A Very Big Problem
[Ruins, Previously]
Old ruins, long is disrepair. From the outside, not of much interest. Upon closer investigation... still not really of much interest. One had to be pretty familiar with what the ruins once were in order to discover their true secrets.
One of those secrets, possibly the most important, was a strange entity that dwelled therein. That was sealed therein, actually, in an amorphous, yellow-tinted enclosure. The half-awake entity had waited a long time there, not yet fully revived, though it couldn't comprehend what it was.
It vaguely understood that it could draw negativity from things nearby to keep itself intact insofar as it was. It's actual presence, however, was restricted to the confines of the ruins. It had long since felt, explored, and come to understand every nook and cranny in the place in it's half-revived, dreamlike state.
Now, though, the sealing cocoon that surrounded this entity was starting to wear thin. The sealing method had been reapplied every few years, in the past, and it was closing in on the time to do so again. Until that happened, the entity could slightly feel somewhat beyond the ruins.
And beyond, it felt something interesting. A power, not that different from itself.
The power was fighting something, a few threatening, but ultimately frightened and weak things. Typical humans. Then, something happened. The power spiked, just for barely a moment.
In that moment, demonic chakra from the power outside coursed through the air, just barely, so little that it could scarcely be detected by a person. It was picked up by the seals on the chamber, absorbed, and channelled toward the inside to be converted by the entity into the source for the ruins.
But it wasn't normal chakra. When picked up by the entity, a seal began to work, recognizing the peculiar form of the chakra. The entity started to fully awaken and revive in the cocoon-like enclosure. As thin as it was, the entity was quickly able to break out.
As the entity found itself on the floor of the room it had been enclosed in, it uncoiled from it's cramped form, shaping into what resembled a fairly large snake of a dark, gelatinous form. On it's "head", it bore what looked like a Noh mask, with a symbol for zero, and five red, feathery tendrils.
It was fully aware, thanks to the power, but it remained weak. It needed to find a strong source of negative emotions, soon, or it could fall apart. But it didn't regret it's escape. It was through waiting to be used as a weapon for some forgotten old country. The Zero-Tails was free, and it would feed and grow.
[A Town in the Land of Fire, Previously]
In a world where ninja villages go to war, people are often far more than what they seem. For few was that more true than it was with an elderly doctor by the name of Shinnou.
The inheritor of the... "hibernating" Land of Sky and Soragakure, he was a skilled medical ninja with great knowledge of regeneration and reincarnation techniques. He had once even taught Orochimaru of the Sannin.
Since then, he had been the doctor of a small, obscure town. His "apprentice", as she seemed to be, was a young girl he had saved from a mysterious disease years ago.
But, not out of the goodness of his heart.
He had sent out Amaru to meet with Kenji and, in turn, a band of bandits, along with one Sora nin, who would kill the man, but spare the girl, leaving her emotionally distraught. She would be on her own a time while he was out, ostensibly to care for a patient in another town, in actuality in order to reinforce the seal on Soragakure's power source.
In time, he'd return to the emotionally wrecked girl and comfort her, strengthening her dependence on himself, ripening her for the time when the pain in her heart would be the host for Sora's sealed beast.
That plan went awry, though, when he arrived at the ruins along with a few assistants.
"It's... it's gone!?" he stammered in disbelief. The Zero-Tails, an additional tailed beast beyond the standard nine that the original Land of Sky seal masters had somehow acquired, was no longer in their possession.
He turned to one of his assistants. "When was it last seen!?" he demanded.
"W-we saw it yesterday when evaluating the seal, Shinnou-sama! The blood seals were active, and we reset them after leaving, using the small sample of your own!"
Dammit. How had the Zero-Tails escaped!? The seal was supposed to hold strong weeks longer than it had. Besides, it was only half revived until he could find a full reincarnation scroll for it. It should've been lazily lying around until something lured it away. Had the process been done improperly last time? Had it been fully revived somehow? Had it been partially, but still not fully revived?
Had someone stolen it? No, the Uzumaki-made blood seals guarding the room had been untouched. It must've gotten out, somehow, but the only possible exits were really narrow tubes that...
Dammit, the Zero-Tails was amorphous!
"It's escaped on its own, somehow! We can't just let it get away," Shinnou decided. "We need the Zero-Tails, to exact our revenge on Konoha, to conquer the great villages. Initiate the containment plan. I'll get the vessel into place."
[A Town in the Land of Fire, Previously]
"Shinnou-sensei, you're already back?" Amaru asked of the old man.
"Yes, I was partway there when I realized I'd forgotten to take something from here," he said, opening one of the chests in their place of residence.
"It's... it's not here," he said before turning to his 'apprentice'. "Amaru, I need you to find something for me."
In a little bit, he had given her a description of several herbs with medicinal properties. They actually had some, and he had taken them with, but she probably wasn't keeping as much track of them. She probably hadn't even noticed that it was rare for him to forget to take something with him.
"Okay, I'll go get some," she said. "When I'm back, I want to tell you about some nice people I met when I went to get Kenji earlier. They helped fight off some bandits!"
That should've raised some red flags in Shinnou's head, but he was too preoccupied with the plan to notice right now.
[A Town in the Land of Fire, Previously]
An attack on the town while the girl was gone, and she'd come back and see her sensei 'die' before her eyes. Then the Zero-Tails would be attracted to her sudden spike of suffering, being already in the area because of the attack. Then, he could survive with his own reincarnation jutsu and work to restrain and reseal the beast so they could do a proper revival later.
Then they'd be able to find the reincarnation scroll to figure out how to reform it safely in a controllable form that he could siphon properly for his jutsu, after eventually rebuilding the damaged sealing cocoon. Their plans would be pushed back years, but they wouldn't be scrapped.
Of course, things had to go wrong.
First of all, the fire in the building he was in was spreading too fast, passing the seals set up to keep it from hitting to where he was until he allowed it. Instead, it would be on him before the girl was back to see his dramatic 'death'.
Second of all, there were outsiders in the town. Possibly the people that Amaru met, the ones that had caused Kenji to survive. Worse yet, they were Konoha ninja.
"N-no! Don't come in here! The fire's too-!"
And just to make his day complete, one stupid, blond Konoha ninja was trying to rescue him from the burning building, despite his protests.
If that boy, a Konoha ninja, died here, more would come to investigate. And if they came to investigate thoroughly, they'd probably find out what those ruins were, and signs of recent inhabitation.
"Where are you!?" the kid ninja shouted from beyond the blaze and rubble.
"W-what the hell are you doing!? G-get out while you can!" he yelled frantically. They weren't ready. They were years from ready. If Konoha found out about the remains of Sora and the Ancor Vantian now, it'd be destroyed, and it wouldn't matter if they had the Zero-Tails or not.
"Not without you!" the boy shouted back.
"Y-you're insane! You've still got your whole life-" He was interrupted by another crashing sound.
The boy managed to get into the room, and now that he was close, he could feel an abnormal chakra coming from him. It actually reminded him, somewhat, of the Zero-Tails' dark chakra.
Then, the boy stared at a wall a moment. "I'll make us an exit!" But as the boy began to charge, more of the building collapsed from above him.
So, now he had to save this little idiot that had ran into a burning building with no protection of any sort. "Dammit, I'll get you out, then!" He began to try and dig the child out.
"No! Get away!" yelled the child ninja. Shinnou could feel the abnormal chakra rolling off the boy, but he ignored it. "Get back, you'll die!" the buried boy cried.
"I'll die!?" he asked incredulously. "Dammit boy, you're the one pinned under burning debris!" Using a jutsu, he was able to pull off the heavy, burning beams, freeing the idiotic child's arm.
The arm pushed against him, and he could feel his skin burn where it touched. What was this boy? "Please get back! You'll die! I'm about to-"
The abnormal chakra. He knew what it was now. The boy was Konoha's jinchuriki.
Who had transformed in the building, obliterating it and impaling him. He tried to start a jutsu to keep himself alive, as he had planned to during his 'death' by the fire, but it was disrupted by the demonic chakra of the tailed beast.
Shinnou realized now that he truly was going to die.
Soragakure would never rise again. He would never rule over the Elemental nations as Sky Emperor. And what would happen to Amaru?
...
In his last moments, Shinnou wondered why that thought came up. Hadn't she just been a pawn in his plan?
[Outside of Town, Previously]
Amaru saw the smoke first, and she ran back to town, dropping the herbs she had quickly gathered. As she got to the entry in the wall, she felt a rush of... something in the air, like she'd felt before from that blond ninja that had helped her and Kenji out. Then, she saw the source.
A gigantic, red-orange-furred monster with many tails, a mouth of horrifying, sharp fangs, and claws bigger than a person. As it roared with it's horrible voice, she saw something on the end of one of those claws...
"SHINNOU-SENSEI!"
It couldn't be real. It had to be a dream. This wasn't real.
The monster then looked right at her. Her legs failed her, and she fell to the ground. Then, it dropped her sensei's lifeless corpse on the ground and ran out of town, wrecking the bit of wall that still stood there.
[In Town, Previously]
She felt so strange. She'd seen the giant monster, she'd yelled at the kunoichi, though she couldn't remember why, and then the older shinobi had looked at her. Her sensei was dead at the claws of that horror, and now she was all alone. Some remaining townsfolk tried to get her to go with them, but she stood her ground.
"Listen, Amaru, we're all hurting from what happened, but..."
She didn't stay to check if he would finish the sentence. She ran. She didn't even know where she was going.
In time, she grew too tired to run and collapsed in the forest, crying.
Why? Why did everyone have to die? She hated life, she hated fate, she hated that demon, she hated...
"Hello."
She suddenly lifted herself up and looked around in a fright. "Wh-wh-who said that?" she stammered.
"I." The source of the sound sound was suddenly revealed. It looked like some kind of darkly-colored snake monster with a mask and some feathers on it's head. She screamed and tried to scamper away, finding a little more strength in her untrained body.
But this monster followed her, and it was faster. It quickly caught up and blocked off her path.
"You have been wronged," it said.
She couldn't speak.
"You're all alone. Your only real loved one is dead. Any others who were like friends have died as well."
She began to cry again, mourning now accompanying her fear.
"The fox. That demon. You saw it. It took something from you."
She managed to overcome her petrifying terror long enough to nod slightly.
"It's all because of that fox. You hate it. You want revenge."
...Revenge? Amaru hadn't really considered it. "H-how, why, what...? D-did you see it? Did you feel it?" she asked, forgetting for a moment what she was talking to.
"Yes," the creature answered her. "It's a powerful creature. I am, too." An... arm? A... limb of some form protruded from the snake-like creature, and pointed to her. "So can you be. With me."
This was disconcerting to the girl. "I'm scared, I don't want to fight anything!"
"You saw it. It wronged you. You wanted revenge. You still want revenge." The creature's voice had grown loud, and Amaru screamed and backed away.
"You felt it. Felt it before it showed its true form. It was that ninja. But you forgot."
That triggered something. A memory came back. That blond ninja. He... he was the monster, the one who killed her sensei! Those ninja, they brought the monster that killed him, and destroyed her home!
"Yes. The desire is still there. The wound still raw."
She looked at the creature. "...How? How can we kill it?"
"I will join you." The creature then approached her. She twitched away at first, but calmed enough to stay still. When it touched her skin, it...seemed to just flow through her.
We will grow strong. The voice was no longer physical.
[Outside Konoha, Previously]
The demon that the Zero-Tails had felt. After a time, the entity began to realize what it was. It felt similar to itself. It was a tailed beast, like itself, as it had been told when it was first brought forth. The tails it felt in it's form, there were nine. The Nine-Tails. How strong was it? Could it devour that power?
Most importantly, would it cause suffering and fear where it went? The Zero-Tails was certain it would. That was the nature of a tailed beast like itself.
He and Amaru had followed it at a distance. The Zero-Tails had no illusions that it was a match for it now. But that would change. It would grow bigger, stronger off the wake of negativity the Nine-Tails left.
But they had to be careful. They were trailing ninja. A previous Sora leader, Tennou, an old, dead human, older and deader than Amaru's sensei, had tried with mixed results to use the Zero-Tails' chakra personally. But, while he had, the Zero-Tails' conscious had followed him. From this and from some of the others on Sora, he had learned bits of what ninja were, what they did.
For one thing, ninja were stealthy, and left little trace.
Amaru was a wonderful source of negative emotions, one the Zero-Tails could use for a long time. She even knew how to forage for food, presumably from her travels with the old, dead human. With the Zero-Tails help, hunting for meat was doable, so she could survive without taking energy in turn from the Zero-Tails.
Despite this, Amaru was not a ninja. Nor was she stealthy. Nor did she leave particularly little trace.
As such, they had to very slowly and carefully follow the Nine-Tails to Konoha, and then stay away from it. The Zero-Tails ability to catch even faint negative emotions at great range helped with this. They stopped and waited just northeast of it, having come from Amaru's wrecked town. They had waited near the village until it came out, since the creature wasn't sure how safe it and Amaru would be against a seal master, which the village had if they could bind a being like itself to their will.
Still, it was close enough to detect and, more importantly, drain the negativity of people's minds. Negativity spawned well by the Nine-Tails' use of it's power, besides that of other people, and some of the negativity that rolled off another strange source of power that had joined the Nine-Tails in that forest. Negativity that slowly made it bigger and stronger, and extended the range it could drain from. In time, it planned to grow strong enough to assimilate the Nine-Tails' power directly.
[Outside Konoha, Previously]
"It's somewhere around here," said the ninja. Amaru had been found. Somehow. She didn't know how.
"I can smell her scent around here, just a bit," said another ninja. Smell her? "I can't be more specific than that."
"Eh, if we can't find her, we'll just have to get an actual Inuzuka, instead of a knockoff."
"I can feel the love and respect, Okei."
Even if they leave, they'll come back for us. We can't be found yet.
I know, but I don't know what to do!
Kill them.
But they're people!
They're ninja.
Amaru considered.
Suddenly, one of them, the blue-bandanna-wearing one identified as Okei, turned and threw something sharp-looking at her. It caught her in the chest and she let out a scream.
The ninja that attacked tried to interrogate her, but she was in too much pain. After awhile, he seemed to give up.
"...Shit," he said, after looking her over for a time. "I-I think she's really just some civilian girl we've been following." And that he attacked with a deadly weapon.
"Then...gah, dammit, Okei, get that wound patched! We've got to take her to the hospital!"
Don't let them take us.
She wasn't in any condition to argue, but neither was she in much condition to do anything about the ninja.
You might be recognized in town. Those ninja that killed your sensei could be around there. Besides, he attacked us first.
Eventually, she shakily reached out her arm. "Listen, I'm going to take out the-" The dark mass of the Zero-Tails suddenly shot out around his neck and choked him.
"Okei!" The other ninja ran toward her. She reached out her other arm, and another limb of dark mass emerged. He dodged around it, then got behind her and slit her throat.
I'll kill them myself. Useless girl. Amaru couldn't really talk back to the demonic entity because even if she didn't need her newly-slit throat to talk in her mind, the additional wound distracted her immensely.
After a few moments of that pain, it advanced to searing agony as the dark chakra of the Zero-Tails restored the wounded parts of her body. As she looked around, the two ninja were dead, more of her possessor's limbs having emerged from her body and broken their necks.
I just killed two people!
I just killed two ninja. Amaru wasn't fully convinced, looking at the bodies. And now we must dispose of the corpses before they're found.
Amaru wasn't sure she wanted to know how, but she asked anyway.
We'll devour them.
The Zero-Tails then fully manifested a body around her, and Amaru felt her senses adapting to it, as it's jaw opened...
[Outside Konoha, Previously]
The Zero-Tails had been much more careful at keeping Amaru from getting them found since then, especially since once or twice she had nearly caught the attention of the Nine-Tails itself. It's methods largely involved hiding in a river to cut down on the smell, coiled up tightly in the riverbed in the Zero-Tails' own form to keep the girl from drowning.
Sometimes, it had merely left Amaru to wander around some outlying towns as an orphan. Whatever it had done, though, it hadn't gotten nearly as much power as it had expected from the Nine-Tails' actions thus far.
This invasion was just what it needed.
Snakes, living reptilian creatures, were breaking through the walls. It was a simple matter to masquerade as one; it looked similar enough as it was. Once inside, it could devour chakra directly, sucking the body dry and destroying the remains with dark chakra, like it had discovered it could from those two ninja outside, while in less danger of seal masters due to the general mayhem and it's apparent identity.
This was what the Zero-Tails lived for! Pain, suffering, destruction, fear, all around! It grew well, on the negativity and the chakra of devoured ninja of Konoha to feed it's dark chakra body.
Furthermore, another entity like itself was approaching. A gigantic creature of sand, with one tail. Was that a tailed beast, too? That one didn't feel as similar to itself as the creature with nine tails had. Regardless, the Zero-Tails really had no idea if it was strong enough to fight it yet or not, so it decided to exercise caution and stay away for the time, unless it could get an opportunity to devour it later.
It was fortunate that some humans had figured out a way to fight back against it, letting it stay above to devour more. The human was somehow making wood that was able to weaken it, if just somewhat.
That got the Zero-Tails thinking. That power might allow it to fight the Nine-Tails sooner, allowing it to devour the other beast, gain it's power, and bring fear to the world at large.
But, that human was too close to the sandy power source right now. It would have to wait for later. Besides, it didn't even know how it would go about claiming that power.
It also felt some rather odd humans. Their negativity, rather than the variation displayed by normal humans, was kind of a simple, steady flow. It followed the sign of one of them to find tunnels under the city. Out of curiosity, and since it still needed a way to avoid the sand creature, it wandered into some of the tunnels, still draining from above. With the war under way above it, the Zero-Tails had grown so big it had to reshape itself to fit through them.
It found several more of the strange-acting humans below and devoured them, adding to it's own power. They were starting to coordinate on trying to attack it now, but as they attacked with weapons and ninjutsu, they did nothing but momentarily sever fragments that would quickly reattach.
During this, it kept sensing above. It felt the Nine-Tails moving, then attacking the sand creature. Soon, the latter was very weak. The Zero-Tails saw opportunity once again.
It followed the tunnels toward it, hoping to strike from below and devour part of it. Then, an explosion came, blocking off some of the doors. The weird humans must've been trying to trap it. It charged forward, toward where the two demonic entities had been fighting, hallways sealing around it.
It could hear more explosions ahead, and...the sand creature, it had retreated, heavily wounded, into a human host of some form, which had, by chance, fallen into the same set of tunnels. It hurried forward, reshaping to get through partially-sealed halls, until it reached the room, where a door was annoyingly trying to close on it.
Two humans were there, one the host of the sand creature, the other just weird-looking. The latter of the two looked at it and looked relieved. "The other hallways down here are blocked, and the stairs over there lead right to Konoha's damn fox," it said. "We have to get Gaara here to safety, or Suna is as good as dead. The fall of a great village, that could be enough to start another full scale Shinobi War..."
A full scale Shinobi War. Something even bigger than this, like back when it had first been brought out to battle in the Ancor Vantian. The Zero-Tails grinned at the prospect.
"You're kind of a... creepy looking snake summon," the weird-looking human said, growing a nervousness the Zero-Tails drank up.
Then it reached it's 'arms' forward, catching the two and dragging them into it's maw, before disappearing back behind the door.
[Outside Konoha, Previously]
It had taken some time to fully process the chakra of the One-Tailed Tanuki. But once it had, the Zero-Tails had evolved. Sand flowed around it, forming into a coating of scales that could even work with it's 'limbs'. It was able to use the flowing sand to travel quickly and discretely underground. Finally, it was a significant boon to its overall chakra and form, swelling it into an even greater size.
Indeed, when it first absorbed the chakra, it might've gone berserk a moment in the rush, possibly even fallen apart due to overload. But that, at least, was tempered by having already grown so significantly in the invasion.
This power we got from that red-haired ninja boy, could we do the same with that one that made the wood things?
The red-haired ninja boy had been a container for a tailed beast. But maybe the girl was onto something...? Ooh... Possibly! It hadn't noticed how it's mannerisms had changed.
He tried to track where the ninja that used wood had gone to, catching it's unique set of minor negativities. It was too close to the Nine-Tails, though. If it wanted to use that power against the Nine-Tails, it would have to retreat to convert the ninja to chakra it could incorporate into its own form. It was forced to wait deep underground for a time, avoiding Kurama. It didn't notice that it suddenly had a name for the Nine-Tails.
Then, the wood-user moved away on its own. Now was the time.
[Outside Konoha, Previously]
Tenzo was exhausted. Too much chakra use trying to fight an undead Hokage. Too much chakra use trying to slow down a fully transformed tailed beast. Too much chakra use fighting off invaders. Too much chakra use trying to fix buildings and repair damage. Too much chakra use reverting a tailed beast transformation.
A soldier pill would take the edge off, but... He shuddered. Too many of those. Too much toxicity building up, even with the First Hokage's implanted powers. The side effects were starting to get painful, cutting down his standard chakra reserves and vitality. Hopefully, his charge wouldn't transform again for a long time.
The boy should be asleep in the house he'd grown awhile back now. He just had to get back to Konoha so he could get some ordinary rest himself.
But, something was off. He felt... something approaching. Vaguely like the Nine-Tails, vaguely like the One-Tail, but not really any of those.
The ground shook below. He jumped instinctively, but what looked like a limb of sand grabbed for him. Gaara hadn't been found after the invasion. Was he attacking again already?
He tried to get away, tried to reach for his pouch and get the soldier pill he'd need to survive the fight, but more and more arms flowed from the hole in the ground and toward him. He was quickly grabbed, restrained, and dragged under.
[Outside Konoha, Previously]
It didn't work. The Zero-Tails had converted the man to chakra and drained it all, incoporating it like it had Shukaku, but hadn't been able to replicate the wood power like it had the sand power.
Are we strong enough? its host asked. She had grown marvellously for its purposes, no longer squeamish or reluctant at the killing and devouring of ninja. Unfortunately, her body had limits. As its full form was used in battle, her body withered more quickly than a human's should, even when trying to fortify her with dark chakra.
With regards to her question, the Zero-Tails didn't know exactly how powerful itself, the One-Tail, or the Nine-Tails really were, but it was certain it was now much stronger than before.
That wood power still would've been useful; still hate that it didn't work! As it is, we'll want to get stronger first.
But, feelings of mourning rose from the town since the invasion. There was more to be gained. In time, the Zero-Tails was larger still. It suspected it had a way to fight Kurama...
Can we kill it yet?
[Somewhere in the Land of Fire, Previously]
"The...the thing, it's practically on us, it's underground! It's underground!" Karin yelled frantically from her place on Jirobo's back.
Tayuya, who had sounded irate about the idea of the Sound Four (plus a sensor/hanger-on, a boy in a barrel, and an unconscious pinkette) retreating, took charge. "Upgrade to level two!" Karin ignored how her voice sounded to her for the moment. The four members of Oto's elite squad began to advance their cursed seals, growing various inhuman features, Karin feeling a slight pain when her own mode of transport did so.
Behind her, something made horrible screeching noise that stunned the sensor. Her fellow redheaded kunoichi, who carried the barrel with Orochimaru-sama's new body, began to yell some more. "What the fuck is that!? It's fucking huge!" Karin looked back at what she saw with her own eyes what her mind's eye had shown her vaguely before. A massive worm, snake, thing made of sand, plowing half-submerged through the ground and kicking up a wave of sand as it did so, was charging toward them.
Tayuya, bearing the horns and demonic appearance of her level two form, summoned her giant minions (the angry ogres or something; Karin didn't really recall what her colleague/superior called them), then played her flute to send them to fight off the thing, but it wasn't working. Their physical attacks thumped against the sandy scales without breaking through them.
Kidomaru, looking like a weird demon spider from his cursed seal, shot arrows at the beast with some of his arms while others held him up in the trees by silk and yet another held the pinkette from Konoha. They embedded a slight ways into it, but were pushed back out, leaving it apparently unscathed. "That sand is too thick!" yelled the spider ninja. "So overpowered!"
Sakon (and Ukon; they counted as one out of the Four) bore the visage of a red demon with two heads. They struck fast and hard, but this accomplished nothing but getting them in range of the beast's strange arms.
Jirobo dropped off Karin and tried to strike it with earthen walls, but they were just crushed under it's weight. He then brought up a large chunk of earth to throw at it, which staggered it a moment, but did little else.
Knowing Jirobo's tendencies, Karin gave him a warning. "His chakra isn't right! Don't try to drain it!" she yelled. But when the sand worm got close and ensnared him in it's arms, he was barely able to pry himself out of the first few when others came toward him. He only had the one choice. He tried to drain the chakra, and then screamed aloud.
The shinobi caught in that thing's arms were quickly broken apart by the arms and devoured by the thing's freakish mouth. The two that had attacked at range, either by bow or by proxy, had done essentially nothing to the thing.
"What the shit..." commented Tayuya, and Karin had to agree with her strangely loud ally. The sensor couldn't stop shivering. That chakra, it was horrible. She couldn't describe it, except that it reminded her far too much of a tailed beast.
"Those two. The ones you're holding," the thing suddenly spoke with a bizarre mockery of voice, it's grotesque mouth not even moving. "Give them to me!"
[Somewhere in the Land of Fire]
"I'm here for revenge," the red-headed girl answered. "Revenge for Shinnou-sensei."
Sakura looked over at him with horror in her face, horror he likely reflected, but she didn't say anything.
Sasuke considered the situation. On their side, they had himself, with not enough chakra to use Chidori, barely any tools, and a botched partial cursed seal, plus Sakura, barely awoken after being knocked out by a concussive blow, without her dominant arm and without any weapons or tools whatsoever. On the other side was Amaru, a doctor-in-training who somehow had something similar to Gaara's jinchuriki powers, and who had apparently just eliminated as many as five trained ninja of appreciable skill.
At first glance, they were fucked.
Details, he reminded himself. Look at the details.
The redheaded girl hadn't actually attacked them so far, so he had time to think. Furthermore, her voice didn't sound like the horrible noise he'd heard demanding them from the Sound Four earlier. Also, she wasn't as big as the overheard bits of the one Oto kunoichi's shouting had made her out to be. She must've reduced from something bigger, like a jinchuriki transformation.
Which would have to be for a reason. Was it exhausting to her, or something?
Still, she was here for revenge. On them? Or on his jinchuriki teammate, clearly not present? The latter, if it was for Shinnou. Which meant that she knew of the demon's affiliation with them. Which could mean them as well, by association.
Was bringing them over to... wherever they were heading part of her revenge? She had subdued them with little effort, and could've certainly just killed them. Were they bait? Or interrogation subjects? No questions thus far, so interrogation didn't seem likely.
What else... He and Sakura were being carried by 'arms' of sand, it seemed, a few each, holding them up, binding their legs, and holding their arms to their sides. The 'arms' were strong, and he couldn't make much headway against them. Amaru, whatever power she had come up with, hadn't received any kind of ninja training, nor did she take the precautions of a ninja. Furthermore, all the arms converged, and then connected back to the body of Amaru herself.
Sasuke thought back to Gaara. When he had created waves of sand to attack, that sand hadn't actually been touching him. He could control it freely. With Amaru here, there may be more specific limits to that. The way it was, Sasuke suspected that she could only control sand that was continuously connected as an 'arm'.
So, it may be possible to escape, by breaking the arm at that point, then just running. But, Amaru had been able to track and catch up to the Sound Four, who were probably not moving slowly. She was currently just kind of walking in order to preserve... whatever. But any simple escape attempt would work poorly.
Would it be possible to escape, then just plain kill her and run off? Possible. The sand might protect her, though.
Other questions remained, like why a civilian medic was suddenly displaying powers like a jinchuriki, and able to kill several trained ninja. Or why she was way out here in the middle of nowhere. They were somewhere north of Konoha, on the way to Oto, but they'd been diverted, thinking back to their sensor's shouts. Diverted... where?
He tried harder to remember. It had gotten west of them, and then moved toward them, forcing them to change their route. So... it had forced them to go east? For what, exactly?
"Wh-where are you taking us?" Sakura suddenly asked.
"To a trap for the demon," Amaru responded. Oh. Right. Not a ninja, and therefore not in the mindset of keeping valuable intelligence a secret.
"And... what happened to you?" Sakura asked now. Hopefully they'd get an answer.
Amaru turned toward her with a hateful glare. She looked like she was about to talk, when she suddenly looked like she was distracted by something. She then turned forward and continued walking, the arms still carrying them. Damn, thought Sasuke. She must've realized what they were doing. They probably weren't getting any more details from her.
He'd have to work with what he had. They were going to a "trap for the demon". Something to use against his absent teammate, then. Exactly what did that entail...?
He looked ahead, to see if there was anything. Far in the distance, it looked like a fairly large pile of sand. Was she planning to leverage whatever power she had over sand with that? Sasuke seriously doubted that was sufficient against the full power of the Nine-Tails, if his teammate was willing to actually use that after that ANBU's probable death.
Heck, he seriously doubted his jinchuriki teammate was actually even going to be here. Why exactly would he? Did this girl have some plan to lure it? Or was she just crazy?
Sasuke had a sneaking suspicion that the answer was "both", but the latter was likely to be more important in the long run. In time, she'd get bored of waiting for the jinchuriki to take the bait off in the middle of freaking nowhere, and she'd likely kill the two of them, guilt by association and all that.
And when they were closer to that sand dune in the middle of the Land of Fire (which raised the question, where the hell had it come from, anyway?), she'd have an even greater advantage.
Which meant that they had to escape soon, regardless of the odds. Or escape from their binds, then immediately kill her, despite the sand.
First, though, that meant getting out. Substitution could work to escape a bind, he'd heard, if you were really well practiced with it in particular, or you had really good chakra control. Sasuke didn't have good enough control for that.
He focused again on the arm binding Sakura and himself. One weak point that he could free them both with, if he could hit it hard enough.
Hit it with what, exactly? One of his few remaining shuriken or kunai? With what arms? A jutsu? With hand signs from what arms?
Jutsu could be made without hand signs, but he wasn't able to make any useful jutsu for this situation without them. He couldn't just mold the chakra himself without them; not without a lot of practice. Some signs could be made one-handed; what did he have down that path? Could he use any and do a half-assed version of a jutsu to break it? What jutsu would even work?
Something ranged, first of all. He had the Grand Fireball or the extinguishing jutsu. The latter was only known through the Sharingan's copying, so trying to do that one-handed would be ineffective. The other, though, he had actually learned the old fashioned way. He might be able to come up with it with one-handed signs,
Six signs: Snake, Ram, Monkey, Boar, Horse, Tiger. Which one-handed signs did he know? Not many. He had watched Sakura's fight with his Sharingan, as standard procedure for him. During her fight with Lee, she'd used a one-handed sign to substitute, probably Tiger. She'd also used a one-handed sign to make incorporeal clones, for which the chakra flow looked like Tiger as well. So, one out of six signs. Not nearly enough, if he was going to do it with one hand he couldn't even put in front of his body.
Dammit, he needed something, somehow... What other one-handed signs did Sakura have? He needed some way to get them from her, if he was going to do this. He looked at her a moment. She was looking all around, tears flowing from her eyes. He was reminded, again, that the last thing she had seen, she was walking through Konoha, minding her own business, and then had thought to tell him something. Then, because of his idiocy, she was suddenly at the mercy of some monster.
He needed her attention, without getting Amaru's. He sucked in a breath quickly. She looked at him a moment, so the subtle sound worked. Amaru was still just looking forward toward the approaching dune. So far, so good.
Sasuke visibly looked down toward his one hand, and Sakura's gaze followed. Communication signs. 'Show', 'one', 'hand'. Sakura squinted in confusion a moment, then noticed his active Sharingan. Hopefully she understood exactly what he meant.
In a moment, she was channelling chakra into her hand and shaping it. She went through the signs she knew, which just happened to include most of those Sasuke needed. He was still missing Boar, but he'd been able to cut it out in the two-handed variant.
So, five out of six of the signs, using one-handed signs he had never practiced before, without even being able to bring his hand up in front of his chest for better chakra flow, let alone in front of his mouth to guide the jutsu. Also, with poor chakra reserves and weird cursed seal affecting him whenever he tried to use chakra. Indeed, he could already feel it starting to move just due to the active Sharingan.
Well, ninja didn't always get to operate in optimal circumstances.
He'd have to follow up with an attack, probably a physical one. He'd have to make a lethal strike, so a weapon would be preferred. Didn't want to let Amaru build back up whatever she'd used to take out the Oto ninja. A jutsu would be a more guaranteed kill on a civilian, but this stunt with the Grand Fireball probably wouldn't reach that far, and after using the chakra for it like this to free them, he wasn't going to leave him with the chakra for a damn clone.
They were getting very close to the sand dune now. He made one more signal for Sakura. 'Ready'.
She made a signal back. 'Ready'.
He started his hand signs.
[Somewhere in the Land of Fire]
Amaru had gotten close to what she and the Zero-Tails had created as a trap. They'd wanted to bring it closer to Konoha, eventually even use it against the den of murderers directly, but the Zero-Tails had suggested they go out and pick up these two instead, then try to lure the Nine-Tails here. Something about her health.
She was carrying the two hostages/ninja/murderers while the Zero-Tails caught and significantly amplified their negative emotions, rather than devouring it outright. This, it had explained, may be enough to lure the Nine-Tails, though Amaru wasn't sure if that was something that the Nine-Tails could pick up on. But, they had to be similar creatures, right?
If it didn't work, though, they could just kill them, Amaru supposed.
One of them is doing something! the Zero-Tails suddenly warned her.
She looked back just in time to see Sasuke breathing fire. A soft wave of it with significant spread, but some. It reached down to the arm she had formed from the Zero-Tails' power and part of it melted, breaking up the sand.
It immediately started retreating back toward her, dropping the sandy shell to leave just the dark mass of the Zero-Tails' main body. She quickly sent out more arms that picked up the sand, hoping to recapture the two freed ninja.
But the black-haired one was heading towards her, fast, with a knife! She couldn't even follow him with her eyes! She just put up more arms, sandless, all around her, hoping to stop it.
The blade stuck in one of the Zero-Tails' new arms. Kill him! it commanded. She moved to oblige, focusing all the arms toward the boy, who managed to pull out the kunai and get away.
Then, she saw something else that caught her eye to the side. A swirl of leaves, like a whirlwind. What are you looking at!?
Then, she looked back, and, and... she... she saw...
It's not real! You stupid girl!
That monster. With her sensei speared on it's vile claw. Standing over her burning village. Roaring it's horrible roar.
It's a illusion! It's not real! Your sensei is already long dead! Stupid, useless girl!
And then she felt something striking her face.
[Somewhere in the Land of Fire]
Sasuke stood still a moment, the kunai in his hand still buried in the girl's head, her blood coating the blade and the hand that held it. She hung limply on it, until he, with some effort, drew it back out. He let his Sharingan drop; it was basically running on fumes at this point.
He was breathing heavily, and essentially out of chakra, having pushed back the cursed seal mentally since his jutsu had finished.
He was terrified when his first strike was blocked by the hands, and had narrowly avoided getting caught and restrained again afterwards. But then, she'd suddenly gotten distracted by something. With his eyes, he saw a jutsu taking effect on her, which gave him just enough time to finish the girl.
"S-Sasuke... is... is it over?" asked his teammate.
But in a moment, he saw a strange, dark aura on her, encompassing her head. Then, the girl started screaming. "...Somehow, no."
[Somewhere in the Land of Fire]
After rapidly using dark chakra to heal Amaru's head wound, and then several other stab wounds until it finally pushed the obnoxious boy off of it's vessel, the Zero-Tails examined her. While she was in tremendous physical pain at the moment, which generated some source for the entity, the wound to her head had broken her mind.
Sensei... Hurts! Hurts!
Instead of a steady power source from her drive for revenge and the pain of her loss, the Zero-Tails just detected the current physical pain, plus some vague confusion it could barely use.
I am not your sensei, he's dead!
It didn't seem to get through to the girl. The ninja's attack had made her fairly useless to the Zero-Tails. For some reason, the attack breaking through it's defenses was insulting to the entity.
The Nine-Tails was now within it's sensing range, plus one, no, two other things. It wouldn't do well to be stuck with a mediocre, brain dead vessel when it fought. Too much of it's own chakra would be used. Time for a new host.
These two ninja, they each had their own negativity, which the Zero-Tails had felt when amplifying them. The boy was the stronger candidate, certainly. Revenge, self-loathing, guilt, plenty of food for the entity. The girl could suffice, too, though. Just a matter of claiming one...
[Somewhere in the Land of Fire]
Sakura still didn't know what was going on, but she was going to have to roll with it. She was talking to Sasuke-kun, telling him about her decision to continue on as a Kunoichi, then she was suddenly being held captive by Amaru in the middle of nowhere, who somehow could make limbs out of sand, and then she was fighting her directly (or indirectly, depending on how one counted genjutsu), and now, after she had taken a kunai deep into her freaking skull, she was suddenly up again, and turning into some kind of dark snake... thing. The snake grew massively, sand on the ground flowing up to it, creating a kind of coating of earthen scales on the near-ground parts of it's body.
To top it all off, the entire thing gave off an oppressive aura that reminded her a bit more than she liked of the Nine-Tails.
It was just not her day.
The thing suddenly lashed out toward Sasuke, innumerable arms of it's strange dark mass seeking out to bind him, possibly break him. She saw his Sharingan reactivate, and saw fire-like markings appearing on him. The seal. The damn cursed seal was somehow unlocked.
He managed to dodge out of the way, somehow, avoiding each and every one of the arms. It must've been those eyes. Dammit, he was in trouble, even if he could dodge. They both were. What the hell could they do against that thing!?
Another strike, now multiple arms condensing into one gigantic arm, swept through the woods. Sakura had to jump back to avoid it, as it uprooted trees, breaking them into pieces. She looked and saw that, thankfully, Sasuke had avoided it, too, but then she saw a few arms breaking off the larger one, all heading toward him. He twisted in air, the arms going all about him, but missing the boy himself. He struck with his limbs at several of them, knocking them away. How tough were they? Was his own strength enough to knock them away from the side like that, or was it because of the cursed seal.
Then, though, the thing turned to her, the Noh mask on it's head staring down. This, this was a bad sign. Sakura turned and began to run. Another flurry of small arms were projected from the snake, these from one of the sections covered in sand.
Sakura didn't have a Sharingan, and she was never as good as Sasuke physically anyway. She was quickly caught, and dragged slightly up into the air, as it moved it's 'head' down to her. She struggled in it's grasp, and tried not to look at it's horrible visage, hoping for some means of escape.
Then, it spoke.
"Sakura."
Whimpering, she looked up at it.
"You are so pathetic and useless." It was... taunting her?
"A decoration. A joke! A scared little girl that plays at being a ninja, but ultimately can't make the cut." It squeezed in on her.
"Your victories against real ninja have only ever been won by luck or the grace of others.
"Your sensei's test was won by Sasuke, and Sasuke alone. You won a little preliminary with nothing but dumb luck. Against a boy that couldn't even use chakra, you made a fool of yourself in front of everyone.
"Finally, when you're really on your own in a real fight, the truth of the world kicked it's way into your thick skull!" How... how did it know about those fights?
"You're scared, terrified, even!"
Shut up... Sakura thought.
"Useless, pathetic, stupid, nothing but a failure, a girl with a little crush that's in over her expansive forehead!"
Shut up!
"You could die, and 'Sasuke-kun' wouldn't even care. You don't matter any more! Without your good arm, you're even more of a weight on the team than before!"
Shut up, shut up, shut up! Sakura thought frantically, tears flowing from her eyes freely. She could feel something seeping into her skin, and she was terrified.
"Temari did you a favor, cutting off your arm!" The thing laughed. Laughed at her! At her resolve! "She took you out of that line of work where you'd surely die! Made your stupid dreams and stupid little girl fantasies a thing of the past!"
I'm not useless, I matter, I'm not scared, I'm not giving up! The monster was leaking it's hate into her, feeding off of her own pain and worthlessness
"You are a pathetic wannabe, a joke, and not worth 'Sasuke-kun's', nor anybody else's attention!"
"CHA! SHUT THE HELL UP!" It stopped. The thing was shaken out of her.
The beast remained silent, staring down at her. She was still caught in it's arms. She caught something out of the corner of her eye.
"You worthless little girl..." It tightened it's grip on her.
She wasn't impressed. "I am Sakura Haruno! I'm a kunoichi, and a damn fine one! Cha!"
She felt it crushing, trying to break her physically, if doing so emotionally failed. But like hell was that going to happen. Even with one arm, she knew one-handed signs, and she had amazing chakra control.
She heard the sound of cracking, then crunching. And she looked up at where the log she had substituted with was quickly being reduced to splinters.
It looked around at both of them, then dived downward. She dodged back, out of the way, as did Sasuke. Then, the ground below them churned, kicking up mud and sand. It was... escaping, underground?
She looked over at Sasuke-kun, and saw the horrible black marks all over his body. He looked like he was hyperventilating, and his Sharingan was still active.
The earth was still shaking below them, though. It felt like it was moving. But, away from them. Had... had she done it? Had her sudden yelling driven it off?
That... hardly seemed likely.
She saw the earth moving again. It was coming back up. She looked again at where it was. There was... a sand dune? She hadn't noticed that earlier. She was a little distracted, she supposed. But, it was moving along with the ground near it.
It... it was gathering the sand. To come back stronger, to go after Sasuke again. To do to him what it had tried to do to her.
It emerged from the dune, covered in thick, sandy scales, much heavier than the simple coating of sand that had been on the arms Amaru had conjured up. It charged toward them again with a horrible screeching sound. She covered the one ear she could with her arm, but couldn't keep the sound out. She thought she caught a glint of something reflective left in the sand dune as it submerged in the ground again.
She came to her senses for a moment. "RUN!" she screamed, before doing as she said. Sasuke understood, fortunately, and they were soon moving as fast as they could away from the thing.
But it was faster. Much faster. It got close, emerging from the ground again, and shot more of those horrible arms, now covered in thick, sandy armor. Sasuke was trying some signs, probably for some jutsu to break them, but he stumbled as he ran. Cha! Save him!
She was running toward him, hoping to pick him up in her one arm. But the thing's arms were faster. He was scooped up, and brought up, far above the trees, out of reach of any logs there might be.
"You're a failure, Sasuke." It was starting again.
"Let me go!" he yelled.
"You've seen how you have no chance to be the best, the strongest. You're a mediocre ninja, skilled in nothing but dodging the consequences of your own actions."
"Sasuke-kun, don't listen to him!" she yelled frantically.
"See that? She doesn't even realize it yet. Realize that it's your fault she was maimed!"
...Sasuke-kun's... fault?
"Your stupid decision split you two up, leaving her to the wolves in a war zone. Your failure to pay enough attention, to realize that medic was a spy, that allowed the arm to be taken!"
"Stop! Please stop!" he pleaded. Pleaded! Had... had it really been his fault?
"It was you who kidnapped her to defect to Oto, just to fix your own stupid mistake!"
He. Did. WHAT? She felt her hand clenching.
"You think you could take on Itachi? A man who killed off an entire clan by himself!?" It laughed it's cruel laugh again.
"Please... Sakura..." Sasuke looked down at her, his face betraying horror and despair. She stepped back.
"You see now? You've lost that fake respect, and now you're just a sad, pathetic little creature." Another horrible laugh. "It would've been better if you had just died along with the rest of your clan."
And then... Sasuke started to be enveloped. He was being absorbed into that creature.
Sakura couldn't move. She just watched him slowly disappear into the sand.
Then, it seemed to shrink down, dropping the sand in a pile on the ground. From the sand emerged Sasuke.
But at the same time, it was not Sasuke. That cursed seal was activated, for one thing, spreading the black, flame-like markings around his body. His mouth was twisted into a horrible, psychotic grin.
In the distance, something thumped.
"Who... who are you?" she asked shakily. "Why are you doing this!?"
Sasuke... the thing wearing Sasuke's skin laughed, using his voice.
"I am the Zero-Tails," he said, his eyes beginning to glow. "As conflict rages in the world, and people's hearts become overcome with darkness, I am born anew!"
"The... the what?"
Another thump, somewhere closer.
"I feed on the darkness of hearts," he... it said. "I am born and then grow without bound, in order for this world to be ruled by darkness!"
Suddenly, he was gone. But Sakura remembered something like this before, just before she'd blacked out. She put her one hand back behind her neck, catching the chop the possessed Uchiha brought against her, and jumped forward, turning back to see the boy, and looking around discretely for something to substitute with.
She tried to talk him down a moment. "S-Sasuke, p-please don't do this!"
It charged her again, trying to bring a fist into her face, but she managed to substitute just in time. Afterwards, she made three standard clones to try and mask herself. But, it looked directly at her, ignoring the clones. "He's almost here. You and this boy, you'll be useful against Kurama."
"Sasuke, please! It's me, Sakura! You... you can come back from this! We can go to Konoha, I can vouch for you, nothing bad will have to happen!" She was certainly unhappy with him, but she needed to do something.
Another thump, getting really close, but Sakura couldn't pay it much mind now.
Who 'Kurama' was, she had no idea. She wasn't given time to think on it. Arms of that dark mass stretched out from Sasuke's body, like from Amaru and the creature before, and started encircling her. She frantically looked around and saw one small log that might work, and put her hand into the sign.
But, her jutsu failed, and she was quickly caught. It was hopeless.
Until a large man with long, white hair suddenly punched through the arms with a ball of spiraling chakra.
[Somewhere in the Land of Fire]
A jinchuriki and a Sannin had been riding atop a giant toad by the name of Gamabunta. They had seen that strange creature at a distance, but couldn't make out any detail. Then, it had collapsed.
Unfortunately, it had been in the direction the boy had felt his teammate's pain and fear from.
"So, that... sandworm thing, that's near where you could sense your teammates?"
"Y-yes, Jiraiya-sama," he had responded, worry in his voice.
"Very well, then," the older man had said. "Gamabunta, I'm dropping off Naruto here with you."
"Very well," the toad had replied before obligingly stopping and allowing the Sannin to land safely on the ground. He had watched the seal master continue north for a time.
Then, the boy caught a smell in the air. It smelled like... several people. Sasuke. Gaara. Tenzo-sensei. Faintly, Amaru. Also faintly, Orochimaru. What... what was going on? Was he imagining smells again?
And then, a figure emerged from the woods. It looked like Sasuke, but with an awful grin, one that reminded him of Gaara, at the start of his encounter with his fellow jinchuriki in the Forest of Death, and an active cursed seal.
"Kurama," the black-haired boy said.
"Sasuke?" the jinchuriki asked his teammate, looking down from on top of Gamabunta. "What happened? Why's that seal active? And where's Sakura? I could feel you in fear and pain, from really far away." As an afterthought: "And who's Kurama?"
He noticed something else strange about Sasuke. His eyes. They glowed red, but not with the Sharingan.
A black... thing appeared around his teammate, wearing a small, white mask, with what looked like red feathers on it.
"You are something interesting," it said, it's bizarre, grinning mouth not moving.
Then, it opened that mouth wide and lunged up at the jinchuriki, emitting a horrible screech.
"Hold on, kid!" yelled the toad boss, who leaned back a moment, nearly dropping the jinchuriki off.
He heard a slicing sound. Gamabunta had drawn his sword, and cut off the offending monster's head, which fell onto the ground. "Gah!" But the rest of it was still clinging to the toad, digging in with arrays of sharp limbs.
"Get out of the way," it said, as the head started to move, floating back toward the rest of the body, before advancing dangerously close to the jinchuriki on top of the toad boss, who was struggling to get the offending thing off its person.
"Naruto!" Jiraiya called out to the boy, as he jumped onto the toad from the forest, the one-armed kunoichi under his left arm. "It's going after you! We have to run!"
The blond dashed over to the Sannin, who scooped him up and jumped away, just as the monster was about to bite down with it's mouth.
"S-Sasuke's in that thing! What's going on!?" the blond asked.
The carried kunoichi wore horrible expression on her face. "That thing, it... it absorbed Sasuke! It tried to absorb me, too!" she cried. "It can move really fast underground like you saw, even transformed, and it can control sand!"
Jiraiya swore at that. "So, we can't just run away, can we?"
He looked back at it. Gamabunta was holding the thing down for the moment. The Sannin put the two genin down, then bit his thumb and began a summoning jutsu, like the boy saw him use earlier to summon Gamabunta. Before he could put his hand down to complete it, though, he picked up the two genin and jumped away, narrowly avoiding a gigantic, dark arm that smashed the ground, picking up a coating of sandy scales from the rubble as it rose back up. The monster had reached toward them despite being pinned by the toad boss.
"Dammit, let's move away, then try," the Sannin said, still holding the two.
"T-try what?" asked Sakura, still shaky from the current events.
"I'm trying to summon Gama, so Naruto can sign the toad contract, then get reverse summoned away from here," he explained.
"The toad contract?" asked the blond. "So I could become a summoner?"
"Yes, yes," Jiraiya answered. "I had it all planned out: I'd update the seal, you'd get normal access to chakra, you'd sign it, use your first jutsu to summon a toad and-" He was forced to dodge out of the way of a sand-covered limb. Looking back, the jinchuriki saw that the Zero-Tails had followed them, emerging with a coating of sand scales from under the ground. Gamabunta was behind it, jumping furiously toward it to catch up, and bleeding from various small points throughout it's body where the thing had found footing.
"There's no escape!"
It wasn't going to give them time for much contract signing.
Gamabunta caught up and struck it again with a sword, cutting off the thing's head somewhat lower. "No!" yelled the jinchuriki toward the toad. "Sasuke's still in there, we have to get him out before we cut it up!"
Jiraiya swore again. "Listen, we don't even know what that thing is, let alone if we can get Sasuke out of it."
Sakura spoke up, after a moment. "It... it called itself the Zero-Tails."
Jiraiya looked at her a moment, and then turned his head to see the again-amputated head reconnecting as a gigantic arm pinned down Gamabunta, and still more arms redirected toward them. "Like a tailed beast? Okay, that gives me something to work with..." After jumping several times in succession to make a bit of distance between them and the approaching beast and arms, he put them down and summoned a shadow clone. "Sakura, the clone'll handle you; you're not the target. Naruto, climb onto my back and hang on; I'm going to need my arms." The two genin did as directed.
Just in time, as another swarm of arms was reaching for them. Jiraiya jumped away with his passenger and started digging through scrolls he had on his person, while the cloned Jiraiya jumped away with his other passenger.
[Somewhere in the Land of Fire]
In retrospect, Jiraiya really should've had his godson sign the damn contract while they were on the way here. He had wanted to make an important moment for the boy, signing the contract, using a real jutsu for the first time, and then him revealing that he was the boy's godfather. A real bonding thing.
When he had diverted them to save his teammates, he probably should've had him sign then, but he really expected it to be something that was simple to handle, like most fights he'd be involved in. Heck, most ninja would run at the sight of him, orders or not. Thinking back, it could've been Akatsuki, and it was stupid of him to have assumed like he had.
Now, his godson was stuck in this fight here, with this... thing, which may or may not be a tailed beast, instead of safely on Mount Myoboku, waiting for the Sannin to finish and then fix the seal so he didn't have to worry about transforming.
But no more time to worry about what he might've done instead; time to take this thing down. He had a seal to suppress tailed beast chakra. Maybe it'd work on this 'Zero-Tails', and help extract the involuntary 'jinchuriki' it had made. "'Bunta! Jump on it!"
Gamabunta did as requested, making a large leap and landing on the beast. The thing was stunned long enough to get a tag on it. Seal! he thought, adding chakra to activate the paper.
The effect was immediate, much of the sand nearby started falling off, leaving the dark, bare 'flesh' of the Zero-Tails. But, the effect stopped at a certain distance out. Something was countering his suppression seal, and not like an influx of further tailed beast chakra.
No, it looked more like... a counterseal? This thing was weird. Hopefully, his clone would get more information from Sakura.
While it continued to chase the Sannin and the jinchuriki with arms and it's real body, the Zero-Tails was shoving Gamabunta off itself, having restored a large arm that had been cut off by Gamabunta's sword. If Sasuke was fully intact inside it somewhere, he wasn't likely to be in an arm, at least. It could reassemble itself quite well, each part working fairly well when divided at returning to it's place. Like it had a self-repairing seal, almost.
One that even the parts of itself had, as if the seal was over it's entire body, and able to subdivide. Dodging another set of arms, and then jumping up really quickly, to the distress of his hanger-on, when he realized he'd been lured into a trap, he thought of where he'd similar things before.
He'd heard the reports of his sensei's fight with the reanimated Kages, that could apparently reassemble themselves. He'd also recently read about, well, seals that could do that, to themselves. Maybe they could be adapted to work on... whatever the hell the 'Zero-Tails' was.
Seals that could divide themselves. It wasn't a complete work, to be sure, but who was to say that the completed version hadn't been taken elsewhere by someone who had lived there at the time? No time to mentally wander into that rabbit hole now, though.
Focus. Two tasks: get Sasuke out, and make this thing stop attacking. Requirements: don't let any of the genin die, don't let the jinchuriki get transformed.
Sasuke was in it, somewhere. He had to get him out, somehow. Physical attacks could cut through it well enough, but bashing didn't seem to work well, especially when it was covered in sand. Sage mode might work, if he could get the time to- dodge! -activate it, but fat chance of that so far.
Several arms were closing in from different sides now. No choice but to attack. He formed the Fourth Hokage's Rasengan in his right hand. He thrust his hand forward and the ball of grinding, glowing chakra plowed through one of the offending limbs, going straight through the 'palm' and rendering it partially into sand, which collected on other nearby arms as it was thrown off, and partially into dark particles of whatever the beast was, which quickly began reassembling onto the stalk of the arm. But, it was enough time to get through.
Physical attacks could delay the thing, but wouldn't be lethal. They could also, however, break into the beast, to where Sasuke might be.
Wait. No, don't wait, dodge again! He did so. Thought-wise, wait. Some parts flowed back to connect again, when separated, while others stood still. The kid's body, that must be what it's based around, the other parts returning to it. Which meant it was definitely in a specific part of it.
Of course, testing that meant cutting the thing to bits and hoping they didn't slice the kid in two in the process. Unless...
"Naruto!" he said suddenly, dodging another attack. "Going to need your nose. Does one part of it smell more or less like Sasuke?"
The blond sniffed in the air a moment. "W-we need to get closer," he said in a reluctant voice.
"Don't be too scared," Jiraiya reassured as he approached it carefully, sidestepping more arms. "I'm among the greatest ninja in the world, the toad sage of Mount Myoboku, Jiraiya the Gallant!"
[Somewhere in the Land of Fire]
The shadow clone of Jiraiya, along with the pink-haired kunoichi, were headed away from the battlefield, and fortunately not being tracked.
The cloned Jiraiya spoke up. "We're a bit away, so we... should be safe. Relatively safe, at least." He let her down, then turned to her with a serious expression. "Is there anything at all you can tell me about it, besides just the name?"
"It said it, er, 'feeds on the darkness of hearts'," the pink-haired girl said.
"That could mean anything from 'it literally eats the blood-pumping organs of people that don't get enough sunlight' to 'it's a grandstanding, sadistic asshat that likes to sound intimidating'," the Sannin replied.
"It, er, 'grows without bounds'?"
"Well, it's pretty damn big already."
Sakura thought back further as her heart rate returned to something that one might consider close to normal. "It... it was possessing another girl before. Amaru." She went on to explain the motivations she knew of regarding it.
"It, it grabbed me earlier, and tried to... attack me psychologically," said the kunoichi. "It... I think it turns negative emotions into some kind of power."
The clone looked thoughtful. "That doesn't sound like a proper tailed beast; they're pretty self-contained, basically just drawing back their own chakra. Honestly, that sounds closer to a weird kind of seal. Converting something that isn't chakra into chakra, albeit a nonstandard chakra. Something like tailed beast chakra, maybe." He looked back toward it. "That could explain why it puts out an aura like it does."
"It... the sand, it can only form it around or pretty close to itself. It reminded me of Gaara at first," she explained. "He was the One-Tail's jinchuriki. He controlled sand, but he could control it remotely." That seemed to bring the seal master to thought, too.
"Earlier, when it... tried to mess with my mind, it also seemed like it was trying to possess me. I think that's what it did with Sasuke." Then, she remembered another important detail. "I was able to shake it off, somehow."
"Anything else?" asked the clone Sannin.
"...Right now, no," she admitted, trying to go over the recent events for what might be useful for the Sannin.
"I'll dispel to inform the main man of all that," he said. "I'll have another 'Clone Jiraiya the Redundantly Gallant' over shortly."
Another what? she wondered in confusion before the strangely posing shadow clone dissipated into smoke.
Then she realized something she'd neglected to mention. Shit! The sand dune, the trap for the Nine-Tails! I never told him!
[Somewhere in the Land of Fire]
The jinchuriki was holding onto the seal master's back for dear life as the man weaved in and out of the arms, occasionally striking at them with a weird ball of chakra, and occasionally getting assistance from the increasingly injured Gamabunta. Some time ago, he'd sniffed out Sasuke's location, toward the back of the Zero-Tails. Toward it's tail, if you will. The name was a real misnomer.
A variety of jutsu had been tried against the thing and had failed. A gout of oil had done nothing but stick some of the sand together, which was quickly sloughed off and replaced by sending an arm down. A blast of water had done similar. A swamp had been formed below, making it stick a moment, but it's arms continued extending out, and it used some additional arms from below to quickly free itself.
Suddenly, Jiraiya asked him something else. "Kid, do you know how you might be able to talk Sasuke down?"
That gave the boy pause. "N-not really, I'm not a therapist," he admitted.
"Didn't think so," he said, making a sign for another jutsu. Another clone of the man appeared and jumped toward where the first had taken Sakura.
"Okay, listen. That thing was originally possessing a girl called Amaru, and it feeds on negative emotions!" he said, to the surprise of the jinchuriki. "Any of that mean anything to you?"
Amaru, the girl whose sensei he had accidentally killed. Negative emotions, she must've had a bunch of them after that, though his sensing of them had been flaky at the time.
It had been flaky since that time! Had... had this thing been draining the negative emotions then? No, he'd had the same issues later on, when they were far out of there.
"Any time, kid!" Jiraiya yelled, obliterating another arm with that ball jutsu as it tried to skewer him.
But... he'd smelled Amaru from time to time since then. In the Forest of Death, during training, during the invasion. Could it have been following him!?
"I think it can drain negative emotions from a long distance!" he said. "It's been screwing up my negative emotion sensing off and on for more than a month!"
"Nice to know, but not very helpf-AH!" Jiraiya said, taking a gash to his left leg from one of the innumerable spiky sand appendages surrounding them.
He though further, tried to understand what might be useful. "Smells like Gaara, but all over! Smells a little like Tenzo-sensei, all over!"
"Like Gaara? Maybe it ate him to get Shukaku, and it's trying to do the same with you! Tenzo, no idea!"
Dammit, something else! He could tell Jiraiya was losing patience with this; this close, he could feel the negative emotion emanating from him, before getting sucked... sideways?
"The negative emotions don't drain in a straight line to the beast! They're going sideways!"
"How could that possibly... Wait, is it sideways, or curving around?" Jiraiya asked while successfully avoiding another set of arms purely because Gamabunta's sword cleaved through them, with some apparent effort from the toad.
He focused closer. "Around!"
"Around to anywhere in particular?"
Focus on the negative emotions. Sideways, around the snake body in general, but kind of all around it, all sorts of directions sideways. "All over it!"
"It's a seal!" Jiraiya suddenly exclaimed as he blocked two arms with two simultaneous ball jutsu.
"What is?"
"All of it, the entire damn thing!" he said. "Something I saw in the ruins of Uzushio, a living seal entity! It wasn't done, but it was a way to make a seal that could grow to supply more power, or adapt it's purpose. It was fragile, though, and hard to control, needing some kind of huge array, maybe the size of a city to use for-"
"Jiraiya!"
"Moving on, the pattern of draining negative emotions, it's like a whirlpool!" Jumping up to avoid the Zero-Tails' mouth, then getting snatched out of the air by Gamabunta's tongue, who quickly spat them away when it charged the toad.
"Same thing I did to gather a human chakra template on your extra seal! Based on some kinds of old Uzumaki sealing! Some Uzumaki finished the living seal thing, made something like that to drain emotions in a wide range and turn them into that weird tailed beast-ish chakra, plus some other stuff!"
"Does that mean you have something you can do to get Sasuke out?" The thing was on them again, stretching out from a part held down by the toad boss.
"Brat, I'm Jiraiya the Gallant, toad sage, and the best damn seal master in Konoha!"
Jiraiya was moving with him toward the beast now, which partially dug under to escape the toad's weight. "Guide me to Sasuke again!"
He sniffed. Found the scent, Sasuke and a bit of Orochimaru from that damned cursed seal. He tightened his hold around the man with his left arm, then carefully took out a kunai with his right and threw it into the sandy scales about where the smell seemed to come from.
"Here, this might work!"
Might work!?
He ran hand seals and blow a wave of water, washing out a spot of sand in the appropriate place. Arms shot out all around it, but he busted through with those chakra balls again.
Then, he finally got up to the dark chakra mass of the creature itself, and put a hand against it. "Seal: Release!"
Really? He just treated the giant monster like a storage scroll?
Wait. The surface of the Zero-Tails glowed a moment, and then, somehow, it looked like it started to... unravel. The thing screamed, and the jinchuriki really wished he had both hands free to cover his ears.
From the glow came smoke, some dark red, some dark yellow. Through it, the jinchuriki saw a person. "Sasuke!" Jiraiya reached in and pulled out the Uchiha, who's cursed seal was still all over.
But when the jinchuriki was in contact with the smoke, he felt something. Something really, really bad. And heard a hissing sound he had absolutely dreaded.
He pulled back on the fox's chakra, pulled back with all his might, but it seemed like more of it was seeping into him, from the outside, from that damn smoke! He was so distracted, he lost his grip and started to fall, before Jiraiya caught him in the arm not holding Sasuke.
He was terrified, but also, starting to feel incredibly angry. And he had no idea why. He growled, in anger and the pain of trying to pull back the chakra, trying not to transform now. They'd figured out the weakness, figured out how to beat it, and now he was going to get screwed over!? Hell no!
He was doubled over on the ground, slowly regaining control over the fox's chakra. He vaguely saw the unravelling part of the Zero-Tails get ejected off, and the rest of the form reshaping around it to make up for the missing mass. He vaguely saw Sasuke being placed next to him, and a shadow lurking over him.
"'Bunta, oil, and lot's of it!" He heard a massive flooding sound as oil washed away sand and pushed the beast back and away from them. But the shadow screeched and tried to lunge toward him anyway.
"Don't touch him, do not fucking touch my godson!" Jiraiya yelled at the Zero-Tails. ...Godson?
The hissing stopped. He felt the chakra finally, finally receding, and his own anger resolving itself. He looked up to see the Zero-Tails recoiling, apparently unsure, now that it could be harmed in a permanent way.
It then dove down into the ground, away from himself and Jiraiya, and the rumbling of the earth continued in a different direction, somewhat north of them.
"Is... is it over?" the jinchuriki asked, hesitantly but hopefully.
"I... I think so," the Sannin replied, growing more jovial as he spoke. "'Bunta, thanks for everything! You're done for now!" he called out to his summoned ally.
"You're bringing the sake next time!" the toad boss called back, before vanishing into smoke.
"Finally. We'll bring these two back to Konoha, then..." He stopped to consider. "Maybe I shouldn't have dismissed Gamabunta yet... Eh, he's earned his break. I'll summon Gamaken to take them back while we-"
He suddenly stopped. "No, shit, it isn't over. There's a giant sand dune somewhere over there, intended as a trap for you!" He bit his thumb and started the summoning jutsu again. "It's going to come back, with heavier sand armor we can't blast away as easily." A large orange-and-green toad appeared in a puff of smoke, a necklace around it's neck and a scroll in it's mouth.
The jinchuriki felt something... curious, in the distance. Negative emotions, again. Building, and growing stronger.
"Sign the contract in blood, quickly," Jiraiya explained as the toad offered the scroll to the boy. "Then you can be reverse summoned to safety. I'll bring you back when this thing's dead." The boy glanced down at his unconscious teammate. "Don't worry, I'll keep them safe."
He felt the ground shaking, something very large moving in the distance. He looked over. It was in the direction the beast had been headed. The negative emotions were practically glowing to his senses. That was more than sand-gathering. What was going on over there?
[Outside Konoha, Previously]
Can we kill it yet?
Not yet, the Zero-Tails responded mentally. There's one more tool to claim.
Uh, you use tools?
The Zero-Tails mentally 'harumph'ed. Why not? In the past, I was used to power a great weapon called the Ancor Vantian, a gigantic, floating fortress.
We're getting a flying house?
No! the Zero Tails said. The thing's broken as all hell!
Then... why are-
We're salvaging some parts! I was stuck in it for a very, very long time, and I've felt all around the inside. There are parts I know work, and parts I know how to use directly.
Among them, the Ancor Vantian's answer to the power of a tailed beast. It's main cannon, a weapon capable of destroying a city in an instant!
And that will take down the Nine-Tails! Amaru responded to it with glee in her mind. Where is it?
In the ruins of Soragakure, near the town you and that doctor lived in.
The girl was confused. Why didn't we take it with us when we left?
It's too damn big! I couldn't even move it, let alone power it, back then. The Zero-Tails chuckled inwardly. Now, though, we're much stronger.
In time, they found the remains of the old floating fortress. Several purple-clad ninja with the symbol for 'Sky' on their headbands were inside the half-buried ruins, but they were no match for the Zero-Tails, which quickly devoured or dispatched them.
Growing to it's full size, it started cutting out the gigantic, metal cylinder, removing unnecessary components and raising it up out of the ground.
The redhead seemed to find a flaw in the plan as she looked at the gigantic cannon. How do we get this to Konoha without them noticing it from far out of range?
We'll tunnel with it underground, the beast explained. Shukaku's sand powers continue to be helpful.
Shukaku?
The sand monster. The Zero-Tails had never been told the name, but didn't seem to find it off that it knew it.
Moving the cannon underground was slow work, and more conspicuous than expected. A string of earthquakes followed them wherever they went. Worse yet, the overuse of the Zero-Tails' power was having consequences on Amaru's untrained, civilian body. The Zero-Tails felt she may not last the trip to Konoha.
Would it get a new host? Or try to bring the Nine-Tails here?
Then, on the edge of it's sensing range, it felt a couple of familiar signals, plus several unfamiliar ones, all moving rapidly. And it had an idea, playing off Kurama's negative emotion sensing. Which the Zero-Tails didn't find odd at all that it was aware of, let alone the name of the Nine-Tails.
We're going to raise the weapon here, the Zero-Tails communicated suddenly. We'll assemble a bunch of sand from the ground to keep it buried and hidden, at least somewhat. Though it didn't consider that a sand dune in the forest might also be conspicuous.
[Somewhere in the Land of Fire]
'Na.' 'Ru.' 'To.' His blood formed the characters on the scroll.
The earth shook violently, and the jinchuriki was distracted again, looking over.
"Less sight seeing, more scroll signing!" reprimanded the Sannin.
It was feeling... wrong over there. Far too much negative emotion, far too angry, far too concentrated.
"Something's... something's happening, Jiraiya-sama..."
"Yeah, it's building up it's armor to attack again, and we need you gone when it gets here, dammit!"
"No! Not that, it's focusing negative emotions, focusing it's power! I can feel it all the way from here, even when it's being drained back!"
Something moved, out through the woods. He saw some gigantic metal object just over the treetops. And it was starting to glow.
"Sign, dammit, sign!"
'U.' 'Zu.' He saw Sasuke stir slightly out of the corner of his eyes. He thought also of Sakura, somewhere a short distance away.
"It's about to attack with something big! Really big!"
"So you need to get out of here! Sign, and we'll both get reverse summoned away!"
'Ma.'
The glow of yellow light was starting to shine to them, giving them unnatural shadows, besides those of the sunlight.
"But, what about Sasuke? What about Sakura!?" he demanded of the man. "They aren't signing this! They aren't getting summoned to safety!"
Jiraiya had a guilty, faraway look in his eyes, and it looked like tears in the corners thereof. "Listen," he said. "Being a ninja, it's a dangerous and often painful lifestyle. Sometimes, you can't save everyone."
The jinchuriki looked at him, then down at Sasuke, whose eyes were just starting to open, then toward where Sakura was, and lastly, toward the now blinding light.
He knew what he had to do. He had already decided, back when he'd diverted himself and Jiraiya away from Uzushio. "Today, I can."
He jumped away, toward the Zero-Tails and that yellow light, leaving Jiraiya standing by Gama with the contract, reaching for the boy. In the future, someone that saw the scroll might wonder who "Naruto Uzuma" was.
Sparks of yellow lightning flashed around the metal object. It grew brighter and brighter, and hotter, melting the ground around it, and then exploded into a roaring lance of destructive energy, incinerating trees where they stood, sublimating the ground into gas, igniting the very atmosphere in a horrific, yellow blaze.
It might've seared across the landscape for miles and miles, if it hadn't been blocked by the giant form the Nine-Tailed Demon Fox, which stood as a bulwark against it, shielding three of his very few real friends from the hateful weapon.
[?]
KILL. DEVOUR. DESTROY. These things, they were bouncing around in his head, searing through him like a hot iron blade, but he focused, forced them down. He wasn't a destroyer. He was a protector. He wouldn't let it infect him.
In time, the horrible thoughts stopped, and he opened his eyes.
It was damp, and dark, aside from a faint, yellow light that seemed to come from nowhere. The light, the destructive attack the Zero-Tails had used on him, the forest he had been in, nowhere to be seen. He looked around at the chamber, and saw little, except for in front of him.
There, he saw the twisted remains of a metal gate, a piece of paper of some form hanging off one bit of it. In the lighting of the room, he couldn't see far beyond it, but somehow, he knew.
If he went past that ruined gate as he was now, what lie beyond would destroy him.
He closed his eyes again, and waited for it to end.
[Somewhere in the Land of Fire]
He woke up to the sounds of combat. He raised himself him to see Jiraiya and the resummoned Gamabunta fighting again with the Zero-Tails, constantly pounding it with attacks to keep it from diving underground, and holding it back from advancing on the fox's collapsed form with a combination of burning oil, sword slashes, spiralling spheres, and guts.
The Zero-Tails was now covered in heavy scales of sand, and the oil the two used was having difficulty breaking through to 'release' it, especially when it could replenish the armor from the now fairly close sand dune. Any attempt to try and get rid of the dune itself, though, would've give the snake-like creature free reign to try and devour himself.
Speaking of the sand dune, the metal thing in the sand that it had used looked to be half-melted, possibly from it's own use.
The jinchuriki was ready to fight against the monster that had forced his hand. He got up on his legs and charged. Jiraiya, atop Gamabunta, quickly got out of the way as he tackled the snake monster down.
It tried to bite at him, but he swatted the 'face' down with one of his tails while he pinned more of it, and bit down on it himself. He was quite furious with the Zero-Tails already, but there was still something bugging him about all this. He had connected the smell, or smells, of the Zero-Tails, and the appearance of the sand-filled holes it emerged from and dived into to move underground. And they looked like a larger version of one he'd seen before.
"Tell me," he started, releasing his jaws from the creature, "why do you smell like Tenzo-sensei?"
"Who?" it asked, then it seemed to realize. "Oh, your sensei?" It grinned wickedly. "I ate him. His wood style seemed to work well against Shukaku" Against who now? "and I thought I might use it on you."
The jinchuriki's rage began to boil. He heard faint crying from somewhere, but paid it no mind.
"It didn't work, though. I guess he died for nothing! Hah!" it finished, with one cruel bark of laughter.
That was a bit too far for the jinchuriki. "DAMN YOU!" he roared at it, the force of his... the fox's very voice shoving the thing against the ground. "You k-killed him, for THAT!? For THAT kind of bullshit reason!?"
He was suddenly made aware again of the Zero-Tails' amorphous nature, as he felt several sharp bits trying to stick into the fox's body all around him. Trying to immobilize him. But that wouldn't work now. He broke out in a moment, the Zero-Tails' own strength paling in comparison to that of the Nine-Tails.
He clawed and bit viciously and relentlessly, tearing through the armor and through the beast beneath it, ripping out large sections of the dark mass, tearing that feathery mask off it's face and apart.
And the damn thing just kept laughing. Laughing! At him, at Tenzo's pointless death, at how the death was just to get at him, at the state he was stuck in, and that just made him more furious.
The pieces he tore off began to coalesce anew, and it shot out a sharp spear of an arm toward him. He dodged around it and bit it off, but it, too, began to return to the beast. Time for something stronger.
He coiled the fox's body, preparing to sweep the tails and create a gigantic blast of wind. But then, he saw Gamabunta nearby. On top of him, Jiraiya. He noticed again the scent of those two, and Sakura and Sasuke somewhere nearby, as well.
...No. He wouldn't attack recklessly like that. Not with them here. He had to calm down, figure out something more focused.
He still heard that faint crying, from who-knows-where, but it slowly stopped.
He looked back toward the Zero-Tails. It was still pretty much unharmed by his assault, completely reformed. But, it had stopped laughing. Indeed, it seemed almost to be backing away.
Then, it started to dive into the ground again. Calm or not, the boy-turned-fox was not going to let it get away.
He lunged toward it, catching the back with a clawed hand and dragging back. More of the arms shot out, trying to pry the paw off, but the Nine-Tails' body was stronger, far stronger.
He pulled, and the Zero-Tails began to emerge unwillingly from the ground. "I killed Tenzo! I killed other ninja from Konoha, plenty of them during the invasion!" What... what was it trying to do? No, the jinchuriki knew.
"It won't work now," he told the snake, before reaching forward with the fox's mouth to pull more of it out, while clenching more strongly with the claws it had already sunk through the sand and into it's body.
He flared out the fox's chakra, and the thing shrieked in pain, much of the sand breaking off. Parts of it broke off around the fox's claws and jaw, the connected parts sizzling away into nothingness.
"I'll kill your friends! I'll destroy all of Konoha!"
The remainder tried to reconnect itself and head into the ground, but the jinchuriki reached toward it, slashing it with the chakra still out, causing each one to boil apart.
It managed to find it's unnatural voice one last time. "You'll never go home again! You'll always be feared! You're a monster! You always were! Na-" It's last ditch attempt to enrage the jinchuriki was interrupted when it was forced to scream in agony, as the jinchuriki kept slashing away at the pieces.
Soon, there seemed to be nothing left.
He smelled the air, and the combination of scents that comprised it were gone. He tried to sense negative emotions, and they felt perfectly clear. Nothing was being drained any more. The Zero-Tails had been destroyed.
"It's... over..." he said, not even breathing heavily.
He looked around himself, at the little pile of sand where the small piece of half-melted scrap metal lay, at the weed-sized trees that barely went up to the bends of his limbs, at the knee-high toad with a jacket and a sword, and at the tiny man on top of it that he had only just discovered was his godfather. Then, he sat down, lifted up his front paws, and just stared at them.
[Somewhere in the Land of Fire]
Jiraiya watched the form of the Nine-Tailed Demon Fox sitting and staring blankly at it's own limbs, not even moving.
His godson had survived the attack, and saved them all. He had even slain the enigmatic seal entity. And now... now, what did he get for it? What had he lost for this victory?
He didn't know what the boy was feeling. He didn't know what he could say.
...
Maybe he did have an idea.
"'Bunta, thank you. I don't know how we would've made it through that without you," he said earnestly to the toad boss. "You're done for real, this time."
"You're bringing the sake the next two times," the summon said with a smirk, before vanishing into smoke.
He went to talk to the dazed jinchuriki about his plan. There was risk involved, but there always was.
And Konoha's jinchuriki deserved the chance.
[Somewhere in the Land of Fire]
Sakura was heading toward where she'd seen the fight finishing up, and stumbled upon her recently awakened teammate, Sasuke, leaning against a tree, breathing slowly. The cursed seal had finally retreated back to his neck, and his eyes were an ordinary black.
It was the real Sasuke.
With whom she needed to have a real discussion.
"Sasuke." The sound of her voice was even. "You." The sound of a fist hitting a face demonstrated that her temper was not. "Fucking." Her voice was no longer even as she punched Sasuke in the face again. "IDIOT!" Sakura emphasized the last word with yet another fist to the face.
He had knocked her out and kidnapped her, apparently to defect to Oto, to... fix his mistake? Her lost arm, she realized. This was infuriating on many levels.
"IDIOT!" A fist. "IDIOT!" Another. "IDIOT!" Another.
For one thing, it discounted that she might be fine without it. After all, she could still certainly punch his daylights out.
Though it helped that he didn't dodge. Or block. Or anything, really. He just stood there.
In time, his beaten, bloodied face didn't seem to have any more punchable surface, and she was starting to wonder if she should stop. They had better things to do, such as getting back from wherever the hell he'd gotten them.
"Now, let's get home," Sakura said, finished for now. "Eventually, things will turn out okay..." She was a little unsure about the last bit.
"'Okay,'" Sasuke repeated quietly. "You... you think this is all going to just be 'okay.'" He looked at the kunoichi. "Sakura, your arm's gone, forever. That medic, a spy, probably has it, or delivered it to Orochimaru. It'll just be destroyed when they realize we're not coming to Oto." So that's where it went. Wait, the Zero-Tails had mentioned that offhand, too...
He looked toward the jinchuriki next. "Naruto transformed. And that ANBU that helped him turn back before, he's dead. There's no way to change him back." That was news to Sakura. She looked back up toward her other teammate in horror.
"It's almost a joke," he said quietly. "I failed during the invasion, didn't keep things in mind, and a bunch of people are sent off to die in tunnels, but nothing happens to me.
"I failed and split our group, and you lose your arm and very nearly die, but nothing happens to me.
"I failed and didn't notice the signs about the cursed seal in time, decide to kidnap my teammate and defect to an enemy, nearly get us turned into Orochimaru's spare parts, and Naruto gets turned into a monster. Permanently. And nothing happens to me."
A sad grin showed on his face, somehow, through the wounds. "Heh. They'll probably have a Yamanaka check my memory, and I'll get 'absolved' because the seal was affecting my mind. Since I technically didn't wilfully betray my home, they'll leave me in 'good standing,' maybe with some slap on the wrist, because I'm their last Uchiha, and too important to remove from the ninja program."
Sasuke's grin vanished, but he wasn't done talking. "And back then, Itachi goes crazy, kills my family, down to the last one, and I failed, I couldn't do anything, and nothing happens to me." His voice was getting loud and hoarse. "People keep getting mutilated, mutated, and murdered because I fucked up, but I get off scott fucking free every single time. Like 'fate' thinks I'm too important or some shit."
His voice became quiet. "And maybe that thing was right! I wonder, back then, when the rest of my family was murdered, if I should've just died, too, and saved every-"
"IDIOT!" Another fist to the face. "Quit your goddamn bellyaching! You're literally whining about not having something to whine about!"
He paused a time, then had more to say. "I saw you in Konoha, and... I should've said something then. Something in apology. But I couldn't. I just, just saw that the result of my failure." He paused. "I saw you were leaving the ninja program."
Sakura raised an eyebrow, then remembered. That was why he ignored her then...?
Wait, she had decided since then that she wasn't going to leave it just now. She still had that form, actually. She took it out of her pocket.
Sasuke winced when he saw it.
Then, she brought it up to her mouth, bit down, and tore it into pieces.
He was quiet for awhile after that. Somewhere in the distance, she heard the telltale signs of the third genin in Team 7 approaching. Eventually, he spoke, in a quiet voice. "Sorry. For everything."
"You ought to be," she responded, "but that's fine." She reached down to pick him up, as he had slid down to the ground during his speech.
Their teammate was arriving, his steps shaking the ground. Sakura looked up at him and realized that this may be who he was from now on.
"Hey," he greeted them lamely.
"H-hey," she responded, equally lamely.
[Somewhere in the Land of Fire]
"I knew Sakura could be loud sometimes, but you're usually quieter, Sasuke."
The two genin just kind of stood there, looking at the jinchuriki. "Yeah, I heard you earlier. These things aren't for show," he said, indicating the fox's absurdly large ears with a claw.
"Listen, there are some things I've been told myself that might help you," the transformed blond said to Sasuke.
Great. Now he was going to get lectured by a giant fox.
"You've made a mistake; that's clear. And maybe things would've turned out better if you hadn't."
Sasuke knew that. "And if I hadn't, Sakura would have both arms, you'd still be a human being, and we wouldn't be out in the mi-"
"Quiet, I'm not done," the jinchuriki said. "Basically, you can spend all your time wondering about what you might've done instead, but there's only so much you can do with that.
"Think about what you can do instead next time, think about what you can do to fix it, think about what you can do to honor those you can't help," he said. "T-Tenzo-sensei could've said it better, but..." He trailed off.
"It's... was it really worth it for you, though...?" Sasuke asked, trying to meet the jinchuriki in the eyes.
"Even if this is p-permanent, I..." He paused a moment. "I think I wouldn't regret what I did. Knowing what I know now, I think I'd make the same choice to come here. To save you two."
His expression then brightened up. "Besides, I'm going with Jiraiya-sama," he said finally. "There's one more thing to try before we g-give up on turning me back." He caught the subtle quiver in the fox's voice.
"And here I thought you weren't a therapist," said another voice from on top of his teammate.
Jiraiya, who Sasuke suddenly noticed had been on top of his teammate for the entire conversation, jumped down and used a summoning jutsu. With a puff of smoke, and a red toad around the size of Gamabunta appeared with a two-pronged spear and a shield.
"Gamaken-san, these two need a ride back to Konoha," requested Jiraiya.
"I will do so, though I am quite clumsy," the toad said amicably. "And quite lost," he added, looking around. "Where are we?"
Sasuke remembered that they were off in the middle of nowhere. "I don't know," he said. "I was stuffed in a barrel for the whole trip."
"I was unconscious," Sakura admitted.
"Well, luckily for you, I, Jiraiya the Gallant, have kept track of the path Naruto and I took, so that we could get on to our destination afterwards," boasted the Sannin with a pose. He produced a scroll and threw it down, where Sakura caught it.
Bringing it to her teeth, she opened the end and then let it unroll with gravity. It looked like a bent line with blue and red dots on the ends. "Something else I learned to do from some old sealing writings. It's a tracking seal, sort of. Based on some of the same principles, anyway. It tracks where you are, the red dot, in relation to where you've been. The blue dot is Konoha."
Sasuke seemed to realize something. "Jiraiya-sama," he said suddenly. "I was marked with a cursed seal by Orochimaru about a month ago. Recently, I think the counterseal around it was tampered with."
Jiraiya made a face. "That bastard's still up to his crappy sealing, is he..."
[Somewhere in the Land of Fire]
He wasn't sure why he suddenly felt confidence to try and talk with Sasuke there. Maybe he just needed something to take his mind off... his body. Waiting for that seal to be done, he didn't have much else to do. Sakura didn't seem to have much to say at the moment.
Then, he heard something somewhere. A voice, very quiet.
"Shinnou... sensei..." Was... was that really Amaru? He smelled the air, and noticed her scent was still around. It'd just kind of faded into the back of his mind because of what else had been going on at the time.
He walked carefully around until he found her, lying on the ground. She looked... shrivelled. As if she'd aged very, very quickly, without growing up in the process.
"Sensei..." she said, looking at him with barely-awake eyes. She... seemed to have trouble with recognition. A lot of trouble.
What had happened to her? What would happen to her now?
Well, out here, she's probably just dehydrate and die, or get eaten by a scavenger. She was... arguably the cause of all this, or a lot of it, at least, but the Zero-Tails had a lot of blame. And some Oto ninja, which was apparently what those Eighth Note ninja were back in the invasion. He was really beginning to hate Oto.
Oh. And he was at fault, too, for killing Shinnou.
But the girl, she hadn't really been a menace before.
He reached over to her, as carefully as possible, keeping the sharp claw itself away from her. When it was close, she grabbed onto the fox's finger tightly.
"Scared..."
Well, damn. What was he going to do with her, anyway?
[Somewhere in the Land of Fire]
Once Sasuke's counterseal had been restored, with reportedly much less pain than when Kakashi had originally created it, the two relatively normal genin of Team 7 were sent off with the "clumsy" Gamaken, who had been dismissed and resummoned due to the time needed for the evil sealing method. The toad was actually a fairly rapid and comfortable mode of transportation, it turned out, so they didn't have to spend much of their energy staying on him. Instead, they made more conversation.
"Sure you're okay?" asked Sasuke. More of the same conversation over and over.
"Yes, Sasuke," she said irately. "For the last time, I'm sure I'm okay." As okay as she could be after being constricted an amorphous sand snake thing, anyway, but nothing more had broken due to it, anyway. "What about you?" she asked.
He gave a humorless bark of laughter, and she remembered that she had punched him in the face. A lot. "Aside from the obvious, nothing. That thing fixed my body somehow when it possessed me, sort of like it did to Amaru."
She was reminded again of their withered third passenger. She had done nothing but lie around, call them "Shinnou-sensei", and latch onto someone whenever they were close. This apparently included their transformed, mountain-sized teammate.
She had a bit of medical knowledge. She'd hoped to put it to use in her work, but that hadn't panned out so far. She didn't have enough to know what was causing this, though. The typical list of symptoms for having a sharp metal object in one's brain started and stopped with "instant death", so the intervention of the seal monster thing had taken them into unknown territory.
"She was looking for revenge," Sasuke suddenly said, a faraway look in his eyes as he regarded the girl. 'And so was I' was left unsaid. "And she ended up like this..."
He waited a bit. "Without a scratch..." he said, alluding to his own condition, aside from his face. But he also put a hand to his forehead, where the metal forehead protector rested. She remembered what had been apparently happening before they were interrupted by the Zero-Tails.
They were silent again, watching the trees of the Land of Fire go by, until Sasuke interrupted it again.
At least it wasn't the same question this time. "There's something I have to do, when we get back," he said. "Besides turn myself in, I mean. Probably before that, though it'll probably only be so long before we're brought in for questioning as to why we were gone." He considered a moment. "I might have to leave some of this to you, if I'm not available. Sakura, do you know a good blacksmith and a good tailor that can work quickly?"
Sakura was taken aback a moment, but she had some ideas. "Er, Tenten's dad is a blacksmith. For a tailor..."
[Ruins of Uzushio]
Swimming through seawater was still not something he enjoyed, but at least he didn't have to be completely submerged this time.
Still, when they arrived at the island formerly known as the Land of Whirlpools, he shook vigorously, sending salt water everywhere.
"Hey, watch it!" Including at Jiraiya.
But, they were here with a purpose.
As they man had explained on the way here, the original seal could be expanded, if undamaged. As he was right now, it wasn't accessible, without a lot of fruitless carving against a rapidly regenerating body.
But, the seals that Jiraiya had added, while they weren't going to be kept for the long term, could have a short-term purpose. One of the functions they had was to act as surplus capacity for the original seal, helping replace some of what was lost, which had sent the original seal over the edge and caused him to transform constantly.
The idea, then, was to do what he had done once when he tried to revert himself. But, at the point where the chakra stopped fitting in the original seal, he'd switch to drawing it into the supplementary seal, which due to the arrangement of the combined arrays, had to be filled second. Conceptually, it seemed sound.
Unfortunately, the supplementary seal was designed to take chakra in from the original seal, not from the outside. It wasn't specifically incapable of doing so, but doing so may not work. If it didn't, it could crack, losing the supplementary seal, and getting him stuck transformed, unless he was willing to risk damage to the base seal. At worst, that meant the attempt would be neutral in effect.
The real issue was twofold: First, he had to be very careful when doing so, channelling the chakra specifically into the supplementary seal and not the base seal, at the point that the latter was full, or else the risk damaging the base seal and the unknown parameters therein.
Second, he didn't have time to practice doing so, because the supplementary seal based on foreign chakra intake wasn't taking in foreign chakra while he was transformed like this, so it'd get worse over time. So, he had to do a tricky maneuver with the fox's chakra without practice.
But, if it worked, they'd be next to the chamber Jiraiya had found, and he could quickly be brought in, the base seal expanded, any chance of the fox's influence shut out, his access to the form preserved, his normal chakra available, and then they'd be on their merry way. He'd probably have to transform to get them back to the mainland, but that shouldn't be a problem then.
"This is it," reported the Sannin. It didn't look like much. One broken down building whose door lead to steps underground. Of course, the rest of Uzushio didn't look like much, either. There was a reason what remained was considered "ruins".
"Well, whenever you're ready, Naruto."
It began. He started withdrawing the fox's chakra, as he had done what now seemed long ago. After a moment's searching, he found where the seal itself lie in the fox's head, along with his real body. A bit of feeling also found the supplementary seal around it.
He started channelling the chakra into the main seal, starting the easier part. The fox's body began to shrink. After being in it and conscious an extended period of time, it often seemed like, as the fox, he was in a different world. A smaller one, not really designed for him. With this, it seemed slowly like he was returning to the familiar world he had grown up in.
About... a third of the way through, the inner seal became harder to focus chakra into. Here came the hard part.
He found the supplementary seal again, and began channelling the chakra into it, instead. Slowly. Very, very slowly. His nerves were on edge. It was... shaky. He felt the chakra trembling slightly, and grew more nervous, and it began to tremble more.
Stop. He stopped adding more, just waited partially-reverted for a moment, trying to calm down.
"It's going to be okay, Naruto," Jiraiya said, apparently noticing his distress. "Just stay calm."
In time, he chanced it again, and slowly began to draw into the supplementary seal again.
A long time later, he was almost there, just a cloak of transparent chakra around him.
Then he heard a soft hiss.
He felt again, and... a small "hole" of some form had formed in the supplementary seal. Ruining his efforts. Ending his chance.
Jiraiya's face paled at the sound. "Naruto, I-I'm sorry, but-"
"No," he hissed. He just had to revert one time. Just. One. Time. In order to get the finalized seal.
He kept pushing chakra into the supplementary seal. It was a small leak; he could put it in faster than it escaped. He pulled it back from the delaying seals, pulling back through the "hole" as well.
Another hiss. Another "hole", slightly larger. He clamped down on it, too. He began to grow scared.
Another hiss, somewhat louder. He tried to, but couldn't focus on the first any more. The chakra began to leak out faster than it went in. He began to panic.
"No!" he said louder. He wouldn't let it happen. He had to revert enough to reach the seal, and hold it long enough.
So he overreached.
"Naruto, stop!"
And tried to force some of it into the base seal.
It was difficult, but he managed to start putting it back in. But more was still leaking from the outer seal, which had to go somewhere. So more went into the base seal, with more effort. And still more leaked out from somewhere. He scrambled, tried to find it, to stop it.
"Please stop!"
The outer seal, he tried to push more into it, but it didn't hold anything. He tried to push chakra into the base seal, but it was shivering violently, and it could barely be put in. The hissing was at it's full volume, and he was growing again. The chakra was enveloping him.
"Don't do this!"
And his godfather was shouting for him to stop.
...
So he did.
He let the chakra flow out, and he was fully transformed.
He sensed something. Fear. He looked over, and Jiraiya-sama was shivering in fear, his hands together for a sign.
They both stared for a long moment.
Jiraiya broke the silence first. "N-Naruto?"
"I a-almost had it," he said. "I-I was almost h-human again."
