Chapter 5: The Beast of Blood and Bone
"Courage is not having the strength to go on; it's going on when you don't have the strength."
― Teddy Roosevelt
/The Three Wolves Mountains
/The Land of Iron
Naruto
Thick red-tinted fog covered the vast desert plain on which Naruto found himself. Bumpy, uneven white rubble on yellowed sand ran as far as Naruto could see, which wasn't much given that he couldn't see a thing through an impenetrable fog bank twenty feet away. There was a strange scarlet glow emanating underneath the thick mist in pulses.
Water covered him to his ankles.
He was standing in a trench covered in a rust-colored mud. It was a strange angle to see the world from, Naruto found, as he looked at what he could see eye-level to the ground.
Was this really… it had to be my soul, right?
Some of the older samurai, when Naruto had found time to sneak away from Mifune during inspections, talked freely with him about their experiences with the upper echelons of zen-ryu and their zeal for the blade; he'd been hungry for anything to help him begin to understand iaijutsu. Their enthusiasm bordered on the fanatical and Naruto wanted that for himself. They often talked of the color and shape of the soul and most of them imagined themselves in the vein of a blade; hard, razor-sharp, purposeful. Yojimbra, when Naruto asked later, thought that the soul was something found deep within, a visitable place. If that was true, Naruto's soul was a barren desert with nothing living in it.
Death was the reward here should he fail to break the seal. If he failed, he might as well stay here because he was almost certainly dead-one way or another.
Naruto relaxed and shook the anxiety out of his shoulders and decided to clamber out of the trench. Naruto eyed the earthen walls, found a hold-nothing more than a crevice in the baked clay-and started climbing out. Mud squished between his toes unpleasantly. White rocks were scattered like flowers in a field and it was through this crunching, painful debris that he climbed through, into the thicker mist. There was a rattling sound, almost like the anchor chains of an ocean-faring ship, far off in the distance.
Why would there be chains?
What even is this place?
Now he could see that there was a hill off to his left, or a mound of something, at least, under the bank of now-thinning reddish mist.
Why was it so hot inside this mist now?
Naruto looked down at his formerly bloody hands and found that his ragged clothing was still there, the holes in them where his body had been struck by the Seifuku-sha, but he also found that his shirt was open and a strange design-
Bargain Stuck::paracausal god::deathconditionactive
Prize.
Captured.
Entomb.
Restrain.
ENHANCE.
LOOP.
ENHANCE.
-was looping on his stomach.
It was hot to the touch, black pulsating symbologies were slowly forming on his shoulders and back and legs and neck, gently curling fuin that became legible then disappeared and reappeared just as suddenly. It seemed like just being here, in this place, was forming and writing more of them.
Naruto knew exactly nothing about what was going on other than why he'd come here, what he was attempting to find. A part of him hoped and feared that he was wrong about all of this, that there would be no Demon King of Bijuu hidden away inside his soul. That the Seifuku-sha would be wrong about everything, that this would be some cosmic mistake and the man would apologize, tell him Mifune was still alive, and he'd let him go if only he told him where they kept their money like this was some kind of common robbery and not a betrayal of story-like proportions.
A manic laugh bubbled out of his chest at that.
The sound echoed strangely in the mist.
Naruto kept walking, though it was more like falling forward.
The plain, Naruto didn't know if it was or wasn't a plain, but it seemed like it, stretched on forever.
Naruto walked and walked and walked and after what felt like two hours of walking, he passed his thirty-fifth hill as he'd been counting to help him focus and at this one he'd decided to investigate. As he drew closer, it was as if everything came into focus; the chains, the rattling sound, the crunch of the stones underfoot, the slow-moving slosh of water in the trenches. There were swords, rusted and broken, that littered this place and stuck straight up out of the ground in what seemed like the millions.
This was a battlefield, Naruto was certain.
Bones, skulls and femurs and rib-cages crunched and cracked like branches underfoot, struck through with the endless swords he saw, the red clay that he thought was mud was mud, but it was runny blood and dirt mixing like lovers, the hills bodies stacked like cords of wood Master Ouran had him cutting and stock-piling for fueling the forge.
Naruto didn't scream because the sound was stuck in his throat like a chicken bone.
The rattling sound was closer and it was now that he realized he was sweating like a pig despite the chill of the mist; his body was burning him from the inside out and everything took on a red haze when he continued to walk.
Was this the ritual starting to work on me? Am I...dying?
The red hue of his body and chakra blazed, matching the pulse of red coming from the mist. Naruto pulled at the short bandaged braids of hair that held his considerable amount of blonde back. He pulled and tugged till they fell out of their holds, fell out in his hands. His feet moved, turning his body into a stumbling run, screaming still stuck in his throat as he realized the crunch underfoot was bone. The hills were no hills, but millions of dead bodies, more skulls, and bones than he could count, but it was the chains now that took up all his attention. There was only so much he could process before he became numb to it.
That was him now: Naruto could barely think.
The horror of standing knee-deep in blood and viscera was too much; again.
Taza. Furu. Mifune. Ouran.
Yojimbra. Suzuki.
All of them were dead. Right?
Thick chains, a darkened oily black like they'd been dunked in ash were glowing dully as a banked coal-fire. Fuin brought these structures, these chains, to life and were engraved on every inch of the absolutely gargantuan manacles erupting from the ground.
They felt familiar in a way he couldn't describe.
There were hundreds, no, thousands of them coming from everywhere around him, rising higher and higher from the blood-soaked ground into the fog-shrouded sky. The clanking grew louder as he ran faster, faster than he'd ever run before. Who knew how long he had until the Seifuku-sha did what he came for?
One mile, then two more passed before the mist became different; a deeper red, the red of arterial spray. It was there that he started to hear singing, but not one person singing in the washroom of the barracks, no, this was the singing of a dozen people, a chorus. Naruto shivered. A chorus made up of only one voice, a group who sounded exactly alike conflicted on which song to sing, but deciding to start the same one all in a different spot. A crazier version of the groups who went around singing during the winter holidays, but terrifying in its pitch and tone. Power thrummed through his bones.
Naruto felt hot, his body was reacting, matching the heat to the song. The singing called to his body like a dog that sensed its master nearby, pulling him and he went, paralleling the hundreds of thousands of chains that rose into the sky.
Four steps, then twenty, then twenty-five saw him to the threshold of what he knew would be something madness-inducing; feelings he couldn't find a source to sprung up around him, titanic grief and loss and anger, his in a way but not his.
A malignant miasma, a word Naruto saw in the newspapers that Mifune read describing the plague that had hit Sky country a few years ago, perfectly described the feeling in the air; the fact it was chakra, and there was no doubt about that, was like nothing Naruto had ever felt before. This dwarfed the thimbleful he'd channeled when he slaughtered that ANBU a life-time ago. For there was no doubt this was that legend came before him: the Kyuubi no Kitsune, the Nine-tailed Demon Fox.
Haunter of battlefields, the butcher of millions through history, a being that parents used to scare children straight. The Scourge of the Sage.
Naruto had found what he'd been looking for.
Naruto knew, as every year he attended the Festival of the Heart, that the legend went the bijuu was the curse given from ancient Shinobi breaking the Oath of the Sage. To never use chakra for war.
It had made sense at the time.
The broken oath was the reason Shinobi were bound to the Hokage and the Hokage were bound to the Daimyo, everyone knew that. But it was also the reason Samurai was so trusted. They never profaned chakra for personal use. To use chakra in warfare was to invite destruction from the bijuu… until even that wasn't sacred. Hidden Villages harnessed the bijuu, somehow, and ever since… well.
War wasn't new.
Naruto simply couldn't understand how you could leash something like this… even fuinjutsu seemed to pale in comparison. Deep, oceanic in size, and hateful, he could feel the chakra. Surrounded by it, Naruto was in a cocoon of loss and rage that felt pulled under a powerful riptide.
All that was swallowed in an instant when he actually laid eyes on the thing that he knew without a shadow of a doubt was the cause of everything that had happened to him in his life. Naruto felt bits of his sanity fraying at the edges as his mind struggled to frame what he was seeing in a way that his mind could understand. At least the size of the Three Mountains, the beast was as much a fox as a gentle breeze was to a super-typhoon.
The fox was a beast of blood and black bone, the color of lifeblood and nothingness, a multi-tailed fox kami, a god, for what else could it be? Trapped beneath three equally monstrous torii, pinning its back hindquarters, its ribcage, and its upper-arms and head.
Torii were sacred ceremonial gates large enough to see from miles away that welcome gods and hold back demons, at least according to the stories. They were the color of stars; a black blanket covered with twinkling lights. Chains too, the blackened steel links inscribed with fuin, were like grains of sand on a beach for how they came from every direction to wrap-around legs, around arms, around its neck, and those nine sinuous, beautiful, terrible tails.
The possible death of himself and everyone in Iron was writ large when viewing the beast but fell away as he realized his life as he'd known it was gone, changed the day this thing had entered his life so long ago, changed again, and again irrevocably when he found out this thing resided within him. The main points of his life led a trail of crumbs for some animal to follow all the way up to these two things.
The Fox and the Man in Red.
He hated them both; one for setting the course of his life and the other for killing everything he'd ever loved.
Naruto seized the rage that spread through his body, hot like fever, like a drowning man seizes a life-raft. He hated the weird singing, the Torii, the chains, the whole thing. Naruto stormed up to the edge of what he quickly realized was another fuinjutsu. This fuinjutsu wasn't like the chains, it was bigger than the Fox, if that was possible. It branched out like a galaxy, black lines drawn with something other than ink. It seemed etched, as if on stone. Not a single inch of the beast was outside the furthest lines of the fuin and only the chains seemed to enter or exit.
The Beast seemed… pleased, resonating with the rage in his heart.
Naruto stopped at the edge.
Then stepped over.
Hands at his side, clenched, cold from the mist and the holes in his formerly nice clothes, he screamed himself hoarse at the Kyuubi, raged. He spent himself yelling. All the unfairness and anxiety, all the horror and grief, which felt so much like fear, the size of his emotions scared him and he shied away, shunting what he could out his mouth in incoherent ramblings.
'Shut the hell up you stupid fox!'
The fox had been resting, as much as it could be covered in chains, laying down curled up inside the seal, but his shout, impossible to hear over the singing, must've roused it. One eye, one eye the size of a railroad car opened and Naruto only had chains popping like cartilage as a warning before a massive house-sized paw stopped an inch from his face, making no dent on the ground despite the ground shaking. Naruto had his hands over his head bracing himself. Everything changed; the sounds stopped, the fog cleared in an instant, and the chains grew smaller, but no less plentiful, as he raised his head.
The scent of blood grew in his nose and the presence in front of him changed. Naruto screamed as he met the gaze of a now eight-foot-tall armored humanoid monstrosity staring him in the face. It was the jagged-edged face of fanged death itself with horn-shaped ears sprouting from the terrifying head, claws like swords on either of the vambraces while being disconcertingly slender, feminine, with nine drifting tails, disconnected from the main body, formed from nine black and red orbs floating behind the Kyuubi in a chakram formation.
It was terrifying, powerful, and inches from his nose.
No longer a gargantuan fox: this smaller, though still dwarfing Naruto's diminutive form, the figure was imposing in a different way.
Naruto stepped back quickly, across the script.
Tails lazily flicked back and forth like flames in the wind. Naruto froze staring, noticing quickly that it stood on the edge of the sealing script, but very carefully behind it. The stillness though was the rigor mortis of a corpse. Meanwhile, Naruto was burning from the inside, the furnace not letting up for a second. It felt like he was in a dream; emotions muted, reasoning muted, ability to speak muted. Naruto struggled to say something, to ask the questions he was burning to ask.
Two clawed hands reached up to its face, a face that Naruto now realized was a helmet of sorts with latches and pulled it off. Naruto had always wondered what the face of death looked like and it turned out, as he watched the helmet come off. Hair tumbled down it's armored form in shining black waves. Naruto couldn't help it. The face looked like the Hokage. The face of his death, and hopefully the Seifuku-sha's, was beautiful if odd.
Red ears, vulpine in shape and tipped in black, topped her its head and the rest of her/his/its face was a beautiful blur. Naruto could never have told anybody what she/him/it looked like other than it had red eyes that were streaked like the swirl of galaxies and they were old, older than Mifune, older than anything he'd ever known and they saw right through him and whatever it saw, it smiled to see it.
'Hello, little sacrifice.'
Its voice was a multi-throated singing and terrible and wonderful to behold, straining his mind to contain and define what it was.
His mouth moved without him noticing.
"What are you?"
It almost looked like it was going to laugh with delight; a Sunday stroll in a beautiful park with friends.
"Why, Naruto, I'm-"
Here the face changed; darkening, expanding, fangs standing out in a suddenly razor-blade filled mouth.
"-you."
Armored claws reached for him and Naruto had a visceral reaction to the black miasma of colored energy Naruto had ignored, but could still feel, it was the burning in his body, the furnace in his mind and his veins. It was killing him and liberating him and being ripped away simultaneously.
Power so strong it made his head spin and his body collapsed to the ground.
Naruto screamed, throwing up his hands and everything in his stomach.
The black chains, loosely looped around the arms, legs, neck, and body of the armored woman, horrible beast, man, thing snapped taut, yanking her/him/it screaming and laughing back into the seal on the ground, the fog returning and shrouding everything. The furnace, a thousand degrees hollowing him out, cut off and Naruto had had enough, vomit sizzling on his chin.
"STOP!"
Chains froze, the smile on it's flickering, changing face froze.
Naruto took a step forward, then another, then another until his hand was on a small white strip of paper on the chest of the armored figure, a strip he hadn't noticed before. As soon as his hand grabbed the seal, a flimsy thing that didn't seem like it held back a veritable god, the beast flickered becoming that titanic thing again, it's true self.
Naruto was holding a single piece of a collar the size of an autobus and a single blackened chain like the anchor to a cruise-liner was held in his hand, that single-strip of paper on it flickering in the ethereal wind.
But all was quiet. The Beast froze in surprise.
"I'm not doing this for you. I'm doing this for myself. And for Iron. I'm hoping you kill him. But you owe me, after this, Kyuubi. Your freedom and my life… in exchange, I want you to kill the Seifuku-sha!"
Naruto felt the breath of the great demon on the back of his neck as he bowed his head and found himself crying, ignoring his clothes and face covered in vomit, blood, and dry tears. His throat was raw. He'd been screaming.
I'm going to die old man, I'm sorry. But this is my only plan. I can't escape. I can't run. So, I'm going to fight the only way I know how.
They'll never expect it...
I just hope it's enough.
"This is… quite unexpected, I must admit."
The beast spoke, educated, sounding male, the next, rough and female. But then again, it could sound however it liked.
"Fine then, little sacrifice. You pull that little seal off and I'll do this thing for you. Your mother would be very disappointed in you, by the way, given what she did, but that's irrelevant I suppose as she's moldering in the ground now."
The beast giggled.
"She was of limited imagination. You seem… different."
The beast seemed to hesitate as its voice, so powerful Naruto felt it more in his chest and mind and the ground than as a normal voice through the air, grew softer, though still booming.
"Why do you really do this? You know this will kill you, yes?"
Naruto ignored the question and focused on the Kyuubi's comment.
"My mother, what about my mother?"
Naruto pulled hard on the chain. It didn't move the beast at all.
"Answer my question, little sacrifice."
Frustrated, and knowing that time still passed outside, he spoke honestly. If he was going to die, what was the point of lying?
"I hate you, yes. But you are what you are. Might as well hate the cold outside. It'll kill you, sure, but it is nothing personal. You didn't ask to be sealed inside me. The Man in Red? That asshole? He chose this and I want him to suffer."
Naruto slumped, one hand on the paper tag, and feeling keenly his young age. None of this was right. He was prepared to set a calamity upon his city with who knows how many hundreds of thousands still alive. All because he wanted revenge.
Was his life worth more than all of them?
Something occurred to him.
"Why do you call me a sacrifice?"
The great beast was silent. Even the chains stilled.
No, it doesn't matter. Not anymore.
Naruto wanted to make sure that man never hurt another person again.
Before he could think further, Naruto's hand clamped shut on the seal and tore.
A wide Cheshire deaths head smile greeted Naruto as the fox seemed to swell in his view. Like a miles long suspension bridge cables snapping, everything seemed to burst apart all at once, filling the air with broken chains, crackling torii wood, and Naruto felt something inside of him-many somethings-break all at once.
"I call you sacrifice because…"
Pain.
"One has to give something up to get something. That is how the world works."
Agony.
"You're going to die little Naruto. Nothing personal. I owe you, though it is certainly too bad for you you'll never collect. A life for a life."
Destruction so potent ignited his every nerve endings, the feeling whited out his mind in an instant, like needles dipped in acid, laced with lava entered his veins and Naruto felt himself blown out of his own soul scape, mist whipping by him, as he was transported into that same place he'd come from-the cave where he was getting himself killed.
"For my freedom, I'll give you my name."
The Beast looked almost solemn, though still terrible to behold. It seemed… softer.
"My name is Kurama, little sacrifice, and I will kill Madara Uchiha for you. It will be the most exquisite of pleasures."
A gasp saw him sit up and the pain followed him like a hound across a field, a ragged scream tore the skin of his throat emerging and causing an unimaginable shriek to put even Orochimaru on his backfoot. The black symbology, a fuin-glyph responsible for holding back the greatest power in the world, broke into pieces right in front of their eyes.
Naruto was hovering a knife-edge of life, confused.
Madara...Uchiha?
Orochimaru hissed and the Man in Red roared to his ANBU.
"That idiot boy will kill us all!"
But it was far, far too late.
Roiling chakra, so potent it immediately solidified into the first vestiges of the real beast instantly killed the ANBU closest to Orochimaru, flooding the room like a tsunami hit a beach village, scouring the walls of the room and obliterating the fuin-ritual. Naruto braced himself, his chakra system tearing itself to pieces as a power that his body wasn't ready to handle emerged into a practically baby-sized, though already gigantic compared to the room, fox spirit with nine whipping tails. His body's tenketsu, he could feel all of them at once, were burning and his chakra coils, the chakra power plant of his body swelled up like balloons; doubling, tripling, quadrupling in size at once trying to adapt to the waves of power, broke like a dam and then there was so much pain Naruto couldn't feel his body.
While the beast had emerged see-through, Naruto stared up at the now-solid blood-red fur above his head. He felt like a ghost in the middle of a hurricane, anchored to the ground by his exhaustion. The wounds from earlier, the rough-handling and the blow to the head all caught up with him and Naruto knew, from feeling his tenketsu and the ragged strands of what was left of his chakra system, that he was not long for this world. But that inner voice, not the Beast anymore, but the one that was his the one with a will like iron, cried out that he wasn't done yet.
Another voice spoke in his head, a doubled voice. This one was the Beast.
"You'll need to kill the other boy, the one with His bloodline limit. Do it now or I won't be able to do what you've asked."
Naruto knew him killing anybody was at best unrealistic; he could barely move his arms, let alone his legs, his head lolling about as he processed the chaos of the Kyuubi battling the Man in Red whose yellow eyes spun in the shuriken-shape of the Hokage, fire jutsu blasting at the still-growing demon, tails batting them away with ease.
Orochimaru was nowhere to be seen.
The Kyuubi had been maneuvering carefully above the boy below him, still putting the Conqueror on the back foot, most of the ANBU were dead, shorn apart by claw, or fang, or tail, or it's sheer presence, but it was Tenzo that drew the most hatred from the demon.
Somehow, someway, the Conqueror was stalemating with the nascent demon with the help of the...wood? The wood jutsu. Only six tails wavered above… Kurama?
That was right, the beast was named Kurama. What an odd name.
Naruto needed to do something before Kurama lost; the wood had started to sprout from the tunnel walls, tree-roots coming to obey, impossibly, the command of the black-eyed teenager. The roar, that multi-throated symphony of a scream, wrenched out of the Nine-tails when the Wood, a jutsu that only the First Hokage was ever said to have wielded, started to overpower the still-emerging, still-struggling beast. Naruto would have gained nothing by this sacrifice if the kid wasn't stopped. Exhaustion that muffled his thoughts, his head wound that made thinking seem impossible, the cuts, scrapes, bruises, blood trickling from his side and mouth, they weighed him down, but anger defeated it all, pulled him up. Hands pushed him up off the ground and he got onto his feet, hair just brushing the underside of the Kyuubi, he pulled himself out of there and made for the edge of the room under quickly burning out energy.
Anger, he'd found, gave him strength where he'd thought he'd had none.
The blonde leaned against the wall like his life depended on it and a ragged gasp expelled from his mouth and he tried not to cough and give away his position. Blood flecked his hands. He needed a plan and he needed one quick.
First, he took stock: his chakra system was almost destroyed, it was like the inside of his body was vibrating along strings of pain, chakra in the open swirling around his organs and body uncontained by his chakra network. All of those cobwebs that strung throughout his body were on fire. He felt a weakness that went beyond the muscular the likes of which he'd never known before. Similar to a newborn, he couldn't access any chakra, the moment he tried pain flared up that whited out his mind for a second. The chakra in his body swirled but went nowhere without a working network. It just built up and became painful near his Gates, the place where chakra generated.
He couldn't fight properly, so he had one shot at Tenzo and one shot only.
I need a weapon…
A shard of rock, like slate almost, sheared off no doubt by the whipping tails of the Kyuubi, lay on the ground near him. In a weird, loping run, Naruto scooped it off the ground and put everything he had into his last charge.
Wind and debris from the ferocious battle peppered him with bits of shale and rock, but Naruto ignored it all, honing in on the side of the kids head, a bit of it exposed like a bullseye he couldn't ignore as his arms pumped and legs ate the fifteen feet up between him and Tenzo.
Am I really going to kill this kid whose only crime is to get caught up with this psycho butcher?
Naruto launched himself like a spear, arm outstretched with the triangular rock point first and watched almost in slow-motion as the kid suddenly came aware, breaking off the jutsu, and turning.
Tenzo's reaction wasn't fast enough as Naruto was in his guard already.
The movement was fast enough for the rock to enter his eye instead of the side of his head though. The kid screamed and Naruto fell on him like an avalanche. Blood squirted and some white liquid streamed out of the eye as Naruto retracted the rock and plunged it back down even further, rage powering his arm, feeling the teenager bucking underneath him, trying to get him off. But his struggle stilled with the last strike, viscera coating Naruto's hand, and Tenzo was dead.
Naruto rolled off at him, thankful the kid stopped struggling. If Tenzo had continued to fight, Naruto would've lost badly.
A cold part of Naruto woke up at this kill in answer to his earlier question about whether or not he could kill when it came time. Naruto found it hard to think all of a sudden, dizziness from the blood loss probably, but though his thoughts were hazy it was hard to imagine his simple life not four hours ago was something he looked back on with longing.
Journeyman tests…
Naruto coughed more blood laughing.
Hard to believe that had been his biggest concern.
Now his whole life had been murdered in cold blood like he just murdered this teenager and he was about to die without having accomplished any of the things he'd wanted for himself. He felt the chill and weakness steal over him that he imagined was death. Pacifism was for people who were okay with letting evil have its way no matter what, he now realized. Naruto hated bullies and these were the biggest he'd ever faced. There was no way the Seifuku-sha would survive the rage of Kurama, now, however. That was cold comfort. Already the tide was turning, as Naruto watched where he lay. Those tails, ever-growing larger, battered the strange ethereal purple skeleton protecting the man in red.
What the hell… is that?
Darkness edged his vision and he found it was hard to stay awake, despite the excitement and horror of a high-level shinobi battle. Naruto drowsily thought this might not count as a battle so much as a slug-match between gods. Why should he stay awake? He did what he could, right? Kurama would do the rest?
But no, it was that stupid voice again.
Get up. Your friends, Yojimbra, and Master Ouran are still out there.
I don't have anything left.
If an inner voice could layer scorn on top of scorn, it's response would be a perfect example.
As if.
You don't stop till they kill you.
Pain whited his mind, but that didn't matter.
Naruto wasn't dead yet, so he got up.
The journey from Tenzo's corpse through the tunnels of the Underground and back to the lowest level of the city was almost forty minutes that was really fifteen of slow walking, falling, hand-over-hand against the wall so he didn't stop. The difference that having no accessible chakra made was like night and day. Naruto felt like he could barely make his muscles listen, gelatin as they felt, but it was step after step with his inner voice flaying him until he stumbled into the city center.
Which could more accurately be described as a war zone.
Those Mist ANBU, of which now there seemed to be only two dozen, were fighting and losing against the ONI forces. Most low-level jutsu didn't do anything against those suits. Only extremely powerful techniques of B-rank and above were serious threats. Though, as Ouran had pointed out, enough jutsu and that protection doesn't matter.
But it was a slaughter, as far as Naruto could see. The only reason the ONI weren't completely crushing the ANBU was that Mist was trying to get at the civilians evacuating from the North Tunnel to the northern mountain. ONI forces were simply in a protection pattern. Excitement made his step quicken; this meant he had a better chance of linking up with his Master and his friends. If Mist was here fighting the samurai, that meant that maybe his friends and Ouran and even Yojimbra were safe, too, and had already evacuated.
Naruto hurried onward, trying to keep to the shadows of the buildings as he made his way to Ouran's shop. In his haste, he tripped and went sprawling and spent precious seconds lying on the floor listening to see if anyone heard his clumsy fall. Even his balance had been affected by the lack of chakra.
Eventually, minute by painstaking minute, he'd arrived in the warm light of the forge pouring out the front door and window.
But the door was wide-open and hanging off the hinges.
"Master Ouran?"
Naruto called softly. A groan answered him.
Naruto couldn't have hurried fast enough as he pushed his way into a place that looked like a bomb had hit a tool shed. Tools, client's commissions, general armor, and ingots of chakra metal, invaluable material, were spilled together making the place a death trap.
Gingerly, Naruto maneuvered through the debris to the back door of the work-room where Naruto and Ouran had been inspecting the special delivery that seemed like a lifetime ago. As he rounded a corner, Naruto could hear a deep pain in a faint voice, coming up from the ground in front of him.
"Is… that you… Naruto?"
Ouran came into view and it wasn't good. Blood, copious amounts, stained the floor like a red carpet. Wide at first, where Ourans left leg was missing, the blood trailed on the floor like a streamer till it hit a trickle by the doorway. The leg itself was nowhere to be seen.
Holy kami…
Compared to all the other things he'd seen tonight, this ranked very low on the list of disturbing things, but it had equal weight to him. Master Ouran was vibrant, strong, and built like the mountain he called home. Seeing him so vulnerable hit him like a gut punch. Despite that, Naruto found he could still act: his focus clearing of the pain from his wounds, they were in danger from more than just a missing leg and blood loss. The shogun's ward knew that he was liable to collapse any moment himself, so speed was paramount.
I need to do something.
"Naruto? Where are you going?"
The forge was still hot, hot enough for what he was about to do at least, and Naruto snagged the closest piece of forgeable metal and shucked on a smithing-mitten and shoved the top of the jagged edge into the fire and watched it impatiently. Naruto was aware that time was not on his side as he could feel subtle vibrations through the ground if he strained his limited senses.
Kurama still battled the Butcher of the Hidden Mist down in the Underground.
"Naruto!"
Nobody had any time. Least of all Ouran.
Watching the metal for an interminable amount of time, now glowing a whitish-orange, he pulled out his tool and rushed back to where his master lay panting, sweating, going in and out of consciousness.
"What're you doin' boy?"
Naruto ignored him.
He was very careful where he swung the white-hot metal slug. Naruto felt much, much older than his nine years as he sat on Ouran's leg to hold it down and pressed the metal to the wound. He listened, pained, as his master thrashed and screamed and cried and felt each painful blow as his master's fist impacted his back until they weakened and slacked off. An interminable time later the man was silent, his breathing even. Naruto slumped backwards off his master's wide thigh and felt like giving up, letting go of the metal, still careful of the immense heat.
The man was unconscious.
How the holy hell was he supposed to get a man that weighed three times as much as him out the door without chakra? Naruto did feel a little better, not much above dead, but he wasn't hurting as much. Despite that, his body throbbed like one huge bruise.
Inside…
Inside he was a wreck. Naruto was surprised he was even able to think properly with the amount of damage to his chakra coils and system. He could feel, all through his body, where the Kyuubi had torn its way out. Kurama had been inextricably linked with every organ, chakra pathway, Gate, tenketsu… until he wasn't.
Naruto didn't think about it and locked it away.
He'd be fine. This was a temporary setback at best.
He'd come out of this, he wouldn't die, Naruto would become a shinobi and be the best there ever was or would be.
That bravado, the normal i don't give a shit attitude that infuriated Taza, Furu, Mifune, his tutors, and Master Ouran was strangely absent. Naruto couldn't summon anything except his focus on the next needful step.
Empty, Naruto felt cold and fake, even speaking to himself encouragingly about what he wanted seemed futile given his half-dead master, life in tatters, and the people he loved outside being slaughtered. A tidal wave of grief flowed over him and threatened to dowse his sanity.
The tattered tapestry of chakra in his body gave the lie away; Mifune had given his life for his people, had sheltered Naruto when he knew what lurked inside his ward, loved him, taught him, worried about him and been there for him through everything. Now it was time to prove Mifune hadn't been wrong to care or believe in him. That Kurama didn't define everything about him.
Naruto heaved himself back up as he felt he was constantly doing only to find that Ouran had fallen a foot away from Master Lake's special delivery. The sarcophagus was open and an orb the size of an over-large apple was nestled in a padded center covered by a single symbol. Naruto hesitated, something telling him this was not the best idea he'd ever had and was he even doing it damn it and picked up the object. A suspicion snuck up on him. Master Ouran's forge was out of the way of the main fighting, why had he been attacked?
Nothing happened.
The voice, that sibilant hiss that spoke out of the darkness scared the shit out of him though.
"Fu, fu, fu… it seems the idiot boy is… still alive I see?"
Orochimaru. This… was bad. Why was he even here?
"Though you are on the very edge of death, child. It is a place I have never been. Tell me, does it make you feel alive?"
Naruto took a step back and stood in front of Ouran's prostrate body, slowly he bent down and picked up the jagged piece of metal still glowing.
"This really is amazing. To have survived the extraction of the Nine-tails, quite like a cockroach you are Naruto… Uzumaki."
Shit.
"Yes, you are in quite a bit of trouble here. Your dear Shogun was not good enough to keep you hidden, least of all from them."
A smile, like the water-lizards of the Land of River, all teeth, shone through the dim light of the forge creating a corona around Orochimaru in the doorway. People spoke of this man, this infamous Nukenin, an unaffiliated shinobi like he was death walking.
So far, they'd been right. The man had slid through every person he'd fought tonight. Naruto was exhausted, breaking, and didn't really know anything about fighting a shinobi, let alone one as ungodly strong as this one. The cold feeling in his chest spread.
But he was unbroken thus far and he'd fight till he died.
"Give me the...object and I'll let you walk out of here with your master out of respect for your… tenacity, if nothing else."
"Why do you want this? It's nothing."
"Idiot. It is far from nothing. But you are too imbecilic to understand. Give it and you walk. Don't… and you and your master will die on my sword. Further fighting matters not to me. The outcome is the same only you will be dead and I will have what I seek."
A pale, thin hand stretched out like spider legs, palm up, waiting.
What were the odds he'd let me out and not kill me?
Probably not great. Nor had he come this far and learned nothing.
Orochimaru whirled in the doorway, his sword invisible to Naruto as it clanged off a person attacking him from behind. A huge someone. Armored and venting steam from his suit, already damaged in multiple places.
"Yojimbra!"
Naruto recognized the black and red color scheme with splashes of white down the sides of the arms resolving into the sigil of a bull.
"Go Naruto!"
Hissing like a snake, Orochimaru was a blur as he fought. The man was pissed. Naruto grinned. More sounds of battle came, but Naruto spun and was focused on his Master, still out cold. Naruto slapped him across the face with only the slightest hesitation.
"Master! Wake the hell up!"
Another slugging blow, open-handed across the bearded smith. Hitting the man's face hurt, the hairs were excoriating his hand as he struck. Another blow with the object this time. Then the man's eyes snapped open, hazy with pain. They focused on him with difficulty. Naruto put the orb in his pocket.
There must have been a tremendous amount of panic written on his face because he started flailing to get up on one leg. Naruto moved around behind and bent with a flat back to get his tiny arms around the house-like frame of his master. Agonizing pain flowed throughout his small body, but bit by sliding bit, he pulled him to the right behind the work-space door. There was a back-alley entrance where their trash bin was and also where the larger deliveries were dropped off. The sounds of Yojimbra and Orochimaru's fighting faded as Naruto heard the groan of the structure of the smithy straining.
They must be fighting in the front.
The building can't take much more, I'd imagine.
Naruto watched the beams shake and dust fall.
Naruto pulled faster, almost yanking his shoulder out of its socket trying to pull Ouran.
"Push with your, uh, your foot."
"I'm trying lad."
Huff.
"Didcha really have to eat so much in your life Ouran? Damn it."
The man groaned as his raw, cauterized wound scraped some metal shard lying on the ground. Naruto winced.
Huff.
"Language."
Huff.
"Shut it."
Naruto managed to move them both out into the alleyway and leaned Ouran up against the sooty brick. Both of them were breathing hard. Despair threatened to choke him. This was nearing impossible. How was he going to get anybody else out of here? Let alone huge Ouran with a missing leg? There had to be a way out of this.
"Stay here."
Ouran rolled his eyes, looking pained while doing it.
"Where the hell am I gonna go lad? And where the hell do you think you're going?"
Determined, Naruto kept walking through the dim alley towards the opening out into the plaza where all the craziness had happened earlier today.
Was it really earlier today?
He spotted his prey and looked around for his target. The ramp was opposite Yojimbra who had a molten hole in his chest plate but seemed unhurt, despite being on his back with smoke pouring out of his armor.
The ramp was where he needed to go. A minor problem being the fiercest of the fighting was happening between the ramp and where Naruto was right now. Before Naruto could even process what was coming out of his mouth, he started shouting. Anything to save Yojimbra and Ouran. They were counting on him. Naruto thought about his friends, Suzuki and Roran, but they would have to save themselves. He wasn't even sure if he could get away from Orochimaru long enough to save the two in front of him. Naruto mentally apologized to Ouran. He was abandoning him to save him, but it still hurt.
"Hey, snake-lady-man. I got your ball!"
Yellow eyes whipped around and zeroed in on his bruised and beaten form. Naruto took off in a limping, loping run that he immediately realized would do absolutely nothing to save him. He needed to have something run interference or he was dead.
So Naruto dove into the battle.
The blonde felt true terror again and lost count of how many times that had happened, but it gave his legs the strength it shouldn't really have and he sprinted his way through the samurai and the ANBU, of which there was a handful left. Fire, lightning, water, and wind surged around him in techniques that just barely missed scouring him, setting him on fire, barbecuing him or drilling through his soft parts like a pressure-hose. If the battlefield of his soul was the aftermath, this was what it should've looked like before that.
Chakra being used for war, for hate and destruction. Samurai held that using chakra like this to kill others was anathema. But this power… it was incredible.
Naruto couldn't wait to learn; when he got out of this absolute clusterfuck, that is.
A small, terrible voice chimed in: but what about your chakra?
Your dream?
He pushed that thought away and kept zig-zagging under people and through legs and around corners to get to the ramp and the relative safety of the outside. Naruto swore that power would be his and he would kill the men responsible for everything. Orochimaru and The Conqueror. Anger burned alongside adrenaline and he picked up speed hitting the elevated portion of the run.
Two minutes of agonal breathing and cramps that he ignored, almost falling, Naruto made it to the gate doors which hung broken on their hinges, terrible temperatures raging just beyond in a maelstrom of white. Right outside was one of the only access-laits to the river that split the continent. The river, Zainon, started here as an ice-flow drift and managed to meander into a delta that watered most of the continent. Naruto knew if he… but no. He'd die out there in those temperatures, out of the life-preserving laits.
Naruto breathed in the crisp air.
After the smoke-choked inner tunnels and plaza, it was a welcome relief to breathe air untainted by ash. He spun, feet crunching the packed snow and the sound echoed against the huge rock face to his left. Endless mountain road stretched in front of him, curving around Sekiro and disappearing into plains with various laits sticking up like river-lizards teeth.
Behind him, Naruto felt more than saw the door open.
"Why do you make this harder than it needs to be little Uzumaki? Why run? You've accomplished nothing. Seifuku-sha will triumph, despite your unfortunate move."
A disappointed sigh came out of Orochimaru in a puff of frosted air.
Naruto turned, eyes glancing up and around, seeking avenues of escape. But the man was more akin to a walking tornado than he was human compared to where Naruto was right now.
There would be no escape.
"You have given your two loved ones a brief respite. Your death is now but the work of a moment. Give me the orb. I will not ask a third time."
For the second time, a pale hand reached out. For the second time, Naruto's thoughts whirled trying to figure the situation out. To get him away from this ungodly foe.
He had nothing.
Sorry, Mifune.
Naruto was so, so tired of failing.
Surprise barely registered on Orochimaru's face as the tall, pale man turned to something that Naruto felt too-an immense chakra presence that….
What felt like a giants' hand backhanded him into the rock face and he crumpled, feeling his ribs creak and break, something in his hand snapping.
Blackness.
It felt like no time at all before he woke up, smoke pouring out all around him, a column of smoke rushing out of the door opposite him. A nightmare around him awoke in the form of his previous prisoner; the suffocation was total in the wake of the ocean-liner worth of foul, putrid chakra. Rage, pure, so pure it felt like some miracle drug to his senses. But he couldn't move, only watch as Orochimaru, not nearly as affected by the full-display of bijuu power, stood up singed and disheveled, but unhurt. Above his shoulder, Naruto watched as the Nine-tails broke through the mountain top, blasting the top off and sending rock and smoke and ash thousands of feet into the air.
A fitting triumph. The Seifuku-sha had to be dead now, had to be!
Naruto watched almost in slow-motion as Orochimaru loomed in his eyes, slowly walking to where Naruto was downed. Hard to breathe as it was with cracked ribs, hard as it was to see after slamming his head into a rock formation, Naruto practically felt Orochimaru standing over him, smiling.
When would this freak stop smiling?
Naruto wanted him to stop smiling more than anything.
So he took out the orb, the object of his current misery.
Holding it in a death grip, he smiled at Orochimaru as he realized how close to the edge of the cliff he really was as the lait didn't extend fully across, occasional gusts squeezing in between each lait. It was a long way down; terminating in the icy waters of the Zainon river. Warm in his grip, the blonde held the orb out as far as he could over the edge, immediately a frozen chill entered his arm from the temperature differential between the warm lait and the frigid plains.
Orochimaru stopped smiling.
Naruto wound his arm back and felt the long bong break in the grip of Orochimaru. A blur resolved itself into the sinuous, purple-clad androgynous form of Orochimaru who was none too pleased, holding the now-mangled arm that held the orb in his grip.
Terror spiked through his veins, the pain from his whole body, the exhaustion of this long, long day drilling into his consciousness. Orochimaru hoisted him up by the arm to dangle like some massive deep-sea trophy fish. A deep, slicing pain drilled through his stomach, acid spilling out and igniting a fire in his stomach, exiting out his back in a ragged hole. Eyes wide in agony, Naruto stared down at the longsword embedded inside his body. Weakness, even more than before, started in his chest and made its way throughout his body. Blazing warmth erupted around his palm and the orb, which Naruto had forgotten about, like the last of his energy swirled into it then went dark.
Naruto threw his head back and screamed as that same energy, something dark and otherworldly, launched back into him in a torrent; Naruto couldn't even see the Sannin's face while the whatever it was raged through him and blanked his mind with pain. He felt like a cup overflowing with something… other.
Orochimaru let go of his arm and grabbed the now inert, dark orb. Only the sword kept him up, impaled as he was. Naruto dangled, staring at the rushing churning river almost a thousand feet below. Wind whipped at his ragged clothes, tugged at long strands of blonde hair, and dropped his temperature even more. Naruto had already lost track of the number of times he'd almost died in the last four hours, but this really did feel like the end.
A new voice was there, in his head.
Booming.
Impossibly loud.
Young, impossibly ancient.
Ah, to be out. How long has it been? I can feel my seedlings all around. The garden is a fertile one, then.
A pause.
The voice, female?
Naruto could almost taste the satisfaction in its lilting strangeness, like the common tongue it spoke was entirely new to her, learning as she went.
Fear not, my little seed.
Death is a transition, is it not?
Nothing outside him could be heard over the blood rushing in his ears. Leaning close, Orochimaru smelled of acrid smoke, acid, and death.
Try as he might, he couldn't hear what Orochimaru was saying, just focused loosely, blurred on the slit, yellow eyes of a predator, a voice continued to scream in his body mixing with the new voice, a soothing female voice, and Naruto tried to spit at this blade-wielding terror as the voice, not Kyuubi, a new one, spoke to him in a way Naruto couldn't understand.
The voice felt frustrated.
The blond raised a shaking arm, an arm that weighed as much as an elephant, to his lips shaking and trembling, to come away with bright red blood. He coughed, sharp spiking pain jolting through every fiber of his body.
Naruto felt the blade slide out of his stomach and whatever else that asshole said was lost in the wind as Naruto was flung straight out into the open air and felt his body tumbling end over end.
Death approached at terminal velocity.
I'm sorry.
I'm so sorry.
Naruto hit the water, things broke in his body as dark, frigid water closed around him.
A voice echoed back to him, clearer than ever in his head.
Fear not, my seedling; I have you.
You are but the beginning. You will all be mine again.
...and everything went black.
Indeterminate Time Later
Gekko Hayate
Hayate watched as the beast that terrorized his dreams for the last ten years exploded out of the top of Sekiro mountain. Ash and rock spewed at least thirty-thousand feet into the air, creating a colossal column of smoke and fiery rock.
Hayate, Kurenai, and Lady Mikoto had spent the last three hours fighting their way out of the death trap that the Sekiro City had become. The Shogun had been killed, along with half of the delegations of the other Kage's. The Hokage had been a blur of steel, illusion, and pure death as the three worked in concert to shield the other Kage from the unbelievable power of the Seifuku-sha.
Finally, Lady Mikoto and Lord Ay had engaged him and damaged him enough that they could all leave. The city was lost. The Samurai were blind-sided by sabotage and deception. Their Shogun apparently died in the first stroke; it was a slaughter on all sides.
Hayate had been in the Third Shinobi World War as a Genin and he'd never seen carnage and brutality quite like that. Despite being a seasoned shinobi, this was a night that would star front and center in his nightmare-roundup from this day forward. Until he saw the beast step from the mountain like he was breaking his way through an egg.
The Yamanaka had their work cut out for them on this one.
The nightmare continued in the form of the legendary and supposedly dead but very much alive Nine-tailed Demon Fox. This beast was the very personification of war and rage and every appearance had heralded untold amounts of death. The beast alone had killed over a million during the First Shinobi World War. Until it disappeared. Nobody had seen it until the Desolation nine years ago in Konohagakure, where Lord Minato had slain the beast in a feat no one had ever managed in the history of the world.
Slain…
No.
Clearly, that had been a lie.
This beast was alive and about to kill every last man, woman, and child in the Land of Iron and possibly the surrounding countries. They needed to mobilize! The Man in Red, the Butcher of the Hidden Mist, was NOTHING compared to the threat this thing possessed. It was a cataclysm in the making-
A red flash flooded out from the beast like a lighthouse piercing the night. A roar of hate, rage, disbelief perhaps sang out across the snowy hills and plains of Iron.
It disappeared.
Lady Mikoto was next to him. Her face was the face that poets would kill a thousand times to write stories about and it was completely unsurprised.
"Lady Hokage? What… what just happened?"
Kurenai, still young yet, but powerful nonetheless and his partner in protecting their Lady, was equally as dumbstruck by what happened, the kanji for Foolish Fire, a euphemism for the illusion of the will o' wisp, standing out on her mask. That was a thought. Was the beast an illusion?
A trick?
"What happened was a clever and vital move from an old man that had his move planned twelve steps ahead of everyone else. Even me. But he's bought us time with his life.
What?
The wind whipped around the three of them, fur-cloaks bundled. It was hard to hear with all the howling of the deadly wind, but Hayate could've sworn he heard the Hokage say something softly.
Yes. He heard it now.
"Oh, Kushina. I'm so sorry."
Who was Kushina?
Her voice snapped him out of his thoughts. She was turning away from the destroyed mountain. Hayate just stared numbly at the gargantuan plume of ash, black smoke like the depiction of the underworld of Yomi, and falling, flaming meteors of rock continued to devastate the surrounding area.
"Kurenai, scan the area. We must make haste back to Konohagakure. Plans are in motion and we've spent far too much time here."
Kurenai, in her typical garb of white and black straps covered in a white-fur cloak with her mask blocking Hayate from seeing the naked emotion on her face. It came through her voice instead.
"Y-yes, Lady Hokage."
Hayate barely felt the pulse of echoing chakra Kurenai used to check for active bodies.
"Cl-clear."
A portal like a grey distortion opened in the air before them. All three walked forward, the Hokage's stride purposeful, but Hayate knew Kurenai was looking at him helplessly; what was he to do about the horrific things they'd witnessed? They were leaving the only neutral country in the world to burn in the fires of a madman's plan. Was this really part of something the Hokage had known would happen?
Did that make her complicit?
The night had been an unmitigated disaster for everyone; Onoki's son lost his life to a man wielding his spine as a weapon, Ay had lost most of his escort, Pakura lost some of her shinobi but had the least number of casualties due to that boy.
The red-haired child was the son of the Yondaime Kazekage and had murdered a huge number of Mist ANBU who'd apparently been waiting inside caverns, let in by a saboteur no doubt. Sand had poured out from a large reservoir shaped like a gourd on the back of a large man. Hayate suspected the man was there just for that purpose. The boy was far too small to carry it on his own.
The Seifuku-sha...
He had grudging respect, very grudging respect, for a man who planned a ballsy ambush on all five Kage and lived to tell the tale. As far as Hayate knew, the man had won.
Mikoto Uchiha, Hokage of Konohagakure, was a spider at the center of a massive web and Hayate hoped she knew what she was doing. They'd gone in knowing that the Summit was an ambush, Mifune had told them when they'd arrived. All the countries had known, it seemed-or suspected, at least in the last minute.
But they'd gone anyway most with the excuse that an ambush that was known was one disarmed. They'd lost anyway.
Had it all been a massive miscalculation by so many powerful people?
Hayate had warned against it till he was blue in the face… but she'd insisted it was part of the plan. Hayate suspected it was pride; vanity of a sort. Nobody had taken the Seifuku-sha seriously until he'd almost wiped them all out.
And Orochimaru...
Hayate turned around before he stepped into his Hokage's portal and stared back at a visual reminder of the worst night of his life. Rock still gently arched into the air, like pebbles in the sky, from how far away they were, but Hayate knew they were enormous pieces of a once proud mountain fortress.
Normal things for a shinobi, you'd think.
But this had been different. A nightmare in more ways than one; anxious, fraught urban conflict with no room to open up with powerful jutsu or properly maneuver. So many enemies converging in one place; the death toll was already catastrophic for Sekiro City alone.
Was the same thing happening in Musashi or San?
He hesitated to think the nightmare even over, the Lady Hokage seemed to imply this was just the beginning.
"Hayate."
He turned to the Hokage, watching him from the other side of the portal where bright sunny Fire Country shone through, like a dream he wanted to have. Gekko knew immediately, with a sinking feeling, what she was about to ask him to do. The warm, shadow-dappled forests he called home would have to wait.
Forgive me Uzuki. I won't be home in time for dinner like I promised.
"Find the boy. Get him home. This is my command: any means necessary. Do you understand? "
Hayate saluted with a fist to his heart, elbow and arm horizontal across his body.
Gekko hesitated, "Will you… tell Uzuki I won't be home for dinner?"
The Hokage softened, just a little, nodding.
Hayate nodded as well. Unhooking some clever clasps, he handed the Hokage's brace of blades to her and drew his own in one hand. She took them and handed them away without looking to Kurenai who was no doubt there waiting to receive them. Chakra suffused him with power, the energy shunting to the tenketsu in his legs muscles and thighs and he leaped off the incline, flipping backward off the cliff they stood on as the portal winked shut.
Wind rushed as he fell, twisting to land adroitly only to explode into motion, legs pumping as he ran in a dead sprint towards where the monstrous form of the Kyuubi had been.
Blood, death, nightmares…
What are they to the true shinobi?
I will endure.
Hayate knew the issue wasn't really about him here, about how nervous he was; no, he'd handled worse. Plowing through the snow at speed, he barely left marks on the top layer of snow. The issue, he thought, was finding one boy amongst the chaos before something happened to him; this was a case of a needle in a haystack of needles.
All he had of the boy was a vague description; a boy of nine, slight of build, messy tumbles of blonde hair, maybe put back in bandages, whisker marks on his face, and light violet eyes with perhaps an air of being older than he looked.
He would do his best to find him, or die trying, as his Hokage expected and as any true shinobi of the Leaf would. He would endure and triumph. Or fail and die.
This was the life of a shinobi.
I'm coming, Naruto.
