Hidan spotted me, and plunged one of the spikes on his weapon into his own heart with a curse. The wound instantly transferred itself to me, and I found myself standing there with a perforated heart.
I raised an eyebrow. “Hidan, you just watched me resurrect myself after being vaporized, and you think you’re going to kill me with a hunk of sharp metal? Were you dropped on your head as a child, or what?”
I healed the injury as I spoke, and watched carefully as he cut his own throat next. Ah, that’s how he was doing it. A blood binding with a one-way contagion effect, and a regeneration curse that restored his own body almost instantly. But it wouldn’t restore lost body parts, or even reattach them without some careful medical work. A few decades of relying on that would leave him a scarred, crippled wreck of a man, but his soul would remain tied to his body no matter what was done to it. It was a nasty piece of work, but pretty much what you’d expect to happen to someone dumb enough to bargain with a dark god.
I noticed out of the corner of my eye that Kakuzu was backing away, his body splitting open to reveal four monsters made from bound souls and threads of demonic chakra. Each had a different chakra nature, and kage-level power. But he was a ranged type, and he’d need a little time to get ready to fight me.
“Whatever, bitch,” Hidan scoffed as he stabbed himself again. “You’ll run out of chakra soon, but Jashin won’t. He’s a god, but you’re just a fancy medic-nin.”
My injury healed as instantly as his, and I chuckled. “You know, I’ve been telling myself that for years. But as long as my Heaven Seal is active I can’t fool myself. I see too much, and I can’t miss the implications. I’m not just a medic-nin, Hidan. I’m the last native kami of this demon-haunted world, and my domains are insight and mystery. Not to mention that I just took about six levels of badass. Don’t make me fight you, or you’ll lose.”
“Nobody beats me once I’ve tasted their blood,” he boasted confidently, and stabbed himself in the heart again. At the same moment Kakuzu finally reached a distance he liked, and two of his beasts turned to spit a massive blast of wind-boosted flame at me.
“Have it your way,” I shrugged.
I went back to full boost and body flickered behind Hidan. As I’d expected his confidence in his own immortality had led him to concentrate his taijutsu training on offence instead of defense, and he’d barely begun to react when my foot met his back. My kick sent him flying out of the seal that sustained his damage-transfer technique, and I threw a flame clone henged into a kunai at his exposed back as he sailed through the air. She hit with a satisfying thunk, and wrapped him in an interference field that prevented him from using replacement or body flicker to evade in the second or so it took his momentum to carry him into the path of Kakuzu’s attack.
Having inhumanly perfect chakra control was going to be fun.
I wrapped myself in invisibility and formed a shadow clone that body flickered away, intentionally leaving just enough of a trace for someone of Kakuzu’s skill to detect. He was a powerful opponent, too fast to outmaneuver easily and too smart to fall for an obvious trap. His body was more black chakra than flesh, inhumanly tough and immune to anything more subtle than a Rasengan to the chest. His soul was tied to all five of his bodies, and with his ninjutsu he’d be able to hit me hard the moment I did anything to reveal my presence.
But he couldn’t see through my invisibility unless I got close to him, so the poor sap never had a chance. I let him play tag with my clone for a few seconds while I ghosted into a better position. Normally I would have created other distractions, but that was a clone of me he was trying to catch. She spun out her own clones of air and flame, befuddled him with a barrage of genjutsu, and even nailed his fire-natured heart beast with a water lance that blew it apart in a cloud of steam. Maybe I was over-thinking this one?
Nah, I wanted to see if this would work. He pulled one of the things back to guard his back, and I managed to find a spot that was within a hundred yards of all of them. Perfect. I called out a bead of pure golden chakra, and poured it into a modified mist technique that blanketed the whole area in a dense fog.
Since the chakra that had fueled the technique was holy, so was the water it produced.
Kakuzu howled in pain as the blessed water ate into him like acid. The black threads linking his bodies dissolved in seconds, and the remaining three heart-beasts immediately collapsed and began thrashing about aimlessly. Kakuzu ran, trying to escape the mist but unable to body flicker without a clear line of sight. I replaced myself with a rock in his path, and slammed my fist into his chest.
I pulled it back out with his last heart in my grasp, and crushed it. One zombie down.
Hidan was just starting to move when I got back to him. Kakuzu’s attack had burned most of the flesh off his bones, and even his regeneration needed a few minutes to fix that much damage. His eyes were still missing, along with most of his skin, and he was in so much pain he didn’t even sense my presence when I cut his head off with an oversized chakra scalpel. I wrapped it in stone with my earth control, covering the surface of the resulting ball with structural reinforcement seals and a written warning that an immortal evil was contained inside. Then I drop-kicked the ball, and watched it sail high into the air. It would be miles beyond the edge of the plateau by the time it came down.
“So much for those two,” I said smugly.
You’re even stronger than before, Hinata congratulated me. That was nicely done. But you do realize you’re still naked, right?
The mountain shook, reminding us both that the larger battle was still going on.
“What, you don’t think I should greet Naruto like this?” I grinned, and started circling the palace. I was only a couple hundred yards from the side entrance, and if I stayed there for long Sasuke would send someone tougher after me.
Hinata snickered. It might distract him from the rescue, she chided me. Better save that for later.
“Spoilsport. But your double still has my contract, so I guess you’re right. We’ve got a lot more fighting to do today. You want a real body while I’m at it?”
Actually, I think I can guard you better like this. As long as you let me see out I can just sit here throwing out shadow clones forever, and no one can stop me.
“Neat trick. Ok, give me a minute.”
I paused in the lee of a building to call up a spinning cascade of hot water around myself, which did a nice job of washing off the blood and gore. Then I concentrated for a moment on conjuring up a decent set of clothes in my mindscape and pulling them into the real world. I could make anything that way, so I might as well go with something useful. Reconstituting myself had burned a good third of the chakra in my storage seal, and if I had to keep healing and rezzing myself I’d go through the rest pretty quickly. Armor sounded like a good idea, and some weapons would be nice too.
I conjured a skintight body stocking of black silk that covered everything but my head, just thick enough to provide a little padding. Over that, a bodysuit of woven diamond threads that should stop light weapons and low-level jutsu. Plates of flawless diamond inscribed with reinforcement seals to cover my vitals, through I had to be skimpy about that to avoid restricting my movement. More plates on my shins and forearms, in case I needed to block something serious. The result was mostly black, with pink accents the same color as my hair.