Author's note: When I first started writing this, I never intended it to be told strictly from the POV of Madara and Izuna. However, I was never able to quite figure out Hashirama's internal voice, so instead you get to see the world through the eyes of the Uchiha brothers. Also, somehow, Tobirama and Izuna got the same rivalry between each other that Madara and Hashirama have, except it's much more toxic.
Natsumi had meant their armor, when she told them to strip, so they could drop excess weight and make even faster time than they had previously, but Tobirama had to remove everything so he could dress in some dry, black, tightly-fitted silks that still offered some level of protection.
"Woo-hoo, you are built like a stud," she declared in wide-eyed delight, reaching out to stroke Tobirama's bare chest.
Tobirama swatted her hands away as his face flushed red. "Keep your paws to yourself! I don't go around groping you, do I?"
Natsumi cupped her breasts and leaned forward. "All you have to do is ask," she said in a husky voice. "You smell nice enough to eat, even when you're all sweaty and stinky from running all morning and wearing ridiculous amounts of heavy armor. Rowwr." She trailed her hands along his hips as he tripped over his own boots, trying to retreat out of her reach. "Want some victory sex after I defeat the raider? Battles always get me hot and bothered."
Tobirama managed to put Izuna between him and Natsumi, and sent his brother a panicked look. Hashirama help his hands up and shuffled backwards. "You volunteered for this," he said. "I'm afraid that this is going to be one of those missions where you just have to grit your teeth and bear it. Job hazard and all that."
"My water broke," Shinzou said. She kicked Hashirama as a puddle formed beneath herself. "Change of plans. You're my new midwife. Let's see how your Mystic Palm works on childbirth."
"Good luck with that," Natsumi told Hashirama as Izuna and Tobirama haphazardly threw a bunch of supplies in a pack, and Izuna slipped behind a solid wall of his armored clansmen, out of sight, where he could dress in his only pair of fresh trousers and shirt – dark grey with the Uchiha fan prominently displayed across his back, shoulder to shoulder. "This one likes to hold hands when she's in labor. It's like a rite of passage. See you later," she told her sister and the six other Inuzuka woman like she was wandering off to have a picnic. "I'm off to kill me a raider." She patted her thigh. "With me, Umeboshi." The ninken pushed himself against Natsumi, nearly knocking her off her feet.
"Lop me off a hand. We can turn the bones into a baby rattle," Shinzou said.
"Sure."
Izuna wasn't sure if the Inuzuka sisters were playing their behaviors up for the presence of the Uchiha or the Senju men, but he wasn't going to question it. Everyone dealt with grief in their own way, he knew, and the Inuzuka women had lost fourteen of their oldest and youngest fighters, six children, and over three dozen ninken – well over half their canines. With their armor carefully tucked into makeshift packs and left behind with trusted clansmen, Izuna and Tobirama followed Natsumi and her ninken, easily matching her pace with a lot less sweat.
"What's your approach on the raiders going to look like?" Tobirama asked, raising his voice to be heard as they took to the trees overhead, staying away from the thick underbrush.
"I'm going to smash into them so hard, they won't even know what hit them," Natsumi replied, blithely. "Why, do you have a better suggestion?"
Considering her show of brute force in their clash against the Uchiha, Izuna wasn't sure that Natsumi would be successful following a suggestion doing anything else. Unless the suggestion, given her behaviors, included the possibility of smothering her opponents with her pendulous breasts. But smothering wasn't the sort of death Izuna wanted the murderer of his wife and clansmen to suffer. Smothering was too quick and too painless.
"I'm good with the smashing," Izuna said.
"Sure," Tobirama replied with a downward drag on the corners of his mouth. "When you're a hammer, everything is just a nail. Smash away."
oOoOoOo
In three hours, they had traveled thirty kilometers, and the raider party had traveled an addition ten, when there was a shift. "I think they're on to us," Natsumi said, skidding to a sudden halt. They were on the other side of the mountain range, where old-growth forests were reluctantly giving way to flatter plains, waist-high in prairie grass and sage brush. The forests and steep terrain had hindered their travel speeds, and the delay itched under Izuna's skin, like a swarm of crawling, biting fire ants.
Tobirama knelt and slid two fingers into the ground. Izuna felt a wave of chakra, razor-sharp and paper-thin, shoot through the ground. "One is coming at us. The others are have picked up pace. They're forcing the children to move faster."
"They must have a sensor of some sort," Natsumi said, stroking the head of her ninken. Umeboshi lifted his head and growled. "It's the berserker who slaughtered everyone, moving towards us. At the rate he's traveling," she was silent for a moment, lifting her nose in the air, "and if we maintained our previous pace, we'll meet head-long in an hour. Well, time to prepare for battle."
With that, she sat down cross-legged on the grass and rummaged through the pack on Umeboshi's back. She withdrew a storage scroll with the Uzumaki signature hallmarks, humming an old lullaby under her breath.
After a heartbeat, Izuna reminded himself that he had promised his brother that he wouldn't fight the raider, and it was very, very difficult to keep that promise if he stabbed Natsumi in the neck. He opted to rub a spot between his eyes, which had been feeling tight and sensitive from the stress of the last twenty-four hours. "What are you doing?" he asked, when it looked like Tobirama was just as stunned as Izuna. (He loathed the idea of having anything in common with the Senju ratfink.)
"Making ramen." Natsumi released the contents of the storage scroll. It was a pile of tin bowls, sealed shut with wax paper. "It's a beautiful day for a picnic."
"Are you serious?" He looked at Tobirama. What was so wrong with the world that the ratfink was the other only sensible person in a ten kilometer radius? "Tell me she isn't serious."
Natsumi peeled the wax paper off, and dumped water into a tin filled with dried noodles and seasoning.
"She seems serious to me," Tobirama replied, crossing his arms in front of himself.
Natsumi held the tin up to Izuna. "Can you control your fire release well enough to make the water boil in here? It's the latest thing from the Uzumaki clan. Instant ramen. They're geniuses. The downside is that it takes three minutes for the hot water to cook everything. They haven't yet figured out how to put fresh, hot ramen in stasis so it's ready to eat the instant you pull it out of a transport scroll, but I'm sure someone will figure it out."
Izuna mechanically accepted the tin, and fought down the urge to chuck it at Natsumi's head as she sifted through the stack.
"What flavors do you guys want?" Natsumi asked, squinted at the characters stamped into the wax paper. "I've got pork, shrimp, curry, and beef. The curry always seems a little off, and the pork tastes more like chicken, but pork is the other white meat, so maybe there's some kind of cosmic joke in all of this." Then she glared up at Izuna when he hadn't yet heated up the water. "What? I may be reckless, aggressive, loud, and sometimes have a poor sense of self-awareness, but I'm not stupid. I haven't eaten anything in over eight hours. I'm going to need all the energy I can get, going into this unknown battle, and since he's coming to me, that'll buy me some time for a quick bite."
Tobirama selected the curry-flavored ramen tin. "She's got a point." His eyes, every bit as red as the Sharingan and no less cruel, flickered towards Izuna before they settled back on Natsumi. "You know, I can much more easily heat the water before putting it on the ramen than he can. Water release is a strength of mine."
Oh, the challenge was on.
oOoOoOo
The berserker didn't pause in his travel during Natsumi's impromptu ramen break. By the time she had finished four tins (complaining, with every bite, about how the curry ramen was totally not curry flavored, although Izuna had thought it was perfectly acceptable), the berserker had closed the original distance between them of twenty-five kilometers to fifteen.
"I have half a mind to let him come all the way to me, wear himself out a little with the speed he's maintaining," Natsumi said, carefully repacking away the empty tins, since she apparently got a discount on additional ramen when she traded in the used tins.
Tobirama snorted. "From this distance? The man's chakra stores are nearly as large as yours. You may as well drop the levels of an ocean with a tea cup."
Izuna would, where the ratfink couldn't hear, admit that he had absolutely no talent as a sensor, but even he could tell that Natsumi was a chakra juggernaut. Her stores were at least twice that of Shinzou's, and easily three times that of either him or Tobirama.
"You're right." Natsumi carefully threaded her fingers through her hair. She pulled plain wooden beads free, and then replaced them with ivory beads that had tiny, very distinct Uzumaki seals. Against her copper bright hair, they were a visible target.
"Mito's work?" Tobirama asked, squinting and leaning closer. He carefully slid one hand under a portion of her hair and lifted it for a look without making skin contact with the bead.
Natsumi purred. "Ooooh, you can run your fingers through my hair any time."
Tobirama immediately dropped her hair and retreated, face and ears flushing as bright as Natsumi's hair.
Natsumi's amusement was visible, even without the Sharingan. "Mito's work. She not only etched explosive seals into beads, but she created the food stasis seal for the ramen. That girl is going places in life, I bet." Having tucked away all her supplies, Natsumi threaded her fingers through her ninken's fur, and then leaned forward, touching her forehead and nose against the canine's snout. She was silent for a moment, and then Umeboshi huffed into her face. "I know," she whispered. "But this is a one-on-one battle, and I have to drag it out so we can figure out what they've done to our sisters, to our pups. You need to watch, so you can tell the other ninken how to fight. Do this for me."
After a brief moment, Umeboshi wagged his tail and swiped his tongue from chin to nose. "Blah! Doggy kisses!" She threw her arms around him and hugged tightly. "Thank you, my friend." Then she rose to her feet to face the direction of the berserker. It was mid-afternoon, and her skin, bronzed from her nudist lifestyle, shone with the vigor of life. A small breeze rustled her copper bright hair.
She was red and gold, the color of fire, Izuna realized breathlessly. Like a live spark that explodes a forest into a raging fire. Her muscles were sharply defined, and she was as tall as a man, every bit as bold and as fearless as any male warrior he had ever seen. For a moment, as he stared at her back, there was something incredibly timeless about her.
I want that for Hakuchou, he thought in a rush. His two year old girl, face still chubby with baby fat. He had always wanted his son to be become a fine warrior, but until he had seen how Honami had been cut down, until he had realized that Honami had tried to defend their children and clanspeople with a fucking wok, he had never given any thought of his daughter learning how to be a capable warrior. Someone else was supposed to protect her – a father, a brother, a husband.
And if there were no fathers, brothers, or husbands around?
Why should his daughter have to rely on a man? Why should any Uchiha woman have to rely on a man? They had the same blood, the same determination, the same ferocious love and protection running through their bodies and souls as any Uchiha male. Their clanswomen should also be able to stand in the autumn sun, bold and cocky and so utterly powerful that they eagerly cracked their knuckles in anticipation of battle, instead of collapsing in fear and desperately hoping that someone would come to their rescue.
And when Natsumi turned and smiled at him, teeth flashing with the sly cunning of a predator that knows it can afford to play around with its prey, Izuna silently amended that his daughter (and other Uchiha women) were not allowed to go into battle topless. He felt himself returning her smile, every bit as cruel and cocky. "Are you going to let him come for you," he began, eyes blooming into the Mangyko Sharingan, "or are you going to meet him halfway, on a battleground of your own choosing."
"I like that last idea," Natsumi said. Tobirama's eyes flickered between them, uncertainty crossing his face. "Do you want me to dismantle the berserker before or after I rip out his throat?"
"I want him to suffer."
"Before, it is."
"Could you eviscerate him, too?" Rage flooded his veins as he thought of his wife and their children. Bitterness – towards himself, towards Madara, towards the ratfink and his Senju kin, he would've been there to protect his beloved if he hadn't gone to any fucking peace treaties talk – tasted like the ash of burnt bodies in his mouth.
"I'll see what I can do," Natsumi turned south again, "but I can't promise anything on evisceration. Intestines stink when you tear them open."
oOoOoOo
They traveled only another three kilometers before Natsumi declared their surroundings to be suitable for her chosen battle ground. It was close to a creek – low, given how late in the season it was – that was surrounded on either side by thick groves of cottonwoods. With their large limbs and thick, burnished-yellow leaves, the cottonwoods provided a good cover for Tobirama and Izuna. They perched themselves high enough off the ground that Izuna had a good aerial view of the site. Not as adept at climbing trees as the humans, Umeboshi crouched on the ground, hidden in the undergrowth of shrubs.
As for Natsumi, she stood beyond the line of cottonwoods, wading through the tall prairie grasses until she was at least a hundred meters away from the trees. She had a handful more of the ivory beads, and she spent the next fifteen minutes pricking her thumb bloody with a claw, coating the ivory beads in blood, and tossing them around the perimeter. As far as Izuna could tell, her aim was random.
When the berserker was a kilometer away, the wash of killing intent – scorching hot and stinking of sulfur – hit them. Izuna heard Umeboshi's growl, low and deep like the rumble of an avalanche, and Natsumi briefly glanced over her shoulder, her gaze hard and her mouth set in a grim line. Even without any sensor ability, Izuna could feel the massive chakra.
"Oh shit," Tobirama muttered. He bit his thumbnail. "The berserker has even more chakra. Shit shit shit."
Izuna activated the Sharingan. "As far as we can tell, healing chakra takes a fine control. He's bleeding chakra everywhere to maintain his pace. Natsumi could still outlast him."
"This is going to be brutal."
It was extremely rare for Izuna to stand on the sidelines when there was fighting to be done against enemies. He was usually in the heart of the battle. He knew the same could be said for Tobirama. The opportunity to witness and comment on a battle with someone who was almost as knowledgeable and as skilled was, well, kinda exciting. Even if it was with the ratfink.
They had expected the berserker to charge into the field and immediately attack Natsumi. His pace had never stopped the moment he zeroed in on their party – but he skidded to a halt, ten meters away from Natsumi.
Tobirama bit his thumb bloody to stay silent. Izuna was strongly reconsidering his choice in being the Uchiha to accompany the Inuzuka woman.
The berserker was naked. Not half-naked, like Natsumi, but completely naked except for a pair of leather boots. He was also very hairy. His white-blond hair cascaded in wild tangles down his back, and his eyes were as blue as the far-distant sky. His beard, a few shades darker, disappeared into his chest hair. He was a massive man, easily three heads taller than Izuna, and nearly twice as wide with solid, heavy muscle. The double-headed battle axe clenched in his right hand gleamed, meticulously clean and well-oiled. His arms and shoulders had painted red streaks running down them, as if someone had run bloody hands up and down his skin.
"Valkyrja," the berserker whispered, eyes bulging. "You are a beautiful sight in this land of barbarians. Jashin has blessed me this day." He spoke with an odd accent, consonants bubbling and vowels oily.
"Thanks," said Natsumi. "Nice ax."
"We shall suffer greatly together, beautifully. Your death shall be most magnificent, and my god will welcome you in open arms."
"I'd rather have the ax."
"I have traveled many places, in my life. In all my travels, no woman has ever stood before me with such boldness, such strength. I am honored and blessed. If Jashin would only permit it, I would have you live longer, suffer this life more, so the world may continue to be blessed with your presence."
"Well, shoot." Izuna could just imagine the smile stretching across Natsumi's face – the smile that said, I plan on having a great deal of fun ripping your esophagus out. "You sure know how to get a girl all hot and bothered." (He briefly wondered, as his hands curled into fists, what the monster had said to Honami when she lunged at him with a wok swinging in her hand.)
The berserker tilted his head up towards the sun, throwing his arms wide. "Oh, beloved and blessed Jashin, accept the sacrifice of this lowly, pitiful servant. God of suffering, although she is a barbarian and a heathen, I beg you to welcome this beautiful valkyrja into the highest ranks of your Valhöll."
"It's the body paint and the bloodlust, isn't it?" Natsumi waved at herself, still waiting for the berserker to make his first move. The painted whales were much more elegant than berserker's bloody streaks. "Don't feel bad. It just has that effect on men."
The berserker's eyes fluttered shut. "Ah, sváss. When Jashin finally calls me home, when I have suffered enough for him, perhaps we shall drink mead together."
"You know, I'm just not in to sharing drinks with an asshole who slaughters a bunch of women and then runs off with their kids."
The berserker's eyes opened. His face was placidly calm. It was totally the opposite of being berserk. "Ah, it is a gift I have given to these heathens and barbarians. To suffer is to see the face Jashin. To be a great warrior, one must suffer. And Jashin requires great warriors gathered in the Valhöll, in preparation for the Ragnarök. When Jashin has deemed the gift I offer to be worthy, I give him their souls. There have been many in this land whom Jashin has declared worthy."
Natsumi tilted her head to the side. "And if they're not worthy?"
"Hel welcomes them to Helheim." Then, looking very concerned with the potential prospect of Natsumi winding up in a place where they couldn't share mead together in the afterlife, the not-quite-berserker said, "Helheim is much colder. It doesn't have a raging bonfire."
Natsumi tossed her hair over her shoulder. "Do I look like the cold bothers me? Look, I'm waiting for the actual fight. I had to leave my sister, giving birth, in the questionable company of two male buffoons. I didn't chase you half-way across this country just for you to bore me to death with empty talk."
"Ah, to be so eager, sváss. Very well, let us both gaze upon the face of Jashin." The flare of chakra, suffocating heavy, was the only indication of the raider shifting from placidly calm to berserker. He slammed into Natsumi, punching the flat head of the axe into her abdomen. Natsumi doubled over the axe, using her momentum to roll in midair up the length of the berserker's right arm until she pinned her thighs around the berserker's head and scissored him sideways into the ground. He tucked and rolled upright, axe whistling in the air as it made a wide, silver arc.
Natsumi caught the blade, chakra flaring, and tried to wrench it out of the berserker's grasp. He grabbed the hilt with both arms and kicked at her. She flipped overhead, releasing her grip, and shinshinned in mid-air to the berserker's backside. Her fists were blurs as she pummeled him in the kidneys, and then slid away.
Left hand not gripping the axe, he snatched a handful of hair. The white ivory beads slid free. His eyes widened as they glowed bright between the cracks of his fist, and then they exploded.
"Dibs on the axe!" Natsumi chased after the axe as it blasted through the air, the berserker momentarily going limp in the deep, blackened crater the beads had created.
Tobirama pinched the bridge of his nose. Izuna wished he could do the same, but he had to keep his eyes on the fight the entire time to memorize and analyze every move. "Why did we agree to let Natsumi fight, again?" Tobirama muttered.
Natsumi stood away from the crater, axe slung over her shoulder. As tall and as solidly built as she was, she almost looked too small to wield it. Her eyes were narrow as she stared ahead, body still and lank. Then she flashed towards the pit, axe raised overhead with both hands. When the berserker threw himself over the edge, she slammed the axe into his skull, a hollow thunk ringing through the plains as she lodged the blade deep. He immediately clamped both hands around the handle, and pulled.
Natsumi kicked him in the face. "Hey, let go! I already claimed this as mine!"
A blast of raw chakra threw her backwards without the axe.
The berserker yanked the blade free and ignored the chunk of skull that sheared free. He threw his shoulders back and cackled. Natsumi somersaulted in the air and landed on all fours, skidding through the tall grass. She immediately rose upright into a battle stance. "That's fine, I'll just get it again later."
The berserker ignored the blood streaming down his face. "Ah, sváss, you truly have no fear."
"You're ugly, not scary."
"You are naïve." His voice was layered with another's, shadows of darkness and decay trembling in the tones. "And you haven't yet suffered enough." He threw himself at her, axe swinging.
Natsumi met him halfway, chakra flaring at each limb. The two battered each other across the battlefield, one moving with a predatory grace as easily through the air as she did across the ground, the other with an unbreakable force, the ground trembling with each stomp of his feet. Natsumi dodged the blade of the axe and pummeled the berserker's body as he swung with all limbs, open-handed and sharp-bladed. She was faster, and potentially stronger, but he shrugged off her blows as easily as he had shrugged off an axe that had cleaved his skull apart.
"They're taijutsu monsters," Tobirama whispered, open-mouthed.
Izuna kept himself carefully still. When Senju, Uzumaki, Hyuuga, and Uchiha met each other in battle, it was as much a battle of ninjutsu and strategy as it was displays of raw strength, weaponry skills, and fuuinjutsu. The Inuzuka, however, fought like animals – their weapons were their own bodies, and their style was strictly physical. That's what people said. Until yesterday, Izuna had never seen an Inuzuka actually fight – the Uchiha, as a general rule, felt that women were the weaker sex, and there just didn't seem any honor in grappling with a half-naked woman, no matter how insulting and crude she may be.
And what people said was every bit right. But like a pair of wolves battling for territory, like a badger taking on a bear, like a cougar stalking an oblivious mountain goat, there was no denying the brutal strength and inhuman speed. Animals were fierce and deadly, as beautiful and as breathtaking as a hunting hawk diving to strike, and so was the Inuzuka woman. A single blow from Natsumi – and she wasn't holding back – could cave in Izuna's ribcage, even with his strongest set of fuuinjutsu-reinforced armor. Her speed, even without the shunshin, was phenomenal. Her ability to change trajectory in mid-air with a twist of her body in less than a blink of an eye was eerie.
Most frighteningly of all, no matter what Natsumi did – exploding ivory beads, precise pressure point strikes, kicking the cleaved skull to send bone fragments and white brain matter flying, punches that created ravines as large as the exploding beads when her fists glanced off and struck the ground – the berserker shrugged off. Chakra juggernaut Natsumi was losing her stamina, throwing everything she had into devastating attacks that would've leveled a mountain.
It was, Izuna thought with a racing chill, like fighting the ocean, instead. An explosion in the water meant nothing – more water simply rushed in, and the ocean is unmoved by aggressive attacks. So the unnatural life force (demonic, Natsumi had described his odor, once), perhaps even a strange immortality granted by his strange god, would explain why his clansmen had not been able to defeat this single opponent. If blows that should've shattered bone and liquefied muscle didn't make one iota of difference, then what could ninjutsu do? Perhaps a razor-pointed attack, something that was sharp and piercing, might do more damage.
As Natsumi raked her claws across the berserker's torso, leaving ribbons of flayed flesh, still to no avail, Izuna was forced to reconsider.
But it didn't yet explain how his kin had died with identical wounds.
It took just a blink of an eye – the edge of the battle axe slanted just differently while Natsumi was arching overhead to avoid it – for the berserker to finally spill Natsumi's blood. The blade had grazed her cheek, splitting the skin open.
She landed away from him, eyes narrow in suspicion, as the berserker went still. Then he chuckled. He slowly unfolded himself from his stance, and brought the axe eye-level, just as his manhood also swelled and rose. The small streak of crimson on the blade's edge was dark against the gleaming steel.
"And now," he whispered, attempting to stare at her with his eyes (one drooped much lower in one side, that part of his skull still only attached because of the clinging strip of skin and muscle), "now, we shall see the face of my god." The moment he touched his tongue to the bloody edge, moaning with pleasure, Natsumi swiped her thumb across her cheek, and her hands flew through seals for the first time that Izuna had known her – boar dog bird monkey ram – and she released the largest blast of chakra yet.
If Izuna released that much chakra at once, he would be in a coma for a week, if not outright dead.
Natsumi summoned a whale, and dropped it on the berserker.
Author's addendum: so, yeah, I made the first Jashinists vikings. Also, viking versus ninja. I should win the Internet for this, tonight. :D