Myrmidon (Naruto/Hunter x Hunter)
- Thread starter Ser_Serendipity
- Start date
- Crossover
-
- Tags
- hunter x hunter naruto
Neruz
Rogue Spiderbanana
- Location
- The Land of Fire and Poison
No, that's a Tailed Beast Ball: Enormous black\purple ball of chakra that gives off an almost tangible aura of energy\power and is incredibly heavy are the defining characteristics of the Tailed Beast Ball. The Rasenshuriken was earlier;
The magnetic implosion ones are Sage Art: Magnet Release: Rasenshuriken using Shukaku's Magnet Release. Incidentally the fact that Meruem believes that the Rasenshuriken and its variants are 'primitive' just goes to show how very little he really understands about Chakra techniques, as the Sage Art Rasenshuriken variants are considered one of the most marvelous ninjutsus of all time; even Kaguya thought that the ultimate expression of the technique (using all 9 Tailed Beast Rasenshurikens simultaneously) was notable. The fact that Naruto was able to so easily suppress Meruem's attempted reproduction of the Rasengan further proves that despite all the power he pumped into it, it was ultimately only a shallow and incomplete shadow of the true technique: Only someone with top-tier Chakra absorbing abilities can disarm a Rasenshuriken before it blows up in their face and that is one of the powers that Naruto does not have. (Sasuke does though, because Rinnegan: Preta Path.)
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Ser_Serendipity
Building Character
Yeah, that's intentional. I've messed around with how to write Kurama before, and in this case I decided to make his speech as non-traditional as possible (bolding, no quotations, no punctuation) to help get across just how alien Meruem perceived him. It also encourages a reader to either read carefully or skim for critical words, either of which help impart Kurama's speech as difficult to endure, lol.
Glad everyone seems to have enjoyed the chapter. As ever, it's a joy to entertain.
- Location
- Leeds
Given how much of the communication is done via chakra, it also makes sense that a Chakra Beast might be more fluent in this than two meat beings.
Chapter 34
Ser_Serendipity
Building Character
Myrmidon Chapter 34
Hinata suspected she was having a nightmare. At some point, she might have fallen unconscious, perhaps during the fight, finally overcome by her exhaustion or the unspeakable pressure of the dueling chakra of the King and her husband. Maybe she was seeing her fears, and not reality.
The fantasy vanished as quickly as it arrived. Hinata watched with cold shock as the storm of chakra blew away, dispelled in an instant. The devastation it left behind was clear for the first time: the palace has been completely destroyed. Not even its foundations remained. The land around it was completely sundered, ripped open by the King's anger and blasted to glass by Naruto's. It was as though one of East Gorteau's weapons of mass destruction had been set off and confined to a blessedly small area.
The King had surrendered, and Naruto had accepted it. Hinata's mind skipped over that like a smooth stone across still water, trying to come to terms with it. What was more difficult to consider, that the King had conceded at all, or that Naruto had taken it with a smile? That he'd smiled at-
That thing?
"It's over?" That was Killua. He was leaning forward like the eager child he was. "That was…"
"Insane." Gon finished for him. "What happened to the King?" The Ant and Naruto were about eight miles away now, and even the Nen-enhanced eyes of the Hunter's could only pick out two distant figures without detail or comprehension.
"The King…" Hinata murmured, her hands clenching. Gaara glanced at her, taking a cautious step closer. She couldn't finish the thought. What could she say? What could she possibly say to encompass what she was feeling?
The world was burning down around her. If she said that out loud, she'd sound insane.
Without warning or sound, Sasuke arrived on the hilltop, coming to a stop at her side. Everyone jerked away from him on instinct, except Hinata, who'd seen him coming, and Netero, who observed him with cool detachment. The Chairman shifted back towards the distant King with a small grin, and brought two fingers up around his eye.
He'd saved Neferpitou. Hinata had seen it, but she hadn't really cared. The Royal Guard was all but dead, along with Shaiapouf. The latter had fled into the miasma of chakra, and certainly been destroyed in the crossfire: Hinata had lost track of what was left of him in the chaos of the fight. Now, Pitou was with the rest of the Ants and Komugi, slowly bleeding to death while ensconced by the population of East Gorteau.
"Sasuke," Gaara asked. "What happened down there?"
"Isn't it obvious?" It wasn't Sasuke who spoke, though he turned to regard the man who had. Netero didn't look at any of them. He just kept peering through the hole created by his fingers, the lense of Nen there shimmering with invisible light. The Chairman was grinning.
"He surrendered."
"The King surrendered?" Gon and Ging asked the same question in the same tone and then shot an accusatory look at the other, both clearly thinking they'd come up with it first.
"Impossible," Killua laughed. The arm the King had broken was held stiff and limp by his side. "There's no way that thing-"
Hinata felt herself start to shake; she felt as though she were watching the world from five feet behind herself, her body reduced to an empty, mute doll.
"Do you think Sasuke here is a fool?" Netero asked, his tone mild, and Killua's words died in his throat. "He thought the King would surrender-" He dropped his hand, and looked at Hinata, making eye contact through the side of her head. Her expression was frozen, severe, but the Chairman was still grinning. "-he thought Naruto would ask the King to surrender: did you think he was simply deluded?"
Sasuke inclined his head.
'I'm just trying to do what Naruto would do.'
He'd been right. He'd been right. Sasuke had known her husband's intent better than her. Had this place really made her that foolish? Had it severed her from her family that quickly?
Hinata remembered the King, remembered Himawari, and her trembling grew more violent.
"The King I met wouldn't have surrendered," Sasuke said. "He was almost suicidal in his need to overcome me. It's why he gave me the strength to bring Naruto here at all." He frowned. "I have no idea what Naruto did to make him back down. There's no way I could have managed it."
'Did you really think it would end differently?'
Hinata took another step back, trying to purge herself of emotion and watch everything with the all-seeing eyes her family was famous for, but her desperation and fear and doubt followed her and only made everything muddier. Naruto had talked down Pain, even after he'd stabbed her in the lung. She'd seen it in his memories. But that had been a personal connection; Pain had been a fellow student, someone trying to change the world. There wasn't a connection between him and Meruem. The King was hunger, and rage, and his chakra pushed away everything.
Hinata's heart froze. Like the storm of chakra, her anger and pain dissipated, and the situation was finally clear to her.
The King was lonely.
What did her husband understand better than loneliness?
Nothing. There wasn't a thing in the world. Even with a family, even as the Hokage, even able as he was to give and receive limitless love, Naruto Uzumaki had spent the first decade of his life crushed by an unbearable loneliness. That was what had driven him to take the King's surrender; Meruem's unwitting lifeline of empathy. Hinata understood now.
And yet, she was one-hundred percent sure it was a mistake. The King wasn't a lonely child. He was a biological weapon that existed to consume and dominate. She'd spent enough time in his mind to know that-
Fuck.
To know that Komugi was the most important thing in the world to him. Something he'd move every living being in the country on behalf of without a second thought.
Hinata took one more step back. She was barely herself now, just a distant consciousness watching her body and the others on the hill.
'Did you really think it would end differently?'
Hmm, she thought. She really had. This could be a problem.
The reality of the situation snapped her back into place. She was herself again, and the hurricane in her soul began tearing her in every direction once more. It didn't matter if the King was lonely, she thought. He couldn't be allowed to live. He couldn't be forgiven. If Naruto couldn't see that, she'd have to take care of it herself.
And unlike the King, she could be forgiven.
As she watched with a new conviction burning in her chest, Naruto created a clone. Neither he nor the King were speaking, but their chakra rolled and sparked; they were communicating without words.
'Stay,' Hinata could read in its intent. Like a command to a willful pet.
Then, Naruto moved. The clone stayed. The King stayed.
He was in front of her. In the time it took for her eyes to register that her husband had moved at all, he went from facing the King to facing her.
"Would people stop doing that…" Killua muttered. Hinata barely heard him.
He was here. After more than two months her husband was here.
"Hey." He smiled.
Hinata didn't think. She just rushed forward, and Naruto caught her, wrapping her in his arms and squeezing her to his chest. Faint golden chakra played along him, the leftovers of his cloak, spreading across her body with a ticklish warmth.
Hinata breathed him in, smelled him, felt his arms around her and the comforting solidity of his broad back, and felt something relax. Like a vice around her brain had been released, the migraine that she hadn't even been aware of vanished. It was more than just his presence: his golden chakra danced across her body, closing every lingering cut and scrape. For the first time in over a month, her right leg stopped aching, the damage done by Pitou finally and fully healed.
They stayed like that for what seemed like forever, but the moment ended far too soon.
"Are you okay?" he whispered, pulling back just an inch. Hinata looked up at him, her eyes deactivating.
She considered, and then shook her head, trying not to bite her lip. Saying it out loud would make it real.
Naruto's face fell, and he nodded. "Yeah…" he muttered. "Yeah. What about Shino and Kiba?" He looked to the side, to Gaara. "Where are they? I can't feel them."
"We left them and some others at a settlement," Gaara said. Everything and everyone was quiet now; the Hunters, Hinata thought, because of the paradox of the man who'd defeated the King sweeping her into his arms, and the shinobi thanks to their respect. "Make a clone. I'll guide you to them."
Naruto did, refusing to release Hinata. She was relieved. If he let go, she thought, she had no idea what she'd do.
Safe, fully and completely safe in her husband's arms for the first time in far too long, Hinata forgot about the Chimera Ants, at least for the moment, and surrendered to her relief and joy.
###
It is difficult, Zeno Zoldyck thinks, to have an objective opinion of a man after you just watched him reduce several square miles to glass and come away without a scratch. He stands alongside his son and watches Naruto Uzumaki hug his wife, and the contrast between the man's tenderness now and the unbelievable power and ferocity that must have been necessary to subdue the King of the Chimera Ants makes him smile.
Zeno has never regretted his life or his actions. He thinks of his job as something in between a public service and an expression of a deeply personal philosophy. Human life is common, but not cheap: human life can be ended in an instant by anyone and anything, but that only makes its perseverance more marvelous, like the beauty of a spider's web.
But he has regretted what his profession has done to his family. Like it does everything else, time slowly broke down his original intent. He'd taught his son how to kill because he had nothing else to give him. And then, Silva passed that along to his grandchildren. Of all of them, Zeno is sure that Killua is the only one who is close to understanding what made him a killer in the first place, and that was from willful teenage rebellion more than any concrete philosophy… at least at first.
The Zoldyck family he has unwittingly produced doesn't have balance. They are assassins first and humans second. Ilumi, Kalluto, and Milluki could never embrace someone with the guileless passion of the Hokage, even their own family. That doesn't mean they aren't useful, or that they are worth less to him than the rest of his family, but it does make him hesitate.
So despite the inherent difficulty in making the judgement given the circumstances, Zeno finds himself taking a liking to Naruto Uzumaki immediately, simply because of his ability to win such a pivotal battle and then turn to comfort his wife without hesitation.
However, there is a trend among the present fathers and sons, five in total. That trend is their thoughts moving along similar tracks. So Silva Zoldyck's thoughts resemble his father's, through the warped glass of their separate consciousness, and Killua's resembles Silva's by another degree of separation. Silva's admiration is tempered by cold calculation; this is a man who could be a possible target of a contract in the future, and if that were the case, could the Zoldyck's keep up their unbroken streak? It doesn't seem likely. Naruto Uzumaki is obviously a creature of unbelievable power, and even worse, he clearly has no shortage of powerful friends. In the world of assassins, he's an unprecedented complication.
Killua is simply glad the situation has been resolved. Gon is safe; to a lesser degree, he's happy Hinata is safe. They're all safe. Once the adrenaline has worn off, he'll have more time to consider the terrifying implications of Naruto's power, and that the King is still alive. But in the moment, he's able to enjoy the sudden and violent peace.
It's much the same for Gon. Gon is not a simple person, but he has simple thoughts, and he's awed and gratified by the resolution; the climactic anti-climax. The storm of chakra, the sights and sounds of the battle, the stampede of East Gorteau's people: Gon is a fighter at heart, and he's pretty sure he'll never see another fight quite like that one, even if he only saw a quarter of it. All he can remember in its wake are the quiet, confident words Hinata spoke a week ago in a hotel that was now rubble. He's pretty amused at how much of an understatement they ended up being.
'He's entirely beyond me.'
Much like Killua, right now, his perspective is limited. He's distracted enough to not consider the rest of the Ants, Kite, Neferpitou, his father sitting just ten feet away. That will come later. For now, Gon exults in a victory that he helped shape.
Despite what many present are assuming, Ging isn't the opposite; like Gon, he's thrilled at the fight. He's thrilled at the opportunity and danger it has opened up in a world that has been steadily shrinking around him. But unlike Gon, he's not distracted. Watching Naruto embrace his wife, he's all too aware of everything. The Ants, the Royal Guards, Hinata Uzumaki's fragile state, his son's awe, the Zoldyck's admiration and reservation, the political and military implications of Peijing's essential destruction, the inevitable changes coming to the Hunter's Association, the King, good lord, the King. A hundred thousand different possibilities are spiralling out at once from this moment in every possible direction, and Ging has an insatiable urge to follow each and every one of them to the end of their string, even if that's physically impossible and extremely stupid to boot. After all, a lot of those possibilities end with him dead.
That's who Ging is. He's called a Ruin Hunter, but that's only because ruins are the one thing he can find no matter where he goes. It doesn't matter what path he's following to the end; there's always a past to uncover that can transform the present. In a thousand years, Peijing will be one of those ruins, along with whatever others Naruto Uzumaki, the Chimera Ants, the Hunter's Association, and the complications that their collision will create.
The only thing he's not aware of right now is Isaac Netero. Ging has always told himself that is willful ignorance, that he doesn't predict the actions of someone like Netero unless he absolutely has to because that would make things less interesting, but that's only a half truth. The truth is that Netero is as simple and predictable as he is old and inscrutable; for example, if Netero were to die fighting the King, Ging is reasonably sure he'd be able to predict the man's will. But alive, watching the most powerful human in the world hug his wife with clear and infinite love, Ging cannot for the life of him tell what direction Netero will swing.
That paradox is what makes the Chairman interesting. It will always make him interesting, until the day he dies, which will make him marginally less interesting, if only because he will no longer be able to make new decisions.
Isaac Netero, Chairman of the Hunter's Association, wonders if he should have thrown himself into the middle of the fight, and made everything as simple as possible. He's wondering that because Naruto's mercy has made everything far, far too complicated.
###
Shino was deep in conversation with Knuckle when Naruto arrived.
Morel was dying. That was a given with a hole in his chest, but he'd degraded since Hinata and the others had left, and they didn't have a way to move him safely. Kiba was too injured to carry anyone but himself: Shoot and Shino were both missing limbs, and the damage had degraded Shoot's control of his Hatsu. Palm was still gone. Despite the other Hunter's hopes, she hadn't turned up.
That left Knuckle, and he wasn't confident he could carry Morel to a hospital a country away without harming him more. Moving a man as big as Morel was a challenge on its own, no matter how strong you were. His injury moved it from difficult to impossible.
"What about…" Knuckle asked, hand on his chin. They were both sitting, propped against the building Morel had fallen into a coma in. "Could you paralyze him? Or turn him into something easy to carry?"
Shino cocked an eyebrow, which was far more effort than it should have been. "To the first, no. I could have bred some insects for that purpose, but I lost too many specialists for that; the hive won't listen to me anymore. And to the second… no."
"Why?" Knuckle was growing frustrated, and rightfully so. His master was dying, and they had no way to save him.
"He doesn't have chakra," Shino said. "And even if we did turn him into, say, a rock, he would still have the injury. Just the act of a henge might kill him, if it were even possible in the first place."
Knuckle growled. "Well, there's gotta be something-!"
At that moment, Naruto landed right in front of them, a sudden golden bolt.
It took Shino a moment to identify what had happened: seated on the ground, struggling with the exhaustion that had suffused him since the death of most of his insects, it took him a shockingly long time to understand who had just arrived without warning.
Knuckle was quicker on the draw, but he made the wrong assumption. He threw a panicked punch and hit nothing but air.
"Shino!" Naruto acted as if the man hadn't even attacked him, and rushed to Shino's side. The Aburame looked up at the Hokage without comprehension, and blinked. Once. Twice. His heart restarted, and his brain with it.
"Naruto?" he rasped. "You're here?"
"Hey!" Knuckle shouted. Naruto looked back at him with a curious glance. "Who are you?! You scared the shit out of me!"
Gaara stepped out from the side of the building with a sour look on his face, and Knuckle shot him a disbelieving look.
"Let me apologize on Naruto's behalf," he said, his voice as calm as ever. "He keeps forgetting people around here aren't used to… him."
"Naruto?" Knuckle asked. "Who… what happened to the other guy? Sasuke?" His eyes went wide. "Is the King dead?"
"You're, uh, Knuckle, right?" Naruto said, ignoring the man's question. The Hunter sputtered. "Sasuke's fine. The King-"
"It's taken care of," Gaara interrupted. Shino wondered why he'd bothered. What had happened, back in Peijing? How was Naruto here now? It was too good to be true. As he struggled to come to terms with the sudden change in circumstances, Naruto placed a comforting hand on his shoulder.
Warm golden chakra flowed from Naruto's palm into Shino's torso, pulsing through his body, and after a second he felt like less of a dusty sarcophagus. He struggled to his remaining knee, before Naruto gently pushed him back down.
"Hey, fighting your own battles and all, but right now you're down an arm and a leg." Naruto said it in a friendly manner, but it was the command of a Hokage, not the suggestion of a friend. "Chill for a second, alright? Let it sink in."
He couldn't. "Naruto," he said again, his voice a little stronger. "Morel-"
"Gaara told me. Kiba and Shoot too, right?" The Hokage was one-hundred percent confident and in command of the situation. That's what they'd been missing during this whole mess, Shino suddenly realized. A leader. Sometimes, it was a great comfort to have someone else to shoulder the burden.
"I'll get them." Naruto stood up. "Knuckle, can you help Gaara? He's gonna wrap Morel up for the trip: I can carry him, but I'll need help keeping him still."
Knuckle, standing shocked and wordless, closed his mouth with a snap, and nodded his head. He hurried into the building ahead of Gaara, new urgency in his action.
Shino's head was still spinning, but slower now. He was finally feeling like himself.
"What did that to you?" Naruto asked in the temporary quiet. Shino could hear Gaara's sand shifting; if he had to guess, the Kazekage was probably wrapping Morel in something like a cocoon, an over the top medical restraint. The Hokage was subdued; he was staring at Shino's missing limbs.
"A Royal Guard. The King," he said. "One each."
"Hmm." Naruto's eyes narrowed. "Probably should be glad I didn't know that earlier. I might have done something I'd regret."
Shino cocked his head, analyzing the words. "He's alive, isn't he?" he said after a moment. "You left the King alive."
"He surrendered. I took it." Naruto pursed his lips. "Why? You think it was the wrong idea?"
"No. Maybe." Shino couldn't decide. "It depends. I guess we'll see. Things are going to get complicated."
Naruto chuckled. "Yeah, I figured. I think I'm going to need some catching up. Sasuke told me things were time-sensitive; I didn't ask enough questions." He hesitated. "Hinata… what happened to her? I couldn't…"
Sudden clarity surged through Shino, and he locked eyes with the Hokage. "She spent time with the King, alone." He considered it. His voice dropped. "Naruto, listen. Of all of us, any human alive, she's been exposed to the Chimera Ants on a completely different level." He frowned, a sharp pain forming in his chest as he realized his next words were true. "If the King is still alive, if any of the Ants are still alive, you have to… watch her."
"Hinata?" Naruto sounded incredulous, and Shino thought he was right to. He never could have pictured himself saying anything like that about the Hinata of two months ago, the one Naruto had kissed goodbye as she stepped through the portal to West Gorteau. But now, he couldn't afford not to.
"Yes, Hinata." Shino felt his face twisting, unable to hide some measure of his grief and guilt. "She really, truly hates them, Naruto. If the King is still alive, she'll try to kill him. I don't have a single doubt."
The Hokage rocked back. "She wouldn't do that. Not after he'd-"
"Naruto, listen to me. Did she seem okay? Did she seem like herself?" Shino asked, and slowly, Naruto shook his head.
"We failed." Shino shook with his conviction. His missing limbs ached. "We failed you, and we failed her. We relied on her too much, and she saw for all of us every terrible thing the Ants did. She went to try and talk the King down; he was obsessed with her. We never should have let her go." Shino dropped his head, ashamed to look the Hokage in the eye. "It will take her time. To get back to herself."
They stayed like that, in dreadful silence, for a good ten seconds.
"Okay," Naruto said. Shino looked up, and the Hokage extended his hand. He didn't look anything but determined.
He took the Hokage's hand.
"Okay," Naruto repeated as he dragged Shino to his remaining foot. "One thing at a time. First, we gotta get you all to a hospital." He frowned.
"Then, I'll worry about Hinata."
###
Eventually, Naruto let her go.
Hinata hadn't been sure she was ready, but Naruto had known she was, and his faith in her proved correct. It surprised her that she had the strength to stand alone so soon, but that was a foolish thing to think. She wasn't fragile; she'd just been hurt. Of course she could stand on her own, with a little love from her husband.
"So…" Naruto said. He glanced around. "I should probably figure out what's going on, right?"
Hinata laughed. "It's a long story."
Naruto smiled at her laugh. "Where would you start?"
It seemed obvious, but as Hinata tried to decide she realized she wasn't sure. Where could they? With the birth of the King? With the concept of Chimera Ants themselves? With traveling to the NGL with Mari, or following Killua out of it? Even with hindsight, she had no idea where to begin telling Naruto what had happened.
"I…" She said, looking back to the Hunters. No one had budged since Gaara had left; the Hunters had been quietly talking to one another, and the Zoldyck's had been sitting in stoic silence, observing the millions of humans and hundreds of Ants below in the valley. Gon caught her glance and gave her a thumbs up. "Have no idea, really. What would you ask first?"
"Hinata." Surprising everyone, Sasuke spoke without prompting. "Let me try. And let's introduce him to the others as well. That will make things easier."
Gratitude. That wasn't something she often felt towards Sasuke. She must have been more unmanned by the sudden resolution and her husband's appearance than she'd realized. She looked into his eyes, trying to project her gratitude as best she could.
"Of course," she demurred. "That would probably be-"
Best.
Hinata twitched, feeling a cold spike ram through the top of her head and root her to the ground.
Around them, the Hunter's slowed, stopped. Naruto became a living statue. Below, the uncountable humans stopped their milling, like a wave frozen mid-break.
Time was cancelled. The world ground to a very gradual and very inevitable stop.
"What?" Hinata alone was able to move. Or so she thought, until Sasuke stepped forward.
"Sorry," he said, and he looked genuinely abashed. That was a novel expression on his face. "I couldn't think of a better way."
Hinata looked around at the frozen world, marveling at the stillness. "A genjutsu?" That must have been what that feeling of coldness had been. She looked back at the Uchiha. "Did you… you altered our perception of time? Sped it up?"
"Yes."
"That's impossible," Hinata laughed. "Something like that would take too much, even for you. And why?"
"I could never have managed it," Sasuke smiled. Like most of his expressions, it was dominated by distant sorrow. He tapped his temple. "This is something Itachi gave me; it's not my own."
"Oh." Hinata didn't know what to say. She'd taken eyes, but never received them. She couldn't begin to understand how Sasuke felt about his long-dead brother. "Then… why? What are you doing?" She wasn't afraid; Sasuke wouldn't hurt her. She was overtaken by curiosity instead.
The Uchiha frowned, looking back at the sundered palace and the distant figure of the King, still being guarded by one of Naruto's golden clones. He turned and strode to the swell of the hill, and then surprised Hinata once more; he sat down, crushing time-frozen grass beneath him.
In a world where not even time could move, where (Hinata had just realized) even her heart did not beat, it was impossible to tell how long she left him to his silence, but it couldn't have been more than a second.
"That's not an answer," she said, breaking away from Naruto and moving to the Uchiha's side. She followed his gaze, staring at the King.
"I don't have a good answer," Sasuke shook his head. "Certainly not enough to justify monopolizing you like this. Or the headache we'll both have when it's over." He glanced up and over his shoulder at her. "Sorry: time distortion isn't kind to the brain."
He was being too strange, but it was a welcome change of pace in Hinata's eyes. She sat down beside him, her legs crossed beneath her. It was amazing that she could do that without her once-shattered bone aching, simply thanks to her husband's touch.
"It was an intuition," Sasuke continued. "Nothing more. I wish it was more."
"Of?" Hinata asked. Her husband was like a distant star.
Sasuke looked over at her, his lips twisting.
"It's not my place to say anything," he said. "But I'm worried about you, Hinata."
That had been the farthest thing from her mind. Of every possible reason Sasuke would have gone to tremendous effort to have a private conversation with her over, her health had never been a supposition.
But she could guess why.
"The King," she said, not taking her eyes off the distant statue.
"The King," Sasuke agreed. "What you told me, Hinata, about doing what Naruto would do…" He shrugged. "I never expected that from you."
Hinata's eyes narrowed. "You've never seen my family threatened, Sasuke." You- "You of all people should understand."
The Uchiha flinched.
"He ate them, Sasuke." Hinata began trembling. Unconsciously, the memory of lunar chakra began coruscating across her body, lighting up the hill with violet light. "He played with me, pretending to kill me over and over, but I couldn't care less about that. He threatened my children. He imagined what it would be like to eat them. He forced that satisfaction, that taste, on me."
She stood up, and Sasuke watched her rise. "I can't forgive that. Never. It doesn't matter what he feels, or what Naruto feels, or if you're 'worried.' He has to die," she spat.
"It doesn't matter what Naruto feels?" Sasuke asked mildly, and Hinata glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, feeling her face constrict in anger.
"That's not what I meant," she said, her voice low.
Sasuke shrugged. "It's what you said." He leaned back, totally at ease. None of this was real, after all. "Listen to yourself. Look at yourself."
Hinata looked down, and found herself clad in her ancestor's chakra, thick and bright. It was as she was back in Peiing, facing down the King in the rain and thinking of nothing but killing him. She felt strong, invincible, and the glow reminded her of her husband, which only increased the feeling of power.
"You're doing this," she said halfheartedly, because she knew it wasn't true even before Sasuke shook his head.
"This is just my chakra tricking your nervous system into thinking we're having this conversation," he said. "Like some half-rate Ninshu. You have that armor because that's what you want right now. Even after the King's surrendered, all you can consider is killing him."
"You already said that was none of your business," Hinata said, trying to calm down. She unclenched her fists, and the chakra around her faded, leaving her human.
"It's not," Sasuke said with conviction. "To tell you whether you are right or wrong, or to stand in your way no matter your decision, none of that is up to me." He stood up as well, facing her directly. "But you said so yourself. I, of anyone else, should understand, right?" His remaining arm came up, hesitant, and then dropped. He wasn't confident enough to touch her, even for emphasis, even though this wasn't real. "That feeling of wanting to hurt him so he won't be able to hurt anyone else, that's the same thing that drove me away from the village in the first place."
Hinata frowned, but Sasuke just smiled again. "I don't think you'll do anything that dramatic. You're not as stupid as I was when I was a kid. But that righteous feeling is a…" He struggled to find the word. "Poison."
"It worked out fine for you," Hinata said.
"Only because of Naruto," Sasuke shot back without hesitation. "Without him… have you seen the world, without him?"
She had. She'd been living in it for the last two months.
They lingered in silence.
"I'm sorry," Sasuke said after some non-time. "I got distracted. All I wanted to say is-"
"Leave the King alone."
"No, nothing like that." Sasuke shook his head. "He's unbelievably dangerous. You can't just leave him alone." He began pacing. "But if he's going to die, you can't take things into your own hands. It would be dangerous for you, and it would hurt Naruto for you to go around him."
"I wouldn't…" Hinata paused. "No, you're right. I was considering it."
"Listen, Hinata." Sasuke almost sounded like he was begging. "I don't know if the King remaining alive is a good idea; all I know is that it's Naruto's will, and I don't question him without a very good reason. He hasn't steered me wrong yet. But you're not me, and your perspective is equally valid. Probably even more so. You're not just Naruto's friend. You're his wife; you're his partner. If you want the King to die, tell him. He'll listen to you."
"And disagree," Hinata said, but for some reason the thought brought her some warmth.
"Maybe. That's part of every partnership," Sasuke admitted. "Every relationship. But it's better than trying to go kill the King on your own."
"And you'll have no part in it?" Hinata asked. "You were the one who negotiated with him in the first place."
Sasuke looked at her frozen husband. "I'll go with what Naruto decides. Leaving the King alive, or ending him: I'll trust him to make the decision." He looked back to her. "And I'll trust you to help him make it."
He stepped forward, raising his hand. "Unfortunately, deciding the fate of others is the duty of the strong." He hesitated. "Sorry for taking your time. I just…"
"No, it's okay." Hinata huffed. "It's a little irritating, but it's okay. Thank you for the thought, Sasuke."
The Uchiha gave her an uncertain smile, and touched a finger to her forehead. The world rewound, setting them back to their original positions.
'He's terrified of me,' Hinata realized, the realization frightening in its sudden clarity and its implications. Time finished resetting. The grass they had sat in sprung back to its full undamaged length. 'Because of who I am. He's terrified that I don't like him, and what that means to Naruto.'
Hinata had never realized she had that kind of power over Sasuke Uchiha of all people, and it made her regret her treatment of him.
The genjutsu shattered, and time resumed.
"-best." She finished a distant sentence.
Sasuke, no longer an illusion, strode forward, and Naruto followed him. Like most things Sasuke did, the introduction was efficient.
###
It passed in a blur.
Sasuke spoke; Naruto charmed. Netero could tell the man was in his element, meeting important strangers and presenting a humble and unflappable image, but he was the one at a disadvantage in this meeting. Even though he had already defeated the King, he was still approaching from a position of ignorance.
That gave Netero a measure of peace.
Throughout everything, Hinata watched, as she did. Netero knew her well enough to know she was thinking the same thing he was.
It couldn't be this simple.
Sasuke explained to Naruto the nature of the Ants, the Hunter Association and its role in fighting them, what had transpired in the NGL and how East Gorteau had been taken over.
He didn't mention the Rose, nor the Dark Continent. Netero wondered what the value of hiding those facts could be. He could only presume that Sasuke didn't want Naruto registering him as a threat, even an implicit one.
They were all so young. Far too young to fully comprehend their strength.
When it was over, Netero shifted. He'd stood up to greet Naruto and now, at the end of the meaningless talk that had buzzed around him like a horde of invisible flies, the Hokage smiled at him.
Hinata's husband extended his hand. An explicit confirmation of alliance, or at least entente.
Netero stared. He didn't take it immediately. That was a hand that had destroyed the King. Who could take it without hesitation, knowing that? And more than that…
Internally, Netero grimaced. It was irrational, and absurd, and the fleeting feeling angered him with its existence alone.
Nevertheless right at this moment, he was sure this feeling, this hesitation towards a proffered hand, must have been the same way every martial artist he'd ever defeated must have felt. A sense of shame and surrender.
But right now, he wasn't a martial artist. He was the Chairman of the Hunters Association, and so he took Naruto's hand in a firm, joyless handshake, looking up at the man who towered nearly seven inches over him with an expression carefully tailored to be utterly unreadable. The smile widened.
'How can you smile like that when you are here? When you are you?'
"You've already done us an enormous service," he said, and Naruto watched him with the eyes of a statesmen instead of a shinobi. "But if it's not too arrogant, I'd ask another of you."
'Leave.'
"Don't worry about it," Naruto asked. Netero smiled grimly.
"As Sasuke told you, we came here to suppress the Ants." He looked down at the population of East Gorteau, which had begun to come to their senses. Ten million confused and frightened humans were waking up from a shared dream. It wouldn't take them long to return to reality. "But at the moment, they're quite loose. Would it be possible for you to gather them up? There are more Hunters coming, but I'm concerned they'll have scattered before they arrive."
Out of the corner of his eye, Netero saw Hinata narrow her eyes. He already knew what she was thinking: this wasn't the Isaac Netero she knew at all. He tilted his head towards her, meeting her gaze with placid, empty eyes.
I'm not hiding anything, he thought, and Hinata frowned, a silent question flickering across her face.
'But you can't say anything now, Hinata.' He smiled, and Hinata's frown deepened. They were all playing the same game now, and Hinata had to go by the same rules as Sasuke. Right now, they had to ensure Naruto trusted him, and that meant not questioning his actions, so long as they were reasonable.
Netero watched Hinata come to the realization, and her suspicion quieted. She'd speak her mind when she could, as she always had. He could rely on that.
"Of course!" Naruto said with a grin, rubbing the back of his head. "I guess I made that mess in the first place: I'll go clean it up." It was a childish but wholesome sentiment: how many leaders from this world would have said such a thing, Netero wondered. The Hokage glanced back at his wife, and Hinata nodded. Making sure East Gorteau's population did not panic and trample one another with the King's control wearing off was the most important thing now; Netero felt no shame in acknowledging Naruto was the only one present who could manage that.
'Go,' she mouthed, and his smile faded slightly.
"Be right back," he said, and with Sasuke at his side strode down the hill towards the remaining Ants and the millions of humans surrounding them. As he went, he rolled his neck from side to side and brought his hands up in a cross.
Netero watched with interest, amused by the man's confidence.
There was a puff of smoke, and where one man had stood there was suddenly a hundred. Then each of those clones brought their hands up, and a hundred became a thousand in an instant. By the time Naruto began wading into the crowd, searching for Ants to detain and subduing panicking humans with a touch, there were nearly ten-thousand of him.
Netero watched him go, and for a time the hilltop was silent. Nobody but Hinata had ever seen Naruto at work, and none of them knew what to say. With unbelievable speed, order spread through the chaotic mass of millions of humans and dozens of Ants. Even so, it was a process that would take hours: there were simply too many humans to calm and direct, even if the Ants in their numbers were already gathered in a single mass. It was like watching a strong wind gradually blow a puddle apart.
Or, Netero thought, a swarm of ants divide up their food with supernatural coordination.
"Crazy." Gon said what they were all thinking. "That's just crazy." He looked back. "I guess a lot of clones was part of it?"
Hinata laughed. "A part," she said.
"Your husband is an interesting man," Netero said, stroking his chin. "He's certainly created an amusing situation." The Ants squashed, the King held hostage by a single man. Amusing was the only word he could use.
"He didn't do what I expected," Hinata admitted. "I thought Sasuke would have killed the King. He wasn't always… patient."
"Hmm." Netero looked away, considering. "Naruto changed him, then."
"For the better." Hinata frowned. "But I'm not sure where things go from here."
"You disagree with what he did, of course," Netero said casually, and Hinata flinched. He chuckled. "It's obvious." Gon and Killua looked back to the Hyuuga, but Ging's razor focus remained on the distant Hokage and King.
"Of course," Hinata said, repeating him.
"Do you wish to kill the King?" Netero asked, and everyone on the hill stiffened. He could feel Hinata staring at the back of his head. After a moment, the woman stepped to his side, closer than she'd ever stood to him before.
"Yes," she said quietly.
"Do you think it's possible?" Netero asked, honestly curious.
"Yes." Just as quiet. "But I won't go against my husband."
"Aren't you a dutiful wife." Netero's words were acid. The others were trying to lean in, understanding the importance of the conversation but unwilling to intervene.
"You misunderstand." Hinata turned her head and looked him dead in the eyes. "I'm going to convince Naruto to kill him."
"Oho…" Netero muttered quietly. "How sinister, to arrange the murder of a prisoner."
"Don't do this now, Netero," Hinata muttered, and Netero was taken aback by the bite in her tone. "There's no point in playing this game. You don't disagree; in fact, it's far more important to you, and the Association, that the King dies than it is to me. We're still allies."
Netero chuckled. "Well, you're certainly right about that. It will be quite the blow to our credibility if the King were to walk away." He considered, feeling the words bubble in his chest but unsure of the impact of saying them. Eventually, he shrugged. "Perhaps I should have just killed myself after your husband arrived. That would have produced the simplest solution."
Hinata flinched away, and Netero wondered why he took pleasure, however minor, in other's pain. Was it because he had dedicated his existence to unstoppable violence? What a bizarre shape his life had taken.
It was Ging, sitting to their left, who responded. Perhaps Hinata was too shocked to bother.
"Well, I'm glad you didn't," the Ruin Hunter said, glancing back at Netero with a grin. "We wouldn't be able to enjoy such a remarkable situation if we were dead, would we?" He looked back to the teeming humanity of East Gorteau. "Of course, being able to enjoy it doesn't mean there's an elegant solution…"
"You shouldn't speak so carelessly, Netero." Hinata had found her voice. "Your life has value, even if you don't seem to think so." She bared her teeth. "And my husband is not your enemy."
Gon joined the conversation, sitting at his father's side. Netero was glad the boy had survived everything after all, and found the objective of his Hunt besides that. It was a marvelous coincidence, or rather, too marvelous to be a coincidence.
"Is this what you meant?" he asked, and Ging nodded.
"The Chairman's being a little blunt," Ging said, and Gon laughed in agreement. "But yeah. You get the issue, right?" Netero peered over, indulging in one of his favorite hobbies: eavesdropping.
"Not really," Gon admitted. "Last time we talked, you said this would happen because not all shinobi would be good guys."
"Yeah, that's a whole different problem." Ging waved him off. "The issue is this; practically-"
"Practically, there's not much of a difference between the King, and Naruto." Killua sat down next to his friend, and Ging's mouth snapped shut. Netero laughed; he'd never seen the Hunter look so irritated. Most people never got the opportunity to. "Sasuke too, for that matter."
"Killua-" Hinata started to say, and the Zoldyck shot the woman an apologetic look.
"Sorry," he said. Netero wondered how often he apologized. "I don't mean like that. You understand, right?"
Hinata frowned. "I do," she said, looking down at her husband. Perhaps a hundredth of East Gorteau had already been rounded up, milling about in amiable confusion instead of growing panic. What could Naruto have possibly told them to explain the vanished palace, the shattered city? Netero shook his head.
"It's the power imbalance," Ging told Gon, shooting Killua a dirty look. The boy stuck his tongue out in return. "We've already gone over this: Hunters weren't called to deal with the Ants because they were a huge threat or anything like that."
"It's cause they're an invasive species," Gon said, and Ging lit up.
"Exactly!" he said, and Gon was immediately infected by his enthusiasm. "And in that vein, so are the shinobi."
"I'm not sure I like being called an invasive species." Hinata cocked an eyebrow, and Ging laughed.
"Well, what would you call you guys?" he said. "You show up, totally alter the power dynamic, devastated the natural balance, and from the look of it, over-hunted the other guys into near extinction." Hinata frowned. "Hey, it's a compliment."
"I'll take it," she said with a small laugh. "But you're forcing the allegory."
"Without a doubt," Ging admitted guilelessly, and Hinata laughed again. "But it's obvious what I mean. Someone like Naruto represents the same kind of danger as the King: someone who can overturn the existing system with ease. So naturally, the Chairman thinks of dealing with him the same way."
"That doesn't seem right," Gon said, and Killua nodded in agreement. Despite that, it was Hinata who spoke up.
"The Ants weren't willing to maintain the current system. The nations, the governments, even the existence of humans." She sighed, trying to calm herself. Netero was impressed she could have gone from impassioned over the King's fate to defending her husband so rationally with such speed. "It's not a good comparison. Not to mention, weapons like that bomb in your chest!" She pointed at Netero, and the Chairman grinned.
"Oh? What about it?" he asked. His curiosity was blossoming into something more genuine every minute.
"You told me weapons like the Rose were incredibly common. Was that true?" Hinata asked, and Netero shrugged.
"I had no reason to lie," he admitted, and Hinata nodded. "In fact, weapons like the Poor Man's Rose are mild and cheap compared to the arsenals some larger nations possess. Hence the name."
"So, there are thousands of weapons out there-"
"Hundreds of thousands," Ging chimed in, and Hinata shook her head.
"Okay, hundreds of thousands," she said. "Many of which can do more than erase a city, most in the possession of nations but others by unaffiliated militaries or terror groups. Am I right?"
"I see where you're going with this," Killua said. "But there's a difference between a nation possessing a weapon of mass destruction, and a person being one, right?"
"You should know better than that, Killua," Hinata said, and to Netero's amusement the boy bristled. "You'd only have to look at this country to know that's not the case."
"Ahh," Ging said. "Well, that's true. Someone like Ming Jol-Ik, who completely controlled his country down to the individual citizens, and who possessed hundreds of weapons like the Rose…"
"Would be just the same as my husband," Hinata said with a firm nod. "But you wouldn't see it as a Hunter's duty to remove him, would you? Because he was part of the existing system. He could have gone mad one day and ordered the launch of all his weapons, and that certainly could have destroyed the world order as it stands today. But because he was using a weapon familiar to you, removing him was out of the question."
Hinata grew more and more passionate with every word, and when she finished Ging held up his hands in a mock surrender. "Alright, so perhaps it's slightly hypocritical. We might have been focusing too much on biology here."
"Slightly," Hinata huffed, but she smiled at the Hunter's admission.
"But someone like Jol-Ik remained in power because of the cost of removing him," Killua said. Gon was just looking back and forth between whoever was speaking with a faint, confused smile. Netero was sure he'd gotten lost some time ago. "Because of those weapons."
"And the same holds true for Naruto," Netero said, and everyone shifted to stare at him.
"What?" Gon asked. "Why'd you talk about blowing him up, then?"
"Because that would have been the only opportunity to remove him, and the King, without an unforgivable cost." Netero shrugged. "But I let that moment pass."
They all fell into a silence at that, obviously unsure of how to proceed. Netero wondered why he had even spoken the barbed words in the first place. Nothing had changed. Had that gnawing feeling of surrender pricked him that badly?
"If you could trust this country with such power, allow it to keep existing, then you have nothing to fear from Naruto." Hinata spoke with unbreakable conviction.
"You're his wife," Ging said with an obvious verbal shrug.
'Of course you would say that, as his wife.'
"I am, but I'm not saying this as his wife," Hinata said. "And anyway, Netero already admitted it. In this situation, all you can do is trust me, and trust him. It won't be misplaced."
Netero laughed at the naivety of Hinata's words, but it was a hollow and quiet thing. The woman was one-hundred percent correct. The matter of Naruto was entirely out of his hands now; the genie was out of the bottle, so to speak.
There were other things well within his control. Mainly, the Ants.
The Association had been commissioned to destroy them, but there had been no specification of it being a total genocide. It was just as well. Netero didn't feel a need to annihilate the Ants anymore; they were no longer the unified threat they had been in the NGL. The survivors that remained were essentially overgrown Magical Beasts. They had no leader, no meaningful ambitions, and no ability to decide their destiny. Killing them would be pointless murder with them so divided and paralyzed.
But the King…
Meruem had moved an entire country, nearly ten million strong, with a flex of his will. Well, Netero mused, more than a flex. It had been an effort for him, like a man deadlifting something slightly beyond his comfort zone. But that didn't change the fact that he'd managed it in the first place, so totally and so suddenly. The chakra compulsion had been strong enough that even Netero had felt the urge to move; if the King were to continue existing, who was to say he couldn't create a nation of slaves with something as simple as a passing desire?
It was that kind of power that could only reside in the Outer World. It was that kind of power that had driven Netero to restrict access to the Dark Continent in the first place.
"He will have to die," Netero said, and Hinata looked to him, realizing he was finally picking up their initial conversation. "It's too dangerous otherwise."
Hinata nodded, but once again, Ging interrupted with a laugh.
"Congratulations on coming to an agreement," he said. "Now you just have to go through him." He gestured to the thousands of Naruto's below. "Well, and you'll actually have to kill the King, which certainly isn't as simple as just saying it. That's two impossibilities in a row."
"Only if Naruto doesn't agree that it's necessary," Hinata said.
"Is he a man who's easy to convince?" Ging asked with a smarmy grin, and Hinata's placid expression fractured slightly. "Could have fooled me." He leaned back, lying down in the grass with his hands behind his head. "Face it, we're all in checkmate right now. It's not an unpleasant checkmate, but that's definitely what it is." He closed one eye, the other fixated on Hinata. "Maybe you'll have luck, being close to him." He winked, and Hinata grimaced. "But the rest of us, we're just going to be butterflies in a storm from here on out. Best we can do is pick a direction."
Hmm, Netero thought.
That actually sounded somewhat nice.
If that really was the case, for the first time in two months, two years, two decades, no, even longer than that… he could surrender responsibility.
He could think with his heart, instead of silencing it.
Despite his position, despite his ability, right here and right now all that was useless. That was appropriate. Strength didn't mean anything beyond itself; power had no inherent purpose, and did not mandate action. Strength was strength, and power was power. Neither ensured any particular duty.
Maybe that had been his mistake, he thought as he listened to his slow and steady heartbeat. Forgetting that old lesson in all the excitement.
In the end, Netero deeply believed that was the ugly truth of power and violence. A lifetime of both had taught him that. Everyone, even the Hunters and Shinobi sitting on the hill with him, believed in the fantasy of violence. It was as accepted a concept as oxygen, omnipresent and unquestionable. That violence was a transformative force that could be used to change the course of fate, or make oneself feel better, or even change someone's mind.
Certainly, using violence to search for enlightenment had been Netero's intent when he'd first gone up the mountain. What else could you call his regimen of punches and prayers?
But it was quite possible that no one alive knew violence quite as Isaac Netero did, and in his old age he'd come to a different conclusion.
Violence was a tool. A blunt tool. Calling it a hammer would be too kind, because at least when you swung a hammer you could usually determine what it would strike.
Violence was a message in a bottle. If you were trying to accomplish anything more ambitious than destruction with it, you would simply have to pray it washed up on the correct shore. That had never been a problem for Netero, who had only ever utilized violence for the purpose of destruction: destroying bodies, pride, and anything else his hands could break.
That was what really worried him about Naruto, he realized. Because for Naruto, the fantasy of violence... was not a fantasy.
The Hokage had beaten the King into submission without harming him. He had fundamentally altered the creature who, on a genetic level, could not have dreamed of surrender. He had cheated-
No, cheated was the wrong word. But his chakra interacting with the King's had impossibly changed the equation of violence, and now Netero…
Did not know where things would go.
He crossed his arms, and listened to his heart.
Perhaps for now, it would be better to be the butterfly, as Ging had said. A new world was splitting open in front of him.
And whether the King survived or not, Netero wasn't sure where he stood in it.
The Duty of the Strong
Hinata suspected she was having a nightmare. At some point, she might have fallen unconscious, perhaps during the fight, finally overcome by her exhaustion or the unspeakable pressure of the dueling chakra of the King and her husband. Maybe she was seeing her fears, and not reality.
The fantasy vanished as quickly as it arrived. Hinata watched with cold shock as the storm of chakra blew away, dispelled in an instant. The devastation it left behind was clear for the first time: the palace has been completely destroyed. Not even its foundations remained. The land around it was completely sundered, ripped open by the King's anger and blasted to glass by Naruto's. It was as though one of East Gorteau's weapons of mass destruction had been set off and confined to a blessedly small area.
The King had surrendered, and Naruto had accepted it. Hinata's mind skipped over that like a smooth stone across still water, trying to come to terms with it. What was more difficult to consider, that the King had conceded at all, or that Naruto had taken it with a smile? That he'd smiled at-
That thing?
"It's over?" That was Killua. He was leaning forward like the eager child he was. "That was…"
"Insane." Gon finished for him. "What happened to the King?" The Ant and Naruto were about eight miles away now, and even the Nen-enhanced eyes of the Hunter's could only pick out two distant figures without detail or comprehension.
"The King…" Hinata murmured, her hands clenching. Gaara glanced at her, taking a cautious step closer. She couldn't finish the thought. What could she say? What could she possibly say to encompass what she was feeling?
The world was burning down around her. If she said that out loud, she'd sound insane.
Without warning or sound, Sasuke arrived on the hilltop, coming to a stop at her side. Everyone jerked away from him on instinct, except Hinata, who'd seen him coming, and Netero, who observed him with cool detachment. The Chairman shifted back towards the distant King with a small grin, and brought two fingers up around his eye.
He'd saved Neferpitou. Hinata had seen it, but she hadn't really cared. The Royal Guard was all but dead, along with Shaiapouf. The latter had fled into the miasma of chakra, and certainly been destroyed in the crossfire: Hinata had lost track of what was left of him in the chaos of the fight. Now, Pitou was with the rest of the Ants and Komugi, slowly bleeding to death while ensconced by the population of East Gorteau.
"Sasuke," Gaara asked. "What happened down there?"
"Isn't it obvious?" It wasn't Sasuke who spoke, though he turned to regard the man who had. Netero didn't look at any of them. He just kept peering through the hole created by his fingers, the lense of Nen there shimmering with invisible light. The Chairman was grinning.
"He surrendered."
"The King surrendered?" Gon and Ging asked the same question in the same tone and then shot an accusatory look at the other, both clearly thinking they'd come up with it first.
"Impossible," Killua laughed. The arm the King had broken was held stiff and limp by his side. "There's no way that thing-"
Hinata felt herself start to shake; she felt as though she were watching the world from five feet behind herself, her body reduced to an empty, mute doll.
"Do you think Sasuke here is a fool?" Netero asked, his tone mild, and Killua's words died in his throat. "He thought the King would surrender-" He dropped his hand, and looked at Hinata, making eye contact through the side of her head. Her expression was frozen, severe, but the Chairman was still grinning. "-he thought Naruto would ask the King to surrender: did you think he was simply deluded?"
Sasuke inclined his head.
'I'm just trying to do what Naruto would do.'
He'd been right. He'd been right. Sasuke had known her husband's intent better than her. Had this place really made her that foolish? Had it severed her from her family that quickly?
Hinata remembered the King, remembered Himawari, and her trembling grew more violent.
"The King I met wouldn't have surrendered," Sasuke said. "He was almost suicidal in his need to overcome me. It's why he gave me the strength to bring Naruto here at all." He frowned. "I have no idea what Naruto did to make him back down. There's no way I could have managed it."
'Did you really think it would end differently?'
Hinata took another step back, trying to purge herself of emotion and watch everything with the all-seeing eyes her family was famous for, but her desperation and fear and doubt followed her and only made everything muddier. Naruto had talked down Pain, even after he'd stabbed her in the lung. She'd seen it in his memories. But that had been a personal connection; Pain had been a fellow student, someone trying to change the world. There wasn't a connection between him and Meruem. The King was hunger, and rage, and his chakra pushed away everything.
Hinata's heart froze. Like the storm of chakra, her anger and pain dissipated, and the situation was finally clear to her.
The King was lonely.
What did her husband understand better than loneliness?
Nothing. There wasn't a thing in the world. Even with a family, even as the Hokage, even able as he was to give and receive limitless love, Naruto Uzumaki had spent the first decade of his life crushed by an unbearable loneliness. That was what had driven him to take the King's surrender; Meruem's unwitting lifeline of empathy. Hinata understood now.
And yet, she was one-hundred percent sure it was a mistake. The King wasn't a lonely child. He was a biological weapon that existed to consume and dominate. She'd spent enough time in his mind to know that-
Fuck.
To know that Komugi was the most important thing in the world to him. Something he'd move every living being in the country on behalf of without a second thought.
Hinata took one more step back. She was barely herself now, just a distant consciousness watching her body and the others on the hill.
'Did you really think it would end differently?'
Hmm, she thought. She really had. This could be a problem.
The reality of the situation snapped her back into place. She was herself again, and the hurricane in her soul began tearing her in every direction once more. It didn't matter if the King was lonely, she thought. He couldn't be allowed to live. He couldn't be forgiven. If Naruto couldn't see that, she'd have to take care of it herself.
And unlike the King, she could be forgiven.
As she watched with a new conviction burning in her chest, Naruto created a clone. Neither he nor the King were speaking, but their chakra rolled and sparked; they were communicating without words.
'Stay,' Hinata could read in its intent. Like a command to a willful pet.
Then, Naruto moved. The clone stayed. The King stayed.
He was in front of her. In the time it took for her eyes to register that her husband had moved at all, he went from facing the King to facing her.
"Would people stop doing that…" Killua muttered. Hinata barely heard him.
He was here. After more than two months her husband was here.
"Hey." He smiled.
Hinata didn't think. She just rushed forward, and Naruto caught her, wrapping her in his arms and squeezing her to his chest. Faint golden chakra played along him, the leftovers of his cloak, spreading across her body with a ticklish warmth.
Hinata breathed him in, smelled him, felt his arms around her and the comforting solidity of his broad back, and felt something relax. Like a vice around her brain had been released, the migraine that she hadn't even been aware of vanished. It was more than just his presence: his golden chakra danced across her body, closing every lingering cut and scrape. For the first time in over a month, her right leg stopped aching, the damage done by Pitou finally and fully healed.
They stayed like that for what seemed like forever, but the moment ended far too soon.
"Are you okay?" he whispered, pulling back just an inch. Hinata looked up at him, her eyes deactivating.
She considered, and then shook her head, trying not to bite her lip. Saying it out loud would make it real.
Naruto's face fell, and he nodded. "Yeah…" he muttered. "Yeah. What about Shino and Kiba?" He looked to the side, to Gaara. "Where are they? I can't feel them."
"We left them and some others at a settlement," Gaara said. Everything and everyone was quiet now; the Hunters, Hinata thought, because of the paradox of the man who'd defeated the King sweeping her into his arms, and the shinobi thanks to their respect. "Make a clone. I'll guide you to them."
Naruto did, refusing to release Hinata. She was relieved. If he let go, she thought, she had no idea what she'd do.
Safe, fully and completely safe in her husband's arms for the first time in far too long, Hinata forgot about the Chimera Ants, at least for the moment, and surrendered to her relief and joy.
###
It is difficult, Zeno Zoldyck thinks, to have an objective opinion of a man after you just watched him reduce several square miles to glass and come away without a scratch. He stands alongside his son and watches Naruto Uzumaki hug his wife, and the contrast between the man's tenderness now and the unbelievable power and ferocity that must have been necessary to subdue the King of the Chimera Ants makes him smile.
Zeno has never regretted his life or his actions. He thinks of his job as something in between a public service and an expression of a deeply personal philosophy. Human life is common, but not cheap: human life can be ended in an instant by anyone and anything, but that only makes its perseverance more marvelous, like the beauty of a spider's web.
But he has regretted what his profession has done to his family. Like it does everything else, time slowly broke down his original intent. He'd taught his son how to kill because he had nothing else to give him. And then, Silva passed that along to his grandchildren. Of all of them, Zeno is sure that Killua is the only one who is close to understanding what made him a killer in the first place, and that was from willful teenage rebellion more than any concrete philosophy… at least at first.
The Zoldyck family he has unwittingly produced doesn't have balance. They are assassins first and humans second. Ilumi, Kalluto, and Milluki could never embrace someone with the guileless passion of the Hokage, even their own family. That doesn't mean they aren't useful, or that they are worth less to him than the rest of his family, but it does make him hesitate.
So despite the inherent difficulty in making the judgement given the circumstances, Zeno finds himself taking a liking to Naruto Uzumaki immediately, simply because of his ability to win such a pivotal battle and then turn to comfort his wife without hesitation.
However, there is a trend among the present fathers and sons, five in total. That trend is their thoughts moving along similar tracks. So Silva Zoldyck's thoughts resemble his father's, through the warped glass of their separate consciousness, and Killua's resembles Silva's by another degree of separation. Silva's admiration is tempered by cold calculation; this is a man who could be a possible target of a contract in the future, and if that were the case, could the Zoldyck's keep up their unbroken streak? It doesn't seem likely. Naruto Uzumaki is obviously a creature of unbelievable power, and even worse, he clearly has no shortage of powerful friends. In the world of assassins, he's an unprecedented complication.
Killua is simply glad the situation has been resolved. Gon is safe; to a lesser degree, he's happy Hinata is safe. They're all safe. Once the adrenaline has worn off, he'll have more time to consider the terrifying implications of Naruto's power, and that the King is still alive. But in the moment, he's able to enjoy the sudden and violent peace.
It's much the same for Gon. Gon is not a simple person, but he has simple thoughts, and he's awed and gratified by the resolution; the climactic anti-climax. The storm of chakra, the sights and sounds of the battle, the stampede of East Gorteau's people: Gon is a fighter at heart, and he's pretty sure he'll never see another fight quite like that one, even if he only saw a quarter of it. All he can remember in its wake are the quiet, confident words Hinata spoke a week ago in a hotel that was now rubble. He's pretty amused at how much of an understatement they ended up being.
'He's entirely beyond me.'
Much like Killua, right now, his perspective is limited. He's distracted enough to not consider the rest of the Ants, Kite, Neferpitou, his father sitting just ten feet away. That will come later. For now, Gon exults in a victory that he helped shape.
Despite what many present are assuming, Ging isn't the opposite; like Gon, he's thrilled at the fight. He's thrilled at the opportunity and danger it has opened up in a world that has been steadily shrinking around him. But unlike Gon, he's not distracted. Watching Naruto embrace his wife, he's all too aware of everything. The Ants, the Royal Guards, Hinata Uzumaki's fragile state, his son's awe, the Zoldyck's admiration and reservation, the political and military implications of Peijing's essential destruction, the inevitable changes coming to the Hunter's Association, the King, good lord, the King. A hundred thousand different possibilities are spiralling out at once from this moment in every possible direction, and Ging has an insatiable urge to follow each and every one of them to the end of their string, even if that's physically impossible and extremely stupid to boot. After all, a lot of those possibilities end with him dead.
That's who Ging is. He's called a Ruin Hunter, but that's only because ruins are the one thing he can find no matter where he goes. It doesn't matter what path he's following to the end; there's always a past to uncover that can transform the present. In a thousand years, Peijing will be one of those ruins, along with whatever others Naruto Uzumaki, the Chimera Ants, the Hunter's Association, and the complications that their collision will create.
The only thing he's not aware of right now is Isaac Netero. Ging has always told himself that is willful ignorance, that he doesn't predict the actions of someone like Netero unless he absolutely has to because that would make things less interesting, but that's only a half truth. The truth is that Netero is as simple and predictable as he is old and inscrutable; for example, if Netero were to die fighting the King, Ging is reasonably sure he'd be able to predict the man's will. But alive, watching the most powerful human in the world hug his wife with clear and infinite love, Ging cannot for the life of him tell what direction Netero will swing.
That paradox is what makes the Chairman interesting. It will always make him interesting, until the day he dies, which will make him marginally less interesting, if only because he will no longer be able to make new decisions.
Isaac Netero, Chairman of the Hunter's Association, wonders if he should have thrown himself into the middle of the fight, and made everything as simple as possible. He's wondering that because Naruto's mercy has made everything far, far too complicated.
###
Shino was deep in conversation with Knuckle when Naruto arrived.
Morel was dying. That was a given with a hole in his chest, but he'd degraded since Hinata and the others had left, and they didn't have a way to move him safely. Kiba was too injured to carry anyone but himself: Shoot and Shino were both missing limbs, and the damage had degraded Shoot's control of his Hatsu. Palm was still gone. Despite the other Hunter's hopes, she hadn't turned up.
That left Knuckle, and he wasn't confident he could carry Morel to a hospital a country away without harming him more. Moving a man as big as Morel was a challenge on its own, no matter how strong you were. His injury moved it from difficult to impossible.
"What about…" Knuckle asked, hand on his chin. They were both sitting, propped against the building Morel had fallen into a coma in. "Could you paralyze him? Or turn him into something easy to carry?"
Shino cocked an eyebrow, which was far more effort than it should have been. "To the first, no. I could have bred some insects for that purpose, but I lost too many specialists for that; the hive won't listen to me anymore. And to the second… no."
"Why?" Knuckle was growing frustrated, and rightfully so. His master was dying, and they had no way to save him.
"He doesn't have chakra," Shino said. "And even if we did turn him into, say, a rock, he would still have the injury. Just the act of a henge might kill him, if it were even possible in the first place."
Knuckle growled. "Well, there's gotta be something-!"
At that moment, Naruto landed right in front of them, a sudden golden bolt.
It took Shino a moment to identify what had happened: seated on the ground, struggling with the exhaustion that had suffused him since the death of most of his insects, it took him a shockingly long time to understand who had just arrived without warning.
Knuckle was quicker on the draw, but he made the wrong assumption. He threw a panicked punch and hit nothing but air.
"Shino!" Naruto acted as if the man hadn't even attacked him, and rushed to Shino's side. The Aburame looked up at the Hokage without comprehension, and blinked. Once. Twice. His heart restarted, and his brain with it.
"Naruto?" he rasped. "You're here?"
"Hey!" Knuckle shouted. Naruto looked back at him with a curious glance. "Who are you?! You scared the shit out of me!"
Gaara stepped out from the side of the building with a sour look on his face, and Knuckle shot him a disbelieving look.
"Let me apologize on Naruto's behalf," he said, his voice as calm as ever. "He keeps forgetting people around here aren't used to… him."
"Naruto?" Knuckle asked. "Who… what happened to the other guy? Sasuke?" His eyes went wide. "Is the King dead?"
"You're, uh, Knuckle, right?" Naruto said, ignoring the man's question. The Hunter sputtered. "Sasuke's fine. The King-"
"It's taken care of," Gaara interrupted. Shino wondered why he'd bothered. What had happened, back in Peijing? How was Naruto here now? It was too good to be true. As he struggled to come to terms with the sudden change in circumstances, Naruto placed a comforting hand on his shoulder.
Warm golden chakra flowed from Naruto's palm into Shino's torso, pulsing through his body, and after a second he felt like less of a dusty sarcophagus. He struggled to his remaining knee, before Naruto gently pushed him back down.
"Hey, fighting your own battles and all, but right now you're down an arm and a leg." Naruto said it in a friendly manner, but it was the command of a Hokage, not the suggestion of a friend. "Chill for a second, alright? Let it sink in."
He couldn't. "Naruto," he said again, his voice a little stronger. "Morel-"
"Gaara told me. Kiba and Shoot too, right?" The Hokage was one-hundred percent confident and in command of the situation. That's what they'd been missing during this whole mess, Shino suddenly realized. A leader. Sometimes, it was a great comfort to have someone else to shoulder the burden.
"I'll get them." Naruto stood up. "Knuckle, can you help Gaara? He's gonna wrap Morel up for the trip: I can carry him, but I'll need help keeping him still."
Knuckle, standing shocked and wordless, closed his mouth with a snap, and nodded his head. He hurried into the building ahead of Gaara, new urgency in his action.
Shino's head was still spinning, but slower now. He was finally feeling like himself.
"What did that to you?" Naruto asked in the temporary quiet. Shino could hear Gaara's sand shifting; if he had to guess, the Kazekage was probably wrapping Morel in something like a cocoon, an over the top medical restraint. The Hokage was subdued; he was staring at Shino's missing limbs.
"A Royal Guard. The King," he said. "One each."
"Hmm." Naruto's eyes narrowed. "Probably should be glad I didn't know that earlier. I might have done something I'd regret."
Shino cocked his head, analyzing the words. "He's alive, isn't he?" he said after a moment. "You left the King alive."
"He surrendered. I took it." Naruto pursed his lips. "Why? You think it was the wrong idea?"
"No. Maybe." Shino couldn't decide. "It depends. I guess we'll see. Things are going to get complicated."
Naruto chuckled. "Yeah, I figured. I think I'm going to need some catching up. Sasuke told me things were time-sensitive; I didn't ask enough questions." He hesitated. "Hinata… what happened to her? I couldn't…"
Sudden clarity surged through Shino, and he locked eyes with the Hokage. "She spent time with the King, alone." He considered it. His voice dropped. "Naruto, listen. Of all of us, any human alive, she's been exposed to the Chimera Ants on a completely different level." He frowned, a sharp pain forming in his chest as he realized his next words were true. "If the King is still alive, if any of the Ants are still alive, you have to… watch her."
"Hinata?" Naruto sounded incredulous, and Shino thought he was right to. He never could have pictured himself saying anything like that about the Hinata of two months ago, the one Naruto had kissed goodbye as she stepped through the portal to West Gorteau. But now, he couldn't afford not to.
"Yes, Hinata." Shino felt his face twisting, unable to hide some measure of his grief and guilt. "She really, truly hates them, Naruto. If the King is still alive, she'll try to kill him. I don't have a single doubt."
The Hokage rocked back. "She wouldn't do that. Not after he'd-"
"Naruto, listen to me. Did she seem okay? Did she seem like herself?" Shino asked, and slowly, Naruto shook his head.
"We failed." Shino shook with his conviction. His missing limbs ached. "We failed you, and we failed her. We relied on her too much, and she saw for all of us every terrible thing the Ants did. She went to try and talk the King down; he was obsessed with her. We never should have let her go." Shino dropped his head, ashamed to look the Hokage in the eye. "It will take her time. To get back to herself."
They stayed like that, in dreadful silence, for a good ten seconds.
"Okay," Naruto said. Shino looked up, and the Hokage extended his hand. He didn't look anything but determined.
He took the Hokage's hand.
"Okay," Naruto repeated as he dragged Shino to his remaining foot. "One thing at a time. First, we gotta get you all to a hospital." He frowned.
"Then, I'll worry about Hinata."
###
Eventually, Naruto let her go.
Hinata hadn't been sure she was ready, but Naruto had known she was, and his faith in her proved correct. It surprised her that she had the strength to stand alone so soon, but that was a foolish thing to think. She wasn't fragile; she'd just been hurt. Of course she could stand on her own, with a little love from her husband.
"So…" Naruto said. He glanced around. "I should probably figure out what's going on, right?"
Hinata laughed. "It's a long story."
Naruto smiled at her laugh. "Where would you start?"
It seemed obvious, but as Hinata tried to decide she realized she wasn't sure. Where could they? With the birth of the King? With the concept of Chimera Ants themselves? With traveling to the NGL with Mari, or following Killua out of it? Even with hindsight, she had no idea where to begin telling Naruto what had happened.
"I…" She said, looking back to the Hunters. No one had budged since Gaara had left; the Hunters had been quietly talking to one another, and the Zoldyck's had been sitting in stoic silence, observing the millions of humans and hundreds of Ants below in the valley. Gon caught her glance and gave her a thumbs up. "Have no idea, really. What would you ask first?"
"Hinata." Surprising everyone, Sasuke spoke without prompting. "Let me try. And let's introduce him to the others as well. That will make things easier."
Gratitude. That wasn't something she often felt towards Sasuke. She must have been more unmanned by the sudden resolution and her husband's appearance than she'd realized. She looked into his eyes, trying to project her gratitude as best she could.
"Of course," she demurred. "That would probably be-"
Best.
Hinata twitched, feeling a cold spike ram through the top of her head and root her to the ground.
Around them, the Hunter's slowed, stopped. Naruto became a living statue. Below, the uncountable humans stopped their milling, like a wave frozen mid-break.
Time was cancelled. The world ground to a very gradual and very inevitable stop.
"What?" Hinata alone was able to move. Or so she thought, until Sasuke stepped forward.
"Sorry," he said, and he looked genuinely abashed. That was a novel expression on his face. "I couldn't think of a better way."
Hinata looked around at the frozen world, marveling at the stillness. "A genjutsu?" That must have been what that feeling of coldness had been. She looked back at the Uchiha. "Did you… you altered our perception of time? Sped it up?"
"Yes."
"That's impossible," Hinata laughed. "Something like that would take too much, even for you. And why?"
"I could never have managed it," Sasuke smiled. Like most of his expressions, it was dominated by distant sorrow. He tapped his temple. "This is something Itachi gave me; it's not my own."
"Oh." Hinata didn't know what to say. She'd taken eyes, but never received them. She couldn't begin to understand how Sasuke felt about his long-dead brother. "Then… why? What are you doing?" She wasn't afraid; Sasuke wouldn't hurt her. She was overtaken by curiosity instead.
The Uchiha frowned, looking back at the sundered palace and the distant figure of the King, still being guarded by one of Naruto's golden clones. He turned and strode to the swell of the hill, and then surprised Hinata once more; he sat down, crushing time-frozen grass beneath him.
In a world where not even time could move, where (Hinata had just realized) even her heart did not beat, it was impossible to tell how long she left him to his silence, but it couldn't have been more than a second.
"That's not an answer," she said, breaking away from Naruto and moving to the Uchiha's side. She followed his gaze, staring at the King.
"I don't have a good answer," Sasuke shook his head. "Certainly not enough to justify monopolizing you like this. Or the headache we'll both have when it's over." He glanced up and over his shoulder at her. "Sorry: time distortion isn't kind to the brain."
He was being too strange, but it was a welcome change of pace in Hinata's eyes. She sat down beside him, her legs crossed beneath her. It was amazing that she could do that without her once-shattered bone aching, simply thanks to her husband's touch.
"It was an intuition," Sasuke continued. "Nothing more. I wish it was more."
"Of?" Hinata asked. Her husband was like a distant star.
Sasuke looked over at her, his lips twisting.
"It's not my place to say anything," he said. "But I'm worried about you, Hinata."
That had been the farthest thing from her mind. Of every possible reason Sasuke would have gone to tremendous effort to have a private conversation with her over, her health had never been a supposition.
But she could guess why.
"The King," she said, not taking her eyes off the distant statue.
"The King," Sasuke agreed. "What you told me, Hinata, about doing what Naruto would do…" He shrugged. "I never expected that from you."
Hinata's eyes narrowed. "You've never seen my family threatened, Sasuke." You- "You of all people should understand."
The Uchiha flinched.
"He ate them, Sasuke." Hinata began trembling. Unconsciously, the memory of lunar chakra began coruscating across her body, lighting up the hill with violet light. "He played with me, pretending to kill me over and over, but I couldn't care less about that. He threatened my children. He imagined what it would be like to eat them. He forced that satisfaction, that taste, on me."
She stood up, and Sasuke watched her rise. "I can't forgive that. Never. It doesn't matter what he feels, or what Naruto feels, or if you're 'worried.' He has to die," she spat.
"It doesn't matter what Naruto feels?" Sasuke asked mildly, and Hinata glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, feeling her face constrict in anger.
"That's not what I meant," she said, her voice low.
Sasuke shrugged. "It's what you said." He leaned back, totally at ease. None of this was real, after all. "Listen to yourself. Look at yourself."
Hinata looked down, and found herself clad in her ancestor's chakra, thick and bright. It was as she was back in Peiing, facing down the King in the rain and thinking of nothing but killing him. She felt strong, invincible, and the glow reminded her of her husband, which only increased the feeling of power.
"You're doing this," she said halfheartedly, because she knew it wasn't true even before Sasuke shook his head.
"This is just my chakra tricking your nervous system into thinking we're having this conversation," he said. "Like some half-rate Ninshu. You have that armor because that's what you want right now. Even after the King's surrendered, all you can consider is killing him."
"You already said that was none of your business," Hinata said, trying to calm down. She unclenched her fists, and the chakra around her faded, leaving her human.
"It's not," Sasuke said with conviction. "To tell you whether you are right or wrong, or to stand in your way no matter your decision, none of that is up to me." He stood up as well, facing her directly. "But you said so yourself. I, of anyone else, should understand, right?" His remaining arm came up, hesitant, and then dropped. He wasn't confident enough to touch her, even for emphasis, even though this wasn't real. "That feeling of wanting to hurt him so he won't be able to hurt anyone else, that's the same thing that drove me away from the village in the first place."
Hinata frowned, but Sasuke just smiled again. "I don't think you'll do anything that dramatic. You're not as stupid as I was when I was a kid. But that righteous feeling is a…" He struggled to find the word. "Poison."
"It worked out fine for you," Hinata said.
"Only because of Naruto," Sasuke shot back without hesitation. "Without him… have you seen the world, without him?"
She had. She'd been living in it for the last two months.
They lingered in silence.
"I'm sorry," Sasuke said after some non-time. "I got distracted. All I wanted to say is-"
"Leave the King alone."
"No, nothing like that." Sasuke shook his head. "He's unbelievably dangerous. You can't just leave him alone." He began pacing. "But if he's going to die, you can't take things into your own hands. It would be dangerous for you, and it would hurt Naruto for you to go around him."
"I wouldn't…" Hinata paused. "No, you're right. I was considering it."
"Listen, Hinata." Sasuke almost sounded like he was begging. "I don't know if the King remaining alive is a good idea; all I know is that it's Naruto's will, and I don't question him without a very good reason. He hasn't steered me wrong yet. But you're not me, and your perspective is equally valid. Probably even more so. You're not just Naruto's friend. You're his wife; you're his partner. If you want the King to die, tell him. He'll listen to you."
"And disagree," Hinata said, but for some reason the thought brought her some warmth.
"Maybe. That's part of every partnership," Sasuke admitted. "Every relationship. But it's better than trying to go kill the King on your own."
"And you'll have no part in it?" Hinata asked. "You were the one who negotiated with him in the first place."
Sasuke looked at her frozen husband. "I'll go with what Naruto decides. Leaving the King alive, or ending him: I'll trust him to make the decision." He looked back to her. "And I'll trust you to help him make it."
He stepped forward, raising his hand. "Unfortunately, deciding the fate of others is the duty of the strong." He hesitated. "Sorry for taking your time. I just…"
"No, it's okay." Hinata huffed. "It's a little irritating, but it's okay. Thank you for the thought, Sasuke."
The Uchiha gave her an uncertain smile, and touched a finger to her forehead. The world rewound, setting them back to their original positions.
'He's terrified of me,' Hinata realized, the realization frightening in its sudden clarity and its implications. Time finished resetting. The grass they had sat in sprung back to its full undamaged length. 'Because of who I am. He's terrified that I don't like him, and what that means to Naruto.'
Hinata had never realized she had that kind of power over Sasuke Uchiha of all people, and it made her regret her treatment of him.
The genjutsu shattered, and time resumed.
"-best." She finished a distant sentence.
Sasuke, no longer an illusion, strode forward, and Naruto followed him. Like most things Sasuke did, the introduction was efficient.
###
It passed in a blur.
Sasuke spoke; Naruto charmed. Netero could tell the man was in his element, meeting important strangers and presenting a humble and unflappable image, but he was the one at a disadvantage in this meeting. Even though he had already defeated the King, he was still approaching from a position of ignorance.
That gave Netero a measure of peace.
Throughout everything, Hinata watched, as she did. Netero knew her well enough to know she was thinking the same thing he was.
It couldn't be this simple.
Sasuke explained to Naruto the nature of the Ants, the Hunter Association and its role in fighting them, what had transpired in the NGL and how East Gorteau had been taken over.
He didn't mention the Rose, nor the Dark Continent. Netero wondered what the value of hiding those facts could be. He could only presume that Sasuke didn't want Naruto registering him as a threat, even an implicit one.
They were all so young. Far too young to fully comprehend their strength.
When it was over, Netero shifted. He'd stood up to greet Naruto and now, at the end of the meaningless talk that had buzzed around him like a horde of invisible flies, the Hokage smiled at him.
Hinata's husband extended his hand. An explicit confirmation of alliance, or at least entente.
Netero stared. He didn't take it immediately. That was a hand that had destroyed the King. Who could take it without hesitation, knowing that? And more than that…
Internally, Netero grimaced. It was irrational, and absurd, and the fleeting feeling angered him with its existence alone.
Nevertheless right at this moment, he was sure this feeling, this hesitation towards a proffered hand, must have been the same way every martial artist he'd ever defeated must have felt. A sense of shame and surrender.
But right now, he wasn't a martial artist. He was the Chairman of the Hunters Association, and so he took Naruto's hand in a firm, joyless handshake, looking up at the man who towered nearly seven inches over him with an expression carefully tailored to be utterly unreadable. The smile widened.
'How can you smile like that when you are here? When you are you?'
"You've already done us an enormous service," he said, and Naruto watched him with the eyes of a statesmen instead of a shinobi. "But if it's not too arrogant, I'd ask another of you."
'Leave.'
"Don't worry about it," Naruto asked. Netero smiled grimly.
"As Sasuke told you, we came here to suppress the Ants." He looked down at the population of East Gorteau, which had begun to come to their senses. Ten million confused and frightened humans were waking up from a shared dream. It wouldn't take them long to return to reality. "But at the moment, they're quite loose. Would it be possible for you to gather them up? There are more Hunters coming, but I'm concerned they'll have scattered before they arrive."
Out of the corner of his eye, Netero saw Hinata narrow her eyes. He already knew what she was thinking: this wasn't the Isaac Netero she knew at all. He tilted his head towards her, meeting her gaze with placid, empty eyes.
I'm not hiding anything, he thought, and Hinata frowned, a silent question flickering across her face.
'But you can't say anything now, Hinata.' He smiled, and Hinata's frown deepened. They were all playing the same game now, and Hinata had to go by the same rules as Sasuke. Right now, they had to ensure Naruto trusted him, and that meant not questioning his actions, so long as they were reasonable.
Netero watched Hinata come to the realization, and her suspicion quieted. She'd speak her mind when she could, as she always had. He could rely on that.
"Of course!" Naruto said with a grin, rubbing the back of his head. "I guess I made that mess in the first place: I'll go clean it up." It was a childish but wholesome sentiment: how many leaders from this world would have said such a thing, Netero wondered. The Hokage glanced back at his wife, and Hinata nodded. Making sure East Gorteau's population did not panic and trample one another with the King's control wearing off was the most important thing now; Netero felt no shame in acknowledging Naruto was the only one present who could manage that.
'Go,' she mouthed, and his smile faded slightly.
"Be right back," he said, and with Sasuke at his side strode down the hill towards the remaining Ants and the millions of humans surrounding them. As he went, he rolled his neck from side to side and brought his hands up in a cross.
Netero watched with interest, amused by the man's confidence.
There was a puff of smoke, and where one man had stood there was suddenly a hundred. Then each of those clones brought their hands up, and a hundred became a thousand in an instant. By the time Naruto began wading into the crowd, searching for Ants to detain and subduing panicking humans with a touch, there were nearly ten-thousand of him.
Netero watched him go, and for a time the hilltop was silent. Nobody but Hinata had ever seen Naruto at work, and none of them knew what to say. With unbelievable speed, order spread through the chaotic mass of millions of humans and dozens of Ants. Even so, it was a process that would take hours: there were simply too many humans to calm and direct, even if the Ants in their numbers were already gathered in a single mass. It was like watching a strong wind gradually blow a puddle apart.
Or, Netero thought, a swarm of ants divide up their food with supernatural coordination.
"Crazy." Gon said what they were all thinking. "That's just crazy." He looked back. "I guess a lot of clones was part of it?"
Hinata laughed. "A part," she said.
"Your husband is an interesting man," Netero said, stroking his chin. "He's certainly created an amusing situation." The Ants squashed, the King held hostage by a single man. Amusing was the only word he could use.
"He didn't do what I expected," Hinata admitted. "I thought Sasuke would have killed the King. He wasn't always… patient."
"Hmm." Netero looked away, considering. "Naruto changed him, then."
"For the better." Hinata frowned. "But I'm not sure where things go from here."
"You disagree with what he did, of course," Netero said casually, and Hinata flinched. He chuckled. "It's obvious." Gon and Killua looked back to the Hyuuga, but Ging's razor focus remained on the distant Hokage and King.
"Of course," Hinata said, repeating him.
"Do you wish to kill the King?" Netero asked, and everyone on the hill stiffened. He could feel Hinata staring at the back of his head. After a moment, the woman stepped to his side, closer than she'd ever stood to him before.
"Yes," she said quietly.
"Do you think it's possible?" Netero asked, honestly curious.
"Yes." Just as quiet. "But I won't go against my husband."
"Aren't you a dutiful wife." Netero's words were acid. The others were trying to lean in, understanding the importance of the conversation but unwilling to intervene.
"You misunderstand." Hinata turned her head and looked him dead in the eyes. "I'm going to convince Naruto to kill him."
"Oho…" Netero muttered quietly. "How sinister, to arrange the murder of a prisoner."
"Don't do this now, Netero," Hinata muttered, and Netero was taken aback by the bite in her tone. "There's no point in playing this game. You don't disagree; in fact, it's far more important to you, and the Association, that the King dies than it is to me. We're still allies."
Netero chuckled. "Well, you're certainly right about that. It will be quite the blow to our credibility if the King were to walk away." He considered, feeling the words bubble in his chest but unsure of the impact of saying them. Eventually, he shrugged. "Perhaps I should have just killed myself after your husband arrived. That would have produced the simplest solution."
Hinata flinched away, and Netero wondered why he took pleasure, however minor, in other's pain. Was it because he had dedicated his existence to unstoppable violence? What a bizarre shape his life had taken.
It was Ging, sitting to their left, who responded. Perhaps Hinata was too shocked to bother.
"Well, I'm glad you didn't," the Ruin Hunter said, glancing back at Netero with a grin. "We wouldn't be able to enjoy such a remarkable situation if we were dead, would we?" He looked back to the teeming humanity of East Gorteau. "Of course, being able to enjoy it doesn't mean there's an elegant solution…"
"You shouldn't speak so carelessly, Netero." Hinata had found her voice. "Your life has value, even if you don't seem to think so." She bared her teeth. "And my husband is not your enemy."
Gon joined the conversation, sitting at his father's side. Netero was glad the boy had survived everything after all, and found the objective of his Hunt besides that. It was a marvelous coincidence, or rather, too marvelous to be a coincidence.
"Is this what you meant?" he asked, and Ging nodded.
"The Chairman's being a little blunt," Ging said, and Gon laughed in agreement. "But yeah. You get the issue, right?" Netero peered over, indulging in one of his favorite hobbies: eavesdropping.
"Not really," Gon admitted. "Last time we talked, you said this would happen because not all shinobi would be good guys."
"Yeah, that's a whole different problem." Ging waved him off. "The issue is this; practically-"
"Practically, there's not much of a difference between the King, and Naruto." Killua sat down next to his friend, and Ging's mouth snapped shut. Netero laughed; he'd never seen the Hunter look so irritated. Most people never got the opportunity to. "Sasuke too, for that matter."
"Killua-" Hinata started to say, and the Zoldyck shot the woman an apologetic look.
"Sorry," he said. Netero wondered how often he apologized. "I don't mean like that. You understand, right?"
Hinata frowned. "I do," she said, looking down at her husband. Perhaps a hundredth of East Gorteau had already been rounded up, milling about in amiable confusion instead of growing panic. What could Naruto have possibly told them to explain the vanished palace, the shattered city? Netero shook his head.
"It's the power imbalance," Ging told Gon, shooting Killua a dirty look. The boy stuck his tongue out in return. "We've already gone over this: Hunters weren't called to deal with the Ants because they were a huge threat or anything like that."
"It's cause they're an invasive species," Gon said, and Ging lit up.
"Exactly!" he said, and Gon was immediately infected by his enthusiasm. "And in that vein, so are the shinobi."
"I'm not sure I like being called an invasive species." Hinata cocked an eyebrow, and Ging laughed.
"Well, what would you call you guys?" he said. "You show up, totally alter the power dynamic, devastated the natural balance, and from the look of it, over-hunted the other guys into near extinction." Hinata frowned. "Hey, it's a compliment."
"I'll take it," she said with a small laugh. "But you're forcing the allegory."
"Without a doubt," Ging admitted guilelessly, and Hinata laughed again. "But it's obvious what I mean. Someone like Naruto represents the same kind of danger as the King: someone who can overturn the existing system with ease. So naturally, the Chairman thinks of dealing with him the same way."
"That doesn't seem right," Gon said, and Killua nodded in agreement. Despite that, it was Hinata who spoke up.
"The Ants weren't willing to maintain the current system. The nations, the governments, even the existence of humans." She sighed, trying to calm herself. Netero was impressed she could have gone from impassioned over the King's fate to defending her husband so rationally with such speed. "It's not a good comparison. Not to mention, weapons like that bomb in your chest!" She pointed at Netero, and the Chairman grinned.
"Oh? What about it?" he asked. His curiosity was blossoming into something more genuine every minute.
"You told me weapons like the Rose were incredibly common. Was that true?" Hinata asked, and Netero shrugged.
"I had no reason to lie," he admitted, and Hinata nodded. "In fact, weapons like the Poor Man's Rose are mild and cheap compared to the arsenals some larger nations possess. Hence the name."
"So, there are thousands of weapons out there-"
"Hundreds of thousands," Ging chimed in, and Hinata shook her head.
"Okay, hundreds of thousands," she said. "Many of which can do more than erase a city, most in the possession of nations but others by unaffiliated militaries or terror groups. Am I right?"
"I see where you're going with this," Killua said. "But there's a difference between a nation possessing a weapon of mass destruction, and a person being one, right?"
"You should know better than that, Killua," Hinata said, and to Netero's amusement the boy bristled. "You'd only have to look at this country to know that's not the case."
"Ahh," Ging said. "Well, that's true. Someone like Ming Jol-Ik, who completely controlled his country down to the individual citizens, and who possessed hundreds of weapons like the Rose…"
"Would be just the same as my husband," Hinata said with a firm nod. "But you wouldn't see it as a Hunter's duty to remove him, would you? Because he was part of the existing system. He could have gone mad one day and ordered the launch of all his weapons, and that certainly could have destroyed the world order as it stands today. But because he was using a weapon familiar to you, removing him was out of the question."
Hinata grew more and more passionate with every word, and when she finished Ging held up his hands in a mock surrender. "Alright, so perhaps it's slightly hypocritical. We might have been focusing too much on biology here."
"Slightly," Hinata huffed, but she smiled at the Hunter's admission.
"But someone like Jol-Ik remained in power because of the cost of removing him," Killua said. Gon was just looking back and forth between whoever was speaking with a faint, confused smile. Netero was sure he'd gotten lost some time ago. "Because of those weapons."
"And the same holds true for Naruto," Netero said, and everyone shifted to stare at him.
"What?" Gon asked. "Why'd you talk about blowing him up, then?"
"Because that would have been the only opportunity to remove him, and the King, without an unforgivable cost." Netero shrugged. "But I let that moment pass."
They all fell into a silence at that, obviously unsure of how to proceed. Netero wondered why he had even spoken the barbed words in the first place. Nothing had changed. Had that gnawing feeling of surrender pricked him that badly?
"If you could trust this country with such power, allow it to keep existing, then you have nothing to fear from Naruto." Hinata spoke with unbreakable conviction.
"You're his wife," Ging said with an obvious verbal shrug.
'Of course you would say that, as his wife.'
"I am, but I'm not saying this as his wife," Hinata said. "And anyway, Netero already admitted it. In this situation, all you can do is trust me, and trust him. It won't be misplaced."
Netero laughed at the naivety of Hinata's words, but it was a hollow and quiet thing. The woman was one-hundred percent correct. The matter of Naruto was entirely out of his hands now; the genie was out of the bottle, so to speak.
There were other things well within his control. Mainly, the Ants.
The Association had been commissioned to destroy them, but there had been no specification of it being a total genocide. It was just as well. Netero didn't feel a need to annihilate the Ants anymore; they were no longer the unified threat they had been in the NGL. The survivors that remained were essentially overgrown Magical Beasts. They had no leader, no meaningful ambitions, and no ability to decide their destiny. Killing them would be pointless murder with them so divided and paralyzed.
But the King…
Meruem had moved an entire country, nearly ten million strong, with a flex of his will. Well, Netero mused, more than a flex. It had been an effort for him, like a man deadlifting something slightly beyond his comfort zone. But that didn't change the fact that he'd managed it in the first place, so totally and so suddenly. The chakra compulsion had been strong enough that even Netero had felt the urge to move; if the King were to continue existing, who was to say he couldn't create a nation of slaves with something as simple as a passing desire?
It was that kind of power that could only reside in the Outer World. It was that kind of power that had driven Netero to restrict access to the Dark Continent in the first place.
"He will have to die," Netero said, and Hinata looked to him, realizing he was finally picking up their initial conversation. "It's too dangerous otherwise."
Hinata nodded, but once again, Ging interrupted with a laugh.
"Congratulations on coming to an agreement," he said. "Now you just have to go through him." He gestured to the thousands of Naruto's below. "Well, and you'll actually have to kill the King, which certainly isn't as simple as just saying it. That's two impossibilities in a row."
"Only if Naruto doesn't agree that it's necessary," Hinata said.
"Is he a man who's easy to convince?" Ging asked with a smarmy grin, and Hinata's placid expression fractured slightly. "Could have fooled me." He leaned back, lying down in the grass with his hands behind his head. "Face it, we're all in checkmate right now. It's not an unpleasant checkmate, but that's definitely what it is." He closed one eye, the other fixated on Hinata. "Maybe you'll have luck, being close to him." He winked, and Hinata grimaced. "But the rest of us, we're just going to be butterflies in a storm from here on out. Best we can do is pick a direction."
Hmm, Netero thought.
That actually sounded somewhat nice.
If that really was the case, for the first time in two months, two years, two decades, no, even longer than that… he could surrender responsibility.
He could think with his heart, instead of silencing it.
Despite his position, despite his ability, right here and right now all that was useless. That was appropriate. Strength didn't mean anything beyond itself; power had no inherent purpose, and did not mandate action. Strength was strength, and power was power. Neither ensured any particular duty.
Maybe that had been his mistake, he thought as he listened to his slow and steady heartbeat. Forgetting that old lesson in all the excitement.
In the end, Netero deeply believed that was the ugly truth of power and violence. A lifetime of both had taught him that. Everyone, even the Hunters and Shinobi sitting on the hill with him, believed in the fantasy of violence. It was as accepted a concept as oxygen, omnipresent and unquestionable. That violence was a transformative force that could be used to change the course of fate, or make oneself feel better, or even change someone's mind.
Certainly, using violence to search for enlightenment had been Netero's intent when he'd first gone up the mountain. What else could you call his regimen of punches and prayers?
But it was quite possible that no one alive knew violence quite as Isaac Netero did, and in his old age he'd come to a different conclusion.
Violence was a tool. A blunt tool. Calling it a hammer would be too kind, because at least when you swung a hammer you could usually determine what it would strike.
Violence was a message in a bottle. If you were trying to accomplish anything more ambitious than destruction with it, you would simply have to pray it washed up on the correct shore. That had never been a problem for Netero, who had only ever utilized violence for the purpose of destruction: destroying bodies, pride, and anything else his hands could break.
That was what really worried him about Naruto, he realized. Because for Naruto, the fantasy of violence... was not a fantasy.
The Hokage had beaten the King into submission without harming him. He had fundamentally altered the creature who, on a genetic level, could not have dreamed of surrender. He had cheated-
No, cheated was the wrong word. But his chakra interacting with the King's had impossibly changed the equation of violence, and now Netero…
Did not know where things would go.
He crossed his arms, and listened to his heart.
Perhaps for now, it would be better to be the butterfly, as Ging had said. A new world was splitting open in front of him.
And whether the King survived or not, Netero wasn't sure where he stood in it.
A good, nice, interlude chapter. Or is it the epilogue? I think I remember you saying something about the fic being in its last chapters or something.
If it's the epilogue, I hope there's a sequel. Perhaps going to another world? maybe an exploration of the Dark Continent?
If it's the epilogue, I hope there's a sequel. Perhaps going to another world? maybe an exploration of the Dark Continent?
Ser_Serendipity
Building Character
There are a couple chapters left, probably four or five: this chapter was supposed to be about twice as long and include three more scenes, but I ended up splitting it because frankly, no one has time for that. But we are definitely in the denouement now. Glad you made it here with me
As for a sequel, I'd love to further explore this world but I'm also eager to get started on some other projects: Myrmidon's taken all my attention for about three years now, and I think I'll need to stretch my legs when I'm done.
Neruz
Rogue Spiderbanana
- Location
- The Land of Fire and Poison
I suppose for someone like Netero, living in a world dominated by Nen, the concept of Ninshu actually would be rather frightening on a fundamental level: The ability to literally turn defeat into friendship by understanding your opponent to destruction even as you fight them is a terrifying ability to someone who is used to more 'conventional' forms of violence.
Meanwhile, everyone is so busy focusing on Meruem's survival and the power he wields that they cannot see the forest for the trees and have missed the most important fundamental lesson of the Chimera Ant Arc: Consuming humans was the worst mistake the Chimera Ants ever made, it was also the last mistake they ever made, not because Netero suicide-bombed Meruem with a backpack nuke, but because it turned out that 'humanity' was stronger than 'chimera ant'. By consuming humans, the Chimera Ants made themselves human, and in doing so ceased to be Chimera Ants.
I wonder how long it will take someone other than Naruto to notice that the surviving Chimera Ants act less like ants and more like the humans they have become, when given the opportunity to do so.
Meanwhile, everyone is so busy focusing on Meruem's survival and the power he wields that they cannot see the forest for the trees and have missed the most important fundamental lesson of the Chimera Ant Arc: Consuming humans was the worst mistake the Chimera Ants ever made, it was also the last mistake they ever made, not because Netero suicide-bombed Meruem with a backpack nuke, but because it turned out that 'humanity' was stronger than 'chimera ant'. By consuming humans, the Chimera Ants made themselves human, and in doing so ceased to be Chimera Ants.
I wonder how long it will take someone other than Naruto to notice that the surviving Chimera Ants act less like ants and more like the humans they have become, when given the opportunity to do so.
Damian45
Only Sane Man
What a coincidence. I was just thinking about this story, and it gets an update.
And it is incredibly satisfying when characters inside the story recognize the imbalance of power Naruto and Sasuke represent by merely existing.
Far too many crossovers don't do this, and it annoys me, along with haphazard merging of setting elements, and bad characterization.
Thankfully, this story is above having problems like that. The only problem I can see is the story lacking any strong direction to go in from this point. The cleanest way to solve the entire situation would be for the shinobi to take the Chimera Ants with them back to their world. But that would be an unsatisfactory way to end things, so I guess the next couple of chapters will be dedicated to winding down.
And it is incredibly satisfying when characters inside the story recognize the imbalance of power Naruto and Sasuke represent by merely existing.
Far too many crossovers don't do this, and it annoys me, along with haphazard merging of setting elements, and bad characterization.
Thankfully, this story is above having problems like that. The only problem I can see is the story lacking any strong direction to go in from this point. The cleanest way to solve the entire situation would be for the shinobi to take the Chimera Ants with them back to their world. But that would be an unsatisfactory way to end things, so I guess the next couple of chapters will be dedicated to winding down.
- Location
- Leeds
Fear. I think fear is an objective opinion.
And Sakura will not stop complaining about it.
Dropped a the next to other's, I think.
Or maybe not now I re read this, put a people after to make the subject more clear?
Ignore me because I'm clearly illiterate?
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Chapter 35
Ser_Serendipity
Building Character
Myrmidon Chapter 35
Three hours after the last of the Ants had been rounded up, Ging approached Netero from behind. The Chairman hadn't moved from the top of the hill in all that time, observing the process of East Gorteau reorganizing. It was a fascinating, once in a lifetime sight, but he hadn't been able to appreciate it.
"You're wanted," Ging said without preamble. The man looked invigorated. He'd been speaking with Sasuke Uchiha and assisting in gathering the Chimera, along with his son. Ging probably hadn't had that much interaction with humans in a year, and the man was obviously enjoying it.
Unusual for him, but he was in the presence of unusual people. That was Ging's ideal environment.
"By?" Netero asked, sure he already knew.
"Naruto wants to talk with you."
"Oh?" Netero stood up and turned to face his Zodiac. "What about?"
Ging laughed. "What else?" He pointed over his shoulder. "Bottom of the hill. When you have the time." He turned and waved goodbye. "Good luck, little butterfly."
Netero chuckled. He could waste their time. Perhaps take a nap. Certainly he could use the time to think. But in the end, Naruto Uzumaki was interesting, and more than that, dangerous. Testing his patience in the name of pettiness was something Netero might have entertained several decades ago, but now it was out of the question.
What he found at the bottom of the hill surprised him, but only at first glance.
Everyone present was seated on a stone. It was a patch of rocks sparse and covered in moss, and none came up past his knees. Naruto had taken the shortest, but his height had rendered him more than equal to everyone else. Hinata was to his left. The woman seemed calmer, and Netero could not blame her. Her husband was here; she was perfectly safe now. Nonetheless, her whole body was tense, and she stared straight ahead with a frigid expression.
She was staring at the King of the Ants, who was seated to Naruto's right.
Meruem was staring at the ground like an embarrassed child, unable to make eye contact with the woman staring him down.
Netero laughed, and everyone present switched their focus to him.
"What is this?" he asked. "A little quorum?"
Naruto smiled. "Something like that." He gestured to a stone across from him. "Would you mind joining us?"
Netero didn't respond. He just took a seat, curling one leg up under himself and propping his face in his hand. He peered at the others with curious eyes. The Chairman was already sure he knew what the purpose of the meeting was.
But if that was the case, why was the King there?
"We're here to decide your fate, huh?" The King looked up at him, its expression unreadable. Netero grinned. "Or was the decision made without me?"
The King refused to respond. Netero was sure he read a bit of anguish in the thing's eyes. Who could blame it? A creature without peer, designed to rule from birth, and here it was at one man's mercy, waiting for him to decide if he should live or die. It was a little cruel to have him here, seated next to his judge, jury, and executioner, wasn't it?
He could stop his heart here, Netero thought, and make that decision for himself. Wouldn't that be interesting?
'Only if Naruto doesn't agree it's necessary.'
Netero looked to Hinata, and she glanced at him. Her lips pursed.
Well. No reason not to let this play out. The situation was almost ideal. Netero sat back.
"No decisions yet," Naruto said. "You're our Hunter here, Netero. The Chairman, in fact, so I'm going to assume you speak for the rest of them." The man's blue eyes were painfully earnest.
"Ha!" Netero chuckled. "That's not how Hunters work… but if this mission fails, I'll be the one to take the blame, so here, I can serve."
"Your mission," the King said. "To wipe me out?"
Netero shifted, watching the King's tail flex. They both knew that at this range, Naruto would be able to act before either of them, but that didn't dull their instincts.
"Our contract didn't even consider you," Netero said bluntly. "You weren't supposed to exist. As it is now, the other Ants could walk away. They're too much like… humans now. They took in our flaws." He shrugged. "I have no taste for killing without reason. Our mission was to remove the Chimera Ants as a threat to the Mitene Union. At the moment, we've mostly succeeded."
"Bar me." The King smiled humorlessly.
"Bar you," Netero agreed. "You're too dangerous to live." He looked back to Naruto. "Why are we even having this conversation? You fought the King. You should know better than anyone what needs to be done."
"He's right, Naruto." Hinata spoke up, her voice quiet but firm. Netero gave an appreciative nod. "We should just get this over with, and leave." Her head dropped, her hair hiding her face. "I want to go home."
"I understand that." Naruto sighed, a worried expression dragging his eyes down. "Both of you. I understand that." He knocked a fist into his knee. "But that's why I have Meruem here. If he's got to die, I want him to understand why."
The King laughed. "What would be the point, if I would be dead?" He stood up, and Netero and Hinata both tensed. Naruto remained seated, his head almost level with the King even while the latter was standing. "To make yourself feel better?" the Ant sneered.
"A little," Naruto admitted. "But I don't want to kill you. That's why I let you surrender."
Now, it was Hinata who stood. "Do you know how many people he's killed?" she demanded. "He massacred dozens taking that Palace. When he was waiting inside, he murdered several others, just because they couldn't beat him in a game! The only reason Komugi is still alive is because she kept winning! And more than that, he was going to destroy this whole nation! All those people you saved Naruto, all of them would have been eaten alive, or worse, turned into Ants!" Her hands curled into fists, chakra sparking around her knuckles. "Every person those Ants have eaten, everyone who's suffered, it was because of him. To build him, and then to serve him!"
She breathed out harshly. "If he walks away… all those deaths will go-"
"Unavenged?" Naruto suggested quietly, and Hinata's nostrils flared.
"Yes," she spat. Netero observed the lover's quarrel with amusement. What was the import of that word, he wondered.
"Yeah…" Naruto said, his shoulders sagging. "But that's the problem. I got no problem believing all that. I know you're telling the truth, Hinata." He frowned. "But the Mereum I fought… wasn't any of that." He sighed and looked at the King. For some reason, the Ant looked ashamed. "When I fought him, the only thing he was thinking about was defending a little girl."
Netero considered the absurdity of the situation. "Do you see my problem now?" Naruto asked, and Hinata bit her lip. Netero continued to quietly observe. "It feels wrong."
There was a moment of the silence, and the King retook his seat.
"You can't make that decision on what you feel," Netero said. "Only on what has happened."
"Why?" Naruto asked, and Netero shifted back at the sincerity of the question. The Hokage's eyes shone with conviction. "I'm not being rhetorical! Why? Can you give me a reason? Because I'd like one!"
His mind wasn't made up, Netero realized. He'd gravely misread the situation. Naruto wasn't naive, he just had strong principles. The Chairman had been approaching this from a completely wrong direction.
Dread flashed across his mind: what else had he misinterpreted?
He considered approaching more cautiously, but decided against it.
"Don't be so conceited," he said instead, and was gratified when Naruto leaned in with interest instead of flinching back. That had been a gamble. "Even if the King has changed, perhaps for the better, that doesn't change the reality of his past actions." He laughed. "You can't escape consequences by saying 'Ah, that was the me of ten years ago,' no matter how much you've changed over time. That would be convenient for me, but it's just not the case. For something like the Ants, with their sheer processing power, a month might as well be a decade." He snorted. "And even if the King now is a being of pure altruism-" He glanced at Mereum. "Are you?"
The King started. "Am I a being of pure altruism?" he asked, and Netero cocked his head.
The Ant blinked and sat back down. "I don't know." He rested his chin on one hand, apparently mulling the question.
The Chairman smiled. "Even if the King had an epiphany and transformed into a being of pure altruism, he would have to answer for his past actions. More than that, no matter how benevolent he became, he would still be an enormous danger."
"More than nine-million people had their free will ripped away in a second," Hinata said. "To defend Komugi, yes, but Naruto, he did it in a moment, without hesitation, at the slightest threat. Like a dog raising its fur. That's beyond even you."
"Hmm." Naruto leaned back and crossed his arms. "I agree completely."
The King frowned and dropped his head, but Netero raised an eyebrow. He hadn't expected that answer. "You do?"
"Of course," Naruto said. "I wasn't trying to say that the King was a different person or anything like that. And he definitely has to answer for what he did." He looked at his wife. 'Everything he did."
Hinata looked back. "But?" she asked. Netero realized he was very glad to have her on his side in this argument. She was perceptive and sharp. It was a shame he wouldn't have more chances to fight alongside her.
Naruto raised his hands in a mock surrender with a full smile. "You got me," he said. "But, does that mean he has to die? That's another part of the problem." He looked to the King. "You're just too damn strong, Meruem."
"You couldn't cage me," the Ant said softly. "So if you mean to punish me, the only meaningful punishment is-"
"Death." Hinata sat down, hands falling into her lap. Some of the murderous energy had gone out of her.
"Well, we could seal him," Naruto said. He stood and began pacing, hands clasped behind his back. "Shove him into a box or something. But that would be even worse. Hell, Kurama might not even let me."
Kurama? Netero didn't know the name, but both Hinata and the King had reacted to it. Was there someone standing above even Naruto, directing him? The fire casting the shadow?
"Is that what that was?" the King asked, and Naruto nodded. "That thing is sealed inside you? Is that how you beat me?"
"Part of it," Naruto said. "My cloak is borrowed from him."
The King laughed. "And yet, you would have beaten me without it. I guess I'm still looking for a way out."
"Maybe," Naruto shrugged. Was he truly humble, or just putting on an act? Netero thought it was the first, but the man was a world leader: he had to be practiced at lying.
"Kurama?" Netero asked. Hinata put a hand on her husband's shoulder.
"Naruto is a Jinchuriki." Netero blinked, a distant conversation from more than a month ago echoing in his ears. A society built on human sacrifice.
"I'm aware of that." He looked at Naruto, his eyes dropping to his stomach. "So Kurama is the Nine-Tailed Fox? Morel didn't tell me it had a name."
"He has a name, yeah," Naruto said. "And he's the reason the King's still alive. At the end… he was the one who made Meruem stand down. There's no way he'd let me get away with just sealing him up after that."
"Hmm." Netero looked to the King with renewed interest. "How did the fox change your mind? I would have assumed you would fight to the death."
"I had planned to." The King opened and closed his hands, which could easily squeeze through Netero's bones as if they didn't exist. The Chairman watched the idle motion with a bit of fascination. "I intended to make him kill me. But that thing…" He fell silent, and then looked up to Netero. "It was old. So old that I couldn't comprehend it. It commanded my attention. It reminded me of a promise I'd made."
"Interesting." Netero scratched his chin. His leg was starting to fall asleep, so he changed them out, shifting his left under his body and letting the other dangle off his stone. "Interesting. Then, Naruto, what punishment would you put forward, if at all?"
"I've got no idea," Naruto said. "That's why I've got all you here. I wanna hear all options before taking the final one."
"Naruto…" Hinata said. "He's not a child. You're being too…"
"I know," Naruto said, taking her hand. They looked into each other's eyes. Netero wasn't a man who usually respected privacy, but something about that look made him feel an intruder. "But I'd rather be too soft instead of too harsh."
Hinata's eyes narrowed. "He's cruel." She said it plainly because it couldn't be hidden in the lines of her face. The King had been cruel to Hinata, and it was obvious to anyone who looked for it. "And not the cruelty of a child. Our children can't be safe, in a world with that kind of cruelty."
Meruem stayed silent. Was he unable to defend himself, or unwilling? Maybe he thought Hinata would attack him if he spoke. If that was the case, Netero thought, he had misjudged the woman. She had moved beyond any attempt at direct assault.
"Yeah…" Naruto said, squeezing her hand. "But there's always going to be that kind of cruelty, no matter what." He smiled. "No matter how hard we try. But this one is gone." His face hardened. "I killed it. And Meruem knows that too."
"How can you say that?" Hinata whispered, and Naruto gave her a sorrowful smile.
"Meruem's not a child," he said. "Listen."
Hinata did, and so did Netero. Naruto looked at the Ant as he spoke.
"There's just no other word that fits, cause he's unique. He has an incredible amount of intelligence, and zero wisdom. None. Zilch." The Hokage frowned. "He was cruel to me too. But inside that storm, it was obvious. He was cruel because he had no context for that cruelty, not because it was inherent to his nature. He took pleasure in it because it gave him a path to victory, but he had no way of understanding its consequences."
"That's wrong." Hinata shook her head. "He knew exactly what he was doing."
"I did." The King stood up. "Don't infantilize me."
"You're lying." Naruto narrowed his eyes. "Both of you. You-!" He leveled a finger at the King. "Sit down. And Hinata-" He turned back to his wife. Netero was surprised at the Hokage's tone; the man had gone from mild to commanding and impassioned in an instant. "We've both seen inside him. You know as well as I do, and as he does. As silly as it is, he was cruel for the same reasons he wanted to conquer the world or some other nonsense. When he surrendered to me, he surrendered that too. He's not a child, but he was like a baby, just shoving things in his mouth. He was still exploring sensations, and consequences."
"How can he understand consequences, if he's not punished?" Hinata asked sharply.
"How can he understand consequences if he's dead?" Naruto shot back
"Why are you doing this?!" Hinata shot to her feet. "Why don't you care what he did to me?! To you! To this country, and the Hunters?! What's wrong with you?!"
"I already told you!" Naruto pronounced, standing up as well and towering over his wife. "I'm doing this because I don't know what to do!" He shook his head, growing more and more frustrated. "Is it better to punish him too much, or not enough? Why do I have to make the decision? Just because I'm strong?! Whatever the duty of the strong is, it's not this!"
The words struck Netero like an electric shock, and unconsciously he shot to his feet. "Duty has nothing to do with it." The Hokage gave him a puzzled look. "Duty is a sham."
"What?" Hinata asked, and Naruto echoed his wife's question. Netero felt his heart beat, thrilled at his own honesty.
"Why worry about 'duty'?" he asked. "It doesn't matter what your duty is. Just do what you want!" He laughed. "It's not as if any of us could stop you! Why worry about it, with strength like yours? You are beyond duty!"
"No one is beyond that! And, well I don't know what I want, you old bastard! That's why you're here!" Naruto shouted back, and Hinata laughed at her husband's suddenly brutal honesty.
"Don't be blind!" Netero said. What had come over him? Was he really that fed up, so quickly? God, these shinobi were infuriating. "It's obvious you want to spare him. Maybe even train him! You're practically infatuated with the damn creature. Why not just take him and scuttle back to your home? Take it out of our business, and then soothe your conscience in your world!"
"So long as the portal exists, that's not an option," Naruto said. "Your problems are ours, and the… the other way around."
"Vice versa?" Hinata suggested, and Naruto snapped his fingers.
"Yes, that! Thank you!" he exclaimed, planting a quick kiss on her forehead. The woman, whom Netero had seen destroy dozens of Chimera Ants with her bare hands, blushed.
"Perhaps the portal is the problem then," Netero suggested, and Naruto bristled. "You've been put in a position where you feel a duty to solve our problem." The Chairman sighed, feeling the fight leak out of him. This wasn't going where he wanted. "My apologies. You never should have been in that position in the first place. That's the real problem here."
"That's not the problem," the King said. He had his face cupped in both hands now, his tail idly whipping back and forth behind him.
"Pardon?" Netero asked, and the King pinned him with his deep purple eyes. Netero considered them with interest. Naruto was at least partially right. These eyes were nothing like the eyes of the creature who had tried to rip him to pieces in Peijing. There was more to them than hunger and fear.
"I thought," the King said, "that it was my duty to rule."
"That was just how I was born," he continued. "Born with a duty to rule. But now, there's a disagreement over my duty, and my life…" He smiled. "And it's predicated on duty. I'm starting to get it." The King laughed. "Much more complicated than any game. There isn't even a win state..."
"What are you talking about?" Hinata asked, and the King shifted his gaze to her, his aura becoming mournful.
"It's simple," he said, spreading his palms. "In fact, you already know what I'm talking about, I just haven't been clear enough. The source of our previous conflicts, and this current one, all came from differences in duty. I thought it was my duty to rule, and you thought it was your duty to destroy the Chimera Ants. Now, that duty has shifted to defending your family: you gave up on the grander goal when the scope of the danger I presented…" He grew a little less enthusiastic, to Netero's amusement. "When I made it clear to you what a danger I was. Naruto is the same way: I saw in you that his duty was always to protect what was important to him. But now, I've confused those priorities by surrendering: how can he murder someone who is essentally helpless and still justify to himself that it was in the name of defense?" The King laughed. "'Proactive Defense,' perhaps. Certainly, you could go there. Especially with me."
He looked at the Hokage. "But are you willing?"
"Well done," Netero said dryly, "on summing up the situation. We're lucky to have such wisdom from the mouth of… whatever you are. But did you have anything to add?"
"I believe so," Meruem said. "I don't think any of us are correct here. Perhaps that's juvenile of me, but it's tempting to assume a middle ground." He pointed at himself. "Total control, without reservation. Even switching my duty to defending Komugi maintained that at the core." Then at Naruto. "Defense of the self, and what makes the self. The twine, right Naruto?"
The Hokage crossed his arms and nodded, listening with interest. Netero didn't understand the reference. Then, the King looked at Netero.
"And you were telling the truth," he said, tilting his head. "You don't believe in duty at all. To you, it's just being strong, right?"
Fielding questions from an overgrown cockroach wasn't exactly Netero's favorite activity, but he felt no compunction in answering.
"That's all there is to it," he said, and the King smiled.
"I don't think any of those are right," he said. "They've all failed us. They're too absolute. If you stick to one strategy no matter what, you develop blind spots. I took my absolute leadership as absolute strength, and look where it led me." He chuckled. "I brought the very man who'd defeat me to me. And now, he can't even make the simple decision to kill me!" He looked at Naruto. "That's funny, right?"
Naruto shrugged. "I dunno, maybe a little. It helps if you think your life is funny."
"It is, maybe, a little absurd." The King looked down at his hand, opening and closing it and watching the pull of his tendons, tougher than diamonds. "And short. That's part of the absurdity. If it ends here, all the more so."
He looked up at Netero. "I'm curious. If strength is all there is, and I'm stronger than you, why did you oppose me at all? Why come here, why take the contract for the Ants at all?"
'Why?'
Netero wondered himself. Why had he done anything, become the Chairman of the Hunter's Association even? In pursuit of further strength? No, that wasn't it.
'Because I wanted to lose.' Netero was surprised at the clarity of his thoughts, but he was sure they were correct. 'It's been so long since I lost. I wanted to remember the feeling. What better than you, an opponent who would never consider me a possible threat unless I proved it? Even though you weren't supposed to be born...'
The realization was gradual in how it slowly came together in his consciousness, but like most things in Netero's life the actual moment of understanding was sudden and violent.
'Bad news,' he'd said, and he'd turned and smiled at the rest of the team. 'There's an Ant up there that could kill us all.'
"I came because I thought the Ants might be a challenge. And once the situation became obvious… I wanted you to be born," he said, and Hinata jolted at the admission.
"Netero-!?" she started to say, but he waved off her concern.
"I didn't act on it," he said. "It was just a thought I had. When we realized how dangerous the Ants were, when we saw Neferpitou that first day and I realized there was a creature in this world that could kill me without hesitation, I wondered what the King would be." How refreshing, to be honest.
"But in the end, I only had a chance to fight your shadow." Netero coughed. "It was something, but not what I wanted. A shame."
The King tilted his head. "If you had fought my real body, you would have died. That can't be what you wanted. You didn't have the strength to overcome me."
Netero resisted the urge to bite back. "There's more to strength than the strength in your body," he said instead, and touched his chest, placing his hand over his heart. Hinata glanced at him. "I hold something here that could have destroyed you, no matter how a battle between us went."
"Your heart?" the King asked. He blinked. "A connection? A loved one?"
"Ha!" Netero barked, and to his astonishment Hinata laughed too, a single suffocated snort. "More literal, I'm afraid. But there's no reason to worry about that. Where were you going with all this talking?"
"Of course," the King demurred. "My point was, I think you're all wrong. But the only one I've seen actually change their duty…" He pondered. "Ever, actually... has been Hinata."
"Oh." The woman sighed softly. "So?"
"So... " The King sucked in a breath. It was the only time Netero had seen the Ant look uncertain. "Do you think there is a middle ground?"
A middle ground?
"What do you mean by a middle ground?" she asked. The King looked down.
"I think you're the only person who can reconcile this," he said. "You've seen the most. You've watched me since before I was born. As much as it stings to admit, you're the only one I'd trust to decide my life."
You're the only one I'd trust to decide my life? Had the King really just said that? Netero's laugh was harsh, and everyone started at it.
"You'd leave your fate with a woman you tortured?" Netero was incredulous. "I took you for smarter than that, Ant." Did he want to die? No, that didn't fit. The King couldn't comprehend self-destruction.
But then, he and Naruto had both rationalized his surrender as a kind of death. Maybe he was just taking it one step further.
"You know what my decision would be, Mereum," Hinata said after a short pause. "You already know."
"In that case..." the King said, clambering off his stone. He knelt slowly, as if he were wearing something heavy, and presented his neck. "I would accept it."
Netero froze, and so did Hinata. Naruto was the only one who seemed unphased, watching the proceedings with a resigned look. The King's actions threw even Netero's mind into a jumble. It wasn't natural. These weren't the actions or movements of a King of the Chimera Ants. They were humble, and suicidal.
Netero's dread returned.
This was what he had misunderstood. That was why he'd felt so ill at ease. It wasn't just Naruto.
It was the King himself.
###
He would accept it?
For a solid minute, Hinata was sure that meant the King had accepted his own death. She'd step forward and shatter his spine, burst his skull. She was sure she could now. She'd once said that she could probably kill the King if he dropped his guard and let her. That was exactly what was happening here. There hadn't been any need for this meeting. The Ant wasn't resisting. Naruto wasn't needed.
But even though it would be ridiculously easy, she didn't step forward and break the Ant's neck.
Why didn't she? Was she actually a coward, after all this time? Hinata worried that this place had reduced her to the scared little girl she'd once been, unable or unwilling to commit violence, even necessary violence.
No, that wasn't it. Listen to yourself. You're a woman, you have children, you've killed. There's no difference between the King and all the other Ants in that respect.
It was something else, something obvious. She'd already admitted it to herself. She didn't want to fight anymore. She could kill, she just… didn't want to.
Hinata was done.
She looked down, regarding the King. He remained as still as a statue, his entire body relaxed and his gaze stuck to the floor. He really was ready, she marveled. He'd given up his life that casually. The King never would have bowed to someone, or surrendered his life.
The only person he had ever surrendered to before her husband was Komugi. But that had been in games, not life. By surrendering in a battle, forfeiting his life-
Naruto was right, she thought. As usual. That was a little infuriating to be honest. Why was her husband so damn perceptive? It really was that simple. He'd killed the King. He and Kurama had, by forcing Meruem to surrender. What remained looked just like the creature that had tortured her, but that King was…
Gone.
The King that had threatened her children had been slain by her husband. What was she doing, staring at this thing's neck now? What would she gain from killing him? Peace? She doubted it. Hinata had never felt peace from killing. Even when she'd almost killed Neferpitou, she'd felt relief at best. But now, like this, killing someone as they knelt in front of her, exposing their neck, not resisting? That wasn't who Hinata Uzumaki was.
Maybe if she had relied more on her ancestor's chakra, she'd be ruthless enough to be the executioner Meruem was asking for. But for better or worse, Hinata wasn't Hamura, and she didn't intend ever to be.
Meruem was still dangerous, even if the King was dead. Unbelievably dangerous, she thought. Mereum had sent millions of people to protect the life of a single girl without any consideration for their will. He'd hollowed out an entire country in a moment. But that was a different kind of danger from the dead thing that had fed her phantom children to her.
Hinata took a deep breath.
She remembered the blood-stained nest, and the collected misery of every human whose lives the Ants had stolen months ago. She remembered the King's tombstone teeth, bared in a hateful grimace as he threatened her family.
Don't forget. Can't forget. But what was the point of driving it so deeply into her heart that she saw it every time she closed her eyes, when all it would bring her was more pain?
She closed her eyes, unable and unwilling to forget everything she had seen, and released everything with her next breath.
She felt lighter. There was a weight on her mind, a migraine in waiting, that had just vanished.
Hinata opened her eyes and looked at her husband. He was watching her with obvious concern. It almost made her laugh. He was strong enough to solve all of this in an instant, she thought, but life had taught both of them there was more to solving things than strength alone. He was looking to her for guidance, just as the King was. Right now, she held more power than either of them.
But it wasn't just power. It was a partnership. Even with the King, in a strange way.
A partnership changes both sides, Hinata thought. Naruto had changed her for the better, and the King for the worse.
Which would she rather keep?
She sighed, and with her husband's strength she discarded her hate.
"In a case like this," she started to say. Her voice was soft and quiet, and she saw both Naruto and Netero strain to hear. "Someone who's too strong to punish can only be taught."
The King looked up at her, a confused look in his eyes.
'He really thought he was about to die. That's what he thought of me. That's what he made me.'
She locked her eyes on his, searching for any sign of deception. But there wasn't even a sliver of it. His body, his chakra, his eyes, everything bled sincerity. The King's aura hadn't been screaming since his fight with Naruto, but his intent still leaked from it without regard for subtlety. Hinata had no choice but to accept it.
"If they can't learn, they die," she declared, still looking the King dead in the eyes. The Ant hesitated, and then nodded. "There's no more room for compromise than that."
The King dropped his head again and spoke.
"Thank you."
There wasn't anything more than that.
"Hah." Netero chuckled. The Chairman crossed his arms. "I misread you, Hinata. I thought you would kill him immediately."
"I would have," Hinata said honestly. She looked from the King to her husband. "If I hadn't had time to think about it."
Naruto laughed, much more honestly than Netero, and reached out to grab her hand. "Now what, then?" he asked. There was something in his eyes that Hinata hadn't seen in a long time: relief.
"Now…" Hinata said, and she found that she couldn't help but laugh. "Now, I guess we have to figure out the rest."
Tribunal
Three hours after the last of the Ants had been rounded up, Ging approached Netero from behind. The Chairman hadn't moved from the top of the hill in all that time, observing the process of East Gorteau reorganizing. It was a fascinating, once in a lifetime sight, but he hadn't been able to appreciate it.
"You're wanted," Ging said without preamble. The man looked invigorated. He'd been speaking with Sasuke Uchiha and assisting in gathering the Chimera, along with his son. Ging probably hadn't had that much interaction with humans in a year, and the man was obviously enjoying it.
Unusual for him, but he was in the presence of unusual people. That was Ging's ideal environment.
"By?" Netero asked, sure he already knew.
"Naruto wants to talk with you."
"Oh?" Netero stood up and turned to face his Zodiac. "What about?"
Ging laughed. "What else?" He pointed over his shoulder. "Bottom of the hill. When you have the time." He turned and waved goodbye. "Good luck, little butterfly."
Netero chuckled. He could waste their time. Perhaps take a nap. Certainly he could use the time to think. But in the end, Naruto Uzumaki was interesting, and more than that, dangerous. Testing his patience in the name of pettiness was something Netero might have entertained several decades ago, but now it was out of the question.
What he found at the bottom of the hill surprised him, but only at first glance.
Everyone present was seated on a stone. It was a patch of rocks sparse and covered in moss, and none came up past his knees. Naruto had taken the shortest, but his height had rendered him more than equal to everyone else. Hinata was to his left. The woman seemed calmer, and Netero could not blame her. Her husband was here; she was perfectly safe now. Nonetheless, her whole body was tense, and she stared straight ahead with a frigid expression.
She was staring at the King of the Ants, who was seated to Naruto's right.
Meruem was staring at the ground like an embarrassed child, unable to make eye contact with the woman staring him down.
Netero laughed, and everyone present switched their focus to him.
"What is this?" he asked. "A little quorum?"
Naruto smiled. "Something like that." He gestured to a stone across from him. "Would you mind joining us?"
Netero didn't respond. He just took a seat, curling one leg up under himself and propping his face in his hand. He peered at the others with curious eyes. The Chairman was already sure he knew what the purpose of the meeting was.
But if that was the case, why was the King there?
"We're here to decide your fate, huh?" The King looked up at him, its expression unreadable. Netero grinned. "Or was the decision made without me?"
The King refused to respond. Netero was sure he read a bit of anguish in the thing's eyes. Who could blame it? A creature without peer, designed to rule from birth, and here it was at one man's mercy, waiting for him to decide if he should live or die. It was a little cruel to have him here, seated next to his judge, jury, and executioner, wasn't it?
He could stop his heart here, Netero thought, and make that decision for himself. Wouldn't that be interesting?
'Only if Naruto doesn't agree it's necessary.'
Netero looked to Hinata, and she glanced at him. Her lips pursed.
Well. No reason not to let this play out. The situation was almost ideal. Netero sat back.
"No decisions yet," Naruto said. "You're our Hunter here, Netero. The Chairman, in fact, so I'm going to assume you speak for the rest of them." The man's blue eyes were painfully earnest.
"Ha!" Netero chuckled. "That's not how Hunters work… but if this mission fails, I'll be the one to take the blame, so here, I can serve."
"Your mission," the King said. "To wipe me out?"
Netero shifted, watching the King's tail flex. They both knew that at this range, Naruto would be able to act before either of them, but that didn't dull their instincts.
"Our contract didn't even consider you," Netero said bluntly. "You weren't supposed to exist. As it is now, the other Ants could walk away. They're too much like… humans now. They took in our flaws." He shrugged. "I have no taste for killing without reason. Our mission was to remove the Chimera Ants as a threat to the Mitene Union. At the moment, we've mostly succeeded."
"Bar me." The King smiled humorlessly.
"Bar you," Netero agreed. "You're too dangerous to live." He looked back to Naruto. "Why are we even having this conversation? You fought the King. You should know better than anyone what needs to be done."
"He's right, Naruto." Hinata spoke up, her voice quiet but firm. Netero gave an appreciative nod. "We should just get this over with, and leave." Her head dropped, her hair hiding her face. "I want to go home."
"I understand that." Naruto sighed, a worried expression dragging his eyes down. "Both of you. I understand that." He knocked a fist into his knee. "But that's why I have Meruem here. If he's got to die, I want him to understand why."
The King laughed. "What would be the point, if I would be dead?" He stood up, and Netero and Hinata both tensed. Naruto remained seated, his head almost level with the King even while the latter was standing. "To make yourself feel better?" the Ant sneered.
"A little," Naruto admitted. "But I don't want to kill you. That's why I let you surrender."
Now, it was Hinata who stood. "Do you know how many people he's killed?" she demanded. "He massacred dozens taking that Palace. When he was waiting inside, he murdered several others, just because they couldn't beat him in a game! The only reason Komugi is still alive is because she kept winning! And more than that, he was going to destroy this whole nation! All those people you saved Naruto, all of them would have been eaten alive, or worse, turned into Ants!" Her hands curled into fists, chakra sparking around her knuckles. "Every person those Ants have eaten, everyone who's suffered, it was because of him. To build him, and then to serve him!"
She breathed out harshly. "If he walks away… all those deaths will go-"
"Unavenged?" Naruto suggested quietly, and Hinata's nostrils flared.
"Yes," she spat. Netero observed the lover's quarrel with amusement. What was the import of that word, he wondered.
"Yeah…" Naruto said, his shoulders sagging. "But that's the problem. I got no problem believing all that. I know you're telling the truth, Hinata." He frowned. "But the Mereum I fought… wasn't any of that." He sighed and looked at the King. For some reason, the Ant looked ashamed. "When I fought him, the only thing he was thinking about was defending a little girl."
Netero considered the absurdity of the situation. "Do you see my problem now?" Naruto asked, and Hinata bit her lip. Netero continued to quietly observe. "It feels wrong."
There was a moment of the silence, and the King retook his seat.
"You can't make that decision on what you feel," Netero said. "Only on what has happened."
"Why?" Naruto asked, and Netero shifted back at the sincerity of the question. The Hokage's eyes shone with conviction. "I'm not being rhetorical! Why? Can you give me a reason? Because I'd like one!"
His mind wasn't made up, Netero realized. He'd gravely misread the situation. Naruto wasn't naive, he just had strong principles. The Chairman had been approaching this from a completely wrong direction.
Dread flashed across his mind: what else had he misinterpreted?
He considered approaching more cautiously, but decided against it.
"Don't be so conceited," he said instead, and was gratified when Naruto leaned in with interest instead of flinching back. That had been a gamble. "Even if the King has changed, perhaps for the better, that doesn't change the reality of his past actions." He laughed. "You can't escape consequences by saying 'Ah, that was the me of ten years ago,' no matter how much you've changed over time. That would be convenient for me, but it's just not the case. For something like the Ants, with their sheer processing power, a month might as well be a decade." He snorted. "And even if the King now is a being of pure altruism-" He glanced at Mereum. "Are you?"
The King started. "Am I a being of pure altruism?" he asked, and Netero cocked his head.
The Ant blinked and sat back down. "I don't know." He rested his chin on one hand, apparently mulling the question.
The Chairman smiled. "Even if the King had an epiphany and transformed into a being of pure altruism, he would have to answer for his past actions. More than that, no matter how benevolent he became, he would still be an enormous danger."
"More than nine-million people had their free will ripped away in a second," Hinata said. "To defend Komugi, yes, but Naruto, he did it in a moment, without hesitation, at the slightest threat. Like a dog raising its fur. That's beyond even you."
"Hmm." Naruto leaned back and crossed his arms. "I agree completely."
The King frowned and dropped his head, but Netero raised an eyebrow. He hadn't expected that answer. "You do?"
"Of course," Naruto said. "I wasn't trying to say that the King was a different person or anything like that. And he definitely has to answer for what he did." He looked at his wife. 'Everything he did."
Hinata looked back. "But?" she asked. Netero realized he was very glad to have her on his side in this argument. She was perceptive and sharp. It was a shame he wouldn't have more chances to fight alongside her.
Naruto raised his hands in a mock surrender with a full smile. "You got me," he said. "But, does that mean he has to die? That's another part of the problem." He looked to the King. "You're just too damn strong, Meruem."
"You couldn't cage me," the Ant said softly. "So if you mean to punish me, the only meaningful punishment is-"
"Death." Hinata sat down, hands falling into her lap. Some of the murderous energy had gone out of her.
"Well, we could seal him," Naruto said. He stood and began pacing, hands clasped behind his back. "Shove him into a box or something. But that would be even worse. Hell, Kurama might not even let me."
Kurama? Netero didn't know the name, but both Hinata and the King had reacted to it. Was there someone standing above even Naruto, directing him? The fire casting the shadow?
"Is that what that was?" the King asked, and Naruto nodded. "That thing is sealed inside you? Is that how you beat me?"
"Part of it," Naruto said. "My cloak is borrowed from him."
The King laughed. "And yet, you would have beaten me without it. I guess I'm still looking for a way out."
"Maybe," Naruto shrugged. Was he truly humble, or just putting on an act? Netero thought it was the first, but the man was a world leader: he had to be practiced at lying.
"Kurama?" Netero asked. Hinata put a hand on her husband's shoulder.
"Naruto is a Jinchuriki." Netero blinked, a distant conversation from more than a month ago echoing in his ears. A society built on human sacrifice.
"I'm aware of that." He looked at Naruto, his eyes dropping to his stomach. "So Kurama is the Nine-Tailed Fox? Morel didn't tell me it had a name."
"He has a name, yeah," Naruto said. "And he's the reason the King's still alive. At the end… he was the one who made Meruem stand down. There's no way he'd let me get away with just sealing him up after that."
"Hmm." Netero looked to the King with renewed interest. "How did the fox change your mind? I would have assumed you would fight to the death."
"I had planned to." The King opened and closed his hands, which could easily squeeze through Netero's bones as if they didn't exist. The Chairman watched the idle motion with a bit of fascination. "I intended to make him kill me. But that thing…" He fell silent, and then looked up to Netero. "It was old. So old that I couldn't comprehend it. It commanded my attention. It reminded me of a promise I'd made."
"Interesting." Netero scratched his chin. His leg was starting to fall asleep, so he changed them out, shifting his left under his body and letting the other dangle off his stone. "Interesting. Then, Naruto, what punishment would you put forward, if at all?"
"I've got no idea," Naruto said. "That's why I've got all you here. I wanna hear all options before taking the final one."
"Naruto…" Hinata said. "He's not a child. You're being too…"
"I know," Naruto said, taking her hand. They looked into each other's eyes. Netero wasn't a man who usually respected privacy, but something about that look made him feel an intruder. "But I'd rather be too soft instead of too harsh."
Hinata's eyes narrowed. "He's cruel." She said it plainly because it couldn't be hidden in the lines of her face. The King had been cruel to Hinata, and it was obvious to anyone who looked for it. "And not the cruelty of a child. Our children can't be safe, in a world with that kind of cruelty."
Meruem stayed silent. Was he unable to defend himself, or unwilling? Maybe he thought Hinata would attack him if he spoke. If that was the case, Netero thought, he had misjudged the woman. She had moved beyond any attempt at direct assault.
"Yeah…" Naruto said, squeezing her hand. "But there's always going to be that kind of cruelty, no matter what." He smiled. "No matter how hard we try. But this one is gone." His face hardened. "I killed it. And Meruem knows that too."
"How can you say that?" Hinata whispered, and Naruto gave her a sorrowful smile.
"Meruem's not a child," he said. "Listen."
Hinata did, and so did Netero. Naruto looked at the Ant as he spoke.
"There's just no other word that fits, cause he's unique. He has an incredible amount of intelligence, and zero wisdom. None. Zilch." The Hokage frowned. "He was cruel to me too. But inside that storm, it was obvious. He was cruel because he had no context for that cruelty, not because it was inherent to his nature. He took pleasure in it because it gave him a path to victory, but he had no way of understanding its consequences."
"That's wrong." Hinata shook her head. "He knew exactly what he was doing."
"I did." The King stood up. "Don't infantilize me."
"You're lying." Naruto narrowed his eyes. "Both of you. You-!" He leveled a finger at the King. "Sit down. And Hinata-" He turned back to his wife. Netero was surprised at the Hokage's tone; the man had gone from mild to commanding and impassioned in an instant. "We've both seen inside him. You know as well as I do, and as he does. As silly as it is, he was cruel for the same reasons he wanted to conquer the world or some other nonsense. When he surrendered to me, he surrendered that too. He's not a child, but he was like a baby, just shoving things in his mouth. He was still exploring sensations, and consequences."
"How can he understand consequences, if he's not punished?" Hinata asked sharply.
"How can he understand consequences if he's dead?" Naruto shot back
"Why are you doing this?!" Hinata shot to her feet. "Why don't you care what he did to me?! To you! To this country, and the Hunters?! What's wrong with you?!"
"I already told you!" Naruto pronounced, standing up as well and towering over his wife. "I'm doing this because I don't know what to do!" He shook his head, growing more and more frustrated. "Is it better to punish him too much, or not enough? Why do I have to make the decision? Just because I'm strong?! Whatever the duty of the strong is, it's not this!"
The words struck Netero like an electric shock, and unconsciously he shot to his feet. "Duty has nothing to do with it." The Hokage gave him a puzzled look. "Duty is a sham."
"What?" Hinata asked, and Naruto echoed his wife's question. Netero felt his heart beat, thrilled at his own honesty.
"Why worry about 'duty'?" he asked. "It doesn't matter what your duty is. Just do what you want!" He laughed. "It's not as if any of us could stop you! Why worry about it, with strength like yours? You are beyond duty!"
"No one is beyond that! And, well I don't know what I want, you old bastard! That's why you're here!" Naruto shouted back, and Hinata laughed at her husband's suddenly brutal honesty.
"Don't be blind!" Netero said. What had come over him? Was he really that fed up, so quickly? God, these shinobi were infuriating. "It's obvious you want to spare him. Maybe even train him! You're practically infatuated with the damn creature. Why not just take him and scuttle back to your home? Take it out of our business, and then soothe your conscience in your world!"
"So long as the portal exists, that's not an option," Naruto said. "Your problems are ours, and the… the other way around."
"Vice versa?" Hinata suggested, and Naruto snapped his fingers.
"Yes, that! Thank you!" he exclaimed, planting a quick kiss on her forehead. The woman, whom Netero had seen destroy dozens of Chimera Ants with her bare hands, blushed.
"Perhaps the portal is the problem then," Netero suggested, and Naruto bristled. "You've been put in a position where you feel a duty to solve our problem." The Chairman sighed, feeling the fight leak out of him. This wasn't going where he wanted. "My apologies. You never should have been in that position in the first place. That's the real problem here."
"That's not the problem," the King said. He had his face cupped in both hands now, his tail idly whipping back and forth behind him.
"Pardon?" Netero asked, and the King pinned him with his deep purple eyes. Netero considered them with interest. Naruto was at least partially right. These eyes were nothing like the eyes of the creature who had tried to rip him to pieces in Peijing. There was more to them than hunger and fear.
"I thought," the King said, "that it was my duty to rule."
"That was just how I was born," he continued. "Born with a duty to rule. But now, there's a disagreement over my duty, and my life…" He smiled. "And it's predicated on duty. I'm starting to get it." The King laughed. "Much more complicated than any game. There isn't even a win state..."
"What are you talking about?" Hinata asked, and the King shifted his gaze to her, his aura becoming mournful.
"It's simple," he said, spreading his palms. "In fact, you already know what I'm talking about, I just haven't been clear enough. The source of our previous conflicts, and this current one, all came from differences in duty. I thought it was my duty to rule, and you thought it was your duty to destroy the Chimera Ants. Now, that duty has shifted to defending your family: you gave up on the grander goal when the scope of the danger I presented…" He grew a little less enthusiastic, to Netero's amusement. "When I made it clear to you what a danger I was. Naruto is the same way: I saw in you that his duty was always to protect what was important to him. But now, I've confused those priorities by surrendering: how can he murder someone who is essentally helpless and still justify to himself that it was in the name of defense?" The King laughed. "'Proactive Defense,' perhaps. Certainly, you could go there. Especially with me."
He looked at the Hokage. "But are you willing?"
"Well done," Netero said dryly, "on summing up the situation. We're lucky to have such wisdom from the mouth of… whatever you are. But did you have anything to add?"
"I believe so," Meruem said. "I don't think any of us are correct here. Perhaps that's juvenile of me, but it's tempting to assume a middle ground." He pointed at himself. "Total control, without reservation. Even switching my duty to defending Komugi maintained that at the core." Then at Naruto. "Defense of the self, and what makes the self. The twine, right Naruto?"
The Hokage crossed his arms and nodded, listening with interest. Netero didn't understand the reference. Then, the King looked at Netero.
"And you were telling the truth," he said, tilting his head. "You don't believe in duty at all. To you, it's just being strong, right?"
Fielding questions from an overgrown cockroach wasn't exactly Netero's favorite activity, but he felt no compunction in answering.
"That's all there is to it," he said, and the King smiled.
"I don't think any of those are right," he said. "They've all failed us. They're too absolute. If you stick to one strategy no matter what, you develop blind spots. I took my absolute leadership as absolute strength, and look where it led me." He chuckled. "I brought the very man who'd defeat me to me. And now, he can't even make the simple decision to kill me!" He looked at Naruto. "That's funny, right?"
Naruto shrugged. "I dunno, maybe a little. It helps if you think your life is funny."
"It is, maybe, a little absurd." The King looked down at his hand, opening and closing it and watching the pull of his tendons, tougher than diamonds. "And short. That's part of the absurdity. If it ends here, all the more so."
He looked up at Netero. "I'm curious. If strength is all there is, and I'm stronger than you, why did you oppose me at all? Why come here, why take the contract for the Ants at all?"
'Why?'
Netero wondered himself. Why had he done anything, become the Chairman of the Hunter's Association even? In pursuit of further strength? No, that wasn't it.
'Because I wanted to lose.' Netero was surprised at the clarity of his thoughts, but he was sure they were correct. 'It's been so long since I lost. I wanted to remember the feeling. What better than you, an opponent who would never consider me a possible threat unless I proved it? Even though you weren't supposed to be born...'
The realization was gradual in how it slowly came together in his consciousness, but like most things in Netero's life the actual moment of understanding was sudden and violent.
'Bad news,' he'd said, and he'd turned and smiled at the rest of the team. 'There's an Ant up there that could kill us all.'
"I came because I thought the Ants might be a challenge. And once the situation became obvious… I wanted you to be born," he said, and Hinata jolted at the admission.
"Netero-!?" she started to say, but he waved off her concern.
"I didn't act on it," he said. "It was just a thought I had. When we realized how dangerous the Ants were, when we saw Neferpitou that first day and I realized there was a creature in this world that could kill me without hesitation, I wondered what the King would be." How refreshing, to be honest.
"But in the end, I only had a chance to fight your shadow." Netero coughed. "It was something, but not what I wanted. A shame."
The King tilted his head. "If you had fought my real body, you would have died. That can't be what you wanted. You didn't have the strength to overcome me."
Netero resisted the urge to bite back. "There's more to strength than the strength in your body," he said instead, and touched his chest, placing his hand over his heart. Hinata glanced at him. "I hold something here that could have destroyed you, no matter how a battle between us went."
"Your heart?" the King asked. He blinked. "A connection? A loved one?"
"Ha!" Netero barked, and to his astonishment Hinata laughed too, a single suffocated snort. "More literal, I'm afraid. But there's no reason to worry about that. Where were you going with all this talking?"
"Of course," the King demurred. "My point was, I think you're all wrong. But the only one I've seen actually change their duty…" He pondered. "Ever, actually... has been Hinata."
"Oh." The woman sighed softly. "So?"
"So... " The King sucked in a breath. It was the only time Netero had seen the Ant look uncertain. "Do you think there is a middle ground?"
A middle ground?
"What do you mean by a middle ground?" she asked. The King looked down.
"I think you're the only person who can reconcile this," he said. "You've seen the most. You've watched me since before I was born. As much as it stings to admit, you're the only one I'd trust to decide my life."
You're the only one I'd trust to decide my life? Had the King really just said that? Netero's laugh was harsh, and everyone started at it.
"You'd leave your fate with a woman you tortured?" Netero was incredulous. "I took you for smarter than that, Ant." Did he want to die? No, that didn't fit. The King couldn't comprehend self-destruction.
But then, he and Naruto had both rationalized his surrender as a kind of death. Maybe he was just taking it one step further.
"You know what my decision would be, Mereum," Hinata said after a short pause. "You already know."
"In that case..." the King said, clambering off his stone. He knelt slowly, as if he were wearing something heavy, and presented his neck. "I would accept it."
Netero froze, and so did Hinata. Naruto was the only one who seemed unphased, watching the proceedings with a resigned look. The King's actions threw even Netero's mind into a jumble. It wasn't natural. These weren't the actions or movements of a King of the Chimera Ants. They were humble, and suicidal.
Netero's dread returned.
This was what he had misunderstood. That was why he'd felt so ill at ease. It wasn't just Naruto.
It was the King himself.
###
He would accept it?
For a solid minute, Hinata was sure that meant the King had accepted his own death. She'd step forward and shatter his spine, burst his skull. She was sure she could now. She'd once said that she could probably kill the King if he dropped his guard and let her. That was exactly what was happening here. There hadn't been any need for this meeting. The Ant wasn't resisting. Naruto wasn't needed.
But even though it would be ridiculously easy, she didn't step forward and break the Ant's neck.
Why didn't she? Was she actually a coward, after all this time? Hinata worried that this place had reduced her to the scared little girl she'd once been, unable or unwilling to commit violence, even necessary violence.
No, that wasn't it. Listen to yourself. You're a woman, you have children, you've killed. There's no difference between the King and all the other Ants in that respect.
It was something else, something obvious. She'd already admitted it to herself. She didn't want to fight anymore. She could kill, she just… didn't want to.
Hinata was done.
She looked down, regarding the King. He remained as still as a statue, his entire body relaxed and his gaze stuck to the floor. He really was ready, she marveled. He'd given up his life that casually. The King never would have bowed to someone, or surrendered his life.
The only person he had ever surrendered to before her husband was Komugi. But that had been in games, not life. By surrendering in a battle, forfeiting his life-
Naruto was right, she thought. As usual. That was a little infuriating to be honest. Why was her husband so damn perceptive? It really was that simple. He'd killed the King. He and Kurama had, by forcing Meruem to surrender. What remained looked just like the creature that had tortured her, but that King was…
Gone.
The King that had threatened her children had been slain by her husband. What was she doing, staring at this thing's neck now? What would she gain from killing him? Peace? She doubted it. Hinata had never felt peace from killing. Even when she'd almost killed Neferpitou, she'd felt relief at best. But now, like this, killing someone as they knelt in front of her, exposing their neck, not resisting? That wasn't who Hinata Uzumaki was.
Maybe if she had relied more on her ancestor's chakra, she'd be ruthless enough to be the executioner Meruem was asking for. But for better or worse, Hinata wasn't Hamura, and she didn't intend ever to be.
Meruem was still dangerous, even if the King was dead. Unbelievably dangerous, she thought. Mereum had sent millions of people to protect the life of a single girl without any consideration for their will. He'd hollowed out an entire country in a moment. But that was a different kind of danger from the dead thing that had fed her phantom children to her.
Hinata took a deep breath.
She remembered the blood-stained nest, and the collected misery of every human whose lives the Ants had stolen months ago. She remembered the King's tombstone teeth, bared in a hateful grimace as he threatened her family.
Don't forget. Can't forget. But what was the point of driving it so deeply into her heart that she saw it every time she closed her eyes, when all it would bring her was more pain?
She closed her eyes, unable and unwilling to forget everything she had seen, and released everything with her next breath.
She felt lighter. There was a weight on her mind, a migraine in waiting, that had just vanished.
Hinata opened her eyes and looked at her husband. He was watching her with obvious concern. It almost made her laugh. He was strong enough to solve all of this in an instant, she thought, but life had taught both of them there was more to solving things than strength alone. He was looking to her for guidance, just as the King was. Right now, she held more power than either of them.
But it wasn't just power. It was a partnership. Even with the King, in a strange way.
A partnership changes both sides, Hinata thought. Naruto had changed her for the better, and the King for the worse.
Which would she rather keep?
She sighed, and with her husband's strength she discarded her hate.
"In a case like this," she started to say. Her voice was soft and quiet, and she saw both Naruto and Netero strain to hear. "Someone who's too strong to punish can only be taught."
The King looked up at her, a confused look in his eyes.
'He really thought he was about to die. That's what he thought of me. That's what he made me.'
She locked her eyes on his, searching for any sign of deception. But there wasn't even a sliver of it. His body, his chakra, his eyes, everything bled sincerity. The King's aura hadn't been screaming since his fight with Naruto, but his intent still leaked from it without regard for subtlety. Hinata had no choice but to accept it.
"If they can't learn, they die," she declared, still looking the King dead in the eyes. The Ant hesitated, and then nodded. "There's no more room for compromise than that."
The King dropped his head again and spoke.
"Thank you."
There wasn't anything more than that.
"Hah." Netero chuckled. The Chairman crossed his arms. "I misread you, Hinata. I thought you would kill him immediately."
"I would have," Hinata said honestly. She looked from the King to her husband. "If I hadn't had time to think about it."
Naruto laughed, much more honestly than Netero, and reached out to grab her hand. "Now what, then?" he asked. There was something in his eyes that Hinata hadn't seen in a long time: relief.
"Now…" Hinata said, and she found that she couldn't help but laugh. "Now, I guess we have to figure out the rest."
A very fitting resolution.
Hecatonchires
Just an H-class cyborg with an octopus brain stem
- Location
- The Gong, NSW, Australia
I have no idea what the ants look like, aside from "not very much like ants"
Ser_Serendipity
Building Character
- Location
- Writeland
Most of the higher level ones just look like people with a few animal parts. Like Neferpitou is just a cute catgirl with weird bug legs, Shiapouf is an anime pretty boy with antennae and wings, and Yuupi is just a big red motherfucker, and that's how he rolls. The weaker ants tend to have more animal parts and bug parts.
Hecatonchires
Just an H-class cyborg with an octopus brain stem
- Location
- The Gong, NSW, Australia
Getting a military DBZ Cell vibeThe King, as a pertinent example.
- Location
- Writeland
He is more or less Cell if he were dropped into pre-Raditz dragonball earth.
Chapter 36
Ser_Serendipity
Building Character
Myrmidon Chapter 36
Meruem stared at the rushing water of the river below. He and Naruto had been walking; it had only been two hours, but it seemed much longer.
Since they'd left the stones, leaving behind Hinata and Netero, they had been talking. They hadn't been discussing his life, or how it had been returned to him. Instead, they had spoken about whatever came to mind.
The King had tried to explain Gungi to Naruto after he'd used one too many game metaphors. He found it amusing that despite the Hokage's enormous strength, he obviously wasn't much for board games. It was the same lesson Komugi had taught him. Different people had different strengths. Where Komugi outstripped him in Gungi, Naruto had surpassed him in battle.
And in something else, something Meruem couldn't explicate. Leadership? Charisma? Something he hadn't understood. When they'd been fighting, he'd resolved it as Naruto having more reliable servants, more trustworthy than his worthless Royal Guard, but that obviously wasn't the case. Naruto didn't even perceive them as servants, or treat them as such. It would be foolish to go against the man's own feelings.
Naruto felt the King's confusion through their mingled chakra, and laughed. "Maybe it's hard for you to understand cause you didn't have any equals," he suggested.
"Pardon?"
"When you were born." Naruto kicked a stone and it skipped from one side of the river to the other. "You were the King. You didn't have any peers. You weren't supposed to have any peers, right?"
"Of course. But what does that have to do with it?" Meruem asked.
"That thing you can't understand, that's partnership. It's the reason you're still alive. It's what you have with Komugi." Naruto smiled. "I need to meet her. She must be pretty amazing, if she managed to get through to you."
The King pondered that. "Hinata said something like that. Or thought something like that."
He paused. "I need to apologize to her. I offered my life, but that's not the same, is it?"
"She'd appreciate it," Naruto said. "I'll accept it for now though. She needs time."
"Hmm." Meruem frowned. "Would I have gone on like this forever, destroying without regard, if you hadn't shown up?"
"Maybe," Naruto shrugs. "Who knows? There's no point in worrying about what might have been. Just consider the now. What were you saying?"
"Partnership," Meruem said after a pause. How many humans had he destroyed? He'd thought they'd have nothing to teach him, nothing of worth to him or the world, but now he'd been proven wrong twice over. How many other times had he been wrong without knowing it? How much potential had he wiped from the world without understanding the true destructive impact of his actions?
How many Komugi's had he accidentally killed? And if not his, others? The notion made him feel sick.
"Hinata believed that a partnership changes both sides. That it's an equal relationship." Meruem shifted, squatting down and staring into the river. He could catch glimpses of his reflection in the rushing water. "You said the same thing about me and Komugi. But I don't see how it applies."
"Again, you're looking at it from the wrong angle." Naruto sat down beside him, one leg stretched out and the other tucked under his body. "Any real partnership is two people, or more, changing one another for the better. Or not. I guess just changing works, though that obviously would suck."
He plucked a piece of grass from the ground and twiddled it between his fingers. "You provided Komugi with a worthy opponent." They both watched hundreds of games of Gungi dance across the water, pieces forming in whorls of white currents and the shadows cast by nearby trees. "You gave her a chance to improve the only thing she considered important: the core of herself. And in return, she helped you understand that you weren't alone."
Meruem shifted, looking at the Hokage. The man wasn't saying anything profound, but hearing it out loud helped him more clearly conceptualize it. Hadn't he himself said that to Komugi?
'You've bettered me!'
He'd thought she was teaching him to accept defeat, but it was much more than that. Naruto was right: the Gungi player had been the only one to show him that he wasn't alone. That he wasn't already the pinnacle of creation.
And she'd taught him that humans were more than meat.
Meruem realized he missed her. It had been a whole day. Where had she gone? Surely someone had kept her safe.
He'd thrown them away, but his Guard… had his Royal Guard realized what he'd meant when he lashed out at them? Had they protected Komugi, even before he'd sent out his chakra and forced the duty on the entire country?
He had no way of knowing. Meruem realized he'd never communicated with his Royal Guard at all. Only commanded and dismissed them. If they had helped keep Komugi safe, it would have been entirely on their own initiative.
That feeling of sudden helplessness and regret was the first real sorrow Meruem had ever felt, and the sensation fell over Naruto like a cold breeze. The Hokage glanced at him.
"She's fine," he said, and Meruem let out a rough breath. He hadn't realized he was holding it. "I don't know where she is right now, but she's fine."
He stood back up. "C'mon," he said.
"Let's keep going."
###
When Neferpitou regained consciousness, she lay very still for a long time.
Menthuthuyoupi was there at first, watching over her as if he'd been born to do it, but eventually he left and was replaced by other Ants. They took turns watching her prone body, and Neferpitou did not acknowledge any of them. She didn't know where or when she was. Outside, in a field somewhere. There was grass against her back, and above her the clouds whirled and raced through an endlessly blue sky.
She wasn't sure if she refused to move because she had no will to, or because she wanted to watch the clouds. Even when night fell, the moon illuminated them, and behind the rushing clouds an entire universe of glimmering light spread out infinitely past her sight. Pitou regarded each and every star; they seemed to her a shining panopticon watching over her, regarding her back from millions more angles than she ever could them.
She watched the universe, the universe watched her, and it seemed to Neferpitou that both she and the universe could do nothing but ruminate on her complete failure.
When the sun rose again and the other stars vanished, Pitou pulled herself to her feet. It hurt, but everything had hurt for the last couple days. A little more pain, unfortunately, wouldn't kill her.
Squad Leader Zazan was watching over here when she found the will to rise, and the Ant quirked her head at her, her truncated tail flicking back and forth. It reminded Neferpitou of her own.
"You're up," the Ant stated, and Pitou nodded. She started walking, and Zazan followed. "Have something in mind?"
"No," Neferpitou said, staring straight ahead. She didn't know why she was walking. She was just tired of lying on her back.
"The humans have corralled us," Zazan told her. "Youpi is talking with them; he's trying to negotiate our release."
Menthuthuyoupi, negotiating? That was enough to snap Pitou out of her stupor.
"Is it going well?" she asked, and Zazan shrugged.
"Who knows. They'll probably just kill us all anyway," she said with a laugh. "There's not much we can do. They told us if we leave we get blown up."
"Hm." Pitou looked around. So far as she could see, she and the other Ants weren't stuck in a pen or anything of that nature. The empty fields that had surrounded the palace stretched for as far as the eye could see; every couple yards, she could pick out a piece of rubble from the former capital. It had been torn apart and flung to every corner of the map in the course of the fight. "Leave where?"
"Wherever we are." Zazan was starting to look a little annoyed. "They have the Watcher, and other sensors; they're keeping track of us. Look, are you going to keep going? Youpi didn't tell me to keep you still, but he'll probably be mad at me if you get yourself killed."
Pitou stopped and looked over her soldier at the squadron leader. "Do you think you could stop me?" she said softly, and Zazan paled. Since her skin was purple, it produced an ugly puce color.
The other Ant laughed nervously. "Fine, go get yourself killed. That's your business now." She turned away. "It's not as if you have a King to guard anyway."
Pitou watched her go, and considered removing her head. But when Zazan was about fifty feet away, the Royal Guard with no one to guard realized she didn't care enough to. She sucked in a painful breath, turned, and kept walking straight. The ruins of the city of Peijing loomed many miles ahead of her, and Pitou marked it as her goal.
If she weren't blown up, as Zazan had put it, maybe there were humans there. As she rolled the thought around in her head, Pitou realized there was one human in particular she wanted to meet.
It wasn't the Watcher. Neferpitou never wanted to see that woman again.
She stretched her Nen out tenderly, like someone nervously extending a broken limb and waiting for a flare of pain. One kilometer; that was all she could manage right now. That wasn't nearly enough, but it was all she could work with.
She didn't even need to sense someone. She just needed a human to sense her.
###
Menthuthuyoupi wasn't sure what he was doing here. He hadn't been designed for this. In the ruins of Peijing, inside a once-hotel that was only mostly destroyed, he sat cross-legged at a solid oak table, having accidentally crushed the seat on his side of the table with his weight.
Ging Freecss, who was very annoying but also quite interesting, sat across from him. The man was drumming his fingers on the table. Youpi wasn't sure why. Maybe he just enjoyed fidgeting.
"Like I said," Ging continued. "I can't make any decisions for the Association as a whole, or the other nations in the Union. Best you can do here is lay out terms for me to pass on."
"What terms could I possibly lay?" Youpi asked, and Ging laughed. "We have no…"
"Cards?" Ging suggested.
"Of course we don't have cards," Youpi said. "Why would we have cards? I meant that we don't have leverage." The Hunter laughed again. Was he really that funny? "All we can offer is ourselves."
"Oh? What do you mean?" Ging asked. He shifted, and Youpi wondered if he really wanted to know, or already understood what Youpi meant and was just trying to extend the conversation. Ging Freecss was a strange man, and it was obvious he enjoyed speaking with Youpi for some reason.
"The same way you're here now," Youpi said. "You got hired to come deal with us. Well, we could do the same thing." He sat up. "I'm strong. If you could guarantee the safety of the other Ants, I'd do whatever you wanted."
"Well, that's an amusing thought," Ging said with a grin. "Having a bunch of my own pet Ants. That'd certainly be scary, huh?"
"For your enemies." Youpi grinned. "You'll consider it?"
"I'll consider it, but like I said, I can't make the decisions here. That's up to the countries, and the Chairman." Ging leaned back. "Tell me something. Why do you care so much about those other Ants?"
Youpi blinked at the inanity of the question. "What do you mean? They're Ants."
"Yeah, they're Ants." Ging scratched at the stubble on his chin. "But you weren't made to keep Ants safe. You were made to keep the King safe."
"Ah," Youpi said. He leaned forward and propped his chin up on his fist; his elbow left a dent in the table. "Hmm."
"I don't know if you even can answer that question, to be honest," Ging admitted. "But I'm definitely curious."
"That's why you spoke with me, during the assault," Youpi said.
"Yeah," Ging confirmed. "I saw you defending the other Ants. That didn't look like the actions of a Royal Guard to me. It made me wonder what else you would do."
"Well," Youpi said after a pause. "I deceived myself."
Ging titled his head. "You replaced the King with… them?"
"Something like that." Youpi lowered his head. "I couldn't keep the King safe, especially from himself. He was unable to lead; he stood alone. But the other Ants were extensions of the King; of his will, and his genes. So if I couldn't keep the King safe, I could at least protect the other Ants."
"But you call that a deception."
"It is, but it's also a truth. Does that make sense?" Youpi wanted validation, even if it was from a human. What better human to give it than Ging?
"A little," Ging chuckled. "Holding two contradictory ideas like that… that's very human, Youpi."
Youpi narrowed his eyes. "Is that an insult?"
Ging rose and stretched. "If you want to take it as one. I think whether you do or not will give us a clue how the rest of this will go." He eyed Youpi with a smile. "You're willing to be my servant, but we might ask more of you than that. Would you be willing to be human?"
###
Neferpitou stopped when she felt the Watcher's gaze fall on her.
The sudden detente was familiar, and Pitou fell into it with ease, directing her attention to the distant focus. She and the Watcher regarded one another, and Pitou wondered at the passivity she felt in the woman's attention. Before, the Watcher's gaze had contained an unmistakable malice that made it easy to pick out: now, it was more relaxed. If she'd wanted to, Pitou wouldn't have been able to follow the sight to its source.
She spoke without speaking, and even just moving her mouth made her entire face sore. "I'm looking for him," she said. "That man who saved me. Will you stop me?"
The Watcher's focus wavered. Shifted. Then, about fifteen seconds later, it locked back on her.
What did that mean? The woman wasn't approaching, but she also wasn't letting her go. Pitou wondered what that meant.
She shrugged and kept walking, this time under the Watcher's supervision.
Pitou had left Peijing before it was destroyed, crashing through a building on her way out. The scale of the devastation couldn't surprise her. She was beyond that after surviving the crossfire between the King and the Hokage. But the leaning, creaking buildings, the shattered streets, and the human detritus scattered everywhere still affected her.
Three million people had once called this place home, and now even Pitou's enhanced senses and Nen couldn't find a single one. They'd been ripped up and cast out entirely.
And for what? A King who'd abandoned his plans in a moment and thrown her away in the next? What a waste. These countless humans hadn't even had their lives shredded for a good reason. As Neferpitou looked around, she found herself filled with a novel melancholy.
They were like her, in some way. She'd been abandoned by the King, but these human's ruler had looked at them solely as chattel. They'd always been abandoned. It was one thing for her King to perceive them as such, as an outsider, a superior form of life, but for so many to be ruled like that, by someone weaker and more pathetic than them?
Yes, they were similar. Neferpitou perceived the gutted city as a mirror to her condition.
Without warning, three different auras entered her En. Pitou jerked her head up; two of them were familiar, but the third…
It reminded her of the one-armed shinobi's, but where his had been titanic and cold, this one was blazing and bright. It was like one of the stars she'd watched the night before had descended on top of her. It overwhelmed her completely: her En fizzled out, withdrawing back into her, and Pitou suddenly felt blind, left with her ragged ears and single eye.
She looked about, watching where the aura signal had originated. Just a moment later, movement on the skyline caught her eye.
Three figures atop a crumbling apartment block. A tall man with blond hair: the Hokage, or one of his clones. The other two were more familiar to Neferpitou. The two young hunters that she'd scared off the day she was born.
They jumped down, leaving behind the Hokage. Pitou watched them come; they both looked as resigned as she felt. She remembered what the Watcher had said when they landed
'That man was their King.'
Both the Hunters approached her, separating and coming at her from different angles. She kept her eye on the one who'd punched her missing eye out. She was forced to feel the other, the boy who could electrify himself.
Gon, that was the name of the Hunter who'd taken her eye. That's what Hinata had called him. Gon, and the electric one was Killua.
Gon stopped about twenty feet from her, far enough to let him react to her leap, and Killua stopped with him. They were practiced partners. Maybe that's why Pitou hadn't been able to defend the King, not even from himself. She'd always stood alone.
'If you can understand that, maybe you'll understand this.'
"Where are you going?" Gon asked, and Pitou stood up straight, her arm rigid at her side. The hole in her side ached, and so did her missing arm.
"Nowhere," she said, and the Hunter cocked an eyebrow. "I'm not going anywhere."
"Everyone's going somewhere," Gon said. Killua was circling around behind her, Pitou realized. They were ready for a fight. Was that what she wanted? Was that why she'd come here?
She truly didn't know.
"I don't have anywhere to be," Pitou said. She sat down, crossing her legs under her, and Gon blinked. Her Nen receded further, leaving her defenseless. She couldn't even sense Killua behind her now.
Gon was a fighter, but Killua was an assassin. If he decided to kill her now, she wouldn't be able to stop him. The thought brought Pitou some peace.
'That's it then,' she thought. It didn't matter where she went or what she thought: she still wanted to die.
But five seconds passed, and Killua didn't drive his hand through the back of her head. Gon was just watching her. Pitou sighed.
"Don't you want to kill me?" she said, and the Hunter's lips twisted.
"I killed your King, didn't I?" she continued, closing her eye. "I saw it, last time we met. You almost sacrificed your life to end mine. You would have succeeded if it weren't for Meleoron."
When she opened her eye, Pitou still wasn't dead. Gon sat down as well, one leg stretched out before him. They regarded each other; Pitou with dull anticipation, and Gon with an emotion Pitou hadn't experienced before.
Pity.
"So you want to die?" he asked, and Pitou narrowed her eye.
"I tore his arm off first," she said. "He didn't scream. I didn't realize at the time how admirable that was for a human."
"Kite knew the risks," Gon said, not rising to the bait. "We all did, when we got that close to the nest."
"So, you're just going to let him rot in vain?" Pitou asked, and the Hunter shook his head. What had happened? What had changed in him, in just a few days? Why wouldn't he kill her?
"He's dead. Would killing you bring him back?"
"No." Pitou smiled. "But I'm sure it would bring you some satisfaction."
The Hunter frowned. "No. You were right, though. A couple days ago, I would have killed myself to kill you," Gon said. Pitou couldn't help but marvel at his calm. "I almost did. But now, you want to die, huh?"
He got back to his feet. "No way in hell am I giving you what you want."
Pitou should have attacked then. If she's attacked right then, Gon would have had to defend himself. He would have killed her. It would have been clean and easy.
But she found she couldn't. Just like before, just as it had for the last day, her body refused to die. She was paralyzed in place. All she could do was watch.
"C'mon, Killua." Gon turned and began walking away. Killua walked past Pitou, passing not four feet from her. Either of them could have reached out and ended the other's life, but neither did. "Let's get out of here."
The Hunters walked away, and unable to get off the ground or even beg, Pitou watched them go.
Even after Gon and Killua passed out of sight, Pitou remained rooted to the ground. She'd never felt so pathetic in her life. Somehow, it felt even worse than when the King had discarded her. It was one thing to want to die; it was another entirely to have someone look you in the eyes and deny you even that.
She didn't stir when the Hokage approached her. Even in a state of near-zetsu, his aura nearly burned her. His passive energy felt like blunt knives running across her skin.
"You really want to die?" he asked. Pitou looked up; the man was quite tall. It fit his aura. He knelt down, almost face to face with her.
"Sasuke dragged you out of there, right?" he said, and Neferpitou felt something stir in her gut. Anything other than turgid death was welcome.
Sasuke. So that was the name of the shinobi who had torn her and the other Guards apart in two or three seconds, and then rescued her afterwards. The man who'd saved her because she'd been too weak to refuse.
"Where is he?" Pitou suddenly asked, and the Hokage rocked back in surprise at the fervor in her voice. "Where is Sasuke?"
"Not a clue," the Hokage said, scratching the back of his head. "Why?"
Pitou pushed herself to her feet, her whole body aching. She pushed a surge of Nen through it, forcing it to forget its injuries for a moment.
"I want to see him." For the first time since the King had thrown her away, she wanted something. She would be an idiot not to follow that feeling. "Can you take me to him?"
The Hokage blinked. "Sure," he said, standing up as well. "Sure. Let's go find Sasuke."
###
In the deep tunnels that ran across East Gorteau, miles from Peijing, Shaiapouf scuttled through absolute darkness.
The tunnels were old, and hadn't been lit in decades. This was a place where no humans and no light had come in a very long time. It felt appropriate to Shaiapouf. It was a competition, he thought, between the inky blackness around him and the darkness consuming his soul.
All Shaiapouf could feel was hatred and shame. He had enough hatred for everything in the world. He hated the humans that had opposed the King and put him in this position. He hated the other Royal Guards for being weak enough to not see the King's true designs. He hated them for being strong enough to oppose them. He hated himself for losing to Neferpitou, pitiful little Neferpitou with one arm and no will to live. He'd lost to her and the Watcher, somehow at the same time!
'Shaiapouf is the only one I can rely on now.'
He gagged, hundreds of him choking on an inimical reality. Foolish little Shaiapouf! Did you think this would be a story with a happy ending for you, simply because the King was relying on you? The more responsibility you're given, the more tragic the consequences! That's all there was to it!
Shaiapouf wept. The King had triumphed, he was sure. He'd killed the Fire Shadow, the one armed man, the Watcher, everyone. Meruem had to have destroyed everything that had opposed him because that was what Meruem was. Unstoppable, invincible, unquestionable. But how could he return to him now, a complete failure? He was no longer someone the King could rely on. He was a coward, a worm squirming through the earth of a dead country. If he were the King, he would kill the Shaiapouf that Pouf was now without a second thought. He wasn't even worth being eaten. Even maggots would find him disgusting as he was.
As Shaiapouf pondered the best and most efficient way to cease to exist, while still being unable to conceive of simply dying, he came to a crossroad. The tunnel split into two paths, both equally dark. He stopped, hundreds of pairs of eyes looking from one to the other. What was the difference, he thought. They both led to hell. Why even bother making a decision? Why not just stop here, and slowly wither away in the darkness?
Then-
Shaiapouf perceived a light at the end of one of the tunnels.
A light? Down here, where no human had walked in decades? Where no electricity flowed, where no fire could start? He drifted down the right tunnel, entranced by the dim light. Was that his salvation? Was it as simple as a light at the end of the tunnel?
Like a moth drawn to a flame, Shaiapouf fluttered towards the distant, flickering light.
He drew closer and closer. Even with his enhanced senses, it was difficult to tell how far away the light was. Was it a fire, or electrical? As he drifted, Pouf became certain it was a fire. A small one, like that given off by a lighter.
He caught a glimpse of gleaming metal, a tube behind the flame. A tube? At that, he paused.
Why was there a floating tube, along with the floating flame? His addled mind ground to a stop. That didn't make any sense. None of this made any sense. What was he approaching?
Just as Shaiapouf began to realize something was wrong, a blast door, over a meter of solid titanium, slammed shut behind his swarm. He turned in shock at the sudden deafening noise. The tunnel behind him was suddenly totally cut off. He probed at the door: with the mass he had left, he could beat his way through it, but it would take several minutes. The only way he could go was forward.
He turned back. The light had danced from the edge of the tunnel to the center. And now, it wasn't waiting for him.
It was approaching.
Trapped between the door and the tiny light, Shaiapouf felt a primal fear. This wasn't the fear he'd felt when Neferpitou had nearly destroyed him, or even when he'd realized he'd completely failed the King.
This was, simply put, a fear of the dark.
"Who's there!?" he screeched, reforming his body and pulling himself up as tall as he could. He spread his wings wide, an instinctual attempt to look as large and intimidating as possible, and glittering scales blew off of him and down the tunnel, lighting it up in a dim rainbow medley.
The sparkling scales revealed more and more of the tunnel, and eventually reached the light. Shaiapouf perceived a pale hand holding the tube behind the flame.
A hand, an arm, a body. A woman in a dirty grey dress came striding out of the darkness, her arms slick with her own blood. Shaiapouf blinked. The woman was a Hunter; his Nen could only detect rage from her. There wasn't anything in her soul but hatred.
Against his own will, he drew back. The woman had a wide metal tank strapped to her back and knives sheathed across her chest. A line ran from the tank to a metal tube she was holding in both hands, like a rifle. The dancing flame that Shaiapouf had seen all those minutes ago was attached to the front of the tube. It was indeed a lighter, or something like it.
"Who are you?" he asked, feeling a mounting panic in his chest. The woman kept on coming with a remorseless stride, his scales casting a kaleidoscopic rainbow across her body. The only constant light was the fire she held so securely in her hands. Her right hand was gripped tightly around a trigger guard, her middle and index fingers straining against an oversized trigger. Whatever she was holding was just like a rifle. But what was the tank for? A liquid?
"You don't know me," the Hunter said. Even if Shaiapouf hadn't used his Spiritual Message, it would have been obvious to him how the woman was fully consumed by anger; her voice curdled with hatred. "I'm a Hunter who stays behind. My name is Palm."
Palm. He didn't know her. Shaiapouf considered the distance. If he charged now, he could take her head in a little over a second. But she was a Hunter. Even if she was one who 'stayed behind,' she'd surely be able to react in time. What kind of Hatsu would she have? What was the weapon she was carrying? There were too many unknowns.
Foolish Pouf! Fritter your life away, or act!
Shaiapouf screamed and charged.
Palm depressed the trigger.
The tube in her hand bucked and belched out a stream of thick, semi-liquid fire. The blast took Shaiapouf full in the face.
One moment, Shaiapouf was moving forward, sure he could take the woman's head. The next, he was blind, his whole body covered in a literally burning agony. He roared and swung blindly, but hit nothing but air.
With nothing to fight for beyond his own life, Shaiapouf began to panic. His body started breaking down, reacting to his stress and trying to escape.
No! Think, Shaiapouf! Even if he was blind, he could find her with his Spiritual Message. Her hatred was so sharp she stood out like a beacon in the dark. He couldn't miss her!
He charged again, and Palm blasted him once more. To Shaiapouf's horror, nearly half his mass melted in a heartbeat. It was just fire! How was this happening?!
"My Hatsu is called Wink Blue," Palm said as he stumbled and screamed, melting flesh slowing off of him and evaporating into thousands of screaming flies who were burned to ash by the flames. She continued walking forward, unwilling to give him any ground. "Once I see someone, I can track them anywhere in the world with just a bit of my blood."
Shaiapouf scrambled backwards as he felt another spike of rage, and the jet of flames barely missed him. He wanted to attack, but found that he couldn't. What was left of his body was paralyzed by pain and fear.
He couldn't understand why her fire had burned through his Ken as if it weren't there. Surely he wasn't that weak?
"I saw you, Shaiapouf, while you were trying to kill my master." Pouf couldn't see, but he knew Palm's face was twisted up in a rictus of hatred. "I saw you because I was watching him. He made it all the way to the stairs before you found him. Or did you just let him go that far?"
More and more of Pouf's mass was sloughing off. It felt like his consciousness was going with it. He couldn't breathe anymore, only scramble backwards. Palm let out another jet of fire, and Pouf screamed in fear, scuttling away like a cockroach.
"I mixed my blood with the napalm," Palm said calmly. "That's why it's destroying your cells so completely, and how it broke your Ken. I knew I would need that after watching you survive Knov's Hatsu." She blasted him again, melting his legs off, and Pouf was left dragging himself backwards with both arms as the flames licked at his torso.
The fire pouring from her weapon was literally filled with the Hunter's pure hatred. It was devouring him alive.
His back hit the blast door, and a high, keening whine emerged from Shaiapouf's chest as he realized he had nowhere left to run. The tunnel was so hot. Smoke was rising from his body: his wings crumbled away, their fragile structure destroyed by the heat.
"It hurt to cut myself that much," Palm said matter of factly. For the last time, her rage spiked.
"But I'm sure it was nothing compared to what you did to Knov."
She held down the trigger, and Shaiapouf was completely engulfed in flames. He couldn't even scream as the fire stole all his oxygen. His body melted, becoming one with the door, and began to drift into ashes.
Shaiapouf's body ceased to exist, but for a moment, his Nen remained, stirring in the heart of the fire like a phoenix. It didn't attack. He had been too overcome with shame and terror to manage that. Instead, all it did was keep Shaiapouf's Spiritual Message functioning despite his death.
The last thing Shaiapouf, who had once been a Royal Guard, perceived before everything vanished and only the fire remained was Palm crying.
Her hatred guttered out, and only a deep sorrow remained. The woman collapsed to her knees, throwing aside the flamethrower and weeping as steam rose from the blood running in thick rivulets down her arms.
The Royal Guard would have wept as well, if he still had a body. Even his death hadn't managed to bring anyone peace.
Thus, Shaiapouf died without managing to satisfy a single soul.
Loose End
Meruem stared at the rushing water of the river below. He and Naruto had been walking; it had only been two hours, but it seemed much longer.
Since they'd left the stones, leaving behind Hinata and Netero, they had been talking. They hadn't been discussing his life, or how it had been returned to him. Instead, they had spoken about whatever came to mind.
The King had tried to explain Gungi to Naruto after he'd used one too many game metaphors. He found it amusing that despite the Hokage's enormous strength, he obviously wasn't much for board games. It was the same lesson Komugi had taught him. Different people had different strengths. Where Komugi outstripped him in Gungi, Naruto had surpassed him in battle.
And in something else, something Meruem couldn't explicate. Leadership? Charisma? Something he hadn't understood. When they'd been fighting, he'd resolved it as Naruto having more reliable servants, more trustworthy than his worthless Royal Guard, but that obviously wasn't the case. Naruto didn't even perceive them as servants, or treat them as such. It would be foolish to go against the man's own feelings.
Naruto felt the King's confusion through their mingled chakra, and laughed. "Maybe it's hard for you to understand cause you didn't have any equals," he suggested.
"Pardon?"
"When you were born." Naruto kicked a stone and it skipped from one side of the river to the other. "You were the King. You didn't have any peers. You weren't supposed to have any peers, right?"
"Of course. But what does that have to do with it?" Meruem asked.
"That thing you can't understand, that's partnership. It's the reason you're still alive. It's what you have with Komugi." Naruto smiled. "I need to meet her. She must be pretty amazing, if she managed to get through to you."
The King pondered that. "Hinata said something like that. Or thought something like that."
He paused. "I need to apologize to her. I offered my life, but that's not the same, is it?"
"She'd appreciate it," Naruto said. "I'll accept it for now though. She needs time."
"Hmm." Meruem frowned. "Would I have gone on like this forever, destroying without regard, if you hadn't shown up?"
"Maybe," Naruto shrugs. "Who knows? There's no point in worrying about what might have been. Just consider the now. What were you saying?"
"Partnership," Meruem said after a pause. How many humans had he destroyed? He'd thought they'd have nothing to teach him, nothing of worth to him or the world, but now he'd been proven wrong twice over. How many other times had he been wrong without knowing it? How much potential had he wiped from the world without understanding the true destructive impact of his actions?
How many Komugi's had he accidentally killed? And if not his, others? The notion made him feel sick.
"Hinata believed that a partnership changes both sides. That it's an equal relationship." Meruem shifted, squatting down and staring into the river. He could catch glimpses of his reflection in the rushing water. "You said the same thing about me and Komugi. But I don't see how it applies."
"Again, you're looking at it from the wrong angle." Naruto sat down beside him, one leg stretched out and the other tucked under his body. "Any real partnership is two people, or more, changing one another for the better. Or not. I guess just changing works, though that obviously would suck."
He plucked a piece of grass from the ground and twiddled it between his fingers. "You provided Komugi with a worthy opponent." They both watched hundreds of games of Gungi dance across the water, pieces forming in whorls of white currents and the shadows cast by nearby trees. "You gave her a chance to improve the only thing she considered important: the core of herself. And in return, she helped you understand that you weren't alone."
Meruem shifted, looking at the Hokage. The man wasn't saying anything profound, but hearing it out loud helped him more clearly conceptualize it. Hadn't he himself said that to Komugi?
'You've bettered me!'
He'd thought she was teaching him to accept defeat, but it was much more than that. Naruto was right: the Gungi player had been the only one to show him that he wasn't alone. That he wasn't already the pinnacle of creation.
And she'd taught him that humans were more than meat.
Meruem realized he missed her. It had been a whole day. Where had she gone? Surely someone had kept her safe.
He'd thrown them away, but his Guard… had his Royal Guard realized what he'd meant when he lashed out at them? Had they protected Komugi, even before he'd sent out his chakra and forced the duty on the entire country?
He had no way of knowing. Meruem realized he'd never communicated with his Royal Guard at all. Only commanded and dismissed them. If they had helped keep Komugi safe, it would have been entirely on their own initiative.
That feeling of sudden helplessness and regret was the first real sorrow Meruem had ever felt, and the sensation fell over Naruto like a cold breeze. The Hokage glanced at him.
"She's fine," he said, and Meruem let out a rough breath. He hadn't realized he was holding it. "I don't know where she is right now, but she's fine."
He stood back up. "C'mon," he said.
"Let's keep going."
###
When Neferpitou regained consciousness, she lay very still for a long time.
Menthuthuyoupi was there at first, watching over her as if he'd been born to do it, but eventually he left and was replaced by other Ants. They took turns watching her prone body, and Neferpitou did not acknowledge any of them. She didn't know where or when she was. Outside, in a field somewhere. There was grass against her back, and above her the clouds whirled and raced through an endlessly blue sky.
She wasn't sure if she refused to move because she had no will to, or because she wanted to watch the clouds. Even when night fell, the moon illuminated them, and behind the rushing clouds an entire universe of glimmering light spread out infinitely past her sight. Pitou regarded each and every star; they seemed to her a shining panopticon watching over her, regarding her back from millions more angles than she ever could them.
She watched the universe, the universe watched her, and it seemed to Neferpitou that both she and the universe could do nothing but ruminate on her complete failure.
When the sun rose again and the other stars vanished, Pitou pulled herself to her feet. It hurt, but everything had hurt for the last couple days. A little more pain, unfortunately, wouldn't kill her.
Squad Leader Zazan was watching over here when she found the will to rise, and the Ant quirked her head at her, her truncated tail flicking back and forth. It reminded Neferpitou of her own.
"You're up," the Ant stated, and Pitou nodded. She started walking, and Zazan followed. "Have something in mind?"
"No," Neferpitou said, staring straight ahead. She didn't know why she was walking. She was just tired of lying on her back.
"The humans have corralled us," Zazan told her. "Youpi is talking with them; he's trying to negotiate our release."
Menthuthuyoupi, negotiating? That was enough to snap Pitou out of her stupor.
"Is it going well?" she asked, and Zazan shrugged.
"Who knows. They'll probably just kill us all anyway," she said with a laugh. "There's not much we can do. They told us if we leave we get blown up."
"Hm." Pitou looked around. So far as she could see, she and the other Ants weren't stuck in a pen or anything of that nature. The empty fields that had surrounded the palace stretched for as far as the eye could see; every couple yards, she could pick out a piece of rubble from the former capital. It had been torn apart and flung to every corner of the map in the course of the fight. "Leave where?"
"Wherever we are." Zazan was starting to look a little annoyed. "They have the Watcher, and other sensors; they're keeping track of us. Look, are you going to keep going? Youpi didn't tell me to keep you still, but he'll probably be mad at me if you get yourself killed."
Pitou stopped and looked over her soldier at the squadron leader. "Do you think you could stop me?" she said softly, and Zazan paled. Since her skin was purple, it produced an ugly puce color.
The other Ant laughed nervously. "Fine, go get yourself killed. That's your business now." She turned away. "It's not as if you have a King to guard anyway."
Pitou watched her go, and considered removing her head. But when Zazan was about fifty feet away, the Royal Guard with no one to guard realized she didn't care enough to. She sucked in a painful breath, turned, and kept walking straight. The ruins of the city of Peijing loomed many miles ahead of her, and Pitou marked it as her goal.
If she weren't blown up, as Zazan had put it, maybe there were humans there. As she rolled the thought around in her head, Pitou realized there was one human in particular she wanted to meet.
It wasn't the Watcher. Neferpitou never wanted to see that woman again.
She stretched her Nen out tenderly, like someone nervously extending a broken limb and waiting for a flare of pain. One kilometer; that was all she could manage right now. That wasn't nearly enough, but it was all she could work with.
She didn't even need to sense someone. She just needed a human to sense her.
###
Menthuthuyoupi wasn't sure what he was doing here. He hadn't been designed for this. In the ruins of Peijing, inside a once-hotel that was only mostly destroyed, he sat cross-legged at a solid oak table, having accidentally crushed the seat on his side of the table with his weight.
Ging Freecss, who was very annoying but also quite interesting, sat across from him. The man was drumming his fingers on the table. Youpi wasn't sure why. Maybe he just enjoyed fidgeting.
"Like I said," Ging continued. "I can't make any decisions for the Association as a whole, or the other nations in the Union. Best you can do here is lay out terms for me to pass on."
"What terms could I possibly lay?" Youpi asked, and Ging laughed. "We have no…"
"Cards?" Ging suggested.
"Of course we don't have cards," Youpi said. "Why would we have cards? I meant that we don't have leverage." The Hunter laughed again. Was he really that funny? "All we can offer is ourselves."
"Oh? What do you mean?" Ging asked. He shifted, and Youpi wondered if he really wanted to know, or already understood what Youpi meant and was just trying to extend the conversation. Ging Freecss was a strange man, and it was obvious he enjoyed speaking with Youpi for some reason.
"The same way you're here now," Youpi said. "You got hired to come deal with us. Well, we could do the same thing." He sat up. "I'm strong. If you could guarantee the safety of the other Ants, I'd do whatever you wanted."
"Well, that's an amusing thought," Ging said with a grin. "Having a bunch of my own pet Ants. That'd certainly be scary, huh?"
"For your enemies." Youpi grinned. "You'll consider it?"
"I'll consider it, but like I said, I can't make the decisions here. That's up to the countries, and the Chairman." Ging leaned back. "Tell me something. Why do you care so much about those other Ants?"
Youpi blinked at the inanity of the question. "What do you mean? They're Ants."
"Yeah, they're Ants." Ging scratched at the stubble on his chin. "But you weren't made to keep Ants safe. You were made to keep the King safe."
"Ah," Youpi said. He leaned forward and propped his chin up on his fist; his elbow left a dent in the table. "Hmm."
"I don't know if you even can answer that question, to be honest," Ging admitted. "But I'm definitely curious."
"That's why you spoke with me, during the assault," Youpi said.
"Yeah," Ging confirmed. "I saw you defending the other Ants. That didn't look like the actions of a Royal Guard to me. It made me wonder what else you would do."
"Well," Youpi said after a pause. "I deceived myself."
Ging titled his head. "You replaced the King with… them?"
"Something like that." Youpi lowered his head. "I couldn't keep the King safe, especially from himself. He was unable to lead; he stood alone. But the other Ants were extensions of the King; of his will, and his genes. So if I couldn't keep the King safe, I could at least protect the other Ants."
"But you call that a deception."
"It is, but it's also a truth. Does that make sense?" Youpi wanted validation, even if it was from a human. What better human to give it than Ging?
"A little," Ging chuckled. "Holding two contradictory ideas like that… that's very human, Youpi."
Youpi narrowed his eyes. "Is that an insult?"
Ging rose and stretched. "If you want to take it as one. I think whether you do or not will give us a clue how the rest of this will go." He eyed Youpi with a smile. "You're willing to be my servant, but we might ask more of you than that. Would you be willing to be human?"
###
Neferpitou stopped when she felt the Watcher's gaze fall on her.
The sudden detente was familiar, and Pitou fell into it with ease, directing her attention to the distant focus. She and the Watcher regarded one another, and Pitou wondered at the passivity she felt in the woman's attention. Before, the Watcher's gaze had contained an unmistakable malice that made it easy to pick out: now, it was more relaxed. If she'd wanted to, Pitou wouldn't have been able to follow the sight to its source.
She spoke without speaking, and even just moving her mouth made her entire face sore. "I'm looking for him," she said. "That man who saved me. Will you stop me?"
The Watcher's focus wavered. Shifted. Then, about fifteen seconds later, it locked back on her.
What did that mean? The woman wasn't approaching, but she also wasn't letting her go. Pitou wondered what that meant.
She shrugged and kept walking, this time under the Watcher's supervision.
Pitou had left Peijing before it was destroyed, crashing through a building on her way out. The scale of the devastation couldn't surprise her. She was beyond that after surviving the crossfire between the King and the Hokage. But the leaning, creaking buildings, the shattered streets, and the human detritus scattered everywhere still affected her.
Three million people had once called this place home, and now even Pitou's enhanced senses and Nen couldn't find a single one. They'd been ripped up and cast out entirely.
And for what? A King who'd abandoned his plans in a moment and thrown her away in the next? What a waste. These countless humans hadn't even had their lives shredded for a good reason. As Neferpitou looked around, she found herself filled with a novel melancholy.
They were like her, in some way. She'd been abandoned by the King, but these human's ruler had looked at them solely as chattel. They'd always been abandoned. It was one thing for her King to perceive them as such, as an outsider, a superior form of life, but for so many to be ruled like that, by someone weaker and more pathetic than them?
Yes, they were similar. Neferpitou perceived the gutted city as a mirror to her condition.
Without warning, three different auras entered her En. Pitou jerked her head up; two of them were familiar, but the third…
It reminded her of the one-armed shinobi's, but where his had been titanic and cold, this one was blazing and bright. It was like one of the stars she'd watched the night before had descended on top of her. It overwhelmed her completely: her En fizzled out, withdrawing back into her, and Pitou suddenly felt blind, left with her ragged ears and single eye.
She looked about, watching where the aura signal had originated. Just a moment later, movement on the skyline caught her eye.
Three figures atop a crumbling apartment block. A tall man with blond hair: the Hokage, or one of his clones. The other two were more familiar to Neferpitou. The two young hunters that she'd scared off the day she was born.
They jumped down, leaving behind the Hokage. Pitou watched them come; they both looked as resigned as she felt. She remembered what the Watcher had said when they landed
'That man was their King.'
Both the Hunters approached her, separating and coming at her from different angles. She kept her eye on the one who'd punched her missing eye out. She was forced to feel the other, the boy who could electrify himself.
Gon, that was the name of the Hunter who'd taken her eye. That's what Hinata had called him. Gon, and the electric one was Killua.
Gon stopped about twenty feet from her, far enough to let him react to her leap, and Killua stopped with him. They were practiced partners. Maybe that's why Pitou hadn't been able to defend the King, not even from himself. She'd always stood alone.
'If you can understand that, maybe you'll understand this.'
"Where are you going?" Gon asked, and Pitou stood up straight, her arm rigid at her side. The hole in her side ached, and so did her missing arm.
"Nowhere," she said, and the Hunter cocked an eyebrow. "I'm not going anywhere."
"Everyone's going somewhere," Gon said. Killua was circling around behind her, Pitou realized. They were ready for a fight. Was that what she wanted? Was that why she'd come here?
She truly didn't know.
"I don't have anywhere to be," Pitou said. She sat down, crossing her legs under her, and Gon blinked. Her Nen receded further, leaving her defenseless. She couldn't even sense Killua behind her now.
Gon was a fighter, but Killua was an assassin. If he decided to kill her now, she wouldn't be able to stop him. The thought brought Pitou some peace.
'That's it then,' she thought. It didn't matter where she went or what she thought: she still wanted to die.
But five seconds passed, and Killua didn't drive his hand through the back of her head. Gon was just watching her. Pitou sighed.
"Don't you want to kill me?" she said, and the Hunter's lips twisted.
"I killed your King, didn't I?" she continued, closing her eye. "I saw it, last time we met. You almost sacrificed your life to end mine. You would have succeeded if it weren't for Meleoron."
When she opened her eye, Pitou still wasn't dead. Gon sat down as well, one leg stretched out before him. They regarded each other; Pitou with dull anticipation, and Gon with an emotion Pitou hadn't experienced before.
Pity.
"So you want to die?" he asked, and Pitou narrowed her eye.
"I tore his arm off first," she said. "He didn't scream. I didn't realize at the time how admirable that was for a human."
"Kite knew the risks," Gon said, not rising to the bait. "We all did, when we got that close to the nest."
"So, you're just going to let him rot in vain?" Pitou asked, and the Hunter shook his head. What had happened? What had changed in him, in just a few days? Why wouldn't he kill her?
"He's dead. Would killing you bring him back?"
"No." Pitou smiled. "But I'm sure it would bring you some satisfaction."
The Hunter frowned. "No. You were right, though. A couple days ago, I would have killed myself to kill you," Gon said. Pitou couldn't help but marvel at his calm. "I almost did. But now, you want to die, huh?"
He got back to his feet. "No way in hell am I giving you what you want."
Pitou should have attacked then. If she's attacked right then, Gon would have had to defend himself. He would have killed her. It would have been clean and easy.
But she found she couldn't. Just like before, just as it had for the last day, her body refused to die. She was paralyzed in place. All she could do was watch.
"C'mon, Killua." Gon turned and began walking away. Killua walked past Pitou, passing not four feet from her. Either of them could have reached out and ended the other's life, but neither did. "Let's get out of here."
The Hunters walked away, and unable to get off the ground or even beg, Pitou watched them go.
Even after Gon and Killua passed out of sight, Pitou remained rooted to the ground. She'd never felt so pathetic in her life. Somehow, it felt even worse than when the King had discarded her. It was one thing to want to die; it was another entirely to have someone look you in the eyes and deny you even that.
She didn't stir when the Hokage approached her. Even in a state of near-zetsu, his aura nearly burned her. His passive energy felt like blunt knives running across her skin.
"You really want to die?" he asked. Pitou looked up; the man was quite tall. It fit his aura. He knelt down, almost face to face with her.
"Sasuke dragged you out of there, right?" he said, and Neferpitou felt something stir in her gut. Anything other than turgid death was welcome.
Sasuke. So that was the name of the shinobi who had torn her and the other Guards apart in two or three seconds, and then rescued her afterwards. The man who'd saved her because she'd been too weak to refuse.
"Where is he?" Pitou suddenly asked, and the Hokage rocked back in surprise at the fervor in her voice. "Where is Sasuke?"
"Not a clue," the Hokage said, scratching the back of his head. "Why?"
Pitou pushed herself to her feet, her whole body aching. She pushed a surge of Nen through it, forcing it to forget its injuries for a moment.
"I want to see him." For the first time since the King had thrown her away, she wanted something. She would be an idiot not to follow that feeling. "Can you take me to him?"
The Hokage blinked. "Sure," he said, standing up as well. "Sure. Let's go find Sasuke."
###
In the deep tunnels that ran across East Gorteau, miles from Peijing, Shaiapouf scuttled through absolute darkness.
The tunnels were old, and hadn't been lit in decades. This was a place where no humans and no light had come in a very long time. It felt appropriate to Shaiapouf. It was a competition, he thought, between the inky blackness around him and the darkness consuming his soul.
All Shaiapouf could feel was hatred and shame. He had enough hatred for everything in the world. He hated the humans that had opposed the King and put him in this position. He hated the other Royal Guards for being weak enough to not see the King's true designs. He hated them for being strong enough to oppose them. He hated himself for losing to Neferpitou, pitiful little Neferpitou with one arm and no will to live. He'd lost to her and the Watcher, somehow at the same time!
'Shaiapouf is the only one I can rely on now.'
He gagged, hundreds of him choking on an inimical reality. Foolish little Shaiapouf! Did you think this would be a story with a happy ending for you, simply because the King was relying on you? The more responsibility you're given, the more tragic the consequences! That's all there was to it!
Shaiapouf wept. The King had triumphed, he was sure. He'd killed the Fire Shadow, the one armed man, the Watcher, everyone. Meruem had to have destroyed everything that had opposed him because that was what Meruem was. Unstoppable, invincible, unquestionable. But how could he return to him now, a complete failure? He was no longer someone the King could rely on. He was a coward, a worm squirming through the earth of a dead country. If he were the King, he would kill the Shaiapouf that Pouf was now without a second thought. He wasn't even worth being eaten. Even maggots would find him disgusting as he was.
As Shaiapouf pondered the best and most efficient way to cease to exist, while still being unable to conceive of simply dying, he came to a crossroad. The tunnel split into two paths, both equally dark. He stopped, hundreds of pairs of eyes looking from one to the other. What was the difference, he thought. They both led to hell. Why even bother making a decision? Why not just stop here, and slowly wither away in the darkness?
Then-
Shaiapouf perceived a light at the end of one of the tunnels.
A light? Down here, where no human had walked in decades? Where no electricity flowed, where no fire could start? He drifted down the right tunnel, entranced by the dim light. Was that his salvation? Was it as simple as a light at the end of the tunnel?
Like a moth drawn to a flame, Shaiapouf fluttered towards the distant, flickering light.
He drew closer and closer. Even with his enhanced senses, it was difficult to tell how far away the light was. Was it a fire, or electrical? As he drifted, Pouf became certain it was a fire. A small one, like that given off by a lighter.
He caught a glimpse of gleaming metal, a tube behind the flame. A tube? At that, he paused.
Why was there a floating tube, along with the floating flame? His addled mind ground to a stop. That didn't make any sense. None of this made any sense. What was he approaching?
Just as Shaiapouf began to realize something was wrong, a blast door, over a meter of solid titanium, slammed shut behind his swarm. He turned in shock at the sudden deafening noise. The tunnel behind him was suddenly totally cut off. He probed at the door: with the mass he had left, he could beat his way through it, but it would take several minutes. The only way he could go was forward.
He turned back. The light had danced from the edge of the tunnel to the center. And now, it wasn't waiting for him.
It was approaching.
Trapped between the door and the tiny light, Shaiapouf felt a primal fear. This wasn't the fear he'd felt when Neferpitou had nearly destroyed him, or even when he'd realized he'd completely failed the King.
This was, simply put, a fear of the dark.
"Who's there!?" he screeched, reforming his body and pulling himself up as tall as he could. He spread his wings wide, an instinctual attempt to look as large and intimidating as possible, and glittering scales blew off of him and down the tunnel, lighting it up in a dim rainbow medley.
The sparkling scales revealed more and more of the tunnel, and eventually reached the light. Shaiapouf perceived a pale hand holding the tube behind the flame.
A hand, an arm, a body. A woman in a dirty grey dress came striding out of the darkness, her arms slick with her own blood. Shaiapouf blinked. The woman was a Hunter; his Nen could only detect rage from her. There wasn't anything in her soul but hatred.
Against his own will, he drew back. The woman had a wide metal tank strapped to her back and knives sheathed across her chest. A line ran from the tank to a metal tube she was holding in both hands, like a rifle. The dancing flame that Shaiapouf had seen all those minutes ago was attached to the front of the tube. It was indeed a lighter, or something like it.
"Who are you?" he asked, feeling a mounting panic in his chest. The woman kept on coming with a remorseless stride, his scales casting a kaleidoscopic rainbow across her body. The only constant light was the fire she held so securely in her hands. Her right hand was gripped tightly around a trigger guard, her middle and index fingers straining against an oversized trigger. Whatever she was holding was just like a rifle. But what was the tank for? A liquid?
"You don't know me," the Hunter said. Even if Shaiapouf hadn't used his Spiritual Message, it would have been obvious to him how the woman was fully consumed by anger; her voice curdled with hatred. "I'm a Hunter who stays behind. My name is Palm."
Palm. He didn't know her. Shaiapouf considered the distance. If he charged now, he could take her head in a little over a second. But she was a Hunter. Even if she was one who 'stayed behind,' she'd surely be able to react in time. What kind of Hatsu would she have? What was the weapon she was carrying? There were too many unknowns.
Foolish Pouf! Fritter your life away, or act!
Shaiapouf screamed and charged.
Palm depressed the trigger.
The tube in her hand bucked and belched out a stream of thick, semi-liquid fire. The blast took Shaiapouf full in the face.
One moment, Shaiapouf was moving forward, sure he could take the woman's head. The next, he was blind, his whole body covered in a literally burning agony. He roared and swung blindly, but hit nothing but air.
With nothing to fight for beyond his own life, Shaiapouf began to panic. His body started breaking down, reacting to his stress and trying to escape.
No! Think, Shaiapouf! Even if he was blind, he could find her with his Spiritual Message. Her hatred was so sharp she stood out like a beacon in the dark. He couldn't miss her!
He charged again, and Palm blasted him once more. To Shaiapouf's horror, nearly half his mass melted in a heartbeat. It was just fire! How was this happening?!
"My Hatsu is called Wink Blue," Palm said as he stumbled and screamed, melting flesh slowing off of him and evaporating into thousands of screaming flies who were burned to ash by the flames. She continued walking forward, unwilling to give him any ground. "Once I see someone, I can track them anywhere in the world with just a bit of my blood."
Shaiapouf scrambled backwards as he felt another spike of rage, and the jet of flames barely missed him. He wanted to attack, but found that he couldn't. What was left of his body was paralyzed by pain and fear.
He couldn't understand why her fire had burned through his Ken as if it weren't there. Surely he wasn't that weak?
"I saw you, Shaiapouf, while you were trying to kill my master." Pouf couldn't see, but he knew Palm's face was twisted up in a rictus of hatred. "I saw you because I was watching him. He made it all the way to the stairs before you found him. Or did you just let him go that far?"
More and more of Pouf's mass was sloughing off. It felt like his consciousness was going with it. He couldn't breathe anymore, only scramble backwards. Palm let out another jet of fire, and Pouf screamed in fear, scuttling away like a cockroach.
"I mixed my blood with the napalm," Palm said calmly. "That's why it's destroying your cells so completely, and how it broke your Ken. I knew I would need that after watching you survive Knov's Hatsu." She blasted him again, melting his legs off, and Pouf was left dragging himself backwards with both arms as the flames licked at his torso.
The fire pouring from her weapon was literally filled with the Hunter's pure hatred. It was devouring him alive.
His back hit the blast door, and a high, keening whine emerged from Shaiapouf's chest as he realized he had nowhere left to run. The tunnel was so hot. Smoke was rising from his body: his wings crumbled away, their fragile structure destroyed by the heat.
"It hurt to cut myself that much," Palm said matter of factly. For the last time, her rage spiked.
"But I'm sure it was nothing compared to what you did to Knov."
She held down the trigger, and Shaiapouf was completely engulfed in flames. He couldn't even scream as the fire stole all his oxygen. His body melted, becoming one with the door, and began to drift into ashes.
Shaiapouf's body ceased to exist, but for a moment, his Nen remained, stirring in the heart of the fire like a phoenix. It didn't attack. He had been too overcome with shame and terror to manage that. Instead, all it did was keep Shaiapouf's Spiritual Message functioning despite his death.
The last thing Shaiapouf, who had once been a Royal Guard, perceived before everything vanished and only the fire remained was Palm crying.
Her hatred guttered out, and only a deep sorrow remained. The woman collapsed to her knees, throwing aside the flamethrower and weeping as steam rose from the blood running in thick rivulets down her arms.
The Royal Guard would have wept as well, if he still had a body. Even his death hadn't managed to bring anyone peace.
Thus, Shaiapouf died without managing to satisfy a single soul.
- Location
- Canada
Oh good, the cracked Shaiapouf is gone. That increases the odds for peace.
Argidoll
And hast thou slain the Jabberwocky?
- Location
- Dreamland
- Location
- Leeds
Oh no. Another one for the fanclub.
Palm scary. No wonder Biscuit got the hell out of town before Gon and Killua lost to Knuckle and Shoot.
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Neruz
Rogue Spiderbanana
- Location
- The Land of Fire and Poison
Ouch, yeah adding a blood sacrifice to your Nen along with that much emotional investment is going to create a nasty Hatsu towards the target of those emotions; shit like that is why even the weakest Nen users are still potentially deadly.
And when I say 'emotionally unstable and stressed' I mean she looks like this normally:
Incidentally, this is what she looks like after Gon charms her onto a date and she takes a shower and puts on some makeup.
Yes, those two pictures are the same person ladies and gentlemen.
She didn't get Chimera Ant'd this time, so she's still emotionally unstable and stressed and scares the heck out of everyone except Gon. Gon, as it turns out, is just naturally good with women and gets along with her just fine.
And when I say 'emotionally unstable and stressed' I mean she looks like this normally:
Incidentally, this is what she looks like after Gon charms her onto a date and she takes a shower and puts on some makeup.
- Location
- Leeds
I know all that and stand by my statement. Hunting down a royal guard and killing even after creating a new Hatsu to enable it, is scary regardless of if you're a chimera ant or not.