AN: Thanks for waiting, let's do this!
Kakuzu straightened to his full height, glancing around himself. "So, Hidan," he murmured, reaching down to untie the loose belt of his robe. "Looks like we're outnumbered six to two."
Itachi and the nine tails didn't move, standing protectively in front of their younger companions. The two spies were hanging back, waiting for them to make the first move.
Hidan chuckled. "Yeah, looks that way." He stooped down, picking up his severed arm and holding the stump out to his partner.
"Not yet," Kakuzu growled, slipping out of his robe to reveal his exposed torso. Naruto gaped. Along the shinobi's back, five masks of varying designs seemed to have been stitched in place. Kakuzu let out a small groan as one of the masks began to quiver and twitch, creaking slightly with every move.
Hidan frowned. "And why can't you reattach it now?" He said angrily. "This hurts, dammit!"
Kakuzu chuckled. "Don't pretend to care about pain, Hidan. It makes you look like a fool."
"Well maybe I don't," the one armed ninja retorted. "But we're fighting enemy ninja here and I need both arms."
Kakuzu let out another groan, not quite pain, but not quite pleasure either. "Shut up," he muttered, reaching out a hand to the stump of hidan's shoulder. The mask, still quivering at Kakuzu's back, moved. Carried by some sort of sickening, greyish tendrils, the mask wormed its way out of Kakuzu's body, climbing up his exposed torso and along his arm. With a sick squelching sound that made Naruto shudder, the mask dug its tendrils into Hidan's open wound, burrowing into him. A few of the horrible tendrils extended to Hidan's severed arm, embedding themselves into the flesh and pulling the severed limb back in place. Within a few seconds, all that was left as evidence of the injury was the mask, sitting on Hidan's shoulder.
"There," Kakuzu murmured. "That mask should stitch you back together if you get wounded. Now stop bothering me."
Hidan flexed his newly reattached arm a few times. His expression of confusion slowly turning into a wide grin. "Kakuzu, do you have any idea how much this hurts?"
The masked man shrugged. "You have thick tentacles burrowing through every part of your body. I imagine it's agonizing."
Hidan gave a happy grin. "Yup!"
Kakuzu let out another low chuckle. "Good. Now go kill those spies while I deal with these four." Kakuzu rolled his neck with a series of small cracks, groaning in that same way he had before. The four remaining masks sitting on his back began to move.
Kakashi watched the proceeding carefully, not even flinching as the tentacle mask buried its grey body into Hidan's flesh. "This looks bad," he murmured. "The guy has a scythe blade in his stomach and his arm's been ripped off. He should be dead. Can you see anything that might tell us why he isn't?"
Shizune shook her head. "No. My specialty is medical ninjutsu. I can't discern anything about this because this isn't medical ninjutsu, this is just messed up."
Before Kakashi had time to respond, Hidan charged, pulling his scythe from his torso with his freshly reattached arm and running, full pelt towards the duo. Wordlessly, the two sannin's apprentices dodged, each going a different way. Hidan grinned, turning his attention towards Shizune and chasing her down. The mask at his shoulder twisted in place, extending on its tendrils so that it sat positioned on a stalk beside Hidan's head. The thing rotated, pointing towards Kakashi and, quite unexpectedly, firing a narrow stream of water towards the ninja. He barely dodged in time. The arcing lance of liquid struck a tree, severing it cleanly through the bough.
Kakashi grimaced under his disguise as he watched shizune frantically evade her pursuer, this was not going to be a fun fight.
As Hidan broke away, running off to engage his two unexpected adversaries, Kakuzu turned towards Itachi and Kurama. Kakuzu arched his back, seemingly in spasm as the masks at his back began to quiver violently. Kurama and Itachi readied themselves. From behind the two, a bolt of black fire streamed forth, striking Kakuzu in the centre of his exposed chest. The masked ninja let out a shriek of pain, doubling over as the fire struck and clung to his flesh, burning him continually. Itachi glanced at his brother behind him, grinning. "Good job, Sasuke." Itachi tried not to sound too bitter. Amaterasu was one of the powers he had lost in the mangekyou transplant. The power to perform it had resided within his right eye, replaced now by a glass fixture. In receiving Shisui's left eye, he had kept the power of his own left eye, tsukuyoumi, but had lost the black fire of Amaterasu, he regretted that loss of power almost as much as the loss of his Susanoo. "Now, I want you and Naruto to run. Take him back to the wave, Kurama and I will join you when we're done."
Sasuke bristled. "No! I can fight with you, let me stay."
Itachi turned back to face Kakuzu. The masked ninja's screams had already subsided, he stood straight once more, seemingly ignoring the black flames slowly burning through his torso. "I don't have time to argue, Sasuke. If you and Naruto stay here, Kurama and I will have to look after you. That's the sort of thing that could slow us down or get us killed. GO." As he spoke, the distant figure of Kakuzu groaned once more, a bundle of tendrils bristling through the skin of his chest, either pushing the fire away or, more likely, severing the skin to which it was bound. The massive slab of skin that had so recently covered Kakuzu's chest fell to the ground with a wet slap, still burning.
Kakuzu took a step forwards. "Your brother took my skin from me," he said in an angry murmur, directing his words to Itachi. "I'll be replacing it with his."
"Yeah, you two need to run," Itachi repeated, not taking his attention off of the abomination before him. Kurama nodded in silent agreement.
With an aggravated sigh, Sasuke took hold of Naruto's shoulder and began to drag his protesting brother away from the fight. They made it nearly ten feet before, with a sickening slick sound, three of the remaining masks burst out of Kakuzu's body, each held aloft by more of those grey tendrils, so many that they shouldn't have fit within the ninja's form. The masks formed the tendrils into vaguely human shapes, each larger than Kakuzu himself.
All at once, the fight began. Kakuzu and his three beasts charged forward, the masked horrors spewing gouts of elemental power from their ceramic faces. One of fire, one of earth, and one firing bolts of pure electrical energy. Kurama tackled the earth monster to the ground, the two beasts wrestling one another for supremacy. Itachi engaged the lightning beast and Kakuzu himself, holding his own without too much difficulty. The fire beast, for its part, broke away and began to chase down the fleeing boys, its lumbering gait surprisingly fast. The thing slowly began to gain ground as the boys ran. They just barely made it to the cover of the trees when the creature drew close enough to use its fire, great gouts of flame striking against ancient forest wood.
Naruto and Sasuke sat on a tree branch, watching the beast below them as it slowly burned its way through the forest, heading only vaguely in the right direction.
"Has it lost us?" Naruto asked.
"Not sure," Sasuke replied quietly. "I think it knows roughly where we are, but not our exact location."
Naruto nodded. "Two choices then," he murmured. "We can run, and probably make it out easily enough; or we can go for an ambush. I'm pretty sure we can take this thing."
Sasuke grinned. "Well I definitely can. So as long as you didn't get too slow while I was away, I should be able to look after you."
Naruto restrained a snort of laughter, careful in case the beast noticed him. "Don't you worry about me. I'll be just fine as long as you don't slow me down."
As the two boys watched, the beast drew nearer. Burning all in its path. Silently, the brothers separated, each disappearing among the burning trees. The challenge had been issued, the race was on. The winner, by mutual consent, was whoever was first to kill the beast.
Standing behind the burning bough of a large pine tree, Sasuke grinned. He allowed the energy to crackle through the whole of his body, just as he had done while training for the Chunin exams. He had refined the technique since then. It was quieter now, the glow it emitted dimmed somewhat as more of the electrical energy traveled beneath his skin. Sasuke activated his Sharingan, stepping out from behind the tree and almost immediately catching sight of the monster, a stream of heat still spewing from its maw. Sasuke raised a hand, cloaking it with his chidori, and charged.
Naruto crouched behind a bush as of yet untouched by the rampaging beast's flames. The boy watched the creature continue its destructive path in silence. He grimaced, this thing was hardly subtle. He sighed. Well, whatever.
Naruto stood, allowing himself to be seen clearly as he let the chakra flow through his eyes, his rinnegan exposed once more. Naruto raised his left hand towards the creature, his right hand held at his waist, a small orb of pale, swirling blue energy forming in his palm. The boy channeled the power of his rinnegan through his extended hand, emitting a force designed to pull the great creature towards him and his waiting attack.
It was then, that something quite unexpected happened.
The creature's assault was halted neither by Sasuke's chidori nor Naruto's rasengan. Instead, a small, compact steel ball slammed into its ceramic mask with a clang that sent echoes ringing through the forest. The creature staggered back, its mask shattered into a thousand tiny pieces, no longer able to spew forth flames.
For a single moment, the steel ball seemed to just hang there in midair. Then, with a puff of smoke, Sakura blossomed once more into existence, a satisfied smirk on her face. "Gotcha," the girl murmured, gazing down at the writhing beast. Then she noticed Sasuke, a look of desperate panic on his face as he furiously tried to halt his collision course, his momentum far too great to slow. Sakura let out a startled little 'eep!' before, with an unsettling sensation, Sakura felt something pulling at her. The unknown jutsu grabbed hold of Sakura and yanked her to the side, mercifully out of Sasuke's path. The girl twisted in midair to see where she was headed and gave another quiet yelp. Standing in the firelight, rasengan held at the ready and a look of utter shock on his face, stood Naruto.
AN: So, mangekyou sharingan powers are weird. Each individual eye has a special power that can be transferred to a new wielder with an eye transplant. With an eternal mangekyou, the eye gains two powers, the powers of the original weilder and the powers of the new host. So, since Itachi took one of shisui's eyes, he gained Kotoamatsukami, Shisui's power, and retained Tsukuyomi, his own power. However, because he didn't replace his right eye, he lost Amaterasu and, because you need two mangekyou to use Susanoo, he lost that too.
As always, thanks for reading. All the usual other stuff, feel free to review or offer advice, yada yada. Btw, for anyone who isn't aware, I have published a rewrite of this story in which Haku's gender is changed to female. I've received so many mixed reviews about that subject that I just decided "Screw it, I'll write two identical copies of the story so that every reader can choose Haku's gender for themselves.
