A/N: I did not expect an outpouring of support from last chapter, but you guys surprised me. Thank you for that. Really. It means the world to me.
As such, I'm gonna put out this chapter, and then take three days off if that's alright with
you folks. This one's a doozy.
ALSO: THIS FIC IS WITHIN 25 REVIEWS OF HITTING 1,000 REVIEWS. LET'S GET IT TO 1,000 BOYS AND GIRLS
Time for Chapter 24
Enjoy!
Hiruzen flinched in surprise as his office door flew wide open with no prior warning. The gust of air the motion sent his way blew several documents off of his desk, and the impact of the doorknob on the wall shook the room. The culprit behind the sudden, jarring entrance was Anko Mitarashi. She looked as though she had hardly slept, with dark circles under her eyes, and her hair disheveled and messy. Most notably, she looked distraught.
"Good morning, Anko." the elderly leader greeted the frazzled woman calmly. Irritated though he was for her unceremonious entrance, reading the room told him that such complaints could wait. Anko took several deep breaths and pulled the door closed once more.
"We need to talk, Hokage-sama." she said with fabricated professionalism. Hiruzen rested his chin on his interlaced fingers and kept his expression unfeeling.
"I gathered as much. Now speak." he ordered. Anko quickly found a chair and pulled it up in front of his desk, seating herself in it a moment later.
"I have a pretty wild hunch, but one I think needs to be taken seriously." she started, straightening her jacket and fixing her forehead protector during a brief pause.
"I think Orochimaru is in the village. Specifically, I think he's in the forty-fourth training ground as we speak." she revealed. Hiruzen felt his blood run cold. Anko Mitarashi was certainly eccentric, and her promotion to jonin had raised several eyebrows amongst the administration, but she was far from dumb, and her intuition was sharp.
"Why have you come to this conclusion? Be thorough." the Hokage pressed. Anko promptly reached into her jacket pocket and produced something chilling. A thin, white snake. It appeared to be dead. Setting the inanimate creature on the desk, the jonin allowed Hiruzen to study the evidence she had brought to him.
"I found it just outside the forest. Beyond that, one of the Oto Genin struck me as strange. She looked normal, but…almost too normal. Like she was fake. Doesn't hurt that she was by far the tallest person there despite being a woman." she explained, a touch of nervousness in her voice. She then pursed her lips.
"I thought about confronting her. Her chakra felt off too, but for whatever reason, I didn't step in. I let her enter the forest. I'm kinda kicking myself now-" she said dejectedly. Hiruzen held up a hand to cut her off before she could speak further.
"Don't waste your energy on self-deprecation. As you said, this is a hunch. As of right now, we don't have any concrete proof." he said sternly. Anko nodded and took another breath to calm herself.
"If he is here, what do you think he's looking for? He'd never risk coming back without a goal in mind." she asked. It was a fair question. One that required nuanced thought to process. Before Hiruzen could answer, Anko offered her own hypothesis.
"I could be wrong, but my first guess would be the Hyuga kids. There are two of them in that forest. Their eyes might be enticing to him." she suggested. It was then that two faces popped into Hiruzen's mind.
"I sincerely doubt it. There are several Hyuga children far younger and weaker than Neji or Hinata. If he wanted the Byakugan, he would have taken the path of least resistance." he said with a shake of his head.
"No, if he's here, he wants either the Sharingan or the Nine-Tailed Fox. The exclusivity alone would attract him, not even mentioning the immense power of both of those things." he said. Anko clenched and unclenched her hands.
"In other words, Naruto and Satsuki are the most likely targets. Both are on Team Kakashi. If you're right, they don't have much time. Eighteen hours have already gone by since the start of the second phase. If he's in the forest, he'll be on top of them soon." she said. Hiruzen nodded rigidly. It made far too much sense to have not been predictable. The Exams were the rare time during which a genin was entirely separated from their assigned Jonin, without being among the general population. In short, they were intensely vulnerable.
"If he finds those kids, they're as good as dead. He'll slaughter them." Anko said darkly, reading the Hokage's mind. If he had been apprehensive to subscribe to the theory minutes prior, Hiruzen was now entirely sure of its validity.
"How quickly can you reach them?" he asked, his tone now urgent. Anko glanced off in the direction of the forest, and then back to her leader.
"I can get to the forest itself in less than two minutes. Finding them in there is the problem. Ten minutes at least, if I had to guess." she said honestly. The Hokage briefly weighed his options. Gathering a team of Jonin would increase the chances of the knee-jerk operation being successful in some regard, but it would take more time than they likely had at their disposal. Just as he began to administer an order to Anko, something happened that left no room for debate.
In an instant, the white snake on Hiruzen's desk flared to life, writhing and hissing. The sudden burst of motion caused both Anko and the elderly leader to back away from the creature momentarily. Once the shock had worn off, Anko drew a kunai and stabbed the snake through its skull, killing it once and for all. It was a bad omen, and both knew it. With a curt nod, Hiruzen looked Anko in the eyes.
"Go. As fast as you can."
Having lived in Konoha his entire life, Naruto Uzumaki was quite familiar with its environment. He knew its weather patterns well. It rained rather frequently during the spring, the summers were muggy, and the winter was dry and cold. Aside from the odd thunderstorm now and again, living in the Village Hidden in the Leaves was rather peaceful, naturally speaking. As such, the feeling of the ground rumbling beneath his feet was a cause for great concern to the blonde.
"Since when do we get earthquakes around here?" Naruto asked nervously. The question was directed at no one in particular, but he was answered anyway.
"I think this is a first." Shikamaru replied as he struggled to keep his balance on the tree branch Team Seven was perched on. The rumbling was getting stronger, almost as though something enormous was approaching them.
"Something's coming." Satsuki, who's sharingan were active and wide with concern, reported. The group then collectively braced themselves. It now felt as though they were in the epicenter of the quake. For several moments, the group focused all of their efforts on simply remaining in their tree. The last place to be was on the ground. Then, all of a sudden, the ground stopped shaking. Naruto breathed a premature sigh of relief.
"That was-" he began. Before he could say even three words, the periodic silence and calm was shattered. Up from the ground, with great force, burst a gigantic serpent. As the length of its body exited the ground, the mouths of Team Seven all hung open in shock and fear. After several moments of forceful escape from the earth, the titanic creature finally settled before them.
The large snake was pale white in color, with jagged-looking scales all across its body. Its eyes were pale yellow with slitted pupils, and its tongue was flicking in and out of its mouth menacingly. The sheer size of the creature was staggering. It was, at a minimum, fifty meters in length, and its head was the size of a large carriage.
"There's no way that thing is native." Naruto said tensely. Satsuki nodded in agreement and tightened her grip on the kunai she had drawn moments earlier.
"It has chakra. That's not natural. I think it's a summoning creature." she hypothesized. Shikamaru swallowed nervously as a bead of sweat trickled down his forehead.
"What kind of genin has enough savvy to summon something that huge? That's not a beginner-level contract." he pondered aloud. For better or worse, his inquiry did not go unanswered.
"Let's just say…that I'm far from your average genin."
The voice was cold and husky, and it seemed to reverberate through the environment around them. As the cell's eyes darted around in all directions, the jaws of the enormous serpent opened, unhinging at the joint in grotesque fashion. From its throat rose a figure, tall and slender.
"What the hell?" Naruto choked out in disgust as the entity straightened its posture and gained its footing on the tongue of the serpent. Covered in the bile and saliva of the serpent was a tall woman with pale skin and long, dark hair. Once she was fully separated from the maw of the serpent, she leapt straight up into the air, after which the jaws of the snake snapped shut. Landing squarely on the top of the serpent's head, the woman swept her eyes across the group.
"My, my. An Uchiha, a Nara, and even a Jinchuuriki. Quite the lineup. Convenient, too. It saves me the trouble of searching." she said, dragging a serpentine tongue across her lips. Though he had been unable to completely identify the feeling, Naruto had felt from the moment his team had entered the forest that they were being watched, and based upon the lack of shock on his comrades' faces, they had felt the same way.
"Who are you, and why are you here?" Satsuki called out bluntly. The woman then focused her attention on the Uchiha girl, her expression shifting from smug to deeply interested.
"What fun would it be if I killed the mystery so soon? Besides, you'll know me well in time, little girl." she replied. While Satsuki did not budge from her spot, she visibly tensed. In the silence that followed, the ominous woman's gaze did not waver from the raven-haired girl.
'She's after Satsuki. I don't know why, but she's here for her.' Naruto thought to himself urgently. Feeling his panic rising quickly, the blonde took an instinctive step forward, and then one to his right, placing him firmly between his teammates and the disturbing woman.
"Shikamaru, take Satsuki and run." he ordered shakily. He was terrified. Something about the entity they were facing put him on edge in the worst way. His fight or flight response was blaring in his mind like a siren.
"What? No way in hell!" Satsuki snapped back at him. Shikamaru echoed her sentiment with a look of puzzlement and idignity.
"The last thing we need to be doing right now is splitting up." he said. Naruto shook his head and took another step forward.
"Don't argue with me." he said as firmly as he could despite his nerves. Before any more debate could be had on the topic, they were interrupted.
"Your first mistake was assuming that retreat was an option at all."
Naruto whirled around to find that the woman had appeared in the middle of Team Seven, with a genin on every side. She looked amused, more than anything. As though she were an adult toying around with toddlers. Shikamaru quickly made a sign with his hands, his shadow morphing as he did so. A beat later, he had ensnared the woman in his paralysis.
"Scatter!" the Nara boy yelled to his teammates, who promptly jumped to separate branches on different trees in the vicinity. As he landed on his perch, Naruto clenched his jaw. While he could not properly sense the level of strength their foe possessed, his instincts told him that Team Seven was punching above their weight.
"Shadow Possession Jutsu, hm?" the woman said calmly as Shikamaru strained to hold her in place. She then grinned, revealing a set of fangs in place of her canines. With very little effort, she stepped forward and seized Shikamaru by the throat, picking him up off the ground with shocking ease.
"I actually had to flex a little to move. You have quite a strong grip."she complimented the genin she was strangling. Naruto, who had been frozen by fear up to the current moment, finally broke free from his hesitancy and burst from his branch.
"Let him go!" he yelled as he charged forward. Acknowledging his presence with little more than a glance, the woman obliged him by casually tossing Shikamaru in his wake. The boys crashed together mid-air, causing them to tumble down to the forest floor. Due to having knocked heads during their collision, the boys were both too dazed to land on their feet.
With a painful 'thud', they both landed on their backs. Quickly recovering, they rose to their feet simultaneously.
"She's stronger than Kakashi-sensei." Shikamaru said fearfully. Naruto's eyes widened and shot him a look of disbelief.
"You've gotta be kidding. Please tell me that's a joke." he stammered. The shadow user shook his head and rubbed his neck, which had finger-shaped bruises on its front and sides.
"I've tried to hold sensei in place with Shadow Possession a few times. He never broke my hold on him that easily. She's a monster, whoever this is." he said seriously. Before Naruto could lament their situation any more than he already had. The air above them suddenly glowed an angry orange color. The color of Satsuki's Fire Ball Jutsu.
"Can you still fight?" Naruto asked his teammate. Shikamaru nodded and drew a pair of kunai from his pouch. With a collective deep breath, the pair leapt up to join Satsuki in combat.
They seldom knew just how much danger they were truly in.
Satsuki fought to control her breathing as she leapt backwards to recreate distance. The situation had gone from uncomfortable to completely haywire. While she could not have imagined the feeling even half a day prior, she would have traded the tension of being hunted for the desperate straits she now found herself within in a heartbeat.
'Who is this? She's faster than me, stronger than me, and I don't think she's trying all that hard.' the Uchiha girl pondered. Before she could fully finish the thought, the woman appeared directly in front of her.
"Leaving so soon?" she asked mockingly. Satsuki replied by reflexively swiping at the woman's face with her kunai. Much to her own surprise, the action was a success, splitting open her foe's cheek wide. Taking full advantage of the woman's momentary pause, Satsuki kicked her in the stomach and pushed off of her. Performing a short flip to increase her height, Satsuki landed on a thin branch.
She was quickly joined by both Naruto and Shikamaru, who took their positions on trees to her right and left. They appeared uninjured from their fall.
"Any ideas? I'm fresh out." she called out to them. Much to her surprise, Shikamaru nodded and held up three fingers. Then two, then one, and then finally, none. The woman, who had been watching the group's reunion with mocking interest, was suddenly enveloped in an explosion.
"Wait…what just happened?" Naruto asked, his tone dumbfounded. The Nara boy smirked and kept his eyes fixed on the smoke that was now billowing from their foe's position.
"I attached two under her sleeve when she was choking me. Not sure how she didn't notice. They were delayed charges. Two minutes between deployment and explosion." he explained. Clever as the tactic had been, the cell was afforded no time to celebrate, as they were interrupted by a mirthless laugh.
"You've earned that surname, Shikamaru Nara. Dangerously clever." came the voice of the woman. When the smoke cleared, however, her gender was no longer a concrete fact. While the explosion had done little meaningful damage, it had aesthetically altered their foe greatly. Half of her face was seemingly peeling off. Rather than bone and blood beneath her skin, however, another face entirely was now visible. The new face peeking through had sheet white skin, and a single yellow eye showing through. Most unsettlingly, the features were distinctly masculine.
"What kind of freak is this?" Naruto questioned. The androgynous enemy laughed once again, taking hold of the peeling skin on her face.
"You're a rude one, speaking like I'm not right in front of you. I'll answer your questions regardless." she said. Then, in one gruesome motion, she tore the skin completely off, revealing the entirety of the face hiding beneath. As it had appeared, what seemed to be the true face of Team Seven's enemy was male.
"That's much better. Now I don't have to keep up that ridiculous voice." Team Seven's foe said, his voice an octave deeper than it had been before. Satsuki shuddered as his eyes settled on her once again. He was emitting an emotion she wasn't equipped to decipher in any detail, but she could feel that it was malevolent. Taking a glance at both of her teammates, she saw that Shikamaru's eyes had widened to saucers.
"Do you recognize him?" the Uchiha girl asked. The Nara boy gave a strained nod and narrowed his eyes to slits.
"I've never met him, but I've heard of him. This is…Orochimaru. He's one of the three Sannin, if you've heard of them." he revealed. Satsuki's heart dropped. Like her teammate, she had certainly heard the name before, though she had never read a description of the man's appearance, while Shikamaru seemingly had.
"I've never heard of him. How screwed are we?" Naruto, the only member of the team in the dark, asked only half-jokingly. Satsuki swallowed a nervous lump in her throat and steadied herself on her branch.
""Screwed'' isn't really the right word. We're fucked." she said bluntly. Orochimaru gave a fanged grin and stepped forward on the wide branch he occupied.
"I'm flattered. My reputation precedes me. You two boys don't need to be too worried. I'm only here for your lovely teammate. I'll just take her and be on my way, if that's alright with you." he said in a goading tone. Naruto growled and bared his own fangs, which had become even more pronounced.
"Like hell you will." he hissed. He then vanished from his perch. Orochimaru quickly followed suit. The pair returned to view in the space between Shikamaru and Satsuki, with the Sannin's knee driving up into the blonde's chin. The impact of the blow sent Naruto crashing into Satsuki's tree. Instead of ricocheting off of it, however, Naruto caught himself on the trunk by sinking the nails in his right hand into the bark, leaving him hanging level with Satsuki.
"Fighting him head on is suicide, Naruto." the Uchiha girl said urgently. Her teammate turned his eyes toward her and met her gaze. Satsuki suppressed the urge to shiver. His eyes were blood red, and his pupils were slits.
"We're out of options." he said simply. He then pushed off from the trunk of the tree to engage once more. Orochimaru, who was standing horizontally on a tree opposite their position, leapt out to meet him again. The following exchange ended similarly to their first, with Naruto being brutally cracked on the chin, this time by the Sannin's fist. The blonde was sent spiraling to the forest floor below, which he loudly collided with a moment later.
Shikamaru, who had been frozen by his knowledge of their foe's identity just as Satsuki had been, let out a shout of frustration and launched a flurry of shuriken toward Orochimaru, who had leapt down from his tree to follow Naruto. The Sannin easily turned his body to weave around them, expertly landing on his feet all in one motion once he touched the ground. The Nara boy quickly jumped off of his branch to pursue.
And yet, despite her desire to do so, Satsuki did not follow suit.
She was simply frozen in time. Her body refused to move, or even function beyond basic necessity. Her breathing was shallow, her heart was racing, and her eyes were wide with terror. As she looked on in horror while Naruto was repelled time and again, with futile assistance from Shikamaru's paper bombs and shadow, the Uchiha girl could not find the strength to throw herself into the fray.
'They're fighting. They're putting their lives on the line. Why aren't you?' she questioned herself. She was battling the very same feeling she had experienced during her and Naruto's brutal encounter with Haku. Petrified by the notion of being relied upon in a situation she was unsure of. She had managed to break free of the feeling when it counted on the bridge, but she could scarcely remember how or why.
Naruto was then violently slammed into the base of Satsuki's tree, sending leaves cascading down from the canopy above.
'He can't handle somebody like Orochimaru. No matter how angry he gets. It's just too much.' she thought frantically. She had no excuse to not be helping. Shikamaru likely knew even more about the man they were facing than she did, and he was down in the fire, doing what he could to assist the desperate effort to survive. Satsuki was stronger than the Nara boy was, and arguably Naruto as well, yet there she stood, doing nothing.
"Don't be a spectator! Help us!"
Satsuki quickly snapped out of her trance and looked down. It was Shikamaru who had yelled, and his eyes were trained solely on her. He looked some combination of angry and desperate. He was bleeding from his hairline, and his cheek was bruised. He, too, had taken punishment.
"Right now! I can't help him, but you can!" he yelled once more. Finally, the Uchiha girl broke free of the paralysis gripping her body. Leaping down from her branch, Satsuki hit the ground a moment later with a forward roll. Her presence was immediately acknowledged by Orochimaru, who greeted her with a mocking bow.
"How kind of you to join us, Miss Uchiha. Just one moment. I'm not quite done drawing and quartering this one yet." he said sadistically, holding up Naruto by the front of his shirt. The blonde was badly damaged, and he looked quite tired, but his expression was one of pure defiance.
"You're free to watch if you-" the Sannin began. He was cut off harshly before he could finish by Naruto's knee slamming into the bottom of his chin. The short strike snapped Orochimaru's head up, and allowed the blonde to wriggle free from his grip and scamper away.
"Took you long enough." Naruto grumbled as he regained his footing next to the Uchiha girl. Satsuki drew a kunai and planted her feet.
"Sit back for a minute. I'll take over for a bit." she said, forcing more confidence into her voice than she truly had. It was a fool's errand, but Naruto needed the rest. He had suffered enough. Before the Jinchuuriki could complain, Satsuki rushed forward with a look to Shikamaru, who nodded in understanding.
"About time you showed some backbone." Orochimaru cackled, catching the Uchiha girl's wrist with ease as she attempted to stab him in a downward-arcing motion. Then, in a display of flexibility and natural coordination, Satsuki jumped straight up and twisted mid-air, freeing herself from the pale man's grip. Landing directly behind him, Satsuki kicked the Sannin in the back. Though the maneuver only knocked Orochimaru off balance for the briefest of moments, it was enough to distract him from the fact that Shikamaru had thrown a kunai with a paper bomb attatched to its hilt his way.
Reacting at the last possible second, the Sannin was able to raise his left arm, where the kunai lodged. A split second later, the tag exploded. Thanks to her careful positioning, Satsuki was shielded from the blast by Orochimaru's body. Despite this, she was still sent tumbling backwards by the shockwave. Before she could skitter too far, she was caught by Naruto, who had wisely kept his distance once the paper bomb had become a factor.
"Nice catch." Satsuki joked as she allowed him to help her stand. In contrast to his usual willingness to joke, Naruto's expression remained serious. He had not taken his eyes off of Orochimaru, or at least, where he had once been.
"Where'd he run off to?" he pondered aloud, his tone rough. As Satsuki urgently searched their surroundings, Shikamaru's voice hit her eardrums.
"Above us!" he yelled from several meters to she and Naruto's left. Craning their necks upward, the pair spotted their assailant perched on a tree, with the sleeve on the arm Shikamaru's kunai had struck completely singed off.
"You three have proven quite capable for your level of experience. I'm impressed, I must say." Orochimaru complimented. Before any of the three genin could snap back at him with something aggressive or witty, the ground began to rumble. Shikamaru quickly rejoined the other two members of Team Seven.
"That huge snake is coming back." he said grimly. Unfortunately, he was correct. Having been dormant a fair distance away from where the scuffle had traveled to for most of the conflict, the serpent was soon at Orochimaru's side again.
"As I said, you should be proud of yourselves. You're impressive for genin. Unfortunately for you, we aren't even playing by the same rules." the Sannin called to them. He then straightened his arm in their direction. Satsuki's eyes widened with terror as the enormous snake's head reared back. Neither she nor her teammates had the time to exclaim or lament, as the snake struck out in that same instant. Clamping her eyes shut and bracing herself for what was bound to be a fatal impact, the Uchiha girl waited for it all to go black.
The strike never came.
While she had been knocked to her rear end by the aftershock of a massive collision with the ground of some kind, she herself was fully intact, as was Shikamaru, who had retreated as much as he could in the small frame of time the snake's attack had provided them. As she slowly opened her eyes, what Satsuki saw was both horrifying and absolutely breathtaking.
"How…" she stuttered in awe. Standing between Satsuki, Shikamaru, and the serpent was Naruto, whose back was pressed into the beast's nose with his claw-like nails digging into its nostrils. He had stopped the snake with his own body. It was an incredible display of raw strength. The Jinchuuriki's eyes were downcast as he took in labored breaths. When he turned his head up again, Satsuki suppressed a sharp gasp.
"Are you guys…alright?" Naruto asked through clenched teeth. His eyes were bloodshot and as deep a shade of red as they had ever been. His canines were completely extended into fangs, and the whisker marks on his face were thick and defined. While she had glimpsed it just before Naruto had first engaged the Sannin, it was only then that Satsuki fully grasped what she was looking at.
'This is what he became after Haku killed me.' the Uchiha girl thought to herself. Fortunately for the raven-haired girl, Shikamaru took the initiative to speak.
"Yeah, we're alright, man." the Nara boy said between deep breaths. Naruto gave a short nod and stepped away from the snake. What he did next was shocking. Turning on his heel without warning, Naruto slammed his clawed fist into the snout of the serpent with all of the force he could generate. After the impact of his punch had fully rippled through the snake, the beast vanished in a massive puff of smoke.
For the first time since their encounter had begun, even Orochimaru wore a look of surprise. Gradually finding her way to her feet, Satsuki's mouth hung open as she looked at Naruto, who was facing away from her and Shikamaru. His shirt was largely in tatters, leaving much of his back exposed. There was a grotesque bruise from the base of his neck all the way down to his tailbone. Stopping the snake had come at a price.
"You really are something else, Nine-Tails." came the voice of Orochimaru once again. The Sannin then hopped down from his perch, landing in front of Naruto.
"Naruto-" Satsuki called out, meaning to warn him. The second word hadn't even left her mouth when Orochimaru brutally slugged her teammate in the liver, practically folding him in half. Rushing into action to save their teammate, Shikamaru and Satsuki both attempted to intervene. They were swiftly dealt with.
Kicking Shikamaru in the chest, the Sannin sent the Nara boy flying back into a tree. As he attempted to regain his balance, Orochimaru fired a kunai into the cartilage of his right ear, pinning it to the bark of the trunk. With Shikamaru effectively immobilized, Orochimaru turned his attention to Satsuki, who held her ground.
"You're a freak." she hissed at him fearfully. The Sannin gave a dark smile at her insult, promptly spinning her head around with a harsh punch and sending her down. Falling to her back in a daze, Satsuki could only watch as Orochimaru strolled back over to Naruto, who had fought his way back to an upright stance. In the brief scuffle that ensued, the blonde was knocked down four separate times.
After the fourth knockdown, the pale man seized Naruto by his throat and picked him up from the forest floor. As Naruto kicked and struggled, tears welled up in Satsuki's eyes. She was truly helpless. There was nothing she could do to help him, even after he had saved both her life and Shikamaru's.
"Despite how this is going to end, you've earned my respect, brat. Jonin have fallen to that serpent. You're stronger than you have any right to be." Orochimaru said with sickening glee. He then leaned his head back and opened his mouth unnaturally wide. With his free hand, he reached down his throat and pulled a sword from its depths.
"I could use you as well, I suppose. You're certainly interesting. But, your time to be my lab rat isn't today. For now, you're just…" the Sannin said, punctuating his pause by viciously running his blade through the right side of Naruto's chest.
"...collateral." he concluded, pulling his sword from the blonde's chest as tears stained Satsuki's cheeks. The Sannin then tossed Naruto's limp body in her direction. He landed just in front of the girl. Immediately rushing to check his vitals, Satsuki pressed her ear to his chest. His heart was still beating, but it was faint, and slowing quickly.
"There's a chance he survives. I avoided anywhere fatal. Though, the blood loss certainly could do him in without medical attention." Orochimaru commented as Satsuki cradled Naruto's head in her arms. The pale man slowly began to walk toward the kneeling girl.
"Run away, Satsuki!" Shikamaru bellowed, his voice breaking mid-sentence as he attempted to free his ear from its pinning. Though Satsuki was filled with fear, another emotion was rapidly replacing it.
Raw, unadulterated anger.
Rising one final time, her hair and hands stained with Naruto's blood, Satsuki weaved a sequence of hand signs she had memorized to the point of muscle memory. Rearing her head back, fueled by rage, the Uchiha girl unleashed every last drop of her chakra reserves.
"Fire Style: Fire Ball Jutsu!" she screamed, sending forth the largest burst of flames she had ever produced. Rimmed with searing blue, the mass of intense heat crashed into Orochimaru. The heat of the fire completely vaporized the brush in its path, as well as the trunks of several trees, causing them to fall. Once the flame died out, Satsuki let her arms drop to her sides, heaving deep breaths.
She was utterly spent, both mentally and physically. Hearteningly, there was a time of silence. For the briefest of moments, it seemed as though she had succeeded. Sadly, it was not meant to be.
"Yes…you'll do nicely."
Lowering her head in defeat, Satsuki remained standing as Orochimaru emerged from a pile of ashes, burns of varying degrees all over his body. Her last-ditch effort had done little to truly damage him beyond stripping a few layers of skin from his body.
"Just kill me." Satsuki croaked hoarsely. Orochimaru chuckled and tilted his head off to one side as he studied her.
"If I had wanted to kill you, you'd be dead already." he said ominously. Then, his neck rapidly extended from his body with his head along with it. Before she could react, Orochimaru sank his fangs into the left side of her neck. Crying out in pain, Satsuki attempted to push him off, but was unable to do so. Within moments, her vision grew fuzzy. Slowly but surely, she lost consciousness. Eventually, she was out cold on the ground next to Naruto, leaving only Shikamaru with his wits still about him.
"I'd hurry up and free yourself, if I were you. They both need to be patched up. They may die without help." the Sannin called to Shikamaru, who was still working on dislodging the kunai in his ear from the shockingly dense wood of the tree he was stuck to. As quickly as he had come, Orochimaru left, leaving no trace of his presence at all as he vanished. Mere moments after he had left, Shikamaru finally pulled the kunai out of his ear and the wood with a painful tug.
Ignoring the blood streaming down the side of his head, the Nara boy rushed over to his fallen teammates.
"C'mon, don't you dare die on me, either of you." he whispered to them urgently. As he tended to them with the limited medical skill he had learned from the academy, a rustling in the nearby trees caught his attention. Immediately shooting to his feet and drawing a kunai, Shikamaru searched his surroundings.
"Calm down, and put the knife away."
Turning to face the voice, the shadow user was met by a sight so welcome in comparison to Orochimaru that he nearly broke down in tears. It was Team Guy, whom they had encountered a day prior.
"What are you guys doing here?" Shikamaru asked wearily. Neji Hyuga, who the voice belonged to, gestured over toward the bodies of Naruto and Satsuki.
"I don't think you're really in any position to be picky, Nara-san." he said, to which Shikamaru gave a dejected nod.
"Do you have any medical supplies?" he asked. Tenten, who wore her hair up in two buns, nodded and produced a roll of gauze and bandages from a pack around her waist.
"They definitely need more than this, but we'll do what we can." she said firmly. She then handed Rock Lee, a boy with an ambitious bowl cut, and a questionable fashion sense, half of the gauze and pointed to Satsuki. Giving a curt nod, Lee went to work dressing the Uchiha girl's wounds as Tenten did the same for Naruto. With the other two members of Team Guy occupied, Shikamaru returned his attention to Neji.
"How much did you see?" he asked. The Hyuga boy remained silent for a moment, his eyes assessing and calm.
"Only the end. We were en route to help you, but clearly…we made it too late." he replied. Before Shikamaru could say anything in response, Lee's voice caught his attention.
"Neji-kun, Shikamaru-san, I think you should come take a look at this." he called out to the pair. Exchanging a nod, the boys jogged over to Lee, who was intently studying a specific part of Satsuki's neck.
"What on earth…" Neji muttered, kneeling down to get a better look. Shikamaru quickly joined him. What he saw unsettled him greatly.
At the base of Satsuki's neck, where Orochimaru had bitten her, was a strange black marking.
A/N: UBER LONG CHAPTER, but I really wanted to knock this entire sequence out in one go without splitting it up. That'd have been clunky.
I know that Team Guy's introduction was a little clunky, but I tried to give *some* context with their off-screen meeting that was mentioned in the last chapter, and I think the transition to Shikamaru's perspective was definitely shaky, but oh well. Practice makes perfect
Please, PLEASE leave a review on this one. I put a lot of work into this entire chapter. Definitely not perfect, but I think it's the best I've written :)
I love you all
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