Hello there, not much ranting to do, my week was filled with me being at home, reading Manga (I read up to volume 18 of inuyasha, and a few volumes of Salad days), watching occasional anime, and not watching NGE (which is a bad thing, since I planned to watch it all again this vaction) the only bad thing which happened this week was my lack of going-to-the-gym.
Oh yeah, the story, here's the new chapter.
Chapter 17: Hyuuga eyes and Sarcastic Demons
****** before the attack *****
"Really? Shu-al almost ate Hob's dog? that's cool!" Gray shouted in fake enthusiasm, tales of their genin missions wasn't what nor Gray or Karen were interested in, but they weren't ready to talk about anything serious yet, Gray wasn't sure if he'll ever be.
"What are you thinking about when you have that look on your face, Gray? Sometimes your shirnk you eyes a start chewing your hair, doesn't you mother scold you doing so?" Karen asked, it wasn't something she remembered from the academy, and he didn't have enough split edges for it to be an old habit, it must have been something new.
"I am?" he just noticed that he really was chewing his hair; it was defiantly something that started on the last few days, but no one other than Karen seemed to notice it, maybe it was because he did it only around Karen…
"Yes, and that's really annoying, so if you've something on your chest, then get rid of it already, you aren't pretty when your mouth moves around so much, you're they guy who looks better with his mouth closed in a relaxed pose, so spit it" Karen told him sharply.
"it's just that… I mean.. you and what happened there… with the village.. and you know, the thing and that stuff…" Gray couldn't found the words that he looked for, someway to talk about what happened to her without talking about it. He suddenly realized that he was chewing his hair again.
"I get it" Karen said simply, she stretched her right arm out and combined her left hand into the tiger seal. Her right arm started to glow and shake, and then it grew bigger, and much feral-er, "is this what was bothering you?" she asked him, her head held down.
"This, the metamorphism no jutsu? No way, you've done it since you were in the academy, I know it's a rare skill for a kid our age but it's nothing that I haven't seen before…" Gray replied, but he felt something was different, even with Karen's awful chackra control, she released way too much chackra for such a jutsu, and he knew she practiced this particular jutsu more than any other skill she had.
Then she raised her head, and he saw what was wrong, her eyes.
No longer did she have the ever calm pearl white eyes that he learned to associate with her face, something changed in them.
They were radiating red, like they were about to change into full red eyes but something was stopping them.
"Is this what's bothering you? That I can change my hand without ninjutsu?" it started out gentle, the only clue about her mental state was her still shaking hand, "That I can transform my whole body without trying to?!" Then she started to scream, tears flowed to her eyes. "That I can turn into a fucking monster without knowing it!?! or is it because I'm that monster!!?" Karen started shaking with her whole body; the red radiation from her eyes grew stronger. She started to change again, legs, arms, cheast, even her face; everything was one step closer to the fox state.
But then came the shots.
Four bullets, a half transformed demon wasn't a hard target to hit, one gazed her shoulder, two cut through her right arm, and one into her left leg's bone.
It stopped the transformation immediately, leaving a shattered bleeding shinobi on the ground, and another panicked ninja without any idea what to do or how to react.
So he did the only thing he could think of, take Karen with him and run away, but the question was where to run? An attack by almost invisible enemies from over 500 feet away? He wouldn't live to get to them, let alone fight them. The sound camp? They seemed to be under the same condition, staying at the same spot? Worst option. The only clear place seemed to be the one place he swore not to return to.
"hang in there Karen, it might be a bit painful, but you'll have to deal with it, cuz I can't do anything about it until we get to somewhere safe" he told her, then he diverted his eyes, and below the gunshots, he whispered "leaf village, here we come" he started to crawl, dragging Karen besides him, he threw a glance at her wounds. A prediction came to his mind, by the time they get to the village, she might lose her arm from blood loss; 'got to keep moving" he reminded himself.
*********-**********
"Somehow" Gray muttered "we made it", they passed into the leaf village, and Karen still seemed to be in somewhat good shape, still conscious and her bleeding miraculously stopped, now all that was left was to find a place to hide until the trouble pass, or at least until they know what exactly happened.
"How much time has passed?" Karen asked silently, it might have already been over.
"Not much, it's been an hour since it started, but I think it's still going on, I can hear a bit of gunfire. I'll check it once I've taken care of your leg and arm, so just try to be silent for a while…" Gray said.
"Don't bother, I'll be fine soon, this isn't enough to kill me. There are probably other sound that came here to hide, go look for them" she commanded him, he tried to protest but a quick glare from Karen stopped him.
"don't worry, they'll never be able to find me…" she started a series of seals, "it's called demon leaf seed jutsu, don't look too much into it, it's complicated to explain" the chackra began whirling around her, her eyes sent out the red glamour again, but this time she didn't change.
From Gray's point of view, the first noticeable effect of the jutsu was that she was getting shorter, when he lowered his look he saw that she wasn't shortening, she was assimilating into the ground, it seemed to him that her body turned to liquid and was soaked by the ground, he tried to grab her hand but when he finally moved only her head was above the ground.
"don't worry, it's perfectly safe for me, if you want to call me then pull out the weed, it'll start growing once I'm inside the ground" she said at perfect ease, she felt surprisingly good inside the ground, somewhat pure and clean.
"It's even better than usual, must be the water" the Kyubi transmitted his thoughts to her, it was one of his powers, but combined with a forbidden leaf trap. Karen was the second human ever alive to transform her entire body to chackra and to be able to reform it again.
"Weed? She probably meant flower" Gray examined the place Karen just disappeared from, he resisted the urge to dig in the ground and to look for her, and something did grow on that spot, so he figured the jutsu has been successful, even if it was a sunflower and not just a weed, "flowers are better than weeds, aren't they?" he thought to himself.
Seeing how Karen was probably safe, he got on his way to the insides of the village, searching for other sound shinobies.
--------=---------=------
"You say that we can be travel all around the village with this jutsu, but how am I supposed to do it without being able to see anything? I can barely feel slight winds from above; I'm not in any condition to move around…" Karen said in a disappointed tone, no wonder this was called seeding jutsu, she felt like she had to wait for days until something would happen.
"Of course, it's a trapping skill, you aren't supposed to be able to move much around… but there's an exception for you, try looking around with your Byakougan" The fox told her, it seemed like an impossible idea, how was she supposed to perform seals without hands? But nevertheless, she tried, and it somehow came out naturally.
Something was different, she knew that her Byakougan eyes were open, but it wasn't the same as always, instead of just seeing everything in great perspective, she was now able to see something new, it glowed in her eyes with a strange feeling, the strange thing was that she could see a few of those things…
One was getting farther and farther away from her, another four were much further away, and they seemed much 'larger' than the first one, the sixth one was also around them, but it seemed so enormous that everything else faded in comparison, and it seemed to be spared around most of the village in small quantities.
Karen suddenly noticed another thing, those things were different from each other, and not only in 'size', the large one shared similarities with one other out of the four near it, they seemed to be much more chaotic than the others, another one of the four seemed to be made of many other 'things' - over millions and billions of 'things' working together to fulfill some common goal, the other three, the one getting away from her and the last two of the four, she couldn't see anything special in them.
Her 'vision' began to widen, more feelings entered her sphere, most of them were about the same size and form as the one who was getting away from her, some were larger, though none came close to the big chaotic one, and a few even had different special forms and one shard the chaotic qualities of the huge source, but the chaos seemed to be much 'weaker' a slender version of it. Karen suddenly realized that some signals were disappearing or losing something within them.
"do you mind telling me what is it that I'm seeing, oh, mighty and sarcastic sadistic demon?" She mentally hissed, figuring it was better to get the jokes and stinginess out of the way as soon as possible.
"Mighy and Sarcastic sadistic demon? That's something I haven't heard yet… and I'd never dream about ripping you away from the surprise, just start moving somewhere and you'll probably figure it out along the way…" He lied sarcastically, he guessed that he'd need at least a few hours to get used to the new Hyuuga vision.
"Figures, you can't lend me a hand at anything, can you?" She said.
"You know, you're acting more like your father each day, and I don't mean it in a positive way…" he hissed back.
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Naraku could barely keep up with the attacks now, even though it was always the same, Ealla or Temari would attack, and then Gaara would try to catch him off guard, the sand forced Naraku to jump around much, it was getting more and more tiring to keep an eye from ambushes, he seriously began considering running away, as much as he hated that idea.
"No! Father never ran away from a fight, and so will I!" he jumped to the air and began the seals, when he crushed to the ground, a small cloud of smoke rose from the ground. Gaara, Temari and Ealla couldn't see him anywhere.
"Nine crushing tails of doom" he whispered silently.
Now, he was in control.
-------=-----------=--------
Again, as much as Karen believed it was impossible without limbs, the moment she thought about the concept of walking, she felt a slight movement, the next few minutes were try-&-fails until she finally believed she got the movement abilities right in her new form, then she started advancing to the center of the leaf village, closer to the point where she felt the large chaotic 'thing', she decided to check each one and one of those sources, just to get the general knowledge about what to expect.
In less than a minute she got to her first target, she followed him from below the ground, at those moments she was close enough to recognize his chackra output, Gray. She focused some chackra to her Byakougan eyes, her sphere of 'sight' grew tremendously, she was able so sense hundreds of sources again, now she focused on the one that seemed to act just like Gray's signal, she guessed it would have to be Sasuke, Gray's adopting father and role model, it was only normal for them to have similar chackra output.
Her next targets were the four large signals, and the one huge source.
-------*----------*---------
The first tail was aimed at Temari, the black fire rained from the skies onto her, it didn't come by surprise though, the heat from the tail was so intense that it would alert any being in a radios of 100 meters of it's coming, but that never mattered, even most of the legendary demons covered in fear in face of the fiery tail. However, those reactions only happened when it was used by the nine tails demon, when used by Naraku, it was simply flame jutsu, which was easily countered by Temari.
"not good enough, boy!" Temari shouted as she cleaned her fan from the sand she had to put on it to block the flames, she noticed that the fan's edge was blackened a bit by the fire, but it was still in good condition.
The second tail of electricity was met with Ealla, Naraku didn't expect her to be able to change her kunais into metal and reshape them, with a simple alchemy jutsu, she managed to divert the lightning strike from her to a nearby large boulder. The stone exploded immediately in impact, but the attack has already lost it's power by then.
The other tails met the same fate, all were overcome by the three jounins, even the illusion of the seventh tail was crushed by Gaara's spell of fake sleep. And the soul craving ninth tail hadn't fulfilled its goal either, with no spare immortal soul, the Kyubi couldn't contribute his part to the jutsu and cause it to work as it should, it was practically useless.
--- Chapter 17: Hyuuga eyes and Sarcastic Demons --- End -----
so what did we have this chapter?
On one hand we got some relationship between Karen and Gray, an improvement of Karen's Byakougan skills, and a new jutsu…
Just to clear a bit of the jutsu, the general idea was taken from the demon brothers (the start of the anime, maybe episode six-seven…) and was twisted to a flower to fit a leaf village jutsu, I chose to use Sunflower because HINA in Hinata means sun (Hinamaru- suncircle) and the deal with the weed was about underestimating yourself, I was under the effect of some Hinata-based fanfic…
Other than that, we got another glimpse on Naraku, which seems to be in a pinch now… don't you all wonder what'll happen to him?
Now, I realized I forgot to explain about Naraku last chapter, so here it comes:
The idea for his 'birth' came from the Berserk Manga (serious spoilers ahead):
DON'T READ UNLESS YOU WANNA BE SPOILED!
In the manga, Grifith takes over the body of Gatts and Cascka's baby and reshapes it to his old body.
END SPOILER SEASON!
The other source of inspiration came from Trigun, when I stared writing the story, I was in the middle of my 4th viewing of it, so originally, Karen and Naraku were supposed to end like Vash and Knives, but I decided against it, seeing how it would make no sense for two siblings who never met to start a death match right away..
So anyway, in the last chapter of "Shadow of Life", there were two mentionings of spirits, one coming out of Naruto's body, creating the vortex, and by extent, all the demons in the village.
The other came out of Hinata, or rather, her unborn child (Naraku), which was also the reason why she woke up that night (pregnant sickness, yay for the women!), but since Naraku hasn't fulfilled his cosmic goal (becoming a character in my story), his Kyubi spirit took used Naruto's and Hinata's bodies to keep Naraku alive.
However, since the Kyubi is doing that, he can't do anything else inside of Naraku, so every time he speaks, Naraku loses control over the body and loses his balance. This doesn't apply to times when Naraku touches the vortex (the Demon fox who lived inside Naruto), because at those times, he gets chackra from the original kyubi, so it strengthens him.
I hope that made things a bit more clear to you guys, and here are the Shout outs (!):
hi this is a flame: wow, my first flame, if you would have signed with your own account (or even a real nickname) I would have gone through the trouble of explaining you how much of an idiot you are, but since you decided not to, I'll keep this short by saying that if you have to flame me about something, there are more relevant things than the pairings to do so.
Eikou: well, my life is a twisted play of irony and sarcasm… actually, I'm quite happy that it's Passover, if it wasn't I'd still be stuck in that bakery, polishing the damn floor for minimum wages… you got the Naraku part right, he is using his parents remains to move around, talk about being attached… and the Gaara Naraku fight; I'm really proud about that one, allow me to brag when I say it's a different level from other fanfiction fights, and even par with the original fight scenes…
Shadowcriminal: well, didn't I tell you guys to expect the plot to continue it's twisting? I'm really like doing those stuff… and you were right about Naraku, just not completely, you've missed the part that Naraku really is Karen's brother, not just by circumstances.. Peace out, Rock on!
Oh, plz review, the flamer said that 57 reviews for 16 chapers is sad, prove him wrong!