Chapter LIV - Brief Flash, then Silence

"What?! You can't be serious!" Zuko cried out, an exasperated look on his face. The thought of Hikari ultimately sacrificing himself seemed asinine to him, as it was the last thing Zuko thought he'd ever do. After all, nobody knew his best friend better than he did. While Hikari was irrefutably loyal to Gyatsō and the Hidden Dark, there were just some things Gyatsō didn't know about his blonde subordinate. An example being the fact that only Zuko was knowledgeable of Hikari's true self, that deep under his benign shell lied a man that wanted to avoid death like the plague. Since he was Orochimaru's guinea pig years ago, it was more than reasonable for him to do so.

For reasons known only to the nefarious Orochimaru, an innocent Hidden Stone child had to witness countless other human experiments succumbing to the unnatural modifications implanted in them, a great deal of them literally imploding due to the excessive amounts of chakra in their bodies. A discombobulated Hikari would normally find the torn remains of their flesh and organs within their cells. Prisoners that were foolish enough to try and escape were captured and tortured for days on end until they died from their gut-wrenching injuries. Orochimaru even had their corpses routinely displayed in front of all the other prisoners to instill fear and dissuasion in them. Zuko was certain that there were many other horrors his friend experienced that he just didn't have the stomach to share.

After everything he's been through, how in the hell could he go through with this?! Zuko thought, furiously grinding his teeth together. The prospect of losing his only friend sent a surge of pure rage throughout every muscle in his body. It rose for what seemed like an eternity, then crashed into him like an enormous tidal wave. Without thinking, acting on pure response to this anger, the black-haired teen turned his body the rest of the way to face Hikari's clone directly, roughly latching a hand onto its cloak and pulling on it so that their faces were inches apart. He then reached into his ninja tools pouch and brandished a sharp kunai, dangerously pressing the metallic weapon against the clone's neck. Even with this sudden burst of aggression, Zuko was met with a completely unfazed expression from the clone. Its face was not only understanding of its impending doom, but accepting of it. Both two things Zuko was struggling very hard to do.

"You don't know what you're talking about!" Zuko shouted indignantly, tightening his grip on the clone. "You just have to be a- a dud! Hikari was at the very limit of his chakra reserves when he made the two of you, right? That would perfectly explain why you're defective, spouting out complete nonsen-"

"As I am a clone," the clone interrupted, "I carried over my original's psyche the moment I was created. My thoughts and the thoughts of my original are one and the same. When I say he's fully intent on killing himself with the Raikage, it's no different from him telling you that himself. Also, you should know that he created us with the intention of letting you know what was about to become of him."

Faced with such revelations, Zuko quickly activated the second level Shaolin in his left eye, angrily glaring at the still unnerved clone.

"But that just doesn't make any sense to me! Why would he.. even..." Zuko found himself to be trailing off, his words becoming softer and softer before stopping completely. Clearly, the endlessly swarming questions in his head proved to be difficult to formulate through his lips.

"My original determined that his sacrifice is necessary. It will still take time for Lord Gyatsō's injuries to heal - time that he just simply didn't have. With the damage he's sustained restricting his movement, the Raikage would've made quick work out of him. Are you able to understand it better now, Zuko?" the clone asked. The dark-haired shinobi in question remained eerily silent. His crimson eye slowly drifted from the clone's face to the kunai still pressed against its neck. It wouldn't take any effort whatsoever for him to push the blade further and end the conversation right then and there. If he had the courage to do so, however, was entirely up for debate.

"He'd be dead," Hikari's clone continued, "right now I might add, if he didn't decide to do this. Then you would've never been brought here safely, and your death would've been guaranteed... sadly, that means Lord Gyatsō would have died as well. All those years of his planning wasted just because you couldn't see the bigger picture and get over yourself."

Zuko's eye suddenly shot back up to the clone, his grip on his kunai suddenly tightening. The clone returned Zuko's stern look. After a few seconds of this stare-down, the Taisega clan member slowly lowered his head, unable to will himself to actually attack it. Not only because it'd feel identical to attacking Hikari himself, but because he had to admit he was being told the truth. At the very least, he appreciated that Hikari willed himself not to sugarcoat this information.

"If it will help with your anger, Zuko, you can destroy me right here. Since my original will die very soon, it really makes no difference to me," the other clone spoke up, sitting on his knees next to an unconscious Gyatsō. Zuko took a moment before averting his gaze to the Osore leader. The green healing aura presently on Gyatsō's neck was still faint and weak, and the bleeding hadn't even stopped yet. Zuko concluded that this was due to the absence of his left eye's regenerative power. He released his tight grip on the clone's cloak and redirected his hand to his remaining eye.

"No... that won't be necessary... I just.. have to accept this," the young man said quietly. He carefully pulled out his eye and tossed it to the clone next to Gyatsō.

"Don't forget, both Orochimaru and Lord Gyatsō know the hand signs for the Reanimation jutsu. There's no doubt in my mind that this will only be temporary," the clone added in. He caught the eye and slowly pushed it into the white-haired man's empty left eye socket.

If push comes to shove and we lose our advantage in this war, there's no way I'd be able to actually trust someone like Orochimaru, Zuko thought. There's just nothing about him that suggests he's completely loyal to the Hidden Dark and our ambitions. Obviously, I have to rule him out.

Zuko let out a sigh and placed his hand over the black seal located his neck. He applied a small amount of chakra in his palm, then withdrew his hand after about three seconds. The seal turned a bright red and immediately spread across his skin, a complicated pattern of cross markings soon covering him from head to toe.

And I can't guarantee that Lord Gyatsō will revive Hikari, either... the smartest thing for me to do is... assume that he's gone forever...

The markings on Zuko's skin grew closer until it appeared that every region of his body was glowing red. Just as before, mysterious black mists engulfed his body and dispersed after a short interval, revealing the transformed Osore member. Instead of having white blotches throughout his otherwise dark hair, he now had completely white locks that had grown to his waist. The Taisega clan member parted his lips to reveal his sharp fangs.

"I wouldn't go into that state so casually if I were you," the clone next to Gyatsō warned. "Your level two Shaolin isn't enough to have replenished your chakra reserves yet."

Zuko snapped his head to the right to look at the clone, a smug grin forming across his lips. The clone gasped lightly, noticing that his right eye socket had just somehow fully healed. In place of the standard crimson Shaolin was a much more intense, red-orange iris surrounded by two spiraling crosses and eight ominous dark triangles. Almost absentmindedly, Zuko had activated his unique Mūgetsu Shaolin simply just by tapping into the full power of Mirage's Curse Mark.

"I stand corrected," the clone said with an amused smile. "So, the rate of your healing depends on how much chakra you put into that seal on your neck. I guess you learn something new everyda-"

Suddenly, the clone let out an unsettling gasp of air, its eyes widening as far as they could. Hikari worriedly reached out to the clone, his previous cocky expression turning into one of precipitous fear and anxiety.

"What's wrong?!" Zuko asked. The clone's eyes frantically looked into Zuko's, its shaky fist lifting and facing out to the white-haired teen. It then extended his fingers and closed its eyes.

"Farewell, my friend."

Immediately after, the clone dispersed into a lifeless smoke cloud. Zuko quickly turned around to seek answers from the remaining clone, only to discover that a second cloud of smoke was ominously hovering where it was standing.

"You're not getting out of this alive," Killer Bee grunted angrily, still struggling to even bend a finger. Hikari was staring hard at the ground when he slowly looked up into the Raikage's eyes. Another mass of chakra detonating clay was tightly clutched in his palm.

"Believe me, neither one of us are," he said under his breath.

"Neither one?" Bee heard Gyuki suspiciously mutter in his head. "Listen, Bee, you've got to hurry up and break out of this guy's jutsu! I think he's about to try and take you both out with his next attack. The man's gone insane!"

A little help would be greatly appreciated! Bee snapped back. I could've sworn that genjutsu had no effect on Jinchuriki that were in sync with their Tailed Beast!

"This is no genjutsu, Bee! I've already tried stabilizing your chakra flow, nothing's working! I didn't know what kind of jutsu this kid uses other than his space-time ninjutsu, I'm really at a loss here!"

Well that makes two of us...

"You undermined me one too many times, old man," Hikari said weakly. He took a few slow footsteps forward and placed a hand on Bee's shoulder, smirking menacingly.

"And it costed you everything... it would have been ideal for me to cut you down earlier, but oh well.." The blonde shinobi rose the ball of detonating clay to his lips and took multiple large bites out of it, almost failing to swallow due to how thick and rigid the clay was. He stumbled to his knees again, now clutching onto his terribly wounded stomach.

"A-and with this damn hole in my s-stomach, I would've been a goner anyway... once again, oh well... you know, life really can be a bitch sometimes," Hikari said with a soft chuckle. Faced with an uncomfortable silence from the Raikage, he looked up at him and smiled, revealing his slightly damaged teeth.

"L-lighten up, will you..? I will be just as dead as you, and you see how chummy I'm being... at least t-take solace in the fact that a perfect world is being created right in front of you..."

Bee gritted his teeth furiously at the younger male but still remained silent. Hikari stared at him for a few seconds before shrugging his shoulders.

"Nothing, hm? What a shame. Well, I should get to it then..."

Nendo: Shokan!

After performing the required hand seals, Hikari's body suddenly bloated in random places. As seconds passed, he kept growing and expanding grotesquely as a result of the Shokan growing within his body. The blonde Osore member let out a disturbing, painful gurgling sound, shutting his eyes tightly. Blood soon pooled out of his mouth due to his organs being crushed from the inside. All he could do was endure the pain until it all ended at once.

I was right back then... None of us would die decent deaths...

Hikari thought back to when he was dismally informing his Osore comrades of such an idea. Upon doing so, he was reminded that Nagato died burning alive from Itachi's Amaterasu back in their battle in the Hidden Leaf. Konan was injured to such a degree, he had to deal the killing blow to ease her suffering. Sebbech was swiftly impaled through the heart from Ketsueki's sword. Zuko broke Seiko's neck in a fit of rage, then later himself fell to Sasuke's lethal fray of sword attacks. Now there he was, in an indescribable amount of pain, seconds away from detonating himself.

He thought even further back to when he was Orochimaru's plaything and the ensuing chaos afterwards. The war between the Hidden Dark and the battle-hungry Junkyosha Clan. The long list of people he murdered for his nation. His relationship with Suzuka. The matter in which she lost her life. Despite being so close to death's door, time appeared to move so, so slow. It allowed Hikari to witness the entirety of his life and more.

He then thought about Zuko.

The blonde man roared at the top of his lungs, whether it was the pain he was feeling physically or mentally was unknown to him. Regardless, he managed to whisper three words, out of sheer willpower.

"Farewell, my friend."

A blinding light engulfed the area. Along with it, another catastrophic explosion unlike no other. Then immediately after, the light slowly faded away, not even remaining alive for more than five seconds. The only thing that followed was complete silence.