I'm too tired and annoyed to write the whole damn thing down, so here's the story!
Chapter 13: Reunion of the Uzumaki Hyuga
"Now, this is really weird…"
"What is it? you've started to look at two different directions all of the sudden, is something happening?" Reilla asked, anything that managed to set Neji off his goal had to be pretty big and important, she knew the Hyuga enough time to say that.
"Karen isn't by the vortex anymore, her chackra disappeared, but the odder thing is that a similar chackra was formed, it was some sort of swirly blast, it was powerful enough to seriously harm anyone of the shinobies around here, including both of us" Neji stopped moving and looked at Reilla, he decided to count on her choices.
"let's go to the source of the blast, our primary objective is to stop that crazy demon from killing everybody" Reilla said, safty of others, that was her reasoning, she would never admit the was afraid from the vortex, not only from the form of it, but also from the fact she felt the vortex was pulling her in, it was almost a… a calling.
"Somebody's coming!" Hob whispered to his group, he looked at Gray, waiting to hear his orders.
"is it a demon? Or something else?" Gray asked.
"Can't really tell, the wind has changed so I got the smell of burnt ground, but whoever it is, he's hiding his presence perfectly, he just passed the point where those 4 groups were killed, he threw some ashes to the air, that's how I spotted him. He's probably human, but I can't be sure" Hob answered.
"can you hear anything?" Tack questioned Doro.
Doro stopped for a second, "not much, I can tell that there are two people there, but they're pros, I can't even tell the gender" Doro said, still, even the knowledge that the enemy was able to hide his presence to the point of perfection was a knowledge, and could prove vital at some cases.
"we keep moving, no stops at all!" Karen hissed backwards, she was quite sure she could handle anyone, and even if not, she wasn't in the mood to wait anymore.
Naraku was 'enjoying' himself with the rare occasion of rest, he hardly got any of it because of his body, the demon inside of him also enjoyed the rest, it was his only chance to stop giving away his power to the boy, before he was a part of Naraku, he spent most of his time half sleeping and half arguing with his former holder, now he and Naraku were always on the verge of death, which was slightly better than what would have happened normally, where Naruku would have died with his mother, as a womb that hasn't even developed something resembling a body yet.
"I like it…" Naraku said silently "even now, *you* and dad are helping us, I just wish I could take this power with me, so we won't have to be stuck in this shitty village after we meet her"
"I'm sorry about it, if I was real like I was once then I might have had the power to help you… but I'm merely a clone of myself now, when I was with your father I was the real me, but even then I couldn't do anything when you two most needed me" the dark voiced answered.
"don't go all softy on me, remember what mom said once? Shinobies can't allow themselves to need anything, I think it was in their secret marriage vows, the ones they took in private, dad always said it was keeping him from becoming the perfect ninja, until the marriage she took it as an insult, but then she realized what he really meant…" Naraku started, he left the sentence hanging.
"…that their relationship was more important to him than anything, even being the Hokage or any other shit he ever dreamed about…" the demon continued, and then he spoke in a voice that Naraku heard only a few times, it was the voice that the demon talked with his father, cynical voice of dark destruction, "let's just ignore the fact that your father was officially banned from the village at that time, and only two people knew of his true identity".
"Are they still on our tail?" Gray looked at Doro and then at Karen, he didn't want her to think he was ignoring her and the fact she was currently the leader. Karen just looked at Doro, she didn't really care about whoever those two were.
"they got to the place we stayed at before, If they're really tailing us then we'll meet them in a few minutes" Doro said, even with the slight chance of encounter with the two, the whole group wanted to be ready, they turned their eyes to Karen.
"You just won't let go of it, would you? Fine, start setting up this place, we'll do them quickly and then continue" Karen said, she decided it would help her to blow out some steam she has been holding inside. The four other genins started setting a few ropes around, Karen noticed that none of them had any function, they just wanted to trick their enemies to think they've been waiting for quite a time to this battle.
"it's defiantly Karen… only the Uzumaki's chackra can act like this" Reilla said after looking at the wall, the inner part was perfectly fine, but the outer side was a total mess, the chackra was even able to scar the ground from that height. "it's almost as strong as Naruto's rasengan was when we fought, I won't want to be on the wrong side of her attacks".
"well, it's another reason for us to be extra careful when talking to her…" Neji said,
he looked on the walls carefully, there were still signs of chackra on the walls, "whoever was with her, they left in a haste, we should get to them quickly, before that demon will have a chance to attack her".
Reilla was already on her way, for some odd reason, she had a very bad feeling about what was happening, "we messed up with this job... we allowed our feelings to lead us instead of thinking, we left too many opened issues", she whispered to Neji as he ran behind her.
"we know you're here, stop trying to sneak around and just get up here so I could kick your asses and get on with my life" Karen shouted, everybody looked at here, shouting challenges to one's enemies wasn't the way shinobies acted.
Two shadows jumped to the roof Karen was standing on,
Hob and Doro recognized them, "it's them, Karen! The ones we told you
about, Neji and Reilla!"
"so, you're the two" Karen said silently, her friends were right, there was no place for mistake, if she didn't know better, she could even mistake them for her parents, it only made her anger rise. She clenched her fist and started the seals
"What the hell are you doing? Karen! Didn't you hear? Those are your relatives!" Gray started, he didn't like the feeling he just got, he could feel Karen's rage, the chackra she released was huge, he almost jumped in fear, and he could tell that Tack was experiencing the same thing.
"Shit! She's pretty much pissed off!" Reilla said as she watched Karen's body changing into a more vulgar, beastlike form, her special chackra made it even easier for her, not only to transform, but also to lose control and release her inner demon.
Hob watched in terror, Karen was three times her normal size now, and her hands were in the shape of claws, she stood on four legs now, he couldn't see her face, but something inside him told him he would rather not see it. But what he did see was bad enough, her back started sprouting tails out, not one tail, almost ten tails. Nine tails.
*slash*
Neji never had a chance to even close his eyes from the surprise, one moment he was staring at his niece transforming into the Kyubi, and the next moment she held a claw next to his head, only a few centimeters from it, he turned his eyes to the monster's face, the eyes were burning red, he could feel the anger inside her.
"I can't…" Karen cried to herself "why can't I do it? I should be able to… why did my hand stop? I still want to tear them open… they deserve it!" she slowly withdrew her hand back, and she turned the other way, she started running on her four legs to the opposite side.
"It seems she's coming this way, I guess I won't have to look for her anymore" Naraku said in relief, it meant he would a few more minutes of rest, a few minutes that he could allow himself to believe he was just a kid, not a freak of any sort, and not a walking corpse.
"You didn't kill him" The kyubi said, "I know… it was you who stopped me, wasn't it?" Karen accused him, "what makes you think I have any control over your actions? I could never control you or your father. But why'd did you try to kill Neji?"
She couldn't answer.
"What is that?" she asked in surprise, she pointed her claw at a liquid of some sort, it was spinning inside a pool, she could feel chackra emitted out of it. For some reason, it made her feel as if she was back at home.
"This is the po-int where the kyubi emer-ged eight years ago, and then he destroyed the village" she heard a voice, "this is also my place of birth" it whispered silently, almost too silent for her to be able to hear.
"Who are you and why are you talking to me?" Karen asked, he was obviously not able to see her; she was a monster, a four legged nine tailed fox demon with the mind of a twelve years old girl, but how come he was able to understand her?
"My name is Naruku, and it's because you and I are of the same kind, we are the demons of this world, we can never be part of the normal society, father tried it, but he could only walk by their side, he was never a true part of them"
"Father…?" she gasped, "what do you mean?". Her eyes were now more adapted to the new form. she could see a small figure not far from her, he was still a child, a child with a empty voice and a twisted way of speech, but still a child.
"Father, you know, the male who was involved in your creation" he tried to suppress the giggling, the process of making children wasn't something an 8 years old could talk seriously about, "you're older than me, even tough you're an orphan as well, you should have someone to teach you the facts of life"
"are you joking with me or something?" she waved her now human fist at his direction, "how can you act like you know so much about me? Ha, you little twirt? I bet you never spoke to girl in you're whole fucking life!" she almost screamed at him, beneath her skin she could hear the Kyubi making some strong arguments about acting like that during an exam.
"he's right, you know, but you're right as well, this is the first time I got to talk with anyone, only a few people met me until today, but no one lived past it", Naraku said quietly, he took another step closer to Karen.
"what the hell just happened here?" Tack was the first to speak, the four genins looked at the two shinobies, the male, Neji, was on the floor, paralyzed by shock, apparently. The female, Reilla, was in almost similar state.
"it's just like what happened eight years ago…" Neji finally opened his mouth and began talking, "it's a curse that runs in their family…" his mind suddenly snapped, it could explain many things, "kiddies, you're her teammates, right? Is this the first time her 'transformation' happened?"
Hob was the first to start shouting, "of course it never happened before! What do you think she is, some sort of freakish monster!?"
"that's exactly what she is, you know, a monster which is able to destroy the whole country without giving a second thought about it, it won't be the first time something of these lines would happen, so if you care about her and wish to help her, just answer our questions!" Reilla yelled at them, Karen almost gave her an heart attack, any Uzumaki was a force to be reckoned with, any angry Uzumaki was worse than a hundred ANBU members, and a Uzumaki which held the Kyubi at any level, was more than a force, it was a pure opening for oblivion.
"yes, ma'm" Doro and Hob said in a union, they both noticed how her facial expression changed, her whisker-like birth marks curved in a way that could only express fear, an extremely deep fear.
Tack suddenly noticed something was missing, he looked around and understood what it was, then he spoke, "Where is Gray?"
---Chapter 13 - Reunion of the Uzumaki Hyuga – End ---
A lot of people said I was stretching the whole Naraku thing for too long now, and I agree about that point, it's just that whenever I tried to write it, it always turned out so artificial, so I continued without revealing the truth about him, my planning was that you'll all figure out who is (sorta) and then when it comes, you won't mind that's it's badly written since you already know it. So far, so good.
Another thing a lot of you spoke of was the over usage of Inuyasha themes, I must say that Inuyasha is also one of my favorite anime (even though it has about 50 episodes of nothing) and I've gathered a bit of knowledge from it to the story. However, you can say the same about every anime, I'm too much influenced by animes..
I'm not gonna do shout outs (!) this time, instead, I'll answer a few questions that I've seen.
Shu-al: as the story stands now, Shu-al is out of it and I don't think he'll come back again, considering that the story will probably end before they return to the sound village. But worry not, things are gonna get so messed up that you'll forgot shu-al existed…
Chapters lengh: it might appear that the "Shadow of life" story had longer chapters, but on the general count, I think this story is a bit longer. The reason is that when I wrote shadow of life, I didn't think about chapters and editing, so there's hardly any cliffhangers or plot surprises between the chapters.
Oh, as a special treat for you guys who have to stand the long wait about Naraku, here's something I haven't done in a long while.
Name: Naraku (family name unknown, for now)
Team: isn't an official ninja.
Place of birth: leaf village.
Age: 8
Date of birth: the night between 9\10 and 10\10 (it isn't mentioned anywhere around the story, but hell, it might help you figure out who he is).
Hair: blond. Eyes: strong red. Often wears: Rags, as expected from a kid who lives in ruins. Hairstyle: messed up spikes, dirty as hell.
Specialty: as kicking, transforming into fox form, some fire jutsus.
Issues: major family deal, unsociable, body weakens unexpectedly, inner voice, dead.
First appearance: Shadow of life – Chapter 14.
Your guesses: his identity was guessed a few times in the reviews, but one serious point was missed.
I hope that helped clearing a bit of things, and just to let you know, I've finally found an ending which I'm sort of satisfied with with, so I'll probably be able to write much more now, which is good.