Genin
By Flashfyre5
Chapter Fourteen: Reaper in Red
Naruto ducked, allowing Masako’s staff to whiz by over his head. He stepped to the side, a kunai in hand,
but his barely-begin counterattack was cut short when Masako deftly jabbed the
butt end of her bamboo staff at him.
Naruto had to step back to keep it from crushing his nose. Again, he tried to duck and come in low
for a strike against Masako, but the staff was there again, missing him by
centimeters. In the midst of the
whirling dance of brown bamboo, Masako smiled serenely and handled the weapon
with a level of utter precision that Naruto had never seen
before.
Naruto took a step backwards, avoiding the staff again. Masako took a step forward, denying him
the ability to retake the ground he’d lost. Again, Masako attacked, and Naruto fell
back. He cursed under his breath,
finding that she’d taken control of the fight. He was being driven, step by step,
towards a particularly large boulder about ten meters away. Every time Naruto attempted to move the
procession left or right, Masako’s damnable staff was there, striking him
solidly and forcing the orange-clad teenager back on to the course that she had
chosen.
“Disappointing,” Masako said flatly after about a half minute of
combat. Naruto had already lost a
good five meters of ground. He
growled, and rushed forward, his kunai extended. Masako’s eyebrows rose slightly in
surprise, but she caught his hand between her left arm and the staff. She twisted viciously, and Naruto
launched himself into a horizontal spin to keep her from breaking his arm. Nevertheless, Naruto lost his kunai, and
tumbled to the ground.
As quickly as he could, Naruto was on his feet again, but Masako was
already there. Again she herded
him, but towards a different boulder.
It took a moment for Naruto to draw a spare kunai, and a trio of red
welts marked his carelessness. This
time, he couldn’t mount any kind of effective counterattack before she had him
backed against the rock. Out of
maneuvering room, Naruto was forced to endure the repeated punishment of the
blue-haired woman’s staff. Slowly,
Naruto’s eyes grew red, and his pupils slitted.
“Get… away from me!” Naruto roared suddenly, grabbing a little ledge of
rock above his head. He pulled his
body up a bit and bunched his legs, then twisted and kicked out with both of
them. Masako, surprised, took the
blow and skittered away, then came to a stop in a defensive stance. Naruto pulled himself up and stood on
top of the boulder that he’d been pressured against. His eyes faintly glowed with hate as he
stared at Masako. Hers watched him
with a level of guarded respect.
Slowly, Naruto’s jacket parted.
It had been cut cleanly, from his left shoulder do the right side of his
stomach. Beneath it, his black
undershirt had also been sliced, and a long red line of blood traced the slice
down his torso. Masako watched
Naruto, showing no sign of satisfaction at the strike that she’d landed. With a grimace of pain, Naruto tore off
his jacket and allowed the halves of his favorite item of clothing to fall to
the ground.
“Nice try. Didn’t even see
you,” Naruto complimented Masako.
As he did, the blond-haired boy slid his hitai-ite from its place around
his neck and re-cinched it around his forehead. Then, with deliberate slowness, he
reached down and slid a finger along where Masako had cut him. The blood smeared away, revealing whole,
healthy skin. Beneath his
undershirt and the blood on his chest, the wound had already healed. “But it’s gonna take more than that to
bring me down,” Naruto grinned, falling back into a fighting
posture.
“I expected no less,” Masako replied coolly, adjusting her stance. Suddenly, her eyes flashed red, a shade
that Naruto was all too familiar with.
“Sharingan,” he noted aloud, and Masako nodded.
“You’re drawing on his power,” she noted in return, a clear emphasis on
the word ‘his.’ Naruto nodded
slowly, and Masako continued.
“Kyuubi has been a mixed blessing for you, hasn’t he? Despite the fact that he’s a demon, his
strength has saved your life quite a few times.”
“Shut up,” Naruto growled, his face darkening. “You have no idea what it’s like to live
with this thing,” he elaborated, spitting out the last word. “I’d do anything to get rid of
it.”
“I’m quite certain,” Masako smiled condescendingly. Naruto’s eyes flashed open, and he threw
himself towards the Akatsuki woman.
The blond-haired shinobi descended upon Masako in a fury of teeth and
claws, his eyes wild. Masako met
him with her staff, and twisted him away.
Naruto spun and landed lightly, then launched himself towards the
blue-haired woman.
Without missing a beat, Masako drew the end section of her bamboo staff
out from the rest. With it came a
long, thin blade. Using the sheath
as a distraction, Masako dodged away from Naruto’s strike, then stabbed at his
left kidney. Naruto roared in pain
and skittered away. The wound,
which would have been fatal on anyone else, sealed itself shut
quickly.
Meters away, Sakura tried to think of something, anything, that she might
be able to do. The two were moving
around almost faster than her eyes could follow, even though she’d activated her
Sharingan almost as soon as the fight had begun. Now, as she watched red chakra pour off
of Naruto like water, she began to feel a sinking feeling in her gut. Somewhere in her mind, an obscure fact
that she’d read in an ancient scroll clicked.
To demons, death is mostly an inconvenience, the text had read, as
she’d sat in the archives late one night.
Anxiety over a test the next day had brought the young girl to this
section of the archives, which had lain largely undisturbed for a little over a
decade. Being creatures of
chakra incarnate, a demon simply must summon the will to re-materialize his
form. Thus, the only truly
effective way to stop a demon is to seal it. Often, this can be achieved with any
item, though some exceptional cases require relics of faith. In a few cases, and these involve only
the most potent of the demon hierarchies, there is only one vessel that can
properly contain a demon for an extended period of
time.
“A human
infant,” Sakura breathed, her jaw trembling. Slowly, she fell to her knees as her
mind unwillingly traced the years back to the most catastrophic event in the
village’s recent history. “And the
Fourth Hokage was able to end the creature’s reign of terror by sacrificing his
own life. At midnight, on October
the tenth, the Nine Tails Demon Fox was defeated forever, allowing the people of
his village to enter a new day with hope.
This is why we now celebrate Thanksgiving on the eleventh,” Sakura
recited, remembering the childhood lesson that she had heard dozens of times in
her youth.
Naruto shook his head a bit as he circled Masako. Her blade was extended towards him, and
the four-foot reach advantage it gave her was considerable, even in his
state. Bloodlust pounded in his
head, deafening the blue-eyed chuunin from anything but his opponent. The ragged slashes of fur on his cheeks
showed that Naruto was drawing on Kyuubi as much as he dared; the demon’s chakra
thundered through his veins like fire, and Naruto could almost hear Kyuubi’s
chuckle of enjoyment at the battle.
Without warning, Masako attacked him, and Naruto was forced to dodge the
surprisingly quick long sword that Masako was fighting with. Even with all the speed that Kyuubi
could grant him, Masako struck him again and again. As she had been before, Masako was
utterly precise and just a bit quicker than he was.
/Do it,/ Kyuubi whispered in his mind, the seductive tone odd for such a
thunderously powerful demon. /The
seal prevents me from giving you any more power. Tap the gates from your side, and we’ll
end this wench together./ Naruto
shook his head, and Masako took the opportunity to slice him deeply across his
right arm. The wound was slow to
heal, muscle taking longer to knit than fat and skin.
/This is why I hate using the damn fox,/ Naruto thought to himself,
concentrating again on dodging Masako’s attacks. /Every time I do this, he’s there,
trying to get me to do more./ Only
once before, when he’d fought Gaara, had he demanded more from the demon. He had opened the floodgates, accepted
the second rush of chakra. It had
terrified him profoundly, and Naruto had suspected that, had he not used the
chakra immediately, that the demon would have taken up residence in his
mind. He’d never spoken of it to
anyone, even Jiraiya.
“Still disappointing,” Masako said at length, carefully controlling what
she would allow Naruto to do. Any
hand seal or movement to either side was met with a recriminating stab,
disrupting whatever the demon-enhanced chuunin had in mind. “But mildly entertaining, at least. I suppose that it’s true what they say
about you, despite Kyuubi’s best efforts.”
“What?” Naruto growled, freezing.
Masako was so surprised by his sudden lack of movement that she failed to
take advantage of it.
“Dropout. Dunce. ‘Dead last,’ even,” Masako explained,
shrugging her shoulders a bit.
Naruto’s face screwed up in an expression of rage like none she’d ever
seen before.
“That’s it,” Naruto growled, gritting his teeth. Engulfed in a rage fed quietly by the
demon inside of him, and pulled.
Deep inside the blond-haired boy, something gave, and chakra poured
outward in great waves. “Now
there’s no way I’m gonna go easy on you!”
Masako took a few steps backwards as the dark red corona that surrounded
Naruto suddenly exploded in size and intensity. Instead of flowing around him, as would
normal chakra, this chakra burned around him, like fire. Pure rage settled in the boy’s eyes as
he regarded Masako.
With a burst of speed and torn earth, Naruto broke to his right. To his amazement, Masako was there as
well, keeping pace. Her emotionless
mask was gone, replaced by an expression of intense interest. Naruto struck at her, but the woman
managed to dodge the blow. She
twisted and struck at him lightly, but Naruto barely had time to wince in pain
as the blade slipped in and out of his ribs. Kyuubi’s chakra wrapped the wound and
healed it almost instantaneously.
The two traded glancing blows for a few moments, then broke away from one
another.
Naruto could feel Kyuubi’s mind pressing in on his. With his chakra enshrouding the body
that was supposed to keep it sealed, Kyuubi pressed inwards, trying to impose
himself on the boy that bore him.
/Go to hell, fox shit,/ Naruto growled, forming hand seals
rapidly.
“Honshitsu Bunshin no Jutsu!” Naruto shouted, and nine clones of himself
appeared in a circle surrounding Masako.
Each bore his expression of concentrated rage, and each quickly moved to
form a set of new hand seals.
Masako, to her credit, attempted to dispel the genjutsu that she thought
was tricking her Sharingan eyes.
“This is my best move, damn it!
You’re going down!” the ten enraged chuunin shouted as one, each moving
their hands to form a familiar and well-known seal. “Kage Bunshin revised: Hitori Sangun no
Jutsu!” As they finished, the world
around Naruto, Masako, and Sakura was obscured with a massive explosion of ninja
smoke. Slowly, it billowed
away.
Sakura brought her hands to her mouth as she looked around in
amazement. She could barely move
without bumping into a Naruto clone.
Masako’s reaction was similar, in one sense.
“My word,” she murmured aloud, looking around an ocean comprised entirely
of identical faces. Thousands upon
thousands of completely identical shadow clones covered the shattered lands in
bodies, each with Naruto’s wild red eyes and jagged whisker-marks. They stretched as far as the eye could
see in every direction, standing or hanging off of every boulder in the
considerably cluttered plains.
“Ten thousand clones apiece,” Naruto alone shouted, the pressure in his
mind seceding a bit. “My absolute
max. Think you can land that many
deathblows?”
“We sure as hell don’t!” a hundred thousand voices rang in unison. Unnoticed by Masako, a single clone,
near Sakura, grabbed her by the shoulder.
“Run,” it told her, a worried expression on the clone’s face. “If this doesn’t work, I’ve got nothing
left.” Sakura’s eyes widened; she’d
never heard Naruto speak like that before.
A corridor opened up in the ocean of bodies behind her. With a final glance, the pink-haired
girl turned and ran.
* * * * * *
With a growl of excitement, Sasuke charged toward his brother. Malice and fury were etched across his
face, turning the once-handsome boy into a vision of horror. Sasuke’s expression had darkened as the
fight with his brother had progressed; he had yet to successfully land an attack
on his brother. Itachi was living
up to his reputation as the brilliant prodigy of the Uchiha clan; whenever
Sasuke attacked, he was either simply not there or ready with a devastating
counterattack. As of yet, despite
the expression if of slightly-insane rapture on the elder Uchiha’s face, he had
yet to offer a direct attack of his own.
Sasuke ducked, as if to come up with the kunai he gripped in either hand,
but then quickly faded to the right and launched himself into the air. As he rotated, Sasuke extended his right
leg, hoping to catch his brother on the side.
It was not to be. Just as
Sasuke’s leg was about to connect, Itachi grabbed his ankle. Despite the momentum of his leap and
spin, Sasuke was simply stopped cold by his brother’s grab. Desperately, Sasuke twisted, bringing
his other leg into striking position.
As a defense, Itachi simply ducked his head down, and the leg soared
harmlessly through the space where his head had been. Sasuke realized too late the position
that this would leave him in, and tried desperately to stop his rotation. However, he was too far into the kick,
and Itachi’s grip was absolute iron.
With an audible ‘pop,’ and a scream of pain, Sasuke’s right hip was
dislocated.
“That was reckless and stupid,” Itachi snorted in disgust. He hauled on Sasuke’s leg, eliciting
another scream of pain from his brother, then threw the young man across the
market to crash into a storefront.
Some of the wood broke, but most held, and Sasuke had a moment to catch
his breath as he sat with his back against the storefront.
“I’m disappointed. You’ve
done nothing of note in the past four years, it seems,” Itachi said with a sigh,
and the rabid grin slowly faded from his face. Sasuke, with a gasp of pain, wrenched
his injured leg back into its proper alignment, then screamed in agony. From personal experience, he knew that
almost nothing hurt more than a dislocated limb, including broken bones. The pain from a broken bone, at least,
was not intensified so greatly by every movement as was a broken
limb.
“Shut up and die,” Sasuke growled, pulling himself to his feet. After a moment, Sasuke found a measure
of balance, using only his left leg to support himself.
“No,” Itachi stated flatly, a mask of indifference now firmly in
place. A glance towards Sasuke’s
injured leg confirmed his assessment.
“It’s time for you to die, I suppose,” the elder Uchiha decided with the
barest hint of a sigh.
“Not yet,” Sasuke said, glaring.
With a grimace of pain, he settled his weight on both legs, then fished a
small, cream colored scroll from his pocket. “I’ve still got one move
left.”
“Shijuukaigan?” Itachi wondered aloud, his eyebrows rising. Sasuke ignored him, instead performing
the complicated hand seals necessary to empower the technique. “It’s no wonder you’re so reckless,
then.”
“Oh?” Sasuke looked up, hands still flowing together
smoothly.
“Yes. It took me years to
control the madness after I first used it,” Itachi elaborated, his tone still
flat. “Utter emotionlessness is the
only way to stop the killing urges.
Masako-sama helped greatly.
After all, she provided me with the model scroll.”
“What?” Sasuke’s eyes widened, and he fumbled the final hand seal. His scroll tumbled to the ground,
unnoticed.
“Did you really think that our family would keep such a dangerous
technique?” Itachi asked, a note of honest curiosity in his voice. “Our clan eradicated every record of
that technique generations ago.
Only one scroll survived, locked away in the Hyuuga family archives,
which Masako-sama retrieved on her own initiative.” Sasuke simply stared at his brother in
shock, several bone-chilling realizations coming swiftly to mind. “Her original intention was to use the
technique herself, but discovered after a little research that she would never
be capable of performing the maneuver.”
“Thus, she came to the Leaf, and waited for a few years,” Itachi
continued, his flat, unemotional voice a chilling contrast to what he was
saying. “When I came of age, she
transformed herself and entered the ninja academy with me. In order to pass the genin tests early,
as our father desired, she provided me with the Shijuukaigan scroll. I used the technique again to pass the
chuunin examination. I didn’t know
the truth about her until I was your age.”
“You left me alive…” Sasuke trailed off, his jaw shivering
slightly.
“Because Masako-sama demanded it,” Itachi finished. “She knew that if she left the scroll in
your possession, fresh with the memory of my betrayal, you would eventually use
it of your own volition.”
“And our parents?” Sasuke asked, the red clouds of his insanity receding
enough for a sliver of himself to slip through.
“Again, because Masako-sama demanded it,” Itachi answered. “She knew that she’d never be able to
take me if my parents still lived.
She also knew that they would discover the secret behind my genius
eventually. Finally, if the two of
them were dead, she could have you as well.”
“And you feel no guilt whatsoever?” Sasuke half-asked, already knowing
the answer that Itachi would give.
His remorseless, emotionless face told all, it seemed. However, as the words left Sasuke’s
lips, Itachi’s face seemed to sag, just a bit.
“You cannot imagine the guilt I feel,” Itachi said with a slow,
deliberate shake of his head. “I
dance like a puppet for Masako-sama’s whims,” he continued, looking up
again. When their eyes met, to
Sasuke’s utter shock, the slowly whirling red depths of Itachi’s irises slowed
something that Sasuke had never seen.
Sadness.
“I watched helplessly as I slaughtered them, Sasuke. I died that day, along with our
parents,” Itachi said, his emotionless tone at odds with the sadness etched in
deep lines across his face. Slowly,
he closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath. When he let it out and reopened his
eyes, the sadness was gone, and his mask was fully in place once
more.
“My only hope was that, despite Masako-sama’s designs, you would grow
strong enough to kill me. I… cannot
harm myself, or allow harm to come to myself,” Itachi explained helplessly. “Masako-sama has forbidden
it.”
Sasuke’s head sagged on his shoulders as the foundation that he had built
his whole world on crumbled. The
violent haze of madness still swirled in his mind, but could find no hold to
latch on to, as the psyche that it had come into being in shattered around
it.
“And now?” Sasuke asked, doing his best not to sniffle. When he looked up, he looked at his
brother with the unsure, worried eyes that he’d had when he was seven. Itachi’s jaw tightened visibly when he
saw this, but he made no other outward move.
“She told me to kill you,” Itachi answered, speaking of Masako for the
first time without using her full name.
“Well,” Sasuke said slowly, thinking. Then, with a pained half-chuckle, he
reached down and grasped the scroll.
“The end of the Uchiha clan.
Let’s make it something to remember.” Itachi stared at him for a minute before
he replied.
“Yes,” he said, with a wan half-smile. The killing urge welled up inside of him
at the display of emotion, but Itachi fought it back down with practiced
ease. “Let’s.” Sasuke’s hands flew through the seals
that he needed to make, an eager grin plastered across his
face.
“Shijuukaigan!” he shouted, completing the technique. The world around him flew again into
vibrant shades of color, representative of the unique chakra that each thing,
living or unliving, bore. Unlike
before, however, the red mist of insanity did not rear up to again consume his
mind. Instead, Sasuke’s mind closed
in on itself, focusing on Itachi.
Stray thoughts vanished like morning dew, and there was only
logic.
/I can’t beat him,/ Sasuke concluded after a few moments of thought. He could feel chakra coursing through
his veins, and his muscles flexed with newfound ease. His brother, however, was still
better. Sasuke glanced down at his
leg. /And I can’t run./ Again, he looked up. His mind closed in on itself, tightening
up its operations like a powerful computer booting up for the first time. /My best odds lie in fighting him, and
to hope for assistance./
Sasuke bunched his good leg underneath him, and observed the way his
brother’s body tensed in response to his movement. He used that to guess at his best course
of attack, and was about to execute it when an ethereal shockwave washed over
him, the signature of a massive surge of chakra. Sasuke froze, and looked to his
right. His brother, having felt the
wave as well, looked in the same direction.
Two towering columns of red chakra, bending and fusing into one as they
reached towards the ground, erupted from the shattered lands. A hundred feet in the air, they twisted
and fused together again, spreading out from there to form a much larger
shape. Slowly, an angular front end
formed, and another pair of columns stretched down to meet the ground. Itachi gasped in amazement, and Sasuke’s
jaw dropped a moment later as the shape took on its final
form.
Springing fully-formed out of history books and legends, Kyuubi towered
over Konoha again, his tails swirling and his head extended in a cackle of
glee.
* * * * * *
“My word,” Masako repeated, looking around. An expression of excitement had settled
across her face, and a genuine smile of enjoyment rested on her lips. “How very interesting. I’ve never seen anything like
this.”
“Good,” a few dozen clones nearest to Masako grinned. Some of them drew kunai, while others
extended hands to ready the lethal Rasengan. Masako let out a half chuckle at the
response and fell into a defensive position, her blade at the ready. Her stance spoke of bemused
readiness. The assembled Naruto
clones decided simultaneously that they would have no more of her
condescension.
“Get her!” about a hundred of them cried, and a tide of bodies flowed
towards Masako. Many clones leapt
into the air, Rasengan or kunai at the ready, to make room for more of their
brethren below. Masako flexed her
arm once, then was buried underneath the wave of attacks.
About a hundred meters away, Sakura collapsed to the ground with a scream
completely inaudible above the massed war cry from Naruto’s army of clones. She clutched her head as her Sharingan
grew to its final level, a third Sharingan pupil entering orbit around the
primary pupil in each eye. The pain
subsided more quickly than it had before, and Sakura managed to rise in time to
see Masako’s counterattack.
“Karitori Enjin!” Masako shouted, and the mass of bodies pressing in
around her vanished in an explosion of ninja smoke. Sakura, with her Sharingan enhanced
eyes, saw Masako spinning and twisting as she worked her blade in every
conceivable direction. She used
chakra to fuel her spin, in much the same way that Neji used chakra to spin his
Kaiten. This spin, however, was
offensive. When the smoke cleared,
Masako stood with a single hand upraised.
Her sword was spinning through the air above her, and there were no
clones within a hundred feet of her.
“Nice try,” Masako complimented him honestly, her hand coming down. It met her other hand quickly, and the
two formed a little circle.
“Maru no
Suimin no Jutsu,” she said simply, pouring chakra into the powerful
technique. All around her, the tide
of bodies slowed, then stopped. One
by one, each and every shadow clone within fifty meters of the woman fell to the
ground, then exploded into nothingness.
A few moments later, those farther out simply vanished. Slowly, the smoke cleared, and Masako
caught her weapon as it fell.
“But,” Masako continued, looking around. “If the user of Kage Bunshin falls
asleep, he can’t maintain the mental control necessary to keep his clones in
place. The same is true of all
variants thereof.” As the smoke
cleared more fully, only Naruto and Masako remained inside the glowing circle of
sleep that Masako had created. The
blond-haired boy was facedown in the dirt, and appeared to be twitching in his
sleep. Masako’s Sharingan eyes
detected red chakra still swirling uncertainly around the boy’s slumbering form,
as if it didn’t quite comprehend the situation that it was in. As Naruto twitched, a word or two
occasionally escaped his lips.
“Now adorable,” Masako said dryly.
“He talks in his sleep.” She
now stood over the prone boy and regarded him dispassionately. “You know, it really is a shame that the
Kyuubi couldn’t be moved to a different body. I really did want his power,” she said,
more to herself than to Naruto. “On
the other hand, you did save me quite a bit of trouble and embarrassment by
eluding Itachi. It took me years to
discover exactly why infants had to be used in sealing ceremonies.” Slowly, Masako rose her
blade.
“Now, though, you die,” she said simply, and brought the weapon down with
enough force to sever Naruto’s head from his body. The blade struck, and blade spattered
onto Masako’s cheek.
“What?” she exclaimed in shock.
Naruto’s arm had interposed itself between her blade and his neck. The weapon had struck his arm bone and
lodged there. Slowly, deliberately,
Naruto looked up at his opponent.
“Delightful,” the blond-haired boy growled viciously. The red of his irises had spread out to
encompass the entirety of his eyes.
His slitted pupils had elongated, and now nearly touched the wide-open
eyelids that surrounded them. Every
tooth in the boy’s mouth was razor sharp, and the whisker marks covered most of
his cheeks. “Pain is almost as
delightful a sensation as pleasure when you’ve felt nothing for two decades,”
Naruto continued, pushing himself up with his free arm. Masako’s eyes widened in fear as chakra
began to pour off of the boy in waves.
She tugged again at her weapon, but Naruto met her efforts with a snarl
and twisted his arm. The blade
snapped cleanly, leaving Masako with only a hilt. She dropped it and stepped
back.
“How can you be awake?” she wondered aloud. “Nobody can resist my Maru no
Suimin.”
“He didn’t,” Naruto growled, a toothy grin sliding across his face. Idly, the boy tugged Masako’s blade out
of his arm and tossed it away. The
wound didn’t even have time to bleed before it closed.
“What do you mean?” Masako asked, grabbing the remainder of her
staff.
“You put Naruto to sleep, and he slumbers still,” the blond-haired boy
confirmed, stepping towards Masako.
“On the other paw, there are far worse things in this boy than he would
have most people think.” Slowly,
two columns of chakra extended upwards from the corona that surrounded Naruto’s
body.
“Kyuubi,” Masako realized, stepping away. /I’ve got to scuff the circle and let
the boy wake up,/ she realized.
“Exactly,” a deep, horrible voice said in her ear. Hot breath washed over Masako’s neck,
and she didn’t have to turn to know that Kyuubi was there. She hadn’t seen him move; she hadn’t
even see him tens up to move.
“A technique that puts anything within its radius to sleep,” Kyuubi
continued, twisting Naruto’s voice to produce a timbre and deepness of tone
usually reserved for the otherworldly.
“Irresistible, and independent of its user,” he continued, slowly
circling around Masako. “An
impressive innovation, for meat,” he grinned, mere inches from her face. Masako tried to control herself, but the
chakra that boiled off of Naruto’s body was thick and demonic, untouched by
human molding. It was fear
incarnate, and Masako stumbled away from the possessed boy, trying to stop the
shivering in her knees and lower jaw.
“No, you don’t,” Kyuubi snarled, behind her once again. “I’ll not let a whelp like you get away
from me, not when I’m finally free.”
“If you kill me, the circle will vanish,” Masako declared, summoning up
as much of her legendary cool as she could.
“And therein lies my dilemma,” Kyuubi growled, his claws raking lightly
along her stomach. Masako didn’t
have to look up to see that Kyuubi’s excess chakra had formed itself into a
hundred foot tall avatar of himself, a feat which he was likely doing as an idle
exercise, to keep his mind busy. No
human had enough chakra to even attempt such a thing.
“If I let you go, you’ll snuff the circle, and I’ll be forced to retreat
back inside the seal as the boy awakens,” Kyuubi continued, confirming what
Masako suspected. /He can’t
escape,/ she thought to herself.
/The seal just can’t lock him back inside because the boy brought too
much of the demon out. As soon as
he wakes up, Kyuubi’s mind’ll be overridden by the kid’s, and he’ll be stuck
again./
“If I kill you, the circle fades naturally, and I must again return to my
prison,” the possessed boy grinned, his breath hot on her throat. “Though I leave with a certain level of
satisfaction.”
“Are you sure that you can kill me?” Masako bluffed, trying to gain some
level of advantage. Kyuubi chuckled
for a moment, then broke out into a full belly laugh.
“It took a hundred shinobi to bring me down last time,” Kyuubi replied as
his laughter wound down. “Several
of whom were more talented than you purport yourself to be. I believe the question is, whelp, are
you sure that you can kill me?”
Masako tried to maintain her composure and, after a few moments,
failed. She skittered away from
Kyuubi desperately, fear in her eyes.
“There is, of course, a third option,” Kyuubi continued, taking visible
pleasure in Masako’s fear. “One
which interests me greatly. I know
only one jutsu, and I really would like to try it out on
you.”
“A jutsu?” Masako asked, edging even further away.
“Yes… the only one that I’ve bothered to remember,” Kyuubi replied, his
hands already coming together in the seal of the sheep. “The technique that dumped me into this
abysmal prison.” His hands flew,
forming eight additional seals. It
felt to Masako as if the bottom of her stomach had dropped out; she knew that
she had no chance of surviving a technique that could stop Kyuubi in full
rampage.
“Fuuin Jutsu. Shiki Fuujin,
Kyuubipoi,” the demon-possessed boy declared. Masako saw chakra flow out of him in a
rush, but she could see no other outward effect. “Now, this technique would usually
consume the life of whoever used it, as a part of the cost. It drags the soul of two beings out of
the bodies in which they reside, that they might dance forever in the depths of
Hell,” Kyuubi explained. Behind
him, Masako could see a massive gathering of chakra, swirling red and
black. It had the general shape of
a human, but it was fourteen feet tall, and hovered well above the ground. She could see nothing more specific,
however, despite her Sharingan eyes.
“However, my soul is tethered in place for now, thanks to the seal that
this very avatar of death created,” Kyuubi continued, and the form behind him
materialized fully. Shaggy white
hair hid his horned head, a short knife clutched in the avatar’s teeth. Billowing robes snapped around his
body. When the avatar had
materialized, they had been a pristine white, but were now slowly becoming red,
as though someone were dipping them in blood. A vague humanoid form hovered in front
of the creature, and a length of beads were clutched in his left
hand.
“Will it kill the boy, and launch us all into his grasp?” Kyuubi wondered
aloud. “Will it break the seal, and
send only the two of us to Hell? I
don’t know, whelp, but I suppose that we’ll find out together.” Masako’s jaw trembled, and she stumbled
to the ground.
“You’re crazy!” she shouted as the avatar’s robes became fully
red.
“Not as much so, no,” Kyuubi taunted with a chuckle. “Unlike you, whelp, I have only to will
myself back into existence once death claims me. It is life, now, that entraps me.” Suddenly, Kyuubi snapped his head to the
left, where Sakura had been creeping towards the line that Masako’s technique
generated.
“Away from the line, little one, or you’ll join the blue-haired whelp in
my little experiment,” Kyuubi growled, and Sakura stopped dead in her
tracks. “He needs nothing more from
me. Now, even if the boy takes
over, Death will claim those that it can.
All I have to do is will that he take you as well, and he will. He does, after all, have two
hands.” Sakura, paralyzed with
fear, simply stood in place for a few moments, then took a wavering step
away. Behind Naruto’s body, the
avatar was raising his left hand.
Swirling red tattoos appeared on his arm, and he reared his arm
back.
“Good girl,” Kyuubi grinned, and the avatar thrust his hand into the back
of the humanoid figure that hovered in front of it. From Naruto’s chest erupted a gigantic
arm, clearly larger than the one that the avatar possessed. It hit Masako with enough force to throw
her completely into the air. Then,
just as the avatar’s elbow emerged from Naruto’s chest, the hand stopped, and
Masako’s body flew away. Clutched
in the hand was what seemed to be a wispy white cloud. Slowly, it withdrew, sliding back into
Naruto’s chest. Already, the circle
that surrounded the three figures was beginning to fade. The avatar’s arm was soon fully
withdrawn, and he bowed respectfully towards Masako’s corpse, which had tumbled
to the ground near the far line of the circle. The next moment, he was simply not there
anymore. The hundred foot tall
effigy of the demon fox had vanished as well, leaving Naruto alone on the
battleground. Only a faint wisp of
chakra remained in his entire body.
He staggered forward, his head lolling, then half-turned to look in
Sakura’s direction.
“Sakura… chan,” he managed, then pitched forward to fall, face down, in
the dirt. After a moment’s
hesitation, Sakura threw herself towards Naruto’s limp body with an inarticulate
scream of grief.
* * * * * *
“That is…” Itachi trailed off, amazed. Even from kilometers away, he recognized
the only figure that the floating demon could be. “Death’s hand. I know that
technique.”
“What is it?” Sasuke asked, not quite sure what was going on. When Kyuubi had appeared, the fight had
halted. Both of them were far more
interested in the gigantic demon.
When, at length, Itachi had declared it a mere avatar of chakra, their
interest had only grown.
“The piece of Death that is summoned with the Shiki Fuujin no Jutsu,”
Itachi explained, shaking his head.
“We should not be able to see it.
I don’t understand.”
Itachi’s shoulders sagged, and the two of them watched as the figure
bowed, then vanished. The chakra
avatar followed suit a moment later.
“What does that mean?” Sasuke asked, confused. A part of him still wanted to kill his
brother, but another part, a part that he’d buried years ago and was only now
resurfacing, looked up to the elder Uchiha. In a completely unfamiliar situation, he
relied, as he had in his youth, on Itachi’s judgment. For some reason he couldn’t fathom,
Sasuke couldn’t bend his mind around any possibilities regarding anything that
he’d seen.
“Masako-sama is dead,” Itachi stated flatly, “Whether she summoned
the avatar or was the victim of it.
One of your friends as well.”
Sasuke’s heart wrenched, and immediately ruled out Sakura as a possibility. Nobody would waste their lives to bring
her down, and he knew that she didn’t know the technique.
“Naruto,” Sasuke said, knowing that the blond-haired boy was the only
realistic option. Itachi, after a
moment of though, nodded in agreement.
“Well,” Itachi mused, turning to face his brother. “What now?”
“I don’t know,” Sasuke returned with a shrug. Honestly, he couldn’t think of a
possibility that didn’t involve fighting, and this worried him on a level that
he couldn’t quite identify. He’d
lost something when he’d used Shijuukaigan the third time, but the younger
Uchiha had no idea what.
“Well,” Itachi sighed at length.
“Masako-sama didn’t tell me when I should kill you, and we’re both
outside of her supervision now.”
Sasuke didn’t understand the second half of Itachi’s statement, but
nodded his agreement to the first.
“I’ll see you some time,” Itachi said, picking up his cloak. “When I do… please, be ready to…” He didn’t finish the sentence. Sasuke was about to ask him what he meant, but his memory finally served the younger Uchiha with an answer. Again, Sasuke nodded. Itachi fastened his cloak around his shoulders and slowly walked away. With a grimace of pain, Sasuke collapsed to the ground and waited for the medic-nin to arrive.
“Symphonic
Evil II: Evil Has a Name (Robotnik),” by Sephiros. This is an oddball remix if Robotnik’s
theme from Sonic 2. I like it,
both for nostalgia and for its quality.
New
Techniques:
Hitori
Sangun no Jutsu- One
Man’s Glorious Army (lit.), An Army of One (fig.): This technique is used in
conjunction with the Honshitsu Bunshin.
After creating several Honshitsu Bunshin clones, the user commands each
of those clones to create as many shadow clones as possible. In doing so, he creates many times the
number of clones that he would normally be able to create, even with a full
night’s rest. However, this army is
short-lived, and relies upon the original user of the technique for its
maintenance, since all Honshitsu Bunshin clones are consumed in order to create
the absolute maximum number of clones.
Karitori
Enjin-
Reaping Circle: This is an extremely high-level taijutsu technique, and requires
a higher level of chakra control than few people, even those among the elite
ranks of the jounin, are able to achieve.
The user spins his or her body with chakra, slashing dozens of times with
a bladed weapon of some sort. He or
she then throws the bodies of those they’ve successfully struck upon anyone else
in easy range, using centrifugal force to accomplish the
maneuver.
Shiki Fuujin, Kyuubipoi- Dead Demon Imprisonment, Kyuubi Style: This technique is functionally identical to the normal Shiki Fuujinm except that Kyuubi uses his chakra to make the avatar of death clearly visible to all. It also causes the demon to be an avatar in red, simply due to Kyuubi’s preference. He always was a showy bastard, no?