Author Note: Hello all, just a short note before you continue to read. This is my first story, so bear with me! This story has the potential for violence, sexual acts, explicit language, and any number of 'adult only' content- so please read responsibly. If I do end up with romance in this fic, it will be LGBTQ friendly (femslash as the main focus most likely)- if you are not a fan, no hating- just don't read it. I would love any comments, questions, or other tidbits if you have any. I am hoping to make this a lengthy fic, but it will probably take me a LONG time. I do not own Naruto or any other cool anime (unfortunately). Read at your own risk ;) Hope you enjoy!
The sound of harsh breathing filled the air of the dark cave which Satomi inhabited. Sweat dripped down her face in long streaming beads, traveling down her face and neck to soak into her tattered and torn uniform. She hardly noticed as her sweat made her skin stick to her body uncomfortably, as she focused solely on a sealing array on the large scroll she had on the ground.
She meticulously draws her brush over the paper, swift but calculating every movement carefully and with the surety only a master in the art could have, and with a desperate focus only someone under threat of death could accomplish. The cave was silent, but she could hear the voices of her comrades encouraging her, yelling out in their last struggle for survival, crying in defeat, and screaming in pain. Satomi blinked rapidly at the onslaught of tears suddenly obscuring her vision, she had no time to spare for tears, they only delayed her progress on the seal.
Just as she wiped her face and continued another sequence of the seal, a man's voice filled the empty space in the air. "Satomi! You must hurry, one of Naruto's clones just dispersed. She's found our location!"
"Tsk-!" Satomi clicked her tongue in distress and again focused all her efforts into the sealing array before her. It was their last hope after all. A way to escape and recuperate, to hopefully develop a better plan and finally defeat the goddess Kaguya.
Satomi only managed another thirty minutes of work before Obito and Naruto rushed in to the cave. In the back of her mind Satomi felt a bit of amusement at the odd pairing, but it diminished as soon as it came. Two enemies coming together to fight a monster which defies all possibilities. They really got themselves into a huge mess.
"She's here!" Naruto yelled, interrupting Satomi's thought process. With a snap and crack of her stiff back, she stood up, scooping up the scroll as she did.
"I'm not yet done. I still have the final two layers to add to the array. The seal is incredibly complex, the chance of it succeeding are incredibly low as well. It may do as intended and send us to a dimension where we can heal and come up with a better plan, or it may not work at all, making this a wasted effort, or it could send us to a place where there is not sufficient resources for our survival- like the sun! - it may even just tear us all apart from the time-space rift it will undoubtedly create!"
Satomi shouted the last sentence, the tears from before finally freely flowing from her eyes. For a moment she could only imagine all her friends and loved ones that she lost from this war. The Fourth Great Shinobi War, started by one of the men in front of her, and how everything went to crap after everyone who had died was brought back to life. AND STARTED TO FIGHT THEM. It was so hard to kill the people who she admired, loved, and felt respect for. Towards the end of all the fighting, after their ranks had dwindled down to less than a hundred, they had come up with this plan.
Stealing the idea of dimensions from the very creature who killed them all so easily, they devised a plan to create a way to jump to another dimension, to hopefully escape and heal and come up with a way of attack that would kill the 'goddess'. Using Satomi's sealing skills, Obito's Sharingan and Kamui ability, and Naruto's ability to hold off the goddess while they work together on the seal. Originally, they had a little under a hundred members all working together to create this seal, but after only two months of running and hiding and fighting to their last breath, it came down to these three shinobi. How they would defeat Kaguya, Satomi had no clue, she was entirely focused on finding a method of escape, so that they could think of that part of the plan later.
"Satomi!" again, the elder shinobi was snapped from her thoughts as Obito stepped forward and shook her shoulders lightly. "We need to get out of here, this is our last shot. Naruto is going to distract her for as long as he can, to give us an opportunity to escape and finish the seal. Can you do this?"
Satomi felt her gaze harden, she turned her tired green eyes to the young man, who she remembered as just a young academy hopeful. Sprouting off his dream of becoming Hokage to all who could hear, pulling an insane amount of pranks and always with a smile on his face. The man before her now reminded her so much of his father, blue eyes sharp but hardened with experience, the determined expression reflected that of his mother. The memories of the former Hokage and his wife only caused Satomi to experience another pang of sadness. Yet more people who have died in the vain hope for a peaceful future.
Satomi and Naruto held each other's gaze for many moments. The elder woman, nearing the age of 55, felt an odd calm overcome her as she took in his determined expression. The young man, only 17 years of age yet already having experienced the death of all he held dear, still had hope that they would be able to pull through. She had never met anyone who embodied the will of fire so revered in Konoha as was in that young man. Hardening her own resolve, she turned to Obito and said.
"Let's go, we will finish this, and finally find a way to end this hell we are living in." The three of them stood silent for a moment, gathering up their strength before their final push which would determine their fate.
Their plan, if one could call it that, was for Naruto to confront Kaguya and stall for time. In the meantime, Satomi would finish the seal configuration and Obito would stay with her, acting as a guard and last resort if Naruto fails and Kaguya reaches the duo. Satomi estimated she needed three more hours of work, the layering process was quite complex after all, and hoped that Naruto would be able to buy them the time they needed. With one last look towards one another, they split into two groups, Naruto by himself and Obito and Satomi in the opposite direction.
Satomi and Obito did not go far, unwilling to sacrifice too much time running when there was so much work to do still. They gave up all pretenses of hiding now, Satomi set up her equipment right in the middle of a long since used path. She needed the large flat area for her work. Obito took up point in a tree not far away, acting as sentry. She worked as fast as she thought safe, swiping across yards of scroll paper and even the ground where the seal spilled out. If her process was interrupted now there was no undoing the work or rolling it back up and running. It really was now or never- the final moment of truth. If she could complete this array they would have a chance. If not, they were as good as dead.
The time went by so swiftly, Satomi hardly even noticed as the sun began to descend into the earth. The sky turned a dark orange, with stripes of pink and yellow visible, and the light blue of the sky turning darker until it looked almost purple. The evening was cool, there were no clouds in the sky, no looming storm to signify the intensity of the situation. It was utterly peaceful. Until it wasn't.
With a deafening BOOM! something crashed into the earth not far away from Obito and Satomi's location. Heart pounding in her ears enough to overcome the sounds of trees falling and crashing into the earth, she looked up to Obito who had his Sharingan blazing.
"It was Naruto… He's not looking good… he has some of Zetsu on him. Kaguya seems to be playing with him, as Zetsu is very slowly covering him." Satomi's teeth clenched painfully and frustrated tears threatened to spill from her eyes. She looked to her array, before looking towards her companion.
"I-I'm almost finished. I just need maybe thirty more minutes. Can you… can you help him without dying? Your Sharingan is needed for this seal to work. If we want this to succeed, you need to come back, alive and able to perform the Kamui." Another loud noise filled the air, this time a sharp crack sound that could only be a body smashing against a solid surface. They both flinched harshly, turning towards where the sound came from, Obito spoke.
"There is no longer any other option, I have to go, and I have to come back." Obito looked to Satomi again, looking with some mixture of remorse and determination in his eyes. "I am sorry for all that my selfishness has put us all through, if I had known…" He let out a sigh, regret contorting his face and eyes clouding over momentarily.
"The same could be said of all of us, Obito. You were not the only one who made mistakes, cost people lives and potential happiness. Your actions may have caused this mess, but it was also the inaction of people like me who contributed to it." Satomi is suddenly taken back years in the past, where she could have helped a young boy struggling to survive but instead chose to ignore the problem since it was not her own.
"Now, let's put our all into this last effort. We can play the pity game after this bitch is gone to Kami and out of our lives." Satomi snarled the last sentence, and Obito smirked at the older woman's words.
"Now that, is a plan I can get behind." Obito jumped down hard, all thoughts of stealth gone now that we were on our last leg. "I will be back soon, you better keep up your end of the plan!"
Satomi barely took the time to acknowledge his last words before she was once again rushing through the seal matrix. Her body was quivering, the ground shook with the powerful battle going on not too far away, she could practically taste the chakra in the air from the battle. Before long, she made one last swipe of the seal, just in time to hear the sound of laughter filling the air.
Satomi's head snapped up, but she did not see anyone nearby. Still, that feminine manic laugh could not be mistaken. Kaguya. Satomi's eyes darted back and forth, her body tensed and she prepared for the worst as her ears caught the sound of someone rushing towards her. With hardly a second to prepare herself, someone was suddenly in front of her. She was barely able to stop herself from flinging her readied kunai when she realized it was Obito standing in front of her.
He was panting heavily, blood covering his clothes, his already crippled arm an even more mangled mess of flesh and bone. Half of his hair was gone due to a Fire Jutsu, his legs were shaking with the effort of even standing, and his chakra was dangerously low. Satomi rushed to his aid, her palm glowing the familiar green of medical chakra. She couldn't do much about his injuries now, but she could infuse some of her chakra into him, to at least alleviate that concern. He was mumbling something, but Satomi paid no mind to that and continued the transfer until she felt he had a safe amount in his system.
"The array is finished now, we just need to stand in the middle. I will provide the chakra to fuel the Jutsu, you just need to provide the direction with your eye." She paused a moment, before taking his arm and helping him into the sealing array. "Is Naruto…?" she let her question trail off, unwilling to complete the sentence in fear that it was true.
A pained look overcame Obito's face, and Satomi felt an incredible twist in her gut. There were no more words said between the two as she helped him into the sealing array and stood next to him. She knelt and placed her hands over the area where she needed to channel her chakra to fuel the Jutsu. Looking up, she noticed that Obito's eyes were filled with a great intensity as his Sharingan blazed with power of his will.
"Ready?" Obito asked, already channeling his own chakra for the Justu.
"As I can be." Satomi replied softly, surging her chakra forward and into the seal. The ink around them began to glow, slowly gaining more intensity and eventually its brightness blinded the duo.
Just as Obito finally called out his Jutsu, a loud voice could be heard nearby.
"Space-Time Sealing Technique: Kamui! Activate!" There was one more big pulse of light, before the two of them were dragged into a dark portal which opened in the seal rather than in Obito's eye. Satomi felt her chakra rapidly draining from her body, and she could barely feel Obito's presence next to her. Weakly, she reached out with one hand, trying to grab her only allies hand for support. He seemed to have had the same idea, and their fingers just barely brushed one another before she was overcome with pain from her chakra getting forcibly taken from her coils. Satomi began to fall forward, too weak to support herself anymore, when suddenly light filled her vision again.
Her brain was barely able to register a sudden explosion of colors before she lost consciousness due to pain and exhaustion.
