Hello and sorry for the (relatively) long wait. I've had a rough week. Anyhow, it's my birthday this week! Right before Valentine's day. Speaking of Valentine's day...do something special for someone you love...everyone needs some love now and then, right? Have fun reading, and please review! -Lumi
I don't own Naruto.
Chapter 10
Shikamaru leaned against a tree, bent over with his fingers touching to form a circle. He was thinking deeply. Damn, he cursed silently. They had rushed in foolishly and now they were paying for it. This enemy wasn't alive – not in the normal sense anyhow. His thoughts went back to Hidan, the member of Akatsuki who refused to die. He felt a pang of pain in his chest as he remembered his beloved sensei's death. Was this situation going to end up the same way?
Not if you come up with a plan, he reminded himself. He closed his eyes, scrunching up his brows. Hidan was probably still alive, but he had managed to trap him and seal him underground. They would have to incapacitate this enemy similarly, but it would be difficult – this enemy didn't have a solid form.
No, that was wrong. Even if it was immortal, it had to have a main body somewhere. But how did it split apart? He took a stick, and scratched a few drawings on the bark of the tree. I'll need any info I can get from Hinata and the others, he decided.
Suddenly, his thoughts were interrupted. The sound of a person approaching startled him.
"Who's there?" he said quietly. Hinata emerged, and behind her came Sakura. Both looked weary but alert.
"H-hello, Shikamaru-kun," Hinata stuttered. Her voice was shy, but her Byakugan was fully activated. "W-where are the others?"
"They should be coming," he muttered. "Can't you see them with your eyes?"
She shook her head. "We are too far apart. My eyesight only goes so far and – oh, wait, Yumi-chan is coming. And Kankuro…but he's wounded."
Yumi burst into the scene, supporting Kankuro as they ran. Blood flowed from several deep gashes in his right arm. He appeared more dazed than hurt, though, which was a good sign.
"Set him down here, Yumi-chan," Sakura commanded. "I'll heal his arm." Yumi nodded and did as she was told. Kankuro groaned, and his eyes shifted from one person's face to another.
"What's wrong with him?" Shikamaru asked.
"It's nothing serious…his muscles have been severed in places along his arm, but I can fix that. But his chakra flow is what has me concerned." She frowned in frustration.
"Genjutsu?"
"Seems like it…but whatever casting it is still doing it. I'm trying to nullify it but at the same time, it's trying to take over. Kind of like how a stinger from a bee keeps pumping in poison until you remove it."
Kankuro muttered something. "Got…thing…take it." He sluggishly reached for his jacket and pulled it aside, revealing a macabre sight.
It was a severed arm, still twitching its fingers. It was blackened with old blood and chakra threads wrapped around it, twisting their tendrils around Kankuro's skin.
"So that's the 'stinger,'" Shikamaru said grimly. Sakura raised a hand to sever it, but he stopped her. "Don't touch it, Sakura." He thought for a moment. "Alright," he said. "focus your chakra into the blade of a kunai. That should cut through."
Sure enough, it worked. Sakura pinned the arm down, sealing it so it couldn't move. Kankuro breathed a sigh of relief.
"Damn, getting that friggin' arm sure wasn't easy," he grunted. "What the hell is it, anyway?"
"Where did you get this?" Shikamaru asked, but he already knew the answer.
"Where else? In the middle of one of those chakra spider-nests. I used my own chakra threads to manipulate the strands, and made it into the middle before one of them got me. I got out, luckily."
Shikamaru looked closely at the hand. "That son of a bitch," he swore. "So he cut off his own body parts as bait. What kind of people are they?" He shuddered on the inside, remembering the way Hidan had cut himself apart. The world was full of all kinds of crazy. He narrowed his eyes, remembering Kankuro's wounds. They weren't caused by chakra threads…the ones they had encountered didn't affect anyone physically. He examined the arm. "I see," he said finally.
"What is it?" Yumi asked.
"There are two types of thread. One is the kind that we have all seen, the chakra type that casts genjustsu. But there's another." He reached down gingerly and removed a single clear string from the arm. The shinobi gathered for a closer look. It was next to invisible, even when seen up close. "I'm guessing that once someone is trapped in the genjutsu and immobile, the enemy moves this second kind of thread in to finish them off." He pushed the string against a branch, and with a neat 'snick' the thick wood was severed.
"I didn't even notice," Kankuro muttered.
"The enemy probably noticed there's eight of us, and made eight traps. He was clever enough to split them far enough apart so we'd lose contact. But you've probably come to the same conclusion as me; just as each nest was controlled by a separate body part, all these nests are controlled by one main component." He left out the fact that the 'component' was probably the horribly maimed remnants of a body, but everyone knew it without him saying.
"How are we going to find it?" Sakura asked.
Shikamaru stood up. "Didn't you find if weird that the chakra paths we followed all split in completely different directions?" He gestured to the picture he scratched out on the wood. "According to the info you gave me before you lost contact, the paths you followed were fairly straight. Fishy, to say the least. But the end result was that we were all separated and arranged in a very large circle formation." The group nodded, realization dawning on them. "The easiest place from which to control all the, erm, body parts, would be from the middle. And that is exactly where we are." He pointed at a small lake down on the ground. "They knew we might be tracking them by scent, so this would be the perfect place to wash away any scents and hide. I don't know how they suppressed their chakra, but it's not unheard of."
"Suppressing their chakra…it's possible," Sakura murmured. "I'm going to dissect this arm. It's too dangerous to leave it here or bring it with us, but it could hold valuable information." Shikamaru nodded his assent. She knelt down with a blade in her hand, ready to make the first cut. The arm seemed to sense its predicament and writhed in anguish.
Suddenly, it twisted and morphed until it changed form. The shinobi jumped back in surprise. It turned black and shadowy and legs sprouted from its body. It became a spindly black spider the size of a large dog. Sakura retreated in surprise and disgust. It wriggled and slashed the seal with a sharp leg and darted into the shadows.
"Kill it!" Shikamaru cried. But it spat out threads and the shinobi had to leap aside and dodge, and it nimbly evaded the kunais thrown its way. "Damn," Shikamaru swore. "So that's how he manipulates his body. It was gathering info from us. We essentially brought the arm back to its owner. Hinata, use your Byakugan. We're following that son of a bitch."
"Roger," she said. Her eyes darted around, following the black blur. It melted into the shadows as if it were a liquid, and trickled into the river. "You were right," she said. "I didn't see it before, but the chakra is reacting now. The enemy is twenty feet below ground, under the river."
"Alright, let's go," Kankuro grunted. The others nodded, but suddenly they were interrupted.
Three figures stumbled jerkily into view. One was tall, with dirty blond hair tied into several pigtails. One was black-haired with remarkably thick eyebrows. The last one had blond hair and blue eyes, and whiskers on his cheeks. Their expressions were dull and they moved like puppets.
"Lee-kun? Naruto?" Sakura said in shock.
"Temari?!" Kankuro exclaimed. She did not reply. She reached behind her, and grabbed her enormous fan, and moved to attack.
"Shit," Shikamaru said under his breath. Faint blue lines wrapped around their bodies, and the near invisible strings they dangled from glinted as they moved. They had been caught by the threads.
Enter ominous music. Oh no! hehe...what will happen next? Leave a review for me...I'll consider it a birthday gift! -Lumi