Not quite that long, but I can't seem to concentrate on something more than a few hours at a time these days... too many things going on...

Oh, has anyone seen Alien vs. Predator: Requiem yet? It's pure awesomeness!!!!

On another note, I still haven't heard back from the winner of the 'I obey' contest. C'mon, dude, I'll take anything at this point! Even if Lorsvall can't use it, I'll fit it in somewhere (there are still plenty of opportunities).

usual disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or any of its properties. Such a sad, sad thing...

Oh yeah, and another language warning. Like you'll even read this line...


Naruto and Hinata dove headlong into the adjacent structure in the nick of time; the building whose rooftop had once been their battleground crumbled and imploded upon itself. The Hyuuga recovered from her roll after a few yards while Uzumaki drug himself to an almost immediate halt with the energy tails.

"Hinata!" he called. "You okay?!"

"I'm good!" she returned.

"How're we gonna take him down?! Any ideas?!"

"Oh yes," replied a voice from the shattered glass window. The eastern duo turned to find a graceful silver blade dancing outside their floor, occasionally phasing back to form Lorsvall so he could mock them. "You won't have to fight me if you're dead." He raised his strange rifles at them and fired.

They split up; Uzi to the General's left and the blue-haired woman to his right. Seeing as how the western specialist possessed duel weapons, he simply followed each of them with one firearm each. Hinata did her best to dodge the sharpened globs of metal while returning fire with her arm-sized pistol as the blonde red-eye emptied his final clip against the barrage of metallic energy. The only result yielded by the exchanged gunfire was the numerous rounds canceling each other out as their infused energy collided and pulverized themselves in a bright flash.

Naruto sharply angled himself with a chakra tail to charge the silver-eyed man as soon as he heard the firing pin to his trademark gun click against an empty magazine. He overlapped several tails in front of him for protection while using the rest to increase his speed. He was horrified when he realized that, as Lorsvall didn't let up the barrage, the shards of silver projectiles were actually penetrating his shield. He was lucky the enemy commander's rifles weren't especially accurate or he'd leak every time he took a drink.

He was already close enough to initialize his close quarter's attack, so he lunged forward and charged his left hand's tattoos for a strike. As soon as he came within striking distance he opened up a hole in his chakra barricade and struck his hand outwards, filling the air with sharpened energy.

As Uzi thought, his opponent was one step ahead of him. The General easily dodged the airborne barrage by falling into his knifelike silver energy and gracefully spiraling to the side. When Naruto realized he hadn't thought his plan through as he flew out the hole in the building, an observation struck him. "He didn't stay in one place," he mused inwardly. "He basically sidestepped that move instead of trying to maneuver through it…" His thoughts were interrupted when he peered down to find a few dozen onyx-clad, shield wielding soldiers aiming upwards in his direction.

"Mother of…!" He didn't finish his exclamation before he threw his energy appendages back into the broken glass window, latched onto its sides, and hurled himself back into the building. The instant he entered the mild safety of the structure, the floor around the hole buckled under the extreme gunfire. "Did you see that?!"

"Back up!" Hinata shouted as she stepped in front of him and fired a salvo at a reformed Lorsvall who was currently shooting at the blonde. The huge chakra-laden bullets collided with the silver projectiles and burned out with a bright flash as the shots cancelled each other out. The large slide locked back as the magazine went dry.

"Duck!" Uzi commanded. The blue-haired woman instantly obeyed and an especially fierce barrage of slicing energy flew over her. The General merely 'sidestepped' again by silvering himself down a few floors.

"Are you trying to kill me?!" the Hyuuga loudly questioned the blonde due to her uncomfortably close proximity to his randomized energy attack. She stood up and felt a draft on her back. Curious, she took off her beige trench coat and found out why; the aft of her outer wear was completely shredded. She looked back at the blonde with mild annoyance and shock. "I liked this jacket!"

"Sorry," he apologized with a nervous chuckle as he eyed her. "But you do look real sexy without it…"

She stifled a rising laugh. "Not the time!" she yelled, Byakugan detecting the enemy specialist's chakra shifting as he transformed into sharpened silver again. "He's coming back!"

He grabbed her shoulder and hooked her with an energy tail. "Then let's move!" He took off across the floor as the enemy's metallic rounds followed them, gutting that level of the structure.

"Hey Hinata!" Naruto addressed his white-eyed companion as they flew out the other side of the building and he started scaling it with his tails. "I've got an idea, but I'll need lots of help!"

She looked at him even though her activated bloodline could clearly see the blonde as well as everything around them. "Shoot!"

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

The Raver felt left out at first. When the fighting started early that morning, his job was primarily support. What that entailed, however, was more than boring in his mind; ensuring that the invasion force's battlefield turbines and any special equipment ran smoothly. While this task was certainly important, he had either personally built or overseen construction of everything in his charge. He knew for a fact everything he made would not malfunction within the next thousand years.

But when the battle took an unusual turn- that being the arrival of the black troops- he felt strangely liberated. His rod like tech armor glowed and flashed brilliantly under his reflective multicolored clothing as he danced amidst electric bursts and prismatic lights over the massive enemy formation.

He moved in his rough circle around the city as he leapt high into the sky and landed on the dark steel helmets of the marching troops, delivering harsh jolts of electric energy into the soldiers. As quick as he was, though, something felt wrong about the enemies; they didn't react like people.

He was an entertainer at heart, so he practically wrote a chapter in the book about getting certain reactions using specific actions. He expected the soldiers to act surprised, disrupting formation to try and intercept him as he descended from the sky again. His attacks were repetitive enough to see coming a mile away; so repetitive that the simple act of aiming upwards and pulling the trigger would force him to temporarily change tactics. But they never did this. In fact, he never even noticed one of them look up.

He manipulated one of his gauntlets and synched its magnet to thrust him away from his current perch. The machine pulsed for a fraction of a second before shooting him away and into a hole on the ground floor of a structure across the troop-choked street. Upon landing, he activated his magnetized boots and stuck to the floor as the opposing charge kept his feet stationary. He immediately deactivated his boots and jumped for cover while synching his palm magnets to attract a soldier passing by the crumbled opening. He leaned his hands over the edge and did just that: yanked a soldier from the perfect formation and slammed his head into a concrete support. A sound of flesh, bone, and metal sounded off upon impact.

"That didn't sound normal," he thought, "That was metal grinding on metal, and his helmet isn't crushed…" He cautiously removed the dented head armor and pulled off the cloth face mask.

"Ohohoho!" he exclaimed with a hushed yell. "Looks like Lorsvall's been busy…" His lips curled into a smile while his crimson eyes flared behind smooth azure ocular lenses to pass on his new discovery to his red-eyed comrades.

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

Naruto and Hinata had gone through- literally- several buildings thanks to Lorsvall, his walker, and his army. They had been looking for a break to implement Uzi's hasty plan, but no prime opportunities presented themselves.

The blonde's eyes burned brightly as information was passed to all the red-eyes. The Hyuuga saw this through her bloodline as she unloaded massive rounds into a segment of black troops, taking them down as the slugs buried themselves into their heads with a metallic 'crunch'.

"Wait… 'crunch'?" the blue-haired woman wondered. She ducked behind a barely standing concrete wall and moved towards one of the armor clad corpses. Her first course of action was to sweep the dead man's long weapon to her side. She then pulled the woolen mask off the bloodied head and gasped at what she saw.

"So now you see my handiwork, White Eyes of Death!" the General announced with great bravado, though how he knew she had seen anything without actually seeing her with his own 'eyes' was beyond her. "I believe Uzi knows what I'm talking about, don't you red-eye?!"

The white-eyed woman glanced at the blonde easterner. He gazed back at her with blank eyes as he confirmed what she had recently witnessed. "Yeah, Raver just told us…"

With disgust contorting her face, she turned back to the deceased soldier's head. The rear top half of the skull was missing, and in its place was a black metal shell constructed of multiple steel shafts. The remnants of the corpse's brain oozed onto the asphalt in a mixture of grey mush, dark blood, and liquid silver.

"They are my soldiers, after all!" Lorsvall taunted.

The eastern duo turned to each other and nodded their heads, revealing their mutual strengthened resolve to defeat this sick bastard to each other.


Oh yeah. Regarding the art stuff: since there's no way in hell I'll be done in time for January 3rd, I'm gonna extend the deadline for at least a week. That ups it to about January 10th or so, but I'll probably up it even more to account for the weekend or something.

Since I've been such a lazy ass, I am doing a little something: a headshot of our beloved Lorsvall as I see him. I took the cheap way out by doing lineart of him, but I don't even care at this point. Once I get it all colored in, I'll post it for your enjoyment (or lack thereof)

Catchya'll later.