Chapter 8: The Two-Souled Sovereign
The challenge hung in the air, a formal invitation to unleash hell. Yagura, or the entity controlling him, accepted with savage glee.
"The beast..." Yagura whispered, his voice distorting, becoming a guttural growl.
A violent, bubbling torrent of red chakra erupted from his body. It was raw, chaotic, and immense, kicking up a hurricane of wind and water vapor that tore across the training ground. The chakra solidified around him, forming a sinister, single-tailed cloak of malevolent energy that writhed like a living thing. His teeth sharpened, his pupils became slits, and the very ground beneath his feet cracked under the sheer pressure of his power. The Three-Tails Chakra Cloak was engaged.
"So, that's the power of a Jinchuriki," Vanica (Haku) murmured from the sidelines, her visible eye wide with a manic excitement.
"Pathetic," Dante (Zabuza) grunted, though his hand rested on the hilt of the blade he no longer carried, a phantom limb aching for a fight. "Just borrowed power."
Yagura vanished. He didn't use a flicker technique; he propelled himself forward with a pure, explosive burst of Bijuu chakra. He reappeared directly in front of Julius, his club, now glowing with the same crimson energy, swinging down in a vertical arc meant to cleave the Emperor in two. The blow carried enough force to level a small mountain.
Julius didn't retreat. He didn't even raise a hand to block. Instead, he simply stood his ground as something truly grotesque and awe-inspiring began to happen.
His neck and shoulders bulged, flesh and bone shifting and stretching with an audible, wet crackle. The high collar of his white shirt strained and then tore as a second neck began to form from the base of the original. From this new appendage, a head molded itself into existence—first the skull, then muscle, then skin knitting itself together. Short, messy black hair sprouted, and a dark, sun-like mark materialized on the right side of the forehead. The face was a mirror of Naruto's, altered self. It was the face of Lucius Zogratis.
Simultaneously, two more arms erupted from Julius's sides, tearing through his red robe. They were fully formed, identical to his original arms. He now stood before the descending blow as a two-headed, four-armed being, a living effigy of some forgotten, terrible god.
The crimson-wreathed club descended.
Two of the four arms—the upper right and lower left—snapped up. From them, thick, interlocking plates of bone erupted, forming a dense, cross-braced shield. Bone Magic: Adamant Aegis.
BOOM!
The impact was cataclysmic. A shockwave of pure force detonated outwards, ripping the ground apart and sending the Kiri ANBU stumbling back from their hiding spots. The bone shield held, though hairline fractures spiderwebbed across its surface before instantly sealing themselves with Body Magic.
The spectators were frozen, their minds unable to process what they were seeing.
"T-Two heads… four arms…" one of the ANBU stammered, his voice trembling with a primal fear.
"What… what are you?!"
The question came from Yagura, his voice a mixture of the Mizukage's shock and the Bijuu's rage.
The blond-haired head, Julius, smiled calmly. "It is quite simple, Lord Mizukage. Unlike normal twins, who are born into separate vessels, my brother and I were granted the profundity of a shared existence. We were born as two souls, inhabiting one body."
"Impossible!" another ANBU cried out. "Such a thing is a biological and spiritual absurdity! It's an abomination!"
Then, for the first time, the second head spoke. Lucius's eyes, the same piercing purple as Julius, opened, but they held a cold, light that was utterly devoid of warmth. His voice was a smooth, chilling baritone, laced with an unshakable, condescending arrogance.
"Do not be alarmed, Jinchuriki," Lucius said, his gaze analytical, dismissive. "You are simply witnessing perfection. A soul unbound by the flaws of a singular perspective. An existence you could never hope to comprehend."
Yagura roared, pushing forward, pouring more of Isobu's chakra into his club. The bone shield began to groan under the immense pressure.
While two of the being's arms were locked in a contest of strength, the other two were free. Lucius's free arm shot forward, bone elongating from his fist into a wickedly sharp lance. He thrust it under the locked arms, aiming for Yagura's throat. Simultaneously, Julius's free arm gestured subtly, and a spike of gravitational force slammed into Yagura's knee, forcing him to buckle slightly.
The coordinated, two-pronged attack was perfect. Yagura was forced to abandon his power struggle, leaping back to avoid being impaled, his knee throbbing.
"You see?" Lucius continued, his voice dripping with disdain as the bone shield retracted. "While my brother entertains your frontal assault, I am free to dismantle you. This is the advantage of a complete being."
Enraged, Yagura's chakra cloak flared, becoming denser, darker—a deep, blood-red almost bordering on black. An endoskeleton of bone-like chakra formed over his body, and his tails multiplied. One… two… three. Version 2.
"I will crush you both!" Yagura howled, his voice now almost entirely the beast's. He brought his club up, pointing it at the two-headed Emperor. "Coral Palm!"
He didn't need to touch him. A wave of Isobu's chakra shot forward, and the ground beneath Julius and Lucius erupted with sharp, fast-growing coral, attempting to ensnare and impale them from below.
"Julius," Lucius stated calmly.
"I am aware, Lucius," Julius replied.
A wave of gravitational force pressed down, not on Yagura, but on the ground around their body. The earth compacted, becoming impossibly dense, and the coral growths shattered against the hardened ground, unable to break through.
Yagura charged again, this time his speed was an order of magnitude greater. He moved like a crimson blur, his club a mere extension of his rage.
The two-headed being met his charge. It was a terrifying dance of unparalleled combat prowess.
Lucius's two arms would form bone swords, engaging Yagura's club in a blinding flurry of parries and strikes, the clang of metal on bone a deafening rhythm.
Simultaneously, Julius's two arms would perform hand seals—not for jutsu, but as focal points for his magic—unleashing targeted gravitational pulses to disrupt Yagura's footing or manipulating his own body to evade blows that were too fast to block.
Yagura swung his club in a wide, horizontal arc. Lucius's arms met the blow with twin bone shields. As they locked, Julius's arms reached under the point of impact, his hands glowing. "Gravity Magic: Repulsion Gauntlets." He slammed his palms into Yagura's chest, and the Jinchuriki was blasted backward as if hit by an invisible cannonball, tumbling through the air.
Yagura righted himself mid-flight, landing in a crouch fifty meters away. The genjutsu's influence was pushing him to end this. He needed overwhelming power.
He slammed his club into a pool of water. "Abyssal Coral Cage!"
A massive dome of water, fifty feet high, instantly erupted and trapped the two-headed Emperor within its sphere. Before the water could splash back down, it hardened with a sickening crackle, transforming into a dense, translucent lattice of razor-sharp coral. The cage immediately began to constrict, the pressure mounting, the sharp inner walls designed to crush and shred whatever was caught inside.
From outside, the ANBU watched in horrified awe. It was one of the Mizukage's most powerful containment jutsus. Nothing could survive that crushing pressure.
Inside the cage, the two heads looked at each other.
"His final act of desperation," Lucius observed.
"A flawed conclusion," Julius agreed.
They raised all four of their hands, palms facing outward against the constricting coral walls. A visible, shimmering distortion began to radiate from their body.
"He believes he can contain us with pressure from the outside," Lucius's voice echoed, loud enough to be heard beyond the cage. "The folly of a limited mind."
"Gravity Magic: Collapsing Sphere."
An impossibly dense sphere of gravitational force manifested outside the cage, its event horizon perfectly matching the cage's outer wall, pulling inward on the coral structure from all directions simultaneously.
The coral structure, unable to withstand the paradoxical forces, folded in on itself.
With a final, deafening implosion of sound, the Abyssal Coral Cage shattered into a million glittering fragments, which then turned to dust under the immense gravity before it was released.
Julius and Lucius stood in the center of the devastation, completely unharmed, all four arms crossed.
"Your cage, Jinchuriki," Lucius stated, his cold eyes locking onto the stunned Version 2 Yagura, "was flawed. Like you. Like this entire world. Now, allow us to show you what true, absolute power looks like."