Chapter 2 – In the Company of Monsters

The pair waited in strained silence as the light faded slowly from the sky. The day's heat cooled and the insects ceased their frantic flights. Tomoki glanced again toward the west and licked his dry lips. The sunset was a magnificent blaze: a river of orange and violet pouring over the edge of the earth. As spectacular as the sight was, the leaf-genin's breath quickened and he felt hollow in the pit of his stomach. He looked over at the recalcitrant, yellow-haired ninja who sat across from him with arms folded over his orange-jacketed chest, looked away then looked back again. "Please, Naruto," he begged.

His companion grimaced then growled testily, "Don't say it."

"But you're being so stupid!" Tomoki wailed and threw up his hands as he rose. "Naruto, I've thought about this a lot. I've spent half my life training for this day and learning which jutsus I'd need – for attack and defense; I can even heal myself if I need to. I've made my peace but I can't fight knowing that I've killed you too. Think about it – if you stay, you'll die, and you'll never get to be hokage, you'll never -."

"Shut up!" shouted Naruto who sprang to his feet with fists clenched. "I see why you want to get this over with so bad; you're pathetic," he railed intensely, jabbing his finger into the surprised boy's chest. "You think everything's about you! Me and everyone and everything else in the whole world just fades away next to what Xiaomei's done to you. You poor thing! You're the only one who's ever suffered in their life!

"Let me tell you something," hissed Naruto, eyes blazing like sapphire flames, "everyone suffers in their way and you're not the only one who can make a choice. You've made yours and I've made mine! Just because you don't like it and don't understand it doesn't mean it's not right! I'm staying right here so you'd better get used to it!"

Tomoki stared at him, shaken. The young ninja's mouth fell open while Naruto crossed his arms again and looked out into the forest where darkness spread. From the hollows and shadows it grew until everything was covered by it. The blond boy looked up into the bare, indigo luminescence of the darkening sky and seemed to realize that even that would fade in a matter of minutes. "Got any advice?" asked Naruto suddenly.

Tomoki, who could only stand there with a more-or-less blank expression, shrugged bleakly. "No," he muttered then added sharply: "Yes! Don't be afraid."

"What?"

"Whatever may come your fear will make a thousand times worse. Xiaomei can't really create anything; she only gives shape to the evil that's within her. Her monsters are like puppets…or big balloons filled with magic. Don't ever doubt that you can cut through them," Tomoki explained then went to the tinder-filled grave he'd prepared and struck a spark. Fire stirred to life and he drank from his canteen. A look crossed his face and he tossed it to Naruto. "Drink it if you want. It's worse than anything you've ever tasted but it's supposed to be good for the chakra," the young leaf-ninja advised then collected his weapons and made himself ready.

Naruto sniffed at the canteen's mouth and winced but then drank it down anyway. The blond had just finished when darkness finally fell.

Tomoki stared out across the clearing and into the forest with his back to the roaring fire.

Naruto looked at him uncertainly. "Well?" he said after awhile, but Tomoki remained silent as the impatient blond stirred the ground with his foot.

"Naruto," Tomoki cautioned with an understated urgency in his voice, "remember what I said." It was then that Naruto heard it too, a rustle from the depths of the surrounding darkness – a rustle that crept towards them. "Follow my lead. If we can draw them all together then maybe we'll actually live through this."

From the darkness, shapes flickered. Naruto paled for a moment then nodded with a determined look. Something came toward him, a shape even blacker than the night and barely visible except where its edges reflected the fire's fierce light. The creature, if that's what it was, radiated elemental, supernatural terror and its sibilant voice froze the genin to the spot.

"Naruto?" warned Tomoki who then shouted, "Naruto!"

Shards of pitch black exploded from the forest. Tomoki leaped in front of the paralyzed ninja, making hand-signs as he went, turned his back and felt the shards thud and crack against him.

Naruto looked at his classmate's grimacing face in shock as a dark blur passed his own shoulder, splitting blue and orange fabric and drawing blood. "Tomoki, no!" he wailed.

The boy glared up at him. "It's not what you think," the ninja said, turned and slashed double figure-eights with his swords. Black monster skin shred like fabric; black monster blood sprayed into the night air and evanesced into black vapor, and a cry more hideous than any natural creature could make pierced the forest. At Tomoki's feet lay shattered fragments, black as obsidian, smoking away into nothingness. He whirled back then at Naruto and struck him hard in the chest.

"Huh!" Naruto grunted angrily and stumbled back only to be silenced by the baleful look in Tomoki's eyes.

"Hey, Naruto!" the taller ninja shouted fiercely; his face contorted with rage as specs of foam sprayed from his snarling mouth. "Mr. great hokage, Mr. number-one, hyperactive whatever they call you! After all that crap you unloaded to me, you'd better step it up!" he screamed then turned to face the coming darkness.

Naruto's expression hardened. "Hey, you know iron-vest jutsu!" he observed jealously.

"No, really?" Tomoki yelled back in a voice dripping with sarcasm as a dark shape, fluid and indefinable, lunged at him.

Lances and swords formed from darkness stabbed, jaws snapped and claws seized. Tomoki danced away, slashing with oddly languid movements, and the dark shape vanished like a drapery set afire. The genin swordsman retreated a step and took a begrudging look at his unwelcome ally just in time to see a venomous, black stinger impale Naruto from behind and haul him high into the air. Tomoki's eyes widened but the boy's body vanished then and in its place appeared a tangle of twisted branches. The Replacement Jutsu…that's more like it! he thought, warmed by relief, and saw the orange genin plunge toward his spectral adversary from the tree canopies overhead with kunai knives flashing in either hand.

More confident now, Tomoki returned to concentrate on the onslaught of creatures before him. Save your energy, he warned himself. Smooth, fluid, effortless…let your blades do the cutting. It was easier said than done. The shadow monsters' bodies were wispy but the weapons they formed were as iron.

Scores fell under his blades as he pressed the fight, encouraged by the sounds of Naruto's battles, before the monsters relented…or seemed to. Sensing something was wrong, Tomoki drew slowly to a stop. We've been drawn too far away, he realized with a gasp. The boy looked back at Naruto who breathed hard but still seemed far from spent. "Back to the fire!" he shouted frantically, directing with a wave of his sword.

Naruto sprang up into the trees and leaped from branch to branch while Tomoki ran below as fast as he could. His arms and legs pumped desperately for he never was that fast, with his sight fixed on the roaring fire that shone before him like a beacon.

"Hurry up!" he heard Naruto cry just as the fire vanished.

Tomoki gasped then understood that the fire was still there, he just couldn't see it anymore because he was surrounded! Braking hard, the boy's feet skidded then caught in vines and he fell.

The shadow-monsters' dark shapes closed in, around, and over him like an enveloping fog. The young ninja rolled away as a hail of black spears and razor shards smacked the earth where he'd been. Fear overcame him; he could no longer see the moon or the stars. Tomoki twisted away and came to his feet. At a sudden sense of peril, he spun around in the pitch black and parried. The oncoming lance, jagged like black lightning, slid over his blade with a screeching whine and Tomoki felt pain sear along his arm.

Suddenly, out of the gloom there appeared a ripped-open patch of blessed, starlit sky as Naruto swiped and stabbed furiously at the monsters from without, teeth bared and flashing white. Not daring to hesitate, Tomoki threw himself toward the opening then, on the verge of being overwhelmed himself, the yellow-haired ninja abandoned the effort and fell in behind his taller classmate just as he escaped.

Blackness whirled after them, close on the scrambling pair's heels.

"Come on!" Tomoki urged as he raced toward the fire but Naruto needed no extra encouragement. "Over here!" he said then veered sharply and stopped beside a towering tree bathed in moonlight.

"What are you doing!" yelled Naruto while the other boy sheathed his swords and made hand-signs for a jutsu.

As the monsters flew like black sails to surround them, Tomoki grabbed Naruto and pushed him into the tree's shadow. Both appeared that instant right beside the fire, springing up from the dancing shadows it spawned.

"Whoa! Nice trick," commented a mystified Naruto, who straightened his vivid, orange jacket. "What do you call that?"

"Shadow Gate Jutsu. See? I told you I was prepared," answered Tomoki between breaths, straightening then as the army of momentarily-distracted monsters regrouped to surge after them. The ninja assessed in a glance that both his and Naruto's wounds were slight. Nothing that can't be fixed later, he thought and again prepared a hand seal, but Naruto stormed forward and made one of his own.

"Shadow-Clone Jutsu!" he barked, and there appeared with staccato pops of smoke a full three-score of Narutos all with kunai-knives drawn, ready to fight.

Tomoki coughed, astonished, then smiled as he realized that these were no mere illusions that any genin could muster but actual physical duplicates. "Ok," he allowed then admitted, "You're pretty handy, I guess you can stay." The army of Narutos formed a protective cordon around him, an elbow-to-elbow wall of orange and blue, yellow hair and sharp steel, and prepared to meet the monsters' charge. "But now," said Tomoki, "for the second reason I made this great, big fire." He prepared his jutsu then waved his hands. A blazing ball of the fire came loose from the pyre, contained within the swirling motions of Tomoki's tensed fingers. The genin thrust them sharply and sent forth a comet that arced into the onslaught of shadows where it burned through rank after rank of them before exploding with volcanic fury.

The Narutos all spared him one incredulous look before the front line of shadow-monsters arrived and the fight was joined.

The chaos of battle raged. All around, orange-clad ninjas slashed, parried and grappled with ebon monsters and kept them at bay while Tomoki's fireballs flew overhead, bursting over and decimating legions of the things in fiery spectacle. Slain Naruto clones vanished in puffs of smoke and the shrieks of vanquished shadows broke upon the night's shore. The timberline blazed with fires and lit up the black with broad, angry brushstrokes of red and orange.

Both warriors fought on relentlessly. Both knew that to tire, to slow, to falter even once was to die. The last of Naruto's shadow clones vanished, pierced through the chest by a twisted fan of black spikes. Of the monsters there were still well over a dozen.

Naruto limped back toward Tomoki who greeted him with an appreciative smile. "Sorry, Naruto," he offered. His eyes traced over the ninja's wounds and battered face. "You got the worst job. All I had to do was hang back." Naruto nodded with a resolute smile that touched Tomoki – there was no anger, no fear, only a selfless, indefatigable determination. "Take cover," he said with inspiration, "the least I can do is handle the rest." With only a trace of hesitation, Naruto followed the suggestion as Tomoki again prepared his jutsu and stood before the fire which welled at his urging into a towering column. Gathering his energy, the fledgling ninja gave an exultant shout at which the column crashed earthward and crested out, its searing energies enveloping the remaining creatures and leaving only a scant few survivors to flee, burning and flapping, into the night…but now the fire was out.

"Is that it?" rasped Naruto hopefully as his eyes searched through the forest. "It can't be, right? Where's that witch you were telling me about?"

Tomoki stood stark still and listened to the distance. "She's out there…and she's not done yet."

"What!" yelped the yellow-haired ninja. "How many of these things does she have?"

Tomoki shrugged. "I believe she spends whatever she uses for magic in her spells like we do chakra for our jutsus. Maybe they're one in the same, who knows, but one of us is going to give out first."

"Right! And it's not gonna be us!" agreed Naruto, who beamed confidently now that he knew the rules. Both ninjas turned and fell silent as an eerie feeling fell over them.

A woman entered the burning clearing, walking through a curtain of fire as if it were only mist. Her shape was black and indistinct against the conflagration. As Tomoki squinted, he could see that she wore formal robes, stiff with bright embroideries and had long hair that waved in the hot, gusting winds.

The young ninja nodded dourly. Xiaomei had arrived.

"W-what now?" Naruto inquired anxiously of the awaiting Tomoki.

"I don't know," he muttered. "Be ready for anything."

The woman brought her palms slowly to just below her midriff then raised them to the heavens and circled them back. At her call, strange lights began to appear, iridescent colors of emerald and violet that glowed against both darkness and flame. Tomoki's head rose but he allowed no expression.

One of the lights touched the earth and seeped into it. From that spot rose a hideous creature - a giant with massive, thick-fingered hands, that sprouted stalagmite horns and stalactite tusks. Another light touched fire and brought to life a fire-demon which capered gleefully before its mistress, waving tentacles of flame.

As the two leaf-ninjas looked on, Xiaomei became a fountain of lights, with dozens and dozens of them erupting into the air. When any touched earth or fire so there appeared a monster until the clearing and surrounding forest was shoulder-to-shoulder with them. The earth shook under the giants' crushing footfalls and the trees erupted into towers of flame.

Naruto stared hard, refusing to believe his eyes, at this glimpse of the underworld and the army from that nightmarish place that marshaled themselves and then marched as one toward them. Tomoki stared too with an expression that softened slowly. The corner of his mouth twitched, lifted slightly and resolved into…a certain smile.

Naruto flinched at the sight. "Tomoki!" he barked. "Have you lost your mind? You'd let me know if you did, right?" The taller genin's smile widened even further which prompted Naruto to take a backward step and raise his arm up protectively just in case.

"No, Naruto, I haven't gone crazy," Tomoki clarified. "I have a plan, that's all. You didn't think I'd come all this way without some way of defending myself against magic?"

Naruto looked back at the oncoming army with growing anxiety as it rushed forward then broke into a charge.

"Run!" Tomoki ordered promptly.

Naruto's mouth fell open. "That's the plan?" he shrieked. "Are you kidding?" But Tomoki had already raced off. "This way!" he cried. "To the top of the ridge!"

Naruto grit his teeth and growled, bounding after him only barely a step ahead of the pursuing monsters.

Tomoki reached the crest first and looked back just as a fiery tendril uncoiled past Naruto and nearly snared him. "Watch that one!" he warned helpfully and loosed a volley of shuriken at the fire-monster. The spinning metal only passed through but distracted it enough for the blonde to spring away.

The fire monster's head swayed toward Tomoki and spat a geyser of fire at which the ninja ducked into the shadow of a rock and vanished only to reappear well away from the ensuing blaze.

Meanwhile, earth-monsters clambered after Naruto, hammering down at him with boulder fists. The young leaf-ninja dodged their blows then ran up one's arm to kick it in the face. Earth and stone spalled from the impact and crumbled away, leaving the monster headless but unvanquished.

Gathering himself, Naruto sprang to the top of the narrow ridge to land right beside Tomoki, wobbled a bit then stuck his arms out to catch his balance. Just behind them, by not more than a step, a sharp, tree-studded slope fell away down to the waters of a rushing stream.

"This is going so much better than I planned," commented Tomoki with barely-contained enthusiasm.

Naruto's eyes bugged as a hoard of earth and fire monsters swarmed up the slope of the ridge toward them. "You're crazy!" the whisker-marked boy shouted and pointed frantically. "What about this looks good to you?"

Tomoki raised an eyebrow. "Don't you see how they're all bunched together?" he pointed out. "This is exactly what I hoped for." Naruto looked at him with alarm. "Come on, Naruto, I've had almost five years to plan and train for this fight; five years to learn magic's strengths and weaknesses. These things look big and powerful, and they are, but there really isn't much holding them together. Just watch!"

Tomoki drew a breath and bent his legs then initiated the complicated hand signs for a jutsu. Naruto looked around frantically as the monsters approached, shoved a big boulder down at them and then heaved a length of rotting log which evaporated in the flames of a fire-monster's chest.

"Hup!" Tomoki annunciated.

"Hurry it up? They're almost here!"

"Hum…hee…haa," continued Naruto's classmate as fiery tentacles lashed toward them and thick, earthen arms clawed at the top of the ridge.

"Tomoki!"

The ninja's last utterance was felt rather than heard. Its effect rippled through the night air and it seemed as if space itself had torn. The earth and fire monsters quivered and fell in its wake, collapsed into inert heaps of earth and stone or sputtered into cascades of embers and ash.

Naruto stared with disbelief as the supernatural army shattered away before him like so many falling dominoes then gasped as Tomoki sank to his hands and knees. The yellow-haired genin rushed at once to his side, knelt and grabbed him by the shoulders. Tomoki's dull, brown eyes wandered dazedly and blood seeped from his nose. He choked once and mumbled, "Pretty good jutsu, huh?"

"Yeah," replied Naruto worriedly, "pretty good." He grabbed Tomoki by the shoulders and helped him to his feet. "Are you ok?"

The boy shuddered. His jutsu had taken all the chakra he had and left him depleted…empty. "Where…?" he stammered and gripped the white of Naruto's ribbed collar, "where is she?"

Tomoki fought for balance as he searched for Xiaomei. His eyes froze then narrowed as they found her, standing alone amidst the scorched, battle-scarred landscape. He took a calming breath then hissed with fury.

The witch's dark shape turned away then she crossed her hands gently over her shoulders, they rose and circled, then fell again to the center of her body.

"No…," whispered Tomoki direly. "She still isn't done."

"Huh?" wondered Naruto as a circle of lights appeared before the distant, shadowed figure. "Oh, no," he groaned, "not again!"

The lights the witch conjured spun together and defined the shape of another terrible beast – this time a gargantuan creature with a bristly, fanged, leonine face, huge reptilian body and long, clawed arms and legs. It rose up against the darkness, glowered at the pair and roared with the sound of thunder and crashing waves.

Tomoki and Naruto looked up at the beast, both boys stricken with awe.

"Ok, what's the plan?" asked Naruto keenly through gritted teeth once he'd gotten past the initial shock.

Tomoki sighed and wiped under his bloody nose with a sleeve. His face fell. "It looks like Xiaomei has entered a pact of her own. That is Tsao-Tsao, the blood-seeker."

Naruto looked at him, disconcerted by the tremor of defeat in his voice. "Yeah, so what? You've got tons of great jutsus, and me, I'm still ready to go! Believe it!"

"I'm sorry, Naruto," said Tomoki with a shake of his head as he scratched his cheek, "but this isn't one of her creations. Even if it was, I'm completely out of chakra. This is a real demon – a powerful being from another world."

The monster roared again as if to illustrate and clawed the air with hooked talons.

"Come on, we can still beat it…and her," prevailed Naruto in a confident tenor.

"No…we can't," replied Tomoki. "You are going to run, cross that stream and head back to the Village Hidden in the Leaves. I will face what I came here to face…and give you some time to get away."

"No, Tomoki!" Naruto insisted, adding a vehement shake of his head. "Like I told you before: I won't go!"

Tomoki turned and stood before the resolute genin, backing him deliberately toward the precipice. He looked straight into Naruto's eyes and knew at that moment that his classmate, who he'd never said more than two words to until today, cared about his life more than he himself did. "I'm dead, Naruto," the brown-haired boy explained with a calm smile as if to a child. "I've been dead ever since the day I lost everything, the day I dedicated my life to revenge. You can't save me…and I won't let you die trying to."

Without warning, the taller ninja's palms shot into the genin's chest, sending Naruto tumbling from the top of the ridge off into space; the expression on his face of shock and hurt surprise as he fell then disappeared into the darkness struck Tomoki like a blow.

"Sorry, Naruto," he apologized weakly as he shut his eyes and bit his dry lips.

The young ninja turned, leaving behind his regrets, then leaped his way down to the base of the ridge to meet his fate.

Tsao-Tsao sniffed the air; its frothing lips parted around fangs, tempted by the scent of human blood. Its long legs tensed then sprang as the demon hurtled over the distance toward Tomoki who waited, blades in hand, ready to meet its charge with all the remaining strength he could summon.

Suddenly, time seemed to slow as Tomoki felt another presence, an evil far greater and even more terrible than the one that rushed toward him. How stupid was I to think that I'd ever be able to kill Xiaomei, the boy realized. She was only playing with me the whole time.

A shape flew over the ninja's head and landed before him – a creature like a fox, but towering up many times bigger, formed not of skin and bone but of coruscating energies within which hunkered the suggestion of what might have been a human being. It turned a great, glowing eye downward at Tomoki who trembled under the force of its fearsome gaze; its indistinct maw gaped open in a display of triangular teeth, four tails lashed the night air.

The genin's swords shook and dropped from his trembling hands but, astonishingly, the towering fox-man-demon turned away and set its sights instead on Tsao-Tsao.

The realization fell over Tomoki: this was not one of the witch's servants. "Naruto?" he gasped then reeled when he came to the dreadful understanding. "Oh, no…Naruto!" The rumors…they weren't rumors at all! Naruto really IS the Nine-Tailed Fox!

As Tomoki stood there with his mind fighting to grasp what he'd seen, a figure approached him from the flame-lit darkness.

Xiaomei threw back long ribbons of jet hair from her shoulders which cascaded down the stiff, square geometries of elegant robes embroidered with gold, silver and colorful silk thread. "Your friend is full of surprises," she remarked and smiled disarmingly. Her face was young, pretty and unconcerned as she regarded him with ebon eyes.

Tomoki swallowed hard and struggled to compose himself in the face of this most hated enemy, a face that brought all the nightmares from his past to life. "Isn't he, though?" he replied coolly.

The witch laughed at this. "You are as transparent to me as glass. You didn't know yourself that the child you brought with you was home to the Kyuubi no Yoko – I did wonder what ever happened to him. Someone very learned must have sealed the beast up in that boy but he is not fully unleashed and so I doubt he's a match for Tsao-Tsao." Tomoki scowled at her mocking tone. "I presume that you are the grave-robber, yes?" Xiaomei said with sudden venom and the leaf-genin nodded his reply. "I see. May I ask why you saw fit to destroy what took generations of my family a thousand years to build?"

The boy's eyes widened. "Can't you guess?"

"From the hatred I feel pouring from you there is no need to guess. You are one of the brats from Chi-ling Mountain." The boy shut his eyes at her mention of the name. "In retrospect, it's obvious that I should have taken pains to ensure that no one left that place alive. Have you been waiting to kill me all this time?" Again Tomoki nodded and again she laughed. "Despite your feelings toward me be assured that they are but a candle held against the sun of my outrage that you would visit such atrocity upon me…and for what? Human lives are common; this world crawls with them like an infested house, but powers like mine are unique. They belong only to those with the extraordinary qualities required to harness them.

"For what you have done, death is the very least you deserve now."

"You know," Tomoki began with quiet composure, "somewhere in the middle of everything that's happened tonight, I had a moment of doubt. I wondered what I was doing. I asked myself: am I really going to give up my life for a chance at revenge; for all the people you killed that can't ever be brought back?" he mused. "Am I really going to walk into the forest, dig up a grave and desecrate a corpse? Am I really going to fight Xiaomei with all her strange powers? And I…I wondered if any of this would take out the stain you left on my life." Tomoki gave Xiaomei a sharp, upward look. "I'm glad you took the time to speak with me…so I could thank you," he offered earnestly then snarled: "I no longer have any doubt that I did the right thing!"

"Hmmph," hissed the witch caustically, "your impudence is as expected. But it won't help you. That Spirit-Cannon Jutsu you resorted to is extraordinarily draining. I doubt you have any chakra left to fight me with," she opined with a knowing smile.

"Nor do you have much magic after summoning your pet demon, Tsao-Tsao," returned Tomoki. "But that's ok. Settling this the old-fashioned way is just fine with me."

Xiaomei parted her robe and drew forth a sword – a broad, curved blade with nine metal rings that jangled from its back side. "Little boy is a ninja now," she cooed. "Do you believe you are my match then my fierce, little boy?"

Tomoki grinned. "Let's find out," he said, picked up his swords and set them into motion with each passing back and forth in slow, circular rhythm.

Xiaomei raised her sword over her head, parallel with the ground and extended a hand toward him tensed into a claw. Tomoki's eyes compressed into slits as he flew at her and slashed. The witch parried deftly; the sound of steel edges colliding and sliding off one another rang through the darkness. Tomoki pressed forward and cut left and right but Xiaomei again deflected his attacks then grabbed his wrist and pulled. Her sword whirred just over his head as he ducked and rolled away.

As the genin came to his feet he turned back and their eyes met. Clearly, she is not unschooled, he thought soberly. Tomoki circled his blades around him, came at her and slashed high on either side. The witch blocked twice then nimbly glided away from the low, hooking stab that followed. The ninja cursed to himself, careful not to let his adversary see his consternation.

The witch's calm was unassailable. "As you can see," she offered, "magic is not my only friend…steel is also."

Though Tomoki could hear her footsteps it was as if she glided over the ground. Covering the distance in an instant, the woman was upon him. Her nine-ring broadsword sang as she whirled its edge at his neck. Tomoki blocked once, twice, then countered with a quick block-check-strike technique but she ducked and his slash cut only hair. The boy didn't see the witch's heel whip around until it caught him hard along the side of his head; the genin's vision went dark for an instant then reawakened with pin-pricks of light.

Seeing her advantage, Xiaomei threw herself at him with a fury; the outward beauty of her face contorted with rage and blood-lust. She spun and struck at him with maniacal strength as she sought to break through his guard but Tomoki warded with both blades then sidestepped deftly and her weapon blurred past him. Relentless, the witch flew after the young ninja but he had already recovered. He blocked hard with one blade and whirled the other up for her arm. Her eyes widened as she pulled away, hard and off-balance.

Tomoki now followed after her, sidestepped the sole of her foot which came up for his groin, and slashed. Xiaomei screamed as rents opened in her robes but there was no blood – he'd missed by a fraction of an inch!

The witch's hand lashed out. Tomoki sensed the energies but it was too late. Waves of force seized him, launched him deep into the forest and slammed him against a tree.

Of course he exhaled on impact; of course he kept his chin tucked into his chest to protect the back of his head but even though he'd distributed the force over as much of his body as he could he was still knocked breathless. Instinct screamed at him to move and the ninja slid to one side as a coruscation of lightning lashed the tree with an explosion of bark.

Breathless and blind, Tomoki staggered away…then hid.

Xiaomei's hateful laughter rang out through the black. "Oh, my," she ventured, "it seems that I have some magic left in me after all." The witch came forward slowly, smiled and canted her head with languid appreciation at the shattered tree which glowed and smoldered against the darkness. "I wonder if you still believe that you did the right thing, little boy."

Where the overgrown forest floor sank, not five paces away from where Xiaomei stood, Tomoki hid in a pool of shadow. Sharp, finger-sized splinters peppered his back and shoulder and it was all he could do to stay calm and focused.

"Now where did you go?" the witch mocked. "Have you tired of playing with me so soon?" Her eyes shifted left and right as she paced around the incandesced tree. "You cannot defeat me, you know."

Tomoki heard the slight jingle of the rings on her broadsword and his heart pounded. With agonizing deliberation, he shifted silently into a crouch and crept after her.

Xiaomei gave the dark forest a cross look. "Although I will freely admit the blow you've dealt me, know this: I will rebuild," she vowed shrilly. "I will go on from here and my powers will be even greater for I am nothing if not patient. I will sacrifice dozens, scores, no, thousands of lives on the altar of my ambition if that is what it takes!"

The genin was just behind her now, sword drawn and utterly quiet as he approached. He turned as she turned; read her posture and anticipated her movements.

Easy…easy…slow…calm…breath in…breath out..., Tomoki thought but wondered in the back of his mind if it could really be this easy; could the witch really have forgotten that ninjas were good at sneaking up on people?

"What village is it you call home now?" she asked casually, but the provocative question brought fresh shocks of dread to the boy's mind that maybe Ichi, Iruka-sensei and all the rest of his classmates and the citizens of Konoha could be in danger now because of him. "No need to answer, I'll learn all I need from your corpse."

With his lips pressed together along a hard, thin, determined edge, Tomoki shot forward, his sword pierced her enveloping robes and Xiaomei screamed but she'd turned slightly and the blade had not caught her full. The warrior sliced again at the witch who fell back before fierce, whirlwind slashes.

Gathering herself, she gestured, and an invisible force again clutched Tomoki and yanked him into the air. This time it came as no surprise. The leaf-ninja tossed away one of his swords and flung a volley of shuriken at Xiaomei with his freed hand. The woman flinched, released her hold, and then waved at the oncoming missiles which were deflected away, batted aside by a demon-wind.

Tomoki plunged to the ground, landing in a cat-like crouch. He watched for a moment with expectation then grimaced in bitter disappointment as the sword he'd thrown arced earthward, right on target, but ended up impaling the ground a full inch from Xiaomei's feet. The startled witch jumped back then fixed a hateful stare upon him.

The boy cursed silently and then again aloud, "Can't I get just one break here!" he fumed in frustration. He was wounded and exhausted. Blood flowed down his back and arm; he could feel its sticky, sickly warmth on his skin.

The genin glanced down just then at his remaining sword and the thin, black ribbons that stained it: blood in the moonlight. He had gotten through! He'd cut the witch! The sight encouraged him and brought an expression of grim resolve to his face. It's not the blood I've lost, Tomoki thought, it's the blood I have left that's important!

"Boy?" asked Xiaomei politely, surprising him.

"Yes?" he answered in a matching tone.

A calm, inscrutable look came over the witch's face. "What is your name?"

The genin's brow rose slightly. "It's Tomoki," he informed in a mimicry of courtesy then growled, "just Tomoki…you know why there's no last name."

She considered this and nodded. "To have dismissed you as a little boy was inapt," the enchantress explained and her eyes leveled. "If your late lord had possessed your virtues then perhaps none of this would be necessary." Tomoki was taken by the earnest inflections in her voice but remained vigilant as Xiaomei continued, "I realize now that you are a ninja. I want you to die aware that I appreciate the difference."

Tomoki nodded, smiled and allowed himself a mirthless snicker. "After I kill you, Xiaomei," he replied, "you'll know the difference."

The woman laughed then in a way the boy found way too familiar. "Well said," she offered graciously then suggested, "Shall we finish this?"

"Yeah," Tomoki agreed, looked around at the trees and the deep darkness that lay between them then up into the night sky's starlit tapestry. "After all, it's way past my bedtime."

The witch drew a deep breath and exhaled slowly as she extended the edge of her palm toward him and raised her sword. With supernatural speed she rushed at him. Leaping high into the air, she spun the flat of her blade around her neck and brought the cutting edge slicing down toward Tomoki's. He deflected the blow adroitly, using his free hand behind the flat of his blade to brace then push her off-balance.

Xiaomei recovered in time to swing her foot away from the ninja's slash at her unguarded instep. Tomoki then thrust quickly toward her flank but found his blow met and countered. She spun around to reap his leg at the knee but he jumped up, landed, then slashed at her back. Xiaomei blocked it with the flat of her sword then intercepted his punch with her free hand. Pivoting around, she wrenched his wrist and Tomoki yelped as bolts of pain shot up his arm. He swung at her desperately with his free blade, but the counter was far too obvious. The witch knocked it aside easily, slipped inside his guard and smashed his face with the pommel of her sword.

Suddenly Tomoki felt like he was floating, hovering there, weightless, inert, insubstantial. His head wobbled on his neck and he found that, although he could still see what was coming, his body would no longer obey his wishes to do anything about it.

Xiaomei bared her teeth. Her leading slash cut Tomoki diagonally upward across the chest from ribs to shoulder; her follow ripped diagonally upward from the other direction, carving a broad, bloody 'X' into his body. She then whirled around with what the genin felt sure would be a decapitating horizontal cut across his neck but he was mistaken. The witch instead brought her sword in close to her body as she turned, denying him a quick, painless death, and her free palm thundered into his chest.

Tomoki no longer floated but flew! Before his eyes the treetops and night sky blurred past. A strange, dragging sensation at his heels told him that the earth was still down there somewhere just beneath him and rising. There. The young, leaf-ninja squashed against the ground then went rolling again and again and again through a dark kaleidoscope of churned-up leaves, pine needles and scattering earth.

Everything slewed to a stop.

There on the ground Tomoki lay, entranced by the sudden stillness and the soft crackling from the distant fires. His limbs dangled lifelessly and his sword flopped from his limp grasp.

Reflexively, the young ninja's trained hand and arm twitched for his weapon which rested nearby and he rolled himself over reflexively to retrieve it. The sensation of it against his fingers as he found it, a warming, familiar presence, gave him a shred of hope even now.

Summoning every last remaining vestige of strength, he pushed his way up pitifully to his knees and from there attempted to rise but it was no use. The genin planted his sword point-first into the earth and tried to push against it but his legs refused and he dropped down, clutching his arms woefully about his wounded, blood-drenched chest.

"An admirable effort, Tomoki-san," a voice called to him, and he regretted now having told the witch his name. "Determination, courage - you've shown me those virtues here this night. But the world is harsh and virtue often goes unrewarded. Though you are young you must have noticed that by now.

"Haven't you ever wondered why good only exists in flashes, like struggling lamps on a windy night, while evil endures age after pitiless age? Such is the way of things."

Tomoki rasped for breath as he sat on his knees, doubled over; his face, wet with tears, pressed into the forest floor. He could hear Xiaomei's soft footfalls approach as she came before him.

"What a shame," said the woman with a winsome sigh then demanded fiercely, "Look at me, Tomoki!" Her voice echoed through the trees. "I wish to see you. I wish to see the look in your eyes as I send you on to hell."

With his face a quivering, defiant mask, the ninja looked up as the witch whirled her sword high then brought it down in a fatal, final arc. Tomoki's expression blanked as he raised his arm up weakly in defense…and stopped it cold.

Xiaomei gasped, a slight, sudden inhalation as she felt the edge of her weapon strike and stop at the surface of the boy's skin. A grin, quick as lightning, flashed over Tomoki's face and they both realized her mistake. She hadn't seen the hand signs the boy had hidden while bent over - the hand-signs for the Iron-Vest Jutsu.

"I guess…I had a little chakra left in me after all," Tomoki quipped and his hand reached out.

Even without looking, his fingers knew where his sword could be found and were drawn automatically, inexorably toward the handle where they flexed around it one digit, one knuckle at a time. In a fluid, expert motion the leaf-ninja withdrew the weapon from the ground, whirled it up though Xiaomei's outstretched arm, then her opposite arm, then her neck. The witch's limbs and head remained in place for a moment before black seams appeared and they spun away. The motionless body was the last to move, seemingly suspended, before it too surrendered to gravity and collapsed to the ground.

Tomoki stared in disbelief and for long moments fully expected the body to rise and reunite stronger than before like something out of the stupid mangas he sometimes read. He sat there and watched her black blood pool in the moonlight and he knew it was not a trick of the light. Xiaomei's magic and evil had long since stripped her of any humanity.

The boy's shoulders shook as he started to laugh – the kind of laughter that sane people rightly fled from; the kind of laughter found only in the asylum's deepest depths. Dead! he rejoiced, for it seemed like a great weight had been pulled from his shoulders and a shroud lifted from his soul. You're finally dead!

Oh, Ichi! Ichi, you crazy old man! I'll never say or think anything bad about you again. Your shitty drink really WAS good for the chakra!

Tomoki fell into a fit of unrestrained joy. He slumped over on the forest floor and, wounded though he was, laughed to the heavens. At last…at last, the thought repeated in his head.

Gradually the fury of battle left him. His breath stilled. His heart's pounding drumbeat quieted. All he felt now was tired and cold…so cold. Closing his eyes, he saw his village again there in the mist-shrouded heights of the Chi-ling Mountains – just as it had been. He saw the faces he'd known, felt the embrace of a mother and father who'd loved him, and re-lived how things were so long ago before he knew anything about witches or monsters, before he knew the meaning of the word 'ninja' or touched a sword…way before there were calluses on his hands or scars on his body.

There in the delirious darkness within his closed eyes Tomoki reached toward that place whose essence, incomplete without him, had followed him over the years, trickling down in a narrowing river of red through those far-distant valleys and forests to reunite with him now, here where he lay.