A low growl that had been permeating the air of the clearing came to a fading end, several crows taking heed to the ominous sound and subsequent silence and launching themselves out of the uppermost branches of a fir tree to his right and taking flight. It was unnerving, the frozen, furious expression on her face; an expression that bordered on frantic insanity. He had frozen when she had, an automatic response to the menacing surge of frighteningly toxic chakra that had suddenly flared to life, and his hand was still clenched in the almost-black brown locks of the currently unconscious Uchiha Itachi's hair; he was in his crouched position, eyes trained in on every aspect of his opponent so that he could bolt at the first sign of attack.

She was not physically imposing in the least. In fact, her body shape was that of a trained dancer, with supple curves, delicate joints, a tiny waist and the likes. Nothing about her had triggered any instinctual caution in him; the first time he had even actually registered her presence was when he had began punishing his subordinate for his insultingly insubordinate behavior. She had sprung up out of her position next to a very out-of-place willow tree and charged halfway across the oblong clearing, emitting a troublingly carnal snarl all the while, coming to a rigid stop once his hand had swept across the Akatsuki member's face in a vicious back hand. His sharingan had zeroed in on her as soon as she stopped, despite his vision being directed at Itachi at the time.

They maintained their poses for several minutes, his eyes rapidly searching for any information on her via only what he could see of her, since he had an unnerving sense of foreboding stemming from her growl; no human could have produced such an ominous and livid sound. Her eyes did not focus on him at all though. Her eyes were crazed, staring past him at the unconscious form of his pawn; she didn't actually seem to actually see him either though.

He took a moment to observe her eyes warily, and was barely able to refrain from narrowing his eyes in curiosity; her eyes seemed normal enough at a glance, yet under further scrutiny, her irises, which were larger than most to begin with, were perfectly reflective like mirrors. Her pupils, now dilated with anger, were the only things keeping the images in her eyes from being perfect reflections of what she was looking at. It was eerie, he decided; he could see a perfect copy of himself in her eyes with the precision accuracy of his sharingan. Was that a kekkei genkai?

He was jerked out of his thoughts by a slight shift in his hand; Itachi was blinking, on the verge of waking up. Without hesitating, something that someone immortal and all-powerful seldom did, he snapped his other hand back across the man's face with enough force to knock him out again. He instantly snapped his head back to the girl, bracing himself for the consequences of his mistake.

She convulsively blinked, with enough force to dislodge something from in her eyes. What were those things falling to the ground? He concentrated on her with one eye, but focused his sharingan on the falling objects with the other. They looked like…..Contact lenses?

Suddenly the air was pierced by a haunting keen, a bone-chilling cry that sounded jarringly identical to the shrill and piercing notes possible on a shinobue flute. He felt the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck stand up and felt his stomach bottom out, a combination of reflex responses that he hadn't felt in decades. He recognized it as fear; primordial fear.

A multitude of this occurred at once; her eyes flew open, his blood ran cold, and her appearance changed chillingly. Amongst her teeth, barred from her frozen state, two fangs grew from her canines; her fingernails lengthened two about an inch and a half and turned a silver color; her hair, which had previously been pulled back and pinned up in a thick, cascading pile of coffee colored and tightly curled hair had shaken loose of its pins, depositing them carelessly onto the mossy ground.

In a fast flick reminiscent of a whip cracking, and by a stimulant inside the very strands of her hair, chakra he presumed, her hair flung a slew of brown hair dye out onto a scattering of rocks not far from her. This revealed her real hair color to him, an inky black that fell down her back in several distinct sections, ending each with an intricate white cord; she also had two thick and intricate herringbone braids of silver hair falling forwards over her shoulders and down her shapely chest, ending in three inch silver disks on either side of her exposed navel.

Her eyes were the most unsettling part of her. They were an opal white, like the Byakugan, had the tomoe of the Sharingan, nine of them, and the rings of the Rinnegan. He swallowed involuntarily; He vaguely remembered a story about the legendary Juubi having eyes like those…

The scream trilled, her pointed chin dropping a notch as her jaw unhinged to let the otherworldly shriek come to a powerful end. Seamlessly, she moved from keening to a venomous hiss, infinitely more threatening than that of even a tiger. She slipped into a wide-footed stance, a deadly and daunting black chakra seeped out of her, bathing her in a coat that was similar to the cloaks of the jinchuuriki; this coat was unlike the bijuu cloaks in the way that it clung to her frame in a flattering shape, not the shape of any beast.

Who was this girl?

He edged back a step, dragging Itachi by the hair as he did so. Her fury caused her chakra cape to roil and surge; one pointed clawed finger came to point directly at him with a swing of one of her pale arms. In a distractingly female voice that rang out like the shinobue flute her keen had sounded like, one that held such a cold steel tone in it and reverberated with sheer power and fury, her rose lips moved.

"Uchiha Madara. Release him now! Give me Itachi!"