Hello, my wonderful readers!
How are you? How's your day going?
I know, I know. Third update in three hours? How indecisive can you be, Foy?! I'm sorry ok? Last one, I promise XD
I've got another chapter for you~
Enjoy…
CHAPTER 12
Mikoto tugged out a kunai as the mist rolled over their group.
She spun it on her left palm and lowered her stance, flicking the blade into a reverse grip and clutching her right arm close to her body, dressed in a cast and numb from recent medication.
Kurama, she called in her mind, looking left and right, What's going on?
The Nine Tails yawned, setting its right over its left. "What do you think? You're being ambushed. Obviously."
The girl hissed at his sarcasm, By who? I can't sense anyone.
The beast rolled its eyes. "These people—or person—know what they're doing," It commented in its rumbling tone, setting its head on the back of its hand as it lay inside its cage. "They waited for your group to leave the grasslands and enter Fire country's forests. If they had waited a little longer, the forest would have gotten denser in their favour."
Enough with the monologue, Mikoto snapped, feeling a snarl rumble through her chest. She bared her teeth at the utter silence of the forest, speaking aloud, "Granny? Shizune?"
There was a tug on her backpack, and Shizune replied in a nearly inaudible whisper, "Mikoto, I'm here."
Mikoto exhaled, relieved. She shuffled back a little so that Shizune could find her right shoulder and grasp onto it, making sure not to disturb the cast on her right forearm. Mikoto knew from the Academy that medics, though trained to fight, were discouraged from engaging in combat given their importance on the field. Medics don't fight, not commonly.
There was a small scuff of feet on leaves some ten feet from Mikoto and the girl raised her kunai in that reverse grip, only to lower it slightly when she heard, "Washboard. You alive?"
She didn't acknowledge the name, snapping quietly, "Where's granny and Yugao?"
"Last I checked, they were behind you," Sai replied, shifting a bit closer to Mikoto and reaching a hand out to find Shizune's right shoulder. "Don't worry about them. Lady Tsunade and Yugao-senpai can fend for themselves until we find them." He ushered Shizune to keep low, standing at her front while Mikoto stayed at the woman's back in a ready stance. "Aren't you a sensor? Sense already. Tell us where these people are."
"That's the thing, Whitey," Mikoto muttered, her sky-blue eyes looking about the thick mist. "There's chakra everywhere."
The mist roiled, thickening. They could hardly see four feet ahead of them. The mist dampened the sounds of the forest, muffling it so much so that the girl felt as if someone had stuffed cotton balls in her ears, hearing faintly but unsure of where the sound come from.
Mikoto had a feeling that Sai wasn't smiling anymore.
Sai tried a wind jutsu. The mist merely roiled stronger, thicker, wherever the boy blew wind.
"Save your chakra," Shizune said quietly, tugging on the boy's side bag. "Mikoto."
"Yes," the girl nodded, already ahead of Shizune. "I think I've got something." The two others kept quiet, allowing the girl to concentrate. Mikoto had her eyes closed and her kunai holding hand was close to her chest. Kurama smirked, settling in for the show.
Mikoto's eyes opened and they were red, not vulpine but not still human.
She growled, "I can smell you, Haku."
"Excellent."
That was followed by several faint whistles. Mikoto raised the kunai to her neck and the ice needle deflected off the flat side of the blade, almost too late as the girl's enhanced hearing range was a mere five feet from herself. Moving her kunai to her right shoulder, right chest and left hip, blocking the needles honed to those points. She heard a grunt from Sai, and Shizune wavered to a knee.
Mikoto's chest rumbled, like a cornered tiger, and she dropped her kunai. She lifted her left hand near her chin and flicked her fingers into a half-ram, calling out the only one-handed jutsu she knew.
"Shadow Clone Jutsu!"
A sequence of pops sounded all around them and seven Mikoto clones appeared from chakra smoke, a replica of the original from the red-eyed glare into the dense mist and the crippled right arm, except these versions of the girl didn't possess their own backpacks and claymores. Two of the clones checked Sai and Shizune, while the original and the five other clones remained vigilant in their circular guard.
"They're ok, boss," one of the clones said in a murmur. Her red eyes located the needles embedded in their sides and neck, and the two clones summarily began pulling them out. One clone turned to the original and Mikoto shifted somewhat so that the clone could rummage inside the outer pocket of her backpack for smelling salt. "Conscious, but they're out of it. I don't think they'll be able to get back in the fight any time soon."
"What will you do now, girl?" Kurama smirked. "All by yourself, just like always-"
"Quiet," Mikoto said scathingly.
"Will you die such a cowardly death?" Kurama continued, unintimidated. The Kyuubi bit back, its harsh voice reverberating in Mikoto's skull. "To be slaughtered in this putrid mist. You know better than to die here." It stood up on all fours, roaring with finality, "This is not my glorious death!"
"Washboard," Sai spoke with a grating snarl, breaking his pleasant façade. "I'll watch Shizune."
Mikoto felt a wave of goosebumps ripple down her left arm, flexing her fist. She grinned, her reddened eyes dancing with mirth, "You sure? You got your ass handed to you just now."
Her clones sniggered and, much to their combined pleasure, they saw a tick throb on Sai's brow. His reply for her was by reaching into his side bag and pulling out a scroll, unfurling it with a flourish and whipping out an already inked brush from a separate part of his side bag. He artfully slashed at the scroll while it was still in the air, slamming his palms together afterwards.
"Ninja Art: Super Beast Imitating Drawing."
The black ink leapt off the pages of the scroll, manifesting as a pair of bears two times their height and three times as wide. These ink creatures bellowed and fell on all fours. A Mikoto clone had Shizune propped up in her arms and another was waving smelling salts under her nose, gently needling her back to consciousness. One of the bears prowled close to the original Mikoto and the other stayed near Sai.
Sai spoke in a monotone, casting a hollow look to his teammate, "I was careless. This Haku will not blindside me again."
Mikoto suppressed her urge to shudder from the boy's soulless stare, suddenly missing his empty smile and his deriding words.
"Get him."
Mikoto ran into the mist, following her nose.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
For as long as it had known her, Kurama observed that Mikoto had heavy legs and quick thoughts. Kicking was not her forte, and yet she was still quick on her feet; the Chunin exams were proof of that.
She wasn't quite a genius like Minato and the twins thought her to be, but she was still exceptionally sharp for one her age. Her family might have liked to deceive themselves that they knew the girl, but Kyuubi was seated firmly in her psyche, and as such knew her more thoroughly than any carbon-based lifeform on the planet.
As Minato had been pushing his youngest child to learn the Namikaze clan taijutsu, Kurama had been privately teaching the girl the Uzumaki clan taijutsu, among other secret lessons.
In terms of combat, Mikoto was more Uzumaki than Namikaze.
Case in point—
Haku slammed a low kick to the side of Mikoto's calf, but the girl didn't budge, absorbing the impact of the attack upward from her feet and channelling the power of Haku's strike into her left fist. Her knuckles shattered a hastily crafted ice clone, winding around and covering the side of her head from another kick.
"Nice," Kurama dully mumbled, its voice reaching the girl's ears. "Compensate for your right arm. Watch that chin."
The girl ducked a base palm to her chin, stepped away from a spinning elbow and leaned out of reach for the follow-up backhand, stepping into Haku's guard and her uppercut to his diaphragm came along with her.
Kurama steadily grinned, coaching the girl, "Good form, good form."
Both Jinchuriki and tailed beast groused when Haku crumpled into ice again.
"Steady. He's trying to frustrate you."
Mikoto grunted and tucked into a roll, avoiding a barrage of needles, leaping behind a tree. She sped away from the tree as more needles peppered her position, ducking and weaving in her low, speedy run.
"You have him?"
"I have him," the girl barked lowly, sliding on her knees underneath a horizontal hail of ice needles and reaching to the pouch of her left thigh, bringing out four shurikens. She fanned them out in her fingers and flung her arm out, slowing down on her knees to flip over another volley of needles, shooting more spinning stars into the mist.
She frowned when her stars clinked against a glassy surface.
She stopped short of running into another tree, hopping backwards as Haku dove down with a missile dropkick. Kurama sensed apprehension from the Ice Release user, through his hunter ninja mask and his wordless fighting. He got up, only to see Mikoto bobbing and weaving toward him, planting a firm fist into his gut.
He again fell apart into shards of ice.
"You can't keep this up, Haku," Mikoto said out loud, deftly taking out a kunai and flinging it to her right. On meeting the target, it made a wet thunk, followed by a smash similar to shattering glass. "This doesn't even make any sense. Why are you attacking us?"
As far as Kyuubi knew, Mikoto and Haku were on good terms.
Mikoto had held back her fury in Wave country, not killing Haku after what he had done to Sasuke and Sakura. And after getting double-crossed by Gato, a badly beaten Zabuza sacrificed himself to end Gato's tyranny over Wave. His body was never recovered.
As tense as the atmosphere between Mikoto and Haku was, they had both agreed to let bygones be bygones.
Mikoto hopped into a tree as the ground underneath her gave way, nearly falling into a deep pit. She hummed, irked more and more by the mist blanketing the forest.
Her irritation reached its tipping point.
Her left hand raced close to her chin, curled in a half-ram seal and she flooded her quarter of the forest with shadow clones.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
It was as strange as it was astonishing.
A flash mob of doppelgangers appeared in bursts of chakra smoke, briefly babbling amongst themselves in genial conversation. They spoke conversationally, laughing and exclaiming, pacing about their stretch of the forest with narrowed eyes.
Sai's jaw fell.
The clone clustered around him, almost too densely to be another more than a mass of chattering limbs, writhing for breathing room. One of his bears had to carry a swirly-eyed Shizune on its back, saving her from being crushed by the forest of clones, and Sai clambered onto his bear as well to save himself from being squeezed to death.
Despite the stifling mist, the casual conversing of the red-eyed clones permeated the air, humming until-
"He's here!"
Off in the distance, about half a dozen or so clones had yelled for the attention of their other brethren. The conversations of the clones halted and the silence was deafening, brief before it was broken by a war cry somewhere else among the throng of clones.
"Let's get him!"
The clones raised their voices, roaring to the high heavens, "YAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!"
And they dogpiled Haku.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Five minutes later
Mikoto cursed Sasuke again.
If tying someone's wrists with one hand was difficult, then having a hundred one-armed clones poking their head inwards to help wasn't matters easier.
"Ok, ok, ok, guys," she barked impatiently, trying and failing, to call her clones to order. "Guys, this isn't helping."
If it were possible, the heavy drone of the clones increased in tone.
A clone accidentally dug her elbow into Mikoto's side and the hair of another clone curtained her face.
Or was that her hair?
"Guys," she shouted again, blowing the hair out of her face. "Guys—I just need two of you." The babbling clones must not have heard her, because their hands reached down to Haku and fumbled at the binding rope on his wrists. The boy was thankfully insensible for this whole awkward ordeal, laid on his front and having his hands behind his back. "None of this is helping. I just need—"
Mikoto stopped, her clones clamouring over and under. Her brow pulsed with a tick.
"Back. Off!"
Trees rustled at her outwards at her yell and all of the clones in the immediate vicinity leaned back, brows high and mouths agape at their summoner's shout.
Mikoto frustratedly adjusted her askew collar and dusted her front once, refusing to feel ashamed. Meanwhile, as she collected herself, and her red eyes sharpened in the stubbornly thickening mist, her clones murmured amongst themselves.
"You didn't need to yell, y'know."
"In my ear too…"
"Kami, what a loser."
"We're only trying to help…"
"Does this look like a pimple to you?"
Mikoto wondered if she really was this annoying, poking a finger at a clone. "You and me."
"Yes, boss," the clone saluted, fumbling with her right hand before slapping the back of her left hand on her brow.
Mikoto was right-handed and using two left hands to tie a rope didn't in any way make the experience better.
"Damn you, Sasuke," She groused, giving up after they only succeeded in tying a rudimentary knot on Haku. Really, if the boy were awake, all he had to do to undo his restraints were to pull his wrists apart. Quite frankly, Mikoto was ashamed she was the one to have done this nonsense. "Good enough, now," she waved her good hand to her clones. "One at a time, dispel."
With each burst, random and uncoordinated, Mikoto ground her teeth at the memories of the pointless gossiping of her clones.
"Imagine how it is for me," Kyuubi commented, rolling sleepily onto its side. "But a hundred times worse."
"Screw you, Kurama. I'm not annoying," Mikoto retorted, debating what to do with her old adversary; she couldn't carry him in her arms since she only had one useable arm at the moment, and lugging him on her shoulders was out of the question because then she would have to unstrap the claymore sheathed vertically on her back, and that was going to be a whole other ordeal—taking off her backpack, unclipping the holster from her back, wearing back her travelling pack and then deciding how to carry her sword along with her—.
Besides, she liked having her claymore. The twins had gotten it for her after they learned she wasn't too comfortable with lighter blades, like a katana or tanto. The Claymore was Mikoto's sweet spot.
She grabbed Haku's ankle and began pulling him, taking her time heading toward Tsunade's boozy scent.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Ao didn't want to do this.
Yagura wanted this, not him.
Ao's chakra tightened and relaxed, shooting up from his chest and into his eyes.
His byakugan tracked Mikoto through his mist, and his rinnegan pulsed.
"Universal Pull."
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Kurama's ears perked.
Mikoto stopped, her face scrunched and her ears twitching.
"Do you feel that too?"
"Yes…" Kurama murmured aloud, steadily rising on all fours. Its ears twitched, swivelling left and right, and its vulpine red eyes turned misty as it dredged through centuries upon centuries of memories. "It's on the tip of my tongue…"
Then Mikoto was torn off her feet and propelled backwards.
Kyuubi's eyes bugged wide and it snarled, "Rinnegan!"
Mikoto gnashed her teeth as her back impacted tree after tree, bouncing against and through solid rock, and whipped through bushes, until her neck slammed into an open hand, choking spit out of her mouth.
"Kah!"
The force of her collision with the person's hand drove away most of the mist, thinning out the fog.
The hand closed around her throat and her left hand grabbed the person's wrist, gritting and gasping. Her burning red eyes squinted at the person, and she was only able to take his eye; his left eye was purple with black concentric rings, and his other eye was obscured by an eyepatch. Her chakra senses flared and she hacked again, realizing that the ringed eye was siphoning too much chakra with every passing minute.
She didn't get much time to note anything else, since the man reared his arm, the one choking her, and slammed her into the ground.
The earth reverberated with on impact and Mikoto blacked out.
Kurama screamed, its eyes reddened with primal agitation, "Mikoto!"
She jerked back awake and ground her teeth, growling at the stoic man bearing down on her. Her spine was in rough shape and she had another minor concussion, her second in a week since the Chunin exams.
Ao hid his surprise that she was still alive, but she could see it, through his expressionless mask.
She gurgled a breathless laugh.
Her canines elongated, the whites of her eyes inked black, and her red irises sharpened, lengthening.
"I do not wish to kill you, girl," the man said with a repulsed tone at the girl's gradual transformation. He brought out a kunai. "Children should have been excluded from assassination missions, that was how it was done in my day. Now…I don't know anymore…"
Kurama! Mikoto barked internally. She flattened her tongue and caught his kunai in her teeth, jerking down to impale her throat.
"Yes!" The beast bound onto its feet, its nine tails thrashing and crashing about the cage as it bellowed, "My glorious death! It's near!"
I'm going to do something reckless, Mikoto growled in a dark tone, biting down hard on the kunai and shattering it, spitting the metal shards in her mouth to the man's face, stunning him. Mikoto fed on Kurama's exhilaration.
Kyuubi's front paws slammed against the cage and it roared, "Do it!"
Then Mikoto exploded with toxic Kyuubi chakra, and Ao released her in favour of retreating a few yards. He shaded his rinnegan eye with the back of his hand at the spike of bright red and dark black chakra. The mist in the vicinity blew away at the storm of chakra howling from the girl lying prone inside the shallow crater. He leaned into the wind and chakra, fixing his feet on the ground as trees and clumps of earth were ripped away.
Ao's face twisted, peering with his hidden byakugan into the storm.
Without bending her knees or winding her legs back, the girl rose onto her feet and fell forward, crouching low on the ground on all fours and snarling bestially. Her broken right arm was healed and the cast had burnt off.
A cloak of black and red chakra obscured her whole body, warbling like a liquid yet bubbling like a gas. Her face was elongated somewhat, with a noticeable snout and sunken vulpine eyes. her snout opened a little to display a row of sharp teeth, leaking with drool and growling for blood.
Two tails, twice as tall as Ao, waved erratically in the wind.
Mikoto gripped the earth harder in her claws and reared back, lunging and crossing the distance in an instant.
Ao cursed and raised both of his hands, saying, "Almighty Push."
The bestial girl was cast back, only to stop herself by jamming her tails into the scorched ground. The push wasn't as strong as when he pulled her, sparking a small part of Mikoto's primal brain that what she noticed was true; that the ringed eye was taking too much chakra too quickly.
She slammed back to the ground and stood up on her hind legs, capitalizing on the man hissing and covering his left hand.
Her clawed hands flicked through hand seals and exhaled steam from the sides of her maw, calling out her jutsu, "Water Style: Exploding Water Colliding Wave."
Her mouth opened wide and she howled, water shooting from her mouth at high speed and whistling to Ao.
The man had finished a set of seals, spitting out clumps of earth, "Earth Style: Earth Release Wall."
Mikoto's jet stream collided against Ao's wall, holding strong against the onslaught, dampening the soil and making the forest swampy with excess water. The girl's tails burrowed into the water and tunnelled forward, while she maintained her water jutsu, flooding the landscape.
Her tails burst out on the other end, shattering the earth wall and forcing Ao to leap away.
Her red eyes noted that he had switched his eyepatch, covering his left eye and exposing his right. She narrowed her eyes when she saw that it was a byakugan, biting her jaw shut and pulling her fingers apart to end the jutsu.
She and Kyuubi bellowed at the same time, "Thief!"
Her two tails ripped out from the soupy ground, diving down toward Ao as he skimmed the clearing. The man ran with his head low, barely dodging the tails as they spiked into the ground, weaving left and right as the prehensile chakra tails swam after him. He zigzagged his way to her, leading with a kick to the side of her head into her prepared forearm guard.
The girl planted her footing firmer on her hindlegs, and guarding her side against a knee, racing her fist into Ao's chin and grazing it, leaving her open to a low kick to her legs.
It was like kicking a tree.
Mikoto didn't fall or falter, bringing her left fist close to her chin and shooting her right to the man's chest, growling when it was dodged. He jumped to the side, away from the tail that erupted from the ground and swung a kick into Mikoto's side, tagging her and following with an elbow strike clean across her jaw. He slammed a punch into the other side of her and snapped a kick to her shoulder, stepping away from another tail.
"Focus, Mikoto!" Kurama bayed, frothing at the mouth. "He is a Jounin. You cannot beat him in hand-to-hand combat." Despite Mikoto and its mindless frenzy, smashing its paws and shoulders into the cage, it still coached the girl. "What do you have that he doesn't?"
The girl skipped away, shaking away the cobwebs in her head and snarling out loud, "Shit loads of chakra."
"Use it!" Kyuubi wailed, elated. He allowed the girl access to a small part of its memories—a tiny part—and the girl soaked in the technique the tailed beast wanted her to use. She had never used it before. And it wasn't like her previous water jutsu, where she had privately trained with it away from her family's eyes. For this one, she moved purely on instinct, summoning five identically feral clones, swarming Ao as one in a tag team of tails and bodies. Kurama cheered, "Use it!"
Mikoto's front claws landed on the ground and she tipped her head back, pulling chakra from her bottomless reserves and revolving it behind her gnashed teeth.
Ao dispelled two of the clones, yanking out a katana and deflecting a clawed strike, spinning with the blow and slicing into the clone, cutting diagonally downward from their shoulder to their lower side, dispelling them.
Mikoto opened her mouth when the ball became too big, hovering it in front of her open maw and continuing the process of gathering Kyuubi's potent chakra and spinning it in a ball, splitting her mind between doing so and maintaining the spherical shape, balancing the density of the chakra.
The growing ball of chakra was a scorching shade of black, and the sphere encasing glowed with a red outline.
Inside the sphere, Kyuubi's chakra roiled chaotically.
Ao cut down the last pestering clone and blazed to Mikoto, his eye bugged wide at the density of chakra rotating inside the ball.
Mikoto then did something that stopped the man short of reaching her.
She inhaled the ball of chakra and snapped her jaw shut.
Ao bared his teeth in a curse and tore off the eyepatch covering his rinnegan, shouting, "Almighty Push!"
Mikoto's claws had sunk deep into the mud and she spread chakra into the ground, and the area underneath her was blasted away into the sky the second the gravity push slammed into her, yet the girl tipped her head down and her red vulpine eyes simmered.
She opened her mouth and bellowed Kyuubi's technique.
"Tailed Beast Ball."
A beam of Kyuubi's chakra blinked out of her maw and Ao stumbled away, speeding away from the beam of chakra doggedly chasing him. Mikoto hopped from one clump of earth to another, pursuing Ao in the air until she landed squarely on the ground and levelled a sweeping horizontal beam of Kyuubi's chakra at the fleeing man.
Ao couldn't run from this one.
The chakra seared into Ao, and a quarter of a second later, the fox girl snapped her jaw closed.
She sat back on her haunches and bellowed to the sky.
Then she collapsed on her front on the muddy forest floor, whereupon Yugao materialized behind her, her hands clasped in a dragon hand seal. The seal the Hokage had given her in case the nine tails chakra hummed at the girl's back, sucking in the excess Kyuubi chakra and easing off the cloak of chakra that covered the girl.
Her features pulled back to normal; her snout receded and her sunken red eyes became normal again. Her hindlegs snapped straight and her claws became blunt, cracked and caked with mud. Her white apron shirt hand and her blue shinobi sandals had been burnt off, leaving her in a black vest and black pants. The ends of her straight red hair were singed and she groaned as her sharp teeth slowly shortened.
Mikoto panted, until the tension in her body released all of a sudden and she fell unconscious.
Yugao slumped down with relief, kneeling by the girl and checking for any injuries. Her katana, momentarily forgotten in her hurry to reseal the nine tails, was soaked red with Kiri ninja blood. There was a lull in the air, as the woman turned the girl onto her back and looked her over, feeling another wave of relief when the worst of Mikoto's injuries were a few scrapes on her face and some harmless burn marks on her neck.
She looked up with a jolt when she heard footsteps approaching, reaching for her hip and closing her hand around nothing, as the sword was not sheathed on her hip at that moment.
It was Tsunade.
The medic pushed past toppled trees, saying, "The brat really did this?"
"It could have been much worse," Yugao answered, sitting back on her knees as Tsunade knelt beside the girl, roving a glowing green palm over her and checking for internal injuries. Yugao saw the blood on Tsunade's knuckles, wondering if the medic code even applied to a legendary Sannin.
Content that there was no internal bleeding, Tsunade motioned to the devastation of the forest, the fires burning about and the muddied ground, caused by Mikoto's Kyuubi-enhanced water jutsu, "What's worse than this?"
Too tired from their battle with Kiri ninjas, Yugao asked, "How's that other guy?"
"The kid pretty much vaporized him," was Tsunade's reply, rubbing her sore knuckles. "I can't heal ash." She jutted a chin to Yugao, asking, "Have you radioed for help? With how badly the man's burnt, we won't be able to safely transport him back to Konoha."
"Itachi's close. He's bringing backup."
"Good," Tsunade nodded. The medic looked over Yugao with a critical eye, seeing her black eye, her uneven breathing and the way she held her left arm close to her body. "What about you?"
For this, Yugao scoffed, "Don't worry about me. I've been through worse."
"Don't be stubborn," Tsunade barked, and Yugao flinched. "Come here. Let me see."
Yugao had a torn calf muscle, a sprained ankle and some fractured fingers. The latter wasn't anything serious, Tsunade observed aloud.
Tsunade scolded her for trying to hide her injuries.
If Mikoto had been awake, she would have laughed at Yugao's sulking, while the medic tend to her injuries.
"We'll have to get you to Konoha for another check," Tsunade concluded her healing, steadily sweeping glowing green hands over Yugao. "For now, you're fine."
Yugao pouted, mumbling quietly, "Thanks."
"Mhm, no problem," Tsunade rolled her eyes at the prideful woman's appreciation. She turned around in a squat, saying, "Help me get her on my back."
Yugao gently sat Mikoto up and heaved her onto Tsunade's waiting back. Sai joined them some minutes later. An ink bear carried Shizune on its back. The group steadily made their way back to Konoha.
They needed to report this to the Hokage.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Naruto's eyes fluttered.
The wind rushed past his ears, and he could also hear a distinct sound. A sound he was all too familiar with.
The beating of wings.
His eyes opened a little and he smiled invisibly at his sister, carrying him in her arms.
A pair of large golden yellow wings flapped mightily on her back, glittering in the sun as they soared above the clouds.
The girl's purple eyes looked ahead, narrowed with seriousness in the direction of their destination. Even at that, Naruto squinted and saw a thin halo hover in his sister's head. A shroud of Rin's chakra covered both of them, bathing Naruto and rejuvenating his depleted reserves.
The hole in his lower left side still leaked with blood, not healing.
Despite the numbness of Naruto's pain, he couldn't help admiring his sister, basking in her glow.
He closed his eyes and whispered, breathy and quiet, "My angel."
He slipped back asleep as his angel carried him home.
Authors Note
So yeah. Ao (and Mei) have had the rinnegan for about a week. The eye uses a lot of chakra and effort. And given that time frame, they've only been able to use one path at a time. Mei has Asura path, and Ao has Deva path. Mikoto vaporized Ao with the Tailed Beast Ball. Hopefully this doesn't cause a riot XD
Next chapter would be uploaded on Monday.
Minato is going to make a big decision concerning Yagura and Kiri. Also, expect some Naruto/Rin mushiness ;)
So, what do you think of this chapter?
What do you think of the story so far?
Tell me what you think, would you so kindly. Stay happy and stay safe, wherever you are in the world.
I'll see you when I see you.
Foy.