9. The Final Showdown –

Kakashi ran at Ryouma with his hand covered with jagged ice and struck at Ryouma's head, but Ryouma pulled out a kunai and parried the attack. Kakashi fell backwards and said, "Ice Blade Release!" he yelled. The ice on his hand disappeared and a sword made of ice appeared. Kakashi gripped the sword and rushed towards and was deflected by Ryouma's kunai again. "Attack now everyone!" he yelled.

"Aqua Burst!" yelled Shizu. She threw an orb of water at Ryouma, hitting him in the chest, winding him.

"Flamingo!" yelled Tetsuma. His flamingo flew towards Ryouma and used its solar wind technique right in front of his face sending him flying into the nearby crates.

"Sai!" yelled Chouko as Ryouma struggled to stand up. She threw the two sai that she created with her notebook at Ryouma and it hit in his shoulder.

"You guys suck," he said. Chouko's sai had hit his shoulders and had pinned his shirt to a crate, but only hit the very top of his clothes, not hurting him at all. He laughed and tugged on his shirt, ripping off some cloth and leaving the sai stuck on the crate. "All those attacks barely scratched me," he told them.

"Kakashi catch this!" Chouko yelled. She threw the crystal at Kakashi and he dropped his ice blade on the ground and caught the crystal. "Now you, Shizu, and Tetsuma, run and try to find an exit! I will deal with him!"

"No!" yelled Kakashi. "We can't keep sacrificing people! We need to stay together!"

Ryouma rushed towards Chouko and kicked her into a pile of nearby crates and punched Kakashi away. Ryouma approached Chouko, who was lying on the ground, and started performing the hand seals of his soul extraction technique.

"So this is one of my last moments," thought Chouko. One of her past memories started to run through her head. It was when she and Tetsuma were eight years old and it was Christmas time. Tetsuma was very competitive and would always challenge her (they are siblings, fraternal twin siblings, and Chouko is five minutes older) to little competitions such as racing around a building or rock-paper-scissors. Tetsuma was a horrible loser and had a phobia of failure. On Christmas Eve, she was wrapping his present at her desk, next to her old notebook, and when Tetsuma saw her wrapping, he said, "Who's it for?"

"For you," she relied.

"I don't want a present," he replied.

"Why?!?!" she questioned.

"I don't want one," he said.

He then left the room and when she came out of her room, he challenged her to a rock-paper-scissors match, so she put his present on a nearby desk. He did rock, she did paper, causing him to lose.

"NOOOOOOO!!!" yelled Tetsuma. "DID YOU CHEAT?!?!"

"No," replied Chouko as she picked up her present.

"Here," she said as she put her hands out holding the present. "You can open it early. Merry Christmas."

"No, I won't take it!" he yelled.

Chouko shoved the present into his arms and walked back into her room. She quickly turned the lock on her door. Tetsuma ran over to the door and started knocking and yelling, "Open up! I don't want the present!"

"Then throw it away!" she yelled back at him.

He tried to shove it underneath the door, but it wouldn't fit.

Tetsuma then gave up and decided to open the present, wondering what she decided to give him. It was a black notebook with a flamingo on the front cover. He opened it and on the back of the front cover, it read: "I found this notebook at the store a week ago, and since you like flamingos so much, I decided to buy it for you to replace your old, ripped notebook that you use for you chakra art. There's also a pencil stuck in the spine of the book."

Chouko then decided to open the door and saw Tetsuma sitting in a chair holding the notebook in his hands.

"Sorry," he said with a feeling of guilt in his voice.

"It's okay," she replied.

The memory ended and Chouko lost her soul.

"Chouko!" yelled Tetsuma. "Eagle!" he yelled, sending an eagle flying across the room hitting Ryouma in the stomach. He ran towards Ryouma and kicked him in the chest, blowing him a couple of feet away. Tetsuma ran over to Chouko's body and shook her, in hopes that she was still alive, but she wasn't. She didn't wake up no matter what he did.

Meanwhile, Kakashi and Shizu were trying to fight Ryouma. Kakashi was constantly attacking with his ice sword, while holding the crystal in his left hand, but Ryouma kept blocking with kunai.

"Water Flow!" Shizu yelled causing water to be released out of her hands and hit Ryouma's face. This gave Kakashi a chance and he slashed at Ryouma's stomach, causing a large cut in his armor.

"You…" said Ryouma. He struck Kakashi and Shizu both in the chest with the palm of his hands and performed some hand seals. He placed his palms on the ground and mud creatures rose. They started swarming Kakashi and Shizu, surrounding them. With the other two preoccupied, he walked towards Tetsuma who was standing above Chouko.

"I will deal with you later," he said. "I want to get that kid's soul over there."

Some mud creatures started to attack Tetsuma and they managed to pin his arms and legs to a nearby crate. He couldn't move because of the creatures' strong hold on him and he knew that it was over.

Throughout his mind, he thought of the same memory that Chouko thought of.

"Sorry," he said with a feeling of guilt in his voice.

"It's okay," said Chouko.

Tetsuma remembered that he felt really bad about how he had treated his sister after she took a lot of time trying to find a good present for him. He wanted to make it up to her. Chouko returned to her room, leaving the door, unlocked this time. Tetsuma, on the other hand, ran off, hoping to find a store where he could buy a present for her for Christmas. He was walking thought the streets when he saw a sign for a store. "Large Wonders" was the words on the sign so he went into the store. As he browsed the aisles, he started to remember why he didn't want the present she bought him. He never liked gift giving holidays. He always thought that they made people feel obliged to give a friend a present, when they might not really want to and buying a present from a store doesn't show much thought. It just shows they took a couple of minutes of their time in a store to buy something, but he told himself that he was going to take longer than a couple of minutes.

He then found an aisle full of notebooks of all different colors. Large Wonders was having a special event where there were hundreds of different types of notebooks. They were all in shelves, and he pulled one off the shelf to see that there was a notebook with a different picture on the cover. He did this to many of the notebooks, to find that there was a different notebook behind the one he removed. A lady who ran the store then walked towards him.

"Do you need any help," she asked. "Are you looking for a certain type of notebook?"

"No, it's okay," he replied.

"Are you sure?" she asked. "We have many notebooks that could have something different on the cover and you may never find the one you're looking for since we only have two copies of a notebook with a certain symbol on the cover. I remember a girl that was her a week ago who spent an hour trying to find a notebook."

"What notebook did she buy?" he asked.

"A flamingo," the lady replied.

"Oh," he said. Now he felt even worse. "I don't need any help."

The lady left. He knew that he had to find a notebook that Chouko would really want now to replace her old notebook. He spent the next hour searching though the notebooks and finally he found a white notebook, the one he had been looking for. He bought it and carried it back to his house. He found a roll of wrapping paper and quickly wrapped the present. He then knocked on Chouko's door.

"Yes?" she said as she opened the door.

"Here," he said. "Open it now."

Chouko carefully unwrapped the present and saw that it was another flamingo notebook.

"You found the other flamingo notebook?" she asked. "You dug through the hundreds of notebooks?"

"Yeah," Tetsuma replied.

Back in reality, Ryouma was removing his hand from Tetsuma's forehead. He placed the soul in his jar. Kakashi and Shizu then finally managed to destroy all of the mud creatures.

"Mud Chains" said Ryouma. Chains made of mud appeared out of the ground and chained themselves to Kakashi's wrists and ankles. The chains moved backwards, moving him ten feet away from Shizu. He dropped his sword.

"Damn it!" yelled Kakashi. "Shizu, hurry up and run!"

"No I'm not leaving!" she yelled back.

"At least take the crystal," he said.

Shizu ran towards Kakashi and grabbed the crystal from his hand and put it in his pocket, hoping Ryouma would think she would have it. She pulled out a kunai and tried to break the chain, but the chains wouldn't break.

Ryouma grabbed Shizu by the neck using one of his hands, and started to slowly tighten his grip on her throat. Shizu attempted to stab him with her kunai, but more of his mud chains came out from the ground and attached themselves to her wrists and ankles. She started to feel dizzy. She started to remember about her childhood like how she moved around a lot and on her first day of ninja school in the Cupcake Village. She sat in the seat behind Kakashi. On her whole first day, she was quiet and never talked. The first day was pretty quiet. All the class was taught was how to transform into someone else. All of the students had a turn in transforming into their teacher, Iruka. All of them succeeded. Last up was Shizu.

"Henge," she said quietly. A poof of smoke appeared, but nothing happened. One of the kids started to laugh. It was Musashi.

Kakashi, who sat next to Musashi, pointed to the top of Musashi's hair and then said, "Look Musashi, there's a ladybug!"

"WHAT!" yelled Musashi. "WHERE! OH MY GOD! WHERE!"

The class stopped looking at Shizu and started to laugh at Musashi panicking.

Ryouma loosened his grip on Shizu's neck, but she still fell unconscious and the chains disappeared. Ryouma prepared to steal her soul, but she opened her eyes and kicked Ryouma in the face. The chains restraining Kakashi broke, due to Ryouma's concentration being broken, letting him fall to the ground. Ryouma then kicked Shizu in her stomach, causing her to flinch from pain. As she struggled to get up, Ryouma managed to perform his soul extraction technique on Shizu. He placed her soul in his jar.

"Only one of you left," said Ryouma. "She thought she could trick me by hiding the crystal in your pocket, but I'm smarter than that. I can sense the crystal's energy. So give it to me. If you give it, I might spare you."

"No, it's ok," Kakashi replied. "I have to get that jar of souls," Kakashi thought to himself. "Ice Release: Frozen Breeze!" he yelled. Out of Kakashi's hand, came an extremely cold wind that went in the direction of Ryouma. Ryouma put his hand up to shield himself, causing him to not see Kakashi rush towards him and grab the jar.

"YES!" yelled Kakashi as he ran away, but he then tripped on a crack in the ground…

…………………………………………………………….

The jar fell to the floor and the hundreds of souls Ryouma stole started to flood out, returning to their real bodies. Shizu, Tetsuma, Chouko, Genta, Marumi, and Jin (the other five ninjas all lost their souls much farther away from the scene of this battle), all who ran towards Kakashi, who was facing Ryouma. Ryouma managed to stand up and was extremely angry.

"You little !" he screamed at them. "All of my souls are gone! I'm going to kill you little !"

"Let's start running," said Kakashi. The seven ninjas ran towards the light they saw leak through a half-closed door. Kakashi pushed the door open and light flooded in. They were outside, and in front of the entrance to the secret base. Musashi, Maasaki, Reiko, Daichi, and Hayoto ran towards them.

Ryouma came out of the door, and still looked angry.

"I'm tired of this!" he yelled. "I'm going to kill all you at once! Mud Cage!" Mud started raising from the ground and created an orb around the twelve ninjas

"Energy Cutter!" yelled Shin. The technique sliced Ryouma's body in half, horizontally. The mud stopped surrounding the ninjas and started to disappear. "Are you guys okay?" asked Shin.

"We're fine," replied Tetsuma.

Meanwhile, the nine shadowed figures were still standing outside of the village.

"Ryouma has died," said Kami.

Two more shadowed figures appeared.

"We have found a new person to replace Ryouma," said the man that just appeared.

"He comes from the Cupcake Village," said the other man who just appeared.

The next day…

The twelve ninjas were standing in front of Ryouma's coffin, and each placed a flower on next to it.

"Even though Ryouma was not a good person, he still deserves a funeral," said Shin to the twelve ninjas. "And thank for finding the crystal and keeping it safe Chouko."

"Thank you, but all of us helped protect it," she replied.

"We Fruit ninjas will be sure to protect the crystal and keep it safe this time," said Shin.

The twelve ninjas then decided it was time to leave.

"I will see you guys soon!" he yelled as the twelve left the village.

At the entrance to the forest, Shizu suddenly said, "We forgot the golden fruit. Should we go back?"

Kakashi looked back on the gate, which was 10 feet away from him. "It looks too far," he said. The other eleven stared at him. "Fine, I'll go get it," Kakashi said. "It's a good thing the Kinomikage ("Kinomi" means fruit/nut/seed") decided to remove the seal on the gate, so I don't have to go through the challenges."

Twenty minutes later…

"They had to find the golden fruit so it took a while," said Kakashi.

The twelve of them walked into the forest, with the sun rising behind them. The mission might be over, but their journey has just started.

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

Note: This ends the first arc of the story.