Chapter 98

The Snake Sannin actually looked pleased to see Hibiki, and he bowed his head to the younger Senju.

"Hibiki." He said, in his usual slithery tone. "I was about to look for you... I needed to discuss something with you." He said, "something important."

Hibiki grinned, "Uncle Oh! I didn't realize you'd gotten home." He mentioned, giving the Snake Sannin an appraising look, but - as usual - he couldn't find anything wrong with him. "Minato said you were out with Tsunade on some S-rank?"

The pale-skinned Sannin nodded, "oh... I have been back from that mission for... Some time, now. As has she... Where we went wasn't quite as far as I had initially suspected... But it is because of that mission why I wish to speak with you."

Following his uncle through the hospital, and leaving behind a shadow clone to keep an eye on Gai, Hibiki arced an eyebrow, "something happen?" Orochimaru was being more vague than he was usually, and that was saying something.

Guiding him outside, Orochimaru shook his head. "No... No, nothing wrong. Much the opposite, the results of this mission have given me an opportunity I have dreamed of for a long time." He explained, before looking over at his nephew, "and have prompted me to request you... Specifically... For a followup to it... If you will allow me, I would give you context."

Knowing Orochimaru wasn't the type to ask for help, or anything that could even compare to the definition, unless it was important, Hibiki nodded and allowed the Snake Sannin to speak.

Orochimaru nodded to the hallway, and Hibiki followed him. "In the interests of raising Hidan, I asked the Hokage for, and was granted access to, our intelligence on Yugakure. Mission reports, images taken and drawn, chakra and blood samples, recovered historical texts..." He listed off, before rolling his hand. "This was partially out of curiosity, but primarily to ensure, or at least reasonably infer, that the things you had told me you'd witnessed there weren't some sort of nascent bloodline I would have to manage."

Hibiki nodded to the side, "I want to hope not, considering that nothing I did could replicate what they were capable of, but..." He shrugged, "I'm vaguely aware there were things you-know-who either couldn't get his hands on, or decided against giving me, and we both know how weird chakra can be... It's not unreasonable to assume it could be something brand new."

Orochimaru nodded, soon bringing the two to his home, where Hibiki saw a shadow clone tending to the two-year-old Hidan. The clone acknowledged their presence, but otherwise kept up his duties, as Hibiki and Orochimaru sat in the man's private office, the Snake Sannin behind his desk, Hibiki in front of it.

Orochimaru produced a scroll, and slid it across the desk to Hbiiki, "Through my research I concluded that what they used was more of an... Arcane technique, than it was a bloodline..." He hissed, "but... What caught my attention was something mentioned in your wife's report of her encounter with the village."

Hibiki accepted the scroll and, after a nod from Orochimaru told him he was allowed to read from it, he opened it up, being greeted with his then-girlfriend's handwriting. "What about it?" He asked, pushing back the bad memories from that time, including those from his own visit to the village, right before he'd thrown everyone alive out into orbit with extreme prejudice.

"Near the end..." Orochimaru prompted Hibiki to skip down, "when they rescued Hidan-kun, they mentioned retrieving a book."

Hibiki nodded, "Dai told me, she believed it was one of Kenichi's, a theory compounded by the fact that I suspect one of the Undead took it."

"Transformed as Noboru, yes." Orochimaru nodded, then crossed his arms on the desk, locking his eyes onto Hibiki. "This book, it has been a question mark ever since Yuga, and it was never recovered before their last attack on Konoha, following her mission, and then your pursuit and assassination of Katsuo."

Hibiki blinked, his mind slowly syncing up with the Snake Sannin's, as he slowly rolled up the scroll of parchment.

"Uh-huh..." He said, eyes slowly melting into their red forms as they locked onto Orochimaru's in turn. "Are you trying to say -"

"I suspect." Orochimaru emphasized, now pulling out another scroll, but not yet handing it to Hibiki. "That I might know where it is... Just as I suspect... I know what it is."

Hibiki leaned forward, putting Dai's mission report on Hot Water on the desk, and then leaned back, crossing a leg over his knee and cradling his chin, "and what might that be?" He wasn't trying to get at the idea that Hidan was undead, was he? A newborn undead, even 'younger' than Hibiki?

"I think that it was Kenichi's codex."

Holy shit you are... Hibiki briefly looked over his shoulder, in the vague direction of where they'd left the Orochimaru clone and the infant. "What makes you think that?" He turned back to the Snake summoner.

"Your wife mentioned that the Jashinists Katsuo had recruited to take over the village had gone to rather extreme methods to satiate their bloodlust, and recovered documents, ones not rendered illegible by blood, confirmed this theory. They would forcibly breed, the more extreme would kill the mother and the child, the wiser would just kill the child, and repeat the process... But that took a long time, and their people..." He hesitated, his slithery tone catching on itself as he considered the best words for what he knew, "they viewed it as a sin, to delay the slaughter... So they sought a better solution."

"And that solution was Kenichi's book?" Hibiki asked, "how? I doubt a death cult would have the patience to grow a body and put a soul in it."

"Unfortunately, much of their decision making process appears to be destroyed by the state in which we found the village." Orochimaru said, a small hint of lamentation in his usual tone. "But what little could be read made hints of Kenichi's books, of Juin- and Fuinjutsu... And using eggs, harvested from 'non-viable sacrifices,' and combining them with the sperm of the living Jashinists, combining the two and accelerating their growth... To do in days what requires three quarters of a year to do otherwise."

Hibiki shuddered, "ugh... Those people." He grimaced, revolted. "But... That does sound familiar. Kenichi did mention techniques he used to accelerate the aging of his 'Test Subjects.'" The ones Hibiki referred to as 'Zombies,' "so you think that they... What, reverse engineered the technique from his codex?" Hibiki wasn't willing to write it off entirely, as he didn't know what was in said Codex beyond a key to Kenichi's fuinjutsu language. It wasn't impossible to conclude that in addition to the codex, the means of performing his various life-making techniques could also be recorded in it, and that the encrypted data on his notes wasn't his techniques, but rather his findings and conclusions based off of them.

"If we assume they acquired his codex even just a few years after he was killed and his lab burned, that would mean by then they would have had it for a decade. More than long enough to decipher it and reveal to them its secrets." Orochimaru reasoned.

"Let's play devil's advocate here, Uncle Oh - isn't it kind of a stretch to hedge all of our bets on it being Kenichi's codex?" Hibiki asked, "all we know for absolute certain is that they had it, it was present at whatever ritual they were performing on Hidan, and that one of the Undead stole it."

"We also know that Katsuo went to impressive lengths to hide from us that he retrieved it." Orochimaru pointed out, his yellow, snake-slit eyes meeting the challenge posed by Hibiki's red, spinning Sharingan. "And that many of the signs in the village point to it being possible they were adopting methods similar to that of the Graverobber. Similarly, it was important enough that it was present at the ritual that was being performed upon Hidan, and all of Dai's team corroborated the report that the Jashinist was reading from it as he was performing said ritual, following its instructions, making it potentially even more important. Truly, I suspect that the ritual Dai and her team witnessed wasn't some profane corruption of an infant, but rather the Jashinists creating Hidan. To wit, when Dai-san had discovered him, Hidan hadn't been a few days from birth, but rather a few days from inception." He explained, "perhaps he had been pulled from the artificial womb that day, and that the techniques being performed upon him were aging him - thus, his gray hair."

"That's conjecture, Uncle Oh." Hibiki said, cutting through that. "But fine, we can conclude it was important. We can conclude that it was perhaps even instrumental to what they were doing to Hidan... But how do we make the jump from it simply being one of Kenichi's books, to being his codex? Are we really going to assume Anbu missed that when they torched his lab?"

"Anbu do not think like you or I." Orochimaru countered, "they didn't know what they were looking at, or for. They grabbed whatever they could and whatever looked valuable, and burned the rest... But they are nothing if not thorough, and good at their jobs. If that book survived the fires, and in the condition that Dai-san described it to be, it would mean that Kenichi took precautions against its destruction. Took measures to ensure that, above all else in his laboratory, that would survive."

Hibiki leaned back, breaking eye contact with the Snake Sannin and running his hand through his hair, mind feeling a little numb. "Fuck me..." He sighed, "alright... We can reasonably assume it could have been the codex, but what does that mean?" But he suspected he already knew - Orochimaru had brought him here under the auspices of a 'follow up' to whatever his own retrieval mission had been. "Is that what you recovered?" He asked, bluntly.

But Orochimaru shook his head, "no... As I said, the mission undertook by your adoptive mother and I was shorter than I expected... Truthfully, I did not even leave the village." He said, pushing the scroll he'd retrieved across his desk, where Hibiki took it. "But I do suspect I might know where it is." He said, as Hibiki opened what he now knew was a mission scroll. "You mentioned that, after Hot Water and when Aojiroi the Hulk and the woman, Facsim, attacked this village, that you found and exterminated almost all of the Undead... That their hideaway was the Valley of the End."

"Holy shit..." Hibiki breathed, reading the deceptively simple details of his mission.

"And then, you found the place that Katsuo and Aeneas hid, following your mission to Sunagakure... The abandoned town." Orochimaru continued, giving Hibiki his moment. "Two places... Two prime suspects... Two biggest candidates for where they may have hidden the book." He then indicated the scroll, "I've cleared it with your Sensei... You must search these places. Thoroughly... Either find the book and bring it back here, or confirm that it is not there." He said, "and then... Bring it back to me, if you would."

Hibiki blinked, then looked back up to Orochimaru, a frown creasing his face. "And... Why?" He drawled.

"I would rather not say, yet... Not until I am certain of my hypotheses... But it had something to do with my own mission." He nodded, "I assure you, I am not trying to restart his work."

Hibiki stared deep into Orochimaru's eyes for a long second, before he sighed, "alright." He said, trusting the Snake Sannin. "Alright." He said, "but whatever it is you want with Kenichi's notes, I want to be a part of." Hibiki said, his expression turning as serious as when he fought Katsuo. "And I want the right to cut it off." He didn't have to say why.

Now it was Orochimaru's turn to match eyes with him, to challenge Hibiki's will and to search his soul, and once he found what he was looking for, he relented, closing his eyes and nodding once.

Returning to the Valley of the End meant a return to shame, for Hibiki. Even before the question of Orochimaru's cursed seal became one that was asked, this was the place where Hibiki had realized the most intimately how far he'd fallen, was the first place where he'd not only let his base emotions take control of everything he did, but had also abused the power he'd acquired in this world so thoroughly that he'd been forcibly confronted with the reality that Hibiki Senju and David Semloh were irrevocably two different people. There would never be reconciling one with the other, not after this place. David Semloh had died, and Hibiki Senju had savaged everything about the man - his legacy, his memory, his very soul. He'd stolen everything the man of yesterday had worked to build for himself, all of the knowledge he'd acquired, the way of thinking he'd honed over nearly three decades, all of the experiences and lessons he'd learned, and used it to fashion a warrior for today.

Perhaps more than anything else - more than Ame, which had required a mathematical miracle to even happen in the first place, more than even Iwa, which had been a mistake born from pride, what Hibiki had done at the Valley of the End was the best representation of all in him that came up short in this new world, because for all his mistakes, all the black marks on his soul, he'd sought out the Valley. Everything he'd done here, he'd done willingly. Consciously. He had set out to murder more than a dozen people who, when it came down to it, were just scared and confused, forcibly brought back to life in a world they didn't recognize, with power they didn't understand, and with the sole desire of wanting to return to normalcy, return to their status quo. More than a dozen people being led by the only one among them that seemed to have even the faintest idea of what he was doing at any time, the only one among them that had the will to rally them and put them to a task.

Here, Hibiki had killed them all.

Coming down from the sky, Hibiki landed on the lake he'd entombed in a meter thick layer of steel, transformed from his own skeleton. It was eerie being back here, it set Hibiki's teeth on edge and made the hair on his arms stiffen. It felt like when he'd first awoken in Eglin, back before he'd started learning the secrets of the universe - that this place may have been alive once. Peaceful, even.

But it wasn't anymore.

The steel top to the lake hidden below rose and crested in places, appearing like waves of water, frozen in time and immortalized forever in a metal visage. The sky above was a dull gray, and the air around him was chilly, still, and stale - no wind blew in this place. Looking up, Hibiki saw the two mountain-sized statues carved here, long ago - once standing proud and depicting the strongest men to have ever lived in the post-Kaguya world, but now horrendously wounded by Hibiki himself. Madara was gone from the chest up, while Hashirama bore scars, pock-marks, and deep fissures all over his chest, arms, and face - appearing almost unrecognizable, unless one lived in a village where his face was carved onto a mountain, and as such they knew what to look for.

Looking down, Hibiki grimaced, teeth clenched - as Runner's body was still laying in the middle of the steel lake, and off in the distance, was the skull of the Undead that had made the brilliant move of using his smoke bloodline in front of a man who had a technique that could produce as much thrust and recoil as a jet engine. Both Runner's body and the other Undead's skull had long since lost its flesh and musculature, either having rotten away in the past three years or having been picked clean by scavengers. Though this didn't change the fact that Runner had been an Undead - a quick look at the skeleton with Hibiki's Sharingan showed that his body was still leaking out chakra, and if Hibiki was any indication as to how much the others had, Runner, and all the ones drowned in the lake below, would be radiating their chakra away for a long time.

Shaking his head, Hibiki forced himself to look away from the two formerly Undead, and instead started examining his surroundings.

Alright... Let's get to work. He thought, stowing his hands in the pockets of his longcoat and closing his eyes. He'd only ever dipped into Facsim's memories the one time, and just to locate where the other Undead were - once he'd done his deed, he'd locked them away, never to be looked at again.

Now, however, he needed them.

Searching memories that weren't his own was a bizarre, and surprisingly difficult venture. He'd never really gotten the hang of it, even during his long years masquerading as the Salamander. It was like trying to remember something one had the fuzziest recollection of, a memory they had but hadn't thought of in a long time, and then trying to tease details out of it. Hibiki had found the only reliable method was to essentially spitball ideas, images, sights, sounds, smells, textures, even ideas, anything that may give him the 'lightbulb' moment that would bring the memory to mind. It was only moderately easier to do when he was actively using his Rinha blood to assume the form of the person in question, as then half of the matter became pushing away Hibiki's own memories and then dealing with the mountain that was left. The word 'Sonder' came to mind every time Hibiki used his Rinha blood - the rather monumental realization that without fail, everyone's lives, even strangers on the street or anonymous posters on the internet, were just as complex as his own, filled with just as many variables and details. That the human mind was capable of sorting through all of them and creating an identity was a miracle - that chakra allowed those of the Rinha clan to essentially do this multiple times synchronously, was almost unimaginable, and to take all that and apply it to the Undead, who had already lived two lives to begin with? Even Hibiki had trouble wrapping his mind around it - and this fact was perhaps chief among the reasons why he had such difficulty sifting through another's memories.

Katsuo... Home... Sleep... He frowned, visions and flashes of a life he'd never lived, and yet had experienced in totality, flashed before his eyes and through his brain. Bed... Dreams... Wake... Slowly he narrowed in on something - memories of plush beds, of waking up to low, rocky ceilings, of not needing lamps because her eyes could adjust with just a thought and a pulse of chakra.

Book... Cave... John... New visions, one in which she fought against one of the pale-eyed fighters whose eyes none of her new family had. The one her Lord had said was trusted to their great enemy, to their 'father's' Magnum Opus, one whose face was known and trusted even to 'John Doe's' allies. She needed this face because of this trust - and because John had, for some reason, turned his eyes to Yuga, so her Lord had decided they needed to get the book back before he found it, but they needed to do it secretly - if John figured out what they wanted to do with it, as Katsuo had said, it would be 'really bad.' She wished she knew what the book was, but Katsuo - once Billy - was smarter than her - much more childish, but that was why Aeneas was here, he filled Katsuo's gaps pretty well. So if Katsuo said it was important, then it was important.

Hibiki shook his head before he sank too deep into the wrong memories. He pushed forward, surfing past entire weeks until he got the briefest glimpse of Facsim, as Noboru, taking the book from Dai, and then vanishing before the other Yuga-nin could attack her.

She returned home - to the place with the Giant Twin Statues - and passed into the cave underneath the wild-haired one's legs.

Bingo... Hibiki thought, pushing her memories away and trying to shake away the hero-worship Facsim had had for Katsuo.

He approached Madara's statue, and sure enough, there was a small cave just behind his legs.

Entering inside, using his Sharingan to cut through the darkness, Hibiki saw neglected torches lining the walls, and the cave descending deeper into the Earth. He pushed deeper inside, carefully tempering the feelings of familiarity and deja-vu with a silently-repeated mantra.

I've never been here... He told himself, blood red eyes passing over one offshoot to the cave, where a sign made out of what Hibiki remembered was a fused-together ribcage, was hung, the word 'Agostino!' written across it, and memories of Katsuo, warmer and happier than Hibiki had ever seen him, explaining to them all that 'everyone should have their own rooms! With their own beds! Oh - and signs, so we know whose room is whose!'

Looking away from 'Agostino's' room - and pushing off the stolen memories of a face Hibiki recognized as the history-obsessed Undead who'd unwisely used his Smoke bloodline in front of Hibiki - the sole surviving Undead pushed further into the cave, looking for one name in particular.

He found it at the furthest part, and the words, 'Well, since I put everyone together, that means I should have the biggest room!' floating through his mind as he looked at a wooden sign, upon it written 'Billy!' in English, and then under it, 'Katsuo' written in the Common Tongue.

Hibiki took in a deep breath to still his beating heart, and then pushed aside the blanket that had been hung up in front of the entrance to the cave.

'Well, I don't know how to build a door, do you?' Hibiki heard in another's life.

Katsuo's room was about as big as Hibiki's apartment. The stone walls had deep, but thin, grooves torn into them - leaving Hibiki with the impression that Katsuo had used his monstrous strength to dig out his room by hand. In the corner was a bed that looked far too expensive and modern to belong in a cave, bigger than Katsuo by a full meter, and also left completely untended to, its blankets cast aside and sheets wrinkled through repeated use.

Looking around, however, Hibiki realized that the remains of Katsuo's 'construction' wasn't all that was on the walls. Some grooves were even thinner, and Hibiki realized that they were Katsuo carving into the walls some memories of his old home, either never having wanted or never having considered a journal, as Hibiki had when he'd been reborn. Hibiki recognized the general outline of a 1940's television, a rough facsimile of an American Flag, some animal that Hibiki couldn't even try to identify, and from Facsim's memories Hibiki concluded she'd never been in here before, so they didn't help.

But among the wall-carved reliefs of Katsuo's heritage and memories, Hibiki found the most stereotypical treasure chest he'd ever seen, and it made him roll his eyes and smile despite himself. Katsuo had been operating on his memories of home, of his first life - where he'd died a child, and through the way he spoke to Hibiki, it was obvious he'd favored them as much as Hibiki had favored his own, thus they colored the somewhat naive way he viewed and worked with the world. His decades in this new world appeared only to equip him to be able to interact with modern Humans, but whenever he didn't have to, he defaulted to what he liked - he defaulted to what he knew. For all that he'd learned, he'd been forced to grow up on an elementary school education from the 1940's - he was, for all intents and purposes, a kid, just one that knew how to walk and talk.

So of course he would stash his valuables in a Pirate Treasure Chest.

Approaching the chest, however, Hibiki was surprised to actually find the book. He'd always associated Katsuo with a smarter supervillain - one that learned from his mistakes and kept training. He'd expected Katsuo to have taken the book with him when he'd abandoned this place, but then he considered the fact that the time between Hibiki's slaughter of the Undead, and the entire Loop, had just been a month, and Katsuo had appeared pretty set up and comfortable with Aeneas in that abandoned town, and with how confused Katsuo had been when Hibiki had come, how concerned he'd been for 'them,' the words he'd used, Hibiki wondered if Katsuo had even known what he'd done.

Facsim's memories only helped this theory, as the time between her last seeing Katsuo and Shikaku and the Konoha shinobi killing her had been several weeks. Indeed, her memories corroborated that the Undead often went out in pairs, and after those first few years when Katsuo had gathered them all up in one spot and given them his plan to go home, they often would go out and work independently. Their being assembled and waiting for Hibiki had been a failed attempt on Katsuo's part to finally take him out - a plan that may very well would have worked, Hibiki noted icily, if he had been in any other state of mind.

But they'd made the mistake of mortally wounding Dai, and that had snapped the Senju, caused him to throw out all the theatrics, all the bravado, all the pride, and just left killing the Batman.

Hibiki shuddered away those thoughts, and grabbed the book. Upon its front cover was written Kenichi's name, and opening it up, it caused Hibiki's heart to flutter, as he sensed, and saw, the chakra inside the ink in the book.

It really is... Hibiki let out a hollow sigh, red eyes flicking over Kenichi's fuinjutsu codex, going back and forth between the seals themselves, and then their descriptions in Common, their functions. Holy shit, after all this time... He wasn't even reading any of it, just giving it a once over and confirming the small details - the remnants of Kenichi's chakra in the ink, the handwriting, the thickness of the lines, the pressure of the pen and brushes on the paper, all the tiny details Hibiki had memorized from Kenichi's notes, comparing them to what he saw here. It actually survived. What Hibiki held in his hands was an arcane tome of forbidden knowledge, only comparable to the collected knowledge and archives of all of humankind's knowledge, locked under the Cheyenne Mountain Range, and maybe even more dangerous than it.

In this book, combined with the notes held in the Senju Archives, was the ability to not just cheat, but rob Death. In this book was the ability to bring back a soul from the afterlife, to artificially build a body of unlimited potential and to bequeath this soul to this body. With even the most minor refinements, Hibiki wondered if it wouldn't be possible to take the knowledge of this book, and the Impure World Resurrection fashioned by Tobirama, and use them both to identify and hand-pick souls from the afterlife, to resurrect any and all of Humanity's ancestors. If such a thing were possible, the sky wouldn't be the limit, but rather the stars themselves. Humanity's brightest minds, their greatest leaders, history's most wonderful ideologues, one could cherry-pick the absolute best of the best of the old world, and give to them the opportunities of the new.

Hibiki felt microscopic - he felt like suddenly everything around him was titanic in comparison to him. He felt like a grain of sand in a beach, a drop of ink in an ocean, an atom in a planet, because he knew. He knew that right here, right now, he was at a confluence, a nexus point where the past, present, and future all met. By finding this book, he was actively participating in, and writing, a moment in history as important as the apple falling on Newton's head, as Athens holding its first vote, and Hagoromo and Hamura creating the Eight Gates, while in his hands he held the future of his entire species. Absolute and unending, the potential of what he held was literally unimaginable - it was the event horizon of a black hole, and the opportunities it represented was the singularity.

As great, and terrifying as such a prospect was, because all the good this could do was equaled out by the evil it was similarly capable of. For all the best and brightest of Humanity this could bring back and empower, so too could it dredge up its absolute worst - Hibiki, Katsuo, all of the Undead were proof of that. Katsuo had just been a kid, and he'd set up the pieces that sparked a world war just because he wanted to go back to his time, back to his mother and father. Hibiki had been a firefighter - one with aspirations to NASA, fine, but a firefighter nonetheless! And he'd nuked one village, trashed and taken over another, and was among very few alive who scared everyone so bad that their walking orders were to flee on sight.

Even if they brought back someone like Ghandi for Christ's sake, the sheer confusion that man would suffer, alongside the power he would be given, predicting what he would do next just wasn't possible, and for all he knew the power could corrupt the absolute best of Humanity just as much as it had corrupted him. He could try to get Superman, the ideal of Hope, only to unintentionally create Superman, the Tyrant of Injustice.

Holding this in his hands, barely even able to imagine comprehension of what it meant, of the weight of it, Hibiki realized that, no, he wasn't an atom compared to a planet.

He was an atom compared to the entire sum total area of the observable universe.

So what the hell did his uncle want it for?

Hibiki put the book in the most secure storage -seal he had: The very one that had once held Nagato's head.

After Hibiki signed in with the gate guards, he used the Hiraishin to beeline-it for Orochimaru's home without any delay. The whole 'mission' took less than a day, the guards had been more thorough than usual in confirming Hibiki's identity due to the fact that, when he'd signed out, he had done so under the auspices of an S-ranked mission, so returning barely twenty four hours later was enough to get them anxious, but he made it through without much problem.

Appearing in front of Orochimaru's home with a ripple of light, Hibiki stepped up and banged on the man's door. Despite the early hour, Orochimaru was there in an instant, as though he knew how fast Hibiki was, how 'simple' the mission had been, and thus had been waiting. The white-skinned Snake Sannin knew Hibiki had been successful just from looking at him. Hibiki had a tension to him, his eyes wider than usual, Sharingan blazing brighter than normal, teeth clenched, breath coming fast, and the cloth of his hitai-ate darkened by the absorption of cold sweat.

"Hibiki... Are you alright?" Orochimaru asked, his snake-like voice cutting through the early morning dew like a blast of cold air.

Hibiki gulped, "what do you want it for, Orochimaru?" Hibiki asked, "because I won't disrespect you by lying - it was there... But now I have it, and I need to know why you want it before I give it to you." He said, practically shaking in his coat from the effort of keeping all of his thoughts, worries, and fears bottled up.

"Hibiki." Orochimaru grunted, smoothly, putting his hand on Hibiki's shoulder. "Calm yourself, please." He urged, "I promise you my intentions are noble..." He twitched the fingers of his right hand, and after a bang and a plume of smoke, a clone entered the home as Orochimaru himself exited, shutting the door behind him. "Follow me... I have something to show you." He said, "and... Please allow me... For a moment... To drop the pretenses." He said, causing Hibiki to frown. "During our time together... I have concluded that you possess memories from..." He paused, to choose his words carefully, considering their being in public. "Before." He settled on, with a nod. "And I know that you have suspected as much."

With another gulp, Hibiki nodded, and fell into step beside his uncle. "You'll... Forgive me for not saying anything. Only a handful of people know, and most of them... Well, I didn't voluntarily tell them." If he'd honestly had his way, he never would have told the people who had been sucked into the Loop about his origins, they didn't need to know, and while he wasn't a kid anymore and could handle anything the world may throw at him if the secret became common enough that someone - or many someones - tried to capture and grill him for knowledge, he still preferred to keep it under wraps. This knowledge wasn't necessary to damn near anyone out there, and it likely never would be until the Elemental Nations started striking out and exploring the Earth, and even that was arguable.

Orochimaru nodded, lifting a hand to assuage Hibiki, "you need not apologize... Truth be told, what knowledge you hold of before..." He said, pushing out that last word as though it took up his whole throat. "Is not as intriguing to me as how it colored the way you think... You and I, we did not spend all-too-much time together when you were younger." He continued, "but the time we did spend together... I know you honed in on the way I thought. You deduced my goals in life." And when Hibiki nodded, "I did indeed, as I still do, believe that knowledge is power... But what you may not fully comprehend is that before you, I thought that the key to said power, was knowledge of ninjutsu. I dedicated my life to learning... Every... Single... One." He hissed, face contorting into a disgusted expression, as he shook his head.

"Yeah." Hibiki knew as much, and while one part of him wanted to yell at the man, to tell him to get to the point, but the rest of him knew that this was getting to the point - that Hibiki needed whatever context Orochimaru was about to provide in order to understand his motives. Orochimaru was trying to get them on the same page, but it was the end of this 'book' that occupied Hibiki's worries and fears, as did the question of where Orochimaru was taking him - they'd long since left his quaint home behind them, and were walking in a vaguely northeastern direction, where Hibiki didn't know of anything relevant to this conversation.

"You... However... Taught me otherwise... Albeit unintentionally, at first." His uncle continued, his soft, slithery voice barely making it past the two as they passed through a working district. "You made me realize that... Everything evolves, changes, and multiplies over time. Learning every ninjutsu would be an eternal quest, and a futile one... But your studies, made me realize that there was another way. A better way - to study how the world works in components. At its basest level. If I understood chakra, I would understand everything it made... So for these last years, that is what I have been studying. Not the techniques, but the energy used to create them. How it flows, how it does what it does, what its effects are and how it changes."

Hibiki nodded, "and how's that treating you?" He chuckled, a little forced. " 'cause chakra's been a tricky bitch to learn, for me."

Orochimaru smiled, closing his eyes and nodding, "difficult." He said, as they left the warehouses behind and soon after, even left the roads, reaching the parts of the village that hadn't been built yet, inhabited only by trees and wildlife. "But not impossible... Your method of thinking, you know the one... It is remarkably versatile... As I have learned... As you know... And as Kenichi the Graverobber discovered."

Hibiki's frown deepened a little. Now we're getting into it... He nodded.

"Something he and I... As has most of the known world, have always shared a fascination with, was the bloodline of your grandfather."

Oh... "Well, when you've got a power that lets you spawn a mass of trees that spans a country, folks tend to take notice." Oh fuck.

"Quite." Said Orochimaru, as he guided them deeper into the forests. "It is a very powerful, and very versatile bloodline... One that Kenichi often lamented its stubborn lack of reappearance since Hashirama's death." Hibiki nodded - Kenichi had actually managed to deduce quite a bit about the Mokuton bloodline from studies into its legends and his dissection of many Hashirama Ironwood trees, native to the Land of Fire. Comparing his notes to Hashirama's own studies, and seeing how close Kenichi often came with his limited resources, had been a fascinating few weeks for the then-child Senju, and while Hashirama obviously had known and recorded more - like its component chakra natures, being Earth and Water - Kenichi had made some insightful conclusions in his own right. "I do not need to speculate, to think that the man likely would have paid any price for Hashirama's blood.

"And as I said, it was long a dream of mine to be able to study it, myself. During those scant few years before Tsunade told me the truth of your inception, I thought I might even get the chance, now that a new, living, blood relative of the First Hokage had been born." He nodded to the side, as Hibiki noticed him slowing down, them appearing to be reaching their destination. "I promptly learned otherwise... But the pipe-dream remained, nonetheless. The Mokuton was, and remains, a fascinating bloodline to study. Moreso than even the Sharingan, and the Shikotsumyaku." Hibiki watched as Orochimaru singled out a single tree, one that looked like a giant bonsai, its trunk and branches curved and shaped like one would the potted tree, its leaves, despite the tree obviously having not been cared for, still appearing meticulously trimmed and kept up. "So... One day, some years ago, I brought this dream to your adoptive mother."

Hibiki's frown turned to one of confusion, and he gave Orochimaru a look as the Sannin placed his hand on the tree and pulsed his chakra into it. The roots sprang to life, spreading open like a gateway, and revealing a dark tunnel underneath the tree, illuminated by bioluminescent moss and spores, lazily floating in the newly flowing air.

"What... Could... She have done about it?" Hibiki asked, slowly, as he followed Orochimaru into the tunnel, lit in a blue-green glow by the plantlife and fungi inside it. "Tobirama started the tradition of burning shinobi bodies specifically because of the Mokuton..." He said, as they reached a huge underground cavern, with fireflies flitting about, adding their light to the glowing fungi, the sound of a waterfall on the cavern's far wall adding a pleasant white noise, but what was at the center of the cavern being what attracted the majority of Hibiki's attention:

A platform, upon which a coffin rested, surrounded by masses of plant life, their colors so vivid that Hibiki thought for a moment they belonged to a painting. The coffin itself, just as the plants around it, appeared to let off a faint glow, and when combined with the rest of the cavern's natural light, it was as though the sun shone brightly in this peaceful place, and they weren't underground at all.

"Right?" Hibiki drawled, even as his jaw went slack and he realized this wasn't a cavern.

It was a tomb.

Orochimaru sighed, and shook his head. "It was his brother, Hibiki, and more than that... Hashirama was a hero. He still is... And not just to Konoha. The entire Hidden Village system, modern society itself owes its existence to him. Every village out there respects him, many idolize him as much as we do... The man was a legend, and more than that?" He sighed, "he and his brother were perhaps the only people of their time to think even remotely like Kenichi did, you do, and I have learned to..." He said, as he and Hibiki approached the coffin.

The casket was sealed tight, but its head had a glass plate, stretching down a meter, which allowed the two onlookers to peer inside the grave and see him. Hashirama Senju, the man, the myth, the legend, the one who had, through sheer force of will, managed to bring Mankind out of its apocalyptic tribal state, take the insanity of the post-Kaguya Human race and force it into order, to create the closest shred to what the Earth and her people had been before.

And he looked as fresh as the day he'd died.

The man hadn't decomposed at all.

"And when Tobirama realized that his brother's blood was keeping the body..." He hesitated. "Not alive... But not dead... Preserved, for lack of a better term..." He hissed, "he knew that future generations could learn from it. That in his brother's genes lay the key to a future he couldn't understand, or even imagine."

The man looked just like he did on the Hokage monument - a strong jaw, close eyes, but what the great stone monument couldn't show was the flawless, tan skin, the muscles wrapped in skin-tight clothing, the armor he'd been laid to rest in. He looked at peace, his face calm, eyes shut, dark hair flowing around his head and behind his shoulders, arms crossed over his chest, he almost looked like he was asleep, and not decades dead!

"Holy shit..." Hibiki breathed.

He knew enough about the Mokuton from his own studies to know that it was like a light version of the Envir bloodline - it was naturally predisposed to be drawing in natural energy and converting it to Senjutsu chakra, but he hadn't in his wildest dreams thought that such a thing would result in Hashirama's corpse being kept in a state of post-mortem biological stasis - if he even was dead to begin with! Hibiki remembered reading that Alexander the Great had been believed dead, but it had taken him days to show even the earliest signs of decomposition. To the ancient Greeks, they had thought it a sign of the man's divinity! To the last generation of Homo Sapiens, it had instead been thought that he had been afflicted by, and suffering from, some nerve condition that had paralyzed him, that the Greeks had misidentified as him dying - thus they left him where he was while they prepared funeral arrangements, and he slowly starved to death, potentially even aware of it the whole time.

"Is he even dead?" Considering the arcane nature of chakra, and then again the uniquity of Hashirama's blood, could something similar be happening? Could he be staring at a man in a living hell?

Orochimaru, however, disavowed him of that notion, nodding. "Tobirama did his due diligence... He suspected as do you, and brought people he trusted in to inspect the body. Medics found no life-signs, Yamanaka found no thoughts, a Hyuga saw no blood flow, even an Uchiha saw no signs in his chakra that would indicate he was alive." Orochimaru responded, "Tsunade even confined in me, that when her father showed her this place, she herself checked... And found nothing."

Hibiki turned to Orochimaru, once again being confronted with just how big the world had become, and remained, since he'd died, and it did nothing to help how small he felt. "And she brought you here?" He asked the man, who was respectfully standing away from the Shodai Hokage's grave. "Why hasn't she told me?" He added, shaking his head.

"As to the second... I can honestly only guess, as when I asked, she did not say... I wonder myself, if even she knows." He said, with an apologetic tilt of the head. "As to the first... I spoke to her about my hopes, for two reasons. The first, was simply because I had wanted since I was a child, to study his bloodline, and I while I never in my life suspected she would have his body, I thought she may have a means of giving me samples..." He nodded to Hibiki, "even if it was just an old sliver of chakra, sealed away in a gemstone."

Hibiki clutched the necklace his adoptive mother had given him so long ago, "and the other reason?"

Orochimaru sighed, "as I said, Hibiki... Hashirama was, and still is, a hero to almost all who live, and a legend to all others." He paused a moment, and then said, "a symbol."

Oh. Hibiki breathed, clutching the gem tightly, as all the pieces fell together.

Sometimes, you just need Superman.

Orochimaru had half wanted to research this just because of how much it had meant to him, personally, to be able to satisfy that curiosity, and half because if he could, he might be able to introduce it to Hibiki. Seeing a Senju in the modern times, wielding the Mokuton bloodline, would have a huge effect on everyone. Not just morale, not just psyche, but in every way imaginable. Hashirama had become larger than life to many people, to the point where Hibiki had more than once considered that the man may spawn a religion around him, in time, the people loved and worshiped him that much. Hibiki wielding the Mokuton - Hashirama's Mokuton - would be, to this world, what a man walking on water would have been, Back Home. It would be the stuff of legend, it would be all but directly equivalent to the Second Coming of Christ himself. It would elevate Hibiki, it would put forth the idea that he had been 'chosen,' in a way. But more than all that,it would make them feel safe at night, it would make them believe, with all of their heart, that everything would turn out okay.

It would give people hope.

Hibiki had feared that in trying to cherry pick from Humanity's history to find a Superman, they would instead create a tyrant - whereas Orochimaru instead wanted Hibiki to be that person. He wanted to use the book, and Kenichi's notes, to add Hashirama's blood and bloodline to his own, to legitimize him as an actual Senju, and to use the Mokuton as a symbol to give people hope. Whether he knew it or not, he wanted Hibiki to be the one to lead Humanity.

"You... Want to give me..." Hibiki pointed to the softly glowing casket behind him, "to give - to - that!" He snorted, disbelievingly. "Orochimaru, I'm honored, but holy shit!" He breathed. "I - I'm not even remotely worthy!"

"Your mother would accept no one else." Orochimaru inclined his head. "That alone is why she brought me here... When I told her I could introduce his blood to yours. We had many a conversation, years of debates, before finally she told me that if I wanted to bring this blood back... That it could only be you. She would neither accept, nor allow, anyone else."

"Of course she wouldn't!" Hibiki said, briefly raising his voice, but also finding himself unable to keep it risen - the peace of his place, it felt profane to violate it more than they already were. "But - think of the bigger picture. People stop just short of viewing Hashirama as a god, Orochimaru, and in a hundred years? A thousand? They may very well venerate, and deify him! And even if they don't, his blood is already considered sacred in most circles... I don't have to ask you if you know about what people think of his name." He ran his hand through his hair, eyes wide as he tried to comprehend the magnitude of all of this - where he was, what he was learning, what it all meant, it was adding a gigantic weight to the feeling of being so incomprehensibly small.

Not only was Hibiki writing history right now, not only was he holding the future, he was being given the choice to decide its course.

"So that hero worship, that genuine worship, that would get turned to me if I just suddenly manifest his power! The average person would think I'd been chosen by him! Me! For all intents and purposes I started the war we're fighting right now, Orochimaru! Everyone that's dead, their blood is on my hands, I -" He turned to the casket, his heart hammering in his chest. "I don't deserve this!"

"It would legitimize you as a Senju, Hibiki." Orochimaru debated, "it would continue his legacy."

"A legacy of hope and optimism!" Hibiki turned back to Orochimaru, "of reason! The dream of peace and civility! Not..." He indicated himself, patting his chest with both hands, "death, and combat! I -" He shook his head, "I can't accept this, Orochimaru... Moreover I don't want it!" He said, beginning to pace back and forth in front of the Shodaime's casket. "Even if we assume you'll find a way to just slip it in on top of everything else I have, even if we ignore the potential damage this may cause to the narrative we've crafted of me being able to replicate bloodlines, that -" His breath caught in his throat, "that just seems like too much." He said, running his hand through his hair again, Sharingan eyes practically shaking in their sockets. "Since the day I was born in Kenichi's lab, I've only grown more and more powerful, and that was without his bloodline. Adding it on top of that, I can't even imagine how strong I would be!" He looked beseechingly into Orochimaru's snake-slit eyes, "I'm worried enough as-is about Iwa happening again, Orochimaru. Ask my wife - the guilt of that still keeps me up at night!" He almost yelled, "all else equal, you give me the power of the man who was second only to the Sage of Six Paths, I fear that something like Iwa not only could happen again, not only would happen again, but be worse!"

It wasn't just that he didn't deserve something like this, it wasn't just that he didn't want it, it was all that, and the fact that the idea of it scared him. The mere prospect of the Mokuton, of him having it, on top of everything else, there were very few things that scared him quite as much. All of this was too much - he'd finally found his limit and holding its weight for just a few seconds was breaking him apart. Before all this, he'd been a fireman, an EMT! The most he'd ever seen for his life was a trip or two to space if he won the proverbial lottery and got the job at NASA. Holding the fate of humankind in his hands, being the deciding factor for his entire species, the fulcrum for the future, this was never something he could have been prepared for. Fighting Katsuo had been the upper limit of his mental fortitude, and it had only become saving Humanity at the very end, so he'd never really had to consider the philosophical weight of such a thing, but this? All of this? It was too much, it shouldn't be him.

Is this how he felt? Hibiki gasped. Hamura? When he realized what he had to do? How had he held that weight for so long?

Hell, even what he was doing in Ame paled in comparison to this! There he was just lighting a fire, providing an idea, here he would be physically grabbing humanity and pushing them onto a path of his choosing.

Orochimaru sighed deeply, "I understand your conflict, Hibiki-kun... But just as you ask me to look at the bigger picture, I would ask you of the same." He began, now approaching the casket, and resting his pale hand on it, reverently. "As you said... People all but venerate this man. They view him as something other, as something bigger. To some he is a hero, to others, a legend, to the rest, a myth... But he is something, to everyone, and everyone knows of his power. Everyone knows of the Mokuton. You wielding it... More than giving you power, more than giving legitimacy to your name... It would do two great things.

"The first, would be the hope it would bring to those who have none." Orochimaru began, "to our men and women on the field... To their families here at home... To the wayward villages spread about the Land of Fire, worried each day of a new attack. They would be able to rest well at night, they would be able to hope for tomorrow, lit by the light and led by the strength of the blood of Hashirama Senju.

"The second... Is that you would have a chance that your mother has neglected. You could pass on his power. Pass on that hope. Ensure that change could last... And with the way you think, with your power alone, with his added on, and a child next to you... The world would never be the same."

Hibiki shut his eyes, chest going cold as he let out a long sigh. "You don't know... So I won't hold it against you..." His voice shook from behind gritted teeth, "but please don't ever say that again." He whispered, it all coming out in one breath, images of that day flashing unbidden before his red eyes.

Orochimaru blinked, but he could recognize the pained tone Hibiki spoke with, and gave that ground, backing off. "I apologize..." Hibiki heard the Snake Sannin say, no doubt wondering what made such a subject so sore. "But... You do understand what I say."

"I do, Uncle Oh. I do." And he agreed with the man - a symbol was more than a man, and sometimes that was what the world needed. A symbol. An ideal. Something to strive towards, to physically embody hope and give them the strength to carry on. Sometimes the world just needed a Superman - Hibiki got that! "But I just don't know." He breathed, "I'm telling you... This is..." He grunted, "this is too big. Way too big... I don't want it." He opened his eyes and looked to the snake summoner, "give it to someone else, give it to anyone else! Just not me!"

At this, however, Orochimaru shut his eyes and shook his head. "I can't, Hibiki... Or at least I cannot guarantee the same success I would have with you." He said, "When Tsunade finally agreed to let me try, she revealed to me the few - and I emphasize few - times our village has tried to replicate his power before. Tsunade explained to me that his power was too much. Too potent, and his recipients, even the strongest of them all, were too weak, and were overwhelmed and died... But you, you have a power unseen since him. You would survive it, you could carry on his legacy, long enough for us to find another inheritor." He paused, hesitating, before finally saying, "I would argue that it would even be your duty to... The price to carry his name."

Son of a bitch... Hibiki let out a hollow breath, as he heard Orochimaru going down the same path that Minato and Dai had gone before him. He was telling Hibiki what came with great power.

Digging his hand into his hair, Hibiki looked down at the man, sleeping the peace of death. "I..." Hibiki hesitated.

Orochimaru threw him a bone, and placed his hand on his shoulder. "Just think about it, Hibiki-kun. For me, and for everyone... Please."

Hibiki collapsed onto his couch when he returned home, head feeling light, and shoulders, heavy.

He'd thought things would be simple after Katsuo died. He'd get married to Dai, get Teague to end the war, maybe get a Genin team, and then just ride things out, watch how Humanity would evolve during his brief second round with the species. His post-Katsuo, post-war dreams had been simple - selfish, even! Stupid things that really didn't matter in the grand scheme of things. Idiotic pipe dreams like seeing if he could actually fly between planets, or see if a Shadow Clone, with one of the space suits NASA had given him, could use their ice bloodline to survive walking on Mercury or Venus. Science experiments, studies! The 'biggest' thing he'd ever thought he might get into had been maybe considering inducing the 'near death state' Hagoromo had mentioned, naturally evolving a Rinnegan, and studying that to make up for what he did to Nagato!

Christ... Hibiki pulled his hitai-ate off of his head, and used the cloth to wipe off the cold sweat. Yesterday my biggest concern was teaching Bruce Lee how to be like water... Now I'm manhandling the entire fate of Humanity.

The door front opened, startling the Senju.

Dai entered the home, hood drawn, sunglasses shielding her amber eyes. She immediately turned to him, and when she saw his state, she frowned.

"I'd almost not believed it." She said, Hibiki feeling a beetle crawl up his neck and into his hairline. "When she told me how stressed out you were... I'd wondered what Gai had done... But nothing he could have done would have made you leave the door unlocked." She said, closing it and twisting the latch with a light 'clunk,' locking it off. "Or allowed me to catch you off guard."

She pulled down her hood, revealing her dark brown hair, and then dropped her glasses on the coffee table as she lowered herself onto the couch next to him, taking one of his hands in hers. "Hibiki I haven't seen you look like this since Iwa, and all I'd asked of your clone yesterday night was that you'd been given a mission from Orochimaru. What happened?" She asked, her amber eyes burning deep holes into his red orbs.

Hibiki snorted, opening his mouth, but words failed him, and all he could do was laugh incredulously. "I..." He breathed, "I can at least say nothing happened, yet." He said, leaning back onto the couch. "But... Holy shit, Dai."

Dai tightened her grip on his hand, "turn off those eyes and talk to me."

It took conscious effort to deactivate the Sharingan, and Hibiki found a strange comfort in how less clear the world looked without them.

"I found Kenichi's codex, Dai. Orochimaru realized it had never been found, and he put the pieces together - that it was either in that town, or in the Valley of the End, and god..." He shook his head, an expression of disbelief on his face. "I found it."

Dai, while she may not comprehend the true enormity of what it meant, knew nonetheless that this was, at the very least, monumentally important. She crossed her legs and affixed him with a serious expression as she leaned forward, "tell me what that means." She ordered, voice soft, "why do my beetles not smell the excitement you usually give off when you learn, or are presented with, something new, and are instead smelling fear in your blood?" She put a finger on his chin and turned his head to face her, "why do I see anxiety in your eyes?"

"Dai... I told you about Hamura." He said, "you saw him." She nodded, "he held the fate of his entire species in his hands, and in order to save it, he exterminated it." He began, feeling his chest quiver as it started to come out. "This book... It's that big - maybe bigger! This is the sum total knowledge of a man who learned how to genetically engineer what is to a shinobi, what a shinobi is to a Terran." He indicated himself, "the only people alive who are as strong as I am, or stronger, are the absolute creme of the crop, the Hashiramas and Madaras of the modern age, literal demon containers, and Undead Super-Shinobi built the same way I was.

"And that power - everything I am - was a rushed job that Kenichi was never able to do a follow up, on." He grunted, leaning his head back on the back of the couch. "Imagine what he might have been able to do if he'd had time to study me. To see me grow, to refine the process." He broke eye contact with her, "imagine what may be possible if he, or someone with this book, figured out how to cherry-pick souls from the afterlife, Dai."

The apartment was silent, Hibiki unsure if it was because Dai didn't know what to say, or because she was watching him, waiting for him to order his thoughts and start talking again.

"I..." He began, "I'm not saying that's what I want to do." He affirmed, "as..." He hesitated, not sure what words were right and what words would convey the wrong idea. "Many... Opportunities..." He settled on, "as such a thing would present... I know - and I know personally!" His voice shook, his eyes locked onto the ceiling above him. "That bringing someone from back when isn't a good idea... That even if I found the soul of the absolute greatest human to have ever lived, the pinnacle of our race, ripping them from the afterlife and giving them this power could corrupt even the best of them. I. Know. This.

"But when I'm gone? When I'm just a memory? When I'm just a name in a history book? Those people may not know, and if they have access to this book, I fear what they may do with it, intentionally or otherwise. This book is the future, Dai. Of every human that will ever live, this book will have influence on all of them. This is my equivalent to his decision."

Dai let out a long breath, entire body deflating as she let her tension wash away, "Hibiki -"

"And I wish that were it." Hibiki interrupted, "because the answer to that would be simple... I could just take Kenichi's notes, take this book, and either burn them, or hide them in NORAD, as that would give the best chance for people who are worthy of the knowledge - who would give it the proper respect and fear it deserves... But that's not all of it... Because when I came back, I asked Orochimaru what he wanted it for." He closed his eyes, now only able to feel Dai's hand gripping his. "And if finding this book put me off kilter, what he told me, what he showed me, it made me comprehend the weight that man felt, and I buckled underneath it." A beat, "am buckling." He corrected.

Softly, she asked, "what did he want it for?"

"You know how he is." Hibiki said, slowly opening his eyes back up. "Arjuna once said my passion is learning what interested me, whereas his is the learning itself... Well, Orochimaru told me that something he's always wanted to do was study the Mokuton." He didn't see Dai stiffen up again, her eyes blinking rapidly as she made all the connections to put her on the same page as her husband. "He spoke to my mother, and after what he described as years of discussing it with her, convinced her to let him do it, to study and recreate it, but on the condition that I get it. He wanted the book to figure out how he could do so without compromising the rest of me.

"Hashirama wasn't burned, Dai, he was buried. I saw his corpse, it hasn't decomposed a day. The Mokuton is that good... Honestly it wouldn't surprise me if, had he lived, Hashirama himself would have never aged." Compare Hibiki, who suspected that, with his Kaguya and Uzumaki blood, he would just age slower. "Orochimaru argued that Hashirama is to this world, what people like Superman were back home. He's a hero, a legend. His strength is hope to the hopeless, and his Mokuton is a symbol of that. He said that people need that, and they need it from a Senju. More than that, he said that it was my duty to take his blood. He said that there have been attempts, experiments, done before, to replicate the Mokuton, but no one was strong enough to survive it. His blood was just too potent... But me?" He shrugged, "well, I've died once before. He said that I needed to take this... That I needed to carry his blood, to keep it alive such that it can be replicated again, and maybe passed on from that inheritor... That it was the price to pay for his name.

"You..." He turned to look at her, drinking in her appearance, noting her rampant concern for him, the furrow to her brow, the wideness to her eyes, the hunch to her back, as though that very concern was weighing her down. "Once told me that with the power that we, as shinobi, possess, that we had an obligation to do our best. To try." He said, "Minato... After Iwa, told me that because we're alive, because we have that power, we have to make the deaths of anyone who doesn't make it, who doesn't have that power, worth something. That we have to try...

"To paraphrase the both of you, you told me that with great power, comes great responsibility." Hibiki explained, watching realization dawn in Dai's eyes as she heard the words that, in some way or another, had gotten Hibiki through the toughest moments in his life, and had served as his guiding principle. "and Orochimaru, in his own way, said the same thing... And I know he's right, Dai, but I don't want it." He wavered, "that's not something I deserve, and it's not something I want. As intoxicating as it is, as much as I love using it and fighting, I'm scared of my power, I always have been. But add his on top of it, and I don't know what would happen. How I would change further."

Dai rubbed her thumb over Hibiki's knuckles, "Hibiki, that's your right." She said, "you're strong enough, and his name - your name - has enough power on its own." She urged, "if you don't want his blood... If it scares you that much, you don't have to take it."

"And deny the world that hero?" Hibiki croaked, his voice only a rumble above a whisper. "That hope? Because let's be honest, Dai - I am not, and will not be that hero. There is no argument, at best I'm a warrior, at worst, I'm a gullible fighter that, to some, fell into a trap that started a war, and to the rest, was the person that started that war. Even Teague isn't that hero - he's a thinker. A philosopher." He said, "I... In no way, can be that person. I wasn't equipped before, I am not now. I wasn't capable before, and I'm not now... And moreover, it's not even my right to do something like this." He groaned, finally letting it all out, "my people had died, they lost the grand game, shouldn't it be a Homo Novus making this choice, and not a..." He shrugged, "Sapiens piloting a Novus' body?

"Put it a different way... I remember reading a story once. The character was a man, a hero, frozen in time and thawed back out almost a hundred years later. He was arguing against someone about about making a registry for heroes like him, saying that it wasn't what the people of their country wanted, but his debate partner countered by saying that he didn't know what the people wanted. That he was out of date, out of touch, he didn't understand the modern world or the way its people thought. When he argued otherwise, that person had asked him what something relevant to the time was, and he couldn't answer.

"I see this as no different. I'm a relic of a different time, a different world, and a different people. I barely understand this world, and that was because I had no choice but to to grow up in it again! But even then, despite all of my effort to change, despite knowing that this is a new world with new norms and new rules, I can't get over thinking of it in terms of mine." He admitted, "as ahead-of-our-time the way I think and solve problems is, my interpretation of this world, my understanding of it, is antiquated. I'm out of date. I'm out of touch. This is a new Humanity, and like you've all said - like I just said - I can't judge myself based on the rules and ideals of the world I left... But so too should that mean I can't be allowed to make decisions based on those. Ame is the only exception to this, and only because I'm using it as a means of naturally starting a Second Renaissance. The people were still the deciding factor in Ame, not Teague, not me.

"But while I'm not equipped to be the hero the world needs, I am paradoxically the only one capable of being it. So while it isn't my right to make these decisions, it's also not my right to refuse them, and I just don't know what to fucking do, Dai." His voice tapered off into a dry whisper, as he passed his hand over his face. "Nothing I've done has been this big." He murmured into it.

The apartment was silent for a long time, and this time Hibiki knew it was because no one inside it knew what to say. Dai was digesting his confession, he was still struggling with the choice.

"Hibiki." Dai said, breaking the silence after a while, "do not speak until I am finished... Because I have an idea."