Yo!
How's it goin?
A HUGE shout out to Yamajiji, anthonym3, 777torn777, DuckedHard, ericjr1411, zerkses, LeviDragon, Arraia, CrookedKing1996, lord 7th, darkwolfz, TheMostCasualObserver, shinobinoyami16, Tohka123, DragoFae24, boredasf13, firetemplar415, TheKing91, Primarx, Charles Ceaser, insanemaelstrom, Nightmare noir, Archangel Uzumaki and Lokitazz0. You're all frigging fantastic people :)
I changed up the Rinnegan's abilities and the Six Paths Techniques a little. Another thing you guys should know before you begin reading is that I'm well aware that most, if not all, the jutsu Naruto and Nagato use in their fight don't have to be said out loud or that those jutsus are more than a mouthful to say out loud. I'm aware. They'll still say them tho.
For those that have been observant enough to notice how I stop calling Naruto 'Naruto' once he starts fighting and instead call him 'the Ghost', I won't be doing that in this chapter.
I'm just going to come out and say it; in every story I have Hidan in a climax-kind of fight against the MC (usually a version of Naruto), I don't do him any real justice. I honestly think of getting him gone and moving on to the important people. I'm not sugar coating anything here; that's exactly what happens in this story. Sure Hidan has his swearing time, but that's pretty much it.
Also, Konan is deservedly S rank.
I'll leave it at that…hehehe
In this chapter, there will be quick scene changes from fight to fight. I did my best to separate them as best as I could (using that OOOOO page break, you know the one). Some fights might not be as detailed as others. Fair warning.
Ya ready?
Enjoy…
CHAPTER 31
"Chakra Chains of the Demonic Statue!"
The Ghost's eyebrows lifted up his forehead in surprise at the shouted jutsu.
'That's a new one.'
He ran forward to the Deva path as the other paths spread out, pelting left and right as iron chains as thick as his arms exploded out of the ground and honed to his shadowy, blurry form. The blonde assassin had his head lowered and his arms flying behind him, his ninjato gripped firmly in his right hand.
He was running fast enough to leave elusive afterimages.
A red tipped missile screamed in his direction, sprouted out form the three-faced, six armed, Asura paths chest. The sharp chakra chains that were well-adept at holding down tailed beasts, which Nagato had smartly attacked him with, came at him from behind, roughly a hundred iron constructs that erupted from the ground, while a missile wailed towards him.
Naruto grinned wickedly under the darkness covering his face and he quickened his already fast pace.
The world turned sluggishly as the tip of the missile grazed his jounin vest-
"Intangibility."
-And harmlessly passed through him.
BOOOOM!
The missile blew up against the chakra chains, dispelling only two of them but leaving the bulk of them scattered and somewhat disorganized.
The blonde assassin pelted on, his white soled black shinobi sandals blazing on the ground, skidding under a chunk of earth that had been lifted up by another blast from the Asura path. Two tentacles from his back stabbed into a summoned turtle, only drying a small patch of the underbelly of the massive, thrown animal. This forced the glasses wearing phantom to stop in his tracks and spin on his feet, planting a solid straight kick in the same place his smoky tentacles had dried up with electricity.
A resounding crack sounded after foot impacted shell and the turtle shot backwards.
The Asura path dropped down, seemingly from the blood red heavens, and engaged the Ghost in earth shattering hand-to-hand, as the Preta, Human and Animal paths rocketed towards the multi-armed path as support.
The Ghost spun the ninjato in his right palm, deflecting a closely blasted laser beam from Asura paths fingers, turned under a two-armed haymaker, returned with a knee to the back of the mechanical path but cursed with grit teeth as the path swivelled around one of its three heads completely, opening its back and firing a barrage of red lasers beams.
The assassin pulled his sword arm away from the metal melting beams of light, shifted his head away from an axe blow coming from four arms and rolled underneath a knee that had attempted to rip his head off.
'He's gotten better at this.' The bespectacled blonde swore in his head, gnashing his teeth underneath his mask. His shining white eyes adjusted as his widened optical sensory range acknowledged the three paths heading their way and the three paths keeping a wide berth from them. Deva-Yahiko-and Naraka, the former being Nagato's favourite path as well as the one that controlled attractive and repulsive forces, and the other being able to summon the kind of hell to heal battered or destroyed paths. He slashed his ninjato across a right hook, cleaving off the hand with the lethal blade and hopping aside as the sliced off wrist exploded once it hit the ground. His tentacle-d back was now to the coming paths. Those same white eyes widened as the Deva path held up his right hand, palm open and facing him, and said.
"Almighty Push."
Throwing him into the grinning embrace of the Asura path, who wrapped his arm around the thrashing assassin and opened his chest once again.
The Ghost snapped his wrist, sealing up Night terror, and muttered, as the lasers primed to burn a hole through his torso.
"Hiden art: Smoke release: Acidic Smokescreen."
Poof!
His body burst into thick black smoke once the lasers shot out of the Asura paths chest, hastily covering the paths body and gathering back together behind the hulking, six–armed corpse.
Not too long after, the Asura path's toppled down onto his face. The paths Akatsuki robes were burnt to nothing, the skin shrivelled up and dried, peeling off the bone and flaking onto the ground, turning to dust as they touched the cold-hardened grassy ground.
The three paths heading to him paused and spread out, the Human and Preta paths were the only ones advancing while the Animal path stayed back, flipping through seals.
The reformed smoke assassin opened his arms, shouting.
"You think I'm some sort of kid?" he kicked the bones on the ground and the six metal arms, the black receivers and the copy of Nagato's rinnegan that hadn't turned into dust. "You think you can use that crappy tactic again?"
Nagato had used that move on Naruto when they were kids with mild success.
It was why Naruto had created the Acidic Smokescreen jutsu.
The soul sucking path and the chakra draining path bore down on the Ghost.
Knowing better than to touch the Preta and Human paths or allow them to touch him, the blonde shinobi fired bolts of lightning from two of the tentacles on his back at it, purposely aiming to the ground, throwing up clumps of earth in the process.
He stood over the fallen Asura paths body, firing off shots of white light from the tentacles of his shoulders until he got what he was looking for; the wet, cold water on the grass withered and fire erupted. He focused most of the fire below the Preta path than the Human counterpart, hence why the fire around the chakra draining path was larger and hotter than the one with the soul stealing path. The Preta path was surrounded with fire that was made up of less than thirty percent chakra; therefore they couldn't be put out if he simply drained it.
Afterimages poured out from behind him as he faced the Human path, his head down and his eyes narrowed with concentration as the path leaped through the fire with his forearms covering his face from the sweltering heat. It rolled beneath a straight punch to its face, front flipped over a bolt of lightning and ran around the subsequent shots, until Naruto flashed through five hand seals.
"Water release: Swamp Army Graveyard."
The ground under the Human paths feet softened with water and the path ground its teeth as it fought to stay above ground, even as sticky, muddy arms rose out of the ground and clambered to drag him into the muddy abyss, unaware of when the Ghost flashed up before him, his right knee burning furiously and blasting open its head.
Without missing a beat, the glasses wearing Leader back flipped away from the wildly grasping hands of the soul sucking path, forcing his fingers into more hands seals when the Deva path spat out a rinnegan technique at that very same time.
"Fire release: Great Fireball jutsu."
"Almighty Push!"
The Ghost ripped off his half mask and held up a half ram under his jaw, exhaling what could only be described as a wall of white fire from his gnarly, serrated maw.
The white fireball washed over the trapped path, burning it to absolutely nothing with the heat rivalled only by the sun. The gravity controlling technique didn't make it quick enough to save the Human path, though it smash against the white fireball.
FWOOOOOOOOM!
White fire climbed higher and higher against an unseen gravitational force.
Naruto felt a sweat roll down the side of his head and he joined his other fingers, forming a full ram and holding his half mask with only his pinkie finger.
The Deva path grit his teeth under the strain, raising his other hand to support himself.
Chakra flowing into the other paths through their implanted black receivers noticeably reduced at the focus on ensuring Deva and Naraka didn't turn into melted piles of flesh from the white flames, even as two of their own had already been annihilated.
Naruto finally snapped his half mask back over his face and ran lengthwise from the overwhelming gravitational pulse, bounding from place to place as the earth beneath their feet tore apart.
The world was coming undone as the enraged paths roared after him.
The Preta path, finally able to clear the fire as the light shower of rain reduced the fire, crossed its forearms as the Ghost blasted Sleep Paralysis at him with his left gun fingers, sucking the jutsu of all its chakra and reducing its potency to nothing.
A back fist from a gorilla twice Naruto's size slammed into his side, appearing in a plume of smoke close to his left. The blonde hissed as his bones throbbed painfully. His back slammed into the ground and he rolled on his side twice, righting himself again and throwing an earth rocking hook kick to the Preta path, kicking off the paths guard as it drained a sliver of his chakra and flipping above the gorilla.
"Water release:" the Preta path began, shoving right through the summoned animal. "Crystalline Water Needle Hell."
The torrential rain hammering down on Naruto sharpened into senbon and rained towards him, inadvertently impaling the gorilla.
Those needles stabbed into Naruto's body from all sides, mercilessly digging deep into him. The six tentacles on his back wind milled madly, keeping them back until-
"Hiden art: Lightning release: Blink One-Two Step!"
-The man, pushing through the agony of being perforated like a pincushion, ran to the Preta path. Two steps later and he flicked into a single bolt of white lightning, travelling through the shower of needles coming down from the heavens and faster than normal human comprehension.
The Preta path opened its right hand, ready to suck the jutsu of all its chakra and leave its user with nothing, though dragged its arm back when the blonde reformed before him with his ninjato in a reverse grip.
The smoky blade cut through the paths side, parting his upper body from his lower body. The Ghost's tentacles spun faster and faster, deflecting millions of senbon honed to end their user's life, and extended outwards as Naruto pointed his right index finger to the thunderstorm brewing above them, slashing his finger downwards and pointing to the legs of the Preta path.
The blood red heavens bellowed in agony and a jagged bolt of lightning screamed down from a cluster of black clouds.
The upper body of the Preta path flipped onto his belly and rolled to the legs, opening its arms as the bolt hit the ground, creating a sphere of chakra draining air above it.
The Ghost flashed through three rapid hand seals, faster than all the paths could realize Naruto's plan and much faster than the rinnegan-mutated cheetahs could get to their target.
"Earth release: Earth spike."
With the Preta path preoccupied with the electrical strike from above, and not having the mobility of being on its feet to defend against an attack from below, the single earth spike speedily broke out of the ground and ripped through the back of its head, shattering the skull and having its arms flop down weakly as the chakra receivers in its body fluctuated at the loss of its head.
CRRRRRAAACCCK!
The lightning from above slipped through the chakra draining sphere and obliterated the upper and lower body of the headless Preta path.
Without wasting any time to savour his success in taking out three of Nagato's paths, the Ghost turned to hold Night terror across his chest as one of the cheetahs snapped at his neck, unfortunately biting into the weapon and summarily drying up from having thousands of volts of electricity rushed into its body.
Naruto gnashed his teeth with a curse as the water senbon that had stabbed into his body reduced his mobility, not allowing him to fully avoid a clawed slash from the other cheetah at his back, ripping into his jounin vest. The hail of water senbon had stopped but his body still bore the needles. He also certainly didn't give him the speed to raise an effective guard from a rhino as it rumbled towards him, lowering its head and staring with its beady rinnegan eyes at its target.
The man stepped aside, his muscles and his bones screaming at him from the abrupt movement, the senbon digging into them and restraining motion all the more.
The rhino, as it passed him with the speed of a vengeful train, impaled its cheetah comrade and stomped its massive feet in a mad bid to stop.
Naruto, heaving for air as the needles pushed into his lungs and heart from that one move of stepping aside from death by being trampled underfoot, spat out blood and his left hand shook, weakly holding Night terror.
His glasses threatened to slip off his nose and his hands trembled too hard to push them back up, too stiff from the needles in the joints and muscles to move.
The Ghost chuckled darkly and churned his chakra in his gut.
The tentacles on his back slashed through the rhino as it came back to impale Naruto, dispelling it and beginning the painstaking process of pulling out the senbon from Naruto's body.
Animal path didn't stop bombarding Naruto with summoned animals, stampeding in their multitude without organization.
The tentacles focused on the Ghost's arms, zipping and snapping about his arms, leaving two tentacles that sprouted from Naruto's lower back fire off bolts of lightning from their white tips, dispelling as many as possible.
Naruto hurried up his effort and forced his arms up into the ram hand seal, tearing flesh and muscles in the process.
"Kai."
The volatile white and black chakra that had been gathering in his stomach blew outwards…
…And it was catastrophic.
THOOOOOOOOOOOOM!
The needles blasted out of his body from the pulse of chakra, the earth groaned dolefully and depressed all around Naruto, and the stampeding animals were thrown away by the savage shockwave. The pulse of chakra reached far and wide, casting even the Animal path off his feet and tossing him away, no matter how much chakra he used to fasten himself to the ground.
Naruto lowered his body into a crouch, his jounin vest was shredded to pieces and his shirt had holes dotted over it, showing his bleeding purple-blue flesh where the needles had been blow out from. His right hand grazed the ground and his left hand crossed his ninjato behind him in a reverse grip, looking up at the Deva path and the Naraka path.
He spoke in a whisper, a low sound that was scarcely heard in the warzone that was the battlefield, but the Deva path knew what was coming.
"White Noise."
The atmospheric nature chakra came down from the black clouded heavens and struck the nape of Naruto's neck, spreading its power into the man's body. Thick veins crawled from the corners of his eyes and reached his ears.
At that moment, when Naruto's physical body shot up and the Ghost's Soul form came at him at the speed of sound.
Back in Ame, Nagato abandoned caution and disconnected its chakra from the Human, Animal and Naraka paths, focusing all the power of the rinnegan into the Deva path.
His ringed eyes could see Naruto's Soul form, just vaguely, and seeing it meant that he could touch and affect it but at the very same time, seeing Naruto's Soul form vastly differed from keeping up with it.
Nagato needed to focus.
A metal arm erupted from his lower left side and blocked a strike from Naruto's ninjato, creating a blinding flash of light on impact. The strikes and the blows came faster and faster, swifter and swifter, harder and harder, straining Nagato's eyes. He could hardly even see the vengeful spirit doggedly attacking him.
He sacrificed an arm and grasped blade. Blue light shone from the catch and he quickly dragged in Naruto's chakra, using the blonde's chakra to fuel himself, though he paid for it in the form of a knee to his side, one that definitely reorganized the Deva paths mostly inactive internal organs.
The Ghost release Night terror, grabbing it with his other hand and planting a foot in the paths chest, using a bolt of lightning from the sky to pushing off. He flipped backwards, briefly watching how the path sucked most of the chakra from the lightning attack, and he dove back in.
The battle was too bright too look at, littered with flashing lights and sharp, cutting winds that tore down what few foliage was left in the earth.
Naruto's Soul form, the form he was directly controlling, amped up its speed drastically, moving and striking faster than the speed of sound and venturing into the speed of the light.
The Soul form became less defined as the world around it slowed down, till only a vague, semi-unseen outline remained, and yet it didn't slow down itself.
The vengeful demon bellowed.
RRRRROOOOOOAAAAAAARRRRRRRR!
The air shattered like glass, tearing the fabric of space and time as the Naruto's body became dimmer and the movements became faster.
The visible, jounin speed 'Naruto' copying the past actions disintegrated into nothing, leaving the real Naruto, his Soul form, linking back-to-back attacks within the span of half a second.
The six tentacles on the Soul form's back morphed into hands, and those hands closed into fists.
A knee broke through the space between the Ghost and the Deva path, almost as if it had teleported, and crushed the abdomen as soon as the path channelled the Asura path to mechanize its stomach. The faint spirit didn't stop; a back hand ripped aside an arm, a palm strike broke through a hastily raised guard and a head butt smashed into the assembled forearms, while a tentacle-arm sliced what remained of the metal arm into shreds, letting the Ghost dig an unforgivable upper cut into the Deva paths chin.
One so strong Nagato felt it.
It hurt.
The earth heaved and fell away as the aftermath of the uppercut broke open a section of the sky. Naruto grabbed the paths foot before it could fly away and whipped it down, ducking under two elbows and rolling underneath a grab for his shoulders, intending to drain chakra. He returned with a backflip over a metal tail swipe, again Nagato channelled the Asura path, and he threw a handful of obsidian kunai, switching places with each projectile with his lightning release and landing a chain of brutal attacks with Night terror, utilizing his normal arms and his six additional arms.
Sporadic burst of light as Night terror's single, red cutting edge clanged against the mechanical metal arms that had joined the Deva path's normal arms.
Nagato strengthened his arms with his rinnegan, under the onslaught of the roundabout bladed strikes; the ghostly figure before him slashed down with his right hand, releasing the blade and grabbing it with a tentacle-arm from his lower right side, cutting to the side and grabbing it with another tentacle-arm, slicing diagonally and snagging it with his right hand and continuing this chain of switching appendages to attack, doing it so fast that an outsider that could manage to keep up with the speed of the attacks would think Naruto was using more than six swords.
A metal palm faced down and blocked a slash that would have opened his gut, the back of another hand deflected a slice that would have claimed its neck, coming down to join three other arms to block a cruel rising knee that caved in the metal arms but ultimately protected his heart.
The Ghost stepped back and exhaled tightly, suppressing his frustration.
He breathed out thick black smoke through his clenched teeth.
His Soul form invisibly shimmered in the darkening light of the red sky and the black clouds.
Nagato-the Deva path-was keeping up with him, though just barely.
The chakra Nagato was using to do just that, staying on the same speed as his former best friend, was monumental. The best comparison for how much chakra Nagato was using his rinnegan to create not just a moon, but his own planet.
The act of moving at such speeds for Naruto was like his chakra, his black and white, volatile, unstable, dangerous chakra, had been set on fire. It was bearable, and Naruto was used to it at this point in his life and with his mastery, but the same couldn't be said about Nagato.
It was possible the effect was worse with the Rinnegan god.
The Ghost had a large chakra store inside and outside his body; Night terror, coupled with being a blade that seemed to have been made especially for Naruto, was where Naruto stored his chakra outside of his body in case he ever needed it in the future. Every morning for the past twenty two years, since Torune Uzumaki had gifted him the blade, the bespectacled blonde would push half of his chakra into the sword before he left for work and at the end of the day, when he was preparing for bed, he would push in half of what chakra he had left into the ninjato. Given that Naruto had a vastly underestimated amount of chakra contained in his internal reserves, the first half at the beginning of the day was a staggering amount.
Needless to say, the sword contained a lot of chakra.
Naruto called down ten separate bolts of electricity from the heavens and Nagato controlled the Deva path to spread its six arms and absorbed the chakra based attacks, leaping away as a spike made to skewer him from the bottom.
"Not this time. Now come," He grunted, remember that it was almost the same way Naruto had taken out his chakra absorbing path. The orange haired path panted heavily, sucking in and pushing out as much air as his corpse lungs could accommodate. He then held his hands to Naruto's figure and yanked to himself. "Universal Pull."
Naruto's feet left the ground and he flew to the last path.
The fingers of Yahiko's corpse touched Naruto's temple as he got to him.
"Soul Eater."
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
At the same time
Five hundred miles from the Fire capital
Forest of Yamato
Sueki spotted Orochimaru patiently seated on the ground with his legs were crossed. His Akatsuki robe rustled as he rose onto his feet, beaming widely at the vampire.
"Took you long enough."
The red eyed woman looked up to the flying sheets of paper and shouted. "Keep going!"
Konan, looking over the edge of the flying papers, nodded once and soared on to the Fire capital. Tsume called down as they flew away.
"Give him hell!"
Sueki rolled her eyes.
"You know, you could have declined." Orochimaru said, pulling off his robe to show that he was in his shinobi clothes underneath, throwing the robe away and not caring much where it was.
The vampire's eyes narrowed when he sensed more than one heart inside the grinning Sannin.
Fifty one, to be exact.
"So Akatsuki was after the Jiongu." She said mutely, frowning.
"For a brat, you sure are smart." Orochimaru answered patronizingly. "Can you also guess why I chose you to be my opponent?"
The white haired lady broke her expressionless mask with a sharp, wide smirk, showing her pin-like canines as they grew down from her upper lip. "You want to die by my hands, of course." She tittered humourlessly. "You're biting off more than you can chew, Orochimaru."
"I take it your 'teacher' didn't teach you common sense." He scoffed. "Well, it doesn't matter. Try your best not to die so easily, Ketsueki."
The smirk gradually went down and her marble smooth face cleared of all emotion. "…Don't say I didn't warn you."
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Three men, standing about ten feet apart, blocked the path of dozens of Dark country jounin teams, made up of BLAK operatives and 'normal' shinobi.
Tobi, his sharingan sluggishly spinning in his right eye, in its three tomoe stage and lazily leaning back on a tree, Hidan with his tri-pronged scythe on his back and a demented, bloodthirsty gin etched on his face, and finally Kisame, with Samehada gripped in his right hand and held above the ground. The purple scaled sword was fully unfurled from its bandages and was now easily the same size as its wielder, and yet the grinning shark man didn't show any strain from holding up the weight. A long tongue escaped the serrated lips of the sword, shivering in anticipation.
The three Akatsuki shinobi, S ranks in their own right, faced not less than eighty shinobi, standing in the way of where Naruto and Sueki had disappeared, coolly keeping their backs to the ground shaking pops and air rattling explosions coming from the place Naruto was battling the Six Paths of Pein.
Those shinobi, a small slice of Naruto's Ninja Force, were in fighting stances, some bore weapons and others had their fists raised and clenched tightly.
One shinobi stood in front of the arrangement of men and women, gearing to bum rush the Akatsuki in order to get to their precious Leader.
Kushina Uzumaki, stubborn as the day she was born and refusing to stay in bed while the world was about to fall apart, was dressed in full shinobi wear; a blue, short sleeved half-shirt with long sleeved mesh armour underneath, dark shorts that barely passed her mid-thighs and dark blue tights with blue shinobi sandals. Her straight, bright red hair hung freely down her shoulders, held neatly together by the hitaite wrapped around her forehead, though allowing two fang-like bangs to fall to her chin. She wore a jounin vest and had a large sealing scroll attached to her lower back, fastened in such a way it didn't hinder her motions if she wanted to draw her blade from over her shoulder. The katana Naruto, Sueki and her mother-Tamaki Uzumaki, the Uzukage-had gifted her at her graduation was strapped to her back.
The woman's purple eyes swirled, flicking from each S rank far before her to the other.
An invisible smirk flashed on her face at the short twinkle in Kisame's eyes.
The woman wasn't in any visible stance, rather standing with a straight back and her feet flat on the ground.
What two of the Akatsuki didn't know was that this was all for show.
Those Shinobi of Darkness already had their orders.
Tobi, Hidan and Kisame had been ordered to direct those shinobi into the desert.
The Zero Tailed Shark already had his orders, communicated to him by the Smoke Seed Samehada had swallowed seven months ago.
Their orders weren't to rescue their Leader or to lend their support.
Kisame laughed deeply and turned his head to the right, to Hidan, and said, as the mad priest unslung his scythe and prepared to tear through the shinobi in the insane frenzy he was known for.
"Hey, priest." He called.
The aforementioned Jashin Priest flicked his head to him and his eyes looked absolutely murderous. "What is it, shark piss? Can't you see the sacrifices before me? Don't you know Lord Jashin is waiting?" the immortal man's body teemed with excitement and he began salivating on the number of sacrifices he would make that day. "Spit it out, shark jizz!"
"You want to know something?" Kisame continued calmly, maintaining the wide grin on his face and the close eyed relax about him, though not spreading to his humming sword. "Hm?"
"What?!"
The shinobi, a little bit far from them but not too far to hear the priests curses.
They waited.
The trees behind the three men rustled in the breeze, reacting to the shockwave of one of Pein's attacks, their cloaks flapped in the near violent winds and Tobi closed his hands into fists, keeping them at his sides.
Kisame shrugged carelessly and said.
"I never liked you."
And with that, Samehada stretched impossibly, a mind of its own, and its mouth opened wide, snapping closed and swallowing Hidan's upper body whole, also eating a chunk of the scythe with him.
This happened with the speed and precision vaguely similar to a cobra strike.
It took a few Dark shinobi unaware, though the loyal men and women of Darkness's Ninja Force didn't waver in their place or fearfully step back.
The bodiless legs wobbled on their feet, before Samehada zipped back again, swallowing it whole along with a small chunk of earth.
Inside the sword, Hidan was being squeezed and constricted, the unbearably sharp teeth that wound down the sentient swords insides sheared skin from bone and broke down bone to mulch, weakening Hidan's constitution by sucking what chakra was inside the mad priest and using the accumulated chakra Samehada had stolen over the years to break down the victim's body.
It was possible that Hidan would still be alive, even after such a thorough digestion, but it was highly unlikely that the man would be in any state to re-emerge.
The Jashinist never had the chance to shout.
Hidan's tri-pronged scythe clattered to the floor noiselessly.
Tobi leaped away from Kisame as Samehada finished swallowing the legs, doing do without Kisame moving his arms.
The One Tailed Beast chuckled at the wide eyed horror in the teenage Uchiha's one eye.
"I never liked you either." He took his time walking to the younger shinobi, mentally commanding Samehada to return to normal, though with its scales angrily twitching. A section of the Dark shinobi rushed behind Kisame and advanced, while another flanked Tobi from behind.
A dark, enraged shadow passed over Kisame's face and he bore a clench teethed frown, snarling.
"You will regret insulting Leader Naruto."
He raised his left hand, his free hand, and flicked it into Dark country's sign.
Kurono.
Half of the fuinjutsu masters flanking Tobi and behind Kisame clapped their hands in unison, while the rest unslung the large sealing scrolls hanging from their lower back, unfurling them as they did so to reveal a complex chain of seals that had been drawn end-to-end instead of on top of the other, like they usually were.
The seal masters, Kushina included, shouted.
"Fuinjutsu: Sealing art: Chakra Storage Purgatory Seal!"
A solid blue wall of charka shot up around them and a dome-like ceiling covering them, just as Tobi evolved his sharingan and attempted to disappear.
He couldn't.
Naruto and his seal masters couldn't understand the concept of chakra-less teleportation, like how Kisame had described to Sueki of the time the 'Masked man' tried to recruit him in the Kiri cemetery or how Chizuri Nagateko described how the Uchiha had appeared before her without warning on the day she was place under Katoametsukami. But the bespectacled blonde and his capable people knew that said 'Masked man' would use that same jutsu to escape when the situation wasn't in his favour.
They couldn't afford to let the Uchiha man escape; who knows when he would resurface again or how strong he might be.
No.
He needed to be dealt with when they had the chance.
This was their chance.
In simple terms, the Chakra Storage Seal Purgatory was an expanded version of a storage seal commonly used to store items. This storage seal latched onto chakra signatures that the bearers of the scroll had surrounded and effectively sealed them away into a spatial dimension of its very own, different from their home dimension and separate from any other dimension. The determinant for the size was of how far away the scroll bearers were from each other, and in this case they were on a plain the same size as a training ground.
On the outside, scroll bearers placed the scrolls on pedestals, together in the centre, where the land that Kisame and Tobi stood on had formerly been, and they waited once again.
The seal masters didn't understand the chakra-less teleportation, but they did understand that all creatures under the heavens were bound to earth and bound to life by their chakra.
There was no such thing as a person or an animal without even a sliver of chakra.
The seal they had used latched themselves to Kisame and Tobi's chakra and sealed them away.
Two minutes of waiting and the storage seal didn't alert them of an escape.
Success!
They would only unseal the land and people inside the storage seal when the seals informed them that only the person with a massive store of water affinity chakra remained, else, they would simply burn the seals and damn the fire affinity Uchiha to the storage seal dimension.
Back inside the seal, Kisame placed the large sword atop his shoulder and bent his knees, supporting Samehada's weight.
Tobi had his sharingan spinning and looking for any weak spots.
He turned to Kisame and spat. "I figured you'd be the one to betray us." he unsealed a short scythe attached to a chain, attached to a tanto from inside his sleeve, and settled into a fighting stance. "You refuse to see the truth."
"Don't act like you're surprised; you knew this was coming." The other man sighed and steadily rumbled to his opponent. "Let's get this over with."
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Konan swept Tsume up into her arms in a bridal carry, trying her best not to squish the Inuzuka's large belly, and she leaped off the flying cluster of paper as a clay bird kamikaze bombed it from below. Dozens of white whets of paper blew out from her back as the air trembled after the explosion and the closeness of the blast ruffled her and Tsume.
Massive paper wings sprouted out from her back and she grit her teeth, souring as quickly as she could to the gates into the Fire capital.
They were so close-
She tucked the wings close to her body, covering Tsume with most of the papers, and barrel rolled to the right, avoiding another suicidal clay bird, this one was followed closely by a flock of similar birds.
"Stay still un!" Diedara yelled, flying on a drill beaked bird. He dug his hands into the clay pouches on his sides and the hand-mouths chomped on clay.
Sasori, seated close beside the deranged bomber, rumbled. "Get me to her."
"Un, working on it!" He released a new flock of birds, this time they had spiders attached to their backs, constantly spooling explosive clay. Some of the spiders jumped off and surged through the air to Konan.
"Hang on a second." Konan murmured to the Inuzuka, who wrapped her arms around the other woman's neck and braced for impact. The purple haired woman's stoic face didn't shift as the spiders landed on her back and exploded.
A blizzard of paper spun on the drill beak birds back and Konan ran out with her head lowered, still holding Tsume bridal style.
Diedara grinned madly, his demented eyes wide and excited. Sasori's Hiruko puppet shell skipped aside as the woman blazed by, her dark brown eyes on the Iwa missing ninja, who slammed his right palm down on the back of the clay bird they were all on. Volleys of sharp feathers shot out of the back and impaled Tsume and Konan.
"Fucking easy, un!" the bomber crowed proudly, about to turn the bird around to support Orochimaru.
He almost didn't see when, as soon as the feathers impaled the two paper clones, Konan's body dispersed into confetti and the small pieces of paper latched onto the Sasori and his surprised teammate.
They fizzled and Sasori didn't bother trying to take off the thousands of confetti on Hiruko. He kicked open the back of the puppet shell-
BOOOOOM!
-Paper gathered in the sky, reforming Konan and Tsume.
"Holy shit!" Tsume cried, her bones rattled from the blast.
A plume of black smoke shrouded the blast zone in the sky and small sparks of fire rained down.
"Nothing is ever as it seems." Konan whispered for only Tsume to hear.
Yes, she had created the Confetti bombs from her body and shaped them into identical clones of her and Tsume, but she and the woman had also hidden under the clay bird until Diedara or Sasori predictably attacked. Avoiding the explosion was the hard part; she sacrificed thousands of paper tags to take the brunt of the blast, while she used her body to shield Tsume from the rest.
Konan looked down to the Inuzuka, her eyebrows lightly furrowed. "Are you ok?"
"I'm fine, I'm good." she faltered.
She usually wasn't this easily shaken up.
Was it the hormones?
"Good. We're not done yet." She grunted as her wings batted away a swarm of poison senbon shot up from below them. Some of the paper melted and she made it rain on the trees on the ground that Sasori and Diedara were using as perches to run after them. She ten grumbled, breaking character to calm Tsume down. "These kids don't know when to give up."
Tsume scoffed, rolling her eyes and tightening her hold on Konan. "Kids?"
"Yes, I'm much older than them." the purple angel peered down to Tsume and a brief sparkle of laughter passed over her emotionless eyes. "I'm older than you too, you know."
The pregnant dog woman still didn't believe her, not knowing that Konan was the same age as Naruto and Tsume had turned twenty two not two weeks ago. "Pfft, you're not older than me, Konan."
A tickled laugh escaped the purple haired lady's lips and she smiled a little brighter to the woman under her protection. "Thank you, Tsume."
Not understanding that she had just complimented her benefactor, Tsume shrugged. "Ok…?" she dipped her fingers around Konan's neck and tapped the handle of the sheathed blade on Konan's back, Raijin no Ken, telling her. "Do you want me to call Minato?"
Knowing the level ten seal master Minato was, he had found a way to etch a Hirashin seal tag on the Nidaimes Lightning sword.
Konan shook her head.
"These two are what we call 'small fry'" the woman muttered under her breath, doing so with a straight face and tucking in her wings once again to avoid a volley of senbon. "By now, the capital's defences might have been alerted and they're closing in on us. I just need to get you to running distance of them and all you have to do is tell them your name and show them Raijin no Ken. Minato said that they would know who you are."
Tsume nodded slowly, understanding that she was neither in the state to lend a hand nor could she risk Minato worrying about her by rebelling now of all times. Though she did ask. "Minato and the Fire Lord are pretty close."
Konan grunted, dispersing her lower body in time for more senbon to pass through her. The Origami Angel asked herself why Diedara wasn't attacking her as well; he might not have the clay to spare again after the long distance bombs didn't serve him as well as it was supposed to. She shook her head and adjusted her bridal hold of Minato's pregnant girlfriend, coming out of her head before something avoidable could happen. "Seems to be the case. Has he ever," she ground her teeth and swerved to the left, swishing right again iron sand made to snag them out of the sky. Sasori wasn't playing games anymore, it seemed. "Said why they're so close?"
"He helped with the rebellion when they were younger. Minato was chunin, I think." Tsume answered quietly, unsure. "He doesn't talk about her much though…he said they haven't spoken since he left Konoha."
Sensing her apprehension, Konan said in a soothing voice, betraying the aerial acrobatics she was carefully tumbling through. "He won't have us take you to her if he didn't trust her."
"I'm worried, is all…"
They descended down to the earth and the Origami Angel gently dropped Tsume onto her feet, pointing into the woods and in the general direction of the capital's sirens, ringing aloud at the sounds of combat coming from Konan and the two other S ranks.
The purple haired woman placed her other hand on Tsume shoulder and kept a neutral expression, one to keep the hormonal Inuzuka from panicking.
"Run to the capital and don't look back." she unslung Raijin no Ken and handed it to Tsume, who collected it with both hands. The sirens of the Fire capital changed pitch, signifying that their forces were heading out to investigate the threat. "Don't forget. Tell them who you are and show them the sword."
They weren't expecting Tsume but they won't turn her away.
Minato's friendship with the Fire Lady, though understate and hidden before the Konoha Bloodbath, was now made public after Minato's defection by the Fire Lord's own hand.
It was Wakano's way of showing that no matter what happened, she would still consider Minato her close friend, and the same should be for him of her. The Fire Lady didn't know Tsume's affiliation with Minato but the Raijin no Ken was the only weapon Minato took from the vault, and with it being in possession of a pregnant lady, there won't be that many questions raised.
The seven month heavy woman clasped the sheathed blade in her arms and bobbed her head.
Konan smiled lightly, for the briefest of moments, so quick that Tsume didn't know whether or not it happened. "Go now. I'll cover you."
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Sueki's narrowed her burning red eyes and snapped her right knee up, using her shin guard to kick aside a slash from the deadly Kusanagi blade, spinning on the same foot and planting the right foot on Orochimaru's hastily raised guard, covering his chest with his forearms as the vampire pivoted once again, feinting with her right foot aimed to his chest but ultimately smashing her fist into the scientists face, strengthening her bones with her blood and easily cracking the Sannin's nose.
Ksshhhhh!
The white haired vampire clenched her teeth as an Earth Spike almost impaled her, if not for her using her blood to strengthen her porcelain white skin, only tearing the side of her jounin flak jacket. The non-mask wearing BLAK Commander cracked her elbow into the spike, smashing it to pieces, and whipped out a fistful of long, blood-filled senbon, spinning each of them in her fingers to deflect a volley of water bullets from Orochimaru's Water mask, straight into the ground, moving her body with primal instinct as more Earth Spikes made to rip into her body. That water mask was a light blue snake with a small, flat, eyeless mask covering its face. There were ten water affinity hearts inside the snake and the creature had slithered out of Orochimaru's elbow.
The renegade Sannin smirked sharply, ignoring his bleeding nose, and he pelted back towards the Legend class Kunoichi.
Her heart was the last ingredient that would cure his affliction.
The vampire's immortality would do nicely.
His back opened and black threads wiggled wildly.
Kukukukuku~
Sueki fell onto her back and tucked her knees into her chest, rolling back from a haymaker from the man that had speed slithered to her and ensuring her needles didn't prick her body, even though they couldn't. The man gave a feral hiss at his miss but as the woman righted herself once again, she twisted around and threw all the medical needles in her hand and clasped her fingers into the Rat hand seal.
The needles whizzed to him and another snake slipped out from his left elbow, this one was deep red and wearing an equally eyeless mask to its water and earth counterparts trying to get closer to the vampire, and its mouth cracked open as the Sannin called, at the same time as the homing senbon separated in the air.
"Fire release: Multiple Phoenix Flame Darts."
"Hiden art: Vampire Blood release: Undead Forest of Cardiac Arrest."
The flame darts hit each blood senbon and those senbon fizzled into red mist, that encroached onto Orochimaru as the white haired vampire flicked her fingers into two other hand seals.
"Wind release: Great breakthrough!"
The man inhaled and blew out, dispersing the blood mist that would undoubtedly mess up his immune system all over again, and he shifted his head aside from a four fingered stab for the nape of his neck, courtesy from Sueki. He spun around and swept the woman off her feet, though that one burst into blood mist and he doggedly blew it away, not caring that his breath had uprooted a clump of trees and bushes from the ground, taking with them animals that had made their home in the forest.
A pillar of earth carried the man off the ground, away from more blood mist.
He looked down and growled, baring his teeth as he saw that the world beneath him and a quarter of a mile around was filled with pulsing red mist, multiplying and spreading outwards, moving with the single mindedness of a living organism.
The more he blew, the more Sueki's blood replicated; the red blood cells would divide into two, the white cells copied themselves and moved on and the platelets meshed, formed bigger cells and cut itself down into smaller bits, growing with the addition of air.
Could Orochimaru have bitten off more than he could chew?
…Possibly.
The earth pillar keeping him above certain death cracked as the blood ate away at the bottom.
The man pulled down his sleeves, making extra sure that they went to his wrists, and he pulled out a gasmask from a seal on his neck. He put it on and dived head first into the red mist that had formerly been a forest.
He met Sueki at the bottom of the pillar, an excited grin on his face and his eyes wide with mania.
"I wasn't expecting this much of a fight, especially not from Naruto's brat." The non-mask wearing BLAK Commander crumpled into nothing, merging with the blood mist. The scientists voice came out a bit muffled through the gasmask but the vampire, wherever she was in this dense fog of redness, heard him loud and clear. Orochimaru turned about cautiously, staying wary of his surroundings.
The blood mist couldn't pass through his pores, for Orochimaru wasn't above using his summoning contract to alter his body, though he was careful to not leave his eyes, nose, ears, nose and mouth open to allow the mist in, for if that happened, then the fight was over.
Hence the gasmask.
The blood saturated forest was quiet.
Orochimaru brought out something new from inside his sleeves; in both of his hands, he held a silver canister. It looked like a spray bottle with two short nozzles.
"Can you guess what this is?"
His eyes widened and his senses flared, forcing his body to instinctively move aside from a straight fist that surged for his throat. He pressed down on the top of each canister with his thumbs and dropped them, as Sueki, sporting two inch long fangs and with her whole eye a chilling shade of red, stepped forward to follow through with a hook kick.
Shhhhhhhh
Milky white mist hissed out of each of the nozzles and the vampire choked as she was hit in the face with the new mist.
Purple-green veins crawled up her neck and blood leaked out of her ears. She clawed at her chest with her sharp claws, hacking for air as her lungs closed and her heart thudded noisily in her chest. Violent hives broke out on her hands and on her face. Her knees found the ground and her breathing became tight and strained, gasping for any morsel of air.
Garlic.
She grasped for control of her bloodline to reduce the effects of her extreme allergic reaction.
Orochimaru snickered, enjoying her pain, and plunged the Kusanagi blade into Sueki's chest.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
"Taijutsu isn't your talent, Diedara." Konan said and slapped up a blow to her face, catching his elbow and tucking it under her arm, tossing the mad bomber over her in a fluid judo flip. She cracked her foot into the side of the Iwa missing ninjas head and was about to step on his throat, finishing the job but she lifted her right hand up and her body disintegrated into paper as spike of iron impaled what was hoped to be her chest.
The paper gathered back together and attached to the iron spike, creeping up the spike to the puppet at an impossible pace.
Sasori, cursing harshly, had his Sandaime Kazekage puppet disconnect itself from that spike of sand and jumped away as, when the encroaching swarm of paper got to the end of the spike, Konan reformed at the tip and bounded to the puppetmaster, who was fleeing back and forcing the Kazekage puppet to watch his escape.
Konan murmured under her breath, so quiet and so subtly Sasori didn't hear her or see her mouth move. "Puppets have a glaring weakness."
As she 'ninja ran' to the iron sand wielding puppet, who gathered more sand out of its mouth and was firing shots at her, she clapped her palms together at her chest and, when she got fifteen feet from Sabaku no Tetsuyo, she pulled her palms apart. Between her hands were exactly eight aggressively spinning paper shuriken, levitating in the air and in the control of the S rank Ame missing ninja.
She thrust her hands forward and folded her fingers into the Tiger seal, skidded on her knees under a wave of iron, flipped to Dragon and ended in Horse. The paper shuriken whirred through the air and swerving around each blast of iron, until they were too close to the Kazekage puppet.
"Ninja arts: Origami Shrapnel Bomb."
The eight shuriken blew up, but not with the tidal wave of fire and blunt force like any normal bomb but with a sharp, hard thud and burst of targeted wind.
The Suna missing ninja cursed again, his wooden fingers cramped as the Kazekage puppet refused to move. Not with the hard paper shards lodged in its primary, important joints. The same joints that could be located on normal human body and would be even as effective on a chakra string controlled puppet body than a living being.
Konan smashed the palm of her hand into the chest of the immobilized puppet and skipped off her feet, planting her right foot on the airborne puppets forehead, leaping off and scattering into confetti when a clay spider landed on her back.
THOOOM!
"Un…" Diedara spat, shaking the cobwebs from his head; the kick to his temple had dazed him more than he would like to admit. "I'm still in this un!"
Out of the flames, twenty or so origami cranes fluttered out, their magnificent wings flapped noisily as the whole flock flew to Sasori in a single minded frenzy.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Shark summons filled Tobi's line of sight and summarily dive bombed him.
The Uchiha's Mangekyo spiralled in his sockets, working overtime to avoid getting shredded into ribbons from the sharks raining down on him and the sentient, squealing, purple scaled sword that Kisame was swiping him with.
He bent down and Samehada soared over his head. He ran into Kisame's guard and dug his fist into the sword masters abdomen, ignoring the crunch his fingers made from that one action and followed through with not less than a dozen more strikes to the Dark ninjas rock hard stomach. The shark mans eyes narrowed and he pushed out his stomach, reducing Tobi's punching space and introduced a firm Spartan kick to Tobi's masked face, which the Uchiha avoided by throwing his weight to his left and pushing his hands into the ground, narrowly missing the jaws of a shark summons. His feet landed on another dive bombing shark summons and he back flipped off it as well when the sea creature contorted its body, snapping at him.
Tobi's acrobatic display impressed Kisame.
Only a little.
Tobi huffed and grunted. "Enough of this."
He crossed his forearms and a glowing red ribcage covered him, proving too strong for the sharks. A skull popped out of the top, one bearing a single horn on the left side of its head and its own Mangekyo pair of eyes, and a pair of arms followed suit, shooting out of the sides. The legs didn't form, though the ethereal Mangekyo creation spun around like a top and smashed its arms and fists into whatever was thrown at it, casting them to the walls of the cramped fighting arena.
Tobi stopped the incomplete Susanno's spin and whipped its left fist straight forward, bashing the knuckles into Samehada's front. The chattering sword snapped at the fist and Kisame, holding the handle, pulled.
The swordsman's muscles bulged and he Samehada shortened to its normal length, stubbornly gnawing at the fist and refusing to let go as its user drew it back.
There was an audible crack.
Tobi's eyes bugged out as the Susanno's arm dislocated. He reclaimed his senses and deconstructed the Susanno, forming it again in the blink of an eye and sending a hail of blows to the now defensive Dark shinobi.
Finally, in the insane blizzard of blows from the skeletal chakra creation, Kisame found an infinitesimally small gap between each blow, a sort of space between attacks, and dragged Samehada back, replacing the scaled sword with his foot, mentally commanding Samehada to prop him up. He didn't take the full brunt of the blow; rather he shifted his foot and guided the fist straight into the ground, whipping Samehada around. The sword took the initiative and elongated itself and chomped down on the elbow of the avoided fist.
Tobi mumbled. "Oh no you don't." he dispelled the Susanno as Samehada made to suck it of its chakra, reforming it immediately after, firmly holding it by its body with one clenched fist.
SQUEEEEEEEE!
The legendary sword shrieked and wiggled in the Susanno's tight grip, frilling its scales and shredding manically to no avail. No matter how large it grew, no matter how hard it struggled, and no matter how violently it flailed, Tobi's blue Susanno skeleton held it. Kisame, unyielding in his grip and having his feet no longer touching the ground due to being lifted up along with his restrained sword, flipped through dozens of one handed seals.
"Water release: Five Eating Sharks!"
From the puddles of water scattered around the arena, five sharks blasted out and snapped down on different parts of the Susanno. The momentum of their joint blow staggered the skeletal body, though Tobi had other plans when he noticed Kisame prying the fingers of his Susanno off Samehada.
He looked straight at the hand holding Samehada, the one that Kisame was savagely ripping at the fingers.
"Amaterasu."
The black fire spun out of his sharingan and swallowed the space between its user and the target in an instant.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Konan dully looked down at Sasori, her half lidded, uninterested eyes registering the battered puppet masters attempts at crawling away.
The wooden man's legs seemed to be missing.
Dragging Diedara along her by the back of his shirt and steadily following Sasori, the Origami Angel frowned invisibly, looking down at Diedara's panting form.
"You're forty years too early to test me with explosives." She released her hold on the Iwa missing ninja's shirt and along with that release, left behind a palm sized sheet of paper that had one simple seal on it.
Thump!
Thud!
The mad bombers torso evaporated, leaving him as only a pair of arms, legs and a charred head.
"Bombs don't just burn." The woman said airily, a ghost of a smile tickling her lips. "He was too impatient to know that."
Surrounding them, Konan and what was left of Sasori, were bits and pieces of puppets.
Searching for anything to defend himself with, Sasori thrust his right palm to the woman and Konan moved her head aside, dodging the one senbon the puppetmaster had left in his arsenal.
The wooden man fell onto his back, finally accepting defeat.
"How…?" he asked, a very simple question.
Konan graced the dying man with a small smirk and bent down on her knees, meeting Sasori's light brown eyes with her own dark brown orbs. "You're fighting styles just aren't suited against mine." She tapped his chest and hummed. "Those bombs in there won't work either."
She might not have looked like it, but Konan was the Akatsuki's explosives expert.
The Kunoichi was an evasive fighter, capable of shifting her whole body into paper at the drop of a hat and reassembling back to normal at her convenience.
Her inspiration for that one jutsu-turning into paper and back again-was the same person that could turn his body into untouchable smoke and back again.
Naruto.
Sadness floated into her eyes and she hummed again, spreading her fingers out on Sasori's wooden chest, looking for something that, when broken, would kill Sasori for sure. She tore open the Akatsuki robe over his torso, showing her what she wanted to see.
The Suna missing ninja then said. "My heart seal…once it's inactive, my bombs automatically go off. Your paper ninjutsu won't help you."
"Have you forgotten? I don't need to be present to blow you up." she reached up onto her head and daintily brought down the origami rose that had been perched on her head, placing it on his heart seal. "If you want to prolong your suffering, then you're free to throw it away."
She stood up and blurred to the Fire capital.
Half a mile away, the bomb went off.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
The sadistic scientist gave a hard twist on the handle of the grass cutter long sword and bent down, harshly grabbing Sueki by the back of her head, forcing her weak eyes to look into his own. Her cheeks were covered in rashes and her nose had turned from pale white to dark red.
The vampire's arms were limp at her side and her eyelids fluttered with sleep. Her poisonous red blood mist slowly seeped into the earth and the forest returned to normal. Orochimaru took off his gasmask and brought his face near Sueki's, beaming gleefully into her face.
He pushed Kusanagi further into her chest and the vampire coughed; blood seeped out of her lips.
The toxins laced on the grass cutter long sword were wreaking havoc in her defenceless immune system.
"Don't worry," he breathed out. "I didn't puncture your heart…just a major artery." His firm grip on the back of her head tempered and he gently ran his fingers down her soft white hair, which was splotched with a few drops of red. "It's…disappointing how the Sakenomi branch family of the Chui-Inku clan are so vulnerable to garlic. Cliché, if I may say so."
The Sakenomi branch family being the only sub-group under the Chui-Inku clan wasn't common knowledge, but the scientist had proven very resourceful in acquiring information, especially back when Dark country was weakened by the civil war. Orochimaru also knew that the Kuma branch family of the Chui-Inku clan were the last remaining branch family, after the eradication of the Sakenomi branch family of that same clan of fuinjutsu users. Another branch family of Dark country was the Shiroari branch family of the Suzumebachi clan, that specialized in using termites, instead of wasps. Those three-Kuma of Chui-Inku, Sakenomi of Chui-Inku and Shiroari of Suzumebachi-were the only branch families in Darkness, though now that the Sakenomi was reduced to only Sueki, there were now only two clan branch families left.
Before Darkness had closed their borders to the world and opened them for only their allies, Orochimaru had been able to gather a staggering amount of information.
That curiosity-to-know also led to his discovering of the Sakenomi clans blood passed allergy to garlic, in any form.
He shook his head sadly. "Such a powerful clan…brought down by such a mundane cooking ingredient."
Sueki's hands slowly came up and grasped the blade, wrapping around it. The steel bit into her palms and they wept agonizingly with blood. She gasped, unable to yank the blade out of her body, and not able to turn away from him, for her body was that weak.
"I was the one that found out your clans weakness." His face came closer and the red eyed woman growled, not any different than an injured animal, facing him and meeting his twisted reptilian orbs without a sliver of fear. "I laced the Sakenomi water reservoirs with garlic…I enjoyed cutting your family down."
The vampires breathing became heavier and the blade cut deeper into her palms, still weakly trying to pull the sword out before it could do any more damage. She didn't want to listen to what the scientist was saying.
"They squealed like pigs." He teemed pleasantly. "I find that it's a good thing you and your parents didn't die…you won't be here to give me your heart if you had died back then, now would you." He wondered sarcastically. Her heart was spared from the blade but her body was at the mercy of the poisons filling her system and shutting her organs down. "I doubt that Nagato-brat can kill Naruto. That's good though…I want to be the one to rip his heart out of his chest-"
"S-Stop…talking…" Ketsueki whispered, her eyes closed and her hands no longer futilely pulling the sword out of her chest. A small smirk broke out on her face, saying. "Your breath…it stinks…"
"Kukukuku~" he chuckled freely, bringing his face not two inches away from the beautiful vampires puffy own, purposely saying with a breathy voice. "You are so much like Naruto, it's a shame." He ran his hand down the back of her head and said in a low, gentle voice. "Time to die. Any last words?"
She nodded once, heaving for the little air that could enter her swollen lungs. "J-J-…Just…two…"
He stared at her, waiting with an eager smile.
She found the strength to place a light hand on Orochimaru's pale cheek. "S…Sss…Ssss…" she closed her eyes again and muttered, calling for the last gasps of air in her allergy-constricted lungs. "Ss…Summoning jutsu…"
Orochimaru's eyes widened with horror and his snake-like eyes flicked down to her hand, where Kusanagi had cut into her palms, and he realized that the blood hadn't been dripping down onto the ground but flowing backwards and leaking onto a summoning seal on the inside of her left forearm.
Poof!
A plume of smoke burst at the feet and out of the chakra smoke, a slimy, dark red and black salamander flew out and chomped down on Orochimaru's stomach. The man threw himself back and grabbed into the small creature. He staggered as the salamander levels of pain flowed into his body, taking over his system. The small life form was too small and too slimy for him to get a good hold on, but the amphibious animal didn't have any trouble using its tiny claws to hold himself to the man's stomach, pushing its head deeper and scampering into Orochimaru's stomach right before the man's petrified eyes.
Salamander saliva was the universal cure for any poison but those crafty creatures could switch cure to deadly poison at a slight thought.
Hanzo the Salamander was known for his specialty in poisons and venoms, and that reputation could be traced directly to his summoning contract.
No poison could be compared to the one turning Orochimaru's insides into goo.
The first thing to hit, as the head of that summons was now completely inside of Orochimaru's stomach, was paralysis; his body stiffened up like a board, in that uncomfortable position of staggering back while trying to pull out the carnivorous summons. Next to come was a swift, unmerciful blood thinner, which in turn affected his heart and that caused the small organ in his body to be unable to pump adequate amounts of blood to his brain. Dizziness and tiredness smashed into him with the weight a runaway melon cart rumbling downhill. He toppled off his feet, sweating heavily from his forehead and armpits. Light popped in his vision. Next was muscle spasms; his fingers, arms and legs quaked terribly, before a second later they tightened unbearably, not unlike the feeling of strings of a guitar tightened too much, so much so that it felt like a single pluck and the whole instrument would snap. After that, his brain deflated a little, leaking a sticky fluid that leaked into his eyes. He wept painful streams of blood. More blood leaked from his nose and his ears.
He heard voiceless singing when his lungs collapsed, deflating like a balloon as Sueki's summons bit into the bottom corner of his left lung.
The tips of his fingers and his toes became cold, then the nerve endings suddenly ignited with heat, skipping past a slow burn and entering a volcanic, meteoric bonfire. The inside of the base of his skull bubbled with heat.
This happened in the space of long, tortuous five minutes.
The Jiongu in his gut flailed and attempted to escape through Orochimaru's back but could only snake out a few strings before it weakened. The salamander wasted no time to eat it.
The red and black salamander ate into Orochimaru's stomach, swallowing clumps of flesh blood and steadily making its way to the Jiongu.
Meanwhile, Sueki grunted and fell onto her side, her hands wrapped around the blade that had been stabbed into her chest.
"Uck!" she coughed out blood, spattering on the ground. "Hagck!"
The salamander eating Orochimaru's soft tissue perked up and turned around, leaping out of the Sannin's ribcage. The small creature skittered to its summoner and its purple tongue lapped at Sueki's bloody lips.
The BLAK Commander shivered and licked her lips.
She immediately threw up. A dark green sludge poured out of her ruby red lips, sloshing onto the ground and staining her cheeks.
"Gee! Gee! Gee! Geeeeeee!" the salamander screeched, grabbing onto the handle of the Kusanagi in a hasty scramble and pulling. Though it was too small to do much, its feet clambered for purchase on the ground and gave it's all. The woman righted herself and shakily got to her feet. Her hands once again gripped the sharp poisonous blade of the Kusanagi and she cried.
"Uuugh-" she tore the sword out of her chest and panted for precious air, free from the poisonous blade. She threw it onto the ground, spitting out a mouthful of bile and blood onto the accursed blade. She grated, her anger festering under her raspy breath. "I'll melt you later."
The hives on her cheeks weren't included in the cure the salamander's saliva brought, but she could already feel her bloodline stabilize her system. She hadn't been able to calm down her allergies with her bloodline because Orochimaru had stabbed her with that poisonous blade, pumping her with a variety of toxins, poisons and venoms that could take down an adult elephant.
Giving his first wife the salamander summons was never part of Naruto's plan. He merely wanted a capable ally with Sueki and Kushina in the occasion that he wasn't fast enough to get to them.
In hindsight, it was a good idea.
Sueki staunched the sword hole on her chest with her hand and stumbled to the Sannin, who was lying spread eagle on the ground and listlessly staring at the bright orange sun. His entrails were all over the place, either having bites on them or befouled by claw marks. She fell onto her knees next to his head and took a drop of blood from his leaking stomach.
She licked the blood and the scientists eyes flickered from the sun to her face.
A long, slow, excruciating groan came from his lips at the realization of their switched positions.
The small salamander climbed up her back and skittered onto her head, cocking its own head to the side, staring down at the half-alive man its summoner had brought back from the very brink of death.
"Sup, perv."
She liked how the pain the renegade Sannin was in beamed out from his red, reptilian eyes. His tongue flopped uselessly in his mouth and he visibly paled at the sinister grin that grew on the normally stoic vampires face.
"You said something about my family 'squealing like pigs'" The woman's eyes closed and they turned upwards, her face positively glowing with glee, scarily resembling how Orochimaru's former student would look before beginning a torture.
Orochimaru of the Sannin shivered, right down to his twisted, tainted soul.
"Don't be too shy to squeal, ok?"
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Dark country medics carried Kisame off into the country on a gurney. He body was wrapped in bandages and what little that could be seen-his eyes and his mouth-was charred black.
Fourth degree burns.
He was lucky to be alive.
Samehada hadn't been so lucky.
When the ninjas of the country had poured gallons of water onto the black fire to no avail, the seal masters sealed the fire away to be studied later.
The purple scaled sword had been burnt to a crisp.
It was debatable whether or not it could be saved.
Samehada had used Kisame's hold on its handle to throw him out of the way less than a half a second before the fire hit them, but the size of the fire overcame the effort to save its masters life.
The black fire had burnt through the walls of the separate dimension as like paper to ordinary fire and the masked man had used that opening to escape.
Their trackers had pursued but the masked man had disappeared in an invisible vortex, leaving no trace to follow.
Kushina jogged beside her friend's stretcher as the medics hefted the large man into the safety and security of the country. They had already administered emergency field treatment as soon as they found him and soothed what burns they could with their medical ninjutsu. They were taking him to the clinic in the refugee camp to get him stable and in better shape before they could safely transported him to the North Regional Hospital situated in the northern region, when they were sure movement wouldn't adversely affect his burns.
There wasn't much they could do to help Samehada except gently push chakra into the sword and place it on a separate, smaller stretcher. They did what they could.
The sword wasn't even strong enough to frill out its scales to repel those foreign hands.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Yahiko's corpse's fingers touched Naruto's temple as the Ghost reached him.
"Soul Eater."
That was the point; Naruto completely disappeared from his sight.
The Ghost had reached the pinnacle of his White Noise technique that, if pushed further, he would venture into Silent Night. The technique he was currently using that allowed Naruto to enter Soul form made it so that the faster he was, the less and less he was able to be seen. Opponents that were able to see him could touch him but when he elevated in speed, he entered a whole new plane of awareness.
He was a small step slower than the speed of light.
The forehead the Deva path thought he had touched passed through his hand and when he turned around, he saw no body.
A kick connected with the side of his head and he whirred around, searching for the source. Then a blade cleanly cut through each of his arms, letting them drop uselessly onto the ground and continuing his unseen attacks, breaking the last path down.
The black receivers on its nose and ears were pulled out; the receivers on its arms and torso were yanked out as well.
The last thing Naruto did was stab his pointer and middle fingers into the paths rinnegan orbs.
That last connection to the crippled Kage all the way in Ame blinked off and Nagato was all alone.
Naruto's body became visible and he caught his orange haired friends corpse as it lifelessly flopped forward, lifting him onto his shoulder with a grunt.
"Up we go."
Naruto's protective tentacles receded into his body and his eyes changed back to their normal shade of blue. The red sky seeped away into the black clouds and those as well crumpled into themselves, turning to vapour. The bespectacled blonde refused to allow the pain and chakra loss from the battle affect him, stepping forward as best as he could with somewhat firm feet and his eyes steeled with resolve as he patted the back of the dead body on his shoulder.
It wasn't that he couldn't use Acidic Smokescreen to dissolve the Deva path. It was that he didn't want to turn his friend's dead body into paste, not even if Yahiko was the one attacking him.
Naruto wasn't so heartless as to desecrate his late friend's body in such a way.
Yahiko's burial was long overdue.
"Let's get you home, buddy." Naruto huffed, staggering from side to side as lights popped in the back of his eyes. He blinked numerous times and shook his head. The man found a sliver of chakra to fasten his feet onto the ground as he climbed over upturned rocks and trees, collateral damage from their colossal battle. The sight of him steadily clambering over rock faces and upward inclined clods of earth was similar to mountain climbing in one of Hidden Mountain's smaller, but jagged mountains.
He wasn't in any hurry to go to Ame.
Nagato wasn't going anywhere.
Getting to Amegakure took some time and plenty of effort.
The rain pattered onto the blonde man and he sighed with familiarity.
The people of the village talked among themselves in hushed whispers, surrounding the Ghost, yet giving him way to walk to the Kage's Tower. Some took Yahiko's dead body off his hand and carried it behind Naruto, doing so out of respect for both Yahiko and Naruto, two of the five people that had liberated Ame from Hanzo the Salamander and the incursion of major Hidden Villages.
Naruto looked around, at the wet faces that stared at him with a once dimmed light igniting again, one that had lost its shimmer of hope long ago but brightened at the return of their hero. The people placed their hands on Naruto, murmuring their greetings as he passed through them.
The glasses wearing man subtly nodded to each greeting, his half mask set firmly on his face didn't and his hair soaked through with the village's heavy downpour.
Ame was an industrial village, with tall, metal towers and steam powered locomotives moving up and down, though life well and truly came back to the downtrodden village at Naruto's arrival, carrying another valued hero with him no less.
For Naruto, the feeling was similar to when a father returned to his loving family after a very long journey.
It made him happy.
The sounds from the people became louder and there was palpable excitement running through the people. A buzz went through them and more people came and surrounded Naruto when they got the news of his return, reaching their hands to him for just a touch, believing in their hearts that Naruto was a deity and that such a humble, glancing touch will bless them.
Young and old, Shinobi and Kunoichi.
All welcomed Naruto, the Ghost, back to Ame.
Authors note
So ends another chapter.
What do you think?
How were the fights?
As I mentioned before, the story is winding to a close (like maybe three or four chapters left) but there is still plenty of story left, many things I want to write about before I can conclude this story.
You all have been wonderful. I couldn't have asked for better readers.
Thank you for all the love and the support!
Leave a review on what you think about this chapter, would you so kindly. Please stay safe, wherever you are in the world, and I will see you when I see you.
Foy.