Daze Pt 2
Ch 22 - Heading home
A/N: Sorry for the long delay, due to issues with my former internet provider I've been unable to write for the last couples month.
Hope this chapter makes up for it.
Thank you to all the love and new readers I've received in my time away.
I appreciate all of you more than you know.
X X
Anko's eyes opened to the torch-lit terracotta walls and she knew what had happened.
She turned her head and saw the struggling form of Tayuya, chained to the wall by her arms just as Anko was.
Anko arched her neck extending her shoulder to an uncomfortable extent so she could bite her extended forefinger.
'Summoning jutsu!'
A series of multicolor snakes slithered from beneath the cuffs hissing and whipping their tongues acidic spit shot from their jaws encasing the cuffs.
They eroded quickly, Anko burst forth using her strength to rip her wrists from their steel vise grip.
She looked around the room and noticed a set of empty cuffs on the wall where a third figure must have previously been.
'Where's Naruto?'
Anko groaned clutching her leg which buckled at the newly applied weight causing her to fall to the floor.
She saw a dark nasty bruise and a twisted bone bulged underneath her skin
'Shit, broken.'
Ignoring the searing pain she climbed up unfolding a bobby pin hidden in her hair and went to work on the bindings which held Tayuya.
Tayuya massaged her sore wrists helping the woman to a shaky assisted standing.
Tayuya chuckled.
"Those things are handy, remind me to keep a couple on me if we get out of this."
"Sure thing gaki."
"Kukuku, Naruto-kun such a stubborn little brat,"
The man sighed dramatically clutching his face in his palm.
"-why can't you just be a good boy and tell me what I want to know."
"Aaagh!"
Naruto gritted his teeth in pain, the kunai in his knee scraped deeper putting a painful pressure beneath his growth plate.
"I'm not telling you a damn thing."
Naruto spat on the man's black sandaled foot digging his knuckles into his side in an effort to focus the pain.
The Sanin huffed in annoyance smacking the boy with a closed palm.
Naruto's neck was jerked as his head was knocked hard to the side, his cheek folded under the man's strike.
"That wasn't polite Naruto-kun if you can't show a shred of civility I'll be forced to punish you."
A line of sweat rolled down the blonde's brow, blood filled his mouth, and his chest rose and fell with his twitching fingers.
Naruto spit the blood onto the floor speaking with a defeated tone his chained wrists fell to his sides.
"I'm not gonna play your games Snake-teme put that kunai to my neck and let's get this over with."
"Kukuku Naruto do you really think I brought you here to kill you, no gaki, a healthy male Uzumaki is a valuable specimen."
A thin extremely long spindly serpent with black scales and milky eyes slithered from within the man's shirt collar.
"You get to sample a special mixture Kabuto and I whipped up to keep stubborn guests like you nice and docile."
Naruto struggled futilly with the bindings on his wrists trying to chew through them with pure willpower.
"It's pointless Naruto give up the fight my little friend here will release you of your burden."
The snake crept down the man's arm onto Naruto's chest, snaking its way down his body it coiled itself around his leg and sunk its teeth into his calf.
Naruto recoiled with shock at the initial bite and a moment later he slumped back in the chair he was bound to, his eyes vacant.
"It's alright Naruto from this point on you will serve well as the progenitor of a new Uzumaki clan tailor made to serve my experiments."
The man's snake tongue lapped his lips.
Back with Tayuya and Anko things were slow going as the handicapped Anko had to be assisted by Tayuya.
They heard a series of familiar shrieking sounds and saw two shark men leaving a room at the end of a hallway.
From inside the room a series of technological sounds, loud bubbling, and rushing water could be heard.
"200 Ryo says that's the lab."
"Should we avoid it?"
Anko shook her head.
"If that's the source of our fishy foes then we need to do what we can to ensure nothing else comes out of there."
Tayuya nodded in understanding, pulling a stainless steel flute from her hip holster.
"Let's get in there and fuck shit up."
Orochimaru cut the unconscious boy loose from his bindings carrying his slumped figure into a more spacious room bare of all but torches.
He set the boy down on the floor and turned to the room's entrance when a glint alerted him to the presence next to him.
With a growl he snapped his head around a serpent lunging forth from his throat and wrapping itself around the wrist of a kunai brandishing hand.
"Kukuku Tayuya-chan you've improved much since we last met."
"Urgh let me go you snake bastard!"
"Now now, is that anyway to talk to your former employer?"
Orochimaru gave her a second glance and rolled his eyes.
"Really Tayuya, a clone do you think that little of me?"
He chopped his arm at the girl's head and it flew off with a resounding thwack, the body collapsing into mud.
Tayuya felt her clone dissipate and traced the feeling to a chamber across the compound.
"Found the snake he's in a chamber 2 klicks southeast of here."
Anko nodded.
"We'll deal with him once things here are under control.."
The duo of Kunoichi stepped quietly into the lab taking point at either side of the entrance and hiding behind large glass tubes of glowing blue liquid.
A familiar younger man coughed roughly clutching his chest with his hand.
"Damn that gaki, ever since he hit me with that earth style my respiratory system has been…"
The man turned his head mid sentence.
"I'm a sensory type so you can just save us all the trouble and come out."
'Damn that Kabuto what a pain in the ass.'
Tayuya jumped out from cover, kunai in hand, and faced the man.
"Ah Tayuya, my favorite traitorous cockroach."
"Speak for yourself shit-for-brains at least I'm not Orochimaru's butt puppet."
Kabuto's eye twitched but he kept his composure.
"Well here you are, do you plan to kill me?"
"Tempting, but I think I'll let Anko handle you once we've brought you back to the village."
"Where is Anko by the by, I sensed her with you but it seems her presence has vanished."
A plume of smoke and a pop were followed by a loud crash as a large snake half the size of the room crashed into the tubes shattering them.
The shark men within began to awaken from the commotion only to be swallowed by the orange and black serpent.
"Well done Yoba."
Anko stood shakiy atop the snakes back.
Kabuto raised his hands to mime surrender as the kunoichi and snake summon surrounded him from all angles.
Anko held her kunai to Kabuto's throat and smirked.
"Tayuya go ahead and help Naruto, I've got things handled here."
The girl looked concerned but nodded in agreement leaving the room with a hurried step.
Anko made a handseal and a two headed flesh colored snake grew from her arm either head placing it's jaws by Kabuto's wrist and her own.
The snake's flesh burrowed into Kabuto's arm much the same as it had burrowed out of Anko's.
"Snake Kinjutsu: Twin serpent death pact!"
Kabuto began to sweat even as the massive serpent behind her vanished and a series of heavy footsteps stormed the room.
"If you move my snakes will pierce us with their fangs, we're connected now, we'll both die within seconds, but if you're feeling brave go ahead."
The light reflected off his glasses hiding his true emotions, but a line of sweat graced his brow.
The shark-like men hesitated screeching in confused discomfort but the lone female looked to him for orders.
"Hold for now, if she isn't bluffing I can't afford to die here and cripple Orochimaru's research."
The woman nodded, rezipping her bodysuit as the spikes retreated.
Tayuya ran full speed through the hall, the compound a blur slipping by her.
Arriving at the target room she burst through the door and saw Naruto unconscious on the floor.
Orochimaru smiled sinisterly at her.
"Ah Tayuya, for real this time no less."
The blonde figure on the floor rose shakily to his feet.
"W-where am I?"
Tayuya looked at him with a mix of relief and annoyance.
"Come on, get up Naruto!"
Orochimaru looked at the boy with a tinge of surprise.
"You truly possess the vitality of the Uzumaki clan to think you'd awake so suddenly."
Naruto gazed at his hands in a daze trying to process the words he was hearing.
"Naruto… Uzumaki?"
He felt the roll of nausea take him, his skin a sicken yellow.
"Yes, come on dickless, don't tell me you can't remember your own name?"
He looked at the red-haired girl, her soft lips and crimson locks pulled familiarity from deep within his mind.
"T-Tayuya?"
His throat croaked with cracked numbness.
"So you do remember."
He grabbed his head in pain, his azure eyes flickered with confusion.
Tayuya's face twitched with surprise before she resumed a serious visage stepping behind him.
'I get it Naruto.'
"I-I think I do, what's happening, where is Itachi?"
"Kukuku Naruto-kun where did all your earlier fire go, to see you reduced to such a state; it brings a tear to my eye."
Orochimaru's grin widened, stretching his lips unnaturally.
"All those years I hunted you, and you came running right to me, did you really think you would win just because you have Itachi's eyes?"
The snake licked his lips, his green serpentine eyes piercing through the blonde boy's own onyx.
"O- Orochimaru?"
The man's eyes gleamed like a snake with a freshly caught bird.
"You remember me, good Naruto-kun it'd be a shame if you forgot that much, after all our time together."
Naruto put a shaky hand to his chest subtly feeling the edge of his pocket touch his outermost finger.
"I-I don't remember, but, I recall Sasori told me if I ever saw you there was something I had to do."
Orochimaru sneered his eyes gazing greedily at the boy's onyx pupils.
"And what would that be, pray tell."
Naruto bumped Tayuya with his shoulder and she stepped back a few steps.
In a fleeting moment he vanished with speed unmatched since the time of the Yondaime.
Orochimaru felt his body pressed into the wall with incredible strength and ferocity, his arms crushed in place to prevent hand signs.
He gazed at Naruto's finger move with crimson reflection in his ring before a blade was upon his throat.
"-He said to kill you on sight!"
The scarlet splatter painted the wall crimson.
Orochimaru's eyes were open with shock.
"How can this be?!"
A mist of blood fountained forth from his pain-pursed lips.
"That poison should've ravaged your brain's memory and knowledge receptors!"
Naruto chuckled.
"Well then it's a good thing none of it got into my body isn't it."
He slammed his hand into the wall and a sealing matrix appeared from his fingertips.
A human puppet popped from within with long blonde hair and vacant eyes it fell to the floor with a clatter.
Orochimaru glanced at the pronounced bite marks on it's leg.
"A fake, a substitution?"
"Puppet animation jutsu."
Naruto moved his fingers, the puppet's arm ejected with a pop and a scroll shot from the emptied socket into Naruto's opened palm.
The ink from the scroll soaked into Naruto's forearm and began to spread into the chest of the restrained Sanin.
All the flesh the ink came into contact with began to darken and wither eventually crumbling into a substance that was neither ash nor dust.
"Sasori that bastard, even now he vexes me!"
Orochimaru growled, snapping his head toward the opened door.
"Kabuto summon the snake guard!"
Tayuya snorted her brown eyes glinting.
"Four eyes isn't gonna be doing anything while Anko has him."
Orochimaru groaned between spurts of blood from his torn neck.
His chest was rapidly subsumed by consuming darkness.
"If you think this is enough to take me down,"
The man's chest and throat began to bulge unnaturally and his shoulder tore open a white basilisk burst forth.
"-you're kidding yourself!"
Naruto looked at the large human-headed serpent in disgust.
"So this is your true form, you're even uglier than I thought."
Naruto put his thumb and forefinger to his lip, dropping the scroll to the floor.
"Tayuya, get out of here, now."
The crimson-haired girl opened her mouth to protest.
"I just got here I won't leave you!"
"Go now!"
A side-glance of crimson light sent her back a few steps and she turned to run sensing the immense chakra pouring forth.
"You're not the true Uchiha I've desired but with Itachi's eyes your body should prove more than sufficient!"
The pale serpent lunged only to be sent flying by a sudden shockwave as raw force ripped through the walls.
The sickly yellow of the torches' light was replaced by the crimson glow of an astral figure.
It's skeletal form was wrapped unevenly in half formed muscle tissue and bits of skin.
A ragged cloak covered half of it as it seemed to struggle to fully apparate.
Naruto stumbled forward, his hand clutching his eye as bloody tears cascaded down his cheeks.
"Is this, it can't be- Susanoo?!"
Naruto raised his hand and the figure emanated forth a blade and shield.
"It's over Orochimaru."
"The Tostuka blade... so Itachi hid that from me as well, damn him!"
Naruto mimed a piercing motion and the astral figure brought the blade crashing into the ground where the snake was located.
Orochimaru burrowed into the ground diving deep within in an attempt to avoid the sealing blade.
Naruto growled with effort pushing all his remaining chakra to his eyes.
The cloaked Susanoo fully formed but the exertion dropped him to his knees.
The blade extended as the Susanoo finished forming, the burrow expanded with a glow of burning light.
Serpentine shrieks of the snakeman were heard within as he spat.
"Damn you Itachi, Damn youuu!"
Naruto watched exhausted as pale flesh was absorbed like melting wax into the blade.
The moment it subsided the Susanoo shattered and Naruto fell to the ground.
Despite what he felt was his life force slipping, he could only smirk in victory at the snake man's long waited demise.
"Good riddance."
In the lab the shark men began to screech as their DNA disassembled.
With the presence of Orochimaru's curse chakra no longer there to hold them together they melted into puddles of genetic material.
The lone female of the group fell to her knees grabbing her head in agony as her skin lightened.
Anko sighed a breath of relief clutching her kunai.
Kabuto's eyes widened in shock as he saw his experiments collapse into ruin.
"Orochimaru-sama, for his chakra to vanish like this he must've... but how?!"
"So the old snake finally met his match; never thought I'd see the day."
Anko smirked closed-eye smiling in a way reminiscent of her other half.
Tayuya burst into the lab with chakra coating her hands.
"Anko you good?"
The purple haired woman nodded, with a seal her snakes retreated and she knocked the shocked man to the ground at her feet with a punch.
She pulled ninja wire from her pouch and tied him with sealing tags.
"Four eyes here is nice and tied up and all the fish just painted the floor, you must've felt it too."
Tayuya stared at her rapidly fading curse mark in shock.
"You mean?"
The older woman nodded.
"He's finally been sent to the here-after."
Tayuya smiled a shit-eating grin.
In a moment of unrestrained giddiness she let out an uncharacteristically girly squee of joy.
"Kami you beautiful fucker you, I take back all that shit I said back on the island you are a just god."
Anko smiled subtly.
"I hate to cut our celebrations short but we need to go find Naruto,"
The woman's hand glew with unsteady green chakra and she put a palm on her leg pushing hard.
It made a sickening pop as the bone realigned and the bruise began to heal.
"Tayuya, carry four-eyes here I should be able to walk on my own."
Anko grabbed the incapaitated shark woman tying her wrists with ninja wire.
Picking the woman up with her free hand Anko continued to steadily stream healing chakra into her leg.
The duo of women made their way captives in tow to locate the Blonde boy.
They stepped into what was formerly the larger chamber and saw the crumbled ruins, a lone finger still on the ground.
"Kami no, Naruto!"
Tayuya tossed Kabuto roughly to the ground to check on the status of the blonde boy.
He was unconscious, blood soaked his face and his skin was sickly pale.
She laced her arm under his neck pulling him to a seated position against her chest and gave him a few light slaps to the cheek.
"Come on Dickless wake up, you don't get to die here."
No response, Naruto was still the only motion, the rustling of his clothes in the harsh wind and the blood intermingling with falling drops of clear liquid.
Tayuya looked at him, eyes glistening, shaking him desperately as thunder clouds began to swirl out the bright day.
"Naruto… don't do this to me."
She let him gently fall to the ground.
Ripping open his white jacket and cutting away his ash shirt with a kunai she began to perform chest compressions green chakra swirling.
"Come on!"
Water began to drizzle down onto her forehead as she slammed her palms together onto his chest.
Leaning down she locked lips with him and began to breathe into his dormant lungs.
"Wake up, please!"
She slammed a closed hand onto his chest returning her lips to his to breath into him again.
She raised her hands again screaming in frustration when she heard a faint wheeze escape from his throat.
She dropped her arms to her side wrapping him up in her embrace and she pulled him back to a seated position.
"That's it dickless come on!"
He let out a haggard breath and coughed violently.
"S-so warm."
He smiled with his eyes barely cracked open a blur of red and white is all he could see.
Too weak to hold himself up he slumped forward resting his head onto her shoulder.
He thought he could feel rain falling onto his shoulder but the drizzle had passed quickly, the burgeoning sun shone on the stone, and…
He could hear her sniffling next to him.
X END X
A/N: That's it for 22.
Finally we wrapped back around to the cold open, I hope it lived up to the anticipation.
I went through multiple versions of how to end Orochimaru without it seeming too sudden or unearned hopefully this conclusion was satisfactory
I've learned not to promise a date for the next chapter because I'm the Nostradamus of chapter promises.
But the next chapter will be up hopefully soon.