By Smertios
Author's Notes: The last chapter was short. Sorry. I was having trouble finding a good ending. I either had to end it there, or stretch the story out another 4000 words. I thought that readers would probably rather have a chapter now (three hours ago, to be precise, I'm getting to work early because I'm psyched) than wait for another two or three weeks. Besides which, it was far too good a cliffhanger to not use.
Anywho, without any further ado, I have the distinct honor of presenting you Chapter Nine of Seeking a Center: Tearing Everyone Down.
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Chapter Nine: Tearing Everyone Down"I'd
like to see a change
I'd like to see a change
I'd like to see a
change, but I'm too busy...
Tearing everyone down"
Anti-Flag; "Tearing Everyone Down"
Hinata toppled to the ground, terrified to open her eyes. The sound of the horrific splat that had filled the room moments before was echoing in her ears, looping ad infinitum. Someone spoke from the general area of Sasuke's body. "Ow! That hurt, you old hag!"
"N-Naruto?"
Hinata opened her eyes, relief flooding her being. Uzumaki Naruto stood, holding his hand in pain, and glaring at the kunoichi who had attacked their teammate. Her needles had buried himself in the back of Naruto's hand. He spared a glance to Hinata, clutching at his wounded hand. "Hinata! Help Sasuke!"
Hinata nodded jerkily, and dashed towards her downed, compatriot, pulling her rudimentary first aid kit from her kunai holster. She knelt by Sasuke and checked his pulse. His heart was beating fast and shallow, suggesting hard aerobic work. In contrast, his entire body was completely slack, and his breath came in tiny, fast gulps.
The Hyuuga heiress was puzzled by his condition. Sasuke's condition was very similar to the way that victims of the Hakke Rokujyuu Yonshou. None of the muscles in his body were functioning properly, and the muscles needed to draw breath were failing, making him fight for every breath he got.
A quick check with Hinata's Byakugan revealed nothing out of the ordinary. Sasuke's tenketsu were all open, and his chakra was flowing normally. There were no outstanding wounds on him, excepting the small split in his scalp that he had accrued when he hit the wall. His chakra was strong, and almost undepleted. If Hinata did not know better, she would have never guessed he had been in a fight. In fact…
It occurred to her that it was the normal state of his body that was so wrong. For someone who had lost muscle control completely, Sasuke was too uninjured. 'Poison.'
There was no other rational explanation for Sasuke's state. However, the Hyuuga heiress had never seen, or read of, a poison quite like this one. There was no sign of an attack on Sasuke's nervous system, and he did not appear to have any damage done to his brain. Even stranger, whichever poison the woman had used, it hadn't even caused Sasuke any pain.
Now that was strange. In fact, Hinata quickly realized, Sasuke was in no pain at all. Even though he had hit his head, none of the normal reactions to pain were showing up in his chakra. His nervous system didn't seem to be firing at all.
Realization struck Hinata like a speeding shuriken. 'No…'
She ran a finger across Sasuke's forearm, and a light trace of a white powder came off on her finger. In a moment, her finger began to go numb, and she quickly whipped the offending material off on Sasuke's shirtsleeve, reasoning that his condition probably couldn't be made any worse.
It was a clever mix that the woman was using. She had mixed a powerful topical anesthetic with an over-concentrated muscle relaxant. The effect was a deadly mix that caused a person to completely lose control of their body, eventually killing them by stopping their breathing. Worse, a medic-nin wouldn't have any antidotes on hand for a muscle-relaxant or an anesthetic. After all, they weren't used to seeing medical tools used as poisons.
Hinata searched her mind, hoping that something she had read would offer her an antidote to the solution. To her frustration, no answers were forthcoming. She shut her eyes, trying to calm herself, and uttered a phrase that would have stopped the heart of anyone listening to her. "Damn…"
'If I can't treat the poison, all I can do is treat the symptoms, and wait for help.'
She felt for her center, and called up a surge of chakra. If she slipped at all, Sasuke was likely to die. With careful precision, she closed three tenketsu near to Sasuke's lungs. He stiffened, and his torso surged upwards unnaturally, but, to her relief, his lungs filled with much needed oxygen. After a moment, she reversed the process, causing Sasuke to breathe out. 'Naruto… Please be okay.'
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Naruto's hand hurt. A lot. When he had seen Sasuke's attacker raise her weapons to strike, all rational thought had fled from his brain. Rather than hitting the woman away from Sasuke, or attempting to remove Sasuke from the field of battle, he had taken his stand in front of his comrade, taking the blow meant for him. He was really sorry he had. 'Sasuke, you better be damn grateful for this, you lazy bastard.'
His teammate looked deathly ill, but Naruto didn't have time to focus on Sasuke, as Sasuke's assailant focused her attention on him. Her eyes blazed with malice and frustration. "You little shit! You should learn to stay out of your elder's business!"
"Heh," Naruto's face slipped into an easy smirk. "Just 'cuz you're an old hag doesn't mean I have to respect you. Nobody beats Sasuke up… Except me."
The woman charged, darting towards his injured hand, and threw a solid side-kick. He raised the arm to block her strike, but to his dismay, it responded sluggishly, and her kick slipped by, sending him to the floor. He levered himself up with his good hand, and glared. "What the fuck did you do to me?"
"Wouldn't you like to know?"
"Not really," Naruto replied, drawing his own senbon from his pouch. "It won't matter once you're down for the count."
He threw the senbon at the poison-mistress, not really concerned with whether or not they struck, and began forming seals. "Kage Senbon no Jutsu!"
The senbon he threw quickly became a massive wave of senbon. His attacker's eyes widened in horror, and for a moment, Naruto thought he had her. In the next second, the woman disappeared, and was replaced with an ornate wall-decoration, which was demolished.
Naruto jumped, knowing to expect an attack, but was met from above. He grabbed his attacker's foot as it descended towards his head, and pushed away, avoiding her altogether. As he fell, he called up his stores of chakra, but as he attempted to form seals, his injured arm flopped uselessly at his side. He slammed into the floor, jarring his leg, and fell to one knee. 'What the hell did she do to my arm?'
He felt tempted to pass that piece of inner monologue onto the woman, but he decided that nothing was to be gained by asking again. Words were a waste, at this point. Adjusting his stance to cover for his disabled limb, he charged back into combat.
It was clear to Naruto that he was outclassed as his strikes were consistently batted aside. He was too slow, especially one handed, and his form was too simple for him to win. With jutsu ruled out by whatever had caused his arm to go numb, and his taijutsu quickly failing him, he had hit bottom.
The woman slipped a roundhouse inside his guard, and he was propelled off to the side, pain blossoming along his side like electricity racing over his skin. His arm tingled momentarily, and inspiration struck. As the woman formed seals for a jutsu, he rolled off to the side and pulled one of his senbon from its case.
He slammed the needle into his forearm. The pain was muted, as though he had been pinched, but a burst of imaginary fire raced over the arm, like an awakening foot. The woman finished her seals, and a thorny vine shot out of the ground underneath Naruto, propelling him skyward. Before the vine could impale him, he pushed off with both arms (it worked, but his arm was still weaker than the other), and relaxed into a roll, sending a painful tingle through his shoulder, before returning to his feet, hands already forming seals.
"Kage Bunshin no Jutsu!"
A mass of clones appeared, one of them catching him in mid fall. Naruto's face fell into his old, easy smirk, and he charged, feeling the mass of clones around him surge forward with him. "Take this, you bitch!"
The feeling in his arm was fading rapidly, but the clones around him appeared to be fine. They fell into the fray, striking with ruthless efficiency. A rush of relief filled Naruto.
However, his relief was not long-lived. The woman jumped clear of the scrum, and made a gesture with a hand. The vine that Naruto had barely avoided a grisly death upon came crashing down atop him and his clones. He managed to roll out of the way, receiving only a painful gash down his leg, but his clones were crushed. "Fuck"
His arm was completely numb again, and the woman was rushing towards him, rage in her eyes. He turned, hoping to avoid a critical blow, but her fist crashed into his skull, making stars dance in his eyes.
Bonelessly, he collapsed to the ground, his vision dancing in and out of shades of gray. He lay there, helpless and agonized, upon the ground, as the woman stood over him. "Fucking little bastard. You should have run while you still had a chance."
His words caught in his mouth, as she drove a foot into his stomach, forcing all of the air from his lungs in a giant whoosh. "They should have taught you better at your academy. You should never engage in one-on-one combat with your betters. Your stupid ass will get kicked."
He coughed, and blood spewed from his lips, running down his cheek to settle on the ground. Words weren't coming, and his breath was painful in his chest. The woman glared at him. "No reply, eh? Figures. Big talk means nothing when you can't do a thing to defend yourself. You're lucky I'm not allowed to kill you. A joke of a ninja like you shouldn't be allowed to live."
'No! I'm not useless you damn bitch! I've done so much work, come so far. You just wait!' Try as he might, Naruto couldn't speak, the pain was too great, and so his thoughts ran a mile a minute, as his vision continued to swim before his eyes.
"Well. I can't kill you, but I can sure have fun with your teammates, can't I? I'll teach you to remember Sado Yurika and her lessons well, midget."
Helplessness rushed through Naruto's veins, sweeping through him like a tide of ice water, freezing his heart in terror. The woman, Yurika rather, turned her back on him, walking towards where Hinata sat by Sasuke, clearly fighting to keep him amongst the living. She was unaware of the threat looming fast behind her. He struggled, calling up all of his energy to force a warning from his lips, but none was forthcoming. "Hiiiiiiii…"
This wasn't happening. This couldn't be happening. He hadn't come back from years of training to watch his friends get killed because he couldn't keep his mouth shut. This wasn't how things were supposed to be. Hokage's didn't let their people get killed. His inner monologue spun out of control, gibbering like a mouse caught by a cat. Darkness clashed with his vision, making it difficult to see what was happening.
Yurika kicked Hinata in the back, sending her sprawling over Sasuke with a cry of shock. Naruto's vision went black, and the buzzing in his head grew so strong that he couldn't find a coherent thought. Negations filled his head; futilely attempting to dispel this surreal nightmare he had found himself within.
And then, with an audible "pop", it all went out.
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Naruto was wading through a river against the current, fighting hard against the pounding force of the water, but slowly being pushed down. The water rose higher and higher, covering his head, and he opened his mouth to scream. His only answer was the rush of water that filled his lungs, displacing the air within them.
He struggled, but the icy claws of darkness took him down and down and down…
"You can't do anything properly, can you, kit?"
A booming voice filled his head, and he found himself in a small, dingy room that looked to him to be more of a sewer pipe than a true room. One side was barred off, and on that side, a massive beast, with burning red eyes sat back on its haunches, the foxy equivalent of a smirk across its massive, ugly face. "Who the hell are you?"
"Take a wild guess."
"Kyuubi." Naruto felt a rush of anger fill him. This was the beast that had caused Itachi to attack him. This was the beast that had made his father give his life to seal it away in Naruto. This was the beast that had ended any chance he had of having a normal life.
The monster quaked with laughter, its massive tail swishing back and forth. "Maybe you aren't as stupid as I thought you were."
"Where are we?"
"Your mind. Or at least the corner that you choose to relegate me to." The beast gave Naruto a baleful glare. "It reflects how you feel about me, I suppose. Don't worry, the feeling is mutual."
Naruto didn't really care. There was only one thing on his mind. "I need to get back out! Hinata is in trouble! And Sasuke!"
The beast didn't reply for a moment, content to swish its tail and let the boy simmer. "I didn't exactly bring you in here.""But can you get me back out?"
The beast chuckled, its throaty laugh filling the room. "Yes… I suppose I do."
"And?"
Nothing. No reply. "Dammit! Tell me how to get out of this fucking place! Hinata and Sasuke need me!"
"And why should I, Kit? I don't care about your teammates."
"If you don't let me out of here… I'll… I'll…" Naruto glared, frustration filling him with anger. "If you don't let me out of here, I'll die, and you'll go with me. Don't think I won't do it, too!"
"Okay then…"
The world around Naruto dissolved, and the beast laughed loudly. Naruto felt the exultation of victory fill him, but a rush of concern consumed it. 'Why do I fell like I missed something there?'
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Hinata yelped as a foot struck her back. She fell against Sasuke, and felt the foot stomp down on her back. An angry voice above her said, "See, boy? This is what happens."
"N-Naruto." What had happened to Naruto, she panicked. The woman must have hurt him. She struggled to get out from under the foot that was holding her down, but the woman only laughed. "N-Naruto. Are y-you okay?"
There was no response, but an increased pressure on her spine. She reached for a kunai, to attack the foot, but her hand was kicked away swiftly. 'Not good. Come on, Hinata… What would Neji-neesan do?'
Inspiration struck her as she remembered one of the techniques Neji had worked on. Calling up all of her training with Kakashi, she began to shove chakra out of her tenketsu. The energy flowed out, slowly pushing the foot away, and Hinata tried to roll over, to spin the chakra. However, as she did, the chakra forced her away from the floor, flinging her into the air, and snapping her control. She managed to land on her feet, but the forced expulsion of so much chakra had left her weak. Her body felt too weak to stand, and she collapsed to the ground.
Naruto woke up just in time to see her fall. From her vantage point on the ground, the first warning she received was a gut-wrenching growl that came from his direction. She shifted her head, and watched as Naruto rose to his feet. His position was crouched, his face hidden, and his whole body surrounded by a glowing aura. 'Naruto… What happened to you?'
As his face rose, she realized that there was something very wrong with her teammate. His eyes were filled with a feral hunger, blazing red, and the small birthmarks on his face (which she thought were adorable) had grown into massive slashes of brown on his cheeks. However, more than anything, what bothered Hinata was that there was something very wrong about him. Gone was the happy, hyperactive boy who she cared for. In his place all that remained was a vicious hunter, hungry for his next meal.
He charged, waves of chakra splintering the finely polished dance floor where his feet fell. "Yurika… Die!"
Yurika's (she supposed that was the woman's name) eyes widened in horror, and she clumsily raised an arm to fend off Naruto's berserker rush. In a blink of the eye, his hands (both of which were in perfect working order) slammed into Yurika's stomach, doubling over. He followed up with an inner-edge crescent kick, which snapped the woman's head to the side, and finished his combination by grabbing her shoulder, and sending her spinning to the ground.
She fell heavily, and Naruto was upon her in a moment, hands around her throat. His eyes still had the same feral look to them, and his face twisted into a cruel, hungry, smile. Yurika was quickly turning blue from lack of oxygen. 'Naruto would never do this. Naruto would be horrified to think that this was happening. I've got to stop him!'
:"Naruto! Stop!"
The words burst from her throat, free of any stammer or insecurity. Her voice was hard steel, commanding his immediate cessation. To her shock, his eyes cleared of their red film, and the aura faded. "Hinata?"
He loosed his hands from around their assailant's throat, and stumbled back, horror in his eyes. The woman, who had since passed out from lack of oxygen, collapsed heavily down to the floor, her head bouncing off of the polished wood.
"What… What did I do?"
Hinata's heart went out to Naruto when she heard him speak. His voice was full of disgust and terror, and he was shaking. "N-Naruto"
He looked at her, and his eyes brought a new wave of empathy to her. They looked so empty, so terrified. "I- I'm sorry… I don't know what I did. What happened?"
"I d-don't know."
She wanted to go on, to tell him that it hadn't been him, that something must have happened to him, but before she could speak, a loud voice interrupted them. "Monster!"
The Daimyo, his face as hard as steel and as cold as ice, entered the room, surveying the scene. Behind him, his troupe of bodyguards, all armed with longbows, were standing with forbidding looks on their faces. "So… You thought you would break the peace of this gathering and kill an innocent bystander, did you, monster?"
Naruto shook his head, "No I-"
"I didn't give you permission to speak, you filthy creature." The Daimyo raised a hand, and his guards pointed their weapons at Naruto. "You ruin my conference with your violence! You assault an attendee, nearly killing her! You expect me to hear your excuses?"
Hinata did not know what was wrong. When they had met with the Daimyo before, he had seemed calm, if a little too focused on Naruto. This angry man made no sense. "S-Sir… He just."
The Daimyo shook his head. "Do not worry, child. He will be punished for his actions! Guards."
The men advanced on Naruto, who was slumped in defeat. Clearly the shock of having lost control was still affecting him. When he was surrounded, two stepped forward to tie his hands together. Hinata futilely tried to protest his mistreatment. "But, she –"
The man's expression became a mockery of empathy, as he stared down in what he must have believed was kindness. "Yes. I know. She was nearly killed. Still, I cannot dispense justice in an informal setting. He must be tried before I punish him adequately."
Hinata would have said more, but exhaustion overtook her, and she slept.
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Author's Notes: Okay! This was finished pretty quickly. Good stuff. I'm sorry if the fight seemed a bit brief, but the characters are so limited in their abilities that I was running low on creative combat ideas. As it was, I thought it was pretty good, if short, and it avoided getting repetitive (which was my primary goal in keeping it short).
As you can see, the team has had its first combat encounter, and showed that it could survive an attack by a stronger ninja. To be fair, it had nothing on the trial by fire that Team 7 faced against Zabuza, but this team isn't quite as strong over-all yet. Don't worry, they'll get there.
In the next chapter: The battle is over, but now Naruto faces an even greater threat. Can the injustice of a leader with unchecked power be defeated by a team of genin? Will Kakashi return and save the day? Why is the Daimyo acting this way? All those questions and more will be answered in the next chapter of Seeking a Center: Seeking a Center 10: Stand Up
See You Then!
Smertios