And we've survived to the collapsing of the lawn chair that is this section! 'Tis sad, but oh well, we must be brave until the final section.
Reasons - The Collapsing
Isuki had flown back to the base as fast as possible when she heard the first signs of people searching around the forest.
It had only been, like, seven hours! How could they have been ready so quickly?
At least it lent a little more realism to her panic; she had lost control for a second at the end and slammed into the door. She was sitting there all crumpled up and sore when her dad opened it and looked down at her curiously.
She was about to tell him when she got chance to give him her own curious look; he was carrying mom on his back. Remembering the urgency, she shook it off and spoke directly into his mind.
'There are people in the forest! I think they're looking for us!'
'What?' he asked skeptically. 'What did they look like?'
'I'm not sure; they were all wearing different stuff. Most of them had these ugly green vests, though, and it looks like they have big red targets on the back.'
She knew she had said something right when he tensed and muttered, "Crap."
When he shot back inside Isuki followed him closely, watched as he tried to shrug mom off his back and onto one of the tables when he got pulled back down because she wouldn't let go of him. Sighing in an irritated fashion, he latched onto her wrists and pried her hands apart, leaving her on the table.
"Isuki, wake her up," he ordered brusquely as he swept out of the room. "Tell her we're leaving."
Isuki nodded solemnly, but she was smirking on the inside. "Okay."
He left, and she knew he was going to tell the Leader. And then they would leave, and Eris would be left behind, and she wouldn't be hovering over her and Sasori all the time and she could actually be natural around him. Well, as natural as was really possible.
She trotted over and shook her mom by the shoulder.
It didn't even pull a reaction from her.
Sighing, aggravated, she put a hand on her shoulder blade and her hip, shaking her again. "Wake up, damn you," she muttered under her breath. 'Wake up.'
She groaned a little, rolling away and curling up into a tight ball. "No…" she mumbled. "No… Please, stop it, Deidara, make it stop… It h-hurts…" she choked, tears beading at the corners of her eyes. "Hurts me, please, don't… Please stop, please… Stop… Stop… please…" Tears made a glimmering trail sideways down her face once they encountered gravity, begging intermittently for Deidara to stop… doing something, or help her stop something, stop someone hurting her.
Isuki couldn't stand it anymore, seeing her mom cry; it made her look so weak and vulnerable. She rolled her back over until they faced each other and slapped her. "Mom, wake up!"
Her eyelids popped open and she sat up, hugging herself and shivering slightly. "What is it?" she asked frantically. "What -?"
"Mom, there's people in the forest looking for us - I think most of them are from that village you told me about - and we're leaving, because they're getting close. Dad told me to wake you up and tell you we're leaving now."
"What…? That can't be right… How could they have known? We killed Osanai…" She looked distressed, but Isuki didn't care; she had orchestrated this, and she would see it finished.
"Who knows, but the point is we're leaving, and -…"
Isuki trailed off when everyone started appearing in the room with splooshes and puffs and shadows. The Leader was the last to materialize, and once he did everyone turned to him expectantly.
"I'm sure everyone has heard by now that somehow information on our whereabouts has leaked out. And just like it, we will leak out ourselves, retreating into the shadows." Almost as if to emphasize his point he shifted back slightly, becoming enveloped in darkness.
"'Your enemy should not know he is your enemy until he can see your sword growing out of his chest,'" she heard her dad mutter wryly, reaching out for her mom's hand and lacing their fingers together.
She wondered if she was the only who noticed the way Deidara watched them; bitter, wistful… mostly contrite, though.
"It's a little late for that now, yeah. If they didn't know we were their enemies they wouldn't be looking for us now."
Mostly contrite.
"Let's not go about this all wrong, eh?" Eris suggested sarcastically. "I can tell they're getting even closer. Ten minutes, tops, and they'll be banging down your door. If you're going to leave," she added forcefully, pinning Sasori with her hawkish grey eyes, "now would be the best time."
"That could give us just enough time to be sure they can't track us."
"There're advance scouts, though, that'll be here in under two minutes," Eris added offhandedly.
"What? Why didn't you mention that earlier, back when it would have been useful?" Sasori demanded, scowling at the goddess.
Eris cocked her head to one side, and stared at him with something like bemused amusement. "I don't know…" she muttered insipidly. "If you need to me to hold them back I can, since I have to stay behind again anyway…"
"That's ridiculous," he scoffed.
Eris sagged in the air, whereas Isuki felt like punching it.
"You don't get to have all the fun," he added, an invigorating glint in his eyes and an edge to his smirk. "I know I'm staying."
Isuki was glad she had inherited her dad's gift for appearing perfectly emotionless, because inside her jaw hit the floor and she was tearing her hair out.
How had this happened? The whole point had been to leave Eris behind, not lose Sasori, too. She calmed herself down quickly and bobbed to the surface of the conversation.
"Why stay when you'll have to leave afterwards, anyway?"
Everyone looked at her as if noticing her presence for the first time. Eris was trying to kill her with the look in her eyes, but Sasori didn't seem to notice. Or he was really good at pretending he didn't notice, just like he was good at everything else.
"I don't know about the rest of you," he explained to the group in general, though he was staring straight at Isuki, "but I haven't killed anyone in a while, and this seems like the perfect opportunity."
"Yeah," her mom agreed, as if something was just dawning on her. "I'm getting tired of rabbits. I've got this recent hankering to kill someone," she added maliciously, shooting Deidara a scathing glare.
"Same here," her dad matched, standing behind her.
"Well, I guess that means I'm staying, too," Kisame mumbled, scratching the back of his head.
"Me too, me too!" Maddie chirped, floating through the wall.
"I am sort of hungry… Yeah, let's do this!"
"Remember; you don't eat the ones I mark."
"I'm not going to forget that, Sasori; the ones you mark are filled with poison."
"Well, depleting their little army is a great chance to increase my own."
"Save some of them for me, you greedy bastard! Sacrifices don't grow on trees, you know."
"…Fine," Kakuzu huffed. "Whatever."
As Isuki wallowed in the unexpected setback in her plot, everyone stared at Deidara
"I guess," he ventured, crossing his arms and leaning against the wall, "that not enough people get to experience art and true beauty firsthand." Isuki would have expected him to glare at Sasori, because that's what he usually did during his random monologues, but instead he was glaring at her dad. "After all, it is something to be shared, yeah."
"Well, you all can stay if you want, but we're going ahead," Leader stated as he and Konan disappeared.
"…So," her dad said, "that leaves us about a minute to prepare."
"I'm so excited," she mumbled. "My first battle!"
"Absolutely not," her mother denied.
"What?" she and her dad exclaimed simultaneously.
"If you died during this battle -"
"You would be no daughter of mine," her dad finished with a small smile. "You're staying, too. But don't get in the thick of things," he added.
"Yes!" she crowed, punching the air. Forget that her plan had been skewed, she was going to fight!
"Eris, Sasori, Deidara, Zetsu, Kisame, go meet our visitors outside. Kakuzu, Hidan, take up stations in pairs here and on the roof. Maddie, float around and check where you're needed."
Grumbling, but compliant, everyone sulked off
"Michiko, I want you -" her dad stopped, looking frantically around the room. Her mom wasn't there.
Isuki glanced around, probing the room with her mind. But she couldn't sense her.
"Do you want me to try and find her?" Isuki asked hesitantly.
"In a minute. Right now we're going to go outside and -"
And they heard the first scream.
Michiko was outside already, sulking.
Imagine, Itachi actually overturning one of her orders. Not even just a request, but an order. Well… I-
'Am being childish?' Jurag suggested. 'Come one, you baby. Go back in there and canoodle or whatever, and then come back out here. After all, he's only trying to be fair to Isuki.'
Michiko didn't even bother going through the wavering phase of the argument; she agreed. She was just still… sore. After last night she just wanted to feel like she had some control over something in her life.
She was turning to go back when she smelled something unfamiliar and turned. Standing up in the tree tops were about three squads of Leaf Village ninja, staring down at her analytically.
The first of the swarm had arrived.
Sasori plunged his extendable razor blade into the first unfamiliar face he saw and savored his scream, pumping him full of poison like a water balloon.
He didn't really have time to toy with each person there and kill them slowly, but that didn't mean poison got ruled out entirely. He just had to use more.
And he had enough.
Something blew past him and he turned just in time to see another get impaled by the icicles Eris was forming in her hands and launching like a higher grade of kunai. She grinned at him malevolently and continued, dropping them like flies as they poured out of the forest. Sasori went back to his own work, jabbing and decaying them all one by one, pulling himself out of their reach with the rotating blades mounted on his shoulders.
When he looked up again Eris was summoning thunderclouds.
Eris floated higher into the air and rained down the last of her icicles, skewering a few of the ninja that just. Kept. Coming.
She pivoted in midair and glanced around full-circle, staring down at the sea of enemies that swelled around the clearing. They say no man is an island, but everyone outside was, doing their level best to hold them back, alone. Sasori… Kisame… Zetsu… Deidara… Michiko?
They were all islands, with no one to watch their backs, and Eris realized that as resident Goddess of Chaos and Destruction it was her duty to help level the playing field; they were all skilled, of course, listed in the bingo book, but they were outnumbered at least a hundred to one.
She shot up even higher, until all she could see was a seething mass of tumultuous bodies, and she arched her back and stretched out her arms, screeching like a wounded banshee to the sky.
She smirked as the thunderclouds began to gather over her head, blackening and roiling heavily. As they charged, she flew up closer to them and stretched her wings to their full length, nearly twenty feet in width. The winds she manipulated formed the surface of the clouds, sculpting them.
"Avakod, I know you've always hated me like the others… but I have friends now… and someone to love… and I've… changed. Now, lend me your… spear!" she roared, pointing down violently and sending crisped bodies flying through the air when they were hit by the massive pointed bolt of lightning that speared down.
"Your… arrows!" A deadly rain of smaller bolts pierced and sizzled them.
"Your… sword!"
She drew her hands back and swept down with them, cutting a huge swath in their numbers with a bolt that dwarfed all others and sliced through them like a warm knife through butter.
Kisame looked up when lightning bolts started raining down, spotting Eris, barely visible, directing the mayhem like a mad composer. She was outlined against the black clouds that had become a demonic face, sharp-toothed mouth opened wide in a scream of victory, scowling eyes pierced by the intense light of the sun streaming through them.
He didn't have time to appreciate her power, because even with her help he was swamped. The numbers were near crippling, and every time he cut through them they pressed back in. They were almost mindless, stepping over the bodies of their fallen comrades as he sent them down into the black abyss. He suspected the more strategically important ranks were already inside.
He realized he probably would have been overwhelmed already if Maddie hadn't been helping him out. She ritually possessed and controlled the ones that got a little too close for comfort, forcing them to kill their own teammates.
He hardly even saw her, just her handiwork, like the way you see leaves rustling in the wind. Another mob loomed in and he cut them back perfunctorily.
He felt a stabbing pain in his left bicep and whipped around to find that some woman with snot green hair had actually managed to dig her kunai into him. Then her eyes flashed flat and dead for a moment before reanimating and winking at him. She turned, jerked the kunai out of his arm, and proceeded to horribly maim the man behind her.
Bleeding heavily, Kisame only just managed to swing his sword again, and again, ripping them apart with a monotonous note. He wasn't having fun anymore. It was like he had gone from messing around on the beach to fighting to keep his head above the water. Metaphorically speaking, of course.
He dragged SameHada around in a wide arc once more, and he could have sworn he felt a muscle rip.
He turned one last time and went straight through Maddie's face with his own, leaving a cold, deathly tingle on his lips.
And suddenly the lightning stopped, and Eris was floating over him, and she touched his arm, and she disappeared, and he stood up, and he flexed his arm, and he smirked, and he made some of them shrink back at the sight of his sharp teeth, and he hefted the SameHada again, and he brought it around in a crushing circle.
He thought maybe he heard the crunch of bones somewhere a ways off.
Zetsu twisted and closed around someone's head, ripping it off their shoulders and reaching out for someone else.
He didn't really understand why everyone thought he was slow; he just didn't feel the need to rush all that often. Now was one of those times that speed was integral to his survival.
He heard something like a turbulent gust of wind and paused for only a moment, when he saw something large and a sort of almost tan-ish, off-white-ish white lift off the ground.
Deidara was sure Itachi was trying to kill him.
He wasn't made for close combat. He could manage fine, he mused as he spun on his hands and kicked out, sending the ring closing in around him flying back into the people behind them. But he couldn't detonate anything at such a close range, and he couldn't just lob for fear of who he might hit. It was really the worst possible situation.
He had next to no upper body strength, and his hands were kept busy blocking and keeping his balance while he sent kicks flying at anyone that came close to him, not to mention the mental burn on his arm left over from Itachi's little stunt. Otherwise he would have made something to lift him off the ground and give him some distance to work with.
In a fit of desperation he shoved his left hand into the pouch at his waist and engulfed a mouthful of clay, chewing it thoroughly as he pulled it back out and continued the monotony of blocks when the ring closed back in.
Once he was done, a flurry of jabs from his feet sent them back again, and he molded the bird before coughing it up and tossing it up into the air. He had just enough time to make a hand sign, increase its size, and latch onto its foot as it lifted away and into the air before the crowd closed in.
Pulling himself up and onto its back, he looked around and blanched at the veritable sea of them choking the base.
He caught something, turned around, zoomed in on a bloom of fire to the east.
Michiko was struggling.
It was as if her reflexes had suddenly become… sluggish. The only thing she could chalk it up to was Deidara, making her flinch every time her mind wandered and inevitably rolled back to… that.
She winced again and spun, impaling someone with the spikes on her tail; she was even using the curse-mark and she wasn't up to snuff. One of the few benefits it had was making people a little more reluctant to approach her.
She could only hope Itachi was faring better than she was, wherever he was. If he or Isuki died because she wasn't there…
Michiko launched her mind off the subject, focusing back on the mob that surrounded her. Their numbers were ridiculous; they must have gathered ninja from every village or something! She still hadn't seen any familiar faces, though, of which she was glad.
But she could only be glad she could numb her senses when she needed to, otherwise she wouldn't have been able to move without being accompanied by excruciating pain. Someone - and she swore to herself she was going to find the bastard - kept throwing needles at her. They landed hits too often, along with everyone else. A few more and they would be piling on top of her.
Michiko racked her brains for some jutsu she could use to wipe them all out at once, but nothing came to mind. She was good with sucking people dry and stabbing them with her claws, but all her normal techniques focused on one-on-one combat. When this was over, if they all survived… no, when they all survived, she would have to pick up something new from the others.
Frantically, Michiko blew a small fire at them.
She remembered Itachi teaching her that, back when they were kids. It frightened them back a ways, and it gave her the leeway to pump her wings and lift off the ground. There was something else he had taught her, too…
She grinned, remembering that time they had almost burned down the Uchiha Compound. Imitating his hand signs from that day, his posture, the flow of his chakra, was child's play to her.
With a whoosh and a crackling the flames billowed down from her mouth, rolling over the seething mass below and frying them all. It kept rolling, though, washing over everyone within 100 feet. The funny thing she smelled was that only their upper bodies had been withered and charred, as if it really had rolled over them.
When she lifted up higher she heard a rush of wind, and Deidara was next her on one of his stupid flying rocks.
She could barely hear herself over the wind they both moved, but she tried anyway.
"WHERE IS ITACHI?" she asked slowly, assuming that if she found Itachi, she found Isuki, too.
"YOU'VE GOT TO BE KIDDING, YEAH! HE'S STILL INSIDE!"
"THANKS!" she yelled back, shooting past him and heading straight for the base. As she flew overhead she noticed the huge dead area she had created wasn't being filled; they weren't stepping up the second another one died. Or the smell of burning hair and flesh masked the newcomers' scents, but that wasn't likely.
She landed on the roof and pulled her wings back in, struggling against the very nature of the curse-mark.
The roof was already swarmed with them, though, and she could just make out Hidan and Kakuzu among the myriad scent trails laced around. They were back to back, and their close-range attacks seemed oddly effective in the tight space offered by the roof, especially Hidan's triple-bladed scythe.
She swept her tail briskly along the ground in front of her, knocking down most everyone in her path and killing a few when they landed on her spikes. She ignored everyone else as she pushed her way toward the two other immortals, feeling but at the same time not feeling when a couple people stabbed her, but she kept on going, shoving along. She took their weapons with her, because if they got through her scales they weren't coming back out anytime soon.
"WHERE IS ITACHI?" she demanded of them over the clash of weapons and voices vying to be heard, joining them briefly and forming a deadly triangle. She almost slipped once on the ichor that leaked from her wounds.
"HOW THE FUCK SHOULD I KNOW?" Hidan snapped, beating someone back with the rod of his scythe.
"MAIN HALL, I THINK!" Kakuzu growled, keeping the majority of them away with the smirk on his twisted face.
"THANKS!" she shouted back, pushing off again toward the stairs that led down into the base. The door seemed to be locked, but Michiko punched through it with the end of her tail and slogged through the splintered wood, gliding down. Something speared into her right side, but she moved down to the second floor. She turned and went down to the main floor, and brushed a path through the hallways, taking care of the pests that buzzed around uselessly.
She was beginning to recognize a few people, she thought. Like she thought she smelled Kakashi before her tail whipped at him, and maybe Ino, too. Sakura was unmistakable, along with Temari and Neji. After that she stopped looking around.
She focused in front of her and finally breached the main hall.
Itachi was in the middle of the room, which was crowded with them, but some sort of illusory shield held most of them back while he and Isuki picked off the few that made it to them.
Isuki was unharmed, it seemed; she wasn't bleeding. Itachi, though, was bleeding from multiple slashes on his arms and back; probably the result of blocking Isuki's hits, because usually no one could touch him.
Itachi wasn't using his katana, though. He was using purely physical blows, and that kept him at a disadvantage, though he still beat them all back. If he swung his blade too fast who knew when Isuki would get in the way...
Michiko dragged her feet across the ground and pulled his katana from its sheath on his back, whipping around and stabbing through three of them, pinning them to the wall. She jerked it out and swirled around with her tail and his sword, spinning in a whirl of death. But hits were still landing on her, and soon she couldn't move for lack of muscle that wasn't occupied by some form of steel.
She slowed gradually, and then she fell, and some of the points were driven deeper into her, and she couldn't even smell anymore.
She was so tired…
Itachi saw something out of the corner of his eye and dispatched the one he was dealing with, turning to find Michiko fallen.
She wasn't moving, and she looked like a pin cushion, and he pushed them all back with the shield, and he was next to her.
She cracked an eye open at him, very briefly, and grinned, ichor dripping down her face. "Itachi… I'm so tired…"
"Michiko, you'll be fine. Eris will help, and you'll be okay. Okay?" he insisted.
"I'm just so tired… I've never been this tired before, Itachi…"
"Shhh, you'll be fine," he whispered, brushing a strand of hair off her cheek. He could feel himself tearing up. "Just rest for a while, and you'll be okay…"
"I'm so tired… I'm going to sleep…"
"Not drift?" he asked softly, choking.
"No… I'm so tired…"
Itachi's lips twitched into a brief, small smile; she was so stubborn. He bent over and pressed his lips gently against hers, and he could have sworn she was trying to return the kiss.
He brought his arms around her and deepened it, oblivious to them all around, and it was bittersweet. Their embrace was hollow, their kiss tinged with farewell. He noticed a sudden salty taste in his mouth and realized belatedly that he was crying.
Isuki found it hard to be disgusted this time.
It was so... out of character. Her mom was so weak-looking, every kind of weapon you could name sticking out of her. Dad was bent over her and whispering, and he was...
Crying?!
She wouldn't have believed it if she hadn't seen it herself; her dad was even less likely to cry than her mom. She knew something was wrong; she had seen both of her parents cry for the first time that day.
And then without warning her dad loomed up, and there were still tears streaming down his face. His eyes shifted, and they were still red, but the patterns had fused together and looked like a wheel with spokes made of scythes. They shot open, too wide to be natural, and he cast his glare over all of them, and wherever it fell, so did they.
They were set alight by a black fire, each and every one of them, and it burned until there was no trace of them left.
She ducked when he was turning to her side, afraid she could get clipped in the edge of his field of vision, and when she looked up he saw his eyes were bleeding, now, seeping blood down his face that mingled with the trail of tears left behind.
And then there were none.
The ground shook again, and she looked outside.
Not only was lightning raining down from the sky in droves, there were explosions going off every few seconds. She stepped out cautiously and found the clearing nearly empty. Only few of them remained, and everyone was closing in on them.
And with a slash it was done.
Her plan had been executed.
There had been some hitches, but nothing that couldn't be handled.
They would surely leave, and Eris would be left behind, and everything was perfect.
Except her mom was dead.
For real, this time.
Her dad hadn't spoken to her since mom died.
At first he had just drifted around aimlessly like some sort of ghost tethered to the place of its death. You could tell just by looking at him that he wasn't really alive anymore. Just by looking at his flat, lifeless eyes.
He had ignored her distantly at first, like he had ignored everyone those first few days, when they were setting up to leave. It was like he was purposefully making her wallow in guilt, the way he could disregard her presence without even trying. Like he forced her to notice that he had gone numb with pain.
She didn't think she would ever quite understand how he felt. Of course she had loved her mom, in this weird, compelled sort of way. But she had never had a strong connection. Even if her mom was the one she inherited her wings and thirst for blood from, they hadn't connected.
Her mom had only been there in the first place because her dad was there; she wasn't one of the murderous criminals. She pulled her weight, and threw it around sometimes, but if she could help it she didn't kill anyone. She didn't understand why Isuki would want to hunt down and kill her own food.
Her dad, though; he had totally understood what she was talking about. That thrill that you've overpowered someone completely, knowing that even though they want to they can't do a thing to stop you. Closing in, hearing their death rattle. She had seen everything at some point as a passenger in her dad's mind, looking out through his eyes, hearing what he heard… And she wanted that for herself.
But now that her dad didn't speak to her, she spent most of her time with Sasori.
It was sort of funny; the Leader must have known something like what Isuki had planned was going to happen sometime, because when they moved bases it was to a place almost exactly like the old one except much closer to the Hidden Grass Village. Probably because no exceptional ninja ever come from there anyway.
So the base was identical, pretty much, except it had this unlived in feel. Which was good for her dad, because her mom had never been here, so there shouldn't have been that many memories at all. He still didn't like spending time in the room that was identical to his old one; he spent the majority of his time sitting on the roof, staring off into space.
Isuki would hate to find out what would happen if he discovered it was all her fault mom had died.
So Sasori's room was exactly the same, except Eris wasn't there, which made it even more perfect. They just sort of… talked. Yeah. A lot. She could tell he was still wrung out about Eris, but he would get over it eventually.
Besides, when they weren't talking about some new stibine or something he was developing, or the last thing she had killed, they just talked. About anything.
A couple times her mom had cropped up out of nowhere, as if haunting her conversations, but whenever she did Isuki "managed" to put on her best brave front, and Sasori always "saw through it", and he was a surprisingly good comforter. And not in the blanket sense of the word.
Sometimes they had some serious clinching involved, but nothing more, generally because both of them, she thought, were more than a little worried about her dad.
Now that mom was gone, he ignored the rest of the world and sat absorbed in his own private universe of grief-stricken anguish. And if and when he ever came out of it he would undoubtedly be, like, über rip-snarl-growl overprotective of her. Not only because, for one, she was his daughter, but also because he no longer had mom to love.
She had gotten little tastes from Sasori, but she was afraid her dad was going to drown her. She had been designed to catch the overflow of the affection he had always poured on mom, but once he snapped out of his funk she was sure he was going to start dumping it all on her. She could only hope he wouldn't turn out like Deidara and start telling how she was like a replica of her mom and stuff and not even treat her like a child anymore.
Some people say that losing the one you love is like losing your right arm. She could tell by the way he stood, the sound of his silence, but mostly in his eyes, that it was like his soul had been cut out by some half-bit surgeon; there was no "right arm" about it.
And the one time he had said anything, anything at all, was in response to a remark that could have been considered an attempt at comforting if it hadn't come from Deidara. Maybe it was supposed to be anyway, but the tone of his voice had just had something rub-it-in about it.
He had said, "You know, they say it's better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all, yeah."
And her dad had given him this look. There was no way to describe it, because there was too much in it. But he had just turned, and given him said overwhelming look and whispered a broken response.
"Try it."
Man, this makes me feel so bad for Itachi! I'm such a mean person...
BTW, next section Isuki is 16, hooray...