Wow, sorry for taking so long! I know I said a week to a week and a half, but two weeks?! My bad, my bad...
Anyways, my finals are done, I'm sitting at home with tv (sw33t!), and I've got all the time in the world to do... absolutely nothin'.
Oh! A reminder: Don't forget about the artwork contest, those of you who are participating. I actually have yet to start myself, but I outta have enough time before my own due date...
Well, I'm sure you didn't come here to read the author's notes, so without further ado...!
(disclaimer: I don't own Naruto at all. Gotta say though, I really should, dammit! Oh yes: swearing warning!)
Naruto was having a rough time with the female lycanthrope. Interestingly enough, ever since he sequestered Sasuke's short sword he was able to… persuade the werewolf's movements. Silba seemed to be avoiding the simple iron blade, going so far as to break off attacks in response to untrained swipes through the air.
But try as he might, the blonde red-eye could not gain an edge. He thrust the sword into the misty form of the golden eyed woman only to have her move to the right, reform a leg, and strike a powerful kick out towards him. He managed to grab the boot with his left hand and send a wave of sharpened energy through his tattoos, but to no avail. The leg dispersed the instant before the harmful energy made contact and Uzi jerked back to put some distance between them. He was stopped as Silba's other leg came together from the aquatic smoke and planted itself in the back of his head, sending him somersaulting forward on the vertical wall.
"Son of a bitch!!" He swore inwardly as he could feel the fog caressing a cold steel blade against the back of his neck. He pulled himself upwards against the wall with his tails, swinging the sword wildly in front of him while lashing out with a handful of short energy whips from his right arm that dug into the small protrusions along the wall.
His silver-haired combatant appeared from her smoggy cover and glared at him. "Hold still!" She sneered. "Why won't you just die?!"
"I got somethin' to live for," he replied smugly before the lycanthrope woman melted into her familiar vapor form and split into several paths towards the blonde. He manipulated his energy-laden appendages to push and pull him sideways against the stone bulwark of the vampiric fortress.
"Get back here and die, you coward!!" screeched the enraged mythical soldier through her condensation figure.
Naruto faced her, blade at the ready, as his tails furiously jerked him away. Despite the non-corporal form of his enemy, he could see her golden eyes burning with hatred and… tears? He swung five tails in front of himself to act as a shield and shoved the sword forward to prepare for a strike against the rapidly encroaching drizzle, but Silba skillfully maneuvered around every defense and formed a knife hand strike in mid-thrust aimed for his throat. Uzi's vision tunneled on the incoming deathblow, his focus blurring the world around the stiff, outstretched fingers. "Is this it?" He mused, barely noting a sliver of movement fly overhead through his blurred perception.
Silba suddenly came together, blinking and frozen in surprise. The blonde didn't immediately register that he was still among the land of the living, so he hesitated in delivering a counterstrike. When he finally realized she had been miraculously thwarted, he yanked his five protruded tails inward to impale the she-wolf. She burst into smoke and shot upward before the sharpened energy could dig into her, but this time a shred of her overcoat was torn away and fell to the ground.
"What just happened?" He thought out loud.
"It's that knife!" Hinata exclaimed as she ran up the wall and deposited herself onto a stone protrusion. "Something about that knife makes the werewolves revert back to normal!"
"Huh?" He looked stupefied at her, then at said knife stuck in the wall, then at the sword in his hand. The gears turned in his head as his eyes flared crimson to garner knowledge from the other red-eyed specialists. "That's it!!"
"What?!" The white-eyed easterner proclaimed loudly.
He turned to his blue-haired companion. "Iron! It's the iron!"
"Iron…?"
"Yep! It's an old remedy against her kind," he explained warily, glancing over at the she-wolf perched on the wall. "Throw iron over or at a lycanthrope to reveal their human form. Ain't that right, Silba?"
She snarled at him. "Looks like you aren't so dumb after all, but that won't save you." She melted into mist again and charged the duo.
Hinata pumped chakra into her legs and dodged to the side to avoid the werewolf girl, but was surprised when the fog arced to intercept her. She pulled a handful of rusty shuriken from her aging pouch and let them fly only to pass harmlessly through the air as the she-wolf angled around them. She then unsheathed two oxidized kunai and crossed them in front of her in a last ditch attempt to hold the werewolf off. Needless to say, it was a futile move.
Silba slammed both outstretched legs into the Hyuuga's stomach, causing the blue-haired woman to fall off her perch. The Lycanthrope immediately followed up on her barrage against Hinata by knocking a few stone appendages off the wall and drop kicking them towards her. With her Byakugan active, the eastern woman easily batted the heavy projectiles out of the way. She was currently far more worried about where she would land after such a long freefall.
She frantically focused downward to locate a foothold or at least something to slow her descent. She reached out to grasp an extended stone block when she was suddenly shoved sideways. Her advanced vision instantly found the reason behind her redirection: Silba. The lycanthrope was pursuing her with a vengeance. The she-wolf spiraled into mist and formed her knife straight at the front of the fog, aiming straight for Hinata.
The blue-haired foreigner's mind froze. She was in midair, so dodging was impossible. Any iron weaponry was stored, and the gap between the women was too small to retrieve any in time. In short, she was a dead woman.
Sasuke's sword suddenly flew over the werewolf's haze and Silba immediately came together.
"Damnit!" She cursed before she went into freefall and exploded into mist before one of Naruto's jagged energy whips stabbed into her. The smoky form shrieked and shot away to a safer point.
Naruto had finally caught up to the descending Hyuuga. His tails scampered him towards her and he grabbed her arm. "Finally!" he yelled. "You weigh a ton!" he added with a laugh.
"Stuff it!" she shouted back before being set down on a narrow walkway. "How are we gonna take her down?"
He glanced at the lycanthrope. "We need some wolfsbane or silver. They're badly allergic to both."
Hinata's bloodline saw Silba's eyes widen as Uzi put together a rough plan. "Where we gonna get any of that?"
The blonde red-eye yanked the Uchiha's short blade from its crevice. "That knife you had, did you get that from a vampire?"
"Yeah," she nodded.
"Then the Zersvampiries must have a cache of stuff we can use," he explained with a grin. He turned to his white-eyed companion. "Let's go find it."
-----------------------
The eastern duo was charging across a bridge that connected two squat towers. They had been evading combat as much as possible, as they had run into a few deadlocked skirmishes and witnessed a large scale battle in an open courtyard.
Naruto and Hinata ran into a hallway that intersected with another. When they passed the perpendicular corridor, they saw a handful of vampires and werewolves hammering away at each other. They were about to clear the opening when Silba suddenly reformed and shouted out an order.
"Hans!" She yelled down the chamber, catching the attention of an overcoat-clad lycanthrope with an upturned collar. "Shoot 'em!"
Hans shot his arm forward and caught a huge pistol that flew out of his sleeve. As soon as his fingers curled around the handle, he let fly a barrage of large caliber rounds.
Uzi brought an energy appendage to life and shot it out to the side, easily catching the rounds. However, the projectiles were loaded with energy that transferred into the impromptu shield. The force of the blow was enough to cause the blonde's running stance to stagger as he absorbed the blow. The shots slowed them down a split second, but did no damage otherwise.
They cleared the intersecting hallway and were immediately caught by Silba, who had taken advantage of Hans's interference. She burst into her familiar mist form and charged to strike from behind.
"Again?" Hinata asked no one in particular. "This is getting old…"
"Mm-hm," Uzi nodded in agreement as he spiraled his tails out behind the two. He grabbed the Hyuuga by the waist then struck the ground with the accelerated tails, launching the pair forward.
They approached the end of the elongated chamber with the she-wolf closely in tow. The gothic doors were open, revealing the burning night sky and the sights and sounds of battle.
The eastern duo launched out of the doorway, narrowly missing a vampire rushing across the parapet. Silba, however, was not so lucky. Her misty form touched the legendary creature, coming into contact with his exposed iron blades. She instantly reverted to her human form, transferring her speed into actual force. Her sudden heavy blow with the bloodsucker sent both of them flying into the stone guard rail. She reeled back and shot her narrowed fingers into the vampire's chest, puncturing the red-eye's heart. She yanked the dead organ from the warm corpse and tossed it over the side.
Uzi saw an opening. He threw the short sword directly towards the golden-eyed woman and instantly let loose a barrage of sharpened energy from his tattooed hand. The she-wolf seemed to be affected by the mere proximity of iron, let alone actual contact.
The silver-haired lycanthrope barely composed herself in time to avoid being impaled by the blade. The sword swiped cleanly through her hanging overcoat, tearing some thick woolen cloth apart and dropping something white to the ground. Silba cursed as she spiraled into fog and flowed off the bulwark to avoid the trailing slicing energy.
"Hey," Naruto said excitedly, "I'll bet that vampire's got what we need."
The duo rushed over to the dead creature of the night. The blonde red-eye began stripping off all the iron weaponry and going through the body's pockets when Hinata noticed the white slip that fell from the lycanthrope's heavy clothing.
"What's this?" she asked quietly as she picked up the photo and turned it over. She saw two figures in the picture, one of whom was their werewolf opponent. "Who's he?" she wondered out loud as she observed the second person in the image.
"What?!" The she-wolf appeared over the edge several yards away. Her eyes widened in shock when she saw the photo in Hinata's hand. Shock gave way to anger as she realized what it was. "Give that back!!"
"Who's he?" Hinata's curiosity got the better of her as she flashed the photograph at the silver-haired woman.
Tears began to form in the corners of Silba's rage-filled golden eyes. "That's… Günsche…"
"Who's Günsche?" Naruto also gave in to his wonder.
The female werewolf clenched her fists as she answered. "You should know! You killed him!"
"Where?!"
"Hive City!!"
He thought for a moment. "Was he part of the invasion force?"
She responded with a snarl.
He sighed. "You know, he came there looking to kill me and my people. It was either him or us, and he knew it. Why are you so surprised?"
"Shut up!!" Her energy started to flare outwards.
Hinata kept her Byakugan firmly focused on their opponent when she noticed something strange about Silba's chakra network. The moment she laid eyes on the she-wolf, she noticed an extra, smaller set of coils which she had attributed to the fact that the golden-eyed soldier was a lycanthrope. But now the larger system of chakra was transforming and shifting, leaving the smaller set unchanged. "Now that I think about it," she mused inwardly, "Has she even used that smaller set yet?"
"He was the only normal human I could get close to!" The werewolf screeched in an ever-deepening voice. "He was the only person who ever accepted me for who I am!" Her body began to enlarge. "He was the only person who ever loved me!!" Suddenly, mist poured from her shifting body and started forming a solid shape of fog around her. She glanced up at the full moon, now unveiled in the overcast sky. "Now you'll see the full strength of a lycanthrope!!" The haze completely covered her body and took the shape of a massive wolf. Golden eyes came to life on the head and 'she' leaned back and let loose a deep howl at the moon.
"Oh, son of a…" Naruto started.
"Bitch…" Hinata finished.
It took a while to get over some wierd kind of writer's block with this chapter; it took a LOT longer than the 2-3 hours I'm used to. So until I get back into my groove, I'd say NOT to anticipate a once-a-day release rate.
Oh yeah, one more thing: those of you who demand releases (you know who you are), I have but one thing to say. I believe this example once quoted by my friend Nick is applicable here: "Your horn does not make my car any faster."
So, don't try to boss me around (sorry, most of you guys are are pretty good about not doing that, but like I said, you know who you are.). Doing so will only fuel my desire to do something else (sit on the couch doing nothing).
C'ya 'round!
