Chapter 36: Ruinous Power
Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or any characters of said series. Kazeneko/Ruuko Yue is mine!
[A few weeks after Yue's escape]
Suigetsu got to the meeting spot and was surprised to find none other than Manda there, glaring down at a black and red robed individual.
"You... You smell familiar..." the great snake muttered.
"You have almost completed the task I have summoned you for, Manda, now spit up that which I forced you to swallow," the robed stranger ordered.
"You dare order me!?" the snake hissed, "I'll eat you whole, table scrap!"
Numerous black snakes emerged from the man's hooded robes, a poison mist flowing from their mouths. "Try it, this miasma will kill even the likes of you in short order," the man challenged.
The snake knew better than to take the bait. While he was the greatest of all snakes, and therefor immune to most poisons, something about that mist bothered him. He figured out why when the grass about the man's feet started to die rapidly, the ground cracking as it became infertile. "Tssss! You win this time bastard, but I'll crush you if I find you unworthy later!" Manda said, then spat up a small person, "Orochimaru's little toy... Keh! I don't give a damn, just make sure there is something for me to eat next time aside from an exploding freak show and this disgusting brat!" The snake vanished in a large plume of smoke.
"Who the hell are you?" Suigetsu demanded, holding Aka Kubikirihōchō in two hands. The damn sword was heavy, much heavier than it looked. He needed to use a bit of water to strengthen his arms just to hold it.
Karin and Jūgo arrived, the redhead clearly worried. "Sasuke!" she practically screamed as the Uchiha started waking up.
"Ahhhh. All my old toys have arrived," the man stated as they gathered up.
"Who is this?" Jūgo asked, though he felt a shiver of fear run up his spine.
Karin sensed the man's chakra and it felt like... Her eyes widened. 'It can't be!'
The man lifted his head, his bandaged face coming into view, his gold eyes glittering. "Jūgo, Suigetsu, Sasuke-kun and even Karin, I'm hurt that you forgot about me already..."
"Orochimaru?!" Sasuke gasped, unable to believe his own eyes. Hadn't he taken in the man's soul and power into himself? How...how was this possible!?
"As much as I'd like to stay and play with my future meal, I have things to do, Sasuke-kun. Now you should know that Akatsuki isn't something you go against so easily. I kept you from them for a reason: because you aren't ready yet. Had I not shown up with Manda, that brat Deidara would have killed you for sure. Even your chakra, as strong as it is and with as much as you have, has its limits," Orochimaru explained.
"You kept me from them because you couldn't risk letting your future body get ruined!" Sasuke shouted.
"Kukukuku. Well, that too. As you can see though, Sasuke-kun, you weren't the only one I had prepared," Orochimaru stated as his partially bandaged right arm came out, snakes wrapping around it, "of course, this body is merely temporary until I can get the body I desire more."
"But you have to wait three years, don't you?" Suigetsu asked.
The snake sannin grinned, the bandages around his mouth showing said expression. "That old weakness? I surpassed it when Sasuke-kun tore up my real body. To think it would just take someone nearly killing the true me to perfect my jutsu. I can trade bodies as I will and I can stay in them until they are on the verge of death, if they are strong enough. This body will serve me for a while yet, so there is little reason to view me as an enemy."
"So what is your plan now?" Karin asked.
"I no longer have any servants and I am indebted to Akatsuki, so I guess I'll follow them for the time being. Make no mistake though, I'm still interested in your sharingan, I just don't have the strength to take them at this time," Orochimaru said as he started to sink into the ground, "I'll be back for you later, Sasuke-kun."
[Uchiha hideout, a few days later]
Sasuke wasn't worried about his 'team' at all, they were just there to distract anyone who got in the way of his revenge. Besides, it didn't look like that huge guy with the wrapped sword was itching for a fight.
'Time to finally end it,' Sasuke thought as he entered the hideout, going straight to the main chamber.
On one end of the room sat a stone chair, a throne if you will, where the strongest of the clan, the clan's leader sat. Upon it sat a figure, waiting for the young man before them.
"Itachi!" Sasuke shouted.
"What have you seen with your sharingan?" the figure asked.
"Your death," Sasuke replied.
Cracks started to form on the figure, glowing red cracks. "Oh? So you want to kill him, eh?"
Sasuke's eyes widened as the figure changed form, becoming a person he knew and hated. "Kazeneko Yue... What are you doing here?" he asked as he narrowed his eyes in annoyance. Didn't she have something better to do than waste his time?
Yue stayed in the shadow, the red cracks on her body joined by a baleful glowing eye as she shifted her position to one an evil overlord might favor. "I was waiting for you, though I wasn't alone until a little while ago."
"Where's Itachi? That man back there said-" Sasuke started.
"I was bored of waiting for you and I had yet to finish something with Itachi, so I took care of him. He couldn't feel it until it was too late," Yue cut in.
"Where. Is. He?" Sasuke demanded, placing a hand to his sword.
"It doesn't matter where he is, all that matters is you will finally bow to the will of someone other than Itachi or Orochimaru, you will follow MY will!" Yue stated, standing up.
Sasuke stepped back, assuming a combat stance. "I only ever followed my own ideals and beliefs."
"Oh, really? 'Hate and kill me,' that was Itachi. 'Gain all the power you can get,' that was Orochimaru. Where is Sasuke in all that?" Yue asked. She shook her head. "Face it, you no longer exist as a person, just a fallen puppet waiting for a new master to unbind you from your tangled threads."
Sasuke grit his teeth. "I'm nobody's-"
"Even in my current state, why do you move so slowly?" Yue asked, having appeared behind Sasuke.
Both of them swung swords, blocking each other, but Yue kicked at Sasuke, shoving him back. The Uchiha fired off a chidori sharp spear, but Yue countered it with a raikiri coated sword, then pushed to break his weaker ninjutsu apart as she moved forward. Sasuke swung his sword as he stepped back, turning his entire body, swinging a second time to force Yue to remain a small distance from him.
"You've improved your swordsmanship since I last crossed blades with you," Yue complimented. She went on the offensive again, attempting to slice Sasuke apart with a katana. Sasuke either dodged the blows or deflected them.
Sasuke swung his blade hard as he went into a crouch. "Chidori Nagashi!"
Yue was caught off guard, getting hit by the full charge. While it wasn't enough to kill her, it created an opening that lasted long enough.
Slice!
Sasuke forced Yue to the ground, his blade punched through her body just under her heart. "Now tell me where he is!" Sasuke hissed.
"With such a pitiful performance? I'm not entertained in the least."
Sasuke looked over, seeing Yue on the throne still. He only just realized that the Yue he had been fighting wasn't covered in glowing cracks. "Sharingan genjutsu..." he muttered as the 'Yue' his blade pierced blurred away.
"After attempting at such a bold declaration of not being someone's plaything, you become just that. How does it feel to waste chakra on air?" Yue asked as she stood up, starting to walk up to the Uchiha.
Sasuke sliced her head off from the side as the image of him fell into a pile of snakes. "I'll find him, I don't-"
"To fall for it twice in a row, you must be feeling pathetic."
Sasuke looked back to the throne, seeing Yue still sitting there. She had covered up her left eye with bandages, but the one sharingan was enough.
"To think you of all people would be able to use genjutsu..." Sasuke muttered.
"Itachi taught me, before and after the massacre. Didn't you ever wonder why I called him senpai? It wasn't because he was my senior in Akatsuki, it was because he taught me ninjutsu, one of the few people who let me learn ninjutsu rather than leave me to mimic it with half awoken sharingan, and he taught me how to use my sharingan properly back when I was in the academy, though I refused to use it for the longest time after I realized that the burning pain in my eyes was a dōjutsu. I can only use genjutsu with the sharingan, and nowhere near his level. Well, obviously it's enough for the likes of you," Yue explained.
"You..." Sasuke muttered.
Yue smirked. "I might be part of the reason you two started becoming distant."
"You were that student of his? You must know of the third Uchiha. Tell me who it is!" Sasuke demanded.
Yue remembered how Itachi mentioned that, how there was another Uchiha that she had met, but hadn't met. The man's riddles confused her sometimes, this one being a constant annoying pain in her mind until recently. "I don't know who he was talking about."
"He must have mentioned something to you if he trained you!" Sasuke insisted.
Yue frowned. "My 'master,' not Itachi, he mentioned a name once, another survivor that Itachi mentioned," Yue said.
"Tell me," Sasuke ordered.
"Why would I do that?" Yue asked.
"Because after I'm done with you, Itachi is dead and then that last bastard will perish as well," Sasuke stated.
"Hmm. You tell the most interesting jokes," Yue said with a half grin.
Sasuke swung his sword to point at her face. "Who is he?"
"Uchiha Madara, is the name I heard," Yue muttered.
Sasuke lowered his sword. "You're insane, he's long since dead. Now do you mind facing me in real combat, or are you still afraid of my eyes?"
The real Yue came out of a shadow, her sharingan glowing at an intensity lower than the wounds on her body. "I did wait for my powers to grow to their fullest, their most vicious. The pain I'm suffering from my burden, I'll let you feel the agony of having a great power, but not being able to save anything at all with it. I'll show you the pain of a real curse."
Sasuke noticed that this was the real Yue, but the glowing cracks disturbed him. "What is happening to you, hanyō?"
Yue lifted her arm to watch a crack form, then close, then another one formed in its place, small amounts of heated blood escaping each wound. "Yondaime-sama was right to seal my yōki off. My body, due to my inexperience with such a tremendous power, can't handle it and breaks down if I don't vent my demonic energies every once in a while. As a child, I would have exploded and taken part of a block back in Konoha with me if I wasn't partially sealed. Ironic really, my yōki is destroying and healing me at the same time. The pain of the power, the pain of being torn apart, the pain of forced regeneration, I now know why Pain, my master in ninjutsu, chose to train me, other than me having the Onmyōton like him."
Sasuke frowned "Pain?"
Yue shook her head. "Enough already. Unless you want to pathetically die in an explosion of demonic power, you'll have to beat the answers out of me. Draw out my chakra, drain my demonic might, prove to me that you're an avenger, a genius, the one who obtained the title of Elite Rookie. Do all of that and I'll lead you to Itachi and be the witness to your revenge. I may even join your team and assist you in your goals, no matter how twisted they are. Anything you will, it will happen no matter who I have to kill or what I have to destroy."
Sasuke charged forward with a quick slash, but Yue blocked it with her sword, then shoved him back. Their swords flashed forward, becoming blurs as they chained rapid strikes at each other, attempting to slip through their opposite's guard, but to no avail.
Yue broke a sword lock with a hard slash, the air shimmering as it moved forward. Sasuke leapt back, watching the ground rip apart where the air distorted. Luckily, it only went a half meter.
'So she can extend the length of her attacks with an unknown jutsu, probably one of those 'onmyōton' she has access to. I'd say we're almost even in arm speed, her being slightly faster than me. Her swordsmanship is far above mine, but she is hampered due to her disabled left side. I'd take advantage of that, but Orochimaru told me Ruuko don't rely on their eyes or ears for their sword fighting, but the fighter's sixth sense. With her mangekyō active, she's much faster than me in terms of ground speed. I've seen her seal before, but I don't want to rely on mine so soon. Maybe I should use that now,' Sasuke thought to himself as he retreated to give himself room.
When Sasuke was far back enough, he unleashed snakes, directing them to attack Yue. The girl responded by backing up slightly, swinging her sword so it either beheaded the snakes or caused massive damage to them with that distortion ability. She released her sword near the end of her swing, letting it stick into the ground next to her as she smirked.
'What is she-' Sasuke started to think, but then started dodging as she flung handfuls of kunai at him. It annoyed him that she could still throw so quickly and so well in spite of not having the use of her dominant arm. He got an opening and returned fire, but she deflected his attack with the three kunai in her hand, then threw them at him.
Sasuke sliced the kunai down with his sword, then stabbed an electrical blade at Yue. She deflected it with her raikiri coated left hand, retrieved and swung her sword, cleaving the empty lightning with her lightning coated sword. Sasuke moved forward, swiping at the girl with his sword, attempting to kill her, but she blocked it with her own sword and, once more, the two were trying and failing to hit one another with blindingly fast sword attacks.
"Annoying!" Sasuke snapped as he delivered a few hard strikes in succession, trying to push as much shock into her arm so she couldn't defend properly. When she stepped back to avoid a strike, Sasuke wheeled around and swung his sword at the left side of her head.
CLANG!
"What!?" Sasuke gasped.
Yue glared at the Uchiha, a smirk on her face. "What? You think I wouldn't ever use my left arm against a physical attack again? The muscles are weak, but my arm is still there, dumbass!"
Sasuke leapt back to escape Yue's sword, but she caught his shirt and put a decent tear in it. 'The little bitch wore armor on her left arm. Even without the strength to strike, she still has the strength to lift her arm with that metal on it, allowing her to block with it.'
Yue swung her sword again, throwing off that nearly invisible destructive blade jutsu of hers, forcing Sasuke back again. She glared at him and, to Sasuke's horror, her right mangekyō started to revolve as bloody tears started to well up from said eye.
"Shit!" Sasuke grunted, flying through the seals as fast as his hands would allow, using as much chakra as he could safely spare. He hoped to deflect her attack, not overcome it.
"Katon: Gōkakyū no jutsu!"
"Amaterasu..."
The fireball and the black flames met and, as one would expect from the 'strongest' katon in existence, Sasuke's fireball was easily consumed and he was forced to jump away to escape the black flame's clutches, though it caught on his over shirt a bit. Sasuke discarded the white shirt that Orochimaru had provided for him. Surprisingly, it didn't bother Sasuke much as he caught sight of the Uchiha symbol burning away.
"Why did you dodge?!" Yue shouted, going through some hand seals, ones she hadn't used since her academy days. "Katon: Gōkakyū no jutsu!"
Sasuke dodged the attack, then primed a chidori. He never thought that Yue would be this strong. Well, she did claim to have incapacitated Itachi, so she had to at least have enough power to-
"-hit him with a strong enough attack to knock him out while his back was turned? Do I seem that petty to you, Sasuke?" Yue asked.
Sasuke realized that, just like Kakashi, Yue had actually tricked him into thinking what she wanted him to think with a simple application of sharingan genjutsu. He broke the 'connection' between their sharingan, freeing him of any lingering jutsu she may have cast on him. 'I never learned how to connect and interact with other sharingan, but she has, allowing her to do things I know nothing about. I have to be wary of her eye and avoid looking directly at her sharingan, or else she reconnect them again.'
Yue flinched, the cracks in her body glowing intensely for a moment before they calmed down again. "You haven't even made me use my demonic energy once yet. You're even more pathetic than I thought possible. I had to unlock my demonic powers to even hope to be able to match Naruto or Itachi, but you can't even produce a power great enough to warrant my current state. You are nothing more than-"
"Don't say it..." Sasuke muttered to himself. It was the one phrase he hated and feared the most.
"-a bitter disappointment. You have a lot of chakra, some good fire and lightning jutsu, but other than that, you're an average shinobi, unworthy of being called a genius or being declared an S-rank missing-nin," Yue finished.
Sasuke felt his rage increasing to levels he thought only Itachi and, more recently, Naruto could bring. "I once told Orochimaru that I couldn't bring my full power, my rage to bear against a random opponent, that I couldn't kill them if they weren't Itachi or Naruto. Orochimaru proved me wrong, like you did just now."
"Struck a nerve? As if I can fear a snake that drags itself across the earth on its belly," Yue said.
Sasuke glared at the girl. "I'll kill you here and now, Kazeneko Yue!" He charged forward, swinging his chidori coated sword at Yue's body, aiming for any place that would result in death if his attacks landed. Yue dodged them, but Sasuke noted that Yue's dodges were closer than before. 'Using Amaterasu appears to have a drawback. That will be good to know for when I face Itachi after this.'
Yue was having a difficult time seeing properly. She was losing more vision every time she activated Amaterasu or Tsukuyomi, 'losing her light' as Itachi or Shisui would say. Thankfully just using the dōjutsu didn't eat away at her sight.
"Haretsu!" Yue shouted as she thrust her left arm forward, unleashing a concussive blast of lightning and chakra that struck the Uchiha, throwing him into the throne with enough force to shatter it into rubble. Thankfully, Yue's vision returned to normal as the chakra flow to her sharingan stabilized.
Both of them were tired, having either dealt out draining attacks, taken harsh blows or both. Zetsu rather enjoyed watching, though he would have preferred it if Itachi was fighting Sasuke.
Yue suddenly snorted a bit. Some dust from the destroyed throne had gotten into her nose and a sneeze was coming on.
'...What a horrible time to sneeze,' White Zetsu thought as his black counterpart wondered how Sasuke would kill the girl whose chakra smelled horrible.
Sasuke moved forward, knowing that Yue couldn't properly retaliate or defend herself, aiming for her neck with his sword.
"HIKCHI!"
Zetsu, both of them, were almost as shocked as Sasuke was, who back peddled to get away from Yue. Why did he do that? It was because Yue's sneeze was accompanied by fire!
Yue rubbed at her nose. "Thab's neber...habened befwore..."
"Practice some chakra control!" Sasuke shouted, slightly scared. He checked his eyebrows, thankful to find them unsinged.
"That wasn't ninjutsu, brat," Yue grumbled. 'So I don't have to use chakra for fire. Good to know. Now I need to learn how to use it. First, kick Sasuke's ass. Second, drop him on Konoha's door step. Three, master new fire ability. Four, unknown. Five, profit. Wait, where did that last one come from!?'
Sasuke decided it was time to crush this idiot cat. He had been saving this for Itachi, but he didn't want to be beaten and thrown to Konoha.
Yue would have rushed forward, but she felt intense pain as she hit her limits, the cracks in her skin glowing brightly. "Grrr! Dammit, I hate this part..." That asshole Deidara loved it though...Explosion freak...
"Wha-" Sasuke started, then he got the feeling that he should run, and quickly. Sasuke turned and bolted up the stairs at his top speed, rushing up two floors when-
"Kōhai!"
BOOM!
Sasuke was thrown forward, smashing into a wall as a powerful shock wave hit him. It took him a brief moment to recover, which was enough for him to start scrambling up the stairs, trying to avoid the dust cloud that rolled into the stairway to chase him.
The Uchiha eventually emerged from the sulfur smelling hell of darkness, finding himself on the roof of the hideout, watching smoke waft out of the various points it could escape from through the shattered roof. After coughing for a minute, he looked around, trying to see if he could at least sense Yue.
Her chakra was gone.
"Damn hanyō blew herself up... What the hell was that jutsu? Did that bomb freak help her make it?" the young swordsman mused.
A figure burst from the smoke, a kunai in their hand aimed at Sasuke's shoulder, The Uchiha blocked the strike and shoved them back, shocked to see that it was Yue who attacked him.
"How did you survive exploding?" Sasuke demanded.
"I've 'blown up' like that three times since I broke the seals on my yōki. It might harm me, but it won't kill me. After overloading, my body rapidly heals the damage," Yue explained, drawing Yin, "let's end this, brat."
Yue's smaller and lighter sword would, normally, be unable to stand up to Sasuke's sword of Kusanagi, but Yue's swords, Yin and Yang, were products of the Red Anvil that only the Sisters could ever forge blades on, so they was beyond the level of any normal steel blade. Despite its incredible construction, Sasuke's sword was just a well tempered chakra steel sword that wouldn't break to any inferior sword. Yin and Yang, though, would never break to any blade, not even to each other.
Yue swung her sword, pushing forward as she did so, blasting Sasuke back as he blocked the attack. He attempted to move forward when she slowed, but Yin came down with a vengeance and the hit Sasuke's sword took did something he hoped would never happen: the weapon screeched and rattled from the impact, a sign that it was reaching its limits.
"Damn!" Sasuke grunted as he moved back, sheathing his sword. If she could snap his sword, he'd lose a lot of his offensive power. Once more, Sasuke was forced to break out something he had been saving for Itachi: his sealed arsenal. Sasuke unleashed his shuriken, not too shocked when Yue batted them out of the air. Sasuke increased the amount of weapons and, sadly, Yue deflected them by creating clones and arming them with some of her other blades.
"Why won't you die?!" Sasuke roared as he flung a few more, then found himself out of shuriken.
Yue's clones dispersed, the swords vanishing before they even hit the ground. "You're too weak to kill me. You are too inferior to me."
"I'm a genius!" Sasuke shouted.
Yue cricked her neck as the air warped around her left hand, an object that clearly wasn't a real weapon appearing in her grasp. "Funny, ne?"
Sasuke was staring at a silver kunai with three prongs on it, a replica of the ones used by the Yondaime. This kunai was significant because it was only held by one type of person. "You were Elite Rookie?"
"A genius, a prodigy, a ninja without peer that only comes along once every century. People used those words to describe the Yondaime Hokage, Namikaze Minato-sama. I received similar praise from very few people, in spite of my heritage, when I graduated the academy a year ahead of schedule, though my theory scores were abysmal. A kunoichi who wields lightning as if she were a storm goddess, a youth who masters chūnin level jutsu with ease, the greatest kenjutsu practitioner to graduate Konoha's ninja academy since Ruuko Nozomu, my father," Yue said as she warped the kunai away, "but those words mean nothing at all once you leave the academy."
Sasuke frowned. "What do you mean?"
"Namikaze-sama was praised as a genius, but even he ran into foes who matched him, or even exceeded his power, and these people weren't geniuses, just people who worked hard at what they had or were interested in. Kakashi, a genius, is barely able to keep up with a ninja who only uses summoning jutsu and taijutsu, Guy. You were praised as a genius, but you struggled against many foes that were of chūnin level power. Neji lost to Naruto, the former a genius, the latter a three time failure. I also struggled against many foes despite the praise my skills received. In fact, I ran into people who were able to completely avoid or overpower my lightning with ease," Yue said, then looked at Sasuke, "genius, clan and prodigy only exist in the classroom. Once school is out, it is time to leave it all behind you. A genius can become weak and a loser can become a legend, that's just how the world is."
"So what are you saying?" Sasuke asked, not liking the direction this was going.
"In short? You, me, anyone who was praised because of a pathetic school title, kekkei genkai or clan pride are nobodies in this world. You mean nothing at all in the grand scheme of things, and it would be best to accept that and move on. Those words don't make you a legend or even noteworthy, it is what you learn and do as you grow that defines you to the world and history," Yue explained.
"Clan pride? It isn't pride that fills me when I state that I'm an Uchiha, it is the knowledge that I AM superior to others," Sasuke said.
"Then what do you fight for?" Yue asked.
"Revenge," Sasuke answered.
"And that is why you are a nobody," Yue finished.
"And what do you fight for? Ino?" Sasuke asked. When Yue remained silent, but gave him a sour look, he smirked. "Even after all this time, you can STILL fight because you love her?"
"At least I have something to fight for, even if I get nothing more than the satisfaction of knowing she's alive and happy. Your revenge is empty because the Uchiha clan will be extinct if you keep this up," Yue countered.
Sasuke snorted. "More talk of bonds...of love. Pathetic."
"My bonds are tarnished due to me being a missing-nin, just the way I need them to be. I can protect them from here and when I die, it will be for 'the good of the world,' so they will accept it more easily and do the best thing they could ever do: forget that I ever existed in the first place," Yue stated, her chakra becoming visible to anyone, not just those with dōjutsu. It seemed to have become wilder, deeper and darker than before.
Sasuke decided that he needed to do this right, and make sure to kill Yue with it. He'd have to wait til another day to kill Itachi, but at least there would be one less person in the way. First, he'd have to force her into attacking him.
Yue watched as Sasuke activated the seals he had drawn onto her arms, unsealing something else from his arsenal. When a pair of fūma shuriken appeared, Yue frowned and sheathed her sword. Sasuke flung one of the oversized shuriken at Yue's chest. Dodging over was stupid due to the second shuriken Sasuke had, so Yue ducked under it, letting the spinning blades slice her hair short. She was quite surprised at the one that was low enough to clip her feet off, but Yue used a burst of chakra to throw herself to the side, avoiding both weapons. As she moved, she noticed a barely visible glint and threw a pair of kunai, but only managed to snap one of the wires that Sasuke had used so that he could manipulate the weapons after he threw them.
"That's an old technique! You'll need something new to defeat me!" Yue declared as she sheathed her sword again.
Sasuke tried to swing the still spinning shuriken at Yue, but she quickly summoned her own fūma shuriken and flung it at him after spinning once with it in hand, adding considerable centrifugal force and speed to it. Sasuke jumped away so it flew by his right side, then his eyes picked up on something that made him panic.
Explosive tags wrapped around most of the weapon.
BOOM!
Razor shrapnel flew all over the place, some bouncing off a pair of large, shields Yue brought out to defend herself. After the sound faded and Yue was certain the structure wouldn't collapse under her weight, Yue returned the shields to her personal dimension and looked at the result of her attack. She was happy that she could shove the normally arm mounted shields into the ground, or summon them so they were already dug into the ground, to make a stronger defense. With her left arm in its current condition, she wouldn't be able to properly use traditional shields or even the ones she had just used.
The roof had a rather sizable hole in it, fragments of steel sticking out of it all over the place. Anybody that didn't have a pair of heavy steel shields or a well developed Susanoo would have been shredded apart.
Yue looked around for a bit, then checked a bit forward from where she was, on the other side of the wrecked roof. There he was, though he was in some seriously horrible condition. Sasuke had obviously tried to defend or replace himself with snakes, but them and their summoner were pinned to the wall with numerous shards of steel. Just looking at the teen told the assassin that Sasuke was either dead or soon would be. She made her way over.
Yue drew a kunai, aiming for the side of Sasuke's neck. "I'm not merciless. I'll end your suffering." The kunai started to arc downward.
"Katon: Gōryūka no Jutsu!"
Yue quickly jumped back numerous times, taking full advantage of her natural acrobatic abilities to escape the giant dragon head shaped flames. She was forced to jump back a few more times, making sure that the weakened roof wouldn't drop her. Once it was over, Yue walked over to the new edge, carefully looking down to see an exhausted Sasuke, her mangekyō showing her that he was pretty much done.
"Blind firing a jutsu, that's just like you," Yue commented.
"Don't think it's over just yet," Sasuke grunted.
Yue chuckled a bit. "Stop kidding yourself. Even though my eyes are inferior as regular sharingan, as mangekyō, they're just like any Uchiha's. I can see that you barely have any chakra left at all."
Sasuke wouldn't deny that, but she was wrong if she thought he had blind fired those jutsu. "Amaterasu is the only katon that cannot be avoided."
Yue wanted to point out that one could evade Amaterasu, but a loud boom caught her attention, making her look up at the growing storm overhead, rain starting to fall from the sky.
Sasuke stood up, seeing that he had trapped Yue perfectly. He got to the highest possible point and smirked down at his opponent. "How ironic that this jutsu is the power of lighting, a thing most people view as Kami's power. You are about to be judged by my 'Kirin,' hanyō."
Yue realized what Sasuke was planning as his hand rose up, lightning from the storm connecting to it as large bolts of lightning danced in the clouds.
"I'll kill anyone who defies or denies me. Kirin!" Sasuke declared, dropping his hand.
CRAAAACK!
The lightning blast was huge, the largest single bolt of lightning ever produced, draining the entire storm of its power in one burst. The entire roof collapsed, most of the structure being badly compromised from the previous attacks.
Sasuke staggered onto his feet, his sharingan shutting down to preserve what little chakra he had left. "That... That was harder than I thought. It killed something that is only half human, so it should be enough for Itachi's demise."
"Don't...Don't write me off just yet..."
Sasuke reflexively activated his curse seal, unable to believe that she was still alive. 'She didn't have the time to cast genjutsu or replace herself, so how?!'
Rubble was shoved aside as Yue stood up, very little damage showing on what could be seen so far.
'What is this? She shouldn't have a power strong enough to defend against such a jutsu in her current state!' White Zetsu thought to himself. His black half was silent, but curious.
"If I weren't a Ruuko, if I weren't so strong in raiton, I would be dead. I take it back, you CAN draw out my powers, but you'll suffer now, Uchiha!" Yue declared as her hair started to spark, standing up slightly as she stood all the way up, the edges of the slave seal on her face taking on a 'shocked' appearance as her mangekyō briefly spun and flashed. Even her jacket's ragged ends took on a bolt-like form.
"What the hell..." Sasuke muttered to himself, unable to believe what he was seeing.
"Onmyōton: Raijin no Ude," Yue said as she lay her left hand on the full silver gauntlet on her right arm. Short claws adorned the ends of the fingers, the metal being free of manufacturing marks such as seams and bolts. It was almost like the gauntlet formed from nothing at all, growing onto her arm out of nowhere. It went up to just a bit below her shoulder, the part on her bicep being much lighter, but still made from what looked like pure silver. The whole thing was glowing slightly, almost like the metal itself was luminous.
"How did you survive that jutsu? It should have killed you!" Sasuke shouted.
"This gauntlet is unique among my reimyō buki. They grant me the power to use the element they are formed from, at the cost of rather troublesome effect and increased chakra drain. This one, the Lightning God's Arm, it's a little different from the others, which only give me access to elemental jutsu related to them and a slight resistance to said element. The Lightning God's Arm allows me to convert even pure lightning into chakra for me, or vice versa. Do you know what that means, Sasuke?" Yue asked.
"My Kirin didn't kill you, it..." He didn't want to finish what he was going to say.
"-Fueled my next jutsu, Sasuke. I thank you for that, and for falling into my trap," Yue said.
"You're trap?!" Sasuke shouted.
"You attempted to use a jutsu back when Naruto first found you. I was there, remember? My mangekyō showed me that you were going to use a katon, but you kept a good portion of your chakra in reserve that you started to access when you lifted your hand. I figured you were going to do something like an ultimate attack to defeat Itachi, I just had to figure out which element it was. When you let me spread my Amaterasu around without fighting back, I became suspicious, then I knew that the fire wasn't the attack when you used those dragon fireballs, since most weren't even aimed at me. I just waited to make sure it was a raiton before I activated my defense," Yue explained.
Sasuke frowned as he dropped onto his knees. "What are you waiting for? Kill me now." The moment she was close enough, he'd kill her with his snakes. Orochimaru's power was useful and Sasuke was happy he had absorbed the man's powers.
Yue grinned. "Fine, I'll return the favor and kill you with my fastest raiton, one that the few people I've used it against were unable to escape."
Sasuke's eyes widened in shock. 'What? She's going to...'
Yue held out her left hand, lightning sparking down to her palm and gathering, the charge rising more and more with each passing second. It was fearsome, surpassing the power of the Kirin after less than a minute.
"Raikiri Ka: Arashi Hibana," Yue said as the charge seemed to settle, becoming a luminous mist that surrounded her left hand. The armor on her other arm faded away.
Sasuke decided that he was going to take advantage of her impaired vision and attack her left side, but Yue lazily swung her hand and he was afflicted with incredible pain. When he glanced back, he noticed most of his remaining wing was gone now. "It will take more than that to stop me!" Sasuke shouted, using some of Orochimaru's chakra to summon snakes in place of the missing limb as more spilled from his clothes.
Yue swung her arm again, the serpents losing their heads with each swing. Sasuke directed more snakes to strike from multiple angles, but Yue wasn't fazed and she calmly sliced them to ribbons with nothing more than a few sweeps of her hand.
Sasuke stopped, feeling his chakra hit the lowest possible point it safely could. "How?" he asked as the seal failed, leaving him gasping from exhaustion.
Yue swung her arm again, one of the walls being cleanly sliced. She then held her hand up in an odd position, almost like-
Crackle...Crackle...Crackle...
Sasuke couldn't believe his eyes as a long sword phased into existence, looking less like lightning and more like pure, surging light. And the length, it had to be fifteen feet long. It was an odd shade of pinkish purple, making it kind of ridiculous to look at.
"What is that? Lightning sword?" Sasuke asked.
"A step above it. This is the most powerful form of cutting electricity can manage: a plasma arc. I can cut through near anything with this arc blade, and I haven't even properly mastered it yet," Yue admitted, lowering the blade while shortening it, allowing the tip to point at Sasuke from six feet away. She drew it back into its standby form, not liking the fact that she was subtracting so much energy from the total charge of the jutsu. "I'm going to savor this. I think I'll vaporize you, one centimeter at a time, starting from the tips of your toes until I get to your neck. I think Itachi will like to have your eyes, so that he can save his vision from fading away. I'm no Uchiha, but I can rip them out of your skull as you die."
Sasuke, in a panic, flung his last kunai with every explosive tag he had on it at Yue, but she jabbed her hand forward, a wave of plasma being pushed forward, literally bouncing the explosions off it as Yue kept moving. Sasuke, in a last ditch effort, tried to draw his sword, but a thin ribbon of lightning punched forward from her fingertip in an instant, a hissing sound accompanying it. Sasuke looked to his arm as the extremely thin blade pulled back, a cauterized wound, about half an inch long, was left behind on his forearm, passing through said part of his arm while numbing it.
Yue advanced on Sasuke, an arc blade extending to two feet from her hand. "You don't need eyes, legs or arms where you're going," she said as she lifted the blade up, preparing to swing down on Sasuke's right shoulder.
"Kukukuku. I think not..."
"OI! HEEEEY!"
Everyone glared up at the man, Tobi. He was waving his arm like an idiot, probably grinning like one under that mask of his too.
"TSUGA!" Kiba roared as he attempted to hit Tobi from above, only for said man to step aside and allow Kiba to daze himself with his own jutsu by smashing into the ground headfirst.
"Uwah! That looks like it hurt! Glad it wasn't me~" Tobi lightly sang.
"Son of a... Used his jutsu on me again..." Kiba muttered.
"No, he dodged you that time," Shino stated.
Kiba groaned at his own blunder. His mother and sister always told him not to go downward with his jutsu, since he'd just bang up his head.
Creak...
A pair of figures appeared next to Tobi, one coming out of the branch itself while the other appeared next to the man in a shunshin.
"Is it done already?" Tobi asked.
The strange being grumbled. "Not really, but close enough for your plan."
The hooded figure sighed. "And after I saved Sasuke-kun from Deidara, he just got stopped by Yue-kun. Lucky for Sasuke-kun, I was there to stop Yue-kun from dismembering him."
"Where is Sasuke?!" Naruto shouted.
The hooded figure smirked under his bandages. "Tsk tsk. Naruto-kun, you've grown to be oh so desperate lately. I heard you were a slow learner, but this is getting ridiculous."
The plant-like being sighed. "Tobi, I wasn't able to locate Itachi and Yue somehow managed to mask her chakra from me after Orochimaru attacked her. It probably didn't help that her chakra was burning all over the place."
"WHAAAAT?! I didn't think she could evade me at all!" Tobi whined, then turned away slightly. "Well, she was a traitorous one from the very beginning, plotting to destroy us from the inside from the very beginning by letting jinchūriki like the Nii Yugito escape, just like Itachi with Naruto here. How troublesome that both of my sharingan users were traitors," He sounded completely different, like he was two people that kept switching again and again.
"Hmph. We should get going or else Naruto-kun will get riled up too much, probably go four tails on us again, or worse," the hooded man said.
"Wait!" Sakura shouted.
The plant being slid back into the tree, vanishing from both view and chakra sensory ability.
"Kukuku. I don't think I need to introduce myself to you again, Naruto-kun and Haruno girl. For the bug brat, Hyūga girl and the mutts, I am Orochimaru, the man who killed the Sandaime and nearly killed Tsunade-hime as well. Next time, she won't be so lucky," the hooded man, Orochimaru stated as he vanished in a shunshin.
"And I... You will learn of my true name later, but feel free to call me 'Tobi' for now," the orange masked man stated, glaring down at the Konoha shinobi with a burning sharingan. He jumped back, disappearing from sight as the air seemed to twist and swallow him whole.
Kakashi jumped onto the tallest tree he could find and started to scan around with his sharingan, stopping when he saw a mass of chakra in the distance. "Hinata! Look to the east!"
Hinata did so and couldn't believe what she saw. "Black flames and lots of chakra is flooding the area."
'Amaterasu...' Kakashi thought to himself. "How far out?"
"Almost ten kilometers," Hinata answered.
"Everyone, follow me!" Kakashi ordered as he led the others towards the battleground.
After getting close to the burning forest, Kiba told them that he smelled Tobi ahead of them along with Sasuke's scent. Curiously, he couldn't smell Yue at all.
"What is that fire?" Hinata asked, feeling cold just looking at the fire. It made no sense, but she felt that touching those flames would doom her to Hell itself.
"I thought Itachi was missing... Could he have started this fire to delay us?" Naruto wondered aloud.
"Yamato!" Kakashi called. The wood user promptly used an earth release to bypass the flames by ripping a trench through the burning forest.
"I'll stay back here in case anyone follows," Yamato stated as he stood at the ready.
Kakashi nodded and signaled to the others, telling them to follow him and be on their guard.
A few moments later, they found the destroyed remains of the Uchiha hideout. Kiba told them right away that he couldn't track Sasuke due to the loss of the scent, but he told them that he had a feeling that Yue was close.
After a minute of searching, Sakura moved some rubble and found Yue's unconscious body, injuries all over her. "Naruto! Kakashi-sensei! I found-"
"Get away from there Sakura!" Kakashi shouted.
"Eh?" the girl gasped.
Everyone scattered as a blade of pure light swung down, cleaving through everything in its path. Standing on the other end of the sword was Yue, panting and looking worse for the wear. The shadow clone Sakura found burst into a cloud of expended chakra.
Sakura was shocked, having been tackled aside by Naruto. She just realized how much bigger than her he was, mostly because she was almost completely hidden under his body.
Naruto stood up, looking at his friend. "Yue! What are you doing?!"
Yue turned her gaze to the blond, her squinting green eye telling Kakashi that she was having difficulty seeing properly. "Final test...But you aren't part of it Naruto..." she said as the mist and arc sword disappeared.
Before Naruto could say anything, Yue clasped her hands together and he felt the weight of his body increase, dropping him to his knees. "What's happening?"
"I used an onmyōton jutsu that allows me to make a person's chakra weigh them down. I just need intimate knowledge of their chakra and I can use it," Yue explained.
"So you made Naruto-kun's chakra heavy?" Hinata asked.
"Not really, I made his other chakra heavy," Yue said, looking to Sakura and Naruto as she said it. She saw that they got the hint.
The others moved closer, but Yue clones came out of the rubble, all of their chakra networks going wild with barely contained chakra.
"Stay back. These clones will explode," Hinata warned.
"Yue! What happened to Sasuke, to Itachi?" Naruto asked, worried about how Yue was acting.
"I beat Sasuke, but Orochimaru stopped me from dealing the final blow and Tobi ran off with him before I recovered. Itachi is incapacitated in a nearby location," Yue said, then looked straight at the medic for the combined teams, "Sakura, you are the only one I'll fight right now."
"What?" Kiba growled.
"Are you planning on killing Sakura now?" Kakashi asked, wondering how far Yue had fallen.
Yue showed genuine surprise. "Do you think I'm a monster? Well, dumb question..." Yue looked to Naruto as she undid the bindings that held her Akatsuki jacket closed. "Outside of the 'barrier,' now!"
Naruto listened because he already had a good idea of what would happen if he didn't or if someone interfered.
"What is the meaning of this?" Sakura asked. If only she could focus the chakra to the Yin seal faster, she'd be sure she could help Naruto bring both Sasuke and Yue back, but it was harder than she expected. Yue sighed, letting her exhaustion show for a moment, then it was gone as she locked her reactivated, dimly glowing sharingan on Sakura. Kakashi noted that the exposed right eye revolved for a moment, glowing slightly brighter, then stopped as Yue stood up fully.
"Sakura, I want to be defeated by my student, and other than Tayuya, you are that student," Yue said.
"W-what? But all you taught me was-" Sakura started.
"I taught you more than anyone else I have met that can willingly raise their fists to me. While I am not responsible for all of your power, I did help in raising it slightly. I want to see what that red clothed girl I helped learn to walk on water can do now. Defeat me, show me that you are no longer that weak little girl, that you are a kunoichi of Konohagakure!" Yue shouted at the end, her chakra blazing with that final shout of challenge. As they watched, it turned to a black so deep it was like looking into a void, the curse seal spreading over Yue's body, the chakra arms coming into existence as ornate lightning marks stretched along her collar bones, dipping down on either side of her sternum to an unknown point under her cropped tank top.
Kiba and Hinata went to assist Sakura, but Naruto held them back. "What are you doing?" Kiba angrily asked. Hinata was speechless due to Naruto holding her shoulder.
"This fight has nothing to do with us. If we jump in, Yue will kill herself, Sakura-chan and as many of us as those explosions will catch," Naruto said, keeping his head down.
"Naruto! Why are you-" Kiba started. Naruto tightened his grip on Kiba and Hinata's shoulders, actually making them wince in pain. Kiba looked at Naruto's face and he was shocked at what he saw. "Naruto... You..."
"I want to go to her side so badly that I feel useless standing here, but the only way I can help her is to believe in her! Sakura-chan isn't weak, she won't let herself lose easily!" Naruto growled, a tremor in his voice as he refused to look anybody in the eye because he was crying at his own uselessness in this situation.
Kakashi felt sorry for Naruto. In a way, Yue's actions were forcing Naruto to confront the harsher side of shinobi. The boy was maturing, but it was a painful and forced process.
Sakura pulled her gloves on, remembering how Tayuya had said that the chakra arms Yue possessed had a good reach and could move like snakes. They didn't have enough power to truly grip a human and hold them, forget throwing them, but a punch from them was almost as painful as when they scratched at you. Yue could also, if she caught a person off guard, deliver a vicious series of punches with those arms. Luckily there was only four of them.
"You open up this fight. Show me the light that I'm losing, the light I passed to you three years ago before I started to fall," Yue offered, getting herself ready for an attack.
A/N~
I must apologize for being so lax with releases. To be honest, I've been feeling down lately for some reason. I know I need to buckle down and work on KKIT's next chapter, since I'm set until about chapter 42 for KTD, aside from final checks/edits.
I have a new section that will appear just before the responses, right after my predictions. I'm just going to, well, bounce an idea off of you guys. Let's just say that I've noticed a very, VERY disturbing lack of a specific type of OC, one I think you guys will find amusing.
-Character Themes-
Naruto: His World (Zebrahead version) – Zebrahead / Remember the name – Fort Minor
Sasuke: The Stains of Time (Maniac Agenda Mix) – MGR
Sakura: Fire (Extended DRM mix) -SunLoverz
Ino: Get Lucky – Daft Punk (got this idea from Day by Day, a fanfic, and it kinda sticks)
Shikamaru: The Lazy Song – Bruno Mars
Choji: Unknown (can't think of one)
Yue: Light 'em up – Fall Out Boy / Whispers – Eternal Descent
The bath house master: Grabbag – Megatron (or Epinikion's version, whichever works)
Uchiha Madara: Saw Final Theme – Charlie Clouser / A New Horizon – NemesisTheory
Unnamed Villain 1: Archangel – Elena Siegman / XTC – Psychic Lover
Unnamed Villain 2: Final Destination (hafdwn mix) – Ivan Ether
For the record, these two villains hate each other. Don't go asking my why COD music work for the first one, you'll see why later. For the record, I don't like COD either, but the music is good at times. And yes, the bath house master will appear again later, with a name too, and he is a badass.
This list will expand in a later chapter, hopefully, and the themes I chose will make sense later. I'm also willing to listen to suggestions for some character themes. I'll listen to them and see if they do fit better than my own choices. Before anyone asks or mentions it, Choji's song is NOT the Chicken Fat song!
-A possible request for help-
I have designed a number of Yue's reimyō buki, but some of the elements are so obscure that I don't know what to do with them. For now, I'll list the elements and the basic shape that the 'weapon' takes. Try and help me fill in the blanks with at least semi-appropriate forms. Before you ask, Yue will not manifest all of them in this fic, but might show all of them off during 'Rise of Mecha-Naruto' and 'Konoha's Third Demon.'
I will warn you now, some of Yue's reimyō buki are from other sources, sources that I'll need to add to the disclaimer later. Of further note, some of Yue's swords, from her rather large collection, are also from other sources.
Fire: Gauntlet (left arm only)
Water: Crossbow
Wind: Greaves
Earth: War Hammer
Lightning: Gauntlet (right arm only)
Blaze: Claymore
Wood: Sword
Ice: Bastard Sword
Steel: Manacles
Magnet: Rings (one on each hand's middle finger)
Boil: ?
Dust: ?
Dark: ? (do not mention a scythe)
Lava: ? (Secret, will be revealed in Rise of Mecha-Naruto)
Storm: ? (leaning towards a composite bow)
Scorch: ? (leaning towards a pair of chakram)
Explosion: ? (I was thinking of shuriken and some kind of holsters for them)
Crystal: ? (leaning towards a shield)
Swift: ? (leaning towards daggers or mounted arm blades)
Yin: Lantern & Chains
Yang: Short Sword & Chains
Yin-Yang: None (This will be explained during the war)
And three more weapons of unknown elements. Two have no shape and the last is a long bladed katana.
-Preview-
Meet your new villainess-
She wears black clothes, somewhat revealing clothes too, with long, crimson hair making her skin seem almost alabaster in comparison. Her cold blue eyes contain a burning rage that doesn't match their color. Aside from these hints as to who she is, well, you'll have to wait to find out.
Reimyō Buki Index-
Onmyōton: Raijin no Ude [Yin-yang Release: Lightning God's Arm] – Yue summons silver armor onto her right arm that enhances her affinity for lightning ninjutsu as well as giving her unique abilities. She can fight with electrical strikes or just electrocute a person as she holds them. It is unknown if it has any other abilities at this time, other than absorbing all forms of lightning to empower Yue with usable lightning chakra. It is unknown if this ability applies to senjutsu empowered raiton, though it most likely doesn't.
Jutsu Index-
Haretsu [Rupture] – A raiton developed by Yue with raikiri and elements of the rasengan being the 'parent jutsu.' Using lightning and chakra, she creates a concussive force of chakra and electricity that can, if used at full power, cause internal organs to rupture inside the body. The only drawbacks to this jutsu are that it temporarily disables the arm that uses it and its short range. At low power, this jutsu can be used to shove opponents back with great force and stun/numb them.
Raikiri Ka: Arashi Hibana [Lightning Blade Overload: Storm Brand] – Yue amasses a tremendous charge of lightning to her hand, allowing her to form a plasma blade of variable length and width at will. When in standby form, it appears as a type of luminous mist, though this is really 'exhaust' from the charge surrounding her hand. Most of the time, she creates a 'wire blade' because it subtracts the least from the length of time this jutsu can remain active. Has a time limit of thirty minutes at full charge, but only if it is kept in standby mode. It is unknown if Yue can perform this jutsu without the assistance of her reimyō buki, the Lightning God's Arm.
Prediction-
Could it be that Sasuke wants Naruto to kill him, so that there is no chance of Kaguya being brought back? Since Sasuke is an Uchiha with Senju DNA in him, and he has both sharingan and rinnegan, that means it is highly likely that anyone fathered by him or descended from him could also have the rinnegan, allowing them to, potentially, bring Kaguya back by summoning the husk of the Ten Tails. If Sasuke really wanted to start a revolution, he wouldn't have sealed away the tailed beasts, which he had complete control over, and he would have used them to beat Naruto and then kill the Kage. Since we haven't actually heard what he said to the Sage of Six Paths, this is a possibility.
A new plot bunny has been born- (run for your lives!)
I've noticed that Naruto has had a ton of OC and non-OC friends. Some were ninja, some were samurai, some were weapon makers, a scant few were criminals, one was Ayame, he's even had Kyūbi (herself) as a childhood friend and I even read a fic where Naruto's childhood friend was Sasuke. (that one was all kinds of screwed up) What I've never, EVER seen was the most iconic type of female friend known to date: the short, childish in attitude and body, rich as all hell, tsundere childhood friend. (that's like an otaku's dream girl there, minus the nekomimi, maid outfit and panty flashes galore) Anyway, I created an OC like that and, as the summary for that unnamed fic states, her favorite accessory is Naruto. (not romantically, at first) She's perfect as an ojou-sama, aside from how she talks, but as a kunoichi, she's okay...ish. She's basically got a more solid foundation than Sakura, but let's face it, Sakura had one of, if not the worst skill set in Part I.
Anyway, comment on the idea if you want. I was just wondering if anyone else noticed the lack of rich, small tsundere girls in Naruto fanfiction.
-Responses-
Yuri-Hime-Chan: Actually, I'm not basing her raiton off of electrical charge, I'm basing it off of real lightning strikes, which is positive and negative. As I pointed out before, most of the lightning we see is weaker negative lightning, which is what people who normally use raiton are utilizing. Positive lightning is far stronger and, unlike negative lightning, is much more lethal. I've also said that Yue's lightning is at a much higher frequency than most other characters, allowing her to slice through most other raiton. Besides, it has already been pointed out in canon that raiton function off of frequency and the sheer power of the lightning being used.
Besides, Yue has yet to reveal her full potential for manipulating lightning.
Guest: No, Rin is not aware of who Naruto's parents were, though she may suspect that Naruto is Minato's son based off looks alone. If anything, she probably didn't know about Kushina, or at least not her relationship with Minato. We don't know exactly when Minato and Kushina started dating, or if he told his team, so there is a high possibility that Team Minato didn't know. It seems, to me at least, that Kakashi only found out about his sensei's relationship with Kushina a bit before the Kyūbi attack, like a couple years.
Super saiyan Sakura Haruno: Less fighting and more...well, I don't know how to explain what Yue is doing with her former allies. I guess I'll use the term Yue used in this chapter and call them 'tests.'
NaruSaku fan 100: You know, I found it funny that he struggled against Deidara, one of the weaker members of Akatsuki, then went and defeated Danzō, after losing to all the Kage at once, and forced the man to kill himself. It's almost like Sasuke has the Saiyan Disease and gets stronger when beaten.
As for Yue defeating him, it was more or less a draw, since he needed someone to save his sorry emo ass, as usual.
Rose contestshipping fan88: My thoughts exactly, well, the part about Sasuke rotting is what I agree with the most. Yue has more pain to suffer before she gets her sweet reward and suffers from what I like to call SRSoD. (Sudden Romance Screen of Death) You know, it happens in some stories when the main character realizes a girl/guy is in love with them and they just freeze up.
Trust me, THAT part will be hilarious! Especially what happens right after her brain freezes!
Rocketshipping fan: Yue being smart...more like she lives by her instincts, which have grown sharper. She has knowledge, but she's still not the type to read books/scrolls.
Sakura fan 55: It would take a lot of yarn to get Yue going. She prefers crinkly bags and quick moving objects. She has yet to catch the red light...
As for Sakura dropping her tsundere attitude, it is like all the others: she will stop lying to herself about her feelings and admit them. She'll still drop him if he does perverted stuff (that isn't related to the bedroom, HA!) and she will still call him a baka and she will still be the fake prude we all know. She'll be more concerned with Naruto's well being than before and she will stop making Naruto seem like the silver trophy to Sasuke's gold, which she does in canon when she goes after Sasuke in Iron while she really means to protect Naruto from Sasuke by killing the emo shit before he can cut Naruto up. Though, to be fair, almost the ENTIRE CAST does this to Naruto in canon, with only Jiraiya, Obito, Orochimaru, Zetsu, Kabuto and Kaguya being the only ones who view Naruto as being more powerful/more of a threat than Sasuke.
One thing Sakura will not do is call Naruto by that one little suffix that Hinata uses. One of the oneshots I'm working on, 'The -Kun Issue,' explains why Sakura would never call him 'Naruto-kun.' Heck, I don't even have to post it most likely, since it is quite obvious why she wouldn't call him that. (The tip lies with Sai, for those who want to find it)
Thedarkpokemaster: Yep, we all know that a naked Sakura would drop Naruto faster than said girl's tsundere empowered punches. As for what I had Yue say about Itachi and Sasuke, it's all true. Sasuke seemed to have it in his head that Itachi wouldn't get stronger, that he would stagnate so Sasuke could catch up. That and, as we all can tell, Itachi was more of a genius than Sasuke ever was. The characters praising his prowess with the sharingan, saying he's better than Itachi, are all just the creator pandering to his favorite character. The fact is that Itachi went further than Sasuke ever could with plain old mangekyō, going further than Sasuke could with full on eternal mangekyō. He also showed more talent with all three regular powers of the mangekyō than Sasuke did, who needed power boosts from Zetsu, Naruto or the addition of Hashirama's DNA that Kabuto gave him to match or exceed Itachi's mastery of those same techniques.
Fact of the matter is, Sasuke is a painfully AVERAGE ninja when you get down to the truth of the matter. Take away his rinnegan, Hashirama's DNA, you've got an Uchiha who would have probably lost to Obito before he was enhanced with Hashirama's DNA, and Obito was apparently a weak Uchiha. Sasuke was only praised as a genius because of his last name, nothing else. It was all a huge load of massive ass kissing.
Yuriko will return, with a PERVEANCE! (perversion + vengeance = Pervgeance aka Yuriko's mind) Let's put it this way, her brain is so dirty that her thoughts make Jiraiya's books look like little kid shows. (remember that Jiraiya was predicted to be a MAN who would be unequaled in perversion, the old toad said nothing about women!)
Mangaka Shuzen: As long as you read the chapters, it's all good. I've also been striving for quality, so I'm happy to hear that I've improved.
As for Yue VS other OCs, Yue was always meant to be one who can bring out huge amounts of power, but lost, even becoming almost impotent later on in the story. I never do like reading stories with an OC who has power that can rival levels equal to that of Madara while he was a jinchūriki, or even worse, one of the dozens upon dozens of stories involving jinchūriki OCs who have the 'Ten-Tailed Wolf' sealed inside of themselves. Yue can rise above most of the characters, which isn't hard considering most of them are quite weak/average, only to fail against stronger foes, or becoming a mere punching bag to a rare few later on.
Like I pointed out a long, long time ago: my OCs are powerful on the battlefield, or many of them are, but all of them are weaklings on the battlefield of the mind/emotions. One can wear armor, learn powerful techniques and have incredible power, but none of that means jack shit when you are ostracized, being emotionally/mentally attacked or treated like all the world's problems are your fault. It's a rarely used angle on OCs and I find it adds dynamics to characters that most writers overlook.
Like I pointed out, Yue's true war is far from over. It doesn't help that some powerful foes are appearing on the darkening horizon either.
And Yue isn't the type who would have allowed Naruto and Sakura to glomp her, since she was playing the role of a villainess for the first section of Part II. That, and it would have been rather OOC of them to express themselves like that. The Naruto manga is not a glomping manga, more of a 'you said the wrong thing, BAKA' manga, followed by Naruto being used as a plow after Sakura punched him.
Sensuto: I'm actually following Yue more for this particular part because, one, it is all canon for the most part with Naruto and Sakura, meaning I'd just be writing what you'd read in the regular manga and, two, I'm trying a new angle that will be featured during the next big event: Pain's Invasion. That and it allows me to skip all the Sasuke worship from the author. (there is a lot of that in Naruto)