*Obligatory 'I don't own Naruto so please don't sue me' header*
Subjugation Arc:
Chapter 14 - Nightfall
Gai leapt into the air as the last of the mysterious Akatsuki woman's paper clone disintegrated into the atmosphere, rocketing off towards his gentrified opponent with a fierce glare.
He only had one shot left, if he was honest.
He had to separate Kisame and Samehada.
"SEVERE LEAF HURRICANE!"
A sweeping kick from Gai towards the outstretched hand of the shark man was enough to break Kisame from his amused trance as he watched his comrade flutter away. He turned in time to see the green-and-orange foot projecting towards him at an alarming pace, and barely had enough time to lift Samehada in defense.
Immediately after making contact with the sword, Gai pushed himself off and back into the air, before twirling a bit to control his direction and momentum, and landing low on the treetops beneath him - right hand outstretched, left hand holding himself up on the surface. He looked like a crouching tiger; not that Kisame had much of a chance to admire his form. Less than half a second after landing, Gai pushed off in attack again. This time, he appeared on Kisame's right, and planted a sharp, chakra-infused punch to his gut. Before he could get off another round of attacks, Samehada was there again, sweeping down in an effort to slice off Gai's outstretched limbs.
But Gai was faster than that. He ducked and rolled, travelling underneath Kisame's legs, before falling forwards on his hands and pushing off in a bastardized handstand-turned-twirling kick.
Kisame pivoted in his position with an unamused expression on his face, flicking Samehada here and there and everywhere with startling dexterity in order to parry Gai's endless taijutsu bombardment.
It was a sight to behold; a green blur of motion spiraling – no, orbiting – around a black cloaked figure with a massive club-sized sword. The treetops they stood upon began to smoke from the friction of the speed and power behind Gai's punches, but Kisame was unfazed. In fact, he was simply beginning to get frustrated.
With a mumble of disgruntlement, Kisame released a massive amount of chakra from his body in a tidal wave of pure power. He used the surge to whip Samehada around in a sphere of bandaged blade, forcing Gai back a bit in order to plan another strategy.
With a few flips across the treetops, Gai landed again in a sophisticated stance, observing his opponent behind slated eyes.
Kisame stopped spinning, and turned to look at Gai in fury. "I grow weary of this, Might Gai. I have other matters to attend to, for people much more important than you. We need to end this, right here."
"Funny… I was just about to say the exact same thing," Gai retorted with his traditional confident smile.
In one fluid motion, Kisame sheathed Samehada on his back, and his fingers were working through a sequence of hand seals before he had even returned them to the front of his body.
"Water Style: Water Shark Bomb Jutsu!"
A steaming cloud of water from their earlier encounter rose up off the muddy forest floor, and began to amass into a giant shark. With the flick of his wrist, Kisame sent the ethereal beast on a collision course with the green jounin, who was still standing on his perch: watching, thinking, calculating.
As the shark grew closer and closer, Gai sighed and closed his eyes.
He didn't have a choice at this point. Gai was growing more and more exhausted by the minute, after releasing the first six gates in quick succession in their previous skirmish.
And it hadn't been enough.
A heartbeat.
The self-proclaimed Green Beast of the Leaf village began to glow in the color that described him best, waves of pure power flickering through the sky like superheated air over hot asphalt. It was so intense, so enormous, that the atmosphere began to grow thicker and heavier with each passing moment.
Time seemed to slow down.
"SEVENTH GATE OF WONDER, OPEN!"
Suddenly, he exploded, a beam of pure green energy blitzing off into the heavens like a beacon to the gods.
Kisame grimaced from the light and covered his eyes with one of his outstretched arms, quickly retrieving Samehada from his back with the other. He was going to need it, if this was his opponent's ultimate trump card.
With a wince, he peeked around the corner of his arm to see. He smirked at the sight before him.
Gai was so entrenched in power that Kisame couldn't see his form from behind the green-white cylinder of energy that was spewing off of him like the floodgate for a dam. More and more chakra came pouring out – so much that the Taillest Tailed Beast could tangibly feel it from across the forest.
The same forest that was now beginning to flatten under the immense pressure. It was simple enough to imply that the Water Shark Bomb Jutsu from before had been dispelled due to the churning, tumultuous sea of chakra that rushed across the surface of Fire Country like a tsunami.
Kisame had other things on his mind. In fact, he was practically vibrating with excitement.
He was going to get to use that jutsu.
He hadn't been able to use it since the first 'spar' he had with his teammate, a few weeks after being paired up together.
Kisame internally rolled his eyes when he remembered that technically it was all in his head, due to the fact that Itachi had placed him under a powerful genjutsu the instant he had walked onto the battlefield.
His frown returned to a maniacal grin when he realized what that meant.
This would be the first real time he was going to get to use it in battle.
He took Samehada and slammed it into the ground to stabilize it, before he ran his trembling hands through a series of handsigns, having to take his time in order to compensate for his excitement.
No matter. It would all be over soon enough anyways. He could stand to wait a few more moments, and savor each passing second of it.
First, he created more water from the surrounding environment. What was left over from their previous engagement, and what was left after Gai's gate release vaporized most of it instantaneously simply wouldn't do.
Snake. Bird. Snake. Dog. Ram.
It was more of a bastardized version of two of his more powerful water accumulation jutsus, but he had to be sure he would have enough. It wasn't like they were battling over an ocean.
"Water Style: Massive Exploding Water Shockwave," he said, drowned out by the sound of Gai, who was still amassing power at an alarming rate.
The ground began to rumble, much more violently than before. Trees seemed to shrink, leaves wilting and roots lifting out of the soil. Small beads of mist began to conglomerate with one another, before those much larger balls of water joined with others, and so on and so forth, until at last a giant bubble of water - easily the size of a small lake - was enveloping the two shinobi.
As the water rushed around Gai, most of it was superheated and instantaneously boiled away. The water's harsh reflective properties dampened the green beam's visual intensity, granting Kisame visage of his opponent once again.
And to his surprise, Gai was smirking.
He couldn't help but smirk back. Gai had no idea what was coming.
Kisame moved his hands through the water in a surprisingly quick fashion, as he was now completely immersed in his element – literally.
Clap! Even underwater, the sound of Kisame's rubbery palms connecting with one another sent reverberations through the liquid, rippling outwards like waves. Then, his fingers began to run together, forming the snake seal.
Then, finally, his hands formed into a rather unconventional seal, but one that seemed to work regardless as Kisame pumped a massive portion of his chakra into the technique.
"WATER STYLE, SUPER SHARK BOMB!" he screamed underwater.
And then, quick as lightning, Gai was gone.
But not untraceable. A stream of bubbling, boiling water shot out in a straight line, away from the water cloud.
'You're not getting away from me that easily,' grinned Kisame, as the water began to spiral outwards away from his body, in the direction of Gai – who was now steadily glowing green, standing in his taijutsu pose several hundred meters away.
The water swirled so much, and so quickly, that it began to force itself into a horizontal cylinder. The flowing torrent began to glow a light blue, and teeth seemed to grow from the mouth of the thalassic tunnel. (Translator Note: keikaku means plan, but also thalassic means 'of the sea')
Gai watched in fascination as a 40 foot tall and 200 foot long shark was born right before his very eyes. He shook his head. No matter. He had opened the Seventh Gate.
He could match almost anything at this point.
With another surge of green power, Gai leapt in the air, as the giant floating shark bellowed out in hatred. His speed was almost instantaneous.
Gai soared up several dozen feet vertically, before a massive shockwave enveloped the forest as he took off towards Kisame, seemingly using the air itself as a launching point. He flew through the sky at a terrifyingly fast pace, warping the atmosphere in a green flash as he rocketed off.
Before Kisame could even blink to focus on his now flying target, Gai had planted thirteen sharp kicks to the shark's ribs, half a dozen elbows across his limbs, and several punches in quick succession across his face and chest.
All of this happened in less than one tenth of a second, at which point Gai retreated back out of the water vortex until his next attack.
To Kisame's eye, Gai was there – and then gone – and then there again.
And then his entire body began to scream under the telltale pressure that signified a lost taijutsu match.
"Agh!" he hacked underwater, clouding the area around his face with a dark crimson red.
Gai took this as his sign, and he leapt forward again.
But Kisame was prepared this time. He summoned Samehada from the forest floor, and quickly began to swirl it around in the water like a bastardized Gentle Fist-style rotation. The water swelled and flickered in its shark form under the tremendous pressure of Kisame's kenjutsu skill, somehow withstanding the fearsome might of the taijutsu god that stood before him.
Or, rather, flew before him.
Gai was moving so fast that the laws of gravity and time did not seem to apply to him. Punch after punch, kick after kick was blocked – barely – by the nimble hands brandishing the massive sentient sword. After not landing a single hit this round, Gai switched taijutsu forms, abandoning his well-frequented Strong Fist for a more hybridized form of all of his styles – including Gentle Fist. He was the sensei of the technique's most up-and-coming wielder, after all. He made a concerted effort, however, to not use the Hyuuga's taijutsu form for one simple reason: Rock Lee.
It was a little known fact that Might Gai was, in all actuality, capable of using ninjutsu and his chakra network to its fullest extent. He purposefully handicapped himself once taking on his caterpillar-browed clone as a student in order to help Lee understand that a ninja can be just as powerful without those benefits. It allowed both Lee and Gai to blossom under the restricted training they endured, granting them with tremendous strength and physical prowess on the battlefield in comparison to their much weaker ninjutsu counterparts.
Counterparts such as Kisame Hoshigaki.
Gai still, if he was honest, did not like to use chakra through the usual channels, such as elemental releases or even pure manipulation, in regards to Minato Namikaze's Rasengan. Instead, he preferred to practice it via more supplemental, secondary means – such as through summoning or, in the case of this battle, enhancement of his already brutish taijutsu skill.
The Green Beast of the Leaf willed his inner power to flow to his fingertips, forcing them to glow a harsh blue color in contrast to the crystal clear water around him and his opponent, and his still-green, still-circling form.
The orbiting green sphere that circumnavigated the other began to flash blue, blinking across its surface like lightning strikes from a storm being viewed from high in the atmosphere.
Even if one possessed the Sharingan, the most proficient high-speed battle monitoring tool known to shinobi-kind, they would be hard pressed to view what Gai was subjecting his fishy foe to without serious mental concentration and focus. Even then, the jounin's movements would be basked in a blurry glow that would render its foreshadowing capabilities useless.
To say that Gai hadn't done this on purpose would be a complete and total farce. In all actuality, he developed this particular style of taijutsu for the sole purpose of getting one over on his lifetime rival and ninjutsu master, Kakashi Hatake. Before, Gai was a force to be reckoned with.
Now, he was a weapon of mass destruction.
Blue-tipped fingers ripped their way through Kisame's defenses, blasting his sword aside as they approached his body. After breaking through, Gai's hands would rapidly blast forward like a scorpion's sting, before coming into contact with his blue-hued skin.
Anyone that had battled a Gentle Fist master in the past would be able to tell you that to allow your opponent one touch could – and almost certainly would - be the end of the battle. Once contact has been made, the shinobi simply channels chakra to his fingers, and releases control on it quickly before it can properly amass. The result is a highly precise and deadly blast of chakra that infiltrates the victim's body on a cellular level, disrupting its own natural flow and paralyzing the opponent's chakra network. The Hyuugas preferred to use less violent methods of dealing their blows, giving their technique – the Gentle Fist – its rather unimaginative name.
Gai was not a Hyuuga.
The instant his fingertips made contact with Kisame, they jammed into him with the force of a condensed punch, breaking bone and blood vessels under their tremendous power. This was then, of course, followed by an unimaginable blast of chakra that dwarfed anything a Hyuuga could produce. This was due completely to the fact that Gai was utilizing the unhuman strength the Seventh Gate granted.
Without the Byakugan, the Hyuuga's "All-Seeing Eye", Gai could only estimate where to aim his attacks. Quantity definitely trumped quality in Gai's fighting style, meaning that he didn't have to attack at exactly the right spots in order to do the same damage as a fully-fledged Hyuuga prodigy. Instead, he simply peppered an entire region of his opponent's body, hoping that he struck something important as he went along.
As Gai blitzed across Kisame's body, waves of his compressed chakra shot through his arms, legs, torso, neck – everything that was exposed.
Once Gai could keep up his rotation no longer, he flew back once again through the surging water in order to assess the situation. He was sure that he had made significant damage – this was his strongest hand-to-hand technique, after all.
As Gai fluttered back down onto his treetop of choice several dozen yards away from the border of the water orb, he peeled his eyes at his opponent.
Kisame simply stood there glaring back at him, Samehada held off to the side in a menacing fashion, as he leaned forward in an attempt to launch his own attack.
But then, after a rather intense heartbeat, Kisame's eyes shot open.
Almost instantaneously, his entire body erupted into massive, quarter-sized lesions that dug holes through his skin that were nearly half an inch deep at the worst, a tenth of an inch deep at best. Blood exploded out of his body like water from a punctured balloon, polluting his preciously clear and pristine pool of water with the red life-giving fluid.
Gai grimaced slightly at the gurgled scream that Kisame let loose, before frowning as the scream morphed from one of pain into one of fury.
Pure, unadulterated fury.
"YOU SNOT-NOSED BRAT," his voice bellowed through the forest, seemingly amplified by his massive shark jutsu that still stood despite the obvious disruption of his chakra network. He let Samehada float in the water in front of him, suspended in the water like gravity had been deactivated.
Gai began to move again.
But this time, Kisame was slightly faster. His fingers flew into another archaic hand seal, and the entire figure of the shark began to glow and flicker blue, like some sort of barrier had been erupted across its watery surface.
'Just in time, too,' Kisame thought, as the blurred figure of Gai attempted to gain entrance to the shark's body once again and was violently dispelled.
The Akatsuki member grinned his usual grin as Gai landed on his tree once again, positioned in his standard taijutsu attack pose – right hand behind his back, left hand outstretched, palm facing his face and fingers pointing to the sky in the universal symbol of "Shall we, then?"
"Your time for stinging me like a bee has come to an end," he smirked, as he urged his pained and perforated arm to move forward and retrieve his sword from its unmoved position in the water before him. Almost immediately, the hilt of the sword wrapped around his hand like a noodle, and a surging glow began to pulse through the water.
Gai sighed mentally as he watched the shark man's injuries evaporate before him. Then he spoke as well, voice altered slightly due to the power fluctuating through his system. "I see you have erected some sort of chakra barrier around your little shark friend," he said casually, but with a hint of unbridled determination. "It would seem that I will have to switch from close-range to long-range attacks."
He allowed a smirk to grace his own features as he bent his knees and began to channel more of the Gates' residual chakra through his system. With irisless eyes, he stared at Kisame unwaveringly. "Unfortunately for you," he added at the narrowing of his eyes.
"Unfortunately for me?" Kisame mocked, as he flexed his restored muscles in satisfaction. "No. You see, this shark I have summoned is like no other. It takes your attacks' chakra and feeds it into the jutsu. I no longer have a chakra link with it – which is why your feeble attempts to disrupt my network and dispel it were to no avail. No. This shark is invincible: my greatest creation. You cannot hope to defeat it. It is impervious to chakra!"
He stretched his hands outwards in a display of confidence, and the shark roared in affirmation.
Gai simply focused on his chakra as the beast's roar rippled through the air, flicking his hair across his face and the leaves through the trees violently.
Then, he smirked.
He was ready.
With another roar, joined this time by the battle cry of Kisame, the shark and man leapt forward in a fury of energy and water and hate.
Gai, too, leapt forward, as a giant silver figure exploded outwards from his right fist, which trailed behind him like a comet's tail. His left hand was raised before him, palm outwards, as he charged.
"HEAR MY YOUTH ROAR!" he bellowed, as he sent his fist flying forward with a speed the cracked through the air. His coiled hand went supersonic, sending reverberations into the atmosphere at a terrifying pace. The reverberations began to fold over one another and morph into something solid, yet unidentifiable.
Then, the fist collided with the palm.
And the forest exploded.
Kisame's eyes widened first in shock, but then in glee, as he watched the ethereal figure of a massive grey tiger blast into existence before him as Gai's hands collided. The tiger appeared to circle around Gai's glowing form atop the remains of his tree, before it leapt above him with a snarl, and charged at the approaching shark.
"EXCELLENT!" Kisame bellowed, but the sound of his booming voice was easily paled in comparison to the sound of roaring wind and whipping water as they connected.
Konan floated above a nearby mountaintop in slight curiosity. She knew this fight would be catastrophically devastating – nuclear, even. For that purpose, she directed her paper to float her to the top of a nearby peak in order to easily observe without becoming collateral damage.
When she could vaguely see the form of Kisame explode in blood after the strange green-clad shinobi's violent frontal assault, Konan nearly jumped in to stop the match and lend a hand. The man's survival was crucial to Lord Pain's master plan. His death could not be afforded.
But when she saw him lead his shark in a charge shortly after being healed by that demonic sword of his, she sat back down again.
She turned slightly to will her paper creatures to take to the sky and alert Pain to this development, when she noticed a massive white glow erupt from the battlefield. She was forced to squint her amber eyes in both shock and pain as the glow expanded outwards exponentially, threatening to cross the mile or so distance between herself and her comrade in battle.
The shockwave hit before the sound, but both collided with her cloaked form nearly simultaneously, blasting her off balance and forcing the blue-haired kunoichi to take to the skies and ride it out in the air.
BOOOOOOM!
Konan watched in abject fascination as uprooted trees and entire chunks of earth and stone, some the size of houses, flew past her. More than two thirds of her paper birds, already en route to their leader, were incinerated by the tremendous heat that followed, and she grimaced in displeasure.
With several strong flaps of her paper wings, Lady Angel stabilized herself and narrowed her eyes at the smoking crater of what used to be a pleasant forest located within a small valley between the mountain ranges in the western portion of the Land of Fire. She was certain the shockwave could be felt for miles in each direction, which only further heightened her calm fury.
Pain would not be happy at the trouble this Leaf shinobi had caused.
She had to put a stop to it herself, Kisame's wishes be damned.
With a frown of indignation, she blitzed towards the battlefield in a flurry of white and black.
Gai looked on at the devastation caused by the collision between his Daytime Tiger jutsu and the Akatsuki member's strange shark. He was now standing in the center of a massive, kilometer-wide crater that used to be a forest, surrounded by the whipping wind that carried the dust and debris from the attack through the air and disrupted his vision.
He began to walk forwards as the smoke began to dispel, and grimaced as he felt the aftereffects of the Seventh Gate of Wonder taking their toll on his body. He raised his forearms up slightly to observe the faint blue glow of steam as it evaporated off of his body in a physical manifestation of his rapidly increasing exhaustion.
With a few feeble steps, he soon approached a dark shadow obscured behind the cloud of dust, and raised his fists before him.
With a quick roundhouse kick aimed at nothing in particular, Gai twirled away the obscuring haze to reveal the form of a badly battered Kisame, crouched behind Samehada, which he was using as a crude shield as it lay imbedded in the ground.
With a strained cough, Kisame stood feebly, blood running down his face from his mouth like an opened tap.
The air wave from Gai's kick continued on behind him, however, and revealed another figure – and Gai's heart leapt up into his throat.
'It wasn't enough…'
He feebly reentered his taijutsu pose as the menacing form of the Akatsuki woman from before glared at him from behind the figure of the badly wounded Kisame.
Gai mentally sighed and admitted defeat. 'I was unable to defeat him with my most powerful Seventh Gate move. With that sword of his, he is essentially undefeatable. And now, with the appearance of another foe, whose abilities are unknown to me, I am out of options. Unless, of course, I receive backup. But that is highly unlikely.'
The Green Beast of the Leaf narrowed his eyes and determined that it would be best if he stalled for time. "So, you make a reappearance. I was under the assumption that this youthful battle could not possibly get any more interesting." He gave a strained smile, but one that exuded his typical Might Gai charm. "It would appear I was proven wrong!"
"Cut the crap, Gai," spat Kisame. All amusement was washed from his rather exhibitive face after that last battle, for one simple reason – Gai shouldn't be standing. "Just what did you do to overcome my most powerful jutsu like that? Not even Tailed Beasts can withstand its exponentially increasing power." He allowed the shadow of a grin to grace his face. "After all, chakra is chakra."
"Therein your problem lies," Gai quipped with a small smile of his own. "You see, the Daytime Tiger jutsu is a purely taijutsu move. There is no chakra within it." He locked his black eyes with Kisame's. "It's just a superpowered punch. Nothing more, nothing less."
Kisame narrowed his eyes as he feebly took to his feet, before dislodging Samehada from the rubble beneath him. Immediately, like before, the strange weapon began to feed chakra and life to its master, seemingly rejuvenating him to his pre-battle state. Konan stood behind him. Her eyes never left Gai's as she watched him converse casually with Kisame, reading his very vivacious body language.
'He's weak. Weaker than Kisame. Were it not for Samehada….'
Konan raised an eyebrow subtly at that fact. In all her time within the Akatsuki, and from everything she had heard of the former Ninja Swordsman of the Mist, no one – not even Itachi Uchiha – had ever pushed Kisame this far. And it was all done by this strange looking man in spandex from the Hidden Leaf.
But his devastation was not one-sided. Konan could tell by the way Gai was standing that he was running on empty. He probably could not withstand another lengthy spar before succumbing to his injuries.
The perfect opportunity for her and Kisame to leap in and attack him together.
"Konan."
She blinked, as the shark's sharp call broke her from her thoughts.
"I thought I told you I could handle this on my own. Get the hell away."
The kunoichi bottled up the rage at the insolence that this man was demonstrating, deciding instead to release it in a moment on the green man. The only outward sign she gave that she actually received the man's 'order' was a subtle shift in her eyes from Gai to Kisame.
"You are out of time, Kisame. This can go on no further. We must finish this now."
She allowed some of the venom in her voice to leak out into that last word, as she emphasized to the tall shinobi that she was the one in charge here, not him.
Luckily, it appeared that Kisame got the message and smirked. "Fine. Just don't get in the way of Samehada and you'll be fine."
She didn't bother to respond to that as she turned and refocused on her new opponent.
To her surprise, she saw deliberation flash behind Gai's odd eyes.
Pain. Sorrow. Regret.
And then…
Unparalleled determination.
A nagging feeling began to pulse away at the back of her head. It was a strange feeling, one she hadn't felt in years. She blinked a few times in confusion as the feeling began to grow in size, slowly but surely.
"Your actions," Gai began, his voice barely above a whisper, as he lowered his face until his shiny, bowl-cut hair obscured his eyes, "are those of individuals who are hellbent to do harm to the Land of Fire, to the Leaf, and to the Shinobi world." His simmering body began to shake with some unknown tremor as he spoke, rage and resolve bubbling up behind his voice as he did so.
Konan frowned. The nagging feeling began to seep from her head into the rest of her body in an uncomfortable fashion. Once again, she couldn't quite place it. It was strange…
"The Akatsuki – you are a most unyouthful menace to this world. You seek nothing more than to cut short the lives of those that show insurmountable promise."
He looked up at Konan, staring her right in the eyes.
Or, so it felt. His irises and pupils were completely gone, leaving nothing but the white of his sclera behind.
The feeling in Konan's gut lurched suddenly as she could feel the air around her dense considerably.
And that's when it hit her.
Fear.
That was the feeling she was experiencing – something she hadn't endured since her early days, as a war orphan, wandering the world in search of food, shelter, love….
….a life to live.
Her eyes widened slightly at this revelation, as her heart began to pump wildly.
'This man… this is just like…'
"The Akatsuki must be stopped at all costs."
'He… Just what is he?'
The world around Gai exploded suddenly in a violent red fury as his right fist swung forward and slammed into his chest, right above his heart. It took a moment, but Konan realized that he had embedded his thumb in his own body.
She looked on in a mix of genuine curiosity, excitement, and pure terror as the man began to roar into the steadily increasing howling of the wind.
"Konan? Are you okay?"
The blue-haired girl blinked and turned to her orange-haired companion. He simply smiled at her warmly, conflicting with the cold and harsh environment they were trudging through.
"Yes. I am just worried…"
"Don't be afraid, Konan," the boy replied with a huge grin. "Those three shinobi from the Leaf managed to fight Hanzou to a draw. A draw! He's the most powerful ninja the Hidden Rain has. If they can't train us, nobody can."
"Yahiko…" came a small, timid voice from behind the pair. Konan turned slightly to focus her attention on the nervous red-haired boy, who had his head down in both apprehension and fear. "…are you sure they're gonna train us? We're just war orphans…"
"Don't start with that crap Nagato," Yahiko said both calmly and firmly. It wasn't a mean statement, just a commanding one. One laced with concern and care.
The one called Nagato only bowed out of the conversation as he fiddled with his fingers as they walked, the rain pelting their battered and frail bodies. The war-torn land of Rain certainly lived up to its name, and it seemed, to the trio of war orphans, that each passing day the landscape grew greyer and greyer along with the state of the battles that raged all around them.
It was hell, to put it bluntly.
And they were purposefully walking right into the middle of it.
Konan sighed to try and ease her nerves, but it didn't help as much as she hoped it would. She reached around to the large satchel on her back and readjusted it, taking care not to do anything too rash as to damage it in the process. The satchel contained the only gas mask she owned – and it was more of a fishbowl than a mask, if she was honest. Regardless, it was her only ticket into the more brutal regions of the war – areas where toxic fumes and deadly gasses floated through the air like the constant eerie fog. Her two male companions also brandished their own fishbowl masks, willing to do whatever it took to get out of the cold and the rain and the death.
She sighed again. They were currently walking into one of the most dangerous parts of Rain in search of three tutors – three potential tutors.
The Legendary Sannin of the Hidden Leaf – at least, that's what Hanzou the Salamander, their 'leader', had called them.
There was nothing to say that they wouldn't simply kill Yahiko, Nagato, and herself once they met up with them. It was a chance they were all willing to take – a chance to help Yahiko with his dream.
'I am going to stop this damned war, and take over the world!' she remembered Yahiko exclaiming proudly after a particularly successful market pilfering several months ago. 'Once I rule the world, there'll be no more pain! No more suffering! No more war orphans!'
Konan smiled warmly at that, bringing her hands back down to her front to fiddle with her coat nervously.
'Yahiko… I believe in you…' she thought as the trio approached a massive above-ground cave system that speckled a lone mountain range – one that ran right through the middle of Rain country rather ubiquitously.
Yahiko's dream had become Nagato's dream. Her dream. The dream of the three of them, together, as one.
As a family.
And all they had to do was try to win over the hearts and the minds of three of the most powerful people in existence at the time.
'No big deal!' she recalled Yahiko clamoring not even three hours ago.
Her thoughts were broken by a subtle flash of forest green and snow white at the entrance of one of the upper cave systems in the low-lying mountain range.
And from the excited look on Yahiko's face, he had seen it too.
"Come on, you guys! That's them, I'm sure of it! The Sannin! Let's go be ninja!" he exclaimed, before running off ahead of them.
Konan's stomach began to churn in nervousness and trepidation.
'They're so powerful…' she thought, as the feeling of dread spread all across her body, starting from a small point at the back of her neck – one she began to absentmindedly rub in worry…
"EIGHTH GATE OF DEATH! OPEN!"
"And what, pray tell, are you doing in the middle of the Hidden Rain?" came a sharp and commanding voice from amidst the waterlogged stone landscape. It echoed across the flat surface of the endless pool, bouncing through the swiftly falling raindrops and ultimately winning out over the sound of the drops connecting with the earth and joining the others.
A brisk flash of lightning through the darkening sky revealed two cloaked figures – one tall and foreboding, the other small and feral.
Kyuubi narrowed his eyes and turned on his heels, stopping his forward progress to look at the face of the man who had summoned his attention. His sandals made a small splashing sound as they rotated and were raised, then lowered back onto the saturated stone pathway he was walking down.
"I'm here on business," he casually replied, as he took the sight of a tall, masked figure before him.
"Hn," Tobi grunted, turning slightly to look out onto the horizon, where a massive, vibrant city glowed uninvitingly with life. "I have a vague idea as to what you're doing. But," he turned back to Kyuubi who was still glowering at him untrustingly, "I demand to know why your plan involves the obliteration of all the great shinobi villages."
"Oh!" Kyuubi grinned creepily, revealing a set of sharp canines. "You heard of that, did you? I just received word that my little scheme in the Sand worked perfectly. I'm quite proud of that one myself, personally. To destroy an entire village without actually pressing the button..." He faded off as he sighed in contentment, obviously satisfied by his work. "Of course, the puppetmasters of the Sand are just as much puppets as the wooden dolls they command. It did not take much to spark civil unrest."
Tobi narrowed his lone eye from behind its hole, but otherwise did nothing.
Kyuubi sighed and ran a weary hand through his formerly golden hair, his Akatsuki ring catching on some and pulling it out with it as it went. He absentmindedly picked the follicles out from between his finger and the ring as he turned to face the village on the horizon himself. "Do not worry, everything I do is for a reason. My plans are resolute. And they do not go against the will of the Akatsuki, but neither are they necessarily for it either."
"Of course," Tobi drawled, his lone Sharingan glowing from behind his orange mask. "You are lucky that your 'plans'," he emphasized the word 'plans' mockingly, "do not interfere with my own. See to it that they continue to do so."
"Of course," the orange haired boy replied with a roll of his crimson fox-eyes. "What ever would I do without your eternal guidance, Lord Madara?"
Tobi snorted in derision and turned to leave. "Do not cross me, Nine-Tails – lest you incur the wrath of Tobi for the second time."
Kyuubi let out a hardly stifled giggle at this. "Oh please. You know as well as I do that you can't control me for long. Two is better than one. But regardless, you need not worry. I need to be able to count on your assistance in the future, if things play out the way I am imagining they will when I come for the Leaf. Why would I want to abandon myself from a potential ally when I might need him most?"
Kyuubi knew he was buttering his words slightly, but they did the trick – Tobi stopped and looked back over his shoulder, eye filled with curiosity and indignation. "Oh? And when might that be?"
"Soon enough," Kyuubi replied, as he turned himself and continued walking. "I intend to save the best for last."
Tobi let out a single humorless chuckle at this. "Of course. I simply cannot wait."
With that, he began to vibrate with energy, as his form began to atomize and swirl away into the darkening abyss.
"I will return when the deed is done," he hissed, and he was gone.
Gai trembled as more power than he had ever dreamed of coursed through his system. It was a tremendous feeling, but he knew that it was going to be short lived.
Internally, he sighed, and accepted his fate.
'I must do what I must do,' he thought calmly. 'My only regret is that I am not joined by my prized pupil. His youthful energy would surely allow me to prevail in this most midnight of hours.'
He smiled grimly as the gate opened completely.
"EIGHTH GATE OF DEATH! OPEN!" he screamed at the top of his lungs, and the world began to shake and quiver under the strain of Gai's might.
Whatever Kisame had experienced when the Seventh Gate had opened was simply a drop in the bucket compared to what was happening now. As soon as Gai had finished his announcement, his body exploded into red flames – flames that leapt high into the air and singed the stars themselves. The light he was emitting was so bright – so powerful – that the heat energy from that alone radiated through Kisame and Konan with a force that neither had ever experienced throughout their entire lives. It burned through their very souls, cooking them from the inside out, before -
With a massive blast of power, Gai leapt into the air, sending a gargantuan shockwave catapulting out across the bottom of the crater and cracking the already compacted ground like it was a pile of sand. Whatever poor, unfortunate flora that lined the newly-formed crater was evaporated instantaneously, and the only thing that protected Kisame and Konan as they stood unfazed at the epicenter was the demon sword Samehada being used as a shield again.
Kisame bristled from behind his prized weapon. More times than not this battle, his trusted companion was being forced into this role. It simply wasn't right for the poor creature.
It wanted blood.
And, to be quite frank, so did Kisame.
With a roar, the shark man began to blitz through another series of hand signs, before Gai materialized in front of him instantaneously, and punched him in the arm. Then, he was gone again.
Kisame cried out in displeasure as he felt both his radius and ulna bones disintegrate upon connection. Then, to his surprise, his entire body began to radiate with pain as well, and he looked down to see a familiar sight – massive gashes ripping through his skin that made him look more like a half-grated block of cheese rather than a feared S-ranked missing-nin.
"Ynaaugh!" He bellowed, well beyond the point of rational thought. Gai was going to die. Now.
Konan stood calmly off to the side, attempting to determine what the best course of action would be to take down this new and formidable foe. Her previous assumption that he was weakened beyond battle-capability was severely mistaken – one that she would intend to never make again.
'Never underestimate your opponent, no matter how weak,' the faint words of her late sensei rang through her head.
With a flutter of wind, Konan dissolved into thousands upon thousands of paper birds, which all took to the currents from Gai's last attack immediately. After a few moments, Kisame heard Konan's voice faintly call out a jutsu that he was all too familiar with.
"Paper Shadow Clone Jutsu."
The thousands of paper creatures erupted into millions – clouding the sky with white and black and red.
Explosive tags.
With the roar of the wind, the sea of birds shot forward with unparalleled speed, and began to assault the falling figure of Gai as he swooped in to attack Kisame again.
What followed was a terrifying bombardment of explosions – explosions that may have not been very powerful singlehandedly, but once compounded together with hundreds of thousands of other bombs, radiated heat and power and strength that served only to further obliterate the feebly-faring forest.
Kisame watched in abject fascination as his companion showed her true might. Not many had been able to say that they had entered the battlefield with Lady Angel and lived to tell about it. As such, Konan's true capabilities were a complete mystery to the missing-nin – many a bet had been placed, with Kakuzu at the center, of course, to try and guess what exactly she could do.
He smiled as he watched the explosive salvo enter its third continuous minute of devastation. He was happy to say, for his own sake, that even he had sincerely underestimated the Akatsuki kunoichi.
Finally, the dust began to settle, and the former Swordsman of the Mist could feel his hearing return – coupled, of course, with the telltale sign of tinnitus that rang through his head like a broken bell.
As paper continued to flutter about in the air absentmindedly, the segmented form of Konan's head appeared next to Kisame as he stood in awe of her demonstration.
"Let's go," she said curtly.
"Not so fast," came a powerful voice from across the desecrated valley.
Konan narrowed her eyes. "He's fast."
"You don't need to tell me twice," Kisame chuckled as he spit more blood from his mouth and onto the ground. "The bastard's a tricky one. Always has a trick up his slee-"
BOOM!
The shark man barely had time to react as Gai's fist materialized in front of him again, and then was gone before he had a grip on Samehada to block.
"Akgh!" he sputtered, coughing up a few pointed teeth with another slew of blood-mixed phlegm.
"I'VE HAD ABOUT ENOUGH OF THIS!" he screamed, and snatched Samehada from the ground in front of him. Immediately his physique changed, and once again he was returned to his battle-ready state.
Without skipping a beat, he charged ahead, hell-bent on cleaving off the head of the Leaf bastard. He leapt into the air, and was immediately struck back down again by a right hook to the jaw that not even the sharingan could have detected.
It was as if Gai was now the wielder of time itself, and he was going around while it was stopped and wreaking havoc on Kisame's battered body.
He fell to the floor in a crumpled heap, as Konan simply stayed in place, content to watch the battle from her ethereal position.
Her eyes widened when her face was vaporized into a small pile of ash as one of Gai's punches was finally directed towards her.
Without skipping a beat, she rematerialized several dozen feet in the air, high above the smoky basin that Kisame was now lying at the bottom of. She narrowed her eyes as she looked out across the horizon for something that might give away-
BOOM!
Just as Konan saw the apparition of her foe appear before her, she detonated her paper clone, and continued to barrage the region of the sky with paper bombs for another few moments for good measure.
After making sure that Kisame was up and about again, she once again took the form of a human bomb and looked around. Her companion was very, very angry now – so angry that he would most likely attack out of spite rather than out of forethought.
Luckily for him, it took much more than a few detonated clones to piss Konan off.
Gai watched the narrowed eyes of the blue-haired shinobi with a curious gaze. 'So she's a paper wielder. Interesting. I do not believe to have ever seen one so talented in origami and the manipulation of it.'
But his attention was completely focused on the quaking blue man that stood beside her, cloak in tatters, blood staining the front of his face and chest as it pooled on the ground beneath him. Still, he stood tall, brandishing his massive scaled sword menacingly, just daring Gai to do something about it.
Unfortunately for him, that's exactly what Gai intended to do.
But he would need a lot of chakra for that.
With a deep breath, he flew forward, using the sky as a launching point, as a massive spectral being appeared around him. He charged chakra into his fists again, similarly to how he did for his Daytime Tiger technique.
But the fiery flames of his youth were beginning to set like the evening sun. Thus, a different technique was summoned from the banks of Gai's repertoire.
"EVENING ELEPHANT!" he bellowed with a voice that quaked the earth, and he set forth towards the two imposing figures like a god smiting a sinner.
Kisame howled in anger as he saw the imposing silver figure of something, presumably an elephant, charge down on him like thunder.
He held up Samehada.
BOOM!
BOOMBOOMBOOM!
BOOOOOOOOOOM!
Kisame flinched in anticipation for another delayed pain response, but none came.
Instead, what greeted him when he opened his eyes was far worse.
Crack.
The sentient form of Samehada, held before him in defense once again, began to tremble in pain and fear as a large vertical crack ran down its scaled surface. A soft whimper petered out from its large mouth-like form as the crack began to grow slowly, before finally stopping at a point that put Kisame on edge.
'One more hit,' he thought in terror, 'one more hit and Samehada is dust.'
Konan watched in silent fury as she observed the strongest blade ever to come out of the shinobi world be brought to its proverbial knees in one attack.
She was going to have to go all out. Kisame would be out of service quickly after losing Samehada. They were out of time long ago.
With a roar of indignation, Konan exploded into another small cloud of paper bombs. The ground started to shake, and suddenly thousands upon thousands of additional paper bombs worked their way out of the ground and sped off towards the blurred figure of Gai as he retreated from Kisame in order to amass more chakra.
With a half ram seal, she grunted in an unusual sign of concentration, and the world was illuminated with the harsh glow of insurmountably intense explosions once again.
To a casual passerby, the valley that was once home to quaint wildlife and serene beauty was now nothing more than a glassed scorch in the middle of the Land of Fire – a relic of a battle that was sure to stand the test of time.
Flickers of light echoed across the landscape for miles, overpowering the setting sun and lighting up the sky like a fireworks show. People from all across the nation stopped and turned in order to scratch their heads and frown at the sight they were seeing.
But at ground zero, the valley was hotter and brighter than the surface of the sun. This particular array of explosive tags were some of Konan's most powerful. She had initially been stockpiling most of them for another use, but it seemed that the time for her to reveal her ultimate trump card had finally arrived.
Kisame's beady eyes widened first in shock, then in glee, then not at all as he was forced to cover them to prevent lasting damage. The light and sound coming off of the sky was like that of a bomb of unimaginable power, like a miniature star was being birthed on the surface of the earth, right before their eyes.
He smirked and began to stand, when he noticed something… odd about the explosion.
It was two sided.
With a careful look, Kisame peeked from around his fingers to the white-hot sky, and frowned at what he saw.
Paper bombs – entire waves of them, flickering about like the surface of a stormy sea, were crashing against a figure…
…who was glowing red. Beams of red-hot energy were radiating off of him like petals falling from a rose, blitzing across the sky and connecting with each individual paper bomb like two armies clashing amidst a great war. The paper bombs exploded effortlessly, but Gai himself was unharmed.
'That same damned move from before,' Kisame thought to himself with a sneer. 'He is certainly a one-trick pony at times, isn't he?'
Finally the bombardment drew to a close, and the seemingly unending explosive light dimmed dramatically. A humanoid figure began to form midair from the remaining cloud of paper, taking on the appearance of its master and floating gently back down to the ground next to Kisame.
"He is challenging, that is certain," she stated coolly, eyes locked in front of her.
As the dust and ash settled around them, Kisame could only brace himself for what would come next. He thoroughly expected another flurry of punches and kicks and jabs that would force him to hack up more blood, but when nothing came, he was slightly apprehensive.
Turning slightly to get a look at Konan's papery form, he could see she thought the same thing.
With one particularly swift blast of wind coming down off of the hilltops and floating over the now barren landscape, the dust was dissipated, revealing the form of a rather disheveled and heavily panting Gai. He was in his taijutsu pose, eyes still fiery with power, but they could tell that the effects of whatever he had done to himself were starting to catch up with him.
Kisame composed himself after seeing the state of his opponent, and gave his trademark smirk. "Well, well, well," he repeated, "have you finally run out of steam? As you can see, I always win. You can't defeat me, not as I am." As a sign of his arrogance, Kisame raised his arms out antagonistically. "I will admit, Might Gai, you have proven to be more than worthy of my respect. Admiration, even. You are truly a master of your art. But unfortunately," he reached behind him and grabbed Samehada, "that simply isn't ever good enough. Not for me, at least."
His smirk widened into a massive toothy grin, showing off the pointed tips of his teeth. Whatever had been knocked out from their previous encounter was now firmly back in place, thanks both to his sharklike appearances and the inhuman abilities of the demon sword.
Konan neglected to gloat, simply staring at Gai with her usual stoic expression. The flower in her hair fluttered around in the wind as it continued to whip through the air, rustling her cloak and what was left of Kisame's.
Gai simply smiled from underneath his closed eyes, as he nodded in acknowledgement. "Perhaps. However, none of us shall be leaving this battle alive."
He raised his head up to the darkening sky, admiring the sunset from beyond the raised hilltops. With a sigh of contentment, he smiled warmly, completely disregarding the two weakened Akatsuki members before him.
He was at peace.
"The time has come, Akatsuki. I bid you farewell."
His form erupted into a mass of red chakra flame, the color of blood. What Konan and Kisame didn't realize was that it was his blood, vaporizing from within his body and steaming out of his pores. He manipulated it much like he manipulated the two previous Gates' attacks, and the wisps of life essence began to morph and flow. The sky began to darken under the increased weight that hung in the air, and the earth began to crumble and rattle.
Two vibrant yellow eyes peered out of the red cloud, followed by the rest of a massive spectral beast that erupted from the sky in a fiery fury. A massive dragon enveloped his figure like a gift from the gods, embracing him with his own essence at the twilight of his youth.
It was Gai's last stand.
"Good night," he whispered, as he closed his eyes and charged.