Two chapters in less than 24 hours. What the fuck is this, the early days of writing WTSIG in the summer of '16? Man, I'm good to yall.
Review response:
1. TigrezzTail: While I'm keeping the contents of Tayuya's mission a secret (for now...maybe...if I don't forget to explain it at some point...) I'll just say that Orochimaru debated with himself about how to word the parameters, and he fully intends to take Tayuya back. It's a fair assessment, though, to assume that he wouldn't believe a sixteen-year-old would be able to run circles around him in the realm of Fuinjutsu.
2. CygnusFang: I'd say he'd pale in shock and horror, but...well...his skin is already white enough as it is. The idea is that, as a demon, Naruto/Yuurei sort of has an affinity for the collection/consumption of souls—though this is most prominently seen in the wisps of light that he absorbs every time he kills someone. And, on the note of chapter length: while I certainly could write longer chapters, it would take me a little while longer to put them out, (on a regular basis, at least; these kinds of writing frenzies like I'm in right now, putting out 40K words in a month, are very unusual,) and I personally am quite taken with the light novel style of writing—which is to say, my chapters are long enough to keep readers engaged, and short enough that I can put them out on a steady basis...in a world where I don't effectively go on a two year hiatus, LMAO.
3. Noahendless: Ask, my brother, and you shall receive. The circumstances may be painful, but our beloved demon-lord-in-training is about to clean house. As for gravity seals/speed training...we'll see.
Let's get this trainwreck moving.
"Say, either of you." Yugito began, passing a set of binoculars to Tayuya as she spoke. "Has he used a single jutsu yet?"
"Do you think we'd have missed it?" The redhead asked in response.
As the groups of ninja from Iwa, Kumo, and Kiri had blown past Yuurei, he'd set off a series of explosive seals, resulting in a fine mist of blood and several lightly-charred chunks of meat falling through the heat of the mid-day desert. Ever since then, the three nations' representatives had hesitated to move forward. It was abundantly clear that he'd set this battlefield up in advance, well aware of the direction his foes would be attacking from. A few ninja had made attempts at defeating Yuurei in single combat, but every single one of them had met the business end of the twin sandworm teeth he'd taken to wielding as swords.
That all changed, though, when a pair of swarthy men with pale hair strode forward from the Kumogakure encampment. The one in the lead had a very short-cut mustache and goatee, with enormous armor-weights around his forearms; the man who followed him used his facial hair to frame his mouth and jaw, with seven swords sheathed on his back. If Yuurei were a worldly sort of person, or if he'd bothered to delve into the depths of Yugito's personal history with a few leading questions, he would have known that these two young men, in their early twenties, were the sons of the Sandaime Raikage. A, the elder, and Kirabi, the younger, were fearsome individually—and deadly together. Kirabi was the host of the Hachibi, renowned in Kumo for being the only Jinchuriki to ever truly master his Biju's sills and abilities, and A was rumored to be able to subdue the eight-tailed demon if it ever rampaged.
"Yo there, little man!" Kirabi called out. "Let me lay out the plan: you call for a teammate, and my brother and I will grind up your hate!"
A rolled his eyes at his brother's antics, knowing full well that Kirabi was only trying to irritate their opponent.
"You think I need help?" Yuurei asked with a grin. His hair had grown long and shaggy in the months since his departure from Konoha in the late spring, and it shifted gently in the hot gusts of desert wind.
"What my brother is trying to say...is that we'd find a little more honor in fighting you two-on-two. Surely, there's someone you trust to fight by your side?" A asked, looking pointedly in the direction of Sunagakure.
"Oh, please. There's two of you, I have two hands...what could go wrong?" Yuurei was brimming with confidence in his demonic capabilities, but a figure solidified beside him in the next moment.
"If you want a second opponent, Hachibi, Shukaku and I will meet your challenge." Gaara said, his deep monotone betraying a deep sense of bloodlust. "As long as I have sand, I am invincible. Do as you will, Yuurei."
Still with the Uzushio hitai-ate covering his left eye, Yuurei allowed his refined sandworm teeth to vanish, staring blankly at A as Gaara stood juxtaposed to Kirabi. Many of the closer shinobi from the three-village coalition backed away, unwilling to be caught in the crossfire of the upcoming battle, and they were right to be afrad; where they stood, thin spikes of sand rose in a false attempt to impale them. On that signal, the four-man melee began. The Raiton chakra that Kirabi pushed through his first two drawn swords was a natural nemesis for Gaara's sand-based attacks, allowing him to remain unharmed as long as his reflexes stayed sharp. Yuurei, on the other hand, almost seemed to be playing with A as he caught the burly man's punches and deflected them with ease.
"B!" The older brother yelled, and Kirabi spat a Bijuudama in miniature that launched toward Yuurei without mercy. The blond didn't even try to evade the strike, but in the split second that his attention was diverted, A had maneuvered behind him. Releasing the seals on his forearm weights, his strength and speed increased dramatically, and it was only thanks to his demonic constitution that Yuurei avoided the total destruction of his kidney. Unconsciously folding in three from the blow, he was unprepared for the follow-up strike to his head that sent him the the ground.
The feeling of sand peppering his hair wasn't an enjoyable one, and only Yuurei's deepest survival instincts allowed him to roll over before a would-be fatal blow passed through where his face would have been. But, before A could attack again, a blur of black and purple slammed into the large man's chest, and he shouted in pain before he struck the interloper across the face. There was an audible cracking noise as Yugito spun twice through the air. Yuurei had gotten up to one knee when the Nibi Jinchuriki landed beside him, and a range of complicated emotions flew across his face before he settled on grief and anger. Though Yugito's life was hanging, it was only by a few thin threads, and she'd put herself in a position to be hurt because of the seal he'd placed on her. Spitting blood, the blond warped his life essence into a primitive stasis seal that would keep Yugito still while he fought.
"You shouldn't have done that." Yuurei said darkly, a low rumble beginning to erupt from the core of his being. "You really..."
"So she was with you? Damn woman, running off with an enemy after losing in Konoha. Downright shameful." A derided his cousin, no remorse in his words for the cruel blow he'd delivered without a second thought.
Hearing that lack of regret only pushed Yuurei further, and the desert began to shake with a miniature earthquake as Yuurei felt dark power surge within him. Something hidden had twisted and snapped when he'd realized Yugito had come to defend him, and it wasn't only out of concern for her health. Maybe there were some residual effects of placing the seal on Yugito that had rebounded back onto him, but a deep-seated part of his rage stemmed from the idea that he had, in fact, come to see Yugito as one of his people—perhaps even, as dubiously as his mostly-disinterested demonic sensibilities would allow, his woman. There were a mass of thoughts and emotions coming to light in those moments, as Yuurei felt the now-familiar rush of his demonification, that he hadn't thought of. He would need to wait until the end of the battle to process them.
With a wordless scream, youki flooded Yuurei's organs, and nine shimmering tails of black and red and gold flourished out behind him. In a burst of speed, he appeared before A. His savage uppercut smashed the larger man's left forearm weight to pieces, shocking those who saw the scene. It corroded to rusty flakes as it fell in chunks, and A was dumbfounded as he realized that he'd very obviously bitten off more than he could chew. Before he could process the sixteen-year-old's blinding speed, though, A felt a world-shaking pain in the same kidney where he'd punched Yuurei. Incapable of stopping himself from having the same reaction, A winced briefly. But, when no second blow came, the Raikage's eldest son straightened up and looked around. Where had Yuurei gone? He wasn't ahead, to either side, or behind. He hadn't interfered in the fight between Gaara and Kirabi. So where...
The answer never came to A in time. Yuurei descended from the sky like the Great Darkness had once revealed himself to mankind, sandworm tooth readily appearing in his hand as he drove the razored crystalline spike through A's head and chest.
"FUCK OFF!" Yuurei screamed, wisps of light flowing into his body before his youki detonated A's fresh corpse into a field of corrosive miasma. "I'LL KILL YOU ALL!"
Taking his attention entirely off of Kirabi, Yuurei leaped into the crowd of Iwa-, Kiri-, and Kumo-nin before he began a campaign of carnage. His hands flew through seals before ending in the sign of the Ox, and sand rose up to block off the escape of the several-hundred ninja for as far as the eye could see. Up into the sky, and stretching to the horizons, they'd become trapped on a killing floor. On the walls of Sunagakure, Tayuya threw her binoculars to the nearest available person who wasn't herself.
"Well, fuck." The redhead observed. "They made him mad."
"And what exactly...happens...when he gets mad?" Temari asked, already pale and feeling sick from the display of death that Yuurei was quickly turning into his magnum opus.
"He destroyed an entire country and sank it into the ocean." Tayuya answered truthfully, ignoring the looks on the faces of those around her. She did, however, enjoy the particularly mortified expressions on the faces of Temari's would-be advisors, who were silently recounting every time they'd attempted to dissuade or prevent Temari from training with Yuurei. "He comes off as normal enough, plays nicely with others and all that other well-adjusted bullshit, but he protects what he considers his. And, from the look of it, he considers that pretty little kitty as someone who's his."
Down from the sun came Yuurei's hellish rebuke, an almighty ray of heat that torched bodies into dust and melted sand into glass. Though the strike only lasted for a few moments, it had indiscriminately killed more than a hundred of the shinobi who were doing their best to flee for their lives. A thousand Kage Bunshin came into existence, a veritable swarm of blond hair that was crueler and deadlier than any winter wind. But it was only as Yuurei left the massacre to his clones, turning back to Gaara and Kirabi, that the worst had come to pass.
"I thought you said sand made you invincible?" Kirabi quoted, almost mockingly. "Not to prove you wrong, but that's bull."
The Raiton chakra in his hands was burning through Gaara's sand armor, melting through his throat as Kirabi lifted him up high. Gaara was only thirteen, hardly capable of fighting off the strength of a trained weightlifter in a contest of brute strength.
"And hey, Shukaku, Gyuuki says to go fuck yourself." Kirabi said, before crushing Gaara's throat without mercy. Before he could do anything else, though, two crystal fangs cleaved through the air and took his arms off at the elbows. Looking at Yuurei somewhat tiredly, a brown-and-red chakra cloak came up around Kirabi, and the Hachibi's youki swung out to attack Yuurei. The blond didn't even bother dodging, as the miasma of his youki corroded the attack before it even reached him.
"You woke the wrong dog." Yuurei said, watching Gaara's body begin to move with demonic strength before casting away the sliced-off arms that had been around its throat. A particular loophole that he'd written into the seal had come into play. When Gaara opened his eyes, they were the unmistakable black and gold of Shukaku; youki, not chakra, flooded the air around him. And as the redhead opened his mouth to laugh, the sound carried on the winds of the desert.
"Bring my dear brother out." Shukaku demanded. "Gyuuki was nothing in front of Kurama, and he's nothing in front of me. You humans only feared and venerated him because you didn't know how strong a demon could be."
Yuurei, meanwhile, didn't want to give Kirabi any chance of pulling more tricks and coming out of this alive. If Kumo ever got wind that Yugito was alive, there would be hell to pay; for his own sake, if not hers, he couldn't allow that to happen. From the few words A had spoken, it was incredibly clear that Yugito wasn't well-thought-of in her home village. So, why bother ever bringing her back there?
Thunder sounded as steam and mist began to pour out from Kirabi's body, eight tentacled tails extending out behind his body as soft flesh seemed to consume him. With the exception of the tentacles, hide began to cover that meaty interior, and an oppressive youki fell on the world as the Hachibi no Kyogyuu was brought back into the world. Watching these proceedings, Yuurei grew tired of waiting, a sandworm tooth grasped tightly in his hand before he sent it flying through the air. One of Gyuuki's tentacles moved to intercept the razor-edged missile, but an intense pain rippled through the appendage as the sword-length fang went all the way through the Hachibi's body. And then, with a flicker of youki, Terramorphous' fallen tooth was held again in Yuurei's hand.
"Shukaku...how long can you buy me?" Yuurei asked, watching as Gaara's possessed corpse was beginning to dissolve.
"Little brat...we're not trapped here with him. He's trapped here with me. The memory of the desert is long."
Sand whirled around the pair of Biju, and even a casual observer would be able to tell that the demons were sinking below the surface of the slight dunes.
"Shukaku! You one-tailed weasel! You dare try to strike me down?" Gyuuki roared, his eight tails thrashing restlessly as he tried and failed to escape from the tanuki's death trap.
"All false inheritors to my father's legacy will be purged." Shukaku declared coldly, consigning his brother to death. "Unlike me, you can't escape from your host's body anymore. If you'd waited until he died, you might have had a chance to escape, you dumb ox-topus! Sabakukyu!"
An inescapable vortex opened up beneath the eight-tailed demon, and its tentacles were dragged beneath the surface before being ruptured open by the speed of the twisting sand. By this point, Gaara's dead body had dissolved almost entirely, with nothing but Shukaku's youki keeping the thin outer shell together.
"Sabaku Taisou!" The one-tailed tanuki shouted, clenching his fist before the shell he'd possessed was dispersed into tiny grains of sand. The vortex holding Gyuuki collapsed, but the sand continued to twist, and an unearthly psychic scream emanated from beneath the dunes.
Dark miasma, rusty in its color, leaked up from a wide area of sand that would forever be stained black. Yuurei stood over that black sand, feeling the dead Hachibi's youki entering his body through his pores. Though he could only consume a fraction of the ancient demon's power, he could feel his strength grow as he took in the latent energy. Blending into the black- and red-colored sections of his tails, a rusty brown began to grow in, very similar to Gyuuki's youki. And then, with a soul-shaking howl, the blond released a Bijuudama that utterly dwarfed the blast he'd unleashed in Konoha. As it swept across the open desert, his clones began to vanish, and anybody that bothered to look wouldn't need to wonder about survivors.
This was the root of what it meant to be a shinobi—to keep death in one's heart, leaving one unsurprised when ti claimed them. At the moment, in Yuurei's heart, there was nothing but hate and violence. Was this what it meant to be the Kyuubi, he wondered? A nine-tailed demon, an engine of destruction, a natural disaster for whom there was no equal outside of Makai? He'd only just begun to take his steps down his predecessor's path, but he understood how easily he might fall into the trap of unshakable bloodlust and aggression. Wanting to vent his urge to kill, Yuurei took up the teeth of Terramorphous and began stabbing innumerable holes in every corpse that still existed. His screams of wild frustration and abandoned mercy sent chills down the backs of all those who could hear him, and blood sprayed across his body until the only dry parts of his skin were the two palms that gripped sandworm teeth between them.
It wasn't enough. It could never be enough. They'd hurt Yugito, they'd killed Gaara, and no amount of slaughter could ever be enough. In the weeks since he'd modified the redhead's seal, Gaara had shown improvement as a human, his newfound existence brightening Temari and Kankuro's lives noticeably. And now, just like that, the light that had briefly entered their lives was irreversibly stripped away. If he could have refused the idea of a two-on-two battle...if he could have prevented Gaara from taking up arms against Kirabi...but it was too late.
Bellowing his frenzy once again, Yuurei ripped away the hitai-ate that hid his Sharingan from sight before he launched it back to Sunagakure. Finally, however, there was nothing left for him to unleash his tension on. All of the corpses had been reduced to splintered bones that laid restlessly in bloody sand, and the only living people in the outskirts of Suna's walls were Yuurei and Yugito. Wordlessly, the demon dropped to his knees, lifting the unconscious blonde so that her head was resting in his lap. He swore to himself, in his thoughts. He swore to the dead gods, he swore to the kings of Makai, he swore on all the power he possessed—never again would one of his people suffer because of an action or inaction that he'd taken.
The soft sound of feet touching the ground alerted Yuurei to someone else's arrival, and he looked up at Temari as the young Godaime Kazekage shut her war fan. The look she gave Yuurei was complicated, a mix of grief and anger washing over the relief that he was alright. No words had to be spoken; she knew that her youngest brother was dead. Something stirred within her, and she wasn't sure why it compelled her to speak, but that didn't stop her from opening her mouth.
"They were from Kumo?" She asked, nothing but pride allowing her to hold back her tears. Yuurei could hardly even speak, only nodding as he continued to cradle Yugito's crumpled body. "Then...Yuurei...swear an oath to me."
The unearthly chill that descended on the world was the most brutal that Yuurei had ever experienced, sand freezing in sheets for longer than he could fire a Bijuudama. The fire in his body reached out with him as he grasped Temari's right forearm with his own right hand, begging her to name her terms. For the woman whose brother had just died fighting beside him, was there something he wouldn't do?
"Kill them all. Wipe out the entire village, down to its roots. I want nobody born in Kumogakure to be alive in this world. Make them suffer like I am. Make them beg. Make them ask why you're killing them." She said, the look in her eyes as fierce as any wild beast that Yuurei had ever seen.
"Yes." He agreed without thinking.
"Do it for Gaara. Do it for me." Temari continued,
"Yes!" Yuurei nodded fervently, his expression twisting as a desire for vengeance began to consume him.
"I don't expect you to do it now, only in the future. But swear to me that you'll do it. Promise it to me, and I..." Temari paused, remembering Tayuya's words when Yugito had taken A's attack and nearly died. Her brother had just died—she wasn't in her right mind, wasn't thinking about whether or not she was going overboard in her terms. She wanted revenge on an insurmountable scale, and Yuurei would deliver it for her. "...I'll become yours. Mind, heart, body, and soul. Don't try to talk me out of it, either! No price is too high for this, as long as I can pay it!"
Faced with such dedication, Yuurei nearly faltered, his mismatched eyes gazing almost helplessly at Temari as she kneeled in the sand across from him.
"I swear it. By the dead gods, by the Great Darkness, by our shared memory of your brother...I swear it. I will deliver salvation to Kumogakure." Yuurei spoke, but the world didn't return to normal. As the cold began to penetrate his oppressive youki, Yuurei shivered, but the world turned upside-down as Temari softly brought her lips to meet his.
As a result of the sworn oath, there came a sound that was somewhere between a thunderclap and a deafening explosion. From the depths of Hulasikali Wala's hollow to the furthest reaches of the dead God-Emperor's sunken city, however faintly, the sound echoed as it was heard. Suddenly exhausted, both demon and Kazekage lost their grip on one another, and their bodies sagged as they bent toward each other. With the midday sun beating down over top of them, their shoulders caught their heads. Almost as suddenly as it had began, the battle was over.
