And here is the conclusion of our favorite lady versus the dangerous puppeteer...
Length! Omg I found length again!
Promises Not Made are Promises Never Kept
Chapter Twenty-Two: Mother of All Things
A disgustingly sick sound filled the air as the pike burst through the opposite side of Inaré's torso, a rather large kunai sinking itself into Kankuro's flesh and twisting itself up into his ribcage.
Sasuke's eyes widened.
There they stood in a death lock, Inaré grinning at Kankuro as blood dribbled down her chin and he stared at her in shock, her kunai buried up to her fingers into his body.
"Your poison sucks," she hissed at him, the grin painful and yet relentlessly satisfying as she smiled at him, the agony twisting the expression at the edges. Kankuro's eyes narrowed at her, and he winced as the kunai turned angrily within him. The way his breathing was labored, but not entirely painful, showed him that she had been unsuccessful in the attempt to pierce his lung.
"Yeah?" He panted venomously, sneering at her. "You missed."
Inaré's grin transformed into a scowl, and as one they pushed each other away, both of them stumbling backwards as they looked down to survey their wounds.
They had both taken their respective weapons with them, and Kankuro's pike was bloody while Inaré's blade dripped profusely. Sasuke felt himself starting to cry, raising his hands to cover his face and peering down through cracks in between his fingers.
"Inaré! OH MY GOD, INARÉ-!"
"SHUT UP, SASUKE!" She roared at him, making his jaw snap shut as she lifted her eyes to glare heatedly at him. Turning her gaze back onto her opponent, she lifted a hand to set it over the gaping hole in her abdomen. No amount of pressure was going to stem that blood flow. "I GOT THIS!" She took a few breaths as deep as she could, and swallowed, licking her lips. "I got this."
Sasuke, his nails clawing at the railing in nervousness, switched his weight from foot to foot as he watched and felt nausea tearing at his insides.
"Fuck you, you bitch," Kankuro swore. "Like hell you do! We're both going to die at this rate, you crazy girl!"
"I don't mind," Inaré replied with a small smirk. "As long as I make sure to make you suffer as much as I do, I don't mind in the slightest. But, you know, if you can't handle it…" Relaxing for a moment, she shrugged. "Just say you concede. I promise not to rub it in your face too much."
Kankuro scoffed, but one couldn't help but notice the little smirk that appeared on his lips.
"Che," he stated simply, standing there and rolling his weapon in between his remaining fingers. Kaoru had quite almost ripped his right hand off, and with that body part out of commission there was no way he could completely renew the connection with his puppet. "You sure are a twisted little cunt."
"If that turns you on, you sick little fuck, I'm taken," she responded curtly with a twisted smirk. As Kankuro pulled a face, she began to make hand signs of her own.
"Language people, jeez," Kakashi commented, rolling his eyes and covering one ear with a grim expression on his face.
I'm going to pass out soon if I don't finish this. Inaré thought. The best thing to do is keep the flow going as long as possible. As long as my Chakra is flowing, I'll stay conscious.
"Kaoru," she breathed softly, making the wolf – which had picked herself up and limped over to her master – look up at her. "I'm going to need your help with this."
Her smile was grim as she thought about Haku and what Gaara had did to him.
It looks like you'll have to exact vengeance yourself, Sasuke. She nodded sadly to herself. For both of us. But I'll be damned if I don't do my best to kill this asshole.
She had never been the type to half-ass anything.
Concentrating – it had been a while – she finalized the string of symbols and closed her eyes. Kaoru, standing in front of her between her and Kankuro, raised her muzzle up to the sky and howled a single, relentless note.
That very sound seemed to shake the room, and a ring of Chakra carved itself around Kaoru, drowning the animal in a column of powerful white light. Sasuke's eyes widened.
No. That's-!
"Inaré!" He cried. "Inaré, DON'T-!"
"TRANSFORM!" Inaré commanded, raising her hand to the light as the wind it created made everybody hold onto their hats. "I SUMMON THEE! AMATERASU, GODDESS OF THE SUN AND MOTHER OF ALL THINGS!"
The next howl they heard was regal and strong, and everybody felt their hearts lift at the sound as a body burst through the light, something green and blue piercing through the column and slicing it in two.
A massive creature appeared in midair as the light vanished in a spiral of Chakra, and an enormous white wolf (three times the size Kaoru originally was) with a gigantic sword slung across her back landed solidly beside Inaré, crouched down and entire body geared to kill.
Red markings, like flickers of fire, danced across her fur as she moved and breathed, the great sword she wielded moving and shifting on its own as if made of wind and water. Green at the hilt and slowly fading to a deep sea blue at the blade, there seemed to be no real substance to it, the entire thing seeming to change and alter within its own magic.
Sasuke smiled. Even though his teammate's decision was positively dangerous, the image of the mighty Amaterasu standing beside her always brought him joy. They were such a beautiful team. And just as deadly as lovely.
Inaré. You better kill him.
Kankuro's jaw dropped.
"What the fuck-?!"
Kiba whistled loudly in appreciation as Akamaru barked in excitement.
Smirking, Inaré reached to her own back and finally unsheathed her own blade, pointing it at Kankuro. The deadly weapon flashed in the light.
"Time for some payback, don't cha think?" She asked snootily as she smirked at him.
Then, as one, she and the newly-transformed Amaterasu leaped for him.
"What the hell?!" Naruto asked in disbelief as Kankuro barely managed to dodge the blades, cursing the entire time. His wound was not nearly as severe as Inaré's, and the poison still in her system (to a degree) made her moves less sharp than they were before, the mimicking Jutsu now no longer active with Crow out of the fight. The two (master and animal) seemed to become one; two sides of the same coin, and their movements mirrored each other perfectly as they jumped and flipped and attacked. Kankuro had to frantically pull on the Chakra in his puppet to reconnect the strings as best he could and use the multitude of weapons the machine had installed as his last-ditch defense mechanism. "The wolf is a god?!"
"Haha, no Naruto, not really," Sasuke reassured him with a laugh. Though he smiled, he was still terribly uneasy. Inaré was by far the most headstrong out of the group (and not surprising, with the most to prove) but it wasn't like her to pull Kaoru so deeply into the battle. Silently, he wondered what she was thinking. Was summoning Kaoru's true form really necessary for such an amateur match? After they had both dealt such a blow to each other? She knew the potential repercussions, and she just didn't seem to care. She always takes things like this way too seriously. Ironic, really. "Amaterasu is just the name of the form that Kaoru takes when she transforms using this Jutsu. It's based off a fairytale."
Naruto blinked in confusion at him.
"Fairytale? What fairytale?"
Sasuke smiled at him.
"Okay, long story short," he began.
"A long time ago there was a wicked eight-headed beast that brought darkness to the land and instilled fear in the people. To fight this evil emerged a pure white wolf named Amaterasu that possessed all the powers of the gods. For days and nights they battled, until finally the wolf chopped off all the heads but one, and used her mighty sword to seal the beast's spirit away in a mountain at the edge of the world. There the spirit remained for a hundred years. The white wolf, so exhausted from her battle, fell into a great slumber and turned to stone with her powers scattering across the earth. In time, the truth turned into legend, and a foolish man went to the mountain and pulled the sword from the earth, unknowingly releasing the beast once more.
"A tree spirit that had watched over the land watched her planet dissolve into turmoil. Not knowing what to do, she turned to the sleeping god.
"Awakened, Amaterasu had lost all her powers but one: to summon the sun. Thus, in order to gain the strength needed to defeat the beast again, she traveled across the world to find the powers that she had lost…"
"It's actually quite a sad story," Sasuke mused as Naruto gazed at him intently, enraptured. Amaterasu swung her sword mightily from where it was strapped to her back, using the massive strength in her shoulders to swing the blade in circles over her head just as Inaré combined her horizontal strike with a downwards swing of her own. The sharp sound of whistling wind and crashing waves accompanied each attack of the wolf's blade. Kankuro, almost squealing, barely managed to dodge out of the way with his puppet being used as a shield, striking in the holes of the attackers' formation as Amaterasu's blade managed to slice him across the ribs. Inaré was seriously weakening, and one could see it in the way her strikes became less powerful, became easier to dodge. Ultimately it would fall upon Amaterasu to deal the final blow, and Inaré slowed so much (so much blood so much blood) that Kankuro actually began fighting back with Crow and the wolf had to begin consciously protecting her master, focusing more on defending her than attacking her enemy. "You see, the fairy tale ends with Amaterasu destroying the beast permanently the second time and saving the land, but in the actual legend she only has the power to subdue it long enough to seal it away. Tired, she sleeps. As she sleeps, some idiot wakes up the beast again and the cycle begins anew. Over and over, she is doomed to an eternity of fighting an enemy she can't defeat and saving a land that's too retarded to learn from history."
"Wow," Sakura breathed before scowling. "Talk about being caught between a rock in a hard place."
"But I don't get it!" Naruto exclaimed angrily. "Why? Why does she do that? She doesn't owe those people anything! Why doesn't she go out and make her own destiny?"
Sasuke smiled grimly at him.
"Because if she didn't follow the destiny she had been given, there would be no world period," he explained simply as the battle continued below, swords spinning and slicing the air wildly in fantastic displays of aerobatics and strength. Amaterasu pushed Inaré out of the way just in time to avoid one of Crow's blades. "No one else had the strength to rise up and protect the people. Sacrificing her freedom over and over again allows the people of her world to follow their own paths. She could allow the world to die, and she could just go back up to the heavenly plane to be with her fellow gods. But she never does."
"But why doesn't she?!" He demanded. "I don't get it, I don't get it! Why does she do that for them?!"
"The world is her child, Naruto!" Sakura snapped irritably, just enraptured by the story as the blonde was. "The people in it are her children! To let the world dissolve into darkness would mean failing them all! They would all suffer and die!"
"She's right, Naruto," Sasuke breathed softly, eyes on the great white wolf below. "Amaterasu was the mother of all things. She loved her world, and she loved her people. She loved them so much she was willing to sacrifice herself for all eternity just to protect them and keep them safe, no matter how stupid they were." He raised his eyes to look at the blonde beside him. "That's what true love is."
True, unconditional love.
An angry growl and a sharp cry of surprise from below brought their attentions back down to the arena.
Kankuro, dropping the pike and raising his last remaining hand, had somehow managed to catch Inaré by the hair and twist her around, holding a kunai to her throat while using the arm attached to the bad hand to press her to him. Using her like a shield, he presented her to her wolf companion, Crow now lifeless again by his feet.
"Back off!" He warned the creature, making Amaterasu pause and blink at him. "Forfeit or I'll slit your throat!" Kankuro threatened Inaré, holding her tightly as he gasped.
"Fuck you!" She snapped raggedly, trying to get her throat as far away from the blade as she could. "You kill me there's nothing holding Ammy back! She'll rip you apart!"
"Well well, this is a sorry sight." The Genin on the balcony lifted their eyes to see Sai finally walking over as the battle beneath drew to a stalemate, both parties eying each other warily and catching their breaths as Inaré's animal wondered what to do as she gazed at her master. Sasuke raised an eyebrow as Sai neared, and he glanced back and forth between the battle and the newcomer. "Your teammate's probably going to die, Sasuke Terranova. She's been run through and your other partner has been hospitalized. Not exactly holding a candle to the reputation you brought with you."
Anger rippled beneath Sasuke's breast plate as he turned his entire attention to Sai, a hand still on the railing and the other dropping to his side. His shoulders tensed, his entire body curling up like a spring.
"Sai, don't be such a jerk!" Sakura exclaimed. "She's doing her best!"
"Shut up, Sakura," her teammate replied coldly without even looking at her, making her jaw clip shut. "He and his teammates are our enemies. I can't believe you're still wasting your time with them. They're obviously not worth it."
"Shut the fuck up," Sasuke hissed dangerously, taking his hand from the railing as his eyes flashed. Fists clenched, he strode up to Sai. "Congratulations," he snarled as he did, Zabuza and Kakashi both keeping a wary eye on him. "You now have my full attention."
A whistle of wind and crash of the waves – Amaterasu swinging her sword – had his gaze shifting away (and immediately proving himself completely wrong) from the boy to look down at the arena.
His eyes widened, and he threw himself at the railing as he stared down.
"INARÉ! YOU FUCKING IDIOT!"
Using the hole that Kankuro already made, Amaterasu had sent the very point of her sword forward through Inaré, just enough to pierce Kankuro as her master managed to wrestle the blade out of his hand.
The sword connecting the two, Kankuro's eyes widened.
"You bitch," he bit out, blood dribbling from his lips.
Unlike Inaré's kunai, her wolf's sword hadn't missed. The girl grinned.
"Fuck you," she replied simply in grim satisfaction. Releasing her, Kankuro stumbled away from the blade and Amaterasu withdrew her weapon, swinging her sword to rest across her back again as she raised her muzzle to the sky to mournfully howl – a single, pain-ridden note.
As Kankuro backed away, Inaré dropped to the floor, and – just like that, in a puff of white smoke – Kaoru was back to normal again as she dashed over to her master, a sure-fire hint that Inaré was unconscious, if not dead.
The match was over now, Sasuke could feel it. He could feel it as he completely ignored Sai and leaped down and ran to Inaré, kneeling beside her to gather her up in his arms.
"Inaré…" he breathed insistently as he lifted her up into his lap, touching her face and pressing his fingers against her neck for a pulse. "Inaré baby, come on, open your eyes…"
It took a moment for her to response, raggedly coughing up blood as she opened her eyes and looked at him.
"Hey Sasuke…" she murmured weakly before flapping an exhausted hand at him. "I know, I know, I went too far. I just…" she winced, closing her eyes before curling up against him. "I wanted… to get back at the redhead for what he did to Haku. But I knew I wouldn't be a match, so I settled for killing his partner." She smiled grimly. "But I suppose I didn't succeed at that either."
Sasuke smiled at her warmly.
"You did great honey," he cooed, brushing the blood-stained hair from her face as he tried his best to ignore the redness and swelling and what would obviously become awful bruises. "You definitely would've done it if not for that fucking poison. He's a big fat cheater is all."
She chuckled hollowly, smiling at him as her eyes grew foggy.
"I think…" she breathed as blood dripped down her chin. Beaming serenely, she turned her head tiredly into his chest. "I think I need to go see the medics now."
"Ah, is she awake after all?"
Sasuke's head snapped up as he looked over at Kankuro, who was standing up, still grinning at him with the pike back in his good hand.
"Come now," the other genin stated with the twisted grin, the pain and adrenaline obviously having shaken something loose inside his brain. "I thought she wanted to kill me? But I won, right? So I'm pretty sure that means I get to kill her."
Slowly, he began to stalk over, weapon in hand. Kaoru, snarling, leaped around Sasuke and his teammate and dashed to the wounded fighter, jumping up into the air and seeking to bite down on his throat. Smoothly, the pain and anger making him wholly more dangerous, Kankuro wordlessly jabbed the spike directly into her belly and flung her to the side using the attack. Yelping, the animal hit the floor and skid, a trail of blood following her passage.
"Kaoru!" Sasuke yelled as Dagina snarled, leaping down to the arena to stand next to Sasuke with her teeth bared and claws extended. She recognized the threat a split-second before he did, and he turned his head back to Kankuro, who was still advancing. His eyes narrowed, and he settled Inaré back on the ground again as his eyes flashed and his lips pulled back into a snarl. Inaré's eyes widened, and she grabbed Sasuke's shirt weakly in her bloodstained hand.
You'll pay. You'll pay for what you did to her-
"N-no, Sasuke…" she stammered as Sasuke silently rose, ignoring her as his only desire out of life turned into ripping Kankuro's heart from his body. "No, Sasuke, you promised… you promised you wouldn't-!" But her cries went unheard as he pulled himself into a stand, her hand slipping from its grip. "Sasuke-!"
You think I'm going to just stand back and let this happen you massive sack of shit-
"If you're really in that of a hurry to die, by all means," Sasuke sneered, baring his teeth just like his animal. "I'll rip you in half."
Before Kankuro could obey, before Sasuke could leap forward and finish the job, before one of the many teachers surveying the match could get some sense into their heads to bring a stop to all the madness – a flash of orange darted in front of Sasuke, and before the raven knew it Naruto had punched Kankuro clear in the mouth, sending him flying backwards to hit the floor in a dead faint.
The intensity that had been gathering around Sasuke faded, and he blinked in confusion, looking at Naruto as the blonde stood and turned to face him, giving him a proud thumbs-up. Blinking, Sasuke took a moment to think about what just happened and then smiled gratefully at the other ninja. Naruto beamed as Sasuke's expression, walking over to him.
"You shouldn't have to fight every battle by yourself," he told Sasuke comfortingly as he neared. "That's why we're here!"
Sasuke grinned at him, and Kakashi watched this with pride from where he stood in the balconies.
Good job, Naruto. He thought as Sakura kneeled beside Inaré, surveying the damage as medic ninjas rushed in. You just saved us from what could've been quite a bit of trouble. At the far side of the arena, Kiba kneeled next to Kaoru and stroked her flank.
"You were great," he told the creature comfortingly as he gently picked her up in his arms and walked over to the group at the center of the arena, blood splatters everywhere. Gratefully, Sasuke took the creature in his arms as Dagina looked on worriedly.
"Thank you," he told the dog-lover earnestly. Kiba grinned.
"Of course!" He replied cheerfully. "Any animal that talented has obviously been cared for. They both need to be treated well until they're both spick and span!"
"Spick and span?" Naruto repeated with a laugh. "Kiba, what are you, a grandma?"
"Shut up, Naruto!"
A soft smile on his face, Sasuke cuddled Kaoru for a moment appreciatively before handing her off to one of the medics, walking over to Inaré as they set her on a stretcher.
"Get better, okay?" He breathed softly to her, kissing her sweat-slicked forehead. She smiled weakly at him.
"I love you," she murmured feebly, barely audible. Sasuke's smile had tears at the edges (oh my God, do you know how much blood there is, is that why-?), and he couldn't bring himself to answer as she was ushered to the hospital, Kankuro soon after. Raising a hand, he covered his mouth and turned his face away as she vanished.
In the end, Kankuro was declared the winner because of Sasuke and Naruto's inference, and Naruto gave Sasuke a hearty clap on the shoulder.
"She'll be fine," the blonde told him comfortingly as Sasuke wordlessly gazed down at the pool(s) of blood she had left behind. "She has to be, after all. Both her and Haku." The raven's eyes flickered up at him, and Naruto laughed. "Otherwise you'll be left alone with me and my team, and I don't think you'd appreciate that very much!"
Sasuke managed a weak laugh, but he felt his heart lift the littlest bit at the words.
"You're so weird, Naruto."
"H-hey! What is that supposed to mean?!"
"Ah, everyone, please clear the bottom floor!" An obviously shaken Hayate called. "We'll begin the final match of the preliminaries! Sasuke Terranova versus Sai!"
End Chapter Twenty-Two: Mother of All Things
Yep. Sorry to disappoint you guys.
But like Sasuke said, Kankuro's just a big fat cheater.
Also, yes. Completely shameless ripoff of my favorite video game EVER.
Read? Review? :D
Much love,
DDB
