Yay! Itachi is finally here! And Yodoniku Rasen, one of my OCs, is also officially introduced!
Some parts of this chapter are a lot more serious than most of my writing. In fact…who knows.
Just read on and enjoy! (Oh, and you don't have to read through all that animal ranting. That was just me spilling out my opinions)
Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto, and pretty soon my mom's going to yell at me to go to bed.
Chapter 8 Uchiha, Uchiha, Uchiha
Yodoniku Rasen perched on a rooftop on the outskirts of a civilian village, watching the sky, pondering. When…where…how? Uchiha Itachi could not possibly have found them. He couldn't have… And yet he did, caught all three as easily as fish in a net. And he had wounded Rasen, too. If not for intuition, Rasen would have been trapped in the Akatsuki's Tsukiyomi. But without the Sharingan the Uchiha had done enough damage, and the capabilities of Hoshigaki Kisame were simply overwhelming. And the third Akatsuki… He did not appear at all, or Rasen would surely be dead, and the five tailed bijuu, no, Hiyari, would be suffering the same fate as the other captured jinchuriki.
"Suiken…"
The boy was gone, perhaps dead. The Akatsuki were not people who kept captives alive for long, and for those who lived, perhaps it was better to die. Kisame had dealt a severe blow to the boy's arm. Even Rasen wasn't sure if it had been sheared off completely.
Agilely, silently, he climbed back into the room, where Hiyari shifted on his futon, eyes furrowing as his concentration broke. But Rasen could see that a kunai slid back under the floorboard, and a small sigh escaped the boy's lips. They stared at each other for a long time, neither willing to break the comforting silence. Hiyari's chest heaved under a thick layer of bandages. Finally, Rasen closed the window behind him to take a seat beside Hiyari. "Are you hungry?"
Hiyari shook his head. He closed his eyes. His fists trembled, and at last he wept without shame. "I don't want anything! I just want Suiken back! I want him back!"
And Rasen pulled Hiyari closed. He was so like her, so ever like her… "I have a friend, Hiyari-chan, very much like you."
The boy's tremor faded. "How so?"
"She used to be afraid all the time, in the days when we were chased by the entire ninja world. Yet she has gotten brave. I think. And she is coming for us right now. She will help us. She will save Suiken-chan and you, and me."
A pair of mismatching eyes stared up through a thin film of tears. "She? Save us? But you, you can't even – "
Rasen smiled. "One of the common misconceptions of the shinobi world, Hiyari-chan. Kunoichi are not weak." He hesitated to ruffle the boy's hair. A patch of blood was seeping through the bandage around his forehead. "I am not the most powerful shinobi in the world. She isn't, either, but Kumo-chan always sees a friend safe, trust me on that."
The sun rose above Kirigakure like a huge plate with sweet-sour sauce in it, and the little puffy clouds only served as decorations that vaguely resembled loaves of watery bread. When a blue bird swooped right across the sun, a squirrel dropped a nut onto a deer, and somewhere else a bear roared as killer bees viciously attacked its snot. The amazing properties of life indicated that even if doing such things were very likely to get you killed (such as a hunter sighting the sharp contrast of a bird-shaped shadow across the sun, aimed his crossbow, and shot it down in one bloody feathered heap), evolution somehow jumped right over the section labeled "stupidity gene" and went on to edit physical features (such as giving humans an appendix, which really didn't do much at all but is STILL THERE). The part that really kept those animals was "instinct", but Fate had its funny little way to make animals appear at the most convenient time in the storyline, and then magically fading away. (In short, "instinct" is just Fate's alibi for spontaneous happenings. Also keep in mind that somewhere out there, a group of cloaked, hooded, dead-looking beings are hovering over a large model of the world and saying to one another: "Now I think we really shouldn't have made that bird fly across the sun." And another would say, "Who really cares? It's in the BOOK OF FULES ((basically a book that dictates all the things that characterize the Fate rules)), so it must be right." ((This is why, when anyone try to change Fate, they can't, because Fate's got its own group of creepy, floating specters with magnifying glasses hovering over The World)). )
Sometimes animals were mere background stuff used to drag out time, but some other times animals that would have otherwise been dead found themselves suddenly helping the heroes on their quests (and end up dying LATER, which, due to animal instincts, is considered a good thing among the animal population that can think). For instance, a barbaric warrior out to rescue his believed noble lady lover might find himself severely starved, and so chose to gut a favorite dog (which he took in as a puppy ((which died happily to save its master)) ), and then ate it. This is the one custom that pitted the Inuzukas and about every other dog-based shinobi clan against the barbarians of some far northern country.
Common sense says that the barbaric warrior himself should be gutted since the dog was, for human-environmental interaction's sake, HIS FRIEND. However, other people might simply say that it was evolution's fault for jumping over the part in a dog's brain that made it willing to sacrifice itself for a loin-clothed man with a huge club (or, in some cases, a huge and VERY weighty sword).
Then again, there are people who confused even the Fate people just a little bit, like, say, Uchiha (Shingen) Kumo, who found a puppy and right off the bat swore as the puppy bit her REALLY hard in the neck. "TRUST ME ON THIS, -! IT!"
But the vicious little vampire puppy refused to let go of her neck. In fact, it enjoyed being able to turn the tables once in a while (it's not everyday that the vampire puppy comes across someone like Kumo, who would torture a human without thought but reacted quite pathetically when a puppy bites her ((let's just say this has something to do with Tou's fat cat)) ).
Suddenly the weight fell from her. As Kumo looked sideways, horrified at a little flying body, Uchiha Sasuke stepped out of the shadows and scoffed, "Dobe."
He didn't even have time to see the fist flying at his nose.
"IT WAS A PUPPY!"
Having the Sharingan was a big advantage, and Sasuke used it to its fullest. After recovering from the initial shock of actually being punched (although the contact was no longer than a second before instinct kicked in) he activated his Sharingan and used it to glare at Kumo.
For one moment time hung in the air, a bucket of cow manure threatening to tip over as the door cracked, and then Kumo blinked very slowly, looked at the vampire puppy, and said to Sasuke: "I was going to use that."
"Does it matter that it's dead?" Sasuke shot back, putting away his kunais. Rule #2 when dealing with Kumo: NEVER assume security just because she looks mellow enough.
"The blood all leaked out," replied Kumo stonily, as Sakura walked into the clearing, eyes brightening at the sight of Sasuke. Vampire puppy blood is very expensive. In fact, it could be said that even living vampire dogs were hard to come across, which might have something to do with the fact that natural evolution failed to keep on with evolving diseases, and so AIDS backed vampire-dogs to the edge of existence.
The pink head rolled her eyes. "Do we have time for you experiments?" To Sasuke, she beamed a smile. "Kakashi sensei says that we hurry up. Kumo's 'breakfast' is taking too long." There was a general grumble of consent from Sasuke as he whirled to follow Sakura, already walking back.
"Errr…" Kumo hung her head, giving the vampire puppy a mournful glance. "Sorry." From the general direction where Sasuke had been headed a series of explosions rocked the woods. "See, but it's better!" brightened Kumo, "I've got your…err…vengeance, yeah!" And she completely forgot that a few minutes ago she contemplated eating/dissecting the vampire puppy.
Even a nearby squirrel dropping another nut on an oddly lifeless-looking figure with an Uchiha fan on the back of his blue shirt had no problem imagining the reactions of the angst gods.
The Konoha-Kumogakure team arrived at the Kirigakure border shortly before noon. Before them lay an expanse of quagmires with a stench that indicated at possible predecessors before the team, especially those who never came out again.
A tiny part of her brain that actually functioned flagged a question to Kumo. Why does it smell like Ryoki's attempt at baking cherry pie?
Scientists in Iwagakure long ago figured out that civilians used only 10 percent of their brain while ninjas tended to use somewhere between 15-20 percent. For Kumo, that figure was almost reverse. When she's not on licensed PBME business, her brain goes to zero-mode. She's got a whole universe of her own up there, and no creepy, floating, robed, hooded, dead-looking boney men are going to stop her.
"I see…" muttered Sasuke.
The group of five shinobis stood stiffly on their individual branches, staring at the single beam that was the only thing erect from Rasen's hideout.
"They must have been found." Sakura clenched her fist. Akatsuki…Itachi… It was a memory that no one in Konoha wished to dwell on. Months ago Sakura joined the Sasuke-retrieval mission as a medic, and they had met the Akatsuki halfway. Had they not had other businesses, we would all be dead, she thought. She glanced at Kumo, who had a superficial grin plastered on her face.
No. Look closer. It was a maniac grin of someone who has rediscovered "vengeance" in prodigious amounts.
A flash of silver waved before her eyes. Kakashi had darted out front and spoke without looking back, "Be careful, the Akatsuki might be here."
"Or they might not," Kumo mouthed, and was in the middle of the wreckage before Sakura had time to blink, hands whirling in such speed that Sakura couldn't make out a single seal.
"Ku – "
Kakashi held Sakura back. "If she's exposed, the rest of us better fan out. Since you are the medic, it's better that you stay with me for now." Saying this, he performed a blur of handseals and vanished with Sakura.
Sasuke didn't even have to look around to acknowledge Gai's departure. His Sharingan wheels spun, but detected no sign of any enemies. And if I was Itachi, would I be found so easily? He thought in bitter mockery.
Then Kumo turned around in his direction. "Follow me." It was a command. It was a tone that would have made the Uchiha elders proud. The coldness, the negativity of her voice, had been honed to perfection in that brief moment of Uchiha reconciliation.
And at that moment, Sakura, watching in a bush while Kakashi leisurely paced his reading time, thought to herself. That's an UCHIHA'S VOICE! And she wondered, Has Kumo-san finally grown up?
It was a possibility. It was a possibility.
Suddenly Kakashi's book slammed shut. Sakura did a mental flip as her brain registered that Kumo had disappeared.
Rasen blinked at the sunlight. Hadn't the window been closed?
Adrenaline shot through his veins. Carefully maintaining an even breath, he rose from the futon and, raising a chakra veil around him, flashed through over a hundred handseals. At last, when he heard a small chuckle, he darted out the window.
Hiyari stood in the middle of the road, his back facing Rasen.
He wasn't alone.
On the road were Hoshigaki Kisame and Uchiha Itachi. In a horrible moment Rasen realized that the lump to the side of the road was Suiken.
Hiyari-chan. And that was all Rasen had time to think before he performed the Kagebunshin jutsu and went after Hiyari.
But Itachi was faster, without taking his eyes off Rasen, who had his eyes averted, he reached out and lifted the boy vessel to his feet. With a sinking sensation Rasen changed his direction in midway and dragged Suiken's body out of the line of fire, just in time for a bunshin's shuriken shower swoop for Kisame. In that same instant, the real Rasen charged directly for Itachi and Hiyari.
A third man donning the black and red cloak of Akatsuki appeared on the road, just in time for Rasen's delayed jutsus to surface.
The world exploded in white light.
Rasen looked about the white world of Hiyomi. It was a genjutsu crafted specifically to counter Itachi's Mangekyou Sharingan. So long as the chakra interference is tuned, his Sharingan should not affect me, Rasen thought. But even without the Sharingan Itachi was a formidable, no, deadly shinobi, and the presence of two other Akatsukis only served to raise the danger.
He felt Hiyari's throat in his hand, and quickly he dropped the boy. The placement exchange had also worked. And, as the glaze vanished from Hiyari's eyes, Rasen nodded approval to his newest invention. The genjutsu release designed to a new level, specifically to counter genjutsu generated by the Sharingan.
And there had been one last delayed jutsu. As all three Akatsuki vanished from their spot, Rasen felt a cold, tinkling sensation running up his arms.
Pop
He looked up, dreaded anticipation on his face, but there were two hands clinging to him and one did not belong to Hiyari.
He was back on the road outside the hut, but Uchiha Itachi was also there, and without the Hiyomi's chakra interference, Rasen's great mistake in looking into the Mangekyou Sharingan exacted its price.
And in the brief moment when time hovered hesitantly, all he saw was the terrible wheels of the Sharingan. But he heard. He heard hope.
"RASEN!"
Dramatic License plays cruel jokes on people, and one of that is when it delays time just a little bit so that the ass-kicking (or soon to be ass-kicking) heroes always arrived one minute too late, preferably just in time to see a nasty big spike impale the hero's best friend or mentor.
In Kumo's case, that had only been too true.
In Kumo's case, seeing something like Rasen's legs fold up underneath, and hearing an inhuman scream crash out of his lips, awoke that primeval Uchiha bastard in her.
She didn't even bother shouting words like, "BASTARD!" or "HOW DARE YOU!" (as if people like Akatsuki could be reprimanded like that) and went straight in for the kill.
Sasuke was also beside her, but howling through his mind was pure hatred. In the one moment where anger and hatred collided, the only two Uchiha survivors speared for the Uchiha traitor.
Neither turned their heads as Kisame and a third Akatsuki popped onto the road. Neither gave a damn when Kakashi shouted for them. They couldn't hear Sakura's shriek of horror as Itachi dropped Rasen and came straight for them. The black waves drowned out Gai's battle as he clashed with Kisame.
And then the Uchiha were face to face, all three, the three last in the entire world, inches apart from one another, yet separated by an appalling gulf of hatred, of lust for power, of vengeance.
The moment broke. Without her Sharingan Kumo hardly stood a chance against Itachi's Mangekyou Sharingan, and, blinded by rage, she failed to remember the rule of dealing with such a powerful weapon. Yet Sasuke ignored her as she dropped to her knees, eyes wide. He felt the cursed seal take over. The instant the second level of the seal washed completely over him, he knew that there had never been a return to Konoha. His heightened senses only had room for Itachi, and so he did nothing as the third Akatsuki slammed Sakura into a tree. Even if Naruto were killed in front of his face, he would have only glared at Itachi and hated him more.
"CHIDORI!"
The malicious black chakra that should have been an electrifying blue was easily dodged, but Sasuke was not done yet. With his other fist he slid the kunai into Itachi's cloak in a flash, faster than he had ever moved before, and jumped back as the Mangekyou's black fire roared in the air.
Suddenly he was thrown aside. A storm of kunais pierced the air where he hung. He landed on the rooftop of Rasen's hut as Kumo rolled to a halt. Shakily, she pushed herself up and gave Sasuke a look. "Uchihas are bastards, but at least Uchihas look out for one another," she snapped, "you could've told me about those creepy eyes of his, you know!"
Sasuke had no time to wonder how she recovered so fast as Itachi led the attack. Two years of training under Orochimaru kicked in, and Sasuke dodged entirely on instinct while forming handseals. "Grand Fireball Jutsu!"
Itachi had begun moving even before the fireball left Sasuke's lips, but as his feet stepped left, he froze.
The jutsu hit dead on.
As the bunshin popped into nonexistence, Sasuke spared a glance for Kumo, whose hands made odd motions in the air as shadows left the ground and scattered into the air. "He is mine," they both said at the same time. And, being Uchiha bastards for the moment, neither were very willing to back down.
But as is that case for all sensible shinobis, both quietly agreed that their differences could be settled later, and they proceeded to comb out Uchiha Itachi.
Abruptly Sasuke's speed heightened, and in that moment Kumo knew that the real Itachi was found.
In the woods, a long way off from the smoking earth where the grand fireball struck moments before, Gai clashed with Kisame, launching one powerful kick after another.
A swing of Samehada sent both shinobis leaping five yards back. From their positions they regarded one another grimly. "I SHALL DEFEAT YOU!" cried Gai, eyes burning with the flame of youth, and charged at Kisame.
Sakura shook with the effort of concentration. It wasn't the chakra concentration that was hard, but rather concentrating on the Akatsuki. When your target kept blurring in your sight, you might as well labeled hitting that target "impossible."
Kakashi stood poised before the Akatsuki, Sharingan revealed.
The Akatsuki blurred again. Sakura gathered chakra to her fist and punched the ground just something black and red dashed toward the copy-nin.
Instead of stumbling, however, the Akatsuki crossed right over the wide fissure and aimed for Kakashi's heart.
The chirping of a thousand birds, the roar of Raikiri, and everything fell silent.
Itachi swung his kunai, leaving a bloody gash across Sasuke's abdomen. Yet in his current state Sasuke could care less. "Itachi," he spoke, leaping away from the Akatsuki, "you have gotten weak."
Beside him, Kumo muttered, "That's only 'cause we're ganging up on him." And she lunged also, jumping back as Itachi parried her blow easily. She refocused in time to see Itachi toss the kunai in Sasuke's direction. It exploded in midair.
Not even her prankster experiences helped. How come what happened in stories never worked here? If you were a prankster, then when you became a hero some sort of prankster's instinct ALWAYS saved your butt. In stories the hero ALWAYS had time for free-talk to point out just how villainous the villain was and why he should return to the ways of good so that everybody can live happily ever after.
Well, that's reality for me, thought Kumo, and then realized that in reality, ninjas didn't even have time to think rambling thoughts.
Itachi's kunai went into her stomach and out. She barely felt it, for Sasuke had taken the opportunity and lunged for Itachi with Chidori crackling, and she herself was performing a double-seal simultaneous jutsu at furious speed.
Inwardly Kumo winced. She just knew that Dramatic License would jovially make Sasuke miss Itachi and hit her. Possibly she will also miss and hit Sasuke, which would be thought of as being fair if Itachi wasn't sticking a kunai through her (and preparing for the Amaterasu) and both Sasuke and her were really aiming to hurt Itachi real bad. But she didn't revert completely into an Uchiha bastard for nothing.
With impossible speed (but proven possible now, thanks to Kumo), she delivered a punch into the air in quite a different direction than Itachi. Sasuke closed in. The air where she punched began to shimmer and fade. Itachi's hand twitched, suddenly seeming to sense something wrong. And amidst this all, once more in this battle, someone felt the world change into a color.
Gai heaved as he fought with the real Kisame. Too much of his chakra had been wasted on the clone, but in the business of shinobis it couldn't be helped that you had to get the clone before you fight the real thing.
Nevertheless this was a rule that tended to kill people, and right now the chance of Gai meeting a Shinigami in the next hour was 'highly likely'. That is, until an orange, very fat cat dropped out of the clear blue sky.
It fixed Hoshigaki Kisame with a look. It somersaulted. It shifted through the air unlike any cat and rammed into the shocked Akatsuki.
With legendary reflex Kisame brought Samehada up and endeavored to rip the cat in half, but Gai was already lunging forward, and in his haste to save the cat missed an opportunity to punch Kisame in the face.
However, as Gai spun away and looked back, he saw Kisame lifted into the air, gurgling, hands clawing the air, Samehada lying in tiny little fragments all across the ground, and a horridly thin, pale, somewhat short young man holding the Akatsuki by his collar with one arm. The young man looked quite geeky, maybe because of his glasses and shiny black hair and the stately white suit with a nice blue pen clipped to the breastpocket.
He threw Kisame down, or, rather, seemed to have, because Kisame really sank into the ground like a rock in water and disappeared.
A minute later, the geeky looking man was taking the fat cat from Gai's arms, and Gai just realized that the man wore no headband, so he absolutely didn't have a single clue whom his rescuer was. Before he could blink, the geeky man was gone.
Sakura and Kakashi darted madly toward the Uchiha battle site.
Sasuke-kun, please be safe… Sakura thought worriedly. Her abilities as a medic were topnotch, but what if Sasuke was killed? Worse yet, what if Sasuke was once more mentally destabilized and decided to chase after Itachi? The memory of that night flashed before her face. The memory of when she was still a genin and she begged him to stay.
And all he said was 'Thank you'.
From even their distance, Sakura and Kakashi could clearly hear the snap in the air as though some god had just broke a gigantic glassware over the biggest rocks ever really, really loud. But all they really saw was a thin ribbon of red light streaming into the air. That was never a good sign, for only extremely-highly concentrated chakras emitted such small amount of light and so much sound (the same theory as in lightning and thunder).
-! -! -! -! -! -! swore Kumo most un-Uchiha-like. At least Uchihas used real swear words. Am I -! dead! was what she wondered, just before a -! of a wholebody-ache rammed into her nerves.
"Yeah, I might wish that I'm dead," she muttered, "but I'm not, so I will just heal, okay? Thank you very much, please remove that kunai now and stop staring at me." In her confusion, she didn't quite register that Itachi's eyes were closed, and his body slumped limply.
Gingerly, she tried moving her fingers. It didn't work. Rather, more pain seemed to be in order. Oh -!
From her far right came a moan. Sasuke pushed himself off the ground, reverted back to his normal, human look, and glanced around. Immediately his head spun, but when focus returned, he could just make out Kumo lying on the ground in an unhealthily twisted angle, under Itachi, whose whole body just looked wrong. And the whole earth around them dented in a HUGE crate.
What the hell was that jutus? Sasuke thought resentfully. Whatever Kumo did, it was certainly very effective. In fact, it was OVERLY effective.
A shadow fell over him. He glanced up, and gawked at the stately-dressed man who offered him a hand, politely. "Who the hell are you!" Sasuke growled. His throat felt parched, and perhaps a bit broken.
Without a word the man reached down and pulled him up, handing him over to someone…pink. And Sasuke vaguely registered Sakura's worried look and tear-filled eyes (plus a distant cry of "WHAT HAS HAPPENED HERE, KAKASHI MY ETERNAL RIVAL!") before he blacked out.
"A cumulative reaction, I think. It concentrates all the chakra currently expelled into the vicinity into a space the size of one millionth of an ant and releases it," explained the stately, geeky young man officially established as Jikiri Tou, to Kakashi and Gai, who sat dutifully waiting as Sakura hovered over the two unconscious Uchihas, Yodoniku Rasen, and the Kirigakure shinobi Suiken. Hiyari stood to the side, looking helpless. "Kumo-san's double-seal simultaneous jutsu is currently the only one in the world that can cause this. In fact, she invented the jutsu solely to achieve the effect."
Kakashi maintained a thoughtful silence. "But wouldn't she die?"
"No. Otherwise she would have died all those times she tested out the jutsu. The purpose of the double-seal in syncopation is to achieve multiple, powerful effects at once using one stream of chakra. The second part of her jutsu diverted most of the blast to the surrounding."
Although the explanation had been thoroughly confusing, nobody really wanted to argue with a scientific-looking person, so Kakashi returned to his book.
Kumo groaned. At least the extra weight of Itachi wasn't on top of her anymore (and she suspected that this was also a convention by Dramatic License), but she still didn't feel good at all.
I'm gonna die, she thought.
And then she saw Tou's face hover over hers, and she whimpered. I'm REALLY gonna die.
TBC
Author's Note:
I really enjoyed writing this chapter, especially toward the end. Inspiration just kept rolling in and I found that I couldn't truncate any of the fight scenes between the Uchihas, so I apologize if it got kinda long.
Anyways, Itachi's not dead, yes, so don't worry.
Next Chapter: Return to Konoha; Sasuke's decision, and Itachi on trial!
