Opening - Love Deterrence by Nana Mizuki
X
Kimimaro recognized the jutsu he was faced with instantly. Three years it had been since Naruto had struck him with it, a gigantic blade conjured from nothing and thrown across the battlefield as if from the hand of a god. Banshou Karu was the sort of jutsu that made a lasting impression.
Then again, he could remember every detail of that day with unusual clarity. He could recall the most mundane details of the quiet hours before that mission; he remembered exactly where the sheets had brushed his arms as he'd climbed out of bed, the melancholy on Kabuto's face as he explained the objective, the prick of the needle he'd pulled from his arm as he'd accepted. He'd been expecting to cough up a lung and die; he'd planned for it and believed down into his core that it was the end. He was paying close attention to his last day.
He remembered how that first Banshou Karu had split the earth in two before it even reached him, how it hauled him completely off his feet and threw him back across that forest all while cleaving through the ground down to bedrock. He was stronger now, older, more experienced and with more chakra in his natural reserves and his Cursed Seal, and he knew what he was up against.
He sprinted headfirst at the oncoming bronze blade, shield raised at the perfect level to catch the Banshou Karu at the dead center of his defense. He knew he'd be pushed back, but more than that, he knew how far. He tapped into the awesome power locked up in the seal at his collarbone, sent that chakra pouring out into the ground to lock his feet in place there. His shield produced spikes of freshly grown bone that augured deep into the frozen earth, and then he doubled its thickness for good measure.
When the blade struck, Kimimaro's shield held together. The spines of bone leading from it into the ground snapped and the force of the blow moved on to the chakra gluing Kimimaro to the earth. In a circle ten feet across with the knight in the middle, the ground was pulverized into small chunks of rock and frozen dirt. Now with only a few clods of earth stuck to his soles with chakra, Kimimaro was thrown back.
He sent out his chakra into the ground again, grew fresh spikes of bone from his shield and armor and this time his defense held. He stopped the Banshou Karu well short of Karin, who glanced toward the glaive that might have cut her in half but didn't look fazed at all. "Nothing's ever that easy, huh?" she twirled her swords and took a step toward the enemy. "Alright then... Kimimaro, take the guy with the glaive. I'll deal with her."
The Banshou Karu blade attached to Yosuke's glaive dissolved, and he spun what was left of it to face Kimimaro. The spikes pinning his shield and armor to the ground broke away as well, and he drew back his sword with the tip aimed at Yosuke's heart. Nozomi visibly taunted Karin with an inviting flick of her weapon, and as they charged into battle so did Kimimaro and Yosuke.
But unlike the others, when Kimimaro made his lunge he did so with a Pulse Step. With his Cursed Seal still open to provide senjutsu-enhanced strength, he slammed into Yosuke behind his raised shield and sent bits of him flying in all directions. Most of the undead Uzumaki stayed in one piece plastered against the front of the shield, but his glaive was reduced to scrap metal and he lost at least ten pounds of ash in a comet trailing behind Kimimaro.
"What... the..." Yosuke's words were lost in the wind, but Kimimaro could read his lips and the dumbstruck look on his face since he was peeking over the shield now. He hit the brakes as suddenly as he'd started the Pulse Step; Yosuke was thrown like a bullet by his momentum but Kimimaro came to a dead stop.
Yosuke abruptly stopped as well with the use of his Deva Path, then spun upright where he floated and turned to face Kimimaro with violet eyes wide and wary. With the Asura Path he produced another bronze glaive, clasped it in both hands and lowered himself closer to the ground. His feet stopped several inches short of the cold earth and he remained airborne.
"Wow." He let go of the glaive with his left hand to spin it a few times with his right to test how easily he could move with the ash-leaking cracks running through his entire body. "I've never seen that one before! A jutsu that enhances your speed that much... a trick that useful must've really caught on by now, right?"
"More recently than you might think," Kimimaro noted. He raised his weapons once more and crouched forward behind them. "Here I come."
In a split second he found himself standing several yards in front of Yosuke, rather than just past him as he was aiming. The rigid embrace of Yosuke's Deva Path vanished and the undead Uzumaki whipped the blade of his glaive against Kimimaro's shield. His feet hit the ground an instant later without the Deva Path to hold him up.
Yosuke's first slash glanced off the shield, but he brought his polearm up again without pause. Swirls of white mist lit up the blade before it landed its second hit, and this time it gouged a deep trench through the front of the shield. Kimimaro hopped back and raised his sword for a downward slash on Yosuke's head, but he spun his glaive and struck the blade with the blunt end to deflect it aside.
He followed through the spin with a third slash that Kimimaro dodged, then a fourth that caught the upper edge of his shield and bit down into it. The glaive caught in the groove and Yosuke jumped up with both feet, planted himself on the front of the shield and kicked off to free his weapon. He flipped backward and landed in a crouch; he raised his weapon to point at Kimimaro before rising fully back to his feet.
He twirled the weapon over itself with both hands to reverse his grip on it, and charged with the blunt end drawn back for a swing. He wrapped it in a surge of blue water chakra before his strike connected with Kimimaro's shield, shattered it down the middle where his previous slash had started and pushed the knight himself back a quick two steps.
He switched grips on his sword to wield it with both hands and brought it forward to clash with the next sweep of Yosuke's glaive, which came in low aiming for his right hip. Yosuke let his weapon bounce back from Kimimaro's parry to follow up immediately with two more quick slashes, both soundly blocked. At the third meeting of their weapons Kimimaro flicked his sword forward and out to the side, carrying Yosuke's glaive along to buy an extra moment before the fourth strike.
A spine of gleaming white grew from his left wrist and spiralled out into the shape of a thick round shield, the edge of which he slammed into Yosuke's face hard enough to crush a line through it just under his eyes. His head remained in one piece so he could still fight, but he was also lifted completely off his feet and fired back by the attack.
He caught himself as before with a delicate application of his Deva Path, and this time he immediately shot headfirst into battle once again. He crashed his glaive against Kimimaro's new shield in a quick flurry of spinning cuts all bolstered by his wind chakra, but the shield held and Kimimaro only took a few short steps back under the blows.
Then he counterattacked and Yosuke found himself retreating in an instant. His own cuts bounced harmlessly away from that shield and Kimimaro's swordplay had easily doubled in speed, if at the expense of his formerly staggering strength. Yosuke couldn't see it, but under his armor the knight had withdrawn the Cursed Seal of Earth to its first stage.
Aw, screw this! He called off his next attack with the glaive and shot straight up into the air. What the hell is this guy made of!? The polearm turned to gleaming golden dust in his hands and left them free to direct his next attack at Kimimaro from a distance. High over the knight's head he channeled the Asura Path and produced a hose of cold liquid bronze to douse him.
Kimimaro managed to dodge the stream at first, but Yosuke followed him with his aim and when the attack did connect Kimimaro was pinned immediately. Yosuke took his effort a bit further and showered his opponent's helm in bronze to cut off his air, then switched his aim.
Instead of falling to earth as a liquid, the bronze began to grow outward from Yosuke's palms as a thick metal wall. It curved up toward the sky at its edges as it grew, and Yosuke afforded himself a small window through the metal to watch Kimimaro's attempts to free himself before he suffocated. When the bone helmet exploded and tore through the bronze keeping him from the air, Yosuke decided he was out of time and sealed the hole in his construct.
"Shinra Tensei!" Yosuke slammed his Deva Path into the wall as hard as he could, and it caught like wind in a sail. "Let's see your shield stop this!" the attack hit and passed terminal velocity on its way to the ground, and Yosuke held onto the back of the wall for dear life since his Deva Path had been thoroughly used up to power the descent.
The missile crashed down with a thunderous shattering sound and kicked up an enormous ring of brown and white dust at its edges. The momentum of the landing smashed Yosuke himself against the back end of his own attack and he took several seconds to reassemble himself.
He stood, brushed himself off and considered dispelling the now-broken layer of bronze covering the ground, but decided that doing so would help Kimimaro get up if he had survived the impact. Better to keep him crushed against the ground under its weight, so he turned and walked toward the edge of the cracked metal surface.
Only then did he realize that he was still several stories above the ground.
Yosuke felt a blade of knapped ice glide through his throat, but he knew it wasn't real because he couldn't feel pain as an Edo Tensei. He considered genjutsu next, but a quick glance down at himself showed no disturbance in his chakra network. He put a hand to his throat just in case, and felt it still smooth and whole.
The knife caressed a vertical line down the back of his neck then pulled back and stabbed between two of his vertebrae, nicking his spine but going no further. The shard of ice vanished while still embedded in the wound that wasn't there, and Yosuke found himself falling off-balance as the piece of bronze under his feet was lifted at one end and dropped at the other.
He realized what he was feeling at the same time the knife returned for a third cut, this time a stab deep into his belly. Kimimaro had survived the strongest attack Yosuke could fire, caught it at least fifty feet before it could even reach him, and now he was going back on the offensive with an added burst of killing intent the likes of which Yosuke had never felt.
It took a special kind of evil to produce this feeling, to express a desire to kill so potent that the victim feels it as a knife between the eyes, radiating a chill to freeze nitrogen through their skull. He was outmatched, but more than that, he was thoroughly confused. The boy in that white armor just didn't seem the type to hate with this kind of intensity, much less to an opponent he didn't know.
Kid must've learned it, he guessed. And from a pretty fucked-up sensei too.
At this point he knew it was pointless, but as an Edo Tensei he was compelled to act. He produced another bronze glaive and lit the blade with wind chakra, then turned to look around for any sign of Kimimaro. At the rising far end of the bronze slab was a tower of roughly carved bluish-white bone, with a balcony scrimshawed into it leaving only four smaller pillars to support the solid bone above.
In the middle of that opening stood Kimimaro, encased to the hips in the same rough bone. His helmet was still missing and his eyes were frostbite incarnate, a burning cold that twisted deeper the knife currently running through the side of Yosuke's neck.
"You could've destroyed me instantly if you'd done this earlier," he commented with a gesture toward the white tower. "What made you hold back?"
For a moment Kimimaro stayed quiet, but it was a thoughtful silence rather than a cold one. Then the killing intent vanished and took with it the knife in Yosuke's throat. It had been an act after all, something the knight had learned by imitation. "...I'm supposed to avoid going this far with my Shikotsumyaku," he admitted. "If I don't stick to just the smaller-scale constructs, I'll end up corrupting the cells of the bones in my own body. There are only two medic-nin in the world who can save my life now."
"Ouch. I'm sorry to hear that."
Kimimaro shrugged. "I'll live, but Sakura won't be happy about this."
The chilled knife returned and touched its edge gently just under Yosuke's chin, then pushed inward and cut a clean slice completely through his neck. He felt his blood turn to ice even despite the fact that he had none, and it didn't help at all to know that the killing intent was most likely an act on Kimimaro's part.
Imagining Kabuto standing in Yosuke's place, the knight channeled his kekkei genkai and tore apart the slab of bronze under his target's feet. Huge spear-tipped tendrils of bluish bone surged up through the cracks they'd produced and spiralled around Yosuke to surround him in a cylindrical cage. The tower he stood on bent forward and carried him toward the top of that cage, and as it did he detached his hip pouch and cradled it in his right fist.
A huge spiralling lance of bone grew outward and wrapped itself around his forearm and the pouch, and he aimed the tip down into the center of the cage where Yosuke was trapped. He couldn't break loose without his Deva Path but he at least tried to seal off the top of the cage and block Kimimaro's next move with a roof of gleaming bronze. The knight reactivated the second stage of his Cursed Seal for added power and punched his weapon through the metal.
It got stuck halfway through and didn't quite reach Yosuke, but he wasn't fazed. The very tip of the Clematis Flower turned to white dust revealing a spiralling barrel inside the weapon. Kimimaro clenched his fist and fired a sealing kunai from his weapon, which landed squarely in Yosuke's chest and he vanished with a puff of smoke.
...Now where did everyone else go? Kimimaro mused, and as he glanced around he spotted Karin from the corner of his eye. Her battle with Nozomi had continued and paid no notice to his with Yosuke, and with the latest exchange of their jutsu the ground had been torn apart, its pieces scattered into the air by thousands of chakra chains all lashing skyward.
It took him only a moment to register that Karin's chains were silver and these were blue. She was falling through them; she must have been launched along with the earth covering Nozomi's trap when it sprang. He started to move, started to gather his chakra for a Pulse Step but he was already too late. Even if he could get to the battle before Karin fell into the chains and died there, he could only run along the ground in a straight line. He had no way to extract her from the trap.
He thought next of attacking Nozomi, but she was an Edo Tensei and couldn't be killed. The chains wouldn't be dispelled if he landed a fatal hit, perhaps not even if she were sealed instead, and Kimimaro was too far away to make such an attack either way.
There was nothing he could do, and a quick look to the horizons showed the other members of Taka were still fighting the Seven Swordsmen and Izuna Uchiha, so the cavalry wasn't coming and even that dim hope was dashed.
What else... is there...?
Karin fell and the burning blue chains closed around her. Just as she passed out of sight, Kimimaro realized what he'd missed and lunged back into the fight with a rush of mingled panic and hope. Yosuke's shattered wall of bronze made a slope down from where most of it had been caught by Kimimaro's Bracken Dance, a tricky but not impossible surface to cross via Pulse Step.
The plates of bone armor covering him fell away as he ran; they were only in the way now that he was resorting to levels of his Shikotsumyaku that qualified as kinjutsu. He intended to have full access to every bone in his body and every way he could manipulate them at this point. Having served its purpose, his shield was also lost to the wind but the Clematis Flower stayed put.
Nozomi turned his way as he approached; a gust of blackened wind swept upward around her and pulled open her cloak to show the loose leather jacket and pants she wore beneath. The black cloth snapped wide open and took an almost-rigid shape to catch the wind. It was too small a set of wings to support the weight of a human by itself, but with the tremendous updraft of Nozomi's smoke she successfully took to the air.
Kimimaro arrived and threw on the brakes with his Pulse Step, then took aim at the soaring Edo Tensei and tore loose the bones from his right arm. His skeleton immediately replaced the missing piece and the original bones emerged from his shoulder above his existing arm. In a lesser form he built a similar structure from his sword and called it the Orchid Dance, but now he intended to be much more direct and proportionately less graceful.
The arm grew huge enough to reach into the sky after Nozomi, with its fingers lengthened into razor-sharp white blades set to curl in and slice her apart. She turned back to face him in the sky, snapped her cloak shut and dive-bombed straight toward the bladed hand. Surrounded by a plume of flames she speared through the palm first, scattering the fingerbones through the air. When she struck the wrist and upper arm past it, she broke those larger bones completely into bits and kept soaring down toward Kimimaro.
He blurred away with a Pulse Step and turned back to face her from a distance, and at the same time he waved his hand to snatch up the pieces of bone falling from the sky. They flocked back through the air toward Nozomi at his command, and she shot skyward to flee from them. A shower of glowing chains flew from her hands and directly struck each piece of bone, wrapping it in blue light and sealing it away before continuing down toward Kimimaro himself.
He fell into a crouch and touched his left palm to the earth instead of dodging again. "Bracken Dance!" he countered. Featureless towers of blue-white ivory rose first by the hundreds, then thousands as they spread out in a growing city around Kimimaro. Her chains bounced off the bones; she retreated further into the sky and they chased her relentlessly.
He rose to his feet and took a step forward as he did, melting instantly into a spire of bone directly ahead. A split second later he emerged from the very top of the bone, took aim with the giant lance and fired a burst of three sealing kunai at Nozomi. She swerved back around to face the incoming attack and let off a blast of black smoke in all directions, more than enough to shove the knives away.
Then she spat a jet of seething flame at the skyline of Kimimaro's white city, flame that exploded on contact with bone and spread uncontrollably. Kimimaro instantly lost his line of sight, but just as instantly he flitted through the bone structures and reappeared outside the flames to restore it. He thought of Kabuto and cast his most withering glare skyward at Nozomi.
She felt a dagger of ice drive through her left eye as Yosuke had before her, along with fear and something like an adrenaline rush simulated by her Edo Tensei body. She could feel where the killing intent was coming from, and she immediately turned to face the threat. Kimimaro stood atop one of the bones that hadn't yet caught fire, arms spread wide and armor stripped away invitingly.
The killing intent he could so casually emit was disturbing, but Nozomi wasn't so easily shaken. She drew back her sword and perfectly lined up its tip with his heart. Clearly there was some kind of trap here; the knight now had two ways of fleeing an attack so quickly that he appeared to teleport. His strategy likely relied on one of them, so to kill him now she only needed to outpace him for this one moment.
She shot down toward her opponent wreathed in a comet of black smoke that somewhat hid her exact location, and as she drew close she extended her arm and punched the sword into Kimimaro's chest. The impact would've been enough to turn the bones in her arm to dust, but she was nothing but ash all the way through and her arm held firm.
Unfortunately, so did Kimimaro's chest. A thin line of blood trickled down from the shallow cut in his skin, but just under it was another layer of bone armor that stopped her sword cold. The armor crept outward through the wound and grasped the tip of her blade; she gritted her teeth but let go of her weapon and soared backward to safety.
She blew forth a gust of flame next, but Kimimaro vanished backward into the bone spire before she could burn him. She realized with a start that his trap hadn't killed her yet, despite how she'd knowingly stepped into it and failed to kill him in the process.
Then the clear moonlight above was extinguished. She turned her attention to the sky and started flying upward as fast as her jutsu could carry her but it was too late; the bones of Kimimaro's Bracken Dance curled over each other to build a dome that trapped her inside.
Hidden within the bones, Kimimaro jumped in surprise. He could feel a familiar chakra touching the outer wall of his tower of bone, pushing inward to get his attention. In a split second he was outside under the starlight again, and Karin was in front of him unharmed.
The cavalry hadn't come to save her because it had been there from the start. Hundreds of shadow clones were now flinging silver chakra chains into the air, draping them over the bone tower. Behind her was the chasm Nozomi had torn out of the ground, still littered with burning blue chains.
She whistled up at the huge blue-white structure. "Jeez. I think you might've gone a little overboard, ya know?" He hugged her, and she counted herself lucky he wasn't wearing his rock-solid armor because it was a strong hug. "It did the trick though," she admitted without pausing. "She shouldn't be able to mess up my seal this time."
"You made it," he sighed in relief. "Shadow clones, right?"
"You know me," she laughed for a moment. "It was one hell of a meatshield." she patted him on the back and he took it as his cue to let her go. "I gotta be honest though; it was close."
Just as the seal took hold and Kimimaro's tower gleamed silver with it, a black portal unzipped the air several paces to Karin's left and they both turned to look at it with surprise. It felt somewhere between comic relief and salt in a wound to have backup arrive now, just moments too late to actually do anything. Sasuke was the first to step out into the starlight, Sword of Totsuka in hand and eyes glowing red.
He lowered his guard when he saw Kimimaro and Karin safe, and his example was shortly followed by Sakura and Itachi. "Looks like you two handled this pretty well," he observed with a glance to both of Kimimaro's Bracken Dance structures. "Sorry we're late."
Sakura was less impressed. "I'm gonna have to operate on you when we get back," she addressed Kimimaro. "You're probably terminal after going this far overboard, aren't you?"
"Most likely," he admitted with a sheepish look. "I was out of options."
"I just wanna go crawl under a rock and pass out," she lamented. "It feels like we've been out here for months."
Karin nodded, and the motion showed a bit of shakiness. "Yeah... but as much as I hate to say it, we can't just leave Suigetsu to deal with the Seven Swordsmen..." Her eyes flashed with hope behind her glasses. "...I mean, can we?"
"Suigetsu's team has it under control," Sasuke commented. "We stopped there first since they were outnumbered so much, but... well..."
X
The six fresh stab wounds running through various points on Kisame's body began to heal sluggishly, and at the same time leaked ash and paper in place of blood. In place of his dear Samehada he held a stick lashed into place as a hilt on what looked to be a weathered gray claw. He held it with the tip levelled against the smug cretin currently tapping the Greatsword's power. Mangetsu helpfully twisted the knife in deeper by smiling cheerily at his little brother. "Keep it up, Suigetsu! You're doing great!"
"I hate all of you," Kisame spat.
Suigetsu's infuriating grin widened despite already splitting his face beyond human possibility. "Samehada wants me to tell you there's no hard feelings. Apparently Edo Tensei chakra has no taste, so it'd completely suck going back to you now."
Kisame charged. Some part of him noted that he was up against another of Zabuza's students who could casually escape him with the Empty Wind, but he kept charging and Suigetsu didn't flicker away. He drew back his shabby weapon and aimed its tip to carve through Suigetsu's throat, somehow sure that the blow would cleave through the black carapace he now wore with no trouble.
Suigetsu brought up Nuibari and deflected the blow easily enough, having seen it coming with plenty of warning from Kisame. He was pressed harder to turn aside the next two attacks, and on the third his parry was aimed slightly off. Instead of Kisame's thrust being simply brushed away, the tip of the ancient claw met Nuibari's gleaming length directly.
The Longsword snapped in two.
The eyes of all three ex-Kiri-nin present went wide, and Kisame pressed forward with his stab. It sheared into Suigetsu's chest just under his collarbone, and despite the thickness of the feline claw it ran him through and emerged several inches out through his back. Filled with hot rage and cold satisfaction, Kisame pulled his weapon back out of the wound and swung its blunt length into Suigetsu's face, splattering him with his own blood and breaking his jaw.
Don't panic, said Samehada patiently. Suigetsu's jaw snapped back into place, but to reinforce its message further the Greatsword filled him with a rush of chakra and something more, the same eerie power that had churned his entire body into mulch and forged it again into a new inhuman body. It filled Suigetsu with cozy warmth and made the starlight seem clear and bright as a summer day.
He tasted more blood than saliva now between his steel teeth, but took Samehada's advice and stayed calm. Ah right, I can heal. Awesome.
Indeed.
Clutching the lower half of Nuibari, Suigetsu frowned down at where it had snapped under Kisame's sword. What he saw wasn't a break in the steel; it was a clean slice polished smoother than the rounded length of the rest of the needle. What the hell is that claw thing? Samehada, do you know anything about it?
It's... not from around here, the sword answered. Be grateful for that; the creature that shed that barb could take the Ten-Tails in a fair fight. This one seems rather worn by time; the point is way too dull.
Suigetsu pointedly looked at what was left of one of the Seven Swords he'd spent his life lusting after. To have it reforged would mean returning it to Kiri, a loss as permanent as it would be if he simply let the broken blade be swallowed by the winter. He'd held Nuibari in his hands, wielded it and even brought down a Swordsman with it, and just as suddenly he'd lost his treasure again.
Later he would sulk about it, but for now he needed a replacement sword. He looked around for the nearest one and settled on the claw that had cut through Nuibari, paying no mind to Kisame's hand already on its makeshift hilt. Kisame had options now, to press his advantage against a disarmed target or to keep his distance and attack with ninjutsu. Without Samehada, that was certainly where his strengths lay and he knew it well.
Suigetsu took the choice out of his hands with a quick Empty Wind jump, putting himself squarely in front of the ancient gray barb. Kisame switched tactics away from the water jutsu he'd been about to cast and instead stabbed forward with the barb aiming for Suigetsu's face. It was a solid tactic; a stab to the chest had already failed but a giant dragon claw auguring through his brain would kill no matter how impressive his healing was.
But the downside was equally pronounced. Suigetsu's head made for a much smaller target than his body, one much easier to move aside as well. He simply leaned to his right and the stab sailed over his left shoulder instead of through his skull. It was distressing but not surprising to Kisame; his skill couldn't make up for the reversal of Samehada's allegiance.
Suigetsu locked his sword hand around Kisame's own, and then found himself at an impasse with the older swordsman. His enhanced strength was a match for Kisame's own natural abilities but nothing more, and that was enough to make him realize that his opponent's unnatural blue skin had one obvious explanation. Kisame Hoshigaki wasn't entirely human.
The two wielders of Samehada glared wickedly across the hilt of the weathered claw. Kisame threw a punch with his off hand and Suigetsu caught it with his own, only slightly distracted by the exchange. He needed the sword, and needed a real strategy to pry it from Kisame's hand. Now both of his hands were occupied, and Kisame had him completely matched in strength.
He had an idea, felt Samehada's disapproval of it, and decided to follow through regardless. Again that silvery cheshire grin split his face well beyond the ends of his mouth. Kisame felt a flicker of worry, but it immediately soured into mere annoyance. He was already dead; there was nothing left to be afraid of.
Suigetsu craned forward, opened his mouth wide and bit Kisame's head off. His lower jaw unhinged to fit the head inside and yet still was able to chew it into a paste of ash, paper and spit. A piece of metal inside the mash stopped Suigetsu's teeth cold; the Edo Tensei seal implement was too tough to chew so he swallowed that bit whole.
The rest of Kisame went limp, and Suigetsu dropped him roughly with the exception of the hand still wrapped around the ancient barb. He let Kisame's fingers slip from the hilt and then he finished falling to the ground, leaving Suigetsu with a shabby but serviceable weapon and one opponent remaining.
Then he realized what he'd just done, and he paled even under the black carapace that had replaced his skin. The ash and paper and metal hit his stomach and almost instantly began tugging against it, trying to rejoin the bulk of Kisame's body. Samehada? I'm gonna die, aren't I?
That seal tag will tear its way out of you one way or another, the sword replied casually. It probably has extra seals to attack anyone who tries to hold it, otherwise Edo Tensei would be that much easier to bring down. So unless you get rid of it while we're still fused, then yes. You'll die.
As if on cue, the metal lit up red-hot inside Suigetsu's stomach. Pressed for time, he took the first way out he could think of and stabbed his left hand into his belly, shattering the slick black shell there. He pulled out the implement wet with blood and acid both quickly sizzling away. He considered keeping hold of it in his armored hand, but already thick lines of black smoke were curling up from his fingers and the thing was glowing brighter yellow now. Nothing would hold it back from Kisame, so he reluctantly let it go.
It shot to the stump of Kisame's neck as if pulled by a magnet, and dust from the ground began swirling up to the stump after a moment. The paper that had been Kisame's head was currently dissolving in Suigetsu's stomach and wasn't so desperate to tear free as the seal itself had been. Slowly, patiently, that lost paper could be replaced with raw material transmuted from the environment.
Looking down at his headless and incapacitated opponent, Suigetsu thought of taking this golden oppurtunity to seal him with a kunai. He reached behind his back, and was startled to actually find his pouch still there. He drew the kunai and glanced down at the same time, blinking in surprise. "Huh. I kinda thought my transformation destroyed all of my clothes, honestly."
His clothes had torn as he'd grown, split apart mostly at the seams, but they still hung in tatters over him. The buckle of his belt had broken open but it still sat around his waist, holding up two bottles of water and the hip pouch he'd just drawn a sealing kunai from. "Cool." Without further deliberation he bent down to stab Kisame, and an instant before he could follow through he was struck off his feet with the force of a mountain thrown by a god.
Even I felt that, Samehada commented lightly while Suigetsu continued to tumble backward through the air. The impact had crushed his shell into tiny, sharp fragments. The sealing kunai was lost in the wind along with a few quarts of his blood. He smashed into the ground and rolled along it even further, losing more blood and chunks of his exoskeleton as he went.
By the time he came to a stop he was only vaguely human-shaped, a soft red lump sprinkled with black shards laying face-up on the ground far across the battlefield. You really should've kept an eye on Mangetsu, the sword went on. Suigetsu had gone silent, leaving Samehada with the only voice echoing in his mind. Did you think he wasn't a threat because he's your brother? Or did he just slip your mind?
There was no answer. Samehada was disappointed but not surprised. Now I have to clean up this mess, and it'll cost.
Suigetsu crunched. In places the sound was muffled by the flesh over his bones, but elsewhere it wasn't. With his skeleton rebuilt, there came a brief squishing sound next as his muscles were regrown and blood replaced, then finally a soft crackle as he was granted a replacement carapace. The entire process spanned only a few seconds, but they were by far the worst seconds Suigetsu had ever lived through. His encounter with Pain and the weeks that followed couldn't hold a candle to this.
Samehada reached into his mind and plucked the memory out of it. Suigetsu was disoriented and startled by its loss, and Samehada began to explain just before he could ask what happened. You were struck by Mangetsu's sword. You almost died. I healed you, then erased your memory of the last five seconds because you would otherwise be traumatized for the rest of your life. Doing this took up most of your chakra and mine.
As he crawled to his feet, Suigetsu processed this and took issue specifically with the last of these comments. Most of our chakra? What kinda bullshit is that!? I've heard legends of what Kisame could do with you! He could heal like Naruto can!
You are neither Kisame nor Naruto, said the Greatsword patiently. Kisame was the Tailless Tailed Beast, and Naruto holds the Nine-Tails. Do keep that in mind.
Suigetsu spotted the barb and blurred ahead to retrieve it, then held himself in one of the stances Zabuza had taught him. It was a one-handed weapon unlike Samehada and Kubikiri Bouchou, which called for a different fighting style entirely. The shift was complete and slightly disorienting, but he would make do.
His eyes gleamed fiery violet as he sized up Mangetsu's own huge sword, splattered with his blood and bits of black chitin. Say, he mused. You know about this claw... so could you maybe tell me about that thing too?
I'm a sword, said Samehada with a touch of cold in its voice, not an encyclopedia of swords. I'm not exaggerating when I tell you your brain can barely process the chain of coincidences that allowed me to learn of that barb. Are you familiar with the multiverse theory, Suigetsu? He didn't reply, but the answer came to Samehada wordlessly. That's right. Infinite universes of infinite variety, with infinite possible connections. Do you see what I'm implying?
...This thing is from another universe?
Right you are. It was once sharp enough to cut a path from one universe to another, and out of its infinite possible destinations, it landed here. In exactly such a way that I happened to learn of it over the centuries. Now ask yourself. How probable is it that I heard about Mangetsu's weapon the same way? Asssuming it has any history at all, that is.
None?
Not quite none. Epsilon zero would be low enough, but you can't quite wrap your head around a transfinite number. That doesn't make you stupid, mind. It's a problem with all humans.
Under his shell, Suigetsu began to sweat coldly. Samehada... what are you?
Trust me, said Samehada, jovial once more. You don't want to know.
Suigetsu took the creature's word, and shook off his chills to face the immediate threat. After his initial attack, Mangetsu had gone back to standing still as he had while Kisame and Suigetsu had sparred. A look at the strained smile on the older brother's face showed the younger that Mangetsu was viciously fighting Kabuto's control and partially succeeding.
Meanwhile, Kisame continued to regrow his head. He'd replaced his lower jaw by now, but there was as yet no skull to hold the Edo Tensei tag. He lay face-down and motionless on the ground, flakes of white fluttering lightly around his wound.
"...Well." Suigetsu jumped and swung the barb at the voice to his right; Sasuke was forced to dodge back into the shadow of his space-time jutsu to avoid taking a hit to the jaw. He didn't seem fazed much by it. "Looks like you guys have this under control," he said as he stepped forward again and looked around.
Suigetsu followed suit. In the shadow of the Alliance wall far behind him, Juugo had been merrily smashing Ameyuri and Jinpachi into the ground for a few uninterrupted minutes now, their bodies completely shattered and limp in his hands. They had no chance of regenerating and therefore fighting back at this rate.
Zabuza was outnumbered three to one, but only one of his opponents still carried his Sword. Kabutowari was a powerful weapon but ultimately the most mundane of the Seven, and it was being wielded against Zabuza Momochi who specialized above the others in mundane kenjutsu.
Many times he had claimed to be the most skilled of the Swordsmen, and now for the first time he was proving it. Kushimaru was chopped into pieces and would be completely useless for some time. Juuzou had been deprived of his right arm and now was forced to wield his blue and green nodachi with only his off-hand. Jinin alone was still in one piece, but Zabuza was dancing in circles around him as well with the Empty Wind.
Suigetsu looked back at his brother, still doing everything in his power to lose the fight. "Huh. I guess we do, don't we?" He shrugged momentarily but made the motion quickly; he couldn't afford to compromise his stance much. "Yeah, we'll wrap things up here. Go check on Kimimaro."
"And Karin?" Sakura queried, having poked her head out of the wormhole as well.
"Nah. Never liked her much anyway."
"Hn," Sasuke smirked. "We'll do what we can. Good luck."
Then they stepped back and the portal closed, leaving the Hozuki brothers alone once more.
Mangetsu's grip twitched on the hilt of his battered greatsword. "Hey Suigetsu, how long are you gonna keep standing there? I can't keep this up!"
"Same here," said Suigetsu. "I'm sick of all this talking."
He vanished completely, leaving behind a clear void where he'd been standing. Mangetsu had seen him using the Empty Wind enough to guess his next move, and he whipped the huge black-red greatsword over his shoulder. Suigetsu brought down the blunt length of the barb, but hit the sword instead of Mangetsu's back.
The elder Hozuki drew the sword up and slashed it forward over his shoulder, forcing Suigetsu to dodge back past its tip. He whirled and brought the battered weapon around for a proper attack that Suigetsu parried with the barb. He was blasted back by the weight of the impact, but not as far as before since he was braced for it now.
He flash-stepped ahead again with a stab aimed for Mangetsu's throat, but again hit the impenetrable wall that was the flat of Mangetsu's sword, held point-down between the brothers. The barb was flicked back effortlessly by the sword's next upward slash, but Suigetsu vanished with an Empty Wind before it could slice him in half.
He reappeared at an ideal distance from Mangetsu for them both to use ninjutsu, and there was one obvious choice that came to mind for both of them. Suigetsu took aim with his left hand making a finger gun, and Mangetsu partly let go of his greatsword to do the same. They each loaded, fired and counted six shots apiece, but then Suigetsu vanished with his movement jutsu and the symmetry was broken.
Mangetsu took five of Suigetsu's shots in the head; the sixth missed but the others put out both of his eyes. But he was an Edo Tensei; the dead matter making up his head was only slightly displaced by the shots and would take mere seconds to heal over. He levelled his sword ahead of himself facing Suigetsu; the edge was unreasonably sharp despite the craters that had eaten it down in rough semicircles that by all rights should have made it useless.
Suigetsu crouched three feet to the left of where he'd been before, and held the barb low to the ground at his right side but with both hands locked tight around the shabby hilt. He braced himself and blasted forward with the fastest Empty Wind he could manage, swinging the barb up and around as he went. He met Mangetsu's defense still moving at his top speed and the impact pushed each swordsman's weapon against his own chest. Suigetsu was lucky to have a blunt club; the greatsword bit its way almost through to Mangetsu's spine.
Suigetsu kept running, not completely stopped by the crash. Mangetsu leaned his weight into him and skidded backward over the rough, cold ground with enough speed and force to strip the soles from his boots. They too were ash and paper that would reassemble if given a moment.
"Not bad," Mangetsu admitted once they came to a stop. He pushed his sword forward again, drawing it from his wound while simultaneously shoving Suigetsu back to an appropriate range for ninjutsu. "But you should try attacking around my defense instead of through it."
Suigetsu turned aside and vanished instead of replying. Mangetsu spun to face the first glimpse of the younger Hozuki to his left, but saw nothing by the time he'd fully turned. Suigetsu reappeared and vanished a few more times in random directions, and Mangetsu stopped twitching at the signs of movement. He raised the greatsword over his head with one hand and prepared himself to chop downward in whatever direction Suigetsu attacked from.
He saw something huge flying toward his head from the right, covered in shiny off-black plating, and brought his sword down to smash it into the earth. His attack hit home with no interference, but it was only once he pinned it to the ground that he realized it was Samehada in its sword form.
Suigetsu appeared to the right of Mangetsu's outstretched wrist and chopped through it with a simple kunai clutched in his left hand. With his right he plucked up the greatsword in a reverse grip just below where Mangetsu's severed hand still held it, and he slashed it diagonally up to cleave Mangetsu in half from his crotch to his right shoulder. Finally he stabbed the kunai through Mangetsu's throat and pulsed chakra through it, stuffing the older Hozuki into its seal.
"Like that?" Suigetsu asked, grinning and panting down at the unsealed half of Mangetsu. By now it was already dissolving into flakes of ash. He twitched as he heard Kisame finally getting up, and whirled to face him while simultaneously drawing the cratered greatsword over his shoulder. He threw the weapon at Kisame end over end; by chance the weapon struck his sternum hilt-first and still managed to spear into his chest.
The sword went onward along its previous trajectory without slowing, only now Kisame was carried along for the ride. Suigetsu tossed aside the kunai that held Mangetsu, then drew a new one and shot off after Kisame with an Empty Wind. He caught up to Samehada's previous wielder in mid-flight and rammed the sealing kunai into his chest.
With both of his opponents sealed away, Suigetsu flash-stepped back to retrieve his equipment. He hoisted Samehada onto his back, tucked the kunai holding Mangetsu and Kisame into his loosely dangling belt, and then sized up the slate-grey barb that had apparently come from another universe to be wielded here.
He glanced around and saw Zabuza and Juugo both safe and victorious, the other Swordsmen sealed with their weapons of choice. Juugo had even shown the presence of mind to seal Ameyuri and Jinpachi rather than go on squishing them into the frosted dirt.
Six of the Seven Swords were gathered here tonight. With another short flash-step Suigetsu held two at once, the sheathed Samehada and the broken Nuibari. For some reason beyond his comprehension, Juugo actually seemed to like him and would probably hand over his kunai if he so much as asked politely. There, that was four out of seven.
Zabuza wasn't likely to hand over Kabutowari any more than Kubikiri Bouchou, and Kiri still held Hiramekarei and would never let it go willingly, but Suigetsu could hardly bring himself to care. He was standing in the freezing cold of a winter night in the wake of a harsh blizzard, his clothes in shreds and his chakra nearly spent, but there was fire in his blood and a grin on his face. He didn't even shiver.
For Suigetsu, Christmas had come a month early.
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