Illimitable - The Child of the Sannin

by TwoChimpsWithoutOne

From man he was made, possessing nearly all bloodlines in the known world, and a soul stolen from the world beyond. Raised by the greatest trio to have ever lived, this child of uncharted power will change the world, for better and for worse, unraveling secrets kept buried for thousands of years, and rewriting the history of events past and to come. Sapere aude; Dare to know.

98. The Road Goes Ever On And On -P2-

Chapter 97

---

War Against the Academy

The first deployment wasn't too noteworthy. Hibiki wasn't entirely happy he'd got sent north again, while Dai, also on his deployment rotation, had been sent to the Grass country border. Fortunately, he hadn't been sent to Kumo this time, but rather to the Land of Frost, so he could harass Shimogakure. Their best was around Hibiki's skill at his worst, which meant that, to the sole surviving Undead, it was largely an exercise in seeing how much he could hold back. It hadn't been a complete waste, though - there were more than a few Ice bloodline users hailing from this land, and Hibiki got some experience playing with his own ice bloodline and seeing it in use by professionals as a result. The most fun he'd had was when the Ice users had tried trapping him in sub-zero temperatures, and Hibiki's response had been to heat up his core body temperature with another bloodline, and then using his own ice bloodline to take the temperature they had dropped the surrounding air to, and tanking it even further.

He got a crash course in basic meteorology as a result, and beheld the biggest twister he'd ever seen as a result of his little stunt, and he knew for a fact he hadn't even come close to absolute zero.

Note to self... He'd thought, deciding this had met Dante's requirements for 'thoroughly bruised and beaten,' and retreating to the Land of Fire's border posts. Extremely cold air meeting much warmer air equals fucking tornadoes.

When he returned to the Land of Fire's borders, he had a brief encounter with Ay and Bee, but no real fight came out of it, as they'd started a retreat immediately upon seeing him, and since Hibiki had been barred for the time being from his usual shadow clone shenanigans, they were more effective than usual in pinning him down, with the two of them tag-teaming him to buy time for their forces to retreat, before they themselves vanished. It happened so fast that it was just as Hibiki began to recognize the two, that they'd already left.

When he returned to Konoha and Noboru went back out, he got all of one night to spend with Dai, before she regretfully headed out, and the two silently vowed to find whoever had put together the deployment orders, and had subsequently caused the two newlyweds to only see each other for four months out of the year.

Alone and bored again, Hibiki wondered if it might be prudent to just sit back these next few months, take it easy.

Tsunade promptly disavowed him of that notion, when he went to visit her one morning, after getting a rather tersely written letter to see her at his earliest convenience.

Interestingly, when he entered his childhood home, he saw that Tsunade wasn't alone: The Orochimaru clone, alongside the growing baby Hidan, were there too, though it appeared as though they were getting ready to leave. When Hibiki entered the home and stepped into the kitchen, the conversation stopped, and a nervous, conflicted looking Tsunade, alongside a morose-looking Orochimaru, both turned to look at him.

Hibiki raised an eyebrow, onyx eyes flicking back and forth between the two Sannin.

Orochimaru sighed, turning back to Tsunade. "Just think about it, Tsunade-san." He said, softly.

Tsunade closed her eyes and let out a long breath, nodding, and with that, Orochimaru took his leave, greeting Hibiki and saying his goobdyes in one smooth motion.

When he left, Hibiki turned back to his adoptive mother, "what was that about?"

Tsunade groaned and shook her head, "nothing, yet." She responded, opening her eyes. "You busy?" She asked, straightening up, "do me a favor?"

"What kind?" Hibiki asked, taking the seat Orochimaru had just vacated.

"The Chunin in charge of the academy right now are all temporary instructors. Only ones there that are usually there are the retired Chunin that took that as their post." Tsunade began.

"Oh." Hibiki leaned his head back and nodded, "the curriculum thing."

"Don't you 'oh' me, you know how many Genin have been coming home with preventable injuries." Tsunade growled, but she shook it off. "I want you to help me out. I threw those numbers in your sensei's face and threatened to take the hat from him if he didn't do something, so he decided to give me an inch - big mistake." She nodded to Hibiki, "the next graduating class is taking the test in eight months, and I'm going to personally oversee it, show all of those idiots that, yes, it's possible to teach rookies more than just basic biology - we can teach them medical-ninjutsu basics, properly teach first aid - not that improvised tripe they figure out through trial and error - and the initial mystic palms technique."

Hibiki nodded, "so what do you need me for?"

"You and Shizune are going to take over my spot in the Hospital until this next class graduates." She explained, "after that, if it works, Shizune will take over as instructor and maybe kids will stop dying as much." She nodded, "and while this is happening, I want those medical books you promised me, from back then."

Hibiki blinked, then leaned his head back, staring off into space for a moment as it dawned on him he still hadn't done that. "Oh man, I never did give you those, huh?" He chuckled, and nodded. "It'll give me something to do, sure."

Tsunade smiled, "thanks, gaki."

Hibiki rolled his eyes, "go easy on those kids, yeah? No dropping them in a lake and expecting them to walk on it while you're punching it."

Tsunade scoffed, "it worked, didn't it?!" She demanded, "and you became the strongest shinobi since grandpa!" She shot back, "besides, be careful what you say - I happen to know when the last time you even held a sword was, whereas your uncle doesn't. I let him know and he might appreciate the distraction." She grinned ferally.

Hibiki shuddered, "how about I head to the hospital and we call it even?"

"Good call." Tsunade said, as Hibiki got to his feet.

This helped to occupy his time well through to his next deployment, and had the added bonus of giving him, his adoptive aunt, and Dai, when her squad came back from their deployment, front-row seats to Tsunade doing what she did best: Proving she was the best damn medical ninja who had ever lived, and kicking the teeth in of anyone who thought otherwise. It was far more entertaining than it had any right to be, seeing the old-timers who were stuck in their ways, the young bucks who had been swapped in because the normal teachers were out on deployment, and the veteran teachers who couldn't be deployed, all try to measure up to the Slug Sannin and fail miserably. Even Hibiki's old instructor tried to argue with Tsunade about how useless adding a medical technique was to the curriculum, considering how much effort it took versus the return the students would get: At best, he argued, they would only be able to heal themselves. So what use would it be if they couldn't heal their comrades?

Tsunade's legendary response was, "I don't know!" And then she broke the blind Hyuga's ribs, got her best students to patch him up with the more conventional, less chakra-using methods she taught - specifically meant for situations like this - and called it a 'pop quiz.'

Hibiki hadn't been the one to witness this, but rather Dai, who had put a few beetles on it ever since Hibiki had let her in on what was happening in the academy, and when she told Hibiki what the students were doing, he about died laughing - as, whether she knew it or not, Tsunade was effectively reinventing Emergency Medicine. More of him was willing to bet that her recreating EMT's for the modern age was more accidental than it wasn't, but he had the suspicion that she was doing it on purpose, because while he hadn't given her any of the textbooks he'd learned out of in his time - such things would be painfully simple for someone of Tsunade's skill - he had told her about his job during his little tell-all with the Slug Sannin, and he wouldn't have put it past her to be inspired by the idea.

Regardless, after her little legion of students got Serizawa patched up, loaded onto a backboard, and after they simulated a run to the hospital, Tsunade fixed him up right then and there, told him that even if they could only cast the mystic palms technique on themselves, that meant they could keep themselves fighting and healthy, long enough to do that to their squad, and keep them alive long enough to be seen by proper medics, and asked him if he had any questions.

Serizawa became her most vocal supporter after that, and Hibiki unintentionally found himself a new method of training his self control, as sometimes, unbidden, the image of her breaking Serizawa's ribs and yelling 'Pop quiz!' would float up to the front of his mind while he covered her shifts at the hospital, and he would have to keep himself from sniggering while either cutting someone open to remove shrapnel, rebreaking a bone to set it properly, or just giving a clean bill of health to a recovering shinobi.

Even more entertaining than that, however, had been in the weeks leading up to his second deployment, when he got a surprise visit from Tsume, who appeared to be completely unaware that Tsunade wasn't in the hospital at the moment.

Working out of Tsunade's office, Hibiki got his first hint that something might be coming when the ground started shaking. He looked up just in time for Tsume to kick the door in, yelling, "TSUNADE I'M PREG -" And then stopping wholesale when she saw the younger Senju, and not the older one.

The two stared each other down for a solid minute, before the wild kunoichi grew a savage grin and continued, "I'm pregnant, bitch!"

"Well it's not mine." Hibiki grunted, after a brief snort.

"You wish, bitch!" She barked, strolling into the office. "I pissed on a test today and it said it finally stuck, so since the Big Lady ain't here, you're making sure!"

Hibiki chuckled, putting down his paper and making a spinning motion with his finger. Tsume stripped her jacket and presented her back to him, her face curled up in a savage grin. When Hibiki cloaked his hand in green chakra and pushed it to her back, however, the data from the diagnostic technique didn't say a thing about anything that had 'stuck.' Much the opposite, once he put it all together, it told him she wasn't pregnant.

"Lady, how long have you been trying this?" He asked, " 'cause what I'm getting here is telling a different story."

"I've been trying for a fucking year now!" She howled, loud enough to make Hibiki's ears ring, and to prompt her hound to retreat out of the room and take up sentry in the hall. "Damn thing said I was!" She turned around, teeth bared.

Hibiki shrugged, rounding the desk again and picking up his pen, "false positives happen more often than you'd think, lady. That's why you check again before you bother your local medic. Besides - neither she nor I are fertility experts." He said, pulling his paperwork back towards him, "doubt I have to ask, but are you still taking her pill?"

Tsume scoffed, "of course!"

The pen fell from Hibiki's fingers, and he took in a long, steadying breath.

Sometimes he actually forgot how stupid people could be. Sometimes he actually forgot how many times people had called 911 because their foot hurt after kicking a wall, or they were feeling light headed and hadn't been taking their diabetes medications for three weeks, or wondering why they were sick after going out to party during a pandemic. In those brief, blissful moments, when the memories of his days at the firehouse were deep in the dark recesses of his mind, he sometimes found himself questioning why Tsunade was all but preparing to tear down the entire ninja academy.

But then, just as often as he forgot, the universe would see fit to remind him as fast as it possibly could, and then he remembered why he liked fighting fires more than he liked hopping in the back of the box truck, and he understood intimately why Tsunade was pushing so hard for a standardized medical education.

People were fucking stupid.

Hibiki rubbed his face, "lady." He grunted, his advanced age catching up to him in the form of a low, rumbly voice, that even briefly stumbled Tsume. "Do you know what those pills do?"

"Uh -"

"They stop you from ovulating." He said, "you know what that means, right?" He removed his hands from his face and gave Tsume an unimpressed look.

She blinked.

"You're not just throwing senbon at a flak jacket, Tsume, you're fucking sterile." That Dai had gotten pregnant even though she had been on the pill had been a one in a million accident - or miracle, depending on how one wanted to look at it. "You want a kid, stop taking the pills. They'll be out of your system in three months, and if the stories Dai tells me are true, you'll be knocked up in a week." He grinned.

Tsume blinked, then recovered her moxy, shook her wild head, and proudly declared, "she always underestimated me. I'll be ready to pop in a day!" Then she leaned in, "you want first go? We don't have to tell her." She whispered, a savage grin on her face.

The second she stopped speaking, a beetle crawled out of Hibiki's hair, and Tsume watched as it lazily strode down his face, under his jaw, and underneath his shirt.

Tsume's grin grew wider, "of course you can join!" She said to the never-absent Senju matron.

That broke Hibiki and he broke eye contact with the savage woman, laughing into his hand. She joined him, straightening up as she chuckled, snatching up her jacket. "How the hell did you get used to that?" Tsume asked, for once lowering her voice as she tossed her jacket over her shoulder.

"Going on ten years of practice." Hibiki responded, "and I'm pretty sure they can secrete a numbing agent, because I'm never able to tell where they are." He got a bite in a rather sensitive place for that one, and Tsume noticed him twitch, causing her to howl with laughter as she left his office.

Returning home that night, his wife acted all too innocent when she asked him how his day was.

"Tsume wants a threesome." He responded.

With an equal amount of dryness, her counter was, "Tsume can wait, I'm holding out for Kushina."

Hibiki chuckled, "sometimes I believe it." He admitted, collapsing onto their couch, shutting his eyes, and smiling when the woman that made the house a home slid in next to him.

"You still owe me a trip to that place." She mentioned, covering her mouth as she yawned, and curled up next to him.

"Vegas?" When she nodded, he responded with, "what is it with people calling my debts? That's Tsunade making me stare at a computer screen for a week, and now you wanting me to bring you to a ghost town." He'd have to check and see if his uncle and best friend ever got around to working on Emi Miu, because if not, that was next, he just knew it. "And besides, you already went."

"That was a different world. Wiped out by the Loop. It doesn't count." She pushed back.

"I'll take you to Tanzaku, how 'bout that?" He asked, wrapping an arm around her.

"Nope. Vegas."

"It's dead!"

"So were you."

Eh, she had him there.

---

What Is It Good For?

Hibiki's next deployment was also the first where more than one member of Konoha's shock trooper team was sent out at one time, it would also be the one he would never, for his entire second life, forget. Hibiki and Noboru, along with half of the Jonin being rotated in for combat deployment, were sent to the Land of Lightning to teach Kumo a lesson. Dante was getting pissed at how hard they were pushing against Konoha's borders, and he was downright furious at them when they'd actually managed to break through, but not nearly as mad as he would have been had Arjuna and the investment in the Kaguya clan not paid off: Alongside two dozen of his fellow bone-weavers and more than a hundred of the 'Fire Guardsmen' - the Kaguya without their bloodline - Arjuna had managed to hold the line long enough for the Konoha forces to rally and push the Kumo, Shimo, and Takigaure forces out of the Land of Fire before they could get more than a few dozen kilometers inland.

So, Hibiki and co. were sent out to teach them exactly how mad they were about that, and how bad of an idea it was to keep testing them, but Kumo, like Katsuo, weren't being good supervillains: They'd learned.

Specifically, they'd learned how to counter Hibiki.

He was actually thoroughly and genuinely impressed by how they did it, it was something he'd never thought of. Ay and Bee beelined it for him, while several other Jonin engaged Noboru. Alone, either Ay or Bee were probably the strongest non-Undead shinobi Hibiki had fought, and that had been when he was eight, Bee was probably nine or ten, and Ay was almost in his twenties.

Now Hibiki and Bee were in their late teens, and Ay was in his mid-twenties, and they'd only grown stronger.

That alone didn't frighten Hibiki, he had more than enough tools at his disposal to keep the odds even, even without Shadow Clones.

No, what frightened Hibiki was the fact that somehow the both of them were able to keep up with him at Swift speeds, and Bee knew a way to disrupt his lightning cloak: The rapping Cloud Jonin had thrown a hefty ninjutsu at him, and Hibiki had unwittingly taken the bait, using his Dark Release to absorb it, but something went wrong and the chakra practically exploded on contact with the seals on his hand. This had a ripple effect, temporarily - not even for a second - disrupting his flow of chakra, and thus, snapping him out of his Swift speeds, and disrupting his lightning cloak.

Ay and Bee both hit him with the two-man clothes-line technique they'd used in Kiri to keep Hibiki off balance, and the instant they noticed his chakra coming back, Ay buried a senbon in the side of Hibiki's head.

To anyone else, this would be lethal. Game over.

But Hibiki wasn't anyone else.

His Kaguya blood kept him alive, but with a knife sticking out of his head, this meant that he was alive, and incredibly brain damaged.

Ay and Bee promptly stole him from the field, using Kumo's forces to cover their retreat.

The next several days of his life were a blur of conflicting sensory input, until one day he finally woke up with all of his faculties in a warehouse-sized, jet-black room, the only source of light being the tiny gas-lamp in front of him, with him chained to the chair he was sitting on.

And Bee was sitting there, a big, dumb grin on his dark face. He held out his hands, "the man with a plan! The master caster! Hibiki Senju I got you!" He said, teeth bared in a smile that practically split his face in two.

His vision clearing, Hibiki shook his head, hair flaying about from side to side. "Ugh..." He groaned, "dude, I'd need -" Bee interrupted him, standing up and revealing that what he'd been sitting on had been a barrel of alcohol.

Hibiki blinked.

"Make you do the act without some fuel - man, that'd just be cruel, you fool!" Bee piped out, producing two large cups.

"Bee, I don't know if you know this, but we're kind of trying to kill each other." Hibiki mentioned, looking up at the Kumo Jonin.

But he waved his hand, "nah, me and my bro, we don't quite agree with the guy who's runnin' the show!"

How the hell does he do that?! Hibiki grunted, "uh huh."

"It's true! We didn't like the plan he drew - piss off the leaf, get a lot of our people killed over an idiotic beef. So we pull that knife from your head and let slip to your friends that you weren't dead!"

Hibiki stared at him.

"Are you fucking serious?" This had to be some kind of trick, there was no way this was happening.

Bee nodded, "see, me and my bro, we're wise to the Leaf's show! We -"

"You just rhymed 'bro' and 'show' twice."

Bee's eye twitched, but his grin only widened at the challenge, and he kept on, "- were told to take you by our leader, get some samples of your mighty bloods, but he ain't too much of a reader, didn't listen to us when we said you'd just get rescued by your buds."

This dude's Bee, his brother's Ay, and he's rhyming in A-B, A-B. Hibiki snorted, and grinned despite himself. This motherfucker. He barely held back a laugh.

"Don't need to, ya foo!" Bee produced Kumo's bingo book, and opened it to the page with Hibiki's face on it. "Your friends are comin' for you!"

Hibiki frowned at the book, and saw that Bee had seemingly anticipated this part of the conversation - Hibiki's known associates were highlighted, specifically the Tracker Trio, his squad, and Minato. Was this guy trying to threaten them, or was he really being serious right now?

No, this is a ninja I'm talking about. He's rapping, being all up front, to keep me off guard. Hibiki frowned, "prove it." He said, shrugging his shoulders, "Take these -" But as he spoke, the chains that had bound him all began sliding right off of him.

Hibiki blinked, staring at the chains, and flexing his arms, rubbing one and realizing that not only had the chains not even been secured and bound, but his chakra hadn't even been sealed up!

With a plume of smoke, Hibiki had a pistol in his hand and pointed at Bee's face.

"Ooh, the thunder technique!" He said, flipping a few pages and then showing Hibiki a page that had a caricature of his pistol drawn upon it, "the thing against which all others are weak!"

"That was a stretch." Hibiki murmured, flicking his Sharingan eyes over the page, and arcing an eyebrow, rather impressed at how much information Kumo had gathered on him.

Bee grinned all the wider, "ah, but not me, ya see? Inside me, the Killer Bee, I got the Hachibi, and me and he we ain't going across that long dark sea by our abductee, no siree!" He held his hands out to the side, "to our glee, we left ya free, free as a bee, so I plea, while we wait and see, sit, drink, and rap for me, man with the Kyuubi!" His grin turned knowing.

Hibiki blinked.

Hooooly fuck, this guy thinks I have the nine tails. Hibiki lowered the pistol. Shit, he just told me he's got the eight-tails. And, of course, "how the fuck do you do that?"

Bee chuckled, "I'd be remiss if I don't practice this."

Hibiki finally let his arm go limp, staring, bewildered, at the Jinchuriki, and indeed seeing a minute amount of red chakra leaking out of his stomach with his red eyes. He looked past Bee, to the door at the far end of the warehouse, then back to Bee, then to the keg of alcohol he'd brought along, and then back to him, standing there with a goofy, victorious smile on his face.

"Why?" Hibiki repeated, only barely able to accept any of this.

"We told you, you foo! We told you, it's true!" He collapsed to his rear and punched the barrel, the top of which flew off with a small burst of chakra, "clean out your ears, sit with Bee and have a couple beers!"

"I'm going to disappoint you, Bee." He'd never really listened to much rap, he was pretty sure War by Edwinn Starr wouldn't necessarily count, and Bee probably wouldn't understand Amish Paradise at all. "First off, I'm not a Jinchuriki, Katsuo took ours, secondly -"

"Ah, Big Green." Bee threw his hand dismissively, as Hibiki spawned a shadow clone, and it accepted a drink from the Jinchuriki. "Dude's too mean, tryin' to start a war -"

I'll be damned. Hibiki jumped on it, "what is it good for?" The clone raised his glass.

Bee looked like he'd just seen God, and with a great grin he clinked glasses with the clone and downed his alcohol in one gulp, before slamming the tin cup on the ground and clapped his hands. "That's it! That's what I see! That's why you gotta work with me!" He laughed, "the Master, the teacher, the caster, the screecher!" He leaned back again and laughed some more.

Hibiki let him go, placing his hand on the clone and running medical chakra through him, and he'd be damned - the thing wasn't poisoned! Bee really had just brought some regular ol' hooch!

Hibiki despawned the clone, cleared his throat, and then said, "so, Katsuo."

Bee nodded, "the big green mean machine!" He said, "you said he took the Kyubi? You bein' real with me?" He asked.

"I like you, Bee, damn it I do, but do you really think I'd tell you?" Hibiki blinked, oh fuck he'd -

"The master, alive!" He sang, "if I had one less finger I'd want to be your wife!" He chuckled, "s'pose your right, not talking all in the light. Thanks to the green mean machine you and me we ain't that keen." He nodded to the side, filling his and Hibiki's cups again. "Tonight we fight, but the tomorrows? Who knows? We may not have to come to blows, why not just go with the flow? And man - that's what we told Katsuo!"

Damn he's good! Hibiki was actually having fun, here. "You told him... You'd go along with it?"

"No, no, no, bro!" Said Bee, "we told him to go with the flow, you know? Finding the Jinchuriki? That don't sit right, you see? Starting a war -" He nodded to Hibiki, "what is it good for? Nah, nah, nah, brah." He shook his head, and then took a swig of his drink, and Hibiki shook his head and joined him. "We didn't want no war, we knew what would be in store - and we knew he was the shock that did in Rock, but our leader, man..." He shook his head, "he ain't a man with a plan."

"What, the Raikage wanted the fight?" Hibiki asked.

Bee shrugged, "ain't a smart one, son. Accepted the story, wanted the glory. Wanted to beat the Leaf, give 'em grief. Wanted to capture the Senju, take his power, that way he could be the man of the hour. Cloud on top, and he won't stop." He deflated a bit, sighing. "It's the Warring States, just with bigger stakes."

Hibiki would let that one slide, instead focusing on the fact that Bee was here implying not everyone bought Katsuo's BS, or the official story about Iwa. "How many people buy the official story?" In other words: How many people thought Hibiki had nuked Iwa?"

"Man, I won't lie - enough to make you sigh and look to the sky. The old sons, they're the ones. Heard you took the village down, and didn't protest, didn't make a sound. Missed the glory of battle, and wanted an excuse to rattle. But the young guys - to our surprise, we're the wise. We knew, the Senju - wanted peace, not the death to increase. When the Leaf stopped invadin,' started defendin,' we knew we were right - we always had been. Must've been a reason, must've been a why. So in this season, Ay let you talk to I." He nodded to Hibiki.

Hibiki snorted, looking down into his cup. Killer Bee alone was almost enough to make him wish he had been born in Kumo, or could at least spend some significant time there. This guy was nuts, no mistake about it, but there was something in there - way deep down - that had a more depth than he let on.

I fuckin' love this guy. "I told you." He said, peering up at Bee from underneath his eyebrows, "he took our Jinchuriki. They were my friend."

Bee paused, an eyebrow quirked. "They were a friend of yours? And for them you went to war? In a Jinchuriki, a friend, you see?" He asked, the usual bravado and gravitas missing, replaced with surprise and a small amount of awe.

Hibiki nodded, "why not?"

He actually managed to make Killer Bee go quiet, as he too looked down into his cup. There was a few moments of silence - in which, Hibiki felt the ground shake, and his gaze briefly shot up to the door behind Bee, wondering who it was who'd come to his rescue. Noboru, maybe? Suboro? Had Dai helped track him down? As a matter of fact, where was he to begin with?

Bee leaned in close, so close that Hibiki could smell the sweat on the man's dark skin, the light tinge alcohol on his breath. "Just between you and me, you and me and the Hachibi..." He said, so close that, with the Sharingan's assistance, Hibiki could see through the man's sunglasses, and could see that one of his eyes had changed, taking on a grayish red color, and even without his own knowledge on the subject, Hibiki just knew he wasn't only talking to Bee at this moment. "No bro, no Kage, no foe, okay?" He asked, before leaning in even closer, "you get 'em out?" He whispered, "safe, without a doubt?"

Hibiki frowned, looking deep into Bee's eyes. He still had his doubts, so if Bee really wanted him to be honest here, he had to earn it.

"I talked to the Yonbi, Bee." He began, "his Jinchuriki let me in... See?" He said, slow enough that he could make an honest effort. "Let me in. Let me talk to the creature made of Sin. No fear... Of... Prying ears."

Bee grinned, "you're tryin', man. That's what matters, in the end." And when he finished speaking, Hibiki blinked, finding the ground beneath him filled with standing water, the dark gone, the flame from the candle in between replaced by a dull glow, and a pair of gigantic fists came down, smashing into the ground on either side of him and Bee, as an enormous bull-like creature with eight tails leaned down into the light.

"Trust him." Rumbled the titanic beast, its voice loud enough that it made Hibiki's chest shake and caused the water they stood in to quake. "Killer Bee is many things... But a liar is not one of them."

Jesus Christ... Hibiki thought, looking up at the beast. "Oh thank god, you don't rap."

"As I said." Said the strange, bipedal bull, "he is many things." Hibiki could almost hear the wince in its voice. "He is not lying to you... This war is not one the young of Kumogakure wants... But it is one they've been convinced to fight." It nodded to Hibiki, "you know why."

Hibiki nodded, sighing. "Yeah... Yeah I do." He admitted, starting when Bee put his hand on his shoulder.

"Worry not, it wasn't you who this war brought." He said, "we know, it's Katsuo."

Hibiki grinned, "that was a big stretch, Bee."

Bee just grinned and shrugged, "got a lot to learn, and I got a mind that yearns." He said, "we found the survivors, of Rock. Not a lot, but at nothing to gawk."

The Hachibi rolled its head, groaning. "More people survived Iwa than just made it out that day. Story seems to be that Katsuo really had been seeking a confrontation with you, and the Tsuchikage either had to help him, or risk him and his allies trashing the village, so he evacuated who he could and put the rest in the tunnels and caves beneath the village. A lot of them scattered, but most of their shinobi corps fled here, and their surviving civilians followed them. We don't know the number, but you didn't kill the number you think you did."

Hibiki let out a long sigh, "village still got trashed, though."

To which, Bee shrugged. "Shit: It happens. Gotta remember that the next day always begins."

Hibiki nodded, "He didn't find our Jinchuriki at all. It had been a ploy, to piss me off." Hibiki said, causing Bee to blink, and the Hachibi to tilt its head. "But... We did rescue one. The Jinchuriki of the Yonbi, she was there. We pulled her out."

Bee grinned, "like only the man with the plan can." He nodded in respect, "thanks." He held up his fist, "a friend to the Jinchuriki is a friend to me. You can bet, I won't forget."

As Hibiki stared at, and then bumped, Bee's fist, the Hachibi rumbled, "A second human that actually cares... If not about the Bijuu, then at least their containers." The Hachibi shook its horned head, "what're the odds." It then looked off in the distance, "Bee, they've made it to your brother."

"I -" And as Bee spoke, suddenly he and Hibiki were back in the dark room, "know. Thanks, though." He leaned back and let go of Hibiki, who could hear just outside the sound of a raised voice.

Hibiki leaned back, sighing. as Bee filled up their cups one last time. "Oh... I'mma be real sad when we have to fight again, Bee. I like you."

Bee simply smiled, and gave Hibiki his drink. They each downed it just as the door was blown off its hinges, sent spinning away in a burst of blue chakra, revealing -

"Minato!" He raised his cup, "you're fired, Killer Bee's my new best friend!"

The Yellow Flash blinked, "holy crap he wasn't kidding!" He breathed, heavily, as just past the door, Hibiki could see Ay walking away.

"Minato, one day I'm going to get you to curse, and that day will be glorious." He chuckled, as Bee smiled and got to his feet.

"Yellow Flash, flee on sight!" He bowed, "I'mma leave, rather keep my throat tonight!" And he disappeared in a plume of smoke.

Minato was next to Hibiki a second later, "Hibiki, are you okay?"

"Ah, once they took the senbon out of my brain, I was fine." He took Minato's hand and got to his feet. "Surprised they sent you." He mentioned.

"Uh, yeah -" Minato rubbed the back of his head, "Noboru's outside fighting the guys they put on this place. I can't believe Ay was being serious, though - he just let me walk past him, man!" He urged, patting Hibiki down for injuries or explosive tags. "Just like that!"

Hibiki nodded, "turns out the war ain't as popular as we thought... Least not in Kumo." He nodded, "let's roll."

As it turned out, his entire circle of friends had Hibiki's abduction was - well, as serious as he himself had thought it was before Bee started talking. Dai's squad had been pulled into rotation early to track him down, Noboru and several Anbu led a third of the Jonin Corps in the first no-holds-barred, go-on-the-offensive, fully lethal fight in the nearly two years since Konoha had revised its battle strategy, and Kumo learned two lessons:

One: Stop pushing so hard, or we'll push back.

Two: Konoha looks out for its own, don't do that again, or we'll stop playing nice.

Hibiki felt fucking awful about the casualties Konoha took, and worse that Noboru and Aoi had been among the wounded, but if what Bee told him was true, Hibiki was willing to bet that all the Kumo-nin they'd taken out that day were 'the old ones' Bee had mentioned, the ones that believed Katsuo's narrative and wanted the fight, and Hibiki told this to Dante, after spending an inordinate amount of time proving that he wasn't under a genjutsu, hadn't been drugged, and then proving why he thought Bee was telling the truth. Considering the sheer amount of scrutiny Hibiki had been placed under, he decided not to mention that he told Bee about Emi Miu, but he did silently vow that if Bee really had been playing him, he'd kill the man himself.

But, something deep down told him he hadn't been.

Returning home had, in short order, gotten him throttled by Tsunade, who nearly made the walls of the hospital shake as she checked his head for permanent damage and admonished him for never coming up with a plan for what would happen if someone used his healing abilities against him. He visited Aoi to see how she was holding up after the fights, only to realize that her entire squad and circle of friends had been at her bedside long before Hibiki had been cleared healthy, and when he arrived, it was just in time to see Dai reach the punchline of her story - and for Aoi, Kyo, Akane, Kushina, and Tsume, all start laughing uproariously at the fact that the Thunder God had been taken down by a tiny needle. Minato had spent a lot of time helping Hibiki undo the binding seal the Kumo shinobi had put on the Hiraishin on Hibiki's back - apparently the entire reason Minato hadn't just teleported in, grabbed Hibiki, and then teleported out - and Noboru, as he ever was, wouldn't let Hibiki apologize for the injuries he'd taken during the fighting to get him back, instead just happy that there didn't appear to be any permanent damage to Kumo savaging his brain. Suboro, however, didn't give Hibiki any such niceties - and vowed never to let Hibiki forget the fact that the same man who had gone fist-to-fist with Katsuo the Monster, and had single-handedly killed almost all of his allies, had been beaten by the Ay and Bee tagteam with a senbon.

To which, Hibiki responded, "this coming from the guy who would've missed the fight in the first place."

Suboro sputtered, Noboru grinned, and Hibiki just laughed. When he spoke to Dante later that day, Hibiki came to learn that Anbu had been responsible for torching the warehouse he'd been held in - they'd searched it up and down and hadn't found any samples of Hibiki's blood anywhere. Hibiki was willing to believe Bee in this regard, that he and Ay had simply refused the Raikage and didn't take any, and he said as much, but Dante wasn't willing to take that risk, and he had many saboteurs out trying to infiltrate Kumo to figure out where they would keep such things, and he and the Shock Trooper team would be kept on standby for the next few months until they determined whether or not his and Minato's claims were true.

Hibiki was also given an order, to be followed immediately, and it was one that made him grin smugly.

He hunted down Minato the next day, and found him at a training grounds near the village's walls. The place was trashed, he saw trees fallen, boulders with giant craters, debris and detritus scattered everywhere, and found Minato with

Hibiki's old revolver in his hand, and a pile of fuinjutsu equipment next to him.

An eyebrow arced, Hibiki cleared his throat - trying to avoid exactly what ended up happening anyways: He startled the Yellow Flash, who nearly ruined his seal, and was promptly scorched black by the detonation.

"Ah!" He coughed, waving away the smoke as he stumbled back. "Hibiki!" He covered his mouth, "c'mon, man! This is my grounds!" He coughed again, producing a wet rag and wiping his face off.

"You're promoted, dickhead." Hibiki sniped back, approaching the scorch marks and reaching down for the gun.

Minato blinked, then slowly lowered the rag, "what?" He asked.

"Jesus, Minato - how often do you clean this thing?" Hibiki asked, "it's like it's... Covered in soot, or something!" He cracked a grin, using his thumb to wipe off some of the scorch marks. "Unbecoming of a Jonin!" Looking down on the ground, Hibiki realized he knew what Minato was doing - the scorch marks muddled the evidence a lot, but he could just see the outlines of some of Minato's fuinjutsu characters burned into the dirt, he'd been working on a compression seal!

Looking around at the area surrounding them, Hibiki found himself at a loss for words. Had Minato done it?

"Wait, really?!" Minato gasped, "I'm a Jonin?!" He leapt up into the air, "yeah!" He cheered, "oh, Kushina's going to love this! I outrank her!" He laughed.

Son of a bitch, how'd you do it? Hibiki grinned and, with an arced eyebrow, turned to Minato as the blonde blur approached him, "are you really implying you're going to bring rank into your marriage, Minato?" Hibiki asked, "she lets you inside of her, she wins." He almost wasn't able to hold it together, but managed to avoid breaking his own joke and laughing, even as Minato doubled over and tried to keep his own in so he wouldn't give the Senju head the satisfaction.

"That's -" Minato grunted, "- okay, yeah." He nodded, "yeah." The two chuckled, and Hibiki tossed the revolver up, catching it by the barrel and giving it to the blonde blur.

So did you figure out how to trap ninjutsu? Or are you just shoving your chakra into these things? The Senju desperately wanted to ask the madman how he'd done it, but he knew the Yellow Flash was trying to keep it close to his chest, was building up his arsenal so he could either use it in emergencies, or whenever he challenged Hibiki to a big fight.

The hell else are you working on, Namikaze? Minato took the gun from Hibiki, who said, "Dante wants you to report to the tower, fill out the paperwork so you can start getting Jonin assignments."

"Oh I'm not going to miss border patrol." Minato leaned back, a rapturous look on his face. "I'd forgotten how annoying Genin were!"

Hibiki smiled, the sort of wide smile, light recoil of the head that told anyone looking that what he had to say next was not something the person they were speaking to wanted to hear.

Minato blinked.

"What?" He asked, face going pale as he knew what Hibiki was about to say.

---

Squad Up (Again)

An eight year old who'd passed his tests early, and two twelve year olds who'd made it through the academy the normal way.

One may think in saying that, Hibiki was describing himself, but in reality, he was describing Minato Namikaze's Genin squad, whose files were splayed out in front of the Namikaze, whose hands were buried in his hair as he stared at it in disbelief, leaning forward on Hibiki's couch.

"Really?!" He said, blue eyes wide and bulging, trying to comprehend this.

"It was only a matter of time." Dai intoned from the kitchen, her words slightly muffled by the refrigerator she was digging through. "I would think the surprise should come instead from that you were first, and not any of Hibiki's squad."

"Nah, Dante actually said he's staggering us, specifically." Hibiki called back, leaning back in his chair and grinning at the Namikaze who was trying not to lose his mind. "Doesn't want too many of us heavy hitters off the battlefield at any given time, and the Sannin have already passed their skills on - twice, now that Orochimaru's got Hidan! So -" He nodded to Minato, "the Yellow Flash first, the Kage Killer second... Whatever Suboro is -"

"He's the Ghost, Hibiki." Dai admonished, as she pulled herself out of the fridge with enough easy-to-make food for the four of them.

"- third, and then the Thunder God last."

"Really?!"

"Oh come on, Minato!" Kushina grinned smugly, trying and failing not to snigger at her husband as she swiped up one of the files and flipped it open. "It'll be fun! It's like getting a puppy that can take care of itself, you know!" She looked down at the name of the file, "ooh, she's the top of Tsunade's new class!" She teased.

"The younger one actually broke some of Hibiki's records." Dai mentioned, either blissfully unaware, or completely cognizant, of the fact that she wasn't helping the blonde with her words. "And he's the son of the swordsman that challenged Dante-sensei for the hat." She added, approaching the trio and setting plates down on their coffee table, leading Hibiki to conclude that she absolutely knew what she was doing - as good as she was keeping her face straight when guests were around, nothing escaped Hibiki's Sharingan, and he could see the tension in the muscles around the corners of her mouth, a clear indication that she was keeping a smile under lock and key.

"REALLY?!" Minato screamed, Dai's words having the intended effect.

"Actually, yeah, really?" Hibiki reached forward and grabbed the file of the kid in question, a young boy by the name of Kakashi Hatake. "Oh damn..." He said, flipping it open and being greeted by a bright-eyed kid with silver hair, the bottom half of his face hidden behind a face mask, and his eyes dark enough that Hibiki wondered if there wasn't some Uchiha in him. "He's not even eight!" He was a few weeks shy.

"REALLY?!"

"I think we broke him." Kushina sniggered at the practically crying Namikaze, who threw himself into the back of Hibiki's couch, hands now covering his face as he groaned.

"Oh... Kami." He groaned, "this isn't happening... I'm asleep, I'm - I can't teach!" He surged back up, "I've been a Jonin for... What, two hours? I'm not qualified for this!"

"He's not gonna like the fact that his instructors apparently..." Hibiki said, reading from the file as he spoke. "Recommended he be fast-tracked for Chunin." He leaned forward and grabbed at the food Dai had laid out - only to feel his fingers brush against paper; lowering the file, he saw a standard-issue ration sitting in front of him, and when he looked to Dai with an upwardly curved eyebrow, she shrugged.

"You didn't cook."

Kushina snorted and pointed at him, squirming back and forth in her chair like a child, "she makes you cook!" The Uzumaki teased in a sing-song voice.

"Tsume never misses a chance to say he's whipped." Dai didn't bother hiding this smirk, which Kushina shared, stifling laughter behind tightly shut eyes and a hand in front of her mouth.

But Hibiki was too busy laughing, "oh boy, Minato - you better learn how to cook, yourself, and fast. Got three kids looking up to you, now!" The Namikaze practically relied on either fast food, or his wife, in order to live whenever he wasn't out of the village or frying small animals.

"Why?!" The Namikaze practically sobbed, as he picked up the last of the files and opened it up. "Oh Kami they gave me a clan kid!" He'd descended so far he was now laughing in mild hysteria.

"This kid's in the ninety third percentile, holy fuck!" Hibiki kept going, at this point just because he wanted to keep seeing Minato lose his mind. "Kushina, check this out - he used the Substitution technique and called a book from a kilometer away!" He rolled up and handed Kushina the scroll.

"Really?" Kushina asked, ignoring her husband's hysterical sobs, as she exchanged her scroll for Hibiki's.

"Why would he do that?" Dai asked, ripping a corner of a protein bar off, and then holding it out to Hibiki. "It's a useless waste of chakra."

Hibiki accepted the food, "maybe the point was just to make a point?" He wondered which civilian he'd freaked the hell out of by just appearing in their study out of the blue. "Oh wow..." He said, unrolling the scroll he'd swapped for Kushina, and seeing a petite Genin, head ringed by dark brown hair and face framed by large purple markings. "Who is this, an Inuzuka?" Hibiki looked up at the name, and found that, no, this appeared to just be a civilian's child, because the name 'Nohara' didn't ring a bell. "So she just... Is that natural?" He had never quite figured that out, actually - how the Inuzuka and the Kaguya just seemed to naturally have markings on their faces. Were they born with it? Or was it some kind of war paint? If it was the latter, Hibiki could understand, but that didn't quite explain why this Rin chose to mark up.

"Hm..." Dai hummed, sitting down on the arm of Hibiki's chair and reading the scroll with him. "Apparently she mastered the Mystic Palms technique faster than anyone else in her year."

"You three have to be screwing with me, because this kid sucks!" Minato laughed, "he tried the old 'plastic wrap in front of the ninja wire' trick and got caught!" He said, an expression of shock and amazement on his face as he read the disciplinary report.

"Minato, you do know traditionally the way things work is they put two high-scoring kids with a low-scoring kid, right?" Hibiki intoned, reading Tsunade's note on how well Rin seemed to understand cellular division, and how she'd managed to protect her subject's telomeres from the damage usually associated with the Mystic Palms. Smart kid, he hadn't figured that out until Tsunade got frustrated with him and had him put a hundred shadow clones to work on it, back when he was little, and most medics tended to just ignore it entirely, accepting the marginally shortened lifespan as a necessary cost to being able to heal their patient faster.

"That is why Eiji-sensei waited until all others had been chosen before being taking his team." Dai added, "he knew doing so meant he would have the median students. He gave up getting two of the highest scoring, and the worst in the class, to instead acquire three students of equal knowledge and strength."

"Ha! And look at you now! Where are those 'two highest' in your year now, huh?" Kushina boasted.

Dai nodded to her husband, "working with Hibiki."

Kushina deflated, "oh."

"How does someone miss the one-meter kunai target?! It was practically in his face!"

Hibiki looked up to the other Senju in the room, "I always thought you were a year ahead of me."

"That would have made me five years older than you, Hibiki." Dai responded, resting her hand on his shoulder and continuing to read Rin Nohara's scroll.

Hibiki nodded to the side, "fair enough."

"What am I going to do with this kid? He almost cut his arm off with ninja wire!"

"Well so did you." Hibiki looked to Minato, "recently, in fact." The dumbass had thought he could increase its cutting power by pushing wind chakra into it - and he was right! But he didn't quite consider the fact that even to other shinobi, ninja wire moving at high speeds was practically invisible - it was why only Uchiha made frequent use of them in anything other than traps.

"Yes, but -"

"You're not twelve?" Dai sniped, looking at Minato from over the rim of her sunglasses.

Minato pointed at her, but deflated when she did nothing else but raise an eyebrow, then he pointed at Hibiki. "Shut up, Hibiki!"

Hibiki just chuckled, "tell you what, Minato - I think my Ma might like this kid. You grovel enough and she may take her off your hands."

"She tried." Dai pointed at a small annotation in the scroll, "but Nohara wanted to serve with a squad."

"I need something better to read!" Minato leaned over the table and snatched Hibiki's scroll out of his hands, now swapping it out for the one he'd been reading.

As Hibiki finally took the hint from Dai and started eating without assistance, he looked into the goggled eyes of an Uchiha by the name of Obito. Apparently the kid had drawn the short end of the genetic stick, his eyes were abnormally sensitive to light, yet instead of getting it treated or buying a good pair of sun glasses, this kid had thought the best solution was to wear a pair of orange goggles that wouldn't have looked out of place on a deep-sea diver. Either in an attempt to spite the universe, or as a display of a lack of intelligence, the weak-eyed Uchiha enrolled in the Academy, and despite claims of idolizing Dante and wanting to wear the same hat as him one day, the kid consistently placed in the bottom of all of its rankings. So consistent that Hibiki for a time suspected that it had to have been intentional, but he couldn't find any proof, and many of the disciplinary and psych reports suggested he really was trying, and the rage and fights he got into were results of his class reacting to this.

Oh this is fucking great. Hibiki sneered up at Minato, "did you read that apparently he and Kakashi aren't the biggest fans of each other? Kid nearly broke his jaw."

Kushina gasped, "really?" She said, a wide grin on her face as she looked from Hibiki to her husband, who just groaned.

"Kushina, I will pay you money to try and set Nohara up with one of them. It doesn't matter who, as long as it starts a fight and ruins Minato's day." Hibiki promised, and Kushina had to let go of her own ration as she doubled over and started laughing.

"Okay, can we pretend this isn't 'Hate Minato Day' for a second?" Minato asked, rubbing his face. "What - uh... What am I going to do with this?" He asked, "we didn't even have a dog at the orphanage, how am I going to take care of three little humans? And teach them to fight?" He indicated Rin's scroll, "I don't even know any medical techniques!"

"Relax, Minato." Hibiki waved his hand, "you're their Jonin sensei. Everyone has limits, it's absolutely fine to shrug them off to someone else if they're looking for something you don't have. It's why Dante spent a bit more time with Suboro than he did me and Noboru - genjutsu, and all that." He nodded to the scrolls in everyone's hands, "teach 'em the basics, teach 'em to work together, and then help them wherever you can with whatever you can. You'll be fine!"

"No he won't." Dai deadpanned, looking at a medical report on Obito, "this Uchiha hasn't been on time for a single class in six years."

Minato fell back into the couch, despondent. "Do me a favor then, Hibiki?" He asked, clearly having concluded the Senju matron was not an ally in all this.

Hibiki arced an eyebrow.

"Teach me the shadow clone technique?" He pushed himself back up, "the way you do it? That way I can work with all of them if I need to."

Hibiki regarded Minato, and then cracked a grin as he pushed his hand through his hair. "And so you can train yourself and remain productive during D-Ranks."

Minato's only response was a sheepish grin and a shrug, even as his wife realized the torture he was about to be put through and started chortling all over again.

---

Favors

Kumo, unfortunately, set a trend.

While Katsuo hadn't been martyred by any means - more to the point, beyond the highest skilled shinobi, the Daimyo, and various leaders of the hidden villages, no one even knew he existed - the fact remained that this third war was, by and large, viewed to have begun because of Hibiki, and as such, the world viewed him like Konoha had viewed Katsuo. This meant that the strongest and smartest shinobi the world over were actively working to develop countermeasures against him. Kumo had just been the start, and their success had been as much accident as it had been design - Hibiki was willing to bet they hadn't planned on Bee's chakra reacting violently to his bloodlines and disrupting his cloak, but had adapted regardless, and they'd done it all essentially out of spite.

The other villages?

The other ones actually wanted him dead, and with the knowledge that his healing abilities and even his bloodlines weren't infallible, they started to get creative. Some would saturate the air with chakra-laden mist, rendering his lightning cloak inoperable due to the risk it would pose to his allies - during one such encounter he'd replaced it with the Steel Release, supplanted by the Swift Release. The method had worked well for him up until the point when he ran into a Magnet release user, who caught and halted him wholesale and used his abilities to try and rip Hibiki in half. He got as far as opening up a fissure in Hibiki's chest before the Senju turned back to flesh and blood, and without any metal binding him, he punched the guy's lights out, unable to do anything more because this had been an offense mission, not a defense. Another time someone managed to use an Earth technique to ground Hibiki, effectively neutering his cloak, and then they pelted him with shattering knives and shrapnel-producing weapons, many of which got lodged inside of him and, when he healed around them, they constantly tore him up from the inside out until he manually went in and removed them.

Every village had something, some were more effective than others, but they were all getting the same message across: They wanted Hibiki dead, and were getting better at fighting him, but for every encounter he survived, for better or worse his legend grew. Soon, like Minato, he simply had a flee on sight order, with only the strongest shinobi from their villages even being cleared to try to fight him, and for the rest, he effectively was a walking deterrent.

This defined Hibiki's role in the war going forward, and he learned very quickly that that had been Dante's plan from the beginning: He wanted the world to believe Hibiki was a living weapon of mass destruction, and he wanted them to think Konoha was restraining them. Once this reputation spread, once he had his flee on sight order, Dante restricted him even further, and soon he never left the Land of Fire, being limited to border patrol, and often finding himself the sole Jonin at these border posts. His presence alone would often deter attacks, and with any combination of the Hiraishin and the Swift Release, whenever there was an attack, Hibiki would just be there, and he would single-handedly rout the attacking shinobi.

Unfortunately, as time stretched on and the war continued to escalate, it wasn't long before more Jonin would be deployed at a time, and with even the Sannin sent out to wreck enemy forces and send them running, more than once Hibiki found himself the only one in the village - at least, the only one not tasked with training a Genin team.

Contrary to his worries, Minato took to training his team remarkably well. He gave them what he described to Hibiki as 'the bell test,' and when they passed with flying colors, he knew he might have something good going on. His team gelled together surprisingly well - even the problems they had forseen with Kakashi and Obito were largely averted by Rin, who acted as something of a mediator of the group. Once, when Minato dropped off the kid to get some medical pointers from Hibiki - as apparently Tsunade was out of the village on an S-ranked retrieval mission with Orochimaru - Hibiki would fully admit that he'd tried to stir the pot, but only in the sense that he'd tried to corrupt Rin into being something a shade closer to Tsunade - like planting the idea in Kakashi and Obito's heads that if they ever got a little too rowdy with each other, Rin may just up and decide to let them live with the damage they did so they could learn their lesson. He'd done this because he thought it might be funny, and because Minato had left her alone with him for instruction on medical techniques, and the conversation had naturally gone to her team and how they treated each other.

As it turned out, that was a terrible idea: That girl was incorruptible. She saw the world through rose-tinted glasses, and while Hibiki had initially thought this was a naivete thing, he soon found out that it was her consciously making the decision to stay optimistic, even with the whole damn world trying to tear itself apart, and her sensei actively preparing her and her team to join in on the war. Hell, even Hibiki had to admit he admired that, and he soon switched tactics from trying to corrupt her to spewing out a never ending stream of sly, innocent-seeming remarks about her being absolutely head over heels for the younger silver-haired shinobi on their team, whenever Minato dropped her off to get some pointers on medical techniques, with even Dai getting in on it once she saw the team in the wild and realized Hibiki was right. Hibiki wasn't sure how, as she never told him, but she swore to him that she once managed to make her purple face paint turn red, and this had been when Hibiki and Minato both learned that Rin served two more purposes on her team, both completely unbeknownst to the medical kunoichi: She was both the morality pet, and berserk button, to Obito and Kakashi.

Hibiki figured this out when the two misinterpreted her embarrassed silence one afternoon as Hibiki having done something untoward to her during one of their training sessions. While he was perfectly capable of fending them off when they outright assaulted him on a training grounds the next day, he found that they were more of a handful than he had thought, with Kakashi being way too smart for his own good, managing to replicate the shadow clone technique by the end of the fight, and Obito being something of a force of nature, not giving up no matter how many times Hibiki bemusedly put him on the ground.

The fight didn't end until Minato finally answered Hibiki's call through the Hiraishin, pried the two off of him, pulled Kakashi's weird white tanto out of Hibiki's back, and then summoned Rin, who explained the situation and then managed to give them a better tongue lashing than their own sensei had after he'd pulled them apart and slapped chakra-suppression seals on their stomachs. That was the one and only time she refused to heal them.

She was also not the only person Hibiki ended up being voluntold to take under his wing, as Minato hadn't been the only person to get a Genin squad - Dai had, as well.

After returning to the village to nurse some injuries she had taken in Kusa during a tracking mission gone bad, Dai had received her promotion and was given her choice of the litter, and after a few months together, she approached Hibiki to ask a favor of him, and handed him the file of the student their night would be consumed by the discussion of.

Staring down at the picture of the kid in question, Hibiki looked from it, to his wife, then back to it. "What the hell are you doing with a combat specialist?" He asked, pawing through the scroll, "I thought you'd try and make another tracker trio?"

Dai hummed, "not so much, no... As good as I am, I am best when supplementing Aoi and Akane... And we agreed that if we three received promotions, we would try to do something similar, but on a wider scale." She nodded to the file, "I chose him specifically... My team is geared towards intelligence gathering. Aoi's would be tracking, Akane's, scouting. While Ibiki-kun and Sado-chan can hold their own, their specialty is not in fighting, so..." She nodded to the file, "I chose him as a means of balancing them out. To protect those two while they do their jobs."

Hibiki nodded to the side, stretching his jaw as he read up on this kid. "Well I can see why you're putting him on me..." He murmured, reading about this kid's trouble with some areas, and overcompensation in others.

Dai nodded, leaning up against her husband. "He rather likes what he does... And you'll see yourself. You may find yourself eclipsed by his drive." She yawned, "my only advice is to give him a little time. Say what you will about him, but he grows on you."

Hibiki blinked, and looked over to her, "what's that supposed to mean?"

She smiled innocently, and pulled her glasses off of her nose, letting a small cloud of beetles carry them to the coffee table as she shut her eyes. "You'll find out."

Oh god... Hibiki grinned, shaking his head as he rolled his eyes. I know that smile... He turned back to the file. What's got you makin' her smile like that, Might Gai?

Hibiki found out the next morning.

Not when the sun came up, oh no! That would have been too easy.

He found out when, hours before the sun and any sane person would wake up, he heard such a racket coming from his door that he actually approached it armed, expecting some kind of emergency. He should've known something was up when Dai just turned over in bed, a sly grin on her face.

Opening the door, Hibiki found an eleven year old doing his best possible Bruce Lee impression, staring up at him with a wide, toothy grin on his eyes.

He gave Hibiki an exaggerated salute, "Hibiki-sensei!" He said, in the loudest voice Hibiki had ever heard come from a kid, and he vividly remembered growing up with Minato. "Dai-sensei instructed me to meet you first thing in the morning! The moon has passed its zenith, good sir! I am here as ordered!" He said, holding his salute and grinning so wide that the Cheshire Cat could have sought a tip or two.

Hibiki blinked, "the moon has -" He murmured, looking up to the sky, "did -" He looked back down at the kid, "are you telling me it's midnight?" He asked, storing the gun in his wrist.

"And a fine morning it is, sensei!" Gai called out, loud enough that his voice echoed. "I see you're not wearing a shirt - a fantastic idea! No better way to build our tolerance to the cold!" And before Hibiki could process what he was saying or what he was doing, the mad child slid his arms through the shoulder straps of his green jumpsuit, and pulled the neckline down to his waist, effectively 'removing' his 'shirt'.

I need a divorce. Hibiki had seen a lot in this life, but this was what stumped him. This was what made every gear in his brain grind to a halt, as he stared at what he could only describe as a reincarnation of Bruce Lee, having just peeled off the top half of a green jumpsuit, because the kid thought Hibiki still being in his pajamas was an exercise.

And the kid kept going, too!

"Dai-Sensei told me about your sealswork, Sensei!" He said, cupping his chin, and examining the fuinjutsu tattoos and Hibiki's soul seal, all bare and exposed to the night air. "And your scars! Each one a lesson, each lesson studied, as a master should!"

"Kid -" Hibiki cut in, "good Kami, go home, come back when the sun's up!"

Gai snapped his fingers and pointed at Hibiki, "the sun is up in Suna, Sensei!"

What did I do to you, Dai? Hibiki pressed his hand against his face, pouring through his memories to find Master Roshi's words of wisdom, "kid... Work hard, study well, and eat and sleep plenty - emphasis on sleep!" He scratched his scalp, "Christ, it's not even one in the morning!" But Gai wasn't even listening, Hibiki's Master Roshi quote had practically made the child catatonic.

"I - I - teach me sensei!" Gai fell to his knees, and Hibiki saw lights turning on in other apartments. "Please teach me your wisdom! We must - yes, we must work hard! We must study well, and eat, and rest! We must hone our minds and fuel our bodies! Let us start immediately!"

I'm running away. I'm going to walk the Earth with Tarzan for the rest of my life. Hibiki groaned, "okay - okay. Tell you what." He said, trying a different approach. "You got two choices - you either go home, sleep, and then meet me at Training Grounds two when the sun comes up here! Or if you want to train, and you want to train right now!" He grunted, seeing the stars in Gai's eyes. "I want -" What would convince this kid to go home? "- uh... Twenty laps around the village."

Gai blinked.

"That's right." He felt bad stealing the kid's steam, but being a little grumpy after getting woken up in the night was a habit that had persisted across both lives, and this weird ass kid didn't really help. "Go home, get some sleep, we'll start in the morning, okay?" He asked, making a little effort to sound nicer for the kid's sake, before he closed the door and returned to bed.

Dai, her eyes still shut, smugly grinned and asked, "how'd you like him?"

"What did I do to you?" Hibiki groaned, falling face-first into his pillow. "And how did you get him and not Tsume?"

Dai shifted around, and Hibiki felt her drape her arm over him. "Consider the two of us, and realize that it is I, not her, who has the more patience." She said, pulling Hibiki close. "How did you get him to leave?" She whispered.

He groaned, "told him he could run the wall if he really wanted to train right now. He got the picture, went home."

Hibiki didn't like the fact that Dai's only response was a low chuckle. Nor did he like the fact that, when he woke up and went to the training grounds, Gai was considerably late.

Ah Christ... I didn't scare him off, did I? He asked himself, feeling kind of bad as the sky went from orange to blue.

When Gai became two hours late, Hibiki teleported back home to get a look at the kid's file and find his address. A quick jog with the Swift Release later, and he was there, a simple looking two-story home not too far from the front gates.

Hibiki knocked on the door and stood back.

Barely a second later, he heard a loud crash, and the door swung open. Hibiki was greeted by a man in his late thirties, standing a good six inches taller than Hibiki, who himself had started finally slowing down, right around his old height of just under six feet.

What Hibiki noticed first about the man was the hairiest person he'd ever seen. The second was his fantastic goatee - two thick lines, one on his upper lip, one on his chin, with mutton chops right out of the 70's lining the sides of his jaw, and the thickest eyebrows he'd ever seen on a person before, hidden just underneath a mane of well kept, if messy, hair.

Holy shit, wait a second - "Aren't you Dai?" He blinked, "Might Dai?" He clarified, as the man looked at Hibiki with wide, awe-struck eyes.

"Hibiki Senju!" The second Dai in his life gasped, his thick hands going to his hair, "you know my name!" He breathed, like a kid meeting their favorite celebrity, "and you're on my doorstep!" He looked down at Hibiki's feet and indicated the welcome mat with open arms, "oh - if only Gai-kun were here, he won't believe me!"

"Wow, you are." He'd heard about this guy, he'd never gotten a promotion in his entire shinobi career. That alone wouldn't be too much to think about - there were plenty of career Genin out there, but they typically retired after ten years and transitioned back into civilian life. Almost all of the lifers in the shinobi corps were the Chunin who typically took on teaching or administrative roles later in life, and the Jonin, who either became Jonin sensei or died before they could retire.

Dai, here, was approaching his forties, and was still going strong as a Genin. That fact alone made Hibiki curious as to what this man's mission record must look like, he had to hold some kind of record for D-ranks.

"I'm ah -" Hibiki cleared his throat, "I'm actually here about him, I never made the connection that he'd be your son." He also realized, amusedly, that with how Dante was fighting the war, the past few years may very well have been the first time in decades that this man had seen the outside of the village, provided he'd been deployed alongside the other Chunin and Genin to the borders.

Dai blinked, "is he okay?!" He asked, earnestly, leaning forward. "I - I might be able to find him, he said he was going to meet with his sensei's husband for some training this morning!" Then, after a beat, he gasped, "oh my word his sensei is Dai Senju - I'd, I'd never asked! I'd just been so tickled pink that we shared the same name!" He laughed.

Hibiki chuckled, despite himself. "Going back a bit, yeah - he came by, but it was midnight, so I sent him home." There was something about this guy, he had an air about him of someone who quite literally lived to please. Like wise old elementary school janitors back home, their day wasn't complete unless they made a kid smile.

"Oh, really?" Dai grunted, "I - I haven't seen him since he left!" He frowned, looking off into space, "I thought he would still be with Ni-Dai-san's husband - uh, you!" He snapped out of it and nodded to Hibiki.

"Hm..." Hibiki grunted, rubbing his chin. "Well that complicates things, doesn't it?" He bit his finger, causing Dai to blink as the blood started flowing. "Don't worry, I'll find him, figure out what he's up to, get him back tonight." He said, swiping the thumb across the opposite hand.

Dai gasped, "are you about to -" He shoved himself out of the door to watch, and sure enough - Hibiki summoned an eagle.

Geoff shook off the smoke and greeted Hibiki with a salute, "Hibiki-san! How goes it?"

"Well enough." Said Hibiki, oblivious to how Dai had fallen to his knees, slack-jawed. "Do me a favor? I'm looking for this kid." He retrieved Gai's file and showed his picture to the scouting eagle. "Should be in the village... I'll be in one of the training grounds, he might've just been real late."

Geoff nodded, "I'm OFF!" He shot up into the sky with a beat of his wings.

"A summoning technique!" He heard a starstruck Dai whisper, just before Hibiki vanished with a burst of Swift chakra.

Returning to the training field yielded no results, and when he sent a clone to Dai to ask her if she'd seen the kid, she'd only smiled and told him he'd turn up, before turning back to a rather gruesome-looking lesson in interrogation, that the clone backed away from before becoming conscripted in it.

What the hell is with this kid? The Alpha Hibiki asked himself when the memories returned to him.

However, much sooner than he expected, Geoff returned, heralded first by his shadow dancing across the ground, and then by the dust he kicked up as he slowed his descent and landed in front of his Senju summoner.

"That was quick." Hibiki deadpanned.

"I'm that good!" Geoff boasted, "and it wasn't hard, I found him on the wall, Hibiki-san! He'd actually just jumped off, and he is coming in this direction!"

Hibiki blinked, "the - the wall?" What in God's name was he doing on the wall?! "Uh... Okay." He nodded, "on his way here, you said?" To which, Geoff nodded. "Okay..." He shrugged, "thanks, Geoff."

Geoff nodded his feathery head, and then vanished in a plume of smoke.

Ten minutes later, Gai arrived, and Hibiki's heart skipped a beat at the state of him. "Gai, holy shit!" He jogged over, hands wreathed in green chakra. "What the hell happened? Who'd you get into a fight with?!" Gai was drenched in sweat, skin was bright red, he was panting heavily, and his hands and arms were bruised and bleeding.

"No -" The young Genin breathed, "no -" He gasped, unable to speak.

Hibiki figured out why pretty fast, as he stitched the kid's arms together with one hand, and took a diagnostic with the other - he was exhausted! Physically, mentally, even his chakra, he was running on empty!

Hibiki's healing session, and a canteen of water from his personal stash, helped put enough back into the kid for him to speak, though still panting heavily. "No one, sensei!" He gasped, "I was - I was running the wall, like you said!"

Hibiki almost dropped the canteen.

"And then - because." He cleared his dry throat, and then took more water when Hibiki offered it. "Because I couldn't finish my laps before the sun went up, I did two on my hands!" He proclaimed.

Hibiki dropped the canteen.

"Gai - what the fuck?" If Hibiki hadn't seen the kid, he wouldn't have believed it. "If I told you to jump off a cliff, would you do it?!"

Gai looked up, "which cliff, Sensei?" He wheezed.

"NO!" Hibiki shot back, "no no, no!" He pointed at Gai, "no!" He then snatched the canteen off the ground, "finish this - slowly!"

Gai did as instructed, and Hibiki leaned back, wide-eyed, eyebrows practically to his hairline.

"Jesus, kid." Hibiki shook his head. "I was kidding!" This kid was nuts.

After upending the bottle, Gai looked at Hibiki with a fire in his eyes, "but, sensei - we must never kid about training!"

Despite himself, Hibiki laughed, and corrected himself:

He liked the both of them.

He knew that anything Gai did further today would just be torture, even if the kid seemed like he would have done it without question, so Hibiki declared that Gai was good for the day - the laps on the wall were good enough, and he shouldn't push himself too hard, so to go home and get some rest. Gai took offense to that, and did his best to make Hibiki's ears bleed as he begged and pleaded to do some actual training.

So Hibiki jabbed him in the chest, "there, that's called punch, tomorrow - we'll learn block. Go home, eat, sleep, come back - when the fucking sun comes up!" He said, turning the kid around and pushing him away.

When Hibiki next saw Dai later that afternoon, the two shared a look that said more than any words could have conveyed, and after a moment passed, Dai smiled, and asked him if he'd had fun. Hibiki threatened to hang fly paper around the apartment for this, to which Dai acted offended - as if her beetles were that stupid! When the next day came, and Gai didn't harass him at midnight, Hibiki thought he might have made some small amount of progress.

He should've known he'd made a mistake, because when he next saw the kid, Gai came back and was interested only in working on his defense.

But, it was something Hibiki could work with, and while he obviously pulled all of his punches, they spent the morning doing just that. Hibiki threw himself at Gai, and Gai actually did a decent job of keeping up with him! But the problem was that the level Hibiki fought at was about the same as he'd thrown down with during his Chunin exams - when he himself was eight, had no juinjutsu on his neck, largely had no control over his bloodlines, and his only good trick was his shadow clones and the eight gates. Upping the ante just a little, and fighting on the scale that Noboru and Suboro had been able to back then, dominated the young Gai.

At lunch, when he asked the kid why he didn't try and use any ninjutsu or genjutsu, or even just augment his muscles with chakra, he figured out everything he needed to: He really was his father's son. His only skill worth mentioning was his taijutsu, the other two were something that not only was he weak in, but he appeared physically incapable of training in. The way Gai told it, the reason he'd graduated the academy was because of his overcompensation in taijutsu allowing him to win a spar with an older Genin on a technical knockout.

Initially, Hibiki wasn't sure how the kid might have done such a thing, until, that afternoon, he let the kid get a punch in on him, and while not nearly the worst he'd ever taken, it did manage to briefly put spots in his vision. The strange thing, however, was that it felt less like there was power behind the punch, and more like there was weight. It felt less like he was being punched, and more like he was being hit with something - like a battering ram.

When Hibiki investigated, he figured out that underneath the kid's arm and leg warmers were, indeed, training weights. Moderate ones, that looked like they could be bought on a Genin's salary, and they barely added an extra twenty pounds onto the kid's arms and legs, but it was still noticeable.

Hibiki had been this close to trying to convince Gai to take them off and get rid of them. This was something they'd long since figured out Back Home, wearing an extreme amount of weight did not a Goku make - all it did was add undue stress to the body, and risk ligament, joint, and muscle damage. Better to just get a more balanced workout.

But, just as Hibiki was about to speak up, he remembered how often Chakra had proven that it refused to follow everyone else's rules. Countless runs through a time loop had seen fit to hammer that lesson into him - science could not be applied to chakra. It couldn't happen. But Chakra could be applied to science, and that was where the space magic happened.

Taking a closer look at Gai's body with his diagnostic techniques, showed him the piece he needed to begin putting together the puzzle that would eventually become Might Gai. Despite being eleven, and despite having upwards of two dozen pound weights swinging around from his limbs, none of his joints seemed stressed - at least, stressed because of that specifically. There was more than enough damage because of the unholy training this kid was putting himself through, but what Hibiki expected to see because of the weights, wasn't present, and as with all things in this world, Hibiki was willing to chock this one up to chakra - after all, there were two elements to it: The spiritual, and the physical. Moreover, it was a point of fact that when one of the body's senses, for whatever reason, was weaker, or even non-functional, the rest could compensate.

In Gai, this disparity was between physical and metaphysical chakra was manifesting in a physical chakra that worked in overdrive, leading Hibiki to conclude that this kid may naturally evolve the same levels of strength that Tsunade had had to invent a whole technique to affect, and that Hibiki had to augment his body to reach.

Furthermore, it led Hibiki to conclude that adding weight to this kid may, in fact, not be a bad idea, but an inspired one.

The problem was that eventually, this kid would plateau: He could keep adding weight, most certainly, but he had to do so with smaller, denser weights - so he could remain maneuverable in combat. There was only so much he could do with small weights, and eventually he would reach a point where to keep adding weight, he would have to start staking them on top of each other - which would work for a little while, but would eventually add to his bulk and leave him with wrecking balls on his arms and legs.

Hibiki, however, thought of a different solution, one that could reach the same effect, but without adding to the kid's bulk, and being cheaper to boot:

Gravity. Mass.

He and Kushina had long since learned that gravity seals were a thing, and since gravity was a side effect of mass, it wouldn't be difficult for Hibiki to throw together some seals that would add onto the kid's mass. In small increments at first, just doubling it to start, and then tripling it, and so on - the crazy numbers would only come in pending the results of this experiment. However, such a thing would rely on a pulse of chakra to act as an activator - and Gai wasn't that good at chakra control.

So while Hibiki would never tell her, he took a page out of Tsunade's book and had the kid try water-walking on a raging lake. The kid didn't even ask why Hibiki wanted to do it - it was good enough for him that Hibiki said 'this is what we're doing,' so Hibiki never got a chance to tell him that his reasoning was that this would pump up the kid's chakra control to levels acceptable enough that he could fiddle with the gravity seals on his own. Though, by this point, Hibiki knew Gai well enough to not give him seals that went higher than three times Earth's gravity - because if he did, the kid would just crank up his mass to the maximum and cripple himself just so he could push himself as hard as he could.

It took Gai a full month before he was able to last as long as Hibiki had, once upon a time, during which Hibiki let Dai in on what he was doing and got her blessing. Once Gai's chakra control was up to snuff, he wrapped the kid's legs with the gravity seals, explaining, once Gai asked, that he didn't need anything on his arms now that he had these - they would increase the mass of his entire body. Gai adapted remarkably well to two times his mass, but when Hibiki upped the ante to three, then the kid started stumbling, and that was how they proceeded for the next two weeks: The now three times as massive Gai wouldn't get another upgrade until he was able to keep up with Hibiki fighting on a Genin's level. Adding in more chakra control exercises so the kid could magnify his striking power and running speed, and he soon was able to keep up with the Senju head enough that Hibiki was willing to add on more weight.

Not before he told the kid to take off the weight, however. That was the entire point of this experiment, after all - to see if the weight would have a noticeable effect on the kid's taijutsu. Hibiki had predicted there would be at least a marginal increase to his strength and speed - they were literally dividing the effect that gravity had upon him by three, removing huge portions of the mass they'd added onto him, so by laws of mathematics the kid would move a little faster.

Hibiki hadn't expected what he'd gotten. This kid - this eleven year old kid - got moving so fast that Hibiki had to use his Sharingan to keep up with him, and when he caught the kid's punch, it not only managed to push Hibiki back several inches, but it managed to make his bones creak. When Gai followed it up with chakra, he actually managed a clean hit to Hibiki's head, and Hibiki had to take things somewhat seriously to keep up with the kid.

No matter how long he lived in this new world, no matter how much he saw, he was continually amazed at what chakra could do.

There was, however, one minor problem: The difference in skill between the two was, for all intents and purposes, insurmountable. Since the kid couldn't learn any shinobi techniques, there wasn't really much Hibiki could teach him beyond raw taijutsu and chakra control. What Gai needed was someone on his level, someone who could grow with him, and push him higher, not as an instructor, but as a rival. He needed a Krillin, while Hibiki was Master Roshi.

Fortunately, he had a ready-made solution to this, and after bringing Dai and Minato in on it, one morning, three months into their training, Hibiki introduced Gai to the Yellow Flash, and his best student - Kakashi Hatake. The silver-haired kid was largely indifferent to Gai, until the older of the two realized what Hibiki was getting at, bringing him here, jumped the gun, and decked him in the face. The resulting fight lasted for three hours, and ended in a double knockout.

Standing there, observing the two unconscious children, Minato grinned. "Told you my team would be better than yours!" He shoved Hibiki on the shoulder, going to pick up his kid.

"Not my team, it's Dai's." Hibiki countered, picking up Gai.

They brought the two kids to the hospital to get checked out by a pair of medical shinobi, and during this, Hibiki saw something interesting:

Orochimaru leaving Tsunade's office.