Reborn in the Mist

So this is the power of Gyuki!

Killer Bee’s chakra cloak boiled the air around it. A mere foot away from him I felt my face steam burn and soon straight up sizzle. The water around us was calm but underneath our feet I could sense the water’s temperature rise, it wouldn’t be cold much longer.

Bee loomed over me, his eyes were unseen behind his glasses but I felt the heat of his glare anyway. His [Version 1 Chakra Cloak] shrieked with all eight tails, the pressure of the chakra waving against me did exactly what Bee intended it to— educate me.

It was one thing to fundamentally understand the gulf of power between one Bijuu to another, but it was a different thing to experience it, to feel its weight bear down at you with a suffocating force.

Bee’s voice was a low grumble. “I won’t be going anywhere with you.”

Huh…has he stopped rapping?

I grit my teeth but stood my ground, my cheek alternated from healed to burned through seconds. I looked up at the glaring Junchuriki and measured a smile at him. “Don’t you want to see Jay?”

Before I even completed the question Bee was already saying, “I will see Jay, I have his ransom.” But then, after a beat Killer Bee lifted his gaze past me. My Jounin were swarming towards us, I could sense Kisame, Mei and others. “I don’t want to have to hurt anyone, Mizukage-dono.”

There was nothing but warmth, kindness and a fear for tragedy in Bee’s voice…no, not nothing. My smile froze on my lips as I looked up at him, my Kage regalia mostly burnt or blown away in the waves of his chakra. My insides sank and all of a sudden I felt incredibly hyper aware as it all clicked what else was in his voice.

“Arrogance.” I muttered.

“Mizukage-sama!” I heard Mei call out, Kisame’s footfalls dashing past her with Juzo eagerly joining after.

“Oraria!” Juzo roared, hurling himself into the air, spinning into a brutal hacksaw descent with the Executioner’s Blade poised to cleave. Thin chakra tendrils wisped from me as Samehada’s open maw behind me siphoned with little discrimination.

“Kisame! Juzo!” I barked, snatching Juzo from his murderous descent with Isobu’s chakra arm. In the same breath I swept Kisame off his feet and drove a chakra-fist into the devouring blade, sending it skidding far across the water. “Stand down, all of you!”

“W-why!?” Juzo sneered as I released my grip and retracted the chakra arm.

Killer Bee stood silent, stoic…waiting before my gathered forces. I studied him, finding that once again my suspicions were right and the Jinchuriki couldn’t see himself complying with anything other than Jay’s ransom.

It was the right thing to keep my word, to ransom the damned spy off right now and at the very least, scrape a good first impression on the shinobi world’s strongest Jinchuriki.

But then what? Go to war with Kumogakure at their time? At their choosing, at their mercies? No.

I looked over my shoulder to my subordinates, my eyes sharp with furious authority as I growled. “Get back. I will correct Kumogakure’s assumptions that we can be intimidated.”

By now Killer Bee had shifted into a wider stance, his body was a tad more relaxed but I was blessed with meta knowledge to know his form of Taijutsu was anything but rigid. “Give me Jay.” He said.

But I shook my head. “That’s not happening either, Bee. I realized I never specified how or who in my letters but I think it was implied that the Raikage had to be in approval. For you to be here…this must be your last resort.”

Bee demeanour softened at that, his chakra tails flailed less and even the size of his chakra cloak seemed to shrink. “It is, so you understand, konoyaro!”

I feigned a smile. “I do, because this is also my last resort.”

As much as Killer Bee was the same character I watched, loved and got annoyed with, he was also many years younger and like many other powerful characters within this world— without the inhibition to kill. He was a shinobi in the truest sense, groomed to be the second of a most lethal pair.

I’m done holding back.

“Does that mean…?” Isobu asked within my mindscape.

Yes, let’s start.

I straightened my back as much as my height would allow without going on my tip toes and in the voice I addressed my subordinates I barked at Bee, “You have two choices left, Kumogakure Jinchuriki.” Within seconds of giving Isobu the go I felt Nature Energy swell from within my core. “Submit yourself to my authority and await your Raikage’s surrender and apology, or you can attempt to leave.”

“I choose Jay! Wooo Weee!” Bee yelled, releasing the floodgates of chakra now, sending waves of water clashing against itself.

A sweatdrop slid down my temple as the atmosphere choked with dense chakra, it was nowhere as suffocating as the night of the Nine-Tails attack but it was enough to clue me in on just how much there was to overcome.

And to make a point, I intended to overcome Bee without tapping into my own power as a Jinchuriki. I bit my thumb and flipped through the necessary handseals and a little extra surprise for later— “It’s a shame I must make an example of you before Ay learns a lesson, but if I must hurt you to protect the ones I love then prepare your jaw, Killer Bee.”

“Kuchiyose no Jutsu!”