Chiriku's golden fists filled the sky, battering Darui from one side of the air to the other, sending him spiraling through the heavens as though it would never end.
Darui's burning anger toward Chiriku soon turned into a fear of death.
From his very first day as a ninja, Darui had imagined that he would someday die in battle.
That was a ninja's fate. Even men as powerful as Madara Uchiha and the Third Raikage could not escape it.
But only when death's shadow truly fell over him did Darui realize that he was just an ordinary person!
He was nowhere near as calm in the face of death as he had imagined.
Everyone was equal before death, but being brutally killed by someone who was supposed to be his prey was not the end Darui wanted.
Regardless of what Darui thought, however, his body kept twisting beneath the barrage of fists, his bones snapping with sharp cracks.
Still, his desire to survive drove Darui to keep struggling desperately. He shifted constantly in midair, trying at every moment to escape Chiriku's fists rather than be beaten to death.
"Aah!!" Crack!
In midair, Darui roared in pain. With his uninjured left hand, he forced his broken right arm straight, then endured the agony as he grabbed his right hand and forced it through the hand seals.
"Shadow Clone Technique!!!"
Poof!
A cloud of smoke flashed, and the single Darui in midair became three.
But even with three of him, he still could not escape the range of Chiriku's Welcoming Approach: Thousand-Armed Murder.
The golden fists hammered all three Daruis like cannonballs.
Poof! One!
Poof! Two!
Poof! Three!
Three?
Chiriku's fists faltered slightly. Why were there three?
Even Chiriku had not expected all three Daruis to be clones.
If they were all