DISCLAIMER: No matter how much I want it, I do not own Naruto. I am still only borrowing the characters and promise to return them in good condition – well, maybe slightly battered!
Chapter Twenty-Nine:
Demons Are Real - Ushi Village
Settle down, it'll all be clear
Don't pay no mind to the demons
They fill you with fear
The trouble it might drag you down
If you get lost, you can always be found
Just know you're not alone
~Phillip Phillips~
Asuma cautiously opened the door. Inside, the place looked like a haunted house, a glorious ruin, once it was probably spectacular, now mysterious and threatening. The chandeliers and furniture were covered with sheets that rippled on breezes from a thousand faults in the old walls. Indistinct noises echoed within the ceiling and the floor as the two teams entered.
The lodge was much bigger than it looked on the outside. Faced with such a daunting task, Asuma motioned to Sai and said, "How many mice can you control?"
Sai answered without any hesitation, "For a simple search, about a hundred."
"Do it. It doesn't look like anyone has entered this place in years so as long as we stay within shouting distance of each other, it should be safe. We will split up and search the main level while your mice search the upper and lower levels. This building is crumbling down and I don't want anyone to get injured."
Sai nodded, kneeled down on the ground, and rummaged through his knapsack. Finding his scroll, he began to draw. He sat down the brush, focused his chakra, and completed the new jutsu he had developed which allowed him to see through some of his creatures eyes. As the little vermin poured out of the paper, half went upstairs and the other half scurried off in search of the lower stairs.
"Hey, what about me?" asked Naruto, "I can make a bunch of shadow clones to help too."
"No," said Asuma, shaking his head, "Not this time. We want to be quiet."
"I can be quiet when I want," muttered the blonde while crossing his arms.
By unspoken consent, Ino, Sakura and Asuma went off in one direction while Kakashi, Sasuke and Chouji went in another. Naruto waited with Sai, impatiently pacing the room several times.
"What is taking so long?" he finally asked after ten long minutes.
Sai sat on the floor, his hands still in the ram seal and answered without losing his concentration from the task at hand, "It is a large building and there are many obstacles in the way. There are also quite a few large holes in the floor that they have to maneuver around."
One of the mice scurried over to Sai, squeaking excitedly. It burst in a shower of ink and formed words on the scroll.
"What is it? What does it say?" demanded Naruto eagerly.
Sai calmly leaned down and read the contents. "There is a hidden entrance to a lower level in the sunroom, but they cannot enter. It would seem that they are afraid."
Naruto scoffed derisively, "Afraid of what? They're made of ink – what's there to be afraid of?"
"I think it is a snake, but I am not sure. The vision was to blurred to properly make out."
"Tch, a snake?! Let's go. We can take care of a little snake."
"Are you sure we should leave? What about the others?"
"It's just a snake… and besides, we'll be within shouting distance from everyone like they want. Come on, let's go."
They saw Asuma exiting a room with the girls. "Did you find anything?" he asked.
"I am not sure, we are going to check out the sunroom," replied Sai as he opened the door. "There is an underground entrance there."
Asuma nodded. "I'll be right behind you. Don't go too far."
"We won't," assured Naruto. "We're just going to kill a little snake."
~~O~~
The dust filled room had floor to ceiling windows. Most had been broken from age and disrepair. Naruto was so focused on searching for a little snake that he nearly walked into the huge glittery, green tube that hung down from the upper floor.
Naruto traced the thing with his eyes, up to where it was coiled in a hole in the ceiling. It was the oversized body of a snake, with a belly fifteen feet in diameter. He quickly pulled out his tantō, thinking how insignificant it seemed in comparison to the mammoth reptile.
"Oh crap, that's a snake?" breathed Sai in shock.
As Naruto gasped, spellbound, he was struck from behind. The snake was so long, its body draped on one side of the sunroom and its head on the other. Despite its huge size, it was fast; extremely fast. Its massive jaws clamped onto Naruto's mid-section and snapped down.
Naruto struggled to hold the maw open, dropping his sword in the process. He yelled, "No way am I going to become of bunch of snake crap on the ground! You best slither back to your hole or I'll turn you into a pair of shoes!"
~~O~~
Asuma, deciding to follow the boys, left the girls with Kakashi. When he heard Naruto yelling, he moved faster. Throwing the door open, his eyes widened in surprise. The biggest snake he had ever seen had the blonde in its mouth.
Always prepared for any contingency, Asuma removed a coiled skein of rope from his pack. He threw the long end over a ceiling beam, then instantly made a lasso out of the piece in his hand and tossed the loop at the snake's head.
Naruto's body, in the serpent's jaws, made the rope miss. Despite the rapid beating of his heart, he calmly threw again. In the seconds between tosses, the snake had slurped the boy into its mouth. The rope encircled the serpent's head. Pleased, Asuma pulled. The noose slipped down over the snake's maxillaries and tightened around its neck. Asuma used all his strength and yanked. With the ceiling beam as a pulley, the snake's head slammed against the rafters.
Moving fast, Asuma rushed closer to the serpent. He grabbed his knuckle knives and saw something moving inside the snake's beaded torso.
It was Naruto... still alive.
Asuma, about to charge, stopped in his tracks when the serpent's belly suddenly bulged out. Further down its length, another part swelled. His jaw dropped as the snake burst open and hundreds of blonde haired boys tumbled out.
The real boy was still entangled within. Acids from the monster's intestine had begun to eat through flesh on his hands and face, but still able to wheeze-out words, he shook his fist and yelled, "Yeah, take that you little worm! I told you I wouldn't become a bunch of snake crap!" His clones soon popped from the damage and smoke from their disappearance filled the air and clouded Asuma's vision.
The snake; still alive shockingly enough, used all its strength to lower its head from the ceiling. Sai scrambled for the rope and bravely hung onto it, but was lifted bodily off the floor. Cut by the steel beam, the rope snapped and with a startled yelp, he fell hard. The trailing edge of the noose caught on twisted debris. It delayed the snake for two seconds.
Those fragile seconds gave Asuma just enough time to slip his knuckle knives on and infuse them with wind chakra. He reached into the open belly of the monster and sliced through to the other side, releasing Naruto. Sai pulled him away as the snake thrashed about.
The giant copperhead snapped at Asuma from behind, missing him by inches. He dove to the ground, catching Naruto and Sai's arm on the way down. His momentum carried the genin down to the floor. They rolled away from the massive body that finally fell to the ground, dead at last.
"Now that's what I call a snake," breathed Naruto heavily as he plucked bits of the snake's stomach contents off him and tried to get up. He waved away the rest of the group, who had come rushing in when they heard the loud noises. "I'm fine. It's all good," he assured them with a cocky smirk. "It'll take more than a stupid snake to bring me down."
Sai began to heal his brother's injuries. Noticing the pained grimace, he distracted him by sniffing loudly. "I do not know about that. Your skin is burned and you smell worse now than you did after the cows."
Naruto rolled his eyes and chucked a bloody piece of God only knows what at his brother. "Aho," he laughed. "Let's go check out what that thing was guarding."
"Uh-uh," said Asuma, shaking his head, "Let the mice do it. We don't know what's down there."
Sai put his hands back in the ram seal and concentrated as his little ink creatures squeezed themselves under the hidden door and went down into the darkness. The rest of the team patiently waited as Kakashi reported their findings... The house was empty.
~~O~~
Some time later, several mice returned and again turned into words. Sai handed the paper to Asuma. As he read he looked up in surprise. "Is this true?" he asked.
"They do not lie; they just report what they see."
"What is it?" asked Kakashi.
"There are live people trapped down there in cells."
"Any sign of the enemy?"
"No none," he said, glancing down again at the paper. "It says here that it appears abandoned not long ago."
"Well alright then," said Naruto excitedly. He pulled out a kunai and added, "It's now a rescue mission!"
Asuma stabbed out the cigarette he'd been smoking and nodded. Sasuke's eyes glittered in anticipation as did Ino and Sakura's. Chouji gulped and nervously looked up at his sensei for encouragement.
"We're going in," said Kakashi sternly, "Just remember…be alert, be aware, and stay alive."
~~O~~
Cautiously they silently padded down the long and narrow corridor, with only occasional pools of light from bare, overhanging bulbs. Asuma lifted his knuckle knives. His eyes darted around, looking for dangers. There don't seem to be any. The corridor, while very spooky, was cold and silent.
The stillness was broken when they heard a strange howl echo around them. It was an odd animal-like sound; but like nothing they had ever heard before. They gripped their weapons tighter and looked around.
"It sounded pretty far away," commented Kakashi.
"Hmm…yeah probably," agreed Asuma with a grim look. "Everyone, stay close."
At last they came to the end where a heavy steel door stood. Asuma pushed it open to reveal a vast room filled with specimen tanks. The glass cylinders reached from the floor to the ceiling. There were literally hundreds of them, and with no clear way through the room, they formed a grotesque kind of maze.
Each tank was filled with a viscous liquid and some new terrifying monstrosity. Animals spliced together, skeletons that looked barely human; some that clearly weren't. The teens stood in transfixed horror at the bioengineering gone out of control while the jonin emotionlessly looked on.
"Who would do such a thing?" asked Sasuke in revulsion, "It looks like someone opened the gates of hell."
Asuma called Sai's name three times before he was able to tear his gaze away from the tanks. "Sorry," he apologized with a flush, "What did you say?"
"I asked you where we go next."
"Oh um," he looked down at his map and answered, "It's through this room and down another short corridor."
"Alright everyone, look alive," said Asuma sternly. "We need to find the exit."
~~O~~
As Sakura and Ino wandered through the room they saw human bodies stripped of their skin, just the bare musculature on show. Mesmerized by the freak show, they didn't realize that they were being slowly separated from the others. This room did indeed function like a maze, and Sakura and Ino were becoming lost.
They stopped in front of one tank. It contained a strange creature with no eyes and a disgustingly long tongue. Perhaps it was human once, but that was a long time ago.
The liquid the dead creature was kept in was constantly circulating and the movement made the three foot-long tongue move back and forth. It swayed past the glass, as though it were licking it. Up close, the pink fleshy tongue was covered in a thousand tiny barbs.
"This is the stuff of nightmares… really messed up nightmares," Ino said with a shiver. "The kind mass murderers have."
"Yeah," muttered Sakura with a nod, "Whoever did this is one twisted person."
Sakura looked away from the tank and realized that the rest of the team had disappeared. They were alone in this freak show where literally anything could be hiding. She suddenly sensed movement. Something refracted through the curved glass of a specimen tank, something horrifying.
She turned and came face to face with Kakashi. She tried to stifle a scream, but didn't quite succeed.
"Don't wander off."
Slightly embarrassed, she mumbled, "Sorry Kakashi Sensei."
She and Ino glanced back at the monstrous creature in the tank before hurrying off to join the others.
~~O~~
Through the short corridor was a broken door leading to another room. The girls peered in inquisitively after the others. This one held cages – damaged, open cages. No longer pristine, the room had been wrecked, torn apart. Books and scrolls are scattered everywhere along with smashed fragments of furniture. The room had been destroyed by something or someone in an obvious fit of rage.
And at the center of it all stood a tall, cylindrical tank, a stasis tube, filled with ice. It was mounted on a six-foot tall platform, like an altar, with cables and flexible tubes running out of it. Sakura squinted, and through the freeze, saw the thing that stood sedated within the cylinder. It was enormous. Like the Oni-creatures they killed outside, it had more or less human form, though its musculature was incredible. One of its arms was normal sized, but the other was much longer. That hand dangled at knee-level and had monstrous steel claws as fingers, which nearly touched the floor.
"What do you think was in there?" whispered Ino, pointing at the cages and breaking Sakura from her trance.
"I don't know," she quietly replied, "And I'm not sure I want to know. This place is so creepy. Come on, I don't want to be left behind again… especially in here."
Ino nodded and walked faster to catch up with the group. Unseen luminous eyes followed their movements.
They came to another steel door. Like the last one, it had been damaged. As Asuma wrestled it open, Naruto squatted down and ran his fingers along the gouges that marred the metal surface. "Looks like claw marks," he said.
Sasuke crouched next to him and touched the deep grooves. He said thoughtfully, "Yes it does, but they're too low to be made by those Oni-people."
"Do you think it might have been made by whatever was in those cages, Sensei?"
"I don't know Chouji, maybe," answered Kakashi. "But there could be a simple explanation as well. Never assume anything."
The harsh metal grating echoed down the corridor as Asuma finally wedged the door far enough open for everyone to slip through. He held out his hand to prevent Naruto and Chouji from recklessly charging in and said, "Uh-uh, I'll go first."
The room was vast. It looked like it had been used as a fighting arena. Cells lined the opposite walls. They all could hear the piteous moans and cries of the men and women trapped within them. Though the teens wanted to rush over and help the poor people, Asuma and Kakashi's tense postures and serious expressions stayed them. They crept stealthily into the cavern. There were several dead bodies scattered about. They looked as though they had been eviscerated just as the farm animals had been.
"Hey… hey…psst… over here…"
Sai was nearest to the cell. He silently moved closer and looked in. He took one look at the emancipated man and said, "We are here to release you. Who is your captor? Who runs this facility?"
"His name is Yakushi… a kid, Kabuto Yakushi. But don't underestimate him; he's… he's…" The man's weak voice suddenly became stronger. He sat up and said urgently, "Listen, you've got to get out of here now! The Hunters escaped and killed everyone that didn't flee. There's no hope for us; we're too weak to run. Go! Save yourselves." With that said the man covered his face with his hands and began to sob.
Asuma shook his head at the pitiful sight. He put his hands on his hips and announced loudly to all the inhabitants, "Listen everyone, we are shinobi from Konohagakure. More help is on the way. We are here to rescue you all. Do as we say and you'll all make it out of here alive."
"Chouji… Sai, break them out. The rest of you secure the perimeter," he commanded.
Sai broke open the cells using his earth spears jutsu. The stone spires that jutted from the ground easily snapped the hinges and left the doors hanging crookedly. Chouji went to the upper level and used his super expansion jutsu to increase the size and strength of his arm. He grasped each door and ripped it open, freeing the pitiful creatures within.
The team entered the tiny cells and evacuated the people. One of the women attempted to step forward but stumbled. She steadied herself against the stone wall. Her eyes hardened as she saw the first of the dead guards. She flushed with anger and raced up to him, spitting and kicking his corpse.
Ino moved to stop her, but Kakashi grabbed her arm. "No," he said, calm with sympathy, "She needs to do this. Let her get it out."
Once they were all in the center of the room, Sakura, Ino, and Sai began to heal the people who worse off as best they could. Asuma had a few questions for the ones who appeared stronger.
"So this Kabuto kid, you say he was in charge here?"
A timid red-haired woman stepped forward and explained, "He was the one who gave the orders and conducted the experiments on us. He was working for someone else though. He didn't give a name; he just called him his master."
"What kind of experiments?"
"The injections," muttered one of the men.
"Yes," she continued, "He gave some of our people shots. It made some of them turn animalistic. When we were first brought here, a lot of them just grew old and died before our eyes." She shuddered at the memory. "Those that didn't die grew bigger, stronger, and…"
"Insane."
She sadly nodded at the man's comment. "My husband, Yuudai, was given the shot. It changed him the most. Quite a few of them escaped not long ago. They killed the guards and somehow released the Hunters. Kabuto and his men abandoned this place not long after."
"Where do you people come from?"
"We lived in a small village in the Land of Tea. We have no memory of how we got here… or even where here is."
"What are the Hunters?"
"One of his experiments. The stuff he injected in our…" The woman's voice cracked and broke. She covered her face and softly moaned in the most heart-rending manner. The two teams patiently waited while she tried to control her emotions. After a few minutes and with Sai awkwardly patting her head and saying 'There-there', she sat up straight and tried again. "H-he injected his poison into our… our…"
"…our children," finished the older man sitting next to her. "The Hunters were our children, but now they are no longer human… even after they die."
The woman unsteadily got to her feet and pleaded with Asuma, "Please, you have to get us out of here. They could be back any minute. Even the men and women that were changed couldn't beat them. They are too strong."
It was too late. Unearthly howls filled the chamber followed by odd scraping, ticking noises. It sounded as though the creatures were among them already even though there was none to be seen. Another undulating scream echoed around them. Even the war-hardened, veteran shinobi like Asuma and Kakashi felt a shiver run down their spines at the eerie, chilling sound.
The hunters were coming.
AN:
No matter what holiday you celebrate, I wish you all the happiest of holidays. May you all be surrounded by the warmth and love of your families and friends. And for those of you that cannot - you can come on over to my place... I've got eggnog!
To Masterofwar - to answer your question - Sasuke was the one he really wanted, but a toad snatched him away right before he could bite him. He bit Naruto instead, but the toxicity of the Kyuubi's chakra nulled it.
Got another fic to recommend - You Said Yes by Ethreal Star Dragon. It's a Naruto/Sakura fic. Now I know a lot of people do not like this pairing, however, it is beautifully written story. So far, it's one of my faves just for the imagery alone. Check it out. You won't regret it...believe it!
Thanks to everyone that followed/favorited/commented on the last chapter!
Ja Ne,
AZFAERYDUST
