The Passover vaction is over and I'm back in school, and it sucks.
I'm low on anime (I watched only two episodes over the past three days) and really low on energy (the bakery job keeps sacking away my sleep), but the worst thing, is that I haven't been to the gym for about a month, so I feel extra fat and out of shape.
Chapter 18: The Sunflower and the Black Rose
"I can't keep up with them…" Naraku thought to himself, since the first phase of the fight he was unable to move his leg, and he was already hit in most other body parts. "I can't let them get me… I've got to do something!" he screamed inside his mind while blocking another one of Ealla's kicks, he never imagined the difference between fighting demons and between fighting real-life jounins, it was too much for him.
"Do it" Tamari signaled to her brother, he smiled to her and hit the ground, "tentacles of sand jutsu" he whispered, he almost felt a pinch in his heart, killing a kid because he was too dangerous to be left alive, that was one thing he never imagined he'll do.
"Perfect chance…" Naraku thought to himself as seven sand pillars roused from the ground, all of them were sharp as a kunai and strong as steel, they were all hardened by chackra, Naraku breathed in relief when he spotted an explosive tag in the sand, it all made his escape much easier.
"Bring it on! Show me everything you have! I'll crush it!" he screamed and started focusing chackra to his legs. The seven sand pillars started moving at him, they all clashed at him in the same time, exploding in a grand display of chackra and sand.
"it's over… let's go back" Gaara said quietly, no one could survive that kind of an explosion. He almost felt tears coming to his eyes, "sorry kiddo, no one should die without drinking sake once in their life" he took a small bottle of sake out and poured it over the sand.
"I wonder if I should tell Karen about this…" Ealla wondered loudly, Temari turned to her, "I'm not sure, but I think she needs to know about it". Gaara turned to the two, "you have to tell her about him, he deserves it, if not in life, then at least in his death" he said emotionlessly. The three started moving back, they had to report back to Sasuke about the mission.
Beneath the sand, a small flower grew; it was a rose, a pure black rose.
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"sorry about all your shurikans and kunais, we'll have to do without them for a while now, the next step is to secure a safe house" Konohamaru ordered, it was a few years since the last time he tried to take any student, he concentrated on his science studies most of the time, but it didn't mean he lost anything from his shinobi abilities.
"what are you talking about, sensei? If not for you then we'd all be dead!" Doro almost shouted at him, Hob and Tack nodded in agreement, even though both of them were grazed by bullets many times while escaping, Konohamaru did manage to deflect most of the bullets away.
"it doesn't mean that it was the right choice, because of my jutsu, we're all weaponless, and we're facing an entire army that has the most modern weapons available…" the more he thought about it, the more he hated the situation, even though they had the advantage of the half urban leaf village battleground, they were still only a jounin and three genins.
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"Commander, we have reports on the attack"
"Well, go ahead, how was it?" Amber asked the soldier, she didn't expect a total annihilation of them, and she personally instructed everyone not to take prisoners, she wouldn't risk entering a ninja so close to them. Shinobies had advantage at close range, and she was absolutely sure that some would try to infiltrate as prisoners and attack them from behind.
"It seems that most of them escaped, the Sand and Rock villages are moving together, but they have managed to set up a strong defense, so we aren't expecting to be able to hit them anytime soon. The mist shibobies vanished after the first attack, we have a few sightings of them, but our forces won't be able to chase them for long, the Cloud suffered heavy losses, but they managed to escape as well, however, we have the Sound cornered, we estimate that we've killed about 15% of them" He looked at her, awaiting orders, their losses were few for time being, but everyone knew that as soon as the ninjas start attacking, the whole tide of the battle would change.
"message the assault commanders to continue chasing the escapees, but not to attack them, tell them that I said they should just make sure the enemy is really retreating, have everyone else siege the Sound, If we play our hand right, then we could dull them down from all the genins, it would be a serious blow to their prestige, who would want to entrust his secrets to a village that can't even protect his own kids…" Amber resisted the urge to laugh menacefuly, she wasn't ordering any children killing, all the kids were ninjas, they all knew that the may die, it was part of being a ninja.
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"Something changed!" Karen screamed in her mind, it wasn't just that the three large chackra signals moved, the forth one has undergone a change of some sort.
"indulge me, for I can't see through your Hyuuga eyes" he said in a weird tune, she couldn't decide whether it was formality or sacristy, probably the latest.
"three of them left and are heading outside, but the other one looks different, he still seems chaotic but I feel like he's confined to one spot now, I'm not sure what it means, but it's kinda like a storm in a bottle" she explained.
"And… what are you planning to do about it? your village camp was attacked and you're separated from everyone else, do you have a plan? Do you even know what you're you want to achieve?" a chill went down Karen's spine, it was like someone unleashed the demon's mouth at her, it didn't hold any cynicism in it now, he acted entirely different from before.
"I just thought that… I thought you would help me! You're the immortal demon that never dies! You said it yourself, you said that you helped my father to become the great ninja he was!" Karen thought that she said those words out of anger and rage, but as soon as she heard herself she knew they came from a different emotion, she wondered if it could be that she felt betrayed by him? Almost hurt?
"So, you want me to tell you what to do? No problem! Get out, assume my shape and go wipe those who wounded you off the face of earth! You can also run to Gray and escape with him to wherever you want! And here's a third option, get a spine and decide what you want to do!"
She couldn't say anything, she tried telling herself he was wrong, but it just hit her that she has done nothing yet. So far all she managed to do was to crawl into the ground and hide from someone she didn't even who it was, it wasn't something a chunin should do; it was barely a genin's behavior.
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"How are you dealing with the bullets?" Sakura asked hastly, she was already short on breath from holding such a barrier around them, but working together was the only way for them to survive, she would slow down the bullets, and he would deflect them away, it wasn't perfect, both Sakura and Sasuke were grazed too many times for comfort, but they were alive.
"I'm holding on… but I'm not sure how long I could keep this up, we're probably still on the first stage of their attack, and we're already almost out of chackra, we need to get to somewhere safe, we both have children waiting for us" Sasuke replied, even with his Sharinagan eyes he couldn't see and react to all of the shots.
"there is one place that we could go to and regroup at…" Sakura suggested, Sasuke nodded back at her in agreement, that place was perfect.
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"Commander, we have reports about the Sound stranglehold, it seems that everybody is escaping from our grasp into the ruins of the leaf village" another report came in, but despite the news, Amber was still sure in the plans success, "after all, I'm the one who planned this" she thought to herself in somewhat pride.
"I haven't dismissed you yet!" she said sharply, stage one of the play was done, and it was now time for the second stage of her glorious victory, "I need you to deliver this command, you may not tell anyone about this, do you understand?" He saluted her and left the room with the command, all she needed now was to hold the sound at the same condition for two days, and after that, the village would be good as gone.
"A win-win-win situation, no matter how you look on it, I win…" Amber hummed to herself in satisfaction, on the best case; modern high-tech reinforcement would come and lay waste to the leaf ruins and the shinobies hiding in them. But even if that plan would fail, Amber knew she could call back the other troops and start nitpicking the weakest looking kids out, there were lots of ways to deal with captured shinobies, she devised most of them.
*****/------\*****
"They probably left already"
I can't feel their chackra anywhere around me
It must mean I managed to fool them
It has to safe to come out now
If only it wouldn't hurt so much to move"
Naraku took a deep breath, even though he didn't need to, it was more of a habit thing that he developed from his parent's memories, he pushed himself out of the ground, reverting once again from chackra to flesh.
Transformations were never easy for him and the Kyubi, it meant that he'll have to reshape his body once again from the beginning, he decided to use the teenaged form for now, "even if they are still alive, I could get another second or two to run while they recognize me" he said to himself, even surviving in his natural habitant was getting hard now.
"you might have to give up on your little family dream, you know" the Kyubi suddenly said, causing Naraku to crash to the ground.
"you know me for eight years, do you think I'll ever give up on that!?!" Naraku almost screamed in anger.
"Guess not, you're too much like your father for your own good, so get up and start moving, you could probably use some water jutsu to reach her, though it will hurt you like hell" the fox replied in his same non-chalet voice.
-------*/*/Night Hound* Army Camp\*\*-----
"So the commander has another plan? Man, she really never lets us know about anything. I won't be surprised if she says that everything we're doing the last week was just a distraction and that we're really working with the ninjas to capture some underwear thief…"
"I know what you're meaning; she has a neck for complicating things too much, she treats everyone like chess pieces, I heard she even fooled her superiors a few times to get results.. I think she hanged out too much with ninjas when she was young"
"But you have to admit she knows what she's doing, I joined the same day she did and look at the status difference, there are about seven rank of command between me and her… and yet she still knows about every little female-related joke I make during lunch time"
"You got that shit right! I mean the first part, not the joke thing, you fuckin' male pig, Commander Kazamatsuri knows her buiseness better than anyone else, I tell ya, one day she'll run the whole agency. And when that they will come, women will rule the world!"
"You mean the day of Armageddon? When death strikes and terror followes?"
"Isn't it supposed to be the other way around, first terror and then death?"
"If the world will become so twisted that women will rule it, then believe me that a few other things will change, like the space\time continuity and the 'cause and effect' rule."
"Shoban pig…"
---- Chapter 18: The Sunflower and the Black Rose – End---
well, I wrote the last part when I felt really anti-female, probably I was under the effect of meeting some really stupid girl, so don't pay it any attention.
On a more relevant matter, the next chapter won't come out next week, because of my zero-writing policy (did I mention I hate my job already?) the story has reached the point where I don't have any chapters on reserve. So chapter 19 (Which would be quite longer) will be publicized in an unknown date, look forward to it.
Oh, and here's the shout out (!) to the only reviewer of chapter 17; Zsych!
Don't worry about Naraku, the kid isn't dead yet, and he'll make his return just in time to be cool and kick ass, I couldn't make him win against Gaara, and I didn't feel like killing anyone at that point (even though I originally planned to kill Ealla), so he had to lose, however, I still think the fight was pretty cool, right?
Naruto won't wake up, sorry, bringing him back would be the equivalent of "and then the boy woke up from his dream" or "and then god came and fixed everything" [note: you can replace God with OC, it's basically the same in most stories].
I know that modern armies and ninjas can't live side by side, that's what makes this whole war so interesting, don't worry though, no one will gain a magical power up (making a soldier able to fight a ninja fairly, or giving a ninja the power to kill everybody with one jutsu) and everything will be very tactical, just like how it should be.
I really didn't get the evolution\whatever part, but I agree about "you can't take it with you", our English teacher took us to watch that play, it was quite funny!
Peace out, everybody!