Clash
In a valley between dunes, right next to a small oasis, a cluster of tents granted some respite from the sun's unforgiving heat. Within one of these tents, a bandaged man slowly placed a scroll back on a low coffee table, his fingers moving a calligraphy brush with precision born out of decades of experience to trace the opportune code that would enable his orders for the North Front.
Once the one-eyed man was done, he sealed the contents of the scroll with a swift application of fuinjutsu and threw it at his closest operative, who departed in order to follow the prders he had already received. The Elder listened in the silence for a few seconds, until only the sound of the evershifting sands carried by the constant wind of Kaze no Kuni remained.
Done with his most pressing task, Shimura Danzo's lone eye closed, and he left himself drift in a state of semi meditation that allowed him to quickly track the several parrallel plans he had ongoing to secure the victory of his homecountry.
The last, even if maybe hastily devised, plan was going to be a success. Like he often did, Danzo double checked the resources spent against the weight of the possible gain, events and people taking the shape of unfeeling and dead numbers in his head so that he could be sure of his choiches.
The mixture of defective results of the Root program and weak members were obviously less valuable than a full blooded Uzumaki loyal to Konohagakure.
It was simple, was it not?
The red-headed girl had been rescued from Iwa after her attempt to escape the war-torn Kusa, she had a brief experience of peace and safety in the land of Fire, only for that quiet and peace to be broken by his less useful Root agents, who had the orders to bring the captive towards him, almost intercepting the planned travel of Jiraya while they carried just enough proof to point at their loyalty to Kumo.
The girl was either to be rescued by the Toad Summoner travelling with the Jinchuriki or she was to escape and seek refuge with Danzo. It was too late for the one-eyed warhawk to turn her into a useful asset, but he would be properly courteous while hinting at the possibility of... repayment.
By the time the Uzumaki girl started to feel unease at Danzo's presence, Jiraya would randevouz with his forces, learn of her, and fueled by his distaste and distrust of Hiruzen's old teammate, coupled with the familial ties with the Jinchuriki, he would take the girl to safety, once again saving her from the clutches of less than auspicable circumstances.
As an added gain, Konoha not only would manage to revive the Uzumaki blooline, but there would be alternatives for the sealing the Kyubi when the time came.
Truly, loyalty is easy to engineer. The one-eyed man didn't change his expression, but from the reports, this war was bringing more and more resources to Konoha: the only true menace were Kumo and somewhat Iwa, which still lacked the numbers and the skill necessary to be an actual treath to the land of fire. Onoki's successor wasn't cut of the same cloth of the Sandaime.
In truth, the only wild variable was the Nibi, which had been spotted in a couple of occasions before it levelled areas of the stony environment of Iwa.
Now that the south and east of Konohagakure were safe, at least in terms of potentially country-breaking damage, with Kiri still trying to put itself back together under the guide of a Kage that had won a civil war, thusly guaranteeing herself the dislike of at least pert of the people, the only work left was to set the game to deal with Kumo, which had gained a foothold within the forests of Hi no Kuni.
It was then that he realized that there was foreign chakra in his coils.
With an ease that betrayed his experience, Danzo Shimura broke the illusion that the shifting sound of the evermoving sand had triggered, and with his cane in hand, he steadily left his tent, his chakra ready to unlock the fuinjutsu that kept him from making full use of his abilities.
When his lone eye landed on the 30 members strong platoon he kept around himself, all ranking from seasoned chunin to jonin, with a smattering of Root agents gifted with esoteric abilities that had been extensively trained, he paused: moving languidly among the tents, as if dancing, there was something that rose many alarms in the veteran.
A blood red rattle snake sized like three horses put together moved quietly between his forces, its rattle echoing the sound of the shifting sand to sneak an area of effect genjutsu over Danzo's forces. When the summon, because it couldn't be anything else, noticed the one-eyed leader of Root, he seemed to smile while its forked tongue hissed in the warm air of the desert.
But it wasn't the creator of the annoyingly dangerous auditory illusion that brought Danzo to immediately start the process of undoing the seals and locks on his arm.
In front of him, blue armour glinting in the sun, Daiki was openly smiling, Konohagakure's headband mockingly sitting on his brow. He hadn't changed that much, at least in appearance, but where his chakra had before been blazing and almost openly challenging the rest of the world, he was now controlled, almost like the surface of a lake in absence of wind. Ripples where there, his chakra capacity was simply too large to disappear completely unless he used some esoeric ability granted from his summons, but it was... controlled.
And for the first time since his death, Danzo was reminded of Hiruzen Sarutobi. Vastly powerful, yet controlled. Focused, yet relaxed.
And above all, dangerous.
It was then that a blade removed the head from Danzo's shoulders.
As his vision started to darken, blood leaving his brain faster than he would have liked, he immediately relized his predictament, and ready as he was, his chakra acted while he forced open the eye he kept hidden under the bandages: "Izanagi."
Jiraya wasn't having a good day.
It had started with his foolish apprentice attempting to randomly wake him by dumping enough chakra into a E-rank Suiton manipulation that he managed to extract a couple of liters of the precious liquid out of dry air, following by his limited chakra sensing spotting a frightened presence that he could easily intercept.
Stumbling onto an Uzumaki in full desert stank to high heaven, double so when he had been relayed some reports of this particular red-head, one that Danzo wanted to get his hands on, and one that obviously had somehow gained Naruto's unending protection in virtue of sharing a simple Surname.
He had to slow down and to spend part of the sadly small water reserves he carried in his scrolls to make sure that the girl wouldn't simply die out of exaustion, the girl was unsure about them even after Jiraya and Naruto basically saved her life, and her cry of alarm was the only thing that stopped the Toad Sage from being skewered as his little group moved across the sands.
The blade glinted sharply in the air at a speed that belied the skill of the user, which quickly revealed itself as one of the worse possible opponents for Jiraya to face.
With no hesitation whatsoever, chakra surged through the white mane of the Toad Sage, who turned himself in a spinning ball of steely spikes that deflected the impressive shurikenjutsu while he fluctuated his chakra in order to break through the illusion he had been dropped into.
His wooden sandals kicked off the sand and flung him towards his two other companions while he created a Tsuchi bunshing from the sand beneath him, who immediately collided with the horribly fast form of the attacker, which broke into a murder of crows.
Jiraya's eyes widened in something that in a less experienced man would have been fear when they landed on his apprentice.
In front of the red-headed Uzumaki, Itachi Uchiha started to plunge his kunai, only for Naruto to explode in a whirwind of movement almost too fast to follow.
Following the orders he had been given, in fact, as soon as the blonde haired jinchuriki had spotted the cloack with red clouds, he started to dump all of his chakra into body enhancement, something that he couldn't do without damaging himself because of his atrocious control, but nevertheless something he needed if he wanted a hope to follow the events around himself.
So, while his muscles tore and his ligaments strained, a toxic-feeling red chakra started to seep through his skin, his whiskers marks darkening as the red-headed sensor, because of course she had to be so sensitive to the people around her, turned her back and ran, terror whipping at her heels.
Then Jiraya barreled into Itachi Uchiha, a shadow clone grabbing Naruto and trying to follow the sprinting redhead that hadn't hesitated to flee, and the fight was on.
I broke yet another neck of a shinobi ensnared by Akahebi's genjutsu, swiftly working my way through the forces that would make a nuisance of themselves once the actual fight started.
I have come a long way since my first murder in a tent. I mockingly praised myself as I tapped the base of a man' spine with a chakra scalpel swiftly forming in my hand.
I had never been more aware of the difference between S-rank and normal shinobi. Pushing aside my considerations about what brought some shinobi to the top of the food chain, which included but were not limited to sheer creativity and drive usually born from a trauma of some kind, I was struck by the memory of a D-rank that had required my team to rip the weeds from a garden.
The difficulty, then and now, was mostly the same. Itachi should already be fighting with Jiraya. I considered distractedly as I kept moving.
With Akahebi enforcing the illusion upon any that could hear the rattle of its tail mixed with the sound of shifting sands, added to the control and techniques I had learned while facing Tobirama Senju, it was a matter of time before I managed to destroy the forces guarding Danzo Shimura.
Of all the people that I knew from my metaknowledge, it was easy to say that I'd kill him with no remorse whatsoever. I had come a long way since my first assassinations. A long way since I had looked for solutions that didn't include murder. Whatever guilt I used to feel for erasing those that had been raised as killers was... muted.
I couldn't fault the shinobi for being what they had been raised as. I couldn't even fault Danzo for his Machiavellan attitude and casual disregard for human decency. But most importantly, I couldn't fault myself for the quiet satisfaction that came from the application of my hard won skills.
So, when my Kage Bunshin died after Danzo's abuse of the Uchiha Bloodline in order to preserve his head on his shoulders, I smiled at the memories, and I kept cutting through his forces, leaving my remaining clone to buy time and study my opponent, obtaining information that he would rely to me once he dispelled.
I had taken down another two shinobi when the tent I was crouching behind got torn asunder by an invisible blade of wind that forced me to summersault backwards, the memories of my clone reaching me just as I found my feet again.
A kunai appeared in my hand as I deflected two incoming shuriken, only to jump parallel to the third when I heard the telltale whistling of Air Natured Chakra surrounding it.
There weren't words exchanged, no taunts, no platitudes.
Chakra was moulded and shaped in a split second while my free hand reached for the ground: so the follow up hail of projectiles encountered only a two teet thick wall of compacted dirt, reinforced with chakra that granted it the strenght of concrete. In the time I needed to move from behind the wall, leaving two tsuchi bunshin behind to act as a decoy, I felt the tug on my chakra that signified the dispelling of Akahebi, and then the tags tied to his last distance assault exploded with outrageous force, my clone broke under the pressure and the sharpnel, maintaining its form for a split second while I blitzed the one-eyed shinobi.
In the echo of the explosion, without missing a beat, his eye-endowed arm snapped up, a tanto in hand, and he swung, ready to accept a puncturing wound to the heart if that meant that he could remove my head.
His blow landed while mine was deflected with the ease of the truly experienced, so that instead of a killing blow, I only opened a shallow gnash on the right side of his torso.
When his blade reached half-way trough my neck, the second tsuchi bunshin I had created unraveled while I exploded from the ground, a hand closing on the left ankle of my opponent while I pulled.
Danzo reacted, wind chakra covering a kunai that was flung straight at my head, which was deflected with a similar application of Futon channeled through my free hand.
Still with his ankle held in my hand, I moved, my body completely leaving the ground, my head impacting the chin of the elder with strenght enough to break his jaw, and in the split second that followed, I let go of his ankle, my left forearm turning in a counterclockwise motion to keep his eye-endowed arm from me while my right hand crumpled my opponent's trachea with a wet, cracking sound.
The body of Shimura Danzo fell to the ground in relative quiet, the exchange had lasted barely half a minute, and in that moment, I resumed my blitz through his forces, which were only now returning to their senses.
I eliminated two shinobi bypassing their defences before I was forced to abruptly change direction, twin shuriken coated in air natured chakra tearing through the man that I was about to kill, a man that tried to stab me with a standard tanto even as he died.
Root. I identified him while the remainin forces of the one-eyed Elder rearranged themselves in a loose circle around me, some faces openly displaying outrage and rage at seeing me tearing through their forces.
A few meters behind a couple of stone-faced ninja, my main target was looking at me, Hashirama's arm in full view of the ANBU and regular forces that he still had under his command.
"You are not surprised." Danzo's voice cut the white noise of the desert, his lone, dark eye staring at me with no hint of what he was actually thinking.
For the first time since I had started the conflict, I felt a sile pull at my lips while I broke through the Genjutsu that one of the soldiers around me tried to put me through: "Your control isn't good enough to put me under, honey."
The blonde kunoichi in question almost bristled at my carefree comment, but she was too well trained to let me menipulate her.
"I am surprised why nobody here is wondering how you have Hashirama's face on your shoulder and an eye collection in your arm." I returned my attention to Danzo, who was... buying time?
I slammed my foot in the ground, chakra breaking through the clone that had just attempted to assault me while we were at this particular standstill, and my eyes briefly landed on the responsible shinobi.
And it was then that I realized it.
Fear.
They were scared of me.
There were 9 ninja from Tokubetsu Jonin, to full Jonin surrounding me, a few that had made their careers in ANBU, I could tell from how controlled their chakra was, and other 6 shinobi that were clearly Root. Their presence felt as hollow as Danzo's conditioning had made them.
But while it made sense for the to casually poke at me through meaningless genjutsu or easily dispatched clones, hoping to either force me to reveal a weakness or overextend, it didn't make sense for Danzo to make this encounter last longer than it should. I was young, I was experienced, and while his Hashirama-infused arm granted him strenght, I was both faster and stronger, to not mention my taijutsu, which had been lethal since my chunin exams.
"We all make sacrifices for Konoha." the dry voice of the Elder spoke again, his lone eye never leaving my form.
Danzo knew, as the shinobi surrounding me suspected, that he was the only one with a chance in hell to strike a lethal blow. Given my proficiency as a healer, it meant that their main target was the top of my spine or my head. I'll have to use their fear against them, won't I? After all, I never let go of an advantage.
I opened my hands while I took a step forward, and I spotted how the normal shinobi surrounding me shifted their holds on their weapons, their chakra almost flaring in alarm: "The weak who court death, often find it."
Then, with a familiar rush of chakra, the memories of a clone slipped into my mind.
Invisible to the senses of any shinobi or kunichi, I stood perfectly still in a circular room I had shaped deep into the ground with Doton manipulation. While my life signs were halted, and I accomplished the paradox necessary to store Natural Chakra into my coils, I perceived the world with a clarity that none but a Sage could conceive.
In the distance, I felt the original-self fighitng with the gaggle of weaklings that surrounded the twisted existence of Danzo Shimura. The steely presence of Itachi tried to cut through the blazing chakra of Jiraya, who had not hesitated in summoning two Toads to help Naruto, who clearly hadn't had the time necessary to mature meaningfully in order to keep up with a clash among S-rank.
Much closer, a familiar existence was being pursued by a kage bunshin of Itachi, who leveraged Karin's sensing ability in order to push her where was needed.
The fight between Itachi and Jiraya had started a full ten minutes before Daiki's clash with Danzo's forces, time enough for the true blooded Uzumaki to be pushed to her destination.
I lacked the instinct-driven synaesthesia that allowed Karin to read personalities withing the chakra flow of those she sensed, but the toxic bloodlust that tinged the chakra of a Biju stood out in the otherwise dim perception I had of the desert.
My attention returned to Danzo briefly, who flickered in and out of existence a couple of times, only for the light representing his twisted existence to split while the Original-me... stalled?
Karin narrowly kept her advantage on Itachi's pursuit, fear and the tiredness from days in the desert after escaping her captors blinding her to the fact that if the Kinslayer wished to blitz her, he could at any time.
When her reserves started to lag behind her necessities, she inevitably slowed down, her movements more sluggish as she tumbled down a dune, only for her to sudden change direction, turning west as if she had spotted salvation.
And given what I knew, she did.
I lacked the Uzumaki's egendary sensing to feel what she was going through, but I could imagine her thoughts as her hands uncovered the large summoning scroll from the sands, the faint traces of chakra surrounding it enough to point it out to her senses.
In that moment the clone of Itachi flared its chakra, the flavour of his disinterested killing intent soaring through the air as if yelled.
Karin, aware of her position between a rock and a hard place, picked her poison, and vanished from my senses.
With that objective completed, I smiled, and dispelled myself.
The rush of memories and Narure chakra made me take an istinctive deep breath, thick, black bands blossoming over my face while my sclera and iris turned golden, my presence blossoming around me with the weight of the Elephants, and immediately I understood the seamless substitution that Danzo had performed.
"Picking up tricks from Orochimaru, are we?" I asked the elder, whose expression remained blank while his chakra abandoned the construct he had used to stall for time, letting it crumble into pieces on the ground.
My attention spread outwards as far as it could, but Danzo's presence vanished as surely as Orochimaru's had done during Shikamaru's chunin exams.
Then I felt it, in a single istant, echoing and mirroring my own chakra, a Sage taking the field of battle, toxic bloodlust skyrocketing, and Itachi's chakra turning colder, exploding outwards in a towering presence.
I didn't even feel it when I barrelled through the two shinobi in my way, their bones giving up in the same moment the Root members turned on their fellow countrymen, likely following the orders of keeping the modifications of Danzo a secret.
I dismissed the brief thought of dismantling Root, Itachi's safety had the priority, and the end result of the mission would allow me to be ready to rip apart Tobi when the time came.
AN
How did Danzo's plan for Karin look? It's something that the one eyed bastard would do. Nobody has ever seen what Danzo actually does during a war, but I'm willing to bet that his patriotism (read 'zelotry') would bring him to be a terrifyingly efficient commander, and he's apt at manipulating events in order to set up long terms gains for his village (read 'himself').
Karin follows the directives she's been given by Daiki when confronted with Akatsuki or a Jinchuriki, which Naruto doesn't give the best example of when he starts exhuding Kurama's bloodlust.
I know this chapter is extremely short, but I needed to split the story-screen and it didn't feel right to write the whole fight here.
So, Karin uses the Monkey contract to hop away from Itachi in scary-mode, Daiki has to mop through the remaining forces of Danzo, and Jiraya is pulling all the stops in order to keep Naruto from harm.
