I had held off on writing this for so long. For a bit, I had thought myself lazy. "Another day," I said, as I looked at the open Microsoft Word document. "I'll get to it another day, when I'm not as tired."
That day didn't come for several months.
I had even written up an earlier draft that never made it to the light of day. I still don't know where it is.
Come my first vacation from work in several months. I sat down yesterday and... well.
Here we are, seven thousand words later. Turns out that I was just exhausted. I got about a hundred words in and found the words flowing, unable to stop. The thing I was dreading for so long came so naturally that I didn't stop until I was exhausted and I literally passed out.
Here you go, new chapter. Thank you for the wait, and please let me know what you think about it.
And if you really enjoyed it and have some writing related jobs to throw my way, feel free to recommend them to me. My PMs are always open to my fans.
The Prankster King of Konoha
Chapter 10:
The Aftermath Into The Battle
It was interesting, he supposed, to be on the other side of a soul. Usually he was the one to be looking at a prisoner that he imprisoned inside of him. Now, he was looking outside of a cage, while someone looked in at him.
"Fufufufu," the weird man cackled. His face was long and pale, and his hair was like oil as it streamed from his scalp and down his face in long, slick strands. "You wouldn't believe how long I've been wanting to get my hands on you, Naruto-kun.
Naruto frowned, unsure as to where he had met this man before. He hadn't ever remembered meeting someone this disgusting. He would have remembered the androgynous face or the freaky tongue.
"Don't worry, young one. I won't do anything to hurt you just yet. You're going to go to sleep for a little bit, and when you wake up you won't ever have to worry about anything ever again."
As he spoke, there was a certain kind of darkness that encroached on his vision. Swarming in from all around him like languid, nasty tentacles, they continued to wrap around Naruto's arms and legs, moving slowly towards his chest and restricting him more and more.
Naruto decided that he didn't like this. He could feel that he wasn't in his body, and the Fox told him that when he was but wasn't in his body that he was actually in his spirit form. The Fox told him that he should never let anyone touch his spirit form, because if they did, then they were able to change him forever.
And Naruto didn't want to change. He liked himself the way he was. He tried to break free of his bindings, but the shadow tentacles held fast. Despite feeling like fur they were as strong as iron, and kept him absolutely still as they continued to wrap around him.
"Fufufu," the weird man laughed. Naruto heard a lot of bad laughs in his life, but none were as sinister as this man's. He decided that he hated it. "Don't struggle, little Naruto. I think you'll find that my Cursed Seal is quite impossible to escape from. It's still a prototype, of course, but it is very close to being complete. I don't think even you can break these bindings."
Naruto didn't quite believe that. He continued to struggle, but his wrists started to hurt. The Fox said that pain on your soul was much worse than pain on your physical body. Pain on your body could heal, given enough time. But pain on your soul might never go away.
He didn't understand what that meant, but he didn't want to find out. He stopped struggling and closed his eyes.
"Oh?" the weird snake man said. "Are you finally giving in? Good, little Naruto. The less you struggle the easier this will be for the both of us."
Naruto highly doubted that he wanted to make things easier for this man. The tentacles from each of his limbs had finished restraining them completely and had moved to wrapping around his torso. Naruto found that he was extremely uncomfortable with that fact.
"I want you to stop, snake man."
"Snake man?" the snake man parroted. "Oh, I suppose you wouldn't know who I am. You weren't even born when I started my infamy. I am the Snake Sage, Orochimaru. You and I will be very well acquainted soon."
The man's words were greasy and felt terrible as it filtered into Naruto's ears. He had half a mind to struggle against the restraints again, but they were so far along that he could barely move at all. They had almost completely wrapped around his chest, pressing an unbearable weight against his ribcage. He was in his spirit form, so he knew that he technically didn't need to breathe right now, but that didn't stop the feelings from persisting.
He felt like he couldn't breathe. And that was never a good thing.
The shadow tentacles started to work their way up his neck, and it was here that Naruto decided that enough was enough. He took as deep a breath as he could, his ribs straining against their bindings the entire time, before shouting.
"Hey Fox!" he yelled. "How long are you going to be messing around?"
For a minute, his words echoed around a vast, white expanse. That, honestly, should have been Naruto's first cue that something was wrong. His mental plane was that of a sewer, and no matter what he tried he couldn't change that. That it wasn't was a cause for concern, though he wasn't quite sure yet for who.
"The Fox?" Orochimaru asked. There was a hint of amusement in the man's voice, borne of intelligence that Naruto couldn't have possibly known of yet. "Are you asking help from your Tailed-Beast? I'm sorry, little Naruto, but as much as I hate that blasted Fourth Hokage, I have to admit to genius where it is due. Minato's seal is perfect in every way. There is a zero percent chance that the Nine-Tailed Fox would be able to escape to help you, even if it felt inclined to do so—"
The mindscape seemed to shake as the pure white of the expanse darkened, going to a light pink and getting deeper until it finally reached a passionate scarlet. Orochimaru, who was so confident until now, backed away from the almost completely restricted body of Naruto.
"What… what is going on here?" he asked, his voice just slightly shaky as his serpentine eyes scanned his surroundings at a speed even Naruto couldn't keep up with. Not able to find anything out of place, he turned to Naruto and glared at him. "You. What did you just do?"
"I called the grumpy old fox," Naruto replied. His voice was carefully cherubic as he answered. "He's going to come and get you."
A bit of chakra leaked from the aether, bleeding through the scarlet red of their new reality and dropping directly on one of the tentacles. The man's chakra… even Naruto could tell how foul it was. Despite how disgusting it was, however, it was still simply the chakra of a human. Potent, powerful and dangerous, this kind of chakra would be enough to overwhelm just about every other human.
It was nowhere near powerful to overwhelm that of a walking natural disaster like Kurama.
Orochimaru screamed as the caustic red of the Tailed-Beast's chakra meant with oily black of his own. There was a bit of war there, as Orochimaru's tentacle bubbled and roared, but in the end it was nowhere near strong enough to survive. The tentacle shivered as it went from a strong, unbreakable root of iron into a misshapen cord of tangled mess.
That one dissolved away, and Naruto had to thank his own resilience for being able to survive the same thing happening to him. Either way, the tentacle restraining his right arm was free.
And now he was free to fight back.
"I don't know who you are or why you're so damn creepy, but I want you out of my mind, Orochimaru."
"What have you done?" the creepy man repeated, his voice rising with his trepidation. He held out a hand, and a fresh shadow tentacle erupted from his own spirit body. It lashed out, quite like a snake, and tried to reclaim Naruto's arm.
It didn't make it far. Naruto materialized a kunai, and with it he hacked at the new appendage. It tried to resist, it did, but it was all for naught. Powerful invader that it was, it was still in Naruto's head. And what Naruto said, goes.
And Naruto said that his kunai could cut through the disgusting shadows that were trying to eat him whole.
The blonde reared his arm back once more, before stabbing into the shadows curled around his chest. It hissed at the attack, but instead of relinquishing him, they all seemed to constrain him even harder. He winced at the pain, especially towards the tentacles that were now encircling his neck, but he didn't allow such things to stop him. If he stopped now, the evil snake man would get his way, and that was definitely not something that Naruto wanted.
True, he had no idea what the man wanted, but if it was sinister enough that it warranted breaking into someone else's mind and tying them up against their will, it was most likely something that Naruto wanted no parts of.
"Stop!" Orochimaru snarled. His body, which was almost whole before, had started to bleed away into the same darkness as the tentacles. His face looked half melted as whatever technique that allowed him to be in here started to break down in the presence of the Fox's malevolent chakra. "Just give in so that I can take your body!"
Naruto, for one second, stopped his struggles. So that's what the man wanted his soul for? To control his body? Well, the Fox did say that if he ever wanted to interact with the world, he would just eat Naruto's spirit form. It would make sense then that to take control of a spirit body would be to take control of the real one as well.
But then that begged the question of why this strange man that Naruto had never seen before would want his body so badly. Did he not know how the rest of the village felt about him? Or did he simply not care about his past?
Either way, that man seemed to care about his body, and Naruto actually really liked his body. It was the only one he had, after all, and he wasn't too keen on giving it up so easily.
He closed his eyes once more, but instead of a kunai he imagined a scroll. It wasn't particularly, big, nor was it fancy or ornate. What it was, however, was extremely convenient. Naruto used his teeth to rip away at the cord keeping it together, then laughed as he tossed the scroll in the air.
A roar resounded across the mindscape, before the weight of thousands of years of hatred slammed down on the both of them. For Naruto, it was a harrowing affair. Kurama was a spiteful creature, whose attempts at niceties was harsh even for someone who had been experiencing it for years.
For Orochimaru, it was something very different entirely.
Screams echoed through the mindscape as the weird snake man was subject to the entire pressure of the Nine-Tailed Fox's attention. The blackness eating away at Naruto was burned away in an instant, leaving the young boy's spirit body to fall painfully to the ground. Naruto, not being an idiot for once, darted away from the man that was trying to assault him. He might have been cowering on the ground, but Naruto knew he was no real coward.
The Fox had forced him to learn about history, after all. After recalling the man's name, it wasn't hard to place one of the three Sannin.
Still, it might not have been necessary. Rather than move to reclaim his prey, the manifestation of the Snake Sannin chose to writhe on the floor instead. The Fox's chakra was indeed powerful, but every bit of power came with a price. For Naruto, that price was paid almost daily. He was used to the Fox's chakra, boiling and burning and constantly eroding away at his soul. He had gained a kind of immunity that allowed him to withstand the onslaught of suffering.
For Orochimaru, however, who had never encountered this sort of situation before, this was something unbearable. The total, combined hatred of a Tailed Beast was more than enough to leave him practically dead. For his part, he was resisting rather well. He had managed to not die, at the very least, which was more than Naruto expected.
Still, the man was a creep, and Naruto wanted him gone.
"Goodbye, snake man," Naruto babbled. He raised his hand, and chakra poured from it into the scroll. It was a minor thing that he and the fox came up with. Since he couldn't release the beast fully, they had to come up with a loophole that would allow Naruto the power he needed in times of emergency.
This was a time of emergency.
A single claw—a tiny part of Kurama but absolutely enormous for him—burst from the scroll. It pierced the unidentifiable goo that was the snake man in a single thrust, burning its influence and leaving a pockmarked scar on Naruto's mind.
Naruto stared at it, then turned to the scroll.
"Thanks, Kurama. What was that about?"
"I'm not sure, brat. Are you alright?"
Naruto looked at himself. He felt alright. There were some bruises around his wrists from where he tried to struggle, and it was still a little difficult to breathe, but other than that he didn't feel anything wrong.
"Yeah, I'm alright Fox," he answered. His words rang around the empty expanse, with nothing but silence to answer him.
"If you're sure," the Fox finally said. Cracks then started to appear, breaking away the red hue and revealing parts of the sewers that he was used to.
Naruto watched as it happened, his mind marveling at what he was seeing. He rubbed at his neck, then turned to where he could finally sense the Fox waiting for him.
"Yeah. I'm alright."
XxX
Naruto opened his eyes. He was no longer on the battlefield, but instead in the sewers of his mindscape. He could feel his spirit form flex its fingers, then he could feel the water of his sewers below him.
So, he was back here, it seemed.
"So, you're finally awake," the Fox said. As usual, his voice was loud and booming, echoing around the cavernous expanse of his mind. Naruto turned, and he could see the creature looking down on him from behind the large, iron bars that kept them separate.
There were times where Naruto wished that he could rip that paper off and greet his friend into the greater part of his soul. There was another part of him, however, that knew better. As close as the two were, or perhaps because of it, Naruto knew that he would rather not have the Fox have so much freedom. The beast was cool and all, but he was a trickster. He was selfish and mischievous and definitely some sort of evil at his core.
So, instead, Naruto rubbed at the back of his neck. He didn't know when he picked up this habit, but it had stuck with him throughout the years.
"So I am," the blonde responded. He had to crane his neck in order to look up at his oldest companion, and when he did, it was to large, red and disappointed eyes.
"I feel we should talk about what happened," the Fox said. He didn't sound angry, which was odd to Naruto. The creature could find any amount of reasons to be livid about something, most of them inane, and yet him stealing away chakra when he wasn't supposed to was met with a sort of serene grace?
No, that wasn't what was happening. The Fox was mad. Naruto could feel it through the rudimentary emphatic sense he inherited. He was just holding it back. Any minute now and—
"WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT, BRAT?"
And there it was. Naruto stuck a finger into his ear to try to regain some hearing. He was lucky that his spirit form couldn't suffer hearing loss, or he would be hearing some ringing.
"Look, Fox. I'm sorry."
The creature huffed, then stood from its haunches. The confines of the seal didn't leave the Fox much room to move, but he still liked to attempt to. The walls were barely bigger than the Fox was wide, so instead of pacing like he wanted to, he turned restlessly.
"Do you think simply saying 'sorry' will be enough to excuse you for what you've done?" he asked. His lips were pulled back in a vicious snarl, showing sharp canines that were longer than Naruto was tall. "We had a deal, brat. An understanding. For you to break it like this is nothing short of reprehensible."
And, in a certain, way, Naruto knew that the Fox was right. They had an agreement—access to the Fox's chakra in exchange for some freedom from the seal. The Fox wouldn't attempt to take over his body, and Naruto could take as much chakra as he needed, provided that the Fox gave the okay beforehand. Since the Fourth Hokage's seal was still in place, and they had no way of replicating the key, the only way for them to do this was a rudimentary backdoor.
That backdoor was a like a tiny hole at the back of a water basin. They could sneak stuff out, but to force any more than necessary was painful to both parties. Especially to Kurama, though. So, when Naruto all but yanked that extra chakra for the fight against Orochimaru, well…
He could only guess the agony he put the Fox through.
Still, Naruto couldn't help but feel indignant at the Fox's rage. Who was he to look down on the blonde in such a way? Naruto went overboard, but he wouldn't have had to if the Fox told him about Orochimaru in the first place. Then he could have prepared, and set traps, and called for help or something.
As it were now, however, they were both up shit creek.
"You realize that our minds are still melded, right?" Kurama asked. His snarl was still there, but Naruto could sense a bit of amusement now. "I can hear all of your thoughts."
"Of course I know, you damned Fox," Naruto replied. "And I don't give a shit. I mean what I said."
The two continued to stare at one another, neither of them willing to back down. After several seconds, they both turned at the same time, though neither were particularly happy about it.
"Where's the snake bastard?" Naruto eventually asked. Blue eyes scanned the dark corridor, but they couldn't find the dark, disgusting chakra that once tried to eat him so many years ago.
"It's… around…" the Fox responded. Naruto turned to him, only to see the great beast fiddling with its nails.
"And why haven't you gotten rid of it, yet?" Naruto asked slowly. He could feel his irritation begin to rise again. If this was the Fox's way of getting payback, then…
"Relax. If I wanted revenge on you of all people then I would have done it directly. No, that healer woman you pranked, the drunkard, is trying to fix you. I'm not sure why she's so adamant about it, but she keeps disrupting my chakra. She's a bug before me, but there's no way I can force out enough of my chakra to get past the ridiculous amounts of healing chakra she's pumping into you."
Naruto nodded. "And, let me guess, the healing chakra is dispelling yours, but it isn't actually doing anything to the snake bastard's chakra."
The Fox snapped its fingers. "Bingo. Got it in one, champ."
Naruto sighed. He dragged his hand across his face before closing his eyes. If he concentrated, he could pinpoint where in his chakra network the snake bastard was trying to hide. Looking… looking…
"There," Naruto whispered. "It's still around my neck. Has Granny Tsunade been isolating him there the entire time?"
"Something like that," the Fox said with a yawn. "If you could get her to stop, that would be wonderful."
Naruto nodded, before pushing himself to his feet. He closed his eyes, sensing his awareness on the very edge of his mental scape, and prepared to pull himself back to consciousness.
"Hey, brat," the Fox said, just before he managed to pull himself free.
"What?"
"We're not done talking about this."
Naruto stood there, letting the silence reign over them.
"Yeah, I know."
XxX
Tsunade wasn't a religious person. She wasn't even a superstitious person. As a woman of medicine, she was also a woman of science by default. Her sensei could go on and on about superstitions and traditions and all that, but in the end it was all hearsay and broken logic based around beliefs in the phony supernatural in order to help the uninformed understand things that they were to stupid to comprehend.
Everything could be solved with cold, hard data and reliable facts. That was just the way the world worked, and it was the way that Tsunade reflected on most things in life.
There was only one superstition that Tsunade allowed herself to heed above all things. Above the facts that science and medicine provided her. Above all the logic that circulated her brain constantly and explained to her how the world worked. It was one superstition, and one that followed her everywhere she went. She didn't let anyone touch it, for fear of the horrible calamity that it would bring upon anyone who did.
She had planned to die with it, to bring it with her into the afterlife and throw it back at her grandfather as hard as she could. She never intended to give it to anyone.
Which explained why she was so mad when that little blonde brat stole it from her.
She was, of course, livid when she first found out. Apparently he had stolen it the second they left the border town on their way back to Konoha. He had taken it as insurance in case she decided to back out on their bargain halfway through, and she was far too drunk to comprehend it. When she finally did sober up (albeit briefly) the brat had already fled far from her reach, and she could only seethe in silence as she contemplated a hundred different ways to torture the little brat.
Seeing him now, writhing on the ground as his body tried valiantly to reject that snake's vile chakra, however, was a little more than she was comfortable with.
"Hurry it up, woman!" the Sand brat yelled. It wasn't really a yell, his voice was barely strong enough to carry over the sound of the breaking forest and the wild amounts of jutsu being thrown around. It was scratchy, as if he barely used it, and lost volume towards the end of his words. No, Tsunade could tell that the boy wasn't a conversationalist, but that was okay. As long as he kept throwing around all that sand and kept Orochimaru off of her, she was okay with it.
"I'm going as fast as I can!" she yelled. She grit her teeth as she pulled her attention away from the combat. The little sand ninja would be alright. The more important thing was laying comatose on a branch below her.
Naruto, the blonde brat that tortured her and dragged her back to her hometown was currently unconscious. His breathing was labored as he tossed and turned, and Tsunade had to dedicate one of her hands to keeping him from rolling off the branch they were on. He was sweating, the water bleeding through his black undershirt and wetting her hand as well, and every so often he mumbled, though the words were nonsensical at best.
On his neck, though not fully formed, were the three tomoe indicative of her former teammate's foul creation: The Cursed Mark of Heaven. She had heard enough about it from Jiraiya, who was more than willing to explain in length his discoveries in his search for their traitorous third. From what she knew, it was a masterful marriage of both sage chakra and the sealing arts, and Jiraiya, who was no slouch in either, hypothesized that he would need both of them in order to effectively remove it from a person.
To do otherwise was to invite an unspeakable pain on the one having it removed. Not only that, but the process was only viable almost directly after the seal was applied. If it were allowed to fester and sink its noxious hooks into the afflicted person's soul, not even the dirty old pervert thought that he could remove it.
As far as Tsunade could see, the seal hadn't been allowed to fully manifest yet. A quick diagnosis showed the foreign chakra, and though it had touched Naruto's own, it had not yet spread far beyond where it was implanted. Tsunade could keep it there, but she could not remove it on her own. Her knowledge of the sealing arts wasn't shabby, but it was nowhere near as impressive as her two teammates' She wasn't sure how to reverse engineer it enough to take it away.
So she was left to play support while the sand ninja protected her. There was another girl, a Menma, that came by earlier, but Tsunade sent her to get reinforcements.
Specifically, she sent her to retrieve Jiraiya. The stupid toad was strong enough to repel Orochimaru, and then they could get to work saving the little blonde idiot.
"Gah!" An inhuman voice cried out, and Tsunade was forced to look up from her procedure. The little Sand brat, now half covered in sand himself, was slammed bodily into a tree by the force of a wind jutsu. Spittle flew from his mouth as his back dented the wood of the tree, and despite his best wishes he was still forced to a knee as he pulled himself from the hole.
"Impressive," Orochimaru cackled. He walked slowly from the wreckage that the sand jinchuuruki pushed him into, looking no worse for the wear. "You're a rather powerful one, but you're not the first demon container I've fought. You're not even the strongest."
Tsunade scowled. So the bastard's habit of gloating and taunting his opponents hadn't changed. She supposed that she shouldn't have been so surprised that the man obsessed with immortality had a hard time growing up.
"Still," he continued, "I'm afraid that our little game must end. I have better things to deal with."
Orochimaru then turned, his yellow, slit eyes burning an uncomfortable hole into Tsunade. He smiled, and it was that same, thin smile that just barely showed some of his teeth. As a child, Tsunade thought it attractive and mysterious. Now that she knew the man, she simply thought it disgusting.
"You're not taking him," was all she said. She hadn't any weapons on her—she was posted at the medical tent, far away from the fight, and surrounded by capable combatants. She hadn't felt like she needed any—but then again she supposed that she never needed any. Her fists were deadlier than anything she could wield, and Orochimaru knew that.
If only she could use them.
"Oh, Tsunade. I think you'll find that I'm more than in a position of power here. You could either continue healing him, leaving yourself defenseless to my attacks, or you could fight me, and let the curse mark set. Either way, the boy will be mine."
Tsunade's teeth grit. He was right, of course he was, but she didn't want to hear it spelled out so plainly. The green chakra emanating from her hand fluctuated with her ire, but she pulled it under her control before long.
"Fufufufu, so which will you choose?"
"Fuck you."
Orochimaru smiled. "Eloquent."
The man then crouched, before blasting ahead, directly towards her. Tsunade snarled, then debated on what to do. Should she leave the boy? If she died here then there would be no one capable of healing Naruto, even if she did manage to hold it off a little longer. But if she let go, there was no telling if he would ever be able to recover. Tsunade trusted in her healing ability, so she would be able to take the Snake's onslaught for a bit, but she also had no idea of what her wayward teammate was capable of anymore.
Her thoughts ran wild, forcing her into a sort of indecision that left her paralyzed. She lost track of the snake until he was right on top of her, swinging his sword at her neck.
For a second, Tsunade's survival instincts won over her concern. Her hands came up, already reinforced with chakra and ready to send the snake barreling through more than a few trees. As the blade came for her, she prepared herself for the pain.
It never came, however, as a pale yellow filled her vision. The Snake Sannin was yanked away by the tidal wave of sand that engulfed him, and a vicious aura leaked out onto the battlefield once more.
"I am not done with you, Snake!" the now inhuman boy roared. A seal on his forehead glowed an angry blue, and Tsunade could only guess as to how much pain he was in. Still, Gaara of the Sand was still partially transformed, and instead of only half of his body, now almost all of it was clad in a shining yellow facsimile of his beast, with light blue lines running over most of it.
Orochimaru, of course, was not fazed. "You should learn how to stay down, boy."
"I will not retreat until my sand drinks your blood!"
And then their battle began anew, sand whipping around in every direction in an attempt to trap the shifty bastard. Orochimaru, being much older and far more experienced, didn't seem to consider the boy a threat at all.
Tsunade hated to admit it, but she wouldn't either. The sand brat was strong, but that was all he was. It would be child's play to dispatch of him, and sure enough her ex-teammate looked to be toying around.
Tsunade turned back to her charge, allowing her healing chakra to combat the blackness of the cursed seal once more. It should have proceeded to spread while she was distracted, but it seemed to have not moved at all. That was curious. Could it be the Fox's influence? Could it be…
Gaara's scream echoed through the forest once more, and the brat fell from the trees this time, his sand armor dissipating from around him. He had only managed to buy a few more seconds, but even that much against a Sannin was impressive.
"Are we quite done with this farce?" Orochimaru asked. He strolled languidly towards her this time, the smile on his face only growing with time. "I would like to take my prize and leave now, if that is okay with you?"
Tsunade knew that the man was toying with her, and it brought an indignant rage to her. She bared her teeth as she moved to stand once more, but she stopped just as she was about to.
The pendant around the boy's neck glinted in the afternoon sun. It caught her eye, and, in a moment of weakness, Tsunade was forced to look at the cursed pendant that her grandfather gave her. It fit oddly well around the blonde ninja's neck, and for a second the Slug Sannin couldn't imagine it being anywhere else.
That moment of inattention cost her.
"I'm getting so very tired of people ignoring me. Aren't you?"
Orochimaru's sword passed easily through her blossoming fresh pain in her stomach. She grunted, but she didn't allow the pain to overwhelm her. Her hands continued to glow green as she continued to hold the curse mark at bay.
"In a way, this is funny," Orochimaru cooed into her ear. He was behind her, and no doubt smiling that disgusting smile of is. "I am deeper than in you than Jiraiya could ever hope to be."
"And deeper than you'll ever get again," Tsunade snarled back. She moved the hand pinning Naruto to the tree, before twisting in place. She coated her other hand in chakra as she moved, grabbing Kusanagi's blade and holding it there, before swinging at her teammate's face.
She succeeded, and the Orochimaru stabbing her exploded in a spray of mud that splattered over the tree bark. The blade in her stomach dissipated, and Tsunade made to heal it.
"Fucking bastard," she grunted, she turned back to her charge.
Only to see he was not there.
"You're getting rusty," Orochimaru taunted. He was standing across from her, on another tree branch some twenty meters away. "In your prime you would have never fallen for something so rudimentary."
Tsunade cursed, before forcing herself to her feet. The wound in her stomach hurt, but she was used to such pain. She bent her knees, willing to beat the shit out of her opponent, but a sense of vertigo hit her.
She looked to her stomach, and the viscous red liquid that pooled around it. She would be able to heal the wound no problem… but…
"Blood," she whispered as her body went weak. Her knees trembled, and she was back on the ground before she knew what was happening.
"Oh dear," Orochimaru called. His words were drawled. "I see you still have that troubling aversion to blood. That really is too bad, isn't it?"
Jiraiya once told her that there was nothing in the world that he hated more than Orochimaru's laugh. Hearing it now, she could understand why. If her world wasn't spinning and the nausea wasn't trying to force her stomach out through her mouth, she might have hurled one of these trees at him.
"Well, as much as I've enjoyed our reunion, I really must be going." Orochimaru turned as he said this, though he made sure that she could see the mirth in his eyes the entire time. "I have overstayed my welcome, and I'm sure the cavalry will be along soon."
Despite her nausea, Tsunade managed to speak. "Why so soon? Don't you want to meet the rest of the team? I'm sure Jiraiya and sensei have much to discuss."
"In due time," the snake cooed. "I will settle things with all of you in due time. For now, however, I must make off with my prize. It isn't what I came here for, but it might be so much better."
With a final cackle, the snake disappeared, with nothing but leaves to mark where he had just been.
"Fuck," Tsunade cursed. She punched at the tree, and was disappointed when it did not break.
XxX
"We're free, brat."
"I know."
XxX
Gaara could feel the sand as it spilled off of him in waves akin to water. He grunted as he tried to push himself back to his feet, then grunted again as his vision swam, forcing him off balance.
"We must give chase," his mother cooed. She sounded concerned, which was an odd feeling. "Are you able to?"
Gaara wasn't sure of the answer. He certainly still had the strength left in him to try, but his entire body ached, and it hurt to move. He tried to force himself once more, but every movement sent fire coursing through his body. His muscles failed him once more, sending him back into the bark of the branch he was standing on.
He could still mold his chakra, but his body was far beyond his control now. The only thing left to him now was to use his sand to move his body.
"Doing that will put more strain on you than you need," his mother whispered. "You might do irreparable damage to your body."
"I don't have any choice, mother," Gaara responded. "If I do nothing, then Orochimaru will get away with our only win condition. We have to go and save the gnat!"
His mother didn't respond, but he could feel her concern through their link. It hardly mattered, however. If he was to have that Snake's blood, he would need the help of the only man who could do so. It was with that in mind that he forced himself to his feet. His sand whipped around him, bracing his legs where his muscles wanted to give out, forcing him to stand.
The pain was unbearable, but he would have to endure it. If he gave up now, he would only be proving to himself how weak he truly was.
He forced the sand to wrap around his entire body, and despite his best wishes he couldn't prevent himself from gasping. Every bone in his body felt like dust, and every fiber of his being seemed to scream at what he was forcing it through. He couldn't stop, however. He couldn't let himself. He needed to go save the blonde gnat. He needed—
A roar, bestial and in pain, tore through the forest, blowing the leaves from where they lay and on the trees and sending him back to the ground. His sand scattered, an instinctual reaction to the crimson chakra that now laid ambient in the air, and Gaara winced as his back hit the bark once more.
"Is that… the gnat?" Gaara asked, his teal eyes wide as he stared in the direction of where Snake Sannin fled.
He got his answer, not from his mother, but from the body of the Sannin as came flying back from where he left. Gaara could barely follow the older man's body as it broke through several feet of solid wood as if it were Styrofoam.
He stared at it, mouth held open wide enough to catch flies, before gathering his sand about him again.
It appeared as if the battle was still on, then.
XxX
B-bump.
B-bump.
B-bump.
Tsunade focused on her heartbeat as she held her hand to her stomach. She was still here, she told herself. She was still alive. Such a wound would be life-threatening to any other shinobi, but to one such as her, a stab through the gut was nothing more than a hindrance. She was bleeding, but people bled all the time. It was okay to bleed as long as you could stem the tide. It was okay to bleed so long as you could continue to live.
B-bump.
B-bump.
B-bump.
She could feel her heartbeat want to beat faster. That was normal, that was natural. She was in a stressful situation. Her body didn't know how else to handle it other than pumping a shit ton of adrenaline through her body. The hormone would make her heart beat faster, allowing her to perform better, but she didn't need it right now. She needed to calm down, to think. To concentrate. She needed to heal her wound so that she could stand.
B-bump.
B-bump.
B-bump.
It was okay. She would be okay. Green chakra, healing and soothing, finally listening to her and flowing into the fingers she had positioned over her abdomen. She felt the familiar feeling of her skin knitting itself back together. She felt the cool sensation of her organs returning to functionality.
B-bump.
B-bump.
B-bump.
She was almost there. Her stomach had almost fully healed, and even the wound through her back, just barely missing her spine, had started to heal. All she had to do was block out the rest of the world, and she would be back to fighting shape. All she had to do was concentrate, and ignore everything else. Ignore the jinchuuruki child that was glaring at her, and the sinister chakra he was leaking like a broken faucet. Ignore the rapidly fleeing chakra of her teammate, as well as the rapidly approaching chakra of her other teammate as he moved to cut the first one off. Ignore the ANBU that were converging on her location, likely backup for the very obvious disturbance, and ignore the evil chakra of Orochimaru as he rapidly returned to them.
Tsunade opened her eyes. Wait, why was Orochimaru returning? Had he come back to finish the job? Was he going to take the sand brat as well and start some sort of collection or—
The trees burst open as Orochimaru's body plowed through them and, like the sand child across from her, she could only stare wide-eyes as he flew straight past them.
"What?"
XxX
"Kakashi, Jiraiaya and Anko are already on their way to the Forest of Death. I need you to follow! Orochimaru has been sighted in the area!"
Kakashi nodded, his salute as obvious as the absence of the porn book he frequented. He seemed for all the world lazy and uninterested, but any who knew the man could see the rage smoldering in his eyes.
He left without a word, already knowing plotting out the best route he could take that would allow him to pick up Gai along the way.
XxX
Orochimaru's head was spinning as he slowly pulled himself from yet another tree. The only difference this time was that he hadn't intended to be this acquainted with it.
"What?" he hissed, his hand coming up to massage at the ringing pain in his temple. The blonde brat, that Orochimaru was only now realizing was faking being asleep, awoke suddenly and planted a haymaker against his skull. Tired from having fought two jinchuuruki, one after another, and caught off guard, he was a little slow to react against the attack. He was sent flying, and it wasn't long before he was back where he started.
Gaara and Tsunade, both combatants that he already dispatched, were now back on their feet. They looked at him, expressions mixed between surprise and hatred, before they looked back to where he came from.
Emerging from the trees, body cloaked in chakra of resplendent red, was Naruto. His power whipped around him, displacing air and giving off a mighty pressure the bent the branch he was standing on. His chest rose and fell rapidly, showing tired he truly was. Still, he stared defiantly, with one crimson tail whipping along behind him.
His jacket was displaced from where Tsunade was healing him. Though it was partially obscured by the chakra cloak, the smooth, unblemished skin on his neck was plain to see.
"So it wasn't just a coincidence last time," Orochimaru said, his words coming out like a slither. "Kukuku, very interesting."
The snake man braced himself as all three of the combatants facing him, all equally tired, prepared themselves.
This might actually be an interesting fight after all.