Daze
Ch 25: Rules of engagement
A/N: There's a 50/50 chance you're reading this shortly after the last chapter was released;
if so, hope you enjoy the early upload.
If not, sorry for the wait.
X X
Naruto arrived at the edge of the Uchiha district as the moon crowned the sky.
He took a tentative step through the gate and his eyes burned.
He saw the abandoned police station to his right and the wind whispered around him.
Part of him felt uncomfortable making his way into the home of the Uchiha clan, while pieces of their killer resided in his head and heart.
He shook those thoughts loose and continued towards the head residence.
After a few odd minutes of walking, he arrived at the building and saw Sasuke sitting on the porch steps watching him like a hawk.
"I was starting to think you wouldn't show Dobe."
Sasuke stood up.
"Follow me."
Sasuke opened the sliding paper door removing his sandals and making his way into the living room.
Naruto removed his sandals and followed him in.
Sasuke led him to a corner room where stairs led upstairs.
Sasuke casually kicked the wall beneath the steps and the wall made a popping noise.
Sasuke opened the wall panel revealing stairs leading to a secret chamber.
"I have something to show you."
Naruto nodded confused but intrigued and followed his childhood rival down into the chamber.
The room was an empty chamber with two torches and a stone tablet on an altar.
"What is all this?"
"Activate your Sharingan and you'll know."
Naruto obliged him, activating his eyes two of the three lines of text were revealed to him.
"Wait this is,"
Sasuke looked at him.
"Did Itachi tell you about this?"
Naruto shook his head.
"No, it was, in a dream I think."
Naruto read the stone text aloud pondering it to himself.
"When the powers of Senju and Uchiha are combined a new power is born… two brothers."
Sasuke looked at him.
"Two brothers?"
Naruto shook his head.
"Nevermind it's nothing."
Sasuke looked at him trying to read his face.
"What did Itachi tell you?"
"Itachi told me when the time comes, to give you his eyes, so your light can be preserved eternally."
Sasuke was surprised but gave no reaction.
"So, you even know about that visual jutsu."
Naruto nodded.
"Why would Itachi ask you to help me?"
Naruto looked at his fingers.
"He didn't want me to tell you, but I can't keep you in the dark."
Naruto looked up and his eyes spun into the mangekyo pattern.
Sasuke was transported to a vision of Itachi's Tsukuyomi world.
He watched Itachi speak to Naruto, and explain how he had been ordered to kill his clan to prevent an uprising, and left to keep tabs on Akatsuki.
When Sasuke awoke from the vision his Sharingan had flared to life from anger, tears rolled down his cheeks.
"The Leaf made him do this to our family?!"
Naruto nodded grimly.
"That's why he didn't want me to tell you, he was worried if you knew the truth you would fall into darkness… but"
Sasuke looked at Naruto still seething with rage.
"But what?!"
Naruto smiled at him.
"I wanted you to make that decision yourself, I trust you completely Sasuke."
Sasuke looked at him in shock.
"You… trust me?"
Naruto raised his hand to scratch his head.
"You're my rival Sasuke, I've always wanted to surpass you, but beyond that, you're my friend."
Sasuke sighed.
"Naruto, you have always been so naive."
Sasuke's mangekyo spun to life, and his aura began to darken.
"What makes you think I won't just destroy the leaf now?"
Naruto shook his head.
"You won't."
"And why is that?"
"Because you're not just Sasuke Uchiha, you are a member of Team Kakashi."
Naruto gave him a toothy smile.
Sasuke sighed putting his hand to his temple.
"Naruto, we need to fight here, and now."
Naruto looked at him confused.
"Why?"
"Enough talking, we speak with our fists, then…"
"Then what?"
Sasuke didn't respond drawing a kunai from his back he channeled lightning chakra into it and got into a starting stance.
Naruto sighed.
"Fine."
Drawing a kunai he channeled wind chakra into it and mirrored Sasuke.
In an instant, they lunged as vipers, fangs clashed, and wind and lightning were tossed across the roof of the chamber.
Naruto paled when Sasuke's kunai sliced through his with ease and nearly removed his arm at the elbow.
"Woah Sasuke are you really trying to kill me?!"
Sasuke didn't respond, drawing a shuriken and tossing it at Naruto.
"Fire Style: Shinku Hoshi! (Crimson star)
Sasuke shot a brilliant crimson of flame from his lips it encased the shuriken in a red flare that sped towards Naruto with a shrieking sound.
Naruto narrowly dodged it and it crashed into the wall behind him with an explosion of fire that decimated the stone.
The floor above them began to sink.
Naruto activated his Sharingan drawing a second kunai he channeled lightning into it and charged Sasuke.
Sasuke raised his own kunai to counter but without the elemental advantage, Naruto was able to loop his blade around Sasuke's.
Naruto disarmed him and knocked him away with a hard wind-infused palm to the chest.
Sasuke was tossed back by a wall of wind and flew back first into the wall.
He stood up wiping some blood from his lip and growled.
Naruto tossed both kunai to the ground behind him and leaped at Sasuke with a mid-air crescent kick.
Sasuke raised his arms in a guard but Naruto kicked in front of his arms.
Sasuke looked at him confused when he was smacked from the side by a gust of wind that mimicked Naruto's kick tossing him to the side.
Sasuke tumbled like a ragdoll, but quickly stood up and made a handsign.
"Earth Style: Dark swamp!"
A torrent of black muddy water shot from Sasuke's lungs and began to fill the room.
"Wait, that's Ero senin's move?!"
Sasuke took the element of surprise to follow up by flipping towards Naruto.
"Needle Jizo!"
As Sasuke's back was faced with Naruto's gaze his hair grew longer and turned into blade quills.
Naruto raised his arms in a guard but was pierced in the arms and chest by the hair blades.
Sasuke kicked Naruto in the chest channeling earth chakra into his foot.
Naruto was tossed back first into the stone stairs by the entrance he cried out in pain as his body whiplashed.
Sasuke stood solemn staring down at Naruto as he shakily climbed to his feet.
"What is this a grudge match?!"
Sasuke stared absently at him.
"Fire style: Kaen Kasukado! (Flame cascade)"
Sasuke opened his mouth and yelled an arc of fire jetted forth and continuous flames streamed out.
The mud in the room was superheated and both of them were forced to leap to the roof to escape it.
As Naruto ran upside down on the roof towards the entrance Sasuke turned his head so the flames would follow him.
Naruto monkey flipped off the ceiling and into the stairwell diving out upstairs before the flames could reach him.
Naruto tumbled to the wood floor on his chest.
He heard a crashing sound and saw the floor underneath the steps begin to collapse from all the damage.
Sasuke dove from the lower stairwell just before the steps and floor fell in and the top floor of the house began to crash down.
"Sasuke talk to me is this really worth destroying your home over?!"
"I told you already Naruto enough words, fight me!"
Sasuke channeled lightning chakra into his fist and Naruto paled.
'Chidori?!'
Sasuke slammed his hand into the ground and the lightning passed through his entire body
"Chidori stream!"
The lightning struck the walls in every direction tearing through the stone and plaster.
Naruto dropped himself back first to the floor and streamed wind through the soles of his feet it slid him across the wooden floor at amazing speed.
Right before he crashed into a wall he squared his shoulders and managed to pop himself back to a standing position.
"Alright Sasuke, I was trying to avoid hurting you, but if you aren't going to pull any punches neither will I!"
Naruto began to spin chakra into his hand summoning two clones they each raised a weak barrier with a tag.
The barriers slowed Sasuke for a second as he had to punch through them with strong ninjutsu.
Sasuke tore through the first with a fist of flame, and the second he ran through with a Chidori blade that extended and sliced through both clones.
Naruto finally managed to form a Rasengan and began streaming lightning chakra into, it changed shape.
Sasuke looked shocked.
"The Chidori?!"
Naruto charged at him tossing his palm forward.
Sasuke examined the jutsu in Naruto's hand and noticed it was different from the Chidori.
It resembled a Rasengan but it was a darker blue almost black, and two white rings of electricity intercircled within and crackled around it.
If the Chidori was a failed Lightning style Rasengan then this would be the perfected form of it.
"You broke your own rule, Lightning style: Rasenchakram!
Naruto slammed the jutsu towards Sasuke.
"Earth style: Grand mud wall!"
Sasuke put both of his hands to the floor and a three-layer wall of stone with dog heads on the front rose to shield him.
Naruto growled and slammed the jutsu into the wall it tore through the first one with ease, exploded on the second one, and disintegrated the third.
Sasuke was tossed away by the blast which tossed powerful lightning that ripped through anything it touched.
The lightning shrapnel destroyed all the room's walls and caused the ceiling to collapse.
This caused a chain reaction as the entire house began to fall apart with a loud creak.
Naruto paled as it seemed Sasuke had been incapacitated by the impact.
Naruto prepared to run and grab him when he fell to his knee and began to breathe heavily.
'Shit, out of chakra!'
Naruto fell forward and watched helplessly as the ceiling approached him.
'So this is it.'
Sasuke rose shakily and dove on top of Naruto his mangekyo stared into Naruto's onyx eyes.
Naruto saw the purple chakra begin to surround both of them in a cloaked skeletal figure.
"The Susanoo?!"
Sasuke growled with exertion his eyes bleeding as he dug his palm into Naruto's chest the skeleton tossed the slab of ceiling off of them.
The Susanoo disappeared as the house collapsed around them with an extremely loud crash that shook the ground for miles.
Sasuke fell next to Naruto.
Both of them breathed heavily chests rising and falling.
Naruto broke the rhythm with a question.
"Who won?"
Sasuke was silent for a moment but sighed.
"You did."
Naruto chuckled, then gritted his teeth as he felt waves of searing pain shoot through his arm.
Lightning chakra fired back and ran through his nerves and arms bones.
"Now what?"
Naruto spoke through the pain focusing on his friend.
"I've decided to respect Itachi's wishes…"
Sasuke used his palms to lift himself to a seated position and grab his head.
"-I want my life to have a purpose, revenge ruled my past but it doesn't have to drive my future."
Sasuke's Sharingan ceased to radiate darkness it began to give off an aura that was powerful but reserved.
Naruto nodded and tried to hold back a sigh of relief.
"Thank you, Sasuke."
Sasuke looked away from him.
"Tch."
Naruto looked over and saw a squad of Anbu leaping to the nearby roofs.
The commander a beautiful woman with purple hair and a cat mask on her shoulder leaped down to check on the boys.
"Uzumaki, Uchiha what happened is there an enemy?!"
Sasuke shook his head.
"It was probably just an earthquake."
The woman looked at them skeptically.
"And that earthquake did this to you?"
She gestured to the electrical burns on Naruto's arm and the precision cuts on Sasuke's shirt.
Naruto laughed like a mad man pushing himself to a sitting position with his good arm he scratched his head.
"Probably."
Anko leaned over kissing Kakashi on the cheek he murmured in his sleep, smiling.
Anko carefully climbed out of the bed tossing some sandals on she opened the window and leaped to a nearby roof.
She made her way across the village grabbing a stick of dango and heading to the interrogation corp.
She opened the door and stepped in immediately she was overtaken by the familiar melody of screaming prisoners.
The Anbu who guarded the cells nodded with respect.
"Oi where's Ibiki?"
The Anbu silently pointed to the hall to their left.
"Thanks."
Anko stepped down the hall munching on her dango unfazed by the anarchy in the rooms around her.
She arrived at the chamber at the end of the hall and stepped inside.
Within the room Kabuto was shirtless and tied up in a web of ninja wire various tags covered his chest and one was on his temple.
Inoichi was standing in front of him with his eyes closed and hands in the Yamanaka handseal.
Ibiki was behind him, eyes also closed making a similar handseal.
"Hey you, relay me into the prisoner's mindscape."
A Yamanaka woman who was monitoring the situation while eating nodded.
"Of course Anko-san."
She made a handseal placing a hand on Anko's head and one on her own.
Anko closed her eyes.
When she opened them she was in a building with wooden slat ceilings and a lone clock on the wall.
She looked around curiously.
"This is his mindscape?"
The Yamanaka woman nodded.
"We've tried our best to identify the structure hoping it would give us some hint to his origins but his mind starts resisting if we explore too much.
"Take me to his grey zone I need to see Ibiki."
The woman nodded grabbing Anko's arm and leading her through a door.
They arrived at a grey void with a giant brain and various nerve endings floating in space.
"You can go now I'll relay out with Ibiki."
The woman bowed vanishing.
Anko floated through the water like space towards the area above the brain where Inoichi and Ibiki were.
She arrived and they nodded to greet her.
"How's it going?"
Inoichi sighed.
"We've barely found anything, his brain is the most tightly guarded I've ever seen."
Ibiki nodded in shared annoyance.
"When we do make progress a memory of Orochimaru will pop up and it will trigger his mind to start breaking down."
"Are you saying his mind is uncrackable?"
Inoichi shook his head.
"I can do it but it will take me at least a week."
Anko shook her head.
"We don't have time for that,"
"-if we want to wipe out the rest of Orochimaru's followers we need to strike the bases before they get word of his death and scatter."
Inoichi sighed.
"I know that but if I work too aggressively I could destroy his mind and then we won't have anything to work with."
Anko sighed.
"What of the girl?"
Inoichi looked down.
"Her brain was easy to crack but what we've found is all indecipherable, her speech receptors were completely destroyed by whatever they did to her,"
"-every memory is in some inhuman screeching, and all the text she saw is a mess of jumbled language bits."
Ibiki nodded.
"I have the cipher corp working on decoding it, but it's gonna take time."
Anko nodded but was visibly frustrated.
"I wish there was some kind of eureka moment that could help us out."
Ibiki chuckled.
"Well unless you know someone who speaks shark I don't see it happening."
Anko's eyes widened.
"Eureka."
Ibiki looked at her surprised.
"Shit, really?"
"I need to go contact Naruto, Ibiki, relay me out of here."
Ibiki obliged her excusing himself to Inoichi who continued slowly working on cracking Kabuto's psyche.
Kisame leaned against a log drinking water through a straw pierced waterskin.
He saw a flash of pink out of the corner of his eye and turned to see a cat with a pink bow on her ear.
"Kisame-san, I have a message for you from Naruto."
The man nodded and took the scroll from the cat who vanished.
Kisame opened the scroll and was surprised to see a summoning matrix.
He channeled chakra into it and Naruto appeared before him.
"Hey oji it's been a while."
Kisame nodded.
"You messaged me when you made contact and told me you had a run-in with leaf ninja and might end up captured,"
"-I didn't think you would message me until you were ready to execute the plan, well are you?"
Naruto shook his head.
"This is about something else, do you have any shark summons that can speak human?"
Kisame nodded.
"The Elder sharks can all speak with humans, why?"
Naruto made a handsign.
"Earth style: Slide crater!"
Naruto slammed his hand to the ground and caused the ground to sink into a large circular crevice.
"Water Style: Water wall!"
Next, he streamed a pool of water from his lungs filling the hole with water.
Kisame shrugged.
"Summoning Jutsu!"
Kisame slammed his hand atop the water's surface and a matrix spread across it.
A giant shark appeared and began to swim across the water's surface gaining its bearings.
"Kisame why have you summoned me?"
"My dearest apologies master, my young pupil requests an audience."
The shark gazed at the blonde boy with minor annoyance.
"I trust it's important for you to interrupt my hunt?"
Naruto nodded.
"I humbly request your favor, I need to translate your language into the language of my kind."
The shark nodded.
"Very well I trust you ninja have methods of showing me the speech you wish to have communicated."
Naruto closed his eyes and when he opened it his Sharingan whirled to life.
The shark king was shown a vision of a woman's memory.
She stood in a room watching the door as Kabuto, and Orochimaru conversed, but their words were filtered into a shrieking language.
"Can you tell what they are saying?"
The shark nodded.
"The serpent said, 'Kabuto I've found it, with this I can finally restore my arms, but more than that we can take their souls back from the Reaper,'
'- with those four under our control even the masked one will have no choice but to bow before us.'
"The grey-haired one responded, 'What of the girl Orochimaru-sama, we left her with Danzo in exchange for access to his DNA,'
'-but if she masters the power I implanted in her she could prove a dangerous weapon against us.'
"The serpent concluded by saying, 'That is no matter Kabuto, the chances of that girl surviving such a thing are next to nothing and even if she could,'
'-Such power is nothing when we possess those two.'
The memory ended and Naruto thanked the shark.
Kisame dispelled him.
"Well did you find what you needed to?"
Naruto shook his head.
"Nothing they said makes sense, still I suppose I should report it to Anko."
"What's the plan Naruto?"
"I'll get back to you on that Kisame, just continue to feed us info for now."
Kisame sighed.
"Alright kid but don't forget about me while you're playing ninja with your friends."
Naruto chuckled.
"Forget you Kisame, I only wish I could."
Kisame swung Samehada in annoyance, but the clone had already dispelled.
Kisame chuckled.
"Love you too kid."
Anko relayed the intel to Tsunade and the intel corps.
Tsunade realized that the girl Kabuto was referring to must be Oltier.
She also realized that Orochimaru had some method of retrieving the souls of the previous four Hokage.
She wasn't sure who the 'him' they referred to was, she had an idea, but it was too terrifying to consider."
"Kami help us all if he is ever brought back to this world."
"Tsunade-sama!"
Inoichi ran in accompanied by two nameless Anbu.
"Inoichi what is it?"
"It's Kabuto, he managed to escape!"
"He what!"
Tsunade slammed her fist into her desk shattering it in half.
"He did something to the other asset she's fading fast we need you to come with us now."
Tsunade nodded following the man.
They arrived at the hospital where the woman had been moved to and Tsunade began to investigate the affliction.
"Can you tell me what's wrong?!"
Tsunade bit her lip.
"It's some kind of neurolytic drug it's making her nerves self destruct."
"But nerve damage isn't fatal?!"
Tsunade nodded.
"But this drug is targeting the nerves around her brain and heart making it difficult for the two to communicate."
Inoichi paled.
"Can you do something?"
Tsunade sighed.
"At this stage, it's too late, even if I can get her heart to keep beating her brain has been cut off too long, she won't be capable of thought or feeling."
Inoichi sighed.
"Damn him!"
The shark girl's brain ran through memories rapidly as it began to shut down finally it settled on a memory towards the end of its line.
A few weeks earlier...
Kabuto stepped into the room staring at the shark girl who was in hibernation in a vat.
"Hello Tamako, you've come along quite nicely, I never imagined those Hoshigaki cells would react so well to curse mark fusion."
The girl screeched incoherently at him and he chuckled.
"Thanks to you I have more good news for Orochimaru-sama today,"
He carried a plastic baggie in his off-hand filled with various fibers and sinews.
"-I was finally able to acquire the DNA of a perfect subject,"
He held up long strands of beautiful crimson hair.
"Once we've retrieved the Yondaime's soul from the Shinigami we can give poor Naruto-kun a proper reunion."
Kabuto chuckled to himself setting the baggie on a steel table with various other beakers and tools.
"Well, we need to get you and Sujirin up and running in time for Orochimaru's plan."
Kabuto picked up a scalpel.
"Be a good girl and this will be over quickly."
She screeched in agony as she was torn from the memory.
Her brain misfired and everything went dark.
The last thing she saw was a void of pure light.
"We lost her."
Inoichi sighed.
"Looks like Kabuto was one step ahead of us yet again."
Tsunade slammed her fist into a wall cratering it as she bit her thumb.
'Damn him!'
On the outskirts of the village, a cloaked man stepped out of a spiral branded building and walked into the woods mask in hand.
"Do not worry Orochimaru-sama all will come to fruition, by the moon and stars I swear it."
A white snake slithered behind him it's tongue flicking upward to the moon.
X END X
A/N: Dun dun dun, Yeah Kabuto has a certain Uzumaki's DNA, and now he has the shinigami release mask, so look forward to the future.
1/5/21: Sorry for the wait, please, enjoy, more forthcoming.