Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto or Street Fighter. Which is a shame. It's almost enough to make you cry… doesn't it? Does it make you want to cry for me? No?
…You guys are coldblooded.
Chapter 48: What's Mine is Mine
A riverside bridge in an open park in Aohura City was the agreed upon meeting point if Sasuke was looking for a ride to America without having to jump through hoops and make tons of arrangements in a city he'd never been to; Las Vegas.
He figured he'd been given the correct coordinates to wait at because after an hour or two of hanging out he was joined by others. First by a small teenage brown-haired girl in a blue school uniform with a pink bow at her neck and a white headband around her head. Batsu's girlfriend Wakaba Hinata. She was there for… whatever reason she was there for.
And yes, Uchiha Sasuke was aware enough of Naruto's friends to know that much about their personal lives, especially since everyone who knew everyone in this town was a fairly capable fighter, including this girl apparently. Who knew if it'd save his ass one day or not?
Alright, so he was definitely in the right place if nothing else. And apparently she found him disengaging enough to just sit off on the side of the bridge railing instead of trying to make small talk and shoot the breeze with him. That was good. It was clear that she was bored and wanted to have some sort of a conversation from how her legs were fidgeting, but constantly scowling and looking all standoffish was enough to dissuade her.
Eventually he turned his head to find Abel making his way onto the bridge, dressed in a blue gi and white vale tudo shorts, "Sorry for being late monsieur." He said in a quiet, aloof manner as he seemed to be followed by Akira, "This girl was rather… pushy requesting to be taken to you when she had been wearing her helmet. She is a friend of yours, no?"
"Yeah." Sasuke said as Akira did nothing more than just take a place standing with him, leaning against the bridge railing and not saying a word, "Don't worry about it. You're still early. The idiot isn't here yet."
"Oh God, what happened to your arm?" Hinata asked, pointing out the still bandaged stump beneath Abel's elbow. Certain things she just couldn't ignore or stay quiet about, spirited as she usually was. Seeing someone missing part of their anatomy basically pushed that over the edge.
"It isn't that bad an injury madame." Abel said, trying to brush off something that had basically almost killed him, "You shouldn't concern yourself with it."
As Hinata started asking Abel questions about what exactly had happened to him, Akira put a hand on Sasuke's arm and looked up at him, getting him to raise an eyebrow at her, "You'll be careful?" She asked, almost quiet enough to be a whisper, "You do a lot of reckless things."
"It doesn't matter." Sasuke said in return, "It'll be fine. I do this kind of thing all of the time."
"Even so… I enjoy having you around." Akira admitted, tapping her fingers on the motorcycle helmet she held under her arm, "I'd like you to promise that you'll come back."
"I'm not going to do that." Completely unfazed by the almost pleading way that Akira had asked him to make her a promise, Sasuke barely even blinked. He didn't make promises. Who was he, Naruto?
Right then, Akira figured that she'd made an error. But it was after her brother had accepted her choice to try and pursue Sasuke, after they had been getting rather close (by their respective standards), and even after hearing from Daigo that Sasuke had actually come to visit her a few times in the hospital while she'd been asleep after she'd been injured by Juri.
Even so, any sort of personal commitment just wasn't Sasuke's style. Any sort of show of emotion other than annoyance and occasional anger, especially anything positive, was extremely rare. She should have known better than to try and coax something like that out of him, and the frown that overtook her face was because she did indeed realize this.
"I don't have to promise that I'm coming back because I'm not going to lose." Sasuke continued, speaking as if it were as simple as that. As if it were as much of a foregone conclusion as the next breath he was going to take, "I'm going to win, and then I'm going to fly back here, and you'll find me in that stupid restaurant being tormented by that old bastard gnome Gen, just like always."
He didn't have to make a promise that he was going to come back and things would be just as he left them.
For some reason despite vehemently refraining from making a promise that Akira had asked him to make, his reply set her at ease and put a smile on the quiet biker girl's face. She started to reach out to try and hold his hand, but stopped herself from doing so. Holding hands definitely wouldn't have been the kind of thing that Sasuke would have been okay with, even on his best tempered day.
Sasuke saw the subtle motion out of the corner of his eye, but made no action one way or the other regarding what he knew she had wanted to do. Instead his eyes flickered over into the direction where he could hear helicopter blades, eventually seeing one come their way.
In a matter of moments it had found a clear open spot to land in the grass. Everyone that had been waiting wandered over to it to see Guile flying before the doors open up to reveal Naruto and Batsu in the back, "You sure you don't want to try to go?" Naruto asked the darker-skinned teenager as the latter climbed out painstakingly, "You don't have to actually fight on the trip."
"Nah, if I'm not fighting I'll just be an empty place-filler." Batsu said, wincing as his feet touched the ground, "This ain't the time for that. Don't worry, I'll sit this one out. Just make sure you hit that chrome son of a bitch a few good times for me." His eyes then moved over to the sight of the company that they had, on one person in particular running up to them ,"Besides, I think I'll have enough fun here healing."
"Batsu-kun!"
He found himself grabbed in a big hug by his smaller girlfriend who immediately started fretting over the clear and visible bandaged injuries. Yeah, Naruto was sure that a lot of 'healing' was going to take place while Batsu was temporarily sidelined. Like he was one to talk though after last night, so he kept to himself on that one.
The next group that Naruto saw coming their way was Sasuke, Abel, and Akira. He could guess which two were actually going to come along on this little trip since Akira had not been discussed as a passenger, "Ready to go to Vegas?"
"Vegas? As in Las Vegas?" Akira muttered under her breath. She'd heard about that place. TV featuring or portraying America in some way referenced that place all the time. It wasn't exactly the kind of place she wanted Sasuke to go to. Thus she glared at Naruto, whom she had never particularly been a fan of for several reasons over the years.
In this case it was all his fault that Sasuke would be going to an incredibly sinful city that did not tie in with his personality, and if anything off-kilter happened to besmirch Sasuke's admirable character while he was there she would be blaming the previously aforementioned blond dunderhead.
And he would suffer the consequences for it. It didn't matter that he was disgustingly more powerful than her. There were more ways than simply trying to fight him to do it.
A shiver went down Naruto's spine as once again he found himself the subject of a very cold Kazama Akira glare. He seemed to get those quite often when in her presence. Hers wasn't quite as scary as one from Karin or as blood-chilling as receiving one from Cammy, but it was effective for the kinds of people she would probably usually level it upon.
Geez, you grab a girl's boob one time by semi-accident and she holds a grudge for that long? Come to think of it, he couldn't remember actually ever apologizing for that. Maybe that was part of the problem? Meh, whatever.
"…Right." Naruto said, tearing his gaze away from hers before she turned him to stone like Medusa. What was important at the time was getting Sasuke and getting the hell on the way to Vegas, "Anyway, you ready to go?"
"Yeah sure." Sasuke said, gesturing for Abel to climb into the helicopter first while Sasuke bid Akira farewell. The heartfelt departure in its entirety consisted of Sasuke curtly nodding his head upward and Akira offering a small smile in return while giving him a short, single wave.
You could just feel the abundance of sentiment within those elaborate gestures.
After Sasuke entered the aircraft, the door was shut and Naruto tapped Guile on the shoulder to prompt him to take off. Getting a thumbs up as he began to work the controls, the helicopter ascended and flew off to where their real transport was waiting for them.
Plopping back down in his seat, Naruto lolled his head back and let out a sigh. It was only a matter of time until the game would be afoot, and it couldn't come his way soon enough. He was going to wreck that jerk Seth, no matter what it took.
To occupy his time for a bit he kept his eyes closed and slowly ran through the short hand-seal combination that would activate his ace-in-the-hole jutsu, without placing any of the chakra behind it.
Not finding the scenery from above very interesting, Sasuke turned his attention to Naruto, finding something strange about him. Stranger than normal. He didn't think that Naruto could focus on anything outside of combat, but there wasn't anything reading on Naruto's face other than outright concentration on the task at hand.
Wow. He was a different kind of angry this time. That kind of special breed of pissed off that made you all the more functional because of it and let you zero in on a target. Tunnel-vision pissed. Sasuke knew it well.
Well, as weird as it was, at least it would keep Naruto's mouth shut for much of the trip while he pondered all the ways he would tear S.I.N. a new one.
XxX
(Some Time Later – United States of America – 20 Miles West of Las Vegas, Nevada – Spring Mountains)
Karin's manacles were completely annoying, as were the tacky white clothes that she had been presented to change into after getting cleaned up from the ordeals of the last two days. There was nothing wrong with them as far as poise went, but she felt that the tennis dress she'd been taken captive in was more elegant than what they'd given her to wear after getting her to their base.
At least they were learning, as the entire reason they'd taken her own clothes away, aside from them being rather dirty, was due to the fact that they didn't know what else she would try in order to break free if given the opportunity.
So between the armed guards watching her around the clock, restrictions on her arms and legs, a room that had a one-way mirror of a wall (and was far beneath her station as far as amenities went), and a complete lack of positive human interaction, she was quite effectively subdued.
That didn't stop her from still trying to come up with some way to break free from her captives however, but it was very slow going.
'Whatever S.I.N. desires with me cannot be good.' Karin thought to herself as she sat in a chair and pulled futilely at the manacles clasped around her forearms that held them together, 'For me, the zaibatsu, or anyone in general.'
The moment they'd gotten back, Seth immediately threw himself into working with some scientist that had greeted them upon their arrival. She never particularly liked science, and had a foreboding feeling in the pit of her stomach as far as this went. A little too coincidental for a scientist to be Seth's main concern after capturing her, who was supposedly important to his plans at-large.
Hopefully they wouldn't find it necessary to experiment on her. Scientific experiments had a habit of turning the subjects into quite unsightly beings.
Down around her ankles she also had restraints, keeping her from being able to do anything more than walk at a fairly brisk pace. So she would definitely not be fighting with all of that crap on. She could take no martial arts stance, nor could she effectively defend herself. She wasn't completely helpless, but she was as close to helpless as she'd ever been in her entire life.
The door to her room/cell slid open, and in walked Seth, towering and hulking in the same formal wear he'd been dressed in at her family's mansion. His usual chilling smile was on his face as he stopped and simply observed her, "I want you to come with me. There's something I want to show you." He seemed to be rather proud of himself for whatever reason.
Karin wasn't particularly in a position to decline. All she could really do was stand and walk herself with as much dignity as she could, prisoner or not. She didn't say a word, simply wandering out into the hall into a circle created by her armed guard. She hoped that it would at least separate her from Seth, but that deplorable lifeform merely entered her protective barrier and stood by her side as he led them along.
She wasn't going to say a word to him. The last thing she'd said, about how Naruto was going to kill him, had been all the peace she'd needed to speak. She would not dignify a creature so foul with another word, hence her silence ever since being taken off of the aircraft that had brought them there.
Everything there looked and felt so cold and sterile. A man could go mad living in a place designed as such.
"Let me welcome you to the science wing of our Southwest U.S. base." Seth said, smiling over and down at her as if thinking of a joke, "Of course we have many bases all over the world, but this one is particularly important right now. We've had a breakthrough here."
Karin put out an appearance of not caring, but her eyes couldn't help but to follow to where she was directed to look after they entered through the heavy iron security doors of the aforementioned science wing, because the resulting series of thuds on the unbreakable glass window made her jump in surprise.
Behind the glass a red-skinned human, at least she thought it was a human, pounded away at the glass and tried to break its way free. It alternated from beating on the glass and the even more secure door to make its escape.
"What in God's name…" Karin muttered quietly to herself, walking closer to the glass to get a better look. The man was berserk. His muscles and veins all over his body were swollen to twice that of what they appeared that they should have been. His skin was blotched with black spots, almost making him seem like a plague victim, "…Is this?"
"Finally breaking your 'vow of silence' I see." Seth chuckled before leading her onward, "This is the incomplete version of what BLECE is meant to do. It enhances the human condition, but at the cost of mankind's sense of reason, and all emotion other than rage."
Clearly self-preservation or any sort of reserve wasn't present in the creature due to how it was hurting itself just to try and get out to kill all of the people it could see outside.
"He's not really so threatening." Continued the artificial overlord, "If you want things set in layman's terms, were he to break free it would possibly cost the lives of at least ten of the humans here, not counting yourself were you not bound of course. From what I know of you, you would be able to easily acquit yourself against him."
"You did not count yourself." Karin pointed out, keeping from looking at Seth as they continued onward.
"That's because I am beyond human comprehension." Seth said before gesturing to the next observation window where there were S.I.N. scientists in heavy white quarantine suits cleaning up what could only be construed as a mess of humanity, "What you saw before was a partial success; 17 percent rate of occurrence. This is an outright failure of the project, complete destruction of the cells; 72 percent rate of occurrence."
Why was he showing her this? She had no idea. What did he expect her to say aside from the obvious of referring to him as a monster? A 72 percent chance of turning the recipient into slurry and a 17 percent chance of turning them into a berserk subhuman? What did the remaining 11 percent do?
Seth continued to lead her along, still surrounded by his armed guard, "You may be wondering why I'm doing this. What I could possibly hope to accomplish with BLECE and why I'm even showing it to you at all."
Yes, but once again she wasn't going to say anything.
"I'm going to destroy this world and build something better my dear, and the Kanzuki Zaibatsu's worldwide distribution system is going to help me do it." Seth said, leading her into another place where there was an entire platoon of men and women in formation with pitch black eyes, wearing tight black military gear with the S.I.N. symbol emblazoned on the front, "Let me introduce to you the 11 percent."
They were soldiers. His soldiers. And they were the 11 percent outcome of whatever BLECE was supposed to do?
"These men and women are the pinnacle of humanity." Seth explained, waving his hand to signal for all of them to begin generating ki as easily as breathing, "The original intention of the BLECE project began back when Master Bison was still in control of Shadaloo. He wanted an easy way to create and replace high level fighters to serve his cause or to be lent for money to militaries all over the world. He had the Dolls, and they were superior to all of these people you see before you, but they took far too much time to train and condition."
"You're making an army?" Karin asked, looking them over. So eerie.
"Yes and no." Seth admitted, "At first with the failure of the project to create any discernable subjects at all I was content with using it as a weapon, but with the samples we've obtained from the Bison clone known as 'Abel' we've finally been able to raise the success rate of BLECE's application to 11 percent. Aside from that, it's still extremely viable as a weapon, and that's where your company comes in."
"You are the arms company." Karin told him with a glare, "You distribute it. If anyone is fool enough to try to use such a horrid creation they would purchase it from you and not from us. I do not care what you do to me."
The grin that spread across the chrome-skinned creature's face was absolutely inhuman.
"You think BLECE would be a sanctioned weapon?" Seth said with a laugh, "Silly girl. You could never sell this without putting it on the black market, and aside from that this is not meant to be sold. It will be smuggled in many of the other goods your zaibatsu has a hand in, and distributed to millions. Billions even."
So only 11 percent of those infected would survive in any workable fashion? And then what? This was beyond madness. How could anyone justify doing something like this to the entire world? There were definitely ways to get this to happen. Pharmaceuticals, food distribution, the avenues were numerous.
"And you think I would allow that!?"
"You will not have a choice." Seth said, never ceasing in his grinning, "I said that Master Bison's method of creating the Dolls was unwise if one wanted enhanced conventional forces. You could not train a large group in this manner. However, for focusing on a small group, especially one person in particular, it has proven to be very effective in breaking young women such as yourself."
Whatever was done to Cammy, whatever was done to the rest of the Dolls to turn them into soulless assassins, Seth planned on putting her through the same treatment. But that was foolish. That kind of treatment would have to take months, if not years, to enact in its entirety.
"If you're of the mindset that it will take an extensive amount of time to break you…" Seth said, cutting off her train of thought before she could really get started, "…You would be mistaken. To train the Dolls, records show that it took six months in total at the longest before they were field ready. I don't need you field ready. I simply need you to be obedient enough to carry out my orders for your company of your own 'free will'."
"Do you really think it will be that easy to subdue me?" Karin snapped in a low hiss, "I have already told you; I will not allow it."
"It doesn't matter if you attempt to resist or not. The longest any of them held out before breaking was one month. The shortest; one week" And at that he decided to let her in on a little secret that made her sent a chill of fear down her spine, "Killer Bee wasn't the one that lasted the longest despite being the best of them, so strength and ability have absolutely nothing to do with this."
With that being said, Seth left the circle of guards. Karin angrily bared her teeth at him in a snarl and looked as if she were about to attack him despite her current state. The two dozen guards all aimed her rifles at her, and even the special BLECE-enhanced S.I.N. soldiers seemed ready to pounce if she made a move.
Shackled and manacled as she was, against that many she wouldn't stand a ghost of a chance.
"Do not fret my dear." Seth said as he walked away, "When it's all over you won't remember that it even happened. You won't remember anything I don't want you to."
"I would kill you if I were able." Karin said softly.
"But you can do no such thing. No mere human can. Now take her away, and make sure the Lady Kanzuki enjoys the rest of her time before all preparations for her conditioning are complete."
Karin blinked back the tears that threatened to spill from her eyes, losing only one that slid down her cheek as she was led back to her cell. This was not going to happen. The entire world was not going to be led to ruin because of her family's company. Because of her.
She needed something, anything. She needed someone to save her. For once in her life, there wasn't anything she could do to get herself out of her dire predicament. There was no combination of intelligence and force that she could provide to allow herself an avenue to escape and succeed.
It was the only time that she could possibly remember where she felt entirely powerless.
'Naruto-san…' It was the first name that Karin could think of as she was led away. The only person she knew that could be counted on to save her, 'I need you.'
"There isn't anything I wouldn't do to protect you."
Despite his apparent status as her bodyguard, she never needed or asked him to fight any battle for her. She fought alongside him time and time again, whether he wanted her to or not. But now she so desperately wanted to believe in him, 'Please.'
XxX
(Some Time Later – With Naruto – Outside of Las Vegas – Mojave Desert)
Whether or not it kept him down for too long or not, Seth still beat Naruto's ass the first go-around. One could tout that the chrome being had the whole element of surprise thing, but the fact of the matter was that he was strong enough to repel three tails in one move. Even with surprise, it would have taken some serious, Bison-esque firepower to pull that one off.
Hell, with three tails, Naruto still overpowered Bison only with Cammy's assistance after his friends had already tired him out elsewhere on his base.
Ugh, that was irrelevant. It had occurred a full calendar year ago, thus it was an extremely dated reference to his own strength. He had become stronger since then and he knew it. Still though, it took up residence in the back of his mind.
Still, he had lost some really tough battles in that span of time.
He hadn't defeated Sagat for real in their tournament match, and then there was always the big, open wound on his ego known otherwise as the run-in with Akuma that put him out of commission for a full month.
But those hadn't been with anything ultra-important on the line. Not like this.
The ride out to the coordinates taken from S.I.N.'s grounded aircraft had to be done by dropping off those heading in with a stealth helicopter. Guile was piloting, which meant that he couldn't go in himself as he had to look out for the military's merchandise that he was being allowed to use.
Despite giving Guile access to the helicopter, he was not to engage the enemy directly. The U.S. military was officially not sanctioning any sort of aggressive actions on S.I.N. for multiple reasons, most notable of them being that they supplied the best weaponry available to buy. This meant that there wouldn't be any backup outside of what they already brought.
Naruto, Sasuke, Sakura, Ibuki, Cammy, and Abel. Chun-Li wasn't cleared to pursue a direct conflict with S.I.N. either, as despite the evidence she had managed to stockpile, Interpol hadn't managed to get things through all of the red tape necessary to sign off on an official mission for her. It probably wouldn't have been too popular with her higher-ups to send their strongest agent off to fight with an arms company with only kids as backup.
Sitting in the helicopter, the entire party set to fight the upcoming battle sat in relative silence. Sasuke's face was fixed in a scowl, arms crossed over his chest even as he tried to rest his eyes before he was needed. Abel absently rubbed the vacant space beneath his forearm that Juri had severed during their first meeting.
Every so often, Abel's eyes drifted over to Cammy who chose to comfortably rest her head on Naruto's lap until action was needed to be taken. He still had no idea how to talk to his little sister/cousin/whatever-she-was. He didn't know how things were supposed to work with genetic copies.
She did seem to be happy living with Naruto though. Content. They had spoken briefly during the flight, and Abel had learned that even though Cammy didn't remember anything that she'd done before getting her amnesia short of what came to her in sparse nightmares, she was just fine living on as she was.
Sitting on the other side of Naruto, Sakura regarded the grave expression on his face for several minutes before reaching out to grab his hand, "You're not going to lose it when we get started are you?"
"No, I'm mellower now." Naruto assured Sakura, looking over at Ibuki and giving her a smile, "Thanks for that by the way." He said cryptically, at least as far as Sakura and mostly everyone else onboard the aircraft were concerned, "I really mean it."
"The pleasure was all mine." The kunoichi basically purred in return, her Cheshire smile hidden by the facemask of her ninja outfit, "Just make sure that when this is over you're still alive. No dumb hero stuff. I still need you more than anyone knows."
From the front of the helicopter, Chun-Li let out a groan that went unheard by everyone except for Guile, who was up there with her piloting. She had long since figured out what had transpired back at E. Honda's place in Tokyo, "…Teenagers."
"Aren't you only twenty-one?" Guile replied, getting a roll of the eyes from the Interpol agent.
Sasuke opened his eyes from his temporary resting position at the utterance of Naruto's words from before, "Don't get mellow idiot. The second we set foot off of this thing you'd better fight to kill, no matter who's in the way. That goes for all of you, because if you don't-." He then grabbed Abel's arm and lifted it to show the stump, "…-This will happen to you. And the bitch that did this isn't even the leader."
"-Or the strongest." Sakura added on after the fact, "No combination of any of us has ever beaten Juri anyway, and she's not even the biggest threat."
"You're not losing your nerve are you Sakura-chan?" Ibuki asked. She was the only one there that had never fought Juri at all, so she lacked the direct experience of just how violent that sadistic woman could be. She'd heard and seen enough to know that she was ultra-dangerous though, "We can't turn back now."
"I don't want to turn back." Sakura insisted. Karin might have been the first rival she'd ever had and a headache at times, but she was one of them. Their friend. There was no way Sakura would just sit back and let this happen if there was something she could do about it, "I'm just saying, our track record isn't really the best against her so far."
"So what?" Naruto said, squeezing Sakura's hand encouragingly, "My lifetime track record against Sasuke sucks." He beat him once when they were twelve because Sasuke didn't know he had solid clones at his beck and call at the time, "I'm still gonna beat his ass the next time we fight."
"Like hell you are." Sasuke interjected with a detached mutter.
Ignoring him for the time being, Naruto continued explaining his viewpoint to Sakura, "I can accept failing. Everybody fails at something. But I can't accept not trying at all."
The last time the situation was this real for Sakura, then she had Ryu and Ken, along with other adults such as Guile, Chun-Li, and Charlie that could and would take final responsibility for what occurred, even if it wasn't the desired outcome. While the safety of the world had more or less been at stake then, the pressure hadn't rested in her stomach as heavily as it did at that very moment.
With soulful brown eyes, Sakura looked Naruto's way and then down at their joined hands. He always made her feel stronger, because he was the man with the strongest spirit she knew. So this time she would be strong for him. Stronger than she'd ever been. It was why she had always trained, wanting to catch up to him. Every step forward she'd taken.
She wanted him to keep an eye on her, and walk next to her instead of ahead of her.
"Coming up on the drop point." Guile said from the front, "We're lowering altitude. You kids get ready to go. We're going to be moving fast here." Guile said before an alert went off up front, "Damn it."
Chun-Li cursed when she saw trails of smoke flying up from the mountainside, "Camouflaged surface-to-air defenses?" Well they were definitely in the right place. If the ground defenses around were better than their sensors it was definitely S.I.N.'s technology.
"Sometimes Sakura-chan…" Naruto said, sliding the door open to the helicopter, "…Even if it's dangerous, you can't always think about what you're gonna do next. If it's to get to what you want, sometimes you've got to do something really, really dumb." With that being said he jumped out of the helicopter, immediately cloaking himself in two tails of the Kyuubi's chakra before roaring in the general direction of the missiles that had been fired at the helicopter.
The force of the roar disrupted the propulsion of the missiles and caused them to blow up in the air, with Naruto's body falling through the fire, basically unscathed. It was quite the show for everyone else left back up in the safe vehicle.
"I don't know if I've said this to everyone already." Ibuki said after watching Naruto land on the ground in a sandy dust cloud before walking out of it, the red chakra from before no longer existent, "But in case I didn't, I'll say it again. So gonna be my boyfriend. MY boyfriend." Sakura just stuck her tongue out at her behind her back.
"Tch." Sasuke, not one to be shown up, chose to bail out of his own nearest door, temporarily accessing the second stage of his cursed seal to use his wings to glide his way down to the ground, "Showoff."
"Alright, for those of you that aren't insane showboats or the people irritated by them-." Guile started to say, "-Remember the crash-course I gave you in fast rope descent and good luck."
XxX
(S.I.N. Underground Base)
This was not going to be a surprise attack, as S.I.N. had been aware of everything entering their airspace. From the smallest bird, to any commercial aircraft flying overhead 10,000 feet, nothing that came within the range of their facility went without notice.
After the attempt to shoot down the helicopter that had gotten too close had failed, word was sent to the higher-ups present to inform them of the situation.
A grin came to Juri's face upon being told of the situation within her own quarters, "I fucking love these people so much." She said to herself, laughing in a chair in her room, "Honestly, I keep kicking them around and they keep on coming right back. They're like hitting dummies that yell back and bleed."
Honestly, who could endure being outsmarted and outfought at every turn and still line themselves up for more? This was the most fun she'd had in a while. She could have honestly cried tears of joy.
Entering little ego-driven tournaments like the World Warrior Tournament in both of its incarnations simply didn't satisfy her. No-holds-barred. That was the way that fighting should have been. Not for accolades, not for money, not to prove your strength to the world or to yourself, not for the wellbeing of others. Not for any reason but simply to feel the rush of adrenaline that came with putting your life at risk.
If she knew that these kinds of people existed in the world she would have sought them out to fight against even sooner. But now she had the Feng Shui Engine, so not only could she enjoy the chaos and insanity that came with battle, she could win no matter what.
She would have paid someone money to take the asskickings she was doling out to the attacking party, and instead she was the one getting paid to plant her foot firmly between the lungs and colons of others.
"Oh well." Juri said, giggling and spinning around playfully in her chair, "I guess if they survive Seth's flunkies that are all souped-up on BLECE they'll be warmed up enough to play for a bit longer."
XxX
(Elsewhere in the Base – Isolated Chamber – With Karin)
For upwards of 36 hours, Karin had been kept in a dark room, held by iron bonds against a table-like surface with her arms held open. Above her there was some unseeable apparatus steadily letting one drop of water fall onto the center of her forehead every four seconds.
It was extremely simple, and as the first stage of a method meant to break her will and psyche it seemed extremely weak. But it was meant to do one thing, take her mind away from the need to internally steel herself. Even for someone that was somewhat used to pain or harsh conditions this was an effective way to soften their concentration… when done for an hour or two.
After that point, the monotonous solid drips would begin to eat away at the victim's state of mind, making it a slow-burn form of torture in of itself. Unable to sleep, Karin was unable to even so much as move her head to try and avoid them in the slightest due to the binding around her neck holding her in position.
Once the fourth hour had passed, a low droning voice that echoed quietly in the enclosed space spoke in a loop every five seconds, "Obey." Random flashes of bright, nearly blinding light would hit her right in the eyes when she least expected it every so often.
It was progressively getting louder to Karin, and she had long since gotten past the shouting at nothing phase of the torture to try and coax the voice to shut up. The skin around her neck was worn and red where she was locked down to the table to keep her from moving her head.
She was so weak… and there would be more to come. Even if something happened that would allow her to go free right then and there, she doubted she would be in the slightest condition to try and fight her way out. They would only continue to build upon what they were already doing to turn her mind to mush.
"I know you're watching me." Karin said weakly, staring straight up in the dark, presumably at whatever was dripping water onto the center of her forehead, "Someone is watching me." She knew she was being observed from somewhere. Those flashes of light were being manually operated, "If I were in your position, I would run."
"Obey."
"I would run as far and as fast as I could."
XxX
(With Naruto)
Around fifty devastated armed guards were strewn outside of the main steel doors concealed in the shadow of the mountainside. Hey they'd tried, and they'd given it their all to stop the extremely pissed off blond guy that had walked up to them, made multiple copies and proceeded to attack them, but at some point when it got down to the last few people they probably would have been better served dropping their guns and laying down on their bellies with their hands behind their necks.
It probably would have been less painful or un-fatal to just surrender.
Sasuke just stood back and watched, because it wasn't like he had to do anything to get past the S.I.N. soldiers, and it wasn't like he actually wanted to fight them. He was there for one reason and dealing with interchangeable nameless jabronies was not it.
"Open! The goddamned! Door!" Naruto punctuated with a back kick to the giant iron doors each time, "What's this thing made of? Rasengan didn't dent it!"
"Sure, because kicking it is going to convince whoever's behind it to open it." Sasuke said sarcastically, "Look. Doors like this are usually going to be the most durable part of the front of a base like this. Now do you think it goes down or goes up?"
What the fuck was this, a pop quiz?
"Building the base upward would be pretty stupid." Naruto said, wanting Sasuke to get to whatever his point was, "If it was built upward all anyone would have to do to take it out would be to bring down the mountain."
By this time, Sakura, Ibuki, Cammy, and Abel had caught up and heard the tail-end of Naruto's answer to Sasuke, "You said that like it would be easy to do." Abel remarked, having never seen the kind of devastation that Naruto or Sasuke could unleash if they cut loose.
"I could actually destroy the mountain right now." Sasuke said, crossing his arms nonchalantly over his chest as if what he said wasn't such a big deal. It would take all of his chakra that wasn't required to run his basic bodily functions to do it, but he still could. And no one else needed to know that.
Naruto's head slowly turned in Sasuke's direction as everyone else around could just feel the jealousy wafting off of the blond. He wanted to yell 'bullshit', but Sasuke didn't lie about things like that. Actually, he couldn't remember Sasuke lying in general.
Cammy, as analytical a girl as she was, remembered watching Naruto and Sasuke fight. They had torn up a lot of stuff and completely destroyed the sizeable martial arts temple that the tournament had taken place at, and had done it almost casually, but nothing that could pulverize a mountain happened.
Unless…
"If you honestly could destroy this mountain-." Cammy began to say, "-It's probably due to a technique that is more time-consuming, costly, and bothersome than it's worth to set up. Otherwise you more than likely would have used it during your fight with Naruto." Or to blow up Gen's restaurant in Hong Kong with the man still in it, "…Unless you've learned it very recently, and I don't think you have."
The muscles in Sasuke's face slowly twitched as he turned her way and tried to dismiss it, "Tch. We're wasting time."
Naruto just smiled Cammy's way and gave the petite girl a big hug, much to her confusion. She still returned it however, "I just love having you around. So much. You're so good at pointing stuff out." Sure, she traded that for a lack of tact or know-how when it came to many social things, but hey you couldn't have it all, "But I still don't get what you're talking about bastard." Naruto said to Sasuke.
"The base isn't in the mountain." Sasuke said, bangs shadowing the twitching of his brow, "So where would it be if this is the front door?"
"…Underground?"
"Yes. Very good. Now what would you rather destroy? This door that you can't break, or-?"
"Rasenshinsen (Spiraling Tremor)!"
Everyone moved away quickly when Naruto shoved his hands into the hard, dry ground and applied his Rasengan principles to the earth. Effort on his face was clear as a red coating of chakra surrounded his body and with an echoing yell of exertion he let loose with a Kyuubi-charged jutsu that twisted everything up and eventually made the ground look like a blended smoothie.
A blended smoothie that proceeded to collapse inward on itself like the whole thing was made of limestone.
Abel just stood with his jaw dropped, "Mon Dieu, did he just… create a sinkhole?" He moved closer to the hole and stared down in shock. Due to the dimming light of the desert evening he couldn't see all the way down, but it was farther than was safe for a regular person to drop, "How far is that?"
"It goes until something gets in the way that Naruto's chakra couldn't manipulate." Sasuke said, smirking as if everything had gone to plan, "Like the metal walls of an S.I.N. facility."
"So we're back to where we started with the door?" Sakura asked, turning around to look at said door and then at Naruto, returning to normal after his brush with the Kyuubi's chakra. Seeing him cloaked in red, if only for a moment pulled a sense of longing from the dark reaches of her mind, but now wasn't the time for that.
Sasuke shook his head, "No. I said it already. In places like this the people that build the bases count on the natural surroundings to be good enough defenses, like the mountain or all of the ground Naruto cleared out of the way. So basically the metal walls are just building frames."
With lightning crackling around his entire body, Sasuke deftly dropped straight down the dark hole, lighting it as he fell with his volatile chakra electricity. There was no other sound for a few seconds until Sasuke's voice echoed back up.
"Gouki Kagizume o Oshite (Grand Talon Press)!"
With a mighty metallic clang, sparks and bolts of electricity flew up out of the sinkhole, forcing those that were gathered around to flinch and dodge away to keep from getting hit with a stray jolt. A horrible sound of tearing metal was heard before echoing sounds of panic came from others, signifying that he had broken through.
Well hurrah.
"Alright then." Naruto said to himself, jumping straight down after his chief rival, wielding akimbo Rasengans for the first fools to get in his way. There was no way he was going to take his time with this one. He wanted Karin back safe and sound and he wanted her back right then. If you got in the way and weren't doing so to point him in the right direction, you were about to have a very unpleasant evening, "Hey kids, wanna see a dead body!?"
The sounds of gunfire and general chaos from down below already seemed extensive, and strangely in sync between Naruto and Sasuke's dual anarchy-making.
"I can't tell if those two hate each other or just act like they do." Sakura said to the others, able to hear the anarchy raging down inside of the base before sighing, "Right. Well…" Pulling her gloves tightly on her hands, she proceeded to take the plunge as well, supplementing her body with ki to strengthen it for the eventual landing, "If this breaks my legs I'm gonna be really upset!"
Ibuki grinned and pulled her facemask up over her mouth to cover her delicate features before following suit, choosing to jump wall from wall on the way down to ensure she'd make it cleanly without injury. It paid to be extremely well trained in the acrobatics of a ninja when you weren't a natural juggernaut of chakra or ki like Naruto or Sakura, "Come on guys!"
At the top Cammy rolled out her gauntlet-clad wrists, regarding Abel before she went as well, "Will you be alright?"
"If you will be, I will also. I am the same as you from what I've been told on the flight to America by your… I don't know what to call him, boyfriend?" Abel said before reassuring her, "I will be fine. Shall we?"
"Naruto talked to me before we got here as well. He said you were like my brother… or something." Cammy told him abruptly, stopping Abel before he jumped down, "He didn't quite know, but he tried to allude to me that we were something like family. I don't know much about what that means to me yet, but I'd like it if both of us stayed alive long enough to find out."
Surprise showed on Abel's face until a smile broke through the usual stony façade of the scarred Frenchman, "But of course. I'm not sure I can think of anything that would make me happier than to have a little sister."
For a few moments she gave him a gorgeous smile fully reflected in her blue eyes before her face returned to its normal almost blank state, "You can fight?" She asked him before directing attention to his stump of an arm, "…Like that?"
Without directly answering, he dropped down to be followed immediately by Cammy who immediately targeted several enemies upon getting through the metal ceiling, one wave of an advance force attempting to pincer the slightly quicker-on-the-ball Abel and open fire.
Not tonight they weren't.
"Cannon Strike!" With a well-aimed driving kick, visible purple energy around her attack leg as she did, Cammy struck at her enemies with the impact of a javelin and the force of a howitzer, a shockwave of her ki pushing outward powerful enough to shake the base corridor.
In other words nothing she made contact with survived, nothing close to where she made contact survived, and it was lucky that the floor was made of such durable material and had great foundations underneath, because in a normal building none of it would have survived. She was gaining enough control over the remnants of Bison's Psycho Power that he'd placed within her as his clone to use in battle freely instead of just under duress.
"Tornade Jeter (Tornado Throw)!" Abel didn't seem to be having too much trouble either, having grabbed a hapless enemy by the collar of his uniform, swinging him around in a blur, weaponizing the poor soldier in his grasp. If he had any bones that weren't broken after smashing into every comrade he had within sight, he wouldn't have known it after Abel let go of him and sent him flying as well.
And he did that with one full arm.
Okay, maybe he could take care of himself.
Both of them added to the already considerable amount of downed bodies in the vicinity that their group members had already defeated prior to the entrance of the blond/blonde clone duo. They had no idea what could be happening further within the base at the moment, thus they followed the trail of destruction more than likely left by Naruto and Sasuke than anyone else to catch up in a hurry.
XxX
(Elsewhere in the S.I.N. Base – With Naruto)
Sasuke stared directly into the eyes of someone Naruto was holding up directly in front of him. Uchiha-style interrogation. Less messier and unpleasant for all parties than the manual alternative, but a minimum of one active Sharingan was necessary.
For Ibuki and Sakura, it was rather creepy to see Naruto completely alright with holding up some guy that they'd managed to stop without killing him or rendering him unconscious. Sakura especially knew what it was like to be locked in one of the more intense eye-contact initiated illusions that Sasuke was capable of using.
After a while Sasuke blinked, signifying the breaking of his genjutsu, "Tch."
That was all he really needed to say to let Naruto know that he didn't get anything good out of the soldier, "Damn it. That's the third one. Doesn't anybody know where shit is around here?" How could no one they'd come across so far know where Karin's cell was? He knew full well that every single person in the base had to have known when Seth had arrived with her.
The flashing red lights of the base had by now been long ignored by the intruding party, but it couldn't be ignored any longer when the metal floor opened up and on an elevator lift Naruto saw something that made him feel as if he'd seen a ghost.
If ghosts could be land-based war machines with gigantic cannons and machine guns in it.
At the sight of the hulking land vehicle, Ibuki squinted and tilted her head as if she were seeing something familiar that she couldn't quite put her finger on, "Huh… is that a tank? Why doesn't it have treads? There's just a big glowing ball underneath it."
"Aww…" Naruto said, shaking his head and backing away slowly, "No. No-no-no. They have another one of these things?" Sasuke stepped forward only to be shoved directly out of the way along with everyone else by Naruto when the tank fired its main gun at them.
Who used a tank indoors? And since when did tanks shoot blasts of ki?
The entire place shook as the blast exploded further down the wide corridor.
Narrowing his eyes on the tank, Sasuke lifted his arm with a Chidori around it to aim at the glowing orb underneath the vehicle before he realized something and stopped, 'No, if I rupture that part of it, it'll take down this whole base with all of us in it.'
There was too much energy inside of that thing. It was unstable. But it was the oddest engine he had ever seen in his entire life. Something about it reminded him of the power he saw generated from Juri's eye for the split-second she'd used her ki attacks in his presence.
From the look on Naruto's face, it was clear that he was just about to warn him not to do what he'd been planning on if he hadn't figured it out himself, "Alright dobe, you've dealt with this thing before so how do we stop it?"
"Other than flat-out blowing it up I don't know." Naruto admitted, scooping up Sakura to dodge machine gun fire from the tank. It had two of those now instead of one. Nifty, "The first time me and Batsu fought one, the underside was the only weakness we found that we could get through! And we can't blow it up in here or we're all dead!"
That main gun was charging much faster than the one on the last tank he'd fought as well. It had cut the time down to less than half of the time it took to charge it than the last time. So not only was it the same space-age super-durable tank with a zero-degrees turning radius and more mobility than any ground vehicle had the right to be, but it had improved combat capabilities.
"It doesn't really care too much about blowing things up in here though. This thing doesn't have an ammo limit?" Ibuki commented, diving from behind the cover of the metallic crates littering the corridor once she heard the main gun fully charge to fire once more. Once the gun went off again and blew everything apart she was certain that she didn't want to be anywhere near where it was aiming, "This is ridiculous! If you can't get through the armor, and you can't get to the engine without killing us all, what the hell are we going to do?"
Still holding Sakura in his arms behind a pillar for cover, Naruto and she shared a look between each other before she quickly seemed to sync thoughts with him on what was running through his mind. It was crude and simple, which was why it was so easy for her to read in his face, "You're going to try and flip it aren't you?"
"You have any better ideas Sakura-chan?" He was asking because flipping it wasn't an original idea. He'd already tried it once during his first tank-related run-in and only got it high enough for Batsu to target the engine and take it out. But since they didn't want to detonate a miniature ki nuke in an enclosed space, he had to get it all the way over, and he wasn't sure he could if he didn't the first time.
"No, but you've got to have something better than that." Sakura told him, flinching when she heard the main gun go off again, this time aimed at Sasuke that could easily outpace it but was having worse trouble with the machine gun, "That thing is gonna cut you down before you even get close, either with the cannon or the machine gun."
"Fine. Something else then." Naruto grumbled, poking his head out of cover to yell at Sasuke, "Sasuke, where's the hatch? Maybe one of us could get on it and pry it open or something, maybe get to the crew?"
"How the hell should I know!?" Sasuke yelled right back at Naruto, barely out running machine gun fire before sliding behind another support pillar, "I haven't seen one!"
"The fuck? You see everything!"
"Well there's no hatch then!"
"Then how did the crew shooting at us get in it!?"
"I didn't build the goddamn tank dobe! Don't ask me!"
Ugh. Sakura's head was starting to hurt. Between the tank shooting at anything that moved, and Naruto and Sasuke bitching at each other, she was starting to lose it. They found the stupidest times to fight with each other as well. A conversation about a tank hatch degenerated into this?
Wait…
Sakura poked her head out to find that Ibuki had scaled up to the ceiling to hide in a corner behind a pillar with a Naruto-clone until something good could happen or the tank found her again to shoot at, "Ibuki-chan, do you see a hatch on that tank from up there?"
Ibuki heard Sakura yell at her before quickly looking down and over from where Naruto's clone was cradling her only to see nothing, "No, I don't! How'd they get in it? The underside?"
"No way!" Naruto-clone assured the girls, "I was under one of those things before! There's nothing down there!"
Son of a bitch, it was unmanned. There was probably nothing underneath that armor other than seriously valuable electronic equipment that made the thing go from a remote location, or independent of quality control altogether.
"Are you telling me a fucking robot tank pinned me down in rock field for an hour straight? There wasn't even a human driving it?" Naruto asked the schoolgirl in his arms, "Oh Sakura-chan… my ego."
"Well if it's a robot tank…" Sasuke said to himself, letting his flame-like cursed seal spread over his face to fill him with its dark chakra, "…I'm sure a few strikes of lightning will shut it down." The moment he ducked from behind cover though, he found the main gun trained right on him, with its energy fully charged if the telltale click was anything to go by, "…Crap."
A green, blonde blur with a purple outline around her legs streaked past the others before Sasuke could be blown away and launched right at the tank with a spinning drill of a dropkick, "Spiral Arrow!" Cammy kicked the gun and forced it to turn, causing the tank to shoot a side wall instead of Sasuke and giving him an opening to get closer and end things himself.
Throwing an unsealed fuuma shuriken directly over the top of the tank, Sasuke timed his hand-seals perfectly for his jutsu that he'd already prepared by pouring lightning chakra into it beforehand, "Taka no Ame (Hawk's Rain)!" Talons of lightning formed around the spinning shuriken and dropped down twin bolts of lightning directly onto the hull of the tank.
Electricity surged across the surface of the armored vehicular weapon, a frying noise crackling openly through the open corridor. Slowly everyone moved out from their places of cover and walked up to it to ensure that it was sufficiently deactivated without needing to destroy the engine underneath that was still active from the unnatural glow emanating from it.
Crouching on the ground where she'd landed after kicking the main gun to the side, Cammy sighed in relief and stood back up straight, "I got here in time." She said to herself before turning around to the others with a reserved smile, "Is everyone okay?"
"Fine." Sasuke said, retrieving his shuriken without another word. He was not going to admit that Cammy kept him from taking some serious damage.
"You're some kind of special Cam." Naruto pointed out with a grin as he jogged up to the former Doll, "You know that you just ran straight at a tank just to kick the gun out of the way, right? Are you trying to make my heart stop?"
Cammy blinked and looked her entire body over to ensure she hadn't been harmed, "But… I'm fine. I was quick enough to get to it before it could account for me, so it was as if I wasn't even there."
She didn't know why Naruto sighed before leaning to put a kiss on her cheek. Dangerous and reckless or not, she managed to save their asses from fighting a prolonged battle with a stupid unmanned weapon. The girl was so innocent in so many ways though. Despite how powerful she was, it was hard at times to believe she was a programmed killer.
Before long Abel brought up the rear, notably exhibiting that he was the slowest of the currently amassed fighters despite his strength and skill in regards to what he could do.
"You all…" Abel said after a moment of catching his breath from all of the sprinting after the rest of the group, "…You all are extremely fast."
Loud sarcastic clapping came over the base intercom system after the wilds of battle died down, "Well done. Really, that was funny watching all of you get shot at like that. I wish I had some snacks or something to watch the show."
"Alright, enough of this crap!" Naruto shouted, "Juri, give me Karin back or I'll shove a Rasengan up your ass!"
"Ooh, do you promise?" The kicking specialist taunted, laughing at the irritated look on Naruto's face, "Anyway, she's not mine to give. Seth wanted her to control. He's giving her Bison's old Killer Bee special the last time I checked… and that was a while ago."
The Killer Bee special? As in the brainwashing crap?
"By the time she gets out of there, she won't remember anything other than what Seth tells her. It's actually… really messed up." Juri surprisingly admitted, "Sleep deprivation, gradual voice conditioning. Eventually he's going to start on positive reinforcement behavior manipulation after she cracks enough."
Growling to himself, Naruto simply took off down the hall despite the fact that he still had no idea where he was going. Eventually though, he came to a branching intersection of multiple paths, with dozens of soldiers seemingly waiting on him to arrive. From the form-fitting dark suits they all wore and their stony expressions that revealed nothing despite the fact that they had to know that nothing thus far had slowed them down for any longer than a few moments, they must have been the elite foot-soldiers.
They didn't have any guns on them though. And why were their eyes pitch-black?
It didn't take long for the others to catch up and find out why Naruto stopped. Abel just stared at the lot of them, most notably their eyes. Something seemed familiar about them.
"Really, Seth says thanks for all the blood you lost when I hacked off your arm Lurch." Juri said to taunt Abel over the intercom, "Because of you, S.I.N. scientists were able to stabilize Seth's little science project enough for him to actually go forward with pushing his BLECE Project forward. You're looking at future. Seth's words, not mine."
Sure, they looked like they meant business, but Ibuki couldn't see what the big deal about them was, "Okay? So what? It's not like we haven't been tearing your soldiers apart since we got in here to begin with, right?" Sakura seemed to be a tad stunned from what she could sense from them however.
"Not these ones. These ones are kind of special."
On cue, white pupils appeared in the pitch-black eyes of every last one of them, white ki forming around their hands. They could outwardly manipulate ki. Well wasn't that just lovely?
"…Kill 'em."
The entire invading team scattered when the S.I.N. soldiers started firing speedy bolts of energy at them from their hands.
"What the hell is BLECE?" Ibuki asked, legs working to rapidly keep her out of the way of being hit with anything, "You couldn't fill a civic center with all of people that can fire ki in the entire world! Now S.I.N. has more than a hundred of them!"
Naruto didn't care one way or another. Making multiple clones, some of which died due to the sheer number of ki bolts flying through the air. He picked a hallway that seemed to be the most heavily protected and barreled straight for it, "Out of the way!"
"Shinkuu Hadoken (Vacuum Surge Fist)!"
A large beam of ki blasted straight through the wall of people that Naruto was preparing to charge straight through with a Rasengan barrage. Turning over his shoulder he saw that Sakura had fired it to clear the way for him.
She gave him a reassuring smile that he returned, as there didn't need to be anything said. He was going the right way. She could hardly sense Karin's signature it was growing so weak, while at the same time she felt a void of nothingness coming from that way.
It would be Seth. And if Karin was really important, he would have stayed close to her, especially since he would know exactly why their group would have located his base and attacked it; for her.
In the meantime, they had a few dozen superhumans to deal with. From what she could sense none of them were as strong as they were, but the sheer number that they had was too dangerous to be left to pester them.
So what if they were suddenly able to use ki and fire it as if they were martial artists that had trained to do it for years when they quite clearly had not? Between Sakura, Ibuki, Cammy, Abel, and Sasuke this was still firmly in their favor.
Wait… where did Sasuke go?
Ugh. A word that he was going to step out and move past the battle wouldn't have been too much to ask out of common courtesy, would it?
That would have to be put on hold when Sakura sensed someone else coming toward them. With the current fracas going on, if that person joined the fight she'd be an absolute terror in such a chaotic environment.
"Guys I'll be right back!" With that, Sakura took off down another corridor before coming to a stop upon meeting who she'd been sensing coming their way, "…Juri."
Hands on her hips, Juri tilted her body to the side to look past Sakura at the fight still going on between the others and Seth's BLECE-injected elite pawns, "You know, I was watching you guys take them on and I just couldn't help but feel a little left out. You're my favorite people in the whole world to try and kill. You always make it so interesting."
She wanted to try her hand at beating up everyone at once, including that ninja girl that she hadn't gotten a chance to fight yet. But then again, she had unfinished business with Sakura to begin with. This time there wouldn't be any malfunction of the Feng Shui Engine. Even if Sakura pulled out that strange ki of hers that caused her eye to overload back at Karin's mansion, it wouldn't matter at all.
Yes, this would be very enjoyable.
"I want to see you cry this time." Juri said with a low, meaningful tone, smirking as she prepared herself to fight, "I'm just not gonna be satisfied until I see tears rolling down those pretty little cheeks of yours. That would really make my day."
There was just something about Juri that Sakura couldn't show empathy to. She'd never despised anyone before, but from all of her dealings with this woman, she was making it very easy for Sakura to consider disregarding her own respectful sentiment.
She would have rather Juri simply said she was going to kill her because it was her job to. No, instead Juri was going to fight her for the sole intent of making her suffer and watching the results. Just to crush the fighting spirit out of her, because it would be entertaining to see.
"When I finally get you bawling like a baby-." Juri said saucily, "-Then, maybe I'll let you leave. I'll finish off the failed clones, and I'll handle the ninja girl too if she wants to tangle. Oh… I hope you survive what I'm going to do to you, because I think it would be priceless to see you look Uzumaki in the eye after I kill Killer Bee and her useless clone brother in front of you. If he even survives where he's going that is."
She wasn't doing this for any reason. Not for a living, even as dishonest as it was. Not out of any sort of obligation for some higher reasoning, even if it was twisted. She fought and mutilated just for the sake of getting her blood pumping.
"I…" Sakura said, running a hand through her short hair as the dark place in her mind started pulsing at the sight of Juri's infuriating smirk, "…I really think I hate people like you." She just had to remember what Gouken taught her so far. The Satsui no Hadou would consume her if she let it. Even if she really abhorred the sight of Juri's face.
Juri pointed at herself with a false sense of distress, "You hate people like me? I didn't think you had it in you."
Yeah, that angry part of her heart that told her to lash out at her enemies was seriously pushing itself forward now, "No. Actually, that's not true. I'm sure I just hate you in particular."
When she gave way to how she felt the desire to cause Juri the pain she'd caused others around her, to dominate the S.I.N. agent in battle and assert her own place as the one that was better, the one that was stronger, so that she could show Juri how a real martial artist with strength was supposed to operate-.
-It felt so good just to think about.
Why was it so easy to feel that kind of hate?
Holding those feelings back was such a struggle for her that when they were particularly strong she felt discomfort and pain. But when she let it go, even a bit, it felt so much better. Like a weight was taken off of her. She could indulge a little couldn't she? She still knew who she was, the kind of woman she wanted to be, and she wouldn't allow the Satsui no Hadou drive her, but it was so much easier to give a little ground.
And after all, if anyone deserved to be the subject of a little turnabout as fair play… Juri Han of all people really deserved it.
Alright, having been thoroughly slapped by the real world since finishing up my classes for my bachelor's degree I felt it was time to dip back into this little tale and bring you the next installment.
And now it's time to get back to the workin' world. Or try to at least. I haven't been able to trade up to a decent job in my actual field of 'expertise' yet… so yeah, I've got all that going for me.
Later everyone. Kenchi out.