AN: I apologize for the even longer than usual wait. I'm still in the process of moving, selling a house and finding a new job. Life is interesting right now, in the very Chinese proverb sense. I am still working actively on this fic, and am regularly reminded to get things done by the ever efficient Black-Haired Girl.
A delirious thank you to Usagi Squared for her art gift. I shall pull it up to stare at every time I get stuck writing. It's super cute and available here: : / / i5. photobucket. com/ albums/ y153/ natasha_unos_1/ ConnectionsFArt. jpg
Oh, and in other awesome news, I had my first real bowl of ramen the other day. My favorite Japanese restaurant just added it to the menu. I can now die happy.
There was the sharp bite of something electric in the air. It made Sasuke look up from the tea he had been preparing. He had the sudden feeling of something pushing down on him, like a great invisible force trying to squeeze him out of existence. It left him gasping and clutching the tea pot handle so tightly that it cracked under the pressure. It…did not make any sense. He had felt fine just a moment before, no sign of any illness, no recent injury that might have suddenly worsened. He and Harry were the only ones on the grounds at the moment. Naruto had been sent out with strict instructions to bring back something to eat other than ramen and that there ought to be vegetables involved. He was due back at any moment. But other than the three of them, there should not have been any one else within a quarter of a mile.
And then just as suddenly the pressure was gone and Sasuke was left staring down at the pot in his hands and wondering if perhaps he was starting to finally lose it. Was sudden claustrophobia a symptom of stress disorder? He did not think so. But he felt as if something had just passed over him. Like a ghost almost. He would have snorted at the thought if something had not still felt – off.
"Harry?" he called out, suddenly, irrationally, needing to hear his cousin. Even if the other boy complained about him hovering or gave him that look like he had somehow not only missed the whole point of something but had managed to fail at it spectacularly in the meantime.
And then there was the worse sound in the world. Harry screamed.
"Harry!" he yelled back, dropping everything in his hands and moving. And while part of Sasuke noted that it was a yell of anger and maybe a little fear and not a scream of pain, the rest of him was more focused on getting out of this thrice damned room as quickly as possible and to his cousin's side. This could not be happening. Not again. That settled it. He was going to find a vault, buried safely somewhere secret, and lock his cousin up there, where absolutely nothing could get at the other boy. Because goddamn it, not even Naruto could get into this much trouble in three days.
There was another shout, this time a voice he did not recognize, and then something large slammed into one of the outside walls. Sasuke flipped a kunai out into his hand as he shoulder his way through the door. His momentum carried him across the porch in a roll before he was up and slashing out. He took only a moment to confirm that the body slumped against the wall was not Harry before flicking the kunai in his hand up and across. Blood arched out across the back porch and sprayed his hand. Still crouched down on one knee, Sasuke pivoted his body around, sharingan blazing and trying to find his cousin in the failing light.
There was no familiar figure out there, only a loose collection of strangers in long black robes with their backs to him. Even as his eyes darted back and forth hoping for some sign of his cousin, another part of him was counting each of the strangers, sizing them up based on weight and height, and calculating which target to start with in order to kill them all as quickly and efficiently as possible. Something in his gut tightened sharply. There was no sign of Harry, just a mob of intruders. But if they were still here, then they could not have taken Harry with them. And since they were far too preoccupied with something beyond his range of vision, he could only hope that Harry was still moving.
Sasuke did not hesitate any further. He sent his bloodied kunai flying at the nearest one and reached for two more. His kunai found its target, sinking deep into the man's back. Anatomically speaking, it was not a great hit, but it was enough to send the man topping to the ground and to give Sasuke just the barest glimpse of what laid beyond. Through the dark and the trees it was hard to see exactly what was happening, but it was clear they were giving chase to something and there was only one thing here worth chasing.
Sasuke snarled as he started to pull his arms around again to send a fresh volley of kunai to scatter his opponents when something flashed off to his right. He saw it fast enough to try ducking to the side but even at his best, in such closed quarters, it was hard to be faster than light. Whatever it was smashed into the railing beside him. The wood took the brunt of the force, but even it could not stop the sudden flare that accompanied it. Sasuke cursed as he felt his left arm catch fire. He dropped the kunai in that hand and curled his body in before flinging his legs back and over his head, pulling the rest of his body back off the porch and into the grass with a roll that scraped at already burnt flesh but also hastily smothered the flames. For a moment he was safely hidden behind the raised platform of the back porch before another flash of red and it too exploded. Clearly, staying in one place was not an option as Sasuke dived out of the way and was forced out into the open space of the back yard.
"Hit him, Barnes!" one of the men shouted out.
"Shite! He's fast!"
English. They were both speaking English. Sasuke's breathing quickened even further. They spoke Harry's language. Sasuke had never even heard of English before needing to learn the basic of it for this mission. The chances of other nin being familiar with it enough to use it in battle were fairly nonexistent. The only logical explanation was that they were not nin. That they had followed Harry here. And they sure as hell were not here to help. Harry had said there was a war going on and that it had reached his beloved school. He had never said a damn thing about why a dozen men would track him halfway around the world with violence in mind. That was a small army by nin standards – and if they all fought like these two, he suspected that held true for these wizards too. He cursed his cousin even as he pushed himself to move faster. Forget a secured vault. If this was anything to go by, Sasuke was going to need to put together his own army just to keep his ridiculous cousin alive. If he had known ahead of time that this might happen, he already would have.
It was less crowded back here now, which really, was not a good thing. For while Sasuke only had the two men in front of him to deal with, that meant the other ten he had seen were off chasing down his cousin. There was no time. He flicked out the kunai in his hand before darting low and fast farther down the yard and toward the tree line. The first flash was too slow to catch him, but the next was aimed in front of him and he had to jerk his body to the side to avoid it. Even then, it felt like something trying to pull him in – like it was pulling the very chakra out of him. His eyes widened even as he jumped back away from it. But the flash of light disappeared as soon as it impacted the ground, seemingly made up nothing more harmful than thin air.
Jutsus did not do that. It took time, even if it was only a moment, to shape them properly. And once they were shaped, they kept their shape. They became real substantial things that one could predict and manipulate. These flashes of light came nearly as fast as thought, and all of Sasuke's training in physical hand-to-hand combat was the only thing keeping him from finding out exactly what one of those flashed of light would do to him and his chakra system. He scowled as he skidded to a halt, pushed back away from the woods and leaving himself still in the wide open yard. This was not working. He had already wasted too much time with these idiots, and while he was confident he could catch them eventually, their attack patterns were going to draw this match out. He did not have the same speed they did at long range assaults. He could dodge faster, but he could not dodge and retaliate faster. Given time to wear them down a little, or to pick an opening, he could shift the battle to short range attacks and probably end this whole debacle in a matter of seconds. But waiting for that opportunity was wasting too much valuable time. Harry was out there, alone, with five times as many of these men after him.
Desperate times called for desperate measures. He was just fortunate that he still actually carried smoke bombs on his person. They were not a tool he liked to use, and one he generally avoided. They seemed like a lazy man's tool to him, something nin who could not do better had to fall back on to hide themselves. And he did not like the way they cut down on his range of vision. But they were still a basic nin tool, and like any other good soldier, Sasuke kept the basics on his person at all times.
In one smooth move that took his hand up and across his body, he had his fingers in and out of a pocket, one tiny little capsule held loosely between them and a kunai in the other hand. Another flash of light was heading straight for him. He crushed the capsule in one hand even as he tried to pull both arms up to defend himself. He still took the blow to the chest. It felt like firm kick to the solar plexus and send him flying backwards. The air whooshed out of him even before his body came slamming back down to the ground, bouncing once off the soft loam of the yard. He was already reacting, however, before that first bounce was even complete. Years of practice had trained certain moves into his muscles, and as his body rebounded off the ground, he was already pushing himself off in a jackknife maneuver designed to get him back up and on his feet. Learning how to take a hit and recover quickly from it was one of the first things they taught in the academy and it was one that all young shinobi unfortunately got a lot of practice at early in their careers. Get back up on your feet. No matter what.
He had only a moment to take advantage of the cover he had created. So Sasuke did the logical, strategic option. He took advantage of the smoke plume and sprinted for the tree line. Once he was close enough, he sprung up onto the lowest branch. His feet barely touched it before he shoved himself off. The other intruders had a good ninety second head start on him. At the rate they were moving, he could make up that time quickly. What the hell he was going to do when he got there, he was not sure. He could physically block any attacks headed for his cousin, but that was only going to work for so long.
Assuming he was not already too late.
The first sign of a struggle came not far from the house, on the sharp downward slope of the hillside behind it. One tree was down, another serious damaged and the fire was still burning. Passing over it, Sasuke could make out a body on the edge of the flames, its legs already on fire. A few feet away another body stumbled in the dark, limping and seemingly disoriented. Black cloak, white mask, far too tall to be his cousin. Sasuke took care of that little problem quickly and efficiently. He dropped down out of the tree, feet first, and slammed into the man's shoulders, riding him down to the ground. Once they made impact, Sasuke rammed the kunai in his hand deep into the back of the man's neck, before yanking it free, and pushing himself up off of the body and back into the trees.
His hands were slippery with blood again, but at least he knew for a fact that there was one less enemy to worry about. If Tsunade wanted live ones, she would have to settle for the two Sasuke had already left behind. Interrogators really only needed one prisoner, anyway. Anything more would be overkill.
There was a sudden loud clap, like a thunderstorm directly overhead except the ground did not just shake with it, but seemed to almost roll away from the sound. Sasuke did not let it slow him down. Up in the trees, the affect was not as bad. Trees tended to sway and move already, and Sasuke was used to their general patterns. Another couple of yards and he was to the access road that ran behind the main house and connected the east side of the Uchiha compound with the west side.
Down here was where the small stream that lead to the lake passed, the incline feeding naturally into it. There were shoe prints on both sides, some smeared in the mud, others deep as if the very ground did not want to give them up. Harry's tennis shoes had a distinct pattern to them, unlike those Sasuke had seen before, and he could clearly make out one imprint that was definitely Harrry's. So he was still on his feet when he passed through here.
Sasuke did not quite know what to think of the sudden addition of what looked like marble growing out of the cattails along the river bed. Or whatever the hell that vine was that tried to grab him. It certainly had not been there yesterday when he had inspected the grounds and it was first on his list of things to remove later. After he killed some people, rescued his cousin, and hid the other boy in a basement, that was.
Judging by the angle of the tracks, Harry and those following him had headed east. It was not long before the small wooded area behind his house thinned out once more to a side street of smaller houses. It was also here that he caught up to the first of his targets. A straggler by the looks of him, but it was a good sign that he was on the right track. The man was distracted, simultaneously trying to put out the fire on his sleeve while still jogging awkwardly down the road. It should have been a simple matter to take him down without slowing Sasuke at all. Except luck had never been on Sasuke's side the way it was for Naruto. Just as Sasuke was pulling out his next set of kunai, the man in front of him stumbled to a stop, still beating furiously at his arm, and turned just enough to see Sasuke. It never would have happened if Sasuke had taken more care. Kakashi would have something sarcastic and biting to say about Sasuke leaving himself out in the open like that. But when it came down to stealth or speed, the latter had seemed more important. He could still fix this, however.
Sasuke whipped his arm around, kunai sliding smoothly out of his hand just the way he had been trying to show Harry, and flying swift and steady towards the heart of his target. Even caught off guard and in a rush, his aim was true. But he could not stop his opponent from reacting. The man's eyes widened behind his plain, shapeless, white mask, before he flicked his arm out to the side. Suddenly what should have been a killing hit was sent careening sharply off course. His kunai clattered harmless against a nearby wall and Sasuke was forced to pull himself to a stop only yards away.
Sasuke cursed and flicked another kunai at his target. Maybe it had been a fluke. Unlikely, since he did not make mistakes like that, but he also had not had a good look at exactly what his target had done to avoid his attack so easily. But even seeing the same move repeated, Sasuke still was not sure how the other man was doing it. The man had a wand just like Harry, and like Harry, seemed dependent on manipulating it in order to produce a result. The word he shouted out at the same time was foreign to Sasuke, and of no help. The greater problem, however, was that even the sharingan was proving useless. Harry had said it was something like chakra, but not the same thing. It certainly did not seem to work the same way.
Sasuke cursed again, and gave up on trying to understand it. If the man was dead, he would no longer be a threat either way. He pulled his hands together and began to form one of his more powerful fire jutsus. He would burn this nuisance until the man was little more than an ugly smear on the road.
He was just about to release the energy he had gathered when the man shouted something else, something different, but still very familiar. Harry had said the same thing once. He said it was the name of a spell to cause multiple explosions, designed to inflict damage over a large area. Sasuke had less than a moment to make a choice. He knew his jutsus inside and out, and none more so than his family's specialty. He had complete faith in their ability to destroy a target. But the unknown was always more dangerous than the known.
There was no time. He could not waste any more here.
He held his ground and let his jutsu escape through his fingers with a deep breath and a flow of chakra up and out of his body. He exhaled just as there was a flash and bang of light. His jutsu flared to life, taking shape and form and surging down the narrow street in a gust of hungry fire. It ought to protect him from anything as equally powerful or less, except perhaps from a water element. Sasuke had always been confident in his own abilities, but any ninja worth their hitate was also always ready for the unexpected. Any ninja that had ever met Naruto knew to expect the unexpected. So he could not say he was surprised when that flash of light cut through his jutsu like a hot knife through flesh. Sasuke threw up one arm to protect his face and started to curl his body in and downward to try to avoid as much of it as possible. They looked like fireworks flashing in the dark and headed straight for him, except where fireworks depended on explosive powder packed tightly within flammable canisters, this had no substance, had no form, had nothing that he could try to knock aside or burn up prematurely.
One of these maddening, flashing balls of light slammed into his left shoulder like a lead ball, only to suddenly flare up in a burst of red and purple tinged flames. Instead of smoldering away at his shirt like a normal spark would, these flames seemed to feed upon themselves and rose up instantaneously. His shirt was made of tougher material than that and should not have burned so easily. Sasuke immediately jerked his head to the side as he felt skin heat and tighten. There was already the bitter tang smell of burning hair. He swiped his hand up and tried to smoother the flames. It was a crude, but effective manner of putting out any flame. Without oxygen, there could be no fire. Deny a fire air and it dies. Patting it out with your hand would result in painful burns, but nothing debilitating. It was not often that Sasuke had his own element turned against him effectively, but even he had had to put out a few fires in his time and he was more than familiar with the different levels of burns. It should have been a simple thing.
Except the fire would not go out. No matter how firmly he covered them, the flames just rose up over his hand to burn the top of it. He hissed. The fire was still reaching for his face, blinding him on one side. He heard someone shout something nearby and knew he was out of time. He grabbed the top of his collar and with a sharp jerk tore what was left of the material, ripping the entire sleeve and shoulder off of his shirt and flinging it away from the rest of his body. He ducked in the opposite direction immediately afterward.
The spot he had been standing in exploded into a shower of packed dirt and rock.
"You filthy bastard!" a man screeched in English. "My arm!"
His opponent was still standing as well, though apparently he had fared worse in the face of Sasuke's attack. His left shoulder was a mess of burnt fabric and burnt flesh. It ran from his shoulder all the way down his arm and passed his elbow. Parts of it were blackened, but most of it was an angry vivid red and soaked till it was dripping wet. The fact that he was still standing was impressive, but Sasuke had known as soon as that flash of light had sliced through his own jutsu that it was not going to hit its target with the force it should have. It had lost too much energy and shape.
The man's face was a snarl of rage, no sense of control or cunning at all. He flung out his good arm, his stick of wood clasped tightly, and started to snarl out something Sasuke did not bother to try to understand. He was already dropping his body down low and flinging himself into a sloppy sideward roll. It left him off balance but those crucial few feet away from where he had been and the bright green flash of light that slammed into the ground. It did not shatter the earth the way Sasuke had expected, the way every other thing he had had thrown at him so far would have. This time, instead, it seemed to almost try to ricochet off of the dirt road, burning a dark streak of black across brown earth. It sent a wind kicking up, flinging dirt in Sasuke's face as it brushed over him. It almost hurt - as if a feeling could have an echo and that echo was something like the sensation of someone dragging a coarse file across his skin.
Too close.
Whatever that was, it was far too close. He could not afford to find out what exactly it did. And without knowing what it was, there would be no countering it. Sasuke hissed and darted for better cover.
The man cackled, the sound breaking off into whimpering momentarily before starting back up again. "Come back here, you disgusting little rat! I'll show you what real power is!" The man snarled something else and the corner of the building behind Sasuke imploded. It crumpled as if some giant fist had crushed it like an old tin can. Sasuke watched it all with wide eyes, taking in every detail and grateful his opponent seemed not only to be a bad shot but also too stupid to figure out which building Sasuke had ducked behind.
It would not take him long, however, to destroy everything in the immediate area if he kept it up like that. It was too easy for his opponent to keep him pinned down at a distance. He needed to get closer. Going around the buildings between them would take too much time, and going over would leave Sasuke too exposed. So he took the next option – through. Sasuke scrambled down the length of wall until he found a boarded up window. Hopping up lightly, he grabbed the low hanging edge of the roof and pulled himself up before kicking out sharply with both feet at the thin beam of wood holding the shutters closed. With a crack that was lost in yet another explosion down the street, the wood gave way and Sasuke slipped silently into a mausoleum.
Like all of the other buildings that had once housed the great Uchiha clan, this one had lain completely dormant and abandoned since that day. The land technically all belonged to Sasuke now, and no one had been brave enough to try to reclaim it. Some nameless grunt long ago had been charged by the Hokage with securing the grounds. The bodies, of course, had all been given their proper last rites. The blood had been politely washed away. And each door and window had been shut up tight, as if it mattered any more trying to keep the outside world away.
The room stank of dust and mildew, with the faint hint of something dead rotting. His sandals left foot prints in the grime on the floor as he ghosted from the room's window to the door. Judging by the bed, desk and personal items strewn about, he was obviously in one of the bedrooms. Sliding the door back silently he found a short hallway, with the kitchen visible at the far end. The front door was in between, but that would lead him straight back out in front of the target he was trying to get behind. He passed it by with barely a glance, but noted the way the door frame shook slightly and the flash of light visible from beyond. The foreigner was still blindly pelting the street with explosions, it seemed. That would not last forever. Eventually even an idiot like that would figure out that Sasuke was not retaliating in any way and would stop to think. Sasuke needed to be behind him before that point.
Except the windows in the kitchen were small, and difficult to get through. He could manage it, but it would not be graceful and would cost him time. Standing in this corner of the house, he was only feet away from the source of his current problem. He could hear the man muttering to himself in between shouted code words. Sasuke kept his own mouth firmly shut as he drifted soundlessly into the next room down. Whichever distant cousins that had once resided there must have been using it as a recreation room. There was a low table in the middle, and cushions spread out around it. Someone's half-read book was splayed out in the middle of the floor with a tea cup still sitting beside it. Sasuke stepped around both, and everything else that littered the floor, until he reached the most important thing – the wide window running along the opposite side. It rattled painfully as he slid it back, but he had no other option. Committed, he did not waste any time cringing over the noise, or waiting to see if it had been noticed. He dropped out on the other side, his hands already coming together in the first seal.