Five Point Island (139)

[Gutsy]

The air around the masked man had been the same throughout the entire encounter, and the last embers of the seal on Giyu faded. Giyu remained where he stood for a moment, his breath slow and steady. The heat beneath his skin was still there, muted, but it was a comforting heat. The Five-Tails was revealed and restrained now, but he still felt as if it was watching and waiting. He looked down at his own hands, they were steady. The tag that the masked man had given him was resting in his palm, the tink was still warm. The scroll was half buried in the sand beside him, perhaps an invitation.

Giyu was steady and relaxed for once, letting the heat flow through him, replenishing him. He could feel Gobi stir within him, not with anger, not in defiance, but it felt as if it was accepting its current situation. No words were spoken between them. Giyu believe he was not a cage, but believed that him and the Gobi were destined to be partners.

“…When I’m ready,” Giyu murmured to the empty shoreline, fingers curling around the scroll as the steam finally faded from his skin. Then, with slow resolve, he turned away from the sea, facing inland.

- Mission End

 

[Gutsy]

Missions:

• Stabilize and reinforce a deteriorating tailed-beast seal through direct internal confrontation with the sealed entity. (A-rank Custom)
• Neutralize Unknown Entity: “Arali-Class Construct” (A-rank Custom)

---

The first time the seal burned right through his bones, was at the moonless night half a year ago, near the lake of his home, when the chakra monster got caught in rusty metal chains and was compressed right into him, leaving only dozens of dead bodies and a humongous hollow crater behind.
It was no different than a war, with no less orphans left grieving and stranded. And Giyu’s world changed overnight.

He had the compatibility, they had said. That he would be alright, that he could handle it, and that he wasn’t high enough in the chain of command to actually harm the village if everything went wrong.
He was chosen for the sake of his small insignificant village, and he didn’t mind. The way people, friends, acquaintances and strangers alike slowly walked away from him, kept a distance, and muttered nasty remarks when they thought he wasn’t listening. he was fine with those, too. The pain, though, sometimes could be too much.

It took two months for the previously stable seal to start pulsing, glowing faintly. And then the pain would follow, and Giyu had spent countless nights holding his head and wrist, trying to keep the white-hot sensation in his own body, stubbornly refusing to let it leak out onto the tiles and into the air. He had water affinity. His chakra was supposed to be cool and calm, so he didn’t understand how it could be burning.

Giyu let out a strangled cry as his consciousness kept being pulled under. It was hard, holding onto the light as it was, and the gargled whispers behind the mountain in his mind wasn’t helping either.

“out… me out…”

Giyu couldn’t make sense of the words, could only grit his teeth and brush what healing chakra he could manage to the seal that was starting to glow more and more red, but the voice kept getting stronger. It echoed, bumping around in his head like a rubber ball, and with a last deafening roar in his ears Giyu’s vision went black.

He blinked up awake to a dark place, mist wafting around his face and water pooling to his ankles.

“So your back already…”

Giyu knew that voice. Refused to acknowledge it. He stood up and quietly looked around instead, and his eyes landed at… white. Dusty white, with reds around the eyes. That was…

“Five-Tails” Giyu murmured, and said monster rattled in its chains, its horns moving as its head jingled the manacle around its neck. All four of its legs were chained, too, sticking to the ground in a somewhat awkward angle. It looked painful. Giyu stared up at the ringed eyes, ignoring the faint chill running up and down his spine.

“Stop trying to get out of the seal” he said, not quite a command, but not a plea either. The monster stared at him like he was looking at a particularly weird-looking bug.

“This place is too small for me,” it said, and Giyu just barely managed not to close his ears in response to the all-encompassing voice, “That thing you vermin call a ‘seal’… is no more than a time-limited repressor for my chakra. Sooner or later, these chains are going to wither away.”

Giyu looked closer, and true enough, some of the metal were already rusting, corroded, and the air was getting hotter and hotter, the water under him simmering and bubbling slightly.

“If you don’t want me to tear over a hole through this space to the outside,” Five-Tails said, voice a warning and teeth bared in a manic smirk, “Control that.”

A white, scorching something hovered around Giyu’s abdomen and burned through his flesh.

The pain was endless. At least, that’s what he thought. One second he was gasping for air in a part of his subconscious, and the next he was back in his bed, the room hissing heat like every single furniture was put just a little too close to a fire.

Giyu took a few deep, calming breaths, staring at his left wrist. The seal was still intact. Same as always, really, but Five-Tails’ words kept repeating in his mind. If it was going to be broken.

There was a presence. Faint and flickering, like Giyu had felt of people trying to hold onto the last of their lives. But it was also… weird. It felt too natural to be human, but too heavy to be natural chakra used in sage mode. Just what was it…

Shaking off his nerves, Giyu grabbed his sword and slipped out of the house, trying to trace the presence. It took him to the outskirts of the village before it stopped, not doing anything. Taking a breath and making sure that the seal wasn’t going to go awry again, Giyu came out of his hide from behind a sharp, weather-worn rock, to find… a rock person.

Giyu grabbed the hilt of his sword. Born and raised in the Land of Fire, he wasn’t unfamiliar with earth jutsus. There were a lot of techniques that make use of the elements as an armor. The first dream of any earth country children was to be able to fight as an invincible stoneman, reigning superior to any weapon. Which, now that Giyu thought about it, reminded him of an old tale strewn across the country. An entity made of rock, chasing out intruders that dared to hike certain mountains, and… The person, or whatever it was, skin dark and scraggy, chakra not quite human but also not quite anything else… turned his head to look at him. Giyu didn’t flinch at the pupilless eyes,

but he did get a terrible goosebump at the pair of stumps under the person’s arms. Did it have… two sets of…

Without any cue, the stoneman lunged at him. The movement wasn’t smooth nor fast, but it was surprising enough that Giyu just barely took out his sword to block. The resounding clash was harsh in the dead of the night, but Giyu paid it no mind and tilted the angle of the blade, coming right to cut the person’s neck.

And it didn’t feel like a neck. Giyu’s arms trembled with recoil as it felt like he had just hit a whole metal boulder.

Clicking his tongue, Giyu jumped a few feet back, letting his arms rest for a moment and willing the gears in his head to turn.

He was facing a hostile enemy. Earth jutsu specialist, most probably. And visibly, if only for the way the person moved, wounded, for whatever reason. His best move would be to test…

“That is not of your kind.” Giyu frowned. Five-Tails’ subjective comment on any situation was usually unwelcome, but right now, it sounded clear enough that Giyu didn’t feel the need to tune it out. Moreover…

Is that a jinchuuriki? He asked, because that was what it was, wasn’t it? Bijuu was just an enormous lump of chakra, unable to truly die and was a part of the world itself, so it could feel different from any normal shinobi. And a jinchuuriki that had lost its control over the seal might go in a blind rampage, much like the one Giyu was confronting.

But the Five-Tails harrumphed, and if Giyu didn’t know better he would think it was offended,

“No,” it answered, “Not a jinchuuriki.”

Giyu tipped his head up as the stoneman charged forward again, this time with a barrage of earth raising and collapsing onto each other in a lap, forming a huge wave that might just eat anyone alive.

That looks a lot like an earth jutsu, Giyu thought, not minding whether the bijuu inside him was listening or not, jumping up and away. The jutsu was relentless, though, barricading his escape ways, and in no time Giyu found his back meeting another rock wall.

“Rock and a hard place,” Giyu heard Five-Tails mutter, and he didn’t appreciate the sarcasm.

He would appreciate a help though, because cutting a big rock is one thing, but cutting a rockslide is another, and right now there was a whole gang of moving rocks that would definitely count as a disaster.

“Brace for it,” was all the Five-Tails said before the seal flared up again, and Giyu flinched, vision getting blurry at the way the beast’s chakra stemmed and clouded around his body like a blanket.

And Giyu did. Brace for it. He took a stance, took a deep breath, and when there was no time left, he struck. Cutting through the jutsu was nothing like cutting butter with a knife. It was like trying to shift your whole body through dozen feet of wet concrete, and with his limbs enforced with a tailed beast chakra, Giyu barely managed to get out of it alive.

“Up.” Giyu took half a breath and looked up, already side-stepping, and the human-but-not hit the ground, cracking the earth and rocks beneath it. Giyu continued to hold his breath. Now that he was adapting to the white-tinted vision, it felt more and more like his mind was fading. It wouldn’t be long before the Five-Tails control his mind and get out, he thought, and glanced at the seal on his wrist.

Still intact, which was good. Glowing faintly, which was not.

“…Five-Tails,” Giyu called, and tried to remember what it was that boiled him alive in his subconscious. The monster responded with a questioning grunt, and Giyu took the chance, “You control water, don’t you.”

There was a pause, “Something like that.”

“I’m going to fight,” Giyu said, eyes locked on the humanoid something that was starting to stumble toward him again, “Let me borrow your chakra.”

There wasn’t any pause this time, “Sure,” the bijuu said easily, all devils and scheming tones. “Just don’t forget to return it.”

And Giyu’s vision didn’t get any clearer. It got worse, actually, but his mind didn’t get pulled anymore. His head was crystal clear, and he tried to breathe through the chakra blanketing him.

Not quite water, he took one hand off the sword, forming a seal, but similar enough. Giyu was gifted with the affinity of water, after all.

Once the seals were done, Giyu opened his mouth, the chakra moulded from his core coming out in torrents of water. It swirled up, bubbling and turning, and formed into another creature of the legends. “Water Release: Water Dragon” With the whispered command, the dragon surged up, and barraged down on the stoneman. Giyu watched as the clear liquid had a different tint to it, a haze underlaying each drop.
The rock creature had really been truly wounded, Giyu thought, because once the dragon had sizzled out of sight, there was nothing but empty ground.

And suddenly, all the powers were sucked out of him. Every last bit of chakra, leaving him just enough not to die, and Giyu fell on one knee before deciding that the damp soil was good enough to lay down on.

He was thinking - well, trying to think about that rock monster. Trying to remember what he knew and piece the puzzle, because there shouldn’t be many things able to hike up the mountains and get inside the protective shield around the village. But with his chakra sapped out of him, he really needed to make a clear pact with Five-Tails, and the remnant of the nightmare still haunting behind his eyelids, the exhaustion was winning by miles.


Another time. He would figure it out later. What was important right now, though…

Giyu looked at the spot where his dragon previously stood.

It was… water, but not quite it. Not the usual blue-tinted liquid Giyu was so familiar of seeing. And it was simmering, just slightly. Giyu thought back to his nightmare, what happened in front of the tailed beast and the chains. Something that burned him to the bones would be more than just boiling water. It reminded him a lot of fire, actually.

…Water. And fire. It was…

Giyu closed his eyes, imagining the white chakra around him. The way he felt blissful cold and blazing heat at the same time. The way it was hard to breathe through, how that power alone obliterated the stoneman and left nothing but dust after it.

“Your power” Giyu murmured, believing now that the beast was listening, “I’m going to control it.”

 

[Gutsy]

Missions:

• Tame the Beast Within (A-rank Custom)
• Neutralize Unknown Entity: “Arali-Class Construct” (A-rank Custom)

---

He had made a truce with the Five-Tails. Kind of.

It was more like a bet. Ever since Giyu found out that properly using the beast’s chakra made the seal stabilize somewhat, he had asked Five-Tails to let him use a portion of it from now on, and the monster had said yes.

Not without a condition, though.

He had had to go to a forbidden, uninhibited part of the country to meditate in a weirdly uninfected cave and fight the dark part of his own soul. It wasn’t hard, as Giyu had long since accepted that shinobi would have to carry the burden of countless fallen comrades on their backs, and he managed to make his dark self surrender and merge with him.

The next step was to go further into the cave, to a room where three statues stood adorning its big gates. The gods of old, Five-Tails had mentioned, and Giyu didn’t really understand much so he just hummed and got into the room.

He fought the Five-Tails in there. Specifically, in his subconscious. His task was to pull the monster’s chakra in a tug-of-war fashion, while carefully maintaining his own not to get infected by the spiteful energy and be forced into a tailed-beast mode in the real world.

After thinking things through, Giyu decided to leave a water bunshin behind. That copy of himself would be able to force him to consciousness if, and when, he started to grow chakra tails.

And he submerged the whole of his subconscious with water.

It was not a sane idea, but he couldn’t see another way to win against Five-Tails on his own. With his chakra reserves and a fleeting prayer that it would work, Giyu filled up the space with water. It started small, before the surface rose. Higher and higher. Above his ankles. His knees. His abdomen. Not long, the water was deeper than he was tall, and Five-Tails’ eyes went wider and wider.

“You” it growled, “What are you doing?”

Giyu didn’t feel the need to answer that. Just focusing on morphing his chakra into water, spitting it out, and trying not to drown himself.


Five-Tails thrashed in its chain, hissing and growling, throwing out age-old curses. Giyu didn’t pay it any mind, and not long the beast was completely submerged, its chains preventing it to go anywhere, Giyu floating safely near the water surface.

Giyu made a personification of his chakra, the first and only one he could most likely make, given how exhausted he was, and it swum to the tailed beast. The chakra clone grabbed the monster’s body, carefully eyeing its limbs and horns, and pulled.

The white-red chakra got pulled relatively easily, and Giyu fought against the mind-numbing phantom pain of having to pull the enormous energy out. Five-Tails thrashed around again, and the clone slowed, as if stumbling on the ground, but Giyu caught it before it could poof out of sight. And the light that surged was blinding enough he had to shield his eyes.

It took him a moment to realize that the one shining white and red was him.

Giyu blinked back to the real world, his bunshin melting out of sight, but the light persisted, enveloping his whole body. It formed a weird, four horns on his head, red mark under his eyes, sharpness in his teeth and a tail sticking out of his back.

…oh.

He did it.

“Curiosity killed the cat” was the first thing Five-Tails said to him ever since Giyu had acquired its chakra.
They were out at the southern part of the country, tracing a presence that Giyu had felt a few minutes ago, and now he was starting to hear a rush of water from somewhere “Good thing you’re not Two-Tails, then,” he muttered in response.

In all honesty, they probably shouldn’t follow the presence. Should just let the it go, minding their own business.

But it was similar. To that one creature he met before; the stoneman. The chakra, anyway. Like something flowing in the air and inside the soil. In grass and trees and clouds. But condensed enough it should have a strong enough vessel lest it burst.

Eventually, Giyu reached a barren hill with a deep valley cutting through it, where a river was flowing from the south to the north, some twenty meters down. Giyu looked to the left and found, right there, the source of the presence, standing - no, hovering right at the edge.

It was… something that looked like a human. Or a ghost. Pale skin that was almost translucent, with dark blue hair that reached all the way down and dragging on the ground. Giyu might have mistaken it for a shinobi, if not for the fact that it was wearing no uniform and donning no symbol, eyes glowing faintly. It tilted its head at him, not looking anything beyond mildly intrigued.


Giyu glanced at the river below, then at his wrist. The seal was still there, black and daunting as ever, and a thought occurred to him.

Giyu walked a bit closer, made eye contact with the creature, and tested it with a slash. It was a simple, practiced one, executed in a straight horizontal line.

And it had no effect. The ghost, or whatever it was, burst into something… transparent. Liquid. It bubbled and moved, knitting the wound closed, as if it had never been attacked before. Giyu stared.

“Water” the growingly-familiar voice said in Giyu’s mind, laced with part-fascination and part-aggravation. Giyu nodded, more to himself than anything. A fellow water jutsu user, then? He didn’t see any seal being made, though. A clone would have immediately broken after an attack like that. Then what…

“You’re stubborn,” Five-Tails scoffed, “I said, that is not of your kind.”

“And not yours?” Giyu asked, taking a stance. The probably-ghost looked a little annoyed and was gliding closer.

“No.” Five-Tails huffed, “And not a ghost either.”

Giyu didn’t really know what else there was. A summon? Last he checked there was no record of a flying, humanoid summon made of something that looked half-tangible.

“A spirit?” The tailed beast was muttering to himself now, “No, that’s more like…”

Giyu tuned out the rest of it, focusing on the not-spirit instead. It was spinning, its hands reached out and bubbling up, and not long there was a flow of water just a touch slower than a tornado. Giyu pushed chakra to the balls of his feet, trying not to get swept, but the water barged on him instead, filling in space, and Giyu took one last full breath before half-closing his eyes, engulfed in the liquid.

There was light. Bright and scattered, and Giyu had to take a double take at the… wings? Sprouting from the back of the creature.

Wings. That could only be…

“Get out of here, Kid,” Five-Tails murmured, “Got no chance against that.” and Giyu had a similar thought in mind, but…

He threw the first attack, before. Running away wasn’t exactly an option.

The creature swam, or more like blitz through, the gap between them, and Giyu parried an attack aimed at his chest. He dodged next, ducking under, and spun, slashing to his right. The creature dodged easily, and its hands transformed into a pair of whips, dark blue and serrated. It attacked with wide, thunderous angles. Giyu stood on the defensive, but the weapon scratched his arms, legs, and his face, and there are red floating up and around his vision.

Giyu gritted his teeth. Before the whip could nail him on the side, he pivoted, haori fluttering with his body’s movement, and swung his sword in a sideways arc. He could feel rushing water, and the numbed echo of the clash of the weapons carry through the space. They stared each other down for a fleeting moment before pulling back just to strike another blow.

The creature made a sweeping motion with its arms, and the water around the whips shift, following the movement, sharp as river current. Giyu answered by channelling chakra to his blade, turning it bright, and as it caught the dim light of the surface Giyu lunged, target in his eyes and precision in his blade. The creature spun its arms in front of it, long and fast enough to form a shield, and the slash got bounced back, barely doing any damage.

After pushing Giyu back a few feet, the creature blasted the whip again, toward his legs this time, and Giyu defended with the sword brought low and tilted a bit upward. The whip moved, not unlike a snake, and it stopped half-a-blink in the air before rushing down hard. Giyu barely had time to dodge, and when it suddenly went up again Giyu had to use a hand to block it before it hit his chin. Giyu grabbed the weapon, tried to pull it but it broke free from his grip, skin pulling on its surface and blood splattering on the ground.

They traded blows for a couple times. The creature moving her whips like one would a long, flexible blade, and Giyu trying to hold his ground with red coming off his wounds and tainting the water.

It went for a while before Giyu felt a sickening contraction in his chest and swallowed the need to breathe. He kept going. The creature moved smoothly, as if it was one with the water, motions swift and almost beautiful. Which was very in contrast with the water it was now shooting Giyu with. It was fierce, heavy, and totally not something he could win against with a blade. When spots started to come in his vision, Giyu quickly sheathed his sword and made a few hand seals, stopping with ‘Dog’, and the water around him swirled, guiding him up, and upon breaching the surface Giyu took mouthful of breaths.

The break didn’t last long, as another wave swept him back down, and Giyu tried to imbue his whole body with chakra, his limbs shimmering with sky-blue light. At the very least, he shouldn’t get crushed by the sheer pressure of the water.

But there was a problem. In a fight of a same element, the one with the larger chakra reserves had the advantage, and Giyu was sure that creature could flood an entire country twice over.

Then, he thought, and grabbed his wrist, ready to crack open the seal a bit. But…

No, Giyu thought, just more chakra wouldn’t be enough.

He had to do more.

“I’m loosening the seal” Giyu finally said, putting a blue-lit thumb on his wrist. The black ink swirled slowly, morphing into another shape with a hiss, and he added, “Cooperate, Five- Tails.” He didn’t know if the beast would do as he say. Wasn’t even sure if it heard him, really. But he had to try.

If I die, so does the Five Tails, Giyu thought, and with that in mind, he stared up at the entity, which had been watching him with a twinkling, swirly gaze, and a rush of chill and heat brushed around his body. He looked down and saw the white-red chakra around him, edges sharp as razor, and he could even feel the weight of horns on his head and tails on his back.

Giyu breathed in, he could actually breathe in the water, somehow, and clenched his fists. He stood no chance in a water versus water fight. Not against his current enemy. But maybe…

He weaved through hand seals, ending with a ‘Tiger’ this time…

“Do it right.”​

…and blasted an attack out of his mouth.

Maybe if he added fire in it, he could do something.

And something he did. The jutsu enhanced with Five-Tails’ chakra washed through the previous bubble of water. They collided, mounting over and over against each other, and there was a distinct hiss of water evaporating, turning to the air. Giyu swam up in the midst of the blur of his vision, and found that it wasn’t as far to the surface as before.

Seeing the water receding, Giyu did the same hand seals again and the boiling water burned along his pipes, bursting out in a blast, wiping out the rest of the creature’s flood, and soon there was no trace of the giant water bubble except the inches of mud left above the cliff.

Giyu coughed, falling on one knee but he managed to ward off the black spots in front of him. The Five-Tails’ chakra was petering off, leaving his body numb and weirdly cold, but he had to make sure that…

There. The winged figure. It was… building itself up, half its body melted like candle and faintly shimmering, steam coming off it. Giyu took a couple breaths and stood up on wobbly legs.

Giyu grabbed his sword with a tight grip and forced his body forward. The creature was still trying to pull itself together, its watery body falling apart as steam rolled around it. Giyu did not give it a chance to recover. He channeled steam through his katana, as he drove it through the chest releasing it within, bursting out. The entities body shrieked before it exploded in a mist of water and dissolving into air.

The backlash hit Giyu instantly. A crushing wave of force hurled him backward, sending him flying and rolling across the rocky ground. His vision blurry and his ears ringing as he finally came to a stop.

And yet when he tried to push himself off the ground, it gave way beneath him. With a sharp crack, the cliffside collapsed, and Giyu felt everything drop out under him. Too exhausted to react, he tumbled down, feeling the cold wind against his face as he saw the water below him coming closer.

 

[Gutsy]

Missions:

• Learn from the Five Tails in Combat (A-rank Custom)
• Neutralize Unknown Entity: “Arali-Class Construct” (A-rank Custom)

---

“That way leads to the ancient.”
Giyu didn’t blink as the voice, much more familiar now, easing into their shared mind space, spoke from inside his head.

They had been traveling for another couple weeks and the Five-Tails had been quiet. Giyu suspected the beast had still been angry with what occurred at the cliff near the Land of the Water’s border, but it wasn’t like he could do anything about it now.

Giyu glanced up at the sky and tipped his head, “I know.”

“And you’re deliberately going there?”​

“Yes” he said without a beat, and could feel the growl that follow the answer. But Five Tails didn’t say anything and merely retreated back, their telepathy immediately cut off from one side. Giyu continued his trek through the pathless hike.

Taking control of Five-Tails’ power had been advantageous, so far. Using the beast’s chakra had stabilized the sealing mark for a decent amount of time. He had tried to use it for other things, too. Hunting missing nin for their bounty, helping towns and villages, taking jobs and cases from Country Lords and noblemen.

Then again, none of what he did required exactly the amount of effort of taking down a divine entity. He had never had the real need to use the Five-Tails’ chakra, except once or twice, and never the full force. It was… almost boring, if he could say. No real challenge that could scrape off the excess chakra, and no real urgency that would force him to tame the power.

Except…

Giyu had been looking into it. That water spirit-like creature from the cliff, and the stoneman from the village. It had been… weird, at first, the things he had found and heard. Hard to believe, that something that had been in another plane altogether had broken over and come here. Angels, some people called them. Though there were a lot of stories portraying them as beings from the underworld, too. Shadows lurking in between corners, faceless beings in dreams, a whiff of the wind that knit close scars and wounds.

It was borderline unbelievable, but there were witnesses, and from what Giyu himself had seen, he couldn’t say he didn’t believe it.

So that was what he had to hunt. Angels.

Reckless, he knew. Arrogant and foolish, the beast would say. But Giyu couldn’t come up with another solution. Going around looking for trouble all around the elemental nations would make him an international enemy, stamped and sealed in every nation’s bingo book, and he didn’t need that kind of attention.

So that was what he was doing now. A gang of cultists from the village at the feet of the mountain had mentioned their ‘god’. The mountain’s guardian, residing all the way up at the peak itself, protecting their rich and fertile land, untouched by any mercenaries.

Giyu had no plan of going around killing people’s god, but he was sure it was no god that stayed up at that sharp, snowy peak, located even higher than the clouds. Either the god that the cult referred to didn’t exist, or it was something that Giyu had been wanting to find.

And he did find it. A dozen feet short of the topmost rock, sitting still like it was in vigil. Giyu blinked at the creature.

It was another stoneman.

Then again, the stoneman he first saw in his village was nothing like this one.

What he was seeing now was a sturdy, sharp-edged, humanoid that would probably reach over seven feet tall. It had limbs of what could be igneous rocks, and as Giyu had feared before, this one had two pairs of hands, located under the normal one, just as big and menacing as the other.

“Not too late to turn back”​

Giyu acted like he didn’t hear that, and his sword slid out of its scabbard. He could hear the aggravated sigh from the Five-Tails.

“You’re stubborn as a rock.”​

Giyu was about to use his trademark testing-the-waters slash, when the creature suddenly snapped his eyes open and glared right at him. The gaze was much more intense than the one he had confronted back at the village.

The creature, eyes still wide open and locked onto the shinobi, slowly rose. It was slow, followed by the sound of rocks grating against each other, and Giyu thought that while two meters were the right approximation of its height, the way it stood must have added a couple metaphorical inches.

As the entity walked closer, Giyu used its third step as cue to attack. He unleashed the horizontal strike, clean and fast, and it made contact.

Giyu frowned as his sword embedded into the stoneman’s body, refusing to be pulled out.

Before Giyu could do something about his weapon, a fist came right at him, and Giyu just managed to angle his body toward the direction of the strike before he got thrown off a couple good feet. His side skid against the ground before he rolled, and when he slowed down a face was already up on his, and the next Giyu was punched another way.

Maneuvering his body as best as he could to lessen the damage and not lose his balance, Giyu jumped back, putting enough distance between them. He shouldn’t let the stone gain momentum, he thought, and his vision swam for a second before righting itself up.

“That’s what happens when you take a punch to the face.”​

Giyu frowned, ignoring the tangy taste in his mouth “Be quiet.”

“Would love to,” Five-Tails said, and there was a tone of mocking lining his words, “but you suck so much at bare-handed fights that it’s funny.”

Giyu sent a mental glance at the tailed beast. Five-Tails just smiled, all teeth, “Just use my chakra. Would make all this easier.”

That had been what Giyu had wanted to do. But now that the beast mentioned it like it was his idea, Giyu didn’t feel as motivated to do it anymore. “I can win without using the jinchuuriki mode.” “And without your sword, too?”

Giyu didn’t have an answer to that, and Five-Tails snorted, smug.

While it was true that he might be able to win, at least, defeat the stoneman enough for him to escape, doing so without his blade would prove to be much harder. He had a couple jutsus in his arsenal, but not enough to win against such divinity. Except if he uses the…

…Five-Tails was right. Giyu really hated to admit it.

“I’m going to use it” Giyu finally said with a faint sigh, “Just until I can grab my sword back” He could just feel Five-Tails’ serrated smile getting wider, “Yeah, yeah. Go on”

Giyu closed his eyes, and focused on his wrist. He should be able to do this without loosening the seal first, now. Just send chakra to his core, drive them all the way to the seal, following his chakra path. Then go to the subspace of his subconscious, the one where everything was white and bright, reach out a hand, and…
Giyu felt the wind brushing up his whole body. Felt himself lighter. And his haori had changed, white with tints of red, flaring up like flame but scattering at the edges. There were chakra horns on his temple and a chakra tail on his back, as well as what looked like cracked animal skull on the side of his face.

Before neither Giyu nor the beast could comment on his new transformation, Giyu felt a fluctuating blip, and the next second he clashed, head to head, with the stoneman who had taken the chance to attack. Giyu blocked the stone’s big rock arm with his own, strengthened by the tailed beast power.

The stoneman followed up the strike with his left fists. Giyu blocked it with his right, faintly aware of how his body was pushed back. Giyu looped his right arm on the left of the rocky limb, pulled it down, and brought down a strong left on the creature’s head, his fist clad in some kind of exoskeleton. The creature dodged, and Giyu used his previous momentum to bring his left hand forward again, aiming for its neck, and it tilted back at an impossible speed, the attack barely reaching.

“Spread out the chakra” Five-Tails piped up, not really harsh enough to be a command, and Giyu frowned. How was he supposed to spread it out?

“Just think of it as an extension of your hand” Five-Tails said again, and Giyu could almost see the way the beast was tap-tapping his foot, as if giving a demonstration impatiently.

“Easier said than done,” Giyu muttered, but tried it anyway.

Hand… an extension of my hand.

There was a leg, right up above Giyu’s head. Giyu didn’t have time to dodge and he put out his arms, braced against each other. He stepped back a few paces, still trying to spread out the white-red of the biju’s chakra, and continued to block the stoneman’s continuous punches aimed at his face and body.

It had been a while since the last time he fought seriously with a taijutsu user. But then, the stoneman also used…

As if finishing that thought, something hard and heavy grabbed on Giyu’s shoulder. Giyu flinched, tried to get loose to no avail. He saw as the hardened soil around his shoulder was connected to the arm of the stoneman.

Giyu took a punch right to the head, barely following the direction of the hit. Stars burst in his eyes, but he kept as steady as possible, reaching up a hand.

“Water Release” he murmured, hand positioned in a seal, and breathed out small bubbles of high-pressure water, “Water Bullet”

Five-Tails grunted, “Make it steam release”

“Later”

The attacks hit, cracks and holes appearing on some part of the creature’s body. It was slowly regenerating, and Giyu took the time to close his eyes, focused on gathering the chakra to his free hand, and when the energy was dense enough to buzz, he cut down the soil trapping his arm.

Giyu jumped back a few feet, rolling his shoulder. Still fine, thankfully. It would be bad to get a limb dislocated at a time like this.

“Eyes to the front, Brat”​

The warning had Giyu snapping his eyes forward, just in time to roll out of the way of the walls appearing right out of the ground, placed neatly in a row like dominoes, tall and probably hard as metal.

A hand, Giyu reiterated in his mind, the chakra is a part of my hand.

Maybe it’s because he was in a deadly match, or that Five-Tails had been reluctantly helping, or that he simply had been chanting the words over and over again that Giyu could feel, slowly and still uneven, how the chakra around his hands spread outward, scattered but formed enough, and Giyu used it to block another wave of soil coming his way.

Five-Tails made a low ‘heh’ sound, and Giyu breathed out. The chakra had been getting hotter and his body was trying to adapt with it.

“Now let’s try destroying it, Kid” Five-Tails said again. Giyu observed how the chakra was forming a claw-like limb, “I’m not a kid.”

Clenching his hands, Giyu saw the soil crumbling down like sandcastle, and he could see the stoneman standing behind it.

“I’m centuries older than you.”​

“Still not a kid.”

Giyu tried forming water from his core using the beast’s chakra, and it wasn’t quite steam yet, but the water was boiling, sweeping the stoneman off its feet, flooding the space.

Five-Tails huffed as the stoneman tried to hold his ground, “Fine,” He said, the creature slowly losing parts of itself as the water brushed it away “But I’m not Five-Tails, either.”

Giyu raised a brow at that. ‘Then what are you?’ he’s trying to convey. Five-Tails took a moment to respond.

“Kokuo” it said, and it had a weird, indecipherable tone to it, “You better remember it, Kid”

Giyu blinked. So even Tailed Beasts had names. “Did you…”

“That’s yours, Giyu”​

Giyu looked up, the stoneman trying to mold the soil back into limbs, and Giyu could spot his sword in between the crumbling rocks.

Giyu leapt in a shunshin, took the blade and somersaulted back. He put it in its sheath and did one last hand seal.

The last wave of the boiling water wave took the stoneman, scattered somewhere around the mountain, and Giyu sighed. The tailed-beast chakra snuffed away, leaving him back in his usual haori, and this time he didn’t feel the last of his chakra being seeped away with it.

“Thanks,” he said after a thoughtful moment, clenching a hand “Kokuo.” There was no respond, but Giyu nodded to himself anyway.

 

[Gutsy]

Missions:

• Synchronize with the Five-Tails under Genjutsu (A-rank Custom)
• Neutralize Unknown Entity: “Arali-Class Construct” (A-rank Custom)

---

When Giyu first received the order, he took time to stare blankly, blinked, and slowly accepted the scroll of mission details from the hidden organisation. He strolled back to the cave he had set up as temporary basecamp, located just far enough from civilian dwellings to have some privacy but close enough that there weren’t wild animals roaming around. The tops of Takigakure’s waterfalls jutted out from afar, half-hidden by the trees of the forest. Giyu sat cross-legged on the grass at the mouth of the cave.
“They are telling us to exterminate a ghost,” Kokuo slowly said after a momentary silence, disbelief marring his tone.
“A very aggressive ghost, apparently,” Giyu responded, opening the scroll and starting to read from the beginning. It was mostly the summary of recollections from the villagers. More than a dozen people had been allegedly attacked and half of them had disappeared, apparently in a span of two months, and two babies had vanished without a trace.
Giyu didn’t know if tailed beasts could read or not, so he murmured the words. Kokuo kept silent, and if Giyu didn’t know better he would think the Five-Tails was reading along over his shoulder.
“I have heard that before,” Kokuo eventually said when Giyu was reading for himself for the second time.
“Which part?”
“Mysterious kidnapping,” Kokuo huffed, “happened often a long time ago.”
The kidnapping, huh. “Was it human?” Giyu skimmed the paper, “the ones behind it.”
“Those slippery shifters?” Kokuo scoffed “No.”
Shifters?
Giyu asked again, inquiring about the elaboration, but the tailed beast merely grunted, faint sound of chains rattling in the background “You’ll see when we meet them.”
.
They carried the mission at night, barely after the sun went down. The village was eerily quiet, and while it was common for country folks to go to bed at such an early hour, there should still be some of them roaming the streets. The houses were silent, too, Giyu noted, despite the lights still seemingly on.
Giyu waited on one of the trees, waiting, a hand around his waist in case he had to unsheathe his sword. The nights in the village were colder than his old home, maybe because they had gotten considerably closer to the sea and its colder climate. And that was where the urban legend came from, too. While there were stonemen, there were ghosts in Fire.

Giyu wasn’t sure what they were looking for. Upon asking the Five-Tails, the beast just answered, “Anything out of place.”
Giyu sometimes hoped that tailed beasts wouldn’t be so cryptic.
Two hours in, and there was a shadow. Fast and swift, almost uncaught in the periphery of Giyu’s sight. The shinobi whipped his head to the direction, and with soundless steps track the shadow. Which, it turned out, only to be a harmless hare, burrowing around looking for its form. Giyu loosens his grip on his sword’s handle with a sigh, going back to his watch spot.
There were a few similar false alarms after that, and one hour before midnight one of the villager’s houses open, slow and careful, but the creaky sound was clear. Giyu zoomed in to see and found a man, probably in his thirties, carrying a bundled up something, essentially tiptoeing out of the house.
Giyu observed for a bit longer, and before the man could disappear out of the tree line that made up the village’s border, he jumped down and decided on the most direct approach.
“Halt,” Giyu said, a sword pointed forward, and the man almost shrieked before clapping a hand to his mouth, muffling his voice. The bundle moved slightly.
“Where are you going?” Giyu asked, ignoring the distress flowing off the man.
“The well,” the man answered, almost high-pitched, “My wife and son need water, but there isn’t any left in the house.”
“Son?”
“Yeah, here-“ the man shifted the bundle and revealed a sleeping baby cocooned in soft blankets, “I-I know it’s not safe to go out around this time, but the neighbours don’t accept visitors at night anymore.”
It almost sounded like pleading, and after staring the man down for a moment, Giyu lowered his sword. “Where is the well?” he asked, “I’ll accompany you there.”
The man’s face lighted up, and he nodded low a couple times, throwing words of gratitude. Giyu waved it off with a quiet nod, following the man’s steps.
“A weak male with a newborn?” Kokuo pointed out, “They are perfect bait, Giyu”
We’re not using civilians as bait, Giyu responded in his mind.
“You shinobi kill people for a living, what’s wrong with human bait?”
Giyu didn’t grace that with an answer, just kept walking, and realized how the man was throwing worried glances over his shoulder a couple times, probably making sure that Giyu was still there. Giyu tilted his head, wondering if he should offer to carry the child instead, or if that gesture would make the man even more scared.
The well wasn’t that far from the village. Giyu heard a sigh of relief from his side, and the man was putting his son on the ground carefully, ready to draw the water up.
While the man was pulling the rope connected with the pulley, Giyu looked around the place, making sure there would be no ambush. It was a perfect place for abduction, and he

remembered one of the cases that transpired right at this place, written in the scroll. Giyu stood a few feet away from the civilian, and closed his eyes.
He was not a born sensor, but he was good enough. These creatures the people call demons, if he could just pinpoint them from their chakra…
Giyu snapped his eyes open. He looked to the man, still pulling the rope, no, he wasn’t standing anymore. That’s…
Giyu leapt forward and saw, to his horror, the bundle empty. He went to grab at the man’s body next, trying to locate a pulse.
It wasn’t there.
But the body was moving.
Giyu felt the slash even as he pulled himself away. Blood spurted horizontally on his chest, but Giyu ignored that in favour of watching the person in front of him shifting, limbs and joints rearranging in a sick twist, and in the end there stood another man, eyes hooded by its bangs, tall and lanky. Giyu frowned.
“Where is the baby?”
The person smirked, and he answered, in a completely unfamiliar voice “I wonder where.”
Giyu clicked his tongue and drew his blade. The person, was that what Kokuo meant by shifter? quickly lunged, a pair of short blades in its hands.
Giyu dodged the shifter’s slash aimed at his neck, then their swords clashed, metal grinding against metal. “Your senses are slipping,” Kokuo warned him. “Don’t trust what you see.” Giyu pulled back a step and slashed forward, evaded swiftly with a tilt of the head. They traded blows a couple times, the echo ringing in the air, before Giyu parried an attack and angled his hands to pry off the enemy’s sword, but the shifter held its grip firmly and pulled back, resulting in a slash over its forearm.
The shifter retaliated with a strong swing, and Giyu ducked down, quickly getting back up again, to parry another attack. The shifter kicked, hands still embracing against Giyu’s sword, and Giyu got pushed back. With the distance, he took time to get his bearings again, calculating the battlefield, before looking for any weak points.
Giyu stared. He had gotten a couple scratches here and there, aside from the big one on his chest, and he was sure he traded as good as he got. The wound was burning whenever he tried to breathe. Warm blood had soaked through his clothes and was now clinging to his skin. Giyu forced himself to grip his katana with a steady hand, despite the aching pain in his ribs. The shifter should be bleeding too, so why did it look like it sustained no injuries…
The shifter struck again, and Giyu tried to focus some more. While the shifter had better range with two blades, Giyu had better reach with a longer one. Their speed was about even, height and weight similar, so why did his hits not land?
Frowning, Giyu let one hand go from the sword, forming a seal. The ground beneath the shifter moved and trapped its foot. Giyu leapt forward and kicked up with a leg, the other quickly following, and he spun in the air, using every part of his body weight, and jut a foot down to barrel on the shifter’s head.

And he missed. His leg hit the ground, the shifter just a couple feet away. Giyu clicked his tongue.
Something is wrong, he realized. “Your distance perception is off.” No, Giyu thought, It’s more than that.
Because that last attack should have landed. Giyu looked up, and saw one of the shifter’s legs still trapped in the earth. It was trying to get out, and when it did, Giyu had reached into his core and channelled the tailed beast chakra.
“Oh,” Kokuo piped up, blinking as if just realizing something, “Try to get out.”
Giyu thought for a moment what that meant, and when the answer came he had to take a deep breath.
One hand forming Ram seal, Giyu disrupted his chakra flow, muttering the release command. When he opened his eyes, it was to a whole other clearing, nonexistence of a well, and a man slumped on the ground. A familiar man, one Giyu just met that night. Giyu looked up at the shifter who was now smirking wide.
“You’re the baby,” Giyu pointed out, and he didn’t need to hear a confirmation.
The shifter laughed, the sound high and grating, and suddenly they were at yet another place. A thick forest this time, the densely spaced trees and bushes not a good match for Giyu’s sword.
“This is annoying” Kokuo commented, and before Giyu could try to get out of that genjutsu again, added, “Just fight. I’ll take care of this.”
And just like Kokuo said, when Giyu rushed forward to attack, the environment went back. He clashed with the shifter. It laughed again, finding glee in the battle, and now they were in the river, water up to their waist. The current was stronger than Giyu expected, his footing was slipping, and before he could react, he was dragged under the waves. He could feel the cold rushing water going into his mouth and nose, burning his lungs. The cut that he had received earlier on his chest was pulsing as blood flowed from it. “I’m going to die here” Giyu thought. Kokuo growled, and then they were back. “Focus,” Kokuo snapped. “Anchor your chakra to mine. Breathe.” Giyu forced himself up, as he slowed his panicked breathing, he reached inwards to cling to Kokuos chakra.
“Genjutsu master” Giyu said after taking a good distance, “That explains everything.”
Why he didn’t realize anything out of place from the start, how it hid the man’s body, how it changed his perceptions. He had been toyed with from the very start.
Giyu sheathed his sword, and in a moment the tailed beast chakra burned even brighter. The pain rushed through his body as the power of the tailed beast flooded his body. His muscles were aching in protest and his bones were aching, his vision blurred at the edges as he clenched his teeth.
He would never admit it aloud, but having Kokuo, with an endless chakra reserve and an external way to help him get out of genjutsu, was a blessing at times like this.
“Water in your right hand, fire in your left” Kokuo said, the one sentence he had been saying every time Giyu tried to handle his new element, and Giyu continued with a nod “That’s what makes steam.”
And as they said, Giyu wielded both water and fire, and brought them together, the heat haze it created misting over the clearing. Giyu molded it, concentrating on his palms, let the remaining chakra envelope and strengthen his body.

The genjutsu kept happening, and Kokuo kept disrupting Giyu’s chakra with his own, making the shinobi see places overlap all around him. But he kept his focus forward, to the shifter that had taken yet another form, arms raised.
Giyu punched forward, the mist burning the shifter even as it sidestepped the attack. Giyu spun on his heels and delivered a side kick next. The shifter blocked it before it hit its shoulder, and pushed Giyu’s leg to the side. It rotated its hips and landed a mean kick to the side of Giyu’s face, sending him stumbling a couple feet. Giyu spit out the blood pooling in his mouth as he staggered forward. His legs were trembling beneath him, and he could see black spots beginning to dance around his vision, he was unsure how long his body could last. And saw how the shifter had taken damage, too, its limbs scorching black and red.
“Let’s end this” Kokuo said, and Giyu agreed.
The white chakra swirled, sizzling in the night, and four tails came out of Giyu’s back, along the two pairs of horns, and in a single, condensed attack, he leapt and punched the shifter with both hands.
The searing wind that came with the strike blasted everything around, turning them into nothing. The shifter screamed, its voice dulled only by the disintegration of its body. It turned, not slowly, into dust, its form changing a few times in a desperate attempt to cling to life, and soon there was nothing standing in front of Giyu except the large crater and steam coming out of the very ground.
Giyu stood there panting, and the Tailed Beast Mode fell away. The strength he had left in his body was gone, his knees buckled over and he could barely manage to lean against a nearby tree before he collapsed to the ground. Kokuo muttered something in their shared subconscious, but Giyu just took out his mission scroll, wrote ‘Accomplished’ in a neat, clear letter, and sat leaning on a tree, looking up at the sky.
Something glowed around his wrists and faded, and Giyu knew the seal would hold for a long time. “Next time… listen sooner…” Kokuo muttered inside Giyu’s mind. Giyu closed his eyes and gave a faint tired acknowledgement to him.