Chapter 27

Kurotsuchi was breathing hard as she ran from pillar to pillar, dodging out of the way of the debris falling from all around her. She only had a few seconds at most to regain cognizance of her surroundings per pillar before her cover was blown and she had to go to the next. What she saw in between her brief moments of respite was some of the most unbelievable stuff she'd ever seen in her life.

And that was saying a lot.

A giant made of glowing purple bone and armor walking forward, trying its hardest to destroy what was in front of it with a sword the size of any of the pillars she usually hid behind and black fire pouring from its mouth.

It was Sasuke. Naruto's rival/brother figure. The way Naruto talked about him put the exact wrong picture in Kurotsuchi's head. A nice-hearted, but stubborn and dark kid that got swayed by the promise of power in order to exact revenge against his real brother. Perhaps not the most glamorous type of person to exist, but Kurotsuchi would be lying if she said she couldn't understand that type of person. It was only about two months ago that if someone said the hidden leaf was destroyed a smile would come to her lips. Things change, but the way he was described gave her some empathy for the situation he was in.

Now…

Fu, covered head to toe in purple battle armor slammed into the giant's chest feet first and pushed back with all her might, launching herself backwards and staggering him a little bit. As she did a full rotation in the air, she whipped her arms around and dug the sharp end of an exoskeletal polearm into the giant's ribcage, pulling herself forward and landing another kick to its chest.

They were trying to topple him, hoping that would reveal the squishier human it was hiding. Kurotsuchi didn't know if Fu was planning on killing him after that or what, but it was a fight for survival for all of them. Worst still, after trying to dig a tunnel underneath the giant purple monster thing, he'd been targeting her most of all. The worrying part was he must have been doing that because he considered her actions his biggest threat. And considering she was in a room with a Jinchuuriki, a kage, and a puppet master, the fact that she was the biggest threat spoke volumes to an apparent lack of hope they had.

She dashed out between her pillar, quickly firing off a shot of quicklime at the giant's base before diving behind another pillar. The biggest plan she had for her was to pepper him with small shots of the quick drying cement and douse the base with a lot of water, hopefully blinding him to the outside world and keeping him in place long enough to figure out what to do with him.

Temari and Kankuro came rolling around on the Salamander puppet, doing the dual job of being mobile enough that he can't get a good hit on her and allowing her the vantage point she needed to let loose huge gales of wind at him, further disorienting him.

Another hit to the pillar she was hiding behind. The fight was becoming patterned and routinized. That was never good. It always meant that the losing side was going to do something big and crazy to flip the game board over and come out on top. She had to end things quick.

"Fu! Buy me time!" Kurotsuchi shouted out before breaking for cover one last time. The green-haired girl was already on the case, having abandoned her wings for a heavy set of armor with four arms that had oversized hands attached to the ends. Sasuke's Susanoo dropped a bastard sword the size of a building on Kurotsuchi, which was caught by Fu's hulking form.

Kurotsuchi finished doing her required handseals and shot a geyser of water at Sasuke's base. It hit the dust that was on the ground and shot up around him, covering at least up to the giant's chest with the quick drying cement with a thick base around the bottom.

She was confident in the strength of her cement, but she also knew that she was a human amongst giants. Being around so many powerhouses at once had started to make her wonder how useful she could be at helping a fight.

One second.

Two.

She let out a breath and fell to a knee to catch her breath. She'd been consuming a lot of chakra getting all that quicklime out and running around like a spider trying not to get swatted. But he was immobile and ripe for the picking. The plan worked.

That is, until a sword sheathed in a raiment of lightening cut out a hole in the cement binding and flew forward, spearing Fu through the midsection and slicing open a gash in Kurotsuchi's abdomen in one moment.

Kurotsuchi grabbed her bloodied side and jumped out of the way while Fu and her ton of armor fell to one knee. She was a normal human, thus Kurotsuchi's wound was more grievous. Despite the fact that her face was scrunched in pain, she was able to glare open her eyes in the direction where Sasuke came from and saw him directly in front of her, sword sizzling its covered blood, her blood, from the lighting chakra coursing over it.

His face was like something he'd never seen before. Someone so thoroughly twisted by hatred and a lust for vengeance that it had ceased to be human. His eyes like swirling pools of brackish blood, even leaking the damn fluid.

"Naruto was wrong about you," Kurotsuchi gasped. The pain was intense and the cut was deep. It might have nicked something important

He paused, maybe even flinched for a fraction of a second. "So you know him?"

Kurotsuchi chuckled lightly. "Know him? I'm married to him."

His eyes went to her forehead protector, then back to her. Past the hatred, confusion settled on his brow. He was clearly out of the loop. Regardless, she continued on. "He talked about you sometimes. Made it out like you were brothers. Rivals in all aspects. He never gave up on you. Loves you and wants to bring you back to leaf." Kurotsuchi paused to catch her breath and get back on her feet, despite the jabs of pain lancing up her body. Sasuke's face was difficult to read. But the hatred was getting more intense. She could feel it on her skin. She could see visions of her death dance before her eyes.

Regardless, she continued on. "But you're not that. Not anymore. You're just a thing now. Not human, not beast, not demon. A thing which is hard to define controlled by something else even harder to define. A riderless wagon hitched to nothing but darkness, pulled forward. I don't think he'd recognize you if he saw you now."

His face settled. The novelty of her knowing Naruto had worn off in a big way. He didn't care if she was married to Naruto. She was going to die.

Lightning rolled through the sword like a storm and pierced the ground. He pulled up, slicing through the cement like rotting butter and arcing up to her, aiming to cut her in twain.

It got close enough that she could feel the static electricity arc up and tickle her legs before a scythe of wind disrupted the lightning and dissipated it. Temari and Kankuro, while riding the salamander, came to a stop right next to Kurotsuchi. The kazekage disembarked and clanked her war fan to the ground, eyes set forward, completely unperturbed.

"Sasuke Uchiha," she stated. "I don't have any idea why you are here, but you're surrounded and outmatched. Give yourself up and we might be able to work out a plea deal for you."

"Outmatched?" He questioned mirthfully, like she had just told him a joke. "Don't kid yourself. The fact that you were made kage after your brother died just goes to show how little military might the hidden sand has, rather than any talent you might have. If you run now, you might survive. That's the only deal I'm willing to make."

Temari's jaw clenched. Kurotsuchi had been stalling for time for Fu to get her torso stitched back together, and for good reason. That girl was the real heavy hitter of the bunch, and everyone knew it. More to the point, Temari didn't know why Sasuke was here. What was really worrying her was that they were still the only ones on the scenes. Either nobody else heard it, or they're all preoccupied with something else and she didn't know which of the two was worse. She had to find out what Sasuke wanted and keep it away from him at the expense of everything else.

"Naruto's not here," she said harshly, letting the fan open to its full extent.

His grin just got bigger. "I'm not here for that loser."

"What are you here for?"

He didn't answer, face turning back to that of a demon's. His free hand went up to his face, covering an eye, prompting a surge of black fire to launch forward, hungry and intent on devouring her.

Kankuro jumped forward and got hit by the brunt of the attack, quickly becoming engulfed completely. Kurotsuchi let out a yelp of surprise while Temari's face remained stony. After struggling for a few seconds, he fell to the ground and laid still.

Not waiting, Sasuke launched forward, sword in hand. He was as quick as the wind and as ravenous as the sea. He planted a foot in front of her and swung the sword on a path to decapitate her head.

What he didn't see nor expect was for Kankuro's burnt hand to shoot out from his position on the ground and grab his ankle with a vice grip, pulling on the bloodthirsty lunatic and unbalancing him, providing the perfect opportunity for Temari to heft her war fan and swing it downwards diagonally.

Sasuke ducked under it and tried to wrench his foot away from the still burning man, but only succeeded in pulling the surprisingly light puppeteer from the ground and towards him, where several more hands and arms untangled themselves from the body and wrapped themselves around the Uchiha. Through the burning cloth, he could see a wooden face with three eyes and a mouth full of venomous instruments.

A puppet.

He should have known.

Not risking a close engagement, Temari swung her fan and created a dense bullet of air aimed straight at his chest. Tied down as he was, the only thing he could do was hastily bring up a Susanoo rib as quickly as he could and was shot across the room even still.

He hit the wall in a puff of purple bones, black fire, broken puppet, and dust.

Kurotsuchi started shambling away in the opposite direction of where Sasuke was, her breath short and ragged and intensely pained. Her hand was hiding a side slick with the wet of blood and despite her pressure on it, the blood wasn't letting up in the slightest. She fell to her knees at the bottom of a broken pillar and started kicking off her pants.

Nearly biting a wound into her cheek, she removed her hands and glanced down for a second. Just under her ribs, about half a foot long, and a few inches deep. The area around it was turning purple and it was still spouting blood.

Probably a ruptured kidney, internal bleed, and maybe a nicked artery. Even with the advances in medical technology, that was damn near a death sentence for her.

But not if she had anything to say about it.

Kurotsuchi wrapped the legs of her pants around the wound and tied it off, making sure it wouldn't be too much to cut off circulation, but enough to prevent it from leaking everywhere. That was the best she could do and it would have to work for now.

She got to her feet and walked back where she came from, under no pretenses to how much combat efficacy she could give in her condition. Her first duty was to find out where everyone else was and perhaps get some medical treatment. If she survived, then that was gravy.

In the back of the room, she could hear the sounds of the fighting starting back up again. The crackle of lightning, the woosh of flames, the sounds of stone being torn apart and sent flying as shrapnel. It was chaos.

She ducked into one of the smaller hallways that lead into the big room and kept her senses about her. The shaking of the castle wasn't delegated to her single fight with the Uchiha, it seemed. She could feel the vibrations of countless battles, explosions, huge releases of the elements, and anything and everything else that could affect happen during a shinobi fight happen all around her all at the same time.

Ahead of her, she could see a room that was blasted open and the sounds of scuffling inside. She poked her head in and saw Chojuro fighting against twenty or so white, humanoid-type things, all with various disfigurations and manic grins. He was making short work of them, but there was a lot to contend with. She thought about joining in, but the knowledge that she couldn't even run, much less swing a sword tempered that leaning.

She pushed off the wall as quietly as she could and continued on down the hall.

The girl from hidden stone had no idea where she was going or where any of the hallways went to or where she even should be going. But she had to keep on going, that much was certain.

She continued walking until she saw a four-way juncture, each with a hallway leading off into pitch blackness. Forward was empty. Right was empty. Left held a man walking towards her with an orange swirled mask.

Orange swirled mask?

That sounded familiar. Where had she heard that descriptor from?

As he walked forward towards her, his eye became more prominent. As red as fallen blood with a strange pattern swirling around in the middle.

Oh, right. The mastermind of the whole plan. The one who kickstarted everything shitty going on in her life. The one who sent those immortal people to kidnap her friends who almost killed her. The one who destroyed Naruto's life so bad that he became clinically depressed. The one who disrupted her peaceful, ignorant life.

He stopped in front of her. Rather than hatred, his eye held a serious amount of annoyance and frustration. "You're not a Jinchuuriki. You're… what? The wife from stone?"

That's right.

That's what she was.

The goddamn wife from stone.

She hated that, she really did. Who was she? Kurotsuchi? No. Shinobi? No. Person? No. She was wife.

She really hated that.

"And you're… what? The fuckwit who has no dick and decided the whole world should know?"

His brow cocked up and then he shook his head, starting to walk past her. "I've got no time to waste with you."

"What do you want them for?" Kurotsuchi asked just as he was about to brush past her.

He was close enough that she could smell him. Why did he smell normal? He didn't smell strange or horrible or gutwrenching. He smelled just like a normal guy, not the person responsible for so much wanton and reckless death.

Obito looked at her more seriously. "The Jinchuuriki?"

Kurotsuchi nodded.

"I need them for my plan."

Kurotsuchi closed her eye and leaned hard against her sword, using it like a cane as it was sheathed in her scabbard. "Oh, you're not taking out their tailed beasts for shits and giggles? Man, that's… surprising. Would you kindly wait as I gasp from shock?"

"You're not real," he bit back. "None of this is real. A reality where something like this-" His words were punctuated by a particularly large explosion that rattled her bones and sent dust from the ceiling downwards. "A reality where something like this is allowed to happen doesn't deserve to exist. I'm going to make a better one. A real one. One where no one gets hurt. One where no one dies."

Kurotsuchi's jaw clenched. Her pale, anemic face set into a look nearing rage. "You fucking coward. You think you can hide away into a… into a what? A fantasy world? That's why you're doing this? That's why you're murdering people? Just so you can close your eyes to the fact that the world is a shit place sometimes? Everyone who talked about you said you were the strongest person they had ever encountered. Like a tailed beast condensed into human form. But you're not strong. You're the weakest man I know. The weakest one I've ever heard of."

His lone eye went half-lidded. "You're content with the way things are?"

She shook her head. "Of course not. But at least I'm doing my best to change it. To change it without hurting anyone. Or at the very least, without fucking murder. Like you're doing."

He didn't respond to her, instead continuing on his way past her. Not killing her. Not hurting her.

Ignoring her.

Kurotsuchi snarled and unsheathed her sword, taking a shaky step and flinging the blade end over end towards his back. It passed right through him, like he wasn't even real, but it didn't clang against the floor. His arm whipped back, throwing the blade he had caught right back at her.

She couldn't dodge it.

It pierced her in the chest with such force that it sunk all the way to the hilt and then continued on, pushing her to the ground.

Kurotsuchi was left on the cold stone floor in the middle of the crossroads, staring at the ceiling in a pool of her own blood.

00000000

Mei roundhouse kicked the second Mizukage in the back, directly into the waiting sealing arrangement that Jiraiya had on him. He was easier to deal with than the others because the room they were in was smaller than he could use for his genjutsu summons. That, and she knew how to detect his invisibility illusions which, when coupled with hers and Jiraiya's surprisingly good combat synergy led to a very quick sealing.

Some of them had turned into puppets; corpses without a brain that retained all their power, while others still had retained some of their cognizance and were doing their best to not murder their supposed quarry.

It was working good in their favor at the very least. But that meant they were solely on the defensive. As soon as the battle started, it spread out to all the castle's corners, which Mei would hazard exactly was what the masked man wanted. They had no idea where he was, or the remaining Jinchuuriki were.

Yugito, Fu, Naruto.

Yugito had been strong before she had gained complete control over Matatabi's power, but now that she had, the woman was damn near unstoppable, somewhere near where Yagura had been in his prime. As far as Fu went, Mei hadn't even seen her fully let loose. Naruto, however, was the real variable in the situation.

From Jiraiya's intel, she knew that the masked man was using the chakra of the tailed beasts to do achieve something big, but they didn't know if he needed all of the tailed beasts' chakra powers, or a portion. Would he need all nine if he had eight and a half? Would five be okay if it was only a portion of all 9 of them?

They were dealing with too many unknowns.

Jiraiya thumped her on the shoulder and thumbed a direction to their left. He had scouting toads all around the castle, keeping an eye on all of the battles going forth. Almost every one was turning into a battle of attrition since he was practically the only shinobi with the know how of creating seals powerful enough to contain those powerhouses. That, and there were all those white plant people running around. The Zetsus, she'd heard them call themselves. Almost powerless in and of themselves, but they could overrun the samurai stationed there easily enough in great numbers.

The two of them ran into another hallway, blowing past rubble and debris that got in their way like it was made of so much Styrofoam. "How's it look?" she asked. "Where's Yugito and Fu?"

"Yugito's fighting kekkai genkai holders in a training room on the opposite end of the castle. She's doing fine. Fu's with Temari and Kankuro fighting Sasuke. He isn't one of the reincarnated, so they should be fine. I don't have eyes on either the masked man or Kurotsuchi, which I don't like."

"Kurotsuchi's a hardy girl; she'll be fine. More importantly, she's smart enough not to get involved with anyone too much stronger than her," Mei said almost breathlessly as she blasted a hole in the wall, leading to a room where Ai and the Third Raikage were fighting, each blurs of electricity in their own right.

The two of them leapt into the fray, chakra collecting in their hands, ready to fight.

Mei, however, wasn't concentrating on the fight. All the better for her, considering if she was thinking about it, she could lose an arm or her head, such was the lethality that the Third Raikage represented. Instead, she was thinking about Naruto.

As things were, she didn't know if it was better for him to stay on the toad mountain, or for him to come and join the fray. The only thing she'd heard about his powers were hearsay from Yugito and Fu from the island, putting him only slightly weaker than them. And he was only getting stronger on the toad mountain, supposedly.

Bringing him here would put him in danger, but severely bolster their own ranks against the masked man's. That may also be what the masked man was hoping for. If Naruto joined them, he could get hurt. He could die.

That wasn't something she wanted to chance. Compared to her in age, he was a child, but more and more she had been looking up to him as something she wanted, something she was grasping for for a very long time. Not even as a romantic partner. The kind of life he led was the kind of life she wanted. Completely unafraid to attach himself to anything he deemed worthy enough and to not let go, no matter how much it pained him to do so. Now that was something she had never seemed to be able to grasp. And it came so naturally to him that it almost made her jealous.

There was something about him that just seemed so pure and unadulterated that to put him in harms way would be like committing a grave sin. Like showing up to a funeral drunk. Throwing mud at a wedding dress. Something that just shouldn't happen.

Maybe it was just that she wanted to protect him. If he died, if he got hurt, if he got jaded, if he grew to hate the world that he used to love, a piece of her would go with him. In truth, a lot of her was riding on him. More than she would like to admit.

More than anything, he was the answer to the question of what it was all for. The reason why she shed so much blood and so much blood shed from her. Why so many people had to die. She'd been let down so many times before that if she was broken one last time, she knew that it would be over for her.

The lightning between the two leaders of the village hidden in the clouds finally dissipated. The third had been sealed and the fourth still looked pretty good. Most of the battles the two of them had solved had left the person who was keeping the reincarnated at bay so exhausted as to not be able to rejoin the battle. It was good that Ai was still around. They needed him.

"Go that way," Jiraiya said, pointing behind him. "You'll find Shibuki holding off a wave of the Zetsus. Don't let him die."

Ai nodded without a word edgewise and ran to go help the minor village head.

Jiraiya turned to Mei and narrowed his eyes slightly. She was looking to the side, breathing slightly heavily being the only sign of battle stress on her. She was out of it in a big way. How she'd been able to fight the Third Raikage like that was anyone's guess.

"Have you been hit?" He asked.

She noticed him with a start and shook her head. "No, I'm good. Where to next?"

He hesitated for a fraction of a second and moved to exit the room from where they had entered from, finding his way back into the labyrinth that comprised most of the castle. "This way. Tsunade's fighting Kakuzu."

"Kakuzu?"

"You fought him before. He had iron hard skin, was full of tentacles, and had multiple hearts in his body."

Mei nodded and continued after him. "So that's what his name was."

"She's holding well, but she can't summon Katsuyu until he's taken care of."

When he didn't get a response from her, he looked back and noticed she was looking down, eyes completely focused and unmoving. Again, she was out of it. "What's wrong?!" questioned aggressively.

She started again, looking back up to him. "I think you should make sure Naruto doesn't come back."

His jaw set in place and he turned back around. He'd been giving it an amount of thought as well. "There are too many unknowns to make a good decision. I've sent a messenger toad to him. If he decides to come back, then he'll come back."

Mei's brow furrowed. "If you let him know what happened, then he'll come back regardless of whether he's finished his training.

"He's learned a lot since he was a kid. He's got more wisdom than he has any right to have. If he comes back, then I trust he'll have put some thought into it."

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On toad mountain.

"I'm going back," Naruto said resolutely, eyes tinged with the telltale signs of sage-mode.

Pa put his hands up, eyes closed from annoyance and an unbelieving smile across his mouth. "Why don't you put some thought into it? You just figured out how to collect the sage energy on your own. You don't know what-"

"I've thought about it enough," Naruto said, completely unwavering. "Now send me back."