j0! A slightly longer chapter this time (but certainly not the longest).

I guarantee some of you will truly hate me after reading. Well go ahead, read on to find out why!

disclaimer (as always): I don't own Naruto or his franchise, but I should...

Warning: Language warning (also as always)


All three easterners struck the mad priest simultaneously and were shocked when he blocked each attack. Hinata swung an aging rusted kunai against his left shoulder and was blocked by his thick saber. Sasuke thrust his sword at him from the right, only to have it successfully trapped between the bones of the man's forearm. Naruto had moved behind the madman and was about to strike him with his energy-laden left hand, but instead drove his palm harmlessly against the metal cross that had been moved in his way by the unholy man's left leg.

Priest wasted no time to retaliate. He wrenched the Uchiha's sword from his hands by swinging his arm back and thrust his cutlass towards him while keeping the Hyuuga's knife at bay and kicking the cross backwards towards Uzi with unexpected force. The trio leapt back immediately, narrowly avoiding the multiple counterstrikes. Their insane opponent's grin never left his face as he stuck his sword into the ground and yanked the narrow blade from his right arm and let it clash against the ground.

Suigetsu took this unguarded moment to avenge his earlier humiliation. He charged from behind, massive sword at the ready. He was about to swing when his enemy turned and let loose a barrage of spinning marbled needles. The foreign swordsman couldn't dodge in time with his heavy blade at that distance and took most of the needles head on. Of course, the affected areas burst into water, leaving him relatively unharmed. He confidently continued forward under slowed momentum but was halted when the priest pulled on the wires still attached to his tiny projectiles, causing them to ripple and tear the liquid man to a water mess.

"And so a heathen who was once humbled hath been humbled again," the priest spouted. "May you see the error in your ways and the light of truth shine upon you!" No sooner had he finished his sentence than a thirteen millimeter bullet went through his head, killing him temporarily.

"Seems like he pays less attention during his sermons," Hinata said to Uzi from their wall. "Hit him when he's talking."

"Got it. Uchiha!" Uzi yelled to Sasuke who was charging towards the twitching opponent with a fistful of lightning. "What the hell are you doing?!"

The Sharingan user struck the moving priest in the chest, ceasing his small movements before retrieving his dropped weapon and retreating to another position. "Just getting my sword back!" He answered when he was in the clear. "Suigetsu! You alive?!"

"Yeah, yeah!" He answered while reforming, annoyed as could be.

"Stick your sword in him now!"

"My legs aren't back yet!"

"Then throw it…"

"Sasuke!" Karin called from behind her cover. "He's up again!"

"Damn," Naruto cursed. "That was fast."

Hinata's Byakugan saw that the chakra around the priest intensified every time he was killed and remained in that heightened state until he came alive again. She wondered what the cause could be and decided to analyze the situation. "Naruto," she addressed the nearby blonde. "You go on ahead, I'll figure out what makes him tick."

The man regarded her with crimson and azure eyes for a second before nodding. "Got it."

The Hyuuga snapped to attention. "He's up again! Go!"

Uzi dove from his position, energy charging in both arms. The priest regarded him with a maniacal smile as he came closer.

--------------------------

For the past hour, the easterners had made repeated attempts to kill the regenerating priest. Had he been a normal man, he would have died dozens of times over by now. But he was certainly no ordinary man.

During the battle, Hinata and Karin agreed to attempt to decipher the man's source of power, but to no avail. There was no sign of the technology based chakra's source to be seen, or rather, it was so foreign to their methods of identifying chakra that they simply didn't notice it.

The group had gradually moved throughout the town as they systematically leveled the already devastated ruins. The Hyuuga was hiding behind a makeshift trench of dirt, rock, and concrete when Uzi rejoined her.

"Damnit! There's just no way to take him down!"

The white-eyed woman said nothing as she continued to concentrate on the immortal madman.

"Any news at all?" The blonde red-eye was openly frustrated.

"Nothing. I've got absolutely nothing." Even she was beginning to loose patience.

"Alright," he sighed as he began to head out again, "I'm goin' back in. Lemme know if anything happens!" He stood on top of the rubble barricade and charged the lengthened tattoos on his right arm. When the stored energy reached suitable levels, he jerked his arm and it spiraled around his hand like a whip. He had slowly been discovering this new ability during the course of the battle. He threw the sparkling red end of the crimson colored energy at the priest and nailed him right in the ribcage before pulling back and throwing himself back into the fight.

The Uchiha saw this and moved into position to strike Priest from the same side Uzi was flying in from. He used his Sharingan to perfectly time a powerful strike against the man's legs as Naruto slammed into the madman's body, sending the not-so-holy man airborne against a wall. The blonde red-eye instantly followed up by forming three tails and sending them forward, soundly impaling the undying opponent on the wall in a bloody mess.

As the tails retracted, Hinata observed the immediate healing process of the man's body. "Wait a minute…" she thought as she watched the chakra circulating. "It's not as fast as before!" She refocused her attention to the rest of her vision and noticed a large blob of similar chakra. "That's his cross!" Her sharp mind finally connected the dots.

"Everyone!" She stood up and addressed the rest of the easterners. "I figured it out!"

"What?!" A relieved call came from the exhausted group.

"What is it, Hinata?" Naruto asked with a cheerful curiousness in his voice.

"It's that cross," she pointed to the object standing in the ground. "It's releasing most of the chakra that help him regenerate!"

"But… he's coming back to life right now, isn't he?"

"That's residual. His body must not be able to carry too much of it, so it's slower."

"But whenever we've killed him he came back to life within seconds," Sasuke added.

"But," Hinata's eyes brightened to show her excitement at her revelation, "He's always been right beside it."

Everyone thought for a moment. Now that they recalled all the times he died, he really hadbeen next to the metal object.

"So all we need to do is destroy it?" Naruto asked while starting towards the freestanding energy provider.

"Well, that'll only make it harder for him to regenerate, so we'll still have to kill him somehow…"

"Quite a smart lass, aren't you?" She was interrupted by the standing bloody mass of reforming bone and muscle that was Priest. "But the divine light of truth lives within me regardless of the creations of man." His arm reformed and shot out wires that caught his cross and pulled it back before anyone could get a hold of it. Hinata's epiphany was proven true as his wounds suddenly closed faster than before. "However, the instruments of men can also be a blessing to those whose work is holy," he said with his trademark grin as he hefted the machine over his shoulder and the compartment on the long side opened, revealing uncountable thousands of marbled needles attached to coils upon coils of wire. "And all sinners must be judged accordingly!" He wielded the machine like a rocket launcher towards the easterners.

"Shit!" Naruto yelled. "Take cover!" Everyone complied as swiftly as they could.

Priest fired the multitude of whistling needles into every surface in front of him. He immediately handled dozens of wires between each gap in his fingers and waited for anyone to make a move.

"Shit," Naruto whispered to Hinata, hoping the mad clergyman didn't know his location. "What'll we do now?"

"Lemme think…"

"And so all the rats go into hiding?!" The madman taunted. "What of your pride, heathens?! Before you saw the light, you went against it with all your being, but now that you have witnessed the truth, you have fallen to your knees in fear of it!"

Hinata remembered the chakra difference whenever Priest activated the needles to spin or explode. She leaned in closer to Naruto and whispered, "I'm going to create a diversion while you hit him head on."

"Head on?" He looked at her as if she just said the world was flat. "You're kidding, right?"

She smiled. "Just trust me." She began forming chakra in her fingers, slowly matching the pattern and combination that she had seen Priest use. Once she thought she had it, she touched her fingers on their stone barricade and sent her chakra through to the needles, causing the marbles to explode in small tufts of fire that produced more smoke than damage. "Now!" She whispered harshly.

Naruto leapt out from behind the leveled wall into the cover of smoke. He was careful to avoid hitting any wires to avoid detection by the madman even though it was impossible not to step on all of them or hold all of them as well. He saw Hinata circling around, setting off more of the marbles. He turned his attention towards the mad 'holy' man and called forth four tails. He struck the ground with them when he saw Sasuke picking up on the diversion portion of the plan by sending a long crackling blade of lightning towards Priest. The tails hit the ground at an angle and sent the blonde red-eye flying out of the smokescreen towards his immortal opponent.

"Like a pagan phoenix from the flames!" The man exclaimed. "But an inexperienced one as well," he added calmly as his left arm jerked back.

Uzi's descent was suddenly halted as hundreds of hair thin metal wires shot up from the ground and strung him into place. He could easily break them, but he was too shocked that such a thing had just happened to react instantly.

"You shall see the error of your ways, young sinner," Priest said with a smile.

Hinata appeared from the dying smoke behind the man's cross and prepared to strike him in the head with a fistful of lethal chakra. She saw him move his right arm, heavy cutlass in hand, to intercept her, but his metal cross was in the way. She smirked as her hand moved past the impromptu metal shield and barely noticed a new shift in chakra. That change registered in her mind the instant before her arm stopped and she felt a sharp pain in her chest. She looked down, her vision blurring, to see Priest's hand sticking out of the back of the cross, holding his sword which was now buried in her chest.

"Hinata!" Naruto screamed as he saw the blue-haired woman fall to the ground, sword still impaled through her heart. He ripped his right arm free of the entangling metal web and swung his energy whip at the retreating priest.

Upon stabbing the white-eyed woman, the unholy man caught his cross up as he leapt backwards to put some distance between him and the enraged red-eye. He had retreated a few meters before a burning red rope of energy wrapped tightly around his neck and, with a mighty backlash, ripped his head from his body. The momentum carried his corpse a good twenty meters while his heavier cross crashed to ground only several meters from his opponents. As usual, his body began to build itself again, but was too far from the life-giving metal cross to benefit from its healing powers.

Naruto didn't follow through on his attack, though. He pulled himself down from his flimsy prison and dashed to Hinata's side. Through the tears, he pulled the sword from her chest and hugged her body close to his.

"I'm sorry," he whispered quietly into an unhearing ear. "I'm so sorry."


(Maniacal laughter) So do you hate me now?! Well do ya?! Hahahah...

Sadly, I saved all my work for today and tomorrow, so I wouldn't expect to see a resolution until... Monday at the earliest. One of the comments I recieved from one of you readers out there read, and I quote, "You're evil. Don't ever change." I'm just following his command. Haha!

Ah, yes. One last thing: Priest's ability to pass through solid objects (albeit temporarily) is the special power suggested by Zephiras. He was the first to get Priest's reference correct (Father Anderson from Hellsing), and so he gained the right to give Priest that power. It'll show up a little more now. Thanks a bunch, Zephiras! I would'a never thought of it myself.