Yohoo, Yohoo! A three week vaction is coming up! Starting the day after tomorrow, I'm a school free man for almost a month!

Talking about school, I had an oral exam in English this week, mother fuckers, 92, the lowest grade in my class.. the bitch had to answer her damn cell during the exam so I had less time to talk and make a good impression on her, so the only thing she remembered was probably me talking about Shakespeare, which is a horrible combination…

Anyway, here's the new chapter, not much of Karen, but the tension concerning Naraku keeps piling up…

Oh, and there's a flash back from Naruto's life in the chapter as well, it fits into the Shadow of life story somewhere at chapter 3-4, when Naruto leaves the leaf village…

Chapter 15: Dead frogs & bloody whistles

"It sure is tensed around here" Tack chatted calmly, nobody talked about why the exam was canceled, and no one talked about what happened to Karen back inside the village.

"Good job of noticing it, Einstein, what tipped you off, beside the fact that Karen didn't come to a 300 feet radius from those two?" Hob almost yelled at him, none of the grown ups were acting normally, but Neji and Reilla out-weirdered everyone, excluding Karen and Gray.

"Or was it the fact we hardly see her anymore? I've listened to Ealla's reports before she left, she didn't have a conversation with Karen ever since the beginning of this exam" Doro added, he had the hobby of spying after the jounins meetings. He suddenly lowered his voice "there's something serious going on, I heard Neji and Reilla fighting, it appears Karen will be leaving with one of them".

"Karen's leaving?! Why?" the two spoke at once.

Konohamaru suddenly entered the conversation, it seemed that the kids forgotten he was there as well, and if they were about to hear the news, it would be better for them to hear them from an adult.

"Dunno, it's just that Neji started insisting that he should take care of her and said that he can teach her the Byakougan or something like that, and then Reilla started screaming about how dangerous it'd be to have her stay here, you know, since that guy lives at the dead leaf village… and about how much Karen needs a female role model in this fragile time of her life.. but you shouldn't take it seriously, it's not like any one of them is fit to raise a child"

"Female role model? After almost 10 years she didn't know about her? if Karen was here she'd probably go there and kill both of them for being such idiots" Hob said.

Somehow, the joke didn't sound funny, not funny at all.

---------**********---------

"this place is suddenly quite again" Gaara stated to his sister.

"yep, hard to believe we had to cancel an exam for something like this, but we can't ignore the evidences, there something going down in here, and we have to find it" Temari answered, Neji said that the demon activities has increased during the past weeks, but surprisingly, they haven't even met one yet.

"it doesn't matter, I have orders to get to the bottom of this, and from what I was told, the Kazakage also wants this problem solved, meaning the three of us have to get some results this time" Ealla interfered. Sasuke told her to constantly remind Gaara of their mutual mission, just in case.

"Can you please stop acting like a broken record? I've heard you say the same thing in twelve different ways in the last hour, I don't know what you've been told about me, but I don't kill for fun" Gaara almost shouted, he wondered how many years it was going to be held against him, probably forever.

"Her unreasonable paranoid feeling really don't matter right now, I think we should go to that vortex thing Neji talked about, what do you say?" Temari quickly changed the subject, it was true that Gaara stopped his massacres, but he still had the sand spirit inside him, and it was better not to remind that thing about killing.

"guess so, I want to see that vortex thing anyway, all the demons are supposed to come out of it, so it's the logical place to start looking after a demon" Gaara said, the leftovers of the first person to ever beat him, that had to be something to see.

---------*************--------------

"a lost chance" Naraku looked at the sky, the shurikans were still stuck inside his body, not that he could ever care.

"I totally blew it, didn't I? It's something that could only happen once in a lifetime. And now it's all over, I'm stuck here, and nobody will ever come back to this waste" as always, no one was there to answer him, the only intelligent being he knew was too busy at keeping his body intact, the five meters managed to crawl before Karen escaped his sight proved to be almost fatal to him.

"Just stop whining already, think of what your father would have done"

The shurikans cut even deeper into his body, his sight turned blurry, the world was fading from him.

"What would my father do? Probably get up, travel around for a year or two and forget about the whole thing. But if you hadn't noticed, I'm stuck here; I can't even leave the dead village, let alone go wondering around the world like every normal member of the family does"

"Well then, I guess I'd just start talking until your body rots away and we're both dead, what do you say about it? to die the same way you've lived, the same way you were born? Is this the peak of your life? A dead body in the middle of nowhere, not even able to speak properly? Is that what you'll amount to? I gave you a second chance to live, are you going to use it or you rather give up?"

A shurikan cut through his chest, the 8 year old blood started flowing out, drop by drop. He never saw his blood before, nothing ever hurt him as much as this, his only opportunity, and he messed up with it.

"I'm not like my father or anyone, I can't just walk away, he was a free spirit, I'm bonded with this place, forever" he managed to get the words out.

---------twenty five years ago--------

What do I have to stay here for? I never had a family, I even killed my friends, one after one, how long will it be until I kill Sakura or Lee? And who will come next?

I can't even say I have memories to cling onto, just countless nights of laying in my bed, looking at the sealing and wishing for a change which never came.

Perhaps I'm doing the village a favor? It has no use to me, I'm just like the hokage's necklace, I bring death to all those around me.

When I woke up, the first thing that caught my attention was the smell of blood, both human and monster blood, somehow, even when everybody else dies, I'm still alive, and this day, I passed even my own records, two monstrous creatures were dead as well, one died because he threatened  the village, the other died because what I forced into him.

Damnit, I can't stand the old man's stare, I've never seen him this way, not that it should surprise me, I got his best, possibly only, friend dead, he wasn't a guy to make much friends, maybe the toad was the only one other than Tsunda he had to talk with since the forth died…

The forth, it's kinda funny, he never knew me, and he still died because of me… the even funnier thing is that it all happened on the day I was born and I'm still not sure if he was the first to die because of my presence… how many others have my mother killed just so that I could be born at the "right" spot?

Well, anyway it is, I'm not going to stay here anymore, I'm never going to come back, the world is large enough, I can start traveling today and continue doing so until the day I die.

-----------------()--------

I can't stand it anymore, everyday, doing the same thing, sitting and looking at the bridge, the fox has finally answered to me, but he's not much of a conversation material, but maybe it's just me, it seems much more reasonable than believing a immortal creature could live like this… I guess that some people are just born without the ability to be with someone, it might be a genetic fuck, I know my mother had serious problems with that…

The sound village isn't that much also, Orochimaru is away and Kabuto is the leader, not that I'd want anything to do with that creep, he's probably mad as hell that he lost his chance at Sasuke… and Kabuto, he's just a lost lamb, he was supposed to be the personal doctor of that maniac and now he's burdened with responsibility over a whole village…

----------Back to regular time---------

"we're getting closer, there are remains of chackra here…" Gaara stated calmly, demon or not, Gaara of the desert wasn't a guy to crawl in fear.

"I can see the source" Ealla's voice tingled with excitement, a chance to see what where did all the new demons came from, a chance to get her self a name as the legendary sound who whipped out the new threat.

The three stopped jumping, even ninjas made noise when jumping on roofs, and something in the air told them they weren't alone…

Temari started moving her hands, signaling to the other two what to do, 'someone's there, go from the wings, we act on my command', they both nodded to her and started moving.

She walked step by step, carefully avoiding making any sound, she could know identify what she first saw, a small boy laying on the ground, he seemed to be injured.

She took a few steps closer, he still hasn't made any sign that he noticed her, she was already able to touch him, she could almost mistake him for being dead, if not for the blinkings, his chest didn't move, and he had a shurikan pointing out of his body.

"kid, are you ok?" she laid a hand on his forehead, there was no head band.

Naraku's eyes suddenly opened, he recognized the woman immediately, a sand ninja, Temari, older sister of Gaara. His instincts took over him, he jumped ten feet back, close enough to the vortex, the water took effect right away, he pulled out the shurikan and smiled.

"I guess my genes will never let me die on combat" he hissed to himself, he positioned himself into his mother's fighting stance, it was useless without a Byakougan ability, but his special conditions didn't even require him to guide the chackra towards the vital organs, demonic chackra was deadly enough on it's own.

"come on, show me what the sand has" he called her.

The first thing Temari did was to jump backwards, dead children weren't supposed to get right up and challenge adults to fight. But shinobies were supposed to be ready to fight anytime, so she pulled out her fan and threw at him a small gust of air, even his hair stayed in place. "Ealla! Gaara! It started!" She usually had Gaara hiding in the background to give him an opportunity to lunch a surprise attack, but she didn't believe she'll need it this time.

Ealla started her attack by throwing a kunai towards Naraku, the first attack was usually to test the enemies speed and ability,

"Don't underestimate me! Fight me with everything you got!" Naraku shouted at them, he had over twenty ways to avoid the kunai, so he decided to use the most impressive one he could perform. He quickly drenched his left hand in the liquid on the ground and raised it to the air, the liquid spanned itself into a sphere of black and red, and from the ball a toad appeared, grabbing the kunai with it's mouth and handing it over to Naraku.

Temari used that time to prepare her own jutsu, she opened her fan to it's full length and started performing the seals, it was an attack she worked on since her loss at the chunin exam years ago, on the surface it was just throwing many shurikans by using her fan to direct them, but the true attack was on the ground, when the fan slammed the ground it created a shockwave, and while the enemy was focusing on escaping the  shurikans, the shockwave stunned them, leaving them vulnerable to a real killing attack.

"one, two, three, four…" Naraku started counting each shurikan he struck down with his newly acquired kunai, "… seventeen, eighteen, nineteen.." the shurikans didn't come in straight lines, they were in the air routes, they could pass by his body three times before striking, a wind attack at it's best.

The shockwave hit him from below.

Ealla was the next to attack, her enemy was down on the ground, which would make her technique even more effective.

The first stage was to throw one of Konohamru's sound amplifying potions on the target, it would make his whole body less voice resistant, the second stage was the actual jutsu, the infamous "bloody whistle", which sometimes left the target beheaded.

She performed the seals and touched his foot, every part of the body was enough to kill with that jutsu, actually, the farther than the head the better, it only gave the vibration more time to become wilder.

-----Chapter 15 - Dead frogs & bloody whistles – End-------

Well, Naraku is in a bit of a bind here, wonder what's going to happen to him?

Unfortunately, I didn't have much writing time the past week, but I'll try to write more during the vacation. There won't be any shout outs (!) this week either, maybe they'll be back next week.

Oh, and here's a special treat for all they guys who are complaining about me stretching out the Naraku buissness, chapter 16's preview:

"Very impressive, kiddo. What's your name?" Gaara asked, it was a while since he saw that kind of chackra movement.

What's his name? It was the first time he was asked that question, he didn't want to start this new part of his life with lies, and he didn't feel like making the "it's only proper to give your name first" speech, it would be too Sasuke-like. So he just told him the truth.

That's it for today, see ya in seven days!