Comeback Kid (Naruto & Celestial Grimoire | OC-SI)

There was a serenity in combat that Tobio could rarely find in his life otherwise. Training and hanging out with his friends were fun things, but his blood sang when he was in a fight. When there was objectively someone trying to harm them, and he was trying to harm them in turn. Something was deeply wrong with Tobio, to be sure.

However, it was the kind of dysfunction that the shinobi world was happy to continue to perpetuate. As long as those forces of destruction were turned to positive, external ends, no one cared if a ninja had a few quirks. While the Hidden Leaf was the poster child for forbearance for weirdos, all of the major ones had their own oddballs within their status quo. Some more than others, but Konoha had always proven to be a haven for the prodigies and geniuses.

That came with, understandably, an appropriate amount of oddities with those bright minds. Tobio was no different in this respect, no matter how much he could recognize this craving for violence was an unhealthy coping mechanism. If someone had to be a destroyer, though, he'd take up the mantle just fine. To save his friends from having to become that kind of...person, oni, monster, there wasn't much he wouldn't give up.

But that was enough about his violent past. He was more interested in looking forward to his violent future.

With a thought, he reached for the hilt of his blade and swept out his asauchi, feeling the familiar hum of his partner beneath the metal. In that moment he focused on molding his chakra, pouring it into the receptive, metallic fragment of his soul, as scorching blue flames came to life along the edge. Then, at the same time, he diverted a stream of chakra toward his feet, pushing himself off of the ground in a tiny burst to the side. It was a good thing that Tobio had kept moving, as Gaara hadn't seemed to be waste a second toying around with him like he might have someone else. He didn't know whether to be honored or scared as sand rushed out of the ground, sneakily having burrowed from underneath the redhead's position to Tobio's during their brief conversation.

Maybe that might have been against some kind of rule...but they were ninja. That sort of sneaky, underhanded tactic was part and parcel for their fighting styles. He'd have been upset if Gaara wasn't treating this fight with the utmost seriousness that it warranted. However, as the sand snapped narrowly at his heels as he flew toward his opponent, he wasn't unable to see the danger there.

Close. Far too close for his liking.

The problem with fighting Gaara was that if you weren't completely sure of your ability to get past his sand armor, you'd be opening yourself up for reprisal. Being in range of his sand at all was a fantastic way to be crushed, smothered, or otherwise seriously harmed. Tobio's quickness partiallys invalidated some parts of the automatic defense system, but a lot of his combat style operated on the principle that he could trade hits with his opponents for a bit until making a decisive strike.

This would be a tricky one, but when had he welcomed easy fights in his life?

"Alright," he huffed, hefting his massive blade up once more, resting the back of it on his shoulder. "Maximum effort time."

At a certain point of training and skill, some jutsu could have their chakra costs brought down to minimal levels. This came from rote repetition and familiarity, as people learned how to properly manage the precise amounts of energy to fuel whatever effects they wanted. It was how even Jōnin could make 'weak' jutsu demonstrably effective at higher levels of combat, or manage to churn them out more numerously than a Genin. What Tobio did with the Human Bullet Technique was something similar, after long months of regular usage since he'd learned it. Something likely only capable because the boy had the raw skill and out-of-context capabilities to develop so absurdly rapidly.

Explosions rippled around him as he popped from point to point, trying to keep out of sight of the Genin. It was a move he'd entirely stolen from Lee's original fight, trying to outmaneuver Gaara and succeeding as the boy did his best to whip around and attempt to track Tobio's movements. Easier said than done, admittedly, considering that he might not have been used to someone at those speeds.

Which was probably why Tobio was able to cross the distance in the blink of an eye and land a solid slash against the kid's arm. It wasn't with his full strength, admittedly, as he'd lacked the leverage to bring it entirely to bear. Yet even so, with his massive sword, it would have slain or at least dismembered a lot of ninja on the spot between Tobio's speed and inherent strength. With Gaara's sand armor, though, it only ended up turning the outer layer of sand into glass. Most, if not all of the force was distributed through the boy, rather than immediately shattering his arm with the impact.

A scream of frustration rang forth from the redhead as he went rolling away, shaking his arm while looking at Tobio with murder in his gaze. "You…you hit me!" He yelled, sounding more confused as he got back to his feet, looking down at his arm.

Where there'd been a solid layer of sand, now it was cracked and burnt. Whatever had been turned into a very dull, crappy, blackened glass was shaken off of his body until it too began to float with the mass of sand. Because technically glass was just sand still, if transferred to a different state.

Hmm. Maybe a problem for later.

"Yeah? What about it?" Tobio taunted, a little smirk on his face. In hindsight, getting cocky was his first mistake.

Seeing as Gaara let loose a screech that almost felt inhuman, it was enough to make Tobio flinch as sand poured forth in a wave from his gourd, shifting with the consistency of water. Tobio moved to explode away, only to find the explosion gave a dull whoomph instead of the bang he was familiar with. Glancing down, the sight was enough to send his normally hot blood ice cold, as he frowned. There was just enough sand surrounding one of his feet to keep him in place, tight and squeezing around his foot and ankle in an insidious trap.

…Yeah, this was his bad.

He had just enough time to look up at Gaara's triumphant, ferocious grin, as the boy sent a surge of sand flooding toward him, like a tsunami in miniature. The resulting wave that slammed into him was a justified hit, considering he really should have just kept moving instead of stopping to run his mouth. That was the regret he felt as he felt his entire body thrown through the air, surrounded by sand. If there was a saving grace, it was that even surrounded by sand as he was, it wasn't an organized kind of assault.

It was good that Gaara was more in an insensate rage than a cold, calculating attack, because that could have probably smothered him before he could have responded. Instead, he only had to contend with the unfortunate reality of hundreds of pounds of sand that had hit him like a truck. Once again, he was thankful for his unbreakable bones, and less happy about the exceptionally uncomfortable sensation of being sandblasted. Course and gritty, grinding across every inch of exposed skin, as Tobio wrenched his eyes shut and felt his body shudder under the onslaught as he was swept away across the arena floor.

Going ass over teakettle, it'd gotten everywhere over him. In his hair and in his mouth, and he was coughing it out as he stared over at Gaara with a flat stare. "Yeah, that was my bad."

"I'm going to tear you apart!" There was something warbling, flanging in Gaara's voice, as his chakra spiked with instabilities.

"Ditto!" Tobio called back, but there was something decidedly lacking in the overall threat of his voice compared to the redhead's. Then again, the dark-haired boy hadn't begun getting angry in truth yet. Not that it'd stop him from beating his opponent's ass.

Before the redhead could respond or form a shield, Tobio figured that it was time to change tactics. Zipping around was good, but he needed to get serious now that he'd been hit. Thankfully, the reminder of his bruised ego and battered insides was more than enough to muster up a proper RAGE.

Chakra flooded his sword, and this time he didn't bother trying to get close to cut him. Why did he need to when the Moonveil portion of his sword was more than enough to make something happen? Blue fire arcs were swung forth wildly, blocked narrowly by little waves of sand, but only bit a hair's breadth, as Tobio dug into his chakra reserves.

He didn't need to keep it up for long, though, just long enough to get Gaara into a pattern. To see the right moment…to…strike.

One explosion to charge, to burn through all of the sand, when he got used to Tobio attacking at range. He could see it in those green eyes the moment he realized that Tobio wasn't going to do the normal thing and give him any range as he swung through the attacking sand in a blur of movement. Closer and closer, until he was right upon the boy in a whirling blur of movement.

And then, he was close for him to deliver a vicious cut against his abdomen. The kind of burning slash that ought to have put down most people, provided he cut at the right angle and not deep enough to actually kill him. In reality, Tobio was counting on the sand armor and Shukaku to keep it from actually doing so. For a few moments there was nothing but silence, as even the sand froze in place all around them.

"…Did we win-" His spirit asked, briefly, before a new, guttural scream ripped forth from Gaara, as his body trembled, the acrid scent of blood rushing forth briefly before it was covered in the earthy undertones of sand.

A roar erupted forth from Gaara, as the ocean of sand shifted, rushing to cover his body in a torrent of shifting movement. "KILL YOU!"

Ah. That answered that question. Tobio moved to jump back, and then-

-And then.

-And then.

He wasn't sure what happened, admittedly, as it was between blinks than anything else. Violent, vicious, and painful, as he felt like his entire torso was captured in some kind of vise. It was almost too fast to see, as his breath choked and Tobio craned his head down to look at what had captured him.

It was…

"Malevolence" was the only real word that Tobio could use to describe the insane expression across Gaara's face as sand was coating his features but also one of his arms. It'd created a massive, bestial claw that had Tobio captured in its grasp. It was the sort of transformation that Shukaku had begun after the original canon match, but apparently the Bijuu wasn't content to wait and try and gaslight Gaara into accepting his assistance. Nor was the Suna-nin waiting to begin his own alterations, like according to his original plan.

"MOTHER SAYS YOU'RE A MONSTER!" Gaara growled, visage one of feral horror, eyes gleaming with a singular kind of rage and madness. "TO CRUSH YOU LIKE A BUG! TO PROVE MY EXISTENCE!"

This was bad.

This was very bad.

The fact that Tobio was struggling to get out of its grasp, even with his prodigious strength, was worrying. But the way his insides were being crushed and squeezed was even worse, as his eyes bulged forward, and breath escaped him. While his bones could certainly remain safe from damage, the tendons, muscles, skin, and more beneath those bones were not as protected. Just the sensation of being smothered like this, even as he tried to thrash struggle.

He needed to…

Escape…

Get out…

In the back of his mind he heard his Zanpakutō scream in his mind, loud and shrill. "AS MUCH CHAKRA AS YOU CAN MANAGE, TO YOUR CHEST TENKETSU, NOW!"

There his Oni companion went, with sound advice in the middle of his brief panicking session. He focused hard on the various tenketsu that he could feel across his body, one of the benefits of it being functionally part of his innate biological system. It was one of the first things he took the time to learn with his superlative body control, seeing as chakra could technically be expelled from any opening. Most people just chose their hands and feet, for very sensible reasons. How often did someone actually need to shoot off their volatile energies from anywhere else?

Obviously, Tobio was growing remarkably thankful for his own foresight in figuring out a niche capability like that.

Sputtering flames like an jet's afterburner poured forth from his chest, feet, and damn near every major tenketsu across his body, burning his shirt to near cinders as the sand exploded around him, and Tobio went flying back away from Gaara. The moment he hit the ground was a new, fresh wave of agony against his freshly sandblasted wounds, but it also allowed him to breathe. Hearty, eager lungful's of air, like he'd never tasted before.

Oh, this was awful, but he immediately triggered that familiar instinct for vital energy to flood his body. The primal magic of a Barbarian's rage, designed to fill in the gaps where he'd been brutalized in such an overt way. It was enough to at least take the edge off of things, at least for a moment.

His body knit itself back together in that instant, and frankly, he didn't give a shit about who noticed it amongst the stands. Tobio had considerably bigger fish to fry, than worrying about Snake-epstein drooling over his abberant physiology. The warped joints of his physique fused themselves in the proper shape, while his flesh was wound up tight to close the wounds in his body. Tears in the gristle and skin and the innumerable scrapes and cuts where he'd been literally sanded down were pieced into a fighting fit shape once. More than anything else, though, one thought did strike him in that moment.

…Was he losing this fight?

It was a notion that whispered insidiously to him out of nowhere as he picked himself up off of the ground and stared over at at his snarling opponent. Like, it wasn't the first time he'd been overwhelmed by someone; his sensei did them in spars all the time. He'd even only managed to kill that Takigakure Jōnin with a suicide move that miraculously hadn't killed him because he was built different.

The notion of being overwhelmed, defeated, actually beaten, wasn't foreign to him. Just the fact that an actual peer was doing it. For once, he found an ugly feeling beginning to bubble up inside of his gut as Embers sprang to life, swelling his strength, chakra reserves, and speed in equal measure.

Just the idea of losing made him furious, a texture to his personality that he hadn't even been aware of. It was an ugly, black feeling that made him angry, even in the depths of his rage. After all of this time and all of the blood, sweat, and tears put into his training and his efforts, the notion that his sacrifices and boosts still wasn't enough felt like a betrayal on some level. Of himself, of what he was capable of, maybe? The battlefield wasn't the time or the place to interrogate his feelings.

"I find this state of affairs intolerable." His companion's thoughts bled into his own, as he could practically imagine her grinding her teeth as he got himself to his feet. "Are you a potential man, or are you going to actually defeat this stepping stone?"

Thanks for the pep talk.

"You need somebody to tell you what you already need to know? Mayhaps I've misunderstood the type of wielder you are, then."

It was frustrating that she was him, because it meant she knew precisely what words Tobio needed to hear in order to get under his skin. With gritted teeth, he stared out at the swirling sandstorm ahead of him with a slowly growing, bloody smile.

If he was going to cut loose, there was one thing missing from his impending rampage. An extra quality that he ought to have done at the beginning of the match. "Hey Gaara! One moment."

Tobio reached for his side and pulled forth a small, sturdy metal canteen. Reaching forward, he hastily unscrewed the top, drinking greedily of the contents. Inside wasn't the Elixir, or any special kind of prepared boon beforehand. It was merely warm, delicious mead, gifted from the last time he'd visited his summons. And it was just the thing he needed to get out of this slump.

It spilled down his chin, as Gaara watched with no small amount of incredulity as his opponent…drank in the middle of their match. Just the sheer audacity of it was enough to have him stay his hand, if only for the briefest moment. The cloying scent of the mead was so pungent, there was no way to mistake it for anything other than alcohol. He could only watch with a gobsmacked expression, both him and his passenger, as Tobio gulped his beverage down and then tossed the canteen to the side. All while a toothy, red grin began to spread across his features.

There was a comfortable, familiar warmth beginning to spread across his body now. All of the pain felt looser, and even his haze of rage felt like it'd been diffused to some level. But not enough to dispel it entirely, as the boy hefted up his blade. "Now I've got a buzz. Let's GOOOOOO~!"

And then he was darting back into the fray, a laugh leaving his lips as he emptied his head and focused on nothing but the haze of battle.

It turned out all Tobio needed to do was drink some alcohol. All of his problems could be solved by getting a little drunk.

Inside of him an exasperated voice huffed. "That's your takeaway?"

Is it a bad one?

"No. Maybe I should call you a potential man more often, if that's all it takes to cold shock you into competence."

Imagine, with all of his advantages and all of the work he'd done to get where he was, Tobio would possibly lose. The idea was so inconceivable, he threw it out of the window. There was no world where Tobio could lose, would lose, or may lose. That was the difference between winners and losers, he supposed.

Perhaps it was because perpetual losers could never could think of an outcome where success was anything but the guaranteed option. If he somehow lost when he had a goddamn out-of-context System granting bullshit, incredible perks, he might as well have thrown in the towel here and now. How the fuck was he meant to deal with Zetsu, and the Akatsuki, if he couldn't deal with Gaara here and now?

"KILLL YOUUUUU!"

"GET SOME NEW MATERIAL!" Tobio roared back, as his speed was multiplied to new heights by Embers of the Heroic Age.

What kind of hero would he be if he didn't get his get-back in the middle of a fight? In every story, there was a bit of a fight progression, a back-and-forth flow between one side and another. That was just natural storytelling, at least in his eyes, until the hero of the narrative got their ass in gear. But it was time to bring things to a natural conclusion.

For athletes there was such a thing as the flow state. It was when your body and mind were in perfect synchronicity. Every action perfectly followed what your brain ordered, as you maintained an immaculate control of your economy of motion. That was for normal humans, though, without chakra, or Oni biology, or any of the chicanery Tobio had going on.

It made what happened next fundamentally different.

In a distant part of his brain, he was worried about the fact that Gaara's transformation had been kicked off way earlier than it should have been. The bigger portion of him began to take advantage of it, as the massive sand claw swung through the air toward Tobio, and the boy parried it to the side with a contemptuous ease.

Unfortunately for Gaara, he'd put too much momentum into that attempt to hit him, half-feral as the boy was. A poor choice, seeing as it opened him up for immediate reprisal. And Tobio, for all of his many faults, was never one to allow a weakness to go to waste.

One hand was all he needed to hold his blade, and force the massive, sand-covered mitt at bay, as he got in close again. While his other moved, as he put all of his immense strength into merely walloping his target. His fist was like lightning, bludgeoning the hell out of Gaara's surprised face as his strikes blurred, and Tobio casually advanced on the browbeaten redhead. Hit after hit, jostling his brain in his skull, relentless, as he held his blade at the ready.

For this, though? He didn't need it. Or maybe that was to point, as he bobbed and weaved through the reflexive swipes and swings of that massive arm, ducked and leapt over sand trying to capture him. It was a serendipitous moment where he felt everything coming right before it happened. Trajectories that blurred in his mind, mapped out with a contemptuous ease.

"hOw?!" Gaara howled, voice trembling, while Tobio felt the distant bloom of chakra above his head, in the stands. Things happening elsewhere while his full attention was on the beast before him.

Chiefly because now that he'd taken the time to figure out the boy's emotions, and gotten his own head screwed on straight…Gaara was an open book to the Five Poisons Technique. Before, Tobio had been leery of using it, if only because where Gaara's emotions ended and Shukaku's began hadn't been so clear in the preliminaries. It'd been a morass of emotions that were too fractious to be one united front. But in this, bijuu and container were united as one distinct entity, filled with incontinent fury.

For a normal person, this would have made them harder to read. Tobio's preternatural senses, though, were finely tuned to this kind of inhuman bloodlust, as he felt nearly every attack coming before it ever remotely drifted his way.

Gaara and Shukaku were not paragons of emotional control. And it was time to properly punish them for that failing.

"This is the best you have?" He asked, ducking under a swipe and then sweeping his legs to bring Gaara to the ground. Tobio then propelled himself up with both hands, flipping through the air as sand crashed to exactly his former position, missing him by a hair. "I can't believe I was scared of you!"

"SiLeNcE!"

With an absent thought, Tobio ignited an explosion of pointed, concentrated chakra at his feet, driving him toward toward Gaara like a bullet. He had the briefest moment to see his eyes flutter in surprise as Tobio blurred before him, and then gripped his hilt with both hands. Raising the blade up, for a moment it seemed as if he was going to go for a strike, leaving him open as a massive claw was reared back to strike...right as he instead chose to bring the pommel against the boy's skull. "GO TO SLEEP, YOU CRAZED INSOMNIAC!"

With all of his might, he slammed down, and Gaara was driven into the ground face first, unmoving and still as a plume of sand was kicked up into the air. Right when his Energy Sense flared with even more intensity, as there was a flurry of movement above. A fluttering of feathers that failed to actually capture him in the Genjutsu that they were meant to deliver, because he wasn't the target audience.

Oh yeah. There was a war about to be on. In the original story, Sasuke and Gaara's fight was interrupted by the Konoha Crush, but it had also perhaps not been as explosively pitched as his own. Originally, Konohagakure was a bit unprepared and caught with their pants down as their erstwhile allies and a new village both invaded at the same time. However, he wasn't sure what precisely the measures the village had taken to prepare for that betrayal this time around were.

Nor was he entirely sure what was up with Gaara, as he looked down at the unconscious, unmoving boy. At this moment he should be unleashing Shukaku, something that Tobio had admittedly forgotten in the heat of battle, but…he wasn't transforming. Like, at all. That wasn't what was supposed to happen, he was supposed to keep transforming in the forest when he fought Sasuke, and then eventually hand over control to Shukaku when he couldn't beat the Uchiha or Naruto.

However, that turn of events was quite fucked now. Now Gaara was knocked out at his feet, while the violence began in earnest with everyone over in the stands. It was, to put it simply, the beginning of a small-scale war, and unlike the more sanitized version of the anime, Tobio was pretty sure a forewarned Konoha was going to prove themselves even bloodier in the conflict than they were in canon.

Hmm.

Ah…

Actually, what did he do with a passed-out Jinchūriki? He...hadn't really thought this far ahead outside of just fighting Gaara until he won. That objective was completed soundly, even if it kind of left him in the lurch as to what to do.

There was also what to do with the presences Temari, Baki, and Kankuro he felt rushing forward toward him. Or the fighting that was breaking out around them, in the stands, where his team members were? Hell, there was even stuff happening even further above above, up where the Hokage had been seated with the disguised Orochimaru.

In the middle of this morass, his companion gave surprisingly sage advice, as loathe as he was to admit it. "This is such a clusterfuck, but you can't do everything. Pick a thing, and stick to it."

If there was a real tragedy, it was that he was genuinely not drunk enough to deal with this bullshit.