Chapter 102 Brothers!

The brothers came, and Guy was already there. He'd left the wall the moment A's foot touched the glass. He crossed fifty meters before the Raikage finished his first stride, and the steam pouring off his skin hung in the air behind him in a long blue smear.

A saw him late. Not much. A sliver of a heartbeat. But for the first time since he'd come over that crater at dawn, the Raikage saw him late.

Guy hit him in the ribs. Left fist, right fist, left again, three punches into the same spot under A's right arm before the lightning there could flare to meet them. He felt the current bite into his knuckles every time. It didn't matter. He was already gone from that spot, around A's back, and his right heel came up and cracked against the base of the Raikage's skull. A’s head snapped forward. Before the blow could carry him off his feet, he swung blind behind him with a backhand that could have taken the top off a mountain.

It hit nothing.

Guy was in front of him before he could roll. A knee into A's stomach. An uppercut to the chin. A kick to the abdomen as he was rising, and he went flying across the crater with a boom.

A rushed back up. Speeding toward Guy, he struck forward with a straight right, then a left hook, then a lightning-wrapped chop at Guy's collarbone, each one faster than the one before, each one throwing off sparks that burned holes in the glass where they fell. Guy slipped the right. Ducked the hook. Leaned away from the chop and felt it take the skin off the end of his nose.

He answered every one of them twice.

The Raikage's lip split. His left eye began to swell shut. Blood ran out of his nose and the lightning around his face boiled it into a pink mist. He didn't back up a single step.

“And I thought the Fourth Hokage was the only man faster than me! You aren’t half bad Might Guy!” A shouted as lightning burst from his body. He was going all out.

“Thank you for your words! And I can get a whole lot faster than this!”

Thirty meters to the north, Tsunade fought B. His shroud was bigger than the man inside it. Shoulders like a bull’s, arms thick as tree trunks, the eight tails lashing out behind it and the two curved horns sweeping back from its head. The white eyes in the black face didn't blink. The white mouth didn't move.

She threw her right fist at the center of it.

B caught it. A palm the size of a cart wheel closed around her whole fist and he thought it should’ve stopped her dead. However, reality showed a different outcome. B was once again sent flying fifty meters away.

WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH THAT WOMAN’S STRENGTH!?

Tsunade followed after him this time. After he crashed into the wall of the crater, Tsunade hopped into the air with her heel raised up. She concentrated her chakra into her heel as she came falling down toward B.

The Eight-Tails managed to heal B’s brain enough for him to get back to his feet. He looked up at Tsunade and this time, instead of bracing and believing he could take on that incoming attack, he leaped out of the way. A massive explosion erupted upon her landing, shards of glass and rock pelted B’s form. His tails smacked and swiped at the incoming debris.

“Are you sure you don’t want to try and catch my fist again?” She smirked.

“No way, Lady Tsunade! Ya hit like a landslide, I’m stayin’ on the far side!” 

Tsunade knew that trick wouldn’t work a second time. It was time she got serious. She hadn’t fought a jinchuriki on this level since the Second Shinobi World War.

"Yin Seal," Tsunade said. "Release."

The diamond on her forehead split open. Black lines poured out of it. They ran across her brow and down her temples and over her cheeks, branching, curling, and they didn't stop at her face. They went down her neck. Down her collarbone. Across her shoulders and down both arms to the tips of her fingers and down her chest and stomach and legs to her bare heels. Every inch of her, marked.

B ran in on all fours. The glass splitting under him. Tsunade ran forward to meet him. He hit her. A right paw to the face, and her nose broke and her head snapped back and the bone was already setting itself before her chin came down again. She countered. Straight into the middle of the shroud, where his chest was, the chest she'd caved in once already.

They both went flying in opposite directions. B stabbed his tails into the ground to prevent being sent as far, but it did little to halt his momentum as he spun through the ground itself. Eighto had to heal his destroyed bones as her punch was strong enough to get past his chakra cloak. Tsunade broke half the bones in her body against the wall, and they set themselves before she’d finished falling.

The two eventually got back to their feet, locked eyes, and rushed at each other once more. Tsunade threw a wild right-handed haymaker that B avoided with everything he had. Several tails stabbed into her stomach and blood sprayed out around them. Only for Tsunade to grab those tails, preventing them from leaving her body. B’s eyes widened. Tsunade smirked as she pulled and lifted him into the air and smashed him into the ground. The ground burst on impact as B opened his mouth and began forming a tailed beast bomb aimed at Tsunade. Tsunade barely swayed her head out of the mini-tailed beast bomb shooting toward her face in time before she slammed B into the ground once more. 

When his tails tried to pull out of her, Tsunade clenched every muscle around them  before pulling B even closer with one hand. She grinned as she raised a fist over him. B began wondering if it was a mistake to fight this crazy woman and he should’ve gone after the Hokage instead.

She brought it down. B tore three of his tails loose, leaving the tips in her stomach, and rolled out from under it. Her fist went into the glass where his face had been.

A changed his footing.

Guy noticed it right away. The Raikage stopped trying to catch him. He stopped chasing the fists and the knees and the blur, set his feet wide, tucked his chin, and brought both forearms up in front of his face like a man standing in a hailstorm. The lightning around him doubled. It stood off him a full arm's length, a cage of white fire.

Guy kicked him directly in the face. He appeared behind him after he was sent flying, elbowed him in the back and sent him flying in the opposite direction. This repeated multiple times over, with the Raikage being sent over the crater like a ball. He wasn’t completely helpless though. More than a few times he managed to block with his limbs the incredibly fast and powerful blows of the Hokage.

The Raikage was getting injured more and more but both he and Guy knew that this couldn’t last forever. The Eight Inner Gates was not a jutsu that could be used indefinitely. As long as A could keep his vitals from being affected, Guy’s body would burn out before long.

Guy also knew that. He glanced north. Tsunade and B were fighting. Tsunade was charging forward while B fought at a distance. Guy inwardly laughed. Even he couldn’t defeat Tsunade in an arm-wrestling competition. That strength was to be avoided for sure.

Guy grinned at the Raikage before he turned and ran at B's back.

He came in from behind and he aimed the kick at the back of B's head. Something came out of the shroud to meet it. It burst out through the dark skin of B's back between the shoulder blades and it was wet and dusky pink and thick as Guy’s thigh, rows of white-rimmed suckers along its edges, and it whipped around and caught Guy's ankle in mid-kick.

It yanked, and Guy swung upside down in the air, and a second tentacle came out of B's back beside the first and swung at his head like a club.

Guy reached behind him.

His nunchaku were in the back of his belt. He pulled them out and swung in the same motion. The black hardwood rods cracked across the second tentacle a hand's width from the tip and the tip burst open, flesh and blood spattering across the glass. Guy brought the nunchaku back around his own shoulder, caught the loose rod under his arm, and snapped it out again straight down at the tentacle around his ankle.

It burst too. He dropped. He landed on his hands and flipped onto his feet, and both tentacles were already growing back. The ruined ends bubbled and stretched and pushed out new flesh, new suckers, new tips, as fast as a man could clench a fist.

Four more came out of B's back.

They came at him from four directions. High left, low right, one straight at his chest and one curling around at the edge of his vision to come at him from behind. Guy spun the nunchaku in a figure eight in front of him and stepped into the one coming at his chest. The rod split it open. He ducked the high one. He jumped the low one and came down on it with both heels and crushed it flat against the glass. He turned and swung behind him blind and felt the rod strike flesh and heard it burst.

They grew back.

He broke them again. They grew back again. He was carving a path through them toward B's back, a meter at a time, the nunchaku blurring, the chain singing, flesh and blood and salt water in the air around him.

In front of B, Tsunade saw the tentacles. She saw where B's attention went. For half a second the shroud's white eyes turned over its shoulder toward Guy.

She hit him in the side of the head. B went flying directly at Guy. Guy dropped his nunchaku as he caught and grabbed the spiraling B headed toward him. He shot off from the ground while spinning, turning himself toward the ground, straight down at Tsunade, who was already rearing back a punch to meet him. She and Guy locked eyes.

“BROTHER!!!” B shouted.

“SHUT UP! I GOT YOU!” A suddenly appeared right next to Tsunade and sent her flying with a punch to the side of the head.

Guy didn’t let go of B despite the painful burn of holding the chakra cloak. “PRIMARY LOTUS!!!”

A massive explosion of glass and stone erupted. A green figure came flying out of ground zero toward Tsunade. She caught him and seemingly with a single touch, he was back to full health.

“The lotus of the Leaf Village blooms twice!” Guy shot back up with a pose.

“Yeah, you’re welcome…” Tsunade couldn’t help but smile. 

“This ain’t looking good for us, big bro.” B mentioned. “I might have to go full power if we wanna win this.”

“No! We can win this! Tsunade is the weakest link. If we take her out, Guy will burn out before he can finish us.” A responded.

“Weakest link?! That lady hits harder than anyone I’ve ever fought before! She also can’t die! What are you on about, big bro!?” B asked.

“She’s strong and nearly unkillable, but she’s slow. Slower than both of us. If we take her out with our combo, this war is over.” A told him.

“Fool ya, fool! Do ya really think it's that simple?!” B yelled at him.

“We’re going to have to make it be.” 

The two sparked with lightning before disappearing. 

Tsunade and Guy tracked both of them. B was speeding behind Tsunade while A was speeding toward Tsunade. Both of them had lightning sparking from their arms and raised up. Tsunade and Guy didn’t have the time to talk about their plan. Guy rushed toward A while Tsunade turned toward B.

Guy clashed with A, his fist sliding into A’s abdomen. A brought his head down in a fierce shocking headbutt, dropping Guy’s head down, but not all the way to the ground. Guy caught himself with his hands and both of his feet shot up into A’s chin, sending him flying. He leapt up himself, wrapping himself around A’s waist and slamming him into the ground headfirst, but he wasn’t finished yet. 

He slipped both his arms under the dazed Raikage's armpits from behind after pulling him back to his feet. Guy brought his hands up and laced his fingers together over the back of A's neck. He locked his elbows. He pressed down on the back of A's skull and lifted with his shoulders.

A full nelson. 

A roared and the lightning cloak roared with him. It went into Guy's body and cooked him. The skin of his forearms blistered and split and bled and the blood boiled. He smelled his own flesh burning.

He still didn't let go.

A threw himself backward to crush Guy against the glass. Guy hooked his left foot behind A's left heel and he stumbled instead. A heaved forward to throw Guy over his head. Guy dropped his hips and sank his weight and the Raikage couldn’t toss him.

"Tsunade!" Guy exclaimed.

B’s lariat caught her across the back and threw her across the crater, straight at them. She landed on her feet in front of the Raikage. His arms were up and out in the shape of the hold, his chest open, his face red and roaring. He kicked at her. She took it on the hip and felt her pelvis shatter.

However, before she was sent flying, she put her palm flat against his temple. Lightning chakra went in through the bone of his skull along the lines of his nerves.

A's roar cut off. His right leg jerked up off the ground. His left hand flew open. His head snapped hard to the right against Guy's locked fingers and then to the left. His eyes rolled in two different directions. The lightning around his body flickered. Sputtered. Went out.

Guy let go.

The Raikage fell. He hit the glass on his side and lay there, and he tried to get up, and his body didn't listen to him. His left leg kicked out sideways. His right arm swung in a circle over his head. His fingers opened and closed on nothing. He tried to say something and it came out of his mouth as noise.

He tried to push himself up with his hands, and his hands pushed him sideways instead, and he rolled onto his back and stared at the sky.

Tsunade walked over to Guy, her pelvis already healed, and she healed him again. He put his thumb up.

"You are the most amazing kunoichi in the world, Lady Tsunade!" He shouted.

"Hmph, tell me something I don’t know." Tsunade smirked.

B saw his brother on the ground.

He saw his leg kicking. He saw his hands opening and closing. He saw his eyes rolled two different ways in his head. Thirty years he'd watched that man get up from everything.

He'd never seen him so helpless.

B, said the voice inside him. B. If you do what you're thinking about doing...

"I know." B said.

They told you never. Your brother told you never.

"My brother needs my help."

The Eight-Tails went quiet.

Then it said, Then let's go, partner.

The shroud around B swelled. It went up. Ten meters. Twenty. Fifty. The dark chakra stopped being chakra and became meat and bone and horn. A bull's head. A bull's horns, one of them broken off short near the root. A body like a mountain. And behind it, eight great arms rising into the sky, dusty pink and thick as the trunks of old trees, curling and uncurling, each one longer than the beast was tall.

The Eight-Tails stood in the crater.

On the west, shinobi of the Leaf took three steps back without anyone telling them to.

On the east, the Cloud army went still.

And Guy, standing in the shadow of it, looked up and up and up, and he shook his head.

“Looks like we’re really going all out here.”

"Try to stay alive, Guy."

"I don’t plan on dying anytime soon, Lady Tsunade."

“Then let’s survive this and go home already.”

“HOOOOOH!!!” The aura around Guy increased.

One of the great arms came down out of the sky. It went down slow, and it curled under the Raikage where he lay twitching on the glass, and it scooped him up gently, and lifted him up and back and held him against the beast's chest. The Raikage's mouth twitched but no words came out. Gyūki's eyes, pale eyes with rings inside rings, looked down at the two people in front of it.

"Ya hurt my brother," B's voice said. It came out of the beast's mouth, and it shook the glass under their feet. "Now you about to get the pounding of a lifetime."

The first tentacle came down like a falling tree.

Guy grabbed Tsunade by the back of the collar and jumped, and the arm hit the glass where they'd been standing and drove a hole in the floor of the crater ten meters deep. Black stone sprayed up around them. He set her down thirty meters away.

"Spread out," She said. "He can't get both of us."

"He has eight arms."

"Seven," She said. "Look."

Guy looked. The arm holding the Raikage hadn't moved. It was curled against the beast's chest, close and tight, and the beast's whole body was turned a little to one side, keeping that arm away from them.

Guy went left. Tsunade went right.

Two arms came at Guy. He went up the first. He ran up it, along the top of it, feet slapping against the skin, and when the second arm swung at him he jumped off the first and came down on the second and ran up that one too. He was at the beast's shoulder in four strides. He kicked off. He spun in the air and brought his heel down across the side of Gyūki's face.

The great head jerked sideways. A tooth the size of a man came loose and fell. Another arm swung at him. He dropped under it and fell, and caught himself on the beast's horn with one hand, and swung, and kicked off again and came down a hundred meters away on the glass, skidding.

On the other side of the beast, Tsunade was standing her ground. An arm came down at her. She didn't jump. She set her feet and put her fist up and met it. The tentacle went flying back up as the glass under her feet blew out in a ring and she sank into the floor of the crater up to her ankles. A second arm came slamming down toward her and she grabbed it with both hands, sank her fingers into the flesh, and heaved.

The Eight-Tails slightly tipped over, but the beast had to put another arm down on the glass to keep from falling, and that arm came down close to her, and she let go of the first and climbed onto the second and ran up it toward the beast's head. He saw her coming. Two arms came at her from either side, curling, closing like a pair of hands. She ran between them as they closed. They slapped together behind her, and she was at the end of the arm, at the shoulder, and she jumped.

She came down out of the sky over the beast's head with her right leg raised straight up over her own head. Her heel came down on the top of Gyūki's skull between the horns. The beast's chin hit the floor of the crater. The whole crater shook. The frozen pool on the eastern side, what was left of it, flew up into the air in a fountain of water and ice. Cracks raced out across the black glass to both rims.

And the arm that held the Raikage didn't move. It stayed curled against the beast's chest the whole time, close and safe, even as the head hit the ground. Tsunade landed on the glass beside the beast's open mouth, breathing hard. One of the arms came at her and she rolled away from it. Another one came, and she was slower getting up this time, and it clipped her and threw her fifty meters across the crater floor and into the wall.

She stood up out of the rubble. Guy came down beside her. Another arm came down at them. Guy grabbed her and leapt. They came down twenty meters away.

Across the crater, the Eight-Tails stood over them. Seven arms swaying. One arm curled against its chest, holding a man who couldn't hold himself up. It wasn't attacking.

Tsunade looked at it. The beast was bleeding from its mouth where Guy had knocked the tooth loose. The skin between its horns was split open where her heel had come down. And it was standing a little to one side, keeping its brother out of reach.

B opened his mouth. The light came first. Black specks and white specks. They came out of the air around the beast's jaws like dust rising off a road, swirling, drawing together, the black ones and the white ones circling each other in front of its mouth. They pressed in. They packed down. They became a ball. Small at first, the size of a man's head, then the size of a cart, then the size of a house.

A Tailed Beast Bomb. But it wasn't pointed at them. The great head turned, slow, and the ball turned with it. Past Guy. Past Tsunade. Up. Over toward the west, over the heads of the six jonin standing there, and past them to the second ridge a kilometer behind, where the field hospital had been pulled back that morning, where every chunin and genin and medic of the Konoha army on this front was waiting.

The jonin on the west saw where it was pointed. One of them, the old Inuzuka, started to run toward the crater. Two of the others caught him by the arms and held him back.

Tsunade and Guy didn't move toward the beast.

Neither did it move toward them.

"One more step," B said. "One more step, Lady, and I don't care what happens to Yugito."

Tsunade looked up at the ball, and the arm curled against the beast's chest, and the Raikage inside it. Guy pressed his thumb to his heart.

Guy's voice dropped. "Fire that, and Kumogakure will be destroyed."

Nobody moved.

The ball turned in the beast's jaws. On the east, the Cloud army stood frozen in its lines. On the west, the six jonin stood frozen in theirs. The wind blew across the crater and stirred the steam off Guy's skin and Tsunade’s hair and nothing else moved in the whole kilometer of black glass.

Then the beast took a step back without turning. It lifted one great arm and set it down on the glass behind it, and then another, and then another, and it moved back across the crater floor. It reached the eastern wall of the crater. It put its arms up on the rim and pulled itself up and over, backward, its eyes on them the whole time.

The ball went down behind the rim with it.

And then, slowly, the light of it faded, and was gone.

On the east, C and Darui were waiting.

They'd watched it all from there. They'd stood at the front of the army with their hands at their sides and their orders in their ears. Nobody goes down into that crater. They'd watched their Kage fall. They'd watched their Kage's brother turn back on their enemies.

Now the Eight-Tails came over the rim backward, and it shrank.

It went down and down, the arms drawing back into the body and the body drawing in on itself, and the bull's head shrank to a man's head, and then the beast was gone, and Killer B was kneeling on the rim of the crater in the shreds of his clothes with his brother across his knees.

B’s chest was still caved in. He was breathing in short wet gasps.

C got there first. He went to his knees beside them and put his hands on the Raikage's chest.

A looked up at him. His right eye looked at C. His left eye looked at the sky. His mouth opened and closed.

"Lord Raikage…" C said.

A made a sound.

"It's his nerves," C said. He looked up at B. "Somebody's scrambled his nervous system. We can’t fix this here."

"Then we go home." B said.

Darui stood over them with his hands at his sides. He looked down at the Raikage. Then across the crater at the two small figures still standing on the far side of it.

"Lord B," he said. "They're not following."

"No," B said. "They ain't."

On the west, the blue steam stopped. Guy dropped out of the Eight Inner Gates and raised his thumb.

“We did it!”

“It looks like Konoha keeps its Fifth Hokage.”

“We have a bunch of other options even if I died here.” Guy smiled.

“That may be true, but I’m not interested in the hat. It’s a damn death magnet.” Tsunade said.

"They were a lot tougher than I thought."

"Hmph. We would’ve won if we didn’t have these slackers." Tsunade turned to the jonin coming down the western wall.

“Sorry, Lady Tsunade!” The Leaf shinobi apologized.

“She isn’t being serious, fellas. Take it easy.” Guy laughed and reassured them.

“I don’t know…” Tsunade hummed. “The death of the Raikage and the Eight-Tails would be pretty advantageous for us, right now.”

“Lady Tsunade!” Guy cried.

“Just saying.” She shrugged.