Chapter 30 - Monster vs Monster

Just as a particular wave with a height of over 30 feet destabilized Naruto, Galatea took the chance to pounce on him again, the clash of her fist with his ribcage creating a vacuum in the sea.

A considerable amount of chakra was expelled from Naruto's body as he righted his body in mid-air, flying for a few moments in order to not fall in the very turbulent waters below.

On the other hand, Galatea was secretly frustrated. From the very day she was born, she had been trained by real experts in all types of martial arts. She was a true elite when it came to hand-to-hand combat. Despite that, she could simply not land a good hit on him.

'His martial arts are top notch, I cannot find a single gap in his defence.' she thought to herself. 'And even when I take advantage of his unsteady foothold and do manage to slip past his guard, those blue bones of him are always in the way.'

And no matter how hard she punched, it looked like she could do no real harm to those bones that protruded from all over his body. They seemed indestructible.

On the other hand, Naruto's breathing was starting to become laborious the more their fight continued.

'The ocean's surface is already turbulent as it is, but with the shockwaves generated by our clashes it gets even worse...' Naruto thought. And whenever that happened, he was forced to fly in order to not let himself get swallowed by the water because his enemy would surely not lose the opportunity to end him.

'Moreover, her hits are not as ineffective as she believes them to be.' Naruto thought as he forced himself to swallow back the blood that threatened to burst out of his mouth.

His bones were, indeed, nigh indestructible. However, his internal organs were not. The strength behind each of the Kryptonian's hits was seriously insane. And, although his bones absorbed most of the impact, they could not completely nullify it. After a few tens of clashes, his internal organs began to show signs of being injured.

Even so, Galatea did not suspect anything yet. Naruto had made sure of that by not showing any signs of weakness. Using deceit was part of being a shinobi. He had to not show her any weakness to prevent her from exploiting it.

A very large depression was suddenly formed in the water beneath Naruto's feet as he pushed with the sole of his feet against it with all of his strength. He was propelled in the air like a bullet, slamming against Galatea with his spiky body.

Blood began to flow from the places where Naruto's bones stabbed her. Still, despite the pain, Galatea suddenly slammed her elbow into his back, hurling him back into the water like a rocket.

"You won't escape that easily!" She yelled and plunged towards the falling body of Naruto, intending to take that chance to finish him off.

Just as she was about to reach his body, Naruto disappeared in a puff of smoke. Before Galatea could recover from her surprise, 6 Shadow Clones of Naruto burst from the water at the same time towards her.

"I've had enough of your tricks! Fight me like a man should, like a warrior!" she yelled and, taking a very deep breath, she suddenly expelled a very powerful gale of freezing wind.

The clones became blocks of ice in a instant and the entire surface of the ocean froze over for 1 mile around her.

"Where are you? Come out and die, cow-"

The ice somewhere 20 feet away from Galatea burst open and a silhouette jumped from below.

"Flying, nigh invulnerability, super speed, immunity to lightning and monstrous brute strength...is this not enough? You can also freeze the fucking ocean on a radius of one mile around...Fucking monster!"

Galatea's pale face flushed a bit in anger.

"I don't want to hear that from someone who pulls blue bones out of his ass!" she yelled back at him.

Naruto put his hand in a one-handed ram seal, trying to form a telepathic link with Kyuubi. Because the bijuu had been jailed for so long in his body, the two of them could still contact each other via a limited form of telepathy even now, after Kyuubi got "unsealed".

While focusing on creating the mental connection with the fox, he kept spouting bullshit, in order to keep the Kryptonian busy and prevent her for attacking him for even a few seconds longer.

"Regardless...what is your goal? Why are you attacking me? Simply revenge? - you have no right to take revenge after keeping my sister hostage for nearly 3 years. You got what was coming for you."

Seeing Galatea not replying, he continued:

"Or it is that bastard, Orochimaru? That slimy shit has no other better things to do than to make my second life miserable too?"

"Don't speak like that of my father!" Galatea shouted before she could even stop herself. But when she remembered that her father was the one who killed her she became even angrier. It was almost as though it was against her nature to hate her creator even after the way he betrayed her.

"Ho-Ho... he got a very loyal dog there. His ability in brainwashing people seems to be as good as ever. Did he perhaps tell you that he loved you? I would not be surprised even if he told you that you are his most treasured person..."

In that moment, the Kryptonian looked positively murderous. Her face was livid and it appeared as though she was about to fire the largest heat beams that she has ever fired from her eyes.

Naruto realized that he might have taken it too far, so he changed tactics immediately.

"You know, once upon a time, there was a very powerful warrior. He was considered a shoe-in for the leading position of a militaristic country and everyone treated him with respect."

"But that was not enough for him. In pursuit of his mad ambition, he started to cross the limits that were considered moral in that country. His lab research was found holding innocent people which were used as test subjects for his shady experiments."

"He was exiled. But he never gave up on his ambition: that of becoming that ultimate warrior, one that achieved the feat of gaining the entire knowledge in the world. A feat that would be impossible...Unless one was immortal..."

"As time passed, he joined various terrorist organisations. In the end he took over a country and forced on it his own militaristic regime. Furthermore, with sweet words, faked kindness and his natural charisma, he started to gather talented people from all over the world. They were made to think that they were special to him...only for him to sacrifice them later on, transferring his consciousness into their bodies. This was the way that he devised to cheat death...That person is none other than your loving father."

"And he did the same thing to a friend of mine whom I considered a brother...he manipulated him in such a way that he, my brother in all but blood, shoved a lightning fist into my chest, right through my heart."

"You think that you are special...That you are the his most prized pupil...What makes you think that? Haha. That's exactly what everyone before you was made to believe!"

"What makes you think you won't end up the same? Betrayed, with your life wasted away?"

Little did Naruto know how effective his words were on Galatea in that moment...

After remembering his memories of his past life, Naruto and Kyuubi even laughed at some point that his greatest power back then had not been the Six Paths Sage Mode nor was the Rasenshuriken...no, his greatest victories had always been achieved through the use of his greatest but most hidden weapon - the "Talk no Jutsu".

Now, his talent with words was having an even more powerful effect on someone that was as emotionally unstable as Galatea became after Orochimaru killed her. Even more, coincidentally, Naruto's words were nearly spot-on from Galatea's point of view. She truly thought that she had been betrayed and thrown away like a useless rag by her father. She recalled his final words to her before the poison that he had administrated her killed her:

"Sorry? ...you have nothing to be sorry about."

"After all, it was my mistake for creating..."

"...A failure."

What further cemented Naruto's words and her belief that Orochimaru had never seen her as anything but an eventual vessel for prolonging his life were the words that he had told her back then:

"I've made you nigh impossible to kill. At least impossible for normal humans. However, it was always my plan to leave you vulnerable to a certain poison that only I can concoct. It was for the unlikely case where you would slip out my control."

Tears began to flow from her baby blue eyes anew. Galatea was, in the end, only 3 years old. And Orochimaru had been the one person that she had valued more than everything else in the entire world. Because of that, his betrayal hurt her even more.

In the meantime, Naruto's chakra finally managed to reach Kyuubi and establish a telepathic link.

'Kurama, where are you? Are the two of you safe?'

'Yes we are. But, Naruto, you don't have much time left. Wrap up your fight with the clone because you'll be in deep shit in a few minutes.'

'What do you mean?'

'I saw around a dozen superheroes - the elites of Justice League - gathering above Gotham. It doesn't take a genius to figure out their purpose.'

'Sons of bitches...they are betting on me taking out the clone. Then, exhausted as I will be, they will have no real trouble in capturing me...Shit!'

'However, I cannot finish it quickly...I am not even sure I can kill her while I'm fighting on water...she somehow became fucking immune to my black lightning if you can believe that! Not just that, her strength seems to have skyrocketed and what is truly the worst, she has a regeneration ability similar to Shodaime and Tsunade-baa-chan...for fuck's sake, it's like I'm fighting against a young Tsunade on steroids that also has the ability to fly, shoot heat beams and breathe ice.'

'Well, she certainly does have the looks down right.' Kyuubi said lecherously and sent Naruto a mental image of what would happen if Galatea's top were to get ripped from the opening on her chest, revealing her generous breasts.

'Fuck off with this kind of things right now, you horny fuck! Find a safe place for my sister to hide and come to my help as fast as possible. I'm in deep shit this time, Kurama.'

When he finished his mental conversation with the Kyuubi, he noticed Galatea's current state.

Tears still falling from her eyes, the Kryptonian said:

"You are right...that bastard did try to kill me. No worries, his death at my hands will not be easy. I'm going to enjoy every moment of his agonizing screams as I peel off his skin and melt his bones, one by one."

"But I will have to kill you first. I want to throw it in his face, in his last moments, that I am powerful, that even if I was always seen by him as nothing but a tool, I wasn't useless like he said."

Naruto listened to her words wide-eyed. Even he had not expected that what he told her that Orochimaru would do to her had already happened.

Galatea wiped her tears with the sleeve of her bloodied top and her demeanour became like steel again.

Before Naruto could react, the Kryptonian shouted and slapped her hands against each other with the maximum strength she possessed, to the point where she nearly harmed herself.

When he was a child, Naruto got to watch a cartoon depicting Moses, a biblical character, parting the Red Sea with his staff...under his disbelieving eyes, the shockwave generated by Galatea's clap did not only that: it cut the frozen surface of the water and then parted the ocean below for a depth and length of hundreds of feet!

A large amount of chakra was expelled from his body again as he struggled to stop his body from falling into the abyss that had been opened beneath him, but then, a crimson red light filled his entire view. A heat beam also hundreds of feet wide was a shot at him!

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More than a thousand feet below the surface of water, Naruto was laying almost unconscious. It was only the hellish pain he felt that was stopping him from losing it.

The skin of his torso and half of his face had been melted by the heat beam, revealing the thin, almost translucent blue bone membrane beneath. Had it not been for the Inner Bone Armour, his internal organs would have been melted along with his skin. He would have died.

Still, he was not having it easy. The salty water of the ocean was permeating his raw flesh, making him want to scream in agony. It was a pain beyond anything that he had ever felt until then in both of his lives! Feeling like he was going to lose his mind, blue bones suddenly burst from all over his body and continued to grow, wrapping themselves around his body until he looked like he was covered in what appeared to be a cocoon made of blue bones. He let out a shaky breath as the bones covered his raw flesh, preventing any further contact with the salty water of the ocean. However, his eyes had not lost their determination yet. Putting his fingers in a cross-shaped hand seal, Naruto cast his most familiar technique.

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Galatea had been waiting for quite a while for Naruto to come out, but there was still no sign of him. She had not used her X-ray vision to see what was happening in the depths of the ocean because she was afraid of leaving herself exposed while she concentrated on finding him. Because although his lightning could no longer harm her, as he had proven her numerous times, his bones could cut through her flesh as if she was just a normal human.

But, as time continued to pass, she started growing impatient. Despite the dangers, she had to find out exactly what happened to her enemy. At the expense of leaving herself open to an attack from behind, she used X-Ray vision to see past the surface of the very turbulent ocean's water.

'He is not dead yet...damned cockroach!'

Just as she cancelled her X-ray vision, her instincts began to scream at her to move out of the way!

But it was too late! The small flock of cranes that looked like it was just randomly passing by a few tens of feet away from her, suddenly burst into smoke, obscuring her vision...they had been Naruto's Shadow Clones, Henged into birds...and, when she activated her X-ray vision, she could not see past the smokescreen made by their mass-dispelling. The only thing she could see was something akin to a blue energy surrounding her from all around. It was the chakra of the dispelled clones, that was now in the process of returning to the original. But the time it took for the clones' chakra to return to Naruto, those mere 2 seconds were just enough for him!

'If your X-ray vision is anything like the Byakugan, then you're fucked!' Naruto thought as he also dispelled the Henge that he had used to disguise himself, revealing his horrifying appearance after the heat beam hit him. He could have taken his time to heal himself with his chakra, but that way he would have not managed to create this opportunity at ending the fight.

That said, the moment his crane-henge was dispelled, he immediately aimed with the five fingers of his left hand at her. The skin from the top of his fingers burst open and 5 small, seemingly insignificant bone projectiles were shot a speed beyond what the naked eye could see.

A grunt of pain came from Galatea.

When the smokescreen disappeared, although there were 5 bleeding wounds on her body, the superclone smiled mockingly.

"Don't tell me...was that, perhaps, your trump card?"

"Haha...kind of." Naruto said, feigning ignorance to her mockery. "Any last words before you die?"

At that, Galatea actually started to giggle.

"Has my heat beams melted your brain or something? I'm completely unha-"

Her voice died in her throat as Naruto made a one-handed ram seal and said:

"Burst!"

From one the bone projectiles that hit Galatea in the right shoulder, spike-like blue bones suddenly burst, skewering her entire shoulder and the upper part of her arm... the pain had been so unexpected and so intense that Galatea lost control of her flight and fell into the water, painting it with the large amount of blood that was flowing from all the places where the spike like bones pierced her.

Shaking and trembling, she rose back in the air, looking at Naruto with an expression of shock in her eyes.

The one in question, despite his own agonizing pain caused by having had the skin of his torso, arms and half of his face melted, was standing in mid air, flying, looking at her calmly.

"There are 4 more of this in you body: 1 in your left leg, 1 in your stomach, 1 near your liver and 1 close to your heart."

"Which part of your body do you want me to skewer next?"

Galatea merely grit her teeth in frustration. She felt tears welling up her eyes again. She had never cried as much as she did in the last 3-4 days. She had never gone through such a rollercoaster of extreme emotions. And now, she was one step away from being killed, that even despite having had the upper hand against her enemy for most of the fight.

Naruto noticed her tears. But he did not mock her this time. Galatea proved to be an extremely powerful fighter. In his mind, she ranked as the 4th most powerful fighter that he had ever seen, only below Uchiha Madara, Might Guy with all of his 8 Inner Gates released and Uchiha Sasuke after his Mangekyo Sharingan had evolved into a Rinnegan. Because of that, in that moment, he held nothing but respect for her. It was the respect one can only earn even from an enemy due to their ability, their strength. Thanks to that, when he spoke to her, without noticing it himself, his voice was almost gentle.

"You are frustrated...and it's understandable. There are only 2 reasons behind me snatching the victory. The first is that I knew of your abilities while you did not know about my trump cards. The second is that I have decades of fighting experience more than you do. Had it not been for that, I would have most likely lost. Because you are powerful."

Galatea looked into Naruto's eyes as he spoke, not understanding why was he speaking to her in that gentle tone. What was he trying to do? What was his purpose? He was going to kill her any moment then, anyway, what was the point of trying to console her? Even so, she didn't snap at him with a snarky remark. Inwardly, she was secretly touched at a person as powerful as Naruto acknowledging her worth.

"You remind me a lot of my first really powerful enemy. His name was Haku." Naruto said after a small pause.

"He outclassed me and my partners in every way. But despite how powerful he was, he had never seen himself in a way different than that of a tool. When we somehow managed to scrap a win against him, he simply resigned himself to dying, asking us to kill him. Because, in his words, if he could not win against us, he became a useless tool for his master."

"In the end, Haku had thrown himself in front of his master, taking in his stead a killing blow that was supposed to take that man's life. He died."

Naruto stood silent for a few moments, but his eyes never left Galatea's, the two of them not breaking their eye-contact.

"I don't know what Orochimaru did and said to you."

"However, before leaving this life, I want you to know this: you were not a failure. You were not weak, nor were you useless."

"You're the most powerful opponent I have ever fought against in this life."

Then, whispering to himself, he added at the end:

"Had the circumstances been different, maybe we could have been even friends, or rivals... I'm sorry."

However, unbeknownst to him, thanks to her superhearing, Galatea heard him.

Naruto brought both of his hands into a ram seal, preparing to make the other 4 bone projectiles burst and skewer Galatea's body from inside out...but then, his two chakra hearts throbbed, warning him of the 14 powerful life signatures approaching him.

And Naruto was not the only one who sensed them. With her enhanced eye-sight, Galatea also discovered them.