A/N:

50 chapters!


Chapter 50


Three days to get back to Konoha after Kiri, one day to prepare for Amerigo, eight days for the Amerigo trip, and another day to prepare for and fight Arjuna. As Hibiki woke up the day following his fight, and did the math in his head, he suddenly realized just how close he had come to missing his meet-up with Katsuo. The Senju heir slowly lifted himself out of his bed, shaking his head and wiping the sleep out of his eyes. The Senju heir had woken up well before the sun today, to the point that it was still pitch black and lit only by the moon and the stars. The ten year old, formerly displaced man got a wave of nostalgia as his eyes fought against his orders to open, and for five minutes, as he fought tooth and nail and struggled to get out of bed so early, he felt as if he were back in college, or, even better, in the fire station, at the ass-end of a twenty-four hour, the perfect time for someone to stub their toe and demand a trip to Regional.

Hibiki shook his head twice to clear the fog from it, and pushed himself to his feet, channeling a bit of chakra into his eyes, so as to switch on his Sharingan and jump-start his night vision. The three-tomoed spheres of red and black cut through the darkness like a knife, and he got slowly looked around his dark room, the walls laden with the drawings he'd made some four or five years ago. With another shake of his head, Hibiki pushed himself to the closet and wrenched it open. Inside he grabbed his clothes for the day, throwing on the plain black shirt over his bare chest, and switching out his pajama pants for the beige cargos. Unfortunately for him, when he looked up to his coat racks, he found that they were all empty, and tilted his head, raising his finger and counting each rack.

"Kiri kidnap... Eglin... Kiri round two... Zetsu... And Arjuna, I'll be damned." He muttered, ticking off a finger with each memory, and coming to the conclusion that he, indeed, had managed to destroy his last coat. The thin things barely even did anything, functionally, he had mostly bought them because they had reminded him of the 'lucky jacket' that had gotten him through highschool and into college. The lucky jacket never died, it just looked differently from time to time.

Shaking his head, Hibiki decided he'd fix this problem later, and closed his closet, before he reached to his left and unhooked his headband from the banister of his bed. It made it halfway to his head before he paused, and lowered it, flipping it around so he could give the polished metal plate a look. This headband had seen a lot, but as he geared up for this unsanctioned, international trip into a country that Konoha and the other elemental nations routinely tore the hell apart, he slowly came to the decision that it probably wasn't wise to wear it, so he left it hanging on his bed again. Next came his weapons and scrolls pouches, which he fastened tightly to his pants.

Alright... Game plan. Thought Hibiki, as he stretched, spawned a shadow clone, and took a few quick breaths. Step one... Get out of the village. He thought, before he channeled his Flash chakra and, in the blink of an eye, had opened his window, hopped outside, shut the window, and sprinted to the village wall.

With the world still moving at a crawl, Hibiki leaped over the wall with a mighty jump, clearing it in one single, wide arc before he landed outside of the wall. The Kaguya camp was to his right, and the main road to his left, but Hibiki beat feet for the west, towards rain country. After several minutes, in which he covered hundreds of miles and was well outside of any potential trackers' range, he slowed down and allowed the world to speed up. Barely even winded as he jogged to a halt, Hibiki looked up to the roof of the forest, seeing the tiny slivers of pale white light carving through the spaces in between the leaves.

Step two... Thought Hibiki, as he patted down his scrolls pouch, and made double certain both books were still there. Get to Rain Country. But the question was, did he want to take the quick way and just run there, at the cost of more chakra? Or did he want to conserve chakra, fly there? Well, as he pulled out a map and gave it a look with his Sharingan eyes, Hibiki soon decided that the difference would be in a handful of minutes, so it really didn't matter.

Folding up the map and stowing it back in his pocket, Hibiki blasted off into the sky and started flying, staying close to the treeline so as to avoid visual detection. As he soared through the dark night sky, he started to once again consider just what would happen if Katsuo decided to go against the grain, to refuse his proof. While Hibiki had certainly added to his arsenal since their first fight, the only true thing he had, and he had mastered, was his flight technique. He was nowhere even close to mastering Ay's lightning armor, and he had barely even practiced with the Flash bloodline, which meant that both of those, while very powerful additions to his arsenal, weren't something he could rely on unless he had an excess of chakra to fuel them, and his healing factor, such that he could afford to potentially damage his body with whatever happened while using unmastered techniques. If Katsuo decided to pick a fight with him, Hibiki was, by and large, still where he was at back in Kiri.

Hibiki involuntarily shivered as the chilly morning air whipped at his bare arms, but he took the distraction where he could get it, and tore his thoughts away from what could go wrong, instead trying to focus on what could go right, and what he could do with it. Katsuo had, bare minimum, two super-powerful multi-bloodline shinobi on his side, and the implications were that he had enough to call a 'family'. If Hibiki could win Katsuo over with this stunt, that undead army would be his to use to track down and locate Zetsu and his enigmatic master, and would subsequently be his to use to fight the two of them. Given how hard to kill all of those he had encountered thus far had been, and how powerful Katsuo and Aojiroi had been in battle, there wasn't a chance in hell that Zetsu or his master could defeat them; and, god forbid, Zetsu possessed one of them, their combined might would be enough to incapacitate the possessed, and remove and kill the weakened Zetsu.

Hibiki knew he had crossed over into rain country when the air became more humid, and the endless ironwood forests yielded to a massive, barren wasteland. The ground was an endless expanse of muddy, scarred land, with a few patches of grass and small, unhealthily thin trees. Hibiki kept flying for several kilometers, before he slowed himself down by throwing both hands and feet in front of him. He lowered himself to the ground and landed with a light thud, his boots sinking an inch into the perpetually wet mud.

On habit, Hibiki tried to put his hands in the pockets of his coat, but given that he had none left, he instead shook his head, chuckled, and lowered them into his pants pockets. Now all he had to do was wait.

Good thing I brought a book. Thought Hibiki, as he found a nearby rock and used it as a chair to sit on. He pulled the ancient copy of Frankenstein out of his scrolls pocket, and opened it up.

The Senju heir spent several hours in the middle of a war-torn, humid, muddy wasteland, reading the classic by the moonlight. He had to adjust his position when he noticed he was casting a shadow over it, and as the moon started dipping down, he noticed that the ground was beginning to glow faintly with another light source. Instead of the sole, pale white of the moon and stars, there was green entering the mix.

Honey, I'm home. Thought Hibiki, as the glow grew brighter, to the point that he no longer even needed his Sharingan, or the moon, to read his book.

Two minutes later, and he heard the sound of rushing air, before it vanished with a small shockwave, and he heard a heavy 'thunk' hit the mud. Hibiki sighed once, and closed his book with a low slap, now having gone far beyond the point of no return. The Senju heir turned his head up to be greeted by the six foot tall Monster of Kirigakure. The man was garbed in a simple shirt and pants combo, his clothes loose-fitting, and colored a pure, almost holy shade of white, and his long, thick dark hair fell over his ears and his neck. The leathery, thickly scarred, and heavily muscled skin reflected the moonlight as the green fire died down, and the man's golden eyes made contact with Hibiki's red orbs. Hibiki stood to his feet, his dark clothing providing a contrast to Katsuo's bright garb. The two simply stared at each other, as the Senju heir stuffed his ancient book into his pouch.

"John." The hoarse, deep voice of the Monster spoke, cutting through the silence like a cannonblast.

The corner of Hibiki's mouth twitched, but he didn't bother to correct the man. "Katsuo." He said, "I hope I can trust you enough to believe you came alone..."

"Yeah." Katsuo nodded, the muscles in his neck bulging with the movement. "I hope I'm not speaking to a shadow clone." He added, with a pointed look.

Hibiki let this grin betray him, and shrugged. "I know how important this is, so I didn't bother with the party trick, this time." He said, with a light sigh.

Katsuo nodded again, and placed his hands in his pockets. "Aojiroi said you wanted to speak to me. Given how our last encounter ended, I was surprised. I didn't expect to ever meet you again unless it was on the battlefield."

Hibiki nodded, and, his hand still in his pouch, slowly pulled out the comic book, deciding it to be the better 'weapon' to use against the formerly displaced monster. "I didn't either... But then again, I never really expected to find out what happened." He said, "I have proof. That you're running a fool's errand."

Katsuo, however, vehemently shook his head. "I know what I'm doing will work, Johnny. You can't do it because you haven't had sage chakra for as long as I have, but I can read chakra sources. I can understand their histories, see what they've seen, and experience what they have." He explained, "nature-chakra changes forms and is too shifty to read with any accuracy beyond a few months - years if I'm lucky - but people are easier. If I get the tailed beasts, I'll be able to learn how to send us all home." He insisted.

The Senju heir sighed, "this is home, Katsuo." He said, "there is no other world, there is just this one."

Katsuo turned his head back to Hibiki, slowly crossing his arms as his golden eyes narrowed. "What do you mean?"

As a form of answer, Hibiki handed the paperback to Katsuo. "I went back to the land of the eagles, after we smashed Kiri." He explained, as Katsuo's eyes widened, upon seeing the unforgettable superhero on the cover. "Someone left a trail for me to follow. It was a soldier, who had died over a thousand years ago." Hibiki explained, as Katsuo, his hands shaking, took the book reverently, as if it were the most sacred thing in the world.

"Superman..." Katsuo whispered almost inaudibly, his jaw falling limp as he opened the book.

"His trail led me to a military bunker, designed to survive a nuclear war." Hibiki explained, "this bunker was the only one of its kind, the only one left. In it... Was a message. It was left by the President of the United States." He said, the burly sage in front of him absorbing every word, as he fell onto his rump and flipped through the comic, his golden eyes as wide as dinner plates. "This world... Katsuo, it isn't one separate from ours. We aren't in another universe. This is our world... It's our home." Hibiki said, a frown settling upon his face as he watched the monster before him flip through the book like an excited, but sorrowful child. "It is mathematically impossible for someone to cross universes and somehow end up in a world exactly the same as their own. The man that made us... Kenichi... He pulled our souls from the afterlife, and interrupted our eternal sleep. We slept for over a thousand years... This isn't just our world, Katsuo, it's our future." Hibiki bit his lip, but knew he had to press the point home, the only way to bring Katsuo in would be to leave him in the same state Hibiki had been in under the mountain, because then, all it would take would be one push, and Katsuo would be much more receptive to joining him. "It was a war, Katsuo. The mother of the Sage of Six Paths gained her power by ingesting the fruit of an... Alien... Tree." It sounded ridiculous to say it out loud, but he pushed on. "Bad people tried to capture her, and experiment on her. She lashed out against these people, and decided to use her power to destroy the world on which she lived. Her first target, and the target of the worst of her wrath, was Japan. She destroyed the country in just one day, and turned it into the elemental nations we have today. After that she raised an army of chakra zombies." He explained, "and used them to systematically wipe out each and every single country in the world... She killed everyone, until the world sent its entire military to the US as a part of a last stand.

"It worked, but not how they expected. Her children, the Sage of Six Paths and his brother, rebelled against her and fought with the Terrans - the... Humans." He explained, as he saw Katsuo lazily, miserably, flip through the book. "She transformed into the ten tailed beast - the Jubi... The beast that spawned all of the other, nine, tailed beasts, that we have today." It all flowed through Hibiki's mouth almost naturally, as if he'd told the story a thousand times, though to him, it made sense: It was probably the most important story he'd ever heard. He swallowed thickly, and continued on. "After they defeated the Jubi, split it into the nine tailed beasts, and sealed its body and their mother's on the moon, the Sage turned right around and continued her work."

Katsuo's head whipped up, and Hibiki saw the tears forming in his golden eyes. "But..." He stammered in their shared language, "the stories say he was the good guy..."

"He wasn't, Katsuo. He was an evil man... Who exterminated the rest of humanity while they were on the backfoot, barely even able to fight back. He took the remnants of his mother's Zetsu army and tore apart the remaining humans, taking whoever survived and..." Though this part was guesswork, he couldn't let Katsuo know that. "Turned them into what we have now. Shinobi." He said, "our world... It was destroyed, it's long gone. You and I are all that's left that even remember it. We are its living legacy." He sighed, masking his wavering voice; saying it out loud, even a week after learning the fact, still stung like an open wound. "There's nothing to go back to... It's gone."

Katsuo's jaw was visibly shaking, and tears were forming up around the edges of his eyes as his hoarse, shaking voice cut through the air. "No..." Hibiki heard the pain behind his voice, as he shook his head and flipped the page. "You're wrong..."

Hibiki pulled out Frankenstein, and set it on the ground in front of Katsuo. "You're holding an American icon in your hands, and I just set a classic piece of literature at your feet. If this weren't our world, then it should be mathematically impossible that these would exist."

Katsuo kept shaking his head, flipping through the book so fast that he clearly wasn't even skimming through it anymore. "No... You're lying, we can go back!" Katsuo blubbered, his tough, monstrous air shattered by his tears. "I can see my momma again, I can get my pop to tell me about how he helped sailors kill the Japs... Rina can go back and hunt with her mate... Borsya can see his lord again..." Katsuo turned his head up to look at Hibiki, "stop lying! Right now! We can go back!"

"There's nothing to go back to... Billy." Hibiki crouched down and reached eye level with Katsuo. "Chakra can do a lot of things... But it can't turn back time. We need to stop trying to return to the past, and instead focus on -" But as he placed his hand on Katsuo's shoulder, the world exploded in a deafening downpour of shrieks, cries, and howls.

Hibiki cried out and stumbled back, blood pouring out of his nose as he clenched his at his ears, while Katsuo screamed out in pain and tore at the sides of his head. They both screamed out in agony, as their ears were assaulted with the endless shrieks and cries of trillions of tortured souls. It almost felt as if they were trying to speak to them, but with the sheer volume and number of voices, it all bled together into a single unintelligible wail. The way the voices screamed, it felt to Hibiki as if they weren't trying to truly say anything specific, but just get his attention in the most gruesome, terrifying way possible. The pain built as did the despair and desperation of the tortured voices, as they tried in any way possible to get Hibiki to acknowledge them all, individually, personally. They were desperate, they would take anything, crying out for a casual mention, a sideward glance, a wave, a hand sign, a quick look, anything, anything! This time they would be heard!

Hibiki became numb to everything else as he pressed his hands to his ears, but the sounds weren't coming from the world around them, it felt as if they were all individually coming from within him, and even as he tried to shout and scream himself, to drown them out, it only added to the volume and did nothing to stop the pain. More blood poured out from the Senju's nose as now even his chest began to burn with a fiery intensity. It felt as if Hibiki's ears and chest were being torn off of his body, stretched to their absolute limit and left to rest there, screaming and burning in pain. Hibiki tried to clench his eyes shut, but that made everything worse, as it truly shut himself out from the world around him, casting him into an eternal darkness, deep and crushing, endless and aimless. Hibiki, without warning, slid forward several feet as a blast of air came from behind him, and something began vibrating in his chest, almost like the bass at a concert. He was deaf to whatever it was, though, the only things he heard were the trillions of damned, tortured souls as brief, fluttering visions played at the back of his eyelids. Pale, wispy, formless balls of light dancing just at the edge of his vision, and every time he tried to focus on them, they vanished with a poof.

This unending, deafening, burning pain went on for an eternity, before it began dying down. The shrieking still clawing at his ears, Hibiki was now barely able to hear the world outside of him, to hear his and Katsuo's anguished yells. Hibiki opened his eyes and saw he was pressing his face against a small puddle of blood-mixed vomit that he hadn't even realized he'd expelled. The Senju heir tried to get to his feet, but he barely even got to his knees, his entire body feeling as if it were a billion times heavier. He laboriously turned his head to the side, his hands still clenching both sides of it an in effort to physically press the trillions of barely fading voices out of it. The Senju heir saw the Monster getting to his feet, swaying back and forth as he took one unbalanced step forward, lifting a fist and pointing it at Hibiki.

"You... You lied to me!" Katsuo called out, barely audible over the tortured souls.

Hibiki barely shook his head, croaking out, "no..."

"You said -" Katsuo interrupted himself, falling to his knees, clenching either side of his head and shaking it like a rabid animal. "No... Attacks!"

Oh god! Hibiki tried to get to his feet, as he saw Katsuo push himself over to Hibiki and tackle the formerly displaced man to the ground.

"You!" Katsuo punched, nowhere near his strongest due to his and Hibiki's anguished state, but still strong enough to shatter the stone under Hibiki's head, and split his skin. "Lied!" Another punch, sending blood and spittle spraying everywhere as Hibiki's head whipped from side so side. "You just..." Katsuo paused as the voices overwhelmed him again, but still managed to continue hitting the defenseless Senju heir. "Wanted to kill me!" He hit Hibiki over and over, whipping the Senju's head from side to side. "This is the... Same attack... As last time!"

Desperately, Hibiki threw both of his hands forward, but his chakra was in flux because of all of the pain he was in, and he was barely even able to summon up the explosive force of a grenade, let alone the missile he needed to send Katsuo flying. Katsuo tanked the explosion with barely a scratch, and continued pounding on Hibiki, who lazily covered his face, though it did little.

"You lied!" Punch, punch, punch. "You lied!" Thunderclap, blood splatter, a pained croak, the sound of trillions upon trillions of anguished cries, realizing that the two were fighting eachother again, and not acknowledging them. "You lied!" The anguished cries grew in intensity, stunning the monster and causing the boy to fall limp, his onyx eyes glazing over and his face swelling up. Katsuo roared out in pain, and forced out more rapid, thunderous blows. "You lied!" More punches, "you lied!" The screams grew in intensity, and while it weakened his blows, it also fueled Katsuo's rage. "You lied!" Hibiki could barely even lift a hand he was in so much pain. "YOU LIED!" Katsuo howled in equal parts anguish and anger, as he forced himself to his feet, and hauled Hibiki into the air. "YOU LIED!" He slammed his meaty fist into Hibiki's stomach, then his chest, and then his face. "YOU..." Katsuo threw Hibiki into the air, "LIED!" And followed it up with a powerful uppercut, green flame bursting out in all directions as his power grew exponentially, and Hibiki was sent flying.

Katsuo intended to go after him, but the shrieks assaulted him again, causing his ears and eyes to bleed alongside his nose. He fell to his knees and clutched at his head, his eyes wide and crazy with rage and anguish.


Hundreds of kilometers away, Hibiki finally hit the top of his arc, and began curving downwards. The ground was blazing by beneath him so fast that it was a blur, and with the pain arcing through his body, he could barely even see it through the tears welling up in his eyes. Katsuo, even with his chakra in flux thanks to whatever the hell just happened, had managed to punch him hard enough to blast him through the air like a rocket, and break and shatter his dense, steel-like ribcage. Hibiki barked out in pain when he slammed into the ground and bounced upwards, but before he even got a chance to catch his breath and realize that his already broken ribs had been further damaged, the Senju Heir bounced up and smacked into the side of a building, carving an impressive crater into the building as he rebounded off of it and fell back to the ground.

With a cough and a gasp that sprayed blood all over the ground, Hibiki laboriously raised his head, trying to figure out where he had landed, when his face paled for reasons that did not coincide with bloodloss. He began to feel the rain as it pelted his body, and he saw the giant, towering buildings that surrounded him and filled the village in which he had landed. Hibiki cursed silently, and groaned audibly, as he forced himself to get to his feet, his healing abilities seeming to be out of wack, due to nothing in his increasingly sore body healing up. Hibiki got to his feet but stumbled to the side, leaning against the side of the building for support, as his ribs flared into pain again from the small thud.

"Fuck..." Groaned Hibiki, through his clenched jaw and tightened stomach. Gasping in pain, with both of his arms wrapped tightly around his chest, Hibiki stumbled forward several more steps and turned to the right, disappearing into an alley, praying the local shinobi wouldn't sense or find him, and that the heavy rain washed away his tracks. "Damn it..." The Senju heir gasped, as he stumbled forward and slipped on a pile of trash, nearly slamming onto the ground and further injuring his ribs.

Broke a few fucking ribs by getting punched... Thought Hibiki, as he continued forward, deeper into the alley, searching for a place to hide, or a pile of trash large enough to cover him so he could rest. Then I hit the ground, broke some more, and then a building, some more, and just for good measure, the ground again, to break the ones that had already been broken. He couldn't even call on his Sharingan, forcing him to squint his eyes to try and find something in the monsoon. What the hell even happened? Thought Hibiki, as he looked up to the deep, dark gray sky. He gulped thickly and saw two shinobi leap across the rooftops, but unless they were piss-poor sensors, Hibiki's own chakra being in a state of flux must have hidden him from their sensors.

He shook his ringing, throbbing head, and turned down another corner, deeper into the thick alleys. Gotta hide... Pray to god they don't find me. He could barely even feel his chakra, let alone call on it to try and Flash his way deeper into the village and away from his landing point. Alright... So, first time I heard the cries of the damned, it was when I was fighting him. Thought it was a technique he used, that backfired on him. Thought the Senju heir as he found a large pile of trash next to the backdoor and the trash can of a building. Then I heard them in Eglin, after I touched that white Zetsu... Then I felt it again when I touched Katsuo, but this time we weren't fighting. He tossed aside several trash bags and cleared out a spot in the center of the pile. Its smell, fortunately, had largely been muted by the constant rain. So... This thing, these cries... They're connected, somehow. Me and Katsuo... But I never felt it when fighting Black Zetsu... So what do me, a long-dead white Zetsu, and Katsuo have in common? He thought, as he reached forward and grabbed one of the trash bags he'd thrown and used it to cover him up. The Senju heir curled up in the fetal position and made himself as small as possible in the pile of trash in the middle of what was most assuredly the Village Hidden in the Rain. The white noise of rain droplets heavily beating the plastic bags did nothing to soothe Hibiki's mind.

We're all dead... Or... Undead? But did that mean the white Zetsu was still alive? Or still had a soul in it when I... Turned it into a tree? Hibiki clenched his eyes shut, shit... Okay, so it's clear that this only happens when I touch something that isn't dead, but undead, else I'd always be getting assaulted when I kill something. So... He swallowed thickly, his sensitive hearing picking up on the sounds of leaping and shouting ninjas. What are they? He asked himself, forcing himself to ignore the potential terror of being caught in a foreign village, as he felt constant dribbles of rainwater stream onto his body from between the cracks between the trash bags. It sounded like screaming... It can't have been souls, can it? He wondered, disbelievingly. Dead people? Other dead people? Then what the fuck does that mean? Katsuo, the other Kenichi experiments, and I are all... What, windows to the living world? Or is it only when we come into contact with eachother that we light up the darkness? He gulped, pressing his hand to the soul seal on his chest, above his heart. Does this have something to do with what Dai's beetles said? God... Fuck. He clenched his hand around his chest, his sopping wet shirt groaning under his grip. If this shit hadn't happened, I could've had Katsuo... I would have had him! I could have pooled everything I know, with everything he knows. I could've gotten Kenichi's notes from Tsunade and shown them to him... We could've figured this shit out, maybe even found Zetsu and his master... But now I'm stuck here in a rainy-ass village with a likely, and somewhat justified grudge against Konoha. He sighed deeply, feeling the sharp, biting pain in his head begin to flow away.

"God... Damn it..." He groaned.

Time seemed to blend together and gloss over until, either ten minutes or several hours after he curled up underneath a pile of trash, he heard a trio of voices approaching his general area. Hibiki's entire body still felt like it has been thrown into a vice and pushed through a cheese grater and an oven, and in addition to his sense of time being shot, his chakra was still in some sort of unholy state of flux, meaning none of his injuries, be they made by Katsuo or the cries of the damned, were healing.

"I see it, it is right over here." Came a teenaged voice, deep and loud enough to cut through Hibiki's throbbing, ringing ears, but light enough to seem timid, almost kind.

Hibiki groaned, and it took all of his concentration to pull the tiniest amount of chakra through his frayed coils, and with a light poof of smoke, the pistol he'd scavenged from NORAD appeared in his right hand. He gripped it tight, his hand shaking, but steady enough that he could aim and shoot, as the voices grew closer.

"It is as I have never seen before." Hibiki heard, as he heard multiple pairs of feet pass by his trash pile, but he knew what they were doing - deliberately walking past him to get him to lower his guard. He clenched his jaw heavily and lightly shifted the grip on his pistol until his palm pressed into the grip and his fingers clenched the slide. "Black chakra, it does not radiate, but merely rises and falls to the ground, as if it were a gas." Hibiki gripped the gun tightly, and managed to bring enough strength into it to rack the slide and chamber a round. He held the gun properly just as his pile of trash was blasted off of him.

Immediately Hibiki raised his gun, quickly obtaining his targets: A trio of rain shinobi, all garbed in thick robes, all staring at Hibiki. Silence ruled the alley, as the trio paused at the sight of the injured, ailing child, and the child threatened them with a weapon they did not recognize. The trio saw Hibiki, his face covered in rain-slicked blood and his entire body curled up in pain, his raven hair plastered against his head and his onyx eyes, behind the rage born of self preservation, glowed with pain and confusion. Hibiki, however, saw three threats, the tallest of the trio was a man with a gravity defying head of spiked orange hair, he had both of his hands up and pressed against his comrades in a halting manner, his dark brown eyes wide as they took in Hibiki's ailing form. To the man's right was the shortest of the trio, a woman with hair entirely too blue to be natural, and eyes so vibrantly orange that they momentarily distracted Hibiki from the origami flower tucked behind her ear, which seemed to be completely dry, despite the falling rain. To the orange haired man's left, however, was a man whose hair was as red as Kushina's, but it was his eyes that stole Hibiki's undivided attention. Even through the hair that covered half of his face, Hibiki could see both eyes, one uncovered and one from in between the sopping wet hair. They both were big and wide, a deep shade of purple, and filled with a rippling pattern, Hibiki recognized those eyes, and simply looking at them made his head throb and his ears ring enough for him to grimace, and nearly break eye contact with the trio. This man had the same eyes as Hagoromo Otsutsuki, he had a Rinnegan. This was Zetsu's master.

Oh... Fuck. Zetsu's caught up with me. Thought Hibiki, as he shifted the shaky aim of his gun to the Rinnegan wielder, who widened his eyes, and cast a brief glance Orange's way.

The center man shook his head, "he's hurt, Nagato." He said in a hushed tone, before turning his iron gaze to Hibiki. "Okay, kiddo... I need you to put that... Thing down. Please." He said, slowly bringing both hands in front of them, still held aloft in a non-threatening gesture. "We're... We're not going to hurt you." He shook his head firmly, after that brief moment of hesitation. Hibiki didn't buy that tripe, and he kept the gun on the one called Nagato, his face set in a firm frown. Orange seemed to notice the disdain in Hibiki's onyx orbs, and quickly looked back and forth between the two, before settling his eyes back on Hibiki. "I promise, we're not going to hurt you. We're not like the others..." He said calmly.

Hibiki swallowed thickly through his throat, his eyes wide and locked onto Nagato's, from behind the barrel of his gun. He couldn't pull the trigger - even if he managed to kill all three of them before they could attack and kill him, he couldn't just start firing off rounds in the middle of an enemy village, and expect to get away scot-free. The local shinobi would be on him like white on rice, and he wouldn't be able to hide this time, but nor could he allow these three to take him - Nagato had Hagaromo's eyes, and back in America, Zetsu mentioned he had a master. It would not be unwise to conclude that it was one of Hagaromo's descendants, and if that descendant had a pair of Rinnegan, that would give him immediate dominion over the oily black monster.

Now... If I had those... Hibiki groaned as his chest throbbed, and he forced himself to a sitting position, half of his face red from where it had been pressing into the ground. "I..." He grunted, his voice raspy and his throat dry. "Already told your beast no." He said, leaning against the side of the alley, as, in the distant, lightning flashed, and thunder filled the air.

Nagato narrowed his visible eye confusedly and opened his mouth, but on the other side of Orange, Blue spoke first. "He is injured, Yahiko." She said, placing her hand on the man's shoulder. "He is hallucinating."

Orange, now properly identified as Yahiko, nodded his affirmation. "Listen, kiddo... I don't know what problem you have with Nagato, but if you're the guy that came flying in and smashing apart those apartment buildings, then a lot of bad people are looking for you, and if they find you, a they'll do a lot of bad things to you."

Hibiki pressed his free shoulder into the side of the alley, and slowly hauled himself to his feet, before he pulled back the hammer on his gun. He was bluffing, and everyone present knew it, but he would pull that trigger if Nagato so much as blinked in his general direction. "And I don't like your buddy's eyes." He rasped after another distant bolt of lightning and clap of thunder, desperately trying to think of some way out of all of this that wouldn't kill him. "I'm not supposed to be here. I wasn't planning on being here. I'm not here with any ill intent. So here's what's going to happen. I'm going to leave. I'm going to walk away, right now -" He pointed the gun at Nagato, "I know you know what this is. If you... Any of you... Take one step, I will not hesitate. I already told Zetsu no..." He clenched his jaw as he fought off another wave of pain, "I... Just need to leave." He didn't want to fight the Sage's grandkid, but he would if he had to.

Yahiko kept his hands held aloft placatively, "listen, I -" But he made the mistake, and took a step forward.

Adrenaline flooded Hibiki's system as he swung his gun to bear, his gut clenched and his eyes grew wide as, in that split second, everyone realized that the mistake had been made, that Hibiki wasn't bluffing. In slow motion, Yahiko halted himself and tried to step backwards, waving his hands in front of him as he tried to appease the Senju heir, but Hibiki wasn't listening - he couldn't take any chances. If this guy had really wanted to help, he wouldn't have taken the risk. As Hibiki squeezed the trigger, Nagato's hand slowly shot up as his eyes flashed a bright purple, just as Blue's narrowed and she tried to grab Yahiko. Unfortunately for all three of them, they may be fast, but the bullet fired from Hibiki's gun was much, much faster. The hammer slammed home and the flash of fire and clap of thunder filled the rain filled air, joined almost instantly by a distant flash of lightning as the bullet soared through the air, carving a contrail through the rain-filled air. It tore through the air and slammed into Yahiko's chest in less than a second, the impact great enough to send the man stumbling backwards, blood flying out of his chest as his brown eyes grew wide.

Blue cried out as she caught their robed leader's body, and before Hibiki could blink, the world sped up again and he was ripped from his feet. His hands were thrown to the side by the sudden motion, inadvertently causing the gun to go off again as he was yanked towards Nagato. He heard the bullet ricochet through the air and bounce around as he was caught in Nagato's outstretched hand, but the sudden stop caused Hibiki's hands and feet to swung back to his front, putting his gun hand right back where it needed to be in order to cause damage. His windpipe constricted by Nagato's iron grip, Hibiki jammed the pistol into the teen's chest, and four bullets later, he was dropped as the red-haired teen stumbled backwards, his hands clutching his bleeding chest.

Hibiki scrambled back several steps, creating large splashes in the rain-filled alley. He whipped his gun back to Blue and Yahiko, but he was greeted by the sight of where the earlier ricocheting bullet had gone: In the neck of Blue. Her spinal chord had been severed before she could have even tried to help herself or her friend, and with her dead and Yahiko unconscious and bleeding out, Hibiki whipped the gun back to Nagato. The red-haired shinobi was still on his feet, but as he clenched at his chest, his bright purple eyes passed over the corpses of his friends. The entire world - from the distant lightning, to the rain falling through the air, to the ringing in Hibiki's ears - seemed to freeze as Zetsu's master locked eyes onto the two bodies. His eyes shook, his jaw fell slack, and the rippling pupils dilated as it all dawned on him.

"No..." He breathed, despite the holes in his lungs.

Hibiki wasn't a sensor, but he could feel the waves of chakra now pouring off of Nagato.

"Oh shit." He said, as he shook his head and scrambled to his feet, the pain of his injuries and the fog in his head slowly clearing with the adrenaline, but still slowing his movements.

"No!..." The Rinnegan wielder cried, as he fell to his feet, his bloody hands reaching forward to his friends. Hibiki backpedaled, popping a magazine out of the seal on his thigh, but before he could even dump the remainder of the bullets in the loaded magazine into the Rinnegan wielder, he was deafened by his next cry.

"NOOOOOOO!" He roared out, arcing his back and clenching his head with both hands, his voice quickly dropping multiple octaves until it became demonically deep. His eyes seemed to bulge out of his skull as his chakra cast the alley aglow, and his chest clenched tightly underneath his bloody robes, forcing all of the air out of them to continue his anguished cry. Barely a second later, before Hibiki could bring his gun back to bear and try to end this before the power of the Sage of Six Paths could be brought to bear on him, the ground shook, stumbling him enough to give Nagato the second he needed to slam both hands onto the ground. The ground shook even more violently before something exploded out from beneath it, filling the air with smoke, dust, and debris.

Hibiki coughed and waved his hand in front of his face as the smoke cleared, but before it even did, the air itself shook from the sound of a monstrous, demonic bellow. His lungs rattled in his chest from the sheer volume of the demonic roar, and when it calmed down, Hibiki noticed three things. The first, that it had become a lot darker all of a sudden, the second, the rain had stopped, and the third, the pain in his head had dulled to a painful throb. With a gulp, Hibiki raised his gaze and saw, seated on the destroyed ruins of the buildings in front of him, an enormous, decayed, emaciated-looking being, with brown leathery skin, black markings not unlike his cursed seal coiling all around its body, its skeletal head covered by a sight-restricting sash. Both of its hands were braced on the ground, holding it up. Even with its emaciated, almost rotten appearance, it dwarfed everything around it in sheer size, but Hibiki felt his heart stop and his body grow cold. He recognized this creature.

It was the Jubi.

It was the Jubi's dead, decayed, emaciated, statue-like body.

Nagato had just summoned the body of the strongest of the tailed beasts.