mission 4: the 6th path
"what are you?"
the group looked on in horror as the newest visiting resident of the village hidden in the leaves stood there with a pair of wings and a tail but not small wings,gigantic wings. Eathen could most likely fit the entire group under them and still have plenty of elbow room.
Eathen looked at the expression the entire group shared, one of non-belief. tsunade probed into the matter the best way possible"seriously,are you even human"by asking VERY bluntly"and what the hell where those flying snake demons you so thoroughly annihilated?"
Eathen gave the best answers to give, the true ones"well in all honesty I am humen,though how human i am not sure..."Eathen let his dragonic features dissolve in a rush of fire and began putting his clothing back on and before their eyes the ninja watched as the apparel dried instantly as steam ejected from the wet clothing"you see those where a very aggressive breed of nagas devils known as blood nagas. while the human body is made up of 90% water they are made up of 90% blood, blood they prefer to get from other individuals via oral consumption, I.E. bit you and suck your blood."
as the knight explained the creatures that had attacked him and failed, the shock and severity of the information was all but lost on all who listened and tsunade, who had evidently nominated herself as spokes person of the group spoke up "so those things were demons, huh. well why did they attack you, or was that just a coincidence?"the tone of slight suspicion in her voice was not lost on Eathen.
he set her strait and continued "OK first:drop the tone,its rude. second:they are NOT demons, demons are parasitic cock bites that deserve a painful end and as a bit of warning to all of you:call a devil a demon and they WILL kill you no maybe, decapitation, mutilation or decimation on the spot. and they thought it would be clever to try at a preemptive strike on me, in which they sucked at..." eathen then sat down and leaned his back against the near by tree "and to be honest they just saved me the trouble of having to look for them"
"so you were going to look for them and kill them anyway, that sounds a little suicidal don't you think?" eathen simply looked blankly at the statement and responded"not really, its my job to kill bad things and i like it, its fun and to be completely honest I'd love to say the soul reason for coming to this village is to see naruto but i have actually been tracking a group of extremely powerful legendary devils that split up among the countries years ago and it been a bit of a bitch trying to find them all or even find viable information on them. but what i did find out foe sure is that the strongest devil in the group was last seen in this region a few years back."
jiraiya stepped to the front of the group to speak"you can't mean them, there hasn't been a knight in the history of the following that could fight them let alone that one!" at the mention of the word "knight" the ninja groups curiosity was officially peeked as they remembered Eathen's title.
"you referred to yourself as the Blackfire Knight earlier, is that your actual job or is it some bravado title to make you sound cool?" said tsunade, probing for the truth
as Eathen was about to answer the new hokage jiraiya explained for him "its very much his real occupation and dare i say its not one any here could do, its requirements are brutal and quite often fatal. first you must under go vigorous training that full heartedly puts the ninja academy training to shame in spades, then once you graduate and reach the knights equivalent of a genin, the 'warrior' class, you chose your path out of the 5 paths of the knight:guardian, dark knight, slayer, destroyer and paladin. each with its own set of stipulations. For instance a destroyer is the knights equivalent to the shinobi black ops, they hunt rogues and destroy them as the name says, everything from the body to the weapons and armor.
The guardian is like a permanent body guarding mission, protect a chosen cause with all you have, the knight choses the person, place, or thing they must protect and do so till dead or released from their duty. But you never told me you graduated Eathen, I mean the last time I saw you you were what 9, when did you pass?"
With a chuckle eathen stood and answered "not long after you left actually, i graduated at 10, and made full knight at 14, thus earning my title of 'Blackfire Knight' being i am the only living human save itachi uchiha whom can weild the power of the black death flame and as for my choice of path i spent years researching a rumor i heard about a 6th path, a path not like the other, with almost no restrictions and it allows me to take care of my own...personal mission, the only requirement is that i kill things i don't like...,"glances around the group with a slightly sadistic grin"with no discrimination and no repercussions, the path of the Dark Slayer."
at this new revelation the whole group was floored but with the reference of itachi uchiha, sasuke attention was fully grabbed "how do you know my brother, Heroshy?!" everyone knew that was coming the second the name was uttered.
with an annoyed smile Eathen was happy to respond"well, uchiha talk to me with disrespect again and I swear to dog I'll fucking brain ya. and I know him by the fact that we have had a long standing rivalry for the last 2 years and to date i have kicked his ass or sent him packing about 10 times,until recently though we never had to seek each other out we just sort of run into each other, but that changed when he got a hold of something of mine..."Eathens expression turned frighteningly dark "something dear to me, something i want back. hell I was the one who chased him away and saved your ass a few weeks back, I stopped him from mind fucking you...right before you passed out like a pussy that is, so i guess you might not remember, hm."
with an uncaring shrug eathen finished his sentence and the second he did sasuke did what any brooding douche of an emo kid would do:he rushed eathen and swung at his head.
Eathen limboed right under the attack but sasuke kept coming punching and kicking wildly so much so that the group of ninjas were astonished by the skill of the rookie, everyone save jiraiya who simply shook his head at the youths stupidity.
as sasuke kept swinging and eathen kept dodging, steping back so sasuke would miss or twisting his frame causing sasuke to over shoot and as sasukes attacks got faster, Eathens dodges got faster, so he decided to play a game he loves to play commonly referred to as "poke the bear"(or in this case poke the emo)
"yo pany waist lets make this interesting, real fight, you win and I will personally deliver you your brother to you on the verge of death so you can finish him, and to sweeten the pot I'll keep my hands in my pocket the whole time and I won't use my powers, but you can use what eeeever you want. first one to lose consciousness loses, what do you say?"
Both combatants stopped for a moment as they reached a rather large clearing with the group right behind them watching in fascination as the terms for the fight were determined.
"OK, Heroshy but what if by some miracle you win?"
hands already in his pockets Eathen responded "you gotta wear a miniskirt for a day." the complete and total lack of seriousness in the terms astonished everyone, well almost everyone, jiraiya knew how this would end and no one will like it, except Eathen who was clearly having fun.
"deal" and with that sasuke rushed Eathen with all his might and determination and to everyones surprise actually hit eathen in the stomach. he really didn't react much though, just took it and back flip kicked sasuke right in the face sending him flying back a few feet. sasuke recovered quickly and continued his onslaught with even more intensity and Eathen seemed like he was having a bit of trouble dodging sasuke's attacks, at least thats what it seemed like.
sasuke opted to end this quickly and weaved the signs for his famous fireball jutsu and pumped as much power into it as he could and as it hit eathen made no attempt to dodge the oncoming attack he just...stood there and looked at it. as the inferno raged where eathen once stood the whole of the group looked on in shock and aw at the brutality sasuke uchiha had shown, that is until the fire parted and Eathen walked right out of it un-scathed "that all you got emo boy?no wonder big brooder's kicked your ass so many times."
as Eathen wanted, sasukes anger got the better of him and as fast as he could he started the signs needed to pull off his deadliest move "Chidori!" and the genin rushed as fast as he could at his intended target with intent to kill or at the very least wound honorably.
kakashi was about to intervene and stop his pupil when jiraiya stopped him in his tracks"relax kakashi, Eathen knows what he's doing." and by the look on Eathens face it seemed he did in fact have a plan,it seemed like he was calculating the power and use of the move he faced and was finding a way to counter it in a brilliant and bad-ass way...that is until sasuke's move hit, going right through Eathen's stomach.
as everyone looked on in horror, jiraiya included, at the dark and horrible out come of this expectedly one sided fight.
as Eathen went to his knees taking sasuke down also and the self absorbed look on sasuke's face as he started to withdraw his arm from the young knights body, until the look on his face turned to one of horror as he struggled viciously to remove his arm to no a vale.
with his back to the group, his violent thrashing started to turn both bodies and to everyones surprise the reason for sasukes immobile hand is the red and black dragon tail wrapped around sasukes wrist with the tip pointing at his palm like a snake about to strike.
with great force and a blood curdling scream from sasuke the point stabbed through his palm and tightened to lock the hold in place.
what happened next would surly haunt most if not all present for their remaining years.
Eathen started to stand and again he took sasuke with him, who had yet to stop thrashing and when they were both standing eathen looked up, red eyes blazing and locked eyes with sasuke who hadn't stopped screaming since Eathen's tail pierced his hand and with the single most sadistic looking grin, blood running from the edges of his mouth said in a disturbingly joyful voice
"welcome to thunder dome bitch!"
and proceeded to smash his forehead into sasukes and repeated said motion over and over and over and over until the unconscious bloody mess that was sasukes head slumped over and eathen released his arm and pushed the boy over and let him hit the ground with a loud thump.
and eathen simply walked over to the group dragging sasukes limp body with his tail. but what surly disturbed all who could see was the forearm sized hole in Eathens midsection...that
slowly closed up completely as he walked till his bare abs could be seen though the hole in his shirt.
"little douche fucked up my shirt and jacket." he then took of his jacket to inspect the damage done to his wardrobe when he saw the long silver strands of hair on the tattered jacket."WHAT THE..."he looked at the unconscious sasuke and kicked him in the nuts"COCKBITE!!!"
kakashi picked up sasuke and looked over at eathen"you are one cold son-of-a bitch,ya know that?"eathen then smacked kakashi on the back of his head "don't call my mom a bitch or next time it a boot to your skull."
eathen shook his jacket to clean off the bits of hair on it and just ripped off the tattered remains of his shirt revealing that not even a new scar remained from the spot sasuke's jutsu had pierced, not that you could tell with the massive scar going from Eathen's right shoulder to his left thigh, in fact something about all Eathen's scars seemed weird in that they weren't the deluded flesh color most scars take on after healing, no his scars all held a blood red tint to them that made it look almost like they could start bleeding at any moment but if one were to touch one such scar it would feel exactly like any normal scar, thus making them that much stranger.
"any way we are gonna have to put our Q and A on hold for a while,at least till i get my self some new clothing and i might as well see what i can find on the kyubi while I'm at it. talk to you guys later." and with a massive wave of air he was air born of towards the hokage monument.
naruto was visibly worried at the last bit of information. his cousin and last remaining family who happens to be a very successful killer of devils and evil things was on a mission to kill the very powerful creature sealed inside him,the question that remained was:his his love for naruto stronger then his need to kill the creature or not?naruto and all present aware of this great secret were in fear of the answer to this question and the out come of the whole issue. jiraiya was the first of the group to depart and weather anyone noticed or not but he walked of in the same direction as eathen flew. they needed to talk about this and many other equally if not more important matters.
most everyone went their separate ways at this time with the exception of team 7 and the hokage who personally escorted them to konoha hospital to treat sasuke"my cousin really kicked sasukes ass did'nt he?" as they walked the shared expression of "this really isn't the time for that" was obvious"is anyone else looking forward to seeing sasuke in a mini-skirt?"kakashi looked at his pupil with
a deadpan look"ya know naruto,that sounded really gay"