Chapter 35

Shimeru suddenly teleported into the living room, by himself, looking significantly the worse for wear compared to this morning.

"Shimeru!" Kankuro scrambled to his feet. "Oh my god, what's going on?"

"Your father is fighting Orochimaru," Shimeru said quickly. "The Sound alliance is a trap. I have to report to the Council. Kazekage-sama's orders." He teleported out in a puff of smoke, not his usual graceful transition.

Kankuro turned to Aio and Josei. "We're going to Father."

"You're damn right we are!" Aio was already on his feet, as was Josei.

"We're coming, too," Gaara said. It wasn't a request. Kankuro could tell by the look in his brother's eyes that Gaara had already decided.

Kankuro nodded. "You bet you are."

xXx

Beads of sweat rolled down Jiraiya's temple, to his jaw. His teeth were gritted, and he was shaking. This is going to bring me dangerously close…dangerously close to dying…

Seals had been Minato's specialty, but he was the one who had helped Minato study them. Without long hours of hacking through scrolls with him, Minato wouldn't have been an expert, either. He'd known all of the best places to go to study, all of the most renowned seal masters. He'd bribed half of them with sake and gambling bets. The shinobi world was a lot like the civilian world, in that there was an old boy's club one had to know how to network with in order to get certain benefits.

Baki kept a wary eye on the battle between his sensei and Orochimaru, keeping silent about how Jiraiya looked.

Jiraiya was grateful. I know I must look like shit. He wouldn't be surprised if Baki gave him a lecture after this was over.

Yondaime couldn't spare a glance to see what the others were doing. He had his hands full controlling Orochimaru's coils so that no one got crushed. His giant gold dust hands mimicked the movements he made with his real hands. He caught Orochimaru's lashing coil and shoved it back, protecting the spot where Baki and Jiraiya stood. Baki's wind shield was up, but Yondaime doubted it could withstand the sheer force of a ten ton snake coil smashing into it.

His arms hurt. He could feel lines of burning pain etched down the backs of his arms, where his veins were. His hands were numb from it. I'm overusing my chakra channels. Too many large jutsu one after the other could do that. If this battle didn't end soon, he might have to go to a med nin for help healing.

Not to mention that Yondaime's vision was blurry from chakra loss, and he was lightheaded. Crushing Kimimaro had taken a significant part of his chakra. If I had come alone with Chounin and Shimeru…I wouldn't have stood a chance.

He glanced up at the enormous, furious eyes of Orochimaru-the-snake. He wished that he could just put a gold dust lance through Orochimaru's eye. But if he killed this body, Orochimaru would just turn into smoke and reform sometime later. And smoke was a lot harder to fight than a physical form, even a giant snake.

Yondaime was startled by the sudden ringing sound in his ears, and the simultaneous appearance of glowing chains wrapping around Orochimaru's body, chains made of pure chakra. Jiraiya's sealing ceremony! It's working!

Orochimaru whipped his head back with panic, thrashing against the ghostly chains. Suddenly, he snapped through the gold dust bonds around his jaw. Gold dust split with an ear-shattering crack and sifted off, releasing Orochimaru's shriek. "No!"

Then he lunged, quite predictably, for Jiraiya.

Yondaime shot between the Sannin and threw up a gold dust barrier. "Stop!" The word was more to crystallize his command to his gold dust than it was an order to Orochimaru.

Orochimaru slammed into his barrier, forcing Yondaime back about ten feet. Yondaime panted.

"You can't do this to me! I am –"

He hastily shoved his gold dust into Orochimaru's mouth, trying to make a plug. Orochimaru choked and spluttered. If the situation weren't so dire, it would have been funny. Jiraiya, hurry… Yondaime knew he didn't have to say it.

Jiraiya involuntarily increased the speed with which his hands flowed through making the seals. It wasn't a reaction to almost being eaten by Orochimaru. He felt the telltale tug of the sealing ceremony taking hold. Can't stop now… Heat ignited inside his body, as if the sealing ceremony had lit his chakra like a candle. This is it. I'll either make it or I won't.

xXx

Kankuro, Temari, and Gaara got ready the fastest they ever had. They were out the door with Aio and Josei in moments. Once they hit the outskirts of the village, though, their task sank in.

"The Head Stone is at least an hour away!" Kankuro exclaimed in frustration.

"I can go faster," Gaara said flatly. He summoned a disk of sand underneath everyone's feet and lifted it, sending the disk careening over the air like a skipping stone. The people around him barely had time to keep from falling off. He appeared not to notice.

Kankuro grinned. That's my ototo. He crouched, carefully keeping his balance.

"This is so cool!" Aio yelled against the force of the wind. "Gaara, you're a badass!"

Josei looked at his partner incredulously.

Gaara commendably kept control of his jutsu, but he looked flustered.

"Yeah!" Temari chimed in. "This rocks!"

We're gonna make it in time now, Kankuro silently agreed. He didn't want to yell into the wind. He crept forward against the force of the wind blowing him back and squeezed Gaara's shoulder.

Gaara didn't look up, but he blushed.

xXx

Orochimaru struggled, but the chakra chains were solid now, solid enough to hold him back. He shook his head back and forth, uselessly trying to dislodge the gold dust plug in his mouth.

Then his eyes narrowed, and with a ripple of powerful muscles, he swallowed.

Yondaime froze. He just swallowed my gold dust.

Orochimaru reared back with a hair-raising roar and breathed out a cloud of purple smoke to blot out the sun.

"Yondaime!" Baki yelled.

Yondaime shot out of the way of the roiling clouds, desperately holding his breath. He glanced down and saw that Baki's wind barrier protected his student and Jiraiya from the clouds of poison. That's good…

Tendrils of purple smoke clung to his clothing, and he realized as his dizziness and vertigo spun out of control that the poison was seeping in through the pores of his skin. His control slipped, and he fell to his knees onto the rapidly dissolving disk of gold dust.

"Yondaime!" Baki yelled again, agonized.

Yondaime peeled off his martial arts jacket, but that was as far as he got. Wind ripped the jacket out of his fingers, and the last thing that he saw was Orochimaru turning into translucent smoke and spiraling into the vessel that he had created with his magnetism release. We did it…

He hit the desert floor with a crunch of sand and blacked out.

xXx

Jiraiya's haze cleared as soon as the last pulses of the sealing ceremony faded out of his body. He found himself on his knees in front of the golden vessel Yondaime had created. The symbols were still glowing. I'm alive…

Then he realized Baki wasn't with him. His head snapped up. Jiraiya looked around wildly and saw Baki twenty feet away, pulling Yondaime into his arms. A limp Yondaime.

"Oh, no…" Jiraiya scrambled to his feet, brushing sand from his knees, and ran to them. For once, it was a run that lacked any grace at all. It was the exhausted stumbling of a child, and the sand slipping out from under his feet at every step almost made him fall more than once. But he didn't care.

He dropped to his knees beside Baki, taking in Yondaime's paleness and shallow breathing. He took Yondaime's pulse. "Still steady…"

"He's been poisoned," Baki said. "While you were completing the ceremony…"

Jiraiya didn't see any poison smoke remaining, but realized that was because Baki had dispersed the clouds with his wind release. "I don't know any way to counter Orochimaru's poison."

"I know," Baki said. He looked down at his unconscious sensei and gently brushed Yondaime's hair out of the closed eyes. "It's not your fault."

Jiraiya felt sick. "He'll be dead in fifteen minutes."

"I know. You mentioned that poison before," Baki murmured. "Yondaime-sama was chakra exhausted as well. It might take less to circulate through his system and take him down than it would if he were fully rested."

Jiraiya closed his eyes. Oh my god. It's all my fault.

"It's not your fault," Baki said, as if reading his thoughts.

No, probably just my face, Jiraiya reminded himself. He took a deep breath and opened his eyes. "Yeah?"

"It's Yondaime's fault for being too brave, and Orochimaru's fault for being too evil," Baki said.

"It's not Yondaime's fault at all," Jiraiya corrected. He felt tears drip down his cheeks. "It's my fault. For not defeating Orochimaru sooner. He claimed another life, the life of someone –" He broke off, unable to speak anymore, and covered his eyes with his hand. He hiccupped, holding back a sob.

A strong arm wrapped around him and pulled him tight.

Jiraiya clung to Baki, sobbing.

xXx

Kankuro almost had a heart attack when the battlefield came into view. He saw exactly what he didn't want to see: Baki and Jiraiya clustered around a fallen Yondaime. No, not my dad. Not my dad… He wanted to throw up.

Josei and Aio leapt down from the disk before Gaara had even stopped, running the rest of the way to join Baki and Jiraiya.

Gaara set the sand disk down quickly, and Kankuro took off, running to them.

He was in time to hear Josei ask, "What happened?"

"Poisoned," Baki said. "Yondaime-sama's been poisoned. He's dying…"

"Are you guys alright?" Kankuro asked, looking from Baki to Jiraiya.

Baki looked startled at Kankuro's sudden appearance. "We're fine, I had up a wind barrier, but Yondaime-sama –"

"He was outside the barrier?" Kankuro yelled.

"He had to be," Baki helplessly tried to explain.

"Had to be?" Kankuro yelled. "Why did he have to be?"

Baki shrank back.

"Answer me!" Kankuro clenched his hands into fists.

Jiraiya just shook his head, numb. "He was fighting Orochimaru while I did the sealing ceremony…"

That didn't make any sense. Kankuro massaged his brow, beside himself. He started pacing. "Well, someone has to do something. You can't just sit around –"

"Give me room," Gaara said. He walked up and knelt beside his father, placing his hand on Yondaime's chest.

"What are you –" Jiraiya asked, startled.

"Shut up," Gaara said.

Jiraiya shut up, closing his mouth smartly.

Gaara frowned in concentration. A pulse of green light burst out from his hand. He reached inside of Yondaime's chest, his hand slipping in as if through a portal, and pulled out a crystal bauble with something purple splashing inside of it. He handed the translucent globe off to Kankuro. Then he reached in again.

By the time he pulled out the third sphere, Yondaime was a normal color again.

"Amazing," Jiraiya whispered.

Gaara opened his eyes and gave Jiraiya a flat, emotionless stare. "This is not the way to do it. But I improvised."

Jiraiya patted him on the back and laughed. "You improvised. Well, you're a hell of improviser! You should be a med nin, Gaara."

Gaara pulled out a fourth sphere, only half full compared to the others.

Yondaime woke up, his eyelids fluttering open. He saw Gaara first, then looked at Baki and Jiraiya with wonder. "I can breathe again." He looked back to Gaara, at the globe in Gaara's hand, filled with poison. "You saved me."

Gaara looked at his father with wide eyes. The ball fell from his hand.

Kankuro hastily caught it and set it aside with the others. He'd heard that these samples could be used to distill an antidote. An antidote to Orochimaru's poison would be handy to have, even if Orochimaru was sealed up. One never knew what could happen.

Yondaime's eyes filled with tears, and he suddenly pulled Gaara into a tight hug, stroking Gaara's hair. "I love you…I've loved you since the day you were born." Then he just cried, unable to speak any more.

Gaara trembled in his father's arms, then burst out crying hysterically, clinging to his father in return.

Kankuro paused, looking down at Gaara and their father with wide eyes. He realized with a sweeping sense of awe that he was watching the reconciliation he never thought would happen. Gaara and Dad…they're okay now. He felt tears in his eyes.

Temari tapped him on the shoulder, turned him to face her, and gave him a hug.

He hugged her tightly in response.

We're okay now. We're all okay.

Author's Note: This is not the last chapter. So stay tuned. ;p