And here we are again, my friends. This arc is drawing to a close, and...next chapter is going to hurt me. A lot. I think it'll be next chapter, anyway? Still gotta write it. Just...be prepared.

Review response:

1. TigrezzTail: Hopefully that's not a case of "subverted expectations" like everyone's former favorite HBO show.

2. CygnusFang: You did indeed! I thought I might have faked you out, but this was always the intention. Why not ally himself with the people who hate Zabuza like he does?

Let's get this trainwreck moving.


As he stared across the misty expanse before him, Yuurei couldn't help the silent nod of approval that followed his thoughts. In the three days since he'd placed the Mark of the Beast upon Mei, he'd remained in close contact with her through their shared telepathy—which was an incredibly useful tool, but the demon was hard-pressed to explain why Temari and Mei had seemingly received two completely different versions of the same seal. Frankly, the answers he'd received had only left him with more questions, and he was forced to accept that Tayuya was probably right: he was a terrible judge of his strength in Fuinjutsu.

In any event, the rebels in the northeast had been made aware of the situation and recalled further south; by some odd stroke of luck or consequence, they'd hardly been pursued, but that likely meant that the Mizukage was gathering his followers in the same manner. Both sides could only imagine how, with one last battle, they were finally going to crush their enemies. Of course, each side had plenty of reason to be confident; the loyalists had two Jinchuriki, the remaining members of the Seven Swordsmen, and the mercilessly powerful Mist and Rain Guards. The rebels had Mei, and now...they had two Jinchuriki, a true-born demon, whatever Sai was, and all five members of the Sound Four.

Yuurei paused in his ruminating to note how stupid that sounded, and that their other moniker, "the Five Fangs of the Snake," wasn't any better. Snakes had four fangs. Orochimaru was terrible at naming things. How had he managed to...no, those were thoughts for a different time. Yuurei needed to focus. A nice neutral point between Kirigakure and the rebel base, it was entirely reasonable to think that the loyalist army would cross through this swath of land and be forced into combat. Sparse trees, a broad stream, and a series of small rock formations were scattered around the area; even if the enemies managed to cloak their chakra from sensory perception, they'd be moving in plain sight.

"Any words of inspiration, Banchou?" Sai asked. "I have full faith in our abilities, but this may be the last time we see one another for quite a while."

"We both know that I don't give good speeches, and you wouldn't bring that last part up without something to tell me. So...tell me," Yuurei replied, holding out his hand. A jet-black wisp of chakra flew from Sai's forehead, and as it made contact with the tenketsu points on Yuurei's skin, he felt the foreign substance crawl inside of his body before dissolving. With wide red eyes, the demon looked to his proverbial left hand in alarm.

"You're sure?" Yuurei's question wasn't unfounded; it had taken Sai more than half a year of combing through Danzo's records, and more than a little of his own exploration, to discover what he'd just shared. Among the living, only the two of them knew—Sai didn't even trust Ayame with that information.

"I've checked extensively," the Ne commander confirmed.

A troubled expression covered Yuurei's face, but it was gone after a moment. Though the news was disturbing, to say the least, it was also a testament to the Yondaime Hokage's seemingly prescient foresight—as well as his overwhelming, calamitous power. Even if Yuurei hadn't been born a demon, it stood to reason that "Namikaze Naruto" would have become a terrifying force of nature. It almost made him think...made him wish...that the circumstances of his early life had been different. Almost.

"They're coming," Tayuya noted, speaking up from behind Yuurei's right side. "Oh, fuck, they're...who the fuck am I kidding, I know all of you can feel that."

A fair distance away, the now-complete rebel army had gathered and fanned out. As they stood and waited, even the least-apt sensors among them could tell that something was very wrong. Utterly massive chakra signatures were approaching, blanketing any of the remaining loyalists from being sensed. With no idea how many enemies were coming, a handful began to fall into disarray; this only lasted for a few seconds, however, as Mei's lieutenants and Yuurei's nine-man contingent stood firm.

"You know what, Sai, I take it back. I do have some words of inspiration: 'kill them all.'" Yuurei relaxed his body by force, and the scars on his body gradually showcased themselves as his demonic skin began to take a reddish tint.

Slowly at first, and then in waves, the loyal Kiri-nin of Yagura's regime came into sight. This battlefield was massive, because it had to be; neither side wanted to create a hazard zone for friendly fire. There were thousands of ninja on this battlefield, possibly as many as ten thousand—or, perhaps, even more. It wasn't Yuurei that struck the first blow, but Mei, as the rebellion's leader spat lava from her mouth. The unfortunate loyalist caught in the attack didn't even have a chance to cry out before his flesh melted and melded with the cooling rock.

Though Yuurei, Sai, Yugito, Fu, and the various members of the Sound Four were relatively unfazed, the same couldn't be said of those who knew Mei's abilities. The wide sheet-like attack had traveled more than halfway across the battlefield, and its potency was unlike anything they'd ever seen before. When had she developed that kind of skill, power, and chakra control? The thin mist seemed to glitter like diamonds against her skin, highlighting the colored band that seemed tattooed into her left ring finger. Though only the handful of rebels who'd been there when Yuurei made his contract with Mei would know the correlation, even they were shocked at the stark display of talent before them.

A sense of malevolence crashed down on the periphery of the loyalists' minds as Yuurei walked forward, with his comrades standing still at his command. Two sandworm teeth were clutched in his hands, and their crystalline shine made a small set of rainbows appear in the misty air. All too soon, the bare-chested demon was upon them. Chakra flew as hand seals came and went from a loyalist's hands, but his Futon technique did nothing beyond marking several shallow cuts in Yuurei's skin. In response, the tooth in Yuurei's right hand stabbed down; entering the dead man's body through the left clavicle, and piercing through the right side of his intestinal wall, the tooth was left inside of him. From there, the battle began in earnest as both sides began to cast their jutsu.

Sakon and Ukon had split apart, their assassination technique killing loyalists from inside out. Kidomaru and Tayuya covered their allies from afar, a brisk melody coordinating with a multitude of arrows. Through it all, Fu and Yugito flanked Yuurei, and their methods were no less impressive than anything the Otoyon or Mei's rebels put on display.

"My lord! The western flank is being crushed! Two teams of rebels are tearing us apart!" One of the loyalists shouted into a short-range communication device before Sai rose up from the ground in a black pool. With a twitching smirk, the white-skinned teen cut the man's throat out, while the chakra-powered tool in his hand began to speak.

"Is one of them a blond kid?" Zabuza's question echoed, and Sai shivered as he heard the swordsman's voice. Uncertain, he looked at Yuurei, who tore the offending corpse's hand off. Activating the comm-link, his voice carried through it.

"Come and get me, you son of a bitch." Yuurei spoke without fear, confident in his strength.

On the other side of the battlefield, Zabuza abandoned his post, and a deep fog began to exude from his pores. Stalking sideways across the war's conclusive fight, his massive sword drank the blood of friend and foe alike; the veil of his fog rendered all of the body's seven senses worthless, and the heartbeats of his prey would clap like thunder against his solar plexus. With the activation of a half-Ram seal, the murky fog intensified—its radius expanded further, the Kirigakure no Kijin singlemindedly searching for the blond demon who'd driven him to retreat in Nami no Kuni.

"Hey, uh, Yuurei? This might be a bad time, but a long time ago, you said you'd give Matatabi some of the power you gave Shukaku. Could you maybe..." Yugito trailed off, her mismatched eyes locking gazes with Yuurei's.

"I already did. Do you remember the day I tried to modify your seal?" He asked her, but the question was rhetorical; of course she remembered. "Part of what disappeared was laced with that power. That's why the effect was so strong on you. When it disappeared, it should have returned to me, but it didn't. Your demon ate it."

There was a slightly contemptuous look in Yuurei's eyes, but Yugito knew that it wasn't directed at her. In a moment, a wall of fog became visible in the distance, and the younger blond's gaze lit up like firecrackers on the recently-passed new year's day. Sai couldn't help drawing back a step, remembering the last time he'd felt Zabuza's aura, but the flow of time seemed to yawn as Yuurei roared.

"All of you stay out of this! That bastard is mine! Do you hear that, Zabuza? You're mine!" The demon's challenge could be heard across their section of the battlefield, and his bladeless right arm came up across his body. Extending the two fingers that were marked by his oaths with Tayuya and Sakon, he gathered his chakra, and the violent energy was released in a beam that shot into Zabuza's fog.

"Damn. Missed," Yuurei grunted in irritation, watching Zabuza's obscuring fog vanish. The assassin had found his target, so there was little reason to continue hiding, but his eyes narrowed as he took in the sight of the ninja around the blond.

"Hey, Kisame, you're gonna want in on this. They brought their own Jinchuriki...two of them." Zabuza grinned beneath his armor-tape mask, hearing several shouts of disbelief across the high-level command channel.

"Zabuza? Explain yourself, how is it-" Yagura's voice carried across the comm-link, but Zabuza only offered two words to the Yondaime Mizukage.

"Bye, boss," he said, only to launch the device as far behind him as his strength allowed. It was at that moment that Yuurei came within the range of Zabuza's sword, a crystalline sandworm tooth in the demon's left hand.

Deflecting the tooth with the back of his hand, Zabuza registered a deep pain, and couldn't help wincing internally as he saw the deep cut across his dominant hand. Chakra pooled like water to form a temporary bandage, and an incalculable rage filled the burly assassin's expression as he swung the Kubikiribouchou. It was with minimal effort that Yuurei raised his sandworm tooth; Zabuza watched in awe and horror as his mighty blade was sheared into two pieces, and the clean cut on the end of his blade was unlike anything he'd ever seen before. From the cross-section of the sword, a mirror finish could be seen—a testament to the razored, thinner-than-paper edges on the fangs of Terramorphous.

"You never run out of surprises, do you, brat?" Zabuza praised Yuurei, but the bile in his voice was impossible to miss.

"If you can leave this place alive, you can count it as another one," Yuurei growled. Stabbing toward Zabuza's chest, only a sense of impending danger allowed the blond to avoid a scaled sword that seemed to possess enough chakra to rival himself.

"Ah...this one's the demon, isn't it, Zabuza?" The sword's wielder, who seemed to be more shark than man, flashed his pointed fangs in excitement. "Do you mind if I play with him first? It's been so long since I've had a good fight..."

"I'm fighting him!" Yuurei and Zabuza both shouted, and Kisame rolled his eyes.

"Oh, for crying out loud. Fine. Mist, Rain, and I will deal with the trash, and then we're fighting him together." Kisame raised the Samehada onto his shoulder, and a piercing stare made its way over to the eight ninja who stood behind the battle taking place. It was when his eyes met Sai's that a shiver went up the shark-man's spine; he hadn't seen an expression that cold since...

"Oh, father, my father, where art thou?" Sai spoke to himself, in spite of all the people who could hear him.

A pale, milk-white cobra was crawling across his torso, and a thin black grass snake had begun to twist its way around his bare arm. Though Orochimaru's son deeply hated the powers left to him by his father, on a level that no training from Danzo could ever erase, the young commander of Konoha's Ne corps had made peace with his lineage. A piercing yellow color filled his pupils, spreading out to overtake his irises and leaving only a thin vertical slit through which to take in light. Four wicked fangs grew out from Sai's canines, and both snakes raced to slither inside of his opened mouth. Only when they were gone from sight did he dare to speak again.

"You insult my comrades, you threaten my Banchou...you answer to me." A dark void revealed itself beneath Sai's feet, and Kisame twitched into a one-eighty spin to block the tipless tanto that stabbed toward him from behind. When had he teleported? How had he teleported? He hadn't even moved!

Sai was not the first of Orochimaru's successful experiments; not by a long shot. He was neither the strongest, nor the swiftest, nor the most enduring. What he was...was the most ruthless, the most underhanded, and the greatest. Like father, like son. In fathering a child by a Nara woman, and meddling with the Formative Yang stored in his child's unborn body, Orochimaru had inadvertently replicated some abilities from a long-dead race of demons. Sai didn't bother himself with molding something as puny and pitiful as a shadow—he took darkness itself, and shaped it to his will. As he'd aged, his power had only grown.

After killing the man who'd first used a communication device, Sai had made a Kage Bunshin of himself, leaving it in that pocket of nothingness and waiting to utilize it again. Now, that clone had struck. Without another thought, Sai sank down into the ink-black pool beneath him, and rose up on Kisame's right side.

"Orochimaru?" The Samehada's wild wielder asked, trying to put features to a name as he felt a pressure he vaguely recognized.

"His son, unfortunately," Sai complained with no emotion, his blank features betraying nothing. Kisame's mighty sword came across the breadth of Sai's body, but the younger man's tipless tanto stopped the sentient blade in its tracks. Sai looked at Kisame with utter boredom in his eyes, further aggravating the swordsman.

"You know what? Fuck off," Kisame grunted. The Samehada twisted, no longer rigid, and the mouth at the blade's end opened in an attempt to tear through Sai's left side. Leaning back, he lacked the strength to continue holding the Samehada back, and his attempt to dodge was forced into a failure as Kisame extended the range of his swing. Blood sprayed through the mist as Sai's chest was shredded, his tight black vest and undershirt falling in ribbons to reveal the bloody ribs beneath Sai's skin.

"Huh. Pretty sure that kills most people," Kisame said as he cracked his neck. "Props for that, kid! Maybe I'll get to have some fun with you before you-"

"-die?" Yuurei's voice came into Kisame's ear like a whisper, and an earth-shaking pain echoed through his body.

The blond's sandworm tooth cleaved through his left kidney, intestines, and solar plexus. As Kisame turned around, though, Yuurei was clearly fighting Zabuza. But the wound in his body...who could cast a Genjutsu that real? He hadn't noticed anything was wrong until after it had resolved. Off to the side, Tayuya smirked—but that smile wasn't to last. Two magnificent presences were approaching, making an effort to be felt. Their chakra profiles were twisted, at least as imposing as Yugito and Fu. That could only mean one thing, and the Genjutsu specialist didn't like it one bit.

"As disappointed as I am that you went to engage the demon when he had this many high-profile friends...I'm more disappointed that they let you have a fair fight with him." Yagura spoke dismissively.

"Oh, please, you brat. Nobody's getting in the way of this. Even you." Zabuza growled, raw fury guiding his sword as he continued to press Yuurei.

"It's that attitude that makes me wonder why I keep you around, Zabuza. Because, unfortunately, Isobu and I...disagree." The Mizukage took on a green aura, chakra from his Biju filtering into his keirakukei. Three faint tails extended from the back of his chakra cloak, leaving no illusions about the demon sealed inside of him.

"You brought me a puppy?" Yuurei asked with a smirk. "I mean, I guess I can find the time to drown it, but the gift itself says a lot. Thanks, Zabuza."

The tape-masked swordsman didn't know how to respond to that, but the naked contempt in Yuurei's voice had lit a fire in Yagura's heart. Before he could do anything, though, two women stood between the Mizukage and his chosen prey. Two navy blue tails flowed behind Yugito, and seven mint-colored tails twisted in the mist behind Fu. The arrival of another Jinchuriki had been their signal; now Yagura could pick his poison. And then, in the relative quiet of their corner of the battlefield, a horrifying cracking sound came from inside of Sai's ribcage. Out from it, a new body slowly emerged, clothed in darkness and coated in bloody meat.

The young man stood a little taller, with muscles a little stronger, and the look in his eyes was nearly manic. His original body crumbled into blood and dust, and he bared his fangs in a wordless challenge as raw Yin chakra gathered in his hands. Two all-black weapons took shape from the condensed energy—the same ones that had given him his title. Putting fingers in the gaps of the two sai in his hands, Orochimaru's wayward son had taken on a feral appearance worthy of his fearsome father. The Byahebi had been right, speaking to Sai so many years ago.

The first death was the hardest to come to terms with.