ii.
Chapter 43: Lamb Calls (Wolf Strikes)
This chapter was Beta-ed by: Wistfuldaydream
"Never one-" Said Lamb, "-Without the other." Echoed Wolf.
It was the way she moved that initially made him suspicious. One moment it was just his team, all packed up and ready to move out; and then Pakkun went still, very still.
"What's wrong?" Shikamaru brought attention to himself, only for the others to notice his attention was directed at the little pug. Asuma though, Asuma-sensei seemed to have already caught on and his gaze was steady on the canopy of trees before them. Shikamaru couldn't sense anything, but then Asuma-sensei and Pakkun had been fighting in wars before he had even been born.
One moment it was just his team, and the next she was there.
A silent body flicker and an almost soundless, muted thud of her bare feet on a thick branch. She was young, he noted immediately. Awfully young to be moving like that. She crouched, hands and feet on the branch in an animalistic quality. Not unlike the way he had seen some of the Inuzuka clan move when they were especially close to their ninkin. She lacked any facial markings that would have made her a part of that clan however.
She paused at the sight of them, her eyes gaining shadows. There was an intent look about her; a girl on a mission. He didn't miss which way she was heading, either. She was either very confident in her skills or stupid enough to consider walking into a battle between two Konoha missing-nin a viable option. Or she felt she had no choice in the matter. The resigned determination on her face lended credence to that theory.
She flickered again, a silent flash of movement that he knew for sure should be way too quick for anyone that young. Perhaps it was a genjutsu? He gave a small flare of his chakra just incase, and when he felt no pressure relieved he had to accept that she was simply skilled for her age.
Her image solidified before them; she remained crouched, bent forward onto her hands in a particular way that suggested she was used to this posture. As if she had been doing it her whole life. He wasn't sure what to make of that at all.
When she began to rise slowly his teammates shifted below him, hands twitched towards weapons reflexively. He cursed silently for his less than ideal positioning on the outcropping of rock that had him higher than their positions; separated from the group. He started inching towards them, just in case.
"It's just a little kid." He heard Ino murmur, and out of the corner of his eye he saw her kunai lower.
That was a foolish assumption.
His eyes narrowed on the small child. Her eyes found his blond teammate and her head tilted just so. A little bell hanging from the bottom of a braid that fell from behind her ear chimed sweetly, and Shikamaru assessed this as well.
She was clearly a shinobi. He easily classed her as unusually skilled for her age and well trained; but further categorization of her actual level would require more information. In the very least, he knew that the kind of speed she had displayed and the shunshin itself was a high chunin skill. On par with himself, and probably above his teammates as they had only just been promoted. Honestly, he wasn't sure if he even matched up with that speed. He was fast, but he hadn't even been able to follow the motion she had made.
She couldn't have been older than ten; maybe seven or eight at most. Short, sandy brown hair that looked wind blown from a long run, bare feet, her voluminous black cloak shifted around what he thought was probably a kunai pouch on her thigh, and an odd shape on her back: an unidentified weapon. Her eyes were a brown colour, but shadowed with deep lines of exhaustion beneath them. She looked… stressed. It was in the tenseness of her shoulders, her twitching fingers and the deep bite marks on her lower lip. Shikamaru surmised that her state wasn't anything new. She'd been in an elevated emotional state for a while; her gaunt expression wasn't from a lack of any one single night's sleep lost.
It looked chronic.
He watch her eyes cataloged them in return even as he assessed her threat level himself. He didn't like the conclusions he was coming too, however she hadn't displayed any aggression yet.
"Pakkun?" She sounded like she wasn't sure, blinking down at the little dog who went stiff under her scrutiny.
He felt his breath catch. Perhaps she was a spy of some kind? He noted her lack of any village insignia and something in his chest tightened. That was not good. No village meant no loyalties, at least, no obvious ones.
She was a shinobi, so that meant someone had trained her. He had never heard of anyone becoming a missing-nin at her age.
The little dog slunk backwards, farther behind Ino's legs. Pakkun seemed to have a better idea of who she was than they did, and Shikamaru didn't like the pug's reaction.
The girls eyes flickered up to look at Asuma when the man smoothly interjection himself between her line of vision on Ino. Choji shuffled on unsure feet, looking between the girl, himself, and Asuma. He kept his lips firmly sealed and Shikamaru followed his best friend's example.
Shikamaru felt his heart skip a beat when a look of distaste crossed her features at the sight of his sensei; it was the slight curl to her lip, the subtle scrunch to her nose.
He quickly set his own emotional reaction to this aside, and asked himself what does it mean.
She knew them. Clearly.
She disliked his sensei, a Jounin of Konohagakure. Asuma-sensei was a good man, well liked by his peers and a known name amongst the monks of the Fire Temple. She was far too young to have known him when he was a younger man, wild and arrogant. Perhaps it was his family name, Sarutobi.
Shikamaru restrained himself from grumbling a complaint. There just wasn't enough information.
And then she looked at him, and everything went to shit.
She snarled at him, like some kind of rabid animal, all teeth and lips pulled back to show a string of saliva trailing from the end of a canine tooth. She hunched forward, and he knew with a small amount of momentum she would pitch forward onto her hands and lunge for him. He also knew there was no way he could keep up with her speed; if she chose to attack the probability of successfully blocking her strikes would be minimal.
His thoughts stuttered to a halt the second her killing intent unfurled, like a thick, ugly cloud of death reaching out to choke him. His vision went white around the corners of his eyes, his muscles froze and oh gods hecouldn'tbreath-
"Nara." Her voice was so full of hated, and he was drowning in her chakra. He almost didn't hear her and he wished he hadn't because it only made the tension in his neck tangle further.
Visions of her teeth sinking into his neck, the perfect shape of her sharp little incisors that she bared at him tearing out his flesh assaulted his senses and he was so sure he was going to die here-
His knees locked, the blood rushed in his ears, pounding behind his eyes and suddenly there wasn't enough air in his lungs; he gasped for it, muscles tense and body shaking. His thoughts jumbled together in a panic and he desperately tried to grasp onto any sense of logic to clear away the fog of this little girls chakra. It wouldn't come, oh, gods it wouldn'tcomehedidntwanttodie-
Shikamaru's breath left him with a hissing sound when her attention was diverted to a man who was suddenly at her side, her killing intent lessening but not disappearing completely. He blinked harshly, having not realized the creeping white over his vision had very nearly consumed him. He hadn't even seen the new comer arrive he'd been so floored under the heat of her gaze. He wasn't sure he'd ever felt anything that potent before.
He was shaking. He was shaking so badly he irrationally worried he might fall apart right there.
The Ichibi had been a wild, untamed sort of killing intent; unfocused and desperately angry at everything and nothing with a slick, poisonous quality to it. It had been horrid, but he had slogged through it because of it's lack of focus.
This girl though, this girl. Her killing intent was something else. Something on another level. It was a muted swipe of a kunai in the dead of night; it was grim and determined. Focused, pointed like a blow that struck true with the resigned understanding that this was necessary. His life was a hinderance and his death was necessary.
She wouldn't kill him because she liked death, and she wouldn't do it because a Kage had ordered her too. No, this girl would kill him because she genuinely believed the world would be a better place without him in it.
For a split second he was thankful to the newcomer for distracting her because he could think again, the haze, and that horrible, terrible knowledge that his death was coming ebbing away-
Right up until he saw the cloak.
And the man's crazed, too-wide eyes and cackling laughter pierced his brain in a different kind of fear.
He completely missed what the Akatsuki member was saying, too focused on keeping his hands from shaking in fear and leveling himself upright.
Everything made sense then.
Her lack of village insignia, her ahead-of-her-age skill level, her distaste for a Konoha Jounin.
Everything of course, except for why the Child of the Akatsuki would harbor such a malicious hatred for him specifically.
Perhaps it wasn't personal, a very, very small part of him that wasn't desperately trying to keep from passing out whispered. Perhaps it was the Nara name, and not him.
Somehow he doubted that though.
Nanami watched Hidan's retreating back, and the sudden lack of his presence and body heat beside her felt heavy, excruciatingly heavy. It settled on her shoulders so abruptly she couldn't help but raise her shaking hands to her temples to cradle her head and sink down to the ground in a crouch.
She ducked her head between her knees, breathing heavily with eyes squeezed shut. A dry sob sounded in her ears, and she knew it was hers but she felt disembodied enough to question it.
She stayed like that for a few long moments. (It felt like forever)
Eventually her breath evened, her mind emptied (A dead, stagnant sort of empty. The kind that took over when your mind could no longer compute the stress and worry.) and so she tipped forward; just enough to spring off hands and feet and dart back into the brush as if the last five minutes had never happened at all.
She didn't have long to worry, because in the next few minutes as she approached the sounds of battle Sasuke's emotions were so thick they nearly took over her own.
She very nearly let them; but this was not the time to lose her sense of self. So she carefully, methodically separated what she felt and what he felt and boxed them away for later retrieval. It was sloppy, but it would have to do for now.
She bounced from the high branch of a Fire Country tree, skirting around the edges of a crater that ringed with fire and smoke. She looked for a way in, a possible advantageous moment to interject herself into the ensuing battle.
The animals in the area had long since fled, and only the chakra signatures of the trees and earth remained around the combatants.
Except-
Nanami blinked, pausing mid leap to turn her head to look up and slightly to her right.
Above, looking down at her with a tilted head was the stark orange mask of Tobi. His chakra was still there, but it was compressed into a tight, dense ball of raging blue. She could see the tips of his gloved fingers curling around the edge of the branch he was leaning over.
"Swirly Face," She greeted, eyes darting back towards the distant figures in the center of the crater that kept leaping at each other with flashes of metal and bursts of fire. "Be careful." She told him on reflex.
He was still one of her Red Clouds after all.
"Try not to fall." She added, eyeing the precarious way he was tipping over the edge of his perch.
"Tobi will be careful!" He cheered, and she could hear the grin in his voice, so she smiled slightly before darting off again.
She wondered for a moment why he was here, but dismissed it immediately after as none of her business. If Swirly Face wanted her to know he would have told her.
She halted again in a gap between the blazing flames that licked up the trees on either side of her position. This seemed as good a place as any, and her eyes narrowed when she watched Sasuke stumble to the side and Orochimaru's arm pulling back to take advantage of the boy's mistake.
Nanami lunged.
They were deep inside the crater, but the distance meant nothing as she exploded off the tree, bark flying everywhere with a loud crack.
Distorted colours flashed past in her peripheral.
She barrelled into Sasuke, her body making contact with his with the smack of flesh and the hiss of chakra. An enormous green snake shot past, its length leading back towards Orochimaru's sleeve.
Bitter Wings was panting heavily, and his eyes were rapidly gaining a glaze as he lay pliant beneath her. His skin was a stark white against the crimson of blood that was splashed across him, his clothing torn to shreds in some places. There was a kunai held limply in his dominant hand. His hair was more of a mess than it usually was, the wild spikes invading his face instead of smoothing back like it normally did.
The most worrisome part however, was his left eye which was squeezed shut tightly, blood welling from the tear duct. His other spun in rapid circles, the single sharingan working hard to make up for the loss of the other.
She hoped he hadn't lost the eye completely. She frowned, it didn't seem like it would be advantageous to damage Sasuke's eyes if Orochimaru was planning on taking his body. The Sannin had put a lot of work and effort into obtaining the young Uchiha after all.
What did that mean?
Nanami rolled off of him, yanking Sasuke to his feet with her. (It was an awkward motion, he was much taller than her and her body instinctively wanted to crouch even lower to the ground.) They both leapt backwards in tandem, a seamless movement as if the two had never been separated at all.
"Wake up!" Nanami snapped at Sasuke, and he seemed to startle enough at the sound of her voice to shake the confusion off.
"Why are you here." He growled down at her.
Orochimaru started laughing. It was a tired sound, edging on hysteria.
"I just got rid of you." Bitter Wings said lowly; in an almost lost, desperate tone.
She ached for him.
"I couldn't let you do this alone." She told him truthfully, apologetically.
"It's none of your business!" He snapped right back with a curl of disdain to his lip.
Nanami gave a one-shoulder shrug, turning towards Orochimaru whose golden eyes were pinning her in place. His chuckles were tapering off.
"You aren't Akatsuki." She explained as if he would understand. He probably didn't. He wasn't one of her Red Clouds, and despite the pressing need in her to defend this boy, he would never be afforded the same rights that her brothers held.
"Hello, child." Orochimaru's voice was slick and quiet, but she heard him all the same over the roar of fire and crack of falling trees in the distance.
"Hello Orochimaru-san." She greeted pleasantly, because Raven Eyes had shown her how easy it was to set your opponent off balance with apathetic pleasantries.
The Sannin seemed unphased however.
Bitter Wings grunted for breath at her side, and she could tell he was worn thin.
But so was Orochimaru.
Her eyes narrowed on the older man.
"You seem well." She added sarcastically, because as much as she followed Raven Eyes teachings, Oceans had had a hand in her upbringing as well.
Orochimaru scoffed, it was an ugly, twisted expression and in the back of her mind Nanami tallied a point towards herself. In the end though, it would be teeth and the pointy end of her blade that decided the winning mark.
She was fully prepared to show him how capable she was. None of the apprehension of their last meeting lingered in her; save for what Sasuke was feeling, but that was a distant murmur of unease as she forcibly moved his thoughts and feelings to the back of her mind.
Nanami could smell weakness on the Sannin like a wolf chasing after a bleeding hare.
With Sasuke's help, (perhaps even without) she was confident she could kill him this time.
Nanami's dominant foot slid across the scorched earth, pitching her balance forward in preparation. Orochimaru's eyes didn't move from hers, but she saw his lips twitch in what might have been an anticipatory movement.
But then his gaze left her and slid behind to Bitter Wings.
His grin widened.
She heard Sasuke stumbled again, and it took everything in her not to whirl around and catch him.
He fell, hitting the ground with a hard thump.
Nanami's muscles tensed.
There was no way she would have the opportunity to remove him from the field, and she knew Orochimaru wouldn't leave the boy alone.
He'd take Bitter Wings and run at the first opportunity.
A heated breath of resignation escaped her, and her eyes slipped shut for only a moment in the space between Orochimaru's tensing limbs and his forward momentum.
Her chakra strings uncoiled and she snapped them across the surface of Bitter Wings' weakened core.
It wasn't the only option she had left, but this did have the highest probability of both hers and Bitter Wings' survival. There was always a choice, but she wasn't going to chose to let Orochimaru take him just to avoid taking him herself.
The familiar sensation of Sasuke's emotional state returned; the full-bodied force of it swamped over her, stealing her breath. It was almost like comparing the memory of the way something tasted, to actually tasting the thing.
Their previously tattered link flashed white hot in her mind's eye. Now a steady thrum of even exchange between them. Nanami became fully aware of his fear, his apprehension. His anger and hatred and frustration. It all came back as if it had never left at all. She ground her teeth against it.
Move! Her thoughts screeched the command so loud she wasn't sure if she had spoken it aloud or not.
Sasuke was up and leaping backwards with her, despite the absence of his fully conscious mind. She watched his good eye crack open and black bleed to swirling red once more in her peripheral.
Orochimaru landed with a snarl in the space they had occupied only a moment before, unfocused rage crossing his tired features.
Nanami reached into her cloak and curled her fingers around the hilt of her weapon. The chains clinked together softly. Her bare toes dug into the soot and dirt beneath her.
She would have to finish this quickly, and she knew she could; just like Sasuke was vulnerable to her kekkei genkai because of his seal; Orochimaru was weak against her for almost exactly the same reason. The Sannin's chakra core was even more animal than human, even more corrupted and twisted than Sasuke's would ever be.
All she needed was one touch, and all of this would be nothing but a bad memory for Bitter Wings. She just needed to get close enough. (It would be easier said than done; Nanami knew this.)
Orochimaru's hands came up to form an unfamiliar seal.
His fingers were shaking.
"Is this guy even human!" Naruto shouted in alarm as he threw himself backwards- right into Sakura.
Kakashi saw her eyes widen and her muffled "Idiot!" as the two collided. He resisted the urge to facepalm.
The Akatsuki member who stood calmly before them rose an eyebrow at him, as if to say, "Seriously?"
Kakashi just shrugged at the dark-skinned man, completely at a loss as to how to explain his students lack of spacial awareness.
There was another, horrendous crack-snap and a large, black creature made of threads rose from the man's exposed back.
It wore a white mask like the other, which hovered to the left; both of the creatures waited patiently for orders.
The ground between them hissed and smoked from the fire that had resulted from the first things arrival. It had completely obliterated the wood Tenzo had been holding the man in place with.
Kakashi felt his trepidation rise into his throat.
Shit. How many of those things did he have?
His gaze wandered for only a split second towards where he knew Team Ten's location was, and he could feel Asuma's familiar chakra signature headed towards them at what he assumed was the top speed his students could reach.
He hoped they would get here soon- his current team lacked the cohesion to fight an opponent of this caliber.
In the opposite direction, the copy-nin noted that the sounds of battle had silenced and he wondered what that meant for Sasuke.
"He's stalling." Tenzo breathed heavily, chakra depletion creeping up on the man. Thus far his kekkei genkai had only provided a lot of firewood for their opponent.
Kakashi grunted in acknowledgement.
The real question though, was why an Akatsuki member would want to distract them from a battle between the last Uchiha and one of their former members. Something told him this probably had to do with the little kid that trailing along after them.
Her involvement with Sasuke made him nervous, and he wasn't entirely sure what to think of that.
Was she out to help him, or hinder him?
Mismatched eyes caught disturbing acid green and deep red, and he suppressed a shudder of unease.
He needed to get over there as soon as possible.
Omake
Nanami squinted at the handful of berries Tobi had handed her. They were a nice purple colour, a shade that reminded her of a certain Jashinist's eye colour…
But it was more than that. There was something about these berries, something that rang familiar in the back of her mind. She couldn't quiet place what it was though.
Nanami took a delicate sniff of the handful of sustenance Tobi had handed her. The man himself had retreated back towards the campfire, leaving Nanami to her own devices.
"These taste like shit, un." Deidara said from where he sat in a squishy pile of grass. He made an interesting face, somewhere between disgust and consideration before popping another one into his mouth.
"Where did you get these Tobi?" Nanami asked carefully, plucking one from her palm and rolling it between her fingers. When she squeezed hard enough it oozed a liquidy black juice. The smell became even more pungent.
Like rotten bananas and aloe.
It certainly didn't seem appealing enough to eat.
"Tobi collected them from that tree vine we passed on the way here." The man in question chirped, shoving a handful of the icky things underneath his mask with a black gloved hand.
"Eww…" He said a moment later, the eye hole to his mask peering closing at his hand as if it had betrayed him.
Nanami stilled at his words and turned to look at the man with an incredulous expression.
"The vines with the star-shaped leaves?" She asked slowly. Tobi nodded vigorously, and in response Nanami was on her feet in a flash and slapping the berries out of Deidara's hand.
"Don't eat them!" She cried in a panic. Deidara's mouth dropped open in a half formed protest and one of the chewed on things rolled off his tongue and plopped onto his lap.
His face crumpled into despair.
"Are they poisonous?" He asked her, and then immediately turned on Tobi.
"You fucking poisoned us, un! What the hell is wrong with you!" Tobi leap to his feat, his pile of berries littering the ground around him to lie forgotten until some other foolish beast came along to eat them.
"Tobi didn't know!" He cried, waving his arms up and down.
Yeah, right.
"It's okay, we can fix this." Nanami tried to placate Burning Earth with little hands and soft gestures.
"You know a cure?" He sounded hopeful.
"Noo…" She hedged looking away. "But they won't kill you, just…" she trailed off, shoot and disgruntled look at Swirly Face.
"Just, what, un?" He prompted.
"You'll be a bit… delirious for a few hours. Unless you can make yourself throw up before you digest them."
Deidara was up in a flash, stalking toward Tobi who had his hands up in the universal 'I surrender' gesture as he backed away from his teammate. Burning Earth cocked his arm back with a thunderous expression and punched the man in the gut hard enough for him to double over.
He didn't vomit though.
Too bad.
Four hours later found Nanami chasing after Burning Earth in a futile attempt to get him to put his pants back on.
"I can't!" He screamed, as if his pants were the most horrifying and vile thing he'd ever seen. (Thankfully, he had boxers on. Cute blue ones with little white doves all over them.)
His blue irises were completely swallowed by the massive black of his pupils. He was covered in sweat.
"Nanami! Quick, put them down, un!" He whipped around so quickly she startled to a halt. Burning Earth lunged for her, tackling her to the ground and ripped the offending article of clothing from her hands before throwing them for all he was worth.
The pants gently fluttered to the ground two feet away.
He gasped dramatically and leapt backwards before turning on heel once more and darting off into the brush.
Nanami sat up, rubbing her butt where she had landed. "Ow." She said to no one.
Except Swirly Face who was lounging on a tree branch above her. She'd never seen the man look so… relaxed.
He swished a black gloved hand in the air idly, humming a tune she didn't recognize.
"You okay Swirly Face?" She called up hesitantly. He gave a lackadaisical, "Mm-hmm." before going back to humming softly.
Well, at least someone was having a nice night.
AN: Inspiration for the wolf-lamb comparison to the Nanami-Sasuke link came from here:
www . youtube watch?v=8LfUP_9TpMI (Just remove the spaces)
I like it enough that y'all will probably see it again.
Please review and let me know what you think!
I'd also like to mention that the last chapter brought us over 400 reviews and 700 favorites! Thank you all so much for all your kind words and inspirations! I am beyond pleased, and humbled that my story has garnered this much attention. Honestly, I really hadn't expected it to get this far, but here we are and I can't thank you all enough.
The new image cover for this fiction was created by RaeneeAutumn, she did a fantastic job!
There is also a new Poll on my Author's page concerning this fic if anyone is interested.
Preview: Chapter 44: Ashes on Wool
"I don't know what the fuck she's up to but she chased after the Uchiha." Hidan made a distressed noise then that caught his attention and acid green slid over to look at the younger man.
He was making a strange expression, as if he were disgusted and shocked at the same time. Hidan's mouth opened and Kakuzu held back another sigh; hopefully the leaf-nin would get their shit together and they could continue the battle so he wouldn't have to listen to Hidan.
"You don't think she- she- fucking, likes him or something?" Hidan stumbled over his own words.
Kakuzu gave the man a flat look. "You are an idiot."