Family Matters #2
Well, if the hideout had had a ceiling at one point, it was fucking gone now. There was a veritable eruption, as Neji was blasted up through brick and mortar, followed by an irate Hinata-owl trailing lightning.
She slammed two chidori-lionfists up at him, which he deflected with his bare palms (Kami knows how) and then spun and axe kicked her back down to land in a crash on a high point of the structure. She prepared herself for his falling attack, then started as he instead substituted with some debris and appeared beside her with another palm strike. She caught it on her forearms, sliding backwards, and then rapidly stripped off the explosive tag he'd stuck to her and threw it to explode between them and deter his followup, then swerved to dodge the falling piece of debris he'd substituted with and then beat her wings to fly up above the chakra scalpel he'd swung at her head.
She span upside down midair, grabbed his arm, and pulled. He used a tree walking technique to stick to the floor, but she pulled hard enough that the floor came too, two chunks of concrete stayed attached to his feet as she bodily flung him off towards one of the hideouts tall pillars, deadening a few of the chakra points in his arm while she was at it.
Neji kicked the two concrete blocks at her while he was flying, which she deflected without much difficulty, and then landed on the pillar with a much less chill expression than he'd held earlier.
"Note to self; remove her Orochimaru-possessed birdie-powers." He said to himself (out loud) as he struck his one arm with the other a few times, reopening the damaged chakra routes.
Hinata glared at him.
"Chidori." She said, making a long list of hand seals. "Onyx thunderstorm."
Come take a look at what this cursemark can really do.
Lightning crackled, and Hinata split into ten, and each one of those ten fed just about all of its chakra into their curse marks.
The sage creatures still in the area shivered, as they felt all the residual senjutsu chakra get sucked out of the air all at once.
The ten Hianta were enveloped with black lightning, and flew.
Neji adopted a well respected ninja strategy called running for his fucking life as bolts of lightning began to strike the hideout from all directions, clouds formed and darkened as the localised electricity ionised the air and started affecting pressure differentials, and the area became a veritable web of electricity.
Neji sprinted, substituting with debris and dodging behind and around pillars to keep away from the ranged attacks, then had to jump away as one of the Hinata dive-bombed his location with a chidori, causing a giant explosion that bodily flung him across the roof. He barely had a chance to land before another Hinata tried to crash into him, and another, and another, the shadow clones far outspeeding the lightning they could produce as they made mad kamikaze dashes at their opponent.
By the third Neji's hair was singed, by the sixth his Akatsuki cloak had been shredded, and by the ninth he was bleeding outright from myriad wounds and had developed an odd tremor in one hand, presumably from the electricity.
And there was still one opponent left.
Hinata, the real Hinata, screeched to the sky before charging down towards him, marshalling her energy to form a black tinted chidori big enough to remove most of his torso.
And this time, Neji didn't dodge.
He clenched one fist, and a dark blue lionshead burst into existence around it. He held up his hand, moved into a defensive stance, and waited.
And then Hinata collided into him, and knew she'd won.
The lionfists were one of the most difficult Hyuuga arts; they allowed the user to drain chakra with nothing but an incredibly complicated disruption and absorption array that conveniently looked like a really cool lion's face. But one thing Hinata knew for a fact that they could not do, having trained under Orochimaru for years, was drain sage chakra. And that was exactly what she was pouring through her arm and into his.
His eyes narrowed in pain and his mouth opened in a silent scream as the skin on his arm burned, flaking off to leave a blood red layer underneath and then burning that off too as the black lightning tore at the limb.
But he didn't move.
And his other arm came round.
Oh shit-
There was nothing Hinata could do as Neji brought his left hand up, placed it on the back of her neck, and uttered "Hiragekoma."
Her world exploded into agony.
"You have the mangekyo?" Sasuke gasped, cartwheeling to his feet, and
"You have the mangekyo?" Itachi asked, using his cloak as an umbrella to catch all the Amaterasu from Fugaku's eye.
"I'll explain later!" The elder snarled. Black flames burst forth from his eyes again, and again, but Itachi was ready by then. Big weakness of Amaterasu: high damage, high speed, but line of sight only, and low penetration. Quickly thrown up mud walls and substituted tree limbs were enough to catch the fire without Itachi getting so much as a spark on him.
At least, they were enough to stop Amaterasu alone.
Kagutsuchi, and the black fire was chasing Itachi, forcing him to dart around the area as fast as he could to avoid the tendrils of flame catching up to him. At some point there father and eldest son made eye contact, and Sasuke was about ready to forcibly jolt Fugaku out of Tsukiyomi (if he even could), but it was Itachi who convulsed in midair, crashing against a tree he'd been aiming to land on and barely recovering in time to dodge the rest of the Amaterasu.
He looked up at his father and tilted his head. "Your other power just causes pain on eye contact? Bit boring, just sort of mine but worse. Is that where the 'Wicked Eye' thing comes from?"
"How are you still conscious." Fugaku deadpanned.
"This illness has had me in agony for months." Itachi shrugged. "You're not that impressive. Also, because I'm Itachi Uchiha. Fuck you, I can do whatever I want."
Standing still to chat had cost him, however; a wide sphere of Amaterasu swirled into being around him.
Fugaku shouted a warning but was too late, Sasuke (who had formed the prison in the first place) had already charged ahead and entered before it had closed, drawing his sword and crashing into melee with his brother.
His eyes smarted, and he noticed that the visual quality he was used to had dipped considerably since the battle had begun, internally berating himself for his abuse of his abilities. His only consolation was that Itachi must have it way worse.
Swords clashed, Raito's two halves slamming into each other as the two brothers duelled in a ring of fire. Sasuke wondered two seconds in why Itachi hadn't already found a way out of the sphere, then realised that Itachi still wanted to be in here. Fugaku was out of the equation, and now Sasuke was stuck in kenjutsu against an opponent with almost a decade more experience who'd taught him everything he knew-
No. Thinking like that's what got me in this mess in the first place.
I know I'm stronger than him.
Sasuke bared his teeth, and pushed.
His muscles burned, breathing came in sharp pants-
And Itachi fell back.
Looking almost as shocked as Sasuke felt, Itachi was gradually pushed backwards, Sasuke's furious assault making him lose ground step by step, until his back leg was almost touching the fire behind him.
Something had to give, and after another second or so, Itachi did.
His blade arm stayed out a millisecond too long and Sasuke took his weapon in an icepick grip and jabbed, stabbing it right through Itachi's palm.
His brother didn't react, and Sasuke didn't plan to leave him time to, twisting the blade until Itachi's Raito half dropped from his fingers.
Sasuke went into a low sweep, forcing Itachi to jump, and snatched up the falling blade. In one movement, he brought the two together, vanished both in a puff of smoke into his bracer (that's all of them except Samehada now-) and jumped as well, bringing his other hand round charged with a chidori aimed at Itachi's heart.
He still had one good hand, and Sasuke knew he could form hand seals with it, but any technique he could use at this range would either kill both of them or at least knock both away, sending Itachi right back through the wall of Amaterasu. And there was nothing in the sphere to substitute with.
Check, big brother. Move that queen or lose your king.
Itachi's eyes fluttered closed for a split second. Then they opened, and there was a flash of orange.
Hinata stumbled to her feet, glared vaguely in Neji's direction, and placed her hand against the back of her neck. No damage.
And no curse mark either.
Thunder boomed in the sky and rain began to fall as Neji shook out his broken, blistered arm. "I worked with Orochimaru, remember. I know how his toys work. And now you're basically out of chakra, and can't draw in any from the outside."
Hinata smiled. "You're just the same. And I don't need any more chakra."
She reached a hand up.
Neji, being a ninja, immediately saw the threat there and began running straight for her, but her eyes flashed and she declared "Kesshotoketsu!"
Crystals manifested all over Neji's body. Hinata's chakra was low, and this last act depleted it entirely, but she was able to conjure enough of the opal to thoroughly trap her cousin, leaving him unable to move with only his head visible for an essential half a second.
Hinata practically couldn't miss.
"You know, Karin had so many names she wanted me to call this thing." She mused, out loud, as a charge differential built up between her and the clouds above. "Eventually the lion and owl parallels were too good to pass up, but she did have one thing she made me swear to end this with."
Neji heaved against his restraints, but didn't have the freedom to move his hands or the strength to flex his way out.
Above him, the storm went quiet.
"This is the Gryphon." Hinata declared. "Begone; Thot."
She brought her hand down, and blitzing straight onto Neji from above was a gigantic lightning bolt in the shape of a toothy, clawed, hungry beast.
There was a flash that could be seen for miles, and a thunderclap that could be heard in three of the five nations.
A thunderclap echoed and "MOVE! GET TO THE SHELTERS!" Haku sprinted through the streets, pulling civilians who had fallen up to their feet and shouting as loud as he could.
There was a crash, and ahead of him, the entire upper floor of a building tore free of it's lower half, clearly struck by something, and began to fall towards the street below. Grimacing, Haku wove hand seals as quickly as he could and shoved, and pillars of ice grew up from the ground, forming a wide roof over the street. The falling masonry crumpled atop the structure, and it held, and the civilians below (most experienced enough in ninja shenanigans) quickly scrambled out from underneath it.
Haku let the ice collapse with a sigh, and jumped up above the wreckage, trying to get a good look at what had caused the devastation.
His heart skipped a beat.
That...is a big doggo.
The three headed hound roared, tearing a path of wanton destruction through the village as it ran. Even as Haku had been controlling his meager share of the damage, the beast must have crushed dozens of other innocent people. Ninja were jumping about it like flies, and none of their efforts were doing much more than singeing its fur.
"Hey prettyboy!" Haku looked up at the shout to see Sakura land beside him. "What the hell is this thing? What's going on?"
"I don't know!" He shot back, looking at it. "Where's Naruto?"
"He's coming! Tsunade says she sent off a toad!"
"Well we'll have to hold out till he's here!" Haku eyeballed the distance between them and the dog, and began marshaling his chakra. "Someone summoned this thing, and they might be able to do it again! I'll go look for the summoner, but you're the only one with the attack potency to take fluffiekins out!"
"How am I gonna-"
Haku finished the jutsu and heaved again. Ice began to appear, small platforms floating in the air in about thirty meter intervals, leading up to the dogs heads. "GO!"
Sakura didn't need telling twice. While Haku darted away, she threw herself onto the first ice platform and jumped again, building up momentum and propelling herself up to the beast's mouths.
"Three heads? Bullshit..." She grumbled. Then pushed chakra down to her knuckles. "You've been a very naughty boy!" She shouted at it, or rather, them, "Now piss off! The lot of you!"
Crack, one fist broke something in the neck of one head, and-
Crack, she threw herself between the jaws of another and stomped, breaking something, and-
CRACK, as she jumped across, landed on the skull of the final head and brought both fists down, punching bone straight down into it's brain.
Whether the summon actually had internal organs or not, her efforts seemed to bear fruit. With three last howls, and a massive burst of smoke, the dog vanished.
Sakura experienced brief nausea as the surface she'd been standing on vanished, and used her treewalking skills to come to a relatively sane stop on the ground.
Which was where she saw two people with orange hair, and black cloaks with red clouds.
"Well, now I have to re-summon that." One of them sighed. "Good job. But since you seem to be the only one capable of destroying it that fast I should be alright."
Sakura tch'ed and began running towards them, but one put his hands together and-
BANG
-Fur-
Something batted Sakura aside, sending her crashing into a storefront, and then one of the redheads had grabbed her by the throat and looking up she could see the dog was back, how the hell did they re-summon it so quickly-
Then, something happened. She screamed as her attacker yanked, and there was a brief moment of agony as she felt like she was being torn right out of her own body-
And Sakura Haruno died.
Lightning crashed against the Yata Mirror, dispersed along the spirit weapon's surface, and then Sasuke was slammed backwards by the shield's surface and had to rapidly dispel his own Amaterasu to avoid taking a dunk in it himself.
In front of Sasuke, Itachi's armoured orange Susanno burst into existence around him as he staggered back to his feet, eyes bleeding, arms shaking and stance nothing resembling anything effective.
"Move out of range!" Sasuke shouted. "He can't hold it for more than a few sec-"
There was a black flash, and a circle of Amaterasu appeared around the trio, and this time it wasn't Sasuke's doing.
He's completely given up on having any vision after this. The youngest realised. This is him going all out.
Oh fuck.
Itachi and his gigantic fuckoff suit of armour moved towards them and oh shit it was fast, the Totsuka blade swinging almost as fast as Itachi had swung Raito except three feet wide and twenty feet long-
Fugaku jumped one direction, then found his way blocked by the Yata mirror slamming into the ground to his left, and the Susanno was in front and the Amaterasu was behind him and the blade was coming in from the right-
There was a flash of red.
Fugaku's Susanno (oh of course he has a Susanno-) was about as big as Itachi's; and human rather than skeleton, but it was unarmoured, and the Totsuka blade slammed into its side with a crunch of chakra and bone and a dent was formed.
Fugaku's avatar swung a fist that slammed into Itachi's' face, and in its other hand formed a giant Fuma shuriken that it swung forwards.
The Mirror caught it with a thud, then Itachi brought his sword up and back down again, smashing through the red Susanno's skull, then he did it again, and-
There was a flash of purple, and Sasuke's still skeletal Susanno shoulder-checked Itachi's (he'd had to do something.)
Itachi fell back a few metres, and the three took a brief moment to appreciate how fucking epic this confrontation was.
Then the three Susanno in the arena of black fire started fighting again.
Sasuke's (smallest but lightest, and it had arms now) pushed in to punch the flat of the Totsuka blade away, and then Itachi brought the mirror up to block the next punch, then another strike from Fugaku's shuriken, then the shuriken span and shoved the shield up and Sasuke slammed a hammer fist into an orange midriff, cracking it, then the Totsuka blade came back round and beheaded Sasuke's Susanno outright. It continued its swing and stabbed through the hole in the centre of the shuriken, hooking it round and burying it through the chest of Fugaku's. Sasuke's, still headless, punched another two cracks into Itachi's before the Yata Mirror fell down to slam into the purple avatar so hard it almost fell over, leaving a giant crack in the skeleton. Itachi tore his shield out while Sasuke was still recovering (Kami why does it have to feel like I've actually been beheaded ooowwww-) and continued a full barrage against Fugaku, smacking the shuriken out of his Susanno's hands, blocking an ineffectual fireball from the man within using the Mirror, then squaring up and pulling the Totsuka blade back for a stab that was going to puncture straight through the red energy and into the man inside.
Sasuke, acting almost entirely on instinct at this point, stretched out with one hand, and a long whip made up of fiery purple tomoe stretched out from his Susanno's hands. Oh, hey, magatama beads. Unorthodox, but I can work with it.
The beads wrapped around the Totsuka blade and Sasuke yanked, pulling the sword off course and instead making it dig a great furrow in the earth as it swung round in an arc, leaving Itachi's arms wide open. Perfect. Sasuke forced more chakra into his avatar, tinted it with fire, and, shaking with the effort, built up a giant version of the rasenkunai with his Susanno's free hand.
He took one last look at his brother; bleeding, shaking, crying outright, looking back at him with an expression he couldn't even understand.
Then he slammed the rasenkunai forwards.
It smashed through the armour, lodged in the flesh of the Susanno.
Then, with a final echoing boom, it tore the entire avatar to shreds.
Hinata sagged, as the rubble rained down around her.
Inhaled.
Exhaled.
And then-
"Huh, would you look at that."
Oh you've got to be fucking kidding me-
She jumped back as something crashed into the floor where she'd just been stood.
The smoke cleared, and ahead of her she saw Neji. Except not quite.
His entire body, hair included, was an opal white. A few cracks ran down his skull, and down the arm she'd damaged earlier, but other than that he was fine.
And he had- what in the- he had four arms.
"Guess I must just be a coward." He mused. "Turns out I don't want to die after all."
Hinata swore and reached for her pouch, throwing more of her explosive-tagged kunai, but Neji ran through the explosions like they weren't even there, coming straight up to her and kicking her in the pelvis, knocking her back into a pillar.
"Anyway, this is my Vishnu transformation." He told her. "It makes me stronger, faster and more durable. Boring right? Oh yeah, also arms."
Hinata didn't have any choice but to engage him in melee. Her chakra was completely exhausted, as was everything else about her, but she still rallied a desperate cry and ran back at him in a gentle fist stance.
He was faster, faster than he'd been earlier in the fight when he'd already been able to beat her in a taijutsu spar, and he had fifty percent more limbs now. What was worse was when he let one of her palm strikes through (it had to be on purpose) and it thudded harmlessly into the white exterior.
"Oh yeah, I also don't have chakra points now." He told her. There was strain in his voice, she noticed, it was coming out raspy like there was no moisture in his throat.
So she curled that palm into a fist, and tried to punch him, but he caught it with one of his arms. Another caught her other arm, and with his remaining two he fell into a painfully familiar stance.
"Eight trigrams, one hundred twenty eight palms."
Shit-
The attacks peppered her, and she buckled under the pressure, going numb as no no no no-
He let her go, and she hit the floor.
She couldn't feel anything. It was like lying on a bed in Orochimaru's hideout again, only this time she was chakra exhausted to begin with.
"Well tried." Neji's voice wafted in from somewhere, distant and hazy. "But insufficient. I'm going to die when this wears off if I don't get those eyes, so excuse me if I do this in a bit of a hurry..."
A memory came to Hinata, unbidden, from well over four years ago.
"In my life, I will fight. Probably many, many times. I will fight for many reasons; for my friends, for my country, for myself, and I'm sure sometimes I will fight without even knowing why. Sometimes I will fight certain of victory, but most of the time in the murky realm of probability and doubt. And sometimes I will be forced to fight an opponent who I believe is beyond me. And when I look down the paths of the consequences of defeat, and see that the world will suffer for it...then and only then will I open the gates. This I swear, on my heart and on my name."
If Hinata died here, Neji would quite possibly become the most powerful ninja alive. He would pluck her eyes from her sockets and claim the strength to destroy all of Konoha if he felt like it. And his organisation was hunting the bijuu.
He would kill Naruto.
The girl's heart knew what it wanted.
Her brain throbbed, as a pathway within it burst into activity.
Her eyes snapped open, and her hand darted out, catching one of Neji's as it reached towards her face.
"My name is Hinata Hyuuga." She declared, meeting his eyes. "And the eight gates unblock tenketsu, bitch."
She punched with her other arm, and Neji flew backwards, and she wasted no time sprinting after him with a war cry.
Two more strikes slammed into his midriff and a kick buckled his leg, and then his four arms cane up and began fighting back, rocketing palm strikes into her. She fell into a boxing stance that would have made her clan disown her, minimising surface area, shielding her face and hitting him with as much brute force as she could muster.
He was ice, she was fire, passion warring against cold apathy. She targeted the one arm she'd damaged earlier, and the cracks spread considerably, but he was soon able to disable her again, shutting off chakra points in her arms, legs and midriff and kicking her away, but she was not stopping, nothing he tried was going to keep her down anymore.
"Second Gate, Open!" She declared, and there was a burst of pain as her body's systems rebooted themselves again.
She crashed back into him, faster this time, barely even bothering to stop his attacks anymore, just going all out offensively until-
Crack-
One of the four arms was split off at the elbow, and went flying off into the distance. She pushed her advantage and he fell back, unbalanced, skin coming off in chunks, still hammering attacks down on her until again she was forced to stumble to a halt, and again-
"T-Third Gate; Open!"
Agony, all encompassing agony, but she ignored it, charging straight back and attacking him again, hitting even harder, and at this point she was throwing him around the hideout with every punch.
She kneed him in the face, grabbed his throat, and slammed him into the floor, then took him for a ride, digging a new road into the structure with the back of his head and leaving shards of white opal behind gleaming like stars.
His expression didn't change, it was quite possible he didn't even feel the pain anymore, his three remaining arms continued to strike at her until the arm she was dragging him with went limp, so she reached down with her teeth to grip his hair and fling him into a pillar. She threw herself into him, trapped him there with her own body, grabbed one of his arms with her own and rrriiiiipped-
It came off with a crunch, causing her to stagger backwards and away from him, and he just wouldn't Go Down, using his last two arms (both on the same side) to pepper strikes all along her spine until she crashed into the ground again.
"F-f-fourth Gate;" Hinata would be crying if her moisture wasn't evaporating right off her skin- "Op, nnngh, OPEN!"
This was her limit, as far as she'd gotten with all the years of independent study under Orochimaru, and it had never hurt like this before.
Her heart felt like it was melting by the second, every nerve ending on fire as her body went through something it had never been built to go through, but she relished it.
Pain was good. Pain was her friend. Pain meant she was alive, and nothing had ever felt better than being alive in that moment.
She stood, turned around and backhanded him across the face, cracking the entirety of his head.
His broken face turned to her, and his two remaining hands darted towards her, but this time, she caught them.
He tried to kick her, but he couldn't generate enough torque to do anything, and she slammed her forehead into his nose.
His face sort of crumpled, revealing that the white seemed to go all the way through, and then she reached back and jammed one hand into his head.
Bleeding fingers tore through opal, and with a final kiai, Hinata wrenched Neji's left eye out of its socket.
And that, finally, seemed to be enough.
What was left of Neji staggered backwards, barely able to support itself. It's mouth worked, and broken, jarred words made their way out.
"Just so you know..." He said, fixing his last eye on her. "I've always loved you, cousin."
And...and it was true.
Hinata gaped as he began to tip backwards, continuing "Not in, like, a weird way or anything...I'm not a...fucking Uchiha..."
And with that, Neji toppled onto his back, and lay still.
Hinata, still clutching his eye, sank to her knees.
The fourth gate cut out, and she lost consciousness, falling to the floor.
Yes.
Neji is dead.
Headcanoned a bit with Fugaku, but we know the guy had the Mangekyo, and what, was I supposed to turn down the three Susanno showdown? Like come on, somebody draw that, it would have been epic.
And yes, Hinata's jutsu was basiacally Kirin. As for the Vishnu, you'll get to see more of that as time goes on.
