14 – Her Survival
Now you decide to speak up, Kiruma spat mentally, with no small amount of venom. The demon—Salamander, whatever, she could care less—completely ignored her. She clenched her teeth until they ached as a horrible tugging sensation pulled the chakra from her veins, from her gates, and from her very blood.
And, Kami, it hurt.
She felt a new surge of empathy for Kushina as the pain suddenly intensified, because it was truly incredible that the woman had survived something like this. Sparks of pure energy sizzled in the air and filled it with the smell of ozone, snapping and cracking as chakra filtered down the chains and funneled itself into the orb lodged in the cliff.
The only thing worse was that she knew the three people around her were feeling the exact same thing. She strained to turn her head to the side, struggling against the pressure of molten steel in her veins, trying to look at Dandelion. It wasn't fair, they hadn't done anything to deserve this. She at least had made mistakes time and time again, but they'd done nothing but follow her and trust her. And now look where it had gotten them. Guilt, hot and thick, coursed through her veins.
Was it over? Could it possibly be over after all this time? She felt her nails dig into the palms of her hands. Were they going to die?
Kakashi didn't move an inch. In front of him, a silhouette fluttered, a back leg sliding into a defensive stance, and a kunai slipping into the palm of a hand with colored fingernails.
Kakashi's instincts screamed at him of danger, of the massive threat before him, because he had thought he had known this man, back in his ANBU days, and he had been horribly, horribly mistaken. Kakashi's hand twitched backwards toward his weapons pouch and his eye narrowed. His new opponent was in a weakened state, though he barely showed it. The man's dark robes were tattered and stained with soot and blood. His chest rose and fell with forced precision, as if he were purposely keeping the breath sounds even.
His Sharingan blazed, even though the fight had yet to begin.
Warily, Kakashi closed his normal eye and lifted his forehead protector. If Uchiha Itachi was in a weakened state, it was his duty to eliminate the threat so long as he could.
He just couldn't help but notice how horribly young the man was. Just a teenager, forced into the life of a killer during the war. (Like Obito). Just a man who had seen too much too young, and had suffered for it. (Just like Obito).
"Well," Kakashi drawled, ensuring that his tone was dry and uncaring but unable to prevent the slight bitterness in it. "I'm certainly running into my fair share of missing nin tonight."
Itachi's eyes looked dead, he noticed. Tired and empty and frighteningly blank. Again, Kakashi's instincts screamed of danger. He waited. Perhaps another missing nin was secretly assisting Konoha? With Danzo as Hokage, he almost expected it at this point, but no, that was probably too much to hope for.
This would likely end in blood.
"And yet you question who is the more honorable," Itachi answered slowly. "Konoha… or the traitors."
Kakashi stiffened. If Itachi could read that much off of him, did he have any hope of defeating the man? He was staring at a master of the Sharingan that could not only predict his every move, but smell his hesitation. Yeesh. He'd really gotten himself in deep this time.
"Mah… some missing nin have their moments," he answered blandly, determined not to give any information away that could be used against Konoha. Itachi's lips twitched.
"Indeed. And if anything, Kira-san has always been adept at blurring the lines of morality."
"Yet, I doubt I can simply let you pass, depending on your reason for returning to Konoha," Kakashi mused, his voice calm and almost bored as his heartbeat rapidly picked up.
So much for not giving anything away. Itachi already knew exactly who he had been referring to.
"Reason…" the Uchiha mused quietly, his eyes narrowing. "I assume it is somewhat similar to yours."
Kakashi tensed. That was a vague answer if there was one, and he needed to get past Itachi and find Kiruma. Ruby was in the evacuation center trying to keep the civilians under control while the rest of the faction was searching for Danzo, like the true followers they were.
He would have to leave the safety of the people to Ruby and hope she could find some reliable allies of her own while he handled the situation here. He needed to find Kiruma, and he needed to find her now, before Obito screwed things up and did something really stupid and dangerous.
"Chidori!"
"Sharingan!"
VWOOOOOOOM!
Blue sparks snapped and flickered out at the same time as blood red eyes shifted toward the monument. Four columns of light shot into the sky and spread apart like shifting plasma, watery tendrils sizzling as it hit a flickering miasma of red heat, and barely visible swirls of air causing a mud-like plasma to crumble as they collided.
The sound of the elements crashing into the earth sent reverberations throughout the entire village, shaking the ground in its intensity and upsetting the footing of even the most stable puppets spewing poison and launching weapons.
Kakashi leapt to the side as the wall next to him collapsed into rubble from the unnatural earthquake, acting on instinct as his mind worked in overdrive. His eyes zeroed in on the red column, searching for the source, but his view was obscured by the buildings in between them.
Kiruma, you better be alive. His teeth ground together painfully and he forced his attention back to Itachi, expecting an attack at any moment, but to his surprise, the Uchiha's gaze was still trained on the light, his attention completely diverted and his posture open to attack. Well, as open to attack as a genius bloodline limit user could be, but it was still an opening, which said something.
Even stranger, Kakashi didn't take it. An understanding seemed to pass through the two, one of those unexplainable moments of higher thinking where a mutual perspective was shared.
Kakashi realized that Kiruma was inexplicably good at rubbing off on people and getting people on her side, while Itachi realized that to some extent, his red haired sensei just slightly took priority over taking out an S-ranked traitor acting passively toward the copy-nin's village.
Kakashi thought perhaps he should ask Kiruma for advice on how to make such strong relationships with her peers. Itachi side eyed Kakashi before returning his gaze toward the blazing light. He thought right then and there that he wanted nothing to do with something as dangerous and unpredictable as love.
They both took off toward the mountain without another word.
"Kiruma-san…" Dandelion's hand reached toward hers, both their wrists encircled with chains. She turned her head toward him, her eyes taking in blonde hair and four sets of violet eyes before her vision finally focused and narrowed it down to one. She felt her heart break a little as she saw the desperation in his eyes, the fear, and the tiny spark of hope that maybe it wasn't over quite yet. Then his face just… crumpled, and all she could see was pain. "It hurts," he whispered, little more than a whine, and he closed his eyes tight. She could still see the tears leak from the corners of his eyes and slip down his dirt-stained cheeks.
She strained against her chains almost a little too aggressively, making them cut deep into her wrists, and firmly latched onto Dandelion's hand, her fingers weaving tightly into his. He squeezed her hand back, a faint pressure that scared her, because oh Kami this was her family, and they were dying right before her eyes.
Her head turned to Three on the other side, and he was already unconscious, his chin resting against his collarbone. She strained toward him and grabbed his hand too, an act of pure desperation and fear, and her heart slammed against her ribcage when she felt nothing; no pulse, no pressure, absolutely nothing.
She could feel her emotions bleeding into her chakra, agitating the damn Salamander, and she didn't even try to suppress him. Good for him, getting a taste of fear for once. She was fucking glad. What had he ever done for her? Absolutely nothing. He'd probably be glad to watch her burn in hell, and she could honestly say the same for him. It was likely the only thing they would ever agree on.
"Hang in there," she whispered to Dandelion, feeling her voice thicken with repressed despair. Her fingers tightened around his, even as sweat and blood made his hands so slick she could barely hold on. He wordlessly nodded, and she leaned her head back against the cliff, feeling consciousness begin to slip away from her. A chilling cold sensation was beginning to seep into her arms, deadening her veins and stiffening her body.
She wondered idly if Kakashi was alive, and Ruby, and Itachi, and everyone she cared about from her long life of repeated failures. The thought was unbearably sad.
"Sensei!" The pained cry snapped her eyes open on pure protective instinct alone. Ocean blue eyes filled with tears stared directly into her own. "I'm gonna save you! Hold on-dattebayo!"
"No," she coughed out the word, her forehead coming forward to rest on her surrogate son's. "Save him."
Her eye flicked to the edge, and her heart cracked a little more when Naruto stared dispassionately at a man he didn't know was his own father.
"Him?" Naruto repeated, before shaking his head wildly and grabbing the chains around her waist. He jerked his hands back as they burned into his palms. "I have to save you first, Sensei! I'll save all of you, but you first-ttebayo!"
"No!" she glared at him and he flinched back, his small hands trembling. "Naruto, you can't!"
"Why?!" he demanded, fat tears rolling down his cheeks. "Why?!"
Kiruma's eye moved over Naruto's shoulder to rest on a blood colored Sharingan glaring murderously up at the boy. Obito moved.
"He's your real father!" She snarled at him. "Save him!" Naruto reeled back, his expression warring between hurt and confused.
"You're my real mom!" he screamed back at her, and she might have actually hit him for that comment if she hadn't been restrained because his mother was so much more than her, and also because it hurt to hear him say that when she was so close to losing. She didn't want to force him to lose his mom twice. It wasn't fair, and it was too cruel. Just... just too cruel.
And then she was just screaming, because Obito appeared right next to him and kicked the little boy she had tucked in every night to the side like he was nothing (but he was everything) and Naruto crashed into the mountain and fell unconscious into the cloud of smoke below.
She cursed Obito and thrashed against her chains, profanities spilling from her mouth as she wished the worst on this despicable creature for laying a hand on everything that was precious to her.
And he had the audacity to just stare at her for a moment… and then smile.
"Goodbye, Koizumi Kiruma," Obito told her calmly. "We won't be meeting each other again."
The scream had stolen the air from her lungs and left her breathless with black spots coloring the edges of her vision.
Not yet, not yet, not yet, she fought for consciousness, barely able to feel Three and Dandelion's hands within her own. The chakra draining through the chains was lessening, the process nearly complete. Obito was back on the ground, facing Jiraiya, and trying to prevent the man from approaching her with little success.
Not that it seemed to really matter, now that the process had started. The last thing she saw before her vision darkened to black was Obito flying into a tree.
Bastard finally ran out of chakra, she remembered thinking almost incoherently.
Then strong arms were wrapping around her shoulders and darkness washed over her.
There was a strange silence in her mind. A strange emptiness, though it wasn't unpleasant. She searched, looking around the black void for the face of fire, or the plane of glass, but there was nothing. Only emptiness.
Was she dead?
Somehow, she didn't think so. But why not? She didn't have the Uzumaki life force. Where was the Salamander now? She wanted to scream and rant and curse it for ruining her, for controlling her, for being manipulated within her by power hungry adversaries, but there was nothing. Only emptiness. Only a vacuum in which she was an anomaly.
Then she started falling.
It was with an amused snort that she wondered if she was going to hell. What a fitting end for the fire wielding assassin and traitor to a village she'd never loved.
And then she was forced back into consciousness when she hit the ground with a shattering impact.
Blood and saliva flew from her mouth along with her wail of pain as all feeling rushed back, pain and dehydration and burning and this horrible dryness in her veins, as if her skin were made of paper and she was nothing more than a corpse after all.
Her head slowly turned to the side, her chest taking in short, small gasps as she tried to get her vision to focus. Rather than double or even quadruple vision, everything was a haphazard blur, blobs of bright shapes and colors that ever so slowly began to resemble the outlines of people and rubble and trees.
Her thoughts were scrambled, her instincts taking over, and all she could focus on was an intense need to get rid of the dry, gritty feeling in her veins, as if her blood were made of sand and it had no fluid at all.
White hair filtered into her view, strands of it waving in the wind as its owner lay much too still, face down on the ground.
"Th-Three," she coughed, trying to speak and instantly regretting it as her tongue seemed to have swollen in size so much she could barely breathe, let alone make sound. She forced her arm to drag across the rubble and barely graze his hair before Three was rolled onto his back.
Then she realized she wasn't alone. Dandelion was on his knees on the ground, Three's head now resting in his lap as his hands cradled the older man's face.
He was whispering to Three, his violet eyes never leaving his best friend's face as tears slipped down his own without stopping. The whispering was cut off with a hitch and Dandelion grit his teeth and swallowed hard as his fingers stayed at Three's neck, checking for a pulse they both knew wasn't there.
After a moment Dandelion shuffled back, looking so beat up it seemed difficult for him to even remain upright, and laid Three so gently on the ground it was unbearable to watch.
And then he moved over a little, sliding next to her, and suddenly she realized he was checking to see if she was alive. He was whispering to her, too, his shaking hands touching her neck just above her old scar, and for a moment she couldn't move purely for shock.
"Kiruma, you promised," he was whispering, scrubbing furiously at his eyes. "You promised you'd stay with us. Come back." He was still whispering, but she couldn't hear him, her eyes focusing on the body behind him, unbelieving, in denial. He couldn't be gone. Not him, not him and Minato-san. Not again.
She rolled to the side, toward Dandelion, trying to get her bearings, and the ninja let out a sound that sounded like a strangled choke and a gasp all at once. And then she was being crushed to his chest in a hug that really, really hurt, but at the same time, felt kind of good.
"Fuck you, Fire," he was crying into her hair. "You scared the livin' shit out of me. You never do that again. Ever."
Do what? Get stuck to the monument with chakra leeching chains and fight the psychopath trying to take over her partner's village? Because last time she checked, he'd been doing the exact same thing.
But she didn't particularly care right then, because Kami, everything hurt, but at least she and Dandelion were alive. She weakly raised an arm and wrapped it around his back, returning the embrace as best she could.
"I… feel like shit," she rasped out, and she felt his hands press tighter against her back before he let her relax back on the ground.
"I know," he answered weakly, dragging a sleeve across his eyes again and leaving a streak of dirt on his face. Then he rolled over and collapsed on his back, arms spread out around him, one of them splayed across her stomach. He let out a rattling sigh.
"Me too."
And then a shadow flickered from her vision in the side and her sharpened instincts fired off, but her body had just about had it with her reckless antics and really couldn't respond at all. Everything warped around her and she felt another tugging sensation before she was once against surrounded by darkness.
From afar, Kakashi saw the light, and from his height above the buildings, he saw her. He saw the Sannin ripping the chains from the walls as the light faded and the links began to crumble, and then he saw her fall, and he felt a horrible twist in his gut.
Kakashi and Itachi arrived at the same time, right next to one another, mostly because neither trusted the other to be positioned at their back. Behind them, puppets and buildings alike were being destroyed in collateral damage from the very shinobi trying to protect the area while in front of them the land in front of the monument looked like it had been hit by a natural disaster.
Tendrils and vapors of lingering elemental chakra hung in the air, dissipating slowly, and there was a crater in the mountain where some incredible source of chakra must have been. His eyes moved downward, where shrapnel, rubble, and entire trees lay torn and wrecked around the ground, some bloodstained and others coated in strange chakra.
Then he saw the four limp figures strewn across the area, including his sensei and a little redhead with one of her Faction member's arms laying across her stomach. Neither were moving.
And then he heard a roar and saw an explosion in the trees, and wondered briefly if that was Obito. For once, he didn't feel that awful guilt and dread he usually felt when reminded of his failure to his teammate. Instead he felt a surge of anger, hurt, and confusion, because yes, he'd failed and screwed up, but Obito hadn't. So why was he here, and why was he hurting everyone?
Shrapnel came flying out of the woods toward the unconscious (they had to be unconscious, they just couldn't be dead. They couldn't) demon holders.
Another explosion sent smoke billowing towards him, carrying all sorts of rubble and shrapnel with it, and without even caring about the missing nin at his side, he darted forward, grabbed Kiruma's arm, and formed a seal all in tandem.
Kamui!
And they were surrounded by darkness.
The first thing he felt was a steady pulse beneath his hand as it moved to her neck to support her head. The beat filled him with relief, and he visibly sagged against the ground in his pseudo-world.
Then he actually saw her and bile rose in the back of his throat.
"Kiruma, you…" he broke off, cradling her carefully, suddenly scared. Had the shift hurt her worse? Could he even lay her down without hurting her worse?
Her breath was coming in rattling gasps, her lips bloodless and her eyes darkened with deep shadows. Her chakra was sluggish and almost nonexistent, and it scared him. He'd never seen her this bad before. Not even when she'd gotten that awful hole in her chest.
"Kiruma, breathe," he murmured in a low voice. "You're safe."
She weakly raised a hand, and he thought maybe she was going to touch his face, and then she punched him in the jaw before letting her arm go limp.
It was a surprisingly hard hit, and Kakashi jerked back slightly in surprise.
"That fucking hurt," she snarled, before drawing in another rattling breath. He just stared at her, bewildered, before letting a small smile creep up his lips.
"My bad," he answered weakly, and she relaxed against his chest, her head falling against his shoulder, apparently satisfied. He touched her face almost painfully gently, brushing strands of red away from her eyes, and wondered with a sickening feeling if this is how his sensei had felt during the Kyuubi attack.
"Obito…" he began, and she nodded, her eyes closing slowly.
"He got what he wanted," she whispered. "We've lost this one."
