens when an entire clan of kitsune worships a god-like, all powerful mother, who can apparently do everything and solve every problem all by herself?"
That was when a huge portion of the sky became the deepest black.
"Muu…Sayuri can't set her tails on fire…"
Naruto leapt like a frightened cat, avoiding a new swarm of Void ribbons eager to slice him to pieces. Where they advanced, crisscrossing the air and the dense forests surrounding the perimeter of Konoha, everything ceased to be. Great gashes of absence of life and matter scarred the forests of Fire Country in Fubuki's unrelenting chase, as trees, rocks and wildlife were effortlessly erased from existence.
Naruto's clawed hands swiped the air, creating huge gashes of flame that seemed to split the sky, which met an ignoble end against Fubuki's Aegis.
"Nah, that would be too easy; it's gotta be a direct hit—!"
He urged his legs to move, getting away at the same time Fubuki annihilated the distance between them and unleashed her Aegis at close range. Naruto moved over a hundred meters in the blink of an eye, barely enough to avoid being swallowed by the colossal sphere of black nothingness that obscured Fubuki's form. The purest Void without aim or purpose, expanding in the ideal volume; there was nothing Naruto's and Sayuri's flame of Destruction could do about it.
Outside the sphere, Naruto drove chakra to his flaming tails.
"We're welcoming her with a big boom the moment the sphere is gone, Sayuri!"
"Pwetty Beam!"
"Nope, something different!"
Flames swirled from and around the nine tails, but they were but a child's toy until the dancing flame inside the Killing Stone began to pour out through the crystal and mix with the growing conflagration. Ordinary flames became conceptual flames, Destruction made manifest.
Naruto sighed lengthily. With those white flames he had poured out a fraction of his soul. The more he wielded the white flames, the less of himself that remained.
The moment the Aegis ceased to not-be, Naruto released a gigantic white fireball, almost as large as the sand tanuki he fought earlier.
"Reisei Daiendan!"
The Spiritual Sacrifice Great Flame Bullet is a terrifying technique. As Destruction made manifest, it burns not only through matter, but through chakra as well. No physical or supernatural barrier could possibly stop it. Upon contact with flesh, it would predate the poor victim's chakra pathways like acid and poison at the same time it turned flesh into ashes and blood into steam.
This was what Fubuki witnessed the moment she dismissed her Aegis, standing alone amidst the land she had rendered barren.
"Stop."
Twenty meters away from her, the colossal ball of white flame became a colossal ball of ice: the atmosphere itself, frozen due to the annihilation of molecular motion.
"Huh," Naruto said. "Should've seen that coming."
He is saying that more and more often, isn't he?
Dodging was not an option when an invisible force threw the immense ball of ice towards Naruto, thus the young human clenched his right fist and met the crystalline meteor with a war cry and a punch clad in flames.
"Onii-chan Punch!"
The quasi-spherical iceberg exploded in a burst of white steam that clouded Naruto from all sight. However, that same cloud of steam and rapidly melting ice shards became nothingness, for Fubuki closed the distanced to the boy in a split instant, standing before his defiant form with hands and tails coated in black flames. Naruto roared, but his right hand clad in the white flame of Destruction was intercepted by Fubuki's own, and the black Void Fire began to consume Sayuri's white flame.
"You cannot hurt me," the Void Kyuubi declared.
Even Sayuri's flame succumbed to Oblivion. However, as long as the flame of Destruction could eradicate the "hunger" that drove the Void to attack, Fubuki could not direct her jutsu to exterminate him. On the other hand, she could use undirected, omnidirectional Void releases: not truly attacking, simply manifesting the Void upon reality and having it annihilate whatever happened to stand in the way.
However, if it was truly a "spontaneous" release, driven by no "attacking will", just what stopped that Void Fire engulfing Fubuki's arms from devouring Fubuki herself?
Naruto grinned.
"Won't stop me from trying~"
They attacked simultaneously.
Kurosaki Sayoko slowly tilted her head up and down in silent approval of the final clash.
"See? The boy won."
Kougon frowned, unable to understand how what he was seeing spelled Uzumaki Naruto's victory.
Sayoko, however, simply looked at the sky, high above Fubuki's head.
"He might not be the best ninja out there…but he would make a fantastic Void Kitsune."
In the end, it was the oldest trick in the book that defeated Kuromiya Fubuki. She had watched the Chuunin Exam finals from within Higashiyama Yurine's shadow, but in these circumstances that could not help her.
Naruto had been thorough.
Her startled dark eyes blinked a few times as she struggled to understand the petite cloud of unnaturally white smoke in front of her; the result of her Void Fire engulfing the human child which, until a moment ago, was attacking her with hopeless defiance.
But, you see, human children do not explode in clouds of unnaturally white smoke.
"What in the gods—"
"Hanko!"
For a moment, when Naruto destroyed the giant block of ice, he was completely hidden from view. However, that should not have been enough: the Void hungers for the annihilation of all things—even without the driving will of a Void user, the source of the Whispers can also "push" the blind Void towards the things of Reality. It is the basis of Kuuton jutsu that allow the detection of living beings, as mentioned before.
Fubuki should have detected the presence of a second Naruto, even if she could not see him. What she did not understand was that Sayuri's white flame could truly destroy everything. Even things like the alien "hunger" that drives the Void to attack the living.
Even things like Uzumaki Naruto's "presence".
Sayuri was trembling in utter confusion inside Naruto's body because, at the moment, the only Naruto in existence was the clone Fubuki had just destroyed, and thus she did not know who this person identical to her onii-chan was, why he was wielding her as a Weapon of the Soul instead of her onii-chan, or why her chakra responded so naturally to him. Most unfortunately, in the midst of battle Naruto had no chance to explain to her just what the consequences of his plan would be. It is likely he did not understand them himself; he is but a child, after all.
This only lasted an instant, however; the world has a way to correct humanity's messes. Uzumaki Naruto was there, in the world, and thus he carried a "presence".
And Fubuki looked up in alarm because the Uzumaki Naruto which had ceased to exist just a moment before was suddenly very alive and existing and freefalling just over her head…
"How did you—!?" Her mind kicked her into action. "Ae—"
But she caught sight of his fearless smile, and the principle of her defeat clicked in her intelligent brain.
"The rest I got from watching Yuriyo. So, I've got the Void pretty much figured out."
The Trial of the Void! Yuriyo's "will" overcame the lure of the one who Whispers and thus stopped Oblivion from claiming her!
If that white flame can also burn that "will", then not even Aegis is safe—!
"KUBIKIRI!"
The nine fiery tails became a white, blazing guillotine, splitting both the afternoon sky and Kuromiya Fubuki's magnificent black tails, right at the base.
Fubuki screamed. Naruto fell to his knees just two steps away.
"I will tell you why you lost, Fubuki, Kougon," Sayoko spoke, sadly and calmly.
Fubuki screamed as the white flames ate at her chakra, her Void fire flickering briefly and pathetically, too feeble to consume the white fire.
"You lost because you have barricaded yourselves behind fallacies and contented yourselves with what you were given," Sayoko continued. "Am I supposed to be impressed by how many Void spears and light beams you can fire at the same time?"
It was hard to believe Fubuki was listening. She groaned and cried and moaned, and she glared at the boy who had fallen prone on the ground while panting heavily. Both the nine tails of flame and the blazing coat embracing his body were weakening and on the verge of disappearing.
Naruto's soul was burning out.
"Higashiyama Sayuri-sama is a Kyuubi. It was a Kyuubi you were fighting, Fubuki. You lost because you stuck to the physical, while Naruto-sama and Sayuri-sama entered the realm of the conceptual."
Sayoko looked down at the fallen Kougon.
"You too, Kougon. You, the Bodhisattva of Shinkirou, should be the one creature in this world my jutsu should not have worked on."
And Nue, but that's beside the point.
"If I can annihilate the probability of you defeating me, recreating that probability should be within your capabilities."
Despite its name, Naruto's Rebellious Fox Beheading did not involve any severed heads. What Naruto struck with his guillotine of white flame was something deeper and intangible.
"Guuuuh…! Aaaargh!" Fubuki growled and howled like a desperate beast, but her eyes caught sight of the boy who had struck her so deeply. Even as her rage and hatred reached a boiling point, she could feel something, a part of her she had taken for granted all this time, fading away into ashes of ashes.
She felt so weak…
"For thousands of years, the lives of all kitsune have been ruled by fallacy and contentedness; it just so happens that the ignorance you and all kitsune share works in your favor."
Sayoko shook her head.
Fubuki glared at the boy, Naruto. The muscles of his back swayed upwards and downwards with his heavy breathing; it appeared the last attack took everything from him. With a briefly blinding gasp of white light, human and youkai separated, leaving the ever-nude little nine-tails kneeling at the boy's side.
"Mugyuu?"
Beastly, guttural sounds were all that escaped Fubuki's throat by that point. Eyes injected with blood glared at the barely conscious boy who could not even turn his body face-upwards to see how despised he was.
"You…what…what did you do to me…?" Fubuki spoke throatily. Slowly, black fire gathered over her right hand…and faded. All capability for movement had been sealed as well.
"Guh…!" Fubuki grunted, and it was only her posture which allowed her to notice the small band of blackness attached to her own shadow.
"Kage…Shibari no Jutsu…"
"The latest generation is calling it Kage Mane," Sayoko pointed out while briefly glancing at her shadow bound to the Void Kyuubi's—normally an impossible feat, made possible by the Flame of Destruction eating so much of Fubuki's chakra.
"I think I like it better. Now, will you listen properly? You should know I am normally not so…vocal."
"Onii-chan…? Hey, onii-chan? You okay? Did Sayuri burn too much…?"
Sayoko also knew Sayuri well enough to know she would not pay attention at the moment. Fortunately, she was the one person there who did not really need to be educated.
"Uzumaki Naruto-sama, Shinkirou Kougon-kun, Kuromiya Fubuki…all the human and youkai I sent to my Shrine Realm and may be watching this from there, and those who may be watching these events through their scrying techniques. Listen to me, Kurosaki Sayoko, and listen well."
Sayoko walked backwards, moving thus away from the fallen Kougon and the captured Fubuki.
"All this time, kitsune have built their society under the assumption that the number of their tails defines their individual greatness. That is wrong."
Sayoko's eight perfectly black tails swayed at her will.
"An increase in spiritual energy is a natural consequence of aging healthily; kitsune are in no way special by gaining more chakra as they become older. The one and only advantage of more tails is the increased potential for dexterous control of larger amounts of chakra, as is to be expected from gaining a whole new, highly-developed circulatory system every hundred years. Is that not the reason kitsune have to relearn chakra control every time we gain a new tail?"
The oldest Void kitsune caressed one of her tails with her left hand while the right one accompanied her speech with gestures.
"The gift a Kyuubi receives from Inari-sama in his kindness and affection for you: the 'Pinnacle of Systematic Mastery'…when did Inari-sama ever state that this is the only way to achieve that power? Where in the Codex of the Void does 'SaSa' write you need a certain number of tails to reach whatever level of Mastery over the Void? Why would gaining a ninth tail suddenly unlock the mysteries of the Four Aeons?"
Sayoko shook her head again, like the very words caused her exasperation. While Kougon watched and listened quietly and attentively, Fubuki crudely scratched her skin with her own nails until blood was drawn, as if somehow a new source of pain could dispel the first. Her legs wanted to give out, but Sayoko's Kage Mane held her in a standing position.
The eight-tails looked down on Fubuki.
"I hoped it would be you, Fubuki. I hoped it would be you who stepped into the Void and claimed the Aeon of Nothingness for yourself. But you have complacently lived gazing into the Mouth of Oblivion, letting it taint you."
She then glanced at Sayuri, who was carefully turning Naruto's body so that he faced upwards. For a moment, his eyes met Sayoko's, and she knew he was listening, even if he probably could not make sense of her words.
"Sayuri-sama needs no guidance. She has internalized Destruction to a greater level than I have Nothingness. I dare say she would have reached Kakuton before her third tail, even without Inari-sama's gift. What she will become from now on is anyone's guess."
Sayoko looked up at the sky, now tinged with yellows and oranges as the sun descended to the distant horizon.
"The strongest youkai who has lived in this world achieved the pinnacle of her power at the age of two-hundred and sixteen." The remembrance brought a smile to Sayoko's face. "She was…bright beyond compare: undaunted, unflinching, unshakable, utterly unstoppable. Undefeated in battle…and so, so…so bright…"
Sayoko's shoulders trembled. What could those watching and listening to her make out of that?
"Yuria-sama has taken the first step, but walking the road towards that person will take more than a few years."
To finish her round, Sayoko centered her eyes on Shinkirou Kougon.
"And then, there's Creation. Among all kitsune, the only one with the potential is you, Shinkirou Kougon-kun. If only you will reach for it. Otherwise some celestial or some dragon will claim it. But you just do not understand, do you?"
Her eyes caught Naruto, who had finally succumbed to the lull of unconsciousness. Sayuri cuddled next to him, seemingly no longer caring about the other two Kyuubi. Sayoko nodded, both to the brave boy and to herself.
"I am the only one left standing. I believe that leaves the decision of what to do with you on my ancient hands."
"What…did they…!?" Fubuki managed to gasp out, her twitching hands vaguely pointing in Naruto's direction. "What did they…do to me…!?"
"They Destroyed the…'connection' to the Void—no, the connection to He Who Whispers. You probably took it for granted, and you would be right of thinking of it as your genetic birthright, but it is also something that must be nurtured, and developed, and your tails have nothing to do with it. Right now, Higashiyama Yuriyo-sama is closer to the Void than you are. You exist at the level of the shadow-users of Konoha."
"Guh…!" That was a harsh insult to Fubuki, so proud of her power over the annihilation of all things.
"Do not fret, Fubuki," Sayoko said in something like a comforting voice. "You simply need to retrain. Allow me to help you."
What followed was a dizzying succession of hand seals, at the same time Sayoko's tails speared the ground and her shadow morphed itself into an arcane arrangement of curves underneath Fubuki and Kougon.
"If you wish to regain what you have lost, or perhaps gain something else, you must go to the source," Sayoko explained while tendrils of Void-stuff poured out of the black array, slowly merging into a rising dome. Fubuki's horrified gasp could be vaguely seen before her form was concealed by the darkness.
"You can't—" Fubuki's last words before even her voice was swallowed by the black hemisphere.
"The Labyrinth will be your instructor this time. I pray you learn from it what neither I nor your families could teach you, chosen of Inari."
Of course, the two banished Kyuubi could not hear her words anymore, and when the dome imploded upon itself, it revealed only empty space in its passing.
Alone in the realm of consciousness, she looked fondly upon the unconscious boy and the sleeping foxgirl, pressed against his body and clutching his side as if it were the most precious thing in the world.
"How enviable."
But Sayoko still had one last thing to do before she could rest like those two.
"Kuuton Kuchiyose."
Like a sunken city rising from the depths, the Village Hidden among the Leaves, no longer consumed by flames, emerged from a vast pool of darkness which spread across the village's surface. Ruined buildings aplenty and metric tons of rubble crafted the scenery of an urban battlefield after hours of chaos. And among them, shinobi and civilians, all equally confused, all equally blinded by the sudden return from the dark realm they had been sent to. They were confused, but alive and well. It was time to gather the bodies of the dead, clear out the rubble and then build from what remained.
The confusion would hopefully be dispelled by their leaders. And it was they who stood a dozen or so meters from Sayoko, Naruto and Sayuri. It was not only the Third Hokage and Jiraiya. People from the main clans, the Hokage's advisors and Shimura Danzou were also present.
Aside from the Konoha group stood most of the main family of the Great Spirit Clan of Higashiyama. Yurimi, Yurina and Yurine were kneeling around the unconscious Yuriko, while the others stood tall and awfully still, staring at Sayoko with expressions not much different from those seen on the humans' faces. Sayoko noted the distance between the two groups; it was likely the forceful summoning to a place as gloomy as her Shrine Realm drove a wedge of mistrust between the humans and the youkai.
As for the expressions on their faces, well, it is both human and youkai nature to fear the unknown. Sayoko was sure they had watched the fight through the scrying pool in her Shrine Realm, and the things they likely saw in that place only furthered their wariness around her. It was not hard to guess the questions in their minds.
How powerful is Kurosaki Sayoko, really?
And perhaps more importantly, how old is Kurosaki Sayoko, really?
Hence, when faced by the awe, distrust and fear of both youkai and humans, Kurosaki Sayoko did the most Sayoko-like thing she could do.
"Fumyaaa~"
She yawned. Loudly, and most open-mouthedly.
"Hauuuuu…" She then moaned to express her tiredness. After all, she had overcome an over-64000-layered Celestial-Void barrier jutsu, neutralized a wide-area Kuuton technique, reverse-summoned away an entire village and its population, defeated a nine-tailed kitsune and then summoned back the aforementioned village and population while smothering whatever structural fire which remained present.
It was a lot of work.
"Sa…Sayoko-san…?" Yuri inquired lamely when the purple-wearing Void kitsune groggily closed the distance between them. When Sayoko planted her hands on Yuri's shoulders, the taller fox-woman dropped to her knees like she could no longer bear with her own weight. Sayoko quickly followed, cuddling up to Yui's lower half and resting her head on the silver youkai's generous thighs.
"Fumyaa~"
And with one last yawn, the greatest Void kitsune to ever live abandoned herself to a most pleasant sleep, for there are few hypnotics as effective as the satisfaction from a job well done. Others could claim the stage and the spotlight now; she had returned to the place she truly belonged to.
Yuri's comfortable lap, that is.
CHAPTER 22 – END
