Chapter 8

Author: Hey. My slow update was because I'm setting up some stuff for my new apartment and university. Thank you all for reviewing the previous chapters and for favorite-ing either me, my story, or adding me to your alert list. It shows you care :p

The lights flickered on above her head and a hanging lamp swung back and forth in the darkness. Its light gnawed at the inky surroundings but drowned pathetically in the overwhelming shadow that loomed in the room with them. Ino was counting the seconds after the third minute. She was scratching the skin of his hands, fidgeting in his shoes as she felt that familiar steep drain of her chakra hit her as hard as any punch she's ever taken. She felt as if her body was filling up, but at the same time, her blood seemed to grow cold due the lack of her inner ether. It was an odd feeling, knowing the sensations of two different bodies at once due to the chakra exhaustion.

When Orochimaru finally stopped, he turned and grinned at the young boy and leaned in close to look Naruto directly in the eye. "I am excited, thrilled, really. I think you will make the perfect bait. You're so scruffy and arrogant-looking. They'll just loathe you." Orochimaru let out a self-satisfied smirk as he walked around the young boy, looking down into his blue eyes when they were visible for him.

"My scroll." Naruto's lips moved. Ino groaned and was about ready to give up when she saw Naruto look up in his mind's eye and gaze into the mirror that she held out in front of him while his back was turned to her. She looked back through the mirror to see his eyes full of purpose. Resolve. Ino's breath hitched and suddenly she was no longer in control, though she could still see through his eyes and hear the silent footsteps of the Sannin as he stalked about.

Naruto, who had regained the reigns, glared up at Orochimaru and the man stopped, his eyes opening just a hair's breadth wider. "You're back. I remember that glare from a few minutes ago… I wonder; were you in a daze because of your fear? Caught up in it like a web that won't let you go, hanging, suspended, as you wondered when the spider would come crawling back around, starved and thirsty."

"No animal has ever scared me." Naruto said in a poisonous tone.

Orochimaru grinned. "Oh? So, how do you feel about ss-s-snakes-s?" And just as he said it, he extended his arms out and reached for the boy. When Naruto looked up at him and his palms simply set down on his shoulders, he frowned at the older man.

"Some people make belts out of their skins. Now get your hands off of me, and return what is rightfully mine."

His pale face leaned in close and his eyes were gazing into Naruto's. "I suppose I can do that."

"It was collateral. And from what I heard, you are legendary. A Sannin… I'm not sure why I know, I didn't really pay attention in school half the time, but I guess I got it from somewhere."

Orochimaru raised a brow and pulled back slightly, but his hands were still clutching the young boy's shoulders.

"I think it would be pretty pathetic, even for a bastard like you, to break your word." Naruto's eyes peered from underneath his long eyelashes up to the tall man; his brow creased heavily as the look of contempt he wore was instantly recognizable on him.

Orochimaru smirked. He even has his eyes. And yet he is so much like her.

"Very well. I will not renege on our agreement." The Sannin swung the large scroll out from his side where it was kept and held it out to the young blond as if it was no more cumbersome than a single chopstick. Orochimaru's fierce strength was utterly undeniable. He possessed more than any other single man that Naruto had ever seen; even more than an Akimichi.

He reached out and took the scroll, then nodded his head once politely. "Thank you."

Baffled, Orochimaru stayed silent. What a remarkable boy.

The two walked while Ino watched. She felt her life force slowly slipping away and could hear her mother screaming at her, she was wailing for her to let go of the jutsu but she just couldn't. Even if she wanted to, she knew she would stay for as long as it took; she just wanted to make sure that Naruto would be found, hopefully, by the Hokage because she knew that the first thing her father would do would be to inform the Hokage and ask him for his assistance. Then they would embark as a task force including probably Kakashi, her father, and one other jonin with the Hokage as its commander.

When Naruto placed the scroll on his back once more, Orochimaru smirked and the two continued to walk. Just then, Naruto heard a silent whirring sound as something seemed to be moving quickly through the air. Orochimaru spun around on his heel with wide eyes as a windmill buzzed over the top of Naruto's head, trimming a hair before slicing through six-foot-tall man's abdomen.

Naruto recoiled at the gore as the Sannin's body was split in two by the spinning windmill shuriken. When he saw it bouncing off of the wall a little further up, Naruto ducked and turned around immediately with his kunai drawn. It nearly fell from his hand as he turned to watch as Sasuke reached up into the air and snagged it as it spun towards him.

The two of them looked at one another and Naruto's eyes were wide open as he tried to comprehend what had just happened. Did he just kill that living legend? There was a glimmer of red in Sasuke's eyes that Naruto wasn't quite sure he just saw.

"Sa-Sasuke? What the hell! How were you able to find me!"

Sasuke smirked. "Your smell, for one. You smell like dead last."

Naruto grinned, "Idiot. I smell like spring flowers and morning dew and you know it."

The Uchiha boy grunted and tilted his head. "Let's leave."

"No shit."

When Naruto took a step forward he tripped due to something moving along the floor. Sasuke looked confused, but immediately his confusion disappeared from his face when he heard the hissing of snakes in the darkness.

"Naruto! Move! Now!"

Sasuke formed eight seals, ending with tiger and brought his hand up to his mouth as he took a deep breath. Seeing this, Naruto immediately pulled himself up to his feet and moved out of the way as a giant flame burst out of the Uchiha's chest and swirled out of his mouth in a spiral that covered the entire hallway just as Naruto cleared the ten or so feet away from where he had fallen.

When they looked, they saw snakes. Hundreds and hundreds of snakes slithering around the hallway, creeping up on them even as the flames licked at their leathery flesh.

"Run!" Naruto made sure he secured the giant scroll tight and pushed Sasuke in the other direction as the snakes were devoured by the flame only for more to pour out behind it and make their way past until they, in return, consumed the flame. Naruto would praise Sasuke for his mastery of one of his family's signature techniques, but the last thing on their mind was approval from one another.

Sasuke's eyes glimmered red just then and Naruto jerked away when it happened, but as they were running Sasuke frowned. "What are you doing with Ino's chakra? It's weird though, not just her chakra, but something else…"

"Ino? She's still inside me! Oh shit, how long has it been?"

Naruto was dense, not stupid. He knew that maintaining any jutsu, even one like henge, for very long periods of time had the potential to do real damage to a person's chakra pathways and even cause brain damage or death. As they ran down the long hall, Naruto immediately began yelling. "Ino, let go, damn it! You did your part! I'm sure someone's on their way now, so get the hell out of my head before you kill yourself!"

Sasuke looked at him like he was stupid, but they kept running. They were close, Naruto was watching the staircase the whole way as they ran at full speed.

Both of them turned back to look and were shocked to see that there were no longer any snakes chasing them. Sasuke stopped, shocking Naruto even further, making him stop to grab the Uchiha and get him to start running again. "What the hell are you doing?"

Sasuke scowled, "He's in front of us."

"Bull-oh fuck!" Naruto slapped his mouth over the top of his head as he saw the snake Sannin was now standing in front of them when they turned around.

Orochimaru gave a terrorizing smile and reached up to grip the skin underneath his eye and pull it back slightly, showing off his yellowish, snakelike eye. The two boys felt like kunai were digging into their bodies as if thrown from all possible angles, with one very last one going directly through their forehead protectors and splitting their skulls open.

The two young boys fell to their knees as the wave of killer intent washed over them, crippling their knees and making their arms weak, barely able to stand the weight of their own torso as they tried to keep from planting their skulls into the ground.

When Orochimaru walked up to them, they couldn't even bring themselves to look up at him. Their bodies were that badly affected by the mere aura of death that travelled with the Sannin.

"An Uchiha with a sharingan. I must have left lady luck with quite the impression last night." Orochimaru sneered at the Uchiha boy and turned his head. "But if you can't survive, I might as well not even bother. Maybe you're not worth it after all… I suppose I'll have to bide my time until I come across Itachi again."

Sasuke's foundation nearly crumbled. He shook violently as he looked up with terrible hate into the Sannin's eyes. Naruto turned to look and felt a pull of chakra as Orochimaru started forming a few seals, many that neither of the boys had ever seen. When his head suddenly shot up and his neck extended as he reached out with it seemingly to clamp down on the Uchiha's shoulder, Naruto stiffened. He felt another pull of chakra and two arms wrapped around him, but he couldn't see them. And just like that, the feeling was gone, but the strength that it spawned within him remained.

Suddenly his legs were working again and Naruto picked himself up and had a kunai down the Sannin's throat, stabbing through the back of his neck with it as his jaws surrounded the blond's arm and he gagged on his own blood. Sasuke drew back in surprise and immediately moved to push his own kunai into the Sannin's chest, forcing him back a few steps before his hand reached out and shoved him away, making him slide on his back several meters down the hall. Orochimaru was snarling, spitting out blood and coughing as mucous poured out of his nose as he tried to pull his head away from him. Naruto swerved his head out of the way as he threw another of his massive punches and slipped it underneath the monster's chin, turning the wrist in his mouth to force the Sannin to turn his head as he took Sasuke's kunai that was in his chest and pulled down on it with his other hand until a good portion of his abdomen was cleaved and Naruto could see the fleshy innards.

Orochimaru, in the meantime, tried to bite Naruto's arm off, but the kunai was stuck just right that it forced the Sannin to just try and shake away from it. How the man wasn't dead already, Naruto couldn't fathom. He yanked Sasuke's kunai out of the shinobi's gut and jabbed it back in to where he thought his heart was, but he bounced off of a rib and spun away from Naruto's hand only succeeding in leaving a gash in his skin because Naruto lacked the force required to break through this particular man's ribcage.

Suddenly, Orochimaru kicked at him and scored a particularly gruesome strike on Naruto's chest, shoving him backwards even further than he had Sasuke. He reached into his throat and yanked roughly on the knife jutting out over his tongue. Once that was removed, he wheezed desperately for air as he clutched his throat, glaring at the two young shinobi that had caught him off guard.

Sasuke, still on the high coming from the increased endorphins at the despicable memory of his older brother, dashed across the ten or so yards in between them and threw out several shuriken each missing their target even though he didn't move.

Orochimaru looked around and noticed that wires were attached to the shuriken that struck both of the walls and the floor and ceiling as well. Arching a brow, he grunted when the wires were pulled taut squeezing him tight in the middle of the hallway.

Sasuke smirked even as Orochimaru spat out blood on the floor, glaring back at the young Uchiha.

Naruto stood up to watch as the Sannin was burnt to a crisp in the center of the hall and blinked. He wasn't sure that he and Sasuke were even equals anymore.

However, to Naruto's dismay, an elbow slammed into the side of his head, making him hit the wall nearby and fall over, clutching his face. Sasuke spun around and shot out several small fireballs as his chakra reserves were beginning to get low; the corpse behind him melted into a muddy statue that simply tumbled over and splattered on the ground where the bloody spit was missing.

Sasuke's eyes were able to follow, but his body could not keep up. Every time he seemed to get the upper hand on the Sannin, he would simply pick up his pace and rush at him again. He was toying with them. They wouldn't stand a chance even ten years from now.

Naruto lay on his side, looking up after another failed attempt at trying to fight off the legendary shinobi. Ino was gone now, he knew it. Those were her arms that had wrapped around him and they allowed him to stop the Sannin's attempt to, as Naruto saw it, kill Sasuke.

He watched helplessly as Sasuke was lifted up by his chin and pressed up against the wall as Orochimaru hissed, "The wretched pain like your insides liquefying will only last a few days… and then you will either die… or become much, much stronger… and ascend."

There weren't very many moments in Naruto's life that lasted forever. That expression was often lost on him, because most of his life was a blur. But when he saw Orochimaru clamping down on Sasuke's throat, the Hokage, Kakashi and Inoichi rushing down the steps as Naruto saw Sasuke's jugular moving as blood traveled up from his chest, Naruto wished he had just been knocked out after being slammed into the concrete wall for the fifth or sixth time.

Ino lay in a hospital bed, an oxygen mask over her face as several nurses moved back and forth to follow the commands of their specialized Hyuga doctor as he tried to assess the damage done to her chakra pathways while a medic shinobi worked diligently on crafting a powerful seal in an empty room that was used for chakra poisoning.

Ino's mother, Oroi, sat in the waiting room, crying with her face in her hands as a nurse tried to console her.

In Ino's mind, she saw the fan. She saw the glass shimmering in the darkness and walked up to it. When she took it, she looked upon the majestic creator of the silk fan and gasped.

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