A New Life
Chapter 28
Cadmus Labs, Washington DC
Thirty-five minutes ago
The frenetic preparations of the technicians in the repurposed East wing of Subbasement 4 had tapered off over the past six hours following the successful testing of every bit of equipment in the room. Now, after two weeks of preparation, Terra was dead certain that they were ready.
And not a moment too soon.
"Lord Kobra," Terra bowed to the pale-skinned, self-proclaimed god as he walked into the wing, flanked by his right-hand woman, Shimmer. "We received the transmission from the signal beacon sixty hours ago and have actively maintained a lock on the signal."
Kobra s cold gaze swept around the room, appraising her efforts at meeting his demands, before returning to her. "Our eyes and ears?"
"All tested and standing by," She replied immediately, directing his gaze to a large bank of computer consoles, manned by the absolute best Cadmus had to offer. "Our resource in the heroes camp performed as expected, granting us administrator privileges to the security system of the Mountain. Aside from that, we have commandeered six of Cadmus satellites and have positioned them to provide maximum coverage of the Island and its environs."
"Our jammers are also in place and ready for activation," The head technician continued. "As soon as we give the signal, we ll have a forty-kilometer static field surrounding the island: any incoming or outbound signals will be routed to our systems."
"Where is the bounty hunter now?"
Terra tapped at the tablet in her hand and pulled the required information: "The asset just crossed Mars' orbit. ETA based on his present speed: twenty minutes."
"Ma'am the satellites are tracking a different energy signature alongside the asset's." One of the senior technicians stated from his console. "The signature matches the readings of the Green Lantern."
Terra frowned at that. "It seems our space faring hero has returned."
"It seems that way, Ma'am." The technician confirmed. "The asset hasn't made any major deviations from the path we laid out for him."
"Then we are still on track for the demonstration?"
"As it stands, Ma'am."
"Well done, Markov," Terra turned to the member of the Light as he took a seat in front of the large, ultra high-res monitor they had prepared for him. "I do not see your partner."
"He's on his way," She stated, her eyes drifting involuntarily toward the door. "He was temporarily assigned to the Bedlam facility in place of Sportsmaster."
"Very well," the cult-leader sat back, leaning his chin on his arm while his gaze locked on to the signal from the tracking beacon.
There was nothing more to do now than to wait
‹‹‡››
Mount Justice
Now
Time dilation. The effect of essentially stretching a single unit of time such that it extends for a greater period.
It was the addition of a time dilation field that had made his father's version of the Hiraishin so much more effective than the Nidaime Hokage's, allowing the Yellow Flash to stretch a single second to cover a three-second span after every teleport such that, combined with the man's innate speed and genius-level intellect he could analyze a battle to such a degree that he could always make the best decisions regardless of the situation.
It was no wonder why he had so effortlessly decimated the Iwagakure troops.
Naruto, having never really used the technique in a combat scenario, had never truly appreciated the overwhelming benefit of the time dilation effect until now.
The instant after his reappearance, his eyes had immediately raked over his surrounding, taking in the still forms of his friends as they struggled against an overly muscled brute: M'gann's blistered body sprawled over in the distance, Artemis frozen in the midst of unscrewing an arrowhead -'Likely a freeze arrow. - Wally, clutching his ankle as he stared at the scene of the fight, his face a frozen rictus of pain; Raven, eyes glowing dark crimson as a trio of energy tendrils crawled out of an orb of pulsating energy in her hand; behind her, a battered Dick swayed on his feet, looking to be on his last legs; Donna, Kaldur and a new girl with a green aura all closing down on the brute who was just about to throw an object concealed in his fist. Connor, nowhere within sight.
One second gone.
Calling up his biju cloak, he sped forward in a blur of motion, dragging Wally over to Artemis' side before doing the same to Kaldur, the new girl and Donna. He left Raven and Dick for the time being as they were a fair distance from the fight itself before locking on to the gray-blue bastard.
Two seconds gone.
He created a pair of clones -one earthen and the other a Shadow clone- before zipping forward again, followed by the earthen clone, and slamming a heel strike to the bridge of the brute s face followed by a knife edge strike to the juncture between his neck and shoulder, a knee to the gut and a savage right hook to the jaw before returning to his initial spot beside Raven, his cloak dissipating as he moved.
Three seconds.
Time reasserted itself with a vengeance: his teammates that had been moved about stumbled wildly, wondering what had happened while the brute simply stopped mid-motion, a bewildered look on his face an instant before Raven's spells slammed into him with such force that they threw him ass over teakettle for more than a hundred meters.
Raven, sensing the sudden presence by her side and partly consumed by the building battle-lust, instantly spun away from him, a dark purple energy whip lashing out from beneath her cloak to bat him away.
"Rae! It s me!" He stated firmly as he grabbed onto the energy whip with an arm coated in a dense shell of chakra while protectively pulling Dick close. "You used the tag to call for help and I m here."
"Raven! It s Naruto!" Dick added weakly, having recognized the blond a moment after seeing him.
Between his familiar voice, the lack of aggression from him and the verification from her teammate, the dark haired magic user was able to push past the cloud of anger that fogged up her mind, her eyes losing their crimson glow as she focused. "Naruto?"
"It s me, Raven, He said reassuringly as he released the whip. "I'm here."
"Oh good " She gasped, feeling dizzy all of a sudden after suppressing the demonic energies she had been channeling for the past fifteen minutes. "I'll just lie down "
He leaped forward to hold her as she slumped, quickly activating a diagnostic technique to confirm that she was only suffering a severe case of exhaustion. "What happened here?"
"The big guy Lobo he's a bounty hunter-" Dick broke off mid-sentence to cough up a glob of bloody phlegm, "He's after you, Naruto. Came here asking for you."
The blond's eyes narrowed coldly as his mind went into overtime, processing that bit of information. While it wasn't unlikely that someone had put a bounty on him, the fact that the Light -because he frankly hadn't pissed anyone else off enough for them to put a price on his head- had gone to such an extent was somewhat bothersome. More than that, though, the fact that this hunter knew precisely how to call him out confirmed his suspicions: Donna's clone hadn't been lying about the presence of a mole.
"Stay here," He ordered as he placed Raven on the ground beside the younger boy, summoning the shadow clone over while the earthen clone kept the bounty hunter busy. "My clone will take you back to the others and get to work on healing whatever injuries you've got. Where's Connor?"
"Underwater somewhere," Dick answered, his breath coming in short gasps. "Lobo knocked him out and tossed him aside there was a splash "
"I'll get him," Naruto swore, creating a clone for that purpose. "You need to get going." "Don't let him get to his transport," The blond turned to see Dick pointing shakily at an overturned craft, half buried beneath a pile of rubble. "Thing's loaded with some seriously nasty weapons; it's what gave him the advantage."
"Thank you," He nodded before substituting with his clone, seamlessly slamming a kick into Lobo's side, sending him flying again. Without wasting a moment, he performed a seal-less Shunshin, appearing beside the airborne the bounty hunter and driving his elbow into his sternum before diving away, his eyes narrowed contemplatively.
'I've been hitting him with enough force to pulverize concrete and he's barely flinched.' He adjusted his stance as he began channeling a finely balanced mix of fire and earth-style chakra to his limbs. 'Area of effect techniques are out of the question for now so I suppose I can use this opportunity to test the effectiveness of the explosion-style taijutsu.'
"Alright!" Lobo leered as he casually rolled his shoulder. "Let s get this show on the road."
Filing away the odd comment, Naruto shot forward like a bullet, leading with a right hook to the hunter's jaw that was quickly followed up by a jab to his floating ribs. Each attack was expertly parried, however, rather than step away to regroup, the blond twisted his hands to grab hold of the hunter's head and pulled him forward into a rising knee.
Proving his skill, the bounty hunter countered by shifting his head just the slightest bit back, allowing the knee to whizz past his face before snapping his arms back down, dragging the blond out of the air and forcing him to release his hands. Using the momentum the blond's forced descent had given him, the bounty hunter carried on, bringing his head forward, smack into the blond's head.
The blond exploded in a shower of wooden splinters, leaving the Czarnian baffled for a moment before an explosive hit to the small of his back nearly folded him in half. His regenerative ability was the only thing that kept him in the game, working overtime to repair the damage to his spine while he twisted mid-air to land on his feet. He had barely set his feet right when his finely honed instincts had him diving to the side just before the blond dropped to the ground with a punch that cracked the ground. Lobo's eyes narrowed: there was no way in hell that such a weak punch could have had such a nasty effect on him earlier.
For his part, Naruto smirked coldly at the bounty hunter's narrowed gaze, guessing accurately that the brute was wondering about the severely weakened punch a moment ago. 'Let him wonder,' The shinobi thought as he raced forward again, once more channeling Bakuton chakra to his limbs as he reengaged the hunter.
The fight started off again, this time with Naruto on the defense, parrying attacks left and right as the fight grew far more intense than their initial bout. Punches, kicks, elbow strikes and more were exchanged in seconds, Naruto sticking to parrying as the fight raged on while keeping an eye on the bounty hunter's expression of mounting frustration.
"Stay still and let me frag ya, ya bastiche!" Lobo snarled as he tried to bury his knee into the blond's belly only for the target to take a quick step backward, losing ground for the umpteenth time since the current exchange began. Finally losing his cool, the bounty charged right at the blond, ready to shoulder tackle the bastard and get this stupid fight done with.
That was when the blond struck: taking advantage of the hunter's mindless charge, the shinobi dropped beneath the tackle and rose with a blindingly fast uppercut that sent the Czarnian rocketing into the air. Vanishing from the ground, the blond reappeared midair, twisting savagely and lashing out with a spinning kick that caught the hunter at the juncture between neck and shoulder. He vanished again, abusing the hell out of the shunshin as he proceeded to beat the shit out of the bounty hunter. Midway through, he created a pair of clones that joined him in the beatdown, sending the bounty hunter ever higher into the air with each relentless attack, never giving him so much as a second to breathe.
Just as he was about to land the hammer-blow to the gut that would send the bounty hunter crashing to the ground, a sudden deluge of memories flashed through his mind, distracting him long enough for the gray-skinned alien to counterattack: reaching up with a club-like fist, he grabbed the shinobi's interlocked palms and yanked him forward into a nasty right hook that caught the shinobi right above the temple, leaving Naruto dazed and -more crucially- open.
"Fragging bastiche thought he could pummel me and get away with it?!" Lobo sneered as he capitalized on that opening with ruthless brutality, jerking his target around until he was seated astride the blond and raining down blows that struck with thunderous force as they fell through the sky. "Well who s pummeling who now ya shitstain?!"
At the last possible moment, the bounty hunter kicked away from his target's now-limp form, sending the blond crashing into the earth with even greater force.
As he smashed into the ground from his own landing, the shaggy haired bounty hunter glared at the spot the target had landed, spitting out a few bloody teeth that the bastard had knocked loose. "Looks like ya ass was just as overpriced as I expecte- FUUU-!"
The expletive was cut off by a distinct, keening wail as the bounty hunter was engulfed in a dome of ultra-sharp wind blades, courtesy of a Rasenshuriken to the small of his back.
Naruto glared at the blue-white dome of death, his senses locked on to what was going on within it from the spot his clone had once occupied. He knew the kind of damage the Rasenshuriken could inflict on a person: merely the blow-back from the technique was enough to task his enhanced regeneration abilities so the knowledge that the bounty hunter was actually powering through it was all kinds of annoying.
As if that wasn't upsetting enough, he now understood what the bounty hunter had meant earlier when he had talked about getting the 'show' on the road. According to the memory-dump Kennedy had just triggered, Cadmus had hired the bounty hunter to take out the shinobi: if Lobo succeeded, Cadmus would have removed a thorn from their side without losing their internal resources; if the bounty hunter failed -and Naruto was just itching to be a black mark on the alien's record- they would have acquired more data on him.
Irritating as that was, though, the shinobi was mostly pissed at himself.
He had come this close to being beaten into an insensate mess just now, a fate that he had only just avoided thanks to the quick thinking of his clone. Even now his temple still throbbed from the bounty hunter's vicious punch, a dull reminder of the mistake he had made: he had underestimated his opponent.
He had taken the dulled reaction time of the bounty hunter to mean that the gray-skinned bastard couldn't react to a certain degree of speed and he had simply gone along with that, forgetting that, even if the hunter couldn't deal with his speed, he had shown himself to be more than able to deal with the hits regardless of how hard they came at him.
'Well, I sure as hell won't be making that mistake anymore,' Naruto thought grimly as he felt the power of the Rasenshuriken peter out. With Cadmus' voyeurs analyzing his every move, he decided to stick to straight up taijutsu as much as he could in order to keep as many secrets as he could while leaving them guessing how powerful he really was. 'Let s take things up a notch: Futton: Kairiki Muso. Doton: Kongo no Yoroi.'
"That was my favorite jacket you little shit!" Lobo s gravelly voice ground out from the wispy haze left over from the Rasenshuriken. "I've killed a bunch'a fraggers in my time including some really mean fuckers." The haze gradually dissipated, slowly revealing the bounty hunter s malicious, red-eyed grin to the cautious shinobi. "You, though? Imma take my fragging time with ya!" The declaration was punctuated by an explosive CRACK! Immediately followed by the Czarnian s hulking frame appearing near-instantly above Naruto, a meaty fist already swinging toward the blond's midsection.
‹‹‡››
Cadmus Labs, Washington DC
"Fascinating " Kobra muttered as he reviewed the clip of the bounty hunter beating the target into the ground only to get struck by a bladed ball of energy hurled by the very same target. He was leaning forward now, a datapad in his hands as he analyzed the scene. "Freeze," The technician in charge of his screen responded immediately, stilling the video. "Switch to Mountain security feed, quadrant L-3, zoom in by sixty percent. Play." The necessary adjustments were made as soon as he spoke so that, less than a second after his final command, the video played from a new angle, allowing them all to see what had caught his attention:
The body of the target had darkened until it was the same earthly brown as the soil before crumbling apart.
"He somehow exchanged positions with one of those duplicates of his," Terra noted, tapping out her observations on her own datapad. "Looks like we can confirm the nature of the duplicates as earthen replicas which makes it likely that he utilized his elemental manipulation to control their movements."
"One duplicate was transporting the rest of the children into their base while performing triage while the pair he created midair seamlessly joined him in that fight; considering the fact that he was forced into a life-or-death scenario, the chances that he maintained enough awareness to perfectly manipulate the form of his duplicates is highly unlikely." Kobra stated, his gaze locked on the pile of dirt that had once been a perfect replica of the target. "It is far more likely that these clones of his are capable of a degree of sentience."
"Sir, something just came up!" A technician called out from another end of the room. "Two oddities! Bringing infrared filter up now!"
The high-res primary display screen split into three windows, maintaining the feed Kobra had requested at the upper third of the screen while the middle and lower thirds displayed the live feeds, one from the Mountain s security system and the infrared view coming from one of their satellites.
It took less than a second for Terra to spot the 'oddities': on the infrared filter, the target was practically radiating heat, his form glowing white-hot. At the same time, the colored display from the security feed showed his skin -once a lightly tanned olive- had darkened to an almost ebon sheen.
"Why the hell is he radiating so much heat?!" She barked, her utter befuddlement at the new development giving her tone a sharp bite. "And what the hell happened to his skin?!"
"The other filters are picking zilch, ma'am," The lead technician frowned. "Whatever this is, it's only visible on infrared and regular feeds."
"What about the asset?" She demanded, storming up to one of the other consoles herself. "Is he out of that- Son of a bitch!" She reared back instantly, her eyes slamming shut at the sight she had just walked into.
The asset -the bounty hunter, Lobo- was in the middle of throwing a punch at the target while in the nude.
"Why the hell do I have a naked, gray-skinned brute on the screen?!" She snapped, pinning the lead technician with a glare that was somehow even more terrifying while accompanied by a brilliant blush.
"Took the words right out of my mouth," An utterly confused Kennedy stated as he walked into the repurposed area to stand by his partner. "Lord Kobra," He bowed to the pale-skinned cultist before turning to Terra. "All that work and you turned this into a strip-show."
Terra s elbow instantly found his ribcage. "Asshole!"
"It seems the energy attack the target utilized was ineffective at harming the asset," Kobra stated dryly, ignoring the Cadmus duo's byplay. "His clothes, on the other hand "
‹‹‡››
Mount Justice
The sand along the edge of the island exploded into a fine spray of dust as Naruto and Lobo clashed again, the gray skinned alien's fist breezing past the shinobi's chest following a hasty exhale from the blond. In retaliation, Naruto grabbed the swinging fist with one hand and flung it upward, creating an opening that he mercilessly capitalized on, delivering a rapid flurry of punches to the bounty hunter's ribs, each hit sounding like rocks being smashed together. The force packed into each hit was enough to turn concrete to powder yet Lobo shrugged them off as he lifted a knee toward his bounty, trying to smack him in the jaw then -when the first attempt failed- shooting his foot out to stomp the blond shit's face in. If Naruto noticed that his opponent was stark naked, he didn't show it as he twisted around the kick and snapped his elbow down into the bounty hunter's knee, feeling the bone give way beneath his strike. Sweat evaporated as quickly as it formed on his skin, adding to the increased humidity from the Boil Release as he weathered a storm of wild -yet astonishingly powerful- blows, turning away the vast majority with flowing motions and dodging the rest with impressive displays of agility. Blocking was out of the question: the one time he'd tried, the force behind the kick had almost shattered his forearm, Adamantine Armor notwithstanding. Genjutsu had been just as ineffective: Naruto couldn't tell if it was the alien's physiology or some external factor but every illusion he had tried had been shrugged off before they could even take root. The bounty hunter's attacks came in from nearly every angle: every kick led to a punch or an elbow or an attempted grapple or one of a million other options in a chaotic blur that had him utilizing all of his enhanced speed to stay ahead of the assault.
It wasn't as if he was always on the defense, though; on the contrary, the shinobi had found and mercilessly exploited every last hole in the bounty hunter s barrage, hammering away at the gray-skinned bastard with all the tremendous strength the Unrivalled Strength enhancement gave him. No, the second reason he was locked in this stalemate with the bounty hunter had everything to do with the bastard s healing factor: shattered bones, torn muscles -he had inflicted every conceivable form of damage he could incur on an opponent in a strictly taijutsu deathmatch on the bounty hunter and watched him power right through them.
Spotting an opportunity to get some breathing room as he hopped back to avoid a kick aimed at his knees, Naruto blasted forward in a burst of steam, smashing a punch into Lobo s face with all the force of a tank shell and feeling the cartilage practically liquefy beneath his fist before uncorking a punch from his left fist straight into a gray jaw. With the bounty hunter temporarily stunned, he pulled his hands back before shooting them out again, rigid index and middle fingers striking out like greased lightning as they sought out nerve clusters. As Lobo's body stiffened in forced paralysis, Naruto hopped to the alien s chest height, curling himself into a tight ball before shooing his legs outward at railgun-like speeds, caving in Lobo s torso and blasting the bounty hunter a few hundred meters away.
As the shinobi landed, he stared at the hundred and something meter long trench the bounty hunter s body had gouged into the Earth -a testament to how hard he had stuck him- and swore caustically when he noticed the alien s body begin to twitch. He was seriously beginning to wonder if Shikamaru had felt this same frustration that he could feel creeping in when he had fought Hidan.
'Except Hidan wasn't this bad,' The shinobi thought as he ran through a list of techniques he had that would put the bounty hunter down. 'At least, if you shattered Hidan's hand, the damned thing would stay shattered! This is like fighting Kabuto's reanimated fuck-' That line of thought trailed off as neurons fired off in his brain, chasing down the sudden possibility that had just developed. At the same time, he prepared himself for another round of fights when the bounty hunter jumped out of the hole in the ground, accompanied by a sharp whistle.
Something moved in the corner of his eye, a fast-moving dark shape that prompted Naruto to take a large leap away from where he stood, senses straining to pick up any incoming attacks.
There were none, though -not yet, at least. Instead, the bounty hunter flipped once mid-air and landed astride a large, alien-looking vehicle that had moved into position with impeccable timing. A truly evil grin split the bounty hunter's face as a black hatch opened to the front of the vehicle and he pulled out what looked like an over-developed grenade launcher.
"Bitch who's about to get fragged say what?"
"Oh fuck you!" Naruto swore before bursting into a flat sprint a second before a series of loud thumps rang out from the bounty hunter s position, followed by even louder explosions. Dirt, clumps of grass and shattered tree chips filled the air as the bounty hunter continued his bombardment, tracking Naruto's ever-moving form by the thin haze of steam that followed him.
"Stop moving around and just die already!" Lobo guffawed as he lugged the illegally modified Dyson-7 launcher in one hand while pulling out a round, grenade-sized device. "I promise it won't hurt… much!" He lobbed the pulse bomb with an experienced eye, herding the bounty toward the falling object with calculated shots from the grenade launcher. He fully expected the blond to basically walk into the bomb: experience with fast-moving bounties had shown him that the fragging idiots never noticed the little things as they sped past.
Which was why he was caught completely flatfooted when a sudden burst of wind flung the pulse bomb right into his face an instant before it detonated.
Naruto pushed off the ground immediately, barreling through the pulse bomb's expanding bubble of force to bodily tackle the bounty hunter off his vehicle. He followed that up with two shots to Lobo's torso before pushing off and delivering a vicious axe kick to the bounty hunter's diaphragm that sent the alien plummeting into the ground.
"You just don t know how to stay down, do you?" Naruto growled as he landed, gaze locked on to the bounty hunter s crimson glare. Internally, he opened his chakra coils to draw in the ambient natural energy, masterfully balancing the exotic energy with his own elementally-attuned chakra.
"I should be sayin' the same thing to ya, punk," Lobo sneered as he snapped on a pair of pants he'd snagged from the Hog before getting blasted off. "Don't worry, I gotta real special wall to hang slippery bastards like you."
"Let's see you try!" Naruto snarled as he threw himself forward. Twisting past the bounty hunter's attempted grapple, the shinobi's left hand lashed out to grip Lobo's throat before his right struck out like greased lightning, hammering away at the gray skinned alien for one- two- three seconds before he was forced to kick himself away from Lobo's grasping hands.
The bounty hunter tumbled through the sand for a moment before righting himself and launching himself at his target, powering past an uppercut to land a vicious haymaker on the blond s jaw. At any point prior to that, the punch would have stunned Naruto; now, with his Senjutsu-enhanced Adamantine Armor, the hit barely registered and he followed the flow of the punch and smashed a heel into Lobo s liver, forcing an angered roar from the Czarnian. Naruto s attempt to slip in and capitalize from this opening was met with a brutal knee to the torso, Lobo s insane regeneration allowing him to attack right after what should have been a debilitating attack.
His large fist closed around the blond s head and dragged him through the dirt before slamming him into the rocky mountain wall. "Having fun yet?"
"Hardly!" Naruto shot back, pushing himself upwards to slam his forehead into Lobo's face. The bounty hunter's head jerked backward only to snap forward with blistering speed, returning fire with such force that he smashed his bounty's head into the mountain.
"See… how… you… like… it… now… bastiche!" Each word was punctuated with a brutal, jackhammer-like punch, pushing the shinobi deeper into the rock-face while flakes of rocky dust exploded out of the widening crater. "Think you re tough shi-IIIIITTTT!"
‹‹‡››
Cadmus
Every male -and quite a few female- technician in the observation wing winced simultaneously at the ultra high-res image of the target's foot all but burying itself into the bounty hunter s crotch.
"That that's just not right," Kennedy muttered. His loyalties would always lie with the Boss but a crotch shot? Really?
‹‹‡››
Mount Justice
Taking advantage of the bounty hunter's temporarily paralyzed form, Naruto clenched both fists together and brought them down on Lobo's head, sending him crashing into the ground. Leaping out of the hole in the wall, the shinobi grabbed a large chunk of rock, spun, and slung it back at the hole with incredible force. He didn't expect it to be more than a distraction so he grabbed one of the palm trees that had fallen victim to the raging battle and- when the bounty hunter leapt right through the boulder- he swung forward with his improvised weapon, smacking the bounty hunter right back into the mountain. Tossing aside the shattered tree, the shinobi leapt at the bounty hunter, meeting him midair for another brutal exchange that ended when he caught an elbow to the jaw.
As the battle raged on, Naruto found himself drawing more and more on the ambient natural energy around, using the exotic energy to a greater extent than he ever had on this new world. The natural energy responded eagerly, almost too eagerly in fact, refilling his reserves faster than he was accustomed to and empowering his strikes to a degree that he had never experienced. His eyes, a saffron-yellow at first, gradually darkened to a bloody crimson and his fighting style seemed to… degenerate at the same pace: rather than dodge and parry the bounty hunter s attacks as he once had, the shinobi now ignored the blows that crashed into him with all the fury of the gods; his tight, fluid attacks had devolved into a simple, instinctive flurry of blows that were fired out with ever-increasing force.
A punch to the head, taken in exchange for a retaliatory shot to the alien s kidneys; kick to the side, an uppercut counter… the battle devolved to a barroom brawl, the only difference being the destruction wrought with each blow.
What should have been a devastating lariat went sailing over the blond's head as he shifted his blind charge into a shoulder tackle that would have speared through a steel support beam; in this instance, it was enough to throw the bounty hunter onto his back, allowing the shinobi to straddle his chest and rain down a hail of blows that struck like meteors.
Even with a half-caved in face, Lobo still retained sufficient presence of mind to swing his lower body up, snag the blond s head between his booted feet and fling him off. "Fucking bastiche!" He roared as he pushed himself to his feet-
-just in time to receive a flying kick to the jaw that nearly twisted his neck right off.
An instant later, his neck popped back into place-
-and an earthshaking punch almost tore through his abdomen.
The alien hacked out a glob of blood as a line of dirt jumped into the air, the only clue as to what was happening, making the bounty hunter tense in preparation for-
-another kick, this time to the side of the knee, snapping the bone and rupturing the muscles so swiftly that the bounty hunter staggered back-
-into another punch, to the back of the head.
More and more attacks were landed, some so quickly that the hunter had no chance to even register one hit before another struck, and the air filled with the haze of sand and dirt, violently displaced in the wake of Naruto's attacks. The Czarnian was forced to hunch over with his hands clasped over his head as the blows fell, weathering through the damage of the blows as quickly as his body could heal.
And then, out of nowhere, the blond appeared right over the bounty hunter, bringing his foot down in a vertical arc so swiftly not even Cadmus' most powerful cameras could catch it mid-motion.
‹‹‡››
Cadmus Labs
"Son of a bitch!" Terra exclaimed as every single screen connected to any piece of sensory equipment on that quadrant of the island winked out. "What the hell-?"
A second later, the entire island went dark: every camera and sensor on the island blanked out and the communication systems turned to silvery snow.
"Ma'am our satellites just registered a massive pulse of energy from the island!" The head technician screamed over the sudden pandemonium. "Offshore sensors registered an 8.2 magnitude earthquake for about three seconds but it just... blinked out!"
"Something's dampening the effects!" Someone else yelled. "The waters are already settling down!"
"Do we have a retreat code?!" Kennedy shouted at another techie. "Do we have a call back code for the asset?!"
"Only Lord Kobra-"
"Pull him back," Kobra ordered, a deep scowl on his face. "The target already has him on the ropes without accessing the energy form he used to defeat Teth-Adam; there's little else we can glean from this."
"Send the damned code now!" Kennedy barked. For once, his frazzled appearance wasn't entirely an act: he wasn't sure if the Boss had sensed it or not but, a split-second before that kick landed, he had felt a faint, muddled, almost bestial consciousness lurking in the back of his head.
‹‹‡››
Mount Justice
'If that didn't knock his ass out then we've got a problem.' Naruto thought as the dust settled around him, revealing his seemingly impassive form at the lip of a huge crater on the island s coast. The sundered depression was gradually being filled by the gently lapping ocean waves, painting an almost scenic view were it not for the body of the bounty hunter that lay atop the water.
Pulling off what he had just done came with a great deal of risk: unleashing what was essentially a nuclear detonation on the island, particularly with the hollow mountain being right beside the epicenter was insane. It had taken four clones working simultaneously to dampen the effects of the overpowered drop-kick he had plowed into the alien s skull-
"Sonofabitch!" The bounty hunter grunted as he sat up, gingerly rubbing the center of his scalp. "Ah fuck! That last one actually hurt!"
Naruto couldn't help but stare at the Czarnian, wondering how much further he d have to go to actually knock the alien out if the taijutsu equivalent of dropping a nuke on his head amounted to him just feeling 'hurt.' "You are one tough son of a bitch, you know that?"
"Takes one ta know one," Lobo replied grudgingly. "Tougher than I expected actually; here s hoping the next one ain't as annoying as you were." He pushed himself to his feet, boots sinking into the water as he rose and let out a sharp whistle. "Fucking hell I need a drink!"
"You're suddenly very relaxed about things," The shinobi noted as the bounty hunter's vehicle rumbled to a stop beside its master. "You giving up or something?"
"Oi, I dig that you're a tough piece of shit for an Earthling but ya better get this sunk into ya simian skull: the Main Man don't give up." The Czarnian shot the butt off a cigar and glared pointedly at the blond. "Ever."
Naruto returned the bounty hunter s glare with an arched look of his own. "So you getting on your bike is "
"Employers decided they'd gathered enough information," Lobo's glare turned leery. "My guess is, ya broke a few too many of their recording equipment with that nuke ya set off."
Wanting to keep his hand hidden for as long as possible, considering the fact that said 'employers' were probably still watching, the shinobi frowned pensively. "Recording equipment Your employers were recording this fight weren't they? That's what you meant earlier, when you talked about putting on a show?"
"Monkey man's got a decent brain up in his noggin!" The Main Man guffawed as he revved the Hog. "Well then, ya keep being a pain in their asses and ya better prepare for a rematch sometime soon!"
"You show your ugly mug around here again and a nuke to the head will be the least of your worries!" Naruto shot back, giving in -just a bit- to the urge to engage in some good old fashioned trash-talking. For all that the bounty hunter had been employed to try to kill him, Naruto found himself relishing the possibility of engaging in another round of fisticuffs with the bounty hunter and was already considering the possibility of pulling a Kaguya and just transporting them to the desert dimension so they could really duke it out. The thought was so appealing that he almost forgot to ask, "Oi! Think you can tell me the names of your employers?"
"Nice try Monkey Man but the Main Man's all about that employer confidentiality shit!"
Standing at the lip of a gradually filling crater, the blond tracked the bounty hunter's craft as it tore across the sky, racing toward the next bounty on what he was certain would be a very long list: uncouth as he may have appeared, the shinobi knew now that the gray skinned alien was, without a doubt, one of the best at what he did.
A few moments later, Naruto began the trek toward the Mountain's access tunnel.
‹‹‡››
As he walked through the tunnel into the Cave, Naruto studied the walls as much as possible, trying to spot any structural weaknesses his clones may have missed during their sweep. The clones he had on 'dampening duty had dispelled while he made his way back: he now knew that they hadn't been completely successful in their task, a few aftershocks shaking things loose in the Cave. They had done a good job of putting things back together but he still made a mental note to ask Kaguya to come over and run a more comprehensive checkup.
He was still debating whether or not to call her in immediately when he heard the faint sounds of angry yelling coming from the deeper sections of the Cave. Frowning, he picked up the pace, going from a relaxed canter to taking swift strides as he tracked the voices down.
" are telling them and that s final!"
"Kaldur's the leader, not you, Dick! He decides what we do, not you!"
"Donna, Dick, we need to calm-"
"The bounty hunter's been taken care of." Naruto announced firmly, drawing their attention away from one another. The little snippets of their conversation he had heard had given him a rough idea of what was going on and the terse looks he saw on Donna and Dick s faces proved that he was right to intervene at that moment; any longer and they might have come to blows.
With their attention still on him, he asked them for a rundown of the rest of the Team.
"Thanks to the efforts of your clone, M'gann, Connor, Raven and Wally are all in a restful sleep at the moment." Kaldur stated, taking charge of the conversation. "The worst hit was-"
"M'gann, I know," The blond nodded: he recalled the sounds of her pained whimpers and moans as she was moved into the Cave within a bubble of water as though he had heard them with his own ears. It had taken a secondary clone a clone of the first clone- over twenty minutes of laserlike focus to heal her, taking extra care to ensure that she wouldn't suffer any more than she had to and even then, he was certain that the damage would be much worse if Artemis hadn't dumped the contents of her freeze arrow over the girl. Receiving those memories had cooled his tempered battle lust in an instant and he had sworn to inflict three times her pain on the bounty hunter if they ever crossed paths again.
The pained looks on Donna and Dick s faces had him reaffirming that vow. "Where's the Lantern?"
"Jessica that's her name, Jessica Cruz- has agreed to remain in our guest quarters while we work on getting our communications network back online," Dick replied, throwing an annoyed glare at Kaldur and Donna. "Communications that were tampered with by an outside party-"
"We'll get to that in a moment," Naruto interjected. "What about Artemis? You haven't said anything about her."
"She's alright. She…" The Amazon paused, obviously hesitant before sighing. "She just stormed out of here a few minutes ago."
Not even his dense, childhood self could have missed what she hadn't said, leading the blond to sigh explosively. "So everything leads back to whatever argument you three were engaged in." He turned to Kaldur, purposely addressing the Team s leader first. "What happened?"
"After your clone-"
"I think I'm the better choice to say what happened here," Dick snapped waspishly before turning to Naruto-
"I was talking to Kaldur, Dick." The blond shut the young hero down without sparing him a glance. "While I'm certain that you have a story to tell, you will be respectful to Kaldur."
The swift rejoinder had the Boy Wonder blinking in shock while Donna shot the shinobi an appreciative look. "I'll go get Artemis, she deserves to be here as well."
Kaldur nodded to her and returned to delivering his report. "After your clone brought us back inside, Dick tried to send a distress signal out to the League. When we got a response, though, he felt something was off about it so he began digging into our systems' root programming. It would be better if he continued from here; some of the technical aspects of what he found are beyond me."
"Alright, Dick, let's hear it."
The incensed young man nodded. "I'll dumb it down: someone seized root in our systems: they found a way into every system connected to sensory input and communications and placed an administrator-level embargo on them."
"I thought Cyborg was the only one with Admin privileges?"
"Not quite," Dick frowned. "While Cyborg utilizes his Admin status the most, a number of Leaguers also have access to our systems at an Admin level; that way we could avoid having the system locking us out with the only person holding the key being off-planet."
Naruto nodded slowly, seeing the logic behind the League -likely Batman's- decision. "Makes sense."
"Yeah, except somehow, an external party not only gained access, they manipulated our systems pretty much perfectly!" Dick scowled again. "They had full control over our cameras, recording equipment… hell, I'm pretty sure they threw up a net to reroute out communications!"
"None of which explains why you are so pissed off at Kaldur and Donna."
"Because they knew we had a spy on the team and never said anything about it!" Artemis' snarky voice drew the boys' attention to the approaching duo; for girls who had gradually grown close to each other over the course of their time as teammates, it was immediately obvious that they were angry at each other.
Naruto had to fight back the urge to pinch his nose. "Artemis, I worry about you, you know that? You too, Dick."
Artemis' expression was a study in stupefaction. "What, you agree with them?!"
"Who do you think advised them to keep it to themselves?" He shot back dryly. "We've suspected for a while that there might be a mole, either on the Team or -my personal thoughts- among the people you most closely associate with."
"You think there's a mole on the Justice League," Dick's expression was not quite mocking, even if his tone was. "Now that's the mother of all conspiracy theories."
"I didn't say the League, did I?" The blond replied with a piercing stare. After holding their attention for a few seconds, he continued, "Anyway, the point is mostly moot; we had a suspicion that there was a mole: did either of you consider why we had such a suspicion in the first place?" Judging by the near-synchronous blinks from both, he could tell that they hadn't, a fact that was far more disappointing than anything else. "Donna?"
The Amazon nodded and spoke: "During our mission to the Nirvit platform, we confronted an unknown group that managed to escape with the platform's Core-"
"We know all that," Artemis sneered, causing Donna to narrow her eyes to a cold glare.
"I was told -by my clone- that there was a spy on our Team, directly funneling information to Cadmus." Donna stated, her tone flinty. "And she named Connor as the spy."
"Not possible." Dick's rejoinder was immediate, factual. "I've kept an eye on Connor since he joined us: he's never made any strange communications and he only ever left the Cave without prior notice once which was when he met the residents of New Genesis."
Artemis stared at her younger teammate with a wary eye, her stance subtly shifting to a more defensive one. "Any other secret observations you want to tell us about, Boy Wonder?"
"It was important that we keep an eye on him because of his Cadmus origin!" Dick argued hotly. "It would have been stupid to just go along with it without verification."
"You're running observations without carrying the rest of us along but you have a problem not being carried along yourself," Donna couldn't help her disdainful scoff. "Your mentor clearly taught-"
"Enough!" This time, Naruto reinforced his words with a sharp burst of chakra, practically smothering them in his presence for the seconds it lasted. "While Dick's actions make his argument today seem hypocritical, his thoughts were in the right place and we will leave it at that." He stared at each of them, ensuring that they were on the same page. When he was satisfied, he turned to Dick: "I take it you figured out how to burn them out of the system?"
"I- we manually damaged the main drives to completely cut us off from the programs; we got lucky with the timing, hitting them just after whatever you did out there that shook the whole place up. Right now, the entire island is a black spot."
"Good, I can speak freely." Naruto nodded. "To begin with, we had three reasons for not making the matter of a possible mole general knowledge: to begin with, the information didn't come from a reliable source.
"Donna's clone made the claim in the middle of a fight; for all we know, she could have been throwing random bullshit about to find a sentimental opening she could exploit. And even if she wasn't, did you really expect us to believe the words of a growing criminal over the interactions we had with our own teammates? Our friends?"
The earnest way he spoke, coupled with the fact he had just laid down had the two dissenters blushing.
"Our second reason had nothing to do with sentiment and everything to do with facts, which we had none of." Kaldur continued, taking over from the shinobi. "As Naruto pointed out, our source was unreliable and, without evidence, any accusations would tear the team apart."
"Which leads to our third reason," Donna stated. "Without evidence of a mole, we couldn't bring up any accusations so we chose to remain quiet about it, keeping a close eye on everyone but maintaining the status quo. Our plan would only move to the next stage if any evidence turned up."
"Which it just did," Naruto finished. "Your discovery of the embargo on the Cave's systems is exactly what we needed and the confirmation I got from the bounty hunter that our fight was recorded just ties into it."
"Oh…" Artemis found herself feeling very childish compared to the shinobi; he -along with Kaldur and Donna- had known about this problem for weeks and had kept mum for very logical reasons. She had heard of it less than an hour ago and she had stormed off in a fit. 'God I'm so stupid!'
Dick was feeling much the same as Artemis -worse actually, since his hypocrisy had been laid bare to the world, so to speak. "So… what do we do now?"
"Whatever we decide on, we need to be careful," Donna pointed out. "Until we know who the mole is, we have to make sure we don't act in anyway different to what we have always done."
"Donna's right," Naruto exhaled. "I'll keep in touch with Kaldur to minimize my presence here while I draw up some strategies to help you identify the mole; whatever ideas you have, pass them along through Kaldur."
"No offense here, Kal, but what if you're the mole?" Artemis asked. "Wouldn't that nullify everything we're working toward?"
"And this is why we kept the circle as small as possible," Naruto sighed. "Trusting people when you think they are working against you is difficult."
"Anyway the fact that we can now confirm the presence of a spy pretty much clears Donna and Kaldur," Dick said. "If either of them was the spy, they'd tell Cadmus to force their way into our systems to maintain the illusion that there is no spy."
"Whatever the case, we have to work quietly on this," Kaldur emphasized. "We cannot let the this go beyond the five of us."
"Six," Naruto corrected. "Kaguya will work with me on developing strategies for this. As for the possibility that she's the mole… Well, if that's the case then today's fight was just for shits and giggles, which I sincerely doubt." When they all agreed, he nodded and prepared to leave. "I'll be back with Kaguya to ensure that I didn't crack the wrong wall or something."
"Please hurry back," Artemis shot him a little smile. "I really don't want to get buried beneath a million tons of rock."
"No promises," He smirked before vanishing in a burst of light.
‹‹‡››
Okay.
This chapter was hell to write. For those of you who consistently churn out 10k+ words of pure fight scenes, I not only envy you, I bloody bow to your superior skill.
Writing Lobo v Naruto was HARD!
For those of you who eagerly awaited the outcome of this fight, here's my opinion:
First, I'm using a composite Lobo (Young Justice Lobo who basically walks through the entire roster + Man of Tomorrow Lobo who exchanged hit with Superman for a bit) with strength comparable to YJ Superman and regeneration more akin to his comic book self.
He fought against Naruto who stuck primarily to taijutsu, using the Boil Release Unrivalled Strength and Earth Release Adamantine Armor to enhance his base stats, plus Sage Mode to further enhance his total stats.
Genjutsu -to my understanding- is more like a psychic attack than a neural rewiring. As such, Lobo is pretty much immune to them (even if they were neural rewiring techniques, Lobo's regenerative factor would just undo the rewiring).
As for Lobo walking through a Rasenshuriken: he only pulled that off because of his stupidly OP regeneration.
Right now, my skull's pounding and I've got some more work to deal with IRL so I'll leave you guys here.
Thanks for reading.
Please Read and Review.
The Ethereal Lord.
Please support my work! pat-re-on.-com-/-theethereallord Remember to remove the dashes. Your support is greatly appreciated.
EDIT: Quotation mark problem fixed