The Prana signal which caused Hidan Omega-X was not a whisper or pulse. It was a scream. The shriek of rage, pain, and chaotic energy that was continuous and psychic and that brought them to the blighted wasteland of the Scarred Expanse. The atmosphere here was full of ashes and ozone, and the soil was a canvas of old wars, which was broken and brittle.
They discovered him in the midst of one of his symphonies.
He was in a group of Eclipse Cultists, with their robes decorated with the serpent-and-helix emblem. They rocked with cold, organised precision, and cut off blasts of prismatic energy. In the center of them was whirling Hidan Omega-X with its greenish-black aura of abhorrent delight.
He did not avoid their attacks, he welcomed them. Through a wave of swift destructive energy a beam hit his chest and burned his flesh. He threw his head back and laughed, which was a raw, psychotic laugh, as the wound smoked and in a few seconds the skin was sewing itself back whence whence it had broken, and now glowing like the attack that struck him.
"Is that all?" his voice, his voice, he bellowed, Like grinding stone. Nothing pretty in the eyes that your god do-Not-teach!
One of his fists struck the ground. The Tremor Reflex was natural; it was a disaster technique. The earth did not tremble; but uphill it exploded with a shockwave of pure force, and cultists started flying like ragdolls. His movements were a blur of savage efficiency before they could strike the ground he was one of them. He had not a style, but an outcome.
Naruto stood and looked on with a face of disgust. "He's a monster."
He is a weapon, I corrected, Sasuke, whose Sharingan Ki Vision tore the mess apart. "Observe. He allowed the initial attack to strike so that he could study its Prana frequency. The second, like explosion, he took up and turned round through his own radiance. He studies, he changes, he develops. It is a vulgar, savage kind of the identical thing that our enemy plays upon.
Just to drive home the point of Sasuke, a cultist was able to place Hidan in energy ethereal chains. Hidan grinned and his eyes burst with crimson as his Ritual Prana Curse came into effect. Black energy veins were radiating off of him, and he was bound to the cultist. Hidan made a cracking sound as he snapped his own arm in order to loosen the chains. The identical trauma showed on the tethered cultist, who screamed when his own arm turned at a degree of impossibility. The arm that Hidan had lost was growing back.
"Chaos is the only true ritual!" Now with his moaning, wounded bodies of his foes around him, he bellowed. He started his Prana Resonance Frenzy basing on their suffering and his anger. His muscles were large, his aura even more intense, a tempest of green and black lightning. He was strengthening himself on the bloodshed.
This was the moment. Naruto took a step forward. "Hidan Omega-X!"
The Cursed Immortal swung around and gazed psychotically at them. One of the cultists made attempts to strike him at the back. Hidan struck him with his back, the impact sending a Spirit Ground Smash to reduce the man to the ground.
"What?" he snarled. "Come to join the party? I have space in the altar that will hold a few more!
We did not come here to fight you, Sakura said steadily in spite of the scene. Here to give you a fight, here to give you a real fight. The one behind all this." She pointed to the vanquished sect adherents. "Their master."
The maniacal grin of Hidan was enlarged. "I'm listening."
His name is Cell Akatsura, Naruto forced the words out. He is making an attempt to make himself the sole god on earth. To consume all Prana. To end all fights. Forever."
Transformation of Hidan took place immediately. His eyes turned their glad anarchy into a colder, more concentrated one. The pledge of a good fight was one thing. It was an existential insult to face the danger of never fighting again.
"A god..." The word, Hidan, a holy curse, came back with a curse, the word. He stared at the ragged cultists that surrounded him, and then turned around to the three. "This... this is just vermin. Scrambling insects." He moved forward to them, his artificial body continuing to crackle with stolen energy. Thou shalt promise me a possibility of seeing a throat of a god? Man who imagines that he can put the end to the beautiful, bloody song of battle?
That is the pledge, Naruto said, and stood his ground.
Hidan Omega-X lifted his head back and gave a laugh that shook even the rocks they were standing on. It had been an expectation of pure and undiluted anticipation.
"THEN I'M IN!" he roared. "Not for your world. Not for your peace. But that the right to be he who makes it true Which proves that God can bleed!
He kicked out at the last, grunting cultist and walked to join them, a walking cataclysm bringing up the rear. It was not an alliance. It was a meeting of ways, a predator turned into a bigger prey.
As they turned to quit the Scarred Expanse, the same thought, of deep, murmurous self, which had befallen them at the shrine of Piccolo, stroke their brains again, but this time with the added touch of a critical interest.
The virus is aimed at infecting the architect. An... intriguing variable."