Hey guys, sorry for the long wait. It was kind of hard to get back into writing, after such a long break, but I hope this new chapter turned out alright and you'll enjoy reading it =)
Thank you for your patience.
28. Difficulties
This time around at least two-thirds of them have almost been prepared for another attack; at least it hadn't come entirely out of the blue and yet they haven't been as lucky about evading it as that first time. The explosion did not hit them directly, which was something at least, but the force of it and the flying rubbish were bad enough. Sasuke was the only one who managed to evade it all more or less untouched. Sayuri and Karin, however, did not fare quite as well. They did not manage to escape, nor did they manage to hold their ground against the invisible but all too solid shock wave, created by the explosion. Consequently they fell to the ground and were shoved to the edge of the mountain. Karin went over the edge first, and Sayuri would have doubtlessly followed, had she not been so lucky as to have a rock in the way, which, upon collision, knocked all air out of her lungs, but that was still better than falling into the depth.
Coughing and gasping for air, Sayuri struggled to get a grip on herself. She looked towards Sasuke, who met her eyes briefly, a look of warning clearly visible in his blood red Sharingan. Then he focused his full attention on Deidara again, who, in that moment, initiated his next attack. The ground shook and a drizzle of stones rained into the depth.
"Karin!" Sayuri called out, as she couldn't spot the other woman and hastily moved to the edge of the cliff. Peering down she half expected to see a splotch of red on the distant ground, but such was not the case. She did see something red, but it was closer than expected and to her relief it had nothing to do with blood, except for sharing its colour.
"What are you waiting for?! Help me up!" Karin screamed and clung desperately to a protruding piece of rock, only about half a metre below the edge of the mountain. The stones were slick with rain and she was beginning to lose her hold. Even her perfect chakra control did little to help her at the moment. You could tell from her face that she knew so and knew that she would likely not survive a fall from such a height. It was rare to see such a blatant look of fear on her face.
Without giving much thought to it, Sayuri wrapped her legs around the rock that had acted as a life-saver for her before. Hopefully it would now also help her save Karin's life and not have them both soar down and end up as nothing but ugly stains on the ground.
"Here! Take my hand!" Sayuri leaned as far over the edge as she dared and reached out to the redhead, but it wasn't enough.
"Come closer! Damn it!" Karin screamed, her head now as red as her hair.
"I can't," Sayuri pressed out and tried her best to stretch herself and get just a tiny little bit closer to Karin. She was already lying flat on the ground, her face pressed against the mud-covered stones, but it was still not enough. "You have to do something, too!"
"Pfft," Karin snorted, unable to think of a witty reply right now. Instead she clenched her jaw, took up all her courage and released the hold of her right hand on the rock, which right now made the difference between being alive and being dead. She pulled it back and then swung it upwards with all her might, trying to ignore the way her remaining hand slowly slipped from the wet rock. As her hand then closed around Sayuri's fingers that became a little easier.
"Got you!" the violet-haired kunoichi exclaimed triumphantly, though a good deal of strain was also detectable in her voice or would have been, were the noise of the explosions in the background not too loud for that.
"Don't you dare let go! You hear?!"
"I don't intend to – stop fidgeting for cripes' sake!" Sayuri barked and already saw herself slip over the edge, as Karin began pulling at her hand with her full strength.
"Pull me up!"
"I can't! You're too heavy!"
"Heavy?! Who do you call heavy?!" Karin griped, her mouth stretched into a thin line, as though she had just bitten into a lemon.
"That's not-ugh!" Sayuri cried out, as Karin resolutely grabbed a fistful of her hair and pulled herself up. Then she just crawled over her back, like she was some kind of door mat, while every last bit of her body was now pressed into the mud.
"Phew," Karin sighed, as she crawled off Sayuri's back, a good distance away from the cliff. And there she knelt now on all fours, trying to catch her breath and recover from the shock. She was safe. For the moment…"That was close…"
"Yeah… you're welcome Karin," Sayuri grumbled and sat up. Cautiously she touched the top of her aching head, feeling for any bald spots. It was hard to tell with the mud, but it used to feel fuller up there…
"Oh, don't go for gratitude," Karin snapped, "I'm here to help you find your son. As if you would have pulled me up if I wasn't of any use to you."
"Of course I would," Sayuri exclaimed. Judging from that doe-eyed look of hers, Karin actually believed her. Damn these Konoha-softies…
"Whatever," she shrugged and focused her attention on the fighting men, when Sayuri addressed her again.
"But that makes us even now."
"Even?" Karin frowned.
"You saved my life, I saved yours."
So that's how it is, Karin thought with a sneer. So she was not quite as selfless after all… What do you know?
"We're nowhere near even… but if it makes you feel better…" Karin replied graciously. It's not like there was any way for the other woman to clear her debt with her. Not in this lifetime at least, so it didn't matter anyway.
"Will he need our help?" Sayuri asked, her grey-blue eyes glued to Sasuke's small form again. He was a fair distance away from them and she was sure he had intended to lure Deidara as far away from them as he could, even though that meant he had to fight him all by himself, which was no doubt what he wanted, but was it really clever?
"You tell me," Karin said and clicked her tongue, "You know him better than I do."
"I don't even get what's going on," Sayuri said and tensed visibly, as she watched Sasuke only barely escape a shower of rocks, resulting from a succession of explosions. But Sasuke was quick. He would not let himself be offed by a stupid rock. No need for her to worry… "Why is Deidara alive again?"
"What are you, stupid? It's Edo Tensei. Geeze…"
"Edo Tensei?" she repeated, "But wasn't that one of Orochimaru's jutsu?"
"Exactly. It allows the user to summon dead people from their graves and use them like marionettes and since they are already dead, they can't die again."
"But then what is Sasuke supposed to do?"
"…"
Finally a good question. In fact it was the very question Karin was asking herself at that moment. What was to be done about an opponent that couldn't be killed? Her first idea was of course to incapacitate him, but Deidara wouldn't make it so easy… He was a former Akatsuki agent after all… But what else could they do? There had to be something… There was no such thing as a jutsu without a weakness. Perhaps she could make something out if she only watched him closely.
But then why bother? The outcome of this fight should be of no concern to her. If Sasuke won, she'd be stuck with him and he would drag her into more and more situations such as this one. As long as he still needed her, he would protect her, but once she had outlasted her usefulness to him, she would be left to her own devices; a lonesome, defenceless woman in the middle of a great war. Should Deidara win, however, he would probably target her next and there wasn't really much she could do to oppose him. Or maybe he would consider her as too small a fry to dirty his hands on her. From how she had gotten to know him that was rather unlikely though. He thrived… delighted… lived for senseless destruction. Whatever happened next, her chances of survival were slim. And worst of all she had nothing to do with all this. How come she always ended up being dragged into such shitty situations? How come it always happened when Sasuke was somehow involved? Questions upon questions…
"You heard him; stand back and don't interfere," Karin said soberly, "those two play in a whole different league. All we'd do is get into Sasuke's way. You would, anyway."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Sayuri asked, irritated frown in place.
"It means just what I say. Now shut up and watch. Maybe we can see something Sasuke doesn't. Anything will do."
"I know that," the Konoha-nin grumbled, but nevertheless did as she was told and focused her full attention on the fight again, on the look-out for that little something that might mean the difference between a once and for all dead Deidara or a dead Sasuke. And a dead them. A dead Mikan, because that is what it would amount to. Right now, Sasuke was the only obstacle that separated them from a most likely painful death. So much responsibility… so much pressure… she really didn't want to be in his shoes.
And yet he fared quite well. As she stood there, watching him, Sayuri couldn't help but feel a certain sense of awe – of pride – about the way Sasuke soared almost effortlessly through the air, flying without a set of wings – neither his own nor loaned ones. He was under constant attack from the Akatsuki and yet he was still unharmed, didn't even seem to have broken a sweat. Like it was nothing out of the ordinary. A piece of cake, so to say.
It's been a while since she had actually seen him fight. Team 7 seemed so far back. Thinking of it felt how she imagined it had to feel like for grown ups to remember their childhood – the good old days. Back then when the sun always shone a little brighter than it did now and when they always laughed a little louder than in the present. A time in which real friendships were formed that lasted through the worst of crises to times spend on verandas and porch swings – a whole life.
This was clearly one of the aforementioned crises, but that's how life went. It wasn't the first and it would not be the last time they had to endure such hardships, but as long as they were granted a break from time to time… whatever the case, it was too early to give up. Especially since Sasuke really did do well. He killed Deidara before and now, too, it was apparent that he was the stronger of them, but how much longer? Unlike Deidara he was mortal and only had a limited amount of chakra at his disposal. The longer this fight dragged on, the more it would put Sasuke at a disadvantage and since they had no idea what to do about Deidara, there was only one possible outcome and that was not in their favour. But Sayuri refused to believe that this was it. If so, then where was the point in fighting? Then they could just as well drop their weapons and bow their heads, so that Deidara could cut them off or blast them away or whatever else he felt like doing. No way this would happen! Their story couldn't just end here. They owed it to their son to survive.
Sasuke was also aware that time was not on his side and neither was anything else about the circumstances. A quite decisive difficulty was for example the fact that his opponent refused to stay down when he killed him and he did kill him quite a number of times already and that without much of an effort. Since his life was something that couldn't be taken away from him, Deidara didn't even bother to preserve it and instead concentrated on his attacks or maybe on his big mouth. His attacks were rather half-hearted – nothing compared to what he showed during their last fight – a fight which Sasuke nevertheless won, by the way, which might be an explanation for the bad blood between them, why Deidara was so enthralled by playing cat and mouse with him…
And as if that wasn't enough, Sasuke couldn't even fight the way he wanted to, because he always had to pay attention to the two women in the background. He tried his best to relocate the scene of battle as far away from them as possible, but the nature of Deidara's attacks made that a nearly impossible task. Usually it was the Akatsuki who shooed him around. There was no better way of calling it. Sasuke was shooed from one direction into the other. He was constantly on the move, running, jumping, ducking, he couldn't keep still for a second, unless he didn't want to be blown to smithereens.
"It's not much help now, your Sharingan, is it?" Deidara called out and snickered, pleased with himself and the whole situation. Seriously, had he only assumed before that being dead would be anything like this, he would have never clung as desperately to his life as he had. Immortality, invincibility, an unlimited amount of chakra – what more could you ask for? Maybe he should thank Sasuke for giving him a chance to experience this… Oh, he would show him his gratitude by turning him into a piece of his art and his art was an explosion!
It would be too much to say that right on cue an explosion went off, because Deidara had his explosives rain down on Sasuke all the time, not granting him but a second to breathe through. He was only using his weakest form of explosive clay, though. He was enjoying himself far too much, so he didn't want it to end too soon. It did diminish his pleasure, however, that Sasuke hadn't yet sustained a scratch or bruise and much worse still, the Uchiha didn't seem impressed in the least. He had to know that he was fighting a losing battle and yet why wasn't he scared? Why didn't he tremble with fear? Why didn't he go down on his knees and beg for him to spare his life? These Uchiha and their haughtiness… It was about time for him to kick him off his high horse and show him what a true artist is capable of.
Sasuke was standing on the ground beneath him, doused in the shadows of his clay bird, hardly bigger than an especially nasty cockroach – and what did you do about vermin?
"Katsu!" the Akatsuki screamed and watched his archenemy vanish within a dark grey cloud of billowing smoke. He had used a stronger concentration of chakra this time to fool the Uchiha. He knew that he was of the calculating kind, not using a bit more chakra or doing a step, a motion, more than was necessary and he had likely calculated the range of his explosions in the course of their confrontation and he had been mindful to keep it perfectly equal all the time. Now, however, he had widened the perimeter of his explosives by nearly two metres – let's see how he liked that! Deidara couldn't wait for the smoke to finally clear away and reveal to him the stupid look on Mr. Handsome's mangled face. This time he would find out what it took to have the despised Uchiha lose his cool.
"How do you like my art now, huh?"
Instead of a verbal response, Sasuke expressed his thoughts on the matter in form of a huge ball of flame. Deidara navigated his bird aside, an old habit of his past life, which was ultimately redundant now. Just let him hit him! A second of pain was nothing compared to that overwhelming feeling of being brought back again only a second later without the slightest scratch. It was scary how similar to Hidan he felt right now – like a Hidan 2.0 without all that religious crap… And how symbolic, how artistic it would have been, had he first been burnt to embers, only to rise like a phoenix out of the ashes. The symbolic value of that image almost made him want to become religious after all. Maybe next time…
The smoke had cleared now, and Deidara's gaze at once travelled to the spot, where the ball of flame had come from, but there was no one there. He still wasn't fully accustomed to his gift of immortality and so Deidara couldn't keep his heart from picking up its pace (funny that it was still beating at all!) as he lost sight of his enemy.
"Stop hiding you coward!" the Akatsuki screamed and tilted his head from side to side, his eyes scanning the terrain, but there was no one to be seen. There were no sounds either, not even these typical, natural ones, which would appear mighty strange and conspicuous to any other person, but not to Deidara. He had grown used to it. There was something about his presence that made animals shun him, even if they only sensed him from a distance. As though they could feel the explosive force he was able to set free.
"Hey-" he screamed again, impatient, but he didn't get any farther, as suddenly the peak of a blade protruded out of his chest. He looked over his shoulder and stared into a blood red pair of Sharingan. There was not a trace of fear in them and Sasuke's face wasn't quite as mangled as he had imagined it to be. That bastard.
Then, however, it was Deidara's face that ended up being mangled, as Sasuke raised his katana in one swift motion, cutting right trough his face, so Deidara's head gaped apart like a cracked-open oyster, with a bloody mess of a pearl inside. Sasuke's sandaled feet were mired in gore. But then, like every time, the Akatsuki crumbled into a white dust like an ancient piece of parchment upon being exposed to air. His feet were clean again, as was his sword.
The strong wind blew the bits of Deidara away and since he could not know when and where exactly Deidara would appear again, Sasuke leaped off his bird, making the slightest of sounds upon reaching the soggy ground. It would go on like this forever, if he couldn't think of anything to do soon, and unlike his opponent he didn't have forever.
"It's fruitless! Don't you get it?!" Deidara called, back among the living again. "I've forced life and death to their knees. This is Art in perfection, un!"
"For all the nonsense you talk you haven't shown anything yet," Sasuke teased him. Judging from the reaction of the two women in the background, they didn't consider that to be a good idea. "Stop relying on your immortality and fight me for real. Or are you afraid to find out what the year in the grave has done to your strength?"
"Shut up! What do you know, you little shit?!"
"Why so upset? Is it because you almost used up your amount of lives? Let's see what happens after the ninth time, scaredy-cat."
"Shut up you pampered momma's boy," Deidara repeated and watched Sasuke's eyes glaze over with rage, while he himself tried to keep a cool expression, as he pondered Sasuke's last words. Was he just trying to be witty or did he know something he didn't? Was there a limit to the times he could be revived again? Did it have something to do with cats? He had no idea how Edo Tensei worked, only that so far it had. Maybe he shouldn't be quite so careless with his life after all and start getting serious. But what good did it do Sasuke to point that out to him? Was this some kind of mind game? Did he have a plan that required him to initiate an all-out attack?
No. That couldn't be it. Surely he had finally accepted that there was no way for him to win and now he wanted to have this end quickly, so he wouldn't have to suffer any longer. That had to be it!
A smug smile returned to Deidara's face. He would grant the Uchiha his death wish, but it would neither be quick, nor would it be painless.
Deidara leapt off his owl and landed on the ground before Sasuke, his back to the two women. Instead of using it as another explosive, his clay owl soared down and landed by his side, lest he should need to make a hasty escape. His hands dug into the bags of clay at either side of his hip and, still grinning, he said, "Let's see how you like that."
He brought forth both his hands again, his open palms directed at Sasuke. They opened up and vomited a shapeless, white heap.
"Yuck," Karin said. She momentarily blinded herself by taking off her glasses and wiped them clean as a pretext. Her stomach hadn't seen too much today and she was averse to losing that bit again.
"What is this?" Sayuri asked, looking decidedly uncomfortable herself. There was some motion in the so nastily exuded clay now. It welled up like it was boiling, growing and rising, then taking on shapes, faintly reminiscent of humans, misshapen to the point of looking grotesque. They appeared somewhat flabby, knobbly and their unsteady, not to say uncoordinated movements, also added an impression of clumsiness.
Karin put on her glasses again and at once scrunched her nose in disgust. "And he calls himself an artist?"
"Shut up, four-eyes!" Deidara barked and cast an angry glare at the redhead. "Once I'm done here, you're next, un!"
"Pah! I want to see that!" Karin countered and cursed herself for her big mouth. She couldn't ever shut up, could she? Now it really didn't matter what happened now. She was as good as dead either way.
"I'm your opponent." Sasuke tried to get Deidara's attention back. However while he said so, he was not so much looking at Deidara as he was looking at Sayuri, a look of warning in place. It would be best if they just ran away and hid, but he knew that Sayuri would never do that, so they should at least be quiet and act like they weren't there.
"I haven't forgotten about you," Deidara said and turned back around. As he followed the direction of Sasuke's gaze an ominous smirk tugged at the corners of his mouth. These girls… he remembered them now. They were there, too, on the day he died. They were not just Sasuke's cheerleaders, but shinobi as well. Not that it would change anything, apart from making him feel no remorse when he dealt with them later on. Not that he would have felt any such thing one way or another… "Let's get started then."
As he said that, his two additional mouths spat out more clay. It ran out of them like a narrow stream of water out of a faucet and flowed right to his clay minions, connecting them to him. Like drunkards they staggered towards Sasuke now, who seemed neither impressed nor disgusted by their sight. If anything he looked bored.
"Tze," he gave a disparaging sound and slashed his lightning-enhanced katana through the closest of the two morbid creatures. He did the same with the second one and then looked at Deidara, whose sneer only widened, although his attack had only just been rendered useless. Some of his brain cells must have sustained damage even Edo Tensei could not mend. He was a retard.
Something struck Sasuke's leg. He had caught the movement in his eye, so he had jumped back just in time to avoid the full hit, but it had still caught him off guard. His face, however, gave away nothing as he watched the heaps of clay seethe and rise again like before, taking on the same shape with the only difference that it were four now. Which he didn't get, though, was why? He had used his raiton chakra to cut through them, which should have defused them, like it was the case with every other of Deidara's attacks, so what was different now? Surely it had to have something to do with the wire-like clay that connected them back to Deidara. As long as he kept running his chakra through them they would rise up, again and again. Like his own Edo Tensei.
All at the same time they charged at Sasuke now, not appearing quite as gawky and uncoordinated as before, now that they were smaller. They moved faster, too. Sasuke had to have his eyes virtually everywhere as to not have them surprise him again and so far he managed to dodge the eight arms and also an abstract number of additional limbs or however else you wanted to call the shapes, clubs or spikes, they could grow out of their bodies at random. He focused on cutting through the chords that kept them supplied with chakra, but right after he severed them, Deidara just reconnected them, so it was a useless endeavour. Accordingly, Sasuke found himself again lashing about himself, slicing his opponents into two, three or four pieces, or trying to use his Chidori in a way that blew them to fragments. The result was that he soon found himself opposed by two dozens of clay creatures, some of which exploded right in his face and though he was still far from being wounded, he could no longer claim to have weathered this fight without a scratch. The problem was not that they were strong or skilled opponents, which these brainless things were not, but their persistency is what nevertheless made them difficult to face. They made him lose time he did not have and furthermore they were forcing him too far back, too close to Sayuri and Karin.
He was doing his best to keep them occupied, despite their constant increase in number, while trying to block out the taunting remarks, streaming out of Deidara's mouth with the fluency of running water. Then happened what Sasuke had been afraid of and what he'd been trying to avoid at all costs. It was a moment of inattention or not even so much. It was a moment in which he was entirely surrounded and for once not in the position of having the upper hand. Being hopelessly outnumbered, Sasuke was not so much attacking as he was parrying the attacks of Deidara's creations. This task so occupied his attention that he only noticed that Deidara's clay owl had abandoned its post at the side of its creator, as it already soared over his head. It did not halt there though, neither did it slow down and it did not explode either, for its intended target was not the Uchiha.
Ultimately it was his concern about his companions, which turned them into his greatest weakness and a skilled fighter would never miss out on making use of that. The owl-shaped explosive paid no heed to Sasuke. The girls standing behind him however didn't seem to share his luck. They had taken on a defensive stance with weapons drawn, ready to either attack or duck away, he couldn't tell which, but he had little faith in their ability to defend themselves. Against an Akatsuki who was proving troublesome even for him, no less. That is why Sasuke wasted no time to rush to their aid. He swung his katana around in a wide circle. The sharp blade sliced through his opponents' torsos like they were made of rice-paper. Cut into halves, they went down for the time being, although Sasuke knew that they would rise again and then he would have to face twice their number, but he's had no other choice. Now that his path was clear, Sasuke spun around and sped after the owl. It had almost reached them already, but he was too far away still to do anything. His right hand was flickering blue with his lightning elemental chakra. Losing time was something he could by no means afford, so once he was close enough, he would be ready to charge. It flew down now. Sasuke pushed his body past its limits to increase his speed and reach it before it could reach the girls, who were now scattering into different directions. The owl began to nosedive, but instead of pursuing one of the girls, it did a looping to reverse its direction. Head over heels, or head over claws, if you will, it darted towards Sasuke, who could do nothing but gaze stupidly, when he already heard his most-hated word.
"Katsu!"
The owl detonated with an eardrum-tattering noise and Sayuri watched in horror how Sasuke was eaten up by a giant cloud of smoke that just would not release him again.
"Sasuke!" His name slipped out of her mouth, without her having intended it to. In fact she didn't even notice. Her senses seemed to have been turned off. All except for her vision and her vision was now tunnelled on the writhing masses of smoke, as she waited for the Uchiha to reappear again. But there was an unnerving successful quality to Deidara's laugh that almost made her doubt he would. So she ran. She was a medic after all and as a medic it was her duty to look after the wounded. Even if that wounded person had forbidden her to. Not that he'd have much of a chance to reproach her, should that explosion have really hit him.
"He's alive! Stay where you are!" Karin shouted and made Sayuri stop dead in her tracks, although every fibre of her being still yearned to reach him. Once the smoke had dissipated, Sayuri understood why Karin had said alive instead of okay.
"How did you end up with this guy?" Senkai asked, shocking her speechless.
They couldn't know about Kagai. She had never mentioned him – neither him nor any of the things he had done or she had done and as they had met, he's been dead already.
"…"
"Not speaking, eh?" Isamu sounded annoyed more than anything. He was really outgoing and it seemed his tolerance for silence was rather low, so he usually did whatever he could to fight it, even if it meant giving soliloquies. At times he appeared to her like a hamster in a wheel, running and running without ever getting anywhere and certainly not into a conversation with his reticent fellow travellers.
"Why do you care?"
"What a question," he rolled his eyes, "you're the new one in the group. We already know everything about each other, so how about you bring in some fresh stories?"
"I don't know any of your stories yet, so why would I tell you anything?"
"Tze, fine. It happened as I only became Chunin and returned home from the finals. I was intercepted by the snake himself. He was interested in me because of my chakra and asked me to join him. I refused of course, but woke up in his labs anyway…"
Now things were beginning to make sense; they were talking about two different guys, only that they didn't know so. And what were Chunin?
"We come from the same village," Senkai began slowly, his head lowered, as he walked down the dark alleys of memory lane. "As Isamu didn't return from the Chunin exams we set out to search him and followed his trace until we reached an underground base. We got separated within the tunnels. It was like a maze… I don't know exactly what happened then, but as I woke up, we were in a prison cell, jammed together with all sorts of people. I don't even know how long we stayed there. It was hell." His voice broke and he lapsed into silence again, lost in thoughts of a time he'd rather not remember.
"Hm," Isamu ruffled his spiky hair and gave him an encouraging smile, raising a frail copy of it on Senkai's face as well.
They seemed really close, almost like brothers, the way Senkai looked up to him. It reminded her a lot of how she used to look up to her sister and strive to be like her.
The operative word is used to. She used to look up to her sister, but she wasn't there so there was no point thinking about it. It couldn't bring her back. None of them. So where was the point in torturing herself?
"Now you know our stories, so tell us yours. Tell us why you're here."
"I don't see how this is any of your business."
She got up and walked out on them, before they could ask her anynthing else. The protesting sounds coming from the two boys didn't go unnoticed though, but she couldn't just tell them.
Aside from the fact that she has never been in these labs, it sounded far too pathetic, even to her own ears, to tell them that she's just had nowhere else to go to.
…
…
