Chapter 7: Judge, Jury and Executioner

The purple boy dodged around Gaara's sand attack with remarkable speed, pushing off a tree trunk to avoid Shukaku's deadly embrace. The ink tiger skulked around the one-man army, looking for the opening to attack Temari or Kankurō. In response, Temari lowered her war fan and pretended to watch the scarecrow figure. As soon as the tiger pounced, she opened her fan directly to the second stage and whipped it upwards. The sudden blast of air knocked it back into a tree, where it disintegrated on impact.

Kankurō's Crow puppet flew towards the scarecrow, its octopus array of limbs splaying to cover the puppeteer from ranged attacks. Long knives shot out of the puppet's wrist, and with a twist of a finger Crow slashed mercilessly into the doll's body.

"I didn't know there were puppeteers in Konoha," said Kankurō, maneuvering Crow to block one of the doll's attacks. The blade snapped off in Crow's fingers, and Kankurō realized that the scarecrow's limbs were actually sickles, crudely attached to a stuffed torso. The legs were a bit longer, probably hoes or scythes, and its forehead bore the kanji for 'curse'.

"You got a really shitty puppet, man," Kankurō taunted. He wiggled his wrists, and Crow efficiently dismembered the scarecrow. For good measure, he opened the upper right chamber for smoke bombs, which he'd modified to charge and deploy explosive tags, and dropped one into the fallen puppet for good measure.

Temari, meanwhile, was darting through the underbrush at lightning speeds, searching for the creator of the ink tiger. She debated using the third portion of her fan, if only to summon Kamatari to help on the hunt, but decided against it. The sickle weasel was useful to an extent, but he demanded a tribute after service. Temari wasn't in the mood to give him a back rub and pick the lice out of his fur, so unless she really had to the familiar would remain in his domain.

She almost tripped over the boy one the ground. His orange hair stood out in the dark forest, and his eyes were closed. He couldn't have been the other team's puppeteer or the creator of the ink tiger, but a quick search proved two things. One, he was well and truly out. Temari doubted she could wake him up even with the roaring bang of an explosive tag, and there was a loud rumble coming from nearby as Gaara fought the strangely coloured ninja. Two, he had a scroll tucked into some kind of makeshift holster made of fabric on his thigh. After taking it, she checked it... and sure enough, it was a Scroll of Earth, the complement to the Sand Siblings' Scroll of Heaven. Tentatively, she pulled it out of the cloth. Almost as an afterthought, she replaced it with an explosive tag.

.:.

Anko was shaking on the ground, pain wracking her body. There was a faint white tinge travelling across her skin from the curse seal on her neck, a physical representation of the natural chakra the juinjutsu automatically harvested and funnelled into the user's chakra network. Previous versions of the curse seal were oriented around two tiers: one that increased the user's physical strength and alacrity at the cost of some higher cognitive functions, and another that degenerated their mental acuity severely, but brought around a transformation similar to a uncontrolled sage mode. Kimimaro's, for instance, gave him a tail and an exoskeleton, as well as increasing his size greatly. In addition to giving him a vaguely reptilian look, the extra bone made manipulating his osteoblasts easier, allowing the man to plough through entire platoons with ease. In fact, Orochimaru suspected that Kimimaro at his height would have given Minato Namikaze a run for his money.

This version of the curse seal was a bit more versatile. Rather than relying on a designated transformation for every individual (Kidōmaru liked to joke about that: "Not every boss has a second stage!"), his new design used sage chakra in one of several ways. Depending on the strengths of the user, it could add to the scope and power of ninjutsu attacks, increase speed and strength to inhuman levels, and fortify the yin chakra of a genjutsu to the point that it was nearly impossible to break. The uses of sage chakra were limitless, according to Jiraiya, and Orochimaru was inclined to take his word for it. Once, he'd seen Jiraiya miss with an attack at point-blank range, only for the other shinobi to die as if he'd been hit anyways. Afterwards, the Toad Hermit had attributed it to senjutsu.

Here, Anko was a test subject. Her first recovery from the application of the juinjutsu was only a few minutes, so here she might well be done in less than a day. Then, he could test the seal's effectiveness. Kabuto had helped him design an effective battery of examinations to perform, including the search potential side-effects and unpredicted deviations from the projected model. If it wasn't quite what they were looking for, there were a dozen ways he could correct the formula on the fly. When the curse seal finally worked the way he wanted it to, he'd be ready.

"Kuchiyose no jutsu," he said, baring his tattoo and summoning a snake the size of a small tree. The serpent obediently cracked its jaws wide, swallowing Anko whole with only the slightest grimace of discomfort at not being allowed to digest her. Instead, using the kusanagi technique that allowed the sword to be everywhere and nowhere, he banished her to... somewhere.

First order of business complete, Orochimaru turned and broke into a sprint in yet another direction, this time with the intent to test Team Kakashi. What he knew of the team thus far was mostly disparaging: they were united only in the most dire of circumstances, but showed the propensity to turn on each other for innocuous reasons even in the midst of serious business. The pink-haired girl, memorable only for her shade of hair and for actually having parents (he spared a moment to sarcastically thank Kizashi for lending him his identity), was only passable in anything that didn't involve some level of deduction or memorization. The other two, who should have been powerhouses thanks to the gifts given to them at birth, were instead limited by the blinders of their upbringing.

After a long internal debate, Orochimaru decided that he wanted neither of them as a vessel. Sasuke in particular had held a great deal of promise. The sharingan in the right hands were not weapons to be underestimated, as aptly demonstrated by Kakashi Hatake and Danzō Shimura. Sasuke had the potential to be living artillery, delivering wide-bore illusions and ensnaring entire armies with their hypnotic powers. The ability of the sharingan to memorize and perfectly repeat any physical motion or chakra trick was useful for those wishing to gather a repertoire of parlour tricks, but combat jutsu could only be used reliably if learned the hard way. It took a true genius to actually copy an arsenal, but there were a few prodigies who availed themselves of sharingan to do just that: Itachi, Shisui and Kakashi, to name some contemporaries.

In contrast, Naruto was a more subtle option. As an Uzumaki, he was naturally much more energetic than the average human, and a regular Uzumaki could live for centuries. Unfortunately, being a jinchūriki drastically shortened one's lifespan, meaning that Naruto as he was would only live out a normal lifespan. As a host, he would definitely last for at least a decade, though the Kyūbi represented a significant barrier to that. As a Namikaze, of which Orochimaru was certain he was, Naruto availed himself of only one advantage: a greater chance of being accepted by the people of Konoha. Minimal as it was, he could understand why Hiruzen opted to name him Uzumaki: the minute Iwa learned the Yellow Flash had a son, his days were numbered.

In all, they were both poor candidates. Sasuke was infinitely more valuable as breeding stock for the sharingan. With both parents possessing the dōjutsu, and an older brother famous for its mastery, he represented the possibility of impregnating hundreds of women, with the aim of repopulating the world with sharingan users. (Mikoto would be so proud of her children: murderous psychopaths, and one was a closet nymphomanic). Naruto had a much more tangible obstacle preventing his assimilation, namely the kitsune. Even if the Kyūbi were to be extracted, it was doubtful he would survive the experience for longer than a few days. The process had killed Kushina in a fairly short period of time, and Mito had only lived for long enough to apologize to her great-granddaughter before dying.

Therefore, he would find another vessel. Someone worthy of the honour, yet unafraid of the repercussions. Orochimaru was sure he could find someone, but that someone was not on Team Seven. Sakura didn't qualify, primarily because she was average in nearly every way, but also because Orochimaru disliked being a girl. The one time he'd chosen to do so, it had been in a moment of desperation, and he regretted it every waking moment for three entire years. Tsunade's behaviour as a genin seemed somewhat justifiable, now...

.:.

Sai observed the battlefield with a bird's-eye view. Kankurō was now helping Gaara fend off Torune, a rare display of teamwork according to his information. The Sand Siblings were invariably described as individual fighters, their strengths complemented by separating and compartmentalizing the enemy into managable divisions. An amateur strategist himself, Sai was painfully aware that their current method of attack left the Root team in a weaker position.

"Chōjū Giga," he intoned, pulling a prepared sheet of paper out of his notebook. The beautifully artistic illustration of a nest of mice peeled away from the paper, dropping from the ink bird to the treeline and scurrying off in the Forest of Death. He needed to find Fū and ascertain whether his consciousness was still trapped in the smoking remains of the scarecrow. Torune had training in helping the Yamanaka recover, but he was currently fighting for his life.

Meanwhile, Kankurō was faced with the unsettling discovery that his puppet had turned against him. As soon as Crow obliterated the doll, it had abruptly severed its chakra threads to him of its own accord, a feat by all rights that should have been impossible. It turned to him, moving with an otherworldly intelligence in its eyes, and attacked.

"Gaara!" Kankurō shouted, dodging around an exploratory strike by his formerly dependable puppet. "HEY, GAARA!"

Gaara, meanwhile, was discovering that Torune was a trickier opponent than he'd suspected. The purple coating of his skin was actually an intricate hive of insects, marking him as an Aburame. Every time he touched the sand, it left a tiny trace of the insects on the particles, too small for him to crush but large enough to kill him if he made a mistake. Neither of them was going to tire out in the foreseeable future, but Gaara had a significant advantage over him: he could multitask.

"What?" the redhead ground out, turning his head slightly without otherwise moving.

"Can you—" Kankurō swore foully and leapt over another attack from Crow. "Can you hold my puppet still?"

A tendril of sand snaked over and siezed the puppet, leaking into its myriad joints and jamming the mechanisms that kept it mobile. Crow froze, its beady black eyes blazing with fury. The Shinten Kugutsu Juin technique, a variation on the Yamanaka's Shintenshin technique, had a significant flaw: the user's conscience was trapped in a seal. Fū could release it and return to his own body, but that would mean leaving part of his chakra in the seal on Crow. Not only would this deprive him of much of his strength, it would rearm Kankurō with his puppet.

Making a quick decision, Fū relinquished his hold over the puppet, abandoning his attempts to ensnare the puppeteer in his technique, and returned to his body. He brushed the ink mice off, hopefully informing Sai that he was alive, and scanned the forest for the direction the battle had moved.

Meanwhile, Temari had had enough. Growling something incomprehensible, she snapped her fan open to the third and final stage, summoning Kamatari. The sickle weasel hit the ground running, instinctively knowing his mistress' will and obeying without question. As he ran off through the undergrowth, his comically large kama trailing behind him, Temari clambered up a nearby tree. Something about the noise in the forest had been irking her, and now she knew what it was: the sound of a bird in flight, magnified until it sounded like the whoosh of a tornado in Training Ground Twelve.

At first, she assumed it was one of the mutant birds that the Forest of Death produced, a massive raptor or a gargantuan vulture. However, the stark black and white colouring lead her to believe it was created by the same ninja who birthed the ink tiger. Whoever he was, he was asking for it from her. He was even riding a massive pidgeon.

"Kamaitachi no jutsu!" she howled, swinging her fan forward in a great arc. Manipulating the wind for distance rather than power, the air blades struck home and diced the ink bird into vapour trails. From far away, she saw the body of Sai falling through the air, frantically drawing a new bird, but it was too late. Kamatari launched himself into the air underneath him, and in seconds Sai was overwhelmed. The great curves blade cut the Root shinobi into bloody chunks, and as his bloody remains hit the ground, Kamatari was already gone.

.:.

Gaara was truly tiring of this fight. Mother was silent, for once, sensing that Torune was not an opponent to be taken lightly. He wondered idly if she would reward him for being so strong, but he doubted it. Mother only let him control the sand when she was scared, and when Mother was scared she usually emerged feeling angry rather than grateful.

Kankurō joined in, unsheathing a pair of kunai and binding them to his fingers with chakra threads. He unleashed them on the unsuspecting Torune, using the threads as a substitute for ninja wire and forcing the Root agent to block the pervasive sand and a pair of wielder-less weapons at the same time. He retaliated by bringing his hands together and forming an amorphous purple ball.

"Dokujin no jutsu," he said, blowing the cloud of venomous insects towards Gaara. The sand contracted into a tight ball, protecting him from being infected, but Kankurō was forced to retreat rapidly from the oncoming disaster. Whatever other traits the microscopic parasites had, flight wasn't one of them. A decent gale would be enough to blow them all away, but Torune seemed to have this attack down to a science. In a few seconds, they would be on him.

Temari flicked her fan back to the second star and swung again, this time blowing the deadly purple cloud away from her brothers. Torune stopped, falling away to a safe distance as a third opponent emerged.

Elsewhere in the forest, exploding tags continued to go off, though admittedly less frequently.

"Where's the other puppeteer?" Kankurō growled, reaching for another pair of knives.

"My team has no puppet user," Torune said simply, his voice unusually flat. "You were not supposed to be so difficult to kill, Gaara of the Sand. My supervisor said that your sand was much slower and more exploitable."

"Nah, if we're talking about exploitable techniques, then let's talk about yours," Kankurō said pleasantly. "See, with all that purple shit floating around like smoke, someone could just throw any attacks they want through it, and you'd never see them coming. Like, say, six incendiary tags..."

Torune's face showed panic for just an instant, before the explosive tags that Kankurō had affixed to his legs and neck with chakra threads exploded. None of the Sand Siblings even blinked.

"Are there not two others?" Gaara asked pensively, forcing his sand to vibrate vigorously to kill the insects still clinging to it.

There was another explosion, this one much closer to them than the others. Temari took out a Scroll of Earth.

"I took care of it," she said innocently.

I realized later on that the title of this chapter is a bit too cryptic. The judge is Gaara, the jury is Kankurō and the executioner is Temari. Also, I think it's a quote from Judge Dredd. Yeah, that too.

The team from Root is significantly less powerful than they are in the manga, but that's because they don't appear in part one. Danzō's training regimen has made them emotionless soldiers and unusually talented ninja, but they're still barely teenagers. I'd say they're on par with Neji (Torune) and Sasuke (Sai and Fū) when it comes to combat.

EDIT: Re-posts are embarrasing. My thanks for pointing it out.