Head in a Basket
Disclaimer: Naruto and its characters are Kishimoto's property. This work is merely written for personal amusement and satisfaction.
Warning: Violence, Language, and Morbid Content.
AN: This small one-shot fixes a very comical 'deus ex machina' that happened not once but twice in the same scenario.
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The past was like a leech: it stuck itself to the skin eagerly and fed till it became bloated and grotesque. Burn them off, Orochimaru had told him once when they trudged through a marsh. Several of them had attached themselves to his arm. He pried them off with his sword. It did not hurt as much as it should have. The places where their mouths had been left teeth marks and they bled.
He had made peace with the idea that the past he did not need would only wear him down. There was no use carrying around the weight of bonds that gave him nothing to build a new future. He had a chance to end Naruto's life, but he chose to spare it on a whim that he would not let his brother win—that he would not let him defeat his own philosophies.
But Itachi was dead: he had gone off to a better plane. At least, this was what he hoped for, but Itachi had left him behind to be crushed by the tides of vengeance and a lonely solitude that would haunt him forever; his entire clan had met its end, and he was left all alone and without an ink of blood to craft his own destiny in their name.
This was the leech he never pried off; it fed off his emotions and had grown grotesquely into something else entirely. Memories clung to him day in day out, and he let them as they provided a reassurance for his designs: he would get what he wanted and he would get it with force if he had to.
Life was so short; for a man, it was shorter still. It began and ended in a blur, and the only things left for a man to reminisce before he made another transition were his memories. Either they left him aggrieved that he had a bundle of regrets to carry on his back as an impossible burthen, or he found contentment that he had finally left it all behind—that the journey was finally over.
How would he pen his name? The Uchiha name was forged in blood. That night, bodies had fallen and streets ran blood to the clear streams. Scattered they lay about in the shadows. Their stench became a new memory for his thoughts.
All men bled and rotted away, but not like this—never like this. Life was but one long memory for the present, and if it was marked by such memories, it became such a burden to live. So he had chosen to keep the memories he needed and discard those he did not need. They did not even weigh him down; they were just there, wallowing about in the corners like drunkards. He was through with them.
When he was confronted with Naruto's idealism, he shunned it. The boy was a fool. He did not know how harsh the world was; it was brutal, unfair, and unkind. Idealism was best left for good dreams on rainy nights. They made such poor anchors for reality.
Standing over Karin's crumpled body now, he was faced with another trouble, another memory. It was all a matter of usefulness now. If she was useful, he would keep her. If she chose to fight, he would cut her down. Was she not here for this purpose? She carried the stench of Konoha's ideals. He could smell it off her the way he could smell an unwashed harlot in the pleasure houses.
He did not need her reassurances. He could tell that the kunai she carried in her trembling hand was soaked in poison. Her tongue was even more poisonous as it created more lies. She must have thought him to be some fool. How he loathed their lies and their deceits. He was not their chattel—a puppet to their theatre.
Her immature green eyes wandered to the right, like a clumsy child's, to gaze at the fresh blood spurting out of the grave wound he had inflicted upon the red-haired girl. She lay there still, soaking the dry-dirt of aged-stones with her blood—a coarse melange. She was dying, and he did not need his Sharingan to see the truth. Her life was too short; she had moments to live.
She spoke some more and appeared like this volatile bastard of the most foul ingredients she carried in her breast from Konoha. The village's stench travelled far and wide. It never let anyone breathe free. It never liberated those that justly revolted against the nexus of power and corruption it guarded in her heart.
What a fool he had been? The veil had lifted, and he had received a revelation from the silent firmament above. He shed his skin and sprouted mighty wings of vengeance that would let him soar high and climb the tallest cliffs to reach the silent Kami in the sky—a new and deadly metamorphosis for his quest. He would fell them in great numbers that their tranquil streets would run blood for days. Their torments would drown out in the silence of Time. They, too, would be reduced to mere memories, things of the past, though he would spit upon them in rage and contempt as their prize. They deserved no better!
She moved past him, her motions silly and clumsy as if she was the same irksome girl who had tried her best to stop him in the shadows of the night, with confessions of undying love. Her boldness to compare her feelings to what he felt for his family still offended him. What would she know about family when she was so eager to discard them? And still . . . and still her words remained the same: confessions of loyalty and betrayal of family. It was almost disgusting.
He watched as her inky shadow traversed beyond him, and he felt as though a weight had lifted from his shoulder. And he had suddenly transformed into a hawk. His eyes saw the foolish prey so clearly, and his talons were ready to snuff out its life. His hand turned into a claw, and a familiar chakra turned into Raiton: a quick design for her demise.
Karin croaked something, but she was too slow and too foolish to know. It happened in slow motion for him: she turned around to look upon his changed visage, and the sharp tip of the blade-like hand struck the side of her fragile neck and went clean through, and she started to fall back; her neck was a rusty old pipe that had broken in two to let out a sudden red gush of water; red exploded out, and her expression changed so slowly from shock to pain, and then to something else, as she realized that her jugular-vein had been cut through so savagely.
He was not obliged to repeat the stroke again, for her neck was nearly sundered. It remained attached to her body with a few ugly seams of skin, tissue, and ruptured veins. She was like an old, old puppet a puppeteer had thrown against the wall in exasperation that it did not turn and move the way he wanted.
He did not even give a chance for a scream to swell in her throat, and she went down without a sound and thudded to the final remains of the crumbling old bridge. Fresh blood spread in all directions and shone in the sun's grey-soaked light. The final chirping sounds of birds upon his hand dissipated into the iron-grip of the hawk's talons. He was not smiling. It had to be done. Konoha had to be taught a lesson that Taka and Akatsuki meant business.
He raised his uncaring eyes and met the shocked expression in the red-eye his mentor had once received as a great gift. He would remember this in great detail for years to come—the Sharingan never let anyone forget. He had been a few seconds too late to save her life. He had not expected him to be so unforgiving of her attempt on his life. It was only fair. He paid her back here and now. He never liked to delay things for another time.
A cloud rose up into the air, and a tear in the fabric of space appeared beside him. Out came the two-faced whelp who was so fond of masks, and the plant-monstrosity was not far behind. He grabbed Karin and muttered something about 'necessities,' and then the scene of carnage spun before his eyes, and everything vanished. He did not even see the first drop of rain fall down to dilute his bloody artistry.
A memory was gone, and his heart felt lighter. Would Naruto finally learn the lessons of reality? He could only hope . . .
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The End
Canon-Manga Info: Sasuke was aware that Sakura had come to kill him, which is why he tested her and moved behind her to strike. He didn't strike at her on a whim. What's odd is that Sasuke perfectly dodged Mei's first Yōton attack with hilarious ease when it was spewed at him whilst his back was turned to her: he blocked the second with the Ribcage Susanoo; she couldn't even throw him into the damned corridor without Chōjūrō's sword strike!
And still she was miserably failing as Sasuke's chakra (from Viz-translation) was just "beginning to weaken (according to Karin)" when she used Futton in the corridor. So, basically, she shot (the first) Yōton at his back; but his basic Ninja-Sensing was so good that he easily detected it despite the fact that he was exhausted from having fought Raikage (costing him his arm), Shī, and Darui; and bracing the combined attack of Gaara, Darui, Kankurō, and Temari. He shrugged off all that as if it was nothing, buried them under the debris, and went to the meeting-hall where Mei decided to pick a fight.
Whilst, here, he magically didn't see Kakashi coming from the side to rescue Sakura (Kakashi's very slow compared to Sasuke: the latter dodged point-blank clay-based bombs' [C1, C2, etc.] shock-waves, for fuck's sake!) when, scientifically, peripheral-vision detects movement with greater accuracy, and he had been healed a bit by Karin, as well? So he can easily anticipate, detect, and dodge attacks from the back, attacks he can't even see, but he couldn't detect the movements in his field of vision—not once, but twice? That makes no sense! (He matched Naruto's attack after the rescue with pin-point accuracy albeit he could barely see because his eyes were failing him! By God!) It's a narrative paradox. That, folks, is what we call 'deus ex machina'. It's that absurd concept deliberately used by the author that makes no sense whatsoever within the canon-logic, but it works somehow and we're supposed to accept it. (I respect Kishimoto as a writer, but he really didn't do this part justice.)