Chapter 101
Hibiki Senju - through his 'puppet,' Teague Hast - had gotten a substantially better turnout to his little 'World Tournament' than he'd expected. He had been prepared for some of the minor villages to refuse the call, and had even been ready for Kumo to do so, but for everyone to show up? They either were very scared of the alliance Ame had built, or were more willing to let this war end than they wanted to admit. The most difficult part of the entire process hadn't even been setting everything up - both Mifune of the Samurai and Kazahana of Snow were, in their own ways, of a similar mindset to the character of Teague, and as such were more than willing to do their part in iterating upon Hashirama's method of achieving peace - no, the most difficult part had been following through on it all, in assembling the people and resources necessary to first send messengers with Teague's summons, and then sending giant zeppelins out to every Hidden Village to follow through on what had initially been seen as a desperate, impotent, cry for a cessation to hostilities.
So, of course, universe being the fickle thing it was, and with Hibiki having often become the subject of its ire, it got its shots in where it could, and got them in early. First was Iwa rearing its head again, using a surprising number of legal loopholes to allow shinobi who were otherwise full-fledged Kumo citizens, to fight for the honor and legacy of their destroyed village. Then was Yuga, much more explainable due to his actions against it largely unknown to the world at large, but still odd in the sense that Hibiki couldn't recognize a single one of the shinobi who had claimed it as their village, as none of the shinobi he'd ever fought in Kumo matched their description. Finally was the tournament roster itself - a feat of absolute magic and wizardry in Fuinjutsu from two Uzumaki who'd had much more time and training with the art than their daughter and niece, and only more evidence that the discipline worked closer to computer programming than anything else, whose function was no different from a random number generator.
The damn thing had slotted him with the only person in the world who wanted him more dead than Katsuo.
Well... Hibiki risked a glance over at Iwa's section, seeing all three of their shinobi eyeing him down. One of three, I guess. Even if they heeded Kazahana's warning and didn't kill a single person in the entire tournament, Hibiki didn't count - in all likelihood, they'd go for his head.
Don Shiro especially, considering the rage Hibiki could see boiling off of the sandy-haired Jonin.
"Approach the arena!" He heard Teague's calm voice, spoken over the speaker system provided by the Snow village.
Hibiki grunted as he pushed himself to his feet, leaving his coat behind, and feeling one hell of a headache coming on. "Wish me luck, guys." He said, as Don launched himself from his bleachers and to the fighting arena.
Hibiki too chose the more expeditious means of reaching the battlegrounds, stepping off of the edge of the seating area and falling to the ground with a loud 'thud' before approaching his disguised clone, and the proud and angry Gelignite.
"Are there any questions?" Teague asked, looking from Hibiki to Don, and when neither had any, then he said, "we begin the end." And vanished, appearing almost instantaneously in his seat with the other leaders of his alliance.
Don wasted no time, dropping to an aggressive stance, hand snapping back, a ball of explosive energy gathering in it before he shoved it forward, launching it at the Senju, who lunged out of the way, dodging it with his Swift Release. He briefly looked over his shoulder, seeing the explosive bolt slam into the wall of the arena and detonating, but the wall remaining unscathed - the multiple layers of barrier fuinjutsu protecting it, and the watching audience, and effectively containing the fight.
Hibiki snapped back forward to see Don, both hands shoved behind him, detonate his chakra - launching him at the Senju like a rocket. Hibiki's eyebrow arced as the former Iwa shinobi reached him, arm already thrown forward and ready to strike - were it not for his Swift blood. The explosion release user was streaming chakra, Hibiki's eyes could see it radiating off of his skin like a bonfire, his face was settled firmly in a deep, livid scowl, and his fist clenched tight enough that the knuckles were white.
Nodding to the side, Hibiki sighed. You're good, kid... Real good. But as long as I'm around - With one hand still casually in his pants pocket, he lifted his other fist, bringing it right to his chest, you'll always be second best, see? Without any of his other muscle or power augmenting techniques and bloodlines behind it, just the raw speed and his own, natural strength, Hibiki smashed his fist into Don's chest, his entire body twisting into it.
But instead of Don crumpling around it, Hibiki was launched backwards, the world snapping back into normal speed as he was enveloped in a gigantic explosion and thrown into the far wall of the arena.
Oh, whoa - what the fu - He groaned, head lolling about and full of static, and when he raised his gaze, he saw Don launching himself back at him the same way as before - a twin detonation behind him to provide the motive force to blast him towards Hibiki faster than he could move naturally, this time both legs in front of him and driven into Hibiki's stomach like a rocket-powered battering ram.
The wind was knocked out of him, and he was stunned just long enough for Don to flip off of Hibiki, land, and then throw himself back at the Senju Head, an explosion right behind his elbow blasting his fist into Hibiki's head, hitting him almost as hard as Tsunade on an off day. The second strike, Hibiki was ready for, and the world slowed down enough with his Swift blood that he was able to bring his hand up to catch and intercept it - but again, the moment he touched the sandy-haired Gelignite, he was blasted back, and the damage was enough to disrupt his concentration, and give Don enough of a chance to adapt. His arm had been thrown back from the recoil of the contact-explosion, but he spun into the recoil and detonated his chakra right in front of his fist, speeding him up and making the elbow he slammed into Hibiki's face all the more devastating.
Alright, time the fuck out! Hibiki gritted his teeth and pulled his gun out of his wrist - firing a single bullet at random, and the moment he felt the Hiraishin connect, he teleported to it, his face itching as the broken skin stitched back together.
Grunting, and rubbing at his aching face, Hibiki turned around, seeing Don, rage still painting his face, turning as well.
"I harnessed it." He called across the arena, deep voice cutting through the air. "I nurtured it! I trained, and now I see you!" Cupped in one of his palms was an explosive bolt, "and today you die, asshole!" He thrust his palm forward and launched the bolt, it crossing the distance between them as fast as a bullet, and he kept it up, bringing up his other hand and screaming as he blasted Hibiki with bolt after bolt of explosive chakra, soon leaving a crater in the arena and filling it with smoke.
When Don finally stopped, the sound of streaming lightning replaced the sound of repeated explosions, and his rage only deepened, as the smoke cleared and Hibiki, in the center of what looked like the aftermath of a mortar strike, stood, unharmed, even his clothes unscathed, as they and he streamed lightning.
"Trick, as it turns out, is to line your clothes with fuinjutsu ink. Then they'll channel your chakra just like you, and all of a sudden you don't have to worry about fighting in a shredded outfit." Hibiki told the Gelignite clansman, as he brushed some of the debris off of his shoulder.
Teeth bared and his eyes practically lit up with fire, Don looked up to the Kumo stands, and Hibiki followed his gaze. He almost missed it, but he saw an expression of revelation on Ay's face, before he blinked, his usual scowl returned, and he nodded to Don. Hibiki turned back to the former Iwa shinobi, still wearing the headband of his dead village, and Don launched himself back at the Senju with another roar. His earlier precedent of using his bloodline, the recoil from the explosions he could generate, to both speed himself up and increase the raw force of impact beyond what his chakra could do on its own, was followed through here - as was the fact that whenever Hibiki touched him, be it to block an attack, deflect it, or to counter, Don was left unharmed when his skin detonated, deflected Hibiki's attack, and left him wide open for a counter.
Some kind of technique... Hibiki frowned, lunging out of the way of a savage jab, cutting off his lightning cloak and switching to the less chakra-intensive Swift Release, and with his Sharingan, he was able to speed up his perception, see Don's attack coming, and pulse enough Swift chakra to slow the world down, dodge the attack, and then let the world speed back up. It's the chakra coating his skin... Christ, he's turned himself into a bomb! Wasn't there a superhero that was a bunch of nuclear explosions contained in a metal suit? If Hibiki actually managed to hurt Don, would he just blow up?
Whatever would happen, Hibiki did have an idea - and after dodging another attack, he thrust his right hand forward, lightning covering his skin, the twin black diamonds on his palm glowing brightly, ready to absorb Don's chakra. It had the desired effect, Hibiki was still enveloped by the explosion, but he pushed through it, overcoming the recoil and locking his hand around Don's arm, immediately seeing the chakra around his skin destabilizing, but in the same breath Hibiki obtained his victory, he was also presented with his mistake, as destabilizing the chakra on Don's skin resulted in all of it detonating, and the both of them were sent flying as though a missile had gone off between the two of them.
Hibiki hit the wall headfirst and it was only the barriers generated by the fuinjutsu that kept him from being buried in it, Don bounced off of the ground and slammed his back into his wall, some blood leaking out from between his clenched teeth even as he pulled himself off of it and launched right back at Hibiki.
Hibiki felt a smile crawling across his face as he lunged to the side, a glint in his blood red eyes when Don managed to course-correct instantly, detonating his chakra off to his side and slamming his shoulder into Hibiki before the Senju could react. As per the 'explosive cloak' technique Don had created, the moment he touched Hibiki, another explosion lit off, but instead of being thrown back, Hibiki found himself halted - Don had grabbed Hibiki's arms and anchored his feet to the ground with chakra, whipping Hibiki back and forth as his momentum was cancelled out and reflected right back at Don.
Hibiki had just enough time to look down at the scarred hands tightly closed around his wrists, and then back up to Don, whose face had gone purple with rage. A moment later, and Hibiki felt the most foreign feeling - like barbed wires pushing through his skin and into his veins, snaking into his arms and up to his elbows before they ran out of momentum. Just a second later, his arms exploded and Don immediately pushed the attack - smashing his fist into Hibiki's face, his elbow into Hibiki's gut, and then his knee into his jaw before he allowed the Senju to stumble back and behold his work:
Despite the lightning cloak, his most impregnable defense, Hibiki's arms were gone, and he felt blood leaking out of his chin.
Stumbling back a step, heart beginning to thunder in his chest and the familiar buzz of a good fight beginning to set his blood alight, Hibiki looked down at the scorched, bleeding stumps that had once been his arms, both still streaming lightning. What fascinated him beyond the fact that Don had broken through something even Katsuo had never been able to, was what he'd left behind - Hibiki could see Don's chakra still invading his system like a virus, lighting off millions of microscopic explosions, damaging Hibiki at such a rate that it kept his Kaguya blood from doing its job and repairing his lost limbs. From the look he had given Ay, Hibiki concluded that this had been something the two of them had been working on ever since Iwa had gone away - a method of completely countering Hibiki's second best strength modifying technique.
Don Shiro... Hibiki thought, scoffing, as he lifted his gaze to the explosive shinobi, whose pride at injuring his mortal foe was completely overwhelmed by the rage thundering through his body. Okay... If he had to guess, it had to work by abusing the two component chakra elements of the Explosion Release - earth and lightning. It must use earth chakra to ground and steal the electric charge from Hibiki's cells, and used the resulting disruption in the lightning cloak to cause injury.
I wonder... Hibiki cancelled the technique, and just as he thought, he saw Don's chakra fade out of his system - he wondered if what Don had done was use the lightning half of the Explosion Release to replace the electric charge stolen by the earth half, at which point Hibiki's chakra, continuing to fuel the reaction that created the lightning cloak, allowed Don's lightning-natured chakra to supply the electrons to that local area, such that as long as Hibiki kept the cloak active, Don's penetrative technique would keep his wounds open.
"Clever dick." Hibiki muttered, as he felt his arms grow back. "What else you got?" He asked, stretching his newly formed fingers, before clenching his fist, an idea forming about how he could work around this.
"Find out." Don growled, before he blasted himself back at Hibiki.
The sandy-haired shinobi threw his fist forward, but the world slowed down as Hibiki pulsed his Swift chakra. The Senju ducked under the punch and lunged at his opponent, throwing his fist forward - and just before impact, Hibiki's strength and speed skyrocketed even further as he added a pulse of the lightning cloak on top of the swift chakra running through his system. Even though Don's chakra detonated and blunted Hibiki's attack, his doubly enhanced speed meant that he buried his fist into the Gelignite's stomach before it could detonate. When the pulse of swift chakra ran out and Don flew back, the explosion from his explosive cloak washing over Hibiki, Don reacted as fast as he could - unable to grab onto the Senju, but able to scrape the tips of his fingers over Hibiki's shoulder. His penetrative technique pushed into Hibiki's system and blew his shoulder apart, but by this point the lightning chakra Hibiki had saturated his system with had also faded away, the Senju having briefly pulsed it just like the Swift Release - so damage had been done, but without the lightning cloak, it wasn't nearly as permanent, with Don's chakra fading out of his body much faster than earlier.
Groaning, teeth gritted, Hibiki stood up straight, sparing a glance at his now bare shoulder and his hiss of pain turned into a sigh. He'd worked for almost a damn decade on figuring out how to give his clothes the same durability as his body, and this guy was throwing all that effort down the drain.
As Don busied himself with hauling himself to his feet, hand pressed against his pain-filled stomach, Hibiki glanced upwards to the seating areas, red eyes passing over Iwa, Yuga, and Kumo. Of all of the shinobi Kumo had managed to stack their deck with, it was only Ay and Bee he recognized - he supposed he could add Don to the list, since technically he'd fought him before, even if he hardly remembered him. Those two were probably the only ones who could fight him equally, and thus were probably the only ones who had designs on it, but if Don was any indication, he wondered what tricks the other assembled shinobi had up their sleeve to deal with him.
Hell... Hibiki lowered his gaze. I wonder if it was Kumo specifically that started spreading their findings so other villages could counter me. Don had raised his fists, ready for the next exchange. Wasn't he pissed about someone? He wondered, wiping the blood from his chin and falling into a defensive stance. I swear I think he was angry about someone specific... He frowned, and Don launched himself back into the fray, ending his train of thought.
Hibiki ducked under the explosive Jonin, Don sailed right over him, but with another duo of detonations, he halted his momentum and then twisted around in mid-air. The air thick with smoke and the smell of fire and ash, Hibiki's Sharingan cut through the smoke and he saw Don spinning around, his fist hurtling right for Hibiki's face. The Senju zipped out of the way, Don buried his fist into the ground, and with a pulse of his Swift Release and the lightning cloak, Hibiki kicked Don in the side of his face. To the former Iwa-nin's credit, he appeared to have seen it coming, and instead of being thrown to the side, bending his arm at a horrendous angle and breaking it in two, he pushed chakra out of the tenketsu on the far side of his body, relative to Hibiki, and detonated it just as Hibiki turned into a blur, relative to him. The result was Don not budging an inch, Hibiki feeling like he'd just kicked a brick wall, and Don blasting apart the Senju's leg - giving him the opening he needed to wrench his arm out of the ground.
Hibiki saw chakra flowing through all of the debris Don sent up in his wake, and realized with widened eyes that they would explode just a second before they did so. He was sent sprawling across the arena, a number of heavy wounds stitching themselves together and his leg regenerating.
He doesn't even care about the fights after this one. Hibiki grunted, pushing himself to his feet as Don stalked out of the cloud of smoke and soot he'd kicked up with the excessive use of his bloodline. Dude's burning all his chakra on this one... And if the folks wearing Iwa headbands were selected specifically to fight me, they're studying this whole thing. He glanced up to Iwa's stands, seeing the armored man and the thin woman glaring down at them. I needed to save my bag of tricks for Ay and Bee... But now even moreso. The remnants of Iwagakure's entire purpose was to do exactly what Don was trying now: Kill him. Don had clearly trained and crafted techniques for that exact purpose, and he was someone that had been so low on Hibiki's threat list that he'd never even bothered to remember him, so he could only imagine who the other two may be, what they may have up their sleeve - and what they could do if he showed too many of his cards.
He tilted his head to the side, testing his newly grown foot and letting out a light sigh. His best chance would just be to end this, and since the only way he could reliably hurt him was with raw speed, he'd have to get creative - there was no way around it: Those two were going to get a look at how he solved problems. They were going to file this information away and prepare it for when they ran into him - so long as they themselves didn't get taken out before such an encounter.
Never tried a Swift Falcon Punch before... He thought, face settling into a frown as he fell into an offensive stance.
"Do you even remember her?" Don called out, giving Hibiki pause. "The one whose life you ruined even before you destroyed my village?!"
Oh! Hibiki actually relaxed a bit at this. Oh shit, he was Emi Miu's teammate! The more this guy talked - and the more head trauma he gave Hibiki - the more he was beginning to remember. I... Huh. Ideas began to form in his head, of a way to bring that full circle, but all of that relied on Don not having some kind of dead-man's switch prepared for if he lost the fight - with the way he was pumping his chakra through his system to maintain the explosive cloak, Hibiki was genuinely worried, if all else failed, he may resort to destroying himself in an effort to take out Hibiki.
"She's alive, you know." Hibiki tried, "we -" But that, evidently, appeared to be the worst thing he could have said.
"You -" Don's back exploded like a missile, and he shot towards Hibiki with a venemous roar, "FUCK!" Even with the Swift Release, Hibiki wasn't able to fully avoid the punch Don threw at him - it grazing his nose and hitting his cheek as Hibiki twisted away, and in slow motion he watched as the explosion bloomed between Don's knuckles and his face.
Channeling more than just a burst of Swift Chakra, Hibiki triggered the Hiraishin and teleported away, missing most of the explosion, but still feeling the scorched skin on his face. With the world still crawling at a near-standstill, Hibiki decided he would fix this problem after they were done fighting - if he could just knock Don out, once he came to he could try and sit him down and define terms when it came terms to the albino Jinchuriki. So, determination set, Hibiki sprinted at Don's back and clapped his fists together, leaching chakra from one into the other and then, with a burst of chakra to form his lightning cloak, sped up too fast for Don's own cloak to compensate, and rammed his chakra-wreathed fist into the Gelignite's back.
The result wasn't what Hibiki expected - the explosion, Don getting smashed into the barrier around their arena, all of that went as Hibiki had expected it to. The variable came when Don himself exploded - this detonation coming from the inside, from his core, and tearing apart his body in a blinding white flash. Hibiki cursed and leapt away, in a split-second choosing the ribcage of his Susanoo over his lightning cloak, assuming that this technique could penetrate his cloak just as Don had been able to earlier. The world sped back up and Don's explosion washed over him, and when the shockwave passed, the fire cooled down, and the smoke began to clear, Hibiki let the gray ribcage fade away with a sigh, eyeing the crater that had been Don Shiro.
God... Damn it, Don Shiro. Had that really been it? Hibiki hadn't tried to kill the poor bastard, so what threshold had he -
Appearing from underneath him were two hands that locked around Hibiki's feet. Hibiki's head snapped down, red eyes wide, and then snapped back up when he heard the familiar pop of a transformation technique being undone - and there was Don, freshfaced and free of injury, hurtling towards him, screaming, fist thrown forward and hurtling right for Hibiki's face, only to pass straight through him as Hibiki dematerialized into an animated pile of smoke. Don didn't seem to have seen this one coming, and it stunned him enough that he didn't even cancel out his momentum with a detonation - he just landed on the ground and then whipped around, to see the person-shaped mass of smoke take a few steps forward and then form back into a human being.
Hibiki winced at the parts of him that didn't reform correctly, feeling blood leaking down his back as he turned around and saw the Don that had gone through him, and then a second digging his way out of the ground.
Clever dick! Hibiki thought, realizing now that the chakra he'd been seeing through the first Don very well could have been indicative of this clone technique and not his explosive cloak. How much chakra is he pushing into these? He wondered, red eyes passing between the two livid Jonin. How many are there? A frown settled on his face, and what are they? Earth clones, maybe? Considering that was half of the Gelignite clan's bloodline, it would make a certain amount of sense - use Earth-natured chakra to make the clone, and then fill it with lightning-natured chakra to trigger the bloodline once it passed a certain damage threshold.
"This just keeps getting better and better." He hummed, realizing that the easy fight he had expected was long since not going to happen. This cheeky bastard was using his tactics against him! Even more, Don was probably baiting him into going more lethal from the get-go to deal with these clones - and thus, when the Alpha Don entered the fight and Hibiki killed him, he'd be demonized further than he already was for taking a life in an arena where the host had highly discouraged the act, and subsequently damage Konoha's postwar standing.
How do I fix this? This was a problem Hibiki had never run into before - even before the tournament, when the other villages had worked out ways to counter his abilities, the one thing he'd always kept unique to himself was the Shadow Clone technique and his tactics with it. The closest anyone had ever gotten to using it against him had been the burly brawl with Runner, and even that hadn't been quite as close to this. Miu's his berserk button, I can't try that... I'm really going to have to just fight this guy, huh? He gulped, well, I've got at least one trick to let me know how deep I'm in it... He thought, closing his eyes, cutting the flow of chakra to his eyes and then, with his Rinha blood, pulled on Noboru's chakra.
A moment later, Noboru's pale eyes replaced Hibiki's onyx orbs, the act hidden from his opponent, and with a pulse of chakra, the Byakugan ballooned the veins on his temples, granting him the radar-like vision the Hyuga clan was famous for, and leaving him surprised when he saw no more than five clones of Don - the two in front of him, as well as three more buried underground. Doing this, however, left Hibiki with an unintended bonus: He found he was able to differentiate which Don was the real one. Unlike the Shadow Clones, which were indistinguishable on all levels from the original, these Earth Clones Don was rocking were solid piles of dirt and stone, animated by his chakra - and to Hibiki's borrowed penetrative vision, they looked exactly like that. The only one that still had blood and organs was the one that had attacked him after he'd destroyed the first clone - likely hedging his bets on the audacity of throwing his Alpha into the fray, so Hibiki would hesitate and hold back until he could confirm his identity.
It's what Hibiki would have done.
The question... He thought, cutting the chakra off from his eyes, letting the pale white fade away to jet black. Is if he's figured out how to ape my efforts at making them solid. Autonomous. Hibiki opened them again and held up his hands in a boxer's stance. If not, I can knock him out and they'll crumble. If so... I'll have four more pissed off bombers still waiting to get a piece of me. A plan began to form in his head about how he could finish this quickly enough, and leave Don conscious enough to talk to him afterwards.
"Ready for round two?" Hibiki asked, lightning cloak sparking to life, as the clone and Alpha Don sprang to life - the latter dropping to his knees and slamming his palms into the ground, chakra shooting out from him and saturating the earth, while the latter blasted towards Hibiki, an orb of explosive chakra clenched in his fist and being swung right at Hibiki's face in a manner not unlike someone slapping someone else with a water balloon.
Hibiki lunged backwards, but was again confronted with just how thoroughly Don had been preparing for this one battle - once his foot touched the ground, it detonated just as roughly as anything else the shinobi had thrown at him thus far, and, having not expected it, Hibiki hadn't had any of his defensive techniques in place - so his leg was shredded, foot blasted apart, and his balance stolen away from him. He fell to his side, forced to hit the ground and trigger another detonation - unless he took a second option, like pushing his own chakra out of his tenketsu, using the same technique that allowed him to fly, but now was simply keeping him from hitting the ground and shredding himself to pieces.
Then Don's genius came into focus - as Hibiki, distracted by his injury, had momentarily stopped focusing on the Earth Clone charging him with chakra in its palm. Much like how Don's penetrative technique used its earth chakra to nullify Hibiki's lightning cloak, this Earth Clone was using its nature to render it immune to the minefield Don had spread around them - and so it could charge Hibiki unabated.
If Hibiki grabbed or deflected its arm, its explosive cloak would detonate. If he cut the flow of chakra to his tenketsu, he would hit the ground again. If he teleported away, one of Don's other clones would shoot out from the ground and attack him. If he used his lightning cloak, it would break through it and damage him until he turned it off. If he just took the attack wholesale, he'd be hurt even worse.
In that brief instant, the heartbeat between all of the dominoes falling into place and him making his decision, Hibiki, officially, was impressed.
So impressed that he took the kid gloves off.
Red eyes melting together into spirographs, his bloodcells lit ablaze as he called upon his eyes' strongest technique, Hibiki was surrounded by gray fire as the ribcage of his spectral guardian burst into life around him, followed swiftly by two arms - one which cupped underneath Hibiki and gave him a stable platform to land upon, whilst simultaneously protecting him from the ground when it detonated, and the other which shoved forward, grabbing the Earth Clone by the chest and heaving it to the side, leaving it to slam into the far edge of the arena, and Hibiki the time he would need to regenerate the damaged areas of his body.
Don's deep brown eyes shone with the fires of rage as they met Hibiki's bleeding orbs, the Susanoo's ribcage quickly receiving and weathering the fire of multiple explosive bolts from an angrily screaming Earth Clone, impotently throwing what modicum of power it had been afforded at what now was the only defensive technique Hibiki had, that had never been countered.
Knock on wood... Hibiki's frown was one of determination and thought, contrasting the seething anger of Don's.
When Hibiki felt his leg return, his skin and muscles knit back together, and Don's clone crumble away when it ran out of chakra, he let the Susanoo vanish in a twister of gray embers, the Senju floating over the ground made lethal by the Gelignite. Chakra soon wreathed both of Hibiki's hands, as he wrestled with the idea of ending the fight quick and fast, and just leaving Don angry, or giving him the respect he'd proven he deserved - and putting him down as hard as he would an Undead, fighting him with that same vigor, giving him that same power. Don, wittingly or not, was putting into practice an interesting twist on Hibiki's philosophy of just killing the Batman - in that while he wasn't just cutting to the chase and killing Hibiki, he was actively preventing Hibiki from playing to his strengths and fighting him, such that he could keep withering on the vine and either exhaust Hibiki for his allies to finish off, or find that one magic bullet in the myriad of things he'd developed and actually kill him.
Unfortunately for Don, as surprisingly good as he was, there was one trick that only a handful of people had ever seen him use, few of them were alive to talk about it, and none of them lived outside of Village Hidden in the Leaves.
Recoil would be trouble... Thought Hibiki, casting a brief glance over his shoulder, before turning back to Don. But I'll give him this. For all that Don hated Hibiki for, the Senju - even with what little he'd ever committed to memory - knew that high on that list was the fact that Hibiki never took him seriously. He'd never until today considered the explosive Jonin anything even approaching a real threat, and as such had never treated him like that. Hibiki had, in other words, never respected him.
So the question presented to the Senju was: What should he do? End the fight in an instant, combine his Swift Release and the Falcon Punch and take out Don in the blink of an eye? In effect continuing this trend and potentially making him even angrier? Or pull out a trick he'd only ever used on those precious few he'd deigned were the most dangerous people to ever live? An attack reserved for the undead men and women he'd crusaded against for most of his second life, and prove to Don that he now respected him enough to do so?
Hibiki suppressed a sigh - yes, it would be playing right into Kumo's hand and show those assembled against him what he was capable of beyond their knowledge, and give them time to come up with a counter, but Don deserved it. Through coincidence or design, Hibiki had been the prime instrument in absolutely wrecking his life, so at the very least he deserved to be treated as an equal - as only the Undead, Ay, and Bee, had ever been.
And, maybe - just maybe - if he showed exactly how unimaginably vast their difference in power was, he could shock the former Iwa-nin enough that he'd be willing to talk once everything was over.
Hibiki lifted his hands, slowly lifting them up and bringing them to his front, pressing his wrists together, fingers splayed out wide.
"Ka..." Hibiki grunted, just loud enough for Don to hear him.
In the stands, just out of the corner of his eye, he could see Minato shoot forward, grasping and leaning over the railing, eyes wide, with Noboru mirroring his expression, the both of them surprised Hibiki was going to go so far, practically right out of the gate.
"Me..." Hibiki raised his voice, it now cutting through the eerie silence that had sprung up in the break between their previous bout and now, as he cupped his hands and brought them to his hip.
Don blinked, eyes shooting to Hibiki's hands as he saw chakra begin to gather in the space between them, growing in size, density, and brightness, but locked from spilling outwards by Hibiki's fingers.
"Ha!" Don ripped his hands out of the ground, appearing despite all odds to recognize what Hibiki was doing - perhaps he'd trained with Bee as well as Ay?
"ME!" The chakra trapped in between Hibiki's hands only grew denser, dragging some of the debris they'd created off of the ground and into a lazy orbit around him.
Don thrust both of his hands in front of him, the first hints of fear flashing across his face since the beginning of the fight, as another explosive bolt appeared in his hands, lightly mirroring Hibiki's own process as Don poured all of his energy into making this bolt as dense and as powerful as possible.
Then, Hibiki vanished in a ripple of light - appearing instantly at the Hiraishin marker he'd planted earlier in the fight.
Right behind Don.
"HA!" Hibiki bellowed, thrusting both hands forward and unleashing the bastardized bijuu-dama, the wave of chakra crossing the minuscule distance between the two in a heartbeat and then slamming into Don's back like a truck, causing him to instantly lose control of the rapidly-assembled counter to Hibiki's attack, and it and his explosive cloak to detonate in a huge explosion, blanketing the arena in a cloud of smoke that was instantly pierced by the bright blue beam of chakra. It, alongside Don, slammed into the far wall of the arena and they were both ground into the fuinjutsu barrier Ame had erected, blinding through pure white light what wasn't obscured by deep black smoke.
Don yelled out in pain as the blast wave tore into him, shredding, burning, and breaking him, acting as a giant weight unforgivingly pressing him into the barrier whilst simultaneously ripping him apart.
Hibiki kept it up until he ran out of breath, and then let the attack fade away, the ringing in his ears not great enough to mask the sound of Don falling to the ground with a heavy 'thump.' As he straightened up, arms throbbing from the effort, he cleared the smoke a way with a powerful pulse from his thrusters, revealing him and Don to the spectators - he, standing, right underneath Konoha's section, and Don, facedown, underneath Iwa's section.
And to Hibiki's immense surprise, not only was he still conscious, but he was trying to get up!
His arms shook and spit flew out from in between clenched teeth, he was breathing heavily and practically sapped of strength, but he didn't let that stop him, and he just kept trying. Hibiki was as impressed with the man as he did pity him - for all his strength and determination, for his rather thorough forethought in fighting Hibiki and his skill in countering the Senju's abilities, he lacked the raw strength to back up all that skill. His biggest mistake was in allowing Hibiki the time he needed to realize and categorize him as a true threat, as an equal like so few others, and treat him as such. If he'd truly tried to just kill the batman, and not simply prevented Hibiki from fighting him, Hibiki wondered if he'd still be alive right now.
I guess I'll do this now... Hibiki sighed, and started forward.
To Don's credit, even as he reached his knees and, with one hand on his knees and one hand bracing himself against the wall, tried to push himself to his feet, he did still try - he weakly kicked at the ground twice, and just a second later the three Earth Clones he'd left behind sprouted out from the ground, intent on trying to make up for their previous mistake and gang up on Hibiki - but the Senju kept walking, as three of his own clones popped into existence and lunged at the Earth Clones, bear hugging them and vanishing in ripples of light just as they detonated, leaving naught but whisps of smoke behind.
Even then, Don didn't quit - as he reached his feet, smoldering and coughing, he lifted the hand not on the wall and shot Hibiki with two explosive bolts, but both of them vanished into the twin diamonds on his right hand.
The Senju reached the Gelignite, his hands held out to his sides, non-threateningly, as he said, "rock doesn't bleed, Shiro."
Shaking, seething from both rage and pain, and with a small amount of scarlet joining the spit that leaked out from in between his clenched teeth, Don barked out, "fuck you!" And lunged forward, but he missed Hibiki by a mile when the Senju zipped out of the way, and he fell back to the ground, gasping and coughing in pain.
Hibiki knelt down next to the wheezing Jonin, doing little else but swatting him on the back with a hand wreathed in green chakra - sending both a numbing agent into Don's system, and performing a diagnostic on him. "That's second to third degree burns on most of your back, all but a few of your ribs fractured or outright broken, muscles torn, the list goes on." But he knew the effect this would have - Don tried again to attack him, but Hibiki zipped around to his other side, it being little but willpower keeping Don from collapsing entirely when he missed this one. "I remember you, now." He said, "you were Emi's teammate." That got a look of such scathing hatred that Hibiki realized he'd only ever seen in one place before - in his own eyes right after Facsim had almost killed Minato and Dai.
"She's alive, Don."He said, quietly, so only the two of them would hear. "I got her out when the village went up."
Don appeared to be too angry to listen to him, but Hibiki did at least see hesitation, so he kept on.
"I swear to you, it was an accident. A technique that got away from me and the monster I was fighting." He said, placing as much emphasis on Katsuo's title as he could, but not even sure if Don was high enough on Iwa's old food chain to even know who he was. "He'd tricked me into thinking he'd taken someone from me. Someone who means as much to me as she means to you."
"You -" Hissed Don, "you have no idea -"
"Not long after that he killed my baby, Don, and almost my wife. I know exactly." Hibiki cut him off, and that had actually given Don pause enough to blink. The optimist in Hibiki wanted to say it was because of some tiny shred of sympathy, but the realist knew it was because he'd just given Shiro two big secrets about Hibiki Senju - that he was married, and that he'd had and lost a child, both of which were worth their weight in gold in the shinobi world, and would likely be seen soon enough in the Bingo Book. "But what matters is that Iwa wasn't intended. It was an accident - and I've spent every waking moment making up for that. I killed everyone responsible for hatching that plan, and alongside the best Fuinjutsu masters in the world, I undid the damage they did to Emi's seal."
Gasping, and using the lessened pain to push himself up to a seated tripod position, he made eye contact with Hibiki's onyx eyes, something bubbling underneath the rage and loathing.
Hibiki pushed, "Katsuo was hunting Tailed Beasts, Don. He took Emi after the exams because she revealed herself, and in the time between then and Iwa he did things to her and her container seal that I can't imagine, but she's still alive, Don. I got her out, and we fixed her seal. I'm not going to make any deal or bargain, because that wouldn't be right - instead I'm going to promise you, no matter how today ends, I'll pull every string I have to to let you see her, to let you take her, if possible."
Then what was bubbling underneath the anger surfaced - disbelief.
Unfortunately, it wasn't the kind Hibiki wanted to see.
Don's opinion of Hibiki was so low that instead of the disbelief brought on by hope, what was showing itself was the disbelief of someone realizing that their opinion of someone could go even lower. He thought the Senju was lying to him for no other reason than to just get him to stop fighting. Hibiki was so monstrous in Don's eyes that nothing he said was genuine, and the only service he could provide was to die.
"You..." Growled Don, "absolute..." And he lunged forward, hands going for Hibiki's head, glowing with explosive chakra. "Piece of shit!" He screamed.
To the rest of the arena, what happened next was Hibiki punched Don hard enough in the chest to send him sprawling across the ring, chakra fizzling out as the unconscious shinobi could no longer put forth the focus required to fuel it.
To Don and Hibiki, however, something much different happened - as the world slowed down around Hibiki, he stole the chakra from Don's hands and nullified the technique, and created two shadow clones. One transformed into a perfect mirror image of the former Iwa shinobi, while the other remained as his Alpha, who grabbed Don by his wrists and vanished in a ripple of light, leaving the two clones to take their positions and perform their act, while Don and Hibiki reappeared on the other side of the elemental nations.
Right inside Konoha's psych ward.
With the world still halted at his swift speeds, Hibiki had Don on his feet and in a standing half nelson in what, to his opponent, was an instant - the arm around his throat preventing him from making any noise once he cut the Swift chakra and let the world speed back up. Don needed surprisingly little time to react to the change in surroundings and stance, and was instantly struggling against Hibiki, air whistling out from his partially occluded throat, face already turning red, as Hibiki casually tightened his grip and made sure to keep siphoning away the Gelignite's chakra so he wouldn't pull a fast one.
After a full second had passed, it registered to Don that they were no longer in the arena in Ame, but rather a quaint, quiet rehab room. At the room's far end, seated in a wheelchair and numbly letting the pallid, red-gold light of the early morning sun wash over her, was a woman that one of them hadn't seen in almost a decade, and the other, in more than a month.
Don froze solid at the sight of her, little proof he was alive but the involuntary muscle twitches of a person processing far too much information than their brain or body could handle. Even with the light of the early morning sun casting her into backlight thanks to their position relative to her, her pale, albino features were unmistakable, as was the fact that she was completely still. Despite how quiet their struggles had been, in the dead silence of this room, they would have been loud enough for anyone to notice, and yet Emi Miu hadn't so much as twitched in their direction.
"Or..." Hibiki whispered right into Don's ear. "I can let you see her now, if you don't want to believe me."
Again, Don tried - gaining a small second wind and trying to elbow Hibiki in the gut, but the Senju had been prepared for it, and it didn't phase him.
Still, Emi didn't move.
"Calm down, Don, or we'll go back."
Don did the exact opposite for several seconds, but Hibiki had the superior positioning - and when Don continued struggling, Hibiki tightened his arm around his throat and just waited, eyes flicking from Don to Emi, until the former finally lost his steam and began to deflate.
"Okay..." Don gasped, barely audible from his almost closed throat. "Okay!" But perfectly audible was the rush of emotion shaking his voice - if he hadn't believed Hibiki then, he sure as hell did now.
Slowly, Hibiki lessened his grip. Don didn't struggle, and he didn't move until Hibiki finally let go entirely, at which point he rushed to the other side of the room, while Hibiki reached back and planted a privacy seal on the door.
"Emi!" Don coughed, loud enough to make Hibiki glad he'd dropped the seal. "Emi!" He said again, as he reached her and dropped to his knees in front of her wheelchair.
As Hibiki approached, a solemn look on his face, he lifted one of his hands and made a brief sign to let the Anbu guarding the jinhcuriki know that it was, indeed, him, and that this situation was under control. They'd be confused as hell, and Dante probably already knew something was happening, but Hibiki's involvement in her case was just enough to keep them from lopping off heads for the moment.
"Emi!" Don grabbed her hand in both of his, his scorched skin providing a stark contrast to her pale flesh, his look of rapturous glee soon melting to one of desperation, confusion, and anger, as he turned from her to Hibiki, "why isn't she -"
"She's been catatonic for years, Don." Hibiki responded. "She was already dropping when I found her. Didn't say a word when I spoke to Yonbi, or after. If I didn't see the seal on her gut, I wouldn't have recognized her, with how she was acting. We kept her medicated until we could fix her seal, and when we woke her up..." He trailed off and indicated her. "She just dropped even further. Stopped talking entirely." He sat on the corner of Emi's bed, giving the two a little space and sighing as the once fiery Jinchuriki failed to react even to her old friend. "She's still in there. We didn't mess anything up - I may not have been personally part of the process that made the seal, but the best masters in Konoha were, and they checked their work more thoroughly than some people I greatly respect. When she didn't come back, we had some mind walkers take a look. She's still in there, she's just... Not coming out. Whatever Katsuo did got her bad."
Don, in direct opposition to how he'd appeared when they'd started fighting, practically looked like he was on the verge of tears, as he desperately stroked her hand - leaving streaks of ash in his wake - and looked back at her. "Emi - Ricecake, please!"
But she still wouldn't move, gray eyes blankly staring out at Konoha outside.
Once he'd put the pieces together, Hibiki had honestly hoped that Don might be enough to snap Emi out of this, to bring her back at least somewhat, but whatever Katsuo had done to her wasn't easy to shake off, it seemed.
"There are five people in this village that know who she is and that she's here, three of whom are her medical staff." He said, "I personally come here once a month to keep her as fit as we can. I push chakra into her coils, keep her muscles from deteriorating, heal bedsores, the works." Don looked despondent, shoulders slumped, eyes wide and searching Emi's dull orbs for any sign of life, jaw slack and breath coming faster than before. "I wasn't lying, when I said I would do what I can." He said, finally getting Don to turn to him. "Once everything's done, once we're all on our way home, I'll do everything in my power to give her back to you." He wasn't above swapping her out with a shadow clone and then faking her death if it came to it - of all the mistakes and sins he'd committed in this second life, he was being given a chance to make one right, so he'd move heaven and earth to do so.
Don morosely turned from Hibiki to Emi, and then back, "I -" He hesitated, "she'll..." He looked between them again, and lowered his head, pressing it into Emi's hand and taking in several deep breaths, before pushing him to his feet. "If you survive, you mean." He said, finally. "I'm not the strongest one out for your head, Senju." It appeared as though the effort required to let go of her hand was herculean, and that letting her hand fall back to her lap caused him physical pain. "Han and Mara, they're way stronger than me, and I'm not going to stop them." He said, appearing to have to force the earlier determination to return to his face, as he made again made eye contact with Hibiki.
"And the three wearing Yuga headbands aren't?" Hibiki snorted, getting to his feet. "I'll -" He began, but Don had begun speaking right alongside him.
"We thought -"
The two paused, eyeing each other suspiciously for a moment, before Don continued, "we thought they were yours."
Hibiki frowned, "I'll arrange something in case they succeed where Katsuo the Monster didn't." He said, "we thought they were yours." He added, tilting his head. "That Kumo did like they did with you - claimed they were representatives of a village I'd destroyed."
Don blinked, "what? No!" He said, with a disgusted shake of his head. "Kumo let you take them out. They'd been fighting us as hard as they'd been throwing themselves at you." He said, before snidely adding, "you having the experience with obliterating villages, after all."
Hibiki let that slide, instead frowning deeper, "well... I can confirm they're not ours." He said, holding his hand out. "Let's head back. Just wait a bit before you wake up, yeah?"
Don hesitated a moment, staring at Hibiki's hand, before taking it, and the two reappeared in Ame. Hibiki used his Swift Release to set things up in the hospital room Don had been provided, and soon had Don taking the place of the clone that had been acting in his stead, before Hibiki himself returned to the arena and dispelled the clone that had been acting, business as usual. During their sojourn, another fight had already passed them by, and now one was beginning - this one between Mara of Iwagakure, and one of the men in Yuga regalia - the giant, stout one that the scrolls identified as 'Ken.'
The two were already on the field. Iwa's fighter was thin, wore form-fitting, dark clothes and light armor plates, with little skin exposed beneath her neck, and alongside the weapons Hibiki saw on her, all of which, to his sharp eyes, appeared to be covered in thin liquids and oils, he was left with the impression that she may have been former Iwa Anbu, an assassin, even, and that at least explained why she was here, and also what Iwa's remnants' plan was to kill him: Don would take away his ability to fight and try to whither on the vine, Mara, an assassin, would make all attempts not to fight him at all and instead to hit him with assassination techniques and poisons to try and just kill the batman. By that logic, the third Iwa fighter, 'Han,' was probably their last resort - their power house, who would take Hibiki to task head on.
Looking over to Ken, however, Hibiki's frown returned as he examined the giant of a man. He looked not unlike Chouza, in that he was gigantic in both length and width, but unlike Chouza, whose size was equal parts muscle and fat as a means of fueling his family's technique, this guy appeared to be nothing but muscle. A seven foot tall brick shithouse who, on muscle power alone, could probably beat Tsunade in an arm-wrestling contest. The guy had a strange affinity for the color white - with all of his robe-like clothing being washed out whites or grays, and what little Hibiki could see of his face spoke of the same thing - his skin was so pasty and his hair so silvery gray that Hibiki could only assume he'd painted himself. Looking up to the Yuga seats confirmed that one of his companions looked similar, though the third of their trio, Hibiki couldn't make any details out on, being completely hidden by his kimono and his hat.
Maybe they really are Yuga-nin? Hibiki wondered, looking back down to the giant. I don't think I ever saw any Jashinists not using those immortality techniques... And he kind of has Hidan's hair... Maybe this is some part of their religion? Some obscure statement they're trying to make? Trying to suss out the thought processes of a literal death cult wasn't something Hibiki really wanted to go too far into, but at least this provided some kind of explanation. Especially as Don had let slip that some of them had been out fighting Kumo at the same time - so there absolutely could be survivors running around.
It may do me good to check out that village again. He shuddered at the thought, but dreading more the prospect of there being an unknown number of immortal death-cultists running roughshod around what used to be Japan.
As Hibiki leaned back in the seat that had been occupied by his clone, Noboru spoke up, appearing to have been none the wiser of the switch-out. "I wonder if they will truly fight each other... Hailing from the same village." He murmured, as the two fighters bowed to each other, leapt to opposing sides of the arena, and then launched at each other. "It would be counter productive."
"It may help us determine which one is stronger." Minato opined, as they watched Mara produce several senbon, which Hibiki's eyes noticed were covered in thin layers of some oily liquid. "They'll probably throw down a bit and then the weaker one will surr-" And as he spoke, before he could finish, Ken vanished, instantaneously appearing right behind Mara, a great, glowing red battleaxe held in both hands, as he skidded to a halt, all of his tremendous weight on his front foot, upon which he twisted and, in one smooth motion, swung the axe faster than his size would seem to allow, cleaving Mara in two in one swing.