Chapter 4, Remnant (March of the Undead IV)

A starless sky hung silently over Demon Country, the wind's unearthly howls echoing through its many canyons and whipping about a hastily-erected marquee, curtains of dark cloth billowing wildly within the confines of their metallic frame. In his obsidian throne, the Sovereign rested a hand in his palm while the other gently shook a glass of red fluid. His darkened eyes met the apprehensive gaze of his new minions, and he allowed a small smirk to tug at his wrinkled cheeks.

"You are familiar, I assume, with the priestess of Demon Country?" The four nodded vigorously. "I thought as much. Your previous employer wished you to kill her to ensure Mouryou's survival. Without Mouryou, however, she is useless. She doesn't yet know this, of course."

"Then what're you askin' us about her for?" Shizuka hissed quietly, but fell silent as the Sovereign levelled his blackened stare upon her. She breathed a sigh of relief as his eyes left her, drifting back to his glass as he took a long draught of its murky contents.

"She expects to be attacked, as Yomi's plan had dictated, and has requested aid from a third party, the shinobi village of Konohagakure, a few hundred miles to the east. One of the shinobi they have sent will be your target."

"Which one?" Setsuna inquired, then hastily added, "I-I mean, who would you have us attack, my lord?" The Sovereign smiled. He hadn't lost his touch during his imprisonment. These four had yet to see even a single iota of his power, and yet they knew instinctively that he could mutilate them in ways they couldn't begin to imagine with only a twitch of his finger and would at the slightest provocation.

"His identity will not be difficult to ascertain. He will be the first to attack, and the last to die." He took another sip of his drink, and smirked darkly. "If that isn't enough, look for the most unusual. I care not whether he is intact, only that you bring him to me alive." A pinprick light flickered in his stygian eyes and vanished, as if a star had been born and died within their black depths. "I will leave it to you to decide where to draw that line." Gitai and Shizuka grinned and shared a sidelong glance. "He, however moronic he may seem, is without a doubt one of the most powerful adversaries I've faced, and I am far from as heartless as to send you unarmed." A silver bowl floated up from his side and came to rest in the air before the gang of four. Within, several lengths of pulsating purple flesh writhed and convulsed. The four shinobi reared back, repulsed by the eyeless, limbless worms, especially when one opened a circular mouth on its front end to reveal rows upon rows of small, triangular teeth that rippled with each movement. "These worms, as I understand it, are designed to improve your abilities exponentially." They nodded in unison and Kusuna, as the team's iro-nin, raised his arm to take the worms. The serpentine abominations leapt from the bowl and latched onto the pale flesh of his forearm. Kusuna winced in pain and his face contorted in a grimace, but he didn't cry out, for fear of what his new master might think of him. The worms quickly burrowed under his skin and vanished, but the rose-haired medical ninja could still feel their tubular bodies, throbbing uncomfortably in time with some unknown body process, swim through the warmth of his body.

"Th-thank you, master," Kusuna managed, his voice shaky as he tried to ignore the pain of the worms pressing against his flesh from the inside, pulling the skin taut and causing large, snaking bulges to protrude from his body. "I... I won't let you down!"

"See that you don't. I may be a benevolent master, but even I have a limit to my patience. I do hope, for your own sakes, that you do not reach it." A shiver travelled the length of the four shinobi's spines, even as they vanished in a gust of wind, hurrying into the night and leaving the Sovereign alone in his tent, sipping from his drink with only the wailing symphony of the wind to fill the sudden silence. A victorious smile pulled at his lips, and his empty eyes glittered with the light of dying stars once more. 'Soon...'


Hyuuga Neji winced lightly, scratching at his forearms. The deep itching he'd felt in Bat Country hadn't alleviated for an instant in their travel, and if anything it had escalated to the point of pain. His skin was raw and red, yet still the black marks of his chains burned through the damaged epidermis. It was difficult to ignore the worried looks of the others, most notably Naruto, but he had to. The effects could only be abated by battle, but he couldn't let the others know that, could he? How would that make him look? He'd be considered some sort of battle-obsessed psycho!

"Tch, how far is it to this temple, anyway?" Shikamaru drawled, stretching languidly. Neji, broken from his thoughts, looked up and scanned the path before them, silently activating his Byakugan. There, he thought as the archaic architecture appeared in his eyes as if it were in front of him. At first, tiny dots of blazing azure littered the antiquated structure, but each quickly grew into spidery webs of glowing sapphire that formed the crude silhouette of several hundred human beings milling about the temple.

"We'll be there very soon. No need to sound so irritated, Shikamaru." The slothful Nara grunted deeply, and fell silent. He didn't blame his fellow jounin; they'd been travelling for days now without event, and even he had found himself growing irritated at the uneasy, suffocating silence of their travel. He'd expected, with Naruto-sama on the team, for the mission to be a riotous, turbulent affair as missions tended to be with the Darkness' host in tow, but barely a word passed the blonde's lips. He was almost silent the entire time, and it unnerved the Hyuuga. Perhaps dying had changed him? Neji had to stifle a guffaw. Preposterous. Yet still, the concentrated scowl that pulled at his features as the teen stared blankly at the ground beneath his feet troubled something deep inside him, and not even Haku practically hanging off him was enough to break him from his trance. He also jumped when Naruto's head shot up suddenly. Haku leapt away from the blonde as if stung, worried eyes trained on the blonde who looked almost as if he were sniffing the air.

"The temple!" He cried suddenly, and was gone, taking to the trees with speed Neji hadn't known he possessed. The three followed suit quickly, each sending concerned glances in the blonde's direction. Neji's Byakugan drifted over Naruto's shoulder and shot forward to the temple. His eyes grew wide in shock, and the image blurred for an instant until he regained his focus. One question played on the jounin's mind as they sped through the canopy; how?


YoU sMeLl tHaT, dOn'T yOu?

The question remained unanswered. Naruto ignored the guttural growls of his more recent tenant, and focused only on the deep, resonant throbbing that filled his ears yet was silent to the others. It was strong and regular, like the rich, rhythmic pounding of a war drum. It only grew louder as he raced between the thick, dark trunks of the trees, until it began to drown out the distressed voices of his comrades. His sandaled feet touched down upon the dusty ground in the temple's courtyard, and almost instantly his sword was gripped between his calloused fingers as a sphere of inky blackness formed in the palm of his left hand. There was a flash of white as one of the temple's assailants leapt across his field of vision, wielding the blazing light of a Fire Release jutsu against the priestess' civilian guards. Naruto hissed angrily, his eyes blazing amber as he stormed across the courtyard, his left arm rearing back, and released the ball of darkness in a powerful left-handed throw. The ball bounced a few times as it dropped into the centre of the mass of battling shinobi and guards, and all stopped to stare at it as it rolled to a halt.

"In'intaru," he spoke softly, his whiskered cheeks pulled into a smirk as he watch the ball ripple for an instant, before exploding outwards and coating all around it in a field of darkness that solidified into a solid, charcoal mass not unlike the blinding genjutsu used by the Nidaime Hokage. Naruto raised a hand to the orb and touched against it, its walls rippling like water as his arm and soon the rest of his body sank into its embrace and vanished from the world altogether.

"What the hell is going on!" One of his captives roared angrily, and he could see the burning scarlet light of another Katon jutsu eat away at the lightlessness around it, before it finally winked out as the power of his technique crushed it into oblivion. "Damn, can't see your hand if it's right in front of your face in this thing... ouch, dammit!"The unmistakeable thud of a sandal meeting flesh rung out in the silence, followed by another cry of pain.

"What're you kicking me for, woman? Not as if I planned to walk into you!" The second ninja lashed out at the first, or at least, where he thought the first was, and ended up slugging a third, masked shinobi in the jaw, tripping over the legs of the fallen female in the process. "Whoa!" The third caught the arm of the second as he fell, and lifted him into the air with a low growl.

"Try something like that again, asshat, I'll rip out your fuckin' spine, I swear to God." A pitiful whimper sounded through the darkness as the foulmouthed third shinobi dropped the second to the ground unceremoniously. "Now someone better tell me what's what, or I'll beat the hell from everyone in this fucking country!"

"Quiet, all of you!" Even Naruto, who had been struggling to stifle his sniggers, fell silent at the voice of the fourth shinobi, a pink-haired male whose eyes scanned the emptiness, obviously looking for him. He was clearly more collected than the others, and Naruto supposed that he was the leader. "Someone else is here. I can feel another chakra signature, but it's not strong enough to pinpoint." Naruto sighed noiselessly. The time for games was over.

"It seems one of you has some brains, at least." His hand strayed to Pestilence's holster and unclipped the thin leather strap, pulling the silver pistol from its trappings and lining it up with the rosette. The four shinobi were still disoriented, as to them his voice appeared to echo from every direction, but once he attacked the dark globe would be next to useless. He had to make this shot count. "But that won't help you defend against from something you can't see." His finger squeezed the trigger, and a fang of gleaming gold burst from its barrel, tearing toward the enemy.

"Doton: Doryuuheki!" One of them yelled as they slammed their hands into the unseen ground, raising walls of earth around the group despite being unable to see the attack or even their own comrades. The blast slammed into the wall of uneven stone with the force of a speeding minivan, and deep cracks tore through its surface in a great web, but the wall did not fall. Naruto sighed, and allowed the darkness to shatter like glass around him, wincing as the sunlight hit his sensitive eyes.

"So you survived the Kokushokudan (Black Grenade)," Naruto groaned as the walls lowered and his eyes lazily drifted between the glares of his enemy. Both the orange-haired woman and the silver-haired male, his face masked with a thin piece of cloth, raced toward him, their hands each running through seals. Flames erupted from the masked one's mouth beneath his veil, and blades of wind, almost invisible in the air, flew from the woman's hands as she leapt into the air. Another blast from Pestilence ripped through the wind blades and narrowly missed the girl as she sailed through the sky, and the flames were held back by the thick blade of Naruto's sword. But as the second shinobi, a male with long, dark hair, appeared behind him with arms encased in thick rock, a mirror of glittering ice formed in the air, and a brutal kick shot from its surface and collided with his jaw, hurling him from his feet and off to the side. "Tch," Naruto scoffed, "you guys took your sweet time."

"If you expect us to keep up with you, you're delusional," Shikamaru droned as he stepped out from the shadow of the temple, arms crossed. The female enemy shinobi crashed to the ground heavily, her skin scorched, as Neji's sandals touched down on the ground with his enormous arm-shields manifested and crackling with electricity. He took up a defensive stance before the blonde, trading heated glares with Gitai.

"You, trash," he raised one of the shields' bladed edges to the silver-haired nin's throat, "Have no right to call yourselves ninja. Leave now." Gitai grinned beneath his mask, and his hands burst into flame.

"That right? 'Cause, see, I don't really care if I'm a ninja or not. I just wanna kick ass, is all." Gitai pounced on the Hyuuga and threw him into the temple wall, leaping after him with maniacal cackle. Haku moved to follow, but a slash at her throat from Setsuna's kunai stoped her, and she lashed out with a needle at his midsection. He backed away from the blow and shot a sweeping kick at her legs, which she leapt over and used Setsuna's own shoulder to vault over him and stab at his back. Shizuka, pulling herself to her feet, grinned as she regarded the moaning Nara, and she fished in her pouch for a knife. Shikamaru massaged his brow with one hand, but the other pulled his trench knives from their holsters.

"Why do I always get stuck fighting a girl...?" He asked to no one in particular, eliciting a scowl from Shizuka.

"Y'got a problem with that, lazy ass?" She struck, and was sorely surprised as Shikamaru almost instinctively raised his own knife without leaving his carefree, leaning pose, barely a hint of recognition in his eyes. Did he even notice he was fighting?

"I really want just leave this to the other me, but I feel I should actually put some effort in for once. Can't let Naruto show me up, you know how it is." In a surprising show of strength, Shikamaru pressed against her guard, and forced her backwards with just a single knife. Shizuka's eyes grew wide with realisation as she saw the flash of the other knife out of the corner of her eye, and leapt away from the 'lazy' shinobi. "So come on, shinobi. Make all this wasted energy worth it."

Naruto, naturally, had gotten bored watching the others fight, and so had engaged the remaining enemy, Kusuna, who struggled to hold back the impressive strength of the blonde and his cleaver-like blade with his own kunai, no matter how much more agile than his opponent he may have been. He leapt backwards, ducking under a sideways swipe from the curved sword, and raised his kunai to block an overhead swing, pushing the heavy blade to the side as he rolled away. His feet left the ground in an enormous leap, touching down on the wooden balcony that ran around the perimeter of the temple building and disappearing within one of the rooms.

"Where the hell d'you think you're going?" Naruto yelled as he gave chase, following the med-nin into the darkened room just as a feminine cry rang out sharply. His gleaming yellow eyes narrowed dangerously as he saw Kusuna grab a woman and hold her before him, kunai to her pale throat. Her glittering purple eyes were calm and collected however, and her body, wrapped in heavy robes, was relaxed. Naruto shook his head clear. What was he thinking at a time like this? He raised his sword and pointed its tapered tip at the rose-haired shinobi. "You think that's gonna save you?"

"I hold no delusions in that regard, yet you seem to be hesitating quite wonderfully." His features twisted in a mad grin. "Maybe you really do have a heart, hmm?" Naruto scoffed, but didn't move. Kusuna's eyes flashed and he began to slowly back away, his grip on the priestess never lifting for a moment. "It's been fun, Konoha-nin, but there are a few more acts before the grand finale!"

"Keep talkin', and you're gonna need an understudy." He raised his pistol suddenly and fired off a shot mere millimetres from the priestess' pale skin, and even Kusuna had to release her to slip around the shot, his breathing slightly heavier. The heavily-dressed priestess hurried out of the way, and Naruto grinned. "Just you an' me, now. No more distractions." Kusuna roared and leapt at Naruto with his kunai drawn, unleashing a flurry of stabs and slashes that Naruto blocked and parried with a look of unbridled glee upon his whiskered features. He'd been itching for a fight like this! Sword clashed with kunai with an awful screeching cacophony as they ground against each other, only for Naruto to raise his gun again and fire at Kusuna's face. The med-nin bent over backwards, literally, missing the shot by inches, and wrapped his legs around the sword before twisting and flicking the heavy blade to the side where it lodged deeply within the wall. He smirked and righted himself, sliding forward to thrust a second kunai into Naruto's gut, only to have a tendril, coated in ebony scales and writhing with thick bands of muscle, wrap around his arm and throw him away. He slammed into the wall with a heavy thud and groaned as he slid to the floor, Naruto drawing closer with his gun in hand.

"H-He said you would be strong... but this is..."

"Don't take it personally, babe," Naruto started, lining up Pestilence's barrel with Kusuna's forehead as he looked up with wide eyes, "It just ain't your story." Just as his finger pressed against the smooth trigger, a wave of flame erupted between them and Naruto leapt back to avoid it, only for the masked nin, Gitai, to sweep in and collect up the shaken Kusuna and hurry from the room, vanishing from sight. Neji burst into the room, holding his chest as he panted heavily. "Neji! What happened?"

"Sumimasen, Naruto-sama. I was careless, and allowed the enemy to escape."

"Don't worry about it. Are Haku and Shikamaru's opponents gone too?"

"Yes, the enemy left as a group. What about the priestess?" Naruto nodded to the side, where the priestess knelt quietly, looking quite calm about the whole affair. Neji hurried to her, while Naruto walked out onto the balcony, sheathing his weapons and retracting the Darkness. The throbbing was receding now, as the gang of four escaped into the mountains.

"Who were they?" He asked no one in particular, but a growling laugh made itself known in his mind.

wOn'T tHiS bE interesting... YoU sEnSe iT tOo, i prEsUmE?

'What exactly am I sensing? You seem to know an awful lot about what's going on, but you're not letting much slip.'

wHeRe wOuLd bE tHe fUn iN tHaT? i eNjOy wAtChIng hUmaNs sTruGGLe.

'Teme...'


A sigh escaped the painted lips of Demon Country's priestess, Shion, as she took a kneeling position behind the thin veil as she did at all meetings. She supposed she did owe it to the Konoha shinobi, as she had called them here to begin with, to thank them for saving her life, even if it had been fated to occur as it had. She fidgeted in the tight confines of her kimono; she truly disliked wearing such gaudy formalwear, but it simply wouldn't do for someone of her stature to be seen wearing the cloth of commoners, such as the four knelt before her. The veil lifted just as she returned to her statuesque position, and her eyes slowly opened to show the shimmering purple irises that the people of Demon Country both prized and feared.

"Priestess of Demon Country, Shion-sama," her attendant, Taruho, introduced her as he bowed so low she was sure his forehead met the wooden floor. One of the shinobi, a handsome male with chocolate brown hair that cascaded down his back over his pristine white robes, only to coalesce as it met a thin leather tie. He bowed almost as low as her guard had so that his hair draped over his face, yet he moved awkwardly as he made sure that his arms and hands were covered by his long sleeves at all times.

"Hyuuga Neji, milady. Jounin, and captain of the Konoha ninja squad sent to protect you." Beside him sat an elegant and beauteous woman with long, dark hair that fell even further than the Hyuuga boy's, framing her chalk white face as she smiled politely. Shion sent her an almost piteous look; the girl wore robes just as heavy and unnecessary as her own, yet she didn't seem to suffer from it. If anything, she seemed to enjoy the added heat. How odd.

"Momochi Haku, jounin of Konoha." Next along, a man with an angular face that wasn't helped any by the way his hair was pulled back into a spiky ponytail lounged back leisurely as he sat, legs crossed. His eyes were narrow and he honestly looked as if he might simply doze off at any given moment, yet somehow she could tell that his mind, hidden behind his lethargic exterior, was moving at a mile a minute. He seemed to notice that she was looking to him, as he straightened up and scratched at his jaw, fidgeting uncomfortably.

"Nara Shikamaru, jounin," he answered curtly, and returned to his lounging state as her eyes moved from his to the fourth and final member of her bodyguard squad. Her lips parted with an almost silent gasp as she stared at him incredulously, her body trembling ever so slightly.

"Uzumaki Namikaze Estacado Naruto, genin." His words barely registered with her. The unruly mop of sun-kissed blonde, the enthralling sapphire orbs that seemed to simply extend for fathoms without a care for the dimensions of his skull, the whiskered cheeks that lent him a feral, bestial countenance and the overbearing aura of darkness that hung around his form like smoke... Her eyes slid to the floor, and let an unperceivable frown flow across her face. Here was another, walking to his death.

"The attack earlier this morning claimed the lives of many of my fellow temple guards and, as Shion-sama had predicted, my friend Susuki was among them." Her eyes closed slowly. Despite the cold exterior she had always shown, she did in fact have a heart. She would keep her vision a secret, at least for a little while longer, so that this boy, this unsuspecting, greenhorn shinobi, could face his end in blissful ignorance. Her emotions could be quashed, as they had been countless times before, and so she donned her frigid expression once more.

"Of course. And as you can see, I still live. That is what they died to ensure, so I am sure they have no regrets." Perhaps that was a bit much, she mused, as she saw the blonde boy's eyes alight with anger. His fingers clenched into fists, and he rose to his feet despite the protests of the pretty Hyuuga. His heavy footfalls caused the ancient wooden floorboards to groan as he drew close to the priestess whose amethyst eyes were wide with surprise and fear as his calloused fingers grabbed a rough fistful of her kimono and pulled her off the floor, her face mere inches from his own. She could feel his hot, heavy breath on her delicate skin as his vocal chords ground together in a low growl, and his cobalt eyes, flickering with a burning scarlet that seared something deep inside her.

"What'd you just say?" Her mouth opened and closed noiselessly as she tried fruitlessly to find some counter for this disgraceful show of violence. "What the hell kinda attitude is that? Those people died for you, and all you can say is 'they did their duty'! They're not your tools, they're human bein- agh!" Shion released a breath she hadn't known she'd been holding when Naruto's fingers were torn, forcefully, from their grip on her kimono as thick bands of some strange, two-dimensional black substance wrapped around his limbs and pulled him backwards, though only a few inches. She noticed the lazy shinobi twisting his fingers about each other, the muscles in his arms tensing in time with the movements of the black limbs, but the blonde was far stronger than he appeared, pulling back against the ethereal fingers that bound him.

"Sumimasen, Shion-sama," the girl, Haku, apologised profusely, bowed deeply once more as Naruto hissed angrily at his slothful teammate. "Naruto-kun tends to take things a little too far..."

"It's quite alright," she assured the pale-faced kunoichi, smoothing out her kimono with one hand, while simultaneously struggling to quell her rapidly beating heart. She'd seen people fly into mindless rages before; the general populace had this irritating tic about taking offence when you tell them that their loved one was 'supposed to die'. But the fury that still smouldered within Naruto's cooling eyes was different. Her insides turned to ice, her body shook uncontrollably, and her heart felt as if it would tear itself from her breast if the fear that he set in her grew any further, the fear that she realised was because unlike those villagers, whose empty words felt like nothing but a passing breeze, he could and would do something about it. "Just see that it doesn't affect my mission. My journey is of the utmost importance, and I won't have an overemotional child ruin this world with his silly little tantrum." Naruto's eyes turned on her again, blazing once more, though with a mixture of anger and embarrassment.

"You have nothing to fear, Shion-sama," Neji said calmly. "He may allow his feelings to get the better of him occasionally, but he truly is a skilled shinobi. I myself, regardless of rank or position, hold him in the highest regard." She'd already stopped listening, turning instead to the furious blonde. She could feel a sneer tug at her lips, but crushed it under her impassive facade as her violet eyes met with his. She would not allow such impudence to go unchecked!

"You, Uzumaki Namikaze Estacado Naruto," she stopped to take a breath after such an impossibly long name, "will be pierced through the heart and die, very soon." She watched with no small amount of sick amusement as his eyes widened in shock. His mouth opened without a sound, and all the anger he'd gathered vanished into the wind. It was almost comical, the way such a proud warrior, hardened through battle, could become little more than a frightened child by such simple words.

"Again?"

Shion blinked slowly. What? Where was the fear, the horrible petrifying fear of an untimely end? She'd heard of people, however few they may be, that had come to terms with their own mortality and the fact that they would, eventually, expire. Memento mori, and all that. But such a calm, almost bored outlook, and his choice of words, was simply unnatural. And so, she expressed her confusion in the most eloquent way possible.

"Buh-wah?"


That's a wrap! Sorry, this one took even longer than the last time. My computer bugged out royally, and this chapter ended up being way more of a bitch to write than I thought... y'know, screw it. I won't try to defend myself, because I have no excuse compared to others I've seen (NeonZangetsu, SamJaz, etc.). Still, I started off thinking I was gonna hate this chap, it was gonna be horrible, yadda yadda, but I think it turned out okay. At least two references in here, cookie for each one. I know I kinda made Shion into a total cow at the end, but she'll level out... probably. On a related note, I now have the storyline panned out! It does however mean that after the movie arc there'll only be four or five arcs left until this story ends. Boo.

Next Time, on FSIR:

The Mission in Demon Country has begun, and Naruto is already at odds with the client, while the Sovereign and his Gang of Four are relentlessly pursuing their group. With their enemies multiplying, can Naruto and company make it out of this one alive, let alone intact? Find out next time! Goodnight! (Rolls credits, with Crouching Camper Hidden Sniper by Machinae Supremacy)