Devil From The Heavens
Chapter 38: Just In Time
"I'm not hiding this time."
The terror that gripped her was somehow worse than what happened in Suna. There she had the blessing of ignorance. The Zetsu growled and flicked its wrist at Mei. It first pointed to her and than to the ground where she stood before it turned back to the former Kazekage. Mei stood befuddled. Did it just tell her to stay put?
Temari hands were wracked with pain but she did not let her grasp on her fan lighten for a moment. It skin grew back as it admonished her with the stump of its wrist. Despite her fear, she still had her pride and she wouldn't be condescended to by these things.
It's muscles tense and she moved her fan to block. The metal crumpled in half under its blow into her stomach and the former Kage was thrown through stone into the next room. She wheezed as ephemeral lights danced in her vision. The Hybrid stepped through with death in its gaze. Lava fell over its back and a look of annoyance flashed over its face.
"You don't demand things of a lady like that." Mei shouted from behind. The nerves were apparent in the Mizukage's visage even as she played up her normally confident personality. Temari met eyes with her and there was an understanding between them. This was a last gasp. A chance for them to die on their feet.
The former Kazekage struggled to her feet. Everything was wracked with unyielding agony and it was adrenaline alone that kept her moving.
"Yeah," She added. Her fan was nowhere to be seen. "It's rude."
It shrugged, whether it understood what it said and played along or not was impossible to say, and lifted a glowing hand.
The other Hybrid swiped its hands through the remaining stone spears and freed itself. The Iwa ninja were frozen in place as this unstoppable force loomed large in their visions. Onoki put his hands together for another technique but its own pale vice wrapped around them. The old man screamed as blood gushed from between the Zetsu's fingers.
Korutsuchi rushed in instinctively to protect her grandfather but she ran face first into a translucent barrier. As she fell on her rear, the hybrid turned its head towards her. With a grin that nearly split its face in two, it pushed its fist forward. Onoki's screams grew louder for a moment as cracks rang out. The stone he was pinned to fractured before the Hybrid's arm broke through his sternum and out through the wall.
The kunoichi froze in horror at how easily the Tsuchikage was killed. Its murderous gaze swept over her as it pulled Onoki from the wall. The kage slid off its arm and hit the ground with a wet thud. The Hybrid crushed his head as it stepped towards her. It pulled back that bloodied arm and threw a punch she had no hope of avoiding.
Her eyes flinched closed as a boom thundered through the room. Kurotsuchi was launched a ways away onto her back by the force of the shockwave. The kunoichi's head darted around as she looked for her would be savior. The Zetsu was nowhere to be seen. Instead, there was a massive hole to the outside where it once was.
Temari and Mei were both thrown painfully into the ground by the shockwave. They both thought that death had gotten them but the ringing in their ears told them that they had life in them yet. The light from the ruined ceiling cast Broly in shadow. He was a monument to them.
The Saiyan's attention fell on the woman. He could feel the hatred in her eyes, like little pinpricks across his skin, but he waved it off. She was no threat.
"Don't stick around. I'm not good with managing collateral damage."
The adrenaline slowly drained away as the danger seemed gone for the moment. It felt like someone had taken a saw to her guts and she hunched over as the pain hit her all at once. Mei appeared beside Temari and did her best to hold up the injured Kage.
"You took quite a blow there, honey." She said as she looked over her fellow Kage. "Let's get out of here."
Broly flew after his pseudo clones. He'd trust their self preservation instincts would have them follow his instructions. The Hybrids were easy targets but he couldn't just go all out. Everyone else was far too fragile for him to cut loose. One moment of distraction was all it took for them to kill everybody.
He spotted Konan as she was making her way to the rest of the Kage with a clone carrying something- no, someone. He couldn't tell who exactly from where he was. That meant most were accounted for but the question remained: where were the Zetsu?
His answer came in the form of a veritable shower of orbs fell to the earth from the cloud. There were hundreds. "Fuck!" He swore as he raced upwards. Two orbs of ki formed in his hands just as he swung his arms forward. They rocketed upwards to meet the rain and hyperexpanded into explosions that colored the sky. Broly kicked and deflected the few that came through and they tore up the environment for miles around the samurai's estate.
As he was distracted by fending off the swarm, something speared him in the back and he was dragged down to the earth with a cry of surprise. The other Hybrid flew up to him with a grin and nearly folded him with a clothesline. Broly spun until one caught him by the ankles and put its foot under his chin. The other wrapped itself around him and pinned his arms before it did the same.
"Your deaths will be painful." He muttered before the trio shot down at several dozen times the speed of sound.
Konan flew back into the original meeting room which looked like a slaughterhouse now. Korutsuchi knelt before a body sniffling. Konan sighed as she saw who the body was. That would not bode well for the future.
Konan's clone put Darui's unconscious body onto the somehow standing desk. His left arm had been slice cleaned off by the broken pieces of his sword and his left leg was mangled as it had been crushed under a landslide. Without proper medical supplies, she improvised a tourniquet and bandages out of her paper. He was lucky that she found him when she did but how lucky remained to be seen. He wasn't stable by any means.
Mei stumbled back into the room with Temari. "Would either of you have any medical expertise? She took a nasty hit."
Konan looked to the other kunoichi who shook her head. This was an unmitigated disaster.
"Didn't go as planned?"
Terror like no other gripped her as she twisted and flew away with a thunderous flap of her wings. The other Kage quickly fell into defensive stances though Temari's was hardly stable. The woman had grown pale. Madara's robes fluttered and his smugness could be felt in the air. He didn't attack however. He simply admired the handiwork.
"Don't worry your pretty little heads." He said. "I'm not here to fight."
His sentence was punctuated by a loud crash outside.
"I'm here with a promise."
The pseudo-clones created distance from Broly's planted body. There were several seconds where he didn't move and they dared to be happy of a job well done. That was before he planted his hands at the edge of his tomb and pushed himself out. He shook the dirt out of his hair.
Without a word, the Zetsu charged him. In a flash, their momentum was arrested by the imprints of fists suddenly appearing on their abdomens. They hunched over at the sudden impacts before Broly sent one into the dirt with a boot to their skull.
He twisted just as the other threw its own punch in return. He avoided the blow with the slightest move of his head and crashed his knuckles against its jaw. It went flying off as the Zetsu's head twisted around twice. It choked one last gasp before Broly splattered its skull with a clap of his hands. The Hybrid fell dead just as its brother pulled itself free from the dirt.
It hardly registered his movement before the Saiyan turned it to ash with a simple ki wave. He did the same with the other's body. He wouldn't risk it healing back or something.
Despite his easy dispatching of the Zetsu, Broly couldn't help but feel this victory was anything but. The damage was bad for how brief the whole melee was and he couldn't see how anything good could come out of this. The Saiyan sighed and flew up to make sure he didn't miss anything.
That was when he spotted a big purple thing surrounded by slugs. Blue slugs. Like the ones that Tsunade summoned in their fight.
"Damn it!"
Some Time Before...
Tsunade jumped out of the way as the flames of Amaterasu burst around her position. With another kick off, she was on top of the Uchiha. Sasuke slashed at her and she bent back to duck underneath the blade. Her leg came up in a horizontal swipe that had the missing nin leaping back to avoid the crippling blow. The Kage used her momentum to twist and thrust her other leg forward in a brutal kick.
Ephemeral purple ribs encased the Uchiha just as her crushing blow landed. The boy had Susanoo? Sasuke was sent rocketing back with an earth shattering boom and Tsunade continued her chase. A skeletal arm formed from Sasuke's phantom armor and clutched the ground to stop his momentum.
The arm pulled in and his momentum was reversed towards her. She stopped herself in time to lean out of the way for the initial thrust of his blade, now screaming with lightning, but her balance was lost. Sasuke unleashed a flurry of slashes to take advantage but the Sannin was able to, if barely, avoid all but the last slash. She twisted and the blade cut through her upper arm but the blow did not go unanswered as she threw her own punch in return.
He smirked, even as his left eye began to hemorrhage, as the violet bones erupted into black flames. Tsunade swore as she halted the blow mere inches from the deadly fire. She disengaged and hopped back to create distance but the roles were reversed as it was Sasuke chasing her this time. She raised her leg and brought it down on the ground in an axe kick and the battlefield was instantly split in two.
There was a pause as the two ended up on opposite sides of the chasm she had created. Her left arm, numbed by the lightning, dangled uselessly by her side. Sasuke was breathing hard; this could not have been easy on his chakra reserves. She had the advantage with attrition but as long as that construct existed while coated in Amaterasu, he was essentially untouchable. At least, directly.
"You should get that eye looked at." She said patronizingly. She needed the boy angry, careless, to exhaust him quicker. The moment that defense of his went down or those flames extinguish... "We've just started and it's already bleeding."
"You can't hurt me with your taijutsu so you settle with harsh words?" He replied.
She shook her left arm as it started getting the pins and needles from regaining feeling. "This is your last chance to back off, Sasuke. For Naruto's sake."
His grip tightened. "I don't care, you killed my brother."
Sasuke threw himself forward and Tsunade dropped down. She dug her hand into the stone underneath and tore a chunk easily twice her size out. Sasuke swung just as she did and her weapon was sliced in two just as she expected. She pushed one half forward and the stone crashed against the Uchiha's form as she leapt and kicked the other half downward.
There was a resounding crack as the boulder landed and Sasuke fell through into the chasm. In that brief moment, the Hokage bit her thumb and raced through the her handsigns.
"Summoning Jutsu!" Both their voices rang out.
Sasuke was flown into the air on the back of a hawk just as Katsuyu lifted Tsunade upon her back.
"Itachi was loyal to the Leaf even after the night your clan died." She said. "Does that not mean anything to you?"
"Don't say his name!"
The hawk divebombed after her and Katsuyu responded with a spray of acid against the avian summon. Sasuke jumped over the corrosive substance as his Susanoo's ribs and arm reformed. Muscles grew over the outstretched limb as he tried to crush her with its fist. A fist, she noted, that had no flames. Either the boy was arrogant, sloppy, or he was rationing his chakra. No matter what, it was a win.
She reciprocated with one of her own.
The bridge they stood on collapsed into dust at the impact. Katsuyu was forced to divide into thousands in order to survive the shockwave. The two shinobi were thrown away into opposite ends with thunderous crashes.
She stumbled out of the hole she was flung into. Warm blood poured over the right side of her face but her confidence wasn't shaken in the slightest. Sasuke did the same but the boy's killing intent was as strong as ever. It was a hate that tainted the air between. Katsuyu reformed beside the Kage in a smaller form that still towered over the both of them. Around them, multiple Katsuyus of the same size dotted their battlefield.
"Your seal isn't at full power, milady." The slug summon whispered to Tsunade. "Will you be using it?"
"I don't think so" She replied honestly. "This boy is a bigger obstacle than I anticipated but I can handle it."
Unbeknownst to her, Sasuke read the words on Tsunade's lips through his Sharingan and that hate that had already boiled over into the air grew exponentially. She looked down at him like he was some mere petulant child. He grew up alone, without a family, tormented by nightmares of their horrific deaths, and he was only seen as a toddler having a tantrum!
Katsuyu spewed acid at him from multiple directions and he leapt onto the wall behind him. The Uchiha ran as the flesh eating substance chased him. Tsunade landed in front of him and dropped a Heaven Kick of Pain onto him. It was only his Sharingan that gave him the forewarning needed to avoid the thunderous blow. Still, he was thrown away by the impact.
The slug summon kept spraying at him to cut off any means of escape as he recovered. Tsunade quickly caught up to him. Without Susanoo or Amaterasu, Sasuke struggled against the overwhelming might of the Hokage. He deftly dodged a jab and cross and took to the air just as the combo finished. The building shook as Tsunade collapsed the wall they had stood on.
The two bounced between the pieces of falling debris. The Sannin grabbed at boulders and launched them at the missing nin as easily one would throw a kunai. What he couldn't slice through, he twisted around to avoid. He needed just a moment. As he landed on yet another stone, he used Amaterasu once more even as it hit him with a lance of pain through his skull.
She hadn't anticipated it and just barely dodged the flames. The sound of chirping birds pierced the air as a storm erupted in Sasuke's hand. He bounced between the remaining debris, fast as lightning itself, and thrust his hand forward at the vulnerable Kage. Tsunade saw the attack coming and kicked herself away.
All she could do was gasp as the Chidori extended well past Sasuke's arm and pierced through her torso.
"No!" Katsuyu cried out.
The two landed a moment later on solid ground as a cacophony of boulders joined them. Tsunade wheezed as the lightning blade burned through a portion of her lung. It was a small mercy that Sasuke released the jutsu. The Hokage stood on shaky legs.
"You should get that looked at." He said, his words oozing with contempt. Susanoo formed once more as the slug's acid poured over him.
The Hokage coughed once more but it transitioned into a weak chuckle. "Kids think they're invincible. Don't count me out until I'm dead!"
It was a cold rage that bloomed with those words. He had her dead to rights and all she could do was spout some platitudes. To say nothing of the tragedy that spawned all this. It was beneath her to acknowledge it, to even admit any wrongdoing. Itachi's smiling face flashed across his mind. The Mangekyo shone as muscles wrapped around the violet skeleton followed by skin and then a set of armor.
Tsunade balked as the Susanoo towered over her. Its malevolent grin was a seemingly permanent fixture even as it was soaked in that corrosive spit. It summoned an arrow in its right hand and notched it into the bow that laid across its left wrist. Whatever false bravado she had melted away as she remained frozen to the spot.
The arrow was set loose.
There was a flash of thunder followed by a gust of wind that washed over him. There was no way for her to have avoided it. It was too fast, faster than anything she had seen in this battle, and she was fatally injured. He'd won.
So why did he feel such monumental pressure? The dust settled. The arrow was there and he saw a bloody leg but no Tsunade.
"What the hell?!" He snarled. A moment later, Broly crashed down right in front of him.
"I'll make this quick."
"What you saw here today was a tiny fraction of the strength I have amassed. I have hundreds more where they came from."
Madara smiled underneath his mask as he could see the wave of existential dread pass through them. He spread his arms as if he was a messiah which, given what he offered, he was.
"If you do not move against me, your villages will be spared anymore bloodshed. In fact, my plan's success would bring you all into a permanent paradise. Not a single man, woman, or child will needlessly suffer forevermore. They will live out their dreams in the greatest bliss."
Mei scoffed. "I know a conman when I hear one. Madara, I presume?"
"So my reputation proceeds me." He said with a chuckle. "Fine, if a carrot won't convince you, perhaps the rod will."
The temperature of their surroundings dropped by several degrees as an overwhelming killing intent flooded their senses.
"I can have them over your people within hours. It'll be minutes of precious little effort to wipe your villages off the map. It will not be war; it will be apocalypse."
Despite the clear and present fear plainly written on their faces, none of the conscious Kages would back down. The Iwa woman, however, was spineless. She was somehow shakier on her feet than Temari. Konan stepped forward with a face carved of marble.
"Weak words from a coward." The words were acid and Madara bathed in their caustic haze. "Ame has faced annihilation before; you're just another to be resisted."
Madara chuckled at the bravado. As stoic as Konan could be, he could read the terror; she did not believe what she said.
"Pray tell, Konan," He said with an almost playful tilt of his head. "How can a pile of rubble resist me?"
Author's Notes
Happy Halloween everybody!
You might be wondering, did I save this chapter to release on my favorite holiday? Yesn't.
The Saiyan cleans up with little effort. I know y'all wanted more of a confrontation between him and Sasuke this chapter but you'll get it next chapter that will conclude this mini-arc.
Let me know what y'all think!
Ent out.
Review Responses!
Dontus -not Donut- Powerus: No lie, that's my favorite track in the series.
fightingchampion: She had to show 'em who's boss!
SilverJoJo: Good news: Darui is still alive. Bad news: A's been dead for a bit. Darui mentioned it right before things went to shit.
Abyss Emperor: I'd hate to burst any bubbles but Jugo is hella dead. Burned, crushed under tons of rock, and then turned to mush when Broly cratered the area after crashing through the barrier.
DTLA1992: Unfortunately for Taka, I had no real place for them nor any desire to utilize them so they became fodder. And Broly did not go easy lol.
Guest: Broly is not a weapons kinda guy. Why bother when he can turn you to a fine mist with his fists? And, yeah, Konan's a badass.
Johannes293: Honestly yeah, even if there's not a single more death from here on out, the world is irrevocably changed by the events that have transpired. For better or worse.
QuinkingEmperorLelouch: Here you go!
Isaiah Navarro: Happy (Late) Birthday! As I'm sure you can guess, another Zetsu wielding the sword won't happen here and like I mentioned above, Broly won't be wielding weapons. My boi likes punching too much. While, theoretically, Broly could do that ki transfer, he currently lacks the fine control necessary to do that without just killing Konan.
Music is life: It's funny to think that the Sharingan could absolutely beat Broly as he is now given its very haxy abilities but that only works if Broly is slow enough. We'll see how that goes next time.
