A sky piercing stare of the one-eyed Uchiha turned at Gokibure who still held his sister on his shoulders. Despite possessing one of the most potent and unstable defences that could've been repurposed into all devouring offense at any moment the Aburame just barely resisted the instinct to shiver. Even when his opponent was outnumbered, even when his body was covered in bruises and burns and he was cornered right up close to an object he had to keep standing. Such was the power of mere presence of Jiou Uchiha.
"Do not believe for a second that I'd hesitate to pierce my sister's heart to get to you. I love her too much to let her burn herself in self-directed hatred for being a burden" Jiou's silent yet efficient voice reached Gokibure's ears and now that the sandstorm had ceased and become a rain of grain sized crystal dust he could understand every word.
"I saved your sister because I hate hurting women. I consider myself a gentleman and even when a woman is too dangerous to keep alive or I only barely pull myself out of a tough battle, I still cannot push myself towards such a thing…" Gokibure replied with a cocky smile, he meant every word. He'd have much rather took the young Aisha for dinner than fought her in such a cruel battlefield.
Remashi placed her hands together and suddenly veins violently shot out all over her face coming out of her eyes as her white Byakugan of the Hyuuga clan intensified. She scanned the battlefield around her while still trying to keep her eye on her injured opponent just in case he decided to pull something funny.
"He may be right, I don't see Mardith's chakra at all, nor do I see your insects inside of him. He may actually be dead…" she said with a hint of surprise and a slightly smaller shade of hidden sadness.
"Hmmm… I seem to have sensed the signal of the nano-roaches going out some time ago, I was troubled by that but figured it could've been a great lot of things. I thought maybe the woman shorted the roaches out with a Lightning Style technique… If he actually is dead that is unfortunate" Gokibure nodded looking back. Before he could back Jiou's injured and bare-chested body leaped up to him for the kill. Before the Uchiha could deliver a lethal blow or the Aburame could command his insects to protect him Remashi flashed up to the man getting in between the two and thrusted her palm forward.
"Fire Style: Eight Trigrams Vacuum Palm!" she chanted sending a powerful heated up shockwave that blew Jiou backwards a great distance inflicting damage all over his body as he took the technique head on. The intense heat burnt up parts of his hair, it completely incinerated his eye-patch revealing a black hole where his Sharingan once was. The technique left even more patches of black burns over some areas of the man's body, the heavy injuries that he sustained from the previous superheated explosion of chakra greatly impacted his speed.
"I am your opponent, I recommend you treat me as such before I end up killing you…" Remashi exclaimed looking back at her friend. She wasn't overly fond of the roach wielding Aburame but she would have preferred to keep him alive. Kusagoro's squad saw many difficult missions and somehow they started taking each other's lives for granted, even while they bickered like children normally, they'd have protected each other's lives if given the choice.
As the smoke cleared and the searing horizontal twister of fire burnt out the two Kusagoro's teammates realized that they were played – Jiou was nowhere to be seen. The eyes of the Hyuuga woman squinted and focused on a specific point in the castle ruins.
"I've got him… A slippy bastard…" she grunted with great annoyance and dashed onwards to the castle entrance. She knew that Jiou was faster than her so the woman leaped up into the air and drove both of her hands backwards.
"Fire Style: Eight Trigrams Twin Vacuum Palms!" she yelled out as two crystal piercing jet waves of pure flame and heated air fired off of her arms sending her body skyrocketing forward faster than sound itself into the castle. It took great mastery and perception for the woman to flip over in the air and dash off the couple of walls surrounding her, she bounced off of the walls in her way like a pinball only losing a small fraction of her momentum, she had to catch up to that Uchiha bastard, she hit him with a head on "Vacuum Palm", that closed at least four of his chakra nodes, his total chakra level must've been plummeting down at that moment.
The Hyuuga specialized in techniques that closed the opponent's chakra nodes. It was a very dangerous style to face off against since most defensive techniques such as chakra augmentation already sapped great amounts of chakra, losing chakra nodes was like losing chakra generators in the middle of battle, it wasn't just losing a specific amount of chakra, it was losing a part of one's chakra network, every time chakra passed through that part of the network large chunks of it got lost somewhere in the mix. The man must've been a fool to let himself get hit by that just to slip into the castle.
Remashi extended her palm trying to hit the man at the back of his head but Jiou leaped off the ground and turned around placing his elbow to where she would've hit him and blocked the strike.
"Fire Style: Last Resort Eight Gates Assault!" the woman chanted out as she flashed with fiery shades all over the endless corridors of the castle clashing with Jiou's own blows, it was like a combination of blurs, almost like a rotating jet twister of flames and pure power busting and drilling through the doors and walls of the castle that then extended into two that continuously clashed together.
The two involved themselves into a lethal and endless dance of taijutsu combinations. Jiou's stamina and chakra levels must've been insane since he dared to clash with Remashi's Fire Style Gentle Fist combinations up close taking heavy damage and burns even if he perfectly countered her blows. Even when he completely outclassed the woman at close distance martial arts, perfectly avoiding each of her blows and answering with his own the splash damage from her fiery style of assaults burnt the man either way. Remashi didn't have to land a single blow, even her missed pokes hurt the man more than any direct punch could have.
The two danced on through spiralling staircases, through endless abysses that opened over the countless decades that this castle rot inside this desert, they bashed through every barely functional trap in their way. The heat from their exchanging faster than sound blows melted the steel spikes on the floor, the sheer force of the shockwaves from their clashing blows and sometimes their conscious effort destroyed any dislodged stone or ceiling structures trying to crush them and grinded it to dust. While keeping up their dance of fire and death the two managed to deflect or block every single pebble falling on their heads, not because they wanted to show off, it was due to instinct. They didn't care to check if it was just a speck of dust, a pebble that would've felt annoying inside their shoes or if it was floor sized rock, they just destroyed everything in their path shaking the very foundations of the castle.
Their graceful exchange of blows felt like fencing, two skilled fencers dancing all over the place, all over the towers of the castle, throwing each other out the holes in the towers and window holes and then leaping after their opponent wishing to pummel the life out of them. The two traversed one third of the ground floors of the ruins and at least six towers of the castle, the one great tower of the castle even collapsed due to their fiery clash.
"Enough… Begone!" Jiou grunted out through the blood shooting off his broken nose, his handseals flashed at incomprehensible speeds and the man inhaled. He felt his chakra draining out rapidly, it was almost like every blow he took from the woman divided his chakra into bits and pieces, messed up his network but the man didn't care. It didn't feel one millionth as bad as one single touch from the man pursuing him felt, the woman stroke like a butcher gently slicing his chakra to pieces, that man ripped all out and devoured it like an animal, like a devil feasting on chakra instead of human souls. Jiou had no more time to waste with this woman, that man had to be stopped!
"Fire Style: Great Fire Annihilation!" Jiou chanted intending on breathing out a firestorm hotter and denser in its all devouring flames than even the previously displayed Remashi's clone rotation technique. The one-eyed Uchiha was sure that it'd have blown this castle away, it'd have made an all incinerating blast of destruction all the way to Sunagakure. It'd have created a Hell on Earth, a magma spilling crater and a testament of the Uchiha might and destruction. He almost regretted it himself, he needed and wanted that Box but he had to rely on his wife's ability to recover it. He could no longer afford to hold back, this Hyuuga woman would've been a considerable opponent even if he was unchained. He held back long enough, it was time to raise some Hell…
"Fire Style: Eight Trigrams Inferno Crusher!" the Uchiha heard a lovely voice of the Hyuuga woman yell out as she dove ducking in to bypass his defences, she extended her palm on forward making Jiou cancel out his technique before it even began and flip backwards. A concentrated beam of flames a thousand times hotter than her previously displayed Hyuuga Fire Style techniques fired off diagonally into the sky burning through the stone of the castle and firing off away farther than the man could even follow it.
"It was a waste of chakra to use this as a Hyuuga nin-taijutsu, the heat of that technique would incinerate everything and anything in its path, just whose chakra are you aiming to close if your opponent is scorched and not even an atom remains?" Jiou smiled, at one point of his life, before being chased by an unstoppable force of nature, he enjoyed fights, he even looked for powerful opponents and would've loved to challenge this woman. Still, it was useless to dwell on what once was, all that he was at some point was gone now, at the moment he was just prey…
"You're the one to say, you'd have left a bottomless canyon of destruction out of this entire desert with that technique, I thought you wished to preserve this castle…" Remashi huffed heavily, that last technique followed right after such a breath-taking clash must've taken quite the toll on her. She must've been pushed all the way to her limit, able to put out such impossibly searing hot beams of concentrated chakra into such precise and restrained blows, a technique like that must've cost some chakra.
"I lost control for a moment… You are fortunate to meet me in a battlefield I wish to preserve" Jiou also was breathing increasingly heavily and was pulled towards the ground. The aftermath of their clash suddenly opened large fissures on the floor they were standing on forcing the two to once again leap at each other. The Uchiha clenched his fist tightly ready to knock this woman out while the Hyuuga woman was preparing yet another one of her Vacuum Palm techniques, Jiou cracked a grin, he was confident that he could withstand one more head on but if he confirmed his punch he would've knocked the woman out. She seemed to put a lot of care into defending herself so Jiou's theory was that she couldn't take blows nearly as well as she defended against them.
Strangely enough Jiou was not overwhelmed by the Vacuum Technique, his fist cut through the air around him and dug deep into the woman's face first, it must've been his superior speed that helped him achieve this. A loud pop alerted him that something was wrong, the woman's body was replaced with a large chunk of the stone floor that was collapsing and falling to the bottom of black abyss below, Jiou tried to turn around but as he did he realized that it was too late.
The woman's hands lit up with bursts of fire, she shot two fingers out from the both of her palms and precisely planted them right where Jiou's chakra nodes were, she started slow with a slow combination of blows. "Fire Style: Two Palms!" she yelled out planting two searing hot but precise pokes that felt like heated knives tearing through his flesh, where the woman stroke and closed his chakra points a black burn mark remained. "Four Palms!" she yelled out repeating but doubling the combination, "Eight Palms!" she continued striking lightning fast, this encounter has taken so much out of Jiou that he didn't even have enough in him to put up a decent defense. "Sixteen Palms!" the woman continued to mercilessly bombard his defences, "Thirty Two Palms! Eight Trigrams Sixty Four Palms!" she roared out triumphant with a crushing blow to Jiou's chest that left her palm permanently burnt into his flesh and sent the man heated like a comet crushing through the castle walls back into the desert where Gokibure was waiting with his sister on his shoulders.
The Aburame covered himself with the shield of roaches to protect himself and his captured hostage from the blast of a falling star-like man crashing out of the castle into the crystal floor, leaving a pretty wide crater. Jiou's body appeared beaten and mangled, burnt most importantly of all quite badly. He was quite a miserable sight with his one eye missing already. Life as a running man also badly reflected on his overall looks and now he had the messed up wounds to match it.
With a fiery flash Remashi appeared close by, down on her knees and breathing heavily. She couldn't do much more but stay down herself. It was impressive how one man could push her so far while holding back most of his abilities afraid to destroy the castle nearby. In this world the most destructive and powerful abilities were also the most useless, being able to create moon sized meteors couldn't have been more useless when one was a silent assassin and a spy. Because he was a man who took pride in his destructive godlike abilities Jiou was destined to lose against a much more restrained and focused fighter…
Jiou's blood covered and burnt arm grabbed the edge of the crater and pulled his pathetically beaten and burnt body out of the hole. His blood covered and singed hair still fell all over his face, a single movement forced blood to squirt out of the man's crushed inner organs all over his stubble and onto the crystal floor below. Pools of blood were poor decorations for such natural beauty as pure crystal. Remashi looked surprised, she almost begged Jiou to stay down but most of all she was surprised that she wasn't able to kill him. A technique of such heat… His organs should've been molten into one solid pile of goo, the only viable explanation for him to have survived would've been chakra augmentation but how could have one man had such impossible levels of chakra. For him to have so much he should've rivalled the levels of weaker Tailed Beasts or Lesser Demons.
A loud thud reached the ears of the two combatants, Aisha's lifeless body slipped down Gokibure's shoulder and slammed into the crystal floor cracking her head, the poor girl's eyebrows angrily twisted and lowered, she must've been alright but just passed out, in a state of delirium.
"Rest, Remashi, I should take it over from here. You seem to be unable to keep this man down for the count and my roach friends are squirming deep inside… He still has plenty chakra left, enough for at least one more technique, huh?"
"Yeah, one last technique strong enough to blow this whole fucking desert up, however it's sort of useless, that last technique of that bitch locked my chakra away. Whatever little I had left for any hidden aces, I just can't use it anymore… What a despicable feeling of the chakra being there inside my body but being unable to access it!" Jiou grunted out falling down on his knees and pounding the crystal floor of the desert, he reached to his right and picked up one of his swords and gripped it tightly.
"What are you planning to do? You could try attacking Remashi but she could blow you back with one of her Vacuum Palm techniques burning you up even more, you could attack me but my roaches would block any attack and then eat you up, you can't cast your Sharingan genjutsu on Remashi because she'd break out of it noticing it with her Byakugan and she'd also kill you before you could kill me. Face it, you're beaten. Just sit down close to your sister and sit this one out…" Gokibure explained in his sultry confident voice as multiple cockroaches scurried around his face from his hair and disappeared behind his shirt.
Jiou's body blurred, Remashi braced herself to block an impending attack, Gokibure surrounded himself by endless shields of his impenetrable cockroach defence. A moment later the two realized that neither of them were hit, they looked on only to see Jiou flashed forward and behind Gokibure grabbing his sister and holding her up in the air lifted up by the collar of her clothes.
Jiou closed his eyes… "I'm sorry, sister, I wish there was another way. Still, I'm sure you'd see this as a salvation compared to what living chased by that man feels like. You're lucky to leave first…" he mumbled to himself piercing the young woman's chest with his blade after letting go of her and letting her fall onto his sword. The young woman coughed up some blood without even waking up, her body twitched for a couple of moments before letting out a final breath.
"What the Hell did you do!?" Gokibure shouted out enraged.
Jiou's only working eye closed and a single stream of bloody tears ran down his cheek. He let the dead body of his sister slip off his blade and hit the floor, quickly flooding it with the pool of her blood.
"There is a reason why Uchiha love so much… Because the source of our power is directly dependant on pain of loss. Whenever we lose someone we love the most we grow infinitely stronger. Losing someone that one holds the dearest to their heart, that unlocks a very special power…" Jiou's one working eye shot wide open as his Sharingan had changed its markings, three circles added to his Sharingan symbol and the three conjoined identically around his pupil straight onto the centre of the iris.
The pain of loss opened a new power inside Jiou, the pain and desperation of living his life as prey made him ruthless enough to do what was needed and seeing his loved ones in constant danger made him love those close to him strongly enough for them to become vessels for his newly awakened power – the Mangekyou Sharingan.
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