Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Street Fighter. Happy birthday to a hell of a man, my father. If I did own Naruto or Street Fighter, rest assured that a good amount of the income that would come with it would go to supporting him and my mother and repaying them for the damned effort it took in raising me and my jackass brother.
Chapter 49: Beyond Human
While constant movement was simple for speedier fighters such as Ibuki and Cammy, for Abel, mobility wasn't particularly his thing. He was a mauler of a martial artist in close but when being targeted from afar, the way that the S.I.N. elite troopers were doing with their ki blasts, it was an extremely troublesome affair for him.
Since they had by now figured him to be the slowest target, they had tried to focus the bulk of their attack on him to bring the big man down first.
With that plan of action though, the speedier girls were able to take them out when they weren't looking. Cammy wasn't a ninja, but she wasn't a prideful warrior, more like a pragmatic soldier. She would go for the throat and she would do it in a heartbeat if you gave her your back. Blood on her hands didn't really bother her. Her gauntlets were red to begin with.
Too many learned this the hard way and were forced to take the pressure off of Abel lest they all find themselves slaughtered by the petite Doll.
In a blur of her own speed, Ibuki slid friction-lessly across the ground dodging ki blasts until she got close enough to an enemy to slip behind them and grab onto their head. Holding on she used the S.I.N. trooper as a human shield to launch kunai from, taking down several enemies in front of her before she simply broke the shield's neck, "Kubi-ki (Neckbreaker)!"
A rather brutal method of disposing of the enemy yes, but even so it wasn't just some tame fight in the middle of town. They'd taken their friend away and had tried several different times to kill them, including right then. Being nice stopped a long, long time ago.
Besides, Naruto and Sasuke had mowed through a gross share of conventional soldiers before they'd left to the inner sanctum so to speak. Basically those two had set the tone for the battle from the outset, which basically translated to; if you're in the way and you're not pointing them in the direction that Karin or one of the big bosses are in, you're going to have a hole punched through you one way or another.
It served to be a very effective way of dealing with riffraff.
Taking a moment to look around, Ibuki saw Cammy giving her enemies fits with their inability to hit her with any of their ki blasts. Fighting her up close was suicide, but she wasn't giving them any other options.
Abel was doing very well after the pressure had been taken off of him, as Ibuki saw him crack a pair of skulls by messily smashing the heads of two S.I.N. elites together. Ew.
Well, there was still work to be done. With that in mind, Ibuki grabbed more kunai between her fingers and put herself back into the fray.
XxX
"Come on!" Juri taunted, rapidly kicking away at Sakura's defense while standing on one leg, "For someone that's supposed to hate me you're fighting so conservatively! Or are you just so afraid of me you can't bring yourself to fight back?"
Sakura didn't want to get suckered back into the trap of having to deal with Juri's legs, but it was like the proverbial freight train coming down the tracks; just because you knew what was coming didn't necessarily mean that you could stop it.
Despite her best efforts early on in the fight to keep Juri at a comfortable distance, she was simply too fast for Sakura to keep away for long, improved Hadoken or not. Eventually she did get too close for Sakura's comfort, and all she could do in response was cover up and weather the storm.
Stepping up on Sakura's bent knee, Juri sprang up and kicked the girl underneath the chin, knocking her to the ground for just a second, but it was long enough that Juri found it laughable, "What's so funny now?" Sakura asked after getting right back up.
"You're not just fighting me because you don't like me." Juri stated confidently, "That's not enough for people like you, so I'm going to guess you have another reason. A blond, blue-eyed reason all covered in orange and blue."
"What about him?" Sakura felt no need to really deny it, even if it was so clear how she felt that an enemy could see it.
"You want so badly not to be left behind by him." Juri purred, "I can see it. A guy like that likes a girl that can move and needs one that can keep up with him. But that ain't you. You're not tough enough for someone like that."
What did she know? She always had to equate everything back to fighting, to survival. As if that was all everything was about to her. As Sakura considered this she realized that it would truly be a miserable experience to be Juri Han.
Sakura smiled sardonically, wiping a small trail of blood away from her lip, "I feel sorry for you." At that, Juri's grin fell and was replaced with an extremely caustic look, "Loving someone doesn't have anything to do with any of that. Even if I couldn't throw a punch straight, I don't think it would have mattered at all to Naruto. I used to think you were better than me because of how strong you are, but I was wrong."
"Oh really honey?" Best intimidation face from Juri aside, Sakura still smiled and it was pissing her off, "You sure about that?"
"Yeah, that's right. I want to be a strong fighter for a bunch of reasons." Sakura declared, "To prove that martial arts can do more for the world than hurt people, to show Ryu that I'm a worthy fighter and make him proud, to walk with Naruto and support him no matter what. Those reasons are why I do this. But the only reason you fight is because it's the only thing you've got that gives your life any value. Without it you really wouldn't be anything, to anybody."
Juri's hands began to shake at her sides, her glare turning markedly more murderous, "You might want to shut up now." But Sakura didn't shut up.
Scaring her was no longer an option, and she'd have to listen until the schoolgirl was done, "Maybe once you had something else, but you never looked for anything else after you lost whatever it was." Her smile was no longer mocking Juri. It was sad and understanding to some degree, "I think that's why no matter how hard I try, even if I say I do, I can't really hate you."
Pity. That was why. Sakura finally realized why she couldn't truly despise that woman no matter how much she tried to demonize her in her mind.
If Sakura never lifted her hands to do battle with anyone ever again, she more than likely could have been fine with that. She had seen things at such a young age that most people would never see or ever come close to understanding. She had many friends and people all over the place that cared for her. She had someone close to her that she saw every day, someone that she had fallen in love with and had a full chance of pursuing. She had good grades, she would be going to college, and she knew what she was going to try and do with her life.
If Juri never took part in a fight ever again, what would she have? Absolutely nothing.
The look in Sakura's eyes, the look of pity, it angered Juri deeper than anything she'd ever experienced in her life. Losing her family didn't anger her this much, because she didn't have to face all of the looks of pity that she'd received for her loss, for the loss of her eye. She ran away from all of that and threw herself into doing what she had to in order to garner vengeance. Vengeance that she never got for herself.
Sakura didn't flinch when wild blades of ki flew past her head, each threatening to either take it off or split it in half. At worst though, she merely received a cut on the shoulder. It began to bleed rather badly, but compared to the alternative she was entirely unharmed in comparison.
Visible pink ki flowed uncontrollably off of her body, causing a ringing, vibrating noise to emit from the metal surrounding her, "Little girls… should know when to shut their mouths."
"Hadoken (Surge Fist)!" Sakura fired an oversized blast of blue ki Juri's way, only for it to be cut in half with a kick where it hit and landed on both sides of the corridor in separate blasts, "Maybe Naruto has a point? It might be a good idea to learn how to counter ki blasts."
Her legs as deadly a weapon as ever and with real motivation to actually maim her foe, Juri wasted no time making her move to tear Sakura asunder with her kicks, "Senpuusha (Piercing Windmill)!"
Sakura was able to evade the attack by the skin of her nose, choosing to attack Juri immediately upon her landing out of the constant rotating kicks. Her punch moved right past Juri's head, missing her. Juri wrapped her arms around Sakura's forearm and flexibly lifted her leg, swinging it around in a curve to try and break or remove Sakura's arm at the elbow.
Sakura just used the stand that Juri had given her in the form of her own body to push up over her head and behind her neck, all in an effort to smash both of her knees into the back of her neck. When she actually felt herself make contact it almost surprised Sakura herself. She'd actually hit her.
In the past it had taken multiple people just to strike one blow against Juri.
Juri fell face-forward to the ground, more stunned that she'd let herself be outmaneuvered. Sakura was faster than she remembered, but that was no excuse for letting this lone little girl hit her with any sort of attack.
Getting up onto her hands and feet, Juri turned her head enough to peer at Sakura, her Feng Shui Engine eye glowing bright pink for a split-second before she blurred out of the girl's sight in a quick show of raw speed.
Before she could even gasp, Sakura's entire body was battered by blunt and forceful attacks, battering her time and time again before she could even fall to the ground. She let out a cough and took a knee, shaking slightly.
"Heh!" Juri jumped high into the air with her target in clear view, "This is more like it. Shinkusen (Flash of Suffering)!" Diving down from the sky like a bird of prey, Juri nailed Sakura with three chaining kicks, the last of which bounced her off of the wall.
Her target not yet beaten to satisfaction, Juri dashed to Sakura and before she ever touched the ground she rapidly kicked her four more times before finally letting her land on her face. Watching her writhe in pain on the ground was so gratifying it was almost sexual.
Walking over to her she intentionally stepped over Sakura, planting a foot in the small of her back to stand on top of her for a moment just to belittle her.
"Aww…" Juri kneeled down by Sakura and pinched the brutalized girl's cheek, pulling away when she tried to bite at her, "You were so cute giving me that little speech of yours, but you know what? Whether you were right or wrong doesn't matter. The only opinion that matters is from the person that wins. You see you're a girl that just so happens to be a fighter. Well I'm a fighter that just so happens to be a girl. And you're just too soft to ever beat someone like me."
"…mmrph."
Hearing Sakura mutter, Juri leaned closer, grabbing a handful of Sakura's short hair to hold her head up, "What was that little girl?" Her wrist was caught in the suddenly iron grip of her downed adversary. She could feel her bones creak from the pressure and could see the skin on Sakura's fingers underneath her fighting gloves begin to darken, 'What in the-?'
"…Don't you ever shut up?"
Looking down at Sakura again after her dark-sounding comment, Juri could see that her eyes had turned to the color of solid red. A red kanji for 'spirit' had been carved into the back of her top with the intensity of the dark red energy drifting from her body.
The girl stood up from the ground, still holding onto Juri's hand that had a grip on her hair, and stared into her eyes. With a squeeze that painfully dug her fingers into the tendons of Juri's wrist, she freed herself.
Biting back a cry of pain, Juri lashed out instinctively with a front round kick that Sakura blocked with her other arm, drawing a smirk from the girl. A hard punch from her soon followed that knocked her adversary away from her almost casually.
"There." The dark thoughts in Sakura's mind were louder, clearer, and more concise than ever, "Doesn't that feel so much better?" And it did. She felt so much better now.
Sakura flexed out her fingers and pulled her gloves tighter onto her hands as she walked Juri's way to keep fighting, "You were saying something about me being too soft to beat you."
As far as Juri was concerned, freaky power-up or not, nothing had changed. Even after taking Sakura's punch she never went down. She had the wind knocked out of her for a moment, but she was able to mask that and get everything together quickly enough, "You are. You had to lose your shit and go bipolar just to start getting me back. And now that my eye has gotten all the bugs worked out of it, I think it's time I give you what I gave your little friends back at the Kanzuki place."
Sakura just grinned at her darkly and gestured for her to come on. Juri did not like the shoe being on the other foot in terms of fighting her battles.
The two women met in a violent clash of melee, speedier than any of them had been forced to move in order to keep up with any opponent they had fought prior. All of it culminated with Sakura and Juri stalemating in an uppercut/ax kick collision that released a shockwave, denting the walls on the sides of the corridor.
"It sucks for you…" Juri said through the strain of the test of strength, "…Poor little girl is going to die a virgin."
"Heh, shows what you know." Sakura giggled maniacally before making quite the stunning remark, "Naruto already took my cherry a lo~~ng time ago."
"What!?" Taking advantage of the shock and awe her statement created, Sakura used her front leg to sweep Juri's grounded leg, knocking her onto her back. The second she hit she spun her hips and kicked at Sakura's head, giving her enough of an opening to get back up before anything bad could happen, "There's no way you have the heart to let him do that to you."
"Well of course, it was my fault anyway after all. I could never blame the future father of my babies for that." Sakura said, still giving a very Cheshire grin, "It was just a training accident in a spar that got a little too intense. Those things happen really."
"Bitch, you know what I meant!" Juri backflipped onto a wall and launched herself at Sakura, drilling her angrily with a javelin of a kick that was fast and accurate enough to actually hit her dead center. It was blocked, but it still did damage behind her arms. Flipping off of Sakura's arms, she landed on the ground and snarled at her.
"Aww." Sakura said, pacing around with her hands on her hips as she continued to laugh uncharacteristically cruelly, "Don't like it when your nasty little jokes don't work on other people? Well since we're on the subject I've got a joke for you."
"What is it?"
"Die."
"…That's not a-."
"Gouhadoken (Great Surge Fist)!"
Juri wasn't going to risk trying to block a huge Hadoken that size that was tinted red, so she simply moved out of the way of the powerful ki blast, rushing forward at Sakura before stopping short and letting loose a kick that Sakura was prepared to counter, "Fuuhajin (Wind Breaking Blade)!"
Sakura went wide eyed at the blade of ki released from the end of Juri's foot, and due to her already having moved to counter what she originally thought was going to be just a kick she wound up taking both the ki and the actual physical attack head-on.
Despite her target's best efforts to try and lean out of the way, Juri felt nothing but contact on both fronts and licked her lips in satisfaction when she saw blood fly through the air from the attack that she had delivered.
Freaky power boost enhancing her every feature or not, Sakura was still flesh and bone. That kick still should have cut her into two. It most certainly did not.
"Oh well. If at first you don't succeed…" Juri said to herself, crouching to put as much force into her legs as she could before jumping high into the air, "…Try-try again!" Her hands touched the elevated roof and pushed off, propelling her back down in a falling stomp aiming right for Sakura to spill her guts.
Under normal circumstances, Juri's downward kicks had the ability at full strength to split a moderate-sized building in half as if it were a stack of demonstration bricks. Dropping from fifty stories in the air, and pumping out enhanced ki due to the Feng Shui Engine, the danger factor with her chosen method of offense increased horrendously.
As her diving stomp landed, all of the metal on the walls and the floor in the vicinity crumpled inward, a crater actually forming beneath her point of impact as she ripped through the metal.
She missed Sakura though, who had avoided a finish by the slimmest of margins, turning her body to the side and moving it out of the way by mere inches. Lying down on the ground, Sakura's school uniform top was shredded to tatters, with a horizontal gash from the middle of her clavicle to just underneath her left arm
"Tch." Juri pulled her leg out of the deep hole she'd torn into the earth beneath the metal floor and kicked Sakura aside like a can in the road, "No tears." Juri said before charging another release of ki from one of her legs, "I said… I wanted to see you CRY!"
Sakura came back to life and rolled away from the ki blade as it ripped through the floor and glared hatefully at Juri before speeding headlong at her with the Ashura Senku speed technique. She violently grabbed Juri's face, palming her head like a sports ball as she took her off of her feet and ran with her in her grasp.
Yelling as she lowered her body enough to drag Juri across the floor by her face, Sakura lifted her up and threw her into the air, timing her descent with her own follow-up; a short jumping uppercut with a twist that knocked her back into the air, followed by two more, the height and power of each increasing each time, "Cry! For! ME! Midare Zakura (Tumultuous Cherry Blossom)!"
The last punch knocked Juri back into the ceiling, this time her entire body smacking off of and sticking to the metal surface. A bloody cough spilled crimson from her mouth to the floor below, a nice fresh and blackening bruise forming on her belly and around her side, creeping down to her hip beneath her pants.
"Okay." The sadistic kicking mistress whispered to herself, "All of that actually hurt… really bad."
"I'm not done with you yet." Sakura declared darkly, placing her hands together as she began to build up a blockbusting level of ki between them. So much that it constantly shifted colors, resembling an unstable force of rainbow, "You said I was a girl that just so happened to be a fighter? Well what if I just so happen to kill you? Tenmetsu Shinkuu Hadoken (Flashing Vacuum Surge Fist)!"
Juri's left eye glowed bright pink as she bent her legs and planted her feet on the ceiling to assist her in dodging the sure-kill attack by any means necessary.
XxX
(Outside of the Base)
In the helicopter, Guile and Chun-Li tried to circle the area at a safe distance without putting themselves back at risk from the base's defenses. It was a rather troublesome way to spend time, especially for someone such as Guile who was used to being able to make a difference on the battlefield one way or another.
He was chomping at the bit to land the damn chopper and go storming in himself to bring up the rear and fight, but orders were orders. Their respective organizations would not let them get involved for official reasons, and he had to just trust in the kids to get the job done
That trust was stretched severely when they watched a massive rainbow-colored beam punch its way out of the ground and into the sky. Better than any laser show you could ever ask for, and scarier as well. Lighting up the night for a few seconds before everything went pitch dark once more, it was almost a certainty that the blast could have been seen from Vegas.
Whether or not it would have been distinguished from the glow in the sky that The Strip provided on a nightly basis was another matter entirely.
"…Was that a Hadoken?" Chun-Li asked rhetorically, several seconds after it dissipated, "That was a Hadoken." No one else had a beam sort of attack in their arsenal other than Sakura. Even if that was a funky-colored version, and way stronger than her regular Shinku Hadoken, it still had all of the typical symptoms of the pulverizing ki attack, "How the hell did she get the power to do that?"
XxX
(Elsewhere in the Base – With Naruto)
Great shaking of the ground underneath his feet or not, Naruto charged through the halls, taking the last direction Sakura gave him to heart as he searched for Karin. There was a distinct lack of guards in his way, as all of the legitimate manpower that was stationed in the base had probably already been thrown at them.
If they were sending out experimental super-soldiers en masse they couldn't have hordes and hordes of troops left to throw at him to deter him from advancing.
As he continued to run, Naruto caught sight of a simpering little man in a lab coat that looked more troll than human. The man held sample after sample of some black gunk in cases in his hands and a flash drive in his mouth as he looked around fearfully and tried to scamper out of the base.
Before he even realized that he had been spotted by possibly the most dangerous person he could have come across, the scientist was grabbed by the back of his collar by Naruto, "Name."
"S-Senoh!" He crowed in fear involuntarily. He surprised even himself at how quickly he coughed that up. What was that feeling of absolute despair coming off of this person? He felt as if saying the wrong thing would get him killed, "Who are you!?"
"Where's Karin?" Naruto asked, getting straight to the point.
"W-What?"
"Kanzuki Karin! Where!?" After hearing him go silent, but still shaking in his grasp, Naruto spotted the black gunk in the cases that the man held. Grabbing one of them, Naruto opened its top and held it over his head, "I've seen this stuff before. It's pretty nasty stuff, and I'll make you drink it if you don't tell me where she is."
Oh that was just not an option for Senoh. As Seth's lead scientist he'd seen firsthand just what the BLECE substance could do to the human body in its endeavor to forcefully release the ki of the recipient. A quick death would have been preferable to being subjected to that prolonged torment, "No! My body isn't strong enough to withstand its effects! Don't!"
"Karin." Naruto demanded, pouring some of the gunk out onto his face. Apparently it was only effective upon being ingested somehow, so it wouldn't do anything but scare the piss out of him in this manner.
"Observation cells at the back end of the finished product section of R&D! Down the hall!" Senoh sputtered desperately. He wasn't about to get BLECE'd for Seth. He'd rather have Seth kill him, "Don't!"
Naruto let him loose and watched him skitter away like a mouse, dropping containers as he scampered off simply to put distance between the two of them. Looking down, Naruto saw the flash drive Senoh dropped after getting caught and stomped on it before pouring the rest of the black gunk in his confiscated container on top of it.
With his direction confirmed for him, Naruto charged forward faster than ever before and saw the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel.
Knocking down a heavy-duty door to enter an open, eerily lit laboratory area, Naruto stopped as he could feel that sense of emptiness that Sakura had been alluding to. One that he'd sensed personally up close. She had been referring to Seth, and it wasn't very hard for Naruto to see him.
The synthetic human sat lazily in what appeared to be a mechanical throne descending from an elevated platform, smirking at Naruto as if killing intent wasn't flying off of the blond young man at the mere sight of him.
"So you were foolish enough to come and face me again." Seth said, standing up from his throne as it finished lowering. He gestured around himself, "Don't worry about destroying anything here. All of this research has been backed up for posterity so feel free to flail away with all your might just like the first time."
Trash-talk aside, Naruto really only had one burning question at the moment.
"Oi… where are your clothes?"
And indeed, Seth was not wearing clothes. At all. That was weird. Naruto had fought guys wearing tights, had fought in a bathhouse, and his lovely little roomie wore a leotard that left very little to the imagination. He'd never fought a naked chrome humanoid thing before however, and it was kind of unnerving.
He also had no junk. Total Ken-doll syndrome. Which was hilarious, but now was not the time.
"Where's Karin's cell?"
"Oh I can't give her back yet. I'm not quite done with her you see." Seth said with his infuriatingly constant grin, "I'm not done retraining her, so you'll have to wait. She probably won't remember you when I'm finished though, but you didn't have any problems retraining the last hand-me-down Doll that fell into your lap so you shouldn't have too much trouble with this one."
Naruto couldn't have turned on the Kyuubi's chakra quick enough to shut his mouth for his tastes. Two tails right off the bat, just to punch that stupid remark back down his throat.
This time Naruto's first blow landed, but hardly turned Seth's head to the side. It definitely didn't wipe the smirk off of his face, "I just wanted to make you feel that as an inferior being you had a chance to defeat me, if only for a moment." He grabbed Naruto by the wrist and threw him over his head and behind him effortlessly.
Like a cat, he landed on his feet in a crouch and decided to keep from screwing around. A third chakra tail formed, the crushing power of the boost warping the floor beneath Naruto's feet.
With a laugh, Seth disappeared in a teleport and reappeared behind Naruto, hands clasped together in a hammer position that he slammed down on the back of his neck in an attempt to break his neck.
Naruto remained on his feet with a growl despite folding up extensively due to the blow taken, forming a Rasengan in one hand and covering it with his other as he ignored the pain, "Rasenbakufuu (Spiraling Shockwave)!" A red shockwave expanded out all around Naruto's body with enough force to flip a stationary vehicle. But it barely forced Seth to stumble backwards seven steps, 'That should have turned his front into pulp.'
"Don't hold me to the standards of you humans." Seth said, his chrome body hardly even scuffed by the abusive counterattack, "I've already tried to assimilate your abilities. There was no technique you were capable of worth taking and using. But I already know that nothing you have can defeat me." With his back still turned, Naruto lashed out with a series of primal kicks that Seth blocked.
Smashing his forearm into Naruto's ankle after blocking one of the kicks, he spun him around and hit him under the chin with an elbow uppercut. Showing off the dominance of his blend of fighting techniques, Seth landed a kick that spawned an uncountable number of lightning-quick follow-up kicks on his target of choice, "Hyakuretsukyaku (Hundred Rending Kicks)!"
An unseen force was what Naruto figured dealt him the damage, as he saw Seth throw one kick and follow through with the spin behind it while he felt the impact of the others on his body. It felt like he stopped time and kicked him dozens of times before restarting the clock.
The cumulative force sent Naruto flying through a glass shelf of stored chemicals that broke and spilled out onto the floor. His chakra cloak was dense enough to keep them from splashing onto his body and harming him, but they burned away a portion of his fighting outfit, revealing mesh armor underneath.
Seth simply walked over the corrosive chemicals on the floor, ignoring the steam rising up from the burned floor as he gestured for Naruto to keep on coming at him. He didn't need to wave that red cape in front of this particular bull any more than he already had as Naruto attacked head-on.
Rushing forward in an improvised Shunshin, Naruto's speedy rush placed him right in front of Seth with his fist cocked back. This time, Seth didn't let the punch land, catching it in the palm of his hand despite the resounding blowback wave from the blow making impact with something.
The taunt meant to emanate from Seth's mouth after blocking the punch never came to be as he found himself surrounded by dozens of clones, all snarling at him before launching themselves at him. His attention averted for a moment, this allowed the original Naruto to punch him in the stomach and knock him into the air where his personage was then assaulted by every last clone end over end, "Uzumaki Naruto Mugen Rendan (Naruto Uzumaki Infinite Combo)!"
Seth was held up in the air in place seemingly by the unlimited barrage his body was forced to endure on all sides by the red-tinted blurs bouncing off of the walls, floor, and ceiling to batter him from all sides.
The original Naruto didn't sit idle however, inhaling deeply and drawing large amounts of chakra to the back of his throat, "Chou Ikitaihou (Super Breath Cannon)!" In a red flash, Naruto blasted Seth and all of his clones used to immobilize the artificial being.
It was the largest of this jutsu's ilk that Naruto had ever released. He'd never tried it with that much chakra before because there was no way that it would have been safe to use even in the isolated junkyard that was his heavy training area. He would have turned it into a vacant lot if he had.
Everything in the direction that he fired the blast in simply stopped existing in its complete form. That was all there was to it. An entire half of the massive room, the wall at the end of it, and a good portion of the wide hallway outside was turned into a burning, melting, devastated wreck.
Breathing heavily and coughing a bit at the harm he'd done to his own throat with that jutsu, Naruto stared at the devastation he'd wrought, "And that's why I'm the best ninja in the world… you big chrome bitch."
"That was more impressive than anything I thought you were capable of."
Standing behind Naruto yards away, Seth stood, badly scuffed up and no longer as shiny and pristine as he was before, but since he should have been at most a disembodied bottom half after the last attack he was comparatively unharmed.
Naruto wasn't even angry to see his face. He was simply shocked, "How-? How did you survive that?"
"I don't know if that would have destroyed me or not." Seth admitted, "I wasn't willing to try and assimilate that blast. Luckily I already assimilated another technique from you that allowed me a reprieve from testing a limit that I'm not sure I would have been able to endure."
"From me?"
"I believe you refer to it as Kawarimi no Jutsu." Naruto's jaw dropped, "I can't use your ninja techniques, but after studying it, it was fairly simple to modify my teleportation to perform such a task."
With a subtle placement of his hands in front of his Tanden Engine, Seth forcefully reeled Naruto in with the inescapable force of a miniature black hole, "Let's take this to the next level. Tanden Storm!" As Naruto was incoming, Seth swirled his hands in front of his body, creating a second black hole. The force of two cataclysmic forces caused a reaction that warped the physical realm around them.
Naruto was the closest target and screamed in bloody horror as he felt the sensation of his body being crushed from both the inside and outside while the lab crumpled inward on itself. Things that weren't strong enough to stand up to the force did their best impression of aluminum cans in a trash compactor.
"GAAAAAAAAH!" Naruto's mesh armor simply fell apart around him, his skin rippling and his muscles tearing and reattaching in real-time right before Seth's eyes. For once, he was honestly impressed with what he was seeing. As grotesque and violent as it was, a being such as him had no grievances about inflicting carnage when it was necessary.
"A human being with an ability to endure such injuries and regenerate? No, not quite regeneration. Advanced healing I would surmise." Seth mused aloud under the sound of Naruto's agonizing wails. They simply didn't matter enough for him to disregard the fascination he had for watching Naruto's body try to heal the horrible injuries being inflicted upon it almost as fast as they were occurring, "I wonder-."
SHIRK!
From behind, a hand covered in black-colored lightning punched into Seth's back and straight out through his chest. He didn't waver however, merely curiously peering down at the hand inside of his torso.
Behind him, Sasuke stood in his Level 2 Cursed Seal form, wondering how this thing was still standing after taking a black Chidori through the heart.
…Did this thing even have a heart? Apparently not.
Seth slowly pushed Sasuke's hand back out of his chest and turned around to face the winged Uchiha in his transformed state, "A human being can undergo such a radical transformation to their given skeletal structure?"
"What the hell are you?" Sasuke asked, sneering at him.
Seth grinned as his wound seemingly knitted itself back together. His hypothesis correct in assuming that his past assimilation of Naruto in his Kyuubi chakra state gave him potential access to the same ability to quickly heal his wounds as long as he had the necessary power to facilitate the process. With the Tanden Engine inside of him he would never run out of energy.
"…I am eternal." The advanced being crowed majestically.
To the front and the back of Seth's head, Naruto and Sasuke both delivered punches that they figured would have rendered anything else into a fine red pulp complete with mist. Seth was not amused.
Bringing his last attack back up from his playbook, Seth began to create two black holes due to its effectiveness the first time around. Both Naruto and Sasuke saw what he was about to do and both used their right legs to kick at one of Seth's arms, knocking his hands into one another just as the two black holes formed.
The backlash was horrendous, as instead of attracting, it repelled. Repelled everything, including the room itself. The entire hollowed out underground area that the lab was built into groaned and shook as many metal panels came down, exposing the earthy walls that originally adorned the manmade groove in the crust. Emergency sirens blared and emergency lights flashed without cease to periodically light the otherwise shadowy room, meant to inform the scientists that worked there of critical emergencies in the base emanating from the main lab.
There was a critical situation happening in the lab, but it had nothing to do with science.
A bloody mess as a result of enduring Seth's Tanden Storm the first time around, Naruto squinted with one eye, in pain as he stood up off of the wall his body had been hurled into, "Hah… hah… Sasuke…"
"…What?" Good. He was nearby. Naruto caught sight of his best enemy shoving a heavy amount of twisted metal off of his body, "You look like shit."
"What are you doing here?"
"As if… anyone could miss you turning up the heat with your chakra all at once… dumbass." Sasuke figured that if Naruto was willing to jumpstart his power to three tails that quickly, it was for a big reason, "What is that thing?"
"The guy that runs S.I.N." Naruto explained, "Gonna kill him, and go get Rin-Rin."
"You know where she is?"
"She's close."
"Then go get her." Sasuke said before spitting blood onto the floor, "This place isn't going to be left standing by the time this ends. So go get her out."
A look of concern crossed Naruto's battle-frenzied face at the thought of leaving Sasuke alone to fight Seth, even for just a while, "Sasuke… you can't beat him alone."
"Don't you think I know that?" Sasuke spat bitterly. He was highly self-confident, but he was no fool, "Hurry up and shoo the Kanzuki girl out of here and get your ass back in the fight. I'm the only one that's allowed to kill you, and I'm not dying until I make you pay for getting us sucked into this stupid world."
A small grin came to Naruto's face, "How do you know it wasn't your fault?"
"Tch, just go. He's back up." At that, Sasuke formed another warped, darkly chirping Chidori and swung his arm, sending thousands of black electric needles across the room rapidly at the synthetic being, "Habataku Chidori Senbon (Flapping One Thousand Birds Senbon)!"
Knowing that something like that wouldn't get the job done, even as powerful as it was, Sasuke used that as a cover to Shunshin closer to Seth. His hands had already completed the hand-seals for the first ninjutsu he ever learned.
"Katon: Goukakyuu no Jutsu (Fire Release: Great Fireball Jutsu)!"
From his mouth he sprayed a massive flamethrower-style blast of flames to cover Seth's body. With the chemicals that were already on the ground from earlier, a great portion of the floor caught ablaze as well. The site of the battle had become almost a literal embodiment of hell itself at first glance.
'Just die.' Sasuke thought to himself as he continued to shoot fire. It was all for naught though as he could see motion from within the flames with his Sharingan and canceled the attack for safety's sake, 'Of course. A guy that could assimilate the abilities of others would pick up the one thing from the dobe that still pisses me off every time I think about fighting him.'
"It's been fascinating to see just how my newly assimilated healing factor works." Seth said as he walked through the fire with a displeased look on his face, "It does nothing for the pain however. I cannot say that I am pleased with enduring so much from someone who could never kill me. You have nothing to worthwhile to offer me from your assimilation. So you may die now."
XxX
The back end of the lab. That was where Naruto was told to go by weasely scientist guy from before. And lo and behold he found a small hallway that led to several isolated rooms. Trying each door he only found one that was currently locked, and that was the one he chose.
Reinforced to endure any sort of punishing blow that a superhuman being could deal out, the same couldn't really be said for the wall surrounding it. Three-tailed Naruto simply ripped the door out of the wall and hurled it away to enter and find Karin subjected to a torturous amount of mind-altering stimulation to her senses.
Right then his boner for murder died and he lost his chakra boost as he scrambled to pry off the bonds holding her limbs, torso, and neck down to the table. He was strong enough on his own to rip those off, especially when motivated, and wasted no time after doing so whisking her back out into the hallway, slamming his back against the wall and sinking down to the floor with her in his arms.
Her breaths were short and panting, as if she had to strictly regulate her breathing to keep from panicking and snapping while enduring all of that torment.
As he could still hear the sounds and see the sights of the 'conditioning chamber', Naruto sneered and tossed an explosive tag in through the open doorway, cradling Karin's body tightly as it detonated and blew everything in the room to ashes.
"Karin." Naruto repeated to her over and over, tilting her face towards his to try and prompt her to focus her eyes on him, "Shhh… It's okay. It's okay. It's okay. I've got you. It's okay. I promise."
"Not okay." Karin replied in a whispered panic, tears spilling from her eyes at finally being able to let her guard break, "Not okay. Make it stop."
Getting mad all over again wouldn't do her any good now that he had her. She'd been there for two days. Seth had been subjecting her to the kind of conditioning that broke the Dolls for two days. Why did people in the world have to be willing to do such ugly things to others?
The horrible method of preparing female assassins should have died with Cammy's amnesia, which might have been a blessing in disguise. The fact that it was brought back to be used again in any way just told him that some people never learned, at least not in that way. The only mistakes that evil people seemed to learn from the fall of their predecessors were ways to more effectively use their resources to cause others pain and torment. That pain and torment had been inflicted on Karin.
Even after minutes passed and she went quiet in her desperate rambling pleads to make whatever she was seeing behind her eyelids every time she blinked stop, she wouldn't cease her shaking. He never thought he'd see the day when he saw such weakness in the proud girl.
"I'm so sorry Karin." Naruto said, pressing his headband-covered forehead against hers, "I'm weak. If I was strong enough, this wouldn't have ever happened. If I was strong enough, Sasuke wouldn't be out there buying me time."
Dealing with Charlie in the past and Guile in the aftermath of that loss taught him that dwelling on things could ruin you as a person. But it was different when you were staring the results in the face and soothing her tears away.
"You really should shut up about that. You came to retrieve me did you not?" Karin murmured quietly, reaching up to touch at his saddened, battle-stained face, "Oh, you are hurt." Kissing his cheek once and peppering him repeatedly with short ones, "He hurt you." He was coated in blood and grime. Her hands were sticky with it, and it was marking her white dress.
"He hurt you worse."
"I am fine. He did not harm me physically."
"He didn't have to! This is worse! You won't stop shaking and it's scaring me to death!"
Psychological torture scared Naruto more than the thought of physical torture. He could heal anything that anyone did to him physically… as long as nothing was cut off. An attack on one's psyche was life-altering.
Karin softly rubbed the filthy blond's cheek before her eyes sharpened on his and she slapped him, "Do you really think me so weak that I would allow this to cripple me? Let go of me." She demanded, fussing to get out of his grasp to prove a point. She was not going to let the man she supported lose his nerve.
Per request, Naruto let go of her and watched worriedly, still sitting against the wall.
"Are you aware… of just who I am?" She asked as she shakily put her feet beneath her and pushed herself up, swaying slightly before using the wall opposite of Naruto to keep herself upright until she could do so on her own, standing tall and straight-backed, "I am the current head of the Kanzuki Zaibatsu, the most powerful conglomerate in the eastern hemisphere; Kanzuki Karin. Tawdry bells, whistles, clicks, and intruding prods are incapable of breaking me."
"…My boss lady." Naruto said quietly to himself as the entire facility shook around them, "Tenacious as a goddamn pit bull."
That was the constant of all of the incredible women in his life. They came from four different walks of life and were all so markedly different in most every fundamental way one could bring up as a possible point of contention. Despite that there was one thing that Karin, Sakura, Ibuki, and Cammy had in common.
All of them simply wouldn't roll over and be timorous, no matter what happened to them, and no matter what they had to deal with, either due to the life he led or due to whatever hand was personally dealt their way. Nothing would make them turn back. They all embodied resolve, doggedness, drive, and it was never any clearer than right then.
Snapping out of it, Naruto stood back up and put his hands on her shoulders. Her body gave a tremor every now and again. She wasn't even close to being alright, he could tell, but she was putting on her poker face for the benefit of his peace of mind. He would never forget the tormented expression on her face he saw upon opening that door as long as he lived.
Her show of strength was short lived as Karin's eyes fluttered and she collapsed against Naruto, the low strength in her tired body lapsing momentarily, "You came for me, the way I hoped you would… like my knight."
'Yes. Smile at me. Show me the face that will always make me believe that everything will be alright, the face that changed my life simply by being a part of it. I am not afraid. I will not be afraid as long as I can look upon you.'
"-I knew from the very beginning that you would save me."
'Would you listen if I said these words to you? Would you understand why I adore you my beloved? What you've done to me? You give me strength and weaken me at the same time, and it feels wonderful. You cause a storm of contradiction in my heart."
"-No matter what you do, you can never let me down."
'I wonder, do you feel my heartbeat? I can feel yours; ferocious, constant, and strong. It soothes this distressed maiden's mind.'
"-Because I know that you would never accept such an outcome."
'Oh, my koishii, mi amado, bien-aimée! No matter what language I say it in, you will never know how much I adore you, even if I told you! I simply do not possess the vocabulary in any vernacular to aptly articulate what I feel. I could scream it were it not so unsightly to do so, and it still would not convey the proper passion… so I fear it must go unsaid until I find a way.'
She simply didn't have the strength of body to fortify her courage and say what she truly wanted to his face. How she truly felt. It wasn't the same as admitting attraction to him. It was nothing like it at all. It was different than standing up to face an opponent in battle that was frighteningly powerful. There simply was no comparison.
Karin couldn't muster what it took to speak the words she wanted to say over and over to him. Not then.
"Come on. Let's get you out of here Rin-Rin."
"Of course Naruto-san."
'…I love you.'
XxX
(Elsewhere in the Base)
Whatever Sakura and Juri had done, it almost caved in the entire segment of the base that had also been shared by Ibuki, Cammy, and Abel. Even though it had been far down a separate corridor from a conjoining chamber, the horrid shaking that resulted from Sakura's Hadoken vaporizing a giant hole straight to the surface brought the fight between the remnants of S.I.N.'s present elite foot soldier force and the invading martial artists to a temporary halt.
It caused a cave-in of rocks and sand that fell through the new hole and covered the floor. Even at their distance they could see all of that fall inward onto the ground.
"Sakura-chan is still over there." Ibuki whispered worriedly, reconvening with Cammy and Abel temporarily while everything was at a standstill. Even if she was still frightened by that same power that Sakura almost turned on her with in a fit of rage at school, she was still her close friend, "D-Do you think she-?"
"No." Cammy said resolutely, "Even though none of us can sense energy intentionally, all of us felt the power she had. That amount isn't enough to destroy a force like that. It would have had to be enough to bury her alive to even have a chance."
Abel didn't know what they'd felt, or how a girl such as Sakura could generate such a power. To him, it was something that triggered a primal fight or flight response in him, but there was no fight response. His body screamed at him to stay away from that energy. Were he to stand against it, he felt that his body would betray him in order to avoid confrontation with such a force.
'How could so much might exist in such a young girl?' Abel could barely register that sort of power as natural, 'It felt like a spiritual manifestation of sheer wild passion.'
"RRAAAAAGHH!"
The sound of someone crying out drew their attention to the sight of one of S.I.N.'s BLECE soldiers. Dropping to the ground on his knees he started to bleed from his pores despite being uninjured during the course of the battle. Soon thereafter another fell, and another, and another.
What the hell was going on? They were a formidable ki-spewing fighting force one moment and the next they were dropping like flies, writhing in pain on the ground.
Cammy squinted as she started to see what she thought was a glow underneath their skin before it started to burn and blacken from the underside up, "Oh no." She said, holding a hand to her chest in sympathy, "Oh…this is terrible."
"What?" Abel asked his little sister of sorts, "What do you see?"
Cammy took off the little hat on her head and shook her head in sorrow. In battle she had no mercy against her foes, but this wasn't a case of combat, "Their bodies. Whatever BLECE is, I believe it forced the ability of ki manipulation unto its recipients."
"You can't force something like that!" Ibuki exclaimed. She knew that much. It took constant physical and mental training just to gain enough lifeforce as well as learn to reach and control it to utilize ki to enhance oneself. It wasn't something meant to be accessible to everyone automatically. Clearly this had not been a concern of those in charge of this project, "Ki isn't supposed to be used at all! If it was, we wouldn't have to work so hard just to get the access to it that we have!"
Ki was a naturally created energy, but it wasn't meant to be utilized to strengthen and revitalize the human body. It wasn't meant to be used as a weapon. That was something martial arts discovered in order to build upon the limits of humankind.
None of the current Aohura City trio could shoot ki bolts or use it externally unless they were still touching it directly. It had been a curious wonder as to why so many of these soldiers had the ability to perform actions that less than a fraction of 1% of the trained fighter population of the entire world found themselves capable of.
"This is progress?" Abel spat bitterly, "Was this just a next step in what we were supposed to be? A bid to create the perfect human specimen?" Cursing in French he then let out a sigh as he watched Cammy sit down cross-legged on the floor, "Is there anything we can do?"
The question went to her, as no one amongst them knew more about the human body than Cammy did. It was integral to the method of speedy operational style of fighting that she used to accurately attack joints and vital areas whenever available. There was also clearly a practicality to it outside of battle. She knew more by simply watching a person's body than anyone else would, "Are you a doctor?"
"…" He had no comment. It was obvious that he wasn't.
"Are you a holistic healer adept in ki-related treatments?"
"..." Again, nothing.
"There isn't anything we can do then."
No one could ever say that Cammy was tactful in how she addressed unpleasant things.
As this portion of the battle seemed to be over, Ibuki joined the clone pseudo-siblings in watching all of this through to the end, no matter what. As a ninja it was disrespectful to the lives she'd taken already that day to turn her back on this, even if it was graphic and horrible.
She merely got down on her knees, sitting on her heels in a proper seiza with her hands pressed together in something of a prayer to end their suffering quickly. They would wait it all out until it finally concluded.
XxX
With a forceful kick, Juri sent a large-sized piece of stone flying off of her body across the partially caved in corridor. Sitting up from where she'd been somewhat buried under debris, she shook her head out and dabbed at the cut that had opened on the side of her head and bled down the side of her face.
"Stupid bitch." Juri emphasized by kicking a metal beam out of her vicinity as she stood back up, "I hope the whole damn mountain fell on her head."
Once again, gross amounts of reinforced property found itself obliterated as a result of one of her battles, but this time it wasn't her that initiated the massive amounts of destruction. No, it was her opponent that had done so.
She had to have blown everything she had to bring out that kind of energy. Just thinking about it gave Juri goosebumps. Or maybe that was just the cool desert night air drifting down the open and gaping hole that led up to the surface.
"And me with my lovely little source of extra ki." Juri said to herself, rubbing her eye with a pleased purr, "I ain't spent yet." The crunching sound of chunked dirt, sand, and rocks came from beneath her feet as she stood up and dusted herself off as best as she could, "Tch." She looked around and smirked before blowing a taunting kiss at nothing in particular.
Now that all of this was over with and done, she still felt frisky enough to go back and slaughter the other three rubes that had been left back fighting the BLECE soldiers.
In hindsight, that battle had been fun. What a thrill, to face someone that was so willing to inflict the kind of bodily harm on her to win that she was willing to dish out back in return.
Her musings on what a good fight that had been came to an end when she heard the sound of crumbled rocks falling down the main pile caused by the cave-in. Slowly, Juri turned her head around and to the top of the pile to where she saw Sakura, sitting and staring up forlornly at the moon that bathed her in its light through the hole in the roof.
Juri snarled at her adversary through her teeth, "You."
"Me." Sakura replied casually, slowly letting her solid red eyes drift down and over to Juri, "You aren't done aren't you? I didn't break you without even finishing you did I?" She asked, "Come on. Aren't you all about making chaos for fun? Isn't this what you want?" She slowly stood up in her raggedly tattered school uniform, covered in blood, "You're not scared are you? Of little old me?"
Gritting her jaw shut, Juri opened wide and let out a shrill, horrid scream as she unleashed as much pink ki from the glowing Feng Shui Engine through her body that she could force out of it to enhance her every action, "Scared!? You're really pushing my buttons little girl! By the time you get to hell you'll still be screaming after what I've done to you! This is the end for you! Kaisen Dankairaku (Spinning World-Ending Descent)!"
The pink blip faded from sight and began smashing Sakura up higher and higher into the air with a barrage of vertical spinning kicks from Juri, making her look like a blurry, pink top. Reaching the apex of her attack, Juri flipped over Sakura and delivered a downward ax kick that sent her target flying to the ground.
With another flash of the Feng Shui Engine eye, Juri was able to move her body and beat Sakura to the ground where she caused the girl to land back-first with a flexible lifting back kick that held Sakura over her head, her body held up and bent in a manner that enabled Juri to stroke her face with one last bitter taunt before she stopped the show, "Nighty-night baby girl."
There was no response aside from the discomfort of being beaten up on Sakura's face, as she rested almost eye-to-eye upside down with Juri. After hearing Juri's taunt, Sakura simply reached one hand out to the side and as quick as lightning, she plucked her left eye out.
Straight in, straight out. No bumping around the socket, just perfect aim and execution. Damn near surgical precision.
It was as clean as the act of removing a human eye with your bare fingers could possibly be.
Sakura severed every wire and every artificial nerve attached to every real nerve inside of the woman's head as if she'd been practicing the art of maiming others for years. It was almost done casually.
It took a moment for Juri to register the pain and the loss of enhanced ki, but when she did finally feel it, the pain was blinding. No pun intended. It didn't matter that the eye was sort of a machine. It had been legitimately connected to her nerves, optical and otherwise. For all intents and purposes she might as well have gotten the real one ripped out all over again.
Dropping Sakura to the ground without delivering the killing move of her technique, Juri hit the deck and began writhing and howling at the top of her lungs. Blood spurted through her hands freely as she clutched desperately at her now empty socket.
This time hurt infinitely worse than the last time. The first time she lost her eye it had been damaged while in the socket. She had not had to endure someone reaching into her skull and pulling it out.
"YOU BITCH! I'LL KILL YOU!" Juri wailed in between her rolling around, covering herself in her own blood, "MY EYE!" She sobbed terribly.
Sakura simply stood over Juri, looking down at her coldly as she raised her right hand to deliver a killing downward blow, but upon seeing blood drip from her hand she stopped and opened it to look at it, only to see the Feng Shui Engine built into the eye looking right back at her.
Getting a gander at that, Sakura's own eyes went wide and slowly drifted back to their original emotive brown color, the whites of them returning as well. Her skin color receded to its original fairer tone once the dark power of the Satsui no Hadou fully left her.
All that remained was a horrific feeling in the pit of her stomach about what she'd done to another person. She could have done anything in that situation. She'd let herself be captured in that position to prove a point, to assert that she was the alpha woman fighter, not Juri. And she was entirely willing to punish her for every reason she'd come to despise her for in the most brutal way she could think of at the moment instead of just escaping the combo and countering in a more textbook manner.
Juri continued to wail and thrash about in pain and despair. All the while, Sakura stared at her bloody fighting gloves and felt the warm life fluid on her fingertips as she slowly backed away shaking her head. The artificial optical orb finally fell from her open hand and seemed to echo as it bounced off of the ground, 'What have I done?'
And that's the chapter peeps. Violent enough for you? Next time, the end of the fights and the aftermath.
Goddamn Chael Sonnen can run his mouth. After he beat Mauricio Rua tonight on Fox Sports 1's first UFC event, he ran down Wanderlei Silva on the mic.
Admittedly that would have been ballsier to do in 2005 when he had the world convinced that given two minutes he would slaughter any being alive with his bare hands, but even now that man would still scare a shake into my knees if I found out I had to fight him in three months' time.
Ah… damn it I loves me some Chael Sonnen. I don't know why.
And now that I've alienated a good chunk of my audience that may or may not know what the hell I'm talking about I'll stop.
But Sunday night… War Bryan Danielson. You know what I'm talking about people that know what I'm talking about.
Again… I probably alienated another huge chunk of my core audience here, but whatever.
Since I was in middle school I followed that man, following his career while he was busting his ass doing 60+ minute matches for peanuts. I watched him get his retina detached in a match in the bid to make it big. After all of that, it's good to see him get his night to shine.
So now that you're all sufficiently estranged from me due to everything I just said, Kenchi out.