A/N: Alright, so a few things about how the rest of the invasion is going to be written:

A decent chunk of HIruzen (+Kakashi) vs Orochimaru is going to happen OFF PAGE. I'll show the important bits of it when necessary, but I have two other fights to write on top of it, and the other two are far more important.

Back to the chapter at hand, this one will primarily handle Satsuki vs Gaara, and Shikamaru's endeavors (which will result in a fight of his own).

Time for Chapter 49

Enjoy!


Satsuki pushed off her rear leg and charged in to engage with Gaara for the first time since their departure from Konoha's interior. She had learned the hard way that allowing the Jinchuuriki to take initiative over her would end in disaster. He was too explosively fast, and far too strong. Dictation was paramount, no matter how risky it was in and of itself. Leaping up into the air a few feet before reaching him, Satsuki stabbed both her kunai down toward his chest. Gaara easily blocked both blades with his left arm, sending a small spray of sparks.

Satsuki attempted to rotate through and kick him across the opposite side of his face, but the redhead caught her ankle with his free arm and tossed her up into the air. Weaving a quick series of seals, Satsuki sent forth a volley of blazing fire.

"Fire Style: Phoenix Flower Jutsu!" she yelled. Gaara responded by drawing his left arm over himself, and then ripped it across the space in front of him. A powerful blast of whipping wind smashed into the Uchiha's flaming assault, snuffing each blaze out like a small candle. The wind also pushed Satsuki further up into the air, where she was soon joined by Gaara, who leapt up to meet her altitude. She was then violently spiked back down to earth by his earthen fist slamming into her back,

Landing roughly on her hands and knees with an impact that stunned her badly, the Uchiha was far too slow to rise, and was punished further with a vicious kick to her stomach while she was still down that lifted her up off the ground when Gaara touched down. The Jinchuuriki caught her by her left arm, spun her around, and seized her right as well. With no warning, he pushed her back down to the ground and drove his foot between her shoulder blades.

"When I was watching your team in the forest, I saw you break a boy's arms this way. I was honestly a bit jealous I hadn't thought of the method myself. So consider this payback for beating me to it." Gaara sneered, applying painful pressure to her back. Indeed, their position exactly mirrored the way in which Satsuki had snapped Zaku's arms, but now, she found herself the victim. They hadn't been fighting an entire minute, and Gaara had already put her in a major bind.

Gritting her teeth, Satsuki took full advantage of her natural flexibility and performed a split with her legs, causing Gaara's foot to slip from her back. The Uchiha then hooked her insteps through his ankles and yanked her legs forward again, off-balancing him just enough for her to free her wrists from his grasp. Whirling around, Satsuki drew a kunai and slashed it sideways across Gaara's face while the redhead was still regaining his footing. The blade did not draw his blood.

She was not able to ponder for long, as Gaara quickly recovered and sent her flying backwards with an armored punch that struck her in the upper chest. Landing on her feet, Satsuki made another hand seal and conjured a clone, which appeared next to her. She then charged alongside the doppelganger to meet the Jinchuuriki halfway, as he had already made chase. Stepping off in front of Satsuki's true body, the clone's neck was crushed by Gaara in short order. Rather than vanishing into smoke, however, the copy burst into a crippling pulse of electricity that froze Gaara up.

Seizing the opening, Satsuki slapped an explosive tag across his chest and jumped backwards several meters. A beat later, the paper bomb detonated, sending a violent shockwave of dirt and smokey air in all directions. Small as they were, the tags were deadly. Shielding her eyes from the debris, Satsuki kept her obstructed gaze fixed on the center of the blast, which was soon revealed anew when the smoke cleared.

'All of that, and he's not even on his knees.' she thought to herself in frustration. Gaara was still standing, his arms crossed in front of him and his feet planted. Aside from the last of his tunic having been blown away, he had taken no clear damage. Dusting himself off, the Jinchuuriki glanced down at the small crater he was standing within.

"Lightning Clones? Creative." he commented. He then took a deep breath. When he breathed out again, he came tearing forward again. Knowing better than to match strength with him, Satsuki retreated fully into the forest, bounding from tree branch to tree branch. Her backpedaling was cut short rather quickly, as both ninja soon exited the dense wooding into a large clearing. Returning to the forest floor, Satsuki held her ground as Gaara joined her in the open space. It was far from ideal, but it was further from the village itself.

Wasting no time, the leaf genin rushed in. Gaara simply awaited her approach, and when she reached him, the Uchiha girl was struck in the face by her foe's forearm, causing her body to vertically rotate once before she fell harshly onto her stomach behind the redhead. She was badly dazed. Every single time he hit her, it felt as though she'd been struck by a hammer. Frantically rolling to her right, Satsuki narrowly avoided having her ribs crushed by Gaara, who had attempted to stomp her into the ground. His foot's impact made a small section of the ground shake.

Satsuki returned to her feet in a rush, meeting the Jinchuuriki's aggression with a hard punch to the left side of his jaw. Taijutsu was perilous, but at such a close range, she had no other choice. The blow turned Gaara's head to the side, but did little to shake him. Following her strike back to its source, Gaara retaliated with twice the force by ripping the claws of his left hand across her face, spinning her halfway around and splitting open a cut on her hairline. As she stumbled away, Gaara kicked out her legs and set her to her rear end.

Rearing his armored arm back, the Jinchuuriki attempted to strike her with his claws a second time, but Satsuki caught his wrist. Slowly forcing herself up to her feet despite the downward pressure he was applying, the girl clenched her jaw and took hold of his right hand as well.

"Thanks for the help." she hissed. Gaara briefly took on a look of confusion, but his silent question was answered seconds later, as Satsuki skillfully manipulated his fingers into creating matching hand seals with her. The leaf genin's body then flared to life with a crackling blue glow.

"Lightning Style: Depth Charge." she recited. The technique was primarily a long-range weapon, but it had a secondary, less commonly applicable use that could be performed in close quarters. Through their connected hands, Satsuki sent a violent rush of fully-transmuted electrical chakra into Gaara's body. The sheer force of the pulse sent the Jinchuuriki flying backwards until he crashed back-first into a tree on the opposite side of the clearing.

Satsuki did not follow him, as while the maneuver had been successful, using her own body as a conductor for so much electricity, self-created or not, had taken a toll on her as well. As a result, Gaara recovered without incident, and rose up from the bottom of the trunk. Cracking his neck to both sides, the redhead wiped a stream of blood from his nose.

"I've nearly killed you more than once, and every time, you've come up with some way out of it. You're crafty, I'll give you that much." he said, offering a rare compliment. Satsuki blinked blood out of her eyes. The cut in her hair was leaking profusely. She was fatiguing, taking more damage by the minute, and she had done little in the way of slowing Gaara down. She was far from empty in terms of chakra, but she needed a cool-down period. Conjuring another large-scale jutsu would put more strain on her body than she could afford without a break.

"You talk too much." she snapped at him. Gaara smirked at her retort and began a slow walk toward her.

"You should be more grateful. If I were taking this even half as seriously as you clearly are, you'd be dead by now." he shot back casually. The Uchiha girl drew another kunai and narrowed her eyes.

"That little twitch every time you move is a dead giveaway. You're bluffing." she said. The redhead sighed and brought his hands together.

"Stop me if you've heard this one before." he said vaguely, forming a sequence of signs that Satsuki could identify as familiar, but couldn't quite put a name to.

"Wind Style: Great Breach!" he yelled, rearing his head back and unleashing a monumental blast of concentrated wind. With wide eyes, Satsuki was completely helpless in the face of the hurricane, and was caught up in its wake. Crashing across the ground, bouncing off of shattered trees, the Uchiha was battered up and down before she came to a violent landing on the jagged, broken ground. Somehow, the attack had not rendered her unconscious.

Seeing triple at first, Satsuki's vision slowly cleared, allowing her to behold the destruction Gaara had so easily wrought. The clearing they had been scuffling in was now extended hundreds of feet further, with his jutsu having ripped countless fully-developed trees from their roots, and stripping the ground of its grass. The Uchiha herself was laying painfully at the very end of the extended, shallow crater. If Naruto's use of the technique had been like a landmine, Gaara's had been more akin to a volcanic explosion in comparison.

Though she could hear the noise of mass combat in the distance, the ravaged forest was all but silent, save for the sound of Gaara's heavy footsteps. He was still a fair distance away, well over two hundred feet, and he was taking his time, but Satsuki knew all too well that he could crash down on her in an instant should he so choose. With great strain, the genin labored up to her feet with her arms dangling down in front of her.

"You know, I'd heard something about the Uchiha before today. That there were only two of you left. I took that to mean that you were special. That, somehow, you'd been strong, when your clansmen were weak. But now, I'm starting to think I was fooling myself. You're just another dead woman walking." came the voice of the Jinchuuriki, loud and booming across the vast desolation. His tone and words stabbed right through Satsuki's pride and ego. Her hands curled into fists.

"Don't run your mouth like you know a goddamned thing about us." she fired back angrily. Gaara, who was much closer now, came to a stop.

"What's there to know? That surname doesn't change a thing. Those eyes haven't helped you, and they're the greatest gift your blood has ever given you." he said coldly. Satsuki bared her teeth, but kept her eyes downcast.

"Besides, in the end, half their memory will be gone. You'll just be another drop in my bucket for today." the redhead continued callously. Gaara of the Sand well and truly saw no value in human life. It was all trivial to him. Mere playthings to be used up and thrown away. He was a walking genocide. An extinction waiting to happen. As the girl fell deeper into her growing personal hatred for the boy, another familiar face drifted across Satsuki's mind. Eyes like her own, stress lines on his cheeks, a gray anbu flak jacket.

In the darkest way possible, Gaara's brutal nihilism invoked Itachi's justifications. His desire to destroy, simply to test his own ceiling. Dragging her glare up from the battered ground, Satsuki looked upon the Jinchuuriki with boundless contempt.

"You get off on this, don't you? Blood and destruction. That's all you care about, isn't it?" she asked roughly. Gaara's golden eyes gleamed with amusement.

"Nothing makes me feel more alive. I do this for the thrill. I do this because I can." he countered calmly. Satsuki felt a searing pain explode from the side of her neck as her temper flared and consumed her. As the black marks spread across her body, she threw together a dangerous set of seals.

"I don't have much, and maybe I've let my family down, but even if you're stronger than me, as long as I'm still breathing, you won't kill anyone else!" she screamed. Digging her heels in, the Uchiha martialed the entirety of her remaining chakra.

"Fire Style: Majestic Destroyer Flame!" she roared, unleashing a burning sea of fire that engulfed the entirety of her field of vision. As the wave bore down toward Gaara, the Jinchuuriki could do nothing but stand in awe.

In his heartless eyes, true fear took root for the very first time.


Kakashi strained his body to move more quickly as he honed in on his leader. Hiruzen was nearby, but still enough of a distance to make the travel unbearably long in the current state of things. He couldn't quite see them yet, but he could feel them. They had not yet begun fighting. It was likely that they were still conversing, but there was no telling how long that would last. As he sprinted across the tops of the houses and shops, the Jonin took a short glance down. The streets had fallen into absolute chaos. It was a warzone. Ninja were falling left, right, and center, from Suna and Konoha alike.

'The death toll is going to be awful. Things are already bloody as all hell.' he thought grimly. His students were still at the forefront of his mind. Satsuki had led Gaara out of the village minutes ago, and based upon the crushing advantage the Suna boy had displayed over her during their brief skirmish in the arena, facing him alone could only spell danger for her. There was no use in regretting what could not be changed. Blocking out the carnage below, Kakashi focused on locating the Hokage and his foe once again.

A minute and a half later, an unexpected development occurred. Rising up from the streets, a green blur fell into pace beside Kakashi. The Copy Ninja raised an eyebrow and cast a sideways glance.

"Don't you have a team to lead, Guy?" he pointed out. Might Guy, who had joined him on his journey, gave his classically exuberant grin.

"Neji's being tended to, but Lee and Tenten are plenty youthful on their own. I have faith in them." he said confidently. His expression grew serious.

"Besides, if you're heading where I think you are, the more the merrier." he added. His logic was sound, even if his entrance hadn't been. As such, Kakashi nodded in agreement.

"I think we're within a mile of them. Lord Third chose the least populated sector." he reported. Guy fixed his gaze straight ahead, focusing his own senses.

"We'll be on top of them in two minutes. Ready yourself, Kakashi. There's every chance this fight gets ugly, even with all three of us pressing him." he said. The Copy Ninja nodded again. Moving as quickly as they could muster, the pair of Jonin raced across their village in a desperate bid to assist their leader. Finally, once the time frame Guy had established had nearly come to pass, they caught sight of the Sanin and Kage.

They were standing atop the roof of a large building. Oddly, each corner of the roof was occupied by an entity, none of whom were wearing a uniform resembling that of Suna's military. As they approached, something concerning began. A red glow began to encase the rooftop. Uncovering his sharingan, Kakashi felt his stomach drop at what he saw.

"I'm not sure who they are, but those four are creating a barrier. They're trying to lock us out." he said. They were still a quarter-mile away. They were moving quickly, but not quickly enough. Recognizing the dire nature of their standing, Guy took matters into his own hands and grabbed Kakashi by the wrist.

"Brace yourself." he said. Without warning, they lurched forward and burst across the remaining distance at breakneck speed. They crossed through the threshold just as the barrier was completing itself. They had made it, but only barely. Their landing was less than graceful, as they both lost their balance upon touching down, but both were on their feet in seconds. They had barged in right between Hiruzen and Orochimaru, who appeared to have begun their battle in earnest.

"What on earth are the two of you doing here?" the Hokage questioned. Kakashi took his position at the old man's left side, with Guy doing the same on the right.

"Backing you up. Don't act like you couldn't use the help." the Copy Ninja said shortly. Guy assumed his stance and allowed a grin to retake his features again.

"Forgive his insolent tone, my lord. We simply thought it would be timely to assist our commander in chief." he said flamboyantly. Despite hardly looking pleased with their arrival, Hiruzen took a deep breath and set his eyes on Orochimaru, who was looking on in curious haughtiness.

"My, my. Such loyal subjects, Sensei. I never found you too charismatic myself, but I suppose that's up to opinion." he said. Kakashi drew a pair of kunai and crossed them in front of himself in preparation for the fight to come. Hiruzen, who was wielding Enma, his great staff, took one final look at both of his Jonin.

"Leave most of the fighting to me. Give me openings. I'll do the rest." he ordered. Guy and Kakashi nodded curtly. Orochimaru laughed without mirth.

"I just had an excellent idea. I know the two of you are eager to let out all of that nervous energy, so I'll give you each a dance partner." he said, whipping out a scroll and laying it out in front of him as he spoke. He then slammed his palm down into the paper.

"What is he..?" Hiruzen started, trailing off as a massive cloud of smoke rose up behind the Sanin. What the trio saw upon its clearing was unsettling.

Conjured from nowhere, two coffins had appeared.


Shikamaru took a sweeping look around the interior of the bunker. There had been twenty-two civilians in the group he had led down through the stadium halls, and despite having counted each and every one of them several times by now, he still felt the urge to list them off again. He had succeeded in delivering them to something resembling safety. There was room for pride in what he had done, but he was still far too stressed. He could hear the fighting up above. The interior of the arena was a battlefield. The bunker itself was secure. Its door was heavy, metallic, and tightly sealed. The room was dim, but there was enough light to navigate.

There were half a dozen medics tending to a number of injured people, shinobi and civilian alike. The room was packed. Shikamaru himself was leaning back against the leftmost wall, but he had little room on either side.

'This place was built to house forty people. Fifty tops. There are at least sixty-five in here.' he thought to himself as he bumped shoulders with a man. The bunker smelled of an unpleasant mix of blood, gauze, and raw breath. He had smelled worse, but Shikamaru would have taken quite literally any other scent. Above all else, he was agitated by how utterly useless he felt. He had succeeded in ensuring the safety of nearly two dozen people, but he was healthy, if quite tired, and he was not fighting.

'Sensei never put me up to this as a bodyguard. My job was to be an escort.' he pondered. While the sentiment was literally true, reading the room made it clear that the cluster of people within it would be completely helpless should the door be breached. But even with this fact in mind, the fact remained that Shikamaru himself would be of little use against a Jonin, which appeared to be the most common rank amongst Suna's forces. Doubly so due to his chakra reserves being nearly dried up from his exertion during his match.

Another thought then occurred to him.

His father had been in attendance for his match, and as a highly-regarded Jonin, he was almost certainly leading a makeshift platoon. His mother, on the other hand, had been forced to stay home due to sickness. She was alone. This realization filled the Nara with an immediate sense of fear and urgency. Yoshino was not helpless, far from it, but her prowess as a fighter had dulled with her recession into motherhood. With a renewed sense of purpose, Shikamaru maneuvered his way through the cluster of people and approached the door.

He could feel the eyes on his back as he reached for the handle. The metal barrier was their lifeline, and even if for only a moment or two, he was going to strip it away. Ignoring the prying stares, Shikamaru opened the door and closed it behind him. He heard it lock from the inside. The bunker itself was located several meters below ground, with a flight of stairs leading back up to the hallway. Counterintuitively, the starwell itself was only blocked by a wooden door rather than a metal one.

Jogging up the steps hurriedly, Shikamaru opened the second door and stepped out into the hallway itself. Surprisingly, aside from the background noise of the war raging beyond the walls, it was surprisingly quiet. Welcoming the lower volume, Shikamaru carefully closed the wooden door and took a deep breath. When he turned to face down the corridor, his blood froze in his veins. Standing on the opposite end, right at the intersection, was Temari.

She had certainly seen better days. Her face was scuffed with dirt, her clothes were torn in several places, and she was without her fan. She had seen the violence up above for herself, that much was obvious. In spite of her weathered appearance, nothing about her outward demeanor radiated anything less than her usual sturdiness. For several long moments, the genin stared at one another in silence.

"I'd call this awkward, but that's not really the right word, is it?" Temari mused, breaking the uncomfortable ice. Shikamaru swallowed his nerves and remained calm.

"Not quite, no. At this point, I'm just confused." he said honestly. Temari put her hands on her hips and leaned her head off to one side.

"In what way? I've been pretty straightforward with you." she said. The Nara shook his head and stepped away from the door.

"What was the point? I don't understand." he said. His words lacked detail, but both knew exactly what he was referring to, both specifically and broadly. The fan wielder's face transitioned through several emotions before settling back on apathy.

"Takes two people to dance, Shikamaru. You can't lay it all on me." she said, slowly reaching into the pouch on her thigh.

"But, if you need an answer, it's that I'm selfish." she tacked on as an addendum. She then drew a kunai, which she let hang at her waist in a loose grip. Shikamaru drew his own knife, hating the motion every step of the way.

"Aren't we all." he muttered just loud enough for her to hear. Another, far strong silence took hold of them. There was much unsaid, but not the time to say any of it. Temari's knees then bent slightly.

"I'm sorry it's gotta be this way." she said, her voice betraying emotion not visible on her face. Shikamaru, for once, met her aggression in kind, and stepped forward to engage.

"So am I."


Satsuki sank down to her knees as her body completely failed her. She had given everything she had left to give. Majestic Destroyer Flame was the single most powerful jutsu at her disposal by a wide margin. She had only recently learned it from a musty old scroll she had found while rummaging through the Uchiha storehouse on her property, and its results were as devastating as the old text had suggested. Gaara had made a crater, but Satsuki had created a miniature wasteland.

Nothing but petrified wood and scorched earth lay in the path of the fire. Thankfully, it did not appear to be spreading to the untouched trees in either direction, but the outcome had been destructive all the same. It had come at a heavy price. She could not rise again. Her legs would not respond. It took active thought to simply breathe. On top of her utter exhaustion, the accursed tattoo on her neck had spread as far as her chest beneath her shirt. She could feel its grip tightening on her by the second. With luck, it would not matter, as she could not see or sense Gaara.

The sheer force of the jutsu wiping him out entirely was far from unlikely. Satsuki had shocked even herself with the power she had generated. Fighting to catch her breath, the Uchiha girl slowly began to relax, at least to an extent. She had won, even if it had come at a hefty price.

Or so she thought initially.

Just as Satsuki began to allow her mind to think of other things, a shifting sound caught her attention, and drew her gaze up from the burned ground. She mentally kicked herself for daring to have been optimistic. Roughly forty feet away, an unwelcome figure rose up from a pile of ashes and charred bark. His hair was still red, his left arm was still encased in sand, and he was still very much alive. Gaara had survived. Frustration, fear, and anger rose up within Satsuki, but she said nothing. Her voice was gone.

Shaking off the gray ashes, the Jinchuuriki slowly plodded toward her. His body was littered with burns, which were slowly mending themselves, and he was bleeding from a gash on his cheek. Most strikingly, one of his eyes was closed, and its eyelid was badly seared. As he approached her, Satsuki's heart rate increased. Her end was coming, one step at a time.

"Maybe you are special." Gaara said, his usual mocking intonation replaced by something resembling sobered respect. He said no more until he had reached her, and stopped just in front of her. Glaring up at him with all the fury she could muster, the Uchiha girl despised herself for being unable to lash out any further. Meeting her eyes confidently, Gaara's lips pulled into a smirk.

"I think we're done here." he said, his left arm morphing into a serrated, blade-like spike. He pressed the edge of the sand to her throat, applying just enough pressure to make her flinch.

"If it's any consolation, this is nothing personal. I'm killing you out of spite." he offered, his eyes drifting back in the direction of Konoha for a moment. He then reared his bladed arm back.

"Goodbye." he said, his voice seeming to echo slightly. Satsuki closed her eyes. She had done what she could. She did not wish to die, but there was no escaping it now. However, instead of a swift, sharp chopping sound, what the Uchiha girl heard next was the harsh impact of one body slamming into another. Snapping her eyes open again, Satsuki regained her vision just in time to see Gaara fly backwards, and a new shadow cast over her.

Slowly looking up again, the girl's eyes widened to saucers at what she saw. Cloaked in a flaming aura of orange chakra, still clad in bandages and a tattered shirt, was Naruto. Glancing down over his shoulder, the blonde's red eyes met hers.

"I should have come sooner. I'm…sorry." he apologized quietly, the softness of his voice contrasting the feral rage in his irises. He then turned his attention back to Gaara, who had landed a fair distance away, and was back up on his feet.

"I was wondering how long it would take you. Your timing needs work. She'd be headless right now if you were even a second later." the redhead called out to his fellow Jinchuuriki. Naruto remained silent, taking a preliminary step forward. Gaara did the same. The tension in the air had instantly thickened upon the blonde's arrival.

"If you wanted me, you should have just come looking." Naruto said. The Suna boy chuckled a bit and narrowed his eyes.

"What fun is that? Now you're good and motivated. Trust me. You'll need it." he said with a derisive snort. Satsuki dug her fingers into the dirt. Precisely what she had fought so relentlessly to prevent had come to fruition despite her efforts. Gaara had drawn Naruto to him, and she was helpless to do anything about it now. Whether her teammate could find a way to win or not was unclear to her, but it mattered little within her own mind. She had endangered him with her inability to overcome Gaara.

Once again, she had been too weak, and once again, she had failed.


A/N: Alright, so I took an extra day to spruce this one up. The original version didn't have the Shikamaru scene at all, and I feel like that scene is kinda the heart of this chapter in terms of future tension.

I hope this turned out okay. It's rather long, and a lot happens. Much of the events are taking place *roughly* at the same time, for reference.

Leave me a review if you're able. I read every single one, and they make my days :)

I love you all

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