Tales of the Shinobi War 2
By: creyzi4zb12
Fanfic from: Naruto
Setting: During the Shinobi World War 4
Fanfiction Spotlight: Shikamaru, Kurenai
Dictionary: Blue Cult = A cult of shinobis who worship an illusion known as the Blue Kage. Belief and prayers keep him alive and real.
The Blue Kage = Explained in the story
Kunoichi = A female shinobi/ a female ninja.
ESR = Evacuation Shinobi Reserve; the Shinobi forces assigned to safeguard and protect the civilians evacuating in certain hidden villages. These shinobis are mostly composed of Konoha ninjas who were too inexperienced, young or old to fight in the front lines during the Shinobi World War 4.
Fourth Division = A battalion formed by the Allied Shinobi forces during the Fourth Shinobi World War in which Shikamaru is a member of.
Reign of Yagura = A time in the Hidden Village of the Mist where Yagura was the Mizukage, it is a time of brutality and bloodshed, where ninjas from the village are taught to kill at the earliest of age.
Supporting Characters:
Saizo = Rogue Shinobi hand of the Blue Ninja
What are you doing Kurenai?
Despite the fatigue and pain he feels whenever he moves a muscle Shikamaru performs a hand-seal to finish his "shadow-binding technique". His shadow quickly elongates and merges with the shadow of the Blue Kage. The cigarettes that he smoked before drop on the floor, forgotten and dampening.
"I've got you!" Shikamaru stated. "You cannot move your body now."
He breathes a sigh of relief, after his shadow binding jutsu hits the target perfectly. But his victory is shortly celebrated as the Blue Kage begins to move as if he was never really there.
"Fool! Your jutsu won't work on me!" The Blue Kage then tries to sieze Kurenai by the hand, but she tumbles away from his grasp.
"What are you?" Shikamaru grunts in pain as his bruises begin to ache heavily.
"I am the deity of these rogue-ninjas you have eradicated. A being not of this world, the living original." The Blue Kage stands still, as he eyes Kurenai and nothing but her. "You think your puny shinobi reserve has won, well the worst is yet to come as the main force arrives tonight!"
Kurenai throws a shuriken to the Blue Kage, but it passes through his ethereal body. She thought; why did this have to happen now? Everything was perfect until he came. The emptiness within her after losing Asuma had begun to fill once again, she was about to be cured of the darkness plaguing her heart, about to be whole again, until the Blue Kage appeared.
"What are you?" She scowls, holding her kunai and posed for a dash. Outside the tent she could hear the sounds of the alarm bell ringing, and the ESR elements screaming "We're under attack, to your stations."
"I am an elemental, and the most powerful of the originals. I am the pain, and am formed with nothing but the emotions considered negative by the people. The Pain Elemental" He raises his hand in ecstasy confident of his position and power beneath Shikamaru and Kurenai. "Your weapons are useless against me, I am the embodiment of all that is painful, and I have come for you woman!" He then points a finger to the baby crying heavily on the crib as if to touch it.
"No don't!" Kurenai and Shikamaru cried out in unison.
"I may not be real, but I can merge with the soul of any individual that I want. You wouldn't want this poor child to die from fear would you?" The Blue Kage's eyes burn deeply into Kurenai's. Beneath his blue mask it was evident that he was smiling.
"Please, do not." Kurenai kneels to the ground. Tears begin to fall down her cheeks. Everything had happened so fast and furious that she couldn't quite stomach all the events with her emotions. But when the thoughts about her baby coming to harm flooded to mind, she began to feel a sense of dread and hopelessness that all thoughts about her dreams to become a shinobi once again, of her love for Konoha, of Shikamaru and the awkward but comforting feeling she felt whenever he was near, of her memories with Asuma, all of those thoughts vanished in an instant. Her knees became wobbly and weak; every inch of her skin begins shivering as if she was cold and naked in ice.
"Then become one with me." The Blue Kage offers his hand to the dumbfounded mother before him. "Be my vessel woman, and I will stay away from this place when I am reborn!"
"Don't listen to him!" Shikamaru shouts. But Kurenai doesn't hear him, all she could think about right now was the baby; the product of her and Asuma's love, the light and the future of her life. Kurenai extends her hand to meet with that of the Blue Kage's.
"Kurenai!" Shikamaru screams again as the Blue Kage and Kurenai's hand meet. He notices and concludes the fact that she can no longer hear his voice.
Shikamaru mutters a curse, and rolls forward to do the only thing he could. He scoops the baby from the crib on his arms, and heads for the exit. The baby starts to cry more as Shikamaru does his maneuver in a quick and haggard fashion. He runs away as fast as he can, outside the tent, and into the throng of civilians running away in panic from the battle occurring between the ESR and the rogues in the heart of the mob.
She gathers up chakra on his feet and begins to run on top of a tree with the crying baby on his arms. When he gets on top, he rests for a bit and takes a look at the panic occurring below.
Fights were everywhere on the evacuation as civilians begin to panic and stampede their way to safety. East, west, south, north, Shikamaru could see shinobis and rogues fighting, throwing shurikens and kunais at each other, fencing and dragging wounded comrades away.
He concludes that he needed to get to Kurenai back fast, but first the baby needed to come to safety. He couldn't just tie the baby on a tree, or leave it unattended in a secret hideout, that was too risky of an act. So he ripped up some clothes he found on a dead civilian and ties the baby in a piggy back fashion at his rear.
A blinding flash is suddenly seen on the tent where Kurenai and the Blue Kage were at, breaking Shikamaru from all of his thoughts. He then sneaks his way into the holocaust that seems to be erupting between the civilians, the ESR and the rogue-ninjas. Shikamaru soon made it close to the tent with the baby in his back.
He sees a couple of civilians running in the road. Suddenly a rogue-ninja creates a fireball with his breath and sends the innocent people ablaze. Shikamaru watched in horror as they are then cut down by another rogue-ninja with a large nodachi (a type of katana/sword).
No time to help these people now. He had to get to Kurenai fast. The horrors he thought of what Kurenai must be enduring right now in the hands of the enemy leader, Shikamaru couldn't picture them out, but knew they were nasty indeed.
O-O
She stood inside the tent wearing her usual shinobi outfit, eyes close and lifting her head to the heavens. She was one with the Blue-Kage, the god of the rogue ninjas. Little by little both of them shared an intimacy in the soul, sharing their past, present and their future; their strengths and weaknesses. Kurenai slowly began to realize the existence of the Blue Kage, of how he came into being. It was during the time of the "Dreadful Reign of Yagura" where the Blue Kage had been conceived. From the strong emotions of fear and madness, the dark souls of the child ninjas in the village subconsciously created an imaginary person, to escape from all the negativities that they had. The BlueKage was but a flicker of light and darkness back then, they called him Sora, which means blue. Little by little Sora began to feel alive, and soon the Blue Kage realized, that by powerful negative emotions such as fear and pain, he would slowly become alive. It was an emotion that did not stem from the soldier shinobis of the Hidden Villages, but a negative emotion so strong, that they can only be harvested from the sub-conscious of weaker individuals.
Kurenai was falling into chaos, battling with willpower against the entity invading her. But she knew she would soon give way to him, it was only a matter of time before the Sora the Blue Kage overcame her resistance.
She realized that she could move if she wanted to, but would suddenly be stopped abruptly by Sora's will. It was a weird feeling, of being in control and not being in control. Nevertheless, even though Sora was inside her, she knew there was a flicker of her spirit remaining in battle for her body.
"Give in to it! There is no escape, once I am reborn I will have my own body, and I shall spread fear through the lands!" She hears a fatherly-like voice inside her head. The loudness of the BlueKage's volume reverberated in her subconscious, making her almost deaf from the voice of such a powerful spirit. She had to bite her lips to come out of the imaginary pain she felt. Her legs began to feel wobbly, and for a second she loses balance, and goes down to her knees.
"Tut-tut, be careful now. Shouldn't waste such a beautiful body" Kurenai suddenly stands up without her free will, she grabs the baby's crib for a ledge and uses it as base in standing up.
"Why do you need me?" Kurenai asked the entity before her. "My body is weak, perhaps weaker than the other stronger, younger ninjas in this march or your cabal."
"You will know that soon enough." The fatherly-like voice began to speak. And then, to the horror of Kurenai he begins to take over her mind, peeking deep into the subconscious, looking at facts in her past, of her days as a young brat in Konoha, of her parents, of the sudden dream to become a geisha, of the changing of that dream to be a shinobi, of her techniques, of Asuma and their lovemaking, of the baby, the most important person to her life right now. She begins to move on her own, and then she starts to perform a few hand-seals.
O-O
Shikamaru was running rather fast in his way to the tent where Kurenai was at. He sees that the area was guarded heavily by several rogue shinobis, he counts that there are three of them guarding it, all wearing demon-masks and blue robes.
He tries to look for any location where he could hide the baby. He was half naked in the throng, wearing only a pair of ragged pants and nothing on his torso and his feet.
Then his search is interrupted when he sees a rogue-ninja fall from a thrown shuriken by one of the ESR members. The rogue-ninja had suddenly fallen down a tree, a shuriken protruding on his bloody face.
Shikamaru thought of an idea to handle the situation. He climbs a tree in a ninja like fashion (while carrying the baby at his back), and looks out to the crowd ahead of him. A few seconds occur and Shikamaru finds what he is looking for, a huge battle occurring.
Five ESR shinobis were fighting seven blue-robed rogue ninjas. Clashing kunais and throwing shurikens at each other. It seems like the five ESR shinobis were losing the fight from being outnumbered. Shikamaru sneaks his way into the fight and uses his "Shadow Imitation/Technique" to bind/disable all the blue robed rogue-ninjas in the fight.
"Now! Finish them while they cannot move!" Shikamaru shouts to the ESR ninjas, by their movements and reactions he judges them to be chuunins.
After disabling his targets with his "Shadow Imitation/Binding Technique" the fight ended fast. The ESR shinobis made a quick coup-de-grace by throwing shurikens or stabbing them with a kunai, one even launched a fireball jutsu at his enemy, sending a robed-rogue crying in agony from the flames.
"I need all the men I can get to take out their leader!" Shikamaru didn't give the ESR chuunins enough time to say their thanks to him. "If we take him out fast, we could force the enemies to surrender!"
A chuunin with a baby face and a long hair wearing Naruto's old googles salutes him, and replies quickly "Aye sir! We shall do our best to end this fast!" It sounded as if he was scowling instead of replying to Shikamaru. For a moment the kid reminded him of Naruto, brash and persistent. They didn't even bother to question why Shikamaru was half naked.
And so they set-off, all six Konoha ninjas to infiltrate Kurenai's tent.
O-O
Shikamaru had laid his plans to the chuunins in how to dispatch the guards quickly, and it was a good plan indeed. They made quick work of the three guards, with Shikamaru using his "Shadow Imitation/Binding Technique" again.
"What the fuck!" A blue-robed-rogue-ninja mutters when he realizes that he suddenly cannot move. "I can't move!" He forces himself to raise his spear but is unable to do it.
"Now! Finish them!" Shikamaru shouts.
The rogue-ninjas couldn't even turn their heads around, when five chuunins suddenly came out of the bushes to either stab or slash them with a kunai. A few "ugh!" "aaagh!" sounds were heard when the attacks of the ESR chuunins finished.
"Good work!" Shikamaru comes into the clearing, this time he had already removed the shadow jutsu that he made. "Now we go inside the tent and take out their leader!"
"Yes sir!" The ESR chuunins cried out in unison, their kunais were still bloody from the coup-de-grace they made.
"Nobody is going inside the master's tent!" A voice booms loudly in the air, the ESR chuunins and Shikamaru look at their surroundings to see where it was coming from. "Water Clone Bomb Technique!" Shikamaru hears the voice shout. And to his horror, the corpses of the three rogue-ninja guards erupted into a huge watery explosion, knocking out the ESR chuunins close to them.
The three corpses exploded so powerfully that the ESR chuunins close to them were sent flying on random directions, tearing away suit and skin from the powerful force made by the water explosion.
In a heartbeat Shikamaru finds himself alone with Kurenai's baby in the clearing. The ESR chuunins were either dead or rolling in the ground in agony from the pain made by the explosion. He hears one of the chuunins slowly mumbling "Mommy! Huhuhu! I can't see." The splash of the water bomb had hit his face rendering him blind.
Shikamaru cursed himself for being rather rash with his decisions to come out fast. He hadn't thought that there would be other guards nearby that he and five ESR chuunins couldn't handle. Nor had he thought of a trap being laid toward Kurenai's tent. The five blue-robed-rogue ninjas guarding the tent were actually "Water Clones" made by someone to trap any intruders nearby. He cursed himself for not observing the characteristics of the guards properly. Their demon masks differed from each other, but aside from that the guards' height and body build were all the same, which could've confirmed suspicions that they were nothing but Mizu bunshins (water clones).
A ninja suddenly somersaults his way to the clearing where Shikamaru and the baby stood. He wore a blue sleeveless jacket striped with black lines horizontally, several bandages covered the muscular arms he carried, on his forehead stood a forehead protector bearing the mark of a ninja of the Hidden Mist, a single slash is seen on the symbol which indicated that he was a traitor or deserter ninja of his village. He carries a rather medium sized katana strapped on his waist, several scars seem to line his face.
The rogue ninja removes his katana and stabs at the ESR chuunin in his way, this was the chuunin crying moans of "mommy!" earlier. The chuunin suddenly stops crying and gurgles all of a sudden as he drowns in his own blood.
"I am Saizo, second hand of the Blue Kage. And you are not making a single step inside this tent!" Saizo removes his katana from the corpse and points it to Shikamaru, who then changes his position to a hand-seal pose.
Saizo laughs at him. "I have seen what your jutsu can do, they might have worked on my water clones, but they won't work on me!" He says confidently.
Shikamaru grabbed the baby tightly. His face turning into worry.