Howoku tried to come up with a proper plan to respond to pretty much any attack, any possible outcome. The Four Tails Jinchuuriki were known for their Lava Release ability, Howoku already knew that his Starlight Release could most likely properly counteract it, then again, he still didn’t know the amount of mastery that this woman had over her beast. Was she able to awaken it? Was she able to use the chakra cloak at the very least? So far she barely even mentioned it, it was only due to the immense chakra burst and the wild change in her eyes that Howoku even got the clue of her ability.
The woman leaped forward with a wild slam of her iron staff, Howoku stepped to the side but the rubble that the slam raised hit him in the face opening minor bruises and making him flinch. The woman flipped back with a kick at Howoku’s chest, after landing on her feet she charged forward with her staff resting on her back, the woman’s fists hurt immensely. Howoku was forced to once again interrupt and boost his chakra flow just so she didn’t do too much damage on him. Fighting with the idea of an upcoming much larger fight was troublesome indeed. The woman’s elbow sent Howoku flying a couple of meters forward. There was no grace or fanciness in him getting up, just a man picking his injured body and peeling it off the floor.
“My name is Howoku, the Fourth Hokage, may I know your name and also just how much mastery you have over the Four Tails? Do you plan on bringing it out at any point?” Howoku roughed out after picking himself up and wiping the blood off of his nose. The woman just smiled back playfully, while her eyes still looked like those of a mad wild monkey and her chakra leaked so intensely that the red glow was visible even to the human eye she appeared to be in complete control.
“Why would I let Son Goku have all the fun? We had a game of Rock-Paper-Scissors to decide who would get this fight, he looked a bit upset that he won’t have a go so I let him boost my abilities but if he ever tried to slip out he’d be grounded for a year! This is my fight, Goku doesn’t interrupt my fights, I don’t interrupt his. Also, my name is Surawu” the woman explained calmly, Howoku looked surprised. This Jinchuuriki was in complete control of her Tailed Beast! She could even keep it down and restrained if she needed to and gambled by playing games with it, games rules of which the beast upheld. This woman was dangerous!
The extensive mastery over her beast brought another problem to Howoku, he had to decide if he wanted to let the woman live. She was a dangerous asset for Kirigakure and if he was to take Shirona down and place a replacement in her place, the loyalists of the woman could always use this Jinchuuriki by tricking her and promising her awesome fights. Someone with so much power but little restraint of her actions had no place in a world of intrigue, if one was stupid enough to become this strong they had to have the brain to use that power responsibly and at the very least the judgment who to lend it to. It would not have been too tough for Howoku to defeat a Tailed Beast if he just let all of his power out in one burst, he’d be exhausted but… Tanshu could beat Shirona, could he not? There were so many questions that kept the Hokage from fighting at full strength.
“No! If I let this continue I’ll get killed, I need to beat this woman first, then to consider all the moral implications!” Howoku thought to himself as he charged forward, kicking with a spinning kick right into the woman’s block, then repositioning his weight and leaping up to kick with the other foot pushing her block away. Howoku’s punches then had an open hunting season all over the woman’s dropped defenses and he decided to exploit it. He was not the best of taijutsu users but he knew enough. He just kept punching with the hope that one of those punches would take her down, he did not stop for a moment because stopping would have meant her having a chance to respond. Howoku leaped onto her shoulders, then over her and kicked off the back of her head. The man slammed his hands forward shooting off shimmering Starlight Release chakra out of his body.
“Starlight Style: Nova Rush!” Howoku shouted leaping with a tackle at the woman as the chakra around his body expanded into an ellipse making Howoku’s body appear like a comet shooting horizontally right at his target. A deafening explosion echoed and wild shrapnel of heated and molten rock from both the collapsing roof and the floor started shooting off at random directions making everyone put a temporary stop in their fights and worry about avoiding this immense backlash of a jutsu. The area where the explosion went off around the centre was completely obliterated, there was a huge crater that reached well into the soil completely disintegrating even the ancient mossy rock that covered the floor, the entire roof construction was completely blown off and disintegrated into dust. Only Howoku stood in the centre of the explosion right in the crater breathing heavily standing by the unconscious body of Surawu – the Four Tails Jinchuuriki.
“Now… I can think what to do…” he thought to himself stroking his own hair to put out a small tongue of flame on his head. This was a bit excessive, he once destroyed an entire assaulting party that tried to invade his village with this technique and he held it back a bit this time, he was using it on a single target in an area where his allies still were after all. Still, Howoku was a bit surprised that the woman only suffered slight burns in some areas and while her armor got completely annihilated, she was supposed to be disintegrated but the Hokage knew that the woman would’ve done something to survive. He actually counted on her tagging out and letting the Tailed Beast take the blast, in that case he would’ve let it have it all and taken it down. Nova Rush Jutsu was powerful enough to severely kick the Tailed Beast in the teeth, it was made for inhuman encounters, those like ones with a Tailed Beast or a Lesser Demon.
A powerful shock caught Howoku unprepared, something steel hard drove into his face in an instant – it was the woman’s staff! The woman’s injured body leaped up so fast that he couldn’t even track her movements, she spun the staff around wildly letting its weight pummel Howoku, the hits were not as focused and crushing as single strikes but the numbers of impacts let her really get into it. Howoku was completely at her mercy for those several combinations of blows. She hit with spins, both left and right, lower and higher areas finishing the combination with a powerful slam into his face sending Howoku out of the crater and onto the floor. The man’s glasses were shattered all over the area from the damage they took.
Clumsily the woman climbed out of the crater, huffing and panting, murmuring something under her own nose. “Wow that attack was amazing! I really felt that!” she complimented the downed opponent of hers by patting her torn up clothes and examining the burns all over her body. Howoku raised his head and started slowly getting up, his vision was blurry and the sides of his body started aching, this degree of damage was something that even Vashia’s ointment would not have completely helped with. He sustained permanent damage in this battle, something he wouldn’t be able to completely heal even in the future, and that was something that severely lowered his chances against Shirona. Howoku felt warm torrents of blood running down all over his body in multiple areas. If this woman focused her strength into a single strike she may even have killed him!
“You mean… You took all of it?!” Howoku asked wiping the blood out of his eyes and tearing off the sleeve of his jumpsuit. The man tied it onto his forehead to stop the bleeding all over his face, that would have gotten into his way. “I actually counted that you would bring your Beast out, I planned for it to take the blast and get taken out…” the man admitted to which Surawu really got mad.
“I told you this was MY fight! Don’t fight Son Goku you stupid twit! Fight ME! Get serious or I’ll pummel you real bad! Well… Then again, we sort of shared chakra in that moment, I wouldn’t have taken the blast if he didn’t help me, heh heh…” her emotions switched completely erratically. One moment this woman was furious that she was not the main target, the next she laughed herself off just because she used the chakra of the Tailed Beast to survive the impact. So these two had perfect coordination – the beast could lend his chakra instantly without questioning his Jinchuuriki’s judgment, she could incorporate the Beast’s chakra into her flow and use it as her own effortlessly. These two worked in perfect sync.
Howoku had to stall, he needed time to start regaining full control of his body as his ribs and his chest hurt too much to keep fighting. He coughed heavily from some sort of liquid in his lungs – he may have been bleeding internally. “This sync… You also named your Tailed Beast… Just what sort of relationship do the two of you have with each other?” Howoku wondered out loud. Surawu stood straight, her eyes changed into more serious eyes and they wondered down onto the ravaged rocky floor.
“I didn’t name Son Goku, that’s his real name. That’s what he told me when we became good friends. That wasn’t the case initially. When I was a little girl I hated him, he made me stronger, more durable and he indirectly helped me to train harder. The stamina of a Jinchuuriki is fifty times that of a ninja without one, even when the two have had no contact with each other. I always thought I was some sort of a freak – I could’ve trained for weeks without rest and so I’ve become really strong unaware of his existence. Other kids thought of me as a freak, so did the grown-ups but they didn’t hate me because of Son Goku, they hated me because I was strong, because I made it all look too easy and because that made them look bad. When a kid appears to barely be trying to complete the tasks that they would fail at even if they trained for a hundred years… People say “Thank you” but they actually hate you deep inside because you illustrate their flaws, you remind them that they are flawed themselves. They think that you’re full of yourself even if you never take pride in your strength. Honestly they didn’t really care about Son Goku, they only hated me because I was better than them while still being innocent and stupid – they thought it all came on a platter for me and that became my curse. I dealt with that hate and cruelty by transferring all of it on Son Goku…”
The woman’s eyes suddenly became sad as she looked down. Howoku’s body started feeling better, he once again felt his arms and legs, some of his wounds didn’t appear to bleed remotely as profusely as he applied other pieces of his jumpsuit as bandage on the wounds that needed attention. All of a sudden Howoku didn’t want to kill this woman at all, even more, he could identify some of himself in her, empathize with her. He knew the social rejection of a genius, he knew all too well of the hatred that people had for people that were inherently better than them. They never even bothered to see these geniuses being arrogant, they never bothered to even question if their skill was even the point of the conversation – a genius was better than them, he illustrated all the flaws they had by contrast and so they had to disappear. They had to be punished for being so good at something somehow, by rejecting a genius people executed their own “social justice”.
Howoku’s eyes raised up and met those of the monkey woman. He saw from her own eyes that she noticed Howoku’s own experience being related to hers, she knew that he understood her own pain perfectly.
“It’s funny, usually the one who doesn’t want to communicate is the Tailed Beast, I’ve met some other Jinchuuriki as they were supposed to tutor me of the easier ways to master one’s abilities as well as teach me responsibility of having a Tailed Beast inside. Son Goku wanted to play with me and talk from the very beginning, it was my own hatred that rejected him. Son Goku kept asking me to play with him, talk to him and I yelled at him that I hated him. Told him that if I ever played with him I’d vomit until I died and if I died I’d be happy because I would no longer have to share a body with him, Goku was really crushed by those words. He stopped talking to me, stopped lending me his chakra. I was happy for a year or two, tried to gain friends, I thought that if I changed for my friends that they’d accept me but while I changed for them they couldn’t have cared less. It’s actually ironic that I wanted recognition, I wanted friends when I had one all along and I pushed him away by being mean to him for people who weren’t even friendly but recognition of which I craved most of all… It was then that I felt truly alone for the first time.”
The story of the woman he never asked for but just couldn’t force himself to tell her to stop reminded Howoku of his own past. With him bearing the heritage of the Moon People, being a descendant of a descendant of some other line of descendants, and possessing their unparalleled power he also was rejected as a child. He was smart because he worked hard, he was strong because he obliterated every obstacle in his way by disintegrating them, he possessed Fire and Lightning Releases from his earliest days surpassing the other genin who barely could use one. To him things always came easy but he never wanted strength, he never wanted to beat his enemies – he wanted to make them understand him, he wanted for everyone in the world to just get along. Ironically enough no one ever bothered to empathize with him or get along with him so how could a man with no friends or empathizers make the entire world feel for itself? It only changed for the better after he met Misu and Hanasaku, Hanasaku was a bit like him – she was crazy strong and always took all the punches smiling but she didn’t care about anything. She taught him that ignorance was bliss, she taught him that the last thing he should cry about was how everyone else perceived him, that he shouldn’t change for their approval, he should reveal his true colours and have people either approve of him or go to hell. Misu showed Howoku that peace and friendship wasn’t always going to cut it, that sometimes one needed to get their hands into the mess, that turning the other cheek after getting slapped only lead to being slapped again, sometimes peace needed to be forced… The three of them were the best of friends and nothing else mattered, meeting them helped Howoku bloom into the man he was today – the Fourth Hokage!
“So how did you two make up?” Howoku asked Surawu encouraging her to finish the story. This was a unique experience, two opponents of each other feeling for one another, being opponents but not enemies. Fighting only because they ended up on the two sides of the same bridge and one of them had to get wet so that the other could pass.
“I always thought that Son Goku was angry at me and that he hated me after I lashed out at him. Turns out that was not the case – he was just hiding because he wanted me to be happy. He thought that maybe once I was happy that I would stop being so angry and hating the world and him by extension. He is a weird creature, he isn’t violent or inherently evil like people portray the Tailed Beasts to be. He’s actually a lot like me – simple minded. He just wants to play around but sometimes he gets a bit destructive with his games so over the years he started to feel really happy being sealed into a human – where his games hurt no one else, there are no villages to destroy in one’s body, no volcanoes there to erupt, just a black void to play with one’s friend until one gets bored. I confronted him after realizing that, it took me some time but… When I did, I’ve never seen anyone be as happy as Son Goku was at that moment. My inhuman strength and endurance returned after he started sharing chakra again but it didn’t matter, instead of supressing myself I let myself bloom and I couldn’t have cared less about what other people thought, I had the only friend I would ever need inside my own body, as close as close gets…”
Surawu gently touched her exposed belly where a complicated sign of a seal was. That gentle touch must’ve meant a lot, it communicated so many feelings at once. While Howoku was not a Jinchuuriki but he could understand the woman perfectly. “Very well, Surawu-san. I shall honor you by going all out and fighting you without thinking of Fou… Son Goku, or the Mizukage. Initially I was afraid of your mastery and coordination with Son Goku but… I guess I’m getting old and soft, I really have no wish to kill you now so you better find an answer to every attack I throw because if you die on me I won’t forgive you!” Howoku explained taking an offensive stance. The two charged at each other and Howoku’s body lit up with Starlight Release chakra as the two started exchanging punches. Even without using the Tailed Beast chakra Surawu was incredibly strong and fast and a very skilled taijutsu user. If it was not for Howoku’s Starlight chakra that made his body much hotter leaving severe burns on any area he touched and burning the fist or knee that hit him slightly, this woman wouldn’t have fought him on such equal scales as she did now.
The two leaped around each other, Surawu avoided every blow, she couldn’t block any attacks without taking some damage and now her body was already battered by Howoku’s previous explosion of excess. The woman made quick and lacking force strikes to hit the man, just land a quick jab, just to leave a mark but not put too much force so that she didn’t contact the heated up chakra for too long. The man’s glowing bursts of chakra were so hot that they didn’t even feel hot – they just burned whatever they touched so Surawu had additional trouble avoiding taking more damage than she would have liked taking. Eventually the woman just flipped over Howoku and kicked off of his shoulders to make some distance between the two – fighting him up close was too much trouble for her.
“Not that I’m complaining but… Aren’t Son Goku’s Jinchuuriki supposed to be able to use Lava Release? Why aren’t you using it?” Howoku asked politely panting after this intense exchange of blows with the woman.
“Well, technically Son Goku can teach you that and while one has him in them they have the capacity but… I’m sort of really bad at it so I stopped bothering with it, is there a problem with that?” Surawu replied.
Howoku laughed out loud from the bottom of his heart. “No. Your reply reminds me of a friend I know though.”
The two prepared to settle their fight finally.
[Reviews - 0]Chapter or Story
Table of Contents
- Text Size +