Sorry this took a while for me to update, but I wont be nearly as long with the next update!!
Enjoy!!!
And now for today's chapter....
"N....no..."
Mamushi stared down in horror.
In a split second, she had killed her best friend.
She had been so busy in her own thoughts about the time and Naruto's strange behaviour...that she had totally missed the familiar sound of a small projectile flying through the air.
Right over her shoulder.
And down into the twitching abdomen of her fallen comrade.
Hisashi vanished in a puff of smoke, having also being pierced by one of the multiple kunai thrown down from above.
To Mamushi's horror, that one kunai that got past her defences, had split into 5, jutting out at horrid angels from Koneko's abdomen.
Blood was pooling from the wound, slickening Mamushi's panicking fingers, as she desperately laid her friend down, and applied pressure around the wound.
"NOOOOOOOOOO!" Mamushi screamed, her blood slick fingers slipping against her Koneko's neck, as she desperately tried to find a pulse. "KONEKO!" She activated her Sharingan...only to see chakra dimming in the body before her. Like the light of a candle slowly dimming into darkness. "No-no-no-no-no-no God damn it! You are NOT allowed to die!"
There so much damage, ruptured arteries, torn muscles, and very probably damage to her vital organs too. But with all that dark red blood, as she saw was chaos. The one thing she knew, was that if she took out the splintered kunai, she would die immediately. "I, I'm n not a m medic-nin! I I don't know what to do!" Her hands shook above the weeping wound, subconsciously wondering why the hell Koneko hadn't even woken up from her injury. She looked dead already... This is all my fault! I should have heard that kunai coming. I should have been concentrating harder. I should have-
"Alright, a direct hit!" Mamushi's head snapped up, eyes wide, lips parted, Sharingan still whirling.
There was a man before her, wearing a large bamboo hat and a reed robe. It was one of the men that had accompanied her father into the forest.
One of her father's men.
Otousan...
"What are you staring at? I missed you, didn't I? Now be a good runt and hand over your scrolls. The last thing Orochimaru-sama needs is you messing things up with your presence." He walked towards her, but stopped after taking only a few steps. She was frozen stiff, but something was happening. Her face, her arms, her eyes, her entire body remained stiff, and yet the skin around her eyes was...rippling?
Purple scales blossomed around her eyes, spreading like a ripple all over her perfect pale skin.
Until you could no longer see her angelic form, but the form of a reptilian hybrid. A girl, with snake's skin, and gigantic red Sharingan eyes.
"You...why...why..." Her voice wavered, her eyes wide and her hands shaking as she continued to apply pressure to Koneko's wound. "Why would you..."
"You mean, why'd I kill her?" He lazily pointed at the cold body of her beloved friend, like she was nothing. "To get you out the way."
"So...to reiterate..." Mamushi cocked her head to one side eerily, fangs protruding from her dark lips, her voice becoming more and more sibilant as her rage bubbled within her. And from the insane look in her eyes, that rage was about to burst the dam. "...you only did this...because of me? This is because of me?"
"Hai." He smirked at her, seemingly not intimidated by her transformation, or her murderous glare. "And you can't do anything about it, because if you take your hands off that wound, you'll kill her." He chuckled darkly, pulling another of those nasty splitting kunai from beneath his robes. He poised himself ready to either finish the job on Koneko, or silence Mamushi once and for all.
"SSSSSSSSSssssssssssssssssssssssssss"
A gush of hot air ruffled the hair at the nape of his neck, the smell of rotting flesh rising to his nostrils.
He froze, his breath caught in his chest, as he slowly turned to face the source of the sudden noise. Only to wish he hadn't.
"Who said I had to move my hands to kill you?" Mamushi whispered softly, her eyes whirling for several seconds, until they froze in place, and the lights went out.
The Otogakure operative screamed, seeing his entire world phase into red and black shadows. He tried to throw his weapon, to see it was gone. He searched his robes desperately, to find he had been totally disarmed!
He tried to run, but the dark floor seemed to come to life, and coiled like tendrils around his ankles, holding him in place. The skin where the living darkness held him started to burned at his skin, and spikes erupted through the tendrils, blood pouring from his wounds. The smell of his own cooking flesh tickled his flared nostrils, and his lungs burned only from the constant screaming that left his mouth.
His eyes were fixed on the form of Mamushi, hands in the bleeding body of her friend, those whirling Sharingan eyes vibrating in their sockets.
The tips of the black tendrils burrowed suddenly into his legs, and forced their way up his body from the inside, erupting through his abdomen at different sides, only to twist on itself, and strike back through his chest, sliding though his open mouth, silencing his agonising screams. Suddenly, like a leaf changes direction in the fickle wind, the tendrils tore away from each other, tearing the Shinobi's body apart with it.
Mamushi's Sharingan eyes faded back to amber, and she focused once more on the mutilated body of her father's henchmen, still unused to carrying out her vengeance, in only a second.
Blood had actually sprayed across her face from the body being torn apart, but that didn't concern her now.
"Koneko-chan...you...you're fading..." Her hands were still slick with blood, and despite her best efforts, the blood just kept pooling outside of her best friend's body. "I don't know what to do!" Mamushi screamed out, crying heavily as she watched her friend die. If only she had paid more attention when Kabuto had tried to teach her medical Ninjutsu. Wait... "The flute!!"
She quickly elongated her tongue from her mouth, into her back pocket, and pulled the silver flute into her mouth which Kabuto gave her to use in an emergency. She filled her lungs and blew, hard, until she had to gasp for air, and the flute fell from her mouth and to her lap. "KABUTO!!!!" Mamushi screamed, whipping her head from side to side, desperately looking for her old sensei. "KABUTO!!! I NEED YOU!!"
Thud
She heard someone land behind her, and she knew she couldn't turn round without removing vital pressure from Koneko's wound.
"K...Kabuto...?"
There was a few seconds of silence. Was it Kauto? Or someone else?
"Mamushi!"
Kabuto skidded on his knees over to her, having seen a pool of blood by knelt feet, and scanned over the situation quickly. "This is bad."
"I know it's bad!!!" Mamushi screamed, getting his instant and full attention. "I know the flute was for me, but I swear to any god deity spirit or demon if you don't fix her I will bleed you dry!" Her skin was still covered in her purple scale armour, showing she was losing control of herself. "Do it now!"
"You know I can't! You calling me like this alone could get us both killed!"
"But he won't kill you now." Mamushi snarled at him, and the sounds of hissing could also be heard from the trees around them.
Kabuto briefly looked over to the bloody masses and entrails around the floor, then the arterial spray across her scale face.
"It seems, it isn't safe for me to say no. Since you've already tasted blood and death today." Kabuto looked again to her wound and started to do hand signs with a furious pace. "I will try. But it may already be too late."
"Then use your forbidden Jutsus." He shot her a look, not expecting that at all. "If you have to." He pressed his hands onto the wound, chakra pouring through his hands and to her body.
"This is strange." He hissed, seemingly in pain. "There is already another chakra presence here."
"Is it part of the attack?"
"No, there is too much. There...is a lot of foreign chakra here."
"Just fix her!" She snarled, especially when Kabuto pushed her hands out of the way. "Kabuto!"
"I need to be in here." He spat, furiously moving his hands round, stimulating chakra points to mend themselves and tissues around them. "The other chakra-it might be the key to this."
"What?"
"Need to concentrate-shut up." Kabuto hissed, his hands seemingly burning in her body. Steam rose up from his shaking hands, but he didn't stop. "Its trapped...if I can release some...fuck!"
Kabuto jumped back suddenly and Mamushi clawed forward and grabbed him, about to lash out at him, when something caught her eye.
Koneko was sat up, her stomach flawless. There wasn't one break in the skin, no scar, no blood...other than the blood still on the floor round them. There was a lot of blood there.
"...Mamushi...?"
"Koneko chan?!" Mamushi threw herself to her knees in front of her, and started checking her vitals. Kabuto cradled his burnt hands to his chest, waiting for his dead cell regeneration technique to finish its work. It was strange though, he thought. That chakra store she had within her was so corrosive, it killed his chakra as soon as he tried to push it into her to heal her. But he managed to barely stimulate one, what appeared to be, a foreign dead chakra pathway...and the flesh didn't just regenerate, but reanimate the dead tissue as well.
"What happened...my head hurts..."
"Your head?!? Your frigging HEAD?!" Mamushi just laughed, crying shaking, her skin rippling back to its normal alabaster colour. "Your head hurts, my god. Koneko, you almost..."
Koneko rubbed the back of her head, which she cocked to the side inquisitively. "...don't you remember anything?"
"Erm...Naruto!" Koneko jumped up to her feet, looking wildly around her. "I-is he here?!"
"No, dobe." Mamushi got up to her feet, and went to hug her friend, when Koneko ran over to her and grabbed her arms.
"Oh my god are you ok?!?!" Mamushi just blinked at her.
"What?"
"You're covered in blood!!"
"Oh." Mamushi smiled softly. "It's not mine."
"Oh." Koneko shuddered. "Good. Erm, who's is it?" It was then she stepped to the side, and felt something wet squelch under her boot. She and Mamushi looked down together, and Koneko's hair bristled, her eye grew white and she sweat dropped. She shakily brought her boot back up and stepped back, slowly. "W-w-w-was that once a person?!?"
"Yes." Mamushi placed her bloody hand on Koneko's arm, which freaked her out even more. She shuddered, and looked back to the bloody entrails all over the place.
"Can I ask...why?"
"He attacked us. You were unconscious, so I handled it." Mamushi smiled happily, and looked over Koneko's shoulder at Kabuto, who waved at her, and vanished in a silent puff of smoke.
"Oh my god! Mamushi!!!" Koneko barked angrily. Mamushi blinked at her, not sure what she was going to say to her next, but it sounded like she was in big trouble. "You better not have use an awesome Jutsu while I was out of it!"
Mamushi giggled, loving that Koneko seemed to be her old self again.
"It wasn't anything interesting. In fact, I didn't even lift a finger." Mamushi giggled behind her bloodied hand, and pointed forward. "The tower is just over there. And..." She started kicking at bloody piles of flesh (whilst Koneko finally lost her resolve, and vomited against a tree) until she found something. "Ta daa." Mamushi giggled at Koneko's weak stomach. "3 Earth scrolls." She held up three bloody scrolls, all still intact, from a pile of red goo.
"Cool." She gagged, leaning against the tree for support, using one hand to give Mamushi the thumbs up. "I think our heaven scroll and 3 earth scrolls will do the trick." She looked up, and saw Mamushi pulling the scrolls into very familiar waterproof bags... Koneko Ran forward and smacked her strange friend over the head. "Dont-even-think-about-it! In fact!" Koneko took them, resisting the need to barf at the feel of the slick, still warm, bloody scrolls in her hands. "I'll carry them. We're almost there anyway..."
It was only a 5 minute guarded walk before they entered the tower. Iruka was smiling as he waited for them to catch up to them.
But the sight of Koneko with half her costume missing, and Mamushi covered from head to toe in blood, with no visible injuries of her own...made the bile rise to the back of his throat in thought...
"Congratulations ladies." Iruka steeled his face to smiled at them both. Koneko, as always, had her arms crossed, one eye half closed, looking half bored and half pissed off. While Mamushi was smiling with pure joy.
Which meant she basically looked like the grudge with all that blood...
"It was easy, right?"
"Oh yes. Hardly any effort was required at all." Mamushi looked to Koneko, who nodded with pride.
"See you're getting there. You'll be making smart ass come backs like a whip in no time." Koneko patted Mamushi's head, and shuddered and blood dribbled off her fingers as she brought them back. "But maybe first, a shower."
"And a wardrobe change." Mamushi eyed her friend up, missing a substantial portion of her body and chest armour...and leather...
She might as well be wearing a leather bra and skirt with the way she looked.
"Don't you be dissing me and my attire when you look like something that crawled out of certificate 18R horror movie." Koneko chuckled, when Mamushi seemed to take that as a compliment. "And your sticky!"
"That's not my fault!"
"Ladies!!!" Iruka yelled, unable to take their eerie chit chat any longer. "Scrolls please." Iruka held his hand out, and became fixated as Mamushi's throat seemed to be gagging, in the reverse direction. Her jaw dislocated, and she slid her bloody hand into her mouth. With a spluttering cough, she withdrew the wet plastic bag containing their original heaven scroll, and plopped it onto Iruka's awaiting hands. He actually gagged, but managed to keep it down.
He then turned to Koneko, who quite normally handed him three scrolls. It was only when he feel warm slime on his hands did he look down.
To see they were soaked in blood. "You have major issues. You need help."
"I'll keep that in mind Skippy. So, can we go?"
"...hai...that way..." Iruka pointed to the door to his left, and looked to his hands, horrified and mesmerised at the same time.
Koneko winked at him, and looked to Mamushi. "Bloody ladies first?"
"Hai, arigato, Koneko-chan." The two girls plodded off through the open door, without a care in the world, holding hands between them and giggling. This left Iruka to look at the 4 scrolls covered in saliva and blood, and shudder to himself.
"It isn't right, it isn't right...."