Disclaimer: Wait…do I own Naruto or World of Warcraft? No…wait…that was just a dream I once had…sorry.

Here's the next installment of The Legend of Uzumaki Naruto!

Kurenai released a deep, shuddering breath. She did not attack, and hence, neither did her doppelganger. They stood, barely three feet from toe to toe, each staring steadily forwards. There was no possible way that this creature could have absorbed her attacks and movements from just watching her. It couldn't, therefore, be a sight-based jutsu, nor could it be a one-time process. Somehow, as she thought of them and prepared for them, this doppelganger was copying her attacks.

And she thought she had the answer.

She made a single hand seal, taking a deep breath.

And she stopped. For a scant few seconds, her chakra coil system froze in time. Every bit of chakra that flowed through her body came to an arresting halt, and in that moment, the body of Kurenai's doppelganger grew faint. Its skin and clothes became transparent, and Kurenai was able to see what was beneath—it appeared to be no more than a mass of living water, shaped vaguely like a man's torso. It was nearly as tall as her, and dark blue as the sea. But holding her chakra system was as painful and straining as tightening a muscle for too long. She released her breath, and once again the doppelganger became whole.

'So that's it,' she thought, smirking. By deactivating the seal, she had formed a connection with the trap, and her chakra was continuing this technique; and yet, she could not explain the water-beast beneath her doppelganger's skin. She had never seen something like that before. Was that what was giving it its properties? But that meant she still had to find a way to destroy it, once she had stopped it from following her attacks.

Her eyes lingered on the golden armbands. They, no doubt, had something to do with it.

Her plan was decided, then. She flipped open a weapon's pouch, pulling out a kunai and an explosive note. She carefully wrapped the note around the dagger, watching as her doppelganger mimed the action with a kunai of its own.

She would have to act fast.

She put the kunai between her teeth, slammed her hands together again, and stopped, once more.

The image faded, and with all her might, she continued to halt her chakra, while reaching up, grabbing the kunai and hurtling it. It flew at a downward angle, striking the ground just below the water creature, and exploded.

The creature was scattered across the clearing in a shower of water. The golden armbands were flung in opposite directions, landing with soft thumps on the hard earth. Kurenai then let her chakra flow once more, gasping loudly as she did.

She glanced about. It was done. She waited a few seconds just to be sure, and then left the clearing with a swift bound, heading into the forest. She jammed an earpiece into her ear, and shouted into the headset.

"Hinata! Shino! Kiba! Report! What's happening?"

"I've finished," came Shino's slow monotone.

"D-done here," Hinata's voice crackled, with obvious relief.

"Just did it! I was waiting for somebody to call!" Kiba cried, joyful to hear his teammates speak.

She smiled in relief. But there was pride there as well; they had figured it out all on their own, and had defeated the technique as she had.

"Let's go meet Team Kakashi. They might need some aid."

Her students agreed, all quite vociferously. Kurenai changed direction immediately, heading down the slope and towards the waterfall at the bottom. There was a sudden coldness in her bones, and she felt quite worried. She hoped they were all right.

They emerged from a small opening in the very back of the immense cave. It had taken them all the way through the mountain, and out into the fresh, dark, early morning air. Deidara erupted forth from the cave, his avian mount taking him high above the river that lay below, between the mountain he had emerged from and a tall cliff. He flew nearly level with the tree tops on the cliff, gazing down with a pleased smirk as he saw the Kyuubi brat appear a moment later, in but a blur of motion that he himself had difficult following.

'So that's how he kept up…yeah,' he thought. He hadn't been actively trying to lose the boy in the cavern, but he had been moving fast enough to keep out of distance of most shinobi. But the boy had nearly caught him three times, and he had been forced to speed up an equal number of times to avoid him. The boy had even tried launching a few distance techniques—a poorly constructed fire jutsu and a strange variant that shot ice. He had not bothered to waste any clay trying to beat the boy there—he'd be able to do it better out in the open, where he had more freedom to move. The mount he had created was designed specifically for that purpose: quick lateral and vertical movements that allowed him to avoid being struck as well as attack normally.

He glanced down again. His smile faded. A moment after the boy, a silver fox along with a man with similar colored hair appeared. His right eye zoomed in on the man, who looked different from before—his hitai-ate was up, and what Deidara saw made him frown.

'A Sharingan?' he thought. 'But in only one eye…who is this guy?'

He looked back towards the Kyuubi boy. He had leapt into the air, sailing across the ravine, and was now running along the cliff face, moving at a surprising speed considering the terrain. He would not catch up to Deidara anytime soon, however. This gave the Akatsuki member time. He reached into one of the side bags beneath his cloak and grabbed two bunches of his special clay. He still had quite a bit left, and once again he was happy that he had had the oversight to stock up on it before they had begun.

"Naruto!" roared Kakashi, stopping, Tsuwabuki by his side. He had encountered the fox on his way through—she had apparently slowed to meet him, for when he reached her, she became considerably harder to keep up with. Now that they had reached the open air, Kakashi spotted the blonde tailing Deidara, running along the cliff face.

Naruto glanced back at Kakashi. He then looked back up at the flying Akatsuki member, just barely catching sight of Gaara's dangling arm from the white bird's mouth. His boiling anger returned in a heartbeat, and he moved a bit faster.

Seeing that trying to make him stop was not going to work, Kakashi tried a different tactic.

"Find some way to get in close! He's a long-range fighter, Naruto! He'll be weakest when you're closest! I'll try to slow him down!"

Naruto looked back again, and nodded to the man to show that he understood. A moment later, Naruto had leapt off the cliff, for a moment was suspended in mid-air. In the next, the boy tucked his legs in, as if prepared to jump off the air itself.

Which is precisely what he did.

Naruto was suddenly—amazingly—flying. Or at least he looked to be. Kakashi's eyes widened when Naruto's legs shot out, and the boy sped upwards, instead of continuing to fall. The boy did this again; and again, and again, speeding steadily towards Deidara's level, who was staring at him with a similarly impressed look.

Naruto had never so valued his training with Thrall in that moment.

'Wind elemental chakra?' thought Kakashi, staring. He shook himself, returning his attention suddenly to Deidara. He took a deep, shuddering breath, and closed his left eye for a second, gathering chakra steadily into the whirling crimson eye.

When he opened it, it had changed. No longer was it a solid black pupil, surrounded by three small comma-like marks; now it was a solid black shuriken shape, which spun swiftly in place, as if in flight. He then began to focus—everything.

He looked. He did not see, but he looked, as hard as he could, straight at Deidara—he gazed a gaze that many thought was just a figure of speech.

A look could literally kill.

In the two years since Naruto had left, Kakashi had done more than just solo missions for his personal training. He had experimented, especially with the Sharingan that he had received from his long departed friend and teammate, Obito. He had found that thinking of the previous owner of his eye had brought a peculiar pain to his eye—but then again, it always had. A pain that he had long attributed to merely his own guilt, which lay long buried underneath years of memory. A guilt, which while he acknowledged frequently in the form of his visits to the memorial, he had never dwelt too long upon otherwise. It had hurt too much, and so he simply did it in moderation. When Sasuke, Naruto and Sakura had become his genin students, the guilt had begun to lessen, and he had stopped frequenting the memorial of his friends. But it hadn't faded, and never truly would. Therefore, he had never really dwelled on that aching, deep pain, until a need born from Sasuke's defection and Naruto's disappearance had made him think. After years of constant pain, and everything he had ever known about the Uchiha clan, he had finally realized that there was something more to it. The pain was not natural. Perhaps it was guilt, but he began to think it was much more than that.

Simply pouring chakra into the eye had never made a difference, but after months and months of training, Kakashi had begun to see another effect blossom from his constant use of the Sharingan. When focusing on that guilt he had held for so long, focusing so hard that it hurt beyond words—he could make his eye do something it had never done before.

And at that moment, he was attempting to reproduce that effect. He focused all of his attention on Deidara, so much so that everything around him dissolved into dust, and it just him and the Akatsuki member. He ran at an angle that allowed him to get a shot without risking Naruto being hit, and simply focused.

The pain—deep-rooted, powerful, nearly endless; an old scab that he had never let fully heal, burned more and more with each passing moment, springing from an ache to a roaring fire. He did nothing to stop it, or waver from his course.

He just continued to look.

Naruto felt something rush by him; it was enormous, hot, and pinched his skin almost painfully—as if someone where trying to pull the flesh from his bones. He glanced back in the direction it had come from, spotting Kakashi, and saw that the man was staring straight up at Deidara, with a look in his eyes that slightly shocked the blonde, all things considering. In one eye, the obsidian black that was always exposed, Naruto saw an immense fury that seemed to make his eye glow like a stoked coal in a fire pit. But in the other, Naruto saw a pain as deep and bottomless as the sea. He saw too, a Sharingan eye that he had never seen before. He almost faltered in his next air-grasp, but another wave of whatever Kakashi was doing sent his attention back to Deidara.

The attack struck Deidara before he actually knew was happening, but it did not have a lethal effect as intended. Deidara felt a sudden jolt in his stomach, followed by a fierce pain and a feeling as if his abdominal muscles were being sucked into his body. The feeling moved up his chest, straight in the center, making him cry out—even his face began to hurt now, and his vision began to distort and blur. Everything became like a tunnel, suddenly, and his chin snapped to his chest, so that he was forced to see what exactly was happening to him. He gave a startled shout when he saw that his chest and the majority of his torso were being drawn into a small center point—a singularity which seemed to be drawing in every molecule, every atom, into that small, indefinable point—in the middle of his chest. It was as if his very existence was being pushed into a tiny spot, barely the size of a soldier pill. It was a strange and awful feeling, and he felt almost sick from it. The pain became suddenly unbearable, so he tried to pull himself away—by thrusting himself to the side with as much force as he could.

It worked. The point and the pain shifted, moving across his chest and onto his left arm. He felt his bones being distorted again, and he continued to pull away. But this time much more pain came, and it reached a sudden head a second later, when the point reached its smallest size, and Deidara's arm was cut in two at the elbow; his left fore arm fell away, landing a moment later in the dirty river below, while his entire elbow simply disappeared. Nearly a pound of flesh, muscle, and bone simply vanished, leaving Deidara with a missing arm for the second time in a week.

"Dammit!" Deidara snarled, clutching the bleeding stump. He stepped back on his mount, gritting his teeth with the mind-numbing pain that would have made most men faint. He reached for a bottle tucked away in his cloak, but before he could move further, Naruto was upon him—he had forgotten the blonde in the heat of the moment, exactly as Kakashi had intended.

Naruto swung his short sword at Deidara's head with the intent to remove it. But the older man ducked, so it clipped the top of his golden topknot. Deidara kicked Naruto in the leg, but it felt like kicking iron. The blonde didn't move an inch, and instead punched the Akatsuki member a dozen times in the chest, driving him back against the edge of the mount, so that he nearly toppled off. Naruto attempted a follow-through, but Deidara thrust something forwards—a small clay model in the shape of a spider. In grew to about the size of a basketball, its long, jointed legs latching themselves around Naruto's face.

Deidara laughed. He ran forwards and kicked Naruto off the mount, while the blonde desperately tried to pry off the invader. He did not plan to detonate it, not yet—he didn't want to kill the poor boy, after all.

Naruto fell, struggling to pull the spider off him, and when he did, he glanced up for the few seconds he had towards Deidara, and with a cry, hurtled his short sword swiftly upwards in a perfectly straight line. Then he managed to right himself just in time to crash into the river below. It was deep, so he didn't strike any rocks, but the distance more than made up for it. He struck the water with a painful slapping sound, left for a moment senseless by the fall.

The sword flew, piercing the mount just below the neck, and soaring past Deidara's chin—barely missing him. It flew only a few feet higher before crashing, and becoming stuck, in the clay behind the Akatsuki member. Deidara, glancing with a sneer at the failed attack, removed the second bottle of troll's blood potion he had tucked away in his cloak, and downed it with a disgusted look. But only Kakashi was able to witness its frightening effects this time—he stared numbly as Deidara's arm returned as if it had never left.

"What on earth is he…?" The Sharingan had removed an enormous amount of his chakra—far more so than ever before. When this was all over—should he survive—he would be spending a few days in the hospital, he knew. For more than physical reasons.

Deidara glanced coldly down. The man who had removed his arm was staring up at him, his Sharingan eye whirling. 'What the hell was that?' the blonde man raged. 'It was almost as strong as Itachi's…yeah.'

He reached into his cloak, removing more clay, making it into a pair of his favorite cranes. In a flash they were life-size, and both were flying at Kakashi in arrow paths. Instead of trying to dodge—which he knew he'd fail—Kakashi hurtled a pair of kunai at the birds, clipping one's neck off and missing the other. His eye's widened, and he prepared to leap, just as the bird reached him.

And detonated in his face.

"No…" Chiyo whispered, staring with fresh horror at the bloody mess on the cold, dirty cave floor. Sakura lay face down in a pool of her own blood, still as death and resembling it to a degree that made even a battle-hardened women like Chiyo cringe in horror at the sight. Her last few moments were now frozen in Chiyo's mind. They would not stop playing before her eyes, even though it was now over—forever.

She began to shake, without knowing it.

"How boring," Sasori said, calmly. "She's already dead. I thought it might take a bit longer—she seemed to be a bit different from your average shinobi. It doesn't matter, however." He began moving his fingers, and the three puppets before him leaped onto Hakkar's ruined form. Three more joined them, appearing from small holes in the scales, created by Sasori's subtle manipulations. Three of them were clearly male, the largest of them being at least a foot taller than the rest, with a strange, and rather frightening, mask. The other three were clearly female, though all of them were dressed in the same black robes, with subtle differences. There was an emblem on each of their robes—a bat, a spider, a snake, a tiger and a black panther, as well as another unidentifiable marker on the biggest of them. They stood in a line atop Hakkar's shoulders, staring down at Chiyo and her puppets, and perhaps Sakura's body as well, with cold, silent, lifeless eyes and blank faces.

Sasori moved his fingers again; making three of them jump from Hakkar's shoulders onto his back, and then onto his severed tail. From there, two leapt onto the separated end, and their arms split apart, as if they were going to attack—but from their opened hands a glowing green light flowed. The tail began to move, drawing slowly nearer towards the stump it had come from, where the third puppet stood, its arms out and glowing as well.

"Interesting, isn't it? They spent their entire lives wishing for immortality, granted by Hakkar, and now they are the ones who seek to keep him alive. And imagine that instead of finding immortality in a god, they found it in a mere human—in their eyes, that would be the ultimate disgrace, you see. These people detest humans, or they did for quite a while."

Chiyo spat. "I could care less about your disgusting sense of art, Sasori. I did not come here for that. I came here to kill you." Her eyes briefly flickered towards Sakura as she said that, feeling a lance of guilt with her words. Her death came again, unbidden. Chiyo shuddered, wanting it to end.

This girl had not been meant to die.

She closed her eyes. Youth could not be wasted so much. Sakura, with all her talent, had been meant to live.

So why had she died?

She looked at Sasori. Because of him. He had ended her life. He and his disgusting puppets had killed her so brutally. She looked at Sakura's body again, and felt a melancholy unlike anything since her son had perished. It was a sudden shock, like awakening in a pool of ice-cold water. She had been so senseless to feeling all this time, that it took a young girl's death, from the Leaf no less, to awaken her. Now, awash in feeling as she was, she could not help but find some terrible joy in it. It felt good to truly care once more about something, anything. Now she cared about this girl. This dead girl, once an enemy and now no longer anything but a lifeless, bloody corpse whose death would remain in Chiyo's mind until her last breath.

She cared enough that she was going to make Sasori pay for one more thing—so dearly—making sure that he felt that payback long into the next life.

She swallowed. "So I shall do that, and I would be pleased if you didn't interrupt it with your boring descriptions of your disgusting and pointless artistry."

Sasori scoffed. "How rude. I was just giving you a little longer to plan your attack. You will need it, as Hakkar is nearly finished with what repairs I can give him."

Indeed, the trolls on his shoulders had already reconstructed half of the snake-like head, and the other half was coming even faster than before. Oddly, the largest of the trolls did not join in the repairing process. He just looked down, and though Chiyo could not see its eyes, she felt them, with a shudder.

Even in the death, this creature had such a presence it was staggering.

"And I take offence to your words, hag. Someone as old and wrinkly as you can feel nothing but jealousy when looking upon my art. I have captured what everyone has so longed for in their lives—a true constant, a stability that would never end. I make that feeling and hold it in every work of art I produce. How dare you, grandma," he said this with particular impassion, so it felt almost mocking, "call my art disgusting and pointless."

Chiyo narrowed her eyes. Her teeth were clenched tightly. Sakura's eyes, wide and filled with pain, came into her thoughts again.

"Shall we begin again, then, grandma?" Sasori asked.

Chiyo didn't answer. Her eyes drifted one final time to Sakura.

Yes.

Chiyo's children attacked with a sudden ferocity that puppets, in their nature, seemed incapable of. They attacked so swiftly that it was as if they had acted of their own accordance. The red-haired puppeteer countered by suddenly making Hakkar move one of its giant scythe hands in a quick, diagonal slash. The puppets avoided it easily, one ducking beneath and one soaring over. But before they could reach Sasori, the three priests of Hakkar leapt in their way—one clutching a glowing chakra shield, the other two with large swords appearing in their hands. The two reconstructing Hakkar's head abandoned their half-finished task, deploying weapons of their own—one with a huge, wicked looking claw on one hand, the other with a bladed whip—and careened towards Chiyo herself.

"Unlike Hakkar, Chiyo-baasama, I did bother to put poison on his priests' weapons," Sasori said, with that startling arrogance once more.

A female priest—with the bat on her robe— thrust at Chiyo's head with her claw, while the male accompanying her—with the snake—swung the whip at her torso. Chiyo lifted one hand, and in perhaps the most foolish and desperate move she had ever made, grabbed the whip, preventing it from cutting into her stomach, and wrenched it up, using it and her own failing strength to block the claw from impaling her. She then pulled away, and as the two puppets moved in for a follow-up attack, she pulled back a sleeve of her robe, thrusting out her arm. The skin was remarkably smooth for someone her age, and perfectly unmarked—the reason became clear a moment later, when from the flesh sprung four flesh-colored plates, like the arms of a windmill. Both whip and claw struck a barrier made of solid chakra, and had bought Chiyo enough time to jump backwards, fleeing her pursuers and focusing once again on her own puppets.

"That was stupid, old woman," Sasori said. "You just got poisoned." There was a small smile on his face, as pleasant as a frozen corpse. He was not surprised by her sudden ability, however. She was exactly the type of person who would modify her own body, adding weapons and tools usually reserved for puppets to it. But it delighted him, almost to see her use such tools. She was a true puppeteer, like him.

Chiyo ignored him. She wrenched her hands back, and her children flew with them, breaking from the stalemate they had with the three priests from Hakkar's tail. They immediately returned to her, their black robes and wide bodies shielding Chiyo from Sasori's view.

The apparently young man frowned. What was she planning now?

Chiyo dug into her robes, pulling out a small single-shot medicine container, filled with a light blue liquid. She stuck the needle into her arm, and the contents flowed into it with a soft hissing. She returned the antidote to her robes, not wanting Sasori to get wind of it.

Sakura, she decided, truly had been an amazing girl. Before they had entered the hideout, Sakura had pulled her aside and given her one of the three antidotes she had created from the amount of poison that Sasori had injected into Kankuro. She said that it would remain in the bloodstream for three minutes, and in that time would neutralize any poison that entered her system.

That meant, starting now, she had exactly three minutes to kill Sasori.


'I'll end it now' she thought. She looked forwards, at her two puppets—their robes shredded, several of their weapons ruined, but still staring steadily forwards, at Sasori and him alone.

"Forgive me," she said to them, softly. "I'm not strong enough to defeat him with just your aid. I must use them."

They said nothing in return, of course. But Chiyo felt a sudden relief in her, as if they had told her it was all right; all that mattered, they said, was that Sasori was beaten. He had been left alive too long. She must use whatever was in her arsenal to stop him, to destroy him completely so it became as if he had never existed. Use whatever you have to destroy him, Chiyo, they told her.

Because it was too painful to see him like this.

"Thank you," she whispered, reaching into her robes and retrieving a scroll that was perfectly white; so white that it seemed to glow, and felt almost warm to the touch, as if it was forged from light itself. There was but a single word written on it, in small, tidy black kanji.

Chikamatsu.

Sasori didn't see what she was doing. So he decided to make her show him. With a few flicks of his fingers, five of his seven puppets launched an attack on Chiyo and her own puppets. Hakkar and the big hitokugutsu hung back, watching in apparent silent appraisal. Sasori decided that he would kill Chiyo in the old fashioned way—he didn't want a repeat death, using Hakkar's disease. And it would be much more fun, he decided, to see his grandmother get butchered by half a dozen puppets, and see her body parts flung all over the place as they tore her to pieces. Maybe, he decided, he wouldn't make her into a puppet. She was too annoying, and he didn't want to see her face. Maybe he'd just cut her up and burn what was left of her body, so he'd never have to look on that annoying face again. It'd be easy, too—her body was no doubt weakened from the poison, and would continue to deteriorate until she was at his utter mercy.

His smile became a little cruel, showing a hint of emotion for the second time.

Chiyo unfurled the scroll, revealing gradually ten drawn black diamonds filled with a number of symbols; and watching as Hakkar's priests charged towards her, drawing weapons of all manners from their persons—a huge spear, a wicked-looking hammer, a pair of long blades, the claws and the whip, all glinting with the black poison that Sasori so loved. She took a deep breath, and for the final time before she ended Sasori's miserable life, she glanced over towards Sakura's body, to see the final reminder of her failure as a shinobi and a person, before she died.

But the girl was gone, and only a pool of drying blood remained.

And just as she realized that, Sasori did too. There was but a hint of movement at his side—so slight and quick that he registered it a second too late, when a blood-covered fist struck his stomach, making an oddly hollow, almost wooden sound, followed by a violent cracking. A pulse of chakra strong enough to crumple steel then slammed into him, and he pitched forwards in the second before he flew backwards, meeting the eyes of his attacker. They were green, and stared at him above bloody tear tracks, and were filled with fury unclouded by pain or delirium. Then the world blurred and spun, righting itself in a white, dizzying flash when he slammed with stone-breaking force into the wall of the cave.

Haruno Sakura stood up straight, as Sasori's puppets crumpled to the ground from the sudden loss of the chakra strings controlling them. She looked awful—her body was covered in blood, staining her skin red and making her hair matted and sticky. The blood vessels in her eyes had burst, filling the whites with red. There were trails of blood from her nose and eyes that looked like the ghastly face paint of some foreign tribe. One arm hung limply by her side, and the other was up and clenched into a tight, bloody fist. She looked like a demon, with that face and those eyes staring with unbridled hate at Sasori, as he lay in a pile of broken rock by the wall.

But when she turned to Chiyo, her face changed. She gave the tired old woman a confident and kind smile, if only for a moment, that reminded her of the smile Chiyo herself had given the girl just before their first attack. She was suddenly so happy to see the girl that she wanted to hug her and laugh with joy and relief at her survival. Such a sudden swelling of emotion nearly dazzled her, so she merely stared, in awe and elation, at Sakura's apparent resurrection.

It hit her, then, with the same force that Sakura's fist had hit Sasori—Nouha Sayuu.

'She hadn't released the technique,' she suddenly realized. 'Did she destroy the disease as it infected her, and use the chance to spring a trap on Sasori?'

Sasori stared. He couldn't believe it. That wasn't possible! Corrupted Blood was completely fatal to any who struck it! And even if this girl had somehow managed to survive the damage it had done, she had lost enough blood to kill her. He tried to rise, but found his body unsteady and hard to move. The punch had done a lot of damage, he realized.

"Chiyo-baasama," Sakura said, suddenly. It was a wonder to hear her voice. "That's not Sasori's real body."

Chiyo quashed her emotion as swiftly as an unneeded match. "What?"

"When I hit him, I hit something hard, like the puppet he was in before. I don't think that's him either. It might be a puppet look-alike or something, but I know that's not Sasori, or else he wouldn't have survived that hit."

A brief observation of the fallen man made Chiyo immediately agree. The damage done to the rock wall was so severe that no normal person could have gotten up after causing it. In fact, no normal person should have been able to cause it—it would have reduced them to a bloody pulp long before that amount of rock was shattered, and Sasori looked almost completely intact. However, what bothered her was the fact that Sakura's hit hadn't completely annihilated the puppet that looked like her grandson. It had to be that either its body was exceptionally tougher than the others, or that Sakura had been severely weakened.

"How did you survive?" Sasori asked. "That isn't possible."

"I flushed out the disease. It doesn't seem to be able to survive long in air, or this entire room would have been infected already. I forced out as much blood as possible, and used my chakra to kill the remaining virus particles in my body, and then boosted my blood cell creation rate." She spat red saliva onto the ground. "You obviously don't know your own creation that well. Since I had to force the blood out of my body, it's obviously not a natural occurrence—and because you didn't comment, you obviously have never seen it kill someone." She smirked coldly. "You obviously don't know your own toys very well, huh?"

Sasori stared at the girl, narrowing his eyes. What an annoying girl she was. She even had the gall to make fun of him like that! She wasn't going to get away so easily. Neither of them would. He decided that he'd have to take care of this himself. He'd make sure that this girl didn't survive another round. He stood straight up, and reached for the collar of his cloak, beginning to undo it.

"You're half right, girl. This body isn't made of flesh and bone. It is, however my—"

'Stop.'

Sasori stopped. He glanced around, unsure if the word had been spoken aloud or in his mind.

'This fight is over.'

"You," he whispered aloud. "What do you want?"

'I'm telling you to leave. This fight will not continue. Act like a shinobi, Sasori—not a samurai. You're overconfident, and as that girl has proven, it will cost you dearly if you continue this fight. You are still a member of Akatsuki, and hence, you still have a job to do. You can't die just yet, Sasori. Remember what I told you.'

Sasori narrowed his eyes at the invisible specter, lowering his hand. He stood for a moment in complete silence, drawing two mystified looks from Chiyo and Sakura. He then sighed heavily, extending both hands.

"Fine. I guess I have to forgo the more interesting play at this point. It seems I have other things to do, Chiyo-baa, Leaf girl. I'm sorry that I cannot stay. We'll have to finish this show another time." His fingers began moving, and the six priests suddenly leapt to their feet, and abandoned their attack on Chiyo. They fled immediately to where the giant one stood, atop the fallen blood god's back, forming a rough circle around him. The big one then stretched out his arms, while the others placed their hands on Hakkar's body. The scales began to shift around the big puppet, and something emerged beneath him, rising up and lifting him above all the rest. It was a giant idol of a winged snake, carved crudely from a light-colored wood, and covered in head to tail in explosive notes. A door on the big puppet's chest suddenly opened, as did plates on its arms and legs and head—all revealing explosive notes of varying sizes and intensities.

The big puppet then began to shake, for no apparent reason.

To Sakura, it was laughing.

"I'm sorry we couldn't finish this, Chiyo-baa," Sasori said, in a soft lament. "Maybe next time."

Chiyo stared one last time at Sasori, her eyes wide. He was giving her a pleasant smile, in structure like those he used to give her, but in spirit more horrible than ever before. She gazed at the ghastly perversion of a man he had become, and realized for the last time, that Sakura was right.

This man was but a puppet.

This was not her grandson.

Her grandson was a man of thirty-five, with hair like his father's and a smile like his mother's. He was a dutiful, kind and loyal man who fought for his village with everything he had, to avenge the deaths of his parents as well as to keep the spirit of the village alive. That was what her grandson should have been.

But this thing before her now looked as a boy of fifteen, with cold, glossy eyes and an emotionless smile. This was some cruel demon; he had merely taken the face of her grandson, nothing more.

That was it.

Her grandson was already dead.

He had been dead for twenty years.

So when Sasori vanished in a flicker of movement, she did not lament his departure. Nor she did look forward to the next meeting, where she might finally destroy the imposter who had taken her grandson's form.

Because she knew that that time would never come.

"Next time?" she whispered softly. "I guess you truly don't understand, do you?" No he didn't, she realized. He never did. He never would. That was his crippling, horrible weakness. He would never understand life or death, because he could experience neither. He was not truly alive, just as he was not truly dead.

God, what a fool she was.

Sakura was suddenly in front of her, shouting at her that they needed to leave. She looked into the girl's eyes, which despite being covered in blood, glittered with a beautiful inner fire. They longed for life, as Chiyo's once had. They longed for everything Sakura had not yet experienced. This girl was in the prime of her life—the true prime, not just physical, but the prime when life still has so much to give a person. A time Sasori had never had. It had been taken from him, or perhaps he had squandered it himself.

And that was true beauty, true art; that passion for life that Chiyo would not let end here.

It was something that no human hands could capture or create.

'But I tried,' she thought, softly. 'And I failed. Forgive me, my son, my daughter; forgive me for I could not give you back that life that was so cruelly stolen. I was just like him. I didn't understand either. Not until now.'

She smiled at Sakura, glad that she could see that face full of life again. It was the most beautiful thing in the world.

She unfurled the gleaming white scroll, labeled Chikamatsu, roaring into the air as the explosive notes on Hakkar's biggest priest and the idol he stood upon ignited, and exploded.

The air was filled with a bright, shining light, and then came sound, all the sound in the world, it seemed, compressed into a single burst.

And then there was nothing.

'Ah, youth.'

Kakashi was thrown backwards by the explosion—at the very last moment, he had jumped back with all his power, creating a vast distance between him and the fatal range of the explosion. But the force knocked him back even farther, causing him to crash into the side of the cliff, feeling the rocks beneath him hammer into his bones and pierce his skin. The world twirled and spun, making him unable to move for a short while. In that time, Deidara put some distance between him and the silver-haired man, and he began searching the waters for Naruto.

Yet, the blonde had effectively vanished.

His eyepiece whirred and spun, seeking out any possible place for the blonde to hide—there was none. He cursed, reaching up and pressing a button on the side. The view changed. Everything turned a hazy red, making in nearly difficult to distinguish one thing from another. It was a thermal sensor. He rarely used it, as he never usually given so much trouble by an offending shinobi. But it revealed nothing—the blonde was gone, as if he had never been.

He looked down at Kakashi again. The silver-haired man was staring back at him, but had covered his eye again. Deidara smirked triumphantly—obviously, it was too draining for him to continue using. He decided to kill the man as swiftly as he could; things left unfinished nearly always came back to bite.

He began molding another model, guiding his bird lower, towards Kakashi. He'd make it a big one, so this guy didn't have any chance of dodging. He looked at Kakashi again. The man hadn't moved, and was continuing to glare up at him, the silver fox standing almost complacently by his side.

Now Deidara was confused. Why was this man not trying to attack, or even escape? He frowned, his body tensing. A trap, maybe? Was he waiting for something? He looked around below, searching again for any sign of the wayward blonde boy.

Then, there was a sudden prickling in the back of his neck, and he felt his cloak ruffle, even though there was no wind blowing. He whipped around. Naruto was there, half sunk in a dark pool that was Deidara's own shadow, clutching a glowing, spinning sphere of chakra in his palm. His eyes were narrowed in deadly determination, and sprung forwards, his hand pulling back, mouth opening in a loud battle cry.

'Rasengan!'

Deidara dropped the model he was holding, and thrust out his hand. It struck right atop Naruto's outthrust palm, the mouth engulfing the sphere of chakra in a single impressive bite, and quenching it as swiftly as a candle flame. He locked hands with the blonde, as Naruto's eyes widened and the sound died in his throat. Deidara then grabbed him by the scruff of his jacket, tasting the odd leather in his hand-mouth. He grinned triumphantly.

"Got you…yeah!" he said, sneering. "You're an odd one, aren't you? I didn't expect a jinchuuriki to be like you at all. They're supposed to be loathsome creatures that hate people and are hated by everyone. The other two were, at least…yeah!"

Naruto struggled to pull away, but Deidara had an impressive grip for someone so slight. He never once, however, broke eye contact with the man. Deidara was a little unnerved by the boy's eyes—they were so powerful and demanding; they were the eyes of a true warrior. They reminded him strangely of the okashira in that intensity, and that unnerved him even more. So he decided to end it right then. He wrenched Naruto's hand downward, and then lifted him off his feet. He released his grip on Naruto's hand for but a moment, and then grabbed him again on the forearm, hissing into the blonde's ear: "I hope you weren't using this arm…yeah. It's going to become my art."

But in that very second, with the words just leaving his lips—a terrible, fiery pain exploded within his stomach, making him release all holds on Naruto's body. He fell back, stunned, glancing down to see the hilt of Naruto's sword sticking from the side of his stomach, buried in so deep that no hint of steel could be seen. The blade lanced up straight through his innards, cutting through muscle and small intestine, emerging with a flood of blood from the man's lower back. The wound was worse than losing an arm, due to the nerves and organs, and so even Deidara found himself unable to bear the pain. But his cry was cut short by a geyser of choking blood leaping into his throat, making him gag and throw it up all over his mouth and cloak. Added to this was Naruto's sudden, violent kick—which struck him in the face and sent him careening off the modeled bird. He fell, perhaps four or so dozen feet, crashing through the canopy of a tree and then a series of branches—each one cracking beneath his weight but damaging him equally. He finally hit the ground—which was thankfully soft—nearly passing out as he did, as whatever air remained in his lungs was violently forced out.

Deidara's mount fell, no longer controlled by its master—Naruto immediately summoned a clone, which grabbed Gaara's body as it tumbled from the creature's mouth. Both of them then air-grasped down, landing neatly on the branches of a particularly tall tree.

Kakashi watched them fall. He silently praised Naruto, leaping across the gorge and scaling the wall in great bounds, Tsuwabuki speeding ahead of him almost immediately. When they reached the trees above, Tsuwabuki led him to Naruto's tree. Kakashi appeared on the branch a few seconds later, making only two jumps to get there.

The blonde was staring at Gaara, who lay limp in his hands. The Kazekage's eyes were closed, peacefully. But his face was frozen in a mask that Kakashi knew would rend Naruto's heart—it was a look of utter agony, not from pain, but from the most awful feeling that someone like Naruto could feel.

Loneliness.

Naruto stared down at Gaara with sad, soft eyes. He felt numb. He couldn't believe what he was seeing. He couldn't be dead. Not now. Not when…when life was beginning to make sense to him. When it was beginning to mean something. Tears long thought dried came to his eyes, but he did nothing to push them away.

"Kakashi-sensei," he said, softly.

"Hmm?" Kakashi said.

"Look after Gaara, for me, would you?"

"Fine."

"Thanks."

Naruto bounded from the tree, disappearing into the dark forest beneath.

Deidara managed to stand.

Everything was dizzy and his vision was clouded. This was the first time he had been on the verge of death for a long time, he realized. Not since the initiation rite, that is. But even then, he didn't remember it being like this. 'Damn that brat,' he thought. 'How did he do that? That sword was behind him, out of his reach! How did he…" He barely heard those thoughts, the pain coming in surging waves, each one leaving him more fatigued, closer to unconsciousness. He had managed to get the sword out, at least. But it didn't make sense. How had the brat called the blade to him? Was it like Kisame's sword, bound to his will and chakra source?

Partly. Though he did not know it, the wound, while dealt by Naruto, had been Mekkatorque's work in reality. For on the hilt of the blade, as well as Naruto's wrist, there was a new device, just for Naruto. The High Tinker had come up with the plans for it just after Naruto had left him, years ago. He had left it aside, to focus on rebuilding Gnomeregan, but had returned to it every so often, when a minute became free. It consisted of two parts—a wristwatch like device that Naruto possessed, and a smaller device that attached to the end of his sword. It formed a small connection between Naruto and the blade—a small chakra string, which could never be cut, and allowed Naruto to control the weapon from afar to a certain degree. He could draw it to him from great distances, or control its movement in flight. He had had little time to experiment with it, but that had not truly mattered—Naruto was the type to learn as he went in battle, and so far it had been a splendid success.

But Deidara did not know this, and hence cursed and raged and wondered how the blonde had gotten the jump on him. He had never been so injured before in his life. And God, how he hated that brat!

'Why isn't that potion working?' he thought. The troll's blood potion was supposed to have continual effects for up to an hour. He should be healing at this point. The damage was enormous, however, and thus it probably had a lot to regenerate. He bit back a snarl in his throat, gripping his wounded stomach. He'd have to speed it up then. That boy would probably be here soon. He dug for some clay in his cloak, letting a hand-mouth devour it. He then placed it over his wound.

'Doton: Tsuchidaigeki!'

Then the ground exploded beneath him, and despite the awful pain it brought, he was forced to leap into the trees, landing unsteadily on a branch. He glanced down. Naruto stood there, his palm planted in the earth. He was glaring up at Deidara with a renewed bestial rage. He leapt after the man, making seals as he went.

'Raiton: Raikousa!'

A bolt of lightning erupted from Naruto's fingertips, streaking towards Deidara. The man avoided it by jumping off his perch, and falling to the ground, right next to his fallen mount. He glanced at it. The lightning struck the tree he had once been standing on, causing little damage. But Naruto was already reorganizing his attack, and had propelled himself downwards with a burst of air, both hands drawn back, each one clutching a glowing sphere of chakra.

Deidara danced behind the tree. Naruto pursued in a blink, appearing behind the man before Deidara could react. Deidara spun, but could barely get off a shout before both spiraling spheres slammed into his back in an explosion of light and power.

'Rasengan!'

The chakra tore into Deidara's flesh, and propelled him forwards, into the tree and through it too. The chakra bit like a thousand kunai striking a single place, and send waves more of it through Deidara's body, cutting into everything within. The force was so strong that even after flying through the tree, he continue for a few more yards, skidding across the ground, rolling, and finally stopping as the tree struck the ground behind him with a rumbling boom.

Deidara lay still.

Naruto strode towards the fallen body. He drew a kunai as he did, his teeth biting down so hard they looked at risk of cracking. He stopped behind the man, breathing heavily, staring down at Deidara, his hand up and ready to attack. This man would die. He continued to stare, waiting, almost praying, for the man to move again.

But he did not.

Deidara was dead.

And for one fierce moment, Naruto felt a surge of delight in seeing the man's fallen body, knowing that he had caused it. Knowing that he had killed this man. It was an awful, disgusting, violent feeling—and yet it felt so delightful and so justified that Naruto reveled in it.

"Naruto-kun!"

Naruto turned at the voice, and the feeling passed. From the trees emerged Hinata, Kiba, Shino and Kurenai, all looking bruised and battle-worn, but alive and apparently well. Hinata's face was a mask of relief, which Naruto felt a little glad to see, but more sad. But he did not even bother trying to smile, that was too hard.

It was over but Gaara was still gone.

"You guys all right?" Kakashi appeared a moment later as well, the clone of Naruto carrying Gaara's limp form trailing sadly behind him. Hinata gasped at the sight, Shino froze, and Kiba stared in an open mixture of horror and rage.

"H-hey! Is he…?" The question was rather unnecessary, and even Kiba knew it. From the look on Naruto's face, the truth could not be plainer. The mission had failed. Kiba visibly sunk, his face sagging, his eyes downcast. Akamaru whimpered, nuzzling his partner's leg. Shino lowered his head, and pushed his glasses closer to his face, as if to further hide the pain within them. Hinata closed her eyes, trying to stop the tears that would flow—not only from seeing Gaara's silent body, but also from seeing the agony on Naruto's face. Naruto's friends suddenly became awash with feelings of such despair that it was almost staggering. Hinata began openly crying, silently, as she stared at Naruto, who looked sadder than all of them, at least in his eyes. His presence had the same effect, no matter what emotion he felt; if he were optimistic and cheerful, he would inspire others to be as well—but if he was as depressed as now, then so were they.

"There's nothing more we can do," Kakashi said, breaking the soft, mournful, dreadful silence. "We'd best get to Sakura and Chiyo—they may need our help."

Kurenai nodded. She looked masked her own despair, and nodded to her students. "You heard him. We'll go now."

"What about him?" Shino asked. He nodded to Deidara's ruined form.

"He's right," said Kakashi. "Even though it's only a corpse, there's a lot of information we can get from it. We should bring it with us, those in Konoha will be able to do something with it. Though this is a monumental failure, we can perhaps yet snatch victory from it." Kakashi sighed, as if not truly believing his own words. "It will tell us a lot about Akatsuki, and that will be of great aid to us in the future. We'll be able to prevent," he glanced at Naruto, "this from happening again."

Naruto caught the look, and nodded softly. He made a seal, softly whispering a few words under his breath. Two clones appeared, and with a wave he directed them to pick up their new cargo. As they bent down to pull him up, there was a sudden movement—more than a death twitch—and Deidara's head suddenly spun completely around so that it stared up at them with one wide eye and a leering, evil smile.

"Yeah right! Here's the last piece, bastards! Enjoy!" He gave a single, horrifying laugh, as his body suddenly began to swell up, becoming grotesquely huge in only a few seconds. Kakashi roared an order to run, realizing what the man was about to do.

They ran. Naruto could have easily outstripped them all, yet he hung back, behind all of them, perhaps to see that they all survived, and perhaps to keep an eye on his precious cargo—Gaara's body. He gave a final glance back, where Deidara had become something like a gargantuan balloon animal, smiling and laughing in the most horrible way. Naruto wanted nothing more than for that laughter to end.

'We're not going to make it!' Kakashi thought. He put on a burst of speed, just as a white-hot blast of wind, followed by an ear-splitting boom, erupted behind him. He glanced back; and as the explosion rushed towards them, realized that it would completely consume them, killing them all without fail.

"Kakashi-sensei, Naruto, everyone! Get into a circle!"

The voice hit them from the front, and a moment later, their saviors came into sight. Sakura, soaked from head to toe in dried blood; and Chiyo, surrounded by ten, white-robed figures, stood before them. They immediately obeyed, streaking towards the small group as the white-robed figures spread out in a large circle to accommodate them. When they were all within the circle, Chiyo raised her hands, the figures leapt in front of them, forming a long, ten-man wall. They clasped their hands together before them, as if about to pray, as long, wing-like blades erupted from their backs, springing straight up. It that same moment, the explosion hit them.

But nothing happened.

No flames consumed them, boiled their skin or tore them to pieces. The flames parted, as a crowd of subjects does to an emperor. They stood, shocked, as the flames surrounded their small party, not burning or injuring or even singing a single hair on their heads. Chiyo stood at the head of them, laughing with everything she had left. It was not a joyful sound, or a humorous one.

It sounded almost sad.

But nobody would find the meaning behind that laughter. Save two perhaps, but they would never speak it aloud.

It was her final mark on this world. Yes. She knew it now. She knew what had to be done. Youth was something to be treasured in this world. And she would be damn sure that those that deserved to cherish it did. That would be her final gift. Yes. They would have been proud of that.

Even if it only meant saving one life, instead of three.

Burning Crusade rocks or what? That's what I've been doing with most of my time this week.

Hope you enjoyed the chapter—it was a lot of fun to write, for some reason. I know you guys are sick and tired of me basically copying the story arc from Naruto Part 2 (or Naruto: Shipuuden, as they are planning to call it) but I found it enjoyable for two reasons—one, it allowed me to write and keep alive one of my favorite characters in Naruto: Sasori; and two, it allowed me to go a bit deeper into Chiyo's mind, as I saw it. She's old and haggard, and knows she doesn't have much time left in this world, and so originally she hoped to use what was left of that life to kill Sasori. But this arc reveals to her that there is something else she must do with her remaining life, and how wrong she has been all this time. She's a fun character, I think, and I liked exploring the relationship she had with Sasori and her son and daughter-in-law a little bit more. I did it less directly than intended, but I still think it came off well, don't you?

And before you guys start complaining about Sakura's sudden revival—it's not that unbelievable. It just shows how truly powerful the technique she created is. A lot of you should have seen that coming, anyways. It would not be more realistic for her to die here, any more than it would somewhere else. She was not intended to die here, ever. No matter what anybody says, I do like Sakura (she's one of my favorite characters), and I will give her a fighting chance for Naruto's heart, if it remains a one-pairing story. Yes, there has been build up for the Naruto-Kira pairing, all of the last story, but that will just make it more interesting, and more troublesome, for Naruto to eventually choose, should he have to.

Wow. Don't know what got into me. Sorry for the rant, and for those of you who actually read it, congratulations and thank you!

The next story arc will be great, I hope. The storyline from this point on (well, maybe just a little more in the next chapter) will be totally original. I promise you that.

See you next week!

General Grievous

Scroll of Seals:

Doton: Tsuchidaigeki (Earth Release: Earth Shock)

Raiton: Raikousa (Lightning Release: Connected Lightning)

Jibaku Bunshin (Suicide Bombing Clone)?

Shiro Higi: Jikki Chikamatsu no Shuu (White Secret Technique: Ten Puppet Collection of Chikamatsu)

Weapons Pouch:

Gnomish Weapon Puppet Device

Exploding Clay

Poison Antidote

Bingo Book:

Akasuna no Sasori (S-Class)(Humanoid/Mechanical)(Boss)