The Sounds of Battle Part 5 – The Echoes Fade
Riku and Sora were trading places between fending off the giant and Kabuto simultaneously. Kabuto was carrying his Kusanagi blade, and went for a vertical slice down onto Sora, only to be blocked by Meteora’s blade as he held it horizontally over his head. As Kabuto pushed downward on Sora in an attempt to make him give in, Riku flipped over Kabuto’s head, landing behind him and going for a stab straight to his back.
With amazing speed, Kabuto did two quick jumps. The first not only dodged Riku’s stab, but he also landed on his opponent’s blade for but a split second, and then jumped high into the air. Riku looked up at him, and then out of the corner of his eye saw something else coming—the giants massive fist.
Riku, noticing that Sora didn’t see it and without enough time to call out to him, dove forward, pushing Sora ahead so that they just barely missed the fist. They both landed on the ground a few feet away from one another. The attack was not done yet, though, as the second that the giant’s fist connected with the ground, a giant tidal wave rolled over the earth, pushing both of them off of the canyon and slamming into the giant.
The beast then brought his arm inward, and grabbed both of them as they slammed into them, gripping them each with opposite hands in an iron grip. Both of them simultaneously escaped, Riku released what seemed to be blades of ice from all areas of his body, stabbing into him, as Sora released a wave of fire from himself, burning the brutes hand and forcing him to let go. Riku managed to grab onto Titan’s arm, though, and then hoisted himself upwards, standing on it with both hands. Kabuto finally landed, landing on the shoulder of the very arm that Riku was on.
They both rushed in towards each other, Kabuto running down Titan’s arm and Riku running up it. As Kabuto came down, he immediately went into a quick spinning kick, which was promptly halted when Riku’s hand grasped his opponent’s leg, and then, bringing his arm around, he slammed Kabuto down on the beast’s arm. Kabuto took the blow in full, but immediately rolled back several times to finally jump off of Titan’s arm.
Sora, meanwhile, was attempting several attacks directly toward Titan. He was going along Titan’s arm, but was slowly walking backwards. As he walked backwards, he spewed a stream of fire onto Titan’s arm, gradually walking backwards up his arm as the creature howled at the burning pain, and then he quickly jumped off.
Kabuto, having seen this, knew that he had timed his jump perfectly, and Titan quickly slammed his burning arm down on Riku the second that Kabuto was in the air. Riku just barely shot out a small bullet of water just so that enough of the fire was doused as to not do him any harm in that sense, but was still heavily pressed by the oncoming hand. He could have sworn that several bones in his body broke at the moment of impact, but when Titan picked his hand up, Riku managed to stand up and then jump off, aiming to confront Kabuto in mid-air.
When Sora saw that Riku was off, he immediately began shooting fire onto the other arm, and once that was done, he jumped up to assist Riku, managing to catch up with Riku in mid-air before they confronted Kabuto.
As they were nearing their opponent, Riku grabbed Sora’s hand and then threw him forward, sending him charging toward Kabuto like a torpedo. Sora coated himself with all of the wind chakra that he could muster, while Meteora appeared in his hand as he flew toward Kabuto with intense speed. In mid-air, Kabuto managed to time his dodge as such that he placed his hand on Sora’s back as he passed under and then flipped over, but when his hand contacted with the wind coating Sora, it had been covered with cuts and was coated in blood within seconds.
When he flipped over, though, Riku was there, shooting out darts of ice towards Kabuto from his mouth, two of which connected but the final one, Kabuto managed to deflect with the Kusanagi blade.
In a second, Kabuto, knowing that he wouldn’t last long in such a position with both of them surrounding him, disappeared completely, with speed that must have been enhanced by some sort of jutsu. He landed, then, on the ground atop one of the cliffs overlooking the valley.
He was noticeably panting when he landed; whether that was actually some sort of speed-enhancing jutsu or simply a boost in speed that he used massive amounts of chakra to attain, it had clearly taken a lot out of him. He was breathing heavily and shortly after Riku and Sora both landed a distance away from him, but on the same cliff, their backs facing Titan.
Riku looked behind him to regard the giant brute, who seemed to decide upon not attacking at the moment. But it wasn’t because he was in pain from Sora’s various fire jutsu, but rather because Kabuto simply didn’t want him to attack yet. His arms were still burning brightly, the flames alive and newly restored fire now coating his hand where Riku had doused the flames.
Riku mumbled to Sora, “What is he, fireproof?”
Sora turned around to regard the giant as well, and before he could reply, Kabuto, who had apparently heard them and had now regained his composure, answered, “Titan is… let’s say… simply invincible. He cannot be destroyed. He may feel slight pangs of pain, but the only way to destroy him would be on a molecular level, which I’m sure neither of you can do, or, of course, killing me directly.”
Riku scowled at both of those statements, but he was sure that there must be some other way; he doubted that they would be able to finish Kabuto while Titan was still alive to attack before they could pull off a killing blow, but the other way around would be more doable, and so he said quietly, to Sora, “If we can’t kill him from the outside…”
Sora raised an eyebrow, “There’s no way you’re getting me to go inside that thing.”
~
Without hesitation, Minato wasted no time with attacking. A kunai came darting toward the group, moving right within their midst, and soon after he appeared right in between Kakashi, who quickly lifted up his headband, and Naruto, where he, now in mid-air, planted a solid heel kick on Kakashi’s back, and then, using Kakashi’s back to jump off of and spinning him in the reverse way, putting him in a position where he was directly behind Kakashi and diagonally behind Naruto, threw a simple kunai toward his son.
After Kakashi took the blow in full, he managed to pivot around and then jump to the side, catching the kunai in mid-air before it hit Naruto, though knowing fully that it wasn’t exactly needed. At that instant, Minato teleported again, landing on Kakashi’s wrist in a handstand form, but before he could jump off, Kakashi, fully expecting the maneuver, quickly transmuted lightning chakra into his arm.
Minato’s speed saved him now, only taking a slight shock before he jumped off of Kakashi’s outstretched wrist. Within a second, though, all of the lightning in Kakashi’s arm channeled into his arm transferred to his hand, a chirping sound and a bright light radiating from it as he went after Minato relentlessly.
“You’ve gotten better Kakashi… you’re Chidori is far stronger than it used to be, and you made it in a split second,” Minato observed as Kakashi came toward him.
In a quick maneuver, as Kakashi’s Raikiri was but inches away from hitting Minato, he spun around fully, managing to move himself ever so slightly to the side, but just enough for Kakashi to harmlessly go by. As Kakashi flew by him, he grabbed his student’s forearm and spun around again, throwing Kakashi toward one side of the valley.
The Sixth Hokage just barely managed to flip himself over and plant his feet solidly on one of the canyon’s great walls, and then jumped back towards Minato, preparing for some intense hand-to-hand combat with his mentor.
While Kakashi and Minato were dealing with each other, Naruto and the others turned their attention toward Jiraiya and Zetsu. Jiraiya ran forward, jumped up, and spewed out a wave of fire over them all, while Zetsu sunk into the ground. Yamato was the one who blocked it, jumping up and spitting out a bullet of water. Still going up in the air toward Jiraiya, though, he began to form a giant mallet of wood around his arm, quickly bringing it around and slamming it toward Jiraiya’s side.
Jiraiya managed to time his dodge perfectly, and as the mallet came toward him, he planted his hand on it and used that hand as leverage to flip himself over the mallet sideways, but secretly planting a small explosive tag on the wooden hammer.
Yamato’s mallet kept flying to the side for a few seconds before it exploded, the fire eating its way down the mallet and coming quickly toward Yamato, who shot another water bullet from his mouth and then released the wood jutsu.
Naruto was rapidly running toward Jiraiya as the Sage landed, his fingers coming together to make two clones on both of his sides that moved in to flank him. Both of them jumped forward toward their opponent, each with a balled fist. Jiraiya effortlessly kicked one, spinning around and then punching the other, but they were, as he partially expected, promptly followed up by the real Naruto who held a normal-sized Rasengan in his hand, charging forward.
“Heh, so you don’t need clones to make it anymore, eh? Impressive,” Jiraiya commented as he dodged to the side, Naruto going past him.
Naruto, too, was serving as a distraction himself, though, because as soon as Jiraiya dodged, he was promptly hit by a sudden burst of pure chakra. He caught only a glimpse of his attacker before getting blasted back—none other than Neji Hyuuga, his palm pushing out toward Jiraiya for his now-perfected Sky Palm Technique.
They had nearly forgotten about Zetsu, but he certainly reminded them of his presence when he came back up from underground, a few meters behind Neji.
“This is quite a boring fight… let’s start wrapping it up a little early, eh?” he said quietly, as he came up out of the ground lashing out and jumping forward with great speed toward Neji, speed that refrained any of them from speaking out to alert the Hyuuga out of simply not comprehending that Zetsu had even come out of the ground until it was too late.
But suddenly, Zetsu felt his leg begin to burn, and when he looked back, he could see intense ashen flames slowly engulfing it. He managed not to panic, and stopped in his tracks, releasing water from all areas of his body, but the fire did not relent. It still burned brightly, and so quickly, before it could spread, Zetsu jumped up, literally leaving his burning leg behind and then growing a new one momentarily; a prime example of the benefits of being so inhumane. He was looking around rapidly, searching for his attacker.
Meanwhile, Kakashi was just barely holding on in his battle with Minato, and it seemed as though it were a matter of seconds before the Fourth Hokage defeated him; a Rasengan in his hand. But a second before it connected with Kakashi’s back, Kakashi having been laying down after taking quite the beating and Minato now coming down on him from above, a powerful kick hit his side.
Minato went skipping across the valley like a stone, and Kakashi’s savior stood over him on one side, turning around for a moment to offer a hand to the Hokage, “It’s been some time; I hear you’ve become quite powerful in Konoha nowadays. Guess the standards for Hokage have dropped a lot since I was last there,” the man teased.
Kakashi grabbed his hand, hoisting himself up, and, as usual, making a point to manage to keep his cool despite his surprise and gratefulness of this appearance, “I would presume that Konoha’s standards for many things was lowered when you were became a member of the Anbu back in the day, wouldn’t you think so, Shinru?” he countered, and then offered a slight smile and nod combination as a formal thanks.
They both looked over to the area where Zetsu was still looking around at, and slowly, a person seemed to teleport right where Zetsu’s burning leg was, kicking it to the side as he appeared. The figure was Tenzu Uchiha, his Mangekyou Sharingan already activated, staring up at Zetsu, “We’re not too late, are we?”
Neji turned, “Right in the nick of time,” he said, a sort of reluctant thanks.
Zetsu looked over to them, smiling playfully, “Guess it gets a bit more interesting here. Minato, Jiraiya, make me proud.”
~
Riku’s plan was rather… interesting to say the least. They had talked about it in portions, when they got moments of downtime, and then went back into heated battle, and then finished each thought when the opportunity came again. The plan had been fully conveyed to Sora, now, but they had not yet the opportunity to enact it, as Kabuto alone had taken them so far away from Titan that the beast was not even an immediate threat at the moment.
Kabuto had two snakes coming around at either side of him, slithering out of his robe and then quickly towards the two children in front of him. He followed closely behind, running quickly. The two snakes jumped forward, lashing out toward Riku and Sora respectively. Both snakes were promptly dodged by steps to the side, but when the snakes flew past them and exited their field of vision, Kabuto was nowhere to be found.
Suddenly there was a powerful slam on the ground, Riku turned slightly to find that it was Titan, slamming his palm down, and it was followed by a slight rumble. Without warning, what seemed to be a giant mass of lava burst out from the ground under both of them. They quickly managed to jump to the side, avoiding it just barely.
But before they even landed, Titan slammed his palm down again, and, the moment that they landed, another hole in the earth opened, threatening to devour them with molten rock. They managed to dodge this one in much the same way.
It went on like this for a while, until they both were finally smart enough to start jumping toward Titan and then finally on top of him, where they saw Kabuto on his shoulder.
But, seeming to apparently have no intention to fight them, Kabuto vanished in thin air, using his great speed to get away before they attacked. Riku and Sora looked toward each other and then nodded.
To Sora’s understanding, all he had to do was keep Kabuto busy while Riku was apparently going to try to literally cut through Titan, and as he went through the beast he was to perform some new jutsu that he had been working on, a jutsu massive enough to take down Titan with one shot from the inside.
Sora caught Kabuto’s eye, looking at him up in the sky and then jumped up toward him. Kabuto pushed his arm out, and snakes leaped out from his sleeve, snapping their jaws toward Sora eagerly. Sora managed to smack them away with Fenrir, but as he neared Kabuto, from the bottom of the young man’s robe another snake came out, coming from under Sora. The snake didn’t bite Sora, but delivered a nasty head butt, which set Kabuto up for a clean kick to his opponent’s side, sending him going fast toward the ground.
Riku watched the scene for a moment, wincing slightly at the head butt and then quietly giving thanks that Kabuto had decided to continue going for Sora as opposed to going toward him. He then went to work. Jumping off of Titan and, for perhaps the fourth or fifth time today, regrowing two large wings of ice on his back, Riku flew quickly to Titan’s chest area, barely dodging a swat by the massive beasts arm.
Gathering all of his chakra, he went forward as quickly as he possibly could, going ahead like a lightning dart, heading straight for Titan’s chest area and going for a slash that should go straight through.
He felt himself dig through Titan’s skin, part of his flesh, and then suddenly, as if he had hit a diamond straight on, he stopped abruptly, a powerful tingling feeling going down his arm.
Blowing out an exaggerated sigh, he murmured to himself, “He may not be that big of a threat offense wise, but it looks like he’s made of steel itself.”
Riku quickly dodged another swat with the beasts arm, and then went for another attack, doing the same thing as last time and with the exact same result—nothing.
Riku gritted his teeth heavily, and then went back in again… and again… and again for what seemed like an endless amount of time.
He kept going ahead, and finally, Titan hit him once, heavily, with his fist, sending him slamming into the ground. Kabuto was getting every hit he could onto Sora, and Titan was just getting started with Riku.
He slammed his hand once down on the puny figure in front of him.
And then again.
And again.
And again.
Riku could hardly feel his arms or legs now, and his chakra was almost completely drained out of him. The only thing he felt was excrutiating pain as the relentless, heartless creature continued to slam its palm down toward him. He managed to turn his head, and Sora wasn’t doing much better. Kabuto was kicking him up into the air now, higher and higher, like some sort of juggling act.
And it was in that instant of desperation, with Riku perhaps the closest to death that he had ever been and with Sora very much the same, that everything went dark. All things around Riku seemed to halt; everything seemed to be still… quiet. But not a peaceful quiet, this was a disturbing quiet. The kind of quiet that comes from only the most intense forms of fear. There was no sound with the exception of one voice. A deep voice, it spoke slowly.
~
My power… is yours to use.
Riku had no idea where he was. Complete darkness surrounded him. It felt as though something within him was pulsing. What was it? His head… his arms… legs… it felt like everything about him was just… not right. Like his very being was preparing to jump out of him at any moment.
He heard the voice again, it laughed this time.
Yes… that’s it…
For some reason, through all of this pain and confusion, he still gripped Soul Eater tightly. That was it… it had to be. He hadn’t felt this since he had fought with Thane… so that was it then.
He looked up, and saw a large pair of dark red eyes, but oddly they seemed to glow in this place filled with only darkness. His chakra drained, and so obviously prepared to lose, he reached out toward the pair of eyes.
~
Riku opened his eyes partially at first, only a very slight bit, and then wider. Titan got one more hit in, but unlike the others, Riku hadn’t felt this one at all.
But when Riku opened his eyes, the giant’s fate was sealed.
Titan brought his hand down again, but when he did, he found that he hit only the ground. Titan picked his hand up, looking at the ground and then looking at his hand to see if his master’s foe had gotten stuck on his hand at some point. He found nothing, but soon enough, he saw Riku standing right in front of him, calmly, staring at him. His eyes, though, were different. They weren’t the deep blue eyes that he had earlier.
These were two, blood red orbs.
He held his sword in one hand, and as quickly as he disappeared last time, he did the same again this time.
He didn’t reappear this time, but Titan surely felt his presence. Cuts and slashes appeared everywhere around his body, mixed in with a few well-placed stabs. The first was near his shoulder, and then his lower back, his upper back, his right arm, the side of his head, everywhere. There was nowhere that Riku hadn’t injured him by the time he had reappeared, and when he did, Titan knew that his troubles had only just begun.
The boy appeared right in front of the giant’s gruesome face, and with a impossibly powerful and wide slash, in one attack, both of the beast’s eyes were rendered useless, not cut out, but cut enough to blind him completely.
He let out a loud wail, and Riku smiled wildly. He looked back toward Sora, who was still dealing with Kabuto, though they both surely took a moment to be astonished by the sudden scene of merciless brutality. Something told him to finish this quickly, to hurry and aid his ally to finish both of their opponents off as quickly as possible. But there was another urge. A stronger one. An urge that said that there was more fun to be had, more to be done.
He followed the latter reasoning, and disappeared again. When he came back into view, standing back on the top of the cliff, both of Titan’s arms slid off. The beast was wailing wildly now, flailing around as if it was still trying to move arms that were no longer there.
From that point, Titan could feel chips and pieces of him being cut off from every direction. The time that it took Riku to mutilate the beast to a point where he was satisfied was but ten seconds at the most, but in the sense of how much of a beating Sora was taking and the agonizing pain that Titan felt, a beast that did not know that he could feel pain, it may as well have been hours.
Riku finally stopped, standing in front of Titan, staring at him coldly, and then, gradually, a twisted grin crept on his face, “I think that’s quite enough.”
He dashed forward, as he had intended to from the start, right for Titan’s chest, which, like all other parts of his body, was terribly cut up. He went through… no… into the beast, stopping right in the center of him, not even going all the way through with his cut.
From outside, nothing could be seen for a while, and for a moment Kabuto even dared hope that Riku had somehow just killed himself, but then, in an instant, quite literally, exploded.
If there was any single person that could get any remote sense of joy out of this, be they an enemy or ally of the large creature, then a sick person they were indeed. From within, he blew outwards in a sudden rush of limbs and blood. The pieces were blown high into the sky, and then fell to the ground in tiny, unrecognizable remains. Titan, the seemingly hundred meter tall giant, was now reduced to a bunch of scattered bits that were barely an inch long. Any who walked past this place would now know enough of what happened to make them walk faster ahead or turn and run. They wouldn’t know what exactly happen, but only that a gruesome scene had occurred here, when they would stumble upon, this portion of the canyon now covered with blood and small bits of what may have been a bleached creature, or multiple such things.
Riku was flying where Titan once was, and Kabuto couldn’t help but stop now, his blood cold and his pulse racing as Riku’s eyes rested on him, uncompromisingly. And then, the very same smile he had given to Titan the moment before his death, he offered to Kabuto as well.
Kabuto looked over to Sora, who was half laying on the ground and half sitting. He went toward the young man for a desperate attack, thinking that it would be much easier to deal with Riku alone. He quickly brought the Kusanagi blade up and then brought it down while jumping toward his opponent.
But in a moment, Riku was there, holding Soul Eater overhead and standing right in front of Sora. He pushed his blade upward and outward then, sending Kabuto’s sword out wide and making him, reflexively, jump back several meters.
“What’s the matter? Afraid?” was all that Riku said, his voice somewhere between his original one and a darker, deeper voice. A demonic voice.
“Heh… so you think you’ve got this all wrapped up, huh?” Kabuto asked, his voice somewhere in between shaky and full-blown psychotic, “You get a bit of a chakra boost and suddenly you can just take me out like you did to that buffoon? No holding back then. Perhaps I lied to you… Titan was my greatest creation, but only the second best result of my experiments. The ultimate one…”
Kabuto made one seal, and suddenly, what seemed like a hundred minute snakes sprouted up, completely covering his back as a porcupine’s spikes might. Two other thin, though fairly long snakes sprouted out of his shoulder, each one looking straight at Riku. But more impressively than that was the level of chakra building up inside of him. Neither Riku nor Sora had any abilities of sensory, but certainly they could feel all of the excess chakra that he was releasing. As though all of his chakra was floating through the air and pressing down on them.
“The ultimate one…” he repeated, “is me!”
