Chapter 7
Quiet.
In the middle of battle, when the enemy is not yet defeated, quiet could be a good or bad thing.
It was good for thinking. Regrouping. Healing. Strategizing.
He was sure that his opponent was doing three of these four things. Unless one of those toads had an ability to heal.
No. If they had, they would not have let Jiraiya-sensei lose so much blood.
One of the massive copper pipes behind him, ripped from its base and standing in the water, finally collapsed under its own weight. The water swelled with the impact. He bobbed with the motion, its passing not disturbing him in the slightest.
Quiet also had its disadvantages. It made noise too apparent. The lightest sound could give away position, so the possibility for sneak attacks was almost always eradicated.
There were exceptions to this. Two came to mind in that moment.
One was where the enemy used something inconspicuous to lure attention away from their assault. This could be something simple like a thrown stone, or something heartless like a helpless child.
It could even be an animal native to the area.
Like a frog. With a splash – no, the movement of water was too small to be called a splash – the amphibian climbed up on one of the broken slabs of concrete that was ripped from one of the surrounding towers earlier in the battle.
Then it sat there, croaking.
He stared at it. The four others kept looking for sensei.
Pitiful.
After coming this far, was this the best Jiraiya could do? This half-baked distraction, if one could call it so much?
Very well. He raised his hand. He would acknowledge the attempt. Only because it came from sensei.
'Shinra –'
Something whirred through the air; he bent back slightly, letting the Fūma Shuriken pass inches away from his torso.
At that same moment, the frog leaped. It easily reached a height of forty feet and remained floating in mid-air, its mouth aimed downwards and opening.
Ah. So the animal was the attack, not the distraction.
A decent exception to the rule. But not good enough.
When one was an omnipotent god, no distraction or attack was ever good enough.
Even if the two were combined.
The Asura Path, with a smile that would convince the unknowledgeable that he was enjoying every second of life, aimed its hand up towards the spinning frog, whose mouth was stretched open past thirty inches and still going.
Its wrist disjointed and opened, and a flurry of cylindrical missiles popped out. The missiles launched with a flash of fire and a screaming whistle.
At fifty inches, the frog's mouth stopped stretching. Out of the ominous dark hole in the sky flew something white and blue. It spun with an impressively loud buzz, like a mechanical saw. Four wind blades, spinning around a centre of whirling blue chakra.
It was a version of his sensei's Rasengan, one he had never seen before. And one he would never forget.
The wielder, wearing painfully clashing orange, backed his weapon like Jiraiya would, and shouted at the top of his lungs, "Fūton: Rasenshuriken!"
The 'shuriken' collided with the missiles. For a moment, there was silence.
Then the world exploded in a shower of white and blue chakra streaked with flames. The water's surface hissed as the firestorm superheated it, creating numerous clouds of steam.
The explosion's energy spread the lethal chakra, expanding it far beyond its normal limits. The nearby water roared as it was mercilessly sucked into the white vortex. The large copper pipes and chunks of concrete unfortunate enough to be within range were obliterated, ground to dust in a near instant.
The god jumped out of the way of the rapidly spreading sphere. Two of his Paths did not make it.
No. The steel-cable tongues that held their ankles in place did not allow them to make it – the Asura, who had fired the missiles, and the Human Path who was nearby.
No matter. The Naraka Path – a giant brute with a mean scowl permanently etched into his face – and the Preta Path – who just looked plain angry – were his most important survivors.
The Preta leaped into action, sucking the attack into the luminous sphere he held in front of his body.
The Naraka waited for it to finish. From what he could see, it was too late for the Asura and Human – thousands upon thousands, climbing to the millions – the number of blades that struck his two Paths was uncountable, even with the Rinnegan. Attacked on a cellular level, he knew that their chakra systems suffered grave, perhaps irreparable damage.
Yes. For the first time since discovering his divinity, the god doubted. He did not know if the Naraka could heal them.
There was one benefit, however. The wielder, who certainly was not Jiraiya, seemed to have destroyed himself with his own attack.
He aimed his palm towards the frog.
The frog simultaneously croaked, and a veritable barrage of orange exploded from its mouth. Hundreds of copies of the same person, most of them holding Rasengans, though they looked tiny compared to sensei's. Some were holding bigger ones that were closer to their superior, but not quite there.
Nonetheless, this was… an annoyance.
They freefell in waves, screaming nonsensical battle cries. The Preta, still occupied with the remains of the Rasenshuriken – the technique made overly-powerful by his own Asura's attack – was quickly destroyed, its face, chest, back and limbs wrung off and ground to a pulp by an onslaught of whirlwind chakra.
This time, the god did not doubt. There was no way that one could be healed.
The Naraka dodged, whirled and kicked, wielding two rods of dark metal to stab the clones before they got in arm's reach.
It was doing well. He looked up calmly to face his own barrage. He raised his hand.
'Shinra Tensei.'
It was mere thought barely whispered, but more than seven dozen Narutos were gone in a poof of smoke, decimated by the unseen force. The eyes of the clones that saw this widened. Shock registered on their faces for all of a second. Then they shook their heads and their eyes hardened once again.
A new wave of clones surged from the frog's gaping mouth, aiming Rasengans right at his skull. Hundreds upon hundreds.
The god… was impressed. That first jutsu, the Rasenshuriken, must take at least one third of the Jinchūriki's chakra. Without the Kyūbi's chakra, an onslaught like this, combined with just as many Rasengans, must be devastating on his reserves.
This was not meant to defeat him at all. It was an attack: that was obvious. But it was also a distraction.
Five seconds passed. He stabbed two clones and, before they could disappear, swung them into five more before firing another Shinra Tensei.
They just kept coming. He was sure now. This was a classic 'hit and run' rescue, with an extraordinary amount of effort on the 'hitting' part. The original was not here. He was looking for Jiraiya, who had disappeared thirty minutes before the frog appeared.
If he did not know his sensei, then considering the length of time he remained hidden, he would have assumed that he had fled the battle.
But he knew his sensei.
He glanced at the frog. A wall of orange blocked his vision. The time he would need to build up a 'Shinra Tensei' that could eliminate the orange buffer and blast that frog out of his village was time he did not have.
He could not get to it. And it was even worse for the Naraka Path.
He gritted his teeth and jumped back. And kept jumping back. The first few clones who were aiming for him were startled and smashed into the water, the Rasengans they wielded bringing up huge waves and almost fatally throwing the Naraka Path off its balance.
The clones behind the first unfortunate few quickly got their bearings and hit the water running, chasing mercilessly after him.
Another 'Shinra Tensei' wiped out three quarters of the army. In less time than it took his jutsu to recharge, that three quarters was refilled twice over.
He did not sense any malicious chakra, only dangerous; the Kyūbi was not in use here. He could keep destroying the clones, but it was… pointless.
Where was the original?
He looked back towards the sprawl of twisted pipes and broken concrete, the new distance he had gained expanding his view. If he found the Kyūbi before it found sensei…
He did. The boy was kneeling on one of the concrete slabs that was fortunate enough to escape the destruction of the Rasenshuriken.
He seemed exhausted. The god looked. His chakra was very low, almost gone.
Perfect.
In a few leaps, he was on top of the boy. He swung a few weak punches. Pathetic.
Easily, he caught him by the throat and lifted him.
The clones stopped in their tracks.
"Begone," was the command from the God of Amegakure. "Or he's dead."
The clones gritted their teeth, anger and frustration oozing from their bodies. They slowly lowered their Rasengans and disappeared one by one, the poofs of their dissipation causing ripples over the lake surface.
Soon all were gone, and the only proof of their existence was the bed of white smoke hovering like thick mist over a third of the lake.
The blue frog, its purpose negated, tilted back and fell into the water with a soft plop.
One thousand. He had summoned and attacked with one thousand clones.
That was truly impressive.
He released his grip from the Jinchūriki's neck; the boy dropped to his knees, where he coughed weakly. His face was pale and drenched in sweat. Even his hair was damp. He was panting, despite not having fought.
"Who…" the boy wheezed, a single blue eye with a vertical slit for a pupil glaring up at him. "Who are you?"
The Jinchūriki deserved that much before its death. "I am Pain." The boy's eyes widened. "I am God."
He laughed. It faltered when he saw that Pain was completely serious.
"You…how can you…?"
Pain almost sighed. Instead, he blinked slowly, looking down at him with utmost severity. Behind him, the Naraka path picked up the Asura and Human. He stepped into something unseen and disappeared, sinking into the concrete.
Naruto barely paid it any attention. He was fixated on the eyes of the Pain in front of him. The way those eyes looked at him…
It was the look one would give a dying insect. A pitying look of annoyance, that though the chore was bothersome, one would still do what had to be done.
Put the insect out of its misery.
Pain was going to kill him. It was a simple fact and nothing more. There was no malice, no hatred, no triumph, nothing that let Naruto feel that he was anything human. He was a bug writhing lowly on the ground, one that made this god heave a great sigh and rise from his throne, deigning to kill him himself.
A bothersome chore, but one that had to be done.
Naruto shuddered, feeling ill all over. Those eyes… were worse than Danzō's, than the village's had ever been.
After he had used up every last ounce of his chakra and pushed himself so far beyond his limits that his very veins felt dry, to be looked at like that…
It made him so angry that he could spit. The Kyūbi's chakra roiled in his stomach, but Naruto shoved it back. He did not need that coming out of all things. Even though the images of Pain getting ripped to shreds by blood crimson chakra claws were not altogether displeasing.
Pain opened his mouth to speak, and the rest of Naruto's world grew silent. He would remember every last word this man said. And then, to restore his status and pride as a human, he would affirm as much to Pain by punching him in the face with the best Sakura-level punch he could muster.
And if by some miracle he actually got that far, he would punch him again. And then pass out.
"This world…" Pain began, speaking with the kind of lament that made Naruto almost think of Jiraiya. Almost. "…is a child. A child steeped in hate." He held up his hand to stop Naruto's question and looked ahead, at something only he could see.
"One man kills another. His brother avenges him. The man's friends avenge their comrade. And on it goes. A cycle of hatred, one that the world is still, for the most part, ignorant of." He looked down at Naruto. "Does this sound familiar to you?"
"Yeah." His breathing had steadied, but his limbs had a limpness about them that Pain could see clearly. The boy could not move, even if he had a kunai held to his throat. "Ero-sennin…told me about it. He said he wanted to do something about it."
"'Want to' and actually doing are two separate things. That is the difference between sensei and I. He sits and pampers the world, while I do what is necessary to make it grow up."
Sensei…
"What…do you mean?"
The Jinchūriki was fighting to stay conscious. His eyelids were trembling just to stay open. "The Bijuu are beasts with tremendous power. They were sealed inside human containers for that very reason. You are a valuable weapon to your village, Uzumaki Naruto, as are all the Jinchūriki."
Naruto gritted his teeth, but he remained silent. He wanted to hear this man's motives.
"The world respects power. They will listen to one who is powerful. If I possessed all the Tailed Beasts, the power behind each and every one of the Hidden Villages, they would have no choice but to listen to me."
"You want to rule the world," said Naruto flatly.
"I do not," Pain shook his head. "What I want is peace." Naruto opened his mouth. Then shut it again. There were no words to describe how lost he was right now. "I will create a jutsu using the Bijuu, one that can obliterate a nation in mere seconds. Hundreds of thousands, millions upon millions will die. I will give this weapon to each of the villages. This will instil great paranoia. After all, who will use the weapon first? And which village will be the first victim? Suspicion and fear will rise. A Kage will break. The weapon will be used. And the world will know pain."
He did not become animated, or use gestures. It was nothing obvious like that. But as Pain talked, his voice rose to life, sounding for the first time as though a beating heart backed his words.
This, Naruto realised in horror. This is really what he wants to do. This is his true dream.
"A war will be fought the likes of which the world has never seen, and will never see again. The entire world will be brought to the brink of death. At the end of it, the few who remain will be terrified. Surrounded by death, they will know and become trapped within infinite pain. Just like I have."
The Path paused. Naruto swallowed.
"Their understanding, their very beings will transcend from man to god. All conflicts will cease. Wrapped within the guiding hands of pain, the world will grow up, and finally know peace."
"And you…" Naruto's voice was too dry. He swallowed again. "It's your…goal to do this? Akatsuki, murdering the Jinchūriki, it's all for this?"
"As god, I must cleanse this world consumed in meaningless strife and guide it to peace. It is my duty."
"Y-your duty?" Naruto was hissing, and a maddening chakra churned in his stomach. He forced himself to keep calm. "You think murdering the Jinchūriki, and all those people, is your duty?!"
"Yes." Naruto froze. How can he talk like that? Like what he's doing is perfectly logical. Reasonable? Right and sound? As if…he really is a god?
"For I am a God of Peace."
All delusions of somehow getting out of this with his life shattered. This man, who was going to kill him, had to die. Here and now. At this point, a mutual death was the best he could hope for.
Sasuke…
This was his best chance; if he let him go, he'd never get another. If he stopped here, Pain would never be defeated.
He reached into his jacket.
The motion was by no means slow. It was a slight-of-hand manoeuvre, one that could not be seen by most.
Pain was not 'most'. He knocked his hand away with a metal rod and stabbed through his arm into the concrete below. Naruto gritted his teeth; he was trapped.
He gasped. A sharp blackness – shattered like broken glass – hot and sticky like molten pitch – seeped mercilessly into his chakra system, batting aside any remnants of his own chakra like a lion would to an irritating cub.
Needless to say, the blackness' invasion was overpowering.
At that moment, the Naraka path returned, without the two other Paths. Pain did not even look at it, but his eyes flickered slightly with something close to anger.
The damage had been irreversible. The Asura and Human could not be revived. Three of his six Paths had been rendered utterly useless. It was a feat that even Jiraiya could not accomplish – yet this boy…
"Now then, Kyūbi," his voice was the promising herald of Naruto's death. Pain reached down; Naruto tried to pull away but the rod in his arm would not budge. The viscous chakra flowing into it pulsed, the dissonance making him retch. "You're mine –"
"Chōōdama Rasengan!" Pain's eyes widened in the first true emotion Naruto had ever seen on his face – surprise. He turned to face a massive Rasengan mere inches from grinding his face to powder.
Not for a moment – a mere second – had he forgotten about Jiraiya. All of his senses were expanded to the fullest, searching for the slightest movement that would indicate his presence.
And yet, he still had not sensed such a ridiculously enormous jutsu coming.
He had underestimated his sensei. Doing the same with that boy in the beginning of this… annoyance… had taken two of his Paths.
The result would not repeat itself.
"Shinra Tensei." Unyielding gravity surged forth. The Rasengan was slowed, but still pushed forward. Pain narrowed his eyes, putting out more chakra. The massive Rasengan stopped and shook, its wielder determined not to give in.
However, with a final almighty push, it was shoved high into the air, where it exploded like a miniature sun, distorting the lake's surface with powerful shockwaves and covering everything in a searing blue light that temporarily blinded him and his only remaining Path.
Yet, despite the lake's jarring waters splashing forcefully and loudly around him, Pain heard it before he could see.
The mechanical whirring of four spinning chakra blades.
It was huge. The Rasengan at its core was just as big as its ill-fated predecessor's. And Pain could see some of the same chakra swirling in its depths.
The strength he had used to send Jiraiya's Rasengan flying made him incapable of using his jutsu for at least thrice the normal time.
Fifteen seconds. That was plenty of time to dodge the Rasenshuriken and counter… attack…
Time slowed down for Pain as he looked behind him. Blue sparks still flashed in his eyes, but even half-blind he could not mistake the almost luminous blond hair and a smirk just as dazzling. Naruto, still too weak to move, sat behind him wearing a savage grin.
They were both in the jutsu's warpath.
No. This was a trick. Only the Jinchūriki can wield the Rasenshuriken. That means one of them must be a clone. But which one?
Obviously the one sitting behind him. There was no way that the Kyūbi would take a risk as big as this.
But, what if that was what he wanted? He had just told the Jinchūriki his plan; what if he decided to kill himself in a misguided attempt to stop him?
No, no. He was not wrong. The clone was the one behind him. All he had to do was dodge and let it be destroyed.
And what if it was not? What if… he was the real Jinchūriki? If he killed him, the Kyūbi would die with him. He would fail, and the world would never know peace.
A god does not fail.
The jutsu was right on top of him. Pain gritted his teeth and dodged, leaping back a good twenty meters.
The Naraka Path rushed forward, broke the chakra receiver binding Naruto to the ground and, with one half of his body already consumed by the tempestuous jutsu, grabbed the Leaf Shinobi's arm and threw him as hard as he could.
The Naraka Path was swallowed, the Rasenshuriken expanding into a raging white sphere of lethal chakra.
The thrown Naruto collided right into the single remaining Path, who immediately stuck a smaller rod into his shoulder, effectively paralysing him. He held him up on his feet with an arm locked around his neck, not choking but not letting him breathe easy.
Naruto winced. His skin was cold and kind of plastic. Synthetic. Like if you pulled it too much, it would stretch unnaturally before it ripped. And the sour-sweet smell coming off his arm made his stomach churn.
After securing his Naruto, the Deva Path stared unblinking at the Rasenshuriken's wielder, the last grains of light from the Chōōdama dissolving from his vision.
The container jumped back. Looked over at him. Grinned. And poofed out of existence.
"You are insane, Uzumaki Naruto."
The boy laughed. "I'm surprised that worked actually. I thought you woulda figured it out since all my clones did as you said."
Pain thought back. He made a thoughtful rumble in his throat. "I see. They protect the original."
"Bingo."
"I will remember that." Then Pain's arm swiftly tightened, pressing against his jugular in a precise sleeper hold. As the boy slipped into unconsciousness, one of his comments rang suspect in Pain's mind.
It…worked?
The Naruto he was holding slumped: and popped in a cloud of smoke like its brother before it. Before Pain could even register its disappearance, the Fūma Shuriken lodged in a lone rock beside him, the one he had so easily dodged before the battle had even begun, turned into an orange-clad leaf shinobi wielding a scroll.
A plain white scroll, with a simple, glowing red kanji on it.
Fire.
Pain's head was covered with it. Black flames hotter than the deepest hell burned away his skin, his hair, his very eyes were melting, he could feel the water inside them boiling, turning to steam, ready to pop…
"Shinra Tensei!" he screamed. The flames were blown away.
Naruto took a step back.
Pain now looked horrific, like something out of a nightmare. His lips, nose and hair had all been burned away, the piercings in his face long sinking to the lake's bottom. His eyelids were gone, leaving the Rinnegan bulging out of their sockets. His ears were half burned off, the large metal rods inside of them hanging limply. His teeth were … exposed all the way back to his cheeks. This was no longer the head of a man. It was a skull over which charred skin was stretched.
But that was not why Naruto stepped back.
When his head had been on fire, when his own eyeballs had been cooking in their sockets, Pain had not screamed. Not once. He had flailed and made brushing gestures at the flames, though careful not to actually touch them.
But he had been silent. As though Pain could not feel pain. For some reason that, above all else, made Naruto seethe with absolute disgust.
This thing had to die. Now was the perfect time.
Before he could make a move, however, Pain slowly brought trembling hands up to his face. In silent shock, he felt his bones, his teeth, his eyes. Naruto shuddered in repulsion.
He bent over and looked at his reflection in the lake.
He screamed with all the abject horror he should have released when his head was burning.
"Yahiko!" he cried in absolute torment; a high-pitched wail of utter despair. A cry of grief, of remorse, that had no place coming from a god. "What have I let happen?! What have I done?! Yahiko! YAHIKO!"
Suddenly he froze, and turned to look at Naruto with an expression of pure hell. Coming from the face to match, Naruto could almost feel the fires of the Pit. All composure, all superiority, all divinity was gone. With bulging eyes flashing blood-red fury and bared teeth gnashed in rage, Pain screamed.
"UZUMAKI NARUTO!"
Naruto flinched. He was paralysed with the palpable molten wrath that was mercilessly crushed into his name.
Pain launched, all jutsu and proper shinobi technique forgotten; he was acting solely on primal instinct, fingers stretched and tensed to claw out Naruto's throat.
How far from divinity he had fallen.
He tossed aside duty, callously threw away his own dream and the dream of Akatsuki. The dream of Yahiko. All that mattered was ending the boy in front of him. As long as he did that... everything else could rot.
So lost was he in his own bloodlust that he never saw Jiraiya's punch coming – a punch powered with every last drop of the Sannin's Sage Mode chakra. Even when knuckles hard and unforgiving as steel smashed into his (exposed) teeth, jarring a few loose and severely bruising pink gums, Pain did not recognise the source of the blow that felled him.
He did not have time, having been knocked unconscious almost as soon as the hit landed.
The broken god tumbled and bounced along the water's surface before coming to rest, not in the cold, unforgiving depths of the lake, but in a bed of fluttering paper.
A beautiful woman with blue hair, amber eyes that were much softer than the ones Jiraiya had encountered, and large paper wings hovered before them. Her lower half was gone; paper peeled off from the edges where her legs should have been and flew towards Pain, gently encasing him in a paper cocoon.
She stared at them all the while, in case they made a move. Naruto gritted his teeth and stepped forward. Jiraiya held him back with his remaining arm and a look that said, 'you want to fight her, fight me first.'
Naruto stayed put.
She finished wrapping up Pain and shot the smallest glance to her former sensei (though Naruto did not know this, and therefore wondered at the action). Before he could make anything of it, she lowered her gaze only slightly, but enough to assure them that she had reached the same conclusion they had.
"This battle is over."
With that, she dissolved and folded into dozens upon dozens of tiny, origami butterflies. Master and student watched them flutter off, cradling the cocoon on their white wings, until they were far too out of sight to be seen.
Jiraiya sighed. "No use following her. That's probably not even the right direction."
"Huh?"
Jiraiya shook his head. Naruto would forget everything he tried to explain now anyway.
"Well, all of that confirmed everything I was thinking anyway. Even without that nice little breakdown at the end."
"What's that mean?"
Jiraiya clapped Naruto on the shoulder, more to stop his swaying than anything. Fukasaku, who hopped from the shoulder he had vigilantly sentinelled for the past half hour, silently slithered out his tongue and wrapped it around the boy's torso to keep him from sinking any further into the lake.
"It means that Nagato's behind everything after all. And unfortunately, it seems that Yahiko really is dead. But we can't find Nagato now anyway, so we're going back home."
"Oh. Okay. That's nice, Ero-sennin."
"Yes it is. And you're about to pass out from chakra exhaustion."
"Mmhmm."
Jiraiya sighed again and grabbed Naruto around the waist, hoisting him over his now unoccupied shoulder. Looked like he had all the dirty work of cleaning up Pain's remaining two – no, one body.
There was no telling where the other two went, and that one that absorbed chakra met a brutal end.
"Naruto, before you pass out."
"Hmm?"
Jiraiya's voice lowered to a deathly serious bass. "Did I punch him hard enough for you?"
Naruto took a moment to absorb the question. When he did, Jiraiya could feel him smiling.
"Yeah. You did."
"Good."
"'suke. How's he?" Naruto slurred.
"He's fine. I made sure he stayed inside the toad. But if he hadn't smelled Itachi on me, I never would've thought to use that old scroll. That thing's been in my back pocket for ages now…"
Faint snores answered him. He smiled and adjusted Naruto on his shoulder. Dumb kid probably fell asleep as soon as he heard that Sasuke was okay.
He glanced at the orange tourniquet tied around his left stump of an arm.
"I'm going to give you hell for it later. But if you hadn't come here, I probably would have died. So, thank you, Naruto."
Naruto blissfully slept, not hearing a single word.
A/N: Just one thing. If Naruto seems overpowered in this, that's because he is.
That said, this fight is definitely plainer than the last one. Seeing as it wasn't really a fight, I hope it wasn't too boring. But don't worry. The next time Pain shows up...
Well, that'll be next time.
See you guys later!
Edit (21/03/15): To those who recognise the 'Not Sick' line in here, kudos.