Devil From The Heavens
Chapter 24: Ties That Bind
Within, the Saiyan looked at the red color that was steadily working its way up his chains. He could see it breaking down with rot but the sight only filled him with apprehension. Even though he was stuck in his own mind, his throat still felt raw from the screams. He remembered this from his first fight with the brat but it never hurt him here. He cringed as some of it fell off and sizzled on the floor.
Hagoromo put a glowing hand to his back and his body instantly cooled. The relief was nearly indescribable.
The Sage touched the chakra on the chains and rubbed it between his fingers. The action was slow; not methodical but forced. Like he was an actual old man rather than a construct. "This is Kurama's chakra. It seems it's trying to bond with the seal."
"Whatever it's doing, it hurts like hell." Broly slurred. It was even affecting him here despite the Sage's help. He felt so fatigued; he just wanted to sleep. Forever, if he could manage that. The expanse of void flashed through his mind once more. He could still feel their suffocating touch and he recoiled. He couldn't go back. He wouldn't.
Yet it still called.
"It would."
The Sage's voice brought him back to reality.
"The seals weren't meant to accept this." Hagoromo stared as the chakra's movement slowed. "What happened to you, Kurama?"
Broly leaned away and used the tension of the chain to keep himself up. He could feel this metal heating up even as it decayed. He was a steadily boiling frog and he knew it but there was no escape here.
"Who's'at?" His words were barely above a whisper and he felt gentle hands lift him up.
"-ly, stay with me!" The Sage's words came into focus as his conscious returned for a moment. "This is what Madara wants. Remember that!" He practically shouted.
Broly gritted his teeth as an instinctual anger hit him at that name. It was enough to have him raised his head.
"Like I'll forget that. I'm...I'm just tired."
It was like a dam breaking.
Crimson chakra poured out of the boy into a near perfect sphere. A substance, not quite liquid yet not quite gas, swirled around in a violent miasma. Naruto, with gnashing teeth and boiling blood, stared at the Saiyan with a hatred he had not thought the boy capable of. Whips of chakra lashed out like a flare from a star as Broly paced around the shinobi.
Naruto took one step and his skin was burned away. His body reshaped itself to eldritch proportions as six tails erupted behind him. Bones followed like knives from his body before they came to rest on him as an exoskeleton. Blinding white light shone from his eyes and snarling jaws.
Broly barely dodged the initial uppercut by mere millimeters. What he couldn't avoid were the bone claws that followed and crashed into his chin.
KILL. KILL. KILL.
The Jinchuriki watched Broly's body disappear into the sky above. Its every cell screamed to chase down this vile thing that hurt it.
DESTROY. CRUSH. DEVOUR.
But something held it back. A memory, not faint but distant, stays its feet. It searched, to find what kept it rooted, and looked back down at the body that the Akatsuki left.
Hinata.
The name smashed into its thoughts unbidden. The sound of skull meeting skull followed after and its- his anger turned to terror. Naruto picked her up in his paws or tried rather. He stopped when his touch left burns and the Jinchuriki was left paralyzed. What did he do?!
"Calm yourself and feel for her." Kurama's voice rumbled in his head. Naruto calmed for a moment as his senses, enhanced several times over by the Nine Tails, picked up a faint sound. The timid, slow beat of a heart. "She yet lives, boy."
He lifted a finger, guided by the Kyubi, and touched her chest above her heart. A jolt of angry chakra hit her heart like lightning and it moved with renewed life. Hinata instinctively took a breath but she remained asleep. Naruto let out a low noise. His back bubbled as a malformed blob of chakra budded. It fell from him and it coalesced into a smaller copy of the Jinchuriki though it lacked the bones and three of its tails.
It reached down and rolled her over before it picked her up in its jaw by the back of her hoodie. The Jinchuriki gestured with its head and the clone bounded off to where he felt the other humans were.
"They will help. Keep focus on him."
It roared like screeching metal and bounded off towards where the Akatsuki fell.
Broly pushed the tree off of his body. That thing had launched him clear into the forest surrounding the village. As he stood, he felt the earth shake behind him and the air became hostile to his lungs. The Saiyan turned to the beast that the kid had turned into.
His movement was instantly reversed by a wild haymaker and his body went clean through several trees as the Jinchuriki ran alongside him. He sundered a tail that tried to squash him with a quick kick but another struck his spine. He gasped at the blow but he used the momentum granted by the attack to right himself. Broly planted his feet and raised his arms as what was Naruto swiped at him once more.
He slid along the dirt as the force drove him back. The demon reared its fist back for another strike but the Saiyan had prepared his own in time. Their fists clashed with a great crash that flatten the woods around them. The Beast roared as it was forced back sans an arm. Broly grit his teeth as he pushed forward to press his momentary advantage.
Broly raised an open hand but his ki blast went wildly off course as something not only grabbed his legs but pulled him underground. His body took a beating to every inch as he was dragged through what felt like a mile of this planet's crust before he was suddenly back in open air and tossed like a rag doll.
There was hardly a breath between his crash landing and claws, four strong and each making even the largest trees around look minuscule, erupting from the ground around him. His aura lit up as he sped up to avoid them. As he moved, he suddenly noticed the Sun's light dim considerably. Broly looked up in time to see a block of stone, easily fifty feet long, fall onto him.
He exploded out of the stone right before another claw crushed it further. Another brought down a gargantuan tree on him like a newspaper to a fly. Broly punched through and grabbed the top half of the tree in the same motion. With a great heave, he threw it like a spear at the unmoving Jinchuriki. It managed to get a dozen feet from the crimson monster before it exploded into little more than splinters and ash.
The Six-Tail's smoking mouth closed for a moment before another blast erupted from its throat.
The Saiyan failed to react and was hit dead on by the unexpected attack. He fell out of the explosion in an uncontrolled free fall into a waiting claw. The rest grabbed at at a limb and Broly found himself being pulled from four different directions by each limb. The pain blinded him. He gathered ki in his chest and his eyes glowed. He could feel his muscles and skin being stretched to the ripping point and his limbs were moments away from being torn from their sockets.
With a cry, Broly's power exploded out of him and atomized the claws that held him in place. He raced to it before the beast could reform its limbs and held out a hand. Ki burst forth and it was bowled over with everything above its shoulders missing.
Its body writhed and fumbled as the Tailed Beast regenerated its missing parts in moments. Broly charged the Jinchuriki even as its limbs thoughtlessly pursued him. He twisted, deftly avoiding a piercing blow, and slammed his shin into the Six-Tail's head.
The ground cracked as its skull crashed into it. Broly grabbed its spine and ripped the beast from the earth before he threw it down back first. He rushed to the edge of the gargantuan crater he had created and ripped off a chunk the size of a house. The Saiyan crushed the Six Tails with the stone, adjusted his grip, and rose it once more.
He crushed it again and red mist burst out of the edges of impact. Before he could do it a third time, a hand pierced through his improvised weapon and pushed. It let him go seconds later but it felt like his body went through days of punishment. Broly lifted himself out of the rubble. Ahead of him was a trail easily a quarter of a mile long where that thing stood at the end. Another orange blast made its way to him but he noticed this one was considerably slower.
And then it split into hundreds.
He didn't think about what to do; he just did. He threw an orb of his own, little bigger than a marble, but when it met the first of this barrage, it instantly ballooned tens of thousands of times larger. The woods shook as the bombardment met only the unstoppable force that was the Omega Blaster.
It shot several more blasts, each one stronger than the last, but they all exploded impotently against the emerald monstrosity that Broly had created. Even in its instinctual mind, it knew that thing meant death.
But there was space between the shining orb and the ground through which he could see the Akatsuki. Most importantly, he wasn't paying attention to it.
It sprinted towards the earth shattering attack. With every bound, the Beast pressed itself further into the ground until it was slithering with unreal speed. The edges of ki touched the bones of its spine and erased them. It continued forward even as more of its bones disappeared in the emerald light. Broly saw it now, utter shock playing on the man's face, but it was too late for him.
It pounced on the man and they bounced and tumbled until the Jinchuriki had Broly pressed against the ground; his arms and legs pinned by the Beast's own. Two arms shot from its chest and wrapped around the Akatsuki's neck. Its mouth glowed.
Its left arm exploded which was promptly followed by a fist ripping the Six-Tails head clean off. Another claw appeared in the gore to crush the man's head against the earth. Broly's chest shone in response. The Jinchuriki was thrown away as the man just exploded. The next it saw him, Broly hovered well above.
The beast roared up at him the moment it found him again and it moved the remaining cloth on his body even as high up as he was. Broly dropped and crushed the Biju underneath in an explosion of gore. The splatter coalesced into a fist before it delivered a hammer blow to the Akatsuki. Another caught him as body and bones reformed in front of him. It roared in his face before Broly burst the hand that held him with a flare of his power.
He grabbed the Jinchuriki by its skeletal jaws, twisted around, and launched it skyward before he flew into the monster moments later. The Tailed Beast roared in his ear as he took it further and further into the edges of the atmosphere. When he found his breath thinning, Broly let it go and flew around the chakra monster.
The icy chill of the wind did little to calm the acidic fire on his skin. He could only do his best to ignore it; he couldn't stop. He slammed into the six tailed monster with an elbow drop that snapped its spine in two. He lifted his hands above his head and the world was awash in blue, green, and violet coloring as power gathered. He brought his hands down and dozens of blasts exploded forward.
Below, the Jinchuriki rose out of its crater. It was like a meteor shower as each individual orb left behind a trail of faded power. It sped away as the energy speared the ground around it. An errant footstep collapsed some unstable rubble and the Tailed Beast stumbled. Bloody chunks of chakra and bone were blown clean off as a dozen blast ripped through it in an instant.
Its body twisted and deformed as it fought against the concussive waves that threatened to tear it apart. Broly, encased in a translucent barrier, slammed into its side. The Jinchuriki tried to pull itself up along the barrier but it was too smooth and so his body was trapped between it and the unyielding tree trunks. He roared impotently at the enraged Akatsuki.
Six tails fell onto the protective shield. Cracks appeared as they drilled into the thin ki. Broly realized the danger and dropped his barrier to fly away only for his leg to be caught by an extra arm that hadn't been there a moment before. The Kyubi twisted around with the use of its momentum and crushed the Akatsuki into the earth.
Its body twisted into impossible angles to right itself before its arm stretched into the sky with Broly in tow and threw the man back down. Broly's body bounced with a wet thud. A massive set of claws, bigger than the Akatsuki himself, slashed at the man and sent him sailing further into the woods.
Broly slammed into a boulder in a sudden stop.
After a few seconds he needed to adjust, he pulled himself out with great effort even as his muscles and bones demanded he just lay there. Madara won't let him rest until he suffered more. But he could only take so much punishment and he fell. Within, the chains on his right side fell to the floor as the Kyubi's chakra fully ate through the links. He blinked and the Saiyan found himself back in his own body. He screamed with his own mouth.
Broly cracked the ground with a slam of his fists. He did it over and over until his knuckles were bleeding. Anything to distract him from the agony that ate at him. His perspective changed and he was back in his chains but another blink of his eyes had him back in his body proper.
The Saiyan put his hands to his head as blood started pouring from his nose. 'Just stop hurting!' He screamed in his thoughts as his skull felt like it would burst open any second.
Far away, unbeknownst to the man, the Six-Tails stopped in its tracks as a turquoise light rose around it. Threads of chakra wrapped around its form and flattened it against the ground but the Jinchuriki wasn't taking the unexpected obstacle lightly. As it thrashed, it spotted a blue crystal in front of his eyes. Something whispered to it.
"Destroy it. Remove such limits."
It crushed it with ease. The Jinchuriki roared once more as the threads dissipated. A seventh tail grew as he chased after the Akatsuki's scent.
Moments later, Broly tasted blood in the air.
The thing that used to be Naruto stalked towards him and he noticed it was considerably bigger. Unbidden, Broly jumped to his shaky legs and raised his weak arms. Wait, he tried to fly away, why wasn't his body listening to him?!
"H-hey kid..." He spoke through crimson teeth as his nose bleed fell into his mouth. "Listen, I-"
Instinctively, he deflected the blast that shot out of the Seven-Tailed Beast's mouth. His arm shook from the impact. The shockwave hit him a second later as his vision was colored orange. The Jinchuriki looked at the Saiyan with curiosity for just an instant before its mouth glowed once more.
Dozens of blasts followed.
"Shit!"
His arms blurred as he deflected whatever didn't miss. Whole acres of forest disappeared under orange domes and whatever survived the initial explosions were set aflame. As Broly hit more and more, he could feel the bones in his arms start to fracture.
"HA!"
He raised his hands and a barrier formed instantly. The earth quaked and his ears were deafened as Naruto's blasts hit his barrier with unyielding fury. There was a brief pause and he released a held breath. It raised his head and an orb, violet with edges like a moonless night, formed above him. In the corner of Broly's eyes, he noticed blue and black orbs appear from nowhere. They all headed towards the kid.
With a pulse of his ki, the smoke around his barrier cleared and he spotted what was happening. The Saiyan launched himself away the moment he realized what Naruto planned but it was a moment too late. The Beast brought its head down and the orb exploded in a violent torrent of terrible power.
Just the passage of the beam near him sent him off his feet and he crashed through a boulder. There was no break as more gargantuan claws lifted entire sections of the woods into the air including his own.
Broly sat up wide-eyed, nearly numb to the pain of the chakra. He looked to his right arm. It was a layer or two of skin away from being raw meat along with part of his chest. There should have been a lot of blood but the arm was mostly cauterized.
The Saiyan could hear laughter. It took a moment to realize it was his own. What was so funny? Was it the hell of being imprisoned in his own body? Was it these people, little more than gnats really, nearly killing him over and over?! Even as the wind pushed down on his body from being carried upward, he could only laugh at what was going on. Rivers of tears flowed down his face as he grabbed at his hair.
Broly fell back and he pounded the ground with his fists. His laughs took on a manic quality when he noticed the literal chunks of the forest around him blot the sun.
Naruto's many tails swished back and forth with an eager quality as Broly was entombed. The amalgamation of stone and wood dropped when it let go and a strong wave of force hit the Jinchuriki right after. It paced. The man inside still writhed. That hole in the world he felt yet carried on.
A golden light pierced through the cracks.
Jiraiya, Kakashi, and Yamato stood warily between the four-tailed construct and Tsunade and her team as they worked on the Hyuga. To say they were surprised by its appearance was to say the surface of the sun was just a bit warm. Under normal circumstances, it wasn't anything they couldn't handle but with every remaining civilian nearby and with the remaining shinobi capable of combating it on their last legs, it was a severe threat.
Until it dropped Hinata and nudged her towards the Hokage.
"Yamato," The Toad Sage asked out of the corner of his mouth. The last thing he needed was to accidentally provoke this thing. "How's Naruto?"
"Seven tails." The Jonin replied.
"Shit." The Copy-nin cursed. "Do you think-?"
"No," Jiraiya shook his head. "He's a strong kid. We won't see the Nine Tails today."
Nearby, Tsunade marveled at the Hyuga in her care. Sage Mode was honestly miraculous with how tough it must have made her body. Near as she could tell, Hinata took a direct hit from Broly to her forehead which should have turned her skull to little more than a spray of gore. The damage there was severe, life threatening actually, but they could fix it. Sakura, even injured as she was, was practically prodigious in her skill even now, Shizune was an accomplished medic nin in her own right, and Katsuyu had lent her help as well. She'd live.
Tsunade felt a volunteer dab at her soaked forehead with a cloth. That construct of Naruto's was making the place unbearably hot but there was no arguing with it. It wanted to see their work. Who knows how long they've been at this but they were already nearing the end.
Nearby, Konan watched the battle as best she could. She couldn't see either of them but the destruction they wrought was impossible to miss. It felt like the world was ending every time their energies clashed. Even out here, miles away from the epicenter, every impact rattled the shelter.
It reminded her of when Ame was caught in the countless conflicts of her youth. How they had to hide every day to survive. The devastation left behind in the wake of these battles. The families lost. There was a dozen volunteers and medics right now looking after infants and children who had no one to take care of them.
Damn it, this was what they wanted. What the Akatsuki was meant for.
And here she was. With her friends dead and more orphans than ever. More who would grow up like her, Nagato, and Yahiko. The remaining villages would not resist the temptation of picking at the Leaf's carcass.
Then there was Broly. Forced into a conflict of their own making like the villages did to them.
There had to be a way to stop this. To save Broly and the remaining Leaf ninja. The thought of sticking her neck out for Konoha made her sick to her stomach, they had plenty of Ame's blood on their hands, but it was that or have no support against Madara.
Assuming she lived. In the distance, what looked like a small moon dropped to the earth. She could see red from here. That had to be the Kyubi's doing,
"She's waking up!"
She turned away even as the impact brought dust down around them. The Hyuga's were opening but the medics were in a restrained panic. They had been running low on sedatives before she was brought here. She must've waken earlier than anticipated.
Their bunked shook violently. Far more than anything they've previously felt. Fissures appeared in the foundation of their shelter and Konan flew to save a couple civilians who nearly fell in. The construct sent a dozen hands to the ceiling as cracks appeared there as well yet its eyes remained on Hinata.
"What the hell was that?!" Someone out there yelled.
Their dim shelter suddenly looked brightened and people as their eyes were suddenly hit with blinding light. Konan held up a hand as she tried to see but the golden light was too much for her. As abruptly as it came, it went.
Monumental slabs of earthen crust floated up high. Storm clouds quickly gathered and rained lightning down on the still burning forest. Hurricane winds turned the flames below into blazing wildfires that left nothing alive in their wake.
The tomb burst open.
He stayed fixed in the air as if held aloft by unseen strings. His hair glowed with an alien blue amidst the gold of his blazing aura.
Blank eyes stared out and Naruto knew they were looking at him.
Author's Notes
I know I'll catch flak for having Hinata live but, in my defense, I've killed a lot of people in this fic. Let me get a pass here.
False Super Saiyan Broly is ready for Round 2 against Naruto's Seven Tailed form.
God, I'm so excited to be finally writing these fights. Hell, the Hinata and Naruto being Sages and fighting Broly was a thing in my head years ago and it feels so good to have it out there.
That's all I wanted to say.
Ent out.
Review Responses!
revan193: There's, like, a dozen separate instances of me explaining why that's the case.
DTLA1992: This chapter won't probably make you feel any better.
SuperSaiyajin4Vegeta: That's kinda been the story so far, hasn't it?
Abyss Trinity: Yes-ish. There's one last arc after this one.
Dontus -not Donut- Powerus: As cute as it'd be, no chibi Kurama lol.
Johannes293: I'm not cutting Sasuke; just Kaguya. To be honest, even having Madara behind Obito and Obito behind Pain was already pushing it in terms of both complexity and believability to me so when Black Zetsu came followed by Kaguya, it just checked me out of the story entirely. Plus, she adds literally nothing since Madara filled the role of an enemy that required everyone's powers and abilities to beat. Also, there's still another arc left in this story before it ends so there's still plenty of chapters to be written and read.
Abyss Emperor: Everyone put in work but Guy is just built different. Also, yes, Eight Gates Guy could clap Kurama.
Guest: *Pats head* Have some hope, little one.
Jutten: Just letting everyone know, no one who's dead will be revived.
SilverJoJo: Not quite, she remains unkillable yet unfortunately.
kidexx: A bit harsh. Sorry to let you down there.
fightingchampion: Not quite dead!
Isaiah: Whew lad, bit of a write up there! Super neat but it's a far cry from the planned ending! Thanks for the review~.
Primal Warrior: Thanks for the review but there's no need for that.
