Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.
To Jezabel The Pyro: I'm glad you like the premise of my story and I'll try not to do anything to disappoint you.
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Prologue Recap
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"Pardon me," a polite voice interrupted, causing all the Akatsuki except Pein and Itachi to jump. "May I leave now?"
There were ten full seconds of silence before Deidara asked rather quietly, "Shouldn't he be dead now?"
The should-be corpse shrugged as if it were the most natural thing in the world to hear someone say that of him. "But I'm not. You can fix that if it's that important to you, and there wouldn't be much I could do about it if you did."
Nobody spoke for a few seconds, then Pein addressed the former jinchuuriki. "We'll consider letting you live...if you tell us how you survived the removal of the six-tailed peacock from your body."
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Chapter 1: The Decision
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"Very well," replied the boy, who looked to be about sixteen, "that sounds better than I could have hoped for. Simply put, I was able to survive because I have never wielded the bijuu's chakra once in my entire life. For that reason, it was completely quarantined from my own chakra."
"I don't ******* get it," interrupted Hidan. "Use smaller words."
"Idiot," grumbed Kakuzu. "It means his demonic chakra and personal chakra were completely separated."
"Right. Because of that, the extraction of the demon's chakra had no effect on my own, leaving me alive and in decent health, if stiff from the lack of movement. I think I'd like it to stay that way."
Kisame let out a chuckle. "Refreshingly direct. I kinda like this guy."
Pein's form raised a hand for silence and he examined the boy for a long moment. He was of average height and a bit on the thin side. His headband was worn around his head and bore markings that resembled a sun and moon, which denoted the Sky Village, a small town in the Wind country. He wore a long-sleeved camouflage shirt, a pair of gloves with fingers, and a pair of amouflage pants. The only characteristics that stood out about him were his short purple hair and a pair of gray wristbands he wore. "Your name?" he asked.
"Ochiki Yoshiro."
"Very well, Yoshiro. Here is our offer. We will allow you an attempt to join our organization."
Yoshiro ran a hand through his hair and thought aloud about it. "Hm, part of me is railing violently against allying myself with a criminal organization, and part of me is quite flattered to have been invited to join an exclusive group such as yourselves. If I accept, I become a missing-nin and a criminal. If I don't, I likely become a corpse. Whatever the outcome, I have no intention of ever returning to my village. What to do...?" He fell into silence.
All the Akatsuki remained silent for the next minute as Yoshiro deliberated. It was a long minute for Yoshiro, but for the Akatsuki, who had just spent an entire three days sealing his Bijuu, that minute was nothing.
"Alright, I've made up my mind. Appreciate your patience," Yoshiro said with a trace of a smirk.
"And?" came the Akatsuki leader's reply.
"What are the rules for your proposed challenge?"
"The rules, as you put it, are quite simple. In order to make sure you are strong enough to be one of us, you will be tested in battle. I will decide based on that whether to allow you to join. Fight as if you're trying to kill; we have somebody who can restore maimed bodies to full functionality."
"How many of you will I be fighting?" Yoshiro didn't feel particularly confident, seeing as how he had gotten into this predicament by losing to Akatsuki in battle in the first place. No matter what he tried in the previous battle, he hadn't been able to fight through the horde of battle puppets quickly enough to even get close to the source. He had gotten cut several times in the meantime and found out the hard way that the blades on the puppets were coated with a powerful tranquilizer.
"Just one. Itachi and Kisame are the only ones of us actually present, but we can all see and hear what's happening. Choose your opponent now."
"I think I'll face...Itachi. Not like I know what to expect either way. They're just names to me."
"Very well," responded Pein and Itachi in one voice as Itachi leapt down from his position.
"I believe you made a mistake in choosing to fight me," Itachi told the former Jinchuuriki.
Yoshiro noticed the odd pattern in Itachi's eyes and turned his gaze downward. "Too late to worry about that now."
"Indeed it is. Prepare yourself."
"Alright, here we go!" Yoshiro formed a sequence of seals, then called out, "Lightning style: Glow Worm jutsu!" A ray of light formed between his two index fingers. It was no greater than half a meter long or half a centimeter wide, but it lit every corner of Akatsuki's immense cave base. It was so bright that it hurt Itachi to look in that direction with his Sharingan eyes' increased sensitivity.
"That's a clever doujutsu counter, but it appears to tie up both your hands," Itachi said, deactivating his Sharingan. "And you'll need them in order to have a chance against me."
"Then I'll have to do something about that, won't I?" With a few quick movements of his hands, the ray of light was gone, but one of his wristbands began to glow just as brightly. He quickly checked his kunai holster and realized to his pleasant surprise that he was still armed. Pulling out one of his kunai, he slowly approached Itachi.
Calmly, the Uchiha threw a pair of shuriken at him, both of which he struck aside with his kunai. Then he jumped across the last bit of distance between them, slashing with his kunai. Itachi easily parried the kunai with one of his own, but then stopped as if jolted by electricity. Yoshiro, almost as if expecting the pause, lunged forward with his kunai, cutting his forearm deeply enough to draw blood, but not to cause any lasting damage.
Almost as if to mock the hit, Itachi recovered instantly and grabbed Yoshiro's wrist, disarming him. His kunai fell to the ground, revealing a seal on its handle. "That seal must be how you shocked me, but it's not good enough." He tightened his grip, fully intent on breaking Yoshiro's wrist. A second before his wrist would have cracked, Yoshiro shouted, "Lightning style: Megavolt Beam!" and five lightning bolts formed like extensions of his fingers. He bent his fingers so that all five bolts lined up, then turned his wrist to turn them on his foe. Itachi escaped without taking any real damage, but one of the sleeves of his coat was burned clean through in several places. He must have formed a one-handed seal while I was talking, Itachi concluded.
"Itachi, you've been sloppy this entire fight." chided his leader.
"I'm still testing his ability," came the reply. "It seems he can handle something more serious." Itachi formed his own sequence of seals, then said, "Fire style: Phantom Flare jutsu." He breathed three small sparks from his mouth that disappeared almost immediately.
"Itachi-san, that didn't look particularly impressive," Yoshiro dared to comment.
Rather than replying, Itachi rushed Yoshiro and threw a quick punch, which he ducked. The Uchiha continued to throw punches and kicks, all of which the former jinchuuriki dodged, unable to muster a counterattack and getting more and more off-balance with every dodge. After a few more seconds, Itachi landed a kick squarely on Yoshiro's chest, sending him flying backward to the ground.
Yoshiro immediately got up and dashed to his right, but he was suddenly sent flying again by an explosion. Before he even hit the ground, he was hit by a second explosion and sent flying in the other direction. Then a third explosion went off just underneath him and blew him sky high. In a lucid portion of his mind, he realized that he had just taken the full hit from Itachi's Phantom Flare. He hit the ceiling and had the presence of mind to use his chakra to stay there raher than fall back toward Itachi, who was waiting beneath him with a kunai pointed skyward. Standing upside-down, he formed the necessary seals and intoned, "Lightning style: Megavolt beam."
"That didn't hit me when you caught me by surprise and I was holding back," Itachi said in a bored tone. "What makes you think it'll even come near me now?"
Paying his opponent no attention, he activated his jutsu. However, rather than targeting his foe, he turned his jutsu on his other wristband, the one that he hadn't used to maintain his Glow Worm jutsu. For just a fleeting moment, Itachi wished he could activate his Sharingan and see exactly how his opponent was using his wristbands.
Having finished his preparation, Yoshiro ran along the ceiling, then down the wall. Once he got back to the ground, he pulled four shuriken in each hand and threw them at Itachi's legs. Itachi jumped to avoid them, and Yoshiro slid under him while forming a seal. "Lightning style: Megavolt beam!" One beam of lightning extended from Yoshiro's wristband, and five weaker ones formed on the fingers of his other hand. This time, he didn't concentrate them as if to strike one target, but spread them all out in different directions.
Even dodging to the best of his ability, Itachi took a few light hits. So he stored his first lightning attack in one of his wristbands so he could use them both at the same time and increase his chances of hitting me.
Suddenly, the beams of lightning concentrated again, swept once toward Itachi, then struck the ceiling in different places. Combined with the earlier damage from the scattered lightning bolts, a lot of debris began to fall from the ceiling. Getting up from his slide, Yoshiro ran for cover inside one of the craters created in the wall by Itachi's Phantom Flare. He barely made it before rocks of all sizes fell down onto most of the former battlefield.
About thirty seconds passed before the cave-in finished. Yoshiro stepped out of his cover and looked around, seeing nobody.
"What!?" he heard both voices of Zetsu exclaim.
"Impossible," came Sasori's voice.
"No ******* way," gasped Hidan.
Yoshiro let out a breath he hadn't known he had been holding. "What do you know, I got him-"
Without warning, he was punched in the back and he fell facefirst onto the gravelly floor. Before he could get up, he felt a body's weight on top of his back. He tried to buck it off him until he felt a kunai at his throat. At that point, he decided it wasn't in his best interest to struggle.
"It's all over, isn't it?" Yoshiro managed to spit out.
Ignoring him, Itachi said. "The fight is over, Pein-sama. What are your orders?"
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End of Chapter
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A/N: Yes, it is a cliffhanger. Though I plan on continuing with or without reviews, with would be much more pleasant. I don't think I have much more to add. PublicNMEno1, over and out.