Disclaimer: Naruto is not mine, and neither is Final Fantasy. I just own my personal copies of the manga/games :)

Dance of the Pyreflyes, Chapter 36: The pursuit

by Chronodt

The Sound Four gathered together in their hiding hole, waiting for the contact arranged by their spies in Konoha. They were joined, instead, by a nondescript ninja with a sound forehead protector, obviously fake, since Orochimaru-sama assigned the mission only to their elite group. They didn't attack, however, because the man made the agreed-on hand sign as soon as he was in their eye-sight.

"Why are you wearing that symbol?" said Sakon, more than slightly irritated.

"My Master gave orders to my squad to assist in your mission in exchange of our lives, but we cannot be traced back to Konoha in any way." he said, completely emotionless. "We are to deliver Uchiha Sasuke and these documents to you, as proof of its intentions, together with a missive to your Kage, Orochimaru." He gestured to his side, where the sedated body of the chunin was bound with ninja wire and seals.

Sakon and the others were still unconvinced. "What do you gain from all this?" he asked, suspicious.

"Uchiha Sasuke is a thorn in our Master's plans, but he cannot directly be disposed, because he is too protected in this village." said the fake sound ninja. "Letting you get him is an... acceptable alternative."

"So you are just using us, eh?" said Kidomaru, looking at the others. Sakon was busy checking the documents but was still paying attention.

"That is the nature of ninja" said the fake sound-nin, as if speaking by rote, again without any emotion. He was eerily reminiscent of a puppet.

"The documents are authentic." said Sakon.

"The Uchiha is the true one, as well." said Jirobo, examining the unconscious youth.

"He has been dosed with a powerful sedative, he will remain unconscious for ten hours." said the fake sound ninja. "Our mission now consist in buying you time to leave the Fire Country. In the documents in your hands are the most likely members of the only rescue mission that could be spared at this point to recover the Uchiha due to Master's sabotage in the village. Three of our members will accompany you for two hours, then split up to create a false trail. You will not see any of us again after that."

The Sound Four nodded. Suicide mission were not unknown in Otogakure, even if they were very rare. However, thanks to their contact, they now had a few different safe paths to choose from, and Sakon selected the one most dissimilar to their entry route. It would lengthen their return to Rice country by a few hours, but it would be much safer than their previous choice. Even guarding their backs against those three agents would not be a problem, as long as nobody let their guard down.

Jirobo unsealed the barrel they planned to use to enhance the Uchiha's seal to hide the boy inside. Even if spotted by patrols, unless they knew of the abduction, a carried barrel would be much less suspicious than a carried body. A pity they could not use it for its original purpose: without his willingness to be a part of Otogakure they wouldn't dare to give him the stabilizing medicine, because the mind-control aspects of the cursed seals were enhanced only if he took it of his own free will. Orochimaru-sama once at the village would surely convince the boy, sooner or later.

Lifting the now closed barrel, the Sound Four left their hiding place and followed the selected escape route. The fake sound ninja simply followed them, joined by two others who kept themselves just outside hearing range and all of them silently slipped out of Konoha.

The Hokage listened with attention to Anko's report, while the ANBU came and went bringing in reports from all over Konoha. All of the famous tracker clans were mostly incapacitated and unable to offer more than minimal help, as well as the ANBU, because they were needed to secure the village itself. All messenger birds were also sick. They would recover, but unfortunately not in time to inform the border patrols to change their routes to intercept the Sound Four. As Ibiki and Kakashi entered the room, the aged leader had a basic idea about the basic composition of a rescue party to send after the kidnappers.

"Kakashi, Take Uzumaki Naruto, Haruno Sakura and Hyuga Neiji and wait at the gate. Your main mission and top priority will be to find and recover Sasuke. Anko, you take Nara Shikamaru and two other chunin or genin who can work well with both of you, and you'll be the support squad. Your main mission will be to assist Kakashi's squad, but you'll have an additional secondary objective to capture at least one of the kidnappers alive. You'll leave within 20 minutes. I will have a backup team behind you, but not before at least 8 hours, possibly an all-jonin team if I can put it together without compromising the village security."

"Yes, Hokage-sama!" said Anko and Kakashi together, and they left with a shunshin to gather their teams.

"Ibiki, I want those traitors from you, and I want them as soon as possible. And give those sealed bodies to Tsunade, I want to know exactly who they were."

The scarred Head of the Torture and Interrogation department nodded and left toward the hospital and from there to his office to gather his own squad.

The Hokage looked at the papers crowding his desk, thinking that it would have been nice to be already back in his retirement at that very moment...

Shikamaru groggily left his house, after receiving several death threats from the crazy special jonin. A short briefing about the situation, and he said: "I want Chouji in the squad. He is the one I work best with. Ino would have been ideal for a capture squad, but she is still too weak against those kind of opponent."

Anko nodded. Even if that boy was only an average genin, based on her observations during the exams, Shikamaru's familiarity with his fighting style would provide an helpful synergy and he was painfully right about the girl. Her family jutsu would have been very helpful, but they could not cover her ass all the time in the mission. "With you and me as short/medium range fighters and with the Akimichi boy as front line meat wall, we need long range support." said Anko, saying her thoughts aloud.

"The other team already provides tracking abilities with Kakashi's dogs and Neiji's byakugan." said Shikamaru, analyzing the current situation. "Shino and Kiba are probably disabled by the distraction, if they even are in the village, and their clans may need them to clean up the mess. Considering Kakashi's team is also lacking long range support, I'd say to recruit Tenten for the mission, thus allowing us to eventually pair her up with Neiji should the need arise to split ourselves up."

Anko nodded. "I approve. I'll go get the girl, you drag here the Akimichi. We'll leave in 10 minutes."

Shikamaru nodded, and left.

Kakashi observed the six children gathered before him and checked their equipment. Anko was busy requisitioning a few things useful for their mission but be there soon.

"My squad's mission is to recover Sasuke." stated Kakashi, while he waited for both teams to put back their equipment. "Everything else is secondary, including killing or capturing the Sound ninja. Once Sasuke is in our hands, Anko's team will delay eventual re-capture squads while mine will hurry back, using Neiji's byakugan to ensure we won't fall into traps or ambushes on the way. Anko's team mission consists in assisting my squad in the retrieval of Sasuke. They will delay or disable enemies in our way and if they can they will perform the secondary objective, namely capture at least one of the kidnapper. Torture and Interrogation really wants to know how they managed to slip out of the village undetected."

The genin and chunin nodded. Anko arrived in a cloud of smoke and distributed filled storage scrolls. "These contain chakra restraining devices, use them on downed opponents and they will be as tame as kittens afterward, as long as you keep them under surveillance, naturally. They need periodic chakra infusion, a little bit every hour to work at peak efficiency. Our main target is this one." she showed a picture of Sakon. "His name is Sakon. He demonstrated to be in a leadership role, if not the leader of the team itself. He is somehow able to manifest extra arms from anywhere in his body, but the head behind his shoulders make us think he is actually two people fused together in some unknown way." She then showed Kidomaru's picture. "He is Kidomaru, he can secrete some kind of webbing from his mouth that resists even chakra-enhanced blades and as you can see he has six arms. Not much else is known." passing to the next picture, she said. "This one is Jirobo. He is the physically stronger member of the Sound Four, and ANBU reports indicate he is often rebuking the last member of their team for her foul language, but otherwise he doesn't seem to speak up often. The last member is this girl." she showed up her picture. "Her name is Tayuya, she has been seen with a metal flute, so she probably is a genjutsu specialist using music as her vector. She has a true potty mouth that is really fun to listen to and when rebuked by Jirobo she often reacts violently. This is the known opposition, but there may be other sound squads out there, so keep your eyes sharp and don't get butchered!"

Kakashi jumped on the first tree and the others followed. Pakkun, the ninja dog summoned by Kakashi, immediately told them as soon as he found the trail that there were seven smells plus Sasuke's, so there were at least three unknown ninja in the enemy party. While they were traveling, Kakashi updated them on the main strategy and the finer points of pursuit missions, until Pakkun suddenly stopped, a couple hours in the pursuit.

"The smell splits up, Kakashi." said the small dog. "Four smells and Sasuke's go left and three others as well as Sasuke's again go right. In both cases, Sasuke's smell is slightly obscured and I cannot tell the true one."

"Damn!" said Anko, trying to gauge the prints to determine whose tracks belonged to the group who had their target. They were very similar, including the fact that a few of them were clearly heavier and larger, just as Jirobo was. Naruto tried to think if some of his exclusive jutsu could be of any help, but there was no chakra residue (and as such no pyreflyes) to Scan, and none of his summons could track.

After five minutes, Kakashi lifted his forehead protector and examined the area with his sharingan eye and identified the correct track, after noticing small details about the fake trail. He didn't bother telling anyone what he found wrong about the other one but simply pointed to the right path and darted off, in the direction where there were only three smells plus Sasuke's.

"They are about three hours ahead, if they maintain the pace shown in these tracks." said Pakkun, checking the freshness of the trail, "But if they actually know how to slip behind the patrols they may stay ahead of us longer than expected."

"Can we still catch them before they reach the border?" asked Sakura, worried about Sasuke's safety if they could not intercept them before they crossed the border.

"Yes, but barely." was Pakkun's answer.

Naruto contemplated his options, and then he spoke up: "Kakashi-sensei, if I had an extra tracking dog I could send a clone riding Ixion to intercept and delay them. Ixion is a few times faster than our current pace even in this terrain."

Anko spoke up, asking: "Will this reduce your effectiveness?"

Naruto replied: "Only in my ability to summon Guardians until he dispels himself, or for about 2 hours, whatever comes first."

"It's acceptable." said Anko, leaving the final decision to the leader of the mission.

"Do it, but don't let them see you." said Kakashi, "Put traps on their path and try to herd them toward the Valley of the End. It's the longest way from their probable path to Rice country that is still inside our borders, and if your clone confirms their altered path we can cut up to one hour from the chase."

Naruto then observed his team leader summon another nin-dog. He was light brown, with … sunglasses? Damn, Kakashi-sensei summoned a Shino look-alike in dog form! Its name even sounded similar, because he was named Akino! He created the Summoning Glaive and summoned Ixion, to the bewilderment of many of his peers, who only saw Carbuncle before.

Creating a shadow clone to mount the lightning horse, they shot away as soon as the nin-dog jumped on the Guardian, almost leaving a trail of lightning sparks behind. To communicate with the main body, the clone had also been supplied with a small vial of blood to summon a toad and send them vital information.

Danzo examined the reports his Root sent him with a relieved smile. His plan had been executed perfectly, two of the compromised operatives had been killed and the other three would die delaying the two pursuing squads if the fake trails didn't buy them enough time. With their death, there was no way Itachi would ever know of his involvement in this matter. The only ones to even suspect anything would be Orochimaru, but he had his own reason to fear the rogue Uchiha and was not aware of the true situation between Itachi and Konoha, because only five people knew anything about it: himself, Itachi, the Hokage and his two old teammates, Homura and Koharu. He was aware that Itachi could have told someone as insurance against his sudden death, but it was very unlikely for that someone to be the rogue Snake.

Looking at the village, he was actually troubled by the amount of chaos his plan required to pull off successfully. He would need to keep his head low for a while and let the inevitable investigation die off before he could resume his plan. In the meantime, he would plan and consolidate his position in the Council and before the daimyo.

Kidomaru and Tayuya jumped on the next tree, while the two false Sound ninja remained behind, to try to intercept and ambush the pursuing party. Apparently their enemies chose the right trail, either by accident or by skill, so their deception was useless now. Dropping the fake barrel which had been filled with a few rocks and a couple of the Uchiha's old clothes, they consulted their map and chose the shortest pest-free interception route to catch up with Sakon and Jirobo. Knowing all patrol routes and the planned path of the other group would allow them to rapidly rejoin with their teammates with no problems.

Naruto, or at least his clone, and Ixion traveled fast even in the luscious forests of Fire country. Ixion used his own powers to pass in this rough terrain leaving almost no tracks, something the clone wished he could do himself. Akino, the Shino's look-alike kept them on the right track, even looking cool while doing it. Again, the clone wished he could imitate that, but he didn't think that 'Shino's style' sunglasses and aloofness suited his personality.

After an hour they found numerous traps, that Ixion nimbly sidestepped, while disabling as many as they could without slowing down.

The clone said: "They stepped up the trap production from here on, they were probably right in this spot when we stumbled upon the splitting path and chose this one."

The dog nodded, saying: "It's very likely. They smelled... annoyed, or at least two of them did."

"I have no idea how they knew about it, though." murmured the clone.

-A summon spy, Naruto-sama?- suggested Ixion and the clone agreed. A very small summon, especially of a class of creatures common in a forest, would be impossible to notice. They naturally could have chosen dozen of other explanations, but that would have been the easiest method.

"Let's go, they are still a good way ahead of us." said the dog, jumping back on Ixion and they resumed the chase with greater caution.

The rescue teams ran for 2 hours, until Pakkun shouted: "Two ahead of us, two of the decoy squad who went the other way are now right ahead!"

Anko growled and said: "They are surely trying to delay us. Two of those sound ninja fought to the death when they kidnapped the brat and unless they are two of the Sound Four, which I doubt, I'm pretty sure these idiots will do the same. Don't underestimate them, the two I killed were easily low jonin level."

"So will we be forced to kill them? What a drag..." said Shikamaru, managing to convey boredom and tiredness even while traveling at a good cruising speed among the trees.

Kakashi eye-smiled a bit at that (while Sakura shuddered a bit seeing that particular expression) and said: "It's good that you feel so much enthusiasm about it, because it is your team's job to take care of them."

Tenten glared a bit at Shikamaru, but then she realized that if they did a quick job, they would be able to catch up easily after dispatching the delay squad and additionally she could finally go all out after a couple months of ultra-boring d-rank missions!

"Ok, brats!" Anko called up to her squad. "Weapons Girl and I will flush up those two losers with snakes and kunai. Lazy, your job is to stop them and Big Boy will finish the job. Don't freeze up, those guys are serious about killing us and will probably fight until they have breath, so our job is to make them stop from wasting more of our precious air. Do you understand, maggots?"

Three slightly disturbed confirmations later, Anko nodded.

Sakura, in the meantime, started to wonder how could her Sasuke-kun actually want to be the apprentice of such a disturbed kunoichi...

"There is one enemy ahead, coming our way at top speed!" said Akino, smelling the air. Ixion immediately jumped to the side, leaving the projected path of the enemy ninja, following Kakashi's orders to not be seen. The clone immediately dropped on the ground and started writing a concealment seal to hide themselves and waited. A sound ninja, covered head to toe in black darted in the direction they came from, in the direction Boss was.

-We must inform the others, Naruto-sama.- Ixion commented, and the clone again agreed. He summoned a toad using the blood in the vial and gave Gamakichi a candy and a small message.

The first ROOT operative waiting for the arrival of the rescue squad looked at the second. They had long forgotten their own names after the long and hard training they had been subjected to. They were aware that the next step of their mission would cost them their lives, but they were trained to total obedience since a very young age and neither had the slightest hesitation to fulfill those orders.

The enemy was surely aware of their presence and of the ambush, because the mission leader was Hatake Kakashi, an elite jonin and he possessed a few ninja dogs that the sabotage mission operatives could not reach and neutralize. He was the main threat and the two operatives were ready to sacrifice themselves to kill him. In their hands was a secret Iwa stimulant, stolen from a missing nin, that would temporarily enhance their speed, strength and endurance in exchange of a monstrous chakra consumption rate, that would lead to their death within 10 minutes. The drug was called 'last flash' in the black market and was in development in the last war as a last resort to try to counteract the Yellow Flash's ultimate combo. Unfortunately, it didn't work as expected: the speed boost was vastly inferior to the hoped-for level, but the increased strength and stamina were considered sufficient to avoid the 'failure' label into the 'useful under very limited conditions'. Its only practical use was just before a suicide attack against a vastly superior opponent, such as Hatake Kakashi and seven other ninja of unknown strength, assumed to be chunin level or higher. To ensure the highest chances to complete their mission, the two operatives sent to delay Morino and Mitarashi weren't allowed to carry the drug, to surprise the rescue party. Their first target would be the dog, so he couldn't alert his squad of the third member of their squad, hidden in a smell-masking genjutsu just outside detection range, then they would try to reduce or remove the Copy Ninja's ability to evade, in time for the surprise attack. At that point the hidden member would come out and use his specialty, the Katon: Fire Curtain on the clearing to finish them. If Kakashi managed to slip past them, they would still try to kill as many pursuer as they could. There was no reason to follow the elite jonin and waste the 10 minutes they had left in a futile pursuit at that point, and that time would be best spent to eliminate his backup to increase their allies' chances of completing their mission. In fact, the third member of their squad ignored the unseen lone advanced scout that obviously disabled the traps to get the true rescue squad.

Swallowing the deadly stimulant, the three ROOT prepared themselves to their last battle.