NOVEL SIMPLE Chapter 101: Jin and Ayanami
The four shinobi are at a standoff with neither side giving an inch; they silently face each other. It is so quiet, the only sound that can be heard is the remnants of the waterfall and river; the lake no longer exists. The Final Valley is no longer a valley, but a ravine with a small stream running through it.
Looks like Jin’s got Naruto covered… Ayanami takes note of the fact that the two Uzumakis haven’t said or done anything for a whole minute. And that just leaves Sasuke… Now… How am I going to--?!
Just as the kunoichi was planning her next move, the last Uchiha immediately breaks the stalemate; he reveals the summoning tag underneath his right wrist warmer, quickly summoning a pair of kunai and enhancing them with lightning chakra before throwing them at Jin, and then Sasuke makes a dash for Naruto with a Chidori in hand.
The ever-swift Ayanami produces a chakra arm and knocks away the kunai just as they were mere inches away from hitting the Onikage; she hurries and out speeds the Uchiha, cutting off the rogue ninja from his target and grabs him by his left arm; he struggles to break free, but the kunoichi keeps a firm grip.
“Stop, Sasuke. You’re done. It is over.” Ayanami speaks in a calm and clear manner while looking down on her adversary. “Like you said, you’re low on chakra; you can’t even maintain your Curse Ma--?!.”
To the kunoichi’s surprise, she feels herself getting weaker, her chakra is being drained; she quickly notices being sucked out from the hand holding on to the rogue ninja.
Battered and bruised, Sasuke stares at her coldly. “This is just one of the many abilities of the Rinnegan. As somebody who possesses the eyes of the Uchiha, my victory is inev–”
“You talk as if chakra absorption is a power unique only to the Rinnegan,” Ayanami sighs while shaking her head.
While the kunoichi deactivated her Chakra Mode to conserve her strength, the piercing gaze of her Tenseigan persists; her hand which holds onto Sasuke glows cyan-green as she takes back the chakra the rogue shinobi stole and then some; she looks down on the Uchiha with a look of disappointment.
“Shut up already… Just let me cut you down!” An enraged Sasuke snarls through gritted teeth; his composure finally leaves him along with a portion of his remaining chakra. “You’re just as irritating as Naruto! Why don’t you just finish me and be done with it already?!!”
“I’m not going to kill you…” Ayanami’s voice is calm and serene.
Eyes squinting, the skeptical Uchiha is taken aback. “What?”
“Make no mistake, I don’t like you, but Jin and Naruto want to keep a meaningful connection with you…” The kunoichi continues. “I’m not sparing you out of mercy, but in honor of my friends’ wishes.”
Sasuke can’t help, but scowl after hearing that one particular word, “friend.”
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“Lava Style: Massive Rasenshuriken!”
After accessing Son Gokū's power, Naruto creates a giant Rasenshuriken with a lava-infused nucleus, the heat of which is so intense it causes the blades themselves to emit large amounts of steam; he throws the jutsu with great ferocity at the dark figure.
“*Khhohhhhhh*… *Pwhhhhrrr*… *Khhohhhhhh*… *Pwhhhhrrr*…”
The masked figure holds up his free hand just as the hero’s jutsu is mere moments away from making direct contact. To his shock and bewilderment, Naruto’s eyes jaw drops as he witnesses his projectile immediately come completely to a halt; it mysteriously hovers in midair, still spinning.
“*Khhohhhhhh*… *Pwhhhhrrr*… Don’t be too proud of your strength, ‘Chosen One.’ Your sorcery is insignificant next to the power of the force. …*Khhohhhhhh*… *Pwhhhhrrr*…”
With a simple gesture, the dark lord effortlessly sends the attack right back at its user; it moves at a much greater speed than when Naruto initially threw it. Just before the Rasenshuriken can detonate, the hero is quickly grabbed by one of his clones and thrown to the wayside; the ensuing explosion destroys all of his clones and the subsequent shockwaves sends him flying; he finds it difficult to breathe as the intense heat dries his nasal passages, bronchial tubes, and lunges, reducing his oxygen levels.
I-I… I used up too much chakra… o-on that last jutsu…! Breathing heavily, Naruto weakly picks himself up, stumbling onto his feet. “*huff* Jin… *huff* c-c…come out and… *huff* …face me…!”
The hyperactive knucklehead’s challenge is met with pure, absolute silence; the dark figure who towers over Naruto fades to black, vanishing into thin air.
“One final question because we’re in New York and I know that you love ninjas: do you happen to be a fan of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?” The man with glasses on the far right asks. “And if so, which is your favorite?”
Back on his feet, the exhausted Naruto looks to his right and sees his cousin has suddenly appeared, standing right beside him; saying nothing, he silently glances at the hero before pointing forward. Confused, the leaf ninja peers ahead and spots a group of five sitting in chairs and discussing topics completely alien to him; the one in the center is a bespeckled woman while the other four are men.
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The interpreter responds with, “Yes, I do like them; I used to play the video games, in fact.”
Jin quietly observes their conversation while a deeply confused Naruto scans his surroundings. The Onikage brought the hero to a memory he has of a New York Comic-Con interview from 2015; he never physically attended the event, but he was able to view the livestreams and videos posted on YouTube.
“Hey, Naruto? Do you see the guy sitting on the right side of the woman?”
“*huff* …Y-Yeah, why? *huff*” The hero answers between breaths.
“That man is the very, VERY famous author, Masashi Kishimoto,” Jin calmly continues. “He is your creator, your god.”
Naruto furrows his brow as his head tilts to one side. “Wh-What’re you… *huff* …talking about…? *huff*”
“You, your friends and enemies, none of you are real. You never were real. You were all made up by some guy in Japan.” Jin looks down on the hero with a smug grin. The one thing fictitious characters have over real people is their indomitable will. The only way to truly beat Naruto is to BREAK him…
The reincarnation silently eyes Naruto, carefully observing his reactions; the hero takes several steps back; he grits his teeth and clenches his fists while glaring daggers at him. If Jin wasn’t so emotionally fatigued, his self-satisfied look would be genuine, he would even be laughing.
“Destiny? I’m not real…?! Are you freaking crazy?!” An outraged Naruto roars, adamantly denying such a preposterous claim. “Don’t you dare call me or my friends fake! EVERY choice I’ve made has been my own, I make my own destiny!!”
“I already asked you: didn’t you think it was odd that you just miraculously survived ordeals where your death was all, but assured?”
“Shut up! JUST SHUT UP! Keep your freaky ideas to yourself… I won’t believe it!!” The hero continues to reject such an assertion. “It’s a lie! It’s a lie!! It’s all a big…”
“Your mother, Kushina, told you the truth about what happened to both the Uzumaki clan and Hidden Eddy Village, didn’t she?!” Jin asks, raising his voice as he slowly grows annoyed.
“…!!!” Naruto just stares at the Onikage with a look of pure dread and horror; his eyes are as wide as saucers.
After taking a deep breath, Jin calmly continues. “And you recently learned all the tailed beasts’ real names in the jinchuriki’s mental plane. What about the time when Iruka promoted you to Genin after you used the Multi-Shadow Clone jutsu on Mizuki?”
To further prove his point, the Onikage goes through a list of events that only Naruto and a select few would know; he can see the realization as well as the despair steadily take root in the hero just by looking in his eyes.
“N-N… No… y-you’re just l… lying…” The Child of Prophecy stutters, still attempting to rebuff the argument.
“The whole idea behind Ninshū is that people can understand each other, read each other’s thoughts and emotions just from connecting their chakras, right?” Jin calmly queries; his grin gradually fades away. “So, tell me, ‘Hero:’ what is my chakra saying now?”
The Onikage can clearly see that his last question was the nail in the coffin for Naruto; the devastated hero lethargically takes another step back before stumbling, falling onto his behind; his sunken eyes are proof of his submergence into soul-sucking depression upon realizing the truth behind Jin’s words.
“Stop whining and complaining or I’ll take over your body for good, dammit!!” A disembodied, monstrous voice says.
Jesus Christ… What is it now?! Jin hangs his head, massaging his temples.
Kurama emerges, erupting from the ground behind Naruto; he towers over the two shinobi with his fangs bared; his many bristling tails steeply slope upwards, and his ears are flattened to the side of his head.
“Stop listening to his poison,” Kurama orders his jinchuriki with a thundering voice. “If you give up, you’re not going back on your word, you’re abandoning your comrades and what they stood for!”
Jin’s jaw drops as he watches Naruto slowly get back on his feet; he clenches his fists and stares down the Onikage with a renewed flame in his eyes.
All the Onikage can do is facepalm with immense exasperation. Of course, Naruto would fucking get back up…! The damn narrative won’t allow otherwise. Hey, wait…? …The narrative? The narrative!
Jin’s eyes grow wide the moment he reaches an epiphany; he is not fighting Naruto, but the plot itself, the very story itself. The narrative is trying to reclaim control over the situation once more.
“Yeah… Even if what you say is the truth…” Naruto says, definitely pointing at his foe. “My feelings, my friends, THEIR feelings… THEY’RE ALL REAL TO ME!! I’m Naruto Uzumaki, a Leaf Ninja and I'm gonna be Hokage! That’s my dream, you idiot!”
“I am Jin Yamanaka Uzumaki, Snake Sage of Ryūchi Cave, the 2nd Sage of Six Paths, and (soon-to-be) the Onikage of the Hidden Storm Village. And before me you are nothing.”
In that moment, Jin suddenly transforms into a titan, one so colossal in size that it makes even the Ten-Tails; his titan form is comprised of every character in fiction that Jin even remotely likes. There are various heroes, antiheroes, and villains from DC, Marvel, & Image, mobile suits, numerous robots in disguise, wizards, a plethora of video game characters, and many more; the characters swarm, moving as a unit just as the Siafu in the Crystal Skull film.
“Neither one of you can even hope to beat me. Stand down!” The towering titan cracks his knuckles while looking down on the two.
“You’re not fighting one of us,” Naruto says without a hint of hesitation in his voice. “You’re fighting ALL of us!”
Upon uttering those words, the other eight remaining tailed beasts suddenly appear out of nowhere, surrounding both the hero and demon fox; they all stand at the ready, poised to strike.
Jin ominously snaps his fingers, sneering, “Heh… As you wish. Later!”
A massive, swirling black hole appears behind the hero and tailed beasts and pulls at them with its immense gravity. The first to be sucked in is the Seven-Tails, Chōmei; he is stretched to the point of spaghettification the very instant he makes contact with the event horizon before being completely absorbed in his entirety.
The Onikage watches with satisfaction as the other tailed beasts are inhaled into the gravitational abyss one-by-one; his smug grin slowly returns when he sees Naruto slowly being drawn in.
“Bye-bye, flunky!” Jin pompously waves farewell to the hero.
The black hole suddenly expands in size, instantly engulfing Naruto in its event horizon; he is stretched for the briefest of moments before disappearing into the void.
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“Aaargh!” A shocked Naruto gasps.
The battle of minds ends with the two Uzumakis returning to the physical plain with Jin’s last attack knocking Naruto flat on his back, spread-eagled. Quick to take advantage of the situation, the Onikage immediately jumps on top of Naruto with his knees holding down the hero’s arms.
With both fists raised, Jin proceeds to pummeling the hyperactive knucklehead into submission with each punch drawing more and more blood as the beating continues; he knocks out one of Naruto’s molars.
“Submit now, and the pain stops.” The Onikage says, continuing his onslaught with a deadpan expression.
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“*YAWN*” Waking up, the yawning Rito’s eyes slowly creep open.
“Welcome back to the land of the living, Sleepyhead!” An excited voice greets him.
The young genius scans his surroundings and finds himself with Mileena and Mecha-Naruto; the symbiote is piggybacking him while the robot continues to cradle Echo’s corpse and Kakashi can be seen with Sakura’s body about a dozen meters away. The sun can be seen steadily sinking into the horizon.
“Hey, where’s Jin and Ayanami?” A puzzled Rito asks while rubbing his eyes, noticing their absence.
Mileena nonchalantly answers with, “Oh, they left with Sasuke and Naruto to settle some… unresolved issues.”
“What…?”
“THE MASTERS, JIN AND AYANAMI, WERE DISPLEASED BY THE MEATBAGS’ DESIRE TO CONTINUE THE CONFLICT,” The mechanical duplicate elaborates in his usual flat, monotone voice. “SO, THEY LEFT TO MAKE ADJUSTMENTS TO THEIR PROGRAMMING.”
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From dawn till dusk, the battle continues to rage on, but only because Jin and Ayanami allow it; they repeatedly, with minimal effort, knock down Naruto and Sasuke who get back up only to be made to eat dirt and water once more; the co-protagonists stubbornly continue to rise to their feet, determined to prolong this fool’s errand in vain hope of victory.
“I grow weary of this little scrap--if you can even call it that… let’s end this farce!” Jin declares, punching his cousin into the cliff side.
The weakened hero counters by throwing a haymaker, but the Onikage casually diverts the punch away. Capitalizing on the opening, Jin swiftly grabs Naruto by his face and bashes his head against the wall before throwing him to the far side of the wasteland.
Ayanami out maneuvers and finesses Sasuke, kicking him away. Coincidentally, he crashes into the Child of Prophecy; both ninjas are on their last legs.
“First, it was Naruto, and then Jin…” The deeply irritated Uchiha growls as he stumbles back onto his feet, swaying back and forth. “And now you, Ayanami…! Why do you keep doing this?! Just give up and let me CUT YOU ALL DOWN ALREADY!!”
“Because… it… it’s in my interest to crush the both of you.” Jin says, focusing chakra into his right-hand; he finds himself cringing at what he’s about to say. “Not only do I have my own ambitions to fulfill, I-I… I would like to be your friend.”
Hearing that word again, Sasuke’s eyes widen for less than a picosecond, he takes a deep breath and forms a Chidori; powerful sparks of electricity jet out as he infuses the jutsu with more and more of his chakra.
“Hey, Ayanami? How about another collaboration?” The Onikage asks while forming a Rasengan.
The kunoichi gives him a confident grin. “Alright, let’s end this with a bang.”
Ayanami has her left-hand hover over Jin’s jutsu as she adds her own chakra to it. The two reincarnations infuse the spiraling ball of chakra with all five of the basic chakra natures; it rapidly cycles through a menagerie of hues and tints before mystically emitting a whole rainbow of colors. Their collaboration ninjutsu shines brightly like the sun.
Seeing that everyone is planning to settle this with one final attack, Naruto focuses chakra into his right hand and forms a Wind Style: Rasengan; his jutsu resembles his Rasenshuriken only it is much smaller in scale.
“I’m only going to help this one time.” Sasuke says to everyone’s surprise.
Naruto looks at him with shock before excitedly shouting, “…Yeah!”
Sasuke adds his jutsu to Naruto’s, forming the Wind and Lightning Style: Hurricane Lightning; their collaborative jutsu sends out ripples in the air and water as its chaotic core stabilizes.
The air grows still as both sides prepare themselves for what is about to happen; the quartet of ninja are keenly aware that this next clash will be the true end; it is all or nothing. Jin and Ayanami break the stalemate and charge forward with Sasuke and Naruto mirroring them; neither side will back down.
““NINJA ART: RAINBOW RASENGAN!!”” Jin and Ayanami yell in unison, bracing themselves as they plow their collaboration forward.
The duos’ opposing jutsus collide, clashing violently; their collision sends out powerful waves of chakra that engulf their immediate vicinity, destroying the entire area. The friends struggle to keep their hands steady as they try to gain ground. Sparks haphazardly jet out from the point of impact as the rivaling sides smash their attacks more and more into each other.
Standing side-by-side, Jin and Ayanami each take a step forward, pushing Sasuke and Naruto back; they both try their best to stand their ground, but to no avail; they are too injured and low on chakra to do anything. The rainbow chakra being emitted from Jin and Ayanami’s cooperation ninjutsu surrounds the two in the form of a spiral, resembling a drill; not only does it shield them, it also further enhances their jutsu.
“I’ll free you from the chains of your past.” The Onikage declares with conviction for the first time ever.
The determined Leaf Kunoichi proclaims, “I will create a better future for everyone!”
Jin and Ayanami slowly walk forward, pushing their favorite characters back; they gradually gain more and more ground. The awed Naruto and Sasuke have no choice but to taste the rainbow; with one last thrust the two friends overtake and overpower their respective heroes, shattering their collaborative jutsu and blasting them away with a brilliant and massive explosion of colors.