disclaimer: i don't own any part of naruto
The Chain of Change
Chapter Seven
It was three o'clock in the afternoon, and Naruto was sitting by himself at the bar of an abandoned pub somewhere in Suna's market district. The bartender, apparently unused to cerebral activity – much less serving customers – so early in the day, had poured him a pint, grunted something unintelligible, and retreated to a corner to read a skin mag.
That suited the blond fine. Talking with Kakashi had put him in a strange mood: being taken back to the day of his birth, to his mother's death and the Kyuubi's sealing… and of course the unsatisfying fact that the whole story raised more questions than it answered. There were too many inconsistencies, too many troubling details, but after so many years Naruto knew at least enough of his own mind to realize that he wouldn't, couldn't be the one to pick the facts apart to find the answers. So instead, he ordered another beer and tried to think of nothing. The bartender gave him a bit of a sour look as he put a fresh glass up to the tap – clearly, he had been hoping that his only customer would leave after his first drink.
What the hell are you running a bar for if you don't want to serve anyone? The blond thought in disgust as the barkeep slid his drink to him before returning to his porn. He was suddenly reminded of a certain Sannin, and not in a good way.
He took a few sips and tried to not make a face. Suna was a great place in many ways, but its beer sucked. All the beer they served was of the light variety, which in itself he didn't have a problem with, but everything he'd tried had tasted funny, like it had a weird tang to it. This one was no exception, but he downed it anyway without complaining; the bartender seemed like he was itching for an excuse to throw him out.
The bell on the door jangled as someone else entered. Naruto didn't even bother to look up; he had no desire to see some other poor bastard who, like him, had been driven to alcoholism in the afternoon on a weekday. To his surprise, Gaara sat down next to him and ordered a glass of the same crappy beer.
Naruto stared at his friend. "What the fuck are you doing here?" he asked eloquently. "Don't you have a village to run?" It didn't surprise him that Gaara had somehow ditched his guards, but he thought that the redhead was more responsible than that.
The Kazekage fixed him with a cool look. "I was trying to find you, of course." Turning to the bartender he asked, "Do you have any hot sauce?"
"Trying to find me? Do you need something –" the blond began to say, but interrupted himself when he saw what the redhead was doing – "What the fuck is wrong with you? Man, that's so gross!"
Gaara swirled his glass around to mix in the liberal amount of hot sauce he'd just added to his beer. "Try some. It's good."
"Are you insane?" the Konoha-nin exclaimed, staring at the drink, which by now had turned a lurid orange. On the other hand, it wasn't so bad of a color, so maybe it wouldn't taste terrible either… He picked up the glass and gingerly took a sip. Then, eyes widening and, hardly believing himself, he took another. And another.
"Fuck! It's actually good! So that's how you guys manage to keep this shit down!"
"It's a Suna specialty," Gaara said with an amused smile. "Doubtlessly you've noticed that our beer has a… unique character."
Naruto snorted. "So why were you looking for me? I'm guessing it wasn't to show me how to make your beer drinkable – though I appreciate it, by the way."
"I wanted to ask your help with something," the Kazekage admitted.
"Sure. What is it?"
"I was talking to your teammate, the Uchiha. He recognized my attacker from the other day, so I asked him about it. He said that the man was a member of a secret organization known as Akatsuki."
"Akatsuki…" Naruto repeated, then frowned. "Where have I heard that name before?"
"Jiraya of the Sannin tries to keep an eye on their activities, or so I hear."
"That's right – Akatsuki is the group Itachi joined after he massacred his clan. I remember hearing that he killed Orochimaru for the position." The blond fumbled through his pockets and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. "I also remember hearing that they were interested in the bijuu. Is that why that guy went after you?"
"I'm not sure," Gaara admitted. "It's too much a coincidence to ignore, but it seemed like his goal was to cause a disaster in the village."
"While the first diplomatic mission from Konoha to arrive since your appointment as Kazekage was present in Suna. That's convenient."
"I'd thought of the possibility, but what could Akatsuki have to gain by starting a war between Konoha and Suna?"
"Fuck if I know," Naruto shrugged, tapping out a cigarette and lighting it with a snap of his fingers. "Go ask them."
"I intend to," Gaara said, making the blond look up in surprise. "Apparently, the Akatsuki operate in pairs. Since your team only took out one…"
"Then there must be another one of those fuckers still hanging around here." A wicked smile formed on Naruto's features. "And you want me to help you find him?"
"Ow! What was that for?" Kakashi exclaimed, rubbing the spot on his arm where Sakura had poked him with a kunai. He was in bed, albeit back at Team Seven's temporary apartment and not at the hospital.
"Just making sure you're not a clone," the kunoichi replied calmly. Even though so far the jounin had not attempted to escape, his student was hardly going to overlook the possibility. "Here, drink this." She handed her sensei a steaming cup of foul-smelling liquid.
Kakashi took one sniff and scowled through his mask. "I don't want it."
"It'll help with the chakra exhaustion," Sakura explained patiently, as if to a small and petulant child. "Drink it."
"It smells like wet socks," the jounin protested. "I don't want it."
"That's too bad," his student replied heartlessly, turning away and pretending to leave. "I guess you'll just have to stay in bed for the next week then."
Some muscle in Kakashi's face spasmed as he considered the prospect of seven more days of forced inactivity. Holding his breath, he drank the tea in one swift gulp, then made the appropriate gagging noises until Sakura brought him a glass of water, which he downed just as quickly.
"Now rest," the kunoichi told him, taking the glass away and setting it on the bedside table. "If you're good, you may be recovered by tomorrow." She fixed him with a stern glare, as if reminding him of his past transgressions.
The jounin sank pathetically back under his sheets. "Can I have my books back now?" he asked in a small voice.
"No."
Sasuke looked up from the scroll he was reading as Sakura came out into the kitchen, shutting the bedroom door behind her. "How is he?"
His teammate rolled her eyes. "Acting like a four-year-old, of course."
"Hn." It was the closest thing the Uchiha got to chuckling.
"So what did Gaara want to talk to you about?" Sakura asked, sitting down at the table.
"Akatsuki," he replied neutrally.
"What about them?" the kunoichi asked slowly, trying to get a feel for her teammate's mood. She knew that the subject was a touchy one with him.
"He asked what I knew. I told him."
"Did he say anything about you using the Mangekyo Sharingan?"
Sasuke's expression darkened. "Are you going to start on me too?"
Sakura twisted her hands together in her lap, but she was familiar with the Uchiha's habits and did not back down. "Sasuke, it was really dangerous. You could have killed a lot of innocent people, and Kakashi-sensei had to put himself in the hospital to stop you."
"I knew what I was doing," he grit out through clenched teeth. "The man had information that I needed. It has nothing to do with you, or Gaara, or Kakashi."
"Like hell it doesn't," Sakura replied, her eyes flashing in anger. Her sudden vehemence made Sasuke flinch back, although only for a moment. "You don't live in a vacuum, you idiot! Your actions affect other people. For god's sake we're supposed to be a team!"
The last sentence did the trick of setting him off. "A team?" Sasuke snarled. "I tried that, remember? We both did, and look where it got us!"
Sakura's expression hardened. Even now, he couldn't let it go. "This isn't about Naruto."
Her teammate said nothing.
"Sasuke, you got what you wanted from him, remember? It's not like your eyes are going to change back if you try to move on."
The Uchiha glared at her. "I don't forgive traitors," he said coldly, with a finality that indicated their conversation was over. He made a point of ignoring her as he returned to reading his scroll.
The afternoon sun beat down on the wind-cracked rooftops of Suna, sending up lazy shimmers of heat. Despite this, the villagers went on with their lives, shaded by the buildings that lined intentionally narrow streets. The same buildings prevented most of them from noticing the two figures situated on top of one of the taller apartment complexes, clad in the traditional sand-colored cloaks of Suna-nin and surveying the people below them like circling hawks.
Naruto was seated, lotus-style, with his eyes closed. The heat from the sun was unbearable and the hot roof made it feel like his ass was going to burn off, but somehow he managed to ignore it enough to access the desert's natural chakra. Not that it made him feel any cooler, with the dry heat now burning through his chakra coils. Next to him, Gaara was annoyingly composed; the bastard wasn't even sweating.
"Thirty-one jounin-level signatures," the blond said finally, relaxing his position and wiping the perspiration from his face. Slitted amber eyes regarded the Kazekage. "You know, there are probably better ways to do this. I'm not exactly a chakra-sensing type."
Gaara ignored him. "Did any of them feel strange?"
"What the hell is that supposed to mean? All chakra is strange!"
"All right. How many high-jounin?"
Naruto groaned. "Dammit, I'm running out of natural chakra here!"
"Can't you just summon the old toad and have him collect it for you?" Gaara asked, raising an eyebrow.
The blond rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. "Actually, I kinda pissed him off, along with most of the other toad summons…"
"Surprise surprise," the Kazekage muttered, feeling a headache coming on.
Naruto ignored him and closed his eyes again. "Okay, there's Temari… found Kakashi… some dude I don't recognize with some genin… whoa, wait."
"What is it?"
"Could be nothing," the blond shrugged. "It's just that his chakra feels… I dunno how to describe it…"
Gaara gave his friend a flat stare. "Strange?"
The blond scowled. "Sometimes I really hate you." His body seemed to tense as he flung his senses out as far as they would reach. "Okay… got him! He's at the edge of the village, near the main gate."
His friend walked up to the edge of the roof and held out a hand. Sand streamed up to create a floating platform, which he stepped onto. Meanwhile, Naruto was just standing up, wondering how burned his ass was going to be. He didn't get a chance to contemplate for too long however, as a thin coil of sand whipped around his leg, lifting him bodily from the roof and onto the platform before Gaara and his sand sped through the village. The Kazekage set them down on top of the wall a few hundred feet away from Suna's tiered gates. As soon as he did so, Naruto toppled back gratefully against the rock. Even though he was a wind user, he did not enjoy flying in Gaara's moving sand trap.
Gaara nudged him with his foot. "Can you find him?"
"Give me a minute, you sadist," the blond muttered, sitting back up with a groan. He crossed his legs and placed his hands together, focusing his breathing until he stood on the cusp between living and dead. Slowly, as the warmth of natural chakra flowed into him, he reached out, searching for the presence he had felt earlier – a jounin-level ninja with an incomplete chakra signature, as if part of him were missing, or smothered.
"Where are you, you elusive bastard… there we go – Gaara, he's headed out of the village."
They dashed to the gates, where a Suna-nin wearing the traditional sand-colored cloak was handing his documents to a guard.
"That's Yura," Gaara said, recognizing him. "He's a member of my council."
"Well, whoever he is, there's something off about him," Naruto retorted, the feeling of wrongness about the man becoming stronger as they neared him. "I'm sure of it, now that we're closer."
"Naruto, he's been loyal to Sunagakure since before I was born."
The Konoha-nin shrugged. "Can't hurt to follow him." Gaara made a noise of irritation, but did not disagree.
Under cover of sand, the two breached the canyon walls that surrounded the village and proceeded into the open desert. Yura moved at a hurried pace across the sand, but they were able to catch up easily enough. However, the council member's cloak made him difficult to track, and once or twice Naruto had to tap back into sage mode to find him again. Sunagakure was quickly vanishing into the distance thanks to the clip at which they were going, but their quarry made no indication of stopping or even slowing down. Finally, after about fifteen minutes of this, the pair decided to hang back and observe, with Gaara being unwilling to stray too far from his village.
"Dammit, where the fuck is he going? Did you send him out on a mission?" Naruto said, watching the dot that was Yura shrink into the distance.
"Council members don't take mission. I thought he might have a personal errand to one of the smaller towns, but he's headed for the middle of nowhere," Gaara replied, clearly annoyed. "We're on a wild goose chase."
"Yeah," Naruto agreed, looking around at the endless, lifeless expanse of desert. "Either that, or it's some kind of elaborate trap –"
The pair looked at each other, horrified that they hadn't considered the possibility sooner. Immediately Gaara clenched his hands together, bringing the sand around them to form a protective sphere. It was just in time too, because something bit deeply into the walls of the sphere, sending tremors along the inside of their temporary shield.
"Fuck!" Naruto exclaimed unhelpfully. "What the fuck is –"
The force impacted again, and where it hit, the sand rippled and crumbled away to reveal the harsh light of the desert.
"It feels like the chakra is being drained out of my sand," Gaara remarked, far too calmly, as he used both hands in a struggle to close up the hole. "Ready yourself, Naruto – I can't hold this together for much longer."
A third impact, and Gaara's barrier crumbled away into pieces, only to reveal an array of Naruto clones. Between them they held a whirling, shrieking disk of chakra, which they immediately hurled at –
Hoshigaki Kisame brought Samehada up in one swift movement and sliced through the Rasenshuriken. Despite the sword's chakra-eating abilities, the elemental jutsu exploded into a wild cyclone upon being sliced in half, blowing up vicious amounts of sand. "Shit!" the missing-nin exclaimed, shielding his face with his weapon to prevent it from being eroded away.
A flutter of robes indicated that Itachi had joined his side. "They are escaping," the Uchiha pointed out calmly, not the least bit helpful.
"I knew we couldn't depend on that puppet bastard," Kisame growled. "Lure them out, my ass. How the fuck are we supposed to find them again in this?"
Itachi stared out into the desert. "I will find them," he said. The three tomoes of the Sharingan spun lazily in his eyes.
"Fuck! I swear that was Itachi!" Naruto was shouting as Gaara sped them through the desert. "Why the fuck are we running? Turn this thing around!"
"I thought you said that it was a trap," Gaara pointed out mildly. "We are escaping the trap."
"Are you crazy?" the blond practically screeched. "We can't go back to Suna – if they follow us, they'll tear the village to the ground."
Years of exposure to Naruto had lent the Kazekage some immunity to his shouting. "I have no intention of going back to my village," he replied. "I am simply luring them in the way they lured us. There is no telling how many traps they have already planted on that piece of desert. I merely seek to level the playing field."
"Oh," Naruto said, snapping his jaw shut, suddenly feeling quite stupid. The sand platform was slowing. He could see the pair of Akatsuki closing the distance: the dark features of Itachi, Kisame's strange blue skin. "Listen," he told Gaara, "The Uchiha uses genjutsu. Don't ever, ever look into his eyes. I don't know what his intentions are, but if he catches you with his Sharingan, then it's all over."
"Noted," his friend said. "Here they come."
Chiyo picked through the crate of persimmons with a frown on her wrinkled face. None of the fruit the vendor was selling seemed to be very ripe. Deciding to forgo them this time, she turned her attention to the display of vegetables.
There was a rustle of cloth as someone passed behind her. The old lady's grocery bag dropped from nerveless fingers.
"…Sasori?"
"What do you want from us?"
In a bare stretch of desert, two pairs of shinobi faced each other. One was clad in the earth-colored cloaks of Sunagakure; the other wore black robes embellished with red clouds. They stood some fifty feet apart like reflections in a strange mirror, the setting sun painting their shadows long and dark across the sand.
Kisame reached behind his back from Samehada's scaled hilt. His face bore a harsh rictus lined with jagged teeth in response to the Kazekage's question. "We're here for the Ichibi… and the Kyuubi."
"Gaara!" Naruto exclaimed, glancing at his friend in mock surprise. "You never told me you were the Jyuubi container!"
"Cease this foolishness, Naruto," Itachi said tonelessly. "Haven't you discovered the truth yet?"
"That I'm a jinchuukiri? It might be possible – if the Kyuubi weren't already fucking sealed somewhere else!" Naruto snarled. A strange pressure grew in his head as he ignored his own words and stared the Uchiha down. Suddenly, everything from the past few days was bearing down on him, and he was sick of talking, sick of the implications that had been tossed around and lay rattling in his brain. Some primal part of him screamed for the need of violence to expel it all.
It was a stupid idea; he would have had a much better chance against Kisame, but the blond closed the space between himself and Itachi in less than a second. The Uchiha was ready for it, brushing Naruto's lightning-fast strikes harmlessly aside with one hand. Meanwhile the Mist-nin, figuring that dibs had already been called on his partner, surged forward toward Gaara with Samehada in tow, only to be blocked by a transient wall of sand.
"Your taijutsu has gotten sloppy," Itachi noted idly as they broke apart from the exchange. Naruto tilted his head to one side, a savage grin forming on his features. Combined with his reptilian eyes, the whole effect was quite sinister.
"Maybe," he said, his fingers forming a familiar-looking cross-shaped seal. "But taijutsu's never been my strong point."
"Oh," the Uchiha said, a small smile quirking his lips. "What a scary face." He didn't have a chance to say anything else after that though, as three Naruto clones suddenly popped into existence. The first went for a direct attack, using the quick, vicious attacks characteristic of the blond's bastardized taijutsu form to momentarily drive Itachi to the defensive. The second leapt into the air, allowing for the third to grab his leg and swing him around, propelling him over the missing-nin's head. As the clone flipped over Itachi's head, he reached out and grabbed the back of his robe, slamming the Uchiha toward the ground. Itachi allowed the downward momentum to carry him as he flipped onto his hands, his legs arcing up to kick the first clone.
The moment his foot made contact, the second clone let the kunai in his hands fly. Itachi, caught mid-stride, was unable to twist out of the way, and the attack caught him full-on. The exploding tags attached to the kunai detonated, and in the resulting smoke and sand the missing-nin's figure dissolved into a flock of crows. Before the corvids even had a chance to get airborne, a Rasenshuriken sliced through the dust and towards the real Itachi. It was only due to the Sharingan that the Uchiha was able to dodge in time.
When the air had cleared, the two combatants stood facing each other once more.
"I didn't expect you to catch onto the clone so quickly," Itachi said. The entire left side of his robe had been torn away by Naruto's attack and lay in tatters of red and black. Calmly, the missing-nin reached up with one hand to undo the front of the robe and removed it from his shoulders, letting the wind carry it away. Now exposed, it was clear that his person had also not escape unscathed; his left arm was bloody from the shoulder down.
The blond stared hard at his opponent. "Sending Kage Bunshin out at the start of battle to scope out your opponent – you taught me that, didn't you?"
Itachi said nothing. He took a step back with his left foot and held out the opposite hand, palm facing upwards and fingers quirked toward himself – the classic signal for "come and get it."
What followed was a display of ninjutsu that lit up the desert in primitive fireworks. Both combatants shared an affinity for fire, and since Naruto wasn't going to try his standard repertoire of wind jutsu against its opposing element and there was no water around for Itachi to draw on, so it was katon techniques that the two fell back on.
In retrospect, Naruto realized that he should have paid more attention to the old adage warning against fighting fire with fire, because apparently doing so caused explosions. Large ones. Which was unfortunate, because they threw great plumes of sand into the air, obscuring everything to the point where the blond couldn't even see his own hand held in front of his face. Of course, Itachi felt none of this disadvantage, thanks to his magical all-knowing Uchiha dojutsu.
But Naruto could fight blind. He had done it before. Keeping his eyes open in this kind of situation was only going to distract him, so he closed them and stood still. There wasn't enough time to restore his sage chakra, but with what was left of it he could cast out his senses and locate Itachi.
The Uchiha came up from behind him, lightning-fast, releasing a jet of fireballs. Naruto twisted around and countered with his own katon technique, belatedly realizing that Itachi had hidden kunai in the flames. He managed to dodge most of them, but one caught him in the shoulder, lodging itself into the muscle there. The blond reached up to pull it out. His hand touched paper.
The exploding tag detonated immediately, and only Naruto's quick reflexes saved him from being blown apart, allowing him to cast the kunai away at the last second. Even so, the force of the explosion threw him back against the desert like a rag doll, cracking his head solidly against the ground.
Dizzily, the blond forced himself upright. He felt the last of his sage chakra leave him, and with its departure came the nausea and pain from his head injury. There was no time to think about it; Itachi had wasted no time following up his initial attack, and, sensing the movement through the sand-clouded air, Naruto whirled around just in time to roll away from a snaking dragon of fire. Itachi rematerialized before him, blue flame licking up his arm as he struck at the blond with what appeared to be a katon-based version of the Chidori. Naruto dodged to the side and blocked the next strike with a kunai, but the weapon immediately began to melt from the heat of the fire, and the skin of his hand began to blister. He sidestepped and simultaneously dropped the weight from behind the blade, hoping to catch his opponent off-balance, but Itachi simply redirected his momentum to plant one hand on the ground and sweep Naruto's legs out from under him.
The blond fell back, and before he could regain his footing, a hand gripped his neck and slammed him bodily into the ground. Itachi stood above him, staring down dispassionately.
"I'm disappointed in you," he said.
"Fuck you," Naruto bit back. Itachi squeezed gently, and stars began to appear in the blond's vision.
"Answer my question: have you discovered the truth yet?"
"The truth about what, you sick fuck?!" Naruto practically screamed, frustrated by the missing-nin's continuous cryptic questioning. Answering his anger, the wind pulsed around him, and Itachi had to hold up his other arm to his face to prevent it from being shredded. Blood splattered into the air, but the Uchiha did not let go.
"Hasn't your time in ROOT taught you anything?" Itachi asked, looking straight at the blond as his eyes bled into the Mangekyo Sharingan.
"My name is Danzo," the one-eyed man said. "I'll be training you from now on."
"But my dad said that he'd train me," Naruto protested, looking up at the stone-like countenance of his visitor. "He said I could enter the academy once I turned eight."
"And you still can, Naruto-kun," the one-eyed man assured him. The small child flinched back at being addressed so personally, feeling like a trapped animal. "However, your father is a very busy man, so he sent me to teach you in his place."
Naruto didn't like anything about the man in front of him. He didn't like the way his words sounded. It was as if he had been taken from outside and suddenly put into a small room, and now someone was slowly shutting the door on him. But his father had taught him about responsibility, and duty, so he nodded at Danzo and followed him out.
"Please," Naruto begged, trying to shut out the sound of his own voice screaming at him. "Please, just let him go. I won't do it again, I promise!"
The masked ROOT-nin gave no response, only picked up the iron brand from where it lay smothered in glowing coals. He then turned to Naruto's Kage Bunshin, bound by seals that would not allow it to vanish, and applied the brand to the clone's side, eliciting fresh cries of anguish.
When they finally allowed the clone to dispel, Naruto almost passed out from the pain. He retched until nothing came up anymore, then fell unconscious in a pathetic little heap in the ROOT prison.
As he came to, he noticed Danzo standing before him, staring at him in contempt. "Ninja of Konoha do not reveal S-Class secrets," the scarred veteran said. "Not even to their own family."
His mind was filled with heat and fire. He felt the slow burn of the heavens across his skin, the glittering stars and distant moon sliding past him as his soul left his body and splintered: ten became one, became two… became nine, and suddenly the heat receded, leading him back into the aching coldness of the physical world.
The heat receded, but was not gone. The dregs of it boiled and festered in his mind, became feelings for rage and hatred and destruction. Wherever his paws tread, he left behind naught but dust. Wherever his great tails lashed, mountains toppled and oceans evaporated from the heat. For years it seemed that he wandered this way, an unstoppable, unfathomable force of nature…
Then one day, above the cries of a desperate village, he felt once more the burn of the stars as some greater force plucked him from his hard-won body. Half his soul was taken, growing dull and dead when it split off and bound itself to stone. The other half lay forgotten, in between the realm of the living and the dead. He struggled, only a shadow of his former self, crawling like the unevolved ooze, finding new life and clinging to it. Young life: incipient, unformed. A perfect vessel to receive his gifts of violence, and hatred.
The transition back to reality was instantaneous. Upon the touch of foreign memories upon his mind, Naruto felt Tsukoyomi shatter and Itachi reel back, as if physically stunned. Not understanding what had just transpired but grateful for it, the blond took advantage of the Uchiha's momentary weakness to down him in a swift kick to the legs, then follow up with a pin similar to the one that had moments ago been used on himself.
Naruto held out his left hand, gathering a densely-spinning mass of blue chakra. Itachi stared impassively at the forming Rasengan, the Mangekyo not leaving his eyes.
"Do you understand now?"
"I understand that I should kill you," the blond said quietly, feeling as if all the heat had burned his body out from within, leaving only a husk that played at being human. The only feeling that remained was a deep and unquenchable anger that spread heat from his core all the way up to his fingertips. Small scarlet flames sparked to life on his skin, licked down his arm and fed into the Rasengan in his hand, quickly turning blue into red.
The change went unnoticed by Naruto but did not escape Itachi, who said, "That would be unwise, as my partner would then kill your friend." His expression was inscrutable. Naruto turned the information over in his head, Gaara's memory slowly coming back to him with his own humanity. Almost reluctantly, the red chakra receded from his hand and the flames on his skin died away.
"You're bluffing." It seemed like the right thing to say.
"Do you care to find out?"
The thought of Gaara lying broken and battered at the hands of the Mist-nin brought on a fresh wave of anger, and Naruto brought the sphere of red spinning downward. However, before he was able to complete his strike, Kisame appeared out of nowhere, sweeping Samehada in a protective arc over his partner and causing the jutsu to explode. All three fighters were blown back, along with great quantities of sand.
The impact of hitting the ground once again jarred Naruto to his senses. He regained his feet, pulsing wind chakra around his body to drive the sand away.
"Gaara! Where the fuck are you?" he called, although he had a feeling that it was a useless effort. There was no answer from the Kazekage, but Naruto felt someone move behind him. Swinging around, he brought up a leg to connect with Kisame's arm, knocking Samehada out of his grip. The missing-nin reeled back from the blow, and Naruto was somewhat comforted to notice that he had not escaped unscathed from his fight with Gaara; Kisame seemed to be favoring one leg over the other, and his entire person was bloody and battered-looking.
The two exchanged a round of viciously powerful taijutsu before separating. Kisame spat out blood and a tooth that the blond had knocked free with a hit to the jaw. "You're good," the missing-nin said grudgingly.
"Where's Gaara?" Naruto demanded, feeling a bit like a broken record as he formed the seals for a katon jutsu with his left hand. The right reached into his weapons pouch.
"Why ask for him? Ain't I good enough for you?" the shark-like man leered. Naruto responded by exhaling a massive snake of flame, circling Kisame as he tried to dodge out of the way and striking him in the side. Unfortunately, this knocked him closer to Samehada. Naruto tried to kick the sword away, but Kisame was too quick, grabbing the handle as he rolled to his feet. The missing-nin swung at him, scoring the skin off his left arm as he flipped back, a second too late.
Samehada made a screeching noise, and Kisame grinned. "It likes the taste of you."
The blond flinched back, a sense of wrongness washing over him. Though he might have imagined it, he thought that he had felt the sword siphoning off his chakra. The violation stirred up the embers in his belly, and suddenly he felt a deep loathing for the alien object that had not only stolen away some of his life force, but even now hungered for more.
He began to mold elemental chakra in his hand, the process somewhat slowed by the depletion of his reserves. Then he tightened his hand into a fist, forcing the energy upon itself, compressing it until he had a marble-sized sphere that was a deep ruby in color. With the other hand, he formed the seals for a futon jutsu that whipped up a large whirlwind in the missing-nin's direction.
Kisame held up his sword, intending for it to consume the cyclone, which it did with admirable efficiency. He did not expect, however, for Naruto to reach out and slap his hand to Samehada's scaled surface. The blond quickly drew his hand away on contact, as if burned, but the dense marble of chakra remained, burning red-hot. Then the metal around it began to melt. It melted even as Samehada consumed, for the sword could not eat fast enough to prevent the potent chakra from eating through itself.
Realizing what was happening to his beloved sword, Kisame lashed out at his opponent even as the blond angled a strike to his jaw. Both fighters reeled back from the ferocity of the exchange, but Kisame recovered first. His jaw had clearly been dislocated, but the Mist-nin popped it brutally back into place with his shoulder. Naruto was worse off, having felt his ribs crack under the force of the blow, while blood slowly oozed from where his skin had been eroded off by the sword.
His chakra marble hadn't been enough to completely destroy Kisame's monster sword, but it had done a considerable amount of damage. Samehada seemed smaller, and was curled up into itself, as if trying to physically escape from what had hurt it. However, there was enough left of the weapon for the Mist-nin to wield. Kisame swung the thing over his head, the scaled blade extending out from the centripetal force, then brought it crashing down towards his opponent. Naruto, feeling as though his lungs were going to burst with every breath he took, threw himself to the side in order to avoid the blow.
This is bad, the blond found himself thinking as the sword clipped the air above him. He reached into his chakra reserves and scraped bottom; he had nothing but dregs now. Whatever was left in him would only be good for one strike. He grabbed a kunai from his pouch, careful to conceal the almost comically small weapon in his hand.
Then Kisame was standing over him, stomping down hard on the blond's already injured chest. Already broken bones gave further with a sickening crunch, and Naruto almost blacking out from the explosion of pain that it caused. He barely clung on to the waking world as the missing-nin raised Samehada up like an executioner's axe for the final blow. Almost detachedly, the blond noted that nearly a third of the sword had melted away and that any edge it might have once held was clearly gone. For an insane moment he wondered if Kisame planned to bludgeon him to death with the thing.
There was no time to dwell on the matter. Naruto channeled the last of his chakra through the kunai in his hand. The weapon had not been made for such purposes and the metal began to vibrate violently from the sudden infusion of wind chakra. Hardly noticing how the weapon was shredding his own hand, he fed it chakra until he had none left, then let it fly.
It caught his opponent completely by surprise. The kunai flew true, slicing cleanly through Kisame's arm, just above the elbow: a clean, perfect cut. The severed appendage dropped to the ground, spurting blood. Kisame howled and clutched his newly formed stump in agony, dropping his sword in the process.
Somehow, Naruto rose to his feet and staggered over to the missing-nin, taking care to kick what remained of Samehada well out of reach. There was one last kunai in his pouch. He pulled it out.
Some shinobi are able to weather the most traumatizing of events, but evidently Kisame was not one of them. The Mist-nin raged and swore at him as he approached, his words completely unintelligible and coming out in such a condensed stream it almost seemed like gibbering. Blood flecking his lips and teeth, and whatever clarity his reptilian eyes might have held was completely gone as they rolled wildly in their sockets. It was strange to think that a single blow had reduced the man to this state, raging and desperate.
Then Naruto was standing right before him, and Kisame's words suddenly began to make sense, though most of it consisted of cursing. "You won't save your pathetic little jinchuuriki buddy," the missing-nin told him finally, pink-tinged spittle running from his mouth. "Sasori's already got him squared away."
"What the fuck do you care?" Naruto said tonelessly. He was very tired, and there was nothing but contempt in him for the man writhing on the ground before him. Every breath was like it had been taken through barbed wire, but he felt oddly contented, almost soothed by the battle's result.
"You're going to die anyway."
He raised his arm and stabbed down with all his might, and Hoshigaki Kisame toppled backwards.
The last of his strength gone, Naruto fell to his knees before his dead opponent, feeling his consciousness ebbing away. He never noticed that the weapon lodged between Kisame's eyes had three prongs.