Chapter LXII
"Hey," Asuma suddenly bolted up, as he detected a tremor in the rooftop beneath his feet. "Did you two feel that?"
Kakashi had. Slipping his book into his pocket, he leaned over the edge of the building, looking down to the ground far below.
The street was full of people walking about. Security were still stationed outside.
Nothing seemed amiss.
"Perhaps it's an earthquake?" Gai mused.
They waited. Felt another quiver – followed by a deafening roar that seemed to shake the building's very foundations.
"That's no earthquake!" Kakashi exclaimed in alarm.
Immediately they were all on their feet, running toward the door leading to the emergency exit stairs that climbed all the way down to the lowest floor of the building.
As people continued to pass through the door, Sakura searched desperately for Kenji and the others. To her relief, she soon spied Shino, Lee, Neji and Chouji. But still she couldn't find her date. Sinking dread was starting to wedge itself like a boulder in her stomach. Had he been crushed under foot? Was he one of the many bodies lying around the room?
No, she discarded the thought. No, he's fine.
Shikamaru re-joined them, and Sakura's gut twisted at the expression she saw on his face. He looked shaken. It was so at odds with his relaxed nature – and completely unnerving to see.
"What is it?" Ino asked, concerned.
He placed a hand on her shoulder, pushing her forward. "We need to get out, right now!"
The balcony doors weren't an option, he knew. Metal grilles had slammed down over the glass, making it impossible to break. An emergency security feature, Shikamaru suspected, which was clearly not working in their favour. Besides, the doors led out to the gardens of the property, and open spaces would only allow the chimera to fully spread its wings, turning it into the aerial killer it was. It would waste no time in swooping down to cause fatal and wide-spread damage. Their priority was to save as many mortal lives as possible. So they had no choice but to continue through the rooms until they reached one of the emergency exits. "Follow the emergency exit signs! Go!"
"I need to find Kenji!" Sakura said in desperation. The idea of leaving her kind-hearted date behind, and never seeing him again – especially after the conversation they'd had earlier in the evening - filled her with unspeakable trepidation.
"Sakura, there's no time for that!" he shouted back. "We need to keep you of all people safe!"
"But what is happen-" she began to ask frustratedly – at the precise moment Shikamaru inhaled sharply, his head snapping back to look toward the ballroom's entrance. Sakura's eyes followed his line of sight – only for fear to slice through her, hitting as sharply as a cutting kunai.
The entire room shook, as the roaring chimera blasted through the wall, and charged straight toward them.
Ino screamed, and instinctively grabbed a stunned Sakura and Hinata, heaving them through the door behind the other party guests. Sai's face, usually a blank slate, registered open alarm as he froze in disbelief.
"That is-!" he began.
"Tap into your seal and help me contain it!" Shikamaru yelled.
Sai immediately snapped out of his stupor and formed hand-seals, summoning a long scroll and ink-brush. With a quick flurry of brush strokes, he invoked life into his drawing, executing his Super Beast Imitating technique. A dozen lions leapt off the parchment, and flew at the chimera, which sprouted furious flame at them.
Shikamaru guided his shadow imitation hands to the beast's colossal legs, wrapping around them. His entire body quivered as he struggled to hold its great weight down.
"Shit…!" he cursed. He needed more chakra to keep it from moving, and the seal upon him made his veins burn in the effort to drag out more than he could use all at once.
Naruto tore into the room, a large sphere of wind howling in his palm. He leapt into the air, and slammed his Rasengan into the creatures back. It bellowed in agony, twisting, and Shikamaru hauled at his shadow hands, causing the beast to crash to the ground at an awkwardly painful angle. It lay there, dazed, exhaling smoke, but not yet fully incapacitated.
Naruto landed beside him, breathing heavily. "Are the others okay?"
"Ino took them to the next room. They're following the emergency exit signs. That should lead them to another way out!"
"Where could this creature have come from?" Sai questioned. They hadn't seen any mythical beings since the days of the war. The Council had essentially ensured that they'd completely vanished from the surface over the course of time, after being deemed a threat to the safety of humanity and a hindrance to the progress of civilisation.
Only very few remained in the world, and in very remote locations, inaccessible to inquisitive, meddling humans.
"Him," Naruto snarled, with frightening conviction. "Who else?!" Lifting his hands, he formed fresh seals. "Let's finish this!"
Sakura ran forward. Her heart was careening fitfully inside her chest. She had seen the monster that had leapt into the ballroom, and could not believe her eyes.
The only time she'd seen such monstrous creatures had been in the Underworld, in Sasuke's training arena. How was it possible that one was attacking on the surface?
Who had sent it? Was it Cronus's work? Was it possible that he was so brazenly breaking the pact between himself and the surface gods?
Why now? What had changed to give him the confidence to do so?
Anger at uncertainty, anger at not knowing, made her throat burn.
"That way!" she directed the crowd frantically.
"P-please stay calm!" Hinata pleaded, her lovely features marred with distress.
"Stop pushing, you idiots!" Ino cried out. "We want everyone out safely! Stop pushing!"
They poured into another function hall that they found was oddly lit, unlike the others. It was larger than even the ballroom they had vacated. People began to slow down, the shock settling in.
"I can't run anymore," someone moaned.
"My legs hurt!"
"I think I'm gonna be sick!"
"What the hell is going on?!"
Then everyone was talking at once all over again.
"What's happening? What are all those noises?"
"I just want to go home!"
"I don't have reception! Why won't my phone work?"
"Someone call the police!"
"Why is nobody coming to help us?!"
Sakura felt rage prickle through her entire body, as the room exploded into a riotous din. She kicked her shoes off, liberating her aching feet, and grabbed at the skirt of her dress, clambering up onto one of the expensive looking armchairs that rested by the shuttered balcony doors.
Taking a huge heave of oxygen into her lungs, she yelled as loudly as she could, "SHUT UP, damn it! Every one of you, pipe down RIGHT NOW!"
Somehow, they all heard her. Something in her tone made them all fall silent, and they blinked at her in shock – Ino and her friends included.
Sakura lifted her hands, stunned at herself. Had she really just managed to shut up an entire room of hysterical people? "Okay." She breathed, much more quietly. "Everyone just needs to stay…"
The lights in the room suddenly blinked out, prompting everyone to gasp.
Plunged into silence, that was when they heard it. A loud hissing, rasping sound.
"…calm," Sakura finished in a hushed voice, eyes wide as she stared over the masses of heads below her. Slowly she slipped back onto the ground. Everybody in the room grew deathly still, frozen in panic.
"What's that noise?" Someone finally whispered.
Tenten lifted her phone, shining her light. Everyone else followed her queue, trying to figure out where the peculiar sound was coming from.
She paused when she suddenly spotted something on the floor.
A glass sphere. It was a grey-blue colour, and seemed to contain rolling thunderclouds within, glowing with a strange light.
"Hey," she said, reaching down to pick it up curiously. It was icy cold to the touch. Raising it to her face, she inspected it closely, and said in a hushed voice, "What's this…?"
Hinata listened intently, finally locating the source of the sound – only to gasp as realisation slammed into her far too late. Her head whipped around to look helplessly in Tenten's direction.
Neji bolted forward at the exact same moment. "Tenten!" he began harshly, his stoic voice laced with uncharacteristic alarm as he reached an arm out to her in warning. She turned toward him, her doe-brow eyes wide.
"Neji…?"
"Do not touch that-!" he shouted in warning.
But it was too late.
The orb in Tenten's hand pulsated – and then detonated right in her face. A blood-curdling shriek rang through the air, as a spinning typhoon of blinding blue-light enveloped the room, sending bodies flying back.
Sakura heard a loud scream, realised it was coming from her own lungs, as she watched Tenten's body fall, as if in sickening slow motion, to the ground. Neji leapt nimbly forward and caught her before she could smack onto the crippling marble floor, crouching with her motionless form cradled gently in his arms.
So gentle. It was everything Tenten would have wanted.
Blood was seeping from a grievously critical wound in her head, from her neck. It poured down her arms, seeping into her burgundy dress.
Too much of it. Far too much, Sakura already knew, to even hope to save her life.
She saw her friend open her mouth, as if struggling to articulate something to the man who held her, choking on the blood that was pooling into her crushed lungs. She lifted a hand, in a weak attempt to grip onto his shirt.
And then, just like that, the hand fell limply to her side. She grew deathly still.
"NO!" Sakura cried hoarsely, tears blurring her vision. She tried to move forward, but hands were pulling her back, keeping her from getting to her friend.
She tried to move forward even when she saw it - something – a fleeting glimmer of white – above Tenten's body as her soul swiftly departed.
"No…" Sakura sobbed, her entire body quivering violently. She fell to her knees in anguish. Arms held her tightly, and someone was choking out her name, shaking like a leaf behind her. Ino, she registered numbly.
Neji hugged Tenten close for a moment, head bowed, as if her passing physically pained him – and then, with frightening composure, he had laid her gently down, and seemed to struggle between attacking immediately in retaliation - or holding back. In the end, his iron-willed sense of duty won out. He returned to Hinata's side, who reached out tearfully to him, in a desperate attempt to offer some semblance of comfort.
It did not help. The expression on his face made grief claw even more savagely at her chest, as she realised he had cared deeply for her friend all along.
She released another ragged sob in mourning, as more screams filled the air, and the howling light finally subsided, giving way to a petrifying behemoth of a creature that had materialised from the orb.
No, she told herself, as she felt the beast's shadow fall over them all. No, this wasn't happening!
Her hands tightened into furious fists, the image of Tenten soaked in blood imprinted in her mind.
Ino dragged her up to her feet, eyes impossibly wide, the air fleeing from her lungs, as a gigantic cross between a water-snake and a dragon with deep blue-green scales and blazing red eyes hissed down at them. It had nine, gargantuan, snapping heads, and immediately began to claim human lives. It parted its mouths and water began to flood the dark room. At its rear were three long, spiked tails, the ends of which were akin to slicing scythes in their bladed sharpness.
It was something that belonged in the upper levels of the Underworld's training arena. Seeing it so vividly and ferociously alive on the surface instilled an altogether different kind of terror.
The cries perforated Sakura's ears, quaking her to her core, and she had never felt so mortal, so helpless to save others, as she looked around the room, devastated.
Death. So much death at once. She couldn't stop shaking. Did he see this happening, she wondered? Could he sense it?
Did Sasuke know?
Freezing rain showered down upon them. A hand grabbed at her shoulder.
"Sakura!" It took her reeling mind a moment to place Kenji's hoarse voice. "Thank god!"
She turned to meet his concerned gaze. Just like everyone else, he was drenched. Water dripped off damp strands of his hair, plastering the formerly styled locks messily against his forehead.
He pulled her back, farther away from the snaking serpent heads, sloshing in the rapidly rising water level.
"Are you alright?!" he gripped her shoulders tightly, looking as white as a sheet as his eyes checked her over frantically. "Sakura, I've been looking everywhere for you! You're shaking like a leaf!" He wound an arm around her, as if seeking to comfort and warm her.
Was she alright? How could he ask her that question, when she had just watched one of her closest friends die before her very eyes? How could he ask her that, with such a monstrosity in the hall with them? How was he not freaking out at the sight?
Adrenaline, she noted, was a powerful hormone.
"You're okay," she got out, relieved to see him - but numbed by the loss of Tenten.
"I was knocked out when I got swept up in the crowd; when I came around, I tried to help as many of the injured as I could, but…" his voice trailed off. She saw him swallow back a thick lump in his throat, visibly unsettled. He looked as though he had seen a ghost, and she could not blame him.
Of course he tried to help others, Sakura thought to herself. Selfless Kenji's medical instincts would have immediately kicked in, just as hers had.
He turned his head, looking up at the sea-monster. "What the hell is that thing!?"
She opened her mouth to respond, but the creature released a thunderous roar and its multiple heads shot out in all directions, forcing everyone to dive for cover in the dimness. Some people were attempting to climb up onto the walls in vain, their footing slipping. Others waded back in the direction they'd entered the room. Some clawed at and desperately tried to smash at the impenetrable balcony windows. Sakura could see bodies, already floating in the water along with illuminated cell phones that sunk to the floor below.
The water level had almost become knee-deep.
Thinking quickly, Sakura grabbed at the wet skirt of her dress, trying to rip at it. It would only slow her down, make her movements more sluggish and heavy. When it wouldn't give way, she frustratedly channelled a small stream of the chakra she had borrowed into her hands and succeeded in ripping the delicate fabric from its hem, messily yanking across the damaged fibres until she had managed to remove enough of it to free her lower legs.
The other girls did the same, discarding the unwanted material from their gowns to allow them the ability to swim, if required.
"Sakura-chan!" Naruto's voice reached her as he finally reunited with them. Grime and debris marred his smooth skin, and his smart clothes were crumbled and smeared with dirt. Spotting the monster, his eyes grew as wide as saucers, and he balked in horrified disbelief.
"The hell?! A- a hydra?!"
"Doesn't that thing belong in the oceans?" Ino screeched. "What's it doing here?!"
"We just took down a damn chimera," Shikamaru communicated over the rushing of water around them. "It didn't belong here, either!"
"What?!" Ino spluttered, pushing drenched strands of hair out her face as she looked at him in dismay. "But these monsters shouldn't even be-"
"Look out!" Kiba yelled, leaping forward to yank Shino out of harm's way as two of the creature's heads swooped down toward them, hissing and lashing with impossibly sharp teeth.
A startled gasp escaped Hinata's lips as Neji seized her in his arms and lunged to the side. Naruto bodily shoved Sakura and Kenji back, as the others dove into the water for safety.
"What do we do!?" Lee's voice called from behind them, blinking up at the creature with his round, dark eyes. "It will take many rounds of fight to fell this foul creature! With all the youth around us, we cannot risk it! Our chakra will not hold out for certain! This is not a monster we can battle in our current state, with lives to save!"
Kenji stared at them in bewilderment. Chakra? What were they talking about? He still couldn't believe what his eyes were seeing.
"Lee-san is correct," Sai answered, summoning ink-lions at the hydra. They assaulted one of the heads, which snapped at his creations menacingly. The creature seemed to be growing in size, now barely contained within the room.
"Wha- how did you do that?" Kenji questioned, eying Sai wildly, who simply angled a blank stare at him.
"We can't bring it down!" Shikamaru shouted, drawing everybody's attention back to him. "Not here! Lee's right! I remember Minato-sensei's lessons!" He cast a glance at Naruto, whose jaw tightened in memory. "The hydra can't be fought from long range. All its attacks are long-distance attacks. Cut off those heads and they'll just regenerate two-fold! And we can't get close enough to do damage with all these civilians here. Our priority is to get them all out! The main entrance is up in flames- we need to keep everyone moving out the exit over there! That's the only way out, or they'll all drown! Move!"
The water continued to rise, filling the room at a quicker pace than the flood could escape from the only two door openings. Waist deep, they waded through the ice-cold liquid, shepherding as many people along as possible. Ino dragged a hysterical girl by her hair, screaming at her to move or die. Lee hauled Chouji and Shino along behind him, but the heavier boy struggled to push against the tides.
One of the hydra's terrifying heads noticed. It locked onto him, rearing back. In a flash, it struck, slamming one of its mammoth tails down into the water with a bone-rattling shriek. The motion caused turbulent waves to crash through the water, sweeping everyone helplessly along, forcing everyone apart.
This time Kenji held fiercely onto Sakura, and the water closed over their heads briefly. They resurfaced, gasping, and continued to push on toward the exit.
Lee emerged, to find he had been separated from his friends. Naruto sputtered, looking around in desperation. He spotted a body. A familiar pale green suit, brown hair that had flattened.
"SHINO!" he yelled in recognition. His friend floated in the water, face down.
He wasn't moving.
Kiba, who had been right behind him, stood looking shell-shocked. He reached out, tugging at his friend's body, only to find it unresponsive.
"Damn it!" A choked curse tore from Naruto's throat. His entire body trembled and burned with frustration. At full power, he would have been able to get everyone out. He would have been able to get close enough to rip the creature's beating heart out straight out of its chest. But there were too many civilians in the way. He looked down at his hands, shaking with rage, despising the chakra-suppressing seals that had been enforced upon them all for what he now knew had been a farce of a pact on Madara's end.
'Release me,' a deep voice suddenly growled in his mind.
He froze in equal parts of shock and terror.
That voice… he hadn't heard it stir since… since…
Images flashed through his mind as he stared up at the hydra. It was recoiling like a serpent, preparing another devastating assault.
Piercing blue eyes. His father's firm hand on his shoulder. His mother's long red hair, her gentle voice.
'We'll lure Cronus to the pinnacle. Be ready to receive it then, son.'
'Will… will it hurt?'
'No, my sweet boy. You will feel only a shifting pressure. Half of Kurama's powers will be free of Cronus's chains and safe within you. He will not struggle. We have prepared all the necessary seals.'
Naruto blinked, snapping out of his haunting memories.
'Release me, brat,' it repeated, and he felt an ice-cold chill run through his bones, as dark, unstable chakra swirled within him, whispering, pleading to be drawn upon and unleashed.
'Let me tear this sea urchin to shreds.' The voice rumbled. 'Your chakra alone is not enough to contain it.'
'No…' he fought against it. 'I- I'm not to use you… that's not why my mother and father sealed you with me! If Madara finds out I have you-'
'Then watch your friends die,' the voice grumbled.
He gasped with the sheer concentrated effort of keeping the volatile chakra at bay. But thankfully, the voice grew silent once again. He released an unsteady breath.
Chouji was coughing violently, having swallowed down deep mouthfuls of water. Lee waded toward him and tugged at him, as the others guided humans through the emergency exit. "Please keep moving, Chouji! You must-"
Another whipping tail smashed down toward them.
"Gwaaah!" Chouji was sent flying into the air. He smacked hard against the wall, and plummeted into the water.
He did not move again.
"Chouji!" Kiba howled, ripped to pieces at losing another of his close friends. "God damnit!"
"Lee!" Ino cried in alarm, throwing an anxious look back over her shoulder.
The seraph was thrown into the air. Charging his leg with chakra, he used the spinning momentum to aim a shattering kick at one of the hydra's heads. It roared, enraged, and gnashed its sharp teeth, trying to catch Lee in its crushing jaws as he fell into descent.
He quickly formed hand seals, and barely perceptible, near translucent wings, gleaming like a lustrous sheen of water, spread from his back, allowing him to fly away and avoid the mid-air attack.
Sakura gasped as one pair of the hydra's eyes zoned in on her, hissing ominously. She pushed away from Kenji, shouting, "Dive!"
The head shot toward them, and was intercepted by Naruto and Shikamaru, who raised a chakra-charged shield up to ward off the attack.
The head was undeterred. It lashed out at them, joined by three others. They snarled and coiled left and right, seeking an opening, all sets of eyes honed in on Sakura.
"They're after Sakura-!" Ino screamed hysterically in realisation. "Naruto, Shikamaru, they want Sakura-!"
Three tails whistled through the air, upturning a huge crashing wave of water that cascaded down on everyone in the room. Sakura was dragged underneath the rip-tide, with such force that her body spiralled out of her control. She struggled to surface, heart thundering, lungs burning for oxygen. But every time she swam up to gulp down air, another wave crashed over her head, dragging her back under.
"Sakura-chan!" she heard Naruto yell.
I can't hold it, she thought to herself, panic seizing her body in an ice-cold grip as her body spun without direction in the rolling tides. My breath, I can't-!
Hands grabbed her arms, and she was hauled with great force back above water. She dragged in a deep gulp of oxygen to replenish her starving lungs, coughing uncontrollably.
A familiar voice spoke into her ear left. "Are you alright?"
"K-Kakashi-sensei?!" she spluttered, turning her head to find that her masked teacher had drawn her out of the water and saved her life.
"Sakura," he spoke gravely. "I need you to swim toward that opening right now. We'll divert the hydra, and take care of this."
"Sakura!" Ino reached her. She had never felt as frightened as she had been the moment she'd seen Sakura's pink head disappear under water, and vowed she wasn't letting go of her best friend again until they reached safety. Taking hold of her hand, she tugged her through the water, which was now over shoulder level. "Let's go!"
"Kenji-" she began. "The others-"
"They're already next door. Come on!"
The cloaked figure stood obscured in darkness, watching the chaos ensuing through the window.
They were getting the pink-haired girl out.
They were clearly protecting her.
This. This was what they had been waiting to see.
A lone-crimson eye glinted in the shadows as he lifted a hand and sent a telepathic command to the powerful creatures within.
The hydra hissed, its heads simultaneously whipping around to focus on where Lee hovered, shielding Ino and Sakura as they swam to the exit door. Too quick to evade, the heads shot forward together, unleashing powerful jets of water that struck Lee in the wings and sent him careening toward the wall, spinning out of control. A flash of movement caught him in mid-air, stabilising his balance.
"Gai-sensei!"
"I'm here, Lee!" His teacher answered.
Asuma, who had also arrived, gazed up at the hydra in shock, the concern in his expression palpable.
"How is this possible?!" he exhaled.
Kakashi re-joined him and shook his head. There was no time to waste on disbelief. The threat was here and it needed to be disabled as quickly as possible. "Shikamaru!" he called to the war-strategist. "With me, to Naruto!"
Gai pushed Lee toward the exit. "Go with Neji and Hinata. Protect Sakura!"
"But Gai-sensei!" his student blinked worriedly at him. "What about you-?"
"To Sakura, Lee! Now!" His teacher bellowed.
"Y-yes, Gai-sensei!" Lee obeyed, swooping back to do as he was bid.
Naruto lifted his hands and cloned his body as many times as he was able with the remaining chakra he had at his disposal.
"Naruto!" Kakashi called to him. "Get above water level! Lightning is its weakness!"
Kakashi, Naruto, Asuma, Gai, Sai and Shikamaru all channelled chakra into their feet, jumping up onto the walls of the room, using chakra flow to anchor them in place.
Kakashi then formed rapid hand-seals, summoning a screaming stream of flaring lightning energy.
"Chidori!"
They stood on the rocky roof of the hidden base. It had been completely torched, the smoke contained within the thick cavern beneath them. No equipment – or personnel inside – would survive the flames.
Misty forests surrounded them in all directions. The night was dark, the moon full, the sky littered with stars.
"Ahhh, fresh air that doesn't reek at last," Suigetsu exclaimed, inhaling deeply.
Juugo leaned down, finding a small mouse scurrying on the ground beneath them. Gently, he held out a palm, and it scurried into his hold. He smiled to himself.
Sasuke watched him from the corner of his eye for a moment, before turning his focus to their tracker.
"Karin," he spoke her name.
"Ah… r-right!" she straightened her glasses, and peered around them, marking their next location. "We're heading North-East from here."She pointed in the correct direction.
Suigetsu opened his mouth to say something – when he suddenly tilted his head to the right, looking behind Sasuke, into the horizon. Karin's eyes widened in turn. She'd seen what he had at precisely the same moment.
"Hey," he frowned lightly. "What's going on over there? Looked like some explosion."
Sasuke blinked, and angled an impassive glance back over his shoulder.
"I think that's fire," Karin supplied, squinting to make it out.
The skyline in the distance was filled with twinkling lights from the metropolis, set against the mighty mountains that formed Konoha's borders in all directions.
"Isn't that… coming from the village centre?" Suigetsu questioned slowly. Juugo got to his feet, his gaze also turning to the sight of billowing flames.
"Yes," Karin confirmed. "The town is definitely that way." She reached out with her mind, seeking chakra signatures – before tensing suddenly as her mind was overwhelmed with sensory overload. Emotions like panic, fear, chaos, stress. She gasped. "I can sense… I can sense something terrible happening over there!"
"…" Sasuke blinked, the gentle breeze in the night air stirring raven strands of hair across his face as he stared intently in the direction of the flames.
A loud, crackling explosion rocked the building, coming from the room that contained the hydra. It was deafening; a sonic-boom that sounded like the roof of the building itself had been blown off.
When Lee flew into the next room, he found its curtains in flames. People were running for their lives, wading through the water that had flooded in from the previous hall. It wasn't as deep here, but the level was rapidly rising.
"The exit is this way!" Ino shouted. "There're stairs that lead out, go, go, go!"
Screaming people followed her command, swiping at their heads frantically.
Sakura saw why. These were creatures she finally recognised. She watched them torment the terrified humans who were trying so desperately to make it out alive, many of them barely standing from sheer exhaustion.
She thought of Tenten, whose body had been lost to the water in the fray. She thought of Chouji and Shino, and all the others people who had lost their lives that night.
Tears pricked at her eyes. Grief and anger and the overwhelming urge to fight rushed into her. Intense fury blazed through her body like a roaring inferno.
She'd had enough!
Winged harpies circled the room, shrieking, diving at ducking mortals with razor-sharp talons. Unlike the ones Sakura had encountered in the Underworld, these seemed to be formed of shadows, entirely black with a shock of silver hair upon their heads. Like the other creatures they'd met that night, their eyes also glowed a menacing red.
One of them caught sight of Lee in mid-air, and with a piercing cry, shot toward him like a spinning bullet, shedding black feathers everywhere.
Lee evaded, but a follow up attack from an alarmingly fast harpy that reached clawed hands at him clipped him in the wings, knocking him off aerial balance. He pushed back against the wall with his feet and aimed a devastating flying kick into one of the creature's abdomens, sending them crashing backwards.
Neji provided cover, his fists batting away attacks with precisely-controlled chakra, and Ino grabbed a broken slab of wood and with an angry cry hurtled it at the harpies, trying to ward them off long enough to allow all the people remaining in the room to finish filtering through the emergency exit. Kenji stood behind the shielding deities, guiding everyone through the opening with Hinata's assistance.
A snarling harpy lunged toward Ino, aiming for her back. Sai quickly deflected the attack, summoning ink-animals that assaulted the savage being. Another dived low toward him. Hinata immediately noticed and whirled, raising her hands. A pulse of concentrated chakra energy assaulted the harpy, striking her in her vitals, forcing the vengeful entity back with an ear-splitting cry.
Sakura's eyes darted from one harpy to the next, rapidly calculating that there were seven remaining in the room. She grabbed at her mother's necklace, drawing out the last flow of chakra available to her. Concentrating it into her arm, she waited for a harpy to plunge down toward her, her right hand closing into a tight fist, heart pounding as she recalled her mother's training.
Focus the chakra in your limbs. At the final moment, release it.
The harpy drew closer, eyes blazing into Sakura with murderous intent. Her mouth, billowing black smoke, parted to reveal jagged, blood-thirsty fangs.
"Sakura-!" Kenji called in alarm.
"I've got this!" she shouted back. Swinging her arm in a savage hook, Sakura threw her weight into the punch, and yelled, "Take this!"
Her fist connected angrily with the side of the harpy's face. With a curdling scream the creature flew backwards, slamming against the wall with a nauseating thud.
Another harpy shrieked and lunged at Sakura. She ducked and then leaped after it, catching the retreating creature by one wing. Gripping hard, she hauled the harpy back, straight into her waiting fist.
"Chaaa!" she cried, releasing her chakra at the last second. It slammed into the harpy's stomach, effectively winding the monster. The harpy was thrown aggressively into the air and landed with a loud splash into the water.
"Whoa…" Kenji gaped at her, open-mouthed at the impressive display of strength.
The fallen harpies' sisters were incensed. They circled around Sakura in a petrifying swarm, ignoring all the other humans in the room.
Hinata and Sai surged forward to support her, throwing attacks at the monsters. Sakura tossed an anxious glance back over her shoulder as she dropped low to avoid being impaled by a razor-sharp talon.
The last of the people had disappeared into the stair door. Kenji beckoned to her, before Ino pushed him out in turn.
"Come on!" she called. "We're clear! Let's get out of here!"
They alighted in front of the tall building to find a scene of utter carnage unfolding before their eyes. A large group of young people were slumped on the ground before the stairs leading up to the entrance doors, which were barricaded shut. Billowing smoke poured from underneath the doors.
Sasuke took in the sight, immediately analysing the situation with his sharp mind. There had been blood-shed and death here that night. His nature allowed him to sense it.
But what had been the cause of it?
Mortals stood in a daze, looking shell-shocked. Some were desperately trying to get their phones to work, stating in dismay that they had been ruined beyond repair. Others were talking hysterically over each other, while some simply stood, staring vacantly ahead.
More people continued to stream steadily out from a side door in the building that led to an emergency exit staircase. They were dressed in what he supposed was the surface finery – except their clothes had been completely ruined. They were all drenched, shivering, huddled together. Many were sobbing uncontrollably.
'Whoa. What's up with all these people?' Suigetsu questioned, disturbed by the sight, noting that his element had clearly had something to do with what appeared to be a spectacularly ruined evening. 'These poor kids all look like they've seen a ghost.'
'Where are the authorities?' Karin wondered. 'Don't they have that kind of thing up here?'
Passers-by were tending to the wounded, offering comfort. Clearly some catastrophic event had occurred.
"What were those things?" he heard a girl weep. "I- I can't believe what I just saw."
"Monsters? How can this be real?"
Monsters?
The death deity motioned for his unit to follow him, and together they passed through the burning front doors. Sasuke briefly infused the Helm with the barrier of Susano'o, which protected them from the singeing lick of the flames.
They stepped into the burning entrance hall. Fallen wooden beams and rocky debris littered the floor. Motionless bodies lay on the ground, toasted to a crisp.
'What the hell happened?' Suigetsu wondered, cringing as he assessed the dead. 'This is some serious shit!'
'So much… death…' Juugo shook his head sadly.
Sasuke regarded the bodies for a moment, his neutral expression devoid of any pity. Then he looked to their right. A huge hole had been blown into the wall there.
'Put out the flames,' he instructed the ocean deity, who immediately did so without question. They moved to the gap in the wall, their feet crunching over broken glass, crumbled stone and crushed wood, and stepped into a wrecked and abandoned ballroom.
There were even more deceased bodies here. Sasuke surveyed them with clinical detachment. It had been approximately almost an hour, he inwardly calculated, since this harrowing incident had occurred.
Karin ran forward, startled, her attention drawn to something ahead of them.
'Look!' she exclaimed.
They walked forward, to find the body of a slain monster sprawled out on the ground. Fire lapped around it. As Suigetsu put it out, Sasuke stepped around the creature's body, his eyes widening in recognition. Surprise flickered across his face as he stared at it.
'That is a chimera,' Juugo quietly supplied. Feathers were scattered around its body, likely from its struggle to survive.
A chimera?
What was it doing here? How had it appeared? And what had caused it to attack humans? And why had the surface gods not cleaned the mess up?
'The fuck is that doing here?' Suigetsu gaped, mirroring Sasuke's thoughts as he doused the remaining flames in the ballroom with water. 'Aren't these things like extinct on the surface?'
They were supposed to be. Sasuke continued to inspect it.
This was Madara and Orochimaru's doing. He was certain.
He knew that leaving this creature here would spell trouble for the over-world deities. It wasn't his business, the death god told himself, to fix surface problems – though he could make the chimera disappear in a heartbeat, if he so wished. Instead he turned disinterestedly away. He would not expend any effort doing such a thing. This was a surface disaster. The surface immortals would simply have to find a way to dispose of the body themselves.
A sudden yell drew his attention to the door at the opposite end of the room. They made their way toward it, noting with some concern that water was steadily flooding into the ballroom – only to pause in astonishment at what they saw.
An enormous monster that most certainly was not in its natural habitat.
'N-no way!' Karin gaped.
A fearsome hydra, with five of its heads hanging limply around its body, was writhing in pain, caught in the midst of battle with five individuals who were struggling to contain it within a sealing jutsu.
"We need more chakra!" One of the individuals shouted. "If it breaks loose of these binds and gets out on the streets-"
"Let me do it, Kakashi-sensei! I can use the chakra that-"
"No, Naruto!" Another voice interrupted harshly. "If this is their work then they'll be watching! Shikamaru! Bind its remaining heads, now! Be careful not to cut them!"
"Damn it! I'm almost on empty. This fucking seal-!"
Another figure ran into the room from an opposite entrance, pale-skinned and dark haired. "We have evacuated everybody safely!" he reported.
"Sakura-chan?" The name immediately snagged Sasuke's undivided attention. "Hinata… everyone?"
Sakura… had been here?
"They are safe. Let me assist you!"
Sasuke's eyes flicked from face to face, recognising each one as a surface deity or seraph.
Gai.
Asuma.
Shikamaru.
Kakashi.
Sai.
Naruto.
So Madara had finally made his move, Sasuke concluded. That meant that this was only the start of many more attempts.
Suigetsu stepped forward, looking deeply troubled – and completely pissed off. 'What the fuck!' he mentally snarled. 'That's a hydra – that belongs in my oceans. Who the fuck summoned it here?!'
The hydra hissed in agony, spewing a fresh jet of water all around the room. The windows of the hall had been blown open through metal shutters, and water was gushing everywhere.
Sasuke's eyes narrowed into dangerous slits as he watched the deities battling to keep the ferocious ocean-behemoth contained. These incompetent surface idiots were restricted in capabilities and clearly at their breaking point – and it simply would not do to have such a hazardous creature running rampant in the town.
He didn't need souls coming to his Kingdom before their time, due to the clear ineptness of the fools who were standing before him. Humans weren't meant to know of the existence of such creatures. He thought of the people outside who were clearly traumatised, and scowled lightly.
They had fucked up letting this happen. They had fucked up badly.
But maybe, his mind quickly thought, maybe it could work to his advantage to assist in the threat's removal. It would certainly give the damned Council members something else to focus on, and shift their attention away from his other affairs. And if he was still summoned unwillingly, then dealing with this surface inconvenience would certainly work as evidence in his favour.
The chimera, they had already slain. This mighty beast, however, was another story.
His eyes shifted to the extremely irked sea king standing beside him.
'Suigetsu,' he communicated. 'It's yours.'
'I'm on it!' Suigetsu raised his hands, and at his command, all the water in the room was sucked up to form a terrifying, twisting typhoon. It swirled around the monster, which bellowed in fury, enveloping it in blinding blue-white light.
"What's happening?!" The surface gods shouted in alarmed confusion.
When the light dissipated, the creature had vanished – and so had all the water in the hall. Countless dead bodies fell with a soft thud to the floor, freed from their watery graveyard.
Naruto sagged, falling to his knees. The others followed suit, relaxing at last, as if an awful strain had been lifted from them.
They looked around the room and at each other in bafflement.
"Wha- what just happened?" Naruto panted.
"I am not sure," Gai exclaimed, breathing heavily.
"How can it just disappear like that?" Asuma demanded.
'Losers,' Suigetsu sneered at them.
Shikamaru bent down to pick something up. "What's this glass sphere doing here?"
They huddled around him, inspecting the item he had retrieved.
Hn. One corner of Sasuke's lips curled to form a barely perceptible, condescending sneer, as his cold gaze came to fall on Naruto in particular.
Pathetic, he thought to himself.
Then he turned away, losing interest in their conversation. His team made their way to another room, where he found more slain mortal bodies – including those of felled harpies. Reaching out with his palm, Sasuke enshrouded their forms with black shadows as the shades dragged them to the Underworld at his will. They belonged to his realm, and so he had claimed them.
'Orochimaru did this, right?' Suigetsu met Sasuke's eyes, and for once, there was no hint of jest or sarcastic mirth in his face. His lavender irises were hard, glinting with open anger. 'Who else can just make imitations of original monsters appear on the fucking surface?'
'Can that- can that really be done?' Karin pondered uncertainly.
'Wouldn't put it past that freak,' Suigetsu communicated disgustedly. 'He must have a base for shit like that. We need to find it and take him down, Sasuke.'
Sasuke inclined his head once in a terse nod. A rare moment in which they were in perfect agreement with one another.
If the entire building had been otherwise evacuated, and the hydra had been the last of the monsters, then there was nothing else for them to see here.
They warped back outside the building. A blond-haired young man in a drenched grey suit had just come out from the emergency exit, and yet, still oddly, there were no signs of any emergency services at the scene.
'These kids are going to be fucked up for life,' Suigetsu mentally predicted. 'Look at the state of them. I bet half of them will kill themselves tonight.'
'…' Sasuke looked aloofly down the barrel of his nose at the mortals who were huddled in curled balls on the floor, rocking back and forth as if the repetitive motion would make them forget all the horrors they had seen.
The ocean deity had a point. None of the young people here had left yet, were still rooted to their spots by shock. But once they did, the High Council would struggle to track them all down and wipe their memories.
Another idea formed in his mind. Further leverage, which he could use to his future advantage.
The surface deities didn't have the means to alter thoughts.
But he did.
The High Council never overlooked a favour. A favour done, was a favour owed. Those were the rules – and Sasuke knew them. It placed him at a distinct advantage, to hold such a position over them. Especially by dealing with something of this magnitude.
The death deity walked noiselessly to the middle of the mass of people, invisible to all eyes except those of his companions. They were still devastated, still panic-stricken, still staring unseeingly into the space ahead of them as their distressed minds replayed the ghastly evening's events over and over like the most grotesque of horror movies. Like a never-ending, eternal nightmare.
Sasuke would leave accounting for the deaths in front of the Council up to the surface gods to figure out. Turning his back to the building, he mentally called for Karin and Suigetsu to lend him some chakra.
He would need a boost to pull off a technique on this scale, to save drawing too heavily on his own internal supply.
'You clever asshole,' Suigetsu sneered at him. 'You're gonna clean this up, and hold it against the High Council, aren't you? Just like I'll do with removing the hydra.'
Sasuke raised a dark brow slightly at him, his face otherwise devoid of expression.
'Heh,' Suigetsu smirked back. He and Karin then placed their hands on his shoulders, obligingly pumping a steady supply of their chakra into his body. Sasuke felt the conflicting signatures seep into his system, and closed his eyes, focusing.
Upon opening them, the Mangekyou Sharingan bled into existence, spinning lazily in his crimson irises.
'Here,' he telepathically commanded, calling to their very souls.
As if caught in an instant trance, every single mortal face immediately snapped around to look in his direction. Whether they had been crying, sitting, standing, or wailing; the whole road and all of its occupants that were conscious of the event, fixed their gazes on one singular spot.
They could not see him, of course. But his Sharingan found their eyes, locking onto every soul he could sense that was outside. He outwardly projected the devastating illusion around the entire perimeter of the street, his frighteningly accurate ability to pin-point mortal souls ensuring that not a single person could possibly escape from it.
'You will forget most of this evening,' he telepathically told them. For mortals so glaringly unexposed to genjutsu, the simple command would absorb into their minds, guaranteeing that memory loss was achieved. The effects would wear off eventually on a scale this big - for he did not have the means to cast an eternally looping-genjutsu on such a huge crowd of people, yet – but it was strong enough to hold in their minds and rupture at least some memory connections. By the time the people remembered snippets of the evening, it would feel to them that it had been nothing more than a horrible nightmare that they couldn't quite fully place or shake. There would be patchy gaps in their recollections. Like a far off, distant event of which they would never be permitted to speak.
For good measure, he added, 'You will not speak of this night to anyone if you begin to remember.'
Then, with devastating immediacy, he projected the will: 'Sleep.'
Ino, Neji, Sakura and Hinata finally stumbled out of the emergency exit door, sucking in a deep breath of cool air after scouring the staircases for good measure to ensure that nobody had been left behind. The adrenaline of the night caught up to them at last, as they remembered the losses of their friends, and the awful, scarring events that had ensued. The girls fell to the ground in stunned silence. Neji leant back against the wall, closing his eyes briefly.
They exited at the exact same moment Naruto and the others did from the front doors of the building. They had been surprised to find the doors were no longer burning, perplexed to see the fires put out.
But nothing was as surprising as the sight that greeted then, as every single person outside suddenly fell to the floor, like puppets clipped of their strings, lost in a senseless, deep slumber.
"Eh?!" Ino exclaimed in shock. "What just happened?!"
"They're… all asleep…?" Naruto said slowly, confusion evident on his face, a look mirrored by the rest of the surface deities as they stared down at the motionless mortals.
"All at once?" Gai questioned, looking disconcerted. "How can that be?"
"Only The High Council could do this…" Asuma frowned. "Or..." his voice trailed.
"…" Or a very powerful, proficient caster of genjutsu. Kakashi's eyes searched the area. He saw nothing amiss. But his heart was starting to thud in his chest. Something in his bones whispered that perhaps…
"This technique…" he began softly, a prickling of instinctive understanding running through his body – only to catch the words back in his throat. He shook his head slightly, his mind placing two and two together. The sudden disappearance of the hydra. The missing monsters Sai had pointed out in the next room. The extinguished flames. The sleeping humans.
Someone had removed almost all traces of any creatures being on the surface – and they'd done it with remarkable efficiency.
"Kenji…?" Sakura knelt down beside Kenji's body, which lay motionless by the stairs of the building. She pressed a hand against his pulse, to feel that it was beating slowly and steadily.
The only reply she received was the steady rise and fall of his chest as he deeply slept.
The Sharingan receded, and he raised a hand to his left eye, wincing slightly. He had never cast such a large-scale genjutsu before. Not like this, all at once.
He had forgotten how draining it could be.
'Are you alright? Sasuke?' Karin questioned worriedly. Suigetsu, who had been watching him closely, drove an extra surge of chakra into him for good measure.
This seemed to help. Sasuke's hand lowered from his throbbing forehead.
Their detour here was done.
'Let's go,' he said. Juugo placed his hand on Suigetsu's shoulder, and they prepared to leave.
"Kenji…?" They heard someone say softly behind them.
"…" Sasuke blinked. He knew that voice. It took every inch of steely will-power in his body not to tense. Not to react.
Not to look back over his shoulder.
A heartbeat later, he and his team departed.
Author's note
Wow! What a crazy ride! I hope you guys enjoyed it and would LOVE to know your thoughts! See you next update!