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Post by Steggo on Jan 20, 2018 1:47:07 GMT
"Now the key is to keep your concentration at all times," Steggo explained patiently, controlling a gentle flow of chakra between his palms. He kept his hands a foot apart, moving them from side to side and rotating them so that his small trail of earth drew patterns in the air, small swirls and loops. A simple training exercise for those familiar with their works, but his students were far from a level to do much more than this, and it was clearly beyond one or two of them.
His students were a small lot, barely a handful of urchins and orphans, most scrawny and with that hollowness a child forms inside them when their innocence has been snatched away by tragedy. Still, all were clean and well-fed, if most had had their growth stunted by having been starving before being found by the village. Hardly a village at all yet, still barely a dozen small buildings, clustered in a small clearing in the middle of a thick forest, with a few trees remaining between the few houses and training buildings and workshops. But all great things begin with humility, and there was little more humble than this place.
One of the students lost her flows, the trail of water she'd been controlling breaking apart and splashing to the ground loudly. None of the other children raised a titter about it, though; this was advanced stuff to their minds, and their eyes still shone with wonder at the powers they were taking the first steps to commanding. They had seen some of the wonders their masters could perform, and though each had different reasons, they had resolved themselves to learn whatever they could. An orphan himself, and one who'd given himself a silly name in order to stand out from other street children, Steggo couldn't help but like them.
"Again," he said simply to the girl, and she shook her hands to free them of water droplets, then began concentrating on a small flask of water open at her feet. She lifted a tiny thread of liquid from the flask and began again, making small movements and patterns as best she could.
The peaceful lesson was shattered by a sudden explosion to the north, and Steggo immediately raised his right arm, the twisting red spiral covering it shining as he focused chakra into his fist. The children knew at once what to do with this signal, and scattered themselves, leaping into the trees and away from the direction of the blast, the oldest among them guiding separate groups to different safe spots further out from the houses. In the event of attack, their small village would be a target, but the secret bunkers Steggo had built were sturdy enough to withstand almost anything, and the children knew to be away to those safe spots without question.
Steggo darted forwards, ducking through the thick foliage with practised ease from this last year of living here, and soon came upon the source of the explosion. A smoking crater stood twenty feet deep and thirty feet wide, several trees fallen around its edges and more collapsed inside the hole.
"Another failure?" Steggo asked down into the pit grimly. "How many is that now, seven? Thought that was our lucky number."
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Post by Kohga on Jan 20, 2018 3:08:09 GMT
About a Km outside of the small but growing Village of Konoha, there was a nondescript house. The house was tucked inside a thicker part of the forest, so much so that edges of the house but up against the trees, light barely reached the floor, and the mulch was knee high for a grown man. It smelled damp and somewhat moldy, no doubt from the wild mushrooms that could be found in the area. The building was placed here for safety purposes. Not just for the owner's, but for whoever managed to stumble upon it. From the outside, it appeared as normal as any house could. It had wooden panels on the walls, and clay shingles on the roof. A single door for the entrance, that had elaborate etchings. It also had a single window just to the left of the door, with its curtains drawn. On the inside, however, it did not have the home-y feel that the outside would lead you to believe. Inside had much the same smells as the forest surrounding it did, damp and musty. The walls were a foot thick of hard stone, with a inch of solid steel coating them. Almost no light shone in through the edges of the curtain that covered the front window, the only light that was being provided was from a single candle that burned on a lone table in the center of the room. From there one could see the entire room. Which was to say that one could see that the room was void of anything, save the table and candle. With a trained eye, and some information, the door would appear to have a faint blue wisps about it. Those were the runes set to trigger if anyone but the two who gave their chakra to create it entered the house, and met their untimely demise.
The floor just beyond the coffee table had an all but invisible ring about it. This was the threshold to the cellar below. 20ft below the floor above was a laboratory, built in much the same way that the house above was. Thick, cold walls encapsulated metal tables which had pages of texts and notes. This laboratory's footprint smaller than that of the house above, but not by much. The research being conducted here did not require a massive layout, but rather, a secure and isolated location. In here the Hokage was conducting experiments on the stone he and his ally had procured. The Soul Stone of the Nanabi: Chomei. It was after their first experiment, and first failure, that the two men decided on the aforementioned precautions. A hole 50 feet wide by 10 feet deep was created by an abrupt explosion, sending both Kohga and Steggo flying into the trees, and badly injuring some of the nearby villagers.
In the Basement Kohga was trying to learn more about the bijuu stone, namely its qualities for regeneration, but also its power for destruction. The hokage had seen its regenerative power first hand, it taken the broken Steggo and created a new jaw for him, and seemingly restored the rest of his body as well. The stone reacted well to Raiton, and when placed on the injured, would restore them. Any other seemed to 'upset' the stone and less than desired out comes would arise. Leading them back to building another base. It was Kohga's last experiment that gave any hope of even figuring out the stones qualities, that is, right before it tried to kill him. Again. Kohga's arm, the arm of retention, was built specifically for absorbing and redirecting bijuu chakra. It took him an embarrassingly long time to make the connection: what if he used it to draw out the power of the stone?
Kohga looked at his metal arm, flexing his hand in and out a couple times. It was so quiet in the room that you could almost hear the chakra lubricating the joints. The a series of smacks would ring out, "Yosh! No time like the present." Kohga was amping himself up. Six times before this stone had tried to end his life, never really getting close to succeeding, but its still worrisome. He knelt in front of the metal table, pausing for a moment to look and the brilliant green gem, before getting back to the task at hand. He focused chakra into his finger and drew several runes on the floor. These were runes that Steggo had taught him, to teleport him out of the house if the experiment took a turn for the worst. He remembered, too, to grab all the notes from previous experiments. He won't make that mistake again, several months of work gone in a flash.
With all his items gathered, Kohga took his spot on the rune and grabbed the stone. The metal fingers scraped across the like table, screeching through the tired halls. First, Kohga would start to absorb nature energy into his arm. Once it was stable, he would coat the stone with it. The stone reacted the same way as it had many times before, it began to pulse ever so slightly and a brilliant emerald glow would eminate from it. "So far so good." he spoke tentatively. With his fist tight around the stone, Kohga would flood the nature energy with raiton chakra. This was the dangerous part, if the mixture wasn't an even split there would be drastically different outcomes. Too much nature energy, and the stone would reject the raiton and become useless for an incalculable amount of time. Too much raiton, and it would level the surrounding area.
Success. Kohga for the first time had managed a perfect split, and the stone began to grow the slightest bit. Where it was just under an inch before, it was now almost one and a half inches. Kohga was elated, this was their first victory since learning of the stone. He was sure that Steggo would be delighted too, since he risked life and limb to save it. Kohga felt that he couldn't stop there, what if the stone lay dormant after this development, how much time would they lose? The Hokage decided that it was time to try out his next experiment, sucking power from the stone into his arm. A small cavity opened in the palm of his automail arm, and the stone's edge slipped beyond it's opening. From here Kohga activated its absorption ability. The stone began to shake violently in his hand, rattling it back and forth. Over the sound of metal clanging a deep hum could be heard, then in an instant, a freakish scream was heard. Then, nothing.
Kohga woke up outside, dizzy and nearly nauseous. That teleport rune he drawn certainly wasn't perfect. When the man was able to see clearly, he noticed that the house had not only been leveled, but obliterated. In its stead, a crater. "Fuck." The rune doesn't take the stone with him, since it is the epicenter of the explosion, but because it explodes on all sides equally, it never goes far. He slid down the walls of the crater and began to search by sticking his non metallic arm into the earth and funneling his doton chakra into the surrounding area. The world below would begin to bubble and toss up all stones and rocks, making the search quite easy. In a matter of minutes, the stone was found. It had retained its size. Kohga's excitement was so high, that he didn’t notice the scorch marks on his metal arm, or that it had blown his sleeve off passed the shoulder revealing the burns he had just received.
Then, a voice, His friend Steggo was standing at the edge of the crater.
"Far from it, actually. Seems she gave us a break this time." Kohga responded with glee, before tossing the Soul Stone up to his ally. "Notice anything different about it?"
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Post by Steggo on Jan 20, 2018 22:54:18 GMT
Steggo caught the thrown stone easily with his left hand, and held it up to catch the sunlight. It shone with a deep green glare, like a thousand shades of the colour all hiding within that tiny rock. No, not 'tiny' anymore, just 'very small'. He held it higher, concentrating on the light shining through the stone, on how it moved as he turned it.
"It's definitely bigger," he said slowly. "That's pretty impressive, considering it's taken us a whole year to make the blasted thing do anything, after all! But is it just me or does it suddenly feel..." He faltered, struggling for the right word. 'Hollow' wasn't quite it. The light moved as though through a prism, like there was a space inside the stone, but that space wasn't empty, it was full, but full of something that didn't alter how the light moved? That made no sense, and besides which the thing was solid as anything. They'd tried any number of ways to damage the thing, risking destroying it through frustration at getting no reaction from the shiny green pebble, but nothing had scratched it or taken off each the smallest chip.
Steggo grimaced, hoping his face conveyed his confusion at what was happening to the stone since his words couldn't sum it up for him. He raised his right hand, tempted to try that again. Those deep red splashes spiralling round and round his fingers, hand, up his wrist and right up the length of his arm, he'd gained those desperately trying to reach the stone as they'd plummeted together from the great height the Chomei had been at when it died. A stupid thing, really, but he'd felt such great sorrow at the creature's death, at his part in causing it, that he'd been desperate, almost mad with it, to save even the tiniest fragment of what had once been such a marvel of the world. The marks on his arm were where his flesh had burned, searing in the heat of chakra blazing from the huge insect's husk as it burned down into just this tiny stone. Its power had healed the rest of his body, even the mess of his jaw which the finest medical shinobi had thought impossible to heal. But it had left him these marks, emblazoned crimson across his arm, and whenever he touched the stone with that hand...
He shied away, stuffing his right hand into a pocket and flicking the stone up to sparkle in the sunshine, then catching it again, still with his left hand. Safer that way.
"You scared the kids, y'know," he said nonchalantly, waiting for Kohga to clamber out of the crater. "And looks like you've buggered our lab again. I swear we make that thing a little smaller every time we rebuild it." Absently, he channelled the tiniest amount of Lightning chakra into the outside of the stone, and it instantly went warm in his palm, minute sparks escaping between his fingers. I'm going to figure out how to save you, he thought to himself. Just wait for me, and I swear you'll fly again.
At that thought, there was a tiny hum from the stone, almost a buzz. Steggo frowned down at it again, still sparking quietly in his clenched fist. Couldn't be, he told himself. Fool old man.
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Post by Kohga on Jan 20, 2018 23:58:37 GMT
Kohga watched as his friend handled the stone, seemingly absent minded, but rather despondent. He knew that Steggo felt attached to the stone, so much so that he nearly died trying to save it. "I only managed by balancing a perfect mixture of raiton chakra and nature energy. I have a feeling that you'd be better off in that department, next time." Kohga said while scratching his head. "I'm not sure what you're feeling, but I felt one hell of a blast. Hahaha." In reality Kohga's body was throbbing. The rune had to be triggered, which means it had to feel and explosion, which meant Kohga took some of the blast.
Steggo said that Kohga had frightened some of the students, not surprising. The shockwave must be a traumatic reminder of what used to be normal. "Ahh, Damn. Ill make sure to talk to them, and try to ease their minds. Little scamps must have been white as a ghost before you got here." He looked into the pit that was a lab, "Yup. But you know, that’s the smallest crater yet, and the most success." Kohga motioned his arms like a scale and stuck his bottom lip out comically. The gesture was lost on Steggo, though, he seemed lost in thought. Brow furrowed and all. "You know, you're gonna get wrinkles early if you keep that up."
Kohga began to walk off towards the village, "There is one more thing. It's the reason that the basement exploded, actually." He flicked a little compartment on his automail arm to reveal a gauge. The gauge shimmered a dull green up to the 1/8th line. "I managed to extract some energy from Chomei's Spirit." Kohga turned to Steggo, somewhat wary of how he would react to the news.
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Post by Steggo on Jan 21, 2018 0:11:36 GMT
"I don't even know how old I am anymore," Steggo replied quietly to Kohga's joke. He really did have no idea. He'd joined Sunagakure as a boy, trained there for a few years, a few more with Mitori, then at least a couple buried alive and his rehabilitation from that. He smiled at that, marvelling at being able to do so without a hint of pain for the first time in years. Yes, even that had been years ago now, so how old even was he anymore? He shook his head as if to dislodge the thought. Age didn't matter, his chakra fuelled his body to the prime of strength, his frame lithe and powerful, his mind sharp as he'd ever needed it. "Does anyone even keep track of such a thing?"
Steggo followed his friend, still holding the stone firmly in his fist, when those words tumbled from Kohga's mouth, and Steggo stopped dead.
"You did what?" he whispered, eyes wide with shock, hardly able to believe it. Everything they'd been working on, everything they'd tried, all those months of toil and thought and experimentation, and he had taken its energy..?
"What exactly is this stone to you, Kohga-kun?" he asked quietly, still standing stock still. There was no path, both of them having carefully left no trail between the village and their lab for fear of the children following them and being in danger. The ground was loamy, soft and springy and covered in a thick layer of leaves. The trees were thick all around them, some strong, bendy saplings, others thick, ancient monsters. "What exactly is it you think we've been trying to achieve for an entire year?"
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Post by Kohga on Jan 21, 2018 1:07:18 GMT
"I guess it depends on the situation. After I left Suna I stopped keeping track. I have no idea how long I trained with the elder dragon. So I'd guess I'm about 20 now?" It really was a strange thing to think about. The world had been in such turmoil that age didn’t matter. Mirage and Tales killed children and elders alike. Steggo look somewhat appalled at Kohga's borrowing Chomei's power. Understandably so, Steggo seemed to be growing softer in his years. "The stone is a chance." A simple yet powerful statement, filled with the hopes of the future.
"This stone, is our chance to end Konoha's - no, the shinobi world's strife with those men who stripped it of life. What we have been doing is learning. That stone has limitless potential. " Kohga took several steps toward the man who stood still as stone, "With it, our comrades won't perish. With it, our enemies will. Those children and villagers we have taken under our care won't fear Mirage. Eclipse, " His eyes narrowed and brows shifted downwards, " Tales. I am aware of your connection to the stone, Steggo-kun, " Kohga wasn't normally one for honorifics, but if someone who is held as highly is Steggo Gunsotsu uses one, you return the favor, "But there is no telling if Chomei will ever be Chomei again. Today was one small victory in a string of failures. We should take what we can get and try to better our position in the world."
Kohga's monologue was short, but he meant every word. The stone had the potential to become a devastating weapon, or a miracle worker in the form of rapid regeneration. The Hokage would use it in whichever way Konoha needed it most.
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Post by Steggo on Jan 21, 2018 1:34:08 GMT
Steggo's eyes narrowed as he focused his attention on Kohga, listening to every word and feeling his anger begin to build. These had been hard times, certainly, but to see things in such colours, so bleak and pale a view of life, saddened and angered Steggo at the same time.
"You really think that's all this stone is?" he asked, continuing to speak in that soft, dangerous voice. He hadn't decided yet what he was going to do if words didn't manage to settle this point, but at the moment he would use every word he could summon to explain to the younger man. Age meant nothing of seniority between them, but similarly neither did Kohga's self-given title as Hokage. They'd settle this with words or they'd settle it another way if they had to.
"Those children aren't the only ones we've taken under our care, Kohga. This whole blighted world is in our care. Between us we ended one of the greatest calamities the world has ever known, do you really think we should be fearful of men? Tales, I've bested time and again. The boy had a good heart, once, but I saw him in the full throes of his madness and still brought him back to sanity without having to sacrifice a single life, even his. You really think I stand afraid of men? I trained my whole life set on the goal of wrestling far greater powers than mere men, I'll not quake now at the thought of one coming into my home, not while I stand guard over it." Tales had destroyed his Kumogakure, that much was true, but the fact of it had been he hadn't done so while Steggo was there. He hadn't killed anyone under Steggo's care, and he hadn't damaged one rock Steggo had seen fit to safeguard.
"No, what I fear is far more than men. What I fear is the powers of the world, these forces of nature, these calamities in giant form, chained and enslaved by weak men driven mad by the power at their disposal. The solution to that, I thought, was to hunt them, extinguish them, so that they could never be used again, but I was missing the key point.
"These aren't weapons. Dammit, man, they aren't tools and they aren't batteries and they aren't even monsters. They're thinking, living creatures. They're drunk on their own power, minds clouded and trapped within their own bodies. At the end, I think Chomei saved me. I think it saw how tired I was from our fight and how high I was and it felt I would die clinging to its corpse. I think it gave itself to us as this stone to save us, I think it saw in us the chance to be better men than those who've come before us and I think it sacrificed itself to ensure we could walk that path and change this world forever.
"More than that, though," he continued, finally pausing for breath, his anger evident on his face now, his breath catching and his shoulders shaking from the contained fury at his friend's short-sightedness. "More than all of that, I think that this life is far too precious to be wasted on simplicities like fuelling that little tin limb of yours. I think that if you want to use this stone as nothing more than a weapon that you're going to have to prise it from my cold dead fingers. And I think there isn't a man alive who could manage to do that, so I think you'd better come up with a better plan than that."
Steggo stood, staring at his friend, deep shadows having appeared under his eyes. He couldn't have reached thirty yet, he was sure, but a small inkling made him wonder if, where it mattered, he hadn't become a whole lot older in these last few years. He remembered the little boy standing in rags, swearing at a training instructor and snapping at shadows, determined to find an enemy under every rock and to beat every one. He remembered the young hero, praised and raised beyond his tiny maturity, growing such arrogance and lashing out with it at all who dared face him. He remembered the soldier, drafted into place and forged into something more than he had been, driven at knife-point, it had seemed, to becoming something others could use for the benefit of all. He remembered the warrior, standing proud and strong, and he remembered the cripple, shaking and alone, agony wracking his body with his own shrieks of pain.
Most of all, though, he remembered the king of an empty kingdom. The man standing high on a mountain peak looking out over deserted homes, unused training grounds, a school with no children in it. He remembered the pointlessness of that man and he remembered how all that he had suffered and fought had lead ultimately to a complete waste of time. The king of the ashes stands in a burned kingdom. They could do more than that, could raise more than that and could create more than that.
"With our strength already there is no one left to go to war with. The greatest weapon in the world is pointless if there is no need for it. We already possess greater weapons than any enemy could hope to withstand, because we possess our own two selves, can't you see that? This stone, though? This stone represents far more than just the force to blast another crater in the earth, and far more hope than just ridding an idiot of the wounds he earned himself. Dream bigger than that with me, Kohga."
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Post by Kohga on Jan 22, 2018 1:02:27 GMT
Steggo's words were spoken with the full force of his heart, and seemed to resonate within Kohga. True, they had stopped one of the world's great disasters together, and that is a feat no man has been able to accomplish. Still, the fear of losing all they had built was strong in Kohga's mind. "Koga, Tales, and Several other High level shinobi fought against Mirage and were not able to save Konoha." His hands clenched, the metal arm clanged softly. "You weren't there. Your power sounds through the world and is regarded as legendary, but I fear even that might not be enough to save OUR village. You said it yourself, you had bested Tales-sama time and time again. Which means that he was already weaker than you." Kohga's temper flared to match the legends. "Then how was it that a weaker man than you, took on both you and Koga, leveled a village, and took so many lives?" His words weren't meant to hurt Steggo, but open his eyes. "Tales was the weakest of them, Mirage and Eclipse are many times stronger than he was. I saw the carnage first hand, and was nearly killed in the onslaught. " The two men's auras were pratically a force now, pressing against one another, slightly disturbing the leaves around them. "These are not men." Kohga's words were true, but even he had no idea how accurate they were. Mirage was a similar entity to any of the tailed beasts. A mass of chakra formed into a macabre visage hellbent on destruction. "No one won that fight, they left. Two kage barely even scratched him." Kohga watched his friend's anger build, even to the point where he threatened death to save the stone from Kohga. That was enough for Kohga. "You're too removed from this, you've spent too long at the top and it's clouded your vision. These dreams are just that until we, together, stop Mirage and his plots." Kohga raised his automail to the sky, palm out-stretched, and fired off the stored bijuu energy into the sky. The laser shone so bright that for a moment it erased all color, there was only black and white. The beam of pure energy blew holes in the clouds above and traveled out of eye shot, and color returned to the world around them. "The stone and it's energies, hold on to them for now. I don't want to make an enemy out of you Steggo. " Kohga stood no more than a foot from Steggo now. "You and I will create a safe world, of that I have no doubt." His anger retreated, for Steggo's words were hopeful, and pure. "There are a great many questions that surround the stone, and we still have not a single answer. Let's continue researching it, with no views of it as a weapon. BUT, if the need arise's when we've exhausted our strengths and on the verge of death, I need you to allow me use it as one." Kohga's eyes were sympathetic to his friends feelings, Steggo had just poured his heart out to his comrade. Kohga put his god given hand on the legends shoulder, as a sign of the humanity still left in him. "Until that time, you have my word that I will not pursue weaponizing the stone, and it will be treated as a member of the Village. You're ally, Chomei." Kohga hoped that his words and shows of sympathy would disarm his friend, because he really did not want to fight. It wasn't that Kohga thought he would lose in a battle of strength, but that was a fight no one would win.
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Post by Steggo on Jan 22, 2018 23:29:19 GMT
"When they attacked, I wasn't there," Steggo said ruefully. "They never dared strike at any place I was, nor to face me in combat. But any who do come now, Kohga, they will face me, and they will be destroyed by me. If you think you need a weapon to guard what we are building, you don't need the Chomei to do that." Stepping away angrily, Steggo formed chakra into the ground around him, ripping up great chunks of earth that compacted into the hardest stone, forming a complex pattern of plates and parts which attached themselves to his body as he walked away. Armour across his chest and shoulders, heavy claws at his feet and hands, and an enormous tail, thick as his chest and with four vicious spikes, two feet long apiece, extending from the end of it. His namesake, the Steggo Tail, had become a fearsome thing to behold, and combined with his Perfect Tower defensive technique, Steggo had stood against the mightiest forces in the world and taken anything they could throw at him.
"I'm already all the Tailed Beast you need," he growled angrily.
Suddenly there was a glaring red light from the marks around Steggo's right arm. In forming the handseals to activate his techniques, he'd unthinkingly passed the Soul Stone from his safe left hand, to his right. The reaction had paused a moment but now it blazed, feeling like his very chakra was on fire. His entire body, as well as his stone tail and plates, began to radiate chakra, a visible aura of sheer power shining brightest white all around him, making Steggo glow with energy even as his arm howled with pain, shooting through his every fibre.
Agonised, he released the stone, letting it drop into the leaves at his feet, and the effect stopped at once. Breathing hard, Steggo left his stone techniques collapse into soft soil, which instantly fell to the ground around him. All except the hefty tail, which he kept, and twitched thoughtfully. An old habit from the first years after his injury, when he'd become unable to deactivate the tail technique. Steggo raised his right hand, and stared at a tiny spot of blood in the very middle of his palm, where something had suddenly stabbed him.
"I think this may be something..." he whispered, not daring to hope. He dropped to a crouch and fished in the pile of leaves, pulling out the Soul Stone. Sure enough, it had changed shape again. Where before it had been a smooth oval shape, now there was a sharp spike jutting up right in the middle of its broader side, the tip showing his blood where it had stabbed him. As he held it up with his left hand, careful to avoid a repeat of that uncontrolled experiment, that blood seemed to almost soak into the stone, disappearing within it, and the colour changed ever-so-slightly.
"Tell me I'm wrong," he said, handing the stone back to Kohga. "But is it just me or has it gotten darker in the middle there?"
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Post by Kohga on Jan 23, 2018 0:19:17 GMT
Kohga stood still as Steggo walked away from him, shifting and tearing the ground from around them in violent fashion to create his patented tail and armor. It was always a sight to behold, his transformation. Kohga did hope that he never stood across enemy lines from the man. "We are in this together, Steggo. They will stand against us both." Suddenly, a blaring red light shone from the inside of the newly adorned armor, seeping through the cracks and spilling out into the air around them. Then, his armor began to glow white, and became brighter and brighter. Easily matching the brightness of the laser Kohga had just fired off. Kohga ducked his head in to his shawl, the light was even bright through it. Just as quickly as it materialized, the aura and armor crumbled away into the earth around them, save the tail. What was a Steggo without it, after all. Kohga's eyes were still adjusting from the seering light, and he missed the stone being dropped, but saw Steggo on the verge of collapse and rushed to his side to pick him up if needed. It was then he spotted the blood in the palm of Steggo, "What.." the word crept passed his lips. Perhaps the stone reacted to the marks?
He watched as his knackered man rooted through the underbrush in search of the stone, and observed that he chose the opposite hand from the one that was pricked. Kohga followed suit, taking the stone with his non-metallic hand. There had been enough explosions for one day. "No, that is definitely something." He looked intensely at the stone. Twice in a single day they had made significant strides forward in understanding the stone- or at least altering its state. A small, but immensly sharp horn was seen jutting from it, and it had indeed gotten a shade or two darker. "I wonder what that mark on your arm truly is. What happened just now, do you remember?" Kohga was curious to hear the answer to that question.
His mind began to race, the two men had only thought about the mark being a burn from the rapid decent and turmoil of their fight with Chomei. What else could it be?
"Do you think the Stone reacted this way from our argument, and could sense your feelings?" It seemed somewhat far-fetched, but no one had ever heard of a Tailed Beast becoming a stone before now either. It seems that all the hard work has begun to pay off.
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Post by Steggo on Jan 23, 2018 0:29:36 GMT
"I don't know," Steggo said, looking at the red spiralling marks up the length of his right arm. They were most concentrated around his hand, spreading out more and more as they trailed up his arm, like the smoke behind a thrown fireball. "Whenever I touch the stone with this hand, though, it burns. If I hold chakra while doing so, it blazes, agony, like my chakra points are trying to burn their way out of my body. Light, how it hurts." He grinned at that, staring up at the sky. Once he'd feared his never know another day without pain, yet here he had a concrete way to find it when he needed it. If only he understood the full mystery of those marks.
"It definitely responds to different chakras, and it seems like your first success has started something. If we can keep making the stone change, we might see greater results still. I don't think that stone is dead, Kohga, I think there's something in there yet if we can help it break free, and figuring out the confines of the stone may just be the key to that."
Growling under his breath, Steggo swung his tail in the air behind him, enjoying the feeling of having that strength at his back. Knowing that anyone sneaking behind you would receive a brutal end was a great comfort in this world, sometimes.
"While we're on the subject of weird arms, though, what's up with yours? You think you could use that insane laser in actual combat if you filled the thing with enough energy? And is a Tailed Beast really the only source you can find for that energy?"
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Post by Kohga on Jan 23, 2018 1:01:22 GMT
"I see, so that reaction was not without it's own draw backs. This stone really is something else." He listened closely to what Steggo was saying, maybe somewhere in his words they could find the answers. "In any case, your 'experiment,' can be deemed much more of a success. First, it didn't try to kill you." Kohga peered around the side of the tailed man, "See the crater? Second, you managed to further alter the stone. It even resembles something Chomei could have looked like. The small head of a dangerous beetle." Kohga rubbed his temple and grimaced slightly, completely ignoring the loud swishes of the tail dragging through the air, "There is so much new information, and we have no real answers. Now, however, it can't help but think you've stumbled upon some truth to the stone. Just like matter - There is no way to destroy chakra. As for Chomei continuing to live in a infant stage embedded in the stone, that is yet to be seen."
Steggo's query of his arm caused Kohga to look at it sternly. True his arm was special, but it only had one purpose, and one or two unintended uses. "I'd like to think I could, but that’s the problem. It can only be filled with Bijuu chakra, at least I think. It was constructed to absorb immense amounts of chakra, and has to open a flood gate to begin filling. Not much else in this world can compare to the sheer density and power of a tailed beast. I would think, however, that it could suck the power from a Jinchuriki. In fact, that was one of the main purposes in developing this mad scientist's dream." He was of course referring to Tales. The arm was developed specifically to combat Jinchuriki. "I think, though it hasn't been tested, If a jinchuriki were to use a jutsu infused with tailed beast chakra I could catch it and convert it into my own power. By that stretch, I could possibly even steal chakra from them while they are cloaked. Really, its maiden voyage was the fight with Chomei. Both absorbing and firing."
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Post by Steggo on Jan 24, 2018 1:07:23 GMT
Steggo paused thoughtfully. "If you can absorb and convert energy from a Bijuu Ball, that could be a real powerhouse. If we were able to revive the Chomei it may willingly let you have the chakra for such a thing, though I don't think that should be a motivation for us in trying to see what we can do with the stone. If at all possible, I'll revive the Chomei from this stone somehow and bring it back to life. The Bijuu are an important part of this world, calamities that have to be faced in order to moderate us, but also as the ultimate crucible to forge our strength. I think if we eliminated them all we'd bring a great disaster to this world, not unlike when they were all contained and controlled in ages past."
Yes, maybe a revived Chomei would choose to share its power with Kohga if he wished. The man was clearly deeply shaken by his fear of destruction from the hands of outsiders, though Steggo stood by his previous statements on the subject. So long as he was present, no force could decimate what he chose to protect, of that he was most certain. He would have to be, if it was the only way to protect that stone, the only hope to bring the Chomei back to life. Standing inside its helmet, staring into the face it hid within there and coming head-to-head against the creature, he'd felt an understanding that he couldn't really explain. But the world would be a different place if it lost the Bijuu, and he wasn't prepared to see them all destroyed or enslaved again. Thinking on it further, another piece clicked into place in his mind.
"That was how you did it then, wasn't it? The shot you fired that actually brought it down, you got the energy for it from some of its earlier attacks. No wonder you never use such strength since, you don't have it anymore, do you?" Pausing, Steggo nodded to himself. "There may be another way for you to get more of that energy, you know. The Chomei doesn't have to be the one that provides it. There are eight other calamities somewhere in this world, after all. We could always see about hunting down another."
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Post by Kohga on Jan 24, 2018 22:34:16 GMT
The self-appointed kage turned to his tailed-beast of a friend, hands on his hips, "Ha, I should think it would be so easy." His voice peppered with sarcasm, "I am the one who 'killed' her after all." Which was true, Steggo was the forward combatant, but Kohga struck the final blow to the elegant creatures chest. "I believe that if anyone could do so, it would be you." He spoke in regards to the revival of the beast, "As far as dreams go, having an friend like that would be a wonderful turn of events."
The wind began to pick up as the Sun began to shrink into the forest, blasting it vibrant oranges through the trees. His friend was dead on about the automail, it had to already have stored bijuu energy to fire off a beam. "Nope, none left in the tank," He said as he pointed to the now empty gauge on his metal arm, "Let it all out a second ago." Steggo went on about how Chomei would not have to be the sole contributor of bijuu chakra. Before Steggo was finished Kohga's mind went directly to Tales. A logical jump considering the two had just spoken of extracting chakra from a Jinchuriki only minutes before. Though, what his friend actually said was just as interesting. Hunting Bijuu. Realistically that was the ultimate way to hone your skills and gain a massive boost to strength and stamina. "Ahh, never thought you would have brought that up. I was wary of the subject based on the heated discussion that we had earlier." Yes, the thought had crossed his mind, but Kohga had no intention of bringing it up today.
"Lets get on home. No doubt the children are worried, its been ages since you left." As soon as he was done speaking, the Hokage placed his hands on the ground and pushed his chakra into it. Mere moments later the hole that was created from the experiment was flooded with rocks, trees, and dust. It looked like nothing more than a sink hole now, a common occurrence in this part of the forest. Kohga turned and started walking back towards the village, his feet crunching through the brush as he walked, "Not to mention the two bright displays we put on moments ago. Hidden Leaf hahaha. As we broadcast our position."
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