Akio clutched at his temples as the aftershocks of chakra barreled through him. The pain was blinding, deafening, numbing. He let a ragged breath fall from his lips as he embraced that last, strange gift of agony. As long as the pain remained, he couldn't comprehend things, couldn't feel what had happened. The body was selfish like that. As long as it was in torment, everything else just faded into the background. And that's why he grabbed onto it – that suffering that wrenched apart his skull. As long as it remained there, he couldn't truly realize what he'd lost. Couldn't truly recognize what was happening. It was a trick the Mist had taught him a long time ago. An old addict, he latched onto this tortured solace, greedily wrapping himself in it so he could forget whose blood dripped from him.
And who had put it there.
Eyes narrowed yet stinging, he could make out the other shinobi and wolves similarly struggling to regain themselves, struggling to make sense of what had just happened, what they had just heard. But of them all, only Akio was close to comprehending the truth of what was happening.
Akio straightened arthritic knees and stared at the thing that had taken on the blood-drenched guise of a little girl. A vision of the past flickered before his eyes, of the night Mira had returned from the hunt. But this wasn't deer's blood. No. He couldn't help the tremor in his hands as he watched the crimson gore fall from her flesh like stuffed leeches. Something in his chest seized as he took in this shade – this mockery of the Mira he knew. Tightening his embrace on his pain, his emotions drifted away, replaced by the underlying rock of rationality. His old training took hold of him then and when he opened his eyes, he cast aside the man he had pretended to be – the priest he had tried to become – and he accepted his mission.
Twin black flames were rekindled as Akio lowered his chin, his eyes stripping his target's defenses bare. The girl hadn't moved. The wound on its shoulder leaked less blood than it should: its heartbeat was weak. The stillness of the chest, the paling of the lips: it wasn't breathing. The kami had only one interest and that didn't include keeping its host alive.
But the host had other plans it seemed. There, at the base of her neck. His eyes flared as he caught sight of it. Beneath the sheen of scarlet, he could see its skin begin to bubble and blister, to begin to fall away like ash just like it had that night so long ago. Akio knew that it meant the same thing as it did then: Mira was fighting back.
The harae must've weakened the kami's hold, he considered, trying and failing to make the thought cold and rational. Again, his obsidian gaze fell onto her immobile chest. She only has a few minutes left. His lips twitched as he turned towards the other edge of the clearing, towards where the kami's black gaze was ignoring the entirety of existence to focus. Towards where she had fallen to her knees.
With a strange burbling shrieking, Habu was ripping out chunks of her own hair as the pain drove her to the edge of whatever sanity she had left. Her form shimmered as red chakra – so concentrated as to have become visible – began to bubble from her flesh. Her too-white skin began to shine under an oily sheen, that strange slime-like substance beginning to leak from her flesh. It dripped from her, pooling around her to corrode the grass with a faint, hungry hiss.
He knew what this meant. The bijū within Habu was rousing now, awakening like a predator who sensed another invading its territory. But just as before, Habu's flesh was just barely able to contain the overflow of chakra. He remembered the first time she had writhed and thrashed as her sinew and mind succumbed to the bijū.
It had fully formed then, taking over her body to become the sickly, slug-like creature known as the Six Tails. But he hadn't been afraid then, at least, not at first. Despite many deaths, the Six Tails was considered to be the gentlest of the bijū, but after the transfer, the jinchūriki had become someone – something – else entirely. It was after the first rampage, after scores of shinobi lay dead or dying, that the Mizukage had given him his last mission: eliminate the threat to the Mist – kill Habu.
He supposed it should've been funny that even after all these years, it seemed like his mission hadn't changed.
But as he watched his old student, he noticed it. There was something off this time – something in how the crimson chakra seemed to pool along the kunoichi's backside, seemed to stretch out and reach for the woods, seemed to try and escape. But the way Habu looked towards the girl – with eyes just starting to slit to reveal a void of bottomless hate – he knew the jinchūriki at least had no intention of running away.
And neither did he. Not anymore.
Acrid smoke filled the air, billowing up from as the ooze trudged like lava as it disintegrated the grass in a sickly, tired fashion. Akio wrinkled his nose as he smelled the familiar scent, hoping that his old immunity from the poison still existed. He took in a last clean breath and glanced around, noting how the Leaf and Mist had gained their senses and were now backing away as the corrosive cloud grew thicker. Then, at some command, all of the shinobi retreated back into the woods in a silent blur, the wolves slunk back into the shadows.
But the kami who had taken hold of Mira made no attempt at such retreat. It didn't even blink as the rust-colored alkali snapped at its eyes, the black orbs not even allowed to tear up in defense. A snarl ripping out of his throat, a creak wrenching out of his hip, Akio started forward just as a grip tightened around his shoulder and yanked him back.
"She's not breathing," a voice murmured in his ear.
Akio turned, already knowing who it was. Though he had sensed him, his eyes and reactions were too aged to catch the flash of blonde as the Leaf jōnin appeared at his side.
"The poison won't affect her," the shinobi said, his eyes as sharp and cold as ice. "Let's go."
Even if he had wanted to, his reflexes would've been too slow to prevent the Body Flicker Technique. The jōnin's fingers dug into his wasted muscle and the shinobi shun-shinned them away from the clearing, about a yard into the forest and away from the expanding smoke.
Akio grunted as his hip gave a slight pop, even the ricochet of regaining his balance a bit too much for him now. The Yellow Flash released him, a fraction of concern on his face stifled by the familiar look of disgust-tinged suspicion reserved only for those in the Bingo Book. Akio threw back his shoulders as he leaned against a tree for support while the Leaf captain took his own position behind another trunk. From there, Akio watched him fix his blue eyes on the clearing and its combatants. Akio stared at the man, his nose wrinkling but he still couldn't help it. The way the Leaf captain held himself, the way his eyes darted from Mira's wound to Habu's bristling, Akio knew the jōnin was worth his reputation as one of the most feared shinobi of the new generations.
"Sensei, what do we do?" came a whisper that quavered between a child's squeak and an adult's burden. Akio turned to see that young kunoichi against a tree opposite of his own, the goggled shinobi leaning against the bark next to her. Both were flushed, scratched, and sweaty from battle, and they panted in the brief reprieve. Both were staring up at their captain, and both had fear in their eyes.
"She killed her senpai," the girl continued, "and Kakashi hasn't-"
Her voice choked, unable to say the last words. The boy frowned beside her, muttering something under his breath, but the tension in his frame betrayed the same deep panic. Akio's brow furrowed as he looked away from the sentimentality, questioning again how the Leaf had attained such military power.
Their teacher turned to them, his tone calm, even. "He reported in a few minutes ago that he'd become separated from her by a fog. I instructed him to keep tracking her before we were ambushed. I've since lost connection with him." He reached behind his ear and removed the overloaded device, tucking it into a pouch in his vest as he continued, "Kakashi can handle himself. He's a shinobi of the Leaf, Rin."
Immediately, the girl straightened, the wetness in her eyes drying. The boy's frown remained, but he too relaxed even if just slightly. Akio ground his teeth, annoyed that they were wasting time on such trivialities. They needed a plan. They needed it fast. He was pleased then when Rin spoke again, her words were cool, efficient: she had returned to being a kunoichi.
"What should we do, Sensei?" she murmured, her brows lowered.
Minato returned to his breakdown of the clearing where the two combatants were still yet to make a move. The blonde hairs on the back of his neck rose as their chakra built in the air, catching the faint light filtering through the trees and taking on a pale sort of glow.
Not shifting his focus, the jōnin spoke, "Noburu, how'd you stop her the last time?"
The old man hunched his thick shoulders, his old name branding his mind once more. "The prayer beads," he muttered, his voice churning like gravel. "I don't know how it works, but my best guess is it's like those wooden seals I've heard a Hokage of yours used to use." He turned his black eyes to Mira's neck, seeing how the bubbling had travelled up her neck and was now flaking away pieces of her chin. "It was around her neck, but I don't know what could've happened to it. It's not something she could take off herself."
The young shinobi turned on Akio, his eyes flashing even behind the goggles. "Why didn't you tell us earlier?" the boy accused. "We're your allies."
Akio ignored him, briefly wondering how someone so naïve could still exist in this world. His own cynical suspicions were confirmed as the jōnin cut in, "Kakashi has it."
"Idiot!" the ex-priest snarled. "Well, if he's gonna fix the mess he started, he better hurry his ass up. The manifestation is too far gone for even the harae to fully work. All we've managed to do is buy us some time before the kami gets full control."
He heard the boy scoff, "'Kami'?" but he let out a small yelp as the kunoichi elbowed him.
"Don't be rude," she hissed under her breath. "They just use different names than 'bijū' and 'jinchūriki'."
"I'm not so sure that's what we're dealing with anymore," Minato murmured. Caught by surprise, the old Mist shinobi stared at him, wondering where this change of opinion originated as the Yellow Flash jerked his chin towards the girl. "That wound should be healed by now if she was a true jinchūriki. This changes things." His eyes flashed to Akio – a pair of twin, icy daggers aimed to gouge out his own, beady eyes. "Care to explain?"
Akio met his challenge easily, his dark brows forming a smooth line beneath his wrinkles. The way the Leaf jōnin was looking at him had him tonguing the gap in his tooth where his old suicide capsule had been. Realizing this, he yanked his tongue away and shoved away that deeply-engrained tenet to never reveal information to the enemy.
Originally, he thought it was lucky that, on that night of the Kagura, Habu had descended into the first stages of her Tailed Beast form in the village. He was sure the villagers had confused the two and called for the Leaf shinobi with a report of a loose bijū: that initial reporting error was what threw the Leaf off in the first place.
Still, he had known their suspicions of Mira being a jinchūriki would never have lasted long. There were just too many differences – subtle, but there. The only other reasonable explanation was something no shinobi would ever accept. In order for them to acknowledge it, they would have to believe in the supernatural, and he knew personally how hard it was to convince shinobi otherwise: it had taken him a lifetime. But if it was to save Mira now-
Crumpling his lips, the words gurgled out of his mouth, the bubbles of his distrust and uncertainty popping at the end of every word. "'Jinchūriki,'" he began. "Disgusting word. Remember what that means? Eh, Leaf shinobi?" His eyes narrowed to slits and his lips curled in disgust. "Literally, it translates to the 'Power of the Human Sacrifice'. You take someone – someone begging for their lives or their children's lives – you take them, and you force one of the worst fates imaginable upon them by shoving a demon into their very flesh." His glare flickering, his voice faltering, he jerked his chin towards a still-writhing Habu. "That's what she is. A sacrifice. A jinchūriki."
He turned his dark eyes onto the figure across from Habu. Onto the girl still floating inches above the grass, her eyes blacker than the depths of Jigoku Cave. "Now imagine, if you took the 'sacrifice' out of that equation." He paused for a moment only to snort, "There's no Tailed Beast – no vile demon – forced inside of her. A jinchūriki is only a bastardized version of what Mira truly is: a vessel for the kamigami – a miko." He fixed the Leaf team with a stark glare. "Where'd you think they got the idea for a jinchūriki in the first place?"
The younger two took a moment to catch on. It was the kunoichi who gasped in realization first while the other gaped, "Wait, what?" The girl turned to him and quickly explained until the boy murmured an "Oh!" and turned an inquisitive eye on to Mira, his brow arching. He shifted his goggles on his nose and muttered, "Then is she a pseudo-jinchūriki? I thought they all died."
The girl winced and shook her head. Akio's expression fell as the longest speech he had given in years had fallen on deaf – or rather stupid – ears. "Idiot," he chastised under his breath, angling himself towards the clearing.
"Whatever she is," the blonde captain quickly shifted topics, "the objective remains the same: protect Mira from the Mist." He tapped a calloused finger along the hilt of his specially-forged kunai, stratagems almost visibly flickering behind his pupils. "And keep Mira from killing the Mist jinchūriki. I'm not sure why she's so intent on it, but we need to stop her."
"What? Why should we protect that creepy lady?" the boy asked, his creased brow shifting his goggles enough to throw a glare into Akio's eyes.
The old man fixed the boy with a black, beady scowl but the jōnin didn't reveal any irritation as he explained to the goggled shinobi, "Bijū reincarnate after their jinchūriki is killed. Though not always, they tend to show up in the area where that happened. We aren't going to allow the Six Tails run rampant in the Land of Fire. Even now, we have to try and prevent the jinchūriki from losing control entirely. We don't want another town destroyed."
"The jinchūriki of the Six Tails has a habit of that," Akio informed, looking from his ex-student to the jōnin. "The last jinchūriki died prematurely, and we didn't have any infant with a compatible chakra nature. Habu was the best option, but she was already an adult. She's never been able to acclimate to it. While she's able to handle the Six Tails, she doesn't have complete control. As for Mira-" He looked at the girl. "Her training hasn't been completed either."
The Leaf captain nodded. "Well, the Mist jinchūriki is our second priority for now. We need to restrain Mira first. While Kakashi has one of my seals with him, it's better we wait the few minutes for him to track her back here. The way this is going, we'll need to act fast."
Akio needed no explanation as to why the shinobi was hesitant to leave the scene even if it was for a fraction of a second. Habu was frothing at the mouth, straining with all of her might against the creature within her to maintain consciousness, maintain control. But that's not to what the Yellow Flash was referring.
His attention was yanked like a taut string onto Mira. As the girl maintained her own struggle of supremacy with the kami, her skin continued to boil and slough off, unable to contain the power raging inside of her. Akio could barely tell whether the scarlet enveloping her was another's blood or her own but barely cared as he felt the pressure building in the air began to hammer at existence. Just as it had happened in the village, chakra – so concentrated as to be a blinding white – began to dart out of her like electric tendrils and the grass around her began to wriggle, the rocks rise from the earth, quaking as the energy began to disintegrate them.
Akio turned an appraising eye onto the back of that blonde head and found his begrudging respect deepening for the man who wasn't even flinching. Frowning at his own admiration, Akio lowered his chin and muttered, "Chakra can't harm her. Doesn't even leave a scratch. Don't waste time on any ninjutsu or genjutsu. Figured that out the hard way."
The Leaf captain nodded. "Figured as much when their seal was too weak to affect her." He leaned forward, his weight settling into the balls of his feet. "So, I guess that leaves one option."
Akio nodded under a glower. "She won't even notice you unless you get between her and Habu. Physical attacks are the best option, so rely on jujitsu and speed to try and distract her. She's not even conscious enough to protect herself so don't go for the kill, but keep your wits about you. You can't let her get a lock on you, or you'll go the same way as the others. The only one quick enough-" Akio cut off as he fixed the Leaf jōnin with a black, beady eye and dipped his chin.
Minato let out a breath, a little smile coiling his lips making him look like he was some kid psyching himself up before a game of tag. "All right. Ryujin Formation. We need to stall these two until Kakashi arrives with the wooden seal. Obito, Rin, you take-"
"I'll take Habu," Akio cut across. "I know her style the best. I should since I taught her everything she knows. And I should still be immune enough to that acid coming off her to work in close range for a few minutes." His mouth set in a grim line. "Besides, we need to settle a few things."
Minato paused for a moment but seeing Akio's clenched jaw, could only nod. "Rin, Obito offer support when you can, but focus on the other Mist shinobi." He turned a bright gaze back onto the person who seemed a bit more human than the Bingo Book had described. "I suppose you should pray and ask for the kamigami to be on our side today."
"Never presume to know the kamigami," Akio answered, shifting his weight to his toes.
"On my signal," murmured Minato, storing away that small good-humored smile. A fierce expression sharpened his eyes as he spread an array of marked kunai in his left palm. The others readied themselves. "Three. Two-"
The earth erupted as if a comet had struck. Akio was thrown back, barely able to recognize that the source of energy had come from Mira. Unable to contain the power anymore, the chakra burst from her, fracturing the air in blinding arcs. As the static faded from his vision, he managed to see Mira grasping at her throat. It looked like she was convulsing before he realized the girl was dragging in breath after breath as desperately as if she had nearly drowned. The black film over her eyes peeled back, just revealing the shadow of brown beneath.
But there was no moment for joy. In a heartbeat, Habu was above her, a hand weaponless save for the thick red coat that made her limb appear like some sort of fiery club.
"Go!" Minato spurred, disappearing without a trace as Akio launched forward, the two genin fanning out beside him.
As Akio sprinted forward, his old heart pounding, his limbs shaking off the rust of age, he found his eyes locked with those dim irises of Mira. He could see her lips moving. Though no sound came out, he could still hear the words in her voice, could read them as they fell from her lips.
"Run," she begged. "Run!"
And just as the Yellow Flash appeared beside her, he saw those chocolate eyes flicker. Brown. Black. Brown. Black. Brown-
Black.
A blur of color marked the Yellow Flash's materialization above Mira. His form hung in mid-air, his leg cocked back. Then his golden hair whipped to the side as he wrenched his torso, delivering a vicious kick to the side of Habu's skull. Snarling, the jinchūriki managed to block the heavy blow – her speed and strength amplified by the first traces of a chakra coat.
Forced to abandon her attack on Mira, Habu took advantage of the jōnin's attack, exploiting its strength to power her own leap backward. She landed three feet away, her crimson chakra crunching into the dirt like flaming claws. Her sparse hair barely bounced at the movement, clinging low to her scalp like a mottled black fungus. And beneath crinkled strands of that fungus, her eyes bulged, glinting a feverish sheen as they darted between shinobi and miko.
"Chikushō," the cuss crunched between Akio's gnashing teeth. He had launched into the clearing as well and was trying to keep all of the players in sight, but his eyes were watering in that thick, poisonous cloud. He strained his vision, managing to catch the Leaf jōnin releasing a short, controlled breath only to begin weaving an intricate pattern with his fingers.
Minato murmured an indecipherable snarl of consonants, sparking a jutsu which caused a fresh wind to sweep through the clearing and dispel the acidic mist. He blinked, allowing a breath to slip through his lips, his chest rising in a grateful swell. Then he truly began.
In a fluid blur, he unholstered a marked kunai from a sheath along his calf and spun it in his fingers, both correcting his grip and cutting off the bit of cloth snapping and sizzling from the Six Tail's alkaline ooze. The shinobi then braced himself between jinchūriki and miko, his weapon primed towards Habu even before the amputated fabric had hit the dirt.
Habu blinked, swaying low in her crouch, watching how the jōnin shifted with her, the glint of his kunai following her like an eye. An appreciative little grin cracked the sallow skin of her lips as she let her eyes fall to the girl behind him.
Akio followed her gaze for a fraction of a second – still enough time for his chest to clench. Mira lay there, crumpling in on herself like a paper ignited at its center. Her knuckles were pale as she dug at the nape of her neck, her nails biting through flushed, seething skin. Her spine quaked as her breath grew more and more ragged, her body's last scream dwindling to silence. The air crackled once more as raw energy condensed in the clearing, the trees shifting and groaning despite the jōnin's jutsu having ended long ago.
"Chikushō," Akio muttered, backing slowly away as the ground began to quake.
But neither shinobi of the Leaf nor Mist moved. Neither of them dared. Even though both felt it about to happen again, they couldn't risk taking their eyes off the other. The hair on the back of Minato's neck stood at attention, but the Leaf captain couldn't afford to glance back – not when facing a Tailed Beast. 'Never turn your back on a jinchūriki': it was a lesson the Academy didn't need to teach its students – most had learned it from the stories their parents told as they put them to bed.
It was then that the earth shattered beneath their feet, the weight of the air too much for it to bear. Minato leapt into the air just as rocks both collapsed and erupted beneath him, around him, their jagged points rending the space where his flesh had been. The jinchūriki saw her opening. She launched forward, her movements so fast they were impossible to trace. She contorted between the rocks rupturing all around her, heedless of the cuts that welled on her skin; as quickly as jagged stone sliced her skin, the shallow wounds had healed. A harbinger of death, one purpose drove her, and her scarlet eyes didn't shift from the shinobi as she slammed to a halt below him. Spittle dripping from her grin, she gathered herself and-
"Suiton: Water Whip!" Akio's hands had already forming the seals as he planted his stance and shouted the words. A jet of water erupted from his hand, becoming a cord thicker and stronger than steel – a pointed whip that barreled towards Habu. The ex-shinobi had lost track of how many times the force of his ninjutsu had skewered an unsuspecting opponent, and if he had still been in his prime, the whip might've at least been quick enough to wrap around her neck.
With an annoyed scoff, Habu dodged the assault with a sharp pirouette. The wan light of a clouded moon caught strangely against her form, and Akio felt his heart stutter. For a moment, it felt like he had woken from some nightmare to find himself in another sparring session with his old student. He could see the girl he had trained, could see her pigtails splaying in the wind, the exuberance of a child blazing from her like a beacon. But then the bijū's chakra flared brighter and shredded the vision before him.
Akio jolted to his senses just in time to recognize that the crimson energy was slicing through his ninjutsu and charging directly at him. Grunting, he managed to dive away at the last second as he heard Habu snarl, an inhuman ferocity cracking her voice, "I know your tricks, old man."
Akio straightened. From the corner of his vision, he asserted that the Leaf captain could now attend to Mira: the jōnin's fingers were primed for his next jutsu as he murmured something to the girl, trying to draw her back. However, the Flash's words were drowned out by the ringing of metal against metal and the sudden resurgence of nightmarish growls and snapping fangs. Akio calculated that the wolves must have rejoined the Leaf genin as they met the remaining Mist shinobi. He let out a breath, glad that their stratagem was underway. Now, all that was left was his part of the mission.
When Akio faced his target, he saw her pupils had fully narrowed to slits. The wrinkles on his brow deepened. The stories may have been different for the Mist, but the warning was the same: never turn your back on a jinchūriki. They were unpredictable – a slave to their fickle impulses. Especially when they had reached this state. It seemed like the kunoichi had completely forgotten Mira: her eyes, nearly blinding from the hatred seething there, were trained to every movement of her old sensei. Akio knew he would be able to hold her attention without much difficulty. He could buy Mira some time.
The nerves along the back of Akio's hands crackled – something they had always done before he met another shinobi in direct battle, something he had long since forgotten. But there was no time to fully register this fragment of his youth. In these last moments, his mind raced through the dozens of paths the fight could take. Buy a few minutes, he thought, pulling out the borrowed kunai, its handle worn from smaller hands. Another memory flashed then. A little chirping voice saying, 'It's still too dull! Sensei, here, can you hone it?' He gritted his teeth and shifted his grip on the weapon, staring across the swath of cracked earth to the kunoichi who once owned that voice.
He settled lower in his stance, his hips groaning, and etched out one of the last outcomes of this fight. If it comes down to it, save Mira at all costs. His chest tightened again then, barely allowing him to breathe. Complete your final mission: kill Habu.
As if reading his mind, the kunoichi curled her red-cloaked fists and accepted his challenge. She was twenty feet away when Akio blinked: when he opened his eyes, her fist was hurling towards his face. He jerked back, her crimson chakra just missing his jaw as he fell low onto his left hand, shifted his weight, and launched a kick at her kneecaps. The jinchūriki leapt before he was even an inch away only to plummet back to earth, her left fist falling like a meteor straight at his chest. He flipped over to catch himself on his right hand, rolling away so her iron knuckles crashed into the dirt, sending a shockwave of mud into his eyes.
Engrained muscle memory ripped Akio's forearm around, the kunai in his hand careening towards the kunoichi's exposed bicep, the blade starved for the muscles which gave her the use of her arm. But it was also memory that stopped him just as blade was about to pierce flesh. Blinded, he couldn't see the creature before him – the half-crazed jinchūriki shrouded in that blood-like chakra. His mind only showed him his protégé – a girl of twelve grinning despite the grueling hours of another sparring session.
The kunai froze, and Akio was forced to roll away to avoid a savage thrust of her knee. Grimacing, he felt the bijū's corrosive slime splatter onto him and begin to snap at his skin, but his acquired immunity still seemed to hold even after all these years. He swiped the mud from his eyes to see Habu hop back into a hunter's crouch. Every movement seemed to cost the kunoichi more and more willpower as the bijū's chakra coiled around her, bunching at her side like some sort of flame trying to escape the wind.
Like the bijū is straining to yank her into the woods, he considered, realizing the latent opportunity. Contemplating how he could use this to his advantage, he flipped upwards into a crouch.
The action was simple – something he had done since he had begun training as a toddler. But age – that thief of all things – truly betrayed him then. He didn't feel it, but he heard it: the sickening pop as his right knee cried out its last. Habu heard it too. As he fell forward, Habu's face filled his vision and knuckles hammered into his jugular. He managed to tighten his muscles at the last moment, but he was still heaving to catch his breath as he twisted on an ankle and spun away.
He gripped his neck, the bijū's mucus as intense as if someone had set the skin alight, but that pain wasn't the source of his panting. His weak attempt at misdirection was pointless: the kunoichi knew the extent of his injuries. He could see it in her smirk as she slowly straightened up and let her hands fall to her sides.
Slowly, she began to wind her way towards him. He attempted again to stand, but his right knee buckled inwardly under his weight. Snarling a cuss, he caught himself and shifted onto his left leg. He raised the kunai once more but knew what this meant: when his tendon had snapped, so did his fate's red string. He could almost see the unknown stretching before him, but he had seen it for a long time. Shinobi were trained to sense another on the verge of crossing over that horizon; this was only new in that the view seemed so much closer. Despite the unsteadiness, despite the pain, he stood tall and faced it.
Habu, kunoichi that she was, was drunk from the taste of his approaching death. She stretched her bleeding lips into a leer as she strolled forward. She lunged one way, and Akio instinctively jolted to the other in response. The motion sent him stumbling as his leg gave way. Just as he seemed to gain his balance, Habu lunged the other direction, sending him struggling again.
The kunoichi snickered – the sound some unnatural concoction of a rattling hiss. She kept toying with him, dangling him like some sort of puppet, only to abruptly grow tired of the game. With a flick of her wrist, the bijū's chakra shot out and slammed into his chest, pinning him against an upturned rock. He coughed up blood as his ribs cracked beneath the pressure, the kunai falling from his crushed grip.
Yet Habu did nothing more except stride closer and closer, her grin screaming wider and wider. When she was a breath's caress away, she stopped and stretched out her scarred, sallow hands. Akio tried to raise his hands to scrabble at her flesh, but the crimson chakra kept his hands pinned to the rock. Her maddened eyes locked with his, she entwined her fingers around his neck, and she squeezed. Her blackened, jagged nails nipped blood from his skin as her grip squeezed the life from his flesh.
It wasn't that sound faded for Akio, but that his heartbeat was growing deafening. He could hear it pound, feel it reverberating within his flesh – a sensation he had ignored all his life until these final moments when it demanded recognition for its ultimate crescendo. But there was no point. Soon that sound would grow so deafening as to create silence, and in that silence, he would forever fall.
His vision began to flicker, but he didn't dare close his eyes. He kept them open to catch the last glimpses of a world he hated. Of a cruel world where war was the only constant. Where the burning passion of love fed on rotting logs of pain and death until the flames burned black with hatred and revenge. For most of his life, he had only continued this cycle, cut down more putrid logs for the inferno that engulfed the land of shinobi. But still, in these last few moments he couldn't help but strain for the last glimpse of his greatest failure of all, hoping that in these final moments he would see a miracle in the stare of those twin flaming pits – a miracle in which those flames would ebb away, releasing both killer and killed from the chains of their pasts. A miracle that would let him die in peace.
His vision began to blur, colors leaching away, leaving behind shifting lines of black and white. But still, he strained to see, strained to find his absolution in her triumph. But the world around him was fading, shifting, as life's visage slipped away. Everything was falling away. Everything except-
Something – no, someone – was approaching. A figure, darkened by the light of life he was leaving but ensconced in an otherworldly white energy – a white that seemed to stretch even off into the abyss just beyond the veil of life. Shinigami, he thought, greeting it, reaching out to it.
The figure tilted its head as if in greeting, and the world faded to white. But it didn't go quietly.
There was a ringing in his ears, a sharp pressure pounding both against and within his skull. It felt as if someone had turned his bones to metal and rung him with a sledgehammer. His vague sense of self began to sharpen, the feeling of physicality returning to him. With it was a sense that greedy tongues of fire were slurping at his skin, and, for a moment, he thought that Habu had decided to coat him with that acidic slime, ensuring his end would be long and tortuous.
Groaning, he peeled open what he vaguely remembered to be eyelids. The world was still there, the ruptured earth looking as if it had begun sobbing as a hard rain started to fall. But Habu was gone. In her stead-
He blinked, his eyes focusing on the figure he had greeted as shinigami, onto Mira who stared at him. Her eyes once more flickering between chocolate and ebony, between relief and apathy. She turned from him before he could see how much of the girl truly remained, but he knew that the one in control was someone – something – that had only one thing on its mind.
The miko turned its eyes onto the far edge of the clearing, and he followed its gaze. There Habu lay broken against a splintered trunk. The force of the impact that had flung her there had blood trailing out of her mouth and nose, but the stream was already thinning – the jinchūriki healing itself as always.
The miko cocked its head, its child's feet dangling once more a few inches above the grass. It made no noise as it began to move towards the jinchūriki, a strange wind beginning to stir. Akio struggled to rise but ended up watching her go, blanching as he saw what was happening in the girl's shadow. It reminded him of what he had caught Mira was always attempting to do, but this was so much more. For as soon as her shade swept over the blades of grass, their stems turned an emerald so brilliant that they seemed to give off a wan glow just as they soared upward and upward, their tips reaching out to touch the kami's feet; but as they neared, their color mottled to an odorous brown, falling over dead only for the process to begin anew. When the miko's shadow had left them, the grass had returned to the same stage as when her shadow had first fallen over them – making Akio wonder if this all was just in his mind.
This was the creature approaching Habu and this was the creature that set Habu shrieking in pain as if her very nerves were being flayed one by one. There was no outward sign of what was happening – the kami made no noise, no movement. It was just merely staring in her direction. The only thing that told Akio something horrific was occurring was by this innate sense of dread growing in his marrow, the way his hair stood on end as if sensing an approaching storm.
Crimson chakra began pouring out of Habu then as she shrieked. Her eyes crimson orbs. Her pupils narrowing to slits.
"No!" Akio raked out a gasp, a crooked hand outstretched. He felt a wetness on his cheeks as he braced himself up on his elbows. "Kami!" he called, but his quiet cry was swept away in the wind. He shifted onto his palms but his hand slipped in the softening mud. "Stop! Mira! Sto-"
"Katon: Great Fireball Jutsu!" The world just in front of Mira erupted into a wall of flame. The miko jerked back in surprise, and for a moment, Akio thought Mira had regained control, but a flash of jet pupils revealed otherwise. A strange short of shriek, like some animal trying to talk, came from her throat as her eyes raked towards the source of the jutsu.
The goggled Leaf genin stood there, his hands cupped around his mouth. Lit by his own flame, his visage caught the light too hard, making the boy look ethereal. The sweat and rain matted his black hair, clinging to his skin to create a thick coat that caught the light like oil. Puckered lines of cut skin marred his cheeks and exposed torso, but the skin itself was too pallid, making the first stages of bruising along his arms and knuckles all the more marked. Though he maintained the jutsu, his hands were quivering, his posture drooping: the boy was on the verge of collapse.
Without warning, a Mist ANBU sprinted towards the boy, and Akio jerked upwards but fell as his palm slipped in the mud, his shout dying in his throat. When he looked up again, dirt oozing off his chin, he expected only more death. Instead, the swirl-masked ANBU stood next to the boy, his hands a blur of symbols as he shouted, "Suiton: Water Formation Wall!"
The kami hissed as a wall of water burst around it – the impenetrable force of its tsunami-like waves rupturing the ground as it enclosed the miko in a circle. The swell extinguished the weakening flames of the genin's ninjutsu, and the boy fell forward with a grateful gasp, his bloodless knuckles clenched over quaking knees. He had reached the end of his chakra reserves, and his body was entering that near-paralytic state.
Wondering if he had truly lost his mind, Akio ignored this unheard of truce and gnashed his teeth. "Idiot!" he snarled through the dirt lining his tongue. "Get out of there! Now!"
The boy turned his head, the air he heaved in and out of his chest forming a mist along his goggles, confusion marring the exhausted grin on his haggard face. Akio lifted himself up, the question flashing through his mind once more at how the Leaf could have become so powerful and shouted, "Run!"
The ANBU, keeping his eyes locked on his jutsu, affirmed, "Get going! I've got thi-"
Akio blinked. The shinobi was gone. Just gone. There was no eruption of gore, no screams of pain; he simply vanished as if plucked from existence with only a strange sense of a spatial void marking his passing – a void as evident as if a tooth had just disappeared. The prison of water collapsed, exposing the kami, who floated there, its skin furiously bubbling as water dripped from it, its raven gaze not having shifted even a fraction from the boy.
The goggled boy stumbled backward, but the kami was already moving towards him. Another inhuman snarl ripped from its lips as the miko turned towards the genin, storm-ruptured waves of hatred rolling from it. For some strange reason, it seemed like the kami recognized the boy, and for some reason, it registered him as a larger threat on its list then even Habu who lay there, twitching as the bijū's chakra yearned for the woods.
Akio glanced around, wondering why the Leaf captain wasn't acting. That's when he saw the yellow-haired jōnin leaning against a trunk, his face pale, the Leaf kunoichi bending over his leg. Sweat shone off of her forehead as the green medical-nin's glow shone from her hands as she stymied the flow of blood.
Akio glanced toward the goggled kid who had frozen in fear as the kami drifted towards him, its visage as dark as an approaching apocalypse, the earth trembling once more. The boy, meanwhile, had forgotten how to even breathe. The old shinobi found himself scrambling to his feet, slipping from mud and broken body, but he managed to stumble, then shamble, then run forward. The air seemed to warp around the goggled boy, crackling as space itself seemed to crunch inwards on him. At the last moment, Akio leapt forward, shoving the boy free from the kami's lock.
Existence erupted behind them as they tumbled through the dirt. Akio could hear the kami hiss and as he turned, he saw that the miko's flesh was writhing and peeling again even more furiously than before. The black veil over her eyes rippling: just beneath, Mira's consciousness must've managed to gain some control, managed to divert the blow just enough for them to escape.
Akio turned to the genin and snapped, "Get back to the others! I can distract her!"
The boy, trembling, scrambled to his feet, his mouth opening in protest but Akio barked, "Now!"
The genin haphazardly darted towards his comrades, and Akio turned to face an advancing Mira. He could see the kami's attention follow the boy, but he flung his hands wide and snapped, "Kami!"
That seemed to garner the creature's attention. As if interested that something had recognized it for what it was, it swung its gaze lazily back to the old man who wobbled about on one leg. Akio, not expecting that to work, blanched and snapped out, "Kami! Leave your vessel! You're killing her!" But though the kami had turned to him, his words now seemed to have no effect. He frowned, wondering why it was staring at him. Then he realized it was staring through him.
He glanced over his tattered shoulder to see Habu straining, woman's will against bijū's. The chakra cloak around her was thickening, submerging that sallow skin beneath a flood of crackling lava, consuming her body and soul. But still, her white knuckles clenched into the ground, refusing to let the Six Tails take flight.
He turned back to the kami and could see its intentions rolling behind those black veils. "No," he murmured, shaking his head. His chest tightened. "No!" As the miko began to approach, he backed up, keeping himself between the two.
Just as back then, he couldn't let it happen. Even after all these years, he hadn't really changed. He couldn't let Habu die. Not when he was here. Not when he could do something. He flung his arms to either side, trying to cover her. "I won't let you kill her," he snarled. He could feel his heart batter against his ribs, trying to escape the doom that trotted towards him.
The kami cocked its head but no other expression crossed its face. But suddenly, those black eyes flashed brown and Mira was there – Mira was there reaching forward shrieking, "No!"
His chest seemed to have fully collapsed then: the pain was unbearable. He looked down, seeing a chakra-coated, sallow hand with blackened fingernails punched through his sternum. His lifeblood poured out of him, his heart completely destroyed. As his chin fell onto his chest, he realized his mistake: never turn your back on a jinchūriki.
The air tickled his ear as he heard Habu whisper, "I'll meet you soon in the afterlife, sensei. And I'll kill you there too." As he was falling forward, Mira's eyes went black once more as the human part of her screamed in a rage he had only heard in his nightmares. And the world began to ring louder, burning from color to white to the complete brilliance of a star.
But this eruption of raw power was not the thing which took his life. It wasn't even Habu's final blow. No. His life ended as he accepted himself for what he was: a failure who couldn't even save the people he loved the most. A failure who could see that horizon now clearly. A failure who wouldn't be able to meet another's eyes. No, not for a long time.
As his consciousness faded, he approached the horizon but before he could see what lay beyond, he turned back. Strange as it was, he swore he could see another white-outlined figure running in the distance. Another shinigami, he thought before fading into the Beyond. Strange. It looks like a wolf.
Hey my amazing readers! First off, wow. This goes for a long time without my having properly said this, but I was not expecting this level of readership at all. Honestly, I just uploaded this story initially because I needed that extra motivation to keep writing, but I'm so happy people seem to be enjoying it! Yay! Mini-celebration!
Either way, I know my forte doesn't lie with action scenes too much, so hopefully I kept it interesting. I've been reworking this bit for forever because it didn't feel right, but well, hopefully it was entertaining to read! As always, comment if you'd like since that really makes a writer's day and ConCrit is encouraged! Either way, have a great night/day!