633In which the true final boss is finally dragged out of the dark.
(Alt: Hey you wanna finally get that mofo with the psychic equivalent of a wailing fire alarm? Now's your chance.)
(Content warning for: Body Horror, Psychological and Emotional Abuse Against Children)
YOU ARE THE—
GATHER THE—
THERE YOU ARE.
He blinked. The roiling sea, ships, and—most noticeably of all— Doflamingo were gone; snapped away as if they'd never existed between one moment and the next. In its place, the world had flattened out into an endless yawning expanse, stretching on forever. Darkness loomed above like a starless, moonless sky, while below a lake of liquid light shimmered beneath his feet— rippling with every step and turn.
And between it all, in the liminal space between light and dark, mist curled around his legs, flowing as he moved through the gray fog.
The voice, for all intents and purposes, appeared to be gone. The air hummed faintly, thunderstorm-thick, and Naruto was alone.
"Hello?" he asked, an attempt to break the constant buzzing background noise.
No answer. Just the faint ringing of his ears and the ripple of the water. His own heart beat loudly in his ears, his breath accompanying it like a whispered chorus. He'd heard of it before—the sound of silence—but never like this. The only thing left to hear was himself.
Naruto, in all his limited existence, had never spent more than a handful of hours entirely alone in his life. There had always been someone to look out for him. Even when he'd first arrived on the shores of Baltigo far and away from everything he'd ever known, he'd still had Old Man Yang to keep him company. In his head and often at his heels, griping so much that he almost forgot to enjoy his newfound freedom to frolick on the beach.
Not that the old fart would ever admit to doing something so clearly beneath him. Naruto had been there, he'd seen him, and there was visual snail evidence that Old Man Yang would never pry from his hands.
It was just a shame he didn't have photo evidence.
Disappointingly, nothing changed since his little jaunt down memory lane. If anything he felt even more small and alone. The echoes of his life like a taunt in the face of such bleakness.
...Why was it so quiet?!
"Is anyone here?!" he shouted into the sprawling void, his voice echoing in a chorus of imitations, light rippling with the force of his call. A deep chill crept in, soaking right through his jacket and into his skin, sinking to the bone as the significance of his solitude really began to dawn on him. Maybe that was why his voice came out quieter the third time. "Anyone…? Mom?"
Still nothing.
His breathing sounded loud to his ears. He could feel his heartbeat in his temples.
Old Man Yang? he tried meekly.
And yet, despite his efforts, even their bond sat empty. Like a void inside his mind.
Naruto found his hands over his face with no idea when they'd gotten there, his chest tight despite how quickly his heartbeat thudded. Rapid and loud. His breathing growing ragged and frantic. Running his thumbs over his whisker birthmarks wasn't a habit for him like it was for Tatsumaki, not like that. He wasn't supposed to be the one who got sidelined by being afraid.
Don't panic. Don't panic.
His hands shook.
He forced himself to breathe evenly, taking deep measured breaths that he remembered Rin-sensei coaching someone about. In four. Hold two. Out four. Repeat.
It helped. Even if he wished Rin-sensei had told him more, for some longer-term relief, it was enough to keep his heart from trying to escape his ribs. On the tenth try, Naruto managed to pull his hands away from his face with a wince. The skin on his cheeks stung like he'd stretched his connection with Old Man Yang too far, or gotten sunburned—but sharper, somehow. Maybe that Doffy guy had cut him? Maybe even with his own claws.
Wait a minute.
Naruto looked down at his hands, noting the short nails and bloody smudges. The last thing he remembered were V1 claws…
Then, what was—
Long spindly appendages spidered out in his peripheral vision and bent to cradle around his face, his breath catching in his throat in a moment of shocked hesitation that might have cost him if he hadn't immediately lunged forward. Black nails scraped and snapped in his wake, stinging pain painting fire on his face, his arms—Twisting away from yet more hands and their freakishly long fingers as he scrambled away from their clawing grasp.
And then the voice returned in a deathly rattle.
GIVE IT TO ME.
Confused and feeling his heart in his throat, Naruto just shook his head. Not understanding. This was far and away different from all the times the voice had come up in that damn nightmare before. What could it possibly want? Give what to it? "Give? What are you talking about?! Give you what?!"
A dry cackle, like the crackling of leaves resounded in his head, prompting every hair to stand on end—
Naruto thrashed again, slamming his head backward into what was probably someone's nose.
It was like hitting his head against a pillow. There was give, but no crunch and no pain, and that was wrong in a way that made his stomach swoop.
When the voice spoke again, it was a shriek. GIVE ME YOUR BODY!
More hands, these not even remotely like a humans, snatched at his arms and hair—too long, wrong shade—pulling him into an embrace so tight the air was crushed out of him. The arms looped around his chest and ended in claws just as sharp as Old Man Yang's, each hooking into the fabric of his jacket.
Four sharp points scraped against the back of his head. Something was breathing against his hair and the nape of his neck.
"LET GO OF ME!" Naruto's voice burst out of him. He thrashed wildly, clawing at his captor. "Get off, get off—"
He struggled. He kicked and flailed for a moment before slamming his elbow into what he hoped was the body behind him, employing all the physical escape techniques he'd learned from his plethora of willing teachers over the years. Red chakra snaked out of his seal and let him rip and bite at the arms still clinging to his waist, feeling more than seeing the moment the ligaments started to tear.
Only… It wasn't flesh.
The rustling and snapping of dried twigs echoed in the space, and Naruto could only watch in abject horror as the arm split like a rotten fruit, the shape unraveling like intricately woven threads to reveal long thorns and gnarled vines, its image of humanity vanished. The voice howled—not in pain—but rage at his continued struggling, thorned fingers that grasped and hooked with renewed fervor.
YOU CANNOT ESCAPE.
"You don't know a thing about me!" Naruto snapped, his voice roughened by Old Man Yang's chakra bubbling through his coils. Thorns caught at his clothes and pierced his skin, but he wouldn't ever give up.
The arms held fast. They seemed bigger now; the limbs that had hidden in the darkness belonged to a larger body than his. All the while, those long nails and hands sank into his jacket and pinned him in place, silent as the grave even as they persisted in pursuing him.
But this time, the thing holding onto him hadn't budged at all.
NO ONE CAN SAVE YOU.
Naruto ignored the voice that now started to echo of Doflamingo, jamming his claws into the alabaster flesh still pinning him in place. They didn't bleed; the skin and muscle crumbled like sand, leaving blackened bone behind. And still, the creature clung. His ribs ached under pressure and his breathing picked up speed.
THE WEAKNESS OF FLESH IS LAID BARE.
Flashes of the battle outside sprang to his mind. The destroyed ships. The bodies in the water. Fire and blood.
That scraggly old man who'd told him to run.
YOU CANNOT PROTECT THEM.
Naruto's knees hit the floor, the sound echoing like a drum of finality. The arms were still around him. Clutching. Clinging.
He could see it. The burning pyres in the distance. Sky ablaze and choked in thick black smoke. Kurama had collapsed. Gyūki rolled off the island into the waiting ocean waves.
And he… His body was moving. Fighting. Howling as his blood-red claws sank into Shanks against his will. The raw pain of screams welled up in his throat and burned and burned and burned. None of the sound reached his ears but he knew the feeling. The vibration in his jaw.
The futility.
Its grip tightened even against the onslaught of Naruto's chakra cloak, growing stronger. Between frantic strikes, the damage began to undo itself. Not-flesh hissing and thickening and gurgling, knitting back together. Writhing over itself again and again like worms. For the first time, Naruto felt a heartbeat in the hands against his ribs, the sensation revolting as wicked claws sunk into his skin as seamlessly as if they were both clay. Molding together.
"NO!" Naruto shouted into the darkness, shaking his head and lunging like a wounded animal caught in a trap. Feeling helpless and small in the face of this overwhelming entity. This… This mind. It was so much worse than he had imagined, his bombastic claims months before about how he was gonna beat up the source of the dreams beginning to wither into dust in his throat. "I don't want to do this! STOP IT!"
It's a dream! It's just a dream! he told himself, trying to block out the images by closing his eyes. Willing himself to imagine it undone. This was the mindscape. He was familiar with this. It should work. Come on! Come on! Wake up!
Black-thorned vines snaked around his arms, restricting movement as that voice slithered close to his ear, tittering in haunting amusement at his struggles. Spider-silk hair swept forward and engulfed his view of—of anything, trapping him with the humidity of a monstrous, open maw.
He didn't stop struggling, even as thorns scratched deep gouges into his skin. He had to get back to—
YOU ARE THE LAST.
Naruto froze with a gasp. Air punched out of him. His eyes snapped open.
THEY HAVE FALLEN.
The voice was almost… sympathetic. Yet it beared a hint of condescension and mockery in its tone as it bore down upon him, whispering its rasping, poisonous dirge. Caressing his head and hair in some facsimile of affection, its black nails scoring his flesh in line with its true nature.
His vision fogged. The hazy shapes of those pirates he had tried to save lay floating, unmoving in the water. Abandoned. Kei-sensei, on a different battlefield entirely, a spear of ice through her chest as she lay broken and bleeding on a cracking snowfield. Yugi lay not far past her, skin blackened and burned until Naruto could almost smell the meat. Utakata, identifiable only by his clothes because someone had ripped a hole through his head and obliterated everything above his jaw.
They—They were…
He was—
YOU SEE? Its voice rose triumphantly, almost holding the image before him as if it were a prize.
No. No, no no no this isn't happening—stop!
THEY ARE FAILURES.
Hands gripped him, pulling him under. Enfolding. Stifling. The brambles moved like veins under his skin. Naruto barely choked back his screams.
THEY ARE ALL FAILURES.
Despair, as tenacious as the brambles, leeched the fight right out of him, his limbs going slack as the weight of those words sunk deep into his very psyche. He could feel it. His heart heavy. Lungs constricting. It was hopeless. Everything was hopeless. Blood flowed down his body like rain.
"Mom… I'm—I…"
Darkness covered his sight, aided by the palms of two terrible hands as they covered his field of view. Withered palms clasped over his eyes. It was almost comforting, the nothingness engulfing.
I'm sorry.
.
.
.
A rasping, mirthless laugh echoed out into the darkness from a dozen gibbering mouths.
THIS IS THE END OF A HUMAN.
When Isobu said "Follow me," with such grim purpose, the actual field of possibilities was narrow and negative. With the amount of damage we'd inflicted on basically…everything the World Government threw at us to date, there was a part of me that kept waiting for not only another shoe to drop, but a whole factory. Even with every plan we had, and our teamwork, and the force multiplier that was nearly every Tailed Beast, a world-spanning totalitarian government that semi-casually blew up entire island civilizations had to keep options in reserve.
Isobu just gave an opportunity for that hammer-blow of anxiety to land.
I settled in for the long haul and asked, Where?
The answer didn't take the form of words. The unhappy swoop in my stomach was pure roller-coaster drop instead. The confines of Trafalgar Law's infirmary fell away like silver mirrors smashed to dust, replacing sea air and antiseptic with cold, clean wind as I plummeted toward a familiar floor. The detached serenity of the mind-skype was—
Do you see the problem?
—a lot bigger than it used to be.
Strictly speaking, the psychic world the Tailed Beasts maintained was only as real as they wanted it to be. Because most of them didn't agree on much (and certainly not about aesthetic choices), they usually kept it as a plain stone circle where the only source of light was some invisible flame. They only ever cast their shadows outward, toward the uncertain borders of consciousness, and the shadows didn't move much. It was big enough to accommodate all ten siblings in a powwow and not much else. Given the lack of certain people's numbers on my wristband from hell, there were some noticeable gaps.
That whole clearing was gone. In its place was a tree that seemed to stretch across the entire horizon. Nine main branches wove around each other in an uncanny braided bulge before the canopy spread and spread and spread. Roots looped in and over and around each other, defining the landscape for a hundred kilometers in every direction. Autumn leaves in a dozen shapes cascaded down from the sky it blotted out.
It looked like the crown of the world.
The mind-skype buckled under its presence. Huge chasms in the "earth" were opened and overrun by its sheer size. Mountains in the distance were pieced through by roots. The sky was a distant dream past the canopy that Kei could barely see.
And woven across the ground, like the world's most hostile shag carpet, was layer upon layer of wicked black brambles.
This wasn't something any of the Tailed Beasts had signed off on.
Isobu was waiting for me at the end of my long fall, in a single miraculously clear spot of bare stone.
I landed just next to his armored hand as he approached the thorn wall at the pace of any human faced with visible razor wire. Each thorn was as long as my hand and sharp enough to give porcupines jealous fits. There were even barbs to make sure removing a thorn from a victim would be an experience comparable dragging fishhooks through flesh. The long way.
And from my crappy human perspective, the brambles were the ten meters high at the short end.
Isobu didn't touch it, showing that he had sense. Nothing in here was real, but that didn't mean it couldn't destroy us. Whatever could override his family's control was worth caution.
The only real question at the forefront of my mind was this: "What the actual fuck happened here?"
It was the multitool of questions. Swap out a curse and it could be used in many different situations likely to be encountered by the average shinobi, domestic or otherwise. Usually after the local kids got up to something and wrecked half the area. And honestly, I couldn't think of anything else that properly expressed the sentiment.
"If I knew, do you think I would still be here?" Isobu grumbled, shifting his thumb to knock into me as a way to scold me. Because he was being incredibly gentle about it, the sensation was akin to being hip-checked by a human and didn't reduce me to a splatter. "I do not recognize the tree. While the daylight-bearing tree in Fishman Island was similar, it did not feel hostile. It did not think at all."
And this tree was… I scratched my head. Hadn't there been a Sailor Moon arc about some kind of evil space tree? The chaos wrought on the landscape reminded me of that.
Hold on a second. "It thinks? "
"And speaks, if softly." Isobu tucked his forelegs under his belly like a cat. "The voice is strangely familiar."
Well, that's not moderately terrifying. Not at all. Never mind the alarms going off in my head. "Familiar how?"
Isobu slowly shook his head. "It is whispering something I cannot quite make out."
I could've made a joke about a lack of visible ears, but the mood was about a hundred percent wrong. "You know, that's about the least helpful thing you could've said."
"And yet, I strive for accuracy. Listen."
A rustle of wind curled through the brambles. Or, since we were in an artificial mental world where weather was optional, maybe—yeah, the brambles themselves were moving. Slithering like so many snakes in the dark and creeping around us in a circle. Or maybe like a whole black sea was waiting to come down on our heads once the initial ripple really got going.
I hate all of this forever. But between me and Isobu and the shrinking clearing, there wasn't much to do but fight because true to appearances it was clearly hostile. Before that thought even fully completed itself, I drew my sword—or a representative of it—and started channeling Wind chakra down the blade. There was no chance Water would do any good here, so I had to go with my second-favorite option.
Isobu opened his mouth and dark purple energy started to form in the air ahead of his face.
Without a word exchanged aloud, both of us unleashed our strongest individual attacks. In the mind-skype, there wasn't much point to Tailed Beast transformations when my biggest buddy was already right beside me.
"Wind Release: Curve of the Moon!"
Tailed Beast Bomb! It seemed Isobu thought calling his attacks, even in here, was beneath him.
My slash went first, cleaving into the thorns at about knee height and cutting through them like a drunken lawnmower. Little voids followed in the enhanced kenjutsu's wake, stirring up dust devils that cut on their own and spread outward in a rough semicircle.
And then Isobu's Tailed Beast Bomb blew a crater in the whole thing and rendered my attack moot.
Instead of sticking around to watch the dust clear like a couple of gawkers, I leapt backward until I could nestle in the gap between Isobu's spiky crown and his equally spiky jaw, just above his closed eye. And a second later, while I held on for dear life, Isobu tucked his entire head down into his shell and threw himself into a roll. The kind that pancaked armies.
The only reason I wasn't immediately centrifuged into oblivion was probably because physics didn't really care about this world much. As it was, the world spun for a little while and then didn't. When I could crawl out of my hiding spot about thirty seconds later, the first thing on the to-do list was to start prying black thorns out of the ridges of Isobu's shell.
We didn't seem to have made an appreciable dent in the bramble population, but some of what was there was a bit flatter.
"On the whole," I said, as I slashed a long line of thorns free from Isobu's head, "I'm gonna say that didn't work."
"We have a new landing spot." Isobu tapped the ground with one heavy palm, indicating the crater he'd blasted out a second ago that was therefore totally bramble-free. "It would only take several decades to clear the field."
Some of the thorns were already creeping back in, cricking and cracking like geriatric joints. Their disintegrated compatriots weren't worth much, apparently. "Thanks but no thanks." I raised an arm in Isobu's limited field of view, though I was so close to his eye that he probably had some trouble following where I was pointing. "Feeling up to going straight for the big, obvious boss battle?"
Isobu growled in answer and lowered his head again.
"So, how'd you even notice there was something wrong down here?" I braced my entire body for the spin cycle again. "No one else said anything."
"You could say I felt a disturbance in the Force."
I bit back a sigh and bonked my fist against Isobu's closed eyelid. "No one would get that reference."
"You do. And do you see anyone else here?"
"Aside from the creepy whispering tree, no."
And we probably would have bull-rushed the tree for being an ominous landmark in the distance. It just made sense.
But at that exact moment, providence shined down in the form of golden light, which streaked downward from some ember of light above, slamming into nine points across the ground and making the whole world buckle under the sheer force of the chakra behind them. The sound of chains dragging against each other filled the hollow air.
The sky—and the branches covering it—bent ahead of the golden shape and burned and burned. Brambles were incinerated by air compression and a touch of Fire chakra before anything laid a hand on them. Leaves from the canopy rained down and withered to ash everywhere around them, falling like molten rain.
Kushina roared from on high, descending like an avenging angel, her hair akin to a ribbon of blood trailing behind her, a banner to war if I'd ever seen one. Chains of gold fell like shooting stars through the darkness, tearing through the carnivorous plantlife like a woodchipper with a grudge, a voraciousness in them that spelled out the depth of her rage, turning everything in her path to dust in a matter of seconds.
There was something to be said about efficiency. I silently applauded her entrance and sheer bullheaded determination to get things done. Watching Kushina work was always a treat.
But why was she here? She was supposed to be at Marineford, getting into fistfights with the World Government's top remaining hitters. Or looking after Naruto if that turned out to be too boring.
Had something happened?
Not one to be left sitting on the sidelines, Isobu threw himself forward in a spiky bulldozer way, and the only reason I didn't lose track of everything was because his mind pressed so closely against mine. In this false place, his will was as good as sight. We approached Kushina's rampage with the fearless folly of vultures tracking another's kill, mowing down whatever stood in our path. Isobu's armored shell rendered the field of spikes moot.
More brambles reared in defense, thickening and aiming all points at the interloper, rallying before the tree as if we didn't already know that was the prime target.
Kushina slammed into the side of the tree, heedless of the thorns that tried and died in the attempt lance through her, bursts of angry red energy bubbling off her as a semi-transparent skeletal avatar of Kurama loomed over her back. Nine tails made of chakra swirled out behind her like a wedding train.
The massive trunk gave an almighty groan as she cratered the bark, its ponderous branches swaying. But it didn't crumble under her assault as any ordinary opponent should have.
"NA-RU-TO!" she bellowed in rage, punctuating with a punch that rocked the entire tree yet again, her chakra-enhanced claws sinking deep into bark to rip and gouge out chunks. "Get away from him, you bitch!"
"Naruto?!" I exclaimed, something like mortal terror gripping my chest.
He's in there?!
Isobu's trajectory had his whirling wheel-of-death vaulting off a tree root, gaining lift for a brief heartstopping moment before he too slammed into the bole of the parasitic tree, back spikes chomping and chainsawing through the wood like a massive turtle-shaped boring machine.
The tree in question, groaned like the sound of distant glaciers with a deep reverb, and Isobu found his momentum stop with an abruptness that would have thrown me if I hadn't been so ensorcelled in his shell. I felt a brief burst of confusion from him followed by alarm as he realized he was effectively stuck on his back, something along his spine plates had jammed and he was practically nailed to the tree.
Uh oh.
Isobu allowed me to escape before something below unfurled like some hideous starfish, a gargantuan woody hand rising up from the roots. It was mostly a hand in that there were five protrusions—everything else about it was purely evil branches. Which grabbed at Isobu as if he were no more than an annoying burr and ripped him out of the main trunk, chucking him away like a frisbee.
I didn't stop running, trying to reach the place that Kushina was currently dodging another hand. Her chains found anchor points like Spider-Man might've, if web fluid was basically replaced with unlimited harpoon ammunition. She swung on those chains like someone using indestructible wire.
A line slammed home maybe thirty meters from me, but it didn't last. She ripped that point free to keep up her speed. Two seconds later, roots erupted from the ground to try and chase her, but she was long gone already.
It made the Body Flicker ninjutsu look painfully pedestrian.
The tree swayed and groaned as its limbs slashed through the air. Deceptively fast, because of its sheer size, the creature swung for Kushina like it was warding off a whole swarm of flies. Kushina's body was a red-streaked firefly by comparison, but darting so quickly that she did loops around the flailing limbs even if that kind of speed would have killed a normal person in reality.
USELESS. CHAFF.
And—I knew that voice. Every jinchūriki knew that toneless, soul-stamping voice after months of it painting itself across our brains. "You are the third; gather the Nine" was a fucking mantra. Sometimes it practically brought us to our knees.
But it was singing a different tune now.
STRUGGLE UNTIL THE END OF DAYS. IT MAKES NO DIFFERENCE.
Kushina's voice was an unintelligible shriek, given her distance, but no one who knew her would ever think she was taking that argument lying down. My vantage point was just too far off to meaningfully cheer her on.
So I started cutting, slashing at anything within reach. Focusing my nature chakra to cut deep gouges into the trunk and dispel wandering branches.
But it didn't make a difference.
The tree's limbs stretched farther, slamming downward as though to haul the immense creature's bulk out of the ground. Brambles and the ground below exploded as the hands clawed at the terrain. Breaking it apart. Upheaving the ground like a volcanic rift. Black brambles and tree roots erupted from the resulting chasms with new purpose, skittering and slithering up the trunk in a direct mirror to Kushina's chains.
I could hear Isobu bellow something in the distance, but it was too far to be intelligible over the cacophony of rending wood and mass destruction. The air was filled with hundreds upon thousands of burning things, splinters, and thorns flying everywhere. Maybe he wasn't trying to form words at all. Just—roaring. In defiance or rage or anything else.
And I still hadn't laid eyes on Naruto. Or either of the Kurama twins.
Something snagged against my foot and I grunted as my face nearly met the tree bark. Wood scraped beneath my arms as I was dragged backward toward the brambled mass, the wild swing of my blade only managing to knick one of the offending vines. Though I had at least one of my hands under me, even claws made of Isobu's coral didn't slow me down, and soon I was engulfed.
WITHOUT THE POWER OF YOUR BEAST, YOU ARE NOTHING.
Looking up, I could see the facsimile of a wooden face bearing down, the thicker branches of the tree sweeping back like a crown. Thorns coiled over each other so tightly that there were horns above that face, which was perfectly symmetrical and not-human by way of a tumble down the uncanny valley. The eyes were too large, the features too fine. And it was also about four meters across and seven tall, which didn't help.
The first words to cross my mind were: "Fuck you."
Then its delicate features scowled at me in aristocratic disgust. CLUTCHING THE STRENGTH OF YOUR BETTERS GRANTS YOU NO CLEMENCY FROM ME.
Oh, joy. It was talking to me directly.
It picked me up from the snarl, making me wince as several points of my body were impaled by the briars. It brought me even to its face on a bed of thorns that might've been a giant hand, crushing me in its grip like a bug.
YOU ARE NOTHING BUT A WORTHLESS. HUMAN. RUNT.
And promptly flicked me across the battlefield. Didn't even have the fucking courtesy to aim at Isobu.
Kushina's golden chains shot for me and missed, because the big tree-witch was still trying to kill her with the rest of her branches. I tried reaching for Isobu's chakra for a V1 cloak, but the connection slipped out of my mental grip as though it bled instead of my body. Fear didn't even well up in my chest normally—it was almost like—almost like—
The ground rose up to meet me…
And blue flame, everywhere. Bandaged arms under my shoulders and legs and then a body, bracing me for the fall.
We skid on the outskirts of the battlefield, my savior sticking the landing with a suspicious cat-like grace that immediately made me grin.
It was good to have backup.
"First aid isn't my thing," Yugito's voice hissed in my ear, "but we can improvise."
I closed my eyes and felt warmth spread from head to toe. The draining feeling slowed and slowed and then stopped.
"There we are."
And I was on fire? But it didn't hurt. Blue-and-black fire wisped the embedded thorns away into ash. When I looked up, Yugito's odd-colored eyes were crinkled as she grinned, fangs extended. It took me a little longer to notice that she'd managed to get my useless ass to the ground with hardly a whisper. And every single bramble around her was instant ash when it got close.
Yugito set me down, but she kept a clawed hand on my bicep in case I just toppled over like I forgot how my legs worked.
She got about a second of leeway. Gravity wasn't the boss of me. "So, I'm gonna go with 'sleepy thorns that can punch through our regeneration.'"
Yugito raised an eyebrow that, less than an hour ago, had been burned off her real body. She looked perfectly manicured now, and not just her nails. "For…?"
"For the enemy's main tactic," I growled. Already, Isobu's temper pounded like a back beat as my anger came back online. Having part of my power snatched from me was never a comfortable feeling, but that had been a solid morphine hit at the least. The fact that my modified body didn't instantly burn it off screamed "attack" and not "poison." My eyes burned. "And Kushina thinks that tree's got Naruto crammed in it somewhere, which means it's gonna die."
Yugito bristled. Her claws sharpened enough against my arm that she snatched her hand back. Her gaze turned to Kushina's ongoing campaign to Muhammad Ali the tree to death. A limb had already been smashed off.
"You up for that?" I asked, even as a red haze descended over my vision.
"Yes, I think so." Her lip curled. "Weeding is a D-rank mission, but I find myself nostalgic."
Isobu's Tailed Beast Bomb ripped through a long line of thorns rising to grab at Kushina while she sailed smoothly overhead, sending wood flying everywhere. It was there to give her breathing room and a clear shot to wherever Naruto might be in the mass, so it didn't target the trunk. Instead, the blast careened off into the distance and obliterated a fake hillside.
Then, out of bark and branch, the same uncanny face swirled into existence. As we watched from all too far away, the face lurched its way out of the trunk. A neck, shoulders, and new arms wrenched themselves free with a long line of sap clinging to the new body. It had to be hundreds of meters tall, even only exposed to the assumed taper of its waist and with arms warped by its own power.
That was—it reminded me of the Tailed Beasts. Its existence played against my senses like sandpaper on a violin. But how?
But rather than swinging for Kushina again, the parasitic avatar raised its arms, as if it were entreating the heavens. Its palms kept rising until the arms locked in place, sap oozing to the ground from the newly formed length in a horrible mimicry of viscera. Like pus from a wound, but on a godly scale.
And a bone-chilling soprano emanated from that too-large mouth as it fell open.
What it was calling for wasn't immediately apparent, but the illumination of all nine branches above the creature was probably as good an indication as any. That was a charging sequence if ever I'd played a video game.
"Oh shit." I spun my chakra cloak around to get the defensive shell between us and the impending blast.
It pulled that light inward, reddish-orange in hue and burning like the setting sun before throwing its arms back out in a wide arc, energy bursting like a supernova. BEGONE!
A red speck shooting off into the distance was probably Kushina.
Yugito and I braced ourselves for the shockwave—with my chakra coral claws and her real ones—but were unprepared for the absolute migraine inducing pain that wracked our brains.
When it was all over though, I noticed we'd only been pushed back two meters. Drag-marks on the ground told that story clearly enough. Though my head throbbed like the beating of a drum, we were alive and intact and now even angrier.
"Was that supposed to do something?" Yugito hissed, rubbing her temples in annoyance. Her bi-colored eyes glinted like steel.
STILL YOU CLING TO HOPE. Something crunched, deep within the tree. The monstrosity scowled at us, and at the fountain of vicious light that was Kushina recovering in her line of sight. THEN MAY YOU LEARN A NEW LESSON AT THE HAND OF THIS MASTER: DESPAIR.
I cracked my knuckles, shedding bits of coral along he way so I could properly wield my sword again. I brandished it with all the samurai flourish I was known for. We had a target. Time to fulfill a mission. "Bring it."
Thatch yelped as he watched Kokuō full on buckle, horse legs going limp as she slammed headfirst into the ice shelf with a resounding THOOM that shook the very air, her eyes half-shut in the cold. Heart in his throat, he only let out the breath he was holding when he saw familiar blue flames flicker and flare in the resulting ice storm. Marco would get Han out of there safely.
But that wasn't the only concerning thing he could see. Matatabi lay on her side, blue-black flames banked into faint embers as she lay on the ice, heedless of the growing puddle of water around her prone body. Saiken was deflated, flattening out like a particularly slimy pancake as he seemed to melt into the surrounding water. Isobu just lay there, bobbing in place. Motionless. Both of his eyes were closed.
Marco was already on his way back, with a red-armored shape dangling from his talons. Han wasn't moving in that grip, not even to try and stabilize himself. He was as limp as a corpse.
"Oh no." A terrible realization gripped Thatch by the throat. "Kei! Kei, there's something wrong—"
He lunged for the hatch of the Polar Tang, heedless of the men that protested at his abrupt entrance. A loud clatter down the hall drew him in that direction, fearing the worst, and stumbled into a brightly lit infirmary.
The room was a mess, against the rules of good medicine. Utakata was unconscious next to a pile of spilled medical instruments, blood dribbling out of his nose and sideways toward the floor. Trafalgar Law was already bent over him, rolling him to his side carefully, and bearing a disturbed expression on his face. Thatch didn't even want to guess what could make the Surgeon of Death squeamish.
And nearby, Kei sat serenely next to Yugito in full meditation pose, but with her head bowed toward her lap. Like she hadn't even noticed Utakata's tumble to the floor.
Thatch reached her, grabbing her shoulder, only to gasp as a similar line of vibrant red blood oozed from her nose. It dripped down her lip and chin, plinking softly against her pant leg. Red dots against tan cloth.
He shook her, just in case. His voice was quiet even to his own ears. "Kei?"
Her body rolled with the motion, coming back to neutral once Thatch stopped. She remained as still as bamboo and didn't open her eyes. Her breathing didn't even hitch as blood continued to fall.
"Kei, come on, we need you—" Thatch shook her again, harder.
No response. Not even an eyelid twitching in a dream.
"The inefficiency makes this Shukaku want to cry like a pathetic human!" The cat-sized Shukaku clone gestured emphatically as it spoke. Like most of its brethren, it was half-enveloped in a disguise of some kind to facilitate its infiltration of Mariejois. In this case, someone in town was missing a breadbox. "And another thing—"
Box Shukaku paused. Its little eyes went dim, as though it blinked without eyelids. The sandy tail thumping on the ground went still. Then sand started seeping out of the joints in the box and its head cracked off like a neglected sandcastle.
"Shukaku? Shukaku, what's wrong?" Sabo grabbed for the grains before he thought about it, but they trickled through his hands.
The box fell open, empty.
Instead of answering, sand ran down from his hat. Sabo whipped it off immediately, shaking himself to dislodge it, and there was no complaint from his passenger. There was no passenger. "This Shukaku" crumbled into nothing without even a cry of surprise.
Across the way, Koala swore loudly as her backpack suddenly weighed more and its occupant's mind vanished. "Sabo—"
"Don't even start—"
Wait. Every time the Seven-Tailed Beast went on an attack run, it was to the sound of a whole swarm of smaller insects. Enough to make up Chōmei's mass. The ultimate cicada summer. But the ever-present noise was gone, and the shadow overhead was blotting out the sun.
And then it was only terror when he realized Chōmei was falling. Plummeting. His gigantic body careened silently to the earth with only the population of the besieged city between him and the ground. In the periphery, Sabo saw the hulking mass that was Shukaku's main body fly apart in the sea crosswind, as fragile as a dune. Without him, there was no one in position to catch Chōmei before he hit the ground.
They were going to die.
Under their feet, the ground rocked ahead of Chōmei's fall. To the cadence of a death march, Sabo's Observation haki lit up his brain in alarm as something huge careened toward them at full speed. The Tailed Beasts were bulky and deceptively fast for their size up to a certain limit. It was hard not to be when their strides easily covered dozens of meters apiece.
"Can anyone read me?" Hack. Had to be.
Koala lifted her tiny transmitter snail to her mouth. She'd been the one to keep correspondence among the chaos. She sounded faint as she answered, "Not now, Hack."
"No, you don't understand, it's—"
A cavernous howl cut off the last segment of Hack's statement, as a titanic red shape launched itself at the falling Tailed Beast with a powerful heave of its forelimbs. Thick-knuckled paws—more human than any of the Tailed Beasts boasted—clapped around Chōmei's carapace, cradling his body like a baby. Curling its whole body around him to absorb the impact, the new monster landed with a meaty thud right into the gilded center of a mansion or two that happened to be in his path. The ground ahead of the refugee column cracked and heaved until the crater stabilized. Red fur was visible over the top of it, along with Chōmei's yellow wings, and for a moment the world was silent.
Then it emerged. Four red tails, spiked on the back, curled around Chōmei's body as the apparent monkey rounded about, reared and drummed his chest with a hooting roar. It sported a pair of crownlike horns winding back from its brow, a pale belly, and an unmistakable top-heavy gorilla shape. Dull fangs poked down from its upper lip even as it closed its mouth and settled back onto its knuckles, clambering out of the crater with an imperious gaze pointed downward.
"So it falls to me to bring this travesty to a close." Its voice was an old man's grumble, but even deeper than Yang Kurama's. Thankfully, he'd apparently learned that speaking at full volume would explode human eardrums, so it was more of a whisper. "The parasite has made its move at last."
Sabo's heart thundered. That had been way too close.
"Is anyone close enough to ask him what the hell he means by that?" Koala demanded. She'd raised her baby transponder snail to her mouth in an effort to get a message through.
"I dunno about you, but I'm not gonna wait to find out," Sabo said, running toward the Tailed Beast at full speed.
"Sir!" the Revolutionary with the black snail ran with him, filling him in on updates. "It's not looking good. Enemy radio chatter states that all Tailed Beasts have fallen!"
"What are the chances of it being a government psyop?!" Koala asked, keeping pace.
"Unless old Kong spontaneously grew a sense of humor? Nil." He gnawed on the butt of his cigarette. "Reports say that the jinchūriki are in a similar state. Killer B went down mid-fight with the Warlord Doflamingo, but they're saying that the Red Force won't let the Marines touch him. The bodies of the Eight- and Nine-Tails have both toppled Marineford Keep. And someone mentioned seeing the Five-Tails go down in the icefield. No reports on the Two-, Three-, or Six-Tails."
Sabo's stomach sank at the news. That meant… Naruto… Ace!
"Chōmei!" Koala shouted as they drew nearer, drawing the attention of the biggest ape—monkey?—Sabo could name. She ran directly up to one handlike foot with an arm waving to catch the beast's attention, undaunted by his size. "Is Chōmei okay?!"
"And who might you be to speak to my sibling with such informality?" The Four-Tails glowered haughtily down at them with eyes that burned like coals. Heat, like a blast furnace, issued from his jaws, rocking them back on their heels. Sabo felt his hat crisp a little. "The audacity of humanity knows no bounds."
Koala, not one to be cowed, frowned severely up at the great ape with a stubborn set to her jaw. "He's our friend and ally! If he wanted me to try being ultra-polite, he would have just told me to my face!"
"Friend?! Nonsense." He huffed but not in amusement, a meaty hand the size of a plaza waving dismissively. "No human understands the pain of a Tailed Beast. Even jinchūriki claim suffering not their own and cling to our power like ticks."
Okay, this conversation was going absolutely nowhere fast.
Swiping off his hat, Sabo tried to appear contrite, his expression imploring as he gazed up that the blatantly distrustful face of this new Tailed Beast. There was a story behind his words, that was for sure. A tiny part of Sabo's brain demanded to know if what this creature had gone through was worse than the slaves of the Celestial Dragons, but this wasn't the time for that. That could be a campfire story once the situation was less fraught.
Especially when their already-allied Tailed Beasts were all unavailable.
Instead, Sabo dropped into a deep bow he hadn't needed since childhood. A childhood he remembered now, thanks to the Four-Tails's siblings. "Please, I implore you, Mighty Lord. We've heard news that a similar fate has befallen your other siblings and their humans." It took some doing to get his voice loud enough to still carry, but there was a trick to it. And haki, when all else failed. "We just want to know if they're all right."
A deep rumbling growl echoed around them as the Four-Tails considered his request, burning eyes narrowing in contemplation as she stroked his jowls.
"Your manners are better than that other one, I suppose," he snipped. He ignored the way this prompted Koala to shoot Sabo a sour look, which Sabo returned with a wink behind the fringe of his hair. The Four-Tails crossed his massive arms almost exactly like Garp would when delivering a lecture, entirely above plebeian concerns. "Oh, very well. But I would have you call me 'the Great Sage Equalling Heaven.' Not this measly 'Mighty Lord' drivel."
One of the men coughed. He had a slave child on his back, who stared up at the red beast with her tiny mouth agape. "Uh…sir? Don't you have anything shorter?"
The self-proclaimed Great Sage's expression twisted slightly. "No."
Sabo would bet Mariejois's entire stockpile of ill-gotten imperial goods that the Great Sage had just lied right to their faces.
"Listen closely." The Great Sage sat back on his haunches, leaning on Chōmei's unresponsive bulk as other Revolutionaries directed refugees toward escape vessels around him. He evidently didn't think they were worth the effort. " For I will tell you of Kannon, the dead god's rot at the heart of this world."