Naruto stretched his muscles out before pounding his open palm with his fist. It was just a confirmation that he had walked off whatever effects Dosu's mechanical soundwave-emitting arm had left on him. That was indeed the case, no longer did his head feel wobbly when he walked. This was the time to strike back and eliminate as many of the Eight Heads as possible before the Sage Mode ran out of juice.
There was still a problem with that though. He couldn't use any of his big and explosive jutsu while Jirobo was active and he couldn't let Jirobo absorb any Natural Energy and transform him into a toad because that would only have fueled Orochimaru's own Sage Mode reserves.
"What's the matter, Naruto-kun. You've just now come back to life and yet you're hesitating… It's so unlike you to falter in battle…" Orochimaru mocked the young man with a subtle chuckle.
"I don't need my big, flashy jutsu to kick your ass, you know!" Sage Naruto took a fighting stance and prepared to dash at the enemy with all of his regained speed and balance. Orochimaru raised his chin up, declaring one's intent to attack nine opponents at once directly was something just as stupid as the Sennin had imagined Naruto doing.
Like an orange bullet, Naruto flashed forward, Jirobo's arms slammed against the ground before Naruto made the first move, erecting a wall of chakra-infused Black Cube ground. Naruto's fist collided with the wall and it appeared as if though the mystical substance had completely numbed his force of impact. That was before Jirobo's face caved in from a direct smash right in the snout and sent him rolling backward at escalating velocity.
The orange bullet raced further across the stage of the cube, zigzagging behind his opponent. Just when it seemed as if though the fist of Sage Naruto could rip Jirobo's head clean off by hitting him square in the face from a direction directly opposing that in which he was flying, a barrier of web strings blocked Naruto off while Kimimaro raced in and put up a cross-shaped block with his arms to absorb whatever invisible force Naruto's fists were hitting his enemies with.
"Not bad, Naruto-kun. But you are still outnumbered here, aren't you the one usually preaching about the strength of bonds and friendship?" Orochimaru mocked his opponent with a shrug and a shake of his head.
Naruto looked behind him, just in time to recognize Tayuya's new and improved Doki demons. He put up a block to absorb the force of a mace hitting him head-on and sending him flying. Due to his defensive effort and greatly improved physical strength, Naruto didn't feel a thing from that impact but it wasn't the physical effects of that jutsu that bothered him. Something uncomfortable crept inside his head, like a creepy-crawly, a worm burrowing inside his brain, looking at his thoughts…
An attack from over his head, another Doki appeared above Naruto and performed a vaulting kick to send him crashing down. The Toad Sage blocked this strike as well, taking the ride which the Doki demon meant to send him through. While these first few attacks didn't seem like all that much, when the third Doki stomped on him from up above, Naruto finally felt enough pain to force a grunt out of him.
"Hmm…" Orochimaru let out a hum. "So you've figured out that jutsu, didn't you?"
"Yeah, she can't absorb my chakra and rip out my soul if her Doki are at a close distance to me, you know." Naruto wiped his mouth and his nose while standing up. Just like that the ethereal Doki had disappeared after attacking him successfully. Given how every attack Orochimaru had his Eight Heads perform taxed his own chakra, it was obvious he'd try and not waste any chakra whatsoever. "If I let those ogre guys hit me but block their attacks, they won't be able to tear into my soul or chakra, you know."
"Not bad but…" Orochimaru sighed. "Are you sure you can take the punishment, can you handle my pressure, Naruto-kun?"
Prompted by those words, Sakon took off in a rush to Naruto. The Sage evaded every single one of Sakon's attacks by not playing his game and using his superior speed to maintain a respectful distance. Just when Sakon spread out his arms and dove in for a wide grab, attempting to subdue Naruto into a hold, the Toad Sage threw a lazy uppercut sending the overextending Head of Orochi down on his back.
Silver blitzes caught Naruto on his back foot, forcing him to gently weave in between them. It was tough for him not to notice the chakra present inside the steel wire attached to the senbon that Kin Tsuchi employed. The steel wire had applied an effect that limited Naruto's movement, there was very precise spacing in between each strand of wire and Naruto had few doubts that the rest of the Heads would be quick to exploit this opening. Naruto weaved a hand seal attributed to most Clone Techniques.
A clone of Naruto's appeared directly over Kin's head with a heel drop in the making. Zaku Abumi raced in to protect his teammate with his wall of sound, the strongest one he could muster up in such a quick time but both of the Heads had fallen for Naruto's trap when Zaku's wall absorbed the shock of Naruto's heel drop but an invisible smash still sent both of Orochimaru's bodies down. The steel wire trap that Kin had attempted to lay on Naruto in order to limit his movements fell weightless beside Naruto's sandals as the needles dislodged from the wall and touched the floor with nearly inaudible clinks.
"Clone Kata isn't the only fighting style I can do, you know." Sage Naruto pointed right at Orochimaru. By now the Toad Sage had figured out yet another weakness to Orochimaru's style. Over this entire time that these Eight Heads had emerged to take him on, Orochimaru hadn't pulled too many moves of his own, suggesting to Naruto that he had to devote most of his attention on controlling his other bodies. It wasn't too far off the beaten track to assume that he had employed a similar control method to Pain, meaning there had to be transceivers of some sort on all of their bodies.
"Hmm… That invisible force you employ is tricky indeed." Orochimaru admitted, lacking the composure to make fun of his opponent at that moment.
"You don't know the half of it, you know," Naruto smirked before placing his hands in for a Clone Technique hand seal. Orochimaru tightened his body, observing that his fighting stance was the best it could be in preparation for Sage Naruto's attack.
"Multi-Shadow Clone Jutsu!" Naruto yelled out, creating an entire army of Shadow Clones both airborne and on the ground, numerous enough to fill the entire room and leave little space for any of the combatants inside to maneuver around.
"Sage Art: Super Great Ball Rasengan Barrage!" he let out a mighty battle-cry as each one of his army of clones manifested a Rasengan in one hand that then promptly grew in size until the spiraling ninjutsu sphere had surpassed its makers in size and filled the room with blinding azure light.
"So you've chosen death then?" Orochimaru yelled out, trying to remain heard in the fighting stage filled with clones, each one of whom wielded a howling Rasengan in hand. "I'll just absorb all of that Natural Energy and end you with it!"
Orochimaru spread his arms out, then, as the clones moved in closer and closer and the gleam from the incalculable Super Great Ball Rasengans moved in closer and closer, feeling almost warm in its proximity, a thought popped into Orochimaru's head. As the last signs of vitality from him, it snapped to Jirobo who still laid on one knee and Kin as well as Zaku who laid motionless on the ground.
The serpentine Sennin realized all too late that all of his bodies capable of protecting him against such an attack, to absorb the Natural Energy present inside it or to erect a wall of sound that might have either muzzled the blow or dispelled all of the Super Great Ball Rasengan wielding clones were still feeling the numbing effects of Naruto's Frog Kata and laid crippled.
"Naruto!" Orochimaru hissed out before his voice was drowned out in the howling riot of detonating Super Great Ball Rasengan.
When the all-encompassing cyclone of devastation had calmed somewhat, there was not a trace left of any of the Eight Heads of Orochi while Orochimaru himself laid sprawled out on the ground, his grey garbs had been torn off and torn to strands while his black bodysuit remained loosely hanging on its unconscious owner who continued to twitch and display minor signs of life and extensive battle damage while Sage Naruto loomed over his unconscious opponent.
"Heh, you're the one that's gonna disappoint me, you know. I've barely even broken a sweat yet and you're at the end of your ropes here." Sage Naruto sighed.
A metallic-tinted blur cut through the gloom and the shadows of the Black Cube, aimed straight for Naruto's heart. A flesh-piercing noise followed shortly by Naruto's loud grunt, Naruto could not see much but red. All he felt was a sharp pain in between his shoulder and his chest while his eyes gone out completely, black and red with stars gleaming all over, blinking in and out, blinding him in light while the Sage already felt plenty blinded by the pain that took him over.
"Heh, heh…" Orochimaru cackled in an exhausted voice that was equal part worn out of traces of stamina and vitality it once had just as it felt affected by a great deal of physical struggle and battle damage. A sword sticking out from Orochimaru's throat made it difficult for the serpentine Sennin to enunciate clearly. A blade that extended all the way out of Orochimaru's throat and pierced Naruto in between his breast and his shoulder, pinning him to the wall of the cube all the way on the other side of the Black Cube.
"Darn it… I felt the spark of bad intents outta you and still…" Sage Naruto lamented his dip in reaction time while blood made its way through his teeth and down his mouth.
"Don't sell yourself short, boy, it's only because of the unnatural sensory abilities that you redirected the blade to a more favorable spot to be impaled in, as opposed to me ending your life instantly. Not even that cursed Fox you host would have saved you from a direct skewering of your heart…" Orochimaru hissed out while his elongated head held his head in place to keep Sage Naruto pinned to the wall. Naruto clenched the blade, trying to keep it stuck in place but the blade then quickly retracted back into Orochimaru's mouth, slicing into Naruto's hands as well.
The Sennin's body began to bubble and bloat out of shape, as if something even more ungodly had been boiling down underneath his skin and flesh. While Orochimaru was exceptionally lively and had unmatched regenerative abilities, his flesh was not the thickest out of the bunch and thus it burst, revealing eight serpentine heads taking it to the air from deep down in his body.
"To think that I would be pushed to this. Set back through all that I have managed to gather here on this universe, my Eight Heads of Orochi… Destroyed. I now have only the eyes of the Dragon God and the inhuman speed and power granted by this universe's chakra left. You deserve to melt for a thousand years in the stomach of the greatest and strongest serpent out of them all." Orochimaru cursed Naruto while the Sage fell on his knees and stared at his opponent, bleeding with serial and thick droops from his wound.
"Manda?" Sage Naruto grunted.
"Manda? No. By using the Power of Reincarnation of the white snake, I can transform into the mightiest white serpent in existence, boasting a colossal body far surpassing that of the Manda. A jutsu that was described by our predecessors as the mightiest snake titan. Just the scales of its abdomen are enough to dwarf entire buildings, a reptile transcending the mere description of a snake, an entity befitting the Dragon God!" Orochimaru's head joined in on the fleshy mess that his body had turned into while all of his remains became devoted to unleashing the eight heads of white, spiky scales so massive that they truly did appear more like a dragon than a snake.
In between the root of each head, a bare-chested and completely reborn top of Orochimaru's body emerged, spreading its arms out in joy as the Sennin celebrated his rebirth over Naruto's reeling in pain body.
"Behold the Eight-Headed Serpent Jutsu and lament your pathetic, mortal coil!" Orochimaru hissed in a voice that suggested a complete shedding of all wounds he had previously sustained in battle.
"I'll have to put all of my remaining Natural Energy into this, you know!" Sage Naruto jumped up on his feet while the eight heads of the Eight-Headed Serpent reared their fangs at him, striking with the intent of reducing him to a bloody stain. A pillar of force erupting outward raised a shockwave that resonated throughout the entire cube. When the Eight-Headed Serpent cocked its heads back for an examination of the devastation it had wrought, it couldn't see Naruto or feel him anywhere in between its fangs.
Orochimaru gazed upward, witnessing a pair of Naruto's clones assisting him in forming a Rasengan and then changing its shape while still in mid-air. The Sennin allowed the snake's majestic form to reabsorb him into safety while the Eight-Headed Serpent loaded its fangs and tensed its muscles for another strike. As if challenging the titanic reptile, Naruto roared while his Rasenshuriken took shape. The completed jutsu left Naruto's hand at roughly the same time as the Eight-Headed Serpent raced to destroy the airborne sage. Naruto's feet touched the ground with all traces of Natural Energy having completely left his body, observing the orb of revolving destruction above.
A sound of slick, metallic slide through the air drowned out in a rough thud and a fleshy splash of blood. Naruto's body turned sideways as his arm had managed to grab Orochimaru's Kusanagi sword and redirect it in mid-air at the cost of aggravating his hand injuries.
"I told you, Naruto-kun. You will never defeat somebody that has left his mortality behind if you cling on to that which eventually ends all humans. Death is a curse and a plague upon humanity, you are just a boil of that plague to be crushed and abandoned alongside that loathsome relic." Orochimaru hissed while the Eight-Headed Serpent emerged unharmed from the total mayhem which Naruto's Rasenshuriken packed with all of his remaining Natural Energy had raised.
"Damn it, what are you, completely immune to physical damage, you know?" Naruto grunted in complaint while standing up and straightening his back. His straight and confident stance challenged the Eight-Headed Serpent to try its best to do its worst.
"Can't you see the contradiction, Naruto-kun? As someone who accepts death as inevitable, you writhe and do your best to elude it. Even when it is staring you right in the face, you choose to defy it despite being utterly defeated." Orochimaru taunted Naruto further.
"Who said anything about being beaten? Sure, I accept the fact that people die sometimes. It sucks, you know, it hurts. My mom and my dad, Pervy Sage… Still, it's human to die. I wouldn't have become the person I am today if it weren't for the sacrifices that mom and dad and Pervy Sage made before their deaths. I won't let you desecrate that sacrifice, you know!" Naruto swiped his hand aside, defying Orochimaru's taunts and splattering the blood from his injured hands across the floor of Black Cube.
"Fine then, if you won't see the contradiction, if you will continue to sing death's praises while running away from it like a thick-skulled brat that you are, I'll force it onto you just like it was forced onto me when my parents died! I'll show you the true face of death and force you to understand the pain and changes it brings. With your hands in their current state, you won't be able to perform any jutsu so you will be just as powerless to prevent death as everyone else who experienced it are." Orochimaru taunted Naruto while letting the Eight-Headed Serpent absorb his body and attack Naruto.
A dull crack echoed through the Black Cube when the Eight-Headed Serpent hit a golden barrier of chakra head-on. A violent eruption of unmatched force summoned from deep down within Naruto while the overflow of chakra intensified into a solid pillar that stopped only upon the top of the Black Cube's ceiling where its flow dispersed. When the pillar of chakra dissolved, Naruto stood covered in a golden cloak of chakra.
Naruto's pupils became slit, the whiskers over his cheeks became more pronounced to where they appeared more like black facial markings rather than whiskers. As the strength of the future Seventh continued to escalate upward, thick, blazing orange outlines completed his sudden transformation and burst in strength.
The Eight-Headed Serpent hissed out a shockwave blast of air all around it, infuriated and baffled by the fact that mere aftereffects of this transformation threw it off and out of balance. It raced onward to crush the transformed Naruto but the cloaked Jinchuuriki moved like an orange flash, just a mere blur interconnecting several blazing gleams where he connected with brutal kicks, swatting aside each and every head of the Eight-Headed Serpent and sending them slamming down on the ground.
The rampaging kicker blitz took it to the air and then performed a crushing divekick to the center of the shaken serpentine titan, delivering a finishing blow that forced the Eight-Headed Serpent to dissolve into tens of thousands of white snakes all of which scurried for cover, abandoning a single, featureless body of Orochimaru wearing nothing but black, baggy, torn trousers to swim out of the demise of his mightiest snake technique.
"It's over, Orochimaru, I don't need my hands to finish kicking your ass, you know!" Naruto in his Nine-Tails Chakra Cloak form declared. "You're too weak to run away too. In this form, and in your current state, you'd never give me the slip, you know."
"So it seems that I might have been wrong about you all along…" Orochimaru chuckled in pain, feeling the tremendous shortage of chakra that he rarely ever had to face. "You're no ramen, you're not talentless after all, in fact, your talent might just surpass that of Sasuke-kun himself. What a disgusting oversight… The kind of that leads to the death of anyone lesser than me, right?"
"You're wrong, you know!" Naruto said. "It's not because you've abandoned your mortality that you won't die. It's because we are better than to kill you. That is the answer to what you've been looking for, Orochimaru, that's the true oversight, you know. You don't deal with death by throwing away your humanity and embracing delusions about all this rebirth and snake-regeneration shit. You make people stop fighting and killing each other, you leave death to run its natural course, you let people's lives end when it's time so that the emptiness and pain you felt when your parents died would never be experienced by anyone ever again."
"You're such a child, Naruto-kun…" Orochimaru replied. "Were your own parents, was Jiraiya not murdered by fools that thought the same way to you? Idiots suffering the pain of loss yet clinging to the humanity filled to the brim with death and torment all the same? Your path only leads to dealing out more of the same. The only end to death's nightmare is to root it out like a weed and let it die in harsh sunlight, begging for a droplet of water. But don't worry, Naruto-kun… Your body will still serve that use to me…"
Orochimaru's body jerked and snapped back, something massive forced his jaw to snap open while a white coil burst forth from inside him, similar to how the serpentine Sennin shed from his old body and took the form of a new though it would have seemed pointless to do so right now, given how his body was short on chakra and not injured at the moment. Emerging from the human body it had shed was a giant, white snake with spiky scales, similar to one of the heads of the Eight-Headed Serpent but donning Orochimaru's long, black hair and a much pointier chin.
Orochimaru's True Form he had acquired after countless experiments on his human body, aiming to abandon as much of it as possible had finally emerged with the Sennin having seemingly transcended and left his human coil behind, adopting a much-desired form of the white snake and its regenerative qualities of rebirth. An avatar to the Power of White Snake itself.
Author's Note: So I've been kind of wondering about how it seemed like a waste that Naruto and Orochimaru never really collided in the series for real. I thought so since Orochimaru was being set-up as the real main villain of the series and he fit that role like a glove... Not to mention how Kishimoto didn't feel like it was necessary to explore the entire dynamic of how Orochimaru might have become who he became because of the pain of loss that defined him as a child. Tsunade claimed that Orochimaru was always messed up, even as a child, but she's been wrong about people before plenty of times, she's always been the one for generalizing things and taking them for granted so I don't doubt it for a second that she just gave up on him after seeing the first sign that the guy might be a bit creepy.
Both Naruto and Orochimaru seem to be defined by the people they've lost in their lives but they deal with that loss in completely different ways. Naruto used it as a fuel for positive growth, he saw the people he'd lost as heroes and examples for him whereas Orochimaru completely moved past the people he had lost and delved into the horror of their death itself, the finality of it and the pain it caused in people close to the deceased. In a lot of ways, he seems to not want people he held dear to him to experience this with him but he also doesn't want to lose anyone else either like he had lost his parents, though, in the end, he ends up abandoning those same dear people in his quest for immortality and infinite knowledge anyway. Those two simply had to collide in the story and explore that duality in how they perceived death, the soil was fertile for some good Kishimoto's trademark philosophical Shonen bullcrap but nothing seemed to matter in the end but the Uchiha, how many tomoes one's Sharingan had, the Rinnegans, the Six-Paths and ninja-god-aliens.
It's a bit ironic but... I guess, in the end, Naruto the series ended up abandoning its human elements just as Orochimaru shed his humanity for the quest of something greater. I didn't intend on ranting about this nearly as much, it's just that I wanted someone with quality chops taking a crack at this dynamic and all I ended up getting was what Naruto ended up being. I still love the totality of what the series is, I wouldn't have spent time crafting a story two million words long in an alternate universe of that setting if I didn't, it's just that the disappointment in the directions the series took will always be the part of the ride for me.
You guys take care.