Yasu burst out through the front door to be greeted by the sight of a large, scaly sword being stuck through her lovely clay wall and sucking the chakra out of it. She felt the chakra being pulled out of the defense and mentally calculated how long she had until it collapsed. Yasu cursed under her breath; she had less than a minute.
She ran around to the back of the house and stood there next to the wall, quickly starting a jutsu that would keep her and Miki from being hit by the poison outside. Once the shield went down, the man outside would hopefully head into the house and she would be able to run off. Once she had Miki safely stowed somewhere, she would be able to come back and get Nori.
The wall began to ripple and disintegrate in front of her. Mud fell down around her feet in large chunks. She reached in with chakra-coated hands and pulled more mud out from in front of her, creating a large enough hole for her to slip through. She reached down to hike her skirt up over her knees so that she could step through the exit.
She had gotten one leg through when a voice from behind stopped her.
“Don’t tell me you’re running,” it scoffed.
She half turned to look back over her shoulder. The man’s dark cape swirled around him where he stood, the sword resting on his shoulder. He sneered at her and she hardened her features. You could credit the sun and the wind for the bizarre texture of his skin, but not for the gray color tinged with green. She wondered briefly if anyone knew how he had gotten that way; how his physical features had morphed to match the inspiration behind his sword. Surely he couldn’t have been born this way, but she couldn’t think of how else the procedure would be done.
She started to bring her hands up to form seals when a huge blast of water came barreling through the hole she had made in the wall, catching her off guard and sending her flying through the air towards the house. She twisted in the air in order to protect Miki and ended up barreling face first into the side of her house with a disgusting splat.
She let herself sink to the ground, pulling her hands inside the sleeves of her kimono. She lay her cheek against the side of her house and looked through partially opened, hazy eyes at her enemy. He was standing above her, smirking at her crumpled form.
She moaned as if in terrible pain and started sealing inside her sleeves. There was a reason that most of the chakra for the house defenses had been put in the ground. She was still in decent fighting condition and had plenty of fight left in her.
Kisame raised his sword above his head, ready to bring the weapon crashing down on top of her. She rushed to finish her seals before springing away. “Desert Hurricane no Jutsu!” she yelled over the sound of the sword creating a huge hole in the side of her house.
Kisame dropped his sword and brought his hands up to hold his head. Yasu took the opportunity to turn and run. Dessert Hurricane was a powerful technique, and while it wouldn’t hold him once she had gotten too far out of range to keep feeding additional chakra into it, that combined with the time it would take him to recover from its effects should give her a fairly effective escape time. Right now Kisame felt like he was being tossed around like a rag doll through scorching hot desert air. Once the jutsu was broken, it would still take him a while to feel like he could breath again and find the balance in his inner ear. With any luck, by that time she’d be long gone.
She turned the corner around the house and almost ran into Kisame.
One side of his mouth twisted up in a grin. “I thought you were some sort of legend in the east. I was looking forward to fighting you, but all you seem to do is run.”
Yasu didn’t understand. She could still feel her chakra draining away into a jutsu that he had escaped from. He was gone, but apparently the jutsu was continuing to work. Then she felt the man inside her jutsu simply slip away, like water running through her fingers. And that she realized was exactly what had happened. The man she had caught in her jutsu had been a water clone. The most exceptionally crafted water clone she had ever seen.
“You came here just to test your skills against me? I’m flattered,” she said coldly, making it clear that she wasn’t.
His grin widened ever so slightly. “Yeah, right. We’re here to wait for the fox kid.”
“Well, you’ll be waiting a long time. Sora’s gone back to the Kaze in the West and is trying to convince them to allow her and the kids to stay. If they return to Konoha, it will be directly, not by coming here first.”
He let out a bark of a laugh. “You think telling me that is going to keep me from killing you? You expect me to believe that at all?”
She bit the inside of her cheek in order to help her keep her face straight. No, she hadn’t hoped to avoid fighting. But she had hoped that the lie would put him off balance a little, plus keep her from having to kill him. If he didn’t think Naruto was coming here, she might be able to get away with just driving him back, forcing a retreat and making going to the west a more appealing notion. But he hadn’t even believed her.
He shifted his weight back out of his fighting stance. It was an insult to her abilities, saying that he could get back into stance and defend before she could strike. “By now, those three will have fought Nadare and Shiraku. The girl will be dead, and the boy and his sister will be exhausted. But they won’t be able to stop and rest because they know that you two are in danger. It will take them at least two days to get here running full speed and even then, he and your old partner will be as good as useless. You, your husband, and your daughter will all be dead. We’ll get the boy and leave.”
A cold chill went down Yasu’s spine. They couldn’t be dead, could they? Surely Sora would be able to keep them alive. Surely she would slip past them, or catch them off guard, or just plain beat them.
But watching Kisame’s face sink lower under the high collar of his coat, fear seeped into her bones. Sora was good, but she wasn’t in the condition that she had been six years ago when they had retired. She had focused on teaching and let her own training fall. Yasu knew if you didn’t use what you had, you lost it, and she didn’t know just how much Sora had lost.
And standing in back of her house, staring at one of the best swordfighters to ever walk the earth with one of the greatest swords ever forged and with her daughter strapped to her back, she wondered just how much she had lost herself.
Suddenly, Kisame paused, as if distracted by something. It gave Yasu just enough time to scramble away and collect herself out of Kisame's striking range.
She came to her feet and stared hard at him. Then she heard it too, a low pulsing sound that resounded through the air. She swallowed and closed her eyes. She was one of the few people who knew that sound.
Turning towards the noise, she opened her eyes and looked up. There, about fifty feet above them in the air was a huge falcon, batting the air with its wings and circling above them. And falling from the falcon towards them at an extremely rapid rate was a very hyped up blond boy with a swirling mass of chakra in his hand.
“Water Clone no Jutsu!” Kisame yelled quickly, surrounding himself with a protective circle of realistic copies.
“Shadow Clone no Jutsu!” Naruto countered, creating six replicas of himself. The Rasengan rolled off his hand and into the hand of another clone, circling as it passed between them, moving from Naruto to Naruto.
“Water Prison no Jutsu!” Kisame said as the clones came closer. He captured six of them within bubbles of water, but the last one twisted away at just the right moment to avoid being captured. Cupping the Rasengan in one palm, he tried to push it into Kisame’s head, but was thrown off by a sudden shift in weight and a hand wrapping around his ankle. He managed to tag Kisame’s shoulder, the chakra ripping through his coat to the skin and muscle below.
Naruto flew backwards through the air as Kisame threw him by his foot. He twisted in midair to land on his feet. Behind him landed Sora and Hinata, both looking calm and none the worse for wear. Hinata waved at the falcon and yelled a thank you. Sora just grinned.
“Yeah, you got him!” she exclaimed.
“Eh, just tagged his shoulder,” he said grumpily.
“Yeah, but it’s his sword arm. He’s not going to be able to wield that thing nearly as well with those muscles messed up.”
Kisame looked at the three of them with rather thinly-veiled shock.
Sora chuckled. “Oh, I’m sorry; are you wondering what happened to the little annoyances you sent our way?” Sora asked sarcastically.
Naruto snorted. “We took care of them pretty easily. Then summoned up a falcon and hitched a ride here. Figured we’d take care of you while we were on a roll.”
Kisame smirked. “So you’re here, but you’re completely drained.”
“Hinata and I are contracted with the falcons so we can borrow their chakra, and Naruto’s a chakra freak. We’re not completely charged, but we’re pretty good.”
“Certainly good enough to take care of an idiot like you,” Naruto added.
“Here,” Hinata said, brushing Yasu’s shoulder. “I’ll take Miki.”
Sora was bluffing, Yasu realized. Unless you were dealing with the boss, it took a lot of practice to effectively draw chakra out of a bonded animal. Sora had done it before, so she probably was in fairly good condition, but Hinata was clearly not in top fighting form. So, they wanted Yasu to fight while she took Miki.
The last thing that Yasu wanted was to be separated from her child, but she could see that the group was probably better off if she fought. She repressed the urge to yell that no one was going to take her daughter from her and untied the knot holding Miki to her. Carefully positioning the little girl on Hinata’s back, she helped her tie the cloth while Sora exchanged verbal barbs with Kisame.
“So I have to ask, where did you find Shiraku? I’ve never met anyone in my life who was such an idiotic nutcase.”
Kisame snorted. “Fishing for details about why we brought him in? Don’t waste your energy.” He grinned. “You don’t have that much left.”
Naruto grinned back. “We’ll see about that,” he remarked, shifting his feet into a better fighting position.
There was a loud booming sound from behind the house. As they turned to look they could see large chunks of dirt soaring over the rooftop and into the sky. The water from the rice patties flew up into the air, covering them all in a light spray.
They coughed and tried to peer through the mess to find the source of the noise. Yasu’s throat closed up as she looked off toward the back of the house. That was the direction of the escape tunnel.
Through the mist came a cloaked figure, walking slowly, deliberately towards them. Itachi still wore his wide straw hat, obscuring his face, but there was something about his walk, calm, confident, that left no room for doubt that there was nothing going on that worried him. He wasn’t walking away as if there was still an enemy he had to worry about; he was walking away from a defeated foe.
“Nori,” Yasu breathed. Turning away from Kisame, she started to run towards the back of the house. She ran right past Itachi, who made no move to stop her, letting her slip by him while his eyes continued to stare straight ahead.
Behind her house was a hole where Itachi had blasted through the ground to climb out of the tunnel. Running over she stood on the edge of the tear in the ground, looking down into the hole with trepidation. There was her husband, laying slightly crumpled on the floor of the tunnel, the mud having partially retreated from his body.
“Nori!” Yasu screamed, jumping into the tunnel. She fell to her knees in the mud and reached out with one trembling hand to hold his cheek, turning his face towards her.
He took a shallow breath. “Yasu, you’re alive…” he whispered as she pulled his head into her lap.
“Of course I’m alive, you idiot,” she said, bringing her hands up to start the seals for a healing jutsu. But Nori reached up and loosely grabbed one of her wrists. She looked down at him, startled.
“Miki…where is she?” He wound his hand tighter around her wrist.
“She’s fine; Hinata has her. Nori, sweetheart, I need to-”
“I thought you were dead,” he whispered, tears welling up in his eyes. “I watched you die…so many times. I kept trying to save you, I kept trying to get them off of you, but I couldn’t…”
One of her tears fell on his cheek. “It was an illusion. I’m right here, I’m fine,” she said, sliding her fingers into his hair and along the side of his face. He smiled up at her weakly, trying to bring his hand up to touch her face. She caught it and pressed it to her cheek.
“They’re gone?”
It occurred to Yasu that her husband wasn’t quite in his right mind anymore; that the line between what was real and what was not had become hopelessly blurred by Itachi’s illusions. He had apparently watched her and Miki being killed, unable to do anything. She bit her lip and nodded. “They’re gone, and they’re never coming back.”
He smiled at that and rubbed the tips of his fingers over her cheek. “Take care of Miki; keep her safe…” he said.
Yasu’s eyes widened as she realized what he was saying. “No. No, Nori, do not give up.” She pushed her hands together again, starting the healing jutsu, but once again his hand stopped her.
“Don’t. I’m going. I used all of my strength trying to save you and I didn’t think I’d been able to. But you’re here, you’re safe; everything is all right. I can go now.”
“No you can’t! You need to stay right here with me! Don’t you dare-”
“I love you, Yasu,” he said, his voice stronger.
“Nori, I-” For a second she thought he was starting to come out of it. That the worst was over and that he was going to stay with her. But then his hand became dead weight under hers. His eyes shut and his head fell to one side to rest against one of her thighs.
“Nori?” she whispered, lowering his hand, so that she could hold his face in both of hers. “Nori?” she asked again louder, panic becoming more prominent in her voice. Her shoulders began to shake as she stroked his face, her tears running down her face. Finally, she took in one deep staggered breath and screamed his name to the sky.
Around the front of the house, Naruto, Hinata and Sora watched as Itachi crossed the yard to stand a few feet away from Kisame. He eyed them with a look that wasn’t quite distain and wasn’t quite boredom, but clearly not antagonistic.
“You’re sooner than expected,” he stated with almost no inflection in his voice at all. It was simply a statement, not an expression of surprise or fear.
“Apparently Nadare and Shiraku weren’t up to the job. The Hyuuga is still with them,” Kisame sneered. Hinata adjusted Miki on her back and shifted her weight, but did not look away.
Yasu came back around the side of the house, half carrying, half dragging the limp form of her husband. Her eyes remained trained on Itachi, glaring steadfast at his center. She limped under the added weight, breathing hard. She stopped on a patch of grass next to the house and bent down to lay her husband on the ground. The hem of her kimono was torn and muddied, the one sleeve almost completely ripped off. Her white hair had fallen partially down and hung in her red-rimmed eyes. She took a deep breath and planted her feet, readying herself for battle.
Sora, Naruto, and Hinata rushed to Yasu and Nori’s side. Hinata knelt next to Nori, Miki still tied to her back, and engaged her bloodline limit.
“Is he…” Naruto’s voice trailed off.
Hinata looked up at him, white eyes brimming with tears. “His chakra’s completely stopped flowing. He’s dead.”
Naruto howled with rage, the stripes on his cheeks widening and becoming more jagged, the pupils in his eyes narrowing. He drew his hands up to start sealing when Sora’s hand on his chest stopped him.
She jerked her head towards Yasu. “She gets to do it,” she whispered.
Naruto took a deep breath and tried to calm down. Yasu continued to stand next to her husband and seethe.
Itachi drew his hand up into the sleeve of his coat, hiding it from view as he dipped his chin down below the collar of his coat. He twisted the fingers of his hand into a strange sign, unlike any of the half seals that Naruto and Hinata used. He locked his eyes on Yasu, who was starting to form seals with her hands. He gathered his chakra and whispered under his breath, “Mind Cloud: Depression.”
Of all the genjutsu that had been invented in the past century, few were as illusive as the Mind Clouds. The chakra of the user entered the brain of the enemy and messed with the chemical balances, resulting in massive swings of emotion. Originally it had been used to create mania in fighters, making them believe that they were literally invincible, allowing them to go into battle with reckless abandon. It hadn’t taken long for them to flip the effects and create a Mind Cloud that triggered a deep dark depression in the mind, sending the victim into despair.
Unless they were thwarted on the first try it was nearly impossible for the person to know that they were being influenced by genjutsu. Unless the someone knew exactly what to look for they were virtually impossible to identify from the outside. And unless broken, they would stay in someone’s system from months, eating away at their psyche.
Yasu almost managed to repel it. Itachi watched her face as she fought off the attack, and gave a little extra boost to the chakra. She was already heading partially into despair from the death of her husband. It wouldn’t take much more to push her over the edge.
“Yasu?” Sora questioned, daring to send a glance at her partner over her shoulder.
Her face twisted as the genjutsu took over. Then she screamed and fell to her knees, holding her head and sobbing uncontrollably.
“Yasu!” Sora cried and turned towards her partner.
“Sora? Sora, he’s gone!” She wailed, grabbing onto the edge of her black coat. Sora’s eyes widened. She had never seen Yasu like this. “Sora, what am I going to do without him!” She let out a loud wail and let go, allowing herself to fall down into the mud.
“Yasu! Pull yourself together!” Sora cried. What the hell was wrong with her? The woman that Sora knew was likely to rage against the men who killed those she loved, not break down and wonder how she was going to cope. Not while they were standing right in front of her.
“So this is the dGra Klesha,” Kisame snorted. “Some challenge you turned out to be. Pathetic!” he announced, swinging the sword off of his shoulder and resting the tip on the ground. “Looks like we’re not going to have to worry about the fact that all of you showed up; they’re as good as useless anyway.”
“Why you…” Naruto started.
“Naruto.” Sora cut off before switching into the Western, hoping that Itachi and Kisame didn’t speak the language. “I want you to back off like you and Hinata are going to leave, then split and go in opposite directions; Naruto head northwest, and Hinata head southeast. They should follow you. I’ll try to lure one of them off due north and then we can circle back and fight them together. Hinata, you worry about getting Miki to safety and then come back. Argue with me like you don’t want to go,” she finished quickly.
“But Nee-chan, I won’t leave you here!” Naruto yelled in Eastern. “I wanna take these-“
“No time to argue; go!” she yelled and the three of them started to move.
Sora charged directly in towards Itachi and Kisame, hands sealing to activate the Chakra Seal no Jutsu. Her hands glowed purple as she dodged Kisame to head back towards Itachi, ducking and moving in. She attempted to tag him with one hand, but he easily evaded it. She back flipped away from him and landed in a crouch, sending one leg out to sweep underneath his feet. He jumped and again avoided being caught as she tried to hit him from below.
Naruto and Hinata backed up and watched as Kisame picked up his sword to advance towards them. They waited until they had backed up about 50 feet before splitting, Hinata heading away from the fighting and Naruto heading back towards Sora at an angle.
He had traveled about a hundred feet when he realized no one was following him. He turned to see Kisame standing in the exact same spot he had been when they split, looking first at Naruto and then at Hinata. He watched her retreating back and then made three short seals and pointed his finger at her and said something Naruto couldn’t hear.
Hinata froze in her tracks. And then slowly turned around.
He watched as Kisame turned away from him. Naruto found himself looking at Hinata standing there with Miki in her arms. Her eyes were filled with fear, but held determination as she watched Kisame advance towards her. He looked at Nori lying dead on the ground, eyes vacant while Yasu clung to his chest and sobbed. Then he looked at Sora, who was facing Itachi, eyes staring at the center of his body.
Naruto’s eyes narrowed. One simple through went through his head; no.
Ten breaths. Then focus on the goal.
He breathed in deeply and started to gather chakra in his core, pulling it around the spiral in his stomach and into a tight ball. With every breath he took, he drew the chakra tighter and tighter, pulling it around and around his center.
Set your intention.
I’m going to push him down. I’m going to make sure that he doesn’t hurt Hinata or Miki or anyone else. I’ll hunt him down if I have to, but he’s never going to hurt anyone again.
Choose your principle. Call it up from inside you and allow it to take over. Allow that principle to take over.
Destruction. I’m going to destroy Kisame. He’ll never harm anyone ever again. He won’t get to Hinata. He won’t get to anyone.
Let the chakra unwind and go.
Naruto released the ball of energy inside him, letting it spiral out into his body, filling his veins with chakra. He felt as if he was almost being lifted off of his feet as the purpose-charged chakra pumped through his veins. He could do anything, and the first thing he was going to do was completely destroy Kisame.
And then things started to change.
Sora had never let Naruto practice the principles with the Kyuubi’s chakra. It was too dangerous a combination; too many things could go wrong if the demon should somehow take even partial control. She had made him swear that he would never use them at the same time, under risk of having her put a permanent Silence no Jutsu on him. Naruto had grumbled slightly but agreed. Unless they knew exactly what would happen, it was too risky.
At the time it hadn’t seemed like that hard of a promise to keep. Normally when the demonic chakra emerged, it did so with some sort of warning. Naruto would run out of regular chakra, or go into a rage and the chakra would slowly uncurl itself from its place in his core. If he was trying to use it without one of these conditions, he would have to ask and coax it out. So principles would be his first line of defense, and if that didn’t work, he could stop using them and start using the fox’s chakra. It seemed simple enough.
Except for the very first time he had seen the Kyuubi while falling down into the ravine, Naruto hadn’t talked to the demon inside him. He has become a shadowy and undefined presence always slinking in the back of his mind. Naruto never forgot about him, but it was easy to pretend that he wasn’t there when he didn’t need him.
All of that changed in an instant.
Naruto felt his chakra levels boom as all of a sudden more chakra than he had ever experienced in his life came rushing through his system. It wasn’t the uncurling that he normally associated with the release of the Kyuubi’s chakra. This was a rush like a dam suddenly breaking. It was more than he had ever experienced before; more than what he had felt on the bridge when he was twelve, more than in the forest during the Chuunin exam, more than when he had fought Neji.
It was too much for his body for his body to handle. It started to bubble out from his skin like some sort of chemical burn. His skin glowed red as the chakra rose out from within him to form a protective shell around his body. It swirled around him and formed a shape vaguely resembling a large fox. Nine tails slammed into the ground around him, destroying the rice paddies in the surrounding area. All the chakra pulsed once, realigning itself with the principle of destruction.
“Yesssss…” came a deep voice from inside him, almost a growl. He felt a delicious joy run through his veins, making him shutter. That wasn’t his voice, and that wasn’t his emotion. He tried to push the Kyuubi back down, but the demon raged inside him, overwhelming his senses.
Naruto lifted his face and let out a howl.
Through red-tinted vision he could see everyone staring at him. When his eyes reached Kisame, they narrowed. That was his prey. That was the one he was going to destroy.
He could feel the power gathering in his palm and realized that he had subconsciously started forming a Rasengan in his hand. He crouched down near the ground, ready to pounce, the ball of chakra spinning faster and faster in his hand, gathering more and more power.
In the corner of his mind, he could just barely hear Hinata crying out his name.
He snarled.
He struck.
This site is published by Samizdat Express, Orange, CT
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