Hello readers and welcome back to another chapter. Now much to my own annoyance I have been unable to write nearly as much as I would want to seeing as yet again I have a lot of stuff going on in my life…honestly this year has been my craziest one yet. Not to mention that I am already semi nervous about the winter that will eventually be coming back. Needless to say that is due to my car accident but anyways that is not your problem. When I get less busy which will be hopefully by mid-august to September I will be able to plan/do what I want with my stories. Still I am sure you don't really care about my hopes but just want to see results so we will see what happens.
Chapter 57
Naruto stared at Kakuzu and his creatures making sure not to let them leave his sight while still holding onto Ino. "So this is another member of the Akatsuki…great each one of these guys has to be freaks." Naruto couldn't help but think looking at the stich/mask and the stich/man combo in front of him. He also remembered Kisame and the fact that the man was basically a mutated fish. Still he pushed that thought from his mind and focused on the battle at hand.
"Um, Naruto-kun can you put me down?" Ino asked her boyfriend awkwardly. For while she was glad he was here to help and was one of the people that saved her; they still needed to be completely focused on the battle. Something that she couldn't help with stuck in Naruto's arms.
"Oh, sorry" Naruto told the girl a bit embarrassed that he forgot he was holding her.
"Heh, well what do you know this time waste actually will end up benefiting me." Kakuzu said happily. Through letting a team escape them it not only came back with another bounty to collect but also pulled the jinchuriki out of the village and right into his open arms. "Heh, if this luck continues to go on I might just have to think of the land of fire as one of my favorite places to work." Kakuzu thought seeing as the time waste ended up being a huge time savor for him. With that in mind his masks quickly attacked the ninja with their wires. Said ninja quickly spread out in the process of dodging the attacks while Kakuzu simply watched from afar.
"Damn these things are annoying." Naruto complained about the masks seeing as if he quickly was learning why they had so much trouble with them. If you got close to them they would send out strands of the wire like material at you and would send out a few jutsu. Finally, if they managed to get you in range in-between them then they would send wires at you from nearly all directions. A fact that Yamato found out as he was forced to create a partial wood dome around himself as at least a dozen wires tried to pierce into him.
"Tell me about it." Ino grumbled wanting the monsters to die already.
"Focus you two." Yamato scolded his younger teammates partially annoyed that they would let themselves get even a bit unfocused while facing an S class threat. He them jumped out from behind his dome before he could be attacked again.
"We need a way to kill these thing and focus on Kakuzu…right now all he is doing is letting these things tire us out before he gets involved." Kakashi thinks while rolling to avoid a wires that to pierce through his head and chest. "But how? From what I can see they have no real body so hitting a vital point is impossible but there has to be a way." Kakashi thought before having a quick flash back to watching the first mask come out shattered and soon fall apart. He then formulated a plan off of the idea this memory gave him.
Kakashi then ran at one of the masks head on and quickly was blocked by a large fire ball coming at him. A blast that he easily dodged and changed his target to the other mask while going through several had signs.
"Katon: Fire dragon Jutsu" Kakashi quickly called out launching a massive fire dragon at the mask that in turn had to fire a large blast of water to negate the attack creating a large amount of mist to yet again cover the field. While this covered his tracks Kakashi quickly jumped towards Naruto and whispered a plan to said blond who smiled. Their focus though quickly turned back to the fight as the mist was cleared from a gust of wind.
"Tsk, would you stop wasting my time." Kakuzu told them annoyed seeing as his plan of getting them to exhaust themselves was taking too long in his opinion. Not to mention they seemed to be doing little more than just playing around with his masks attack patterns. "I should speed this battle up, after all time is money…but first." Kakuzu thought mentally commanding his water mask to come to him and re-enter his body. He then let out the air mask that quickly combined with the fire mask to create a double headed creature. Thus ending his annoyance with the Kakashi creating steam to hide.
After which he quickly ran at said ninja and quickly began a taijutsu match. Keeping Kakashi occupied simply by the fact that he had to focus on keeping his limbs enhanced with chakra simply to keep up with Kakuzu's superior strength. Still while this was going on Naruto quickly created a few hundred clones to keep the monster distracted while he regrouped with Yamato and Ino to let them in on Kakashi's idea. Soon enough they all nodded to each other and put their focus mainly on the beast trusting Kakashi to keep Kakuzu busy while they hopefully took care of one of their enemies.
They all then ran at the combined masks that was now about done with killing the clones that only rushed at it with weapons rather than jutsu. Ino started off the attack by launching a quick blast of water which the dodged simply by bending to the side Naruto then rushed at the beast and tried his best to slice the creature with wind enhanced kunai keeping the creature on the move. Naruto's reckless charge lasted for about a minute until several beams of wood wrapped around the beast tight enough to make it not be able to slip out.
"Now!" Ino called out and Naruto quickly jumped high into the air coming down with the intention of stabbing one of the masks directly in its forehead. Sadly just as he was coming in close both masks opened up and began to gather chakra to their mouth.
"Shit!" Naruto said and quickly tried to mold his chakra into a shield knowing there was no chance of him escaping this blast. Seconds later a large fire storm was launched from the masks due to the wind and fire combining their jutsus. A blast that was large enough to tear a trench and forced Ino and Yamato to dive to either side as far as they could to dodge the main attack but still could feel the intense heat from the fire.
"Naruto-kun!" Ino called out in worry only to sigh out in relief when she saw him after the flames died down. He was still standing thankfully but clearly had pretty severe burns on his arms that shielded he shielded himself with.
"Damn that hurts." Naruto mumbled out looking at the second and third degree burns his arms had from taking the brunt of the attack after his shield failed. Thankfully the rest of him was relatively fine thanks to this. Still, he tried his best to ignore the pain and focus on the beast knowing that the Kyuubi will eventually heal the burns. "Well that didn't work. On to plan B." Naruto told Ino and Yamato after jumped away from the now free creature.
"Have any ideas then?" Yamato asked open for suggestions.
"Only a crazy one." Naruto told them with his prankster smirk on. He then summoned a dozen clones that rushed towards the beast but stayed several feet from it. "Ino-chan can you mess the ground up underneath this bastard?" Naruto asked the girl who nodded and quickly went through several hand seals before slamming her hands on the ground. Soon enough a large amount of the land around her turned to a mud like material causing the creature to sink down a bit.
"Now Yamato-sensei, create a dome around it." Naruto told the man who looked confused.
"He just showed that he can burn it down in moment-"
"Just do it please!" Naruto told the man who sighed and quickly created a solid dome around the wire creature. Naruto smiled at this and turned his focus completely on the dome.
"Now let's take a page from those puppeteers while this bastard can't see us." Naurto muttered before creating three chakra chains with wind chakra enhancing their tips. He then launched them all at the dome piercing through it easily. Meanwhile the rest of his clones quickly did the same thing making the sphere end up with dozens of chains with no real design.
After the attacks landed, they all stood still for a moment with the only noises coming from Kakashi who still was keeping Kakuzu occupied and Naruto's chains swaying in the wind. Eventually Yamato had enough of not knowing if the combination attacked worked and removed his dome to show the creature. Said creature was still standing with most of the chains pierced through its 'flesh'. It was simply standing there before all of a sudden the masks focused on Naruto.
"Bastards." Kakuzu growled out after forcing Kakashi to jump away from him. "These damn brats managed to kill my hearts! Well I better make the last bit of chakra they have count." Kakuzu thought willing the creature to focus completely on Naruto. The masks then launched another blast though this time not only was it more focused but were now blue, almost white speeding towards the real Naruto who could only watch as the blast came at him with his focus on the chains making him stay still for seconds he did not have.
"No!" Ino screamed out and without thinking ran at Naruto as fast as she could before slamming into him as hard as she could. Hitting him enough to get them both out of the blasts range with only a good portion of the girl's pony tail being burnt to nothingness.
"Whoa, never saw you move that fast." Naruto told the girl who landed on top of him causing her to blush a bit out of embarrassment. He then gave her a large smile. "Thank you my hero." He told her teasingly making her blush a bit more. Still they both knew they couldn't stay distracted and instead focused back on the battle; only for them to see the masking had refocused on them. "Shit" Ino muttered out.
"No you don't!" Yamato called out throwing two kunai at the creature that was not focused enough on him to even see them coming. Thanks to this each kunai managed to land directly in the masks forehead. Unfortunately for the creature each of the kunai had seals on them that quickly began to burn before finally exploding breaking the masks completely. They all then watched as the beast quickly lost its 'life' and turned into a large pile of the wires it was made of. Still they didn't look long before turning their focus solely Kakuzu who was looking at all of them finally past his calm demeanor and was now furious with them.
Said man quickly killed all of the clones that were around where the creature once stood before standing on the pile of threads. "It is time to end this stupidity." He told them all before mumbling "Earth grudge fear" that quickly forced his chakra through the extra thread turning himself into what could only be called a monster. (Look him up/watch anime…its what he looks like minus the masks connected)
"W-what the hell?" Ino asked terrified by the man's new look. Course they didn't get to look for long before he began attacking them by basically launching the large amount of thread around him all around the field.
"Naruto you know NOW would be the perfect time for that new jutsu." Yamato told Naruto not having any true idea how to face this jutsu.
"R-right." Naruto muttered creating three clones close to him. Two of which that created a shield around him and the other clone. He then quickly created a rasengan that the last clone quickly began to condense wind chakra into the orb. Though finally after a while of prepping the attack his clones quickly dispelled leaving Naruto with the attack that was making so much noise that everyone focused on the attack. Still Naruto paid no mind to this and quickly ran at Kakuzu with the attack. Sadly though he easily dodged by picking himself up into the air with the wires while slamming another at Naruto's back hard enough to launch him into a tree instead while thankfully not puncturing through his body. Due to this Naruto's attack ended up hitting the remains of the few trees he slammed into causing them to be cut to shreds.
"Whatever that attack is…I can not let it touch me." Kakuzu though firmly seeing the devastation created. A blast he had little doubt that would even end him.
"Okay…let's try this again" Naruto mumbles before creating several more clones.
"I won't let you." Kakuzu growled out only to be stopped by being hit by a fire and earth ball slamming into his appendages.
"Get ready Naruto we will protect you." Kakashi told him firmly knowing that his attack surely would be the closest thing to a one hit they had.
(that is until the anime makes him be able to pop them off like candy…and almost always not do much with it or miss ((sorry had to have a mini rant)))
So, for the next few minutes that was the new battle. The rest of the team trying their hardest to both force Kakuzu keep his attention away from the blond and from attacking his quickly created shield. Finally though Naruto had the next one finished and dismissed the clones helping and protecting him while keep the rest of them.
"Ok let's go." Naruto ordered the group that all attacked Kakuzu at once who quickly worked on demolishing the clones until Naruto came into closer range. He then threw several attacks at the blond who dodged the attacks only to find them come from behind and pierce through his body making his eyes widen.
"Naruto-kun!" Ino called out in horror watching her boyfriend die only to watch seconds later as his body poofed away in smoke showing he was nothing but a shadow clone.
"What!?" Kakuzu muttered surprised and quickly tried to find the real blond only to notice that he was already too close to him. "So he made a clone have the attack in front of him take my focus enough that I didn't even notice that the brunt of that crazy noise was behind me rather than with the attack." Kakuzu thought cursing his stupid mistake. Course he didn't have long to think about this before his mind focused on the pain that the attack gave him.
"Wind release: Rasenshuriken" Naruto called out before slamming into the man's back. He then watched as the ball seemed to detach from needing him to instead push Kakuzu several yards away. The attack then created a crater while somehow at the same time kept Kakuzu up in the air getting his by a large amount of what appeared to be tiny white blades. Still Naruto didn't have time to feel proud due to soon finding the pain that his first attack caused increased by a drastic amount. "So, I guess if I keep my focus on condensing the attack all the way until they make contact they are not only a lot stronger but also cause a lot more whiplash." Naruto thought before looking over at Ino. He quickly pulled out a pack of bandages and quickly wrapped his injured arm.
"That's truly amazing. Even I can't count how many attacks have hit him." Kakashi thought seeing as even his 'special' eye couldn't keep track of the hits. Still soon enough Kakuzu fell to the ground and laid there.
Yamato then quickly jumped into the crater and let himself slide down to the man and quickly placed his fingers on his neck confirming that the man was indeed dead.
"Yatta you did it!" Ino cheered with a large smile before a strand of hair made its way in front of her eyes. "Ahh! W-what happened!" Ino thought horrified. For now that the battle was over she could alloy her more 'girly' side to come out. With this in mind she quickly pulled out a mirror and looked at the back of her head and let out another blood curdling scream.
"Don't worry Ino-chan it will grow back. Besides you look just as beautiful with short hair." Naruto told her before giving her a loving kiss.
*ahem* "As much as I would love to watch young love please remember that we are still missing people." Kakashi told them making the both blush heavily out of the fact that let the battle go to their head so much that they forgot their friends.
"Don't worry we finished the job." Shikamaru told them with a cigarette in his mouth as he walked into the clearing. Behind him was the rest of the team including Sakura who looked like she was desperately fighting back the desire to either hit the young genius to at least remove the cigarette from him…forcefully.
_Shikamaru's team_
After forcing Hidan to run away with him Shikamaru quickly let the man go after reaching another open field.
"Che, finally deciding to grow some balls?" Hidan asked clearly annoyed. Though instead of responding right away Shikamaru pulled out his sensei's signature blades.
"No, I just have his revenge all planed out." He told him seriously.
"HAHAHA you honestly think a weak fucker like you can 'repay' that bitch? He was a sacrifice and soon enough you and the rest of your village will be as well." Hidan told him with a crazed smile that only made Shikamaru grip his weapons harder. He then glanced over at Choji who just reached him.
"My plans are marked with our regular way. Don't get too close to them and for the love of kami do not let this bastard get your blood." Shikamaru ordered his friend who nodded and then they both attacked the man. The them spent their time trying to injure the man in any way possible while Hidan somehow kept from getting hit too badly while keeping his crazed attacks going.
They kept this going as they all moved all around the field until Shikamaru eventually used his shadow a small bit to push Hidan off his stance to stumble. As he did this Choji slammed an enlarged fist into the man forcing him to slide close to a tree. A tree that soon glowed as several explosive seals on it went off blowing up the crazed man.
"Ah, damn you fuckers!" Hidan growled at them with his limbs still fully attached thought he now had several burns and cuts on his body.
"How is this even possible." Choji muttered.
Course before their basic battle could begin again they all turned their attention to the forest behind them where Sai and Sakura quickly came out of.
"So, I take it that team 7 is our reinforcements then?" Shikamaru asked even though he knew the answer.
"Yup, don't worry we will kick this bastards ass into the ground." Sakura told him confidently while clenching her fist in front of her face.
"….right" Shikamaru muttered to busy changing his plans to fit his newest teammates. "So, Choji and Sai do you think you will be able to keep this psychopath occupied?" Shikamaru asked the two who nodded to the man. "Ok, Sakura you are with me." He added before walking away with her.
"Oy, where do you fuckers think you are going?" Hidan asked annoyed and began running at them only to be hit into a tree by a large fist. Meanwhile Sai was sitting on the ground a ways a way drawing as fast as he could.
"Damn you!" Hidan yelled at Choji seeing as even for him this fight was getting old. Sadly before he could do anything else he had four ink lions surrounding him. "Mother fucker!" Hidan called out annoyed that he was being kept form sacrificing for so long without even beginning able to cut anything up. "Rahh!" he growled and began to swing at the ink beast wanting to get through the distractions as soon as possible.
Meanwhile Shikamaru and Sakura were talking in the forest just a minute or two from the main fight.
"So why exactly are we walking away from the fight? I thought you wanted revenge." Sakura asked Shikamaru questioning if the rage he was feeling was making the guy dumber for some reason.
"Oh trust me I will be get my revenge. We just need to set up a way to 'finish' off an immortal." Shikamaru told her coldly. "Now do you know any earth jutsus to create a hole here as deep as possible?" He asked the girl who smirked.
"I think I can do a bit better." Sakura told him with a smirk before slamming her fist into the ground creating a rather large crater. She then repeated this process several times forcing the dirt underneath her to either move to the side or get compacted meters at a time. Meanwhile Shikamaru just stood their shocked as she did this.
"And people wonder why the Nara men fear forceful women. They may look good but the stronger the women is the scarier they are. Not to mention that a lot of the stronger ones have a hit first mentality….we fear women not because we act stupid. It is because we are smart enough to know just how much damage they really could cause us if they wanted." Shikamaru thought with a shiver of fear.
"Hey is this deep enough?" Sakura asked from the newly created hole.
"Um…yea. Now I guess we work on the next step." Shikamaru tells her pulling out a large spool of ninja wire much to the girl's confusion. Still she shrugged and just went with it assuming that just like always; Nara's always have a plan.
+about 15 minutes later+
"Okay we are finally ready." Shikamaru told her whipping some sweat off his brow.
"Finally. Now let's go fight that bastard." Sakura told him only to see him shake his head.
"If you don't mind this will be something I wish to do myself…don't worry you guys can keep an eye on the fight and help if it is needed. " Shikamaru told her hoping she would understand.
*sigh* "Damn men and their machismo. Fine I will let the others know. Just don't die on us." Sakura told him completely serious. With being decided they both quickly joined their team again with Sakura grabbing onto both of the backs of their shirts and jumped away from the fight much to their utter surprise.
"Oh what the fuck is going on NOW?" Hidan asked with rage clear in his eyes. "These fuckers have kept this fight going on for so damn long and I haven't even gotten to cut off a limb yet…I am not gonna just sacrifice these bitches but will make sure to hunt down EACH and EVERY one of their families to kill for revenge." Hidan thought seeing as unlike with most of his fights he was not having fun at all.
"Don't worry I promise you that this will truly be the last time you have to fight me." Shikamaru told him coldly. He then swung his kunai at Hidan who quickly blocked it with his scythe. He then slowly both pushed and retreated from Hidan until the man was finally standing just in front of where Sakura created her hole. A fact that remained unknown to the man due to it being covered by a semi sturdy cover they placed over it. "Finally." Shikamaru muttered before charging at the man recklessly.
"Heh you finally fucked up." Hidan told him with a large smile as he pushed the kunai away from his body with a quick push from his weapons pole before bringing his scythe down and cutting into Shikamaru's shoulder making him grab his bloody shoulder.
"Shikamaru!" Choji called out scared that he would lose yet another member of his team to this bastard. They all then charged at him.
"No stay back!" Shikamaru yelled at them as Hidan quickly licked the blood from his blade and jumped back to get away from anyone that could stop his ritual.
"Heh, now come on fuckers let's get the sacrifice finally started." Hidan told them with a smile as his skin quickly became black. Course instead of looking worried Shikamaru just smirked at the man and through a basic kunai at his feet with an obvious explosive seal.
"Yes, let's end this." He told the man with a smirk as they both waited the seconds until the explosion with a smile on their faces. And after the few seconds past a massive explosion covered Hidan in dust. A problem that Sai quickly fixed by using a minor wind jutsu showing that the man fell down into Sakura's hole.
"H-how?" Choji asked looking at his best friend who was perfectly fine. Course he just ignored the question and walked to the edge of the hole with the rest of the group shrugging and coming to it soon after.
"Hahahaha how'd that feel!?" Hidan called out from down in the hole with both of his legs blown off from the blast.
"Pretty damn good." Shikamaru told the man honestly shocking the immortal.
"What? How the fuck are you fine!" He asked enraged yet again.
"Simple. You just managed to harm one of our prisoners who was scheduled to be killed today." Shikamaru told him with a smirk before pulling out a pack of blood from where it was attached to his shoulder. "Which I don't know." He added seeing as he bribed Anko for several different bags to have a better chance of him hitting the bag rather than his body. "But you don't need to worry about that." He told him before turning to Sakura.
"Would you mind making him unable to use his arms?" He asked the girl handing her a pack of needles. Which she quickly pulled a few out and launched them at each of his shoulders.
"Ah, fuck you bitch!" Hidan yelled at the girl who clearly didn't care in the slightest. Meanwhile Shikamaru pulled out more kunai with these having wire attached to their loops. He then began throwing them all around the hole creating a spider web of wires before pulling out a cigarette and Asuma's lighter.
"I am so sorry about that but don't worry you won't have to worry for long." Shikamaru told him with his cold eyes never leaving Hidan's own madness filled eyes. "For after meeting you I had to ponder long and hard at one of the hardest questions I have ever found. 'how to kill an immortal.' And you know I never really found an answer I was happy with. That was until I thought about just removing you from this earth completely and then the answer was quite clear." Shikamaru explained making everyone notice the wires were covered with explosive seals. "With the slightest action to kick start it this hole with turn into a fiery pit and end up burying you under a few tons of earth for the rest of your seemingly immortal life. Now just so you know…" Shikamaru told him before lighting the lighter and quickly starting his cigarette. "In the end a piece of Asuma was the one to defeat you." He ended letting the lighter fall from his hands before turning and walking away from the hole as the rest of the group fled from the blast radius. Meanwhile Hidan could only watch as the lighter slowly fell towards one of the seals that ended up on the ground.
"FUCK!" Hidan called out before he was engulfed in the blast.
"Rest in Peace sensei." Shikamaru thought taking a long drag from his cigarette not even bothering to look back at the large cloud that was created just behind him.
+Present+
"Heh, you know Ino if you wanted to copy my I could have helped you instead of trying a fire-" Sakura began before feeling enough KI focused on her that it made her almost see her own death, something that hadn't happened in years.
"Shut up forehead and none of you EVER talk about this." Ino ordered the group who quickly nodded their heads terrified of the girl's sudden blast of KI.
Hey readers and this will be the end of this chapter for me. Now while I know that some may think Hidan's part was lacking know that other than kind of getting it like his regular fight I didn't have too much of an idea of how to make it a 'group' thing. Not to mention I sadly had to enter the hospital yet again this week (that I posted this) and it was going to be the week where I typed up the last bit of this. Sadly due to this most of my time was ate up…basically my luck with health stuff SUCKS. But on the bright (not really) side I have a lot of time on my hands while I heal seeing as I can't do much of what I like. (exercise, karate, work, life, ect.) Anyways enough of my misery. Ja Ne.