Author's Notes: Ah...I wrote the second half of this chapter in 2011. Yeah. 6 months to write 1000 words. 0ะด0
Disclaimer: I do not, nor have I ever owned Naruto or any official characters, though I would like to.
Ino made a strange noise as the air was forced out of her lungs. It was one of those noises that the human throat was never quite designed for, and she would never be able to replicate or describe the noise properly as long as she lived. She collapsed involuntarily, only avoiding the hammer blow of Daruma's swinging fist by chance. She hit the roof, and rolled desperately away before the Kirigakure shinobi split the tiles beneath her with a booted heel. He was on his feet, though. And she could barely move. She tried to suck in more air unsuccessfully as her deflated lungs refused to deform themselves correctly.
'You are a persistent woman, aren't you?' he asked, almost casually, following her with calm eyes. Ino tried to get to her knees as she continued to fight her lungs. Daruma sighed sardonically before taking a carefully measured step towards her. Ino's arms came up in a defensive gesture automatically, even before his other foot suddenly shot forward in a curving arc that that forced her guarding forearms into her ribs and sent her sliding away, towards the edge of the roof. A sound she heard at the moment of contact let her know that he had broken something, but everything hurt so much that she couldn't tell what. On the plus side: the pressure to the side of her torso had, somehow, persuaded one of her lungs to inflate.
She coughed dryly once or twice and rolled onto her hands and knees. She had a vague notion that hopping over the side of the roof might give her a chance to regain a chance to...well, to run away, she supposed unhappily. The awning was fairly close, but when she reached out a hand to grasp at it, a violent stab of pain let her know what it was that Daruma had broken. She gritted her teeth against the pain, and tried her other arm.
'Oohh-no you don't,' Daruma chided, as though talking to a particularly adventurous child. She didn't have to see him to know that he had grabbed her ponytail, since the facts that her scalp suddenly hurt a lot, and her head was being lifted up and away from the ledge, left very little to her imagination. Her uninjured arm continued to reach for the ledge, hopelessly. 'I'm thinking you might just be my ticket out of here. But,' he trailed off for effect, and in order to twist one of her arms behind her back and draw her ear close to his mouth so that he could whisper the next part. 'I figure you'll be more "cooperative" if you're unconscious. With one eye already screwed shut in pain, since the arm he had chosen to twist was also the one that was broken, Ino had no idea by what means Daruma administered unconsciousness on her, but her body was completely limp a moment later.
Pausing only to hoist his human baggage over a shoulder, Daruma leapt away, a huge grin spread across his heavily bruised and blood-crusted face.
Kimimaro stopped running the moment he saw the clone of Daruma he had been chasing collapse into a mass of water halfway between buildings. The water cascaded to the street below, which was uncharacteristically deserted, and he heard Naruto land next to him.
'Damn,' he said irritably, casting a furtive glance over his shoulder- no doubt worried about Haruno Sakura. It hadn't taken Kimimaro long to figure out that he was infatuated with the pink-haired Iryou-nin, and had taken considerably less time to realise that the feeling was not reciprocated.
Using his obvious powers of deduction, he had also decided that the reason Naruto had stuck to his side like they were joined at the leg was because Shikamaru had decided that would be...prudent. Despite everything, it was obvious the broody, intelligent konoha shinobi didn't completely trust him. And Kimimaro couldn't help but appreciate his caution.
'Hey, I think we'd better get back to the others now,' Naruto suggested, looking back the way they had come again. Kimimaro would have been a step ahead of him already, had he not noticed something he wouldn't normally have. Here and there between the buildings, twisting around any serviceable protrusion, and being only slightly more visible than spider's silk, tiny threads had been carefully and inoffensively strung on the structures around them. And now they were silently going taught and creating an innocuously closed space. Naruto did not press his suggestion of leaving, as he had realised that the situation was more complicated than he had taken it to be. Kimimaro wasn't sure whether or not to reassess his impression of the blonde youth.
That thought, however, was forcefully put to one side by the distinctive, graveyard chuckle of Tsukasa. 'Huhuahahahaa... What luck! I was afraid you would change direction before you got here.' A line snapped tight to Kimimaro's right and began making the high-pitched creaking sounds of drawn material under lateral stress. 'I was hoping your friend would have stopped following by the time you got here, however...' a few more lines snapped tight close to Naruto, forcing him to take a backward step towards Kimimaro. '...I don't mind killing you both at the same time.' Tsukasa said that last part in a flat, dangerous tone that promised a speedy and bloody conclusion to his speech.
'Naruto,' Kimimaro said under his breath. 'Be ready to jump down.' Naruto nodded to show he had heard him, even if he didn't quite know what Kimimaro meant by it yet. Not wanting to waste any of the time Tsukasa was giving them, Kimimaro took a deep breath, gathered as much of his chakra as was sensible and threw up his arms. For just a moment, both Nauto and Tsukasa must have thought he was giving up.
'Sawarabi no Mai!' he punctuated the last word by stamping his foot. Tsukasa's gloating and surprise cost him the advantage as Kimimaro disappeared beneath the surface of a huge, coral-like bone structure that grew from him with a movement not unlike a tree growing sped up a thousand times. Tsukasa finally sprang his trap, too late. The almost-invisible lines jittered and skipped along the surface of the bone before breaking as it plunged downward, its sheer weight dropping it through the structure of the building. Kimimaro thought he heard Tsukasa shout in rage, but realised it was actually screams of excited laughter.
Naruto, somehow managing to avoid the sharp corners of the bone tree and the slicing threads that were still snapping to attention all around, hit the floor of the level below and rolled out of the way before the blunt mass of bone smashed down a second later. Tsukasa must have anticipated a downward escape attempt as there were lines here too. However, they were far sparser, and hadn't been intended to stand up against the tree. Several of them were pinned to the smashed floor, and struggled fruitlessly against the intense weight pinning them in place.
Naruto stared at the smooth, white surface, trying to come to terms with it. When Kimimaro's face and torso began detaching themselves from it, he was less intimidated.
'You could have warned me you were going to do that!'
While Kimimaro was trying to decide how best to respond to that assertion, part of the already dusty hallway they were in collapsed in a shower of splintered stone and wood. A figure, bent over on all fours, was at the epicentre.
'Kuhuhu, I never knew you could do that, Kaguya,' Tsukasa oozed, sounding oddly cheery as he said it. 'That makes this all the more interesting!' His right hand whipped out and a long, black cord wrapped itself around Kimimaro's abdomen. With another jerk of his arm, he drew the rope back, tearing Kimimaro the rest of the way out of the bone structure and hurling him against a wall. After spinning him around once or twice the rope lost its hold on him and sprang back to Tsukasa. He grinned and watching Kimimaro regain his feet and extend the bone spikes from his hands.
Having been out of sight for most of the exchange, Naruto came charging down the hall straight at Tsukasa who shifted his attention from Kimimaro just long enough to bring up his arm in a warding gesture. Just when Naruto thought he was going to resolve the situation by himself, Tsukasa straightened his arm, pointing a clawed hand at him. 'Hane-Ken no Jutsu.'
One moment the hand was empty, with Naruto less than ten feet away, leaping through the air with a kunai in each hand. The next moment, a glossy grey ripple of movement shot forward and skewered Naruto through the chest. Tsukasa snorted in smug satisfaction. Then Naruto's body disappeared in a cough of smoke. Tsukasa's eyes grew huge as the mass of hair he had thought had killed the young man flopped weightily to the floor, and he noticed the ring of orange above him descending from all directions. To his credit, he reacted admirably.
With a quick half turn, he flung out both his arms to his sides and a fan of spines resembling straight strands of hair spread out from him, following the arc described by his sweeping arms. Again, the multiple copies of Naruto vanished when hit. Tsukasa clenched his teeth, still not quite understanding. That was when the real Naruto, thrown by still more clones, hit him in the back with Rasengan. He flew straight through the stone wall in a tangle of hair, curses and broken masonry.
Sufficiently impressed by Naruto's tactics, Kimimaro jumped through the hole in the wall, intent on making sure Tsukasa wouldn't be getting back up.
'What's that?' the Lord of Thunder asked in bombastic surprise. He had heard the attendant quite clearly, but the news was such a welcome surprise that he wanted to hear it again. The attendant, used to this, repeated the announcement that Lord Raitengeki was requesting an audience. 'Oh, Raitengeki! Show him in, at once!' the Lord of Thunder ordered with growing excitement. He had been troubled, as of late, what with so many of the country's Lords dying under questionable circumstances. He had been so distraught that he had ordered a summons for every noble of the country to come with all haste to the Imperial Palace. He had been extremely frustrated when most of the messengers he dispatched were never seen or heard from again, so he was more than happy to see that Lord Raitengeki, a sensible and loyal man, had managed to make it all the way here from his remote land holdings. With a titter of contention, he flipped open his favourite fan, rose from his throne began descending the broad stairs before it, intending to meet Lord Raitengeki at the foot of them. His girth prevented him from doing so in any decent amount of time and when he finally reached the bottom of the stairs, huffing and puffing, Lord Raitengeki was waiting politely for him.
'Raitengeki-dono,' he said breathlessly, left hand fanning himself furiously. Lord Raitengeki bowed deeply, apparently determined to go through all the fanfare required of such an occasion, despite the Lord of Thunder's good mood. 'Now, now,' he began again, waving his fan dismissively. 'Let's not burden ourselves with tradition. I've been most anxiously awaiting your arrival.'
'You honour me, My Lord,' Lord Raitengeki said, straightening up slowly. His voice was flat and crisp, as always, and carried a certain degree of dignity that the Lord of Thunder always found reassuring...
It was then that the Lord of Thunder noticed something very unusual. Lord Raitengeki, while tastefully dressed, had decided to adorn his clothes with a most sinister accessory. From his belt protruded a paired Katana and Wakizashi.
Strange...
The Lord of Thunder was just about to comment on it when Lord Raitengeki laid a hand delicately on the Katana's handle, unsheathed it, split the Lord of Thunder completely in half, and re-sheathed it in one terrifyingly precise movement. The grand hall fell completely silent, save for the splashing of liquid on the wood floor, and the heavy impact of the Lord of Thunder's corpse.
Lord Raitengeki then did what any sensible man would have done. He had the former Lord of Thunder's most trusted advisors executed. Even in the shocked silence, the Kirigakure no Sato shinobi that descended from the rafters made absolutely no noise.
At least, until they got hold of their intended victims.