Hello again, and welcome back to another episode of "why is Melkor like this?" The jury is out, folks, but I hope this update finds you well & you enjoy the chapter. I basically had it done a few days ago, but I needed to work myself into the final push.
Let's get this trainwreck moving.
In the middling deserts of Kaze no Kuni, days away from Sunagakure and beleaguered by the hot wind rising off the dunes, Jiraiya and Shizune oversaw Sasuke's training. After achieving the first level of the Gogyou Yakimodoshi Ken, Sasuke's physical strength had skyrocketed. In an attempt to polish that power even further, Jiraiya had elected to use the void tunnels he knew about to bring Sasuke to harsh environments. Here, Sasuke could train his new strength as much as he pleased, learning the intricacies of a multi-element technique under duress.
Fire was the strongest of the elements that Sasuke could wield. Whether this was because he had an affinity for Katon techniques, or simply the way that the Five Elements Tempered Sword technique functioned, none of the trio knew. And, while fire was the strongest, the metal element was the sharpest. Together, they formed a layer of chakra around his body that magnified his attacks while providing a painful edge to his defenses. The lightning element was the hardest to control, as its application was entirely different from simply flooding the body with Raiton chakra; sparks ran across his skin, and a harsh buzzing noise could be heard every time he made contact with his latest target made of sand. Water and earth were the two truly defensive elements, with the former allowing him to soften blows while the latter allowed him to endure.
After having practiced with it for the last three weeks, Sasuke was beginning to get the gist of the technique. He'd learned to corral each of the elements and fine-tune their use, and had even managed to meld specific pairs for use together. Three weeks was an extraordinary speed to have made so much progress, but Sasuke wanted more. Time after time, he struck the dune in front of him. In his attempt to draw every last bit of power out of the technique, his savage blows reverberated throughout the landscape, strong enough to make the ground shake beneath Jiraiya's feet...until, at some point, the ground simply kept shaking.
"Sasuke, get back here!" The sage used chakra to increase the volume of his shouting. He considered himself a well-traveled man, and one of the most knowledgeable shinobi alive. He knew what the rumbling beneath the sand represented, but struggled with the concept. A sandworm—Jiraiya hoped it was only one sandworm—living two days' walking distance from Sunagakure? That was absolutely unheard of.
Jiraiya had to put all his thoughts in the back of his mind as an oppressive heat began to overwhelm the nearby air. In the following moments, as horror overtook Shizune's facial features, a tubular behemoth shot out from the ground. Its cavernous maw showcased row after row of endless teeth, and segmented rings of armored flesh pulsated without regard for the rules of natural science. As the towering sandworm roared, those crystalline teeth shifted to point outward, and the air itself caught on fire. The giant beast had been drawn by the vibrations of Sasuke's crude landscaping, and its sense was so keen that it could differentiate his location before he could convene with Jiraiya and Shizune.
Sasuke hadn't been idle, however. Before the monstrous worm even began to appear, Sasuke's hands had sprung into action. In a foolhardy bid to survive the encounter, he'd begun to form the hand seals for the second rank of the Gogyou Yakimodoshi Ken. Sasuke wasn't sure that he'd trained enough to survive the catastrophic baptism that would come down around him, but if the worm was truly after him, then this was the only way he could think of surviving. With both of his Sharingan on display, Sasuke's fierce stare didn't waver; neither did his hands. The sandworm propelled itself further into the sky, rising higher than any building Sasuke had ever seen, before turning to fall directly over the young Uchiha.
Idly, Sasuke noted that the sandworm's bellowing roar had left him deafened. Though his technique's signature five-colored lights had surrounded him, preparing him for the trial to come, he couldn't even hear his own breathing. As the worm descended, clearly intent on devouring Sasuke whole, an almighty peal of thunder seemed to shake the entire sky. Immediately after that thunderclap, which Sasuke felt all the way to his bones, a tower of lightning seemed to materialize from the distant sky.
Jiraiya and Shizune couldn't tear their eyes away from the scene. The pair were familiar with the concept of dry lightning, though the phenomenon was rarely seen by ninja native to Konoha, but both of them was mortified by the column of electricity that had appeared without a cloud above them. Like a war god from ancient times, the lightning descended; in the next moment, a furious explosion resounded as the electric attack abated. The air shimmered with heat before bursting into flames, and wind carried a cloud of sand towards Sasuke's position. Aware of what would come next, Jiraiya began a vain attempt to rush in and save his new protege, but a concussive blast left his back against the sand before he could take a second step.
Sasuke's entire body was overstimulated with pain so severe that he couldn't prevent his muscles from seizing. In every moment of freedom, however, he continued to form one hand seal after another. From somewhere beneath the earth, a faint tremor was the only trace of impending doom before a mass of metal spikes shot through the dunes around and beneath him. Sasuke's flesh was pierced with ease, and his already-frayed nerves were once again submerged in agony. Blood flowed freely down the length of his body, and his mind was completely blank as the sandworm's razor-studded mouth came down around him. The multicolored light of the Five Elements Tempered Sword did its best to protect Sasuke, but his impaled arms and legs were quickly shredded to ribbons by the crystalline teeth of the sandworm. Through it all, the smell of the beast was overpowering—cinnamon, flint, and smoke coalesced into a unique scent that Sasuke would remember for the rest of his life.
As the heat from the worm's furnace-like core quickly saw the Uchiha's blood evaporate, an unexpected scene occurred: the worm's rotund body writhed in extreme pain before it stopped moving, buried part-way into the ground as its armored flesh was torn open and irritated by metal spikes and loose sand. As Sasuke completed the final hand seals for the second level of his technique from within the worm's body, Shizune watched a single storm cloud come into existence before unleashing its contents on the impromptu battlefield before her. Jiraiya, still flat on his back, was none the wiser to this development. As the rain fell with the fury of a hunting hawk, Shizune's already-fragile ears were terrified further by the sandworm's dying screams. Unable to dive further into the desert, and incapable of retreating, the beast was faced with its natural nemesis: pure water.
When she looked back on this scene in her memories, Shizune would recognize symptoms of a human's anaphylactic shock in the worm's response to water. Its armored hide was rapidly expanding and contracting, the same way a human might hyperventilate or experience arrhythmia. The extreme temperature variance between the worm's core and the warm rain made it difficult to move its engorged body; pure water was a deadly toxin for the desert's oldest and most fabled denizens.
Sasuke groaned in exertion while attempting to free himself from the metal spikes that had imprisoned him, careful not to lose any of his extremities to the vicious edges of the dying sandworm's teeth, but his efforts were unnecessary and in vain. At a comically fast rate—or at least, it would have been comedic in less dire circumstances—the beast's flesh and viscera were being eroded by rain. With each concentric ring that was made to disappear, an endless mass of teeth fell around the perimeter of the carcass. Alongside those teeth, falling in clumps and piles, was a sweet-smelling substance that Jiraiya had only heard of in wild tales of fantasy. Forcing himself up to his knees, he saw Sasuke's bloody body surrounded by the legendary sand trout, miniature amoeboid forms of the more evolved sandworm, tried and failed to consume the bloody rainwater that had begun seeping into the sand. Many of them, trapped upon the supernatural metal spikes that Sasuke's technique had summoned, began to die under exposure to the open air.
Writhing in pain, those captive sand trout entered their death throes with abandon. More than one gnashed its teeth at Sasuke, and as one latched onto his dominant left hand, the Uchiha felt its nerves seem to bind with his in death. Its flat body dissolved into nothingness, and Sasuke's hand had become rust-colored in its wake. Explosions resounded throughout the area as multiple sand trout coalesced in the rain-wet desert, hurling blood and an orange substance across the sand. Enduring pain of his own, Sasuke groaned in protest as the metal spikes impaling him vanished; he had successfully achieved the second stage of the Gogyou Yakimodoshi Ken.
Jiraiya struggled to move, but as he stood to his full height, several grains of that orange substance flew into his mouth. As soon as the spice hit his tongue, the Gama Sennin recalled a legend from his childhood about the spice melange—how its great benefits came at a great cost, and how its value was so immense that many clans in Kaze no Kuni had died out in attempts to make their fortune. The few individual grains he'd just swallowed could sell for enough to buy a small house. As if something had clicked in his brain, Jiraiya pulled out one of his larger sealing scrolls before he began filling it with as much of the spice as he could. Shaking off the last of his explosive backlash, he almost couldn't help ignoring Sasuke's pitiful condition as he experienced his first taste of the world's most addictive substance. Instead, it was Shizune who reached out to the heavily-injured teenager, and his blood soaked her robes as she held his stiff body in her lap.
Green chakra flooded out of the brunette's right hand, as her left was busy holding Sasuke's head up, and she paid no mind to Jiraiya's actions. If Tsunade had been with them, she would have teased Shizune about the fervor with which she was attempting to save Sasuke's life, but Shizune had no qualms about her work. Even if he wasn't the Hokage's brother, even if he wasn't someone who had tried to help her in her fruitless search for her master, and even if his condition wasn't this critical, it was still her responsibility as a medic to throw herself headfirst into healing him. The steeled focus in her mind also managed to block out the notion that, if Tsunade were around to tease her, she might have been right.
The day that Sasuke killed a sandworm, and bonded with a sand trout in a freak accident of nature, marked the end of his time on earth as a true flesh-and-blood human—in much the same way that on the day Team Seven had arrived in Nami no Kuni, Naruto had begun his departure from the mortal realm. Echoes of the desert's heat would burn in Sasuke's left hand for all of time, one of many mementos from his journey that served to remind him of why he had followed his own path in the days before the War of Corruption.
In order to stand beside Naruto, and be juxtaposed against the man who had become a demon, it was a preordained necessity that Sasuke would have to be a monster who eclipsed the divine.
Yuurei recognized the anticipatory look on Itachi's face, even if he'd never actually met the Hokage before. It was the expression of a sadistic competitor who believed his victory was assured, gloating to his opponent before the game was over—the look of a predator, savoring his prey. Yuurei stared right back at Itachi, unblinking and uninterested in his mind games; that was when the Genjutsu unfolded. Yuurei paid little attention to the surroundings that morphed around him, only continuing to look deep into Itachi's eyes as his own Sharingan spun lazily in its socket.
The only thing that concerned Yuurei was the fact that this Genjutsu was laced with an unfamiliar youki, something that didn't belong to the Biju or the two pseudo-demons who followed him.
"You're too weak to keep me here," Yuurei mused, continuing to look at "Itachi's" smiling face as a third eye opened on his forehead.
"The influence I can exert is limited but, unlike my host, I enjoy games of skill. So now you know my secret...and I know yours," the Sanjiyan declared.
"You don't know anything," Yuurei countered, his nine oily tails waving in the nonexistent breeze.
"Maybe I don't. Maybe I do. Either way, it's more fun if someone besides my fixer knows that I exist. Don't you think so, Naruto?" As the Sanjiyan said that left-behind name, the illusion ended, and Uchiha Itachi stood with a blank expression on his face inside of the doorway.
"It's nice to meet you in person, lord Hokage," Temari said in greeting. "The Mizukage arrived a little while ago. Perhaps the three of us will be able to meet together tomorrow?"
"Perhaps. I'm not sure how my wife would respond to the idea that I spent time alone with multiple women besides her, though." Itachi cracked a wry smile at his own joke, noticing the meaningful glance that Temari sent in the direction of Yugito and Tayuya.
"She shouldn't have to worry about that," the Kazekage said, giving a small smirk of her own. "Perhaps you could bring your wife, and the Mizukage and I could bring our respective...what's the proper term, suitors? Consorts? Advisors?"
"I'll be sure to ask her," Itachi replied, laughing politely at Temari's words. Sweeping his eyes over the rest of the assembly, the only sign of surprise on his face was a raised eyebrow as he clearly recognized Yugito. Years of public scrutiny and many long months of being away from Kumogakure caused the blonde woman's adrenaline to kick in, and the hairs on the back of her neck rose up with an alarm that was impossible to see.
"Will you be staying long?" Kankuro asked. "Just, uh, in case I should maybe clean up a bit."
"No, no. I just wanted to introduce myself in person now that we've finally arrived—and I wouldn't want to disturb your other guests, either. Especially not when they arrived even later in the day than I did. I hope you have a nice evening," Itachi said. Nodding politely, the Hokage made a half-Ram seal and took his leave in the next moment. Whether that politeness was feigned or not, only he knew.
Yuurei, for his part, was at a loss for ways to express his newfound frustrations—but not at a loss for words.
"He knows who I am," the blond demon stated bluntly. There was a genuine anger in his voice, in spite of the fact that he'd seen this result coming for quite a while; how many people had a Sharingan, and how many people only had one? Yuurei trusted that Sai had kept his secret from Itachi, but no number of tails or inhuman youki could disguise him from people who knew him—or knew of him—in the past.
"He knows who we are," Yugito corrected her master, no less mortified. She had every reason to doubt that the young Hokage would reveal her whereabouts to her uncle—and every reason to believe that Yuurei would raze her homeland to the ground before it might become an issue—but her fears remained. If the Raikage knew her general vicinity, or the areas she would be likely to travel near, then he would stop at nothing to reclaim her for the sake of Kumogakure's military strength. Even though the Nibi was long gone from her body, only a handful of people were aware of that fact, and that wouldn't stop her uncle from attempting to drag her back to his village.
His village, Yugito mused at her internal monologue, uncertain of exactly when she'd stopped seeing herself as a kunoichi of Kumogakure. She still wore its headband, still knew its techniques, and had lived there for her entire life until meeting Yuurei...but she wasn't certain she'd ever felt at home there, or that she'd ever truly belonged. All Yugito knew was that she didn't want to go back, except to see the smoldering ruins that she believed Yuurei would leave behind.
"So kill him then," Tayuya suggested, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Four heads and eight eyes swiveled to stare at the redhead in disbelief, nearly in unison with their judgement.
"You can't be serious," Temari replied.
"Sure I am. He bleeds just like everybody else, doesn't he? Besides, we're already not exactly on great terms with Konoha. Bullshit from last week aside? I worked for Konoha's most wanted criminal, Yugito is at least titled as the princess of the ninja village Konoha hates more than any other, and Yuurei technically went AWOL on them twice. We are not Konoha's friends or allies. I don't give a fuck if he's the Hokage, or an Uchiha, or if he's really just some giant flying pasta monster—if he breathes the same air that we do, and he bleeds like we do, then just going and killing him will never be off the table." Tayuya ended her speech with an emphatic slap of the wall she stood next to.
Temari, Kankuro, and Yugito continued to look at the redhead like she was insane, but Yuurei closed his implanted left eye and gave her an approving nod. Killing the Hokage outright wasn't on his list of priorities or desires, but there was no reason—beyond some bizarre sentimentality towards Sasuke, if that existed—to avoid the subject entirely.
Enemies, like expectations, needed to be managed. The leaders of two hidden villages were his friends and allies, but that didn't mean that he could fight against others with abandon; situations like the destruction of Takigakure were almost universally impossible to create, let alone exploit, and overwhelming power was necessary before any other considerations could be made. Yuurei knew that he was strong, and believed he was stronger than almost anyone, but he wanted to be absolutely ensured of victory before he made his move.
He didn't know where he'd find an opportunity to obtain the strength he sought, but he knew it was coming.
