Even though their encounter and scuffle had been quite brief up to that moment in time, Howoku was a bit intimidated by Shirona's abilities so far. Despite her general skillset and her managing position in the Barrier Corps making her a Barrier Ninja, she was not to be written down as just that.
When she moved and when she weaved hand seals, whenever a barrier ninjutsu technique was made, it came with such mastery and effortless finesse that the Hokage instantly understood that what most Barrier Ninja defined as their limits in the field was only the cover page for Shirona. It was just her opening hand, a ruler for measuring her opponent's abilities, a shoto-blade to measure the distance between her and the enemy before she drew her real blade.
The woman cocked her head back letting her messy blonde hair fall gracefully behind her back, she also stroked them with her hand putting them in order. They did not seem to get in her way at all, or rather she had chosen a fighting style that did not really make the hair getting in her way a major flaw as it offered few openings if any. Her barriers were built effortlessly and were quite capable of walling any ability, even that on Howoku's level, even if Howoku had not used any of his strongest techniques on the woman yet, he had no doubt she could stonewall them.
Then there was the fatigue and injury from his previous fights. At his current stage which was just the opening steps of their dance Howoku was already feeling at his limit, every step of the way further down the line, every technique and every punch he threw in this fight was only done so because Howoku's mind commanded his beaten and exhausted body. This woman was so cunning, planning this entire day like this...
Howoku hoped that Tanshu could handle himself but honestly he wasn't sure if he could handle Shirona all by himself. Then again, if there ever was a person who could figure out Misu's fearsome ability or take him out - it was Tanshu. Even with his title as the Fourth Hokage, Howoku always knew Tanshu was the strongest ninja in the village, if not one of the strongest in the entire world...
"Well, now that we have our attention set on each other, perhaps I can proceed with a more intricate number?" Shirona smiled as her hands quickly moved through hand seals, Howoku just continued to analyze and observe. The speed of her seals was certainly impressive but Howoku was sure he could match that, even when tired, and when every ounce of air in his lungs counted he could keep up with her in terms of hand seals. The man slapped his hands together trying to make a hand seal of his own when Shirona's palm shot forward.
"Too late!" she exclaimed as Howoku's figure became just a reflection on the barrier she formed around him. With a slow and sultry walk, Shirona walked up to the barrier. "Isn't it a wonderful technique? Ability to seal a person into the barrier that they touch, forever kept in a static reflection, until of course..." Shirona's arm burst with golden-colored chakra as she shoved her barrier-busting technique enhanced fist through the barrier crushing it into pieces. "I break it!" she finished the train of thought seeing bits and pieces of the barrier-shattering on the ground before disappearing, disintegrating into the air like dust, just like snowflakes that get into a warm home. Just like that whatever was sealed into the barrier would've disappeared in time and space forever.
A powerful explosion blew from above as Howoku crashed into the ground, having successfully replaced himself with his own clone he made above himself at the last moment. That barrier sealing technique without a doubt was impressive but it was not something that one catches a Kage off guard with. It was more something that a ninja uses on an insolent and inferior opponent, like a lowlife bandit challenging them to a battle.
Howoku's own arm burst with Starlight chakra creating "Starlight Sphere" technique, a miniature version of his massive "Overhope" jutsu, this one was much more compact but also much weaker. Shirona slid away from the cloud of dust and smoke and stopped herself by driving a kunai into the ground, for a barrier ninja she had the reflexes of a taijutsu expert even if her dodging could've used a bit more technical skill.
Shirona patted the lower areas of her impressive black dress that was torn up by rocky shrapnel that Howoku's brutal technique threw away, just being close to the technique burnt some areas of Shirona's dress and some of her skin, her body had several minor cuts and bruises. Such was the price of just narrowly avoiding Howoku's technique, normally this would mean a shift in the momentum of the battle but now it meant literally nothing.
Not with Howoku's exhausted state, not killing Shirona with this technique was not worth the chakra it cost him. Even the weakest of his Starlight techniques taxed his body, soon he'd be entering the emergency supplies of his chakra and at some point, if it goes on as it has up to now he may enter even his vital supply. The Fourth had to hope it wouldn't come to that though...
"It's so like you, Mizukage, toying with people's lives." Howoku leaped forward with a fist, he already knew that a barrier would be placed in front of him, Starlight chakra burst from his body as the man was already behind his opponent before the barrier was even placed. His fist hit the woman straight in the face, she stumbled back and swiped her hair away from her face, grinning with a full teeth smile. Howoku's burst of Starlight chakra became gigantic, it expanded into a sphere and the Fourth Hokage went through several hand seals thrusting his hands forward after it.
"I will make you disappear so that you cannot use people as your pawns ever again. Starlight Style: Bifrost" Howoku shouted out as a wild beam of energy, spanning entire meters in its covering radius blasted through the temple room.
Stone and steel offered no resistance and the woman's frail physique paled in comparison with the destruction that went on, soon her black shade faded in the overpowering white that blinded temporarily all that would've looked at it. Howoku closed and covered up his eyes knowing this blinding effect full well, his eyes bled for five minutes and he thought he'd gone blind the first time he used the technique. The Hokage's technique tore through the entire building, it was impossible to tell just how far it went but there was a great hole in the interior and the other halls, the beam just entered and left the appropriate halls and corridors disintegrating all matter it came in contact with up until an unconfirmed point in the horizon.
After the destruction finally settled down Howoku's eyes shot wide in surprise, a single mirror-like barrier was right in front of him with Shirona's arrogant posture engraved in it - she sealed herself into her own barrier as she had done with his clone previously. The barrier then burst with Shirona's figure being the only thing that left it, while the woman's body was hunched over and her hands were weighed down and she was hyperventilating, the fact that she didn't take any damage at all just put the D in the "Doom" that Howoku was spelling out for himself in his mind.
He could not afford just to miss his moves like that, not the moves that cost him so dearly! Not the moves that were literally chipping away at his own life force. Powerful black bags appeared below Howoku's eyes and the man's vision blurred - he knew the symptoms, he was overusing his chakra reserves by a wide margin.
It was only due to sheer luck alone that Shirona seemed to also be worn out by her solution to the predicament, the barrier somehow managed to withstand all of Howoku's blast, and to make such a powerful wall Shirona must've spent a great deal of chakra as well, now with her being tired and stressed from the strain, Howoku had some brief moments to deal with his own exhaustion. It was like manna from the Heavens to have this moment of short bliss, Howoku could feel his body thanking him for not moving even if something told him that his body would've refused to move in those brief moments even if he commanded it to anyways...
"What you see as "using", I see as "ruling", we are the people put in power by the trust of our own people. They gave us their permission to rule over them, they gave us their trust to do with them as we see fit as long as we fix the pathetic state they were in before us. If you cannot see that I pity your people. You are no leader, you've not transcended the "ninja" part, even as the head of your village you remain a servant. Just a servant of a nonexistent master, the most pathetic kind of servant there can be." The woman shouted out swiping away with her hand in anger as her body stood straight and proud, this alerted Howoku that she had recovered from her situation and that he needed to prepare for a fight soon. Howoku's arm shot to the side as his "Starlight Sphere" technique formed in his left hand.
"I see it clearly now, Shirona, you are not a woman plagued by her own ambition, you are a woman plagued by the pressure of ruling. Your people imposed unfair expectations putting you there to fix what Daikon had done, then they criticized you when you did not deliver immediate results so you decided to do something drastic, something to prove you can be an effective leader, one who brings results. While I do pity you, I still have to take you down, I guess in that you shall find freedom from your duty..." Howoku spoke up, his voice no longer had traces of anger, for the first time in this battle he was controlling his actions and chakra clearly, using none more than it was needed to. He just prayed to whatever was listening that it would be enough not to die of exhaustion...
Howoku's body shot forward, he charged at the woman driving his hand forward attempting to slam his Starlight Sphere into her central body area but Shirona shoved her own hand forward with a powerful barrier. A violent explosion erupted throwing both Kage aside, both Howoku and Shirona threw off their feet and dragged through the rocky ground but their bodies were not like those of Haoru or Tanshu, they were quite human and so were their wounds. Painful gashing bruises that left blood all over the floor, cuts, and burning pain was all they could feel for a moment before the two leaped up on their feet. Howoku's eye bags got deeper, his tense muscle tonus now changed out for a flabby and forcefully dead muscle. Pain and fatigue met his every move.
Another "Starlight Sphere" formed in Howoku's arm, this time the man drove all of his chakra into it. All of his desire to free his comrade from the responsibility that dragged her into the grave, the pressure of being the Kage she could not handle. The delusion that she could abuse her own people for her own purposes, this cruel idiocy of exacting revenge upon the people that gave her their trust but then disregarded her by using them as her pawns in her own attempt to pull something drastic.
"Tell me one thing, Shirona. How will you manage the entire world as the "Ninja Empress" if you struggle so with the pressure of being just Mizukage? Do you not see you're trying to shoulder too much responsibility and hate?" The blonde stayed quiet, she just moved her hands to her chest focusing them into four interconnected barriers that she then let go off, the barriers expanded tremendously after leaving her hands but they contracted again and started pulsing with chakra.
"This is it then? The "infinite mass technique" that Haoru was talking about? Well, it's do or die then..." Howoku thought as his body just drove him forward at the expanding cube that was starting to gain so much mass that it started attracting nearby objects. Shirona thrust her hands again.
"It seems it will be you who shall disappear, your people will have to suffer your delusions of peace and shackles of treaties no more. Barrier Style Combo Technique! Infinite Mass Configuration!" she yelled out as the shriek coming from the barrier gaining mass by multiplying the number of barriers several times every moment became too loud for comfort.
Howoku didn't care about if he was doing a sound thing, he was faced with a jutsu that tore through reality itself, he just flung his arm forward chanting out the name of the jutsu that had triumphed against odds of similar caliber. Truth be told he was a bit worried about if he could handle something reality itself couldn't. Strange things started happening, rocks both large and small started flying at him but they didn't smash into him, not yet anyway. Howoku realized that all time had slowed down to a crawl.
The Fourth wondered if that was how Haoru felt as well, how exactly did he fight against that technique? How in the world is anyone supposed to fight it? Howoku force shoved his hand with the sphere of bursting Starlight chakra into the cube and it just disappeared, together with Howoku's arm, for a moment there the Hokage felt terrified, did his entire arm just got transported into a tear of the fabric of reality? The stones started flying at him at higher speeds and then it happened - a violent explosion as the Hokage's voice finally pronounced "Overhope" in the real world time, not the one diluted by the technique.
The violent expanding sphere of an explosion of Starlight chakra tossed Howoku aside, away from the crushing void of the tear of reality itself, the man's body got shot through every single rock, and a wall that was attracted to it, pieces of metal and bronze, even the statue in the room got torn to shreds and attracted to the cube in bits, the shards of the statue cut Howoku's body as it was tossed through them. As the Starlight chakra expanded, desperately trying to catch Howoku but failing to incinerate him, it took all of the debris and destroyed it instead.
Shirona was breathing heavily, she was tired and she had just destroyed the icon of the historic legacy. She made her place in history by utterly disintegrating the historic temple of gatherings of many generations of Kage and the Lords. The place of many Summits was now just a pile of rubble, most of it stuck in an undetermined void in between reality and everything that was not it. Shirona kept looking at Howoku's unconscious body, or at least she took it for an unconscious body but she was too tired to check. Also, the Hokage may as well have been toying with her, luring her in to exploit the opening.
Shirona glanced above, observing as the fight between Tanshu and Misu had moved from taking place on the higher floor platforms meant for observers of the rituals that used to transpire in this room, chanting religious babble as blood was spilled without a doubt, as was the case with those ancient religions, to the treetops and what remained of the rubble forming artificial tall platforms that stood alongside the trees around the temple.
The woman reached for her backpack and removed a kunai, playing with it in her hands before starting to slowly and carefully approach her knocked out opponent. The Fourth looked so beaten and powerless, he was completely at her mercy. Still... Something felt wrong with just driving the knife in between his eyes or ribs like this. No. She wanted to beat him clean, to actually crush him and his ideals because she wanted clarification that her ideals were right.
After all, only in a battle can a matter be solved, there were no truths, only artificial delusions of truth based upon one's own individual understanding of things. One person experienced one thing one way, the other could've had completely different experiences and understandings of the very same thing as each person had different backgrounds. There was no one absolute truth, no catharsis of justice being served, just an ideal triumphing over another as natural selection deemed one person survivor and another a fatality of war. Such was the cruel inescapable law of this time and world. In a world of liars and killers, there was no truth or justice, the only truth and justice were what the strongest believed in. The will of the strongest was the only absolute.
"You were a remarkable ninja, Howoku. A descendant of the Moon People, God of whom were praised in this very temple. As ironic it would be for your life to crumble together with the temple which was the legacy of the foolish praise of some beast sealed in the Moon... This cannot be it, you cannot be dead, right? I wondered why the mass of the technique didn't just crush you outright, it was because you used that bloody technique to create a tunnel in the crushing weight of the mass. Your Starlight chakra, no, your conviction in your belief drove through the infinite mass. You drove through the point upon which only the monsters aren't crushed to but dust by just moving on, thrusting your heart and ideals that your "Overhope" symbolized forward, caring not of the end."
Shirona kicked Howoku's body so that it flipped over and leaned over his neck with her knife in her hand, placing it to his throat. "So hear this, Howoku, the Fourth Hokage. If you do not stand now and fight me to the end I shall deem myself the victor, I, Shirona, the Fourth Mizukage will have triumphed over you. My ideals will be deemed superior by natural selection. What say you, Fourth? Speak now or stay forever silenced!" the woman yelled out. A powerful punch silenced her sending her body rolling forward, with a proud roar Howoku's injured and barechested figure jumped up, his pupils were completely white and it appeared that the man now fought completely out of instinct.
Howoku's shouting body leaped forward, kicking the Mizukage to keep rolling on the dirt and stone rubble before weaving a hand seal and making a shadow clone appear that punched the woman up in the air with an uppercut. The Hokage's mindless body leaped into the air and together with his clone, the two kicked the woman in the head sending her crashing down. The clone then disappeared in a poof of smoke as Howoku's eyes once again returned to normal after his feet touched the ground.
"It appears you've been right, Shirona. My Starlight chakra made a tunnel of air that was free of crushing might upon which reality itself folded. Rest assured, all of that power, the strength, and ability to drive through the force that bends reality itself will now come right at you!"
A cruel smile dyed Shirona's face as she stood up placing her torn dress back on her shoulder and wiping the hair off her face and the blood off of her lip. "Come!" she shouted out. This was what she wanted - fate itself deciding over which Kage was right.
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