Chapter Four

4

Sitting tied to a chair and blindfolded for his own health, Arashi remembered how he'd gotten there. Despite his colorful threats he couldn't really hold it against the group of medics, and he knew exactly who they were and why they were there. Kushina had a way with both words and poison, leaving him without the aid of an assisted med nin would have killed him as surely as blade in the back. She was simply doing what she felt was right, as if she knew better, as usual. Maybe she did, but he was damned if he wouldn't stop her if he could. Sighing heavily, he accepted a sip of water. Another hour and he'd be good as new, she certainly knew how to keep a man busy.

()

The sun was shining, birds were singing, and the population of a tatty fifth floor corner office wished the damnable things would just drop dead. Some meetings simply didn't mesh with lusty chirps. Sunlight shone uncomfortably through the wide, open window along the length of the room to paint the soot stained walls a washed out orange. To those who weren't being blinded, the view was lack luster. A spectacular display of shoddy workmanship lent the neighboring building an air of imminent disaster, with a rusted water tower leaning dangerously over its side, presumably eying the street below for a convenient spot to land. The crowd was an even mix of jounin and chuunin with no Anbu visible in attendance, every one of them a leader in their field. Arashi stood at the head of the pack, wedged awkwardly between a lectern and a tall easel that proudly displayed a weathered map of the continent. On it, a number of red lines portrayed this and the other while a few green squiggles noted this and that, it was all very technical. A hand sized drawing of a black cat sat pinned over the location of Konoha, neatly obscuring all but the 'K' in childish scrawl.

"So we're in the way," deadpanned a grizzled jounin, shaking his head gravely with his unshaven face just barely in shadow. He leaned beside the closed wooden door with five others, doing his part to avoid jostling the swarm of people wedged around the oval table running the length of the room. The amount of scribbled paper and odd fashion statements present wouldn't have been out of place at a particularly disreputable tabloid. Such was life.

"Right, it's a straight line from the coast," Arashi rapped a bright red line with his knuckles. "For whatever reason it's cutting a path 'cross country. So far it's taken out two stone outposts and a small neutral city." His tone was bone dry.

"Any casualties?" Asked an older woman from midway down the table. Her question was not out of any concern for some thousand civilians, it was Stone that worried her. Peace was a relative term, she knew.

"Plenty, if this is a plot of theirs it's been an expensive one. They hadn't pulled back their troops in the area at the time, the first loss was so great that they didn't believe their own reports. We only received word a week after one of our own scout teams saw the second location wiped out." Reactions to this last were varied and immediate, Arashi raised a hand sharply. "If this comes as a surprise, you know why you didn't hear about it." Glaring, he dispelled any notion that he could be bullied, a handful of chuunin quieted, once again well aware of their own unimportance. "Clearance is no longer an issue, just roll your eyes and make rude noises if you've heard the background before," he smiled slightly when he was rewarded with a snicker and continued. "What we're facing is a real, live, myth. We've known that greater demons exist for centuries, they pop up now and then to level a few buildings and get sealed when someone gets tired of having their crops burnt. This one, though, hasn't been around recently, and accounts place him as a larger problem than usual."

One of the younger jounin shifted uncomfortably in his seat, asking the appropriate leading question, "Cute, what makes this one so special?" He was a veteran of many a briefing, he knew the script.

A bespectacled youth piped up from the back of the room, waving a hand airily, "It's hard to say, apart from some magic number. The Kyuubi seems to be the most powerful there is by a mile and its behavior is just as unique. Once every week it appears and annihilates everything in the area from dusk 'til dawn, disappearing with the sun. We know the fox first appeared on the coast, but it's impossible to say whether it was hiding, asleep, sealed, or even swimming across the ocean. What it wants is also a mystery."

Arashi nodded, jabbing at the map once more. "The latest demonic event we know of apart from this took place only a few months ago in Wind country, the one tail. It was roughly twice as tall as Gamabunta before an old man sealed it into his tea kettle out of desperation. Now it spends its days burning water." Pausing, he shuffled to the side, brushing past a stocky man's seat on his way to the window. "Common history shows hard record of at least seven, each with a different number of tails and a distinct form. The only one with absolutely no recent word is this little bastard, number nine. The oldest legend in our library pegs the fox's natural form at about a foot tall." Silence greeted him, waving its arms and shouting happily. He appreciated their enthusiasm. "From reports, there's some truth to that. The fox doesn't simply disappear once it's done playing, it just reverts to its usual form and goes on its way."

A mousy woman buried her face in her hands, "Why does he sound like he's serious?"

The looks of disgust on the faces in the room were humbling, one jounin rubbed his temples tiredly, "How the hell do you kill something that small if it can level a city?"

"You don't. The real trick is how to seal something that small," Arashi sighed. "As the good man said, the fox appears once a week in all its mountain crushing, building toppling glory. The next stop is right outside Konoha, I intend to take it down by force, and my beautiful assistant is going to tell you how. Keep in mind that the Anbu have been working on this for a month, assignments are not up for negotiation." He grinned as the man who'd spoken up before stared in frustration at the crowded room ahead of him, "Come on, then." The man glared bitterly at him before clambering awkwardly up the wall and along the ceiling with a sheaf of paper in hand, cursing when he bumped into a hanging lamp. The assembled nin were kind enough not to snicker, fearing that the clumsy career secretary would fall on their heads if they distracted him.

As it turned out, he made it just fine. If the ceiling was a little worse for wear, nobody cared to complain.

()

"Of the team that witnessed the attack, two members survived. One is currently still in intensive care missing half his leg. Barring hidden nerve damage he'd be functional in a year if he were awake. The other is-" Here the young man broke off, frowning at the sheet in his hand. "Mostly intact, is the term used here." He placed it on the lectern firmly. "Torture and Investigation's psych ward has been looking after them both, the reports aren't pretty."

A double handful of the nin blanched. 'Mostly intact' was an interesting euphemism only used by the sadists, normally it was reserved for their victims. To hear one of their own men described as such did not bode well. Those who weren't familiar with that aspect of their profession merely looked interested.

"Simply put, it's huge-"

Arashi poked his head out the window, accepting a letter from a small Anbu operative wearing a heavily painted mask with more red lines than white, couriers lead a bloody existence. He'd heard it all before, first hand. The survivors had a disturbing look to them, even far removed from the event they twitched and cried in their sleep. The men had been broken, something that didn't happen easily.

"- may be nigh infinite, but its capacity for regeneration most certainly isn't. You must understand that we can hurt it, no matter how intimidating it looks. Elemental attacks had a visible effect on its aura and physical form, explosives also proved capable of damaging it. The difficulty is that only repeated attacks had any lasting-"

He sat lazily on the windowsill, listening to his secretary go through the horror story. The kind of damage done to the pair was a sort that did not happen often, only prolonged torture or incredibly powerful illusion could have had such a marked effect on his scouts. They were conditioned to take the worst an opponent could throw at them and carve their names in their corpses in response. Assault teams had nothing on Konoha's dedicated scouts when it came to mental stability. These people lived to survive above all else, reporting back able and sane was their sworn duty. He was proud of them for returning at all, they were brave, good men. After some thought Arashi decided against buying them little plush foxes to commemorate the occasion, perhaps if he survived the week. A new chuunin he didn't recognize looked at him oddly when he smirked, she'd learn.

"When the second trench fires, it's up to the recon' teams to give the mission a go. If you see yellow, follow your section combat assignments. If you see green, it's a general retreat. No heroics, no last stands. You will turn and run to fall back positions for all you're worth. The fox can't get us all in-"

Brutal, but true. Civilians were being spread out in a fan away from the village. Perhaps a third of them would be slaughtered if the beast made it through, a dangerous number, but not an impossible one. The people of Konoha would survive for better or worse. The city certainly wouldn't, though. The explosives being deployed were of the same sort that had been used to excavate the area in which it now stood, only on a much wider scale. Even at range the shock would be too much for buildings long neglected. The war had taken its toll.

"-groups one through four will be handling deployment of the network, the squad leaders have already been briefed. I urge you to help them as you can, it'll be tough going to set everything up in time. We have two days, make them count."

One bright spark realized that his home wasn't likely to survive the detonation and trumpeted a note of dissatisfaction. "Why the hell are we using a net like that if standard attacks work too? You just said that fighting it isn't purely suicidal, we're killing the patient here."

Arashi raised a hand again to quiet the lecture. "I'd like to add one thing. Those scouts were broken by their contact with the fox. My best guess is that its aura has a dangerous illusory component. A large reason we're going in this heavy on explosives is to weaken it enough that it won't be able to maintain that field. Chances are you'll feel the effect anyway, caution your men that the illusion can not be dispelled normally. They'll have to bear with it or retreat piecemeal. Standard numbing techniques may work, keep it practical." He surveyed the room, seeing looks of comprehension dawn on a few faces before nodding at the lecturer to continue. "Apologies, carry on."

"Not a problem, Hokage-sama. Regarding the evacuation-"

Arashi was grateful to have such eager subordinates, they actually enjoyed talking to rooms of unpleasant looking killers. He sat back in the window and flipped open the letter with a practiced motion, waving to a passing genin bounding over the rooftops before scanning it wearily. He hated paperwork. Arashi stared at the signature, even paperwork from the Third, what did he want?

Presently, Arashi felt as if he'd been kicked by a mule.

()

Somehow he really hadn't expected the view to be quite so breathtaking. He'd seen it many times in the past, after all. Perhaps it was just the line of molten fire tracing a ragged path down his ribs that colored his perception. This tired city of his, it had its own special beauty to it even now. On the ground and in the air it retained a sense of power, nobility and danger that no amount of battle damage or failed topiary could hope to tarnish. Far below he could make out ribbons of brightly dressed citizens being escorted through the gates and open tunnels that had seen so little use over the years. From his place atop the Third's stone head he didn't often have to worry quite so much about being jumped by a random assassin with designs upon his mortality. That had often proved to be worth the climb more than anything else, safety had been increasingly hard to come by as the years wore on. Even in his tower the clerks carried their own, special sort of threat. His vision wavered, he might have done with being a little less complacent this time. Turning his head sluggishly he watched a small group of genin argue on a rooftop. An eyebrow quirked after he saw a pair of them hug, were they saying at tearful farewell, wishing each other luck? He'd leave them their moment, he had one of his own to deal with.

"Why didn't you tell me?" Arashi asked without preamble. His question was hard, accusing.

"I, I." Kushina trailed off as she looked to her feet, feeling a hint of guilt. "I was afraid that you'd hate me," she whispered, sometimes he could make her feel as if she was being needlessly cruel. It was the right thing to do regardless. The silly boy simply didn't understand, he'd have tried to stop her. Really, it was his fault that he hadn't noticed her scheme earlier, he was too trusting. She slipped her bloodied dagger back into the sheath on her right thigh.

"And how did you think I'd feel after learning from someone else that you intended this? That you wouldn't tell me? You said you'd stay clear, I believed you," Arashi chuckled mirthlessly and turned. "I don't need you to do this." He groaned, falling to his knees. The line of heat was spreading quickly, working its way through his limbs and dimming his vision. He knew better than to try to fight it, every movement, every flash of irritation brought him closer to death or to sleep. Even after years in her company he couldn't be sure whether she intended to kill him.

Kushina squared her shoulders, then again, sometimes he really could be such an ungrateful brat. She felt herself slip, "You don't need me, is that right?" She advanced on him with slow, careful steps, unsure of his debilitation. "Are these the words of the man I carried home at least once a week because he was too stupid to stop flashing into trees? Is that what you have to say after you decide to take on a demon alone?" Growling, "Is the mother of your child not good enough to fight by your side?"

"No! That's, that's not what I... What I meant." It was getting harder to breathe, she knew, she knew why.

Kushina crouched and took his face in her hand, smiling cruelly and caressing his cheek with her thumb, "Then tell me, what did you mean? I'm not stupid, love. I saw it on your face that morning." Gently she lifted one of his nerveless arms, placing his hand over her belly, only ever so slightly rounded. "It wouldn't have worked, but this will. The first seal, love, the one you gave up on. That's what we'll do."

"You can't do that!"

"Yes, I can, and I will. The sooner you realize that you're not going to do this alone, the better off you'll be." The words were unkind, to his ears. The words didn't make sense anymore. Heat, more heat. He couldn't breathe, he couldn't think. It burned, oh gods, it burned, what was she saying? He'd never allow her to- "Mmf!" Kushina covered his lips with hers, taking what she wanted. Nipping playfully, she ran her fingers through his hair before she set him down.

Kushina giggled at his feeble attempts to resist, holding a finger over his mouth, "Don't act so flustered, you'll wake up soon. Remember to miss us lots, okay? We'll be waiting for you." He didn't see her hesitate before she left. He didn't see her tears. He only heard her stand. His heart was breaking and it was all his fault, he could have stopped her. There was one person he could never say no to, he was a coward to the last. He laughed weakly.

"Um, sir? Sir, are you in pain?" That timid voice again, the woman touched his face, fingers catching on wet fabric.

Arashi scowled, the blindfold wasn't black. It was the man who liked strawberries who came to his aid. "Leave him alone, he's fine."

"But-"

"Don't argue with me. Let him be."

A/N:

It continues, now with more Minato. Arashi. Eeny meeny, lets call the latter an adopted nick name and leave it at that, I've gone back and fiddled with the naming convention.