(AN: Wow, this is a long one compared to the rest... also, I suppose I lied about a regular schedule, though I'll try to keep at least one post per week. This week, I post two)
Night had fallen on the Leaf village, painting everything in gray and shadow. Sasuke and Taka had hidden out a fair distance away from the house Jugo had taken them to, and had insisted countless times was the right place. The quartet at last slipped from hiding and approached the building.
"The plan is this," Sasuke whispered as he dismissed his disguise, appearing again as a shirtless sixteen-year-old. "Jugo and Suigetsu lead the charge. Do NOT kill any of them. I mean it, Suigetsu," he glared coldly at his white-haired companion. "After you two, I will enter, followed by Karin. Leave one man conscious. I will… interrogate… him."
Suigetsu for once merely nodded, rather than spitting out the sarcastic remark on the back of his tongue. Even he knew better than to taunt Sasuke when he got like this. Karin broke her stare at Sasuke's bare chest for long enough to nod in confirmation as well. Jugo looked as though he hadn't heard, but Sasuke knew better than to reiterate for him. Jugo was an enigma, but a predictable one.
Suigetsu and Jugo kicked in the door to the small, nondescript house. "Knock knock!" Suigetsu called, grinning. Jugo's arms turned to a scaly, bloated gray as they expanded. He led the group to a carpet, and proceeded to punch through it. He and Suigetsu dropped into the blackness. Sasuke activated his special eyes, the Sharingan, enabling him to see better in the dark than the others.
"Karin. How many are down there?"
"Counting dumb and dumber? Twenty. One of them is definitely Sound. I can feel a bit of Jugo and Orochimaru's chakra in with it."
"Are any of them notable at all besides that?"
"Uh… no. I can't sense much of anything unique." Karin adjusted her glasses.
"Good." With that, Sasuke began to climb down the ladder after them.
Suigetsu rushed a ninja, clearly a jonin by his attire, instantly upon hitting the bottom. The jonin could barely react as a tidal wave swept over him and reformed behind him into the white-haired youth. Suigetsu drew his massive sword and, to his chagrin, smacked the man in the head with the flat of his blade. "Stupid Sasuke," he muttered.
Another jonin charged Suigetsu, screaming out "Intruder! Intruder! Probably Mist!" He withdrew a kunai from his vest pocket and leapt at Suigetsu, obviously intending to stab him. Suigetsu grinned and dissolved into a puddle, creeping along the floor and reforming a few feet away as himself.
"Hm. No water here, so I guess I'll improvise!" He smirked at the man. Water Style: Water Dragon! His left arm dissolved into water, then immediately reformed as a serpentine dragon, which flew at the Leaf jonin, hitting him square in the chest, fangs digging in as its watery jaws clamped down on him. Suigetsu used the appendage as a makeshift zipline, pulling him towards his target. This time, he sliced through the man's shoulder, severing his arm. Naturally, the man screamed in pain as blood poured from his arm.
A mechanical humming began to sound from the walls as lights flashed on, illuminating the room. The walls were metal, and the ones to Suigetsu's right were bloodstained from his fallen foe. A hallway stretched out ahead of him, leading to a door. The only other exit was a ladder up to the room he'd just left.
Jugo landed, having fallen slower than Suigetsu thanks to using his chakra as a sort of propulsion device. "Didn't Sasuke say no killing?" he asked as he surveyed the bloodstained walls and sword.
"He's not dead. Just missing an arm. Anyway, there's a door down there. Smash it."
Jugo shoved Suigetsu aside and extended what looked like jet engines from his arms. He launched chakra from them and broke into a full-tilt run at the door, bashing through the metal as though it were paper with the force of his punch.
"I will never get used to him," Suigetsu muttered as he followed him, sword raised, into the room.
Upon reaching the bottom, Sasuke noticed two things. The first was the stirring Jonin in the corner. The second was the bleeding, likely already dead, Jonin by a hallway. He sighed, and shot a current of electricity through the stirring man, leaving the bleeding one to his fate.
He moved at a slow, methodical pace through the hallway, listening intently to the sounds of battle from the next room. Fifteen of Leaf's finest versus those two… Heh. They should've brought more.
He stepped into the room. Suigetsu was holding his own against five men at once, flowing in and out of a solid state as he both avoided attacks and countered, and Jugo had expanded the south wall by at least a solid foot with the force of his punches, though he kept missing as the four he was fighting dodged his slow, telegraphed punches. That's nine. There should be six more… ah. Sasuke saw them, standing in formation. Five stood around the sixth, who Sasuke faintly recognized as Ibiki Morino, the proctor for the first stage of the Chunin exams.
"Another intruder!" Morino called as he saw Sasuke enter. "It's… by God, that's Sasuke Uchiha!"
Sasuke fought to keep from smiling as his name was spoken. He slowly approached the six in formation. He drew his sword, and his Sharingan flickered back and forth between the six, judging them and appraising them all. Alone, they would be no match for Sasuke. Together… they were still no match.
As he studied his opponents, one of the men Jugo fought ran at him, twin kunai in hand, clearly looking to make a name for himself. Sasuke, without so much as turning, cleanly severed both his hands with a single cut from his katana. Sasuke returned to a reverse-grip on the hilt, and charged the six men.
Four of them returned the charge. Sasuke smirked and ran a current of lightning chakra into the palm of his left hand, molding it into a sword. He "sliced" through the two in front, scorching a line across them and paralyzing them with the current. His actual sword found its home in the shoulder of the third man, and Sasuke used its leverage to increase the momentum of his double-legged kick to the sternum of the fourth, sending that one reeling backwards. He withdrew the sword as he adopted a typical Uchiah stance: the index and middle fingers of his left hand extended and in front of his mouth. He breathed out four small fireballs, each aimed at the man in the center of the remaining formation, Morino.
The guards to either side of Morino intercepted the attack, each unleashing a gust of wind from the palms of their hands. Sasuke fought back laughter as the air served only to fan the flames, raising their size. Out of options, the guard on the left dove in front of the flames, taking four burning shuriken to the chest for his leader. The right-hand guard let out a roar of anger and leapt at Sasuke, a blade of wind chakra forming in his right hand. Sasuke hopped back away from him and tossed a barrage of lightning-enhanced shuriken. The man dodged them fairly easily, and at last reached Sasuke. He slashed through the arrogant youth… only to watch the illusion fade as the real Sasuke plunged a sword into his back, purposefully missing any vitals. He withdrew the sword as he turned, glaring once again at Morino.
"You fight well, for a kid," Morino conceded, some of his self-assurance deflated after watching this "kid" take out six trained jonin in just a matter of seconds. "But I'm afraid you can't beat me. I'm not as affected by genjutsu." Morino cracked his knuckles and took a menacing step towards Sasuke.
Maggots oozed from the eye sockets of a severed head as it began to rot. Morino clutched at his head. "It won't work, kid! Give it up!" Entrails spilled from a cut to the man's stomach. The man laughed and pulled them out further. Morino stumbled. A child clasped a severed, withered hand. "Mamma? Mamma?" she cried… A thousand cuts had been made on him yet he smiled still, looking rather stupid as a chunk of skin was cut away from his shoulder… The man's face dripped with blood as he devoured the one who had been his brother…
"This can stop anytime you like, Morino," Sasuke said coldly as Suigetsu finished off the last of his foes and Jugo the last of his. "Your subordinates are incapacitated or dead. You have no hope."
A woman smiled pleasantly as her skin turned to ash, muscle and bone grotesquely mocking the human form… A family lay dead and in pieces at his feet, cut to mince by a smiling, pale man with long black hair and snakelike features, who called for another subject… A man's head was crushed, beaten open, his eyes hanging uselessly from the optic nerve, the pink of brains and blood staining the floor and walls around him…
Morino fell to his knees. "No more! No more!" he screamed.
"I told you. This can stop any time you like. I'll even let you walk out of here. Just tell me where you're keeping Tayuya, and I'll be on my way."
"Tayuya?! She's here, three rooms down on the left-hand hall, please just make it end!" Tears were forming in Morino's eyes.
Sasuke's eyes flared red for another moment, then faded back to their usual black. Morino fell to his side, visibly shaken. Sasuke moved down the hallway, and motioned for Suigetsu and Jugo to follow.
The first cell contained a man none of the trio recognized: a gray-haired man, likely in his twenties. He seemed vaguely familiar to Sasuke, but that was it. He sat in the corner of his cell, frantically clawing at nothing. The second was empty, and the third contained a red-haired girl peeking curiously out the barred window on the cell's door. "You guy's Orochimaru's rescue party? Took ya long enough." Despite her apparent bravado, the girl was a wreck. Her hair was messy and wild, bruises and dirt covered her face, and her clothing was not only dirty, but torn.
Sasuke returned her gaze, and his eyes met hers. She tried to return the stare, but looked away after a moment. "You're remarkably spry for a dead girl," he said after a moment.
"Wait, you fuckers thought I was dead?!" The girl looked indignant. "As if that Sand bitch could kill anyone with her weak-ass wind jutsu! All she managed to do was break my fuckin' legs, which hurt like a son of a bitch, but kill me?! HELL no!"
"My apologies. You're remarkably talkative for a dead girl. Now, before we go, did you have any necessary gear?"
"Gear, huh?" Tayuya watched as Morino broke her flute over his knee. "You're useless without this, aren't you? "Nah, nothing really. But who're these clowns? Are we the new Sound Four? I mean, Whitey over here looks as fucked-up as Sakon, but Big Man here isn't half as fat as Jirobo! And you, you're not nearly as obnoxious as Kidomaru."
Sasuke raised his eyebrow. What have I done? Aloud, he said, "We're not the Sound Four. We're Taka, and we are currently unaffiliated with Sound. Whitey, as you called him is Suigetsu." Suigetsu gave a halfhearted mock salute. "Big Man is Jugo." Jugo studied the girl a bit. "I'm Sasuke Uchiha."
"You?!" Tayuya's face contorted into a scowl. "You're Sasuke?! You mother fucker! I was fucking tortured for three years because of you!"
A feeling of guilt washed over him. Because of me? "They… tortured you because of me?"
"They wanted to find you or some shit! I don't know! But how fucking dare you come here to rescue me when this is all your fucking fault?"
Sasuke mentally shook himself. "Their idiocy and persistence isn't my fault. What matters is that I'm breaking you out. Jugo?"
The large boy approached the steel door and simply pulled it out of the wall with brute strength. "Any friend of Kimimaro's is a friend of mine," he said as he moved back behind Sasuke.
"You're free to try to strike out on your own, if you wish," Sasuke said coldly, "but understand they'll just catch you again and bring you back here. If you want to survive… come with me."
Tayuya looked once again at the boy who had both caused her and saved her from years of torment. "As long as being shirtless isn't your team's uniform, I'm in."
Jiraya is dead. The words echoed in Naruto's mind as he walked, slowly, blindly, down the streets of his home village. Jiraya is dead.
The news had been given by an elderly-looking purple toad, which at first made Naruto think it was a joke. It was no joke. Sakura and Sai had expressed empty sympathy, of course. Tsunade had tried to keep her composure, but rage had blinded Naruto. He should have been hokage, not you! Then he wouldn't have…
Naruto walked past several people, including his old teacher, Iruka. If any of them spoke, he didn't hear it. He simply wandered, blind and deaf, only instinct keeping him from bumping into anything or anyone.
After a time, he found himself sitting on a park bench. How he got there, he didn't know, but there he was. He felt tears run down his face. Was he crying? He couldn't tell. He was simply numb. Jiraiya is dead…
"Naruto-kun…" a dark-haired girl in a light jacket sat beside him. Her eyes were pure white, the mark of the Hyuga clan.
Naruto simply stared forward. He paid her no mind, his thought still focused on Jiraya. He had seemed invincible, immortal.
"Naruto-kun!" The girl shook him a bit, gently. "Y-you cannot continue to mope like this! Everyone depends on you! I… I heard about Jiraya. But he wouldn't want this, would he? He would want you to be happy, to protect those you love! N-not mope…"
Naruto didn't budge. His eyes seemed devoid of life.
"Naruto-kun, I—" As she tried to continue, a loud explosion, not too far away, cut her off as the sky flashed brilliant cobalt.
"Why'd you blow it up?!" Karin shrieked as the five stood before the smoldering, electrified crater that had been Morino's torture chamber.
"To send Leaf a message," Sasuke replied casually as he rested his hand on his sword. "Sasuke Uchiha is back. Now… Taka. Mobilize. We move under cover of darkness."
Suigetsu raised his hand. "So, uh, where're we going, bossman?"
"We return to Nekobaa and gather supplies for Tayuya. After that, we gather as much information as we can on Madara Uchiha. I want to know what he's up to. Satisfied?"
"Hey, we have a plan that goes TWO steps ahead! Sasuke's learning!" Suigetsu grinned.
"Hey, not for nothing, but I've been cut off from chakra for a while. So, you know, I won't be able to leap through trees and shit. Can we wa— eh?!" Sasuke cut her off by picking her up and carrying her on his back. Without another word (outside of Tayuya's grumbled protests), Taka leapt off into the night.
Time no longer held any meaning for him, locked as he was with just himself. Though he still spoke to others through Yahiko, or, to get technical, Yahiko's corpse, Nagato himself stayed largely alone within his personal chambers. It could have been anywhere from an hour to a decade between his conversation with Madara and the current Akatsuki meeting, for all Nagato knew.
"Welcome, Akatsuki!" Madara said, likely beaming under his mask. "I trust you know why you're all here?"
"If we knew, why would we be here?" asked Kisame, a tall, imposing man with sharklike features and a wrapped sword upon his back. "The meeting was to decide where to go next, after all."
"Indeed," chimed in Konan, a soft-featured yet strangely harsh-looking woman with pale blue hair, who sat beside Pain. "Since the recruitment of Sasuke and his team failed, we are at a slight loss."
"It's of no consequence, really," chimed in the black half of Zetsu, a strange man who looked for all the world like half an Oreo stuck in a Venus fly trap. Evidently his two halves had different personalities, or something. Madara was quiet about what he was, and Pain never bothered to find out. "Sasuke would have been a helpful addition, but we don't really need him."
"Indeed. And it should be rather obvious from here," added the white half in a voice softer than the gravelly one his "brother" used. "We need to capture the eight- and nine-tails. As we cannot break sequence… we capture the eight-tails next."
"The eight-tails resides in Cloud," Pain observed. "Quite the walk from Rain."
"Then we haven't a moment to lose," Madara replied.
"Indeed."