Chapter 17
"It's authorised?" Sai blinked twice, once more than he needed to. He was shocked, and somewhere along the way Tsunade had learned how to read him. So she repeated herself and slid a stack of documents across the table. Sai bowed and picked up the first sheet.
"All the paperwork was done and brought to the Barrier Team. Stamps and signatures all in place."
"But that's..." Sai's shoulders lowered and he gently replaced the sheet to the top of the stack. He frowned. It took Hokage and advisor a few moments before they registered that fact, but there it was – a real frown.
"I believe I am confused, Hokage-sama. And, because I am confused, I think I am also angry." He looked at them. "Something is very wrong. Tori would not act like this if something was not wrong."
The two adults shared a glance. "Sai, remember that Tori was part of Root. When Danzō was alive, as a secondary power he would have gotten this information to prevent any misunderstandings. With that link gone, I think Tori might have made a mistake here."
It made sense. Perfect sense. But Sai could not accept it.
"The barrier does not disguise scents well, so the lightning strike was deliberate sabotage to the noses of the Inuzuka clan. If that's true then the barrier user has an accomplice that could have forged the documents. She also said that the seals used to create the barrier were not of Konoha."
"How would she know that?" Sai hesitated for half a second before telling them everything, and gazed at their reaction. Pale skin usually meant someone had fallen ill. But, since he saw no fungus, mould, ill-prepared fish or any other things around to make one ill, he was a bit confused as to why the complexions of the two before him briefly matched his own.
Sai moved on, making a mental note to research emotionally induced skin conditions later. "After she told me about the experiments and her blood, I stopped distrusting her. Too many things are strange. She says something is wrong, and I feel that I must stand by her side as her comrade."
Tsunade studied his face for two seconds. "Han!" An Anbu appeared before her, leaping down from nowhere.
"Go check with the Barrier Team concerning this." She gave him the documents.
"Hai!" He was gone.
"Where's Tori?"
"After she found the barrier's location, she went there to destroy it." Sai looked up, past Tsunade's angered eyes, to a pinpoint star approaching in the distance.
"She can't just decide that on her own! What if she really is mistaken? Why didn't you bring her here?"
"I tried." Sai squinted. The star was getting close. "She was adamant. And she outran me." Was that star green? "The underground roots are quicker than the sky. I thought it was better to come to you than waste time arguing – duck."
And Sai dropped to the floor. The two stared at him – their sixth sense activated simultaneously – and the office was torn apart by a hurricane.
More chakra.
Two hands, glowing bright enough to ignite, slammed into burnt earth. With his back arched, Naruto coiled his body and aimed his legs. Two Uchiha on his right preparing fire jutsu. Two on his left threading weapons along invisible wire. One in front of him drawing a sword edged in blue flames. One behind him, in perfect position.
The Uchiha shifted into their final stages of preparation. Naruto smirked and launched off the ground, cracking it. The chin of the fool behind him was blown clean off. Naruto's kick sent his body skyward with the roar of thunder, and the pressure wave spread from the point of contact was felt by every Uchiha there.
Their Sharingan spun. The fool had seen it coming and sacrificed himself for this moment. The moment where Naruto would be suspended in mid-air, unable to dodge. Blue flames swung nimbly towards his neck, a swift and efficient execution.
I need more you damn fox!
The chakra skin ignited, golden water congealed into molten lava and flames danced along Naruto's form. The air grew thick and the Uchiha slowed; the sword's approach turned heavy and lethargic. Oppositely, Naruto felt light enough to float.
His army was supposed to be a thousand strong. But the golden chakra restrained him, refusing to be shared among a thousand. Nor a hundred. Not even half of that. Forty seven. That was the count of his new army and a display of weakness the Uchiha no doubt had already catalogued. And there was more fortune for the zombie clan. The Kyūbi's chakra could barely stretch itself among even that pitiful number, thus the rations were not even. Some clones had more Bijuu chakra than others, and the ones born unlucky were miserably slaughtered. Six had already been gutted. But despite their handicap, they got to play with a technique that Naruto was ready to try for himself.
Sparks flew from the collision of fire and chakra; Naruto grabbed the coming sword barehanded and pulled its wielder forward. Golden chakra flesh grew from his back, a clawed hand clenched into a fist. With a surge of will it shot out and buried solid knuckles into the stunned Uchiha's face.
Abominably hot fire bloomed on his right, uncaring for the frantic rustling of old parchment that tried to reconstruct their comrade's obliterated visage. Naruto's will flared: another arm shot out of his stomach and pushed off the earth, launching him skywards, out of range of the – were those dragon heads? – and into the path of a dozen Fūma Shuriken.
A Rasenshuriken blew past underneath him, picking up flames from the burning land and taking out the four Uchiha in a wild whirl of fire and wind. Still in mid-air, Naruto glimpsed the clones who had created it. Their eyes met for a fraction of time; then his copies leaped into the path of three more Uchiha, engaging them in fierce taijutsu before they could aid their fallen comrades.
But none of the four Uchiha who sailed across the land trapped between burning wind blades were controlling the floating Fūma. Naruto grit his teeth, found ground with the chakra arm again and shoved off it, pushing himself higher. The Rasenshuriken expanded half a kilometre away, decimating another half-acre of Uchiha land.
Naruto spun, using leverage from his chakra arm to face the onslaught of metal stars. Four sword-edged blades to each Fūma. And sheathing each blade was a superfine layer of wind chakra.
Uchiha with wind techniques. That's… kind of bad.
Naruto swung his human arm and the Kyūbi's chakra extended to knock the shuriken out of the sky. Twelve wires tugged. The weapons dislocated, sliding apart from their centres with a dozen clanks of steel. Stunned, Naruto faced four dozen free-floating blades.
At the command of wire-thin flashes of light the blades fell, all aiming to take the Jinchūriki's head. And Naruto, with no ground beneath him, could not dodge.
So he grew tails. They loomed from behind him, six chakra arms, each holding a faintly vibrating Rasengan. Naruto had never made ones like these before; the chakra inside the perfect spheres raged, whirling violently in all directions and ramming the round walls that confined it. He thrust his jutsu at the blades to destroy them beyond all use; until the chakra-arms holding them became translucent and buckled like soggy ramen. The spheres swerved and six wild rotations collided.
Naruto's eyes turned white. From where he was hidden, the shuriken user's eyes gave a bemused half-spin. The shockwaves from the Rasengans' clash rang out and jammed the swords' flight path, sending them tumbling out of the sky.
"Ha- haha… That's what I meant to –!" The shuriken blades halted mid-fall and flew for him again, wind chakra singing. The blond, losing the buoyancy from his initial launch, stared skyward as he fell. The hail of steel chased him, aiming to skewer him before he hit the ground. Naruto shut his eyes and brought out a wind Rasengan he had been nurturing. It was time to scratch that frigid itch of hatred that had bothered him since his first chakra arm.
"There!" He aimed for the trees. The Kyūbi's chakra stretched, an elastic shot that split the air. The Uchiha leaped, but the sphere caught his ankle and dug out hollow flesh. The man flopped to the ground and rolled; his blades wavered before tumbling clumsily, hitting the ground around Naruto as dead metal.
Naruto rose to his knees, panting. His golden chakra-suit dimmed, becoming watery exo-skin once more. Gritting his teeth, Naruto grew one last chakra arm, one final wind Rasengan. His opponent's foot, hanging on by a string of ashen flesh, was merely fluttering paper. It was not regenerating, at least not quickly. One more attack would finish him. The arm shot forth –
And a sword alight with chakra chopped it off.
Behind you: cool hate raised hackles on the Kyūbi's chakra. Naruto swung blind and his knuckles connected: the enemy behind him tumbled back, rolling several times before coming to his feet. His shadow clone, inches away from running a blade through Naruto's chest, popped into a bolt of chakra.
"Heh." Grey head of hair, squinting red lines for eyes, the Uchiha rubbed his peeling jaw. "I've fought a good number of your clones. My eyes have gotten used to your speed."
Naruto remembered him from his clones. The chakra on his blade, more lethal than blue flames, could slice through his chakra arms with ridiculous ease. Squinting Sharingan gleamed; Naruto gulped gritty saliva and planted his feet in the hot ashes.
"It's juvenile, your technique. Shameful to lose to it, Tekka." Naruto could hear the man dragging himself behind him, cursing his maimed existence. "Rest. You might heal faster."
He pointed his blade at Naruto, who did not miss the opportunity to catch his breath. "Juvenile. A petty fraction of its full potential."
He charged. Naruto froze. There was a rhythm to pre-battle conversation. Even when facing strong opponents and unseen speeds, Naruto usually got a peculiar sensing of when words were done.
But the random manner of speech threw him and Naruto's body remained settled, waiting for the new Uchiha to continue. By the time his legs shifted into a fighter's stance, the blade was at his neck. Naruto threw his torso back: the edge grazed his chin, shaving off a layer of Kyūbi chakra that was quickly replaced.
"My blade cuts this level of chakra easily."
Naruto kicked, aiming for a shattered kneecap. The Uchiha twisted sideways, a flawless dodge that put his leg out of Naruto's reach. From a sheath hidden behind his back he drew another blade, a short sword held in a reverse grip.
Naruto did not see it until it slashed into the chakra protecting his stomach and sliced his flimsy shirt.
"My name is Yashiro. I was killed, shamefully, by a sword half as skilled as mine."
Naruto was barely dodging. Every slash of the short sword, every arc of the longer blade took a bite out of his chakra skin. And the chakra stopped replacing itself.
"Dammit!" Naruto ran, trying to create some distance and give the cuts in his chakra skin more time to heal.
Yashiro flew after him, Sharingan chakra boosting his speed. As had happened so many times during this cursed morning, Naruto was taken back to his battle with Sasuke at the Valley of the End, when Sasuke had suddenly been able to keep up with his Fox Cloak form.
He knew it was coming and dived forward, desperate for an extra inch. It was not enough. The short sword carved fire into his back and Naruto rolled, feeling his first wound of the battle. Blood. Warm and thick. It soaked his back and plastered his clothes. The gash bled as though a vein had been cut.
"The chakra on my blades prevents blood from clotting. Think of it like…" He came again, slashing freely. Frustrated, Naruto pelted left, away from the fire that was quickly spreading.
"…a poison."
Whatever Naruto thought about his speech (he had a few choice words), the man's technique was flawless. Yashiro closed in again, ready to carve an X in Naruto's back. Naruto skidded to a stop, whipped round and lunged with a Rasengan, ready to take out a limb or at least knock a sword away.
The short sword sliced up and cut the Rasengan in two. Its shape lost, the turbulent chakra burst into a spiralling cloud of power that shoved Naruto off balance. His body moved with the force of the backlash; twisting around, he threw his left fist out in a powerful jab.
The other blade was there, covering flawlessly for its brother that was still held skyward. In an instant Naruto saw it all: the chakra-shadowed gleam of sharp steel, his fist still too far from the Uchiha's face, the less-than-an-inch gap of air between the blade's edge and his wrist.
'Punch a sword, lose a hand.'
Naruto threw himself left, in the direction of the incapacitated hand. The Sharingan spun. The short sword flipped into an ice pick grip and plunged, stabbing Naruto's shoulder to the bone.
'Your taijutsu can't match a kenjutsu user. Fight blade for blade against them.'
Naruto fell to the ground, gripping his shoulder, feeling blood run over his fingers. Warm red was still flowing down his back, soaking into his pants. The congealing stickiness of it sickened Naruto; until blood loss turned his vision upside down. The sky burned and the blond retched.
'But Ero-sennin, what if someone like Baa-chan punched a sword?'
Stand up.
'Then the sword will break, right?'
The Kyūbi's chakra moved, covering his back again. It pulsed once to cleanse the wound of foreign chakra; torn flesh hissed as it sealed and the blood flow stopped. Ground and sky returned to their rightful places and Naruto scrambled, knowing the growing patch of hate on his chakra-skin.
"Why do you hate Konoha?" Yashiro had rubbed off on him. The question came from nowhere and the man paused for a fraction of a breath, allowing Naruto to scuttle away as much as the surrounding fire would let him.
"Why… do you have so much hatred?" Naruto chanced a glance around while his opponent straightened. He had not noticed, but the fire had grown. The wind-spread flames from the two explosions had met, creating a lake that devoured three quarters of Uchiha land. The undead's attacks, dodged and missed, only grew that lake. The air shimmered, the sky was smoke and ash.
Yashiro opened his mouth. "You really are just like Itachi, aren't you?"
Naruto's gaze flickered to a pair of open, spinning Sharingan. Fire filled them, red and orange seared. Naruto tried to crawl away, and found himself airborne.
The Uchiha had kicked him below the ribs, cracking a few, displacing others. All of Naruto's air vomited from his lungs and spilled onto cooked ground as he flew, away from the Uchiha, and into the lake of flames.
It burned. It did not injure – the Kyūbi's overtaxed chakra saw to that – but he still inhaled its heat and coughed up boiling blood. Naruto rolled, wheezing – lungs burning – everything burning – devouring flames everywhere – trying to find the way out.
A chakra-sheathed blade stabbed his arm, pinning him there. Yashiro straddled him, flames eating his ash-paper skin as swiftly as it was replaced.
"When Itachi slayed us, we cursed ourselves as much as we did him. And we swore, if ever a way was possible, that we would accomplish the task our forefather started. Uchiha sweat, Uchiha blood was used to build Konoha. Yet what of our clan? Whose faces are carved in that stone? Whose will flaunts itself in the hearts and minds of every shinobi?"
Naruto twisted his body, trying to get out from under the man, but Yashiro stepped on his ankle with chakra-focused strength. "I don't know!" the blond choked. Agony filled his chest, displaced ribs grated together. His arm poured blood that could not clot. His twisted ankle was filled with sensations of tendons coiling as they cooked. And worked beyond its limit, the Kyūbi's chakra dragged itself over his body, clumsily trying to heal and protect.
"Hashirama Senju. The First Hokage. His will beat in Itachi's breast, and he slayed his kin without hesitation or remorse. And now you kill us, again and again, for the same reasons as him!"
The Uchiha raised his sword to end it, but froze. His head twitched and his Sharingan half-blinked. He glanced away, in the direction of an invisible signal, and smirked. Naruto's vision swam, his mind overstimulated with heat and hazed from blood loss. His eyes closed and he let himself float, away from the fire and pain and selfishness of the monster inside him.
Yashiro held out his sword and waited. And something came. The sing of wind chakra, mingled with the dull roar of billowing fire. Dragged back to his body, Naruto opened his eyes.
The Fūma was monstrous, blades augmented with enough wind to double their length. But that was a mute detail. The shuriken had cut a clean path, sucking flames into its blades and leaving behind a scorched line of bare earth that would not burn again.
With a clang and showering sparks, Yashiro caught the Fūma on his sword tip and spun it in a wide circle around them. The flames were inhaled into the ever-growing wheel of concentrated heat. Relieved of protecting Naruto's body from burning, the Kyūbi's chakra rushed to heal his wounds. Yashiro, his body free of lingering fire, spun the Fūma above his head. Naruto choked under the non-stop beats of blistering air.
"Itachi, born the best of Uchiha, had a Senju's heart. The heart of our ancestor's bitter enemy! He was a traitor down to his bones. A squatter in his mother's womb and thief of the Uchiha name and bloodline!"
"What are you talking about?!" Naruto screamed with newly mended ribs.
Yashiro stared at him, eyes open, tomoe visibly spinning. "I suppose that doesn't matter. You are just like him."
He yanked his sword from Naruto's arm, leaped back and threw the Fūma.
'Punch like shishou? That's impossible for you.'
Superhot steel slashed the earth. Screaming wind flung fire in all directions, relighting the clearing, vaporizing earth and air. A great orange plume erupted and the fire sea surged.
'It's all chakra control. If you and her used the same chakra, her enhanced strength would be a hundred times yours. You'd have to use a hundred times the amount chakra to match her.'
Yashiro readied his short sword. It was sense more than sight, the experience of over a hundred battles warning him that this might not be over. His senses did not fail him. Blond and burnt orange rocketed out of the blaze, streaking fire. Naruto was airborne, his left fist cocked back and alight with every drop of golden chakra he had been wearing, screaming as though to push the earth out of place.
Yashiro threw the short sword like a kunai; its blade dense with chakra and sharp enough to slice muscle-deep with a glancing touch. Naruto roared and punched with all his power; chakra clashed, and the blade went spinning off into the ashen sky. The gold on Naruto's fist evaporated, the clash having robbed it of energy.
Yashiro smirked, already victorious, and held up his remaining sword. Naruto grinned, twisted his body and brought his right fist into view.
Genetic lack of true chakra perception in the Sharingan. Dangerous assumptions caused by overconfidence in the gap between their experience. The sheer enormity of the Kyūbi's chakra, so even a chunk of it was enough to distract his eyes from the Jinchūriki's true purpose.
The Uchiha would never find the right excuse.
Golden light painted the Jinchūriki's falling form like a sun-dipped death-bringer. The chakra on his fist, fluid fire the size of his body, was blinding.
There was nowhere for the Reanimation to go. With a snarl both indignant and resigned, he backed his blocking blade with his hand and channelled an endless stream of chakra.
Naruto thrust, the weight of his muscle, his falling body and the Kyūbi's chakra all culminating into a single, hell-of-it shout:
"SHANNARŌ!"
It was a beaver's dam trying to block a tidal wave, and the undead could not gather enough chakra to stop it. The Uchiha's chakra vaporised as though it had never been and his sword snapped shamelessly in two, leaving its master's face exposed to the light, heat and force of an exploding sun.
Naruto's punch slammed the Uchiha headfirst into the earth. An ominous quake rang out from the epicentre, warning subterranean life to go deeper. The fire lake trembled as though foreseeing its decimation. A millisecond of silence, then the earth roared. Fire-matted ground heaved in a great wave motion, throwing up several tons of virgin soil and shallow bedrock, scattering flames in a jagged radius of two hundred meters. Within this distance, an Edo Tensei's ankle was almost recovered. He made to stand, looked up, and was crushed by a ton-heavy slab of bedrock.
When Naruto lifted his fist, there was nothing underneath it but ashen pulp. Panting, he slowly stood in the crater, fifty feet below the earth's burnt surface. Some of his wounds were not healed; his shoulder and arm would bleed again if he moved too much, which was impossible with the hot, swollen tendons in his twisted ankle. His limbs trembled, steam wheezed from overworked lungs, skin flushed from overheated blood, sweat dripped into his eyes and off his nose and chin; Naruto had not felt so ready to collapse since he lost a bet to Kiba and was forced to join Lee for his early morning five hundred laps around Konoha.
He glanced at the unmoving Edo Tensei. Parchment was already fluttering around his headless neck, but he was not going to revive any time soon.
'You are just like him… he slayed his kin without hesitation or remorse… and now you kill us, again and again, for the same reasons as him!'
Naruto bit his hand. Droplets of blood bubbled from the wound and he sucked the warm metal. The Uchiha only started acting like this after Kabuto's snakes bit them. It had to be Kabuto, trying to mess with his head.
Naruto nodded to himself, ignoring any niggling dark corners that whispered 'you know better… you just don't want to accept…'
Naruto bit his hand again. "Sasuke… Sasuke…" He hobbled to the wall. He was going to save Sasuke, beat Kabuto and put an end to this jutsu. He grabbed the broken wall and pushed himself up.
The wounds in his arm opened. His ankle popped, shooting pain up his spine and into his brain. Head pounding, body aching, he collapsed like wet clay.
"Sasuke… Sasuke…" He pulled on the Kyūbi's chakra. It pulled back, snapping the connection. Too drained from the pain to yell, Naruto focused his will and violently pulled again. It resisted. Naruto snarled through gritted, blood-slicked teeth. "Pay your rent you damn fox!" He closed his eyes, descending into the damp yellow sewer that housed the beast, ready to rip the chakra through the damned cage bars if necessary.
Sensing his intent, the Kyūbi shoved him out, back into the crater he had created. Naruto lay there, stunned. Then, blood-smeared lips stretched into a smile.
"I'm not giving you a choice." He focused his own chakra to the fingertips of his uninjured hand and pressed it to the seal on his bare stomach. Another seal, the ornate head of a key appeared around the first, and Naruto twisted it slightly. He felt the Kyūbi roar as its chakra flowed.
If that chakra felt a bit thin, Naruto did not notice as his wounds healed and his muscles flooded with power. When he was able to stand, he tried the chakra-arms again. He only managed one, but with the slaughter of another twenty clones, he was able to use it well. Even if he could see right through it. He extended the arm off the original limb, found grip and pulled, clearing half the crater in seconds.
As he repeated this with the other arm, he noticed something peculiar. When he overshot the rim of the crater with one elastic tug and hung in mid-air, he realised what was strange.
He was smiling. The land was burning, Sasuke was kidnapped, his enemies were overwhelming, his chakra-arm was dissipating, but he was smiling.
He could not stop. Deep down, more than adrenaline there was excitement. Enjoyment. Who could deny the thrill of this? Him, the dead-last, the idiot, was fighting alone against the Uchiha clan. Forty of them, according to the information from his killed clones. And he was alive. He was matching them. Not winning, but not losing. He could actually do this. He could –
And Naruto was punched in the face with a flaming fist, his fall to earth turned into a brutally assisted flight.
His face dug a groove into the melted ground several meters long. When he stopped, the burning fist still buried into his cheek, the rest of his body took a few moments before crumpling to the earth with a dead sound.
"Insolent child," his aggressor spat. "We were ready to take down a village. Did you really think you would be able to stand up to us alone?"
"Arrogant bastard," Naruto returned, spitting blood as his eye swelled shut. "I'm gonna be Hokage. Do you really think I don't have a village's strength?!"
The blow was thunderous; the Uchiha's stomach caved in under the force of Naruto's anger and the Bijuu's dense chakra. The Uchiha flew up, Naruto came up, readying his real fist to take his head off. Again.
But the Uchiha, during his absence, had gotten used to his new body. While pieces of parchment flitted around the hole in his gut, he grabbed the chakra arm that punched him and swung, kicking Naruto's elbow and sending his fist off-course. Naruto stumbled back half a step. In that time the Uchiha found ground and pushed; a roaring uppercut took Naruto in the chin and snapped his head back.
White and black lightning flashed in his vision as his feet left the ground. The Uchiha punched him square in the face, twisting his already-cracked and smoking jaw. The Uzumaki flew back and skidded a few feet. He dropped to one knee, just trying to put his head back together, to ignore the pain as his jaw healed, to stop the red and yellow world from dancing so much.
The punishment for his weakness was a broken nose. Naruto reeled back, staggering into a broken retreat, but the Uchiha lunged forward, searing the tenderized meat of the Uzumaki's face with blow after blow. His chakra-skin waned, patches of golden water vaporised into nothing.
"Stupid brat," the Uchiha spat, brutalizing the blond. "Be Hokage for the people who hate and scorn you? A fitting dream for someone who is about to die protecting his tormentors."
With a kick he sent Naruto to the ground; the blond reflexively covered his pulped and broken face, but his one good eye never left the Uchiha that had offered him a place in his clan, a role in Konoha's destruction.
"There is no such thing as gratitude in the shinobi world, brat. You of all people should know that. You saved this village. And they hated you for it. Do you think that by becoming their Hokage they'll finally acknowledge you?"
Naruto had it. Mirroring the zombie before him, he sped up the Kyūbi's healing process by snapping his own jaw into place. When the hinge worked without creaking, he spoke.
"The Hokage is someone who's already acknowledged by everyone," he snarled, blood sludging from his nostrils over curled lips. "Don't talk about it if you don't know anything, idiot!" He reached into his pocket and gripped the only weapon he had. "What I really don't get is you. All of you. Uchiha!" He lunged with a roar, ducked away from another fire punch and stabbed his opponent in the chest with enough force to destroy his heart; if the Edo Tensei had a heart, and if a plastic butter knife was not sharper than Naruto's kunai.
Instead, he ended up body-slamming the man, stunning him. Naruto straddled him and, with his kunai pressed deep into the undead's chest, yelled in his face.
"I would have died to be one of you! To have a name that everyone acknowledged. That everyone loved! You think I liked having to work so hard – so damn hard just to get people to spit on me?! And then, I had to work even harder to get them to look at me. To get them to acknowledge me – I had to have my bones broken. I had to bleed. I had to face horrible monsters and worse ninja and somehow survive! If I had your name, could you imagine how different things would have been for me?!" The Uchiha said nothing, ignoring the warm drops of blood and tears falling on his face. "That's why I don't get you! Why do you hate? Why do you want to destroy the village?!" Naruto pressed in the kunai, teasing a rib. The Uchiha released a tiny groan, his eyes narrowing. "I'm the one who should want to destroy Konoha! You were loved so much – you should be protecting this place!"
"Naïve kid." And for the first time, Naruto saw a flicker of sympathy in those red eyes. "The Konoha you see is only a dream. We were never loved, only used for our eyes. And when troubled times came, they scorned the visual prowess they once adored." Bitterness twisted the Uchiha's lips. "You're just a brat who was ignored. What do you know about Konoha's true darkness?"
Naruto's stomach hollowed.
"You are the Jinchūriki of Konoha, Uzumaki Naruto. Inside the walls of this village is the only place you truly belong."
"I don't know… Konoha's darkness…?"
"Are you preparing such a technique for Itachi-san? … A pity it will all go to waste. I'm afraid those you trust are lying to you about him."
"Your eyes," the Uchiha muttered. Naruto blinked, suddenly seeing his opponent's face again. The Sharingan gaze, however, had never left Naruto. "This is your last chance, Jinchūriki. Join us."
Naruto answered with grit teeth and breaking force applied to the blunt kunai. Both kunai and rib snapped: the Uchiha smirked and disappeared in a puff of smoke, leaving a burning chunk of bedrock in his place.
Naruto braced himself, but no other sensations of hate came to him. There was only the crackle of the unending fire and the scant wisps of chakra returning from his beaten clones. One stabbed, another incinerated; he saw them struggle and die, aided only by faint trickles of gold if any at all. He looked at the large, empty patches in his own chakra-skin. He realised the implications and immediately shoved them aside. Just as his clone said; find Kabuto, save Sasuke, get out of this hell.
Naruto shut his eyes and expanded his senses, questing for the snake. Replying whispers rippled on his chakra-skin, concentric rings of hate and chakra spread out. There was no number for how often he and his clones had done this, during battle and the seconds of peace in-between. But, fearing the unknown powers of a Bijuu's controlled chakra, Kabuto hid himself and moved often. That was all he did. He never sent another massive snake to devour Naruto, or any of his clones – except when they tried to escape the barrier.
One to the north was gored on a fang as it pummelled a spot on the barrier with taijutsu. Three in the south were consumed before they could pull off a Rasenshuriken. And unseen nearby, another was devoured as it tried to dig its way out.
Keep destroying them.
The chakra they returned to him, however little, was invaluable. The rippling whispers swelled into waves that broke over his mind. There were no words but he felt it, the snake hiding in the flames – its slime and frustration. Sticky blood, warmed by the surrounding flames, shifted with Naruto's smile. He pinched his nose, snapping the slowly sealing bone into place. He moved to stand.
And heaved, coughing up bile and blood.
He knew he had never been fully healed. The golden chakra only healed him to the point of sustaining breathing and allowing movement. He knew the damage had been accumulating. He knew how much longer he could last. So he knew that his vomiting had nothing to do with his injuries.
Since their awakening in the cemetery, the Uchihas' hatred was ever-present on his chakra, endless white noise that spiked whenever they launched an attack. It was there, cold and rich and awful as always, during his search. He expected that. What made him retch was that at this point, when he was so used to the seasoned hatred of the clan, he never imagined that he would encounter something worse.
He shook.
Evil was the only word for it. A mass of wills crying out for blood, death and redemption; the anticipation of a triumph so dark, so perversely celebrated, that Naruto's heart stuttered and the Kyūbi's chakra pulsed.
It was near the barrier, at the cemetery a couple kilometres away. Aimed right for the sleeping Konoha.
Naruto wiped his mouth. He finished standing. His chakra-skin flared into a burning almost-cloak. He focused all of the Kyūbi's chakra to his feet, and with the shattering of fire-caked earth, Naruto flew.
How many seconds did it take? How many fractions of a minute? Naruto neither knew nor cared. Fractions of minutes were too long, so he got there with time to spare.
When he arrived there was no punch. No kick. No heroic declarations. There was just a yellow comet hailing from the flames: its impact quaked the earth and scattered the Uchiha like a heap of dead leaves. Those with the stronger Sharingan managed to move just enough for their limbs to escape intact. Parchment pieces hurried to reconstruct the weaker ones.
The Uchiha with the blazing fists and dream-like genjutsu smirked and nodded to the others. "Told you."
He looked at the Jinchūriki, tomoe spinning. "It's just like the legend about the First Hokage's wife. The Kyūbi's chakra lets him sense negative emotions – he doesn't need to see us to know where we are." Amidst the settling dust the glow of the Jinchūriki waned, the flames extinguished, the almost-cloak thinned to water that thinned to mist and then nothing at all. "He dodged me when I first came at him from a blind spot. I watched him since then." Trembling, the yellow figure rose halfway and fell, its leg broken. The Uchiha's smirk grew nastier. "And when he was getting cocky, I blocked my emotions and nailed him. Brat never knew what hit him."
He leaped forward, his hand thrusting into the dust to pull Naruto out by his hair. Broken bones jostled and the blond cried out. The Uchiha brought him nose to nose with a snarl.
"Did Konoha throw their Nine-Tailed dog a few bones to make him behave? Is that why you're so loyal?"
The foul death on the Edo Tensei's breath did not phase Naruto anymore, his senses having long adapted if only to stop his gag reflex from acting up. His blood-glazed lips moved faintly, forcing the Reanimation to bring his ear closer.
"Friends… protect… our home."
"So you've gorged on the bones, have you?" The Uchiha threw Naruto from him, disgusted. "You still don't know the nature of the world. You're a jinchūriki, brat. If they have to throw a few people in your cage to make you stop howling, they'll do it." He stepped forward, sharp-tipped bangs swaying. "They did the same to us. Made us anathema to the villagers and called it the Police Force. Isolated us from the village and called it self-governance. How much were we supposed to take? How much will you take?"
"Quit whining already." Blue wisps gathered in Naruto's palm, only to evaporate before they could take form. Whatever scraps remained of his chakra-skin were too busy with his leg. He gave up the jutsu and gathered his good leg under him, trembling to stand and hyperaware of his injuries.
He smirked. "C'mon, even kitty-Sasuke isn't such a baby." He rose to a crooked half-stance, eyes narrowing at the peculiar and teasing pain of his bones fusing. Shining blue glared up at the sharp-eyed Uchiha. "Didn't I tell you? I would have died to be one of you."
The Uchiha gestured, his frustration building. "You're already like us. Ostracized, ill-treated, looked at with cold eyes. If something binds you, fine. Let us loose. We'll take vengeance for you too –"
"Shut up already!" He spread his arms, half defending the wall, half trying to keep his balance. "You won't touch Konoha!"
"Inabi," Yashiro stepped forward, parchment bits still flitting around his recently remade skull. The plump aunt of the Uchiha came to stand at his side. "He won't come."
Slower than her brethren, the aunt weaved seals and pressed her hands to the earth, setting a glowing pool of fire beneath its razed surface.
Inabi's eyes narrowed, disappointed. "Looks like it."
Naruto moved. He was still fast, if a little broken. Still fast. He pushed off with his good leg, the bones in his broken one grinding. Inabi's sharp eyes flashed into his own – genjutsu that had only a second to exist before being dispelled.
In that second, Naruto's ribs shattered. The kick was muscle and overheat; blood surged from punctured lungs and out of Naruto's mouth and nose, and he was taken off his overworked foot.
But his leg had healed to a fracture – he could work with it now. As soon as he landed, he would summon the almost-cloak again. Wheezing, he would fight without breathing until his lungs drained of blood and his ribs healed.
He was going to be Hokage. Only death was an excuse for not protecting the village. His body could still move. He still had the Kyūbi's chakra.
But since genin days, Inabi's aim had never missed. A fire pool surged, a geyser of flame spouted. Naruto flew into the heart of the eruption, and burned.
Pain. The chakra-skin succumbed and melted away and his betrayed clothes and flesh fused under the welding heat. His broken ribs sang, his lungs filled slowly, sagging. Burned, broken, bruised, drowning, it did not matter. It was all pain. And Naruto, lungs too full to even scream, slowly died beneath it.
It must not have been long. The aunt was not a fighter – there was a limit to how long she could sustain her jutsu. Conveniently, the jutsu's end result did not take long. At the end of a few seconds, it was done. The eruption receded into the earth, snapping back like the head of a snake. The black body floated in time slowed by the Sharingan, quarter seconds doubled and redoubled. When it fell onto the husked ground, there was the sound of dust and ash, and burnt, indistinguishable pieces flaked off the charred meat.
The uncle squeezed the aunt's shoulder, as she looked at the barrier and Konoha beyond it.
"The hottest fire of the Uchiha. No wonder you burned everything you cooked as a kid."
"You're still on about that?"
"When a man tastes burnt soup for the first time, he doesn't forget it." She did not look at the burnt meat. Small, tight lines grew at the corner of her lip. The uncle noticed. "It had to be done."
"I know. He kept blocking us." She tilted her head back a little, looking at the healthy greenery on the other side of the wall. "Why wasn't Itachi like him?" The Uchiha looked at her. Her question went unanswered. "If it would have come to bloodshed between us then it was better, open rebellion. More honest." Her eyes slowly closed. "Dying in a battle like this, there's still pride. Under the lies, I just died like a fool."
"It wouldn't have changed anything," said Inabi, turning away from the scorched corpse.
"What do you mean?"
"I still would've died like a fool. If I had to fight Itachi, I don't know if I could've killed him."
"With backup you would have –"
"Itachi was born during the war." White teeth clenched beneath grey lips. "All you do is kill and plot to kill and set traps to kill and all you see are dead and dying and more dead. And in the midst of that… I was there when Itachi learned to walk." He turned to the aunt. "You were in the village, so you don't understand how attached you get to children born during wartimes. For me who saw nothing but hell, he was…" and Inabi came to himself enough to feel embarrassed, "…a brat. A damned, inscrutable brat. Could never tell what he was thinking even back then. Always looking at you like he could see through you."
"Um, Inabi-san…" a teenage Uchiha, who knew respect for his elders, was staring at the yellow-tainted steam rising off the burnt Jinchūriki.
"Skill doesn't matter so much when it comes to the final blow. Who can make the kill: that determines victory. I don't know if I could. So I would have died as a sentimental fool."
"That's unlike you," said Yashiro, irritably dusting the parchment that flitted about his ears.
"Yeah well I'm dead. So my personality can change all it wants." He pointed into the man's face. "You should be more adaptable. You realise you can make as many Shadow Clones as you want now." The Sharingan-red lines above Yashiro's nose disappeared and reappeared: the man had blinked. "I can't believe you stuck to your one-clone standard. What were you afraid of? Dying again?"
The aunt looked on, the lines at her lips softening. "We all should've been more honest."
Inabi's gaze snapped to her, Sharingan rotating. "You're not rethinking this." She shook her head and looked at Konoha again. The lines hardened.
"Let's –"
"Inabi-san!" The teenager blew fire at the meat that had nothing left to burn. And the corpse resisted. Yellow steam poured from every inch of char; it swallowed the body in billows and surged upwards, buffeting the teen's flames until he quit. The golden chakra bubbled, a pseudo life that plumed ever higher. And then, as though realising the energy it was wasting, the chakra curled in on itself and imploded.
Light and heat surged inwards, filling dried blood vessels and empty chakra paths. It raced onwards, refilling and recreating the cooked flesh and flaking skin. It stretched outwards, piercing the ground, the air, and any jutsu thrown at the centre it protected, turning Naruto into the core of a thousand-pointed star.
Few things could blind a fully trained Sharingan. Light was rarely one of them. Natural light had little to no chance, unless by idiocy or contrition one decided to stare at the sun. And even then it would take half a minute to become unbearable. Chakra light had better odds, but still required exceptional nature manipulation to make it bright enough.
Nova light from angry and frantic Bijuu chakra obliterated the Sharingan's sight – all eighty of them. The catalytic energy roared, shaking the endless flames and robbing a second sense from the Uchiha. The din's change from ancient hate to young fury went unnoticed, and when a body once thought dead moved, Inabi had no chance to react.
Knuckles slammed into his cheek, baby-new skin tearing instantly, new blood flowing warm. Naruto did not look healed. Ripped, burned and grey, his clothes barely hung on him. His skin was alien-smooth, paper-pale and easily torn. Inabi, eyes tightly shut and watering, swung and took Naruto in the chin. Naruto dodged to the right, avoiding a stunning impact. His bruised jaw opened in a scream and he lunged forward, burying blows in the undead's face. His punches were wild, they hurt, his knuckles bruised and split and bled. He hardly cared. With tears and an animal's cry, he brutalized the blind Uchiha who just could not react without his Sharingan.
Inabi stumbled. Naruto's next attack sent him to the ground. He leaped with a wounded howl, fist drawn back for a decisive blow, "Naruto-kun," and was clotheslined with a cloaked arm. The whisper, polite and annoyed beyond its limit, was audible even as he choked. "I think you've forgotten something."
And Naruto was slammed into the ground with enough force to crack one of his newly mended ribs. A pale foot pressed firmly into his chest, straining the fractured bone.
"Hey!" Inabi furiously rubbed his eyes and blinked away the spots. "Don't interfere! He's –"
A single-handed seal shut him up. Enraged veins rose in his temples; twitching, his fingers slowly clenched, sparks dancing over his knuckles. At the same moment, Naruto dug into Kabuto's leg with soft nails. When those split, or ripped off completely, Naruto opted for pounding the spy's calf with bloody punches.
Kabuto grit his teeth. Barbarians on both sides: was the fight that exhilarating? Inabi's foot scraped along the ash-carpeted ground, exerting his will over Kabuto's inch by inch. The other Uchiha did the same, some even managing slow, twitching hand seals.
"Using fully alive sacrifices instead of half-dead ones worked well for letting them keep their personalities." A small vein rose in his neck. His second hand joined the first and strengthened the binding seal. "But it's a bit tough when you want to take control."
The extra chakra froze the Uchiha, for a moment. Then they moved again, indomitable wills tempered through war, hate and bloodpride. Naruto kept punching and broke through Kabuto's persistent healing to bruise his calf.
The neck vein throbbed. Kabuto released his hands and fire came at him from all sides.
"I have Sasuke-kun!" The flames outed instantly, the closest toasting the white scales around Orochimaru's eye.
"You're bluffing," Inabi snarled. Kabuto did not waste a breath in his defence; instead he pointed at Naruto who had frozen mid-punch, his eyes wide. "Where?"
"You're quite adaptable," Kabuto clinically noted.
"Where!" Inabi's fists blazed, the fire moulding into something animal. Jaws snapped.
"And what an interesting variation of the Lion Fist," Kabuto adjusted his glasses. "Can it absorb chakra too?"
"I'll show you." He reared back, ready to take Kabuto's grinning head off.
"Wait!" Through newly strung vocal chords, Naruto rasped. "One of his snakes swallowed Sasuke. If you kill him, we can't get to it."
"Very good, Naruto-kun," he said, kneading his foot into tender ribs. "Did you know that while you were grinding my face off with a Rasengan?" Naruto groaned, but lowered his fists. "And on that note, how long do you think it's been since that happened?" He raised an empty sleeve; a white head slithered out of the darkness, tongue flashing in and out. "It's storage, sure. But this little one is alive," he petted the serpent under its chin, eliciting a sated hiss. "So the things he eats are digested, no matter how slow it is. You should know, right Naruto-kun? How dark and slimy it is, how little air there is inside a snake's body." Kabuto's lip curled back, "How scary it would be to a little –"
"Give," Naruto bit through his bottom lip, nail-less fingers scraping at Kabuto's bruise. "Him back!"
"My leg hurts." The petulant declaration made Naruto's chest seize. His arms fell limp and he lay there, trembling.
"So, you understand." He glanced at the Uchiha, unmoving and watchful. "They don't, but they'll follow you. An interesting exchange must have happened between you. What could it have been I wonder?" Full of theatrical delight, he put his finger to his chin, eyes rolled to the red sky. "The truth about Itachi, perhaps?" Naruto's trembling ceased. Stop. Inabi caught it.
"The brat doesn't know."
Please stop.
"No one does. You're the clan tragically slain by a lunatic."
Enough. It hurts, my head hurts. No more, please.
"And Itachi's the worst villain of Konoha, with the highest bounty on his head."
I should be home. Home with Sasuke. We should be home. That was the plan.
"He left Sasuke behind and left the village, branded a criminal on par with Orochimaru-sama. Unwanted, hated, scorned. It seems that is the fate of all…" He looked at Naruto with dramatic sadness.
The plan was to go to the cemetery and let Sasuke do what he had to and pay my respects and go back home and maybe have a cup ramen and sleep until an hour in the morning when there was actually light in the sky. And then I'd wake up and Hinata would come over and I'd learn how to make breakfast and we'd eat and then we'd visit Sakura and then go see Ero-sennin to waste time until we go over to Chōji's house because then it would be lunchtime and Chōji's mom cooks the best according to Shikamaru so please stop, please, if you go on me and Sasuke can't do any of that, we can't go back so please, please, please…!
"Who save Konoha."
Naruto's tears dripped and were greedily drunk by the scorched ground. Kabuto raised an eyebrow and kicked him. The blond coughed, tears, spit and blood mingling. With slow purpose, Kabuto reached down and gripped him by the neck, lifting him.
"My answer, Naruto-kun." The snake's nostrils teased Naruto's cheek, moving along a whisker mark. Drained blues flicked a hard gaze towards it. "If you kill it, Sasuke dies too."
Kabuto brought him closer, both eyes lightless and painted like stones.
"I'll ask again. How can someone with amnesia – with no past still have an identity?"
The question from a lifetime ago, before hell's gate was opened. Naruto still did not understand it, and still had no answer.
"I don't –"
Kabuto squeezed and Naruto coughed up more saliva. "Oh but you do! Think, Naruto-kun! Think and answer me!"
Naruto did. The red-dyed memories of his oxygen-starved brain swam before him – in seconds he relived days. With unbridled clarity he saw how many things had changed. How he had changed. And how he needed to change again.
"Family." Kabuto released him. He crumpled on boneless legs, his face to the dirt, coughing up old air and wheezing in new.
"Elaborate." Kabuto hissed.
"A lot of things happened. Sasuke went through a lot of pain over what happened to his clan. But, somehow, he finally acknowledged me as his family. I didn't do anything, but he called me his brother, and he told me he loved me. I don't know about being a spy and losing yourself. I don't get it. But I'm Sasuke's brother. I'll stand by his side always. I'm his family. Whatever you see in Sasuke, that's all there is to it."
"… … That's it?" Naruto swallowed, one eye blinking up at Kabuto, his breathing slightly slowed, slightly less damaged.
"Family?" Kabuto hissed, and the white snake retreated into the cloak's comfortable darkness. He reached down and grabbed Naruto by the hair, bringing his face up to meet his own. The blond remained limp, unresisting.
"Family does not help, Naruto-kun!" Bitter saliva flecked onto Naruto's face. The boy said nothing. "Family is why I'm like this! Mother became a spy to protect her family, to protect me!" He shook Naruto by the clumpful of hair he held, ripping a few strands from their roots. Naruto's face was still, his eyes never moving from Kabuto's maddened mismatch. "I became a spy to protect my brothers and sisters! To save them, I lost the identity I barely had, the Kabuto I was just beginning to forge! There were days Naruto-kun – weeks when I did not even know if I was man, animal or insect! Family!"
He threw the blond from him; Naruto landed in the dirt and stayed there, his eyes not leaving Kabuto. The man snarled. "Family only makes you throw your identity away. Love utterly destroys it."
"No." Naruto slowly moved his arms under him. Kabuto crouched a couple feet away, still and silent as the undead watching them. He glared, tense, but made no move to stop the blond. Without adrenaline, he had no strength, and his chakra was too low even for a basic Bunshin technique.
"Lies did that to you, Kabuto." Naruto finally pushed himself up and rolled back to sit on his knees. "You kept lying to everyone and you kept lying to yourself. You lied so much that you couldn't find a truth as basic as who you are."
"You're telling me you never lied to Sasuke-kun?" the seething retort made Naruto wince.
"In the beginning, I did. I didn't want him to be hurt." Naruto's eyes lowered in a moment of silent regret. Then they rose and Kabuto was struck by their light. "But that wasn't family. That was just me trying to protect a fake ideal." Kabuto's eyes widened, his glare replaced by something Naruto had no words for.
Sasuke faced his clan's death. He faced Itachi. And, with you by his side, he made new choices. Different, but his own.
"It took me a while to get it, but I had to tell Sasuke the truth."
Ever since you found him, with words, with emotions, with just being there, you've been fighting to save him from the darkness. And you won.
"I never left him alone. I was there for him. I talked to him. I let him cry on me until he couldn't anymore. And I never let him go to the darkness." Kabuto reeled back; the vitality in his words was almost palpable. "That's love. That's family!" His eyes regained their life, vibrant and fearless he stared Kabuto down. "Family doesn't destroy identity, Kabuto. Family is the only place you can be your true self."
The right-hand with no master to lead him stared at the one born with no family, the boy who through unrelenting effort, indomitable will and a die-hard dream forged unbreakable bonds. Who created a family for himself, instead of waiting to be taken in.
Kabuto was lucky enough to be taken in, though the time had been too short. Even with amnesia, he had memories of a family. Memories of a mother. How shameful, to be lectured about family by someone who did not even have that much.
Kabuto laughed long and hard at himself, grabbing his side as he doubled over in mirth. Naruto stared silently at him, waiting. Finally, the smiling snake adjusted his glasses and, still chuckling, addressed the blond.
"Is that all you have to say?" Naruto nodded. His hand came away from his glasses, and he looked almost wistfully at it. "I see." His smile faded. "It doesn't answer all of my questions." Naruto's fingers dug into his knees, the sound of flesh straining not to be gouged out all too clear to Kabuto. "But," he levelled a look at the Uzumaki, and the sound of straining flesh lightened. "It's a foundation. Better than what I expected to get, coming here. Thank you, Naruto-kun. Your answer is enough."
Kabuto held up an empty sleeve, from which slithered the thick white snake that Naruto would hate for an eternity. As though reading his mind, Kabuto's smirk almost carried an apology as a familiar bulge moved up the white body, slightly diminished in size. Naruto's eyes tracked it with pinpoint pupils.
Sasuke flopped out of its mouth in a bundle of slime, trembling strands of bile and digestive juice still connecting his body to the snake's. These strands broke as Naruto scooped him up. The kitten's hair and fur were slicked, his skin was smooth, his eyes were closed and he was not breathing.
There was no second thought. Naruto opened the kitten's mouth, opened his own, and clamped his lips over Sasuke's mouth and nose, emptying his lungs in one long breath. He pulled back, tasting bitter and acid on his lips as he inhaled. His gag reflex registered for a fraction of a millisecond.
Then he was back again, breathing warm life into the cold body.
He did this five times. No one spoke. No one interrupted him. Not the Uchiha who only minutes ago were trying to kill him. Not Kabuto, who would remember the scene before him for the rest of his life.
Naruto pulled back, already inhaling, the starts of tears in his eyes. Sasuke coughed. Naruto choked on the half-breath. Sasuke coughed again, went into a violent string of them. Then he inhaled – high-pitched and shaky. Then he exhaled another few coughs. And then, he was breathing.
Naruto stopped breathing for the five seconds it took Sasuke to open his eyes. The kitten blinked and looked up blearily at the blond.
"Nawuto?" The half-breath was exhaled in a broken cry of joy and Naruto hugged him, barely remembering to be gentle. Crying freely, laughing ceaselessly, relishing Sasuke's bewildered complaints, Naruto started to take off his shirt, wanting to clean some of the ick off him. He pulled and half of it ripped away, crumbling to ashen dust in his hands.
Sasuke stared at the falling pieces: his eyes widened as they moved over the rest of Naruto's body. He purred in soft disquiet, nosing the blond's torn and bloody knuckles.
"Why are you hurt?" The sky was getting lighter. "What happened? Why is everything… burnt?" Naruto smiled, swaying on his knees. Sasuke's face was getting blurry. "Naruto?" He could barely see those big, deep eyes; they were blending too well with the darkness. "Naruto, your eyes look weird."
"We're going home." It was as though nothing bad had happened. Sasuke was finally in front of him, they could finally go home. His cold and empty body could rest then. Naruto reached forward, unaware that Sasuke took two steps back. "Something's wrong with you."
"Sasuke?" a dead Uchiha's voice reminded them of the graveyard's empty graves. The land was blasted and scorched, graves and gravestones disintegrated to rubble. Only the sepulchre was left standing, the ink-drawn script faithfully protecting its treasure.
Naruto's snapped awake, faces bursting into clarity around him. He snarled, startling Sasuke who he shoved behind him.
"You're not going to the village and you're not getting –!"
"Auntie?" Sasuke came around his side, staring at his dead aunt's face. "You're…"
"This is a jutsu, Sasuke-chan," the woman explained. Tears leaked from her Sharingan. "We're not… really here right now."
Sasuke stared at her, apparently disagreeing, until he closed his eyes and sniffed the air. He recoiled, rubbing his nose in the waist of Naruto's pants. He came away with a black smudge across his face.
"You stink," he said in a small voice.
"I know," the woman whispered in true regret.
Inabi crouched before them, keeping a distance back when Naruto's lip curled. That surprised the blond a little; it was almost as though the man respected him now.
"That's really you, brat?" Sasuke nodded, frowning a little at the old nickname. Inabi smiled, half between surprise and confusion. He looked to Naruto. "What happened to him?"
"Nobody knows," Kabuto bluntly supplied. Naruto turned to him. He returned a bored look and shrugged. Naruto's eyebrows shot up to his scalp.
"Sasuke."
"Yashiro-san." Sasuke stepped forward more, staring at the man's Sharingan. It was rare that he saw his uncle's eyes fully open. The man smiled slightly, accurately guessing what Sasuke was thinking.
"From listening to the Jinchūriki, it seems you know the truth." Sasuke nodded slowly. "What will you do?" he asked simply.
"Go after Nii-chan and stop him."
The man's eyes closed and he exhaled artificially through his nostrils. "Good. Itachi will meet his end by your hand. You will avenge us."
"No." Yashiro's eyes shot open. Inabi's lips parted slightly. "I'll go after Nii-chan because he needs to be stopped. I love him, so I can't let him keep doing bad things. I'll stop him as his family, as his little brother."
Inabi's Sharingan flashed. Naruto threw his arm in front of the kitten, who faced his uncle's eyes unflinchingly.
"You… love him? Is that what you just said?"
"Nii-chan and Naruto. I love them both. They're my precious brothers."
"You wretch!" Sasuke's eyes narrowed, and he unconsciously clung to Naruto's pants. Inabi stood, his Sharingan blazing. "You love the man who slaughtered us?! You say that to the faces of those he's killed – your own family? Have you no soul, no blood of Uchiha in your veins?! Has becoming a cat erased your loyalty, your kinship?"
"I LOVE YOU!" Sasuke screamed and Naruto's ears tingled. And he calls me loud.
Sasuke shoved Naruto's arm aside, stepping forward with bared teeth and raised fur. "I love all of you! I hate that you're dead! I wish all of you could come back and we could live in the district as a family again! But…" He looked back at Naruto, who nodded. "You are dead. And I have a new family who's alive. And he told me I'm free. Even Nii-chan told me to hate him. But Naruto said I don't have to do what Nii-chan says. And I… I like being free! I like living like this, I like having cool ninja friends like Lee and Kunai-neechan and Sakura. I love Hinata-neechan and Jii-chan. I love this village! And I love love love Naruto more than anyone else!"
"So if you no longer had Naruto," Yashiro emotionlessly proposed, "would you take up your duty?"
Sasuke tilted his head, ears lilting. His hair and fur started clumping with the drying digestive juices that soaked him. Yashiro spoke again. "If we had succeeded, and you no longer had Naruto…"
Sasuke's eyes widened in response to his epiphany. "You did this." The words rode a quick, flat breath. Sasuke stared at his clan with wide eyes, his head still tilted. "You hurt Naruto." And his irises narrowed to two pointed ellipses. He stepped forward, claws extending, glaring at his infuriated uncles and wearing a scowl to outmatch his adopted brother's. "You did! Why?! You hurt Naruto! Naruto's my family and you hurt him!"
"So we are less than him?!" Inabi roared. Sasuke flinched, hit with the true implication of his words. "You happily raise your arms against us for Naruto but seek no vengeance against the man who killed us, no hatred of the village that scorned us. You love our enemies and spit in our faces with your selfish words!"
Naruto leaned forward, teeth bared. "You bas –!"
"You're right." The solemn reply froze Uchiha and Uzumaki. Sasuke fixed his Uncle with a steady, defenceless gaze. "I am selfish. I got so angry at you for hurting my family, so I should hate Nii-chan most for what he did. I should be filled up with hatred, become an avenger and strike Itachi down in the name of the Uchiha. Even if it cost me my life."
Sasuke blinked slowly, when his eyes opened he looked so tired. "I almost did that. But now, I can't, and I don't want to. I can't hate Nii-chan, and I love the light."
Kabuto adjusted his glasses, noting Naruto's rapid blinks. The seed had been planted. The scientist smirked: he had tested the Edo Tensei, collected invaluable samples and diverted Naruto from his boring homebody path in Konoha. He wished he could have held on to Sasuke, but had the distinct feeling that kidnapping the kitten again would destroy the new… rapport he had with Naruto. And he wanted to see where this new road led, this road intertwined with Naruto's.
"Happiness." Yashiro spoke with dispassion, but disgust simmered in each word, a bitter undercurrent. "You give up your duty to avenge your family, for happiness."
"I don't have that duty," Sasuke responded without fear, equally. "If one member of my family is alive, my duty is to them. If they say I'm free, then I am. My Nii-chan is alive. My duty is to stop him doing bad things. Naruto is alive. My duty is to be his family and try to make him a little less stupid."
Naruto's brow twitched but no one cared. Sasuke and his uncle stared each other down, trying to find a gap in the other's stance.
Finally, Yashiro crouched so he could get closer to Sasuke's eye level. "You're sticking to that."
"Yes."
His uncle gazed at him a moment longer before his chest shook in a quiet chuckle. "Fugaku, if you could see your son now. I hate your view, Sasuke. But I respect you standing firm." He rose. "Very well, you shall tend to your duty to Naruto. We will seek justice for ourselves."
"What?" Naruto blinked, while Sasuke's eyes went wide. "I won't let you touch Kono –!"
"Nii-chan's mine! Both of them are my duty!" Sasuke growled, his fur on edge once more.
"Sasuke –"
"Enough!" the sound that burst from Sasuke's throat shook the air around them, jolting all in range. But the kitten followed it with an almost silent whisper, his eyes to the ground. "I was glad, to see all of you again. I wish you all could stay. But it's not right, like this." He looked up. "Leave." And crimson glared at them from behind slimy bangs.
Inabi's jaw dropped, while Yashiro looked on, his Sharingan deactivating. Both roar and whisper held authority he never knew in death or life.
"You can't just tell us to leave!" Inabi roared. Being spoken to by this child whose cheeks were still plump with baby fat was an insult. "Not when we have our mission to fulfil!"
"I can," Sasuke affirmed, still quiet, "because I'm alive. You don't belong here anymore."
"Your father was the Clan Head," Inabi stated indignantly, "And I was second in –"
"I am Head of the Uchiha now!" Sasuke roared again, shaking men and air both. "This is my village, my home!" Sasuke raised his hands, stringing seals while his crimson eyes and single tomoe shrunk to slits. "And as Clan Head, my only duty to you is to send you back to yours."
"I am – we are –!"
"You. Are. DEAD!"
"If you won't fulfil your duty – if you won't even hate the one who killed us –!"
"I am living in Naruto's light! I can't carry something as ugly as your hate!"
Sasuke inhaled. Naruto pressed his palm, gloved with Wind chakra, to the kitten's back. None of them dodged. Inabi was gawking, Yashiro was smiling, and towards the back Sasuke's aunt was quietly weeping.
"Katon: Gōkakyū no Jutsu!" Naruto's chakra flowed and the fireball spread, breaking out of its shape to become a massive conflagration. The blast of flame, heat and smoke only broke around the barrier protecting the Clan Heads' sepulchre. The Uchiha's bodies were decimated, burst apart into crackling parchment that burned again into ashes.
But they reformed as quickly as the flames could burn. And Sasuke soon ran out of chakra. The jutsu ceased and the kitten fell, panting, against Naruto. He looked into the gazes of his clan as their bodies fought to maintain shape within the feasting flames.
Living and dead stared at each other, emotionless. As their bodies began to glow, the dead's eyes shifted, and something in Naruto's chest leaped at the unanimous look Sasuke received.
Acknowledgement.
"I guess now's good." Before Naruto could register Kabuto's movement, Orochimaru's apprentice slung several seals together and slammed his palms to the earth. Forty coffins rose behind the Uchiha and jerked them inside, most of their bodies still aflame.
"Those were some very interesting results," Kabuto chuckled. The coffin lids, creaking on non-existent hinges, slammed themselves shut to every box, sealing the clan away.
Sasuke growled. "Let them go."
The coffins sank into the earth. Kabuto adjusted his glasses, levelling a curious look at the kitten. "Strange. Somehow I almost lost their souls to the Pure Land. That fire of yours seemed to have some sort of cleansing effect, Sasuke-kun. If only you were older –"
"Let them go!"
Naruto pushed Sasuke behind him again, leaned towards Kabuto and fell flat on his face, unable to tell that he had even fallen.
Kabuto glared at him, medic's eyes recognising the ailment immediately. He clicked his tongue and raised his hands to form a seal –
And was impaled through the chest by an Uchiha's sword. He heaved an unhealthy amount of blood onto the last bits of grass remaining in the graveyard.
"You –" he turned to the dead Uchiha, who grinned back.
"Kakakakakakakaka!" The Uchiha's head jerked from side to side with the sound of rattling wood. Kabuto sneered at the crassness of it. Mocking him, the head stopped rattling with its cheek parallel to its shoulder. More wood clicked as its jaw disjointed and a kunai launched from its throat, streams of purple poison flying from the blade.
It lodged itself hilt-deep between Kabuto's eyes.
The dead man's head flopped back, poison dribbling along his forehead and into his hair. Tendrils of sand snaked up his body, keeping it sitting upright.
Sasuke took a small break from shaking Naruto's shoulder to say, "Wha –"
Kabuto's corpse twitched, the jaw opened unnaturally wide and the cloaked man dashed out before the sand arm could crush him in its grip.
"Goodbye." He formed a seal as a wave of sand sped for him, accelerated by a rabid gust of chakra-sickled wind. Shooting a last look of almost-concern at Naruto, he disappeared in a clumsily loud smoke cloud.
"Tch. Got away," the girl of wind growled, stepping out of the shadows at last with her two brothers behind her. She glared at one of them. "I almost have to be grateful that he did escape though. Who gave you the authority to kill him, Kankuro?"
"He was still alive after I stabbed him through the heart. Well alive. I couldn't leave him like that."
"Enough." A soft voice cut off the other two. They immediately shut up, though exchanged glares.
By that time, Naruto managed to push himself up on his elbows. He stared in slack-jawed disbelief at the man who had spoken.
"I don't believe you're here," he said bluntly, getting to his knees with a heave of effort. He would shake his head if he was not convinced he would fall over again. With another heave, he found his feet. Sasuke leaped into his arms, never liking to be on the floor in front of strangers. The height difference always unnerved him.
"What – how – I don't believe you're here."
Sabaku no Gaara stared at Naruto, arms folded across his chest, pale eyes solemn as they always were. Those eyes slowly roved Naruto's body, making the blond painfully aware of what a mess he must be.
"Uh, Gaara. How did you get in –?"
"Under."
"Huh?"
Gaara's eyes met his again. "We went under the barrier. Tori helped." Naruto blinked. Gaara did not.
"Uh – okay. Uh – hold on." Naruto put a hand to his forehead and closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, Gaara's gaze had not moved. "I'm glad to see you Gaara, really. But, I guess the question I wanna ask is why you're here in Konoha."
Gaara finally blinked. "I sent a message to the Hokage. She replied, granting permission for my visit, so I came here. It takes three days to get here, correct? Less if you fly some of the way."
Naruto froze. The other two sand siblings looked at each other. Temari opened her mouth, but Kankuro stopped her, slowly shaking his head. They couldn't baby him all the time; he needed to learn on his own.
"Gaara." Naruto realised he had to be very specific.
"Yes."
"How did you know I was in here?"
Gaara unfolded his arms and brought a hand to his stomach. "I was born a Jinchūriki. Even with Shukaku gone, I can still feel the presence of another Bijuu's chakra. I felt yours, even outside the barrier. I used my sand to sense through the earth, and that is how I found out exactly where you were."
"So why'd you take so long to get here?"
The eldest sibling winced. "Talking to that Tori girl took some time. When we finally got in, the Uchiha kid was already talking down his clan." Temari smirked at the kitten. "We didn't hear everything, but you looked pretty tough. We didn't want to interrupt."
"So that's him huh?" Kankuro bent down to stare. Sasuke hissed, startling him back half a step.
Temari laughed. "He's got spunk. I like it."
Particles of sand clustered around Sasuke, embracing him. The kitten squirmed into Naruto, looking up at him questioningly. Naruto nodded with a smile. Reluctantly, Sasuke held still and let more of the sand surround him –
And fell to the ground, Naruto's hold on him gone. The sand caught him before he made impact. He oriented himself on the floating sand cushion, a scolding already on his tongue, but Naruto only stared straight ahead.
Straight at Gaara, whose eyes got noticeably wider the longer he returned the gaze. For the longer he looked, the more he was convinced that he was staring into the eyes of a dead man.
Without ceremony, Naruto fell backwards. No sigh of lost consciousness, no gasp of surprise at suddenly losing his balance. Naruto fell like a hollow tree, and hit the cushion of sand under him with a dead thud. The sand immediately searched his body for vital signs, mainly chakra.
It found nothing. It searched again, but the blond was dry. Corpse dry. Without ceremony, the sand blanketed the blond and began feeding him Gaara's chakra through every part of his body it touched.
"Temari, Kankuro, feed him your chakra as well," a faint undertone of an undertone of Gaara's voice was shaking. The siblings' eyes went wide.
The ground shifted apart, becoming quicksand that quickly swallowed the Kazekage. As his red hair sunk beneath the earth, his siblings heard him whisper, "Don't let him die." It was the first time they ever heard Gaara beg.
The Kazekage came up through the ground on the outside, right next to Tori. She did not blink. He spared no glance for her, just hopped on a platform of sand and streaked across Konoha's sky as quickly as he could go.
It was not fast enough. Of course in moments like these everything always seemed too slow. It was adrenaline in the mind heightening perception, slowing everything down, noticing every detail and impeding time. If that was all it was, Gaara would not be sweating through his armour.
He really was too slow. For all the things sand was known for, speed was not one of them. And ever since losing his Bijuu, Gaara had suffered a shameful slowing of all of his jutsu, a condition that took months of rigorous training to rectify. It did not matter. He was still too slow here. If only he could meet someone faster, but it was still early morning and everyone seemed asleep –
"Gaara-kun!" And suddenly, Rock Lee was soaring beside him, sweat flying from his face in sparkling dewdrops.
"Rock… Lee." The pause between those words was the closest Gaara had ever come to showing surprise. The Green Beast dipped out of his vision before returning, having found ground on another rooftop to launch himself.
"I was doing my early morning five hundred laps around Konoha when I noticed –" he dipped out of view again. When he returned, Gaara cut him off.
"Naruto is dying. You're faster than me. Get the Hokage and bring her to the Uchiha cemetery." Rock Lee's face was pale when he dipped out of sight. When he returned, it was deep red.
"The Fourth Gate, Gate of Pain. Open!" The next roof Lee launched off of cratered, and the glowing green beast soared over Konoha with the speed of a falling meteor.
Both Hokage and Hokage's advisor sensed the coming calamity at the same time. Neither was fast enough to stop it.
When Rock Lee burst into the office in a whirlwind of green energy he kept going, over Sai who had his face to the ground, right through the (closed) office door and into the opposite wall. His tailwind destroyed the room, flinging books and papers to the ceiling, opening or overturning drawers and cabinets; it folded Tsunade over her desk, while Jiraiya fumbled back a step or two, his white mane flinging about in the small hurricane.
"Lee!" Tsunade stood and slammed her hands down on the desk, the second to be cracked in half all too recently. "What on earth are you –?"
"Naruto-kun is dying!" Lee wrenched his foot from the wall, ignoring the pain from his twisted ankle. He'd endured worse. Once free, he launched for Tsunade, just as Jiraiya reached the middle of the word, "Where?"
"Uchiha cemetery!" he was a hundred meters from the tower by then, Tsunade in his arms. They met Gaara along the way, already heading back to the district.
"Kazeka –!"
"Go! I'll catch up!" Gaara called as Lee blew past, a green flash in the dark.
"You know where, Tsunade-sama?"
"Yeah!" Tsunade was already suffering windburn and one of her hair ties had come loose, that half of her hair wildly flung by the wind.
If Lee could have gone fast enough that her skin would be ripped off, Tsunade would have simply released her seal and told him to triple the pace.
But they were there before she noticed, and at that moment, a great dome barrier shattered.
A/N: Massive praise to my magnificent beta for making things make sense in this wonderful ordeal. Hope you all enjoyed it.
Merry Christmas to all of you and see you all next time!