A TBV Chapter 11 Mini-Fic Reimagining: Kawaki Edition

Kawaki thought that there was one thing he truly knew how to do: take a beating and get back up on his own two feet.

It was something he’d been doing for as long as he could remember. The pain of a punch. A kick. The crack of a bottle. The thwack of a rod. To be down on his knees and bleeding. But he always stood up in the end.

Sure, there had been times when he was down for a while. Blows to the head that left the world spinning and ears bleeding. Blows to the gut that had him down on all fours, spitting and gagging and gasping for air.

But there’d come a time when he believed his Karma and modified body had changed all that. As much as he loathed it, the pain was less when his body healed faster. The power it gave him made it harder to knock him down.

There had been a time when Kawaki thought he’d never take a beating again. Just that morning, in fact.

But now that he’s down in the dirt with a mouthful of broken teeth and body that won’t move when he commands it to stand, he’s forced to face the facts–the only reason why he’d ever gotten back up is no one had ever beat him so badly before.

Maybe he should worry after himself. The only sound he can hear is ringing in his ears and everything he’s seeing is double. Can’t take a breath without it feeling like something is stabbing him on the inside.

But even if he could turn his head, he wouldn’t be able to look away from the scene in front of him: Lord Seventh’s little daughter with her mother’s hair, but her father’s face, standing right in front of the monster that fucked him up so badly.

Her blue eyes hold all the warmth of ice and he knows he’s seen that  look on her face before. The set jaw. The bared teeth. Hate oozing from her every pore.

It’s how her father looked when Delta attacked them.

When Jigen came for him.

When Isshiki pulled Kawaki into another dimension when he was supposed to have been safe.

It’s the look Naruto wore right before someone almost succeeded in killing him.

When he looks at Hima standing directly in front of Jura, half as tall as he is and a third of his weight, Kawaki knows there’s going to be no almost for Lord Seventh’s daughter: she was going to die.

Like that moment during a free fall when life itself slows down and all the questions you never bothered to ask yourself rush in during the seconds before you hit the ground, Kawaki wonders where he’d gone so wrong.

He’d followed Hima and Team 10 as soon as he was told she was being pursued by Jura. Delta couldn’t even keep up with him as he zipped away from Konoha.

How stupid could Hima have been to lead Jura away from the village, away from him? Kawaki was the one who was supposed to protect her, the Hokage’s little girl. Just as the village needs to be standing when he returns, she needs to be standing there as well.

He’d landed between her and the Shinju, all hard muscles and white skin and those Rinnegan eyes that looked right at you while seeing through you at the very same time. Just as he’d protected Konoha for the past three years, he was going to protect her now.

Should he have let Team 10 stay? Not demanded that Delta shepard them to safety so they’d be out of the zone of destruction? He’d thought not trying to kill them would only get in his way, that teamwork would do more to hinder than help him.

Had he been wrong?

At least only Hima had witnessed his confrontation with Jura. It couldn’t even have been called a fight for as quickly has he had been put down that day, an encounter which made his brush with Hidari look like child’s play by comparison.

But even amid the beating, he still could hear Hima screaming for him. Not for *him*, though. For her big bro.

How many fucking times had he asked her not to call him that? It hurt as much as his snapped bones and broken body to be called her brother, like it was anything he’d actually earned.He wanted her to hate him. To loathe him. To spit on whatever grave he ended up in. Because then it wouldn’t hurt that she’d lost her brother.

But she’s not screaming his name now. There’s a look in her eyes as though she’s both there with Jura and somewhere else entirely, listening to words no one else can hear. And without even turning to Kawaki, he hears her say it.

“This time, big bro, I’m going to be the one who protects you. I’ll protect everyone.”

The kick she delivers to Jura could have been pulled right out of their Ninja Academy class textbook, but no book could prepare you for the sound of your foot being grabbed in mid-air and your bone being snapped with a single jerk of your opponent’s arm.

That sound, breaking bone and Hima’s scream, hurt more than any wound in his own body.

He tries to scream her name as she’s thrown to the ground, grabbing her mangled ankle, but his voice is gone. He can feel the buzzing discomfort of tiny scientific ninja tools swarming inside his body, trying to repair everything all at once and fixing nothing in time.

Jura looks down at her writhing on the ground, a look bordering on boredom in his eyes.

“We call it devour,” he tells her as claws of wood and bark break out of the earth and encase her body.

“But you simply become nourishment for the tree. It isn’t painful. There’s no need to be afraid.

Kawaki manages a growl. It takes every ounce of will he has to push himself up onto his hands, as though he could crawl toward her and somehow save her.

But his burst of strength lasts a fraction of a second. No sooner is he up than his arms buckle, his face falling back into the dirt.

His gray eyes lock with her blue ones as the bark spreads over her face. The last thing she sees is him mouthing her name helplessly.

Kawaki lacks the words for what happens next. It feels like the air explodes, a shockwave of power washing over him. Then the tree bursts open like someone stomping on a banana, the peel splitting apart, leaving Hima standing in the center.

And those eyes she had? Big and blue like her father’s? They’re glowing red, her pupils slits. Her human teeth sport pointed fangs. Tendrils of her thick hair bursting with chakra dance around her head.

“Are you mad over him?” Jura begins in his monotone baritone, casting an eye in Kawaki’s direction. “I know he’s not a complete idiot, which is why it’s incomprehensible that he tried to protect you. He did not heed my repeated warnings—”

“Shut up!” Hima grows, her girlish voice reverberating all around. “My big brother will always protect me.”

The shock of the first punch she delivers to his gut goes straight through his body and splits the ground beneath his feet, the second sends him sailing.

A prisoner in his own broken body, Kawaki lies on the ground, watching as Hima goes toe-to-toe with the monster who spanked him so completely.

As Hima faces off against Jura, a black ball of heavy chakra forming as she faces off against him, Kawaki knows he should feel relief that she’s safe, strong, and able to protect herself… But all he feels is ashamed. Weak. Impotent.

If he couldn’t protect Lord Seventh’s daughter—if she was the one who needed to protect him—what hope is there for him ever to defeat the Otsutsuki threat and make the world safe enough for Naruto’s return?

It’s not just pain that makes him sick to his stomach, but the memory of his encounter with Boruto earlier in the day, the punch he’d landed in Kawaki’s gut without so much as batting an eye.

How could both Boruto and Himawari be so much more powerful than he is? How could he be so woefully out classed? Hadn’t he embraced the once thing he’d always hated so much and allowed it back inside of him just so he could protect Naruto?

There he lies on the ground, a pathetic, broken, useless pile of rotting garbage.

The blast radius from clashing bombs washes over Kawaki, littering his body with debris and dirt. Already half-deaf from the ringing in his ears, he doesn’t realize Jura is speaking until he sees him standing before Hima unharmed, his lips moving.

Kawaki holds his breath to hear the words coming out of Jura’s mouth as he stares at Hima in fascination.

“You’ve made me want to test my true power…”

The looming monster delivers a head butt, his forehead cracking into Hima’s tiny face. Kawaki hears her nose crunch back into her skull as she flies backwards.

But Hima is still a trained Konoha kunoichi. She manages to catch herself, remaining on her feet. Her tiny win holds out for a single moment before Jura sails over her head in one smooth motion, delivering a nuclear kick to Hima’s back.

She crashes face-first into the ground, the surrounding rock shattering with the impact of her body on cold, hard stone.

“What astounding healing power,” Jura muses as the little girl tries to suck air into her lungs. “It’s far beyond the human or jinchuriki level… Almost like something we Biju possess.”

What his mouth does can’t accurately be considered a smile as there’s no emotion behind the expression, but a look of victory curls up his lips. “Shall we soften you up more before you are devoured?”

Kawaki knows he can’t just lie in the dirt as Hima is beaten within an inch of her life. If he can’t save Hima now, he’ll never be able to defeat Boruto.

That’s what he tells himself as he once again grits his teeth and pushes himself up onto his hands.

Pain zips through his body like an electrical current and every nerve ending is a broken circuit. He hears himself moan in pain as he gets his knees beneath him.

Two hands on the ground. Two knees on the ground. All he has to do is get back up on his feet, the only thing he really knows how to do after taking a beating. Then he can save Hima. And if he can save Hima, he can kill Boruto. And if he can kill Boruto, he can free Naruto.

Tears of anguish sting the corners of his eyes as he pushes himself up higher, only one hand on the ground, and gets a foot beneath him.

Almost there.

Kawaki wonders if lightning could be black when the bolt of darkness whizzes past the Shinju. It’s so fast. The blink of an eye. Hima’s there on the ground, then gone the next second.

It’s only when he looks up that he sees the soles of Boruto’s boots as Hima’s big bro rockets upward through the air. He’s there for a second in the sky above, then a moment later, they both flash out of existence.

A feeling of emptiness washes through him like someone flushed a toilet in his gut and everything goes swirling down the hole to the sewer where shit like Kawaki belongs.

If he can’t save Hima, what hope does he have?

Well, maybe there’s one thing Kawaki still can do.

End Jura.

Or die trying.

Kawaki pushes himself up, his body hardly healed.

“FACE ME, YOU MONSTER,” he screams at the Shinju.

Jura’s face is still turned up to the sky where Boruto had been a moment earlier.

“You crafty thing, Otsutsuki Boruto,” he mutters to himself, never turning to look at Kawaki as he steps into a nearby claw mark and slips out of sight, leaving Kawaki all alone with the emptiness inside of him and the sound of his ragged breath.