Footsteps on stone echoed angrily into darkness. The ray of sunlight peering down exposed for a brief moments two silhouettes. Both were rushing down the cave system on a slope, away, away from the burning village. Even here, underground, the acrid smell of the smoke permeated strongly and tendrils of gray threaded though cracks in stone to whip around quick feet, as if in an effort to trip.
The fighting had been going on for hours. When the run had first risen miles above this place, light of day exposed to patrol's searching and horrified eyes the mangled remains of the night watch. Runners had been sent in every direction to alert the people, but most of them never even reached their destinations.
To this moment very few people knew why the attack had taken place. Outside of the village, absolutely no one even knew that anything was wrong yet. The pursuant in the cave was single-mindedly working to make sure that no one else did find out.
With a roar of impatience, the taller silhouette abruptly came to a stop. Muscles strained briefly and the giant whipped off of his back an enormous and scaly sword. The light reflecting dully off the blade illuminated blue tinted skin that was stretched into a grim smile.
"Come out, little ninja. Come on out and play."
Silence met his words, and his little eyes narrowed angrily.
"You know we will have to fight eventually, it's only a matter of me catching you. Then whoever wins will go back to your little village to die for their respective side. Whichever it is of us may as well not have thirty miles to go back, ne?"
He shifted to balance his weight better, and squinted an eye in a vain attempt to tear through the dim atmosphere and gauge movement. A slow, almost wooden sounding click clack of footfalls met his ears.
With a hiss the bent outline of a young woman lit aglow a meandering trail of semi-liquid fuel that trailed along the cold floor. Its presence was a clear sign to Kisame that these caves were not abandoned as he had previously thought. Rapid flickers sizzled and burst into quick existence, binging soft light to an uninviting place.
The girl stood and looked at him.
Kisame flung his arm and thus the blade out behind his body as he took off at a run towards his newly revealed opponent. He planted his feet and twisted his body, viciously bringing the Samehada to slice through the air where his opponent was. She ducked under; kunai emerging fanned out between pale fingers, and she stabbed upwards. The girl's blow tore through the fabric of his cloak as he jumped a step back and brought the Samehada down over his head. The blunt left edge caught a hard shoulder, sending the waifish female flying a short distance, only to pivot oddly and launch herself at him again, her unintelligent and unlinking blue eyes impassively focused on the man's sword. Her small hand stiffly knocked the huge thing away and Kisame narrowed his eyes. Something wasn't right here.
He faked left and used the opportunity to turn with a new burst of speed and drive the long thin blade that was hidden in his sleeve straight through the throat of his opponent. Warm liquid splashed onto his sleeve and he watched as the woman slid smoothly to the floor, her fingers twitching involuntarily in a muscle spasm.
Kisame lit a small fire jutsu with his non-dominant hand and cracked his neck. He flipped the other over with his sandaled foot and crouched over her. The steady light revealed the steely and serene features of Yamanaka Ino, far more beautiful in cold death than she had ever been in life. His eyes picked out details that others without his experience would have missed.
A chill traversed his spine. This was eerily familiar to the Mist nukenin. He quickly backed away from the fallen body, his features enraged.
"Come out!" He bellowed to seeming nothingness. "Fight me! Whoever the hell you are, you sick freak."
"Naa, naa." A light voice reprimanded gently from behind him. He turned to face it, his fist shaking. He watched with a great deal more calm than he felt as his real opponent leapt nimbly over a tumble of rocks to sashay into his vision. "I wondered how long it would take you to realize what you were following for so long. Not long at all, comparatively speaking."
Kisame faked an unpleasant smirk, though he really didn't feel like it. "I've spent far too much time with freaks like you. Sasori was the original monster."
That was true. In all his years, he had never heard of or seen anyone with methods similar to those to Sasori of the Sand. Puppet usage, yes he had seen before. That wasn't so uncommon, though certainly not popular. It was a difficult and not very rewarding discipline. Chakra strings were something far beyond the capabilities of most ANBU. The type of person who chose this method was often bloody-minded stubborn. The hard work would pay off exponentially in the off chance the puppeteer succeeded.
The usage of corpses as the dolls was not so widespread, however. Most people would shirk at using actual human remains in such a way even though, as Sasori had proved, the dolls could be made to retain their owner's abilities.
Certainly it would take a certain type of person to use corpses in such a manner. It would have to be someone who was very detached, to say the least. More stomach churning was the fact that, whoever this madwoman was, she was actually using the body of one of her former comrades as her weapon. Kisame recognized the woman in question as a rather inept Chuunin who was more known because of her position as a clan head than for being useful.
This did not speak well of Kisame's chances for emotional manipulation, at least.
He felt decidedly sick and his mind raced for an easy way to make this problem disappear. This opponent was clearly of a high caliber, in addition to being utterly ruthless. Kisame was no fool, and he recognized the expert control that would be needed to manipulate numerous chakra strings to move the body smoothly enough to fool even someone who was familiar with puppetry into believing he faced a human opponent. Kisame was not one to run from a fight, but he had been in a dozen serious battles over the day. He was by no means too tired to go on, but the adrenaline had long since left his body. His head was buzzing and he was starting to feel stiffness in his arms and legs from the exertions. He was starting to fear that this fight might prove to be too much in his current state.
When he had first pursued an unknown kunoichi out of the village, he was thinking in terms of polishing off survivors. After all, anyone who was a major threat SHOULD have been defending the hopeless village to their last breath. Only cowards ran from a fight, and the strong had no need to be scared. He had mentally dismissed the person as a threat and was beginning to regret the initial assessment. Had he known what he did now, he would probably have pointed that stupid bomber in her direction and hoped they killed each other.
But now this positively reeked of a setup. He had been lured into unfamiliar territory, away form all possible allies, and than distracted by a false opponent for no discernable purpose. Except of course, maybe it was just to screw with his head.
There was a strong chance that the freak had been setting up traps while he was distracted. He now had to assume there were traps in any case, as she was apparently familiar with this tunnel system. He settled into an athletic stance with one hand steadying his primary weapon and the other poised to flick kunai.
He had work to do.
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Kisame Hoshigashi emerged tiredly from the dank and dark into blazing heat. A quick hand seal doused a narrow path out of the flames around him.
"Hey! Bastard!" A drawling voice lightly rung out from somewhere above him. "Took your sweet time. What were you doing, un?" Deidara leapt down beside him with an astonishing amount of grace for a tall man. He had clearly just jumped down from the ominously hovering clay bird.
"Itachi left hours ago with Tobi. We managed to find out where they sent that damn jinchuriki you and your partner were supposed to have captured forever ago, yeah."
Kisame regarded Deidara with a look at implied he had just stated that he was attracted to polar bears in hats. It was a mixture of the natural deep seated dislike between the two and disgust at his presence pulling at Hoshigashi's face. "Why the hell are you waiting for me then?"
Deidara sneered at him. "Like I want to. But it's Itachi and your job to get the nine tail brat, and if I'd gone with I'd have been involved. Hell if I'm gonna do your work for you. Besides," he snorted, "do you really think Tobi could deliver a message to your late ass in a way that would make any sense?"
"Yeah, well, message delivered girl-boy."
The blonde narrowed eyes fringed with long lashes. "Lies!" He turned away huffily and flipped his hair over his shoulder. Stiffly the nin signaled down the monstrous clay creation. He looked back with an impassive expression. "Anyway, your brat is currently making his way back here form Wind country. Itachi is gonna head him off at the place where Fire's border's meet with the Isa River. Be there."
The ex-Stone nin expertly climbed atop the huge bird and shot Kisame one final dirty look before alighting off in the distance. The figure slowly began to fade away, in the opposite direction as the setting sun, probably en route to some secret base or other.
The jerk was probably intent on stopping to kick puppies and vandalize retirement homes on the way there, Sakura thought rather dryly from her hiding place. She stood once she was sure the Akatsuki was gone and clenched her hands into fists, sweeping them towards herself. Kisame collapsed and slid across the ground to her.
Lord, she was tired.
The technique that prepared a body for her usage was draining at the best of times. It was exponentially more difficult when she had to murder the person in question herself. She didn't have so huge an amount of chakra that she could afford to be reckless with it in the first place.
Still, Sakura realized that tired or not, she had a job to do. Tsunade had chosen her to be the user of an experimental jutsu designed for a day such as this. Her only role in the fighting today had simply been to stay alive to use the technique.
The project was one that was difficult to define, especially taking into consideration the fact that if it was used correctly there would never be any evidence or indication that there had so much as been a need for it. It was undoubtedly old, but there was simply no way for Sakura to know if it had ever been performed before.
A person using the jutsu could theoretically be able to send vital information that would be able to prevent events such as…today… from occurring. It was ridiculously complicated.
A person could only send information back a set amount of time into their own mind in a manner similar to having an internal conversation. The information would be deposited and the real trouble from then on out probably lay in getting the Hokage to take the voice in your head seriously. Actually making contact needed very specific conditions that were incredibly unlikely to be met by anyone who did not know of and plan for the technique.
That wasn't what was most important right now, however. Sakura had more immediate concerns.
She sat in the dust of her homeland that was specked with blood and unraveled a length of sturdy yellowed paper from around her thigh under her brace. She flattened it on the ground as she mindlessly slid a paintbrush out from inside her left boot and dipped it in the only ink available-her blood. She gracefully began the markings that would soon form the storage container of her newest weapon. The brush movements were well practiced, but she paid unblinking attention to her art. It made no difference if this seal was a little more elaborate than most of her similar work.
After all, she had plenty of time to kill. Sakura was intelligent enough not to try a new jutsu out while on the brink of exhaustion.
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