Hmm... more stuff than I intended. Oh, well, benefits all of you.
disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. You're an idiot if you think I do.
Warning: swearing ahead (especially the second to last line).
Naruto was dumbstruck. "I almost executed a pregnant woman?" he reflected inwardly. The thought alone made him anxious.
Silba, however, seemed to forget the fact she was shackled. "Really?" she asked Hinata. "Really?! I am?!" She smiled as wide as her lips could stretch, tears of joy flowing from her eyes. "Thank you, Günsche…" she took comfort in the fact that she now had a remnant of her deceased lover.
Her joy died when she turned back to Uzi, who merely glared at her with indecision. The smile on her face melted away like her body in the mist when she saw that the red-eyed blonde was still considering the forced ending of her life a viable option. Her tears of gratitude transformed into the weeping of sorrow and desperate groveling.
"Please, please don't kill me!!" She begged at the top of her lungs, or at least as high as her voice could reach through her whimpering. "I'll go away!! I'll go away and never come back!!" she pleaded. "I'll leave and never bother you again, just please don't kill me!!" She bowed her head and continued her pleads incoherently, her vocal chords drowned in tears and sobbing.
Naruto stood resolute, but was debating his next course of action in his mind. "Why is my life so full of drama?" he sighed. "Why couldn't I have been born the son of a farmer or something? But what do I do with her? She's a soldier, so dying on a battlefield is something she should accept as a possibility. On top of that, she led the attack against us and caused plenty of casualties, so she should bear the consequences of losing. Then again…"
"What are you thinking?" boomed a voice behind the eastern duo. They instantly turned to face the voice's owner.
"Sünden!" Hinata exclaimed with a touch of fright.
"Master Sünden!" Uzi also voiced his surprise towards the progenitor red-eye. "What's wrong?! Is the seal dying?!"
"That's not the issue here, boy!" replied the original master. The top half of his skull was engulfed in the perfect darkness of the inky ebony smoke. His eyes were yellow dots within the void of the black burning cloud and his voice had become guttural and seethed with malevolent authority. "What are you thinking of doing?"
"Uh..." the blonde easterner struggled to choose his next words carefully. "This… this is Silba," he gestured to the bound soldier who wore a horrified expression. "She's the leader of the lycanthropes that attacked us and…"
"I know that!What were you planning to do with her?"
"I- I was thinking of executing her for…"
"Then why did you hesitate?"
"I… uh…" Naruto's voice failed him due to the pressure exuded from his powerful master.
"She's pregnant…" Hinata stepped in to cover for the blonde red-eye. "I'm the one who noticed and brought it up."
"I see…" the eyes in the smoke glanced at the blue-haired Hyuuga. "And this has made you…" he upturned his arm and pointed at the blonde, silhouetted smoke drifting from under the belted limb. "Reconsider your actions?"
Naruto swallowed hard. Master Sünden was clearly in control of his power, but he was never predictable when releasing it. "Yes," he responded with resolve. "I'm not sure what to do."
The original red-eye's lips cracked to form a light smile. "Very well, but consider this:" His thunderous voice assumed a calm tone. "The very nature of being a red-eye is having a second chance, regardless of how one has lived in the past. When you were first discovered by the Agran brothers, you had already taken the lives of many innocents. Yet you were shown mercy and given another shot at life; had your slate wiped clean. Remember this…" With that, Sünden turned and casually strode into the entrance of the nearest tower, dark smoke burning itself away.
The eastern duo sighed in relief. As soon as the progenitor specialist left their sight, they refocused their attention to the chained Silba. Uzi knelt in front of the prone woman and jammed the blade into the ground near her knee.
"Alright, listen," he ordered. The she-wolf's tear stained eyes locked with his. "I'm going to let you live on onecondition," he emphasized his words carefully. She nodded obediently. "You are going to call off your lycanthropes, leave this place, and never bother us again. And I do mean never. Am I understood?"
"Yessir, yessir," she bobbed her head up and down, eyes wide with relief and shock as she clearly and quickly voiced her coherence of his orders.
"Good," he replied coolly. "Now get moving," he commanded as he sliced the chains with his sharpened tattoos.
--------------------------
Silba followed through on the blonde's command. She had ordered what was left of her werewolf regiment to surrender and was marching out the front gate with her soldiers. Before she exited the gate, though, she turned to face Uzi.
"Peace offering," she said simply, bowing her head and raising her scratched combat blade up to him.
"Lycanthropes are strange…" the blonde thought as he accepted the offering. The she-wolf immediately fell back in line with her troops.
Hinata watched the scene with a twinge of happiness in her heart. Despite being an enemy, she was glad things turned out well for the pregnant woman. "I don't know werewolves very well, but my gut says she'll stay true to her word…" She pondered, not noticing the massive form that broke formation to approach her.
She was startled when the overcoat-clad soldier suddenly shot his arm forward. Her Byakugan instinctively activated and she almost struck the man when she noticed he was holding a tan woolen ammo bag with a familiar gun hastily strapped to the front.
She recognized the massive firearm. "Wait, you're… Hans… right?"
The mythical soldier with an upturned collar nodded silently and straightened his arm, easing his weapon and ammunition towards the Hyuuga.
She hesitantly grasped the strap. "Is this a… peace offering?" she inquired, assuming this was the same gesture she had witnessed between Naruto and Silba.
Once again, the large man merely dipped his head. As soon as the strap left his hands, he continued his march out the main gate of the vampiric stronghold.
The white-eyed easterner shouldered the pouch with the intent of analyzing the weapon and its ordinance later. "Damn, this thing's heavy!" she thought as the strap weighed her down. She strode up to the blonde red-eye and stood by his side as the last of the defeated werewolf soldiers exited the fortress and gradually disappeared over the crest of the artificial crater.
Naruto turned to his blue-haired companion when he suddenly heard his name called out.
"Uzi!" Silba yelled from the top of the ridge. "One last thing!"
"What?!" he shouted back.
"I was in Hive City! I was ordered to collect a sample of the Agende Vhansin tattoo ink and I did! I don't know why the king wanted it, but he has it now!" With that, she cleared the manmade hill and was gone from their sight.
The runaway duo continued to gaze at the horizon, turning the she-wolf's final words over in their minds. "The energy ink?" Uzi exclaimed quietly. "Why would they want that?"
"Dunno," the Hyuuga woman replied. "Can't be good, though."
"Won't argue there…" He turned to the white-eyed woman and smiled.
"What?"
"Nothing," he claimed, smile still alive and well. He glanced at the massive vampire castle behind them. "There's gonna be a delay, so let's go rest up for now."
She smiled back. "Yeah, sounds good."
As the two strolled back into the battle-ravaged stronghold, they were lost in their own thoughts.
Naruto was content for once. In a strange way, the attack had helped him clear his head and solidify his decision. "It might be a naïve way of thinking," he observed inwardly, "But I'll keep her safe until I die." He discreetly eyed the Hyuuga walking next to him. "After all, there are no guarantees in life anyway. May as well make the best of it while I can."
Hinata's thoughts were of similar material. "I never quite knew what would happen from here on out, but I'll stick with it. At least I'll always have something to live for…"
--------------------------
Sünden sat on his bed, plagued by a searing pain that refused to dissipate quickly. "Shouldn't have used it so damn much," he spoke to no one in particular as he clutched his burning seal.
"You want some more painkillers, Master Sünden?" asked Vahre Blus with a hint of worry in his voice.
"No thanks my boy," he coughed. "Drugs can't solve this. You know that."
The vampire apprentice shrugged. He wouldn't show it, but it pained him to see his master in such unquenchable torture.
"On another note," Sünden winced, trying to change the subject as his eyes glowed bright crimson. "You notice that?"
The Zersvampirie leader ignited his eyes in turn. "Yes. I've been noticing it for the past few days."
"What do you think of it?"
"I'm… not certain. It's different, to be sure, but… I can't tell why."
"You too, eh?" He coughed violently, this time a miniscule trickle of blood running from the corner of his lips. "What do you think we should do about it?"
"I do not sense it to be malevolent, so I don't think it will be an issue, but there is no way to know until it breaks free."
"If it breaks free," the progenitor specialist corrected his apprentice. "There's a chance it will never see the light of day."
"Then again it may, and then it will cause the light of day."
Sünden chuckled through the pain. "True, true. We should have Daemon and Nephil, maybe even Geist, take a look. Sound like a plan?"
"Sounds like a plan," Vahre Blus agreed before turning to leave the room. He opened the door and looked back. "Rest for now, Master Sünden. We'll be leaving the next morning." He shut the door and left the ailing man in solitude.
The original red-eye shut his eyes to sleep his torment away. "It's too bad I won't be around to see what happens. These crimson eyes seem to create more problems than solutions at times. Sometimes… I wish I never created it at all…"
"Oh, but it's so much fun!!" replied a chorus of voices in his mind as a new surge of pain coursed through the dying man's body.
--------------------------
"Lorsvall!" echoed an irate voice in the massive chamber of pillars of the imperial throne room.
"Yes, my lord?" replied a submissive voice from the shadows of the throne.
"I thought you said Silba would be enough…"
"Ehe… It appears… that I was wrong, your highness…" he replied nervously. Now was the time to appease the tyrant king's ego rather than be as informal as the second in command usually was.
"Wrong, indeed! I've lost an entire regiment thanks to your assumptions! And now all the red-eyes are going to march against the capital!"
"Ah… well, sir, it appears your troops in the south are doing rather well. That takes out about a fourth of their fighting force…"
"I don't care about that!" the ruler shouted. "I'm pissed that I placed my faith in your poor judgment! How do you plan on fixing that?!"
"Well, sir, I… do have some excellent generals under me. They're all specialists of the highest caliber with some exceptional abilities…"
"You're not sending them out, if that's what you're suggesting."
"Of… of course not, sir! You're the king! It's your decision!"
"Right," the tyrant sighed heavily. He took a moment to calm his raging temper. "All attempts to kill Uzi or anyone of any importance on the outside have failed. We can't afford to loose anyone else before they make their move against us. We're staying here."
Lorsvall bowed deeply. "As you wish, my lord."
"You've been an excellent commander despite your latest bungle, so I'm sending you in with the second line of defense when they get here."
"My black squadron?"
"Is there any other commander capable of ordering them around?"
"Yes, sir!" the shadowed lackey saluted.
"Now hide. We have some… emissaries from the south who are here to… negotiate. I'm sure you can use a few more hands in your ranks."
"Yes, sir," the second in command hid behind his usual place; behind the massive throne. As he settled into his moderately comfortable felt chair, he thought, "Stupid old fuck. It was your idea to send in troops to kill Uzi off in the first place! Why're you gettin' all pissy at me about it?! Once I take care of Uzi and the rest of the red-eyes, you're next!"
What could the tyrant want with the specialized Agende Vhansin tattoo energy ink?!
What on earth are Sunden and Vahre Blus discussing?!
And what could be going on Lorsvall's head?!
Find out tomorrow (a blatant lie) on the next episode of 'Lost'!!!
(Always wanted to say that.) On another note, I tried to write up Silba as a pitiable, unstable character. Judging from most of the reviews I got, I did just that. If you think otherwise, tell me!! Then tell me what you think I could have done better!! Please!
Catchya'll later.
