CHAPTER II

The Wicked's View

"Shaz!"

He couldn't believe it.

There he was in his most frantic time of his life and his brother was nowhere to pry Uzumaki out of his trail. He felt his left eye twitch in annoyance because of his older brother's foolish antics, with him having crossed the forest, and now standing beside a river of sludge and into a swamp of absolute demise. The stench was so overwhelming, like death and blood; the rivers flowed as infinite pinnacles of muck and weed; carcasses and bones were littered everywhere while tufts of unnamed wild-flowers littered the ground, bulky trees, and colored everything blood red; silence pitched the air into eternal night.

And everything that was alive came to an effortless halt.

While thirty minutes had passed, Itsu's unyielding foe is yet to fall out of his winding trail. It was indeed unfair that he, a master swordsman and a highly trained prince of agility, would fall prey to this stubborn orange stain that couldn't possibly keep his big mouth shut, and set his mind straight. But he did admit to himself earlier that even though if this Uzumaki fellow was a bit distracted from kami knows who, he managed to get away from all of his finest traps.

That horrible thought made his body twitch and his lips quiver with a harebrained sneer. Nobody ever evaded his traps.

"Shaz!" an eerie echo followed and repeated his outburst again and again, continuing to reverberate across the deathly fields.

In truth, if he and Shaz had confronted Naruto earlier on the fields, the blonde would have been unconscious by now because of some drug and a heavy blow to the head. Unfortunately for Itsu, that just wasn't the case.

Frankly, both brothers really were two halves of a whole: he, a mentally deluded serial killer who could murder anybody and everybody, including one year old babies, without hesitation or reason; and Shaz, the intellectual half who drinks his victim's blood with bread and eats their flesh with wine in belief that it would give him their powers.

"SHAZ!"

While Itsu's speciality was on swords, Shaz was a master of the bow and arrow. Although Shaz loved his little brother to the point of paternity, he usually just leaves him out to die so that— 'You'll learn how to get out on your own.'

Pathetic, really…

Shaz could've just drugged Uzumaki using one of his poisonous bows, but noo, he needed to do the job himself thereby prolonging the mission, and using his very last and precious Yoko herbs! Yet even though his brother could be an ass at often times, it's not like he would be hiding from him now, would he?

"DAMNITSHAZWHER'RE YA'!" it's possible, really. Itsu almost tasted his sweat, and felt that his death was closing in on him.

Now if we review our present antagonists: a crazy swordsman and a cannibalistic archer, he further concluded that Uzumaki was a shinobi not to be fooled at. Through hard work he succeeded where others haven't. He laughed at the face of death as if death was a foolish jester wearing an Elizabethan dress. Plus, Naruto is so going to slam his ass in hot coal if he caught up to him.

He's dead unless his brother stops playing hide and seek.

"S… sonofa…"

He knew that once the drug takes on full effect, Uzumaki's life will drastically change from better to worst, and may even scar his ability to live. The boss planned this whole plot right, and if he knew his boss this man's spirit is going to break into a million pieces of lost dreams and lost loves. It was flawless.

The plan was flawless…

… Because the plot consisted of the powers of the secret world—

In other words, nobody who only knows chakra can ever get him back. EVER.

Not unless his boss wants to, anyway.

The secret world is an unknown territory guarded by mystical powers more powerful than the chakra. Demon powers; powers of absolute evil and atrocity nobody could ever possibly imagine. So it would only be natural that his home would exist from the center of the earth.

And it would only be natural that humans such as he would be more deliciously malicious compared to humans in terms of reality.

Apparently, Uzumaki Naruto has the demon fox trapped within him.

"SHAZ, DAMMIT!"

Nothing yet, Itsu's brother wasn't responding to his cries. Out of frustration, he decided to pause and intently listen to the world around him. His breath was hitching out of excitement, anticipation and dread mixed together. Through all his observation and stress filled meditation (if there is one), he saw a large stone just to his north. On it was carved: 'Iladros itana', or 'He who is auspicious is doomed…' That language came from his home, so he knew what it meant exactly. Under it was a whole paragraph carved out of pure stone. His ancestors put them there as a final curse to the 'others' who stole earth from them.

'Quidas yukata durotyi…', or 'Let love be blinded by what is not…'

Pulling his eyes away from the nostalgic sight, he continued to pry his ears against the silence. At first everything seemed fine and lifeless—

— Until he felt the earth tremble beneath him, "W- what the hell?"

It felt like a herd of bulls thundering their way towards him as the tremor increased until it seemed like a giant was chasing him… Uzumaki…

The rocks on the ground started jerking; the trees were terrifyingly quivering with fear. The river of mud beside him also gave off sudden reactions to the apparent earthquake which was following him.

"SHIT!"

There he was: Naruto came running towards his petrified prey, his hands glowing with a seemingly distorted reddish sphere which entwined around his fingers like floating liquid. Itsu acted fast and clumsily swerved aside, only to feel the piercing pain of Naruto's chakra and the demon's chakra combined from his back. Damn, KAGEBUNSHIN!

How could he have been so careless?

The clone (the one who just missed him by an ear) suddenly swerved right, leaped and hit something from behind a dirty bush.

… Shaz…

Like Itsu, the unsuspecting prey was thrown out into the air, when he finally landed on his ass like a shovel does to the ground. The older brother, whose face was twisted with definite loathing, supported his body with his right arm and threw a dagger towards the carbon copy (AN: Who I'm going to call Naruto, just for the sake of not typing 'copy' or 'clone' all the time).

Shaz jumped on a tree bough, despite his sore body's protests, grabbed his bow and explosive arrows smoothly, and shot all six, heading for Naruto's head. The blonde quickly evaded the blunt things, but he wasn't fast enough to evade the humungous explosion.

Silence occurred.

Sighing wistfully, he looked towards where his brother had been. Maybe he was getting pummeled by Naruto for doing what he did earlier…

Regardless of whether he felt that Itsu should learn how to kill a half demon, half human prodigy, Shaz was about to help his baby brother from the original Naruto, when he recognized a silhouette just standing, distorted from all the gossamer smoke.

'… Crap…'

This was not going to be easy, having the orders that they weren't supposed to kill him; their situation just got worse.

Naruto was definitely nobody to fool with.

AN: I don't own Naruto, no flames except constructive criticizm... and all that jazz back on page one. Plus please review ! Thanks for your reviews, by the way!