Hey, look at that, we've reached unlucky chapter 13...though I wonder whose luck will turn out worse, you readers or these characters?
I think the real unlucky one was me, I was stuck with writer's block on the back half of this chapter for about four hours after I got home from my shift at work. The 4:00 AM wakeup time, and a 6:00 AM - 4:30 PM shift at a grocery store, don't go over very well with my body.
"But Melkor, didn't you post chapter 12 at 11:30 last night? Also, are you telling us you wrote half of this chapter, plus this AN, in an hour?"
The answer is yes, to both. I didn't go to sleep until 2 AM because I started writing this chapter after I published the last one. I can taste colors and hear pictures...or maybe that's skittles and youtube? No clue. I'm fuckin' tired, though. Probably should've napped, but I didn't want to disappoint you guys and make you go a day without an update. If there's ever a point where I won't be able to update for a day or two, or more, I'll try to leave an AN at the bottom of the last chapter published.
...yeah, I think I'm gonna get on that nap real soon. Maybe. I might just keep writing.
EDIT: after posting, I read through the chapter and fixed a few errors. Sorry about that.
Review response time!
1. draven32: Yeah, the intention was to show a stark contrast between...well, you're gonna find out by the end of this chapter. I won't spoil it for anyone. Ao taking Shisui's Sharingan is more of a, "how can I fuck with canon to make some of the things that happened in canon seem more convincing?" We all know that Itachi had one of his eyes, so now that we're all aware Danzo is lacking its powers, it could explain in canon why he didn't seize control immediately after the Sandaime's death besides the idea that he either didn't want to, or he didn't have it yet. Or, Kishimoto hadn't thought that far ahead...which is poor planning, and creates another continuity error.
A story that doesn't treat its universe like the real world, just building threats as the hero discovers them, is just a recipe for two-dimensional fiction.
2. OneLunchMan: You'll absolutely love the end of this chapter, then.
3. Ordo-Silver: Because I, friend, am a terrible man. A terrible, murderous, cliffhanger-loving man.
4. Winter Arctica: I'm not gonna say that chapter was an excuse to write a Mei backstory, or give Zabuza some more screen-time, or have NaruTayu fluff without having them in the same room as one another, but...yeah, no, it was totally that. I'm not sorry. As for Naruto and Yagura...you may have to wait until tomorrow.
Thanks to everybody else who reviewed, followed, and favorited since last time! I really appreciate it, it keeps me pumped to continue writing.
Let's get this trainwreck moving.
Gaara was frustrated. He was tired, he was a little hungry, his bubble-blowing opponent wouldn't roll over and die...
You know, the little things in life.
"Futon: Kyofu no Yashi!" The Kazekage yelled, triumph in his eyes when the attack landed. Utakata spun, and wasn't fast enough to recover before grains of sand tore the Rokubi Jinchuriki's pipe apart.
"Come on, what was that for?" Utakata said indignantly, casting the ruined weapon's pieces aside as he dropped to the ground. "I'm just trying to screw around, kid. You sure you want me to get serious?"
"If they thought you were stronger than me, they would have kept this to a mob battle. You're just a diversion so that Naruto can't have a fair fight."
Out of the corners of their eyes, they saw lightning spring up from the aforementioned blond's Dai-Raigen'ya technique, and heard Yagura's pained cry.
"Looks like he's not doing too badly, in spite of that. You're sure I can't convince you to just...leave, and go somewhere? It would make my life much easier. Why are you so loyal to a tyrant?"
"Because he wasn't responsible for his actions, but by the time we'd broken the Genjutsu on him, this rebellion had already begun. All we want to do is find the one responsible and bring them to justice."
The words gave Gaara pause.
"I am sorry. Unfortunately, it seems, both sides are in the right. The rebels want Yagura to answer for crimes he committed while placed under the control of another, and Yagura wants to end the war that shouldn't have begun in the first place."
"Yeah...but you're here out of loyalty to your friend, and I'm here due to the same thing. Neither of us is willing to abandon the one who got us into this mess..."
"So we fight." Gaara acknowledged piteously, though that melancholy was soon replaced by determination. "A shame, to kill one who is my like a brother with this curse."
"A shame, to kill one so young." Utakata countered, dark chakra beginning to eat at his body. "A shame, that our own senses of loyalty will be what kills us."
The two renewed their battle, demons howling from within.
"Suiton: Suirendan!" The water bullet slammed into Gaara, but the redhead didn't budge an inch as the caked sand armor fell off of him in chunks.
"Doton: Iwayama no Konagona no Jutsu!" The Crag-Breaker technique shot jagged earth up, attempting to trap or kill Utakata.
"Futon: Bakuken!" True to its name, the air compressed around Utakata's fist when he swung a punch at Gaara and intentionally missed, causing an explosion due to the disturbance in the air that caught the front of Gaara's shirt.
"More explosions...I'm really starting to hate that sound."
"You're more than welcome to die. That'll stop you from having to hear it ever again."
"No, thank you. Then I would have to spend an eternity listening to Shukaku's depraved ramblings in hell."
"Eh, it was worth a shot."
"Don't say you didn't try." Gaara's visage changed, calm and blank as he stared at the terrain.
Shukaku, can you hear me? I have a proposition for you. Gaara offered the words up to his demon.
Speak, then.
If I willingly start to give you control, to fight this man and his Biju, will you guarantee that you'll go back inside the seal once this battle is over?
What's in it for me? The Biju answered with another question.
Destroying the Rokubi in its home territory, proving your superiority.
Tempting...oh, whatever, it's been at least a century since I've fought one of its containers! Let me at him!
Gaara's eyes changed, black sclera defined by the golden iris of the Ichibi.
He couldn't be stopped.
Kirabi's increased speed in his first-stage Biju cloak actually outpaced Naruto enough that the blond had charged his own body with Raiton chakra in order to keep up, with Yagura lagging behind due to his earlier wounds. Apparently, the Sanbi couldn't heal his wounds. All of Naruto's shadow clones had been destroyed, leaving the blond to face his adversaries alone.
Kirabi had begun wielding a third sword in his mouth, in the Santoryu Kenjutsu style made famous during the Warring Clans era. Naruto's enlarged falx was big enough to block all attacks from the burly Kumo-nin, but he would be in trouble if the two shinobi got any more serious.
"You know, I don't know what kind of creature you'd call the Hachibi, but I guarantee you..." Naruto leapt away, sheathing his falx and running through a series of hand seals. "No matter what it is, I think it'll be big enough for a thousand birds to eat."
The Chidori came to life in Naruto's hand, every nerve in his body lighting up to move just in time to avoid a would-be-lethal blow from the hooked end of Yagura's staff. Uzushio's village symbol shone on the blond ninja's forehead, and even if these two had been born long after its destruction, they still belonged to two of the responsible parties.
"That's a lot of lightning, but your jutsu isn't frightening! Mister Nine, we're doing fine!"
How Kirabi managed to speak at all, let alone clearly, with a sword between his teeth...Naruto wasn't sure he wanted to know. It didn't help that the other shinobi's, "rapping," was awful.
Charging the Kyuubi's chakra into his arm, the Chidori turned as red as it had been when he'd debuted his knowledge of the attack against Jiraiya. In seconds, the chirping songbirds had been phased out and replaced with the raucous screaming of carrion-birds.
"You guys should really pay more attention to where I leave my weapons, and if they're really weapons...and separating yourselves from the weakest member of your group. Be back in a few!" Naruto threw a smoke pellet down before initiating his kawarimi, and six of his clones surrounded the allied pair of Jinchuriki.
Naruto didn't worry about how he'd get back, though. He'd already planted another clone in the ground around them, hiding on the ground as a shuriken that looked far too old to have been placed recently.
Of course, keeping that as a contingency plan was a nice idea too. He decided that he would shunshin back to his battle with Kirabi and Yagura.
When he arrived to help Gaara against his foe, he saw two half-possessive Biju smashing into one another...practically without jutsu. Gaara was in his half-transformed state, and Utakata had entered into the second stage of his Biju cloak, with four tails active. Demonic chakra, so concentrated and heavy that it appeared to be black, covered his whole body and seemed to drip off of him like water from a showerhead that had only just turned off.
"Naruto!" Gaara yelled, which was all the warning Utakata would get before a demon-infused Chidori nearly ran through his gut. Utakata didn't bother to dodge, and the most powerful technique that Naruto knew failed to pierce the Rokubi Jinchuriki's skin. Jumping away before his enemy could lash out in revenge, Naruto looked to his friend for a plan.
"Don't kill him. I promise, Yagura has his reasons. He can't be spared, not when the rebellion has come this far, but he's not evil. This one, though...he can be left alive. Kiri will need all the help it can get rebuilding their village."
With a somber look in his eyes, Naruto nodded.
"I learned a demon restrainment technique that I could use in the event that something like this happened. Do you think you can keep him busy for a few minutes? This is going to take somewhere between a quarter, to half, of my chakra, looking at how far he's already gone."
Gaara nodded, and leapt into another round of melee with his fellow Jinchuriki. Closing his eyes, Naruto focused purely on his chakra and began to run through the hand seals necessary to complete the jutsu. As more of his clones appeared, each one running through a different set of seals than the one before, he saw both of the other Jinchuriki after opening his eyes to gauge the distance he'd need to travel.
"Fuin: Enma no Nijuu-Roku Kanadzuchi." The Twenty-Six Hammers of Enma was one of Uzushio's Kinjutsu techniques, and could place any target in a deathlike sleep until its caster either died or unsealed the victim. The only catch was, it required more chakra to use depending on the intended victim's chakra levels.
Clearly, the idea had been to make sure that no Uzumaki could fall victim to their own technique.
In a burst of speed, Naruto moved forward to slap Utakata across the back, and the effect was immediate: the man's chakra cloak disappeared, and he fell unconscious before hitting the ground.
The drain on Naruto's chakra was just as immediate, and he winced; the sealing had taken much closer to half of his chakra than the quarter he'd been hoping for. On the other hand, he still had plenty more, and he'd eliminated one of their enemies.
"Time to go play the fair-fighting game. Hope you're ready, Gaara."
The Kazekage nodded, and both ninja performed a fast shunshin that had them vanish from their fallen brother's side.
"Miss me, assholes?" Naruto grinned, with Gaara standing beside him. "Now it's a little more fair, two-on-two."
"Utakata...what did you do to him?" Yagura growled.
"I shoved a Chidori through his gut. Left a big-ass hole in it, too...don't suppose he heals like me, though, does he?"
"You bastard! I'll kill you!" Yagura screamed, his body being taken over by the Sanbi as he transformed into a full possession. In a matter of seconds, the demon turtle was alive in the flesh again.
"Oh, that's not good." Kirabi said, not rhyming for the first time in the fifteen minutes that Naruto had known him. "New mission, objective understood."
Goddammit.
"New mission?"
"I'm gonna pacify the demon, get Yugito and get to leavin'!"
Of course, the Raikage wouldn't risk his two strongest soldiers on a mission to aid a tyrant; if things were looking a little hairier than anticipated, it wouldn't have made sense for either of the two to die so far from home. Better to save themselves, particularly in this war that wasn't even theirs to interfere with.
Naruto could relate, but he wouldn't have abandoned the rebels he'd fought beside. For better or worse, he was one of them.
"You know, Yagura seems a little...unhinged. More than a Kage should be. No offense, Gaara."
"None taken. The reason, or at least the one Utakata told me when we fought, is because he was placed under a mind-altering Genjutsu that caused him to commit the atrocities that led to this rebellion."
The Sanbi's roar returned the pair to the battle at hand, and Kirabi sighed.
"Yo, Kazekage, let's transform all the way!"
"There's no need for you to do that." Gaara said, sand building him up until the genuine Shukaku stood before them. "I've told you...as long as I have sand, I am invincible."
From offshore, a tower of sand shot upward with more force than was probably necessary, collecting itself into a gigantic ball. The tide had fallen a full foot from the action, but Gaara wasn't concerned with that.
Kirabi and Naruto ducked behind Shukaku's legs as the sandy murder-ball dropped down with enough force to crush a mountain. Their silent hopes were dashed when a bright burst of light signaled that the Sanbi had unleashed a Bijudama. The blast tore through all the wet sand, making it explode outwards and ensuring that the Sanbi remained unharmed.
"Oh, this isn't gonna be fun."
Shukaku spat wind, forming a cyclone that began tearing its way through the forest around them. The Sanbi countered with a wall of boiling water, which set trees on fire when it hit them.
"You know, Mister Nine, it's time for us to shine. We can't let them have all the fun, or else we three can't crush that one!"
Naruto growled, his expression turning feral as violent thoughts began to fill his mind. Throughout the fog of grim wishes, one directive stood out more than the rest.
Kill.
Two tails of chakra exploded out behind his body, red chakra racing across his skin as dark power flowed through him. His eyes were red with slit pupils, finger and toenails transformed into claws, and his teeth had turned canid in nature. The sharp teeth resembled a Kiri-nukenin Naruto had once met, Hoshigaki Kisame, though that was all the similarity they shared.
With a loud shout, though the sound was very near to a bark, the Kyuubi Jinchuriki gathered more of his Biju's power.
His arms moved, controlled by the demon inside, and the voice that was his-and-yet-not-his spoke.
"Zenton: Shinra no Tenken no Jutsu!" The technique wasn't one that Naruto had ever heard of before, let alone used. What was, "all-natured," supposed to mean? Furthermore, what could the Kyuubi do with-
Naruto paused his thought process for a moment, realizing that by channeling the Kyuubi's chakra and giving it a manual override to his limbs, he'd effectively given it access to its own power source. Thankfully, a Biju's chakra couldn't undo the seal it had been placed under, so he was safe from at least one threat in the world.
A great rumbling was heard in the sky overhead, and Naruto understood why the jutsu held the name, "Heavenly Fist of the Omnipresent God." Burning through the atmosphere, a meteorite smashed down into the ground near them, sending Kirabi flying and knocking the Ichibi over when the shockwave touched them. Shielded by virtue of the fact that he technically cast the jutsu, he watched as the Sanbi spun end-over-end until it managed to right itself. Kirabi seemed content to stay hidden, almost seeming to say that he wanted to see just how strong Naruto was as a Jinchuriki. Gaara, on the other hand, was awoken and knocked out by the force of the blast; Shukaku had vanished, and the redheaded Kazekage was lost somewhere amid the vast desert he'd created.
That was fucking badass. Naruto communicated telepathically.
You're fighting my brethren. You can't utilize my full strength with all these seals in place, but it would leave a very poor mark on my reputation if you died against this weakling. The control he was placed under has caused him to lose most of his power, and even my sibling demon hasn't regained its full abilities yet.
The response surprised Naruto, as the Kyuubi generally chose to ignore Naruto's infrequent attempts to talk.
Got anything else up your sleeve?
Always.
"Zenton: Mu Juuryou Sanchou no Jutsu!" The Weightless Mountain Peak began, a slim point rising up from the ground beneath the Sanbi to pierce all the way through it and continue rising, its base ever-widening and carrying the Sanbi further into the air. Finally, it snapped, sending the demon careening into the ground.
That's the most of my strength that you can safely use right now. Your body will need to take a break from my chakra before it can handle my more intensive techniques.
Internally, Naruto paled at the idea that the Kyuubi considered meteor-pulling and mountain-creating techniques to be minor jutsu...and he still didn't know what the hell, "Zenton," was supposed to mean.
As Naruto's Biju cloak faded, the Sanbi slammed head-first into the ground, the damage from two high-magnitude land-altering techniques on the heels of one another being too great to continue sustaining itself. Yagura stood in its place as it disappeared, his body fully healed. With a series of mixed, conflicting emotions in his eyes, he spoke.
"Well, at the very least, thank you for that. Your defeat of the Sanbi shook off the last vestiges of the mind-control technique I was placed under."
The difference in attitude was enough proof that he was telling the truth; the man before Naruto stood with the poise and calmness befitting a Kage, the hooked staff held loosely in his hand and with a gentle smile on his face.
"I'm sorry we had to meet as enemies, Uzumaki Naruto." He said. "I'm sure that, had you been my ally, the rebellion could have been ended peacefully once you touched my mind."
"I'm sorry you were controlled." The Konoha-nin offered. "I'm sorry that your position, and my alliance, make us do what we're about to."
"As Mizukage, I cannot allow the secession of such a significant portion of my forces. Even though their number is small, the talents they possess far outmatch most of those still loyal to me. My duty as the leader of Kirigakure is to keep my village united, however I must."
"Then only one of us is coming out alive."
Naruto's sealed falx rested comfortably in his right hand, and utter silence fell over the land that watched over both of the still-standing Jinchuriki. The hush was a prelude to bloodshed; no matter what, one of them would die today, and neither had resolved that it could be anyone but their enemy.
At a signal that neither knew, yet both understood, the Yondaime Mizukage and the head of the Uzumaki clan rushed forward to claim their destiny.