Chapter Seven
Zetsu, Kisame and Hidan, spent a few days at the hotel recovering, stealing supplies and gathering information. Unfortunately for them, nobody around Hogsmeade spoke their language, so it was taking longer then usual to get settled in. Each one of them took turns "room-sitting" as they called it while the others went out. They had certainly caught sight of a shinobi, but they avoided him. Zetsu had decided that today would be the day they went looking for Konan. Using his Mayfly Jutsu, he sank into the ground and met Hidan in the edge of the forest.
Konan was busy testing her students when she felt the same flash of chakra that she had felt in The Three Broomsticks. She could also hear the source of that chakra screaming a very familiar name. A name that made her insides freeze and sent adrenaline pumping through her system.
"Akatsuki!"
It was coming several doors down from Professor Flitwick's classroom.
"Akatsuki! Come out of hiding!"
She looked at her confused students. "Go to your dorms and do not come out!"
"But-"
"No arguments Miss Granger. Go!" Her tone of voice left no room for argument.
Konan watched her students file out quickly, casting curious glances at the enraged, near unintelligible screams coming from down the hallway. She began walking down and noticed Professor Lupin running to join her.
"What's going on?" She asked, even though she had a pretty good idea.
"Hostage situation. Some lunatic disguised as a student grabbed Charlie Thurston and held a knife to his throat, then started making demands. We can't understand what he wants-he's speaking an entirely different language!" He was beginning to panic.
"I see." She said.
"We can't use a translation spell and we can't use a stunning spell either for fear he'll kill the boy."
"I'll get the boy back." Konan said.
"We can't risk the boy's life Shiori!" Remus insisted.
Konan turned and looked him in the eye.
"I'll get him back and you will help get the students to safety on my signal Remus."
Her cool confidence reassured Remus that she was more then capable of pulling it off.
Fourteen year old Masahiro Fujimoto was quivering with anticipation. He was going to kill the Akatsuki who had slipped from his grasp in the canyon and avenge his brother's death. A flare of foreign chakra alerted his senses as the door opened to reveal the blue-haired kunoichi in Akatsuki regalia. Masahiro recognized her from the Bingo Books.
"Is there something you want?"
Konan asked calmly as she surveyed the situation. The boy had shaggy, honey blonde hair, tanned skin and pale brown eyes. He was smaller then her, well muscled and had several scars on his chest and face and a there was a gap where a top tooth had been. She also noticed he was missing the tip of his ring and pointer fingers on his right hand. Part of his left ear was missing and he was wearing an Iwa headband stretched out like a bandana over most of his head.
"Your head on a pike!" Masahiro sneered.
Konan made a noise indicating disdain, as if she didn't consider him a true threat.
"Tsk tsk. Holding a little civilian boy hostage just to get to me? I didn't realize Iwa nin were so cowardly."
"Cowardly? Hardly!" He sneered back.
Konan took a deep breath, as she prepared to take a dangerous gamble with the wailing second year's life.
"If that were me, I'd be killing the brats off one-by-one until my demands were met." She waited to see if he'd take the bait.
Finally to her intense relief he did and with a scowl of self-loathing on his face, he flung the poor boy into the desk. He sat up, mouth and nose bloodied and a tooth on the floor as he crawled pitifully into Professor Flitwik's comforting arms.
She snorted.
"Now tell me. Why you are here?"
"You killed my brother!" He roared, pain and fury etched into every feature.
She shrugged, indicating that his brother was of no importance to her.
"Perhaps. Perhaps not. Though I doubt I'd remember him if I did."
A manic smile appeared on Masahiro's face.
"Oh…you remember him alright, you targeted him specifically."
"Which means nothing. We targeted a lot of people specifically." Konan interrupted.
"You'd never forget him, he was a jinchuuriki."
"Ah. The Five-Tails. The famous jinchuuriki of Stone." Said Konan with a trace of cruel amusement in her voice. "Yes I do remember him. I was the one assigned to get him. He was particularly difficult to capture and his agony was almost too painful to bear."
She smiled maliciously as though she remembered savoring the man's agony which couldn't be further from the truth. Konan had been sick to her stomach for days after performing extractions. It was the one thing she had hated doing in Akatsuki. Their dying screams and moans haunted her dreams to this day and she had been secretly glad when she'd found out that the Kazekage had been brought back to life by some sort of forbidden jutsu.
"The stubborn fool fought the extraction process for five days, convinced that he would be rescued."
"He…was…my…brother!" Masahiro ground out, pain constricting his heart and rage contorting his features into something savage.
She shrugged elegantly. "And how many siblings have you killed? How many lovers? How many children have you orphaned? Don't come whining to me about murdered family members. We are the same!"
She flung her shuriken at him and at the same time Masahiro let loose a strangled scream of rage and lunged at her, signaling Lupin who flung open the door and began evacuating the students from the classroom while Konan fought with the Stone ninja.
"Is this how you intend to avenge your brother? She whispered mockingly in his ear as she appeared behind him. "Pitiful."
Masahiro whipped around and grabbed the surprised woman by her cloak, sending her crashing into the desks.
Konan got up but not fast enough to avoid the roundhouse kick that caught her in the face. She hunched down and dealt him an undercut, before grabbing him by the shirt and attempting to knee him in the groin.
He moved his body so that she caught him in the gut instead before she was forced to fall back under a barrage of kunai.
She tripped and fell hard over a panicky student and Konan got up and hurried the girl along the way, mentally cursing herself for getting rusty.
At this time, Severus and Minerva had come to her aid while Remus and Flitwick were evacuating the students.
"No. This is my fight. Get the children to safety now." Konan told them.
"Shiori watch out!" Minerva called but it was too late.
The intruder had flung more of those throwing knives which embedded themselves in the wood, causing Konan to jump on the railing as she grabbed them to give herself a larger arsenal. She flung a few back and hit Masahiro in the throat. He melted into a mud clone and Shiori cursed openly.
The real Masahiro rammed his shoulder into her, knocking her off the banister and he laughed like a mad man as she fell.
Severus began casting a spell to stop her fall but Konan instantly flung a shuriken, causing him to duck out of its way.
"I think she actually tried to hit me with that damn thing!" He cried incredulously as the mad man jumped after her.
They both reached for a kunai that was larger then the ones they'd thrown at each other and the sound of metal striking metal filled the corridor as they each tried to slash each other in midair. Suddenly Konan kicked him hard and caught hold of a moving staircase, She tucked into a flip and reappeared on the other side.
Masahiro caught hold of a stationary staircase and applied sticking chakra to his hands so that he could pull himself up, walking his hands one over the other and landed on his feet with acrobatic grace.
In the time it had taken for him to pull himself up, Konan had made a Mist Servant and had slipped outside to warn Hagrid to get the children out of this ugly mess.
Hagrid was just getting ready to take his class out when Shiori appeared in front of him. He had never seen that look in her eyes before. They were so cold and something about her had changed, something frightening and intangible and he couldn't put his finger on it.
"Hagrid, a very dangerous intruder has infiltrated the castle. You need to-"
"Professor Nakamura behind you!" Harry yelped and several of the girls screamed in horror as a strangely clad man put a sword through her head.
She went blank-eyed for a moment, blood gushing from between her eyes before dissolving into a puddle of water at his feet.
Hagrid was so stunned by the gruesome display that he couldn't move his feet. He just stood there trembling violently.
Konan came from above and the man jumped out of the way faster then they could see properly.
Masahiro drove her back with a series of vicious chakra-filled punches, he aimed one high kick at her and she desperately crossed her arms to block it. He dropped into a sweep and she leapt to avoid it, ignoring the pain in his back and shoulder Masahiro suddenly twisted his body so that he could slam her forcibly into the hut with his feet, then he flung one of his kodachi, which pinned her arm to the wall.
Konan let out a low moan of pain as she jerked the sword out. It had been to long since she had fought a real opponent and this damn cloak was slowing her down. She began taking it off, her eyes never straying from the enemy ninja.
"You know what they say about the Akatsuki don't you? When they take off their cloaks they'll be killed!" Masahiro growled in excitement.
Konan who had just let the cloak drop to her feet, began to laugh.
"What a foolish superstition!" She said. "If that were the case then we would have died every time one of us decided to take a bath."
Nobody could quite understand why Professor Nakamura had stopped in the middle of the fight only to burst into laughter.
Konan frowned when she felt a large surge of chakra beginning to form underneath the ground.
"Hagrid! Get the brats into the castle before you get killed! Now!"
Her voice had broken the man out of his spell and he began herding the kids away from the battle scene when the man shouted something and the ground began rumbling.
"Earth Release! Stone Spire Devastation!"
They all turned around to watch as the ground erupted violently beneath them and large rock spires twisted out of the ground like giant drills.
Hagrid forced them to run for it, his heart wrenching as he heard Fang's terrified howls from inside the hut.
Bleeding and battered, Konan had formed the seals to form large paper wings which lifted her to safety with a chakra powered leap. She clung to the wall as she traveled upwards, dragging a kunai to slow her down.
Sibyl was looking down at the window when she heard a low rumbling noise and someone gasping for breath by her window. It was an absolute shock for her when she saw a blood-spattered Shiori Nakamura clinging to the wall with white, blood-flecked paper wings on her back. To have her vision come to life in front of her eyes forced a shriek of terror from her quivering lips and she could only stare as Shiori began flexing her massive wings before pushing off from the wall and swooping down like some sort of warrior angel.
She skimmed over the rubble and was brought down by several clones. Hands dusting the ground, she barely missed being impaled on a spire and punched him hard.
She led him out farther from the castle and onto the lake. Moving into another sweep, she momentarily blinded him with water before slicing his skin with a paper clone.
He snarled and formed hand seals, which caused several rocks from the bottom of the lake to jut out and form a circle around her.
She flung several kunai at him and formed a few hand seals. The man had to dive out of the way of a flock of origami birds whose razor sharp claws tore at his skin and whose beaks tried to peck out his eyes. He flung a few kunai and managed to rip a few wings so that they fell and floundered in the water. He made a long series of hand seals and the earth from the lake tilted into a steep rampart in the middle of the stone circle.
"Earth Release! Whirling Earth Cobra Trap!"
Konan used a substitution jutsu before she was sucked down by the coiling ground and landed on a tree
"Double Rock Assault Jutsu!"
The ground split open and rocks and pebbles of different sizes flew up from the ground pummeling her before she had a chance to move and she only barely managed to perform a Substitution jutsu before they came crashing down.
Hagrid had come back to get back but was mesmerized by an amazing sight! There was Shiori and that lunatic fighting on top of the water! Not in it but on it! How could they do that? How could he manipulate rocks and stones and stuff the way he was? How could Shiori take all that punishment and still be fightin fit? Hagrid also realized that the guy fighting her was nuthin but a kid! A kid who was hell bent on murder! He couldn' a been any older then thirteen or fourteen at least!
Movement caught their eye at the same time and Konan went after the Iwa nin. She kicked his arm and flung a handful of shuriken, pouncing on him her hand holding a kunai, she plunged it towards his throat, but he caught her arm in time and twisted it, so that it plunged into his shoulder bone before shoving her viciously, but she dissolved into a flurry of paper and one of the origami birds cut him in the eye.
Blood obscured his vision partially but that didn't stop him from forming his seals.
"Earth Style! Rock Punch Jutsu!" He slammed her hard in the face but she did a body flicker and sent her flock of birds after him.
He erected a temporary stone barrier. Which would give him just enough time to stop the bleeding.
Konan was breathing hard as she and birds settled down to wait.
"Hagrid what are you doing here?" She asked, her voice was low with fury.
Hagrid gulped. "I came to get Fang."
"You came back for the dog?" It radiated off of her and Hagrid was suddenly afraid of her.
"If you want to live you will not move unless I tell you too. You will only move whereI tell you too. You will not come out to look for me." A voice whispered in Hagrid's ear, even though the woman was standing right in front of him.
"Now listen, this is important, if I come into back into the castle you must say these words to me. In which direction does the butterfly travel? And I will answer, the butterfly travels a little to the south. If I don't say it correctly, then that means that I've been killed and the person in front of you is an imposter. You must kill him immediately. Do you understand?"
Hagrid swallowed thickly and nodded his head.
"Good. Run quickly."
Hagrid turned to find another clone carrying Fang and beckoning him forward
She studied the ground hard and began forming seals on paper kunai. Then she waited.
"Head Hunter Jutsu!" A hand came out to grab her but Konan was ready for it and leaping high she couldn't help the sadistic smirk on her face when she yelled out in Deidara's voice.
"Katsu!"
The blast sent Hagrid sprawling several feet away, his ears were ringing and noises became a little more muffled as he struggled to get to his feet. All he could think of was the password she had given him. The question and the answer, he repeated it over and over in his head like a mantra, shaking violently as the clone opened the door and dissipated.
Masahiro was grinning triumphantly as he rendered the Akatsuki's arm useless. It hung limp and twitching at her side, partially severed from the shoulder. This seemed to be his lucky day the young Hunter nin thought happily.
"Whatcha gonna do now that your arm is useless bitch?" He gloated. "You can't form anything other then a few elementary hand seals."
She was breathing heavily and staring at him through heavily lidded eyes. "My lover managed to fight off and escape two groups of Konoha's elite squads with no arms and a kunai between his teeth. What do you think you're going to be able to do little boy?"
She asked mockingly before taking off into the trees.
He took off in hot pursuit, even at times when she managed to evade him and disappear into the thick forests, all he needed to do was follow the trails of blood coming from her wounds. He would kill his brother's kidnapper and avenge him even if it meant becoming a one-eyed nukenin for the rest of his days. Through the trees and on the ground, he could sometimes see her, slowing down, weakened from blood loss and chakra depletion, though he knew that she was holding back. Did she think he was so weak that she didn't even need to use her more dangerous jutsu on him? Well! The haughty bitch had another thing comin! Masahiro thought, angry at being dismissed so easily. He had her on the run now.
He flung a few larger kunai at her legs and she tripped up.
Masahiro stalked into the small clearing, brown eyes shining victoriously. Yes! He had her now! He thought, slashing her Achilles tendons.
Above him, thunder began to growl in the gray sky and a chill wind whipped through the leaves.
Zetsu and Hidan picked up two distinct chakra signatures not too far off in the distance. One was angry, hard, powerful and earthy, the other cold and light, dancing and refreshing as a sweet, playful summer breeze. The second chakra signature clearly belonged to Konan, they headed towards the two sources of chakra cautiously.
He drew out his second kodachi and forming the swords like a pair of great scissors prepared to decapitate the crippled kunoichi.
Konan frowned as she finished her hand seals. Getting the brat and holding multiple genjutsu and her paper clones through her pain was becoming more difficult as she watched yet another clone leading him to this very spot was very difficult. He was a lot stronger then she originally thought but he was still way out of her league.
Masahiro watched as her rolled on the ground before turning into a fluttering bunch of paper. He paled when he realized that he had been right into her trap!
He watched as the Akatsuki member and three of her clones rose slowly into the air like angels of death on blood spattered wings. They were forming hand signs and for a moment everything became eerily silent as she performed the last of the seals.
The centaur herd had come to see what the source of disturbance in their forest had been, what met their eyes was a strange, gruesome sight. The blue haired human they had saved in the forest had sprouted wings and had somehow divided herself into four people that surrounded a bloodied child warrior watching with fascinated horror! What manner of warrior witch was this? They wondered.
Konan steeled herself, she was about to perform a sure kill jutsu. But it was a dangerous one that had not been perfected and took up so much chakra that it could be deadly because instead of slicing the outer body, it went through the body. She had no partner to aid her in case he had back-up somewhere or he managed to escape it, leaving her defenseless.
"Wind Release! Four Crosswinds of Origami Steel!"
The centaurs watched in horror as the four women dissolved into rotating paper stars and cut through the boy as though he were made of paper, his scream nearly muted by the roaring winds as she tore through his floating body, moving through flesh, nicking bone and shredding soft vital organs.
When she finally reformed as just herself, blood and flesh scattered on her body and in her hair Konan was exhausted. The Iwa nin's face was frozen in a permanent scream, his eyes were bloody masses, his tongue swollen and hanging out of his mouth, his body full of ragged holes where white bone and bleeding intestines showed.
"What were you saying about showing mercy mother?" Bane whispered. Eyes bulging out of his head.
"What kind of a witch is she?" Murmured Bane's oldest brother Magorian.
"She's no witch, but a descendant of an ancient race of warriors from far away."
Answered Orestes. "We need to leave. No one is to approach the warrior woman."
They left quietly and a crack of thunder disrupted the grisly scene, as the rain began to fall.
Konan breathed in the scent deeply, her whole body shaking as she leaned against a tree for support.
"Nagato." She asked as the rain washed the blood from her as though erasing this last murder from her existence.
"Have you come to welcome me into the next world?" She wondered.
Zetsu stilled at the words.
"Perhaps you should go back to the inn with Kisame." He whispered to the intrigued looking priest.
"Why?" He asked.
"Because seeing you here will put her in a state of shock and she may try to attack. She knows I'm alive, but she doesn't know you were dug out."
Hidan glanced suspiciously at Zetsu but he was not going to argue. It had been raining off and on since they got here and Hidan hated being out in the rain. If the Venus Fly Freak wanted him back at the room who was he to tell him no?
Konan sensed a familiar chakra signature in front of her and she stiffened when she Zetsu coming from the woods towards her.
Zetsu was letting off a steady flow of chakra, since signatures could not be faked and he watched as she stiffened in shock, glazed eyes frantically roving over him and hand outstretched as though she were unsure if he were a dream, a genjutsu or a ghostly apparition.
"Zetsu-san?"
She asked questioningly, wondering if he were an enemy ninja or if he still felt compelled to make sure that the bodies of the Akatsuki disappeared forever. It would only be fitting, her foggy brain told itself. She could not fight anymore and if she was going to be killed then at least she had seen a familiar face before she left this world.
Zetsu closed his eyes as a pleasant shiver skittered over his skin where her fingers had grazed him momentarily.
"Nice of you to tenderize my meal for me." His Darker Half said appreciatively, indicating the Iwa nin behind them.
"You should get some rest Konan, I'll keep watch." His Lighter Half amended as he began creating a small underground space for him to devour his prize in peace as Zetsu had not eaten since they'd arrived here.
Konan's back hit the tree and she slumped forward in exhaustion, a kunai clutched to her chest and her eyes closed to the world.
What seemed like hours later, she staggered to her feet, limbs numb from the now stinging rain and Zetsu rose from the ground, mouth bloodied and licking his lips.
"Zetsu san. It's really you." She asked. She was sure of herself now
He nodded.
"You should have those looked at." His Lighter Half said.
"Yeah! I didn't come all this way to watch you die from septicemia." His Darker Half grumbled.
"We will meet here tomorrow at five o clock in the morning after I've had my wounds tended too." She explained.
"Alright."
Hagrid was watching the door wearily. It had been well over an hour since she'd left and he was beginning to think she hadn't made it when the door opened and a wet, wounded Shiori dragged herself in.
Madame Pomfrey looked grim as she slung the teacher's arm over her shoulder. How the woman was still walking was beyond her and it seemed as though this woman defied all known medical fact.
Hagrid was at their side in an instant.
"Wait." He said and whispered in her ear. "In which direction does the butterfly travel?"
"The butterfly travels a little to the south." She answered.
Madam Pomfrey gave him a look of disdain. "I don't know what you're playing at Hagrid but-"
"But he is doing exactly as I instructed him to do."
Konan interrupted with fierce scowl.
"First things first. I need antibiotics immediately."
Madam Pomfrey glowered at her as they reached the Infirmary but administered the antibiotics, then she drew a curtain and got her out of her wet clothes and into clean dry ones. Bandages wrapping themselves around her wounds, the floating wand scanning her body for broken bones and internal bleeding. Her lips were tinged a slight blue and her face was unnaturally pale. The woman was also physically exhausted and so Madam Pomfrey gave her both a blood replenishing potion and a gentle warming potion which the woman downed with a grimace.
"There's no signs of blood poisoning, no internal bleeding and your arm will be as good as new, though it will be sore for a while. I think you'll live Ms. Nakamura."
"Get some rest Shiori." Albus Dumbledore said. "We'll talk when you've healed."
"Is the intruder gone?" Asked Severus.
"Yes. He's gone."
"Is he dead?" He demanded.
"Professor Snape!" Poppy hissed.
"Perhaps, he was wounded pretty badly when he fled."
Konan lied smoothly, noticing that neither man seemed inclined to believe her.
"Out! Out! My patient needs rest!" Poppy growled, ushering the two out the door.
Albus and Severus went to look outside and were stunned by the amount of damage done in such a short time. Large stone spires, interspersed with soggy sheets of white paper littered the ground, around a shallow hole in the earth that was black with scorch marks. There was a gouge in the wall of Hagrid's hut where the sword had been thrown by the Iwa ninja and huge rocks, including a strange rocky spiral floated in the lake as though someone had peeled an enormous gray apple and left the twisted skin behind in the water.
Though they searched some of the forest, neither could find evidence of a body and already the rain was rapidly erasing the existence of some sort of fierce battle in a small clearing not to far from the edge of the forest.
Albus Dumbledore decided to call all witnesses of the fight to see if he could glean any clues about the attacker and what had happened between the two.
Author's Note:
Sorry people,
but I haven't seen Konan fight yet,
so I have to make up a few of her abilities,
other then her origami attacks I mean.
I'm not too good at writing battles yet *grins sheepishly*