The Wanderers
Chapter 47 – Diving into the Maw
A/N: Having just watched The Legend of Korra (feel free to judge me), I didn't realise how similar the main plot of my story and it actually are. The Quiraji and the Equalists are similar in their drive, though with different backgrounds and base motivations. Just thought I'd say that.
Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto. If I did, people who died…WOULD STAY DEAD!
***Previously-On***
With Sasuke and Fiore having joined their group, Jito, Kakashi and Konan moved to the border between the Land of Grass and the Land of Fire to try and punch through. Using Fiore to work undercover, they tried to bluff their way through a group of soldiers at the border, but that failed and despite their best efforts they were discovered after taking out the group. They fled deeper into the Land of Fire under the constant threat of being hunted by the Quiraji soldiers, and after a dramatic move by Sasuke they stayed underground for a week to put off the enemy from their trail. Once they emerged they moved to the nearest stronghold to try and find some information on their target. When they arrived they discovered that all the Quiraji soldiers in the complex had been defeated, and they found that it had been done by Rock Lee, who opted to join their group. After a short conversation he indicated they he knew where the shinobi converting facility was, and agreed to take them there.
***End Summary***
The six of them sat at the top of a tree within a dense forest as Lee indicated to the large building a hundred metres away from their position. With his speed they had been able to push through the scouting forces with little problems, making up for their lost time. In the past day Lee had clearly demonstrated why he had survived in the Land of Fire for so long, and the group's leader held out hope that they would be able to succeed in destroying the facility.
"That's the place, huh?" Fiore eyed the plain building with a suspicious gaze.
It was only a two story building made of concrete and bricks, but they could tell it went deep underground as well. The area around it appeared almost lifeless with dark grass surrounded by otherwise lush green around the forest they were observing it from.
Standing in front of the only obvious entrance were fifteen Quiraji soldiers wearing bright red armour, each stood in perfect formation with their ice-blue eyes scanning the area for anything remotely suspicious. The only reason they hadn't found the group was because of the angle of the sun descending slowly behind them, but that would only last for another hour or so before they would be forced to attack or retreat.
Sasuke felt almost compelled to suggest they destroy it from their current position, he knew that Kakashi's partner had the ability to perform such destruction fairly easily. But that felt too much like something his old blonde teammate would do, and it would only draw every enemy for miles.
Lee frowned as he saw the guards, "Damnit…it had to be Red Guards…"
"How strong as they?" asked Jito, acknowledging Lee's extensive knowledge of the Quiraji.
The taijutsu master thought about it for a moment before letting out a slow breath and staring his dark eyes down at the intimidating guards. "Extremely. The last time I fought them I was forced to retreat after a prolonged battle. I could only fight maybe five of them at once before I'd probably be overwhelmed."
Sasuke smirked as thought about Lee being beaten back by the Quiraji soldiers, then felt himself being mentally slapped when he realised how petty that actually was. He had still never beaten the green-clad shinobi in a sparring match.
"Well, there are six of us here, so I'm sure we can punch through their defences," said Konan with a confident look on her face.
She went to create a set of paper sheets around her arms, but Lee put up an arm across her to stop her. "Wait. Their armour is able to negate chakra and if they are given the opportunity they will harden their bodies with physical energy and it's extremely difficult to get through."
Konan gave him a suspicious glare but cancelled her technique nonetheless, letting her hands fall back into her Akatsuki sleeves. "What do you suggest?"
Turning to Fiore, Lee indicated to the wooden pick sitting in her mouth. When it wasn't in her hair, she liked to chew on it like a toothpick.
Though she could do without the wood chips in her gums.
"Fiore and I have the advantage here, since we can fight them without using chakra to take them down. Beyond that, we need to knock them out before they harden themselves, otherwise it'll become a prolonged battle, one that we might not win."
"Fight without using chakra?" Sasuke looked down at his right arm, still feeling the slight stiffness despite it having been years since he fought Lee in the last round of the Chuunin Exams. It had been at that time that he had learnt what it was like to face someone who had to work hard to become strong. "We could do that too, though probably not to your level."
"Ah, I see what you mean," said Jito. He wasn't a particularly skilled taijutsu fighter, but he would be able to hold his own for a time. "So the four of us will act as the anvils and set up the Red Guards to be taken down and Fiore and Lee will be the hammers to take them out.
On the other side of the large branch, Kakashi put up his hands into a handseal he was very familiar with, "I can help in that regard." He turned to Lee as he moulded his chakra, "Is it just the armour that negates chakra, or the whole body?"
"Just the armour. It's made by Sensou, and has the same effect as having no chakra at all. You need to avoid it at all costs." Lee subconsciously clenched and then opened his fists slowly.
Looking at the Red Guard standing at the entrance, Kakashi quickly corrected his personal method of attack and dropped down to the ground beneath the tree.
"I guess we are going then," said Fiore with a smile of anticipation. She dropped the wooden pick out of her mouth and expanded it into a short stick, wielding it in a single hand with deft skill. She turned to Sasuke, "Are we doing a count?"
The Uchiha heir shook his head with his usual serious expression, "Not a chance. I'm just calling this one in your favour without prejudice."
"Well fine, spoil my fun," she said with a pout.
The two of them dropped out of the tree, with Lee nodding to Jito before dropping down to follow them.
Konan watched them fall before turning to Jito with a tired look in her eyes, "Is it sad that I feel like I'm getting too old for this?"
Jito gave her his best are-you-kidding-me look and motioned to himself, "Come to me when you're over fifty, then I might agree with you."
The blue haired woman smiled with a low chuckle before letting herself float down to the ground to follow her new companions.
Hesitating for a moment to consider what they were about to do, Jito couldn't help shake the feeling that they were walking into a trap. Doing something like this had been the reason he had been captured by Sensou in the first place, though this time he wasn't going in alone. And his allies had proven to be far more reliable than he had anticipated.
With the sun setting behind her, Fiore slowly walked towards the Red Guards standing rigid in front of the entrance.
She slowly tapped her staff on her shoulder with a cocky grin. "Evening boys"
One of the Red Guards frowned and walked towards her, slowly drawing a katana from his belt and keeping it held low. She had her ice-blue contacts in, so he wasn't sure whether she was a converted shinobi or not.
"State your number and position," he said with a slow methodical voice.
Fiore cocked her head and shrugged with a drawn-out sigh, "Well, this just isn't fun at all. I had a whole speech prepared, you know."
Her staff wavered slightly behind her head, and expanded oddly at the tip before she turned it in her hands and held it up towards the sky.
The Red Guard seemed unsure what to do, converted shinobi fresh out of the facility tended to be unstable even at the best of times. "State your number and position," he insisted.
The tip of Fiore's wooden staff bloomed outwards to reveal a small paper ball with the symbol for light written on it. With a smirk Fiore shut her eyes.
"I guess that'll be…wait, damnit I messed up my one-liner…"
The flash bomb sitting at the tip of her wooden staff exploded in a brilliant flash of light, immediately blinding all fifteen Red Guard. Even with her eyes closed, Fiore felt a spike of pain shoot through her eyes, wondering if Sasuke had intentionally made the flash bomb more powerful than it normally is.
Having seen the signal to attack, the shinobi of her group jumped in to take advantage of the Red Guard's momentary blindness.
One of the Red Guard's at the front grimaced as he felt a hand clutching at his ankle, grasping the single exposed piece of clothing that wasn't attached to his blood red armour. Around him, another four Red Guard reacted the same way, though it was too late for them to do anything about it.
"Doton: Shinjuu Zanshu no Jutsu!"
Each of the five Red Guard were immediately pulled into the ground so that only their heads were visible as the four clones and the original Kakashi popped up from the ground behind them.
In perfect synchronisation with him, Konan leapt into the fray and hurled five highly concentrated exploding tags that attached themselves onto the Red Guard's exposed faces. Since their faces were not connected to the armour, they had no chance to survive the chakra-based explosions, which she concentrated with an area of chakra similar to Sasuke's earlier technique so that she didn't hit Kakashi behind the Red Guard.
With the five of them thoroughly destroyed by their combination attack, Kakashi dispersed his clones and the two of them turned to their companions and their own battles.
Jito had gotten the drop on two of the Red Guard and had driven kunai into their faces, dropping them to the ground with little trouble. However the other one he had been committed to defeating had regained his sight enough to dodge Jito's surprise attack, and had his sword out to drive the genjutsu master back.
"Come on," said Kakashi, knowing how difficult that battle would be without Jito able to use any ninjutsu to defend himself.
Coming from an acute angle on the far left, Lee drove as much physical strength as he could without snapping his limbs into one leg, flying through the air and slamming it into a Red Guard's armoured chest after his initial target instinctively ducked under the blow.
His sandalled foot left a large dent in the blood red armour, and clearly caused massive internal damage as the Red Guard buckled and vomited blood onto the ground before Lee instinctively ducked under a sword strike poorly aimed at his back.
He kicked upwards with his feet and disarmed the blinded Red Guard behind him, using the momentum to push his hands off the ground and over the Red Guard's head. He drove several rapid-fire blows into the Red Guard's back, using physical energy to harden his fists so that he didn't take any damage when he hit the hard armour.
The Red Guard was forced to bend backwards to try and avoid the Genin's attacks, but Lee had already anticipated that.
He snaked his arms around its head and yanked backwards, while driving both his knees into his back, snapping his opponent's spine within his body.
Lee looked up and nearly lost his head as a Red Guard tried to slash at his neck, just nicking the top of his flak jacket as Lee fell backwards and rolled to pick himself. The Red Guard jumped at him with his sword slashing faster than his eyes could follow.
Biting his lip nervously, Lee felt the veins on his forehead bulging as he activated through the first two Gates. Ramping up his speed, Lee disappeared in a flash and tried to block the Red Guard's sword with his feet on the dull side so that he didn't lose any of his limbs.
At such a high speed he was able to keep up with the Red Guard's movements, each blow was deftly avoided as he rained down kicks on his opponent's armour. With only using physical energy he had a better chance of breaking through the armour than any of the others, but in Lee's experience he wasn't going to get through such armour so easily. When they were paying attention, doing internal damage was almost impossible.
The Red Guard tried to spear through him, seemingly able to keep up with his speed. Lee spun to avoid it and slammed a clenched fist into the flat side of the sword, sending it straight into the ground while he ran up the length of the blade and tried to drive his knee into the Red Guard's face, but his opponent dropped to the ground to avoid it and kicked up at Lee's body, clipping him in the side.
Lee jumped back several metres and grimaced, holding his side sorely. "Every damn time..." he muttered, straightening himself up and staring at the Red Guard as it charged at him silently.
He brought back a fist and felt the power in his arm amplify as he summoned up his physical energy. It was a strange sensation compared to chakra, and Lee wasn't quite sure how he was doing it since Sensou's messing with his body, but considering the power it gave him he wasn't complaining. Though it did tire him more easily than chakra used to, and he did retain the ability to use chakra, unlike most of her other victims.
Before the Red Guard could reach him, Lee punched towards the approaching enemy as fast as he could, sending a massive wave of air pressure into the Quiraji soldier's chest.
The Red Guard was forced backwards and coughed painfully; even if his armour absorbed most of the damage he still took internal damage from Lee's miniature Hirudora attack.
In that moment of injury, Lee jumped forward and grabbed at the edge of the Red Guard's armour, bringing back his other hand and performing the same taijutsu ability straight into the Quiraji's face.
The effect was not pleasant, and Lee was grateful that none of the gore struck at him since he had essentially attacked with air pressure. There was a part of him that was numb to such a thing, it was war after all, but he hated that he had to kill to keep others safe. It felt very unyouthful.
On another part of the battlefield, with his katana in hand, Sasuke stabbed down into one of the Red Guard's necks, piercing through bone and skin to sever his head from his body and pushing the body backwards to join the other two he had already killed. With their vision taken from them momentarily, it had been child's play for a swordsman of Sasuke's calibre to kill them before they could defend themselves.
From the corner of his eye he saw the last unoccupied target, whose skin flashed momentarily as he steadied himself on his feet and levelled his sword expertly.
Sasuke grinned; he'd intentionally left him alone to see if the Red Guard was the kind of opponent he could test his skills on. He hadn't had a good kenjutsu partner for months, and he wanted to see why Lee was so concerned about this kind of soldier. He still had his pride after all.
The Red Guard didn't say anything as he charged at Sasuke, who felt disappointed at the lack of a decent challenge. He brought up his sword to block the strike, not even bothering to activate his Sharingan.
Their swords clashed loudly at the contact, but only for a moment. Faster than Sasuke could follow with his normal eyes the Red Guard swung around and slashed at his legs, driving deep into his skin.
Sasuke let out a gasp of pain and jumped back, gripping at his leg. "Damn bastard…" he muttered, gripping his sword with both hands. He decided on a different tactic, one that didn't involve him getting impaled.
With the sword in his grip, he ran through a short set of handseals as the Red Guard dove at him again, a confident look on his face. It appeared to be making the same motion, but Sasuke wasn't going to let it have its own way.
He jumped backwards with a wave of his sword, sending a wave of lightning chakra at the Red Guard, using the attack to disappear into the nearby forest. He left a copy of himself to fight the Quiraji soldier, giving him time to activate his Sharingan and study his opponent's movements. Fiore had been on his case for years about underestimating opponents, and though it pained him to admit it, she had a fair point.
Not that he planned on ever telling her that.
The Red Guard dived straight through the attack, letting his armour absorb the chakra attack while his sword clashed with Sasuke's clone. Their movements were lightning fast as they parried and stabbed at each other in perfect synchronisation, as Sasuke having activated his clone's Sharingan as well.
Despite not having movements to copy, they still enhanced his eyesight beyond their normal abilities, and that allowed him to keep up with the Red Guard's movements.
From his further out position, Sasuke watched the battle with fascination, slowly figuring out that the Red Guard was inherently a better swordsman than he was. It was painful to admit, but if the Quiraji soldier wasn't so hell-bent on killing him, he would make a great sparring partner.
But as he looked at the others battling their own opponents, he remembered that this was a battlefield, and he had a job to do.
The Red Guard cleaved straight through his clone's body after making a surprisingly deft dodge that Sasuke would have to try later on, forcing the clone to turn back into the mud he had created it with and collapse into the ground.
It only looked around for a brief moment before fixating on his relatively well-hidden position, moving quickly to attack him again.
"Damn, he's tenacious," said Sasuke, though he was satisfied that his newly-formed plan would work.
Reaching into his pockets he produced an item he hadn't used in a long while, weaving it around his hands before creating five regular Bunshin and sending them at the Red Guard to distract him.
As they were only a basic ninjutsu the Red Guard cut his way through them easily, but in that time Sasuke had accumulated his chakra and activated his technique.
Waving his hands around towards the Red Guard charging at him, Sasuke hurled a dozen long wires at his opponents, hooking them onto the edges of the top and bottom of the armour.
The Red Guard paused momentarily, and that ended the battle for him.
Emerging from the ground beneath him was an Earth Clone of Sasuke, and with four quick slashes of his katana he cut at the bonds holding the Red Guard's armour together.
The original Sasuke pulled on the razor-sharp wire and wrenched off the Red Guard's armour, leaving him exposed to chakra-based attacks.
He tossed aside the wire and let the armour fall to the ground, drawing his sword again and bursting towards the Red Guard with chakra through his legs, cutting straight through him with a lightning-charged blade. He felt a significant amount of resistance since the Red Guard had hardened his body with physical energy, but with enough chakra Sasuke was able to pierce through it and cleaved him from his groin to his face, showering the area with blood.
He looked over at his other companions, grimacing as he felt his cloak being covered in blood. Jito, Kakashi and Konan finished off their opponent with a combination attack, while Lee had just knocked out the first Red Guard he had attacked.
"Looks like you guys did a good job," came a female voice behind him.
He turned to see Fiore standing in front of him, rubbing at her eyes sorely.
"No thanks to you," he said, sheathing his sword after flicking off the blood from its metal frame.
The young girl scoffed and tapped her staff against her shoulder, "You guys were fine, and I couldn't see anything at all. Remind me never to listen to you when you make plans, one day you'll actually get me killed."
"That might be a nice reprieve...think of all the work I could get done." Sasuke spoke with a small smirk on his face, it was the same banter they always had between each other.
"Is everyone okay?" asked Lee, jogging up to the couple, ignoring the pain in his side. "Are we ready to keep going?"
Sasuke and Fiore both nodded in agreement, with Sasuke signalling to their Senju leader that they were without significant injury.
Jito motioned for them to approach the door with them, and they came back together as a group before pushing open the wide doors and entered the large base.
Their real mission had just begun.
The inside of the building looked nothing like the group had been expecting, with the exception of Jito and Lee, who had been held in a similar-looking facility in the past. The walls were covered in cables and wires running through the ceiling and odd characters were painted on the walls that none of them recognised or could read.
From the entrance expanded a long corridor that looked to just keep going off into an eerie darkness, since there were no visible lights within the building or on the ceiling they weren't sure how the corridor was being lit as it was at all.
"This place is really creepy," commented Fiore, nudging Sasuke on the shoulder to show him a character on the wall beside her. "I've never seen writing like that before."
The Uchiha shinobi shrugged and continued down the empty corridor with the others, he didn't recognise it either.
"Where is everyone?" asked Kakashi with a low voice, holding a kunai tightly in his hand.
Even though he didn't have a weapon in his hands, Lee was still walking in a stance that would allow him to pounce on an opponent at a moment's notice, but to the shinobi he seemed quite relaxed. "These places don't have too much staff, they don't really need them. The fact that there were fifteen Red Guard out the front means we likely won't find much resistance inside from normal enemies."
"Which means it's just the really dangerous ones that we need to worry about," said Jito with a grim expression on his face. He was weary of meeting one of the four leaders, though with Lee in their group he felt somewhat better about fighting them.
They spent several minutes moving from the front door to the end of the corridor, examining the area for traps and making sure that the Quiraji couldn't ambush them. In that time the surroundings didn't change at all, and more and more they were beginning to think they had been led into a trapped facility that had no-one inside.
"Am I the only one that feels like this was a waste of time?" asked Sasuke finally, tapping his knuckles on one of the symbols on the wall. "There's nothing here."
"There has to be something here," said Konan, with several paper birds floating around her head to scout out the ceiling. "The Red Guards were guarding the door for a reason."
"She has a point," said Kakashi, though he felt the way Sasuke did. If this is what they were brought out of retirement for, he was very disappointed.
The group finally came to the darkest bit of the corridor, finding that there was a pair of staircases in front of them. The leftmost staircase led upwards towards a more-lit area of the facility, while the rightmost staircase seemed almost pitch black and led downwards in a long spiral.
"Well isn't this just fantastic. You'd think they were inviting us to split up," said Fiore sarcastically.
"We should split up."
"Okay, I was kidding," she said to Jito with a frown. "That's a seriously dumb idea."
Sasuke walked up and stood beside Fiore, facing her with his normal disinterested expression, "He's right, Fiore. We can both cover more ground, and fight more cohesively in such an enclosed space if we split up."
"That's..." She stared at her partner's expression, taking a moment before understanding what he meant. She turned to Jito with a glare, "You should have just said that, instead of making me look like a moron."
"How do you want the groups split up?" asked Kakashi, trying to change the flow of the conversation.
Jito also ignored Fiore's comment, taking a step back to look at the whole group, calculating how they should proceed. He never considered himself a genius of strategy, but decades of war went a long way to surviving such situations.
"Kakashi, Konan and Lee will take the upwards path. Since you are faster, you can cover more ground quicker and with Lee you should be able to at least hold off any opponent you come across, though I want you guys to run if you find someone you can't handle."
The three shinobi nodded in acknowledgement, and turned to move towards the upper staircase.
In front of Fiore, Sasuke was concerned that she might have an issue working directly with Jito when they took their own path, but she wore the same expression she always did before going into battle. He knew she wasn't going to let anything stop her from completing the mission, personal issues aside. She was a profession, even if she didn't look it.
Jito stepped towards them and flexed his sore hands, "We will be taking the lower staircase. We don't know how far deep the facility goes, but I want you to be ready to attack anything that moves, Fiore."
The Cascading Flow warrior nodded without comment, which in itself caused Jito to wonder if her opinion of him was slowly changing. He wasn't holding his breath on anything, but if she would work well with him in their mission it was good enough for him.
Besides, Sasuke seemed adept at keeping her choler down, which was why he was grateful he had tagged along.
"Shall we go?" asked Sasuke, snapping Jito out of his mental analysis. "The others have already left."
"Yes...let's go." Jito stared at the staircase with tired eyes, he had no idea what to expect down there.
Fiore scoffed and walked in front of him, since she knew she would need to be at the front of their little group. "Don't sound too enthusiastic, Senju."
Maybe she wasn't going to change that quickly after all.
Jito, Sasuke and Fiore made their way down the staircase, straining their eyes as the darkness was almost strangling. With a hand on Sasuke's shoulder to steady herself, Fiore led them down until they came to flat ground, where they couldn't see anything at all, not even each other.
"This is ridiculous," she said, not wanting to take her hand off for fear that he might just disappear within the darkness.
Jito coughed awkwardly, he was used to this kind of environment; it was a vital aspect of his fighting style. He begun feeling around in his pockets, "I might have a torch scroll here somewhere…"
"Don't bother," came Sasuke's voice.
Barely a second later there was a bright light that illuminated the whole floor. Both Jito and Fiore turned to see Sasuke holding his sword in a single hand, covered in a bright blue flame.
"That's really cool, Sasuke, I didn't know you could set your sword on fire like that."
The Uchiha smirked, holding the sword away from himself because of the extreme heat. "Well I do it with lightning all the time, so it would make sense that I could with fire."
Jito ignored the two of them and looked around the area, his eyes widening in both surprise and disgust.
Scattered on the floor beyond them were piles of corpses, each body looking like it had had the life simply sucked out of them to the bones. There were easily over a hundred skeletons along the ground, however there was no smell coming from them whatsoever.
"What the hell is this?" asked Fiore, finally noticing the bodies.
Beside her Sasuke ignored the bodies and used his Sharingan to look further down the newly-lit area. He barely made out a light blue image at the edge of his vision, but it was snuffed out almost immediately upon him noticing it.
"What do you see?" asked Jito, seeing the Uchiha doing the job he'd brought him along for.
"There was a chakra signal, but it disappeared. I think something is happening on the other side of the level."
Flipping her staff in her hands, Fiore grinned and began running over the bodies, with Sasuke and Jito quickly following her. Each body seemed to have been killed in the same manner, and both Sasuke and Fiore were on edge as they moved through the area.
They had both seen such a thing before.
The group reached the other side of the floor quickly, but as they saw they were already too late. An old man cloaked in black was holding up a woman with a single wrinkled hand, one who looked like she was a shinobi of Suna.
The three of them watched in horror as her body was rapidly aged to the point of her turning into a skeleton, with the old man flashing a moment of youth in his withered face before turning back to his normal withered look.
Very slowly he turned around to face the intruders, dropping the woman's skeleton to the ground, letting out a soft crack as the bones shattered on contact.
"Escapees? No, you are too youthful to be such. So you are the intruders then?"
With his blazing sword in hand, Sasuke saw red and charged at him with a loud roar, but was held back two massive wooden hands on his shoulders, as Fiore ran up beside him.
"No, Sasuke! He's not the kind of opponent you can charge wildly at!"
"HE KILLED MY MOTHER!"
Fiore tried to calm him down while Jito moved up beside them to assist.
That's Kyoukou, one of the Quiraji leaders. So is this the one who killed you, Mikoto?
He felt his fists clench unconsciously, he understood Sasuke's position and wanted to charge at their opponent as well. However, he knew that out of the three of them, he was the most useless in this fight, since his genjutsu couldn't work without his opponent's having chakra.
Despite this, he knew they needed to take Kyoukou down or make him retreat, since he could see a door behind the Quiraji leader.
"The last of the Uchiha? Interesting." The old man's gaze turned slowly until his sunken eyes rested on Jito, causing a dark smile to emerge across his face. "And the last of the Senju. I can finish what our leader began."
Seeing that she wasn't going to be able to completely stop Sasuke from attacking Kyoukou, Fiore turned to Jito, temporarily ignoring their opponent. "Hold him back, Senju…"
She cracked her neck loudly before slamming one hand into the other, "…I'll take him down."
Their leader frowned, but upon seeing the determined look in her eyes he nodded and jumped up to grab at Sasuke, holding him tightly in a hold while she retracted her wooden arms and manipulated them to a long staff.
She caught her weapon and twirled it in her hands before pointed it at Kyoukou, "We couldn't take you out back in the Land of Earth, but I promise you that you will die here."
"Just because you are a civilian does not mean that you are immune to our wrath. You presume too much."
"So do you," she said with a grin, charging at him while aiming her staff at him.
"Let me go, Jito!" yelled Sasuke, not wanting to see the same thing that happened to his mother happen to his partner. "I have to help her!"
Jito's grip was unbreakable though, and he had no intention of releasing him. "Let her do this, Sasuke. This is what she is here for. Have faith in her."
Sasuke tried to struggle again, but as he saw Fiore clash with Kyoukou he felt his urge to resist lessen.
But only slightly.
Fiore's staff extended instantly towards Kyoukou, but to her surprise he was able to dodge it by the smallest measure. The Quiraji leader reached out and gripped her wooden staff with a wrinkled hand.
He grinned slowly and turned to his opponent, "You people are so arrogant…"
Nothing happened.
Letting go of her staff to avoid any unnecessary damage, Fiore ran at Kyoukou with a similar grin on her face, "And you don't?"
She didn't even wave her hands to command her wooden weapon, letting it spread out over the Quiraji soldier like a liquid as she balled a fist and went to slam it into the side of his head.
He seemed surprised that he wasn't able to affect her wood, but nevertheless kept his arrogant look and turned to take the blow.
She seemed to ignore the change in his position and threw a heavy punch at his head, but at the last second before she made contact her wood intervened and she hurled herself back, letting the wooden weapon harden before slam straight into Kyoukou with a loud thump.
As the old man fell to the ground with a grunt her wood flew back to her and landed back into her hand, letting her rest it on her shoulder.
"So that's how your ability works…"
Her opponent slowly picked himself up and turned to face her with a scowl, "Do not presume to understand my power, girl."
"I'm not presuming anything," she said confidently. "If you aren't touching flesh, you can't use that absorbing power of yours."
The old man sneered and reached up to remove his hood, revealing a head of thin white hair that was clearly balding. He was horrific to look at, but seemingly only for a moment.
In front of their eyes he began to age backwards, appearing to get younger in mere moments. His skin began to heal and turn to a dark tan, while his hair quickly grew out into a long mane of white that ran down to his shoulders. Kyoukou's sunken eyes retracted and once the odd transformation was finished he looked almost thirty years old.
He still looked horrifying though, because his eyes hadn't changed at all during the transformation process.
Fiore balked at his visage visibly, "You guys just get stranger and stranger,"
He grinned and flicked his hair dramatically, "This is true power. You would not understand."
The Cascading Flow warrior sighed and put her staff between her hands. It slowly grew to a pair of large wooden gauntlets that covered up to her shoulders and connected along her chest, keeping to a single shape.
Kyoukou's eyes narrowed when he saw this, he didn't know what kind of trickery she was using to use her technique, but it certainly wasn't chakra. The only other possibility was that she was tapping into her spiritual energy like they did, and that would be impossible.
Fiore charged at him at a high speed, intent on beating him to death with her gauntlets.
Unfortunately she could see a small rip forming behind her opponent, one that she immediately understood meant the end of the fight.
"I will give it to you girl; you appear to be a threat to us. Be grateful that I am not in a fighting mood today, little girl."
Just as her large gauntlets were about to slam into his face he disappeared into the rip, causing her to stumble as she struck at thin air.
"Damnit!" She retracted her wooden weapon to the point of its normal staff which she took again angrily. "They always run away when we push them into a corner."
Far behind her Jito let Sasuke go, seeing that he had calmed down considerably. Kyoukou's odd transformation seemed very strange since it appeared that he was planning to flee anyway.
Was he just showing us that he could do that? How do these Quiraji think?
"What do we do now?" asked Sasuke when Fiore came back towards them, angry that their opponent had gotten away when he was on the ropes.
"We have to keep going," replied Jito, shaking himself out of his confusion. "I believe he was killing the prisoners in anticipation for our arrival, which means he hadn't reached whatever is beyond that door."
Fiore nodded, holding her wooden staff at her side, barely showing any signs of exhaustion despite her frustration.
With nothing else to do in the large floor, the three of them moved to the large double door and slowly pushed it open, letting another source of light shine into the large room.
Going down the staircase, Kakashi's group made their way quickly through the complex while staying in a defensible formation. As the quickest in the group, Lee ran at the front of the three of them, forcing himself to run much slower than he is used to so that Kakashi and Konan could keep up with him.
The walls around them were labelled like hospital rooms, but as they started to look into them they realised that the rooms were apparently empty. All three of them were on edge as they expected enemies at every turn, but when they ran up another staircase they found a wide corridor that looked like an expanded variation of the previous corridor, except this one had over a dozen people standing around in it.
"Who the hell are you guys?" exclaimed one of the men in a long white robe, eyeing the intruders suspiciously. "Does the master know you are here?"
Without breaking stride, Lee disappeared as he moved at his normal speed, instantly appearing in front of the speaker and grabbing him by the cuff of his robe, holding him high up into the air.
"Where is Sensou?! Where is she?!"
The other people braced themselves and prepared to protect their companion, but both of Lee's companions moved up to either side as his prisoner squirmed in his grip.
"She's…not…" The robed man struggled under Lee's iron grip, before looking down at the furious Konoha Genin and passing out due to sheer terror.
Lee tossed the man's unconscious body to the ground and glared at the others with a serious look that reminded Kakashi of when Gai used to get serious in a fight. "Where is Sensou?!"
His companions could only watch as Lee systematically interrogate and defeat each of the fourteen scientists in the corridor, with the only bit of information he'd been able to glean was that Sensou was not in the building.
The whole process had taken less than a minute, and showed Kakashi how much Lee had changed since they had separated. He reached out and grabbed Lee by the shoulder, "You aren't going to find her just by beating up her men. We need to find concrete evidence."
"Why are you so determined to find this Sensou?" asked Konan, unaware of Lee's background.
Lee looked down at one of the unconscious bodies with a passive gaze, "It doesn't matter. I can't see her being here right now, so we need to find a way to destroy this place."
"If this place is where she converts shinobi, which we haven't even confirmed yet," said Kakashi, dropping the issue with Lee's actions for the moment. He could tell the Konoha shinobi meant well, and he knew Lee wasn't one to dwell on personal problems when something needed to be done.
"This is where it is done," said Lee confidently. "I've seen them emerge from here too often in the past few months for it to be a coincidence."
Looking over the corridor, Konan turned back to the two Konoha shinobi through her amber eyes, "We should search these rooms there may be some texts or something to tell us more about how they convert their men, or why they are attacking us."
"That's a good idea, Konan," said Kakashi, proud of his partner's initiative. He'd been concerned that she wouldn't be willing to participate fully, but he could feel her acting like her old self once again.
They collectively searched each of the ten rooms in the large corridor with no results besides some scary statistics that Kakashi found on how many shinobi had been converted so far. As far as they could tell, over five thousand shinobi had been taken, defeated, and converted within the past three years. They couldn't tell from which villages they had been taken, but from what they could tell the Quiraji were building an army for some unknown purpose.
They came to yet another staircase, though this one appeared to snake upwards and outwards into separate paths.
Kakashi frowned, this presented a problem. They didn't want to back-track at all in case they were followed by more Red Guards, but they needed to explore as much as possible in as short time as possible.
"There look to be five pathways," observed Lee.
"So we split up then? That doesn't sound particularly smart," said Konan with a frown.
"No, Lee is right. With Sensou not here, we should be handle of their forces on our own. If we find someone we can't handle, we break out and retreat." Kakashi reached into one of his pockets and withdrew two small scrolls, tossing them to his two companions. "If you find one of the commanders and you don't think you can handle them, push some chakra through that. It should summon some of my dogs to find the others and bring them to you."
"This is a bad idea," said Konan with a shake of her head, taking the scroll nonetheless.
Lee took the scroll and placed it into one of his flak jacket pockets, taking a moment to nod to his companions before taking off to the nearest pathway up the stairs.
Kakashi grinned for a moment as he admired Lee's enthusiasm, before turning to Konan. "You okay with this?"
"Did you think I would be?" Konan put a hand on Kakashi's face, smiling in her usual way. "We shouldn't have come back, I think you know that."
He smiled back and took her hand, "Stay in touch. I worry about you sometimes."
She didn't say anything in return, but nodded to him slightly before leaving to take her own path.
Kakashi watched her leave for a moment before slowly walking up the stairs for his own separate route. He didn't want to let them go, but he had to think of the mission. Besides, if there was only a one in three chance of her getting into mortal danger by meeting that woman, it was worth trying. Even if it meant he might have to face her.
oOoOoOo
Kakashi flicked through an old-looking book quickly, registering as much information as he could in the limited time he had. Most of it was scientific data that meant nothing to him, but there were a few bits of information that he scribbled down on a scroll with a small bit of chakra.
From what he could glean, Sensou had spent years working on a way to subvert chakra entirely, but instead it appeared that she had instead found a way to suppress it within a person. Kakashi couldn't decipher half of what was written, but he knew it might be useful someday regardless.
Once he had gotten what he thought was necessary, Kakashi put the book back into place.
Ravings of a mad woman, clearly. A genius obviously, but this kind of stuff…
He scanned the rest of the room, seeing nothing else of value remaining. Moving back into the corridor, Kakashi wondered whether he should use Kage Bunshin to make the effort go much quicker. He reconsidered fairly quickly though, when he realised that if he found a powerful enemy he would need as much chakra as possible.
The next five doors had nothing of value, but Kakashi found himself hesitating before entering the last door in the hallway. It appeared no different from the others, but there was something about it as he put his hand on the doorknob.
His suspicions were confirmed when he opened the door.
Kakashi didn't bother taking a step into the room, rather he found himself surrounded by white light, with the door nowhere to be found. It reminded him of a genjutsu, but he knew that couldn't be the case from the only other 'being' in the area with him.
Standing without a single motion, was a pale-looking woman with a long black robe, staring straight at him with the same black soulless eyes he'd been knocked out by back in Amegakure.
Kakashi wanted to move to attack her, but his body refused to do anything under her soul-piercing stare. He tried to say something, but his voice failed him as well. Nothing seemed to work.
You have adequate timing.
Did she just speak to me? I didn't hear anything, but I knew what she said.
Unable to do anything but stand there, Kakashi tried to figure out why someone like her was speaking to him at all. Last time he had encountered her, she had slaughtered an entire village of shinobi, and killed Konan in the process. He wasn't going to forgive her for that, though he wasn't really in a state to argue.
Fifth floor, third door on the right. Six, Nine, Four, Eight, Eight, Zero.
Is…is she helping me? I don't know if I should trust her or not. I don't even know what she is telling me.
Kakashi's body continued to refuse to listen to him, so he could only watch as the Quiraji leader walked slowly towards him, not blinking as she kept staring straight into his eyes.
Everything happens in a preordained order. One era moves into another. Civilizations rise and fall as the sun and moon. The cycle persists.
The Konoha Jounin watched as she slowly closed her eyes, and the white background slowly faded away back to what Kakashi was expecting, with the pale woman nowhere to be found. He tested his feet and found his body responsive again, flexing his hands slowly. All over his body there was an unnatural chill running through his skin, but beyond that he seemed to be unmolested.
"That was…odd," said Kakashi quietly, wondering what the hell he had just been through. That was the second time he had encountered the woman, and the second time she had spared him, this time clearly giving him some kind of assistance.
He couldn't see her as an ally though, regardless of what she did. What she did to Amegakure, and Konan, was unforgivable.
The question is, should I follow her instructions or not? If she was truly trying to help, why would she kill all those shinobi in the first place? Is she not a Quiraji leader?
However Kakashi was not one to pass off an offer of assistance, even if it came from a questionable source. He moved out into the corridor and looked up at the staircase in front of him. By his reckoning, he was on the third floor, which meant that the others were likely on the same level too.
I'll have to risk it.
Placing his hands together, Kakashi created two Kage Bunshin, and they moved back down the corridor to find the others in his group. If it was indeed a trap, he would prefer to have both Lee and Konan at his side. If it wasn't a trap, and it was what they were looking for, then it would save them a lot of time within such a dangerous place.
I should check it out first though, at least for traps.
oOoOoOo
Following the directions the Quiraji leader had given him, Kakashi found himself standing in front of the door on the fifth level. He couldn't sense anything nefarious within, but that didn't stop him from being apprehensive about it.
"Is this the place, Kakashi-sensei?"
Kakashi turned to see Lee standing at his side where there had been only space a moment ago. He resisted the urge to jump in surprise, considering his clone had only informed the Genin a moment ago.
"Any problems?" asked Kakashi with an acknowledging nod.
The green spandex wearer shook his head, "Nothing, just low-level enemies and a few early-level converted shinobi. Are you sure of this information?"
"Not particularly, but it's all we have going for us at this time."
He turned on instinct, watching with a growing smile as Konan slowly jogged up to him from the staircase. His clone had only just dispersed, but even so she gave him an affectionate look before nodded to Lee and turning to the door.
"I'm not sure about this, Kakashi. Any information you found in a notebook could be a trap, you know that." Her tone was short, but her face told him she was more concerned than she let on.
He reached out and gripped the doorknob, "We have to try, Konan."
Beside him, she shrugged and watched as he tried to push the door open. It refused to budge, and for a moment Kakashi thought that he had been betrayed.
With a roll of her amber eyes, Konan moved up to him and removed Kakashi's hand. She took the doorknob and twisted it, pulling it open towards herself.
"Well I could have done that," said the silver haired Jounin with an embarrassed expression.
"And yet you didn't," she replied with a grin.
"What is this?" asked Lee, pointing to what was revealed behind the door.
The two of them looked over where he was pointing, and to their surprise it hadn't been what they had expected. Behind the doorframe was a solid wall that appeared to be nothing special besides being exactly in line with the doorframe.
"Well that's…disappointing," said Kakashi with a sigh. He wasn't sure what he had been expecting, but this just seemed out of place compared to the other rooms.
"Stand back." The two Jounin took a step back as Lee stood in front of the wall, placing a hand on its surface with his fingers spread out. His eyes focused as he concentrated on the wall, seemingly making a motion to push his hand through it.
Instead, a small keypad appeared underneath his hand, with no display and only ten numbers visible.
Lee withdrew his hand quickly and frowned, he hadn't been expecting that.
"What did you do?" asked Konan, not sensing any chakra output from the taijutsu specialist.
"The Quiraji sometimes use walls that only respond to physical energy, to protect their secrets. But I've never seen anything like this before."
Kakashi frowned as he tried to remember the numbers he had been told. A lot of traps like this would backfire, sometimes explosively, if the wrong sequence was put in. Thankfully Kakashi remembered it correctly as he punched in the final number, since the wall containing the keypad rumbled slightly before coming apart and revealing the true contents inside.
Lee's eyes widened in shock as the three of them stepped into the room, while Konan wasn't sure what to make of what they saw within.
Kakashi, on the other hand, tensed up immediately, and he could feel the blood pumping through his knuckles as they slowly turned white through his gloves.
"This…can't be…"
"What is this?!"
Neither Fiore nor Jito could hold him back as Sasuke shot forward and stared at the glass at the front of the machine that sat at the back of the room. It easily covered half the back wall with long pipes threaded around the roof and side walls, with eight screens displaying information that Jito couldn't understand at all.
And suspended within the pod-like machine, was Uchiha Itachi.
His Akatsuki robe was in tattered and barely hung off his body as he seemed to be floating by some unknown force. His eyes where closed shut, and they couldn't even tell if he was alive in there, though that didn't stop Sasuke from trying to stab the glass open with the sword from his back.
The blade merely bounced off the glass, and in his frustration Sasuke began to activate his hand with lightning before Fiore dived forward and struggled to hold him back.
"Let me go! I have to free him!"
She kept him in a tight grip, though she knew he could break out at any moment, "You can't! You don't know what attacking that machine will do! You could kill him."
At that, Sasuke deactivated his Chidori and relaxed slightly in her arms, but she could see the fury in his eyes.
While Fiore tried to calm down the Uchiha heir, Jito tried to examine the machine for any way to free the Uchiha shinobi. He knew that the Quiraji had found someone to replace him when Lee had broken him out, but his captor had been anchoring for a replacement near the end of his captivity anyway.
But he'd never seen anything like this. He didn't even know where to begin.
After assuring Fiore that he wasn't going to obliterate the pod, Sasuke turned to Jito with an impatient gaze, his Sharingan boring holes in the Senju's eyes. "Get my brother out of there. You know more about these people than anyone."
Jito reached forward and placed a cautious hand on the smooth surface of the pod, feeling a chill run up his arm as he did so. "This is…I've never seen anything like this before."
"Maybe one of these screens can tell us," said Fiore, trying to read the information on one of the monitors. It had lines of code and numbers streaming across it at such a speed that she was barely able to make out what it was saying, let alone what it meant.
Walking around the side of the machine, Jito noticed there was another portion to the machine he hadn't seen before, one with some kind of interface and entrance to a separate pod-like section.
"Itachi is the one being used to convert shinobi, isn't he?" asked Sasuke, staring at his brother's seemingly lifeless form floating in the tank.
"How strong was your brother's genjutsu?" replied Jito, analysing the part of the machine in front of him. He was starting to get an idea as to how it was being used, but he wasn't quite sure yet.
"Extremely. The only one better was my cousin Shisui, but Itachi had genjutsus without his Sharingan as well. He could also use the Tsukuyomi."
Jito grimaced when he heard that, that meant that Itachi was definitely being used for the same purpose he had once done. "Damnit. That would explain why their converted shinobi have been lasting longer." When he had been forced to convert shinobi they would only last a few weeks before needing another 'session' with him.
"What has genjutsu got to do with the converted shinobi?" asked Fiore, having given up trying to understand the information on the monitors.
Jito walked back to face his two companions, "Sensou is a scientist, she's determined to make us shinobi kill each other. She found a way to take a shinobi's chakra away and brainwash them to fight for her, using their abilities to fuel ninjutsu and genjutsu techniques."
Sasuke snarled and drove a fist into the shell of the pod angrily, "So my brother is being used to enslave others?! We need to free him right now!"
Beside Sasuke, Fiore wasn't surprised at the young Uchiha's reaction to his brother's state. In their downtime at Cascading Flow, Sasuke regularly would speak about his brother, far more than any other topic. She knew their background, and a large part of her wanted to free the Uchiha as well, if nothing else but for her partner's sake.
"I think I might know a way," said Jito, indicating for the two of them to come to his side of the machine. He pointed to the open section and at the console to the side of it. The wording was written in code, and he didn't have the time to try and decode the Quiraji writing, but he felt he knew what its purpose was.
Anticipating his observation, Fiore shadowed her fingers over the keyboard, "You think this is the key to freeing him?"
Jito nodded, indicating to a strange headset hanging within the smaller pod, "If Sensou is using Itachi to brainwash her soldiers she would need to link them together. I think she puts them here, and the machine forces him to cast the genjutsu onto them."
"So, one of us goes in and breaks him out of it, and the machine shuts down? That's pretty thin Senju, even for you."
"I'll do it," said Sasuke confidently, placing a foot into the pod.
Jito reached out and pulled him back, holding him by the shoulder firmly, "You cannot."
"Don't you tell me what I can and cannot do to save MY BROTHER!" Sasuke spat each word at their leader, uncaring about any ideas of keeping the peace with the aging warrior.
"It isn't like that," said Jito carefully, wary of how volatile the young shinobi was at the moment. "If it works the way I think it does, you would need to interface directly with Itachi's mind, and break his genjutsu's hold over you. Do you really think you could do that?"
"It's better than not trying! I have to save him!"
"Think about this rationally," replied Jito quickly, trying to superimpose himself between Sasuke and the machine.
Observing their exchange quietly, it suddenly clicked in Fiore's mind what was going on. Her eyes widened as she looked at the aging shinobi's determined expression, "You mean to go in yourself."
Jito looked past Sasuke to her and nodded gravely, "I'm the only who can. If anyone has a chance of breaking the genjutsu and getting through, it's a genjutsu specialist like myself."
Fiore cocked her head slightly with a frown and put a hand on her hip, "It seems I've misjudged you, Senju. You may not be the spineless coward I figured you for after all."
Shrugging off Jito's hold, Sasuke took a slight step backwards and stood beside his partner, glaring at their leader with his red eyes, "What is Itachi to you? Why would you be willing to make such a sacrifice for him?"
The old Senju warrior sighed and looked away to the side, "I'm old, kid. I've been fighting this threat for nearly twenty years." He glanced at the machine with a weary smile on his face, "Maybe I can do some good, here and now."
Fiore frowned, "You make it sound like you are going to die in there. If it's just an illusion, you should be fine, right?"
Jito shook his head again and reached out to place his hand on her shoulder. To her credit, she didn't baulk at the touch, understanding the meaning behind the physical contact. "I can never make up for what happened between your mother and the clan, nor do I expect any forgiveness for my part in it. The Senju clan dies with me, and regardless of what we did wrong, you should know that I regret that we cast out such wonderful people."
Fiore chuckled and reached up to pat his hand before he let it fall back to his side, "Shame you are full of crap, but thanks for the sentiment."
Jito grinned at her through tired eyes before turning to Sasuke with a serious expression, "Sasuke. You might not understand why I need to do this, but if it saves your brother, then you need to let me try."
"I…understand," said Sasuke through gritted teeth. "Don't die if you don't have to, old man."
Jito stepped into the pod and picked up the headset, "I make no promises."
Here I go, Father…Brother…
He put the headset onto his white hair and felt two prongs attached themselves to his temples. A shot of pain was driven into his skull as he watched the world collapse in front of him. Sasuke and Fiore slowly vanished into shattered pieces of scenery while the room slowly turned into a pitch black void.
Now comes the real battle, he thought to himself as he felt the machine drill itself into his mind.
Author's Note:
Have you missed the cliffhangers? Muhahaha, okay yeah that was bad. Everything does get revealed in the next chapter, and I'll tell you it's going to be crazy.
I've been struggling to write this for the past two weeks, since I've been working on another piece of work. Not only that, but there is a ton of work to do here in Japan too. So I do apologise if this seems like a weird chapter in terms of writing, since I've been preoccupied.
Something I'm going to try and do in the next chapter is really explore what it would be like to have a true genjutsu battle. Not like the Sasuke vs. Itachi one, but more like a battle between minds. Get ready for some very strange settings and environments.
Please review and tell me what you think. I try to take each review into account, and believe me I read them all. Tell me what can be improved, what you liked, what you didn't, everything. I'm a writer so I'm always open to criticism.
