"Kazekage-sama," Baki said, falling to his knees.
"Stand Baki, war is no place for kneeling," Rasa responded with little inflection. "Call for a withdrawal of all soldiers from the stadium."
The snake Orochimaru may have been willing to lose ninja to the beast but Rasa wasn't so flippant. There was little enough ninja in his village as it was. He had lost more than enough already to his son.
Baki nodded before disappearing with a gust of wind.
Rasa sighed and began his trek toward the Hokage's tower. It was the real prize in this invasion. The treasury, Orochimaru had assured, was tucked away in the substantial building. While normally he would just send his own men, Rasa found the idea of one of them running off with all the money a fair bit too risky (and likely) to allow anyone but himself to go after him.
He looked up at the red building, a smile tugging at his normally limp lips. It was hard to fight such excitement.
Opening the door he was greeted by a shocked secretary and four guards. He supposed they must not have realized they were being invaded quite yet. He studied the guard uniforms and was disappointed to see they were the only chunin. It was a clear sign of cockiness that they would leave such low ranking nin to guard the most important building in the entire Village. He made quick work of them before stepping up to the now terrified women behind the desk. He indulged in a more childish side of himself when he spoke. "I'm afraid I don't have an appointment. I do hope that doesn't trouble you too much, but I believe any prior engagements have been canceled anyway."
When she still didn't speak he sighed. "Well, I am here for your treasury. So lead the way."
She seemed to have finally realized exactly what was happening and moved to throw a kunai at him. He caught it mid-air, his gold dust rising to cradle it. He took a moment to study the crude tool before returning his lidded eyes to the woman. With little restraint, he brought down the weapon with terrifying force into her left eye. "I won't ask again."
Kin had never felt so much pain in her entire fourteen years of living as she had felt in the last 24 hours. The instructor from the second exam it turned out hadn't been kidding about being a rather brutal interrogator.
"Has the kid squealed yet?" A female voice she recognized as being the third instructor (Anko?) asked her voice coated in frustration.
It was an odd relief to see her annoyed, Ibiki had yet to show any impatience throughout the entire integration.
"No. Yours?"
"Nothin. I'll admit it makes sense. The bastard always was good with kids."
"An interesting insight." He mumbled sounding completely disinterested. He flipped her chair over immediately afterward.
"I'm saying we're going about it the wrong way. They seem to have an idealized view of the snake may be by introducing them-"
Ibiki then proceeded to stab Kin in the same wound the Anbu had made capturing her. "To his horrors instead of torturing them, they'd be more willing to share information on him." he finished for her.
It was irritating how he could say one thing but do the complete opposite.
"Oh, wrong room."
Kin turned her head to see who exactly the new voice belonged to. It was hard to make out the figures in the doorway when one of her eyes was bruised shut but it seemed to be a red-haired man and maybe someone else?
"Hmm...so this is the T.I department I've heard so much about." She felt the hair on the back of her neck stick up as the strange man looked directly at her. "Your sound aren't you? I suppose I should assist my allies."
As soon as he finished speaking a sparkling substance filled the entire room.
Ibiki dodged the first tendril of golden dust quickly removing his katar. He began running toward the attacker but quickly dust bit at his leg dragging him up by the foot and crushing his ankle before he could break free. Falling to the crowd right on his ankle forced a shock of pain through his body. Carefully the interrogator held it in. The man had long ago conquered pain.
He flew through a few quick signs before placing his palms on the ground: Kuchiyose: Aian Meiden. Chains shot from the ground seeking to drag Rasa into its depth.
Expertly the Kage replaced himself with the secretary who he had previously been holding beside him. The chain instead wrapping around her and forcing into the iron Maneki Neko which subsequently crush her.
Ibiki cringed at his inadvertent murder. He had known her for a good twenty years.
Rasa cringed as he witnessed the death of the young woman. He had needed her to guide him to the vault. Before he could move to finish off the man he felt a cool metal press to his neck. "Surrender."
Ah, the women. He had forgotten about her, Rasa couldn't help but feel embarrassed. If she had just sliced his throat instead of called for his surrender he would be dead! The redhead supposed he shouldn't dwell on it. His dust quickly rose from the ground to grab hold of her wrists; he forced her headfirst into the ground, concussing her.
He turned to finish her comrade but instead found the man already dead. The sound nin he had decided to rescue was holding a bloody kunai before the body. "Good job genin. I will consult with your superiors as to your promotion." It was truly impressive that she had not only resisted integration but also killed a jounin, injured or no.
"I-I have a teammate here as well." She stuttered.
He nodded. "May I know your name?"
"Kin." The black-haired girl whispered. He raised an eyebrow unimpressed by her tone. She straightened seemingly realizing her mistake. "Kin Tsuchi."
"Better. Now let's find your teammate."
Kakashi really wasn't having the best day, if had known there was going to be an invasion today he wouldn't have wasted chakra using chidori. If the drain on his chakra wasn't already bad enough he had been caught in one of the tailed beasts attacks barely surviving as an entire quarter of the stadium was torn up around him.
If he were being generous he'd say he had two used left, but in all likely hood as he struggled to raise his body from the rubble he'd guess he had one, one very debilitating use.
Fucking useless students. With a long labored sigh he finally managed his way onto his feet. Kakashi carefully scanned the wreckage for any survivors, he saw Gai working his own way out but aside from that most of the non-combatants looked dead as well as a few chunin and he spotted a dead anbu. Shame, they were hard to come by.
He scanned the stadium looking for his students, he instead spotted the genin escorting civilians out while the chunin and jounin fought. An imperfect system all things considered as at the sign of combat it was unlikely the genin would win out. "Gai! Go join the genin!"
Gai with a groan nodded before disappearing with a swirl of leaves. Vaguely he wondered where the anbu where at, then he saw it.
Dead bodies were everywhere as more and more anbu flooded into where once was the Kage seating and now appeared to be a miniature forest.
"Alright, let's do this."
The last thing Hiruzen saw was a yellow flash.
1 week later
Minato awoke in the dark, his head pounding in pain. His body felt weak, weaker than usual, more beaten perhaps. He rolled onto his back feeling it scrape against gravel and rock. His arms were numb at his side crusted in what was best assumed to be blood. With little force there were in front of him.
They moved faster than they should have in their sluggishness. They met the ground but nothing poked against them as had been the case with his back. He slowly forced his legs to the forefront as his arms raised him onto his wobbly shoeless feet.
As he studied his injuries, he hummed to himself in mild realization. His arms looked bad, even worse than his legs. He didn't feel much at the sight, though he knew he should have. Minato lazily moved his gaze forward to see metal bars barring the front of the sandy prison. They stood perfectly stern and surprisingly well-kept. He felt his face pull down into a scowl.
Minato tried to think up the memory of what exactly led him here. His head only ached in response, unable to summon any memories.
It was like some invisible knife was jammed into the blond's head, hurting worse than any physical wound ever had. He allowed his body to collapse back to the floor, standing would do him no good.
Some rebellious part of him realized his need for water. The air, wherever he was, was dry, dry and hungry, stealing any moisture that potentially could have been on his tongue.
He felt the touches of frustration but it was quickly blocked out by the agony already in his head. He breathed deeply, only making his dehydration worse. He needed to clear his mind, find some semblance of peace.
Minato carefully shifted his all to heavy body, folding into a meditative position trying his best to relax his posture. He focused on nothing as best as he could.
It could have been hours or days even as he sat there disappearing into the land of the unknown. The blonde only opened his eyes upon the sound of clanging. He was greeted with the sight of a familiar face.
She was a young blonde, somewhere around his own age dressed in a short kimono with a red sash and large fan behind her. She looked near as ragged as him, as though whatever ordeal he'd been through they shared. And yet Minato couldn't think of her name, of whatever had happened to the both of them.
"Why'd you do it?"
Her voice was gruff, as though she felt the very same drain he did from the very air around them.
He would have sighed if he could summon the breath to do so, instead he only met her eyes.
Exhaustion. Torment.
The dark blue pools only reflected the pain. She could relate. It had been a hard week, one he had just so happened to make a little better. That was the part that confused her. Why the upstart kid from the leaf had saved her life, her brother's lifes.
He could have easily escaped but instead he saved them. The very idea of it was confusing to Temari, especially during a literal invasion. It took a different breed of ninja to do something so brazen, so innately wrong.
He looked worn, more so than she felt. It hurt somewhat to know she had helped with that. He now had the Sands interest, and that was never known to be a good thing.
His tense shoulders dropped into a relaxed shrug which he then turned into leaning back shifting his weight to his arms to bear. "I-'' A cough broke through his notably dry lips (dry like everything else around here) breaking off his words. "I don't really know." He finished.
Panic and anger blossomed inside her at his careless words, his posture and eyes reflecting only calm. She had to know, he couldn't deny her like this, not when she held all the power! He was the one in the cell. "What do you mean you don't know?!" The girl demanded.
His eyes widened, "I..uh...well I don't remember much. Names N-"
The blonde shook his head before continuing. "Minato. That i'm pretty sure of at least. I was hoping maybe you could fill me in on the rest but well," he gestured to the bars. "I can understand the situation well enough to know I'm not really in any place to ask questions."
She really hadn't needed this. Temari hadn't gotten a full night's rest in four days, this was only proving to make it worse. "Minato? You've gotta be kidding me…" Temari knew damn well the boy's name wasn't Minato, the hard part was he looked like he really believed. She was no natural lie detector but she could tell well enough and he seemed just as confused as he claimed. It was utterly maddening. "Alright I can't deal with this right now."
She spun around on her feet skirt fluttering slightly with her before she took off down the dim dungeon hall.
A/N: Alright, well it's been a few months...again. Yeah sorry life and laziness I suppose. Originally the Rasa bit was supposed to go in the last chapter but I thought it may have come off a bit...well I'll see in the reviews I guess. I absolutely adored writing it but I understand its kind of of a departure from most of the fic.
Rasa is defiantly my own take on the character, he's meant to still fit in line with canons but if you have issues with him not properly matching you can just as well justified as me purposefully writing him ooc.
As for the time-skip...Well originally I envisioned an epic battle between Naruto going all out Minato kicking Gaara's ass then mid-fight Minato is summoned and suddenly Naruto crumbles and Gaara crushes him.
Then the Kyuubi breaks full loose as the last way of survival chakra streaming out and destroying and mixing with Naruto's own chakra. It all sounds rather grand in scale and maybe to some significantly better than what I did do but...every time I sat down to write it I never could.
So instead, what exactly happened is shrouded in mystery and all we can see is a confused Naruto and Temari. I think I'm gonna have a lot more fun with it.
Also geez guys I'm not gonna freak on some criticism, I would apricate y'all holding back on the Neji fight comments. Look it was convoluted for them to tie, sure, but this is based on an anime and a fanfic at that. I can understand issues with it, but honestly I'm happy with it and not interesting in changing it. I really hope this chapter doesn't lead to more controversy but I guess considering how long its been since I last posted I could get like no reaction so you know what I'll take what I can get!