Naruto's great, bounding strides carried him through the darkness and the blinding curtains of rain. All around him, the surreal landscape flickered and flashed as the boiling heavens convulsed in spasms of lightning and roared with thunder as if it was the end of the world.
The genin's eyes narrowed and his teeth bared with rage. Torrents of water streamed down his face and rolled from his saturated clothes. Up ahead, drawing nearer with every moment and every pounding footfall, the circle of standing stones awaited. The lights swirling within it shone like a beacon in the darkness.
Again the lightning blazed, and in that moment everything out to the horizon's edge that had been hidden in the depths of the stormy night's stygian depths lit up suddenly stark white. A boom of thunder followed that crackled across the black sky and shook the earth like divine wrath, but Naruto neither saw nor heard. Driven by a single, simple thought, the ninja pushed himself even faster as he came to a swollen river, one of the five that surged now through Plaza Lithica, having overflowed their channels. Without even slowing, Naruto crossed; his feet carrying him over the water's racing surface on flashes of red chakra.
At last he arrived at the ancient temple. Scowling, shoulders shaking, and huffing for breath, Naruto passed between the hulking stone monuments and entered. Across from him a figure stood draped in robes of bright red, beneath a tented pavilion that created an oasis of dry clarity amidst the continuing deluge. Between the two glowed the strange, carved stone of the Omphalos, from which whorls of light drifted like veils upon the night's dark shores.
Quivering with rage, Naruto stood there with fists clenched. The ninja looked up sharply; his sapphire eyes flashed as his lips pulled back behind white canines. "You killed him!" he snarled in a gravely voice that met and matched the thunder. "Why?!" his voice roared, torn by anguish. "How could you do that?!"
Without awaiting an answer, the genin coiled then sprang with a bestial cry. His leap carried him up through the rain then down into a descending arc toward the lone woman. But as his balled fist pulled back and his face gathered with fury, something caught him at the ankles and sent him plunging face-first into the sodden grass with a resounding splash.
The red figure removed the veils and wraps that covered her face. "So much fire," the Empress Desdemona observed, barely audible over the hammering rain. "Such rage, such spirit…if you only understood how useless it all is, and how necessary your companion's sacrifice was." Lightning flared again, dancing through the black, fortress clouds. The woman looked up as the thunder crackled. "It all came to me in a vision, you know, a…visitation from a great, dark and terrible angel. It was then that I knew what it was I must do."
Unfazed by his fall and unmoved by her explanation, Naruto's clawed fingers dug into the grass and mud as he pushed his head up and glared at her. "I'll kill you for what you've done!" he seethed in a voice that was barely human.
The Shan matriarch sighed sadly as her accuser was dragged across the water-slicked ground, lifted high into the air and flung hard into one of the massive standing-stones. The genin stiffened at the impact and fell breathlessly to his hands and knees. Looking up, he saw the departing chains wind back though space toward where Manciple stood. The phantasmal figure glowed faintly in hues of blue and white while his eyes and the terrible ideogram scarred into his cheek blazed. The guei eyed him cleverly, winked, then crossed his shackled arms, striking a profile between the dark monoliths that loomed on either side of him.
As Naruto's eyes roamed with savage deliberation over the bleak landscape, he saw that Manciple was not alone. Between the standing stones, six more shapes coalesced -- all of the remaining ghosts Desdemona Shan's terrible jutsu had conjured, all save one.
"There's no point in fighting us," advised Manciple in a fatalistic drawl.
"Even though you are so beautiful," added Sycophant with feeling, "and strong."
"And your passion shines as an example, truly magnificent to behold!" continued Zealot, whose bald pate and prayer beads shone in a halo of misty light.
"Here you are, alone and outnumbered," said Vagrant, a forlorn looking woman with braided hair and an asymmetrically-featured face.
"It's no use. Your work can only come to failure," offered Condemned through his scraggly beard. He wore an encumbrance of clothes, and a strangely-colored hat.
"Death…and decay," stressed Diseased, his face, arms and legs hidden beneath swaths of stained bandages.
"You have no choice but to flee – flee while you still live!" commanded Tyrant. Of this ghastly group he alone appeared almost human, a man of healthy middle-age with graying hair, grey slacks and lapelled coat. But his disturbing pallor, flickering eyes, and the bright scar upon his cheek revealed his true nature.
The blond genin's hot breath gusted and gushed into the cold, rainy air. "Flee?" answered Naruto scornfully as he pushed his way to his feet, glared at the Shan Empress then pointed. "I'm not going anywhere until you're dead," he shouted then swept his arm around at the hellish assemblage, "and none of you can stop me!"
While Desdemona's scarlet shape remained silent and composed, bone dry under her canopy despite the downpour, her guei all chuckled with cold menace.
Naruto stood under their cruel, certain gazes and stared through the rain with his breaths coming faster and faster. Suddenly, he cried out – a terrible howl that split and echoed through the night. The rainwater that pooled around his feet fled back as a whirling maelstrom of energy manifested around him, spiraling around and upward into the darkness in a lashing column of red.
Water floated from the ground, rolled and writhed in undulant globs.
All around the ancient temple, the rain billowed and thrashed from the turbulence. The wet faces of the standing stones reflected red, and even the undead guei shrank from the power of the strange boy's unearthly chakra. Naruto's eyes burned like coals, the markings on his cheeks pronounced and his limbs thickened as he dropped to all-fours.
The Shan Empress drew back with an arm raised protectively over her face. "What," she stammered fearfully, "what is this?"
The transformed Naruto shot toward her, the space between them blurring by in an instant. His clawed hand struck for her throat but was intercepted by Manciple who threw himself in his path and lashed out with his chains. The ninja ducked, lowered his shoulder and charged right through the ghost whose supernatural substance yielded before his demonic fury. More guei awaited, their human-like appearance dissolving into nebulous clouds of angry energy. Glowing tendrils whipped toward Naruto, but could not match his speed as he evaded them and circled around. Vagrant and Condemned moved to head him off. This time the genin weaved, and his hands ripped voids through the two apparitions as he passed.
With Desdemona's spectral minions in disarray, the possessed Naruto spun toward her. The red-robed figure unfolded her arms and snapped them straight forward, but the genin had seen this trick before and leaped away as her needles exploded past him. Springing back, Naruto tackled her and his hands ripped into her mantle of red, breaking bones and rending flesh.
Suddenly, it was sunny. The rain was gone and the air was warm. Naruto looked up, dazed by the sudden dislocation, at the glass-like panes of ice that compassed him on all sides and above, and the bright sunlight that filtered through from beyond. Haku's masked and jade-robed shape cowered as his trembling hand pointed at Naruto accusingly. "Y…you killed him," the normally impassive voice crested in horror. "Your own teammate…your friend!"
With his heart pounding and mind still aflame with rage, Naruto looked down at Sasuke Uchiha's broken corpse, his own gore-clotted hands, and the rivers of blood that ran out along the bridge's fresh concrete.
The boy roared, rose to a crouch and turned warily. "It's not real!" he railed. "None of this! It's just more of your tricks!" The boy gathered his chakra and pushed out with it, at which the guei's illusions broke apart and he found himself restored to the dark, rain-soaked battlefield.
He dropped his head quickly to look, but Desdemona had vanished from his grip. In her place, a proxy of sodden earth and grass remained – raised there by her substitution jutsu.
Naruto laughed grimly as he turned to face the seven guei, and his flicking tongue licked at the corner of his mouth. "Is that the best you got?" he sneered.
Tyrant stepped forward with a look of disdain clear on his spectral face. But before he could utter even a single disparaging syllable Naruto leaped again to the attack. The gueis' fearful energies slashed and seized at the possessed genin in undulant coruscations as his blurring orange shape sped around the ancient temple, arced evasively up and along the ancient standing stones which shattered explosively behind him as his adversaries' attacks went astray.
While the temple's precincts erupted in splattering flames, and strokes of lightning struck down from the boiling heavens, the leaf-ninja charged; with him came the ominous shade of another – a true monster that had been sealed within him years ago, but always sought escape, always probed and pried at the edges and seams of its human prison. Somewhere within Naruto, it grinned mirthlessly. Maybe this night it could again savor the color, texture and inimitable smell of blood, and the thrill of destruction though vicariously through his host. Maybe this night, the pathetic vessel of delicious flesh and tantalizing blood that contained him would not thwart him as he had before.
Like water flowing through sand, the demon's power filled Naruto in a flood of chakra. His fists and clawed fingers smashed and tore at the guei whose powers had been surpassed and now found themselves battered and blown like leaves caught in a hurricane.
Yet as savagely as he fought, as much as each of his furious swipes ripped through his ghostly adversaries, again and again they reformed then rejoined the fray. With time, even the enraged Naruto felt a pang of doubt at the most fearsome of the guei's powers – they would never stop, never tire, and could not be killed for they were dead already.
As his rage gave way, the tiny pore that linked him to the Nine-tailed Fox's nearly-infinite reservoirs of power sealed shut. As its residual, demonic energies waned, the leaf-ninja faltered. It was only for a moment, but it was enough. Manciple's chains coiled all around him, writhing like metal eels. They seized around his waist with a strength that eclipsed what the spirit had only moments earlier, and sent Naruto flying. The boy's twisting, pin-wheeling form smashed into one of the temple's remaining monoliths; its thick stone, that had endured age after pitiless age, shattered like glass under the impact and crumbled to the earth.
"At last, at last!" crowed Manciple, who jumped up and down, but his ecstatic utterance was not at Naruto's defeat. "Now we are complete!"
Shaken, the fallen ninja saw through the rain and his own swimming vision that there were now eight ghosts instead of seven. His face fell at the sight.
Orphan stood there amongst them, barely recognizable from the living, breathing person he'd been not so long ago. His shadowed figure glowed, but his eyes and the character branded on his cheek blazed as bright as the sun. The guei stared blankly at Naruto, his ghostly countenance lit by the dying flames of battle, then flinched away as their eyes met.
"Please, Naruto," Orphan gasped pitifully. His swords blazed white as they flashed reflected lightning – weapons he couldn't abandon even if he wished to, for they were wrapped tightly to broken hands. "Don't look at me like this."
"Tomoki…," uttered Naruto desolately, then took a slow, hobbling step that splashed through the rising water.
The fearsome shades drew themselves up as their powers surged to their pinnacle, all but Orphan who remained solemn.
Desdemona Shan, completely drenched now too from the continuing storm, laughed into the rain-swept darkness. "It is done!" her voice rang. "My Jutsu of the Eight Regrets is done. When I unleash the power of my guei, humanity will be consumed in the fires of its own wretchedness. From the ashes of the old, a new world will be given the chance to rise – a wiser, kinder world, having learned from the mistakes of the past. "But first, a simple task," she said and glared at Naruto, then swiveled toward the newly-come spirit. "Tomoki, kill this interloper."
Naruto's brow rose in alarm as he startled, but the ghostly genin stood completely still as if he hadn't heard.
"Oh!" the Empress realized and raised her long, delicate fingers to her cheek. "My mistake…I meant to say: Orphan, do as I command!"
The leaf ninja watched his friend's ghost look up then quiver tensely as he warred against her influence.
The woman grunted sharply. "We're wasting precious time here," she spat then turned her head. "Manciple, finish what you started."
Manciple looked at his mistress, grinned, then flung himself at Naruto who braced for the attack as the guei bore down on him.
A harsh clang of metal resounded as Manciple's shackles struck against Orphan's swords. Naruto fell back as their two conflicting energies collided just before him with an explosion of cold fire that sent waves of standing water rolling away from them.
"Huh?!" the leaf-ninja blurted with surprise, then wiped the rain from his face and stared at the tense tableau. "All-right Tomoki!" he shouted encouragingly.
The two guei stood there stalemated for a moment, with neither advancing nor retreating.
"You went about it all wrong, Naruto," Orphan explained at last in a critical voice, though his eyes remained locked on Manciple's.
The blond genin stared then gritted his teeth. "Oh, yeah?!" he answered loudly as his disputatious nature rose, "What do you mean by that?!"
"Each of us is tied here by things we can't give up. It's a flaw in Desdemona's summoning jutsu." Orphan spared Naruto a glance, then admitted, "And a flaw in our own selves."
The senior guei looked at Orphan aghast as they pushed against each other, deadlocked – his iron cuffs scraping and sparking against the pitted edges of his fellow ghost's swords. "Tomoki!" Manciple blurted in a hurt, stung voice. "What are you saying? Why did you tell him that?"
Orphan dropped aside in a blur of motion, pivoted then struck. His folded steel sliced through Manciple's shackled wrists with the sound of a bell. Whirling low then, the ghost slashed low and cut through the shackles around Manciple's ankles.
The stricken guei staggered back with a look of anguished betrayal on his face. "Brother?" he gasped, then the brand on his cheek flashed white as he dissolved into nothingness.
Naruto's mouth fell open but then quickly pressed shut with renewed determination. Now he had an ally, and knew the guei's secret -- their one hidden weakness.
Orphan watched numbly as Manciple faded away. "I told you," he offered flatly, "don't call me that."
"Orphan!" Desdemona's strident, appalled voice shrieked over the wind and rain. "What have you done?!"
The ghost rounded on her belligerently. "Did you really think it'd be that easy?!" he shouted back. "Did you think I'd sign up for whatever stupid plan you dreamed up? Did you think you could just carve a character into my head and I'd do everything you say?!" Orphan staggered, looked around wildly, then braced his forearms against the luminous, sigil-covered Omphalos. "Even if we were all together; even if I did join your cause, if humanity could be destroyed or shaped so easily, don't you think someone smarter, stronger or crazier than you would have done it by now?" he continued acidly. "Look at you. How many have you sent to their deaths in your hundreds of years as Empress…how many? It was only when your own son died that you understood what life is: precious and fleeting. Isn't that what Bode was trying to tell you?"
The boy-ghost buried his face in his crossed, handless arms and wept, while Desdemona stood there in shock. The other guei glanced at each other tentatively, whether moved by Orphan's declarations or horrified by Manciple's dissolution.
Naruto's lips trembled and his tears mingled with the rain. As he reached out for the distraught spirit, Orphan raised his head toward the Empress with a fearful scowl on his face.
"And you…and you killed me for this," he spat vengefully, pointed his sword then screamed: "You heartless bitch, you killed me!" Orphan's preternatural stare seemed to cut through the atmosphere. He stepped around the Omphalos toward her. Raising and crossing his weapons up before him, the guei's expression hardened. "Look at what you did to me. You took my hands too. Swords are all I have!" The apparition shook with unsettling laughter. "I suppose I should be grateful for that. After all, most people don't get to take their revenge from beyond death…and yet, here I stand."
Orphan stopped and canted his head introspectively. "You know," he admitted, "I've only ever killed one other person; 'not much of a record for a ninja. You're going to be number two – my second and last." Desdemona retreated a step as a look of concern dawned across her face. Orphan turned deliberately toward his wraith brethren. "Of course, I'm going to kill all of you too. After all, nothing good can come from me letting any of you run around loose."
The ghost, Orphan, swiveled slowly toward Sycophant whose expression contorted with dismay, then vanished in a burst of speed. Condemned and Tyrant, quicker to respond to this alarming turn of events, surged to head off their rebellious brother and transformed into bilious clouds of churning light. The remaining three, Diseased, Vagrant and Zealot lowered their brows and stepped forward, but were confronted at once by Naruto who put his hands together in a sequence of seals and hissed: "Shadow-Clone Jutsu!"
As the last echoes of the leaf-ninja's voice died into a peal of thunder, scores and scores of Narutos' surrounded the ghostly three. "Heh-heh," he growled. "You didn't think I was going to let Tomoki have all the fun, did you?"
The three guei held back for a moment, recalling how viciously the boy had fought.
Zealot grinned paternally, seeming peaceful in his religious robes. "My boy, whatever terrible power it was that lifted you earlier has gone," he observed in a deep basal voice then shook his head. "Tricks like this will not save you."
Naruto met his eyes, rain streaming down his face. "Tomoki's dead," he answered grimly then winced at a pain from his side. "But he hasn't given up. So the least I can do is see this through."
Without another word, his clones attacked en masse with kunai knives drawn. Vagrant and Diseased waved their arms, unleashing a pulse of rippling force that slashed through and scattered the attacking army. Most of the ninja leaped away, others tumbled insensate to the rain-soaked ground, while others vanished in bursts of dispersed chakra.
Zealot strode forward then knelt. As he pressed his palm against the wet ground, he channeled his essence downward and possessed it. Thick coils of earth erupted upward, swept at the masses of dodging, orange figures then coiled around the one who'd never left his eyesight. "I know that's you -- the original, I mean," the guei boasted. "So much for your tricks as well as your noble sensibilities."
The earthen tentacles constricted sharply, breaking bones and rupturing organs. But as the satisfied ghost looked again, he saw that what extruded though those clutches was not flesh and blood, but a proxy of earth and grass.
While the battle between his brothers, Vagrant and Diseased, and Naruto's clone army raged, Zealot snarled in frustration. The wraith looked up suddenly with the feeling that something was wrong, then looked to his left and right. Two fallen Narutos beside him came to life, sat up and looked back at him, grinning. These two had not been knocked out as he'd thought, but left as a trap! The ghost flinched back in alarm, but it was too late. The clones' kunai knives slashed and sliced through his prayer beads, which glowed as they scattered into the darkness then went out one by one…mere moments before Zealot himself did.
Diseased wailed his dismay and grabbed at where Zealot had stood. "No!" he croaked. "Brother, come back!"
Kunai knives thudded into his chest, but they held no chakra and did no damage. The guei looked up and his eyes radiated white through the slits in his bandages. At a single wave of his arm, all the Narutos before him were stricken with seizures and bloody eruptions. They writhed in agony and vanished, then all the rest vanished…all but one.
Grunting with satisfaction, Diseased marched toward the afflicted leaf-ninja who huddled miserably on his knees and elbows in the inches-deep water. The guei raised his foot and kicked Naruto over so he could see the feverish look in his prey's defeated eyes. Thus satisfied, he held out his hand in the palm of which were collected the gruesome deaths of a thousand plagues.
Sycophant, meanwhile, crumbled under Orphan's onslaught. As wildly as she fended and fled, and though her blasts of explosive, supernatural force shattered the gloomy landscape, the elegant hand-mirror that anchored her to the physical realm did not last long against the hunting swipes of brother's swords which slashed the curio from her desperate grasp. The woman watched its bright fragments tumble into space then twinkle out like dying embers, one after the other. A look of terrible realization paled her countenance before she too evanesced into oblivion.
Condemned and Tyrant, infuriated beyond measure, threw themselves at Orphan with a riot of clashing energies. Back and forth, their battle unfolded. Condemned snatched off his precious hat and kept it tightly in hand, determined not to suffer the same fate as Manciple and Sycophant. In the end, though, Orphan had been a trained swordsman in life and remained one in death. He kept his two enemies positioned against each other until he was ready to strike, then the point of his weapon found Condemned's hand and pierced through it and his hat. Drawing it free, Orphan held it aloft then cut it to ribbons with a pair of whirling figure-eights. The defeated guei bubbled with tears as he grabbed at the spinning, glowing tatters.
"Well done," Tyrant complimented him dryly as Condemned slowly disappeared. "But you can't hope to prevail against me. Even as spirits, there are those meant to lead and those meant to follow; those who cleave through the seas of existence with ambition as their prow, and those who are tossed about on its waves."
Orphan looked at him curiously for a moment then shut his eyes and raised his sword high, pointing straight upwards into the rain.
Tyrant paused. "I'll bite," he began, "what kind of tactic is this?"
"That's kind of neat trick you guys --," Orphan broke off then corrected himself, "us guys have: controlling elements, I mean. So, I thought I'd give it a try."
The elder guei glanced at him skeptically, then looked up too into the murk which flashed again. A grin crossed his face. "It's a decent idea," he ventured. "But lightning can't hurt us."
"Not you, maybe," offered the former genin, "and not me. But I'm willing to bet your fabric-wrapped friend might have a problem."
The heavens growled as a cascading net of lightning crackled across the black sky then flashed down into Orphan's offered blade. As it entered him, he possessed then redirected it. Canting his other sword over his opposite shoulder, the blast erupted forth from it in the blink of an eye and caught Diseased squarely in the back. The surprised guei's bandages flamed and blew apart.
"Huh, that went better than expected," Orphan quipped, then returned his full attention to the annoyed Tyrant. "Now, what were you saying?" he began rhetorically. "Oh, yeah, you were so proud of yourself because life gave you a better deal than most." The junior spirit smiled and gestured. "But take a look around. You have no armies to fight for you anymore, no legions of servants and bodyguards to clear this pitiful orphan from your path. It's only you and me – the orphan and the tyrant," he lowered his brow then stated significantly, "the only ones left!"
Tyrant startled at the boy's pronouncement, and looked away in alarm for his other brothers and sisters -- exactly the opening Orphan hoped for. He shot forward, slashing with both blades, one after the other in continuous succession. Each stroke flashed blinding white, like the lightning above, as he channeled his preternatural energies through them.
The other guei fell back, confused, surprised and unable to counter as the blows rained down. As Tyrant tried to get some distance from his unrelenting brother, a gold pocket-watch, solid and real, tumbled from his substance. "No!" he gasped horribly as he reached out for it, but it was too late. Orphan's expert stokes parted the night and, with it, Tyrant's last hope.
Naruto huddled on his knees and elbows. His head pounded and his skin burned with fever. His joints ached; his muscles stiffened, and his stomach was gripped in nausea. He'd been sick before, but never like this. He'd felt pain before, but never anything so excruciating and pervasive -- like his every organ had betrayed him, like his body was rotting away.
A sudden pressure knocked him over and he fell with a splash. Cold rain blinded his eyes and pattered against his face. Standing over him in the darkness, loomed the horrible guei, Diseased. Naruto tried to move aside, but found he could not manage anything more than a palsied tremor.
The bandaged monster lowered his outstretched hand toward him and there was a loud pop and a brilliant flash that made the ninja recoil and press his eyes press shut. As it became clear to him that he was still alive, Naruto forced himself to roll away blindly through the water and mud. When at last he could clear the dazzling spots from his eyes, he could see that Diseased smoked and smoldered from a great, gaping void through his torso. Sparks and embers flew up from the blasted edges of the guei's bandaged form, which were quickly swallowed up by the greedy rain, while what was left of him wobbled and lurched about drunkenly.
An idea took shape in the genin's mind – how he could beat Vagrant. How easy is this going to be! Yeah, he thought, I'll just use my genjutsu to transform into Diseased, wait for her to come and try to help, then wham! He tried to force himself up, but his infected body would not obey.
Vagrant moaned as Diseased swayed a final time then faded away. Somewhere out in the darkness there echoed the sounds of battle from Orphan and his demonic brethren.
Get up, loser! Naruto thought furiously, invoking his rival Sasuke's familiar, repetitive epithet to fire him to action, but even that was no use. The world spun like a carnival ride. His stumbling feet slipped in the mud and he fell into a limp heap. Get…up, he again urged himself, but even the thought was agonizing. "No…," he mumbled wretchedly.
Never before had he let himself, or anyone else, down like this. How many times had he failed? How many times had he fallen only to rise to try again? How many times had he pushed himself beyond the limits of endurance, only to reach a higher plateau of strength? It was his greatest attribute; one that bespoke the essence of his very soul, yet this time it wasn't working. This time he would not prevail in the end as he had so often before. I…I can't go out like this – a…a loser, a disgrace, he hissed vehemently to himself where he lay, with his head soaking in water, his unresponsive body showered by cold rain.
Slow footfalls splashed toward him, and though Naruto could barely raise his head he knew it was Vagrant. The woman hovered there for long moments then sank down and sat beside him. The seconds passed like an eternity, as Naruto waited for the end – for the guei to extend her powers and crush out his life.
Her tinny, unmelodic voice broke the rain's rhythm. "You really cared about him, didn't you?"
The genin attempted to speak, but pain coursed through his body while hallucinations and random thoughts warred in his mind. It was all he could do to keep himself focused. "T…Tom…," he burbled.
"Tomoki," Vagrant finished for him. "That was his name, I know." The guei cast a cross look off into the distance. "He's a fighter, that's for sure…and you too. I guess you don't need me to tell you that," she laughed sourly. "I envy him for having a friend like you." The ghost patted his arm. "You were really pissed off when Desdemona turned him into one of us, weren't 'cha? Oh, I could tell. I'm sensitive like that."
The leaf-ninja's eyes rolled and flickered as his body started to curl up, constricted involuntarily by Diseased's attack. He willed his gnarled hands to reach for the hidden arsenals of kunai knives and shuriken he carried, but they would not go.
Lightning flared then and lit up Vagrant's homely face with a series of stroboscopic flashes. "I'll spare you all the things that happened to me that tossed me out of our nice, warm apartment and out onto the street. But you better know that none of us, and I mean none of us, are ever so far from the dirt that we can't fall and end up there." Her ghoulish cheek twitched, moving the scarred character that bore her name as a guei. "I just wish --," she broke off abruptly and raised a pale hand to her forehead. "I just wish that someone would have cared about me the way you did about him…just a kind word, just to say that it mattered to them," the ghost sniffled. "The Shan woman didn't kill me. She didn't have to."
The ghost looked up suddenly and changed the subject. "Just to let you know, your boy just finished Condemned. Damn…I should've known Desdemona's plan would end bad."
She turned back toward Naruto, grimaced weakly then looked away. "You're going to die, you know. Diseased got you with, well, a disease. Now, I'm not trying to rub it in. I just…I just wanted you to know that I know how much that sucks, being sick, dying outside in the rain like this. And I didn't want you to die alone…the way I did."
For a moment, the guei's story cut through Naruto's delirium and brought to his fevered mind back to lucidity. "S…sorry," he managed to mutter.
"Thanks," Vagrant replied with a far-way smile. "Hey, would you like to see something?" She reached into her vest pocket and produced a photograph – a wedding photo of her in much happier times, arm in arm with a reasonable-looking man. Both expressions radiated hope and dreamy contentment. The falling rain spattered against the picture and slid down its glossy, unmarked surface.
"Surprised?" she asked. "Well, I wasn't always a guei, you know." She took up the boy's clammy hand and pressed it into his grasp. "Why don't you take it? By now I should have given up all that stuff about what was and might have been." The ghost drew a deep breath – a reflex only from habit. "Ah, I'm no good like this. Holding on to the past…it's keeping me from what I need to do next."
Putting her hands on her knees, she rocked to her feet then looked down at the ailing boy. "For what it's worth, Naruto," Vagrant offered, "I hope I'm wrong about you dying."
Naruto shifted slightly, with the rain and mud pooling up around his prostrate form, and watched her go then looked again at the keepsake she'd given him from her former life. She'd been alive once and loved. The genin stared into it, past its slick face and the colored chemicals that comprised it, into the world it presented.
He knew what he had to do; what Vagrant wanted him to do – to destroy this trace and set her free from the Shan Empress's spell. But how…how can I? the thought assailed him. This is the only thing left of her that proved she ever existed! As he lay there, settling slowly into a trace brought by the rainfall's caress and pattering sounds, another thought occurred to him. No, it's not the only thing, he amended. She could have killed me, but instead she talked to me and shared this piece of herself. It's not this picture that proves she lived, but my memories of her kindness.
Naruto's eyelids fluttered, struggling to stay open. He looked at the dead woman's picture one last time, then slowly tore it – an effort that took all of his will and the last of his strength. As the two halves started to glow, they dropped from his quaking hands then flowed off on the surface of the water…away and out of sight.
Orphan, the last of the guei, walked uncontested over the rain-drenched battlefield. Everywhere he looked there were craters brimmed with water and muck, and shattered fragments of stone from the ruined temples' monoliths. As the rain pounded and the sky flashed with lighting and roared with thunder, it occurred to the recently-deceased boy that this was exactly the sort of place that wrought within the depths of the human imagination the presence of demons and spirits…like himself.
Not a bad place to haunt, he mused sardonically, though he found it hard to accept this new identity. Never in life had he pictured himself like this – a wraith whose passage evoked terror in the timid and fascination in the minds of those cursed with susceptibility to the fanciful.
It did not take Orphan long to find what he sought, and he looked down at Naruto's still form which lay in a deepening pool of rainwater. This time, he was glad for his friend's orange outfit which had made him that much easier to spot.
Out of pure reflex, he knelt to pick him up, only to rediscover that his hands were gone replaced with swords and the knots of white bandages the girl, Reona, had wrapped. Chuckling briefly at his mistake, he directed his essence into the ground which welled up beneath the unconscious figure and transported him to a higher, drier area sheltered somewhat by what remained of one of the standing-stones.
That accomplished, he turned quickly to go but then lurched to a stop. Turning back, his gaze fell on the slack, scarred features of Naruto's face. It was clear he'd been through a lot. Diseased had afflicted him with contagions that would have killed even the strongest ninja. But this number-one, hyperactive genin of the Hidden Leaf Village was far from normal. Even unconscious, with his temperature flaring and breath racing, Naruto's hidden powers were fighting it and would heal him back as good as new. Of this, the guei was certain.
Orphan's cheek twitched. Don't do this, he warned himself. Don't do this, don't! Despite himself, he couldn't help but look again at he genin. Naruto…he thought as he remembered all they'd been through. My friend, my…beautiful friend. The ghost staggered for a moment, overcome with emotion, then righted himself and sighed. How many things about you I'll never forget…how funny you are, your courage, your strength, your selflessness. A smile cut through his grief. Your laugh – like a braying donkey, your face sloppy with ramen.
A sharp gust of wind pelted his quasi-real form with rain, but he didn't feel it. Orphan looked again at the haggard genin, whose normally spiky blond hair was plastered flat to his skull by all the rain, and his expression pained.
"If I'd have known I was going to die today, I would have told you," he said aloud in a cracking, hesitant voice, then shut his eyes and gulped. "And I would have told you how much I'm going to miss you…y-you ridiculous loser who wants to be Hokage so bad. But then you probably would have laughed." The guei reached up to rub his face, then again realized his mistake. Forcing a frown, Orphan continued raggedly, "In a way though, I'm glad you're unconscious…otherwise you'd just say something stupid, right?"
His one-way conversation ceased as he sensed the approach of another. Lifting his head, he turned to face the Shan Empress who stood there alone, forlorn and draped in soggy, red robes.
Orphan's eyes rose and his deep, rolling laugh was worthy of any haint described in gothic literature. "You look like a cat left out in the rain," he observed.
She stared at him disgustedly, then her fingers flew together and apart in a rapid sequence of seals.
"What do you going to do, Empress?" the guei interrupted, "kill me?"
Desdemona stopped, and let her arms fall limply to her sides. "You," she intoned. "You ruined everything."
"Did I?" said Orphan with an absent shrug. "Sorry," he offered half-heartedly. The spirit grinned at her edgily, with a tolerance stretched to its limit then pushed past her.
She stared after him then wailed to his back, "So that's the end of it?"
"Almost," the ghost answered without turning or slowing his pace.
The Empress raced after him as he approached the Omphalos, still untouched after all that had transpired.
"This is how you did it, isn't it?" asked Orphan, who gestured at it. "That's why it's been storming so badly. You tapped into the power of the earth's meridians to summon us." He looked at her askance. "Intelligence, wit, wealth and immortality," the dead boy listed. "You have more than anyone could possibly ask for, and yet for all of that you are completely worthless." Orphan sighed then looked around, taking in the oppressive rain, the darkness and the spoiled remnants of the old temple. "I'm going to miss all this," he said as if to himself then, taking notice again of his rain-soaked follower, added: "not this place specifically, you understand…I mean life in general. I really thought I'd have more time, you know? Maybe I could've made something of myself, helped someone out, found true love…"
Before he could become lost in his regrets the ghost drew back and struck the point of his right sword into the ancient stone, which penetrated with a harsh clink. He then stamped his foot forcefully into the flat of the blade and bent it until it snapped.
Desdemona's amethyst eyes flickered up at him. "Kill me too, Tomoki," she said despondently.
The wraith appraised her then slowly approached. With a movement as slow and smooth as the passage of the hour-hand, he raised the point of his remaining sword to just below her breastbone.
"A single thrust would go all the way through," Orphan opined as his eyes found hers, and he could sense her expectation. But then he explained, "It's just that easy to kill someone," and let the blade come away. "Forget it," he commanded and turned his back to her. "Live, I insist. Live on with the memory of everything that happened here tonight. Live with how you betrayed the memory of your dead son, and how you killed me."
Orphan returned to the Omphalos, plunged in the point of his left-hand sword then snapped it before he could endure any second thoughts. As the broken weapons bandaged to his hands started to glow, as well as the fragments stuck in the stone, Orphan closed his eyes to await his passage to the afterlife.
Just then, a crack opened in the earth beside the Omphalos. Orphan gaped at Desdemona who looked down at it from the other side with eyes that were wide with surprise. "It's not me," the guei explained in honest alarm as the rupture in the earth widened and water bubbled up. The ground heaved suddenly and the drenched Empress fell as the schism grew into a crevasse. The ghost looked out, frozen with disbelief as Plaza Lithica and the dark and distant castle teetered.
Throwing himself to the ground and knowing he had little time left, Orphan drove his broken swords into the soft earth and possessed it. It was then that he knew the truth: the rotted underpinnings of Castle Omphalos…the foundations, basements, and crawlspaces that had been built over and abandoned were crumbling away. The continuous, torrential rain and overflowing rivers had flooded and filled those voids, weighing and pressing on the structures of inundated earth and eroded stone that were never meant to contain such forces.
Screaming into the darkness as he reached out with his supernatural energy, thick ropes and coils of earth and stone on Orphan's side of the divide flew across the widening rift to catch hold of the other. For a moment, the gulf held steady, and the ninja-spirit strained even harder as he tried to force it to rejoin.
The ghost's face locked in a rictus of desperation. His power would not be enough, and he could feel himself fading….fading away. His substance was evaporating again into the ether from which it came. As Orphan stared helplessly toward the distance, the lightning flashed. In that moment, the last moment of his existence, he saw the Shan Empress along with half of Plaza Lithica, and the imposing profile of Castle Omphalos wrack, crumble, then vanish over the edge of the plateau.