Not Sick Chapter 23
The Nine-Tailed Fox
A shadow stood haggard and torn over a black pyre, every inch of him betraying exhaustion. He stared at the murmuring flames with whirling red eyes, before nodding slowly and turning away, limping onward with new purpose.
Then he suddenly stopped, staring up at the silvery pearl floating above the Village Hidden in the Rain. His eyes spun, and suddenly the minute flare of crimson at the center of the pearl became crystal clear to him, as if it were right in front of his face.
Itachi sucked in a breath, the pain in his ribs spiking in response. His Sharingan grew wide, and his limp transitioned into a loping sprint, breaking apart the puddle he'd been standing in. Even the mild speed hurt, sending waves of agony throughout his body, but he ignored them. There were more pressing matters on his mind.
"Naruto Uzumaki... what have you done?"
"Nagato."
The emaciated man panted, gritting his bloodstained teeth. Blood was steadily running from his nose. Konan pressed in, her lips cut in a severe line. Origami birds flitted around her, cleaning the blood from her friend's face.
"Listen to me. You've practically killed yourself. If you keep this up-"
"Be quiet, Konan," Nagato hissed, and the woman pulled back at the tone, frowning. "I have to maintain my concentration. It's struggling."
"Struggling?" the paper woman blinked. She turned, moving towards the balcony that looked out over the village, the sparse room's only apparent exit or entrance. All the others were hidden. "That shouldn't be possible."
She stepped out onto the balcony, squinting at the distant watery sphere. It dominated Amegakure's skyline, like a mysterious traveler come to visit, hovering over the city. The lack of rain just made the situation more surreal. "You made it so large. It should be crushed by now-"
Something in the center of the orb caught her eye: the solid core of concrete and steel that Nagato had formed before encasing it in the crushing pressure of Amegakure's water.
It was glowing a brilliant cherry red.
Konan blinked. "What-"
The Chibaku Tensei detonated.
The solid core exploded, simply disappearing. One moment it was there, and the next it was gone. Three hundred and fifty thousand gallons of water evaporated in an instant, filling the air with boiling steam and covering the Amegakure skyline in a white apocalypse. Every remaining window in the village exploded, along with all of its surviving neon signs. Sparks and shattered glass sent up a million flares of multicolored light, adding to the mayhem.
A shockwave rippled out, laced with hungry red chakra, and decapitated every building for a kilometer around. The whole of the village shook, and every cloud above it was blasted out of existence. Most of the boiling steam went with them, dispersed in every direction until the only thing above the village was a perfectly moonless star-filled night sky.
The sound of the explosion deafened Konan from over six kilometers away. But it did not blind her. And so, when the last of the steam finally cleared away, the remnants of Nagato's greatest construction little more than vapor, Konan saw what it had been hiding in all its glory and horror.
A fox; a monstrous, snarling fox, with nine whipping tails arrayed behind it. It towered over almost every structure in the village, and the idle motion of its tails decimated any that remained near it. It sniffed at the air, standing on its hind legs for a moment.
Then it smiled, its black lips peeling back and revealing teeth that shouldn't have gone that far back into its mouth, and roared at the stars above.
There was a muffled echo in Konan's ears. A tiny, niggling sound, barely audible, like a great bell ringing many miles away, with an irritating ringing laid over it.
It was the Kyuubi demolishing a series of buildings before it with a childish glee, great whirls of its tails sending them crashing to the ground. She could feel the tower vibrating beneath her with each crash. The sound should have been as monstrous as the beast, but Konan almost didn't realize it was there.
"Nagato!" she screamed, unable to hear her own voice. She turned, keeping her eyes on the Bijuu that had popped into existence in the center of Amegakure. "Nagato, it's free!"
She fully turned around, rushing to the Akatsuki's leader. He was staring straight ahead, his Rinnegan bugged out, and blood pouringfrom his nose and mouth. He looked to be in shock.
"I know," he said blankly. Konan had to read his lips to understand the words.
"What do we do?" she demanded. Her hearing was slowly coming back: she could hear the monster breathing, even from the distance they were at.
Nagato turned to her, staring at her lips: he was just as deaf as her, Konan realized.
"It's powerful," he said. She could just barely hear his voice, but it sounded like she had feared it would: that loathsome, husked grind that indicated imminent exhaustion. She'd only heard it once before, and she hated it now just as much as she had it then. "More powerful than I could have imagined. It tore through the Chibaku Tensei like it was nothing."
"You can't stop it?" Konan asked. Nagato hesitated.
"If I were lucky," he said, turning from her and staring at nothing. He was communing with the Paths. "And this has not been a lucky night."
Konan watched him for a moment. His breathing was evening out, but blood was still trickling from his nose and the corner of his mouth. He couldn't fight the most powerful of the Bijuu. Not by himself.
But someone had, she remembered. Sixteen years ago.
"We need his help," she finally said. Nagato shot her a look.
"Can we trusthim with it?" he asked, almost rhetorically.
Konan shook her head, and responded with a not-question of her own. "Do we have a choice?"
Nagato stared at her for a moment, and then sighed.
"I can no longer feel him in the village," he said. "That Uchiha boy… he drained all my chakra from the sky and put it in that lightning technique of his. The rain is no longer tracking anything."
Bits of paper split off from Konan, the top few layers of her body peeling apart. Each sheet of paper folded, expanding, and became a hollow clone. They flitted towards the balcony, flying out into the cloudless village.
"I'll find him," she promised.
"And if Madara betrays us?" Nagato asked, shifting in his machine. His arms tensed.
"If he doesn't help, we'll be dead anyway," Konan bit out. "You just hold the Kyuubi back until he can suppress it."
Nagato paused for a moment, then grimaced. "There is a demon ready to destroy my village," he said slowly, before he straightened out, his spine popping with a momentous crack. His whole body suddenly thrummed with purpose, exhaustion banished. "I will stall it as long as I can."
And despite the sound of the monster outside, her lingering deafness, and the mold-like dread slowly growing in her gut, Konan smiled.
The water was cold, and tasted like rotted fish smelled: an acrid taste that felt heavy. There was a thin skim of oil on the surface, slippery and utterly repugnant, that made swimming through it even more difficult than it already was.
Sakura's sticky, knotted hair fell into her eyes, slicked with algae and unknowable slime, and she swam harder, desperate to escape the lake. It felt like her fingers and toes were gone, and her clothes seemed to weigh as much as one of Lee's weights, but the shore was getting closer and closer.
She wasn't going to make it. How could she? It was still so far-
Though surviving a several-mile fall into a freezing cold lake was also something that she hadn't thought herself especially capable of, but here she was, and if she could manage that, why not a kilometers swim to shore?
She hated herself for that. Hated. Hinata's face was taunting her, drawn in horror and pale with shock, the last she'd seen of the quiet Hyuuga.
'You're not dead yet.'
What an empty promise. Maybe it would be better if she did drown.
She'd landed closer to the real shore than she had to the village itself. Far closer: it had been the difference between a thousand meters and five thousand. Every inch of her had screamed to go back to the village, to help her friends, to help Naruto.
But drowning wouldn't help anyone, and that's exactly what would have happened to her if she'd tried to swim that distance in her current state. Sakura knew that just as surely as she knew that she'd never forgive herself for turning away from the distant village and towards the shore.
It felt like running away.
Sakura panted, pushing forward through the water. She could feel herself moving towards total exhaustion with every stroke: depleted of chakra, soaked to the bone, injured in too many places to count, and on the edge of hypothermia, she was completely unable to boost her own body heat. She couldn't even muster up the chakra to run on the water.
But there was no way she was going to die as stupidly as freezing to death in a lake she didn't know the name of in a country that wasn't her own.
One stroke, two stroke, three stroke, four. Arm over arm, legs feebly kicking. Katsuyu was gone, lost in the sky above. She couldn't go on. There was no more strength in her arms, and her lungs-
Her hand slammed into something, bruising her knuckles.
Sakura opened her eyes. She'd never thought she'd find mud and rotting roots beautiful, but the shore surrounding Amegakure indisputably was.
She scrambled forward, pulling herself farther onto it, flopping like a dead fish once she was fully free of the clinging, bitter water. It thickly slipped off of her, as if it were reluctant to leave.
Sakura flipped over on her back, breathing deeply and hacking up an occasional splash of liquid. Everything was soaked: she couldn't feel her fingers, but they were definitely pruning. Her boots were gone, lost to the lake, and all of her wounds were bleeding sluggishly, clogged up by the filthy water. The ribs cracked by the Shinra Tensei ached, a hollow burn spreading throughout her chest.
But she was alive.
She let out a choked laugh, dislodging the last of the liquid in her lungs, and fell back, staring at the sky.
There weren't any clouds. She could have sworn there had been a moment ago, low hanging and dark. She'd passed through them, hadn't she? Now, there was nothing above her but the endless stars of a clear sky.
Then, she heard a sound like the world breaking in two.
A roar, dominating the night and sending her heart pounding harder than it already was. She felt like it would burst. A primal fear wormed up her, even more virulent than the one that had pushed her forwards as the threat of drowning swelled.
Run away, the true fear said.
You're nothing more than food.
And the worst part was that she'd heard that roar before. Just a couple months ago, on the former worst day of her life.
Slowly, Sakura raised her head, looking to where the sound had come from. The village from which she'd been thrown.
She blinked.
"No."
Something hot welled up in her eyes, and Sakura shook.
"Please no."
They appeared in an explosion of smoke, eight of Konoha's most lethal shinobi and one of its fiercer nin-dogs stepping out of thin air and onto the sole bridge connecting Amegakure to the mud-soaked land surrounding it. An enormous ruddy red toad gnawing an antique pipe followed after them, the focal point of their teleportation.
The man who had once been called Tenzo, and was now referred to as Yamato, twitched as steam rose from his hand. He slowly brought it up to his face, trembling as the symbol upon it burned itself into his palm. Two simple lines: one downward slash, and another moving perpendicularly through it, a straight line terminating in a falling hook.
A symbol with a simple meaning: nine.
"We're too late," he murmured in shock.
Jiraiya of the Sannin fell to his knees. He watched with slit pupil eyes, deprived of their iris, as the monster that had once been his student roared to the sky, chasing away any clouds that remained. Both of the elder toads on his shoulder made horrified sounds.
"Impossible." Kakashi Hatake stepped forward, his headband raised in anticipation of a fight. He had instinctually unsheathed a kunai at the Kyuubi's roar, and he held the knife with the full knowledge that it was nothing more than a comfort in his hands. It would be no help against a Bijuu. "What do we…"
"They were here." Tsume Inuzuka interrupted the Copy-Nin with a growl, crouching down. She kept her eyes on the Bijuu at all times as she sniffed at the ground. "The rain's washed away most of the scent, but my son was right here, less than an hour ago." She eased back up with a snarl, which her partner Kuromaru echoed, exposing his fierce fangs.
"Then they're in there now." Hiashi Hyuuga said what everyone was thinking. His omnipresent frown intensified. "Or were."
"We can't know that," Shizune cut in. "They might have gotten out before Naruto…" she trailed off as a sonic boom echoed through the air and the Kyuubi screeched. It flicked its tails about, and a significant chunk of the distant village vanished, crumbling with a muted rumble.
"I can't seal that," Yamato whispered. Kakashi looked at him, both his eyes wide. "There's no way. I had trouble with four tails, but nine?" The former Root operative shook his head.
"Jiraiya."
Shino's father finally spoke up, his voice flat and cold. Everyone in the party, including a silent Inoichi Yamanaka who had just been staring at the village with emotionless, blank eyes, turned to the Aburame. He was watching the Sannin, his arms crossed and his eyes hidden behind his glasses.
"What can we do?" Shibi Aburame asked.
Jiraiya looked at him silently for a moment, before subtly shaking his head.
"We can't do anything to something like the Kyuubi," he said, glancing back at the monster. It was spitting balls of fire in every direction, turning chunks of Amegakure to molten slag. Some sort of vindictive joy shot through Jiraiya at the sight, burning away just a bit of the fear and horror. A moment later, the Fox staggered back at an invisible hammer blow, before it planted itself and roared, leveling a tower some distance from it.
"I can seal it, but it would be a one-time thing," the Sannin continued. Kakashi watched him carefully, his shock fading behind decades of experience in suppressing agony. "We can't approach it: if it's really fully free, we wouldn't even be a speedbump."
"We have to look for them, though!" Shizune exclaimed. "We can't just-"
"Hiashi." Inoichi interrupted the medic-nin, earning a dirty look that he completely ignored. He was still watching the monster with a detached dread. "What can you see?"
Hiashi grunted, activating his Byakugan. He peered intently for a moment, his eyes narrowing.
"Within the village… little," he ground out. "The entire settlment is saturated with both the Kyuubi's chakra, and someone else's: I can only surmise it is Pain's." He flinched. "The atmosphere is thick with it. Nothing is clear."
Shizune bit her lip.
"However," Hiashi continued, and his frown relaxed by just the slightest bit. "Your master's apprentice is right over there, Ms. Katō."
He pointed without looking to his right, keeping his head facing Amegakure. Shizune, along with Kakashi, turned. They found a pink speck lying on the shore of Amegakure's great lake, less than a mile away.
With a curse, the Copy-Nin took off a sizable fraction of the speed of sound, and Shizune followed him. They leapt off the bridge onto the surface of the grimy lake and sped across it, intent on Sakura.
"Well, that is one," Shibi said slowly. "But the rest?"
"Impossible to know. We'll have to search the whole village for them," Hiashi shot back, his fingers drumming a bruise into his shoulder.
"We don't have time for that," Jiraiya muttered, punching a hole in the concrete in his frustration. The toads on his shoulder exchanged grave looks.
"At this rate, they'll already be dead."
The oldest living Uchiha watched the Kyuubi gut Amegakure from the top of one of the few towers remaining in the village. Leaning against the edge of a windowsill with his arms crossed, one never would have thought he was watching a creature of unparalleled power tearing apart a city.
"Finally," the Uchiha muttered, and then he jumped.
In the Village Hidden in the Rain, a god was battling a demon.
And the god was losing.
Badly.
Faced with the demon, the god was beginning to understand what a mistake he had made.
Pain had been wrong. He had been wrong about so many things, and only now, pushed to his limit, the Paths being torn apart with unbelievable speed, did he realize just how incredibly, horribly, foolishly wrong he had been.
The Kyuubi was not just a Bijuu. The Kyuubi was not a monster to be conquered; the Kyuubi was not an animal to be wrangled, a beast to be tamed. It was more than just sentient chakra shaped in the form of a fox with nine tails.
The Kyuubi was HATE.
When the Kyuubi struck out with its tails, it wasn't a beast that tore Amegakure's buildings down, that blew concrete and steel away from itself like leaves in a strong wind. It was hate, rendering Amegakure down to its basest level. When fire burst from the Kyuubi's mouth, it wasn't the burning breath of some monster, but hate that burned Pain's Paths to greasy smears and left great swathes of Amegakure melted, covered in flames instead of water. When the Kyuubi lashed out with its claws, it was hate that tore gouges from buildings and crushed Paths like bugs.
And when the Kyuubi screamed and roared and raged, it wasn't just some animal venting its frustration, but a physical manifestation of HATE, pressing down on the world like an unstoppable weight, knocking away anything and everything and shaking the very foundations of the village.
Pain had made a mistake, but he was almost happy he had.
The hate ripping into his village was the very thing he'd sworn to fight. It was the very thing that was tearing apart the world day by day, hour by hour, and at that exact moment it was physically in Amegakure, destroying everything it could reach. The situation couldn't have been more perfect if he'd asked.
He couldn't beat it. He already knew that. The Chibaku Tensei had been his best shot, and it had failed to an embarrassing degree. It made sense to him: Pain was a creation of that very same HATE. He was just an echo of it. Matching it was out of the question.
But even an echo could stall hate until another echo could arrive; until another one of its creations could stop it…
And then Pain could use it. And with a hate like this, bringing understanding to the world would be laughably easy. Terrifyingly easy.
All he had to do was survive.
The Deva Path knocked the Kyuubi through three or four apartment blocks with a wave of its hand. The Bijuu didn't even fall back, simply skidding along the ground as it rode the force, spitting concussive waves of red death at Yahiko's body. A Preta Path interspersed itself, absorbing the shots, and was torn apart a moment later when the Kyuubi thundered back and crushed it under one of its paws, catching it in the middle of a vain dodge.
The Fox was fast: the speed of its passage sent out visible shockwaves, blowing destroyed buildings away from it and generating a painful crack. The concussive force hammered Pain, and he rode it out of reach of the Bijuu's claws.
The Deva Path flipped away, and as it did, a beam of startlingly blue light burned into the Kyuubi from a distant tower, singing its back. A cluster of missiles followed, splitting apart in midair and forming a wall of explosives above the Fox. The Bijuu turned, its mindless eyes narrow, and screamed.
The missiles detonated or flew wildly off course, and then the Kyuubi turned towards the tower the Asura Path had been firing from. It roared again, and a concussive wave of force rippled out, blowing out the bottom two floors of the building. It slowly toppled, grinding away its lower levels with the force of its collapse.
The Asura Path escaped the collapse, only for the scattershot blast of furious chakra the Kyuubi sent after its roar to melt it into unidentifiable slag.
That was the twentieth Path Pain had lost: now, he was down to fifteen spares.
But he only had to stall until Konan found Madara, or Madara found him.
Peace was within his grasp.
The wall came apart like wet tissue paper, and Kisame laughed a lunatic's laugh, pressing forward as if the obstacle wasn't even there. Every step he took in his headlong sprint left small craters in the ground, and another wall crumbled before him, brought down by his speeding bulk. Samehada licked its lips, making a keening sound.
Kisame could smell Kabuto somewhere above and ahead of him. The former Konoha-nin was running as hard as he could, unable to get the space needed for a summon teleport. Burdened by his crippled master, the little snake was nearing the western edge of the village.
But Samehada had tasted Kabuto's blood, and now Kisame would have found him even if he were deaf and blind. So while Kabuto flitted across the roofs of Amegakure, Kisame didn't indulge in acrobatics: he simply plowed through every building in his way in a straight line set on the fleeing snake.
His cloak was gone, and he was bleeding from a multitude of insignificant wounds, including one that had taken most of the meat from his left bicep. He was also nearly blind in one eye: his old comrade Deidara, visiting from the land of the dead, had tried to be clever and nearly blown his head off. Kisame had shown him exactly what a poor idea that had been. It had taken the blond nearly five minutes to put himself back together after all the chakra Samehada had sucked out of him.
Even as he ran down Kabuto, a half-dozen Edo Tensei were chasing Kisame himself, including a reformed Deidara and several of Orochimaru's former disciples; and to top everything off, the village was coming apart underneath his feet. Great rifts were opening in the ground, and unnatural roars were echoing through the air.
One of the Bijuu had shown up to play, apparently, and judging by the sounds it was tearing Amegakure to pieces.
And all he could do was laugh.
Kisame was having the time of his life.
"Kisame."
Of course, a familiar voice just had to interrupt it.
Kisame didn't slow down, or change his pace after Kabuto in anyway. He just looked to his right, already knowing what he would find there.
Madara Uchiha was sprinting alongside him, watching him with a single amused eye out of the corner of his mask. Kisame plowed through yet another wall as Samehada hissed in satisfaction, and the ancient Uchiha followed, slipping through the crumbling wall like a ghost and staying alongside the Hoshigaki.
"Yo," Kisame said. "I'm a little busy right now. Maybe you could come back later?"
Another wall went down, and Madara slipped through that one too. The Uchiha shook his head in amusement. "It's not that easy," he said deeply. "But don't worry: I'm not here to stop you."
Kisame snorted. "As if you could." He was getting closer. The gap was closing: Kabuto was only about fifty feet away now.
Madara chuckled. "You may be right about that. But really, Kisame, I just came here to ask you a question. I figured the least you could do after what we've been through is give me an honest answer."
"Oh the memories. In that case, give me a second," Kisame laughed, and then he jumped, shooting up through four stories of the apartment building he had been sprinting through. The floors of each level gave way to him as if they weren't there, and less than a second later, Kisame burst from the roof of the building like a great white breaching from a stormy ocean.
On the roof, Kabuto had about half of a very short moment to look both surprised and a little indignant before Kisame tackled him, bringing both him and Orochimaru crashing to a halt. The roof of the building shattered under the tackle, and both Kabuto and Kisame tumbled through the broken concrete. They hit the floor below them and bounced, flipping into a windowsill and shattering the empty wooden pane.
After that, the thirty-foot fall was of barely any consequence, but Kabuto still made a distinctly uncomfortable noise when they both landed, Kisame still on top of him.
"Gotcha!" Kisame exulted good-naturedly, wrapping his hands around Kabuto's throat and squeezing. The disciple choked, his eyes bugging out behind his glasses. Samehada squealed in delight. "Now, I finally get to pay you back for that weak ambush back in-"
Samehada trilled a warning and squirmed with sudden speed to lay itself over Kisame's back, and then a series of tiny clay birds hammered into it. Normally, the birds wouldn't have been a problem, but they immediately exploded after slamming into the sword, which moved them from a non-factor towards slightly irritating.
Kisame was bowled forward off of Kabuto by the concussive force, the sword draped over his back whining at the detonations. He rolled to his feet and turned, grasping Samehada and drawing it into a horizontal guard in the same motion.
"Hey hey hey!" Deidara swooped down from the sky, hovering over the street on a colossal clay owl. "Since when is it your style to choke 'em out, yeah? You shoulda just sliced him up!"
"Hmmph." Kisame straighten up, laying Samehada over his shoulder. "He barely deserves it." He shot a look to Kabuto as the man scrambled to his feet, clutching at his throat. "He's got the kinda face that you wanna crush the life out of, you know?"
Deidara blinked. "I'd prefer it vanish in a flash."
Kisame waved him off, rolling his eyes. "Always about your art, Deidara. Sometimes, you should just indulge yourself."
The blond shrugged, and as he did the other five Edo Tensei arrived. A loudmouthed redhead with a flute, some freak with two faces, a big guy with a belly to match, another with six arms, and lastly a pale teen with two red spots on his brow and razor sharp bones sprouting from his elbows and palms.
"Finally fucking got you," the redhead hissed. Kisame didn't even bother to look at her.
"Are we gonna do this again?" he addressed the group in general, keeping his eye on Kabuto. "Cause there's something I've been wanting to try, and now that this whole place is probably gonna be gone by the end of the night, I don't see any reason not to-"
"I'd prefer you not."
Kisame, along with Kabuto and all the Edo Tensei, turned to watch Madara stride through the wall without a care in the world.
"And who's this asshole?" the redheaded Edo asked, glancing at Kabuto. Madara turned to stare at her, and she met his gaze fearlessly, baring her teeth in a snarl.
A moment later, her eyes rolled back in her head and she collapsed, bits of paper slowly peeling themselves off of her face. The pale teen narrowed his eyes and bent down over her, grabbing her arm and jolting her with a burst of chakra.
Deidara blinked. "Tobi? What'd you just-"
Madara looked at him. Kisame knew the way he was canting his head allowed the Sharingan to shine through the hole in the mask. Deidara's eyes went wide.
"You-" the blond stammered out, his hands curling into fists. "You're an Uchiha?!" Madara turned away without answering. "Hey! Don't ignore me, you asshole! Where'd you get those eyes, huh? Where'd-"
"Amegakure may still have some use," Madara continued, looking to Kisame and ignoring the truly impressive amount of blistering swears that both the revived redhead and Deidara were sending his way.
"You think?" Kisame said. "'Cause if that sound is any indication-"
He paused for dramatic effect, just in time for the rumble of a collapsing tower in the distance, accompanied by an unnatural scream, to wash over the group.
"Then this place won't be standing for long," Kisame finished with a shit-eating grin.
Madara just shrugged. "Perhaps," he said. "I believe, however, that-"
"Madara!"
An angel with blue hair dropped out of the sky, paper wings folding out behind her and stopping her descent. She came to a halt just above the ground in the center of the gathering.
"What…" she said slowly, looking around at the Edo Tensei, Akatsuki members, and Kabuto. Orochimaru was still absent, left on the roof: for whatever reason, he hadn't decided to join the party. "Deidara?"
"Hey." Deidara took a moment from calling Madara a large variety of creative names and leveling interesting threats to flip Konan an insolent parody of a salute. "How's it going?"
Konan just stared at him for a moment, before shaking her head and looking back to Madara.
"The Kyuubi is free," she said without preamble. "Pain… failed. The Nine-Tails is rampaging."
Kisame whistled, and Konan visibly twitched, doing her best to ignore him. "Madara, will you help us? Your doujutsu is the only thing that will be able to hold the beast."
The Uchiha stared at her, looking like he was somewhere else entirely. Amegakure's angel waited impatiently, hovering just above the ground, ready to take off at a moment's notice. The whole village shook again, and Konan flinched.
Madara stepped forward, towards Kisame. The Hoshigaki watched him come with muted amusement.
"No need," Madara said flatly, his voice like a door slamming down on a crowd of refugees.
"What?" Konan blinked.
"There's no need," Madara said, still moving towards Kisame. "If my predictions are correct, I won't need to do a thing."
"But… the village!" the clone said in disbelief. Bits of paper were floating off her, forming into razor airplanes in her frustration.
"In the end, the village is just a village," Madara said calmly. "My plans are much more important. And I am not needed to save it."
Then he blitzed forward, covering the last ten feet to Kisame in about as many millisecond. The Hoshigaki pulled back instinctively, swinging Samehada around, but Madara had already grasped his forearm. The world began to swirl away.
"Madara!" Konan screamed in rage, and then she, along with everyone else, was gone.
Kisame was suddenly cold. Colder than he'd ever been. Madara pulled back, releasing his arm.
Kisame immediately kicked him in the chest, sending the Uchiha tumbling backwards. The man didn't try to dodge. Only then did the Hoshigaki look around, taking in his surroundings.
He was in an endless plane of floating cubes. They extended as far as the eye could see in every direction, into an abyss of infinite darkness, alien geometry, and headache inducing patterns made up of more and more cubes. Cubes and cubes and cubes, overlapped and laid over each other, separate and apart, till everything just looked the same. The fact that they were all the same muted grey color didn't help.
And it was freezing.
Kisame bent down curiously, tapping the cube. It seemed like it was made of concrete, but it had the consistency of particularly dense stone.
He straightened back up, looking around, and declared his judgment of wherever Madara had taken him.
"Weird."
"Somewhat, yes."
Kisame turned back towards Madara, who had pulled himself back to his feet. The Uchiha stayed a safe distance from him, but they both watched each other with the same darkly amused glint in their eyes. Madara couldn't stop Kisame, and they both knew it, but Kisame couldn't touch him. They'd both long ago decided, in that secret language that only S-Class missing-nin spoke, that if they ever came to blows it would be a stalemate.
"So this is where you go whenever you teleport?" Kisame asked.
"Only briefly," Madara said carelessly.
"Neat."
"Somewhat, yes."
"Why'd you take me here?"
"I wanted to ask you a question."
Kisame blinked. "Oh yeah. Sorry I got a little carried away: it slipped my mind."
"I understand," Madara said. Kisame could hear his lip pulling back. "Orochimaru and his apprentice are somewhat… disgusting."
"You let them by," Kisame pointed out. "They wouldn't have reached Itachi's little brother otherwise."
"True. But I needed the distraction they'd offer. I was hoping they'd remove Itachi from play completely, but Orochimaru almost crippling him made it worth it."
"Hmm." Kisame stared off into the abyss. One of the patterns of cubes kind of looked like the face of one of his old teammates, twisted in pain and betrayal. What were the chances of that?
"So what's the question?" Kisame asked. He grinned, revealing his shark-teeth, and Samehada chortled with him. 'Must be pretty personal, if you had to bring us here to ask it. I'll have you know, this blue look is all natural-"
"Why are you following Itachi?" Madara asked, and Kisame immediately shut up.
"Why not?" he said after a second. The silence of the cubed world absorbed the weak deflection.
Madara's eye roll was almost painful looking. "Don't play games with me, Kisame," he rumbled. "The least you can do is answer some honest curiosity."
"Leader's village is getting a torn apart right now. Don't you think you should listen to Konan?" Kisame asked with an uncertain grin. "The Kyuubi's nothing to trifle with."
"Like I said, I won't be needed." Madara crossed his arms. "Are you going to answer my question? Because if not, I'd ask you to stop wasting my time."
Kisame just watched him, his beady eyes narrow.
Then, coming to a decision, he slammed Samehada into the ground, burying it a foot in the cube. With the sword planted, he sunk to a cross-legged position next to it, his hands resting on his knees. Madara remained standing.
"Why'd I abandon your plan, huh? The world of truth?" Kisame asked evenly.
"Exactly." Madara's arms remained crossed, but his mien was relaxed: this conversation wasn't the preamble to a fight. "I had believed that it was exactly what you wanted. But if you are traveling with Itachi in his efforts to disrupt my design, I'm forced to assume that I was mistaken."
"You're not," Kisame chuckled. "I gave up on your plan."
"Why?"
Kisame scratched at his gills. "I realized it wasn't what I wanted."
He could tell Madara was frowning. "You'll have to explain."
Kisame spread his arms. "It all started with Itachi. When I was first assigned to him, I thought he was just like me. A traitor, a man who lived to kill his comrades. And I thought he was fed up with it, just like I was."
"And?" Madara began drumming his fingers.
"And I couldn't have been more wrong and right at the same time. Itachi was never like that," Kisame laughed. "He was loyal to the bone, from the beginning. We both killed under orders, but I eventually stopped taking them. He didn't. It took me years to figure it out. He was never really on your side."
"I was aware," Madara said. "Though I never expected him to break from me so dramatically."
"Hmm. I guess it wouldn't make sense to you."
Madara shifted. "Oh?"
Kisame flashed his teeth again. "About three years ago, Itachi got sick. Real sick. He was hacking up his lungs every night, sounding like death himself. Got even paler than usual. Thing was, he refused to see a doctor about it."
The Hoshigaki shifted. "I was pretty sure that I was gonna have to call Leader up about getting a new partner any minute. But Itachi pulled through, barely even a sniffle a week later. And after that, he was different. Treated me different, started talking about everything different."
"Before, he'd been making plans that only went out a couple years. I'm pretty sure he was planning on dying, probably to that little brother of his. But now, he was into the real long-term stuff. He wanted to change things."
Madara's eye narrowed as Kisame continued.
"I figured he was crazy. I didn't understand why he was telling me any of what he was. He's a pretty insular guy, you know," Kisame chuckled. "He was talking about leaving the Akatsuki. About his brother, about his eyes. A lot."
"Ah." Madara uncrossed his arms. "He ended up saying he "needed you," didn't he?
"Ha!" Kisame slapped the ground. "That would have been cute, huh? It was nothing like that." His beady eyes narrowed, and his teeth gleamed. "Nah. Nothing like that. But eventually, he did ask me one question, instead of just telling me stuff all the time."
"Which was?" Despite himself, Madara leaned forward in interest, one hand cupping his mask.
"He asked why I was following you."
The words poured themselves into the void, swallowed by the darkness and the cold. Madara didn't move a muscle.
"And what did you tell him?"
Kisame shrugged. "The truth, of course."
"You are always so enamored with 'truth,' aren't you?" Madara muttered, before raising his voice. "So he knows about the Infinite Tsukuyomi?"
"Yup." Kisame nodded.
"Troubling."
"Well, you know-"
"Get to the point," Madara snapped, clearly irritated. Kisame just grinned, raising his hands in a mockingly plaintive gesture.
"Hey, no need to get testy. It's a good plan. Itachi thought so too," he said. "It's just not what I wanted."
"And why is that?" Madara demanded, stepping forward. "Your whole life, you've lived in this rotten world, Kisame. Where no one tells the truth and every hope is a lie. Where you've been forced to sacrifice everything again and again, just to maintain that illusion that what you're doing matters, before you gave even that up."
One of his fists started rhythmically clenching and unclenching, his fingers drumming on his palm. "I thought you wanted a world where there were no lies, Kisame. You'll never make that here. If Itachi told you so, he's a greater fool than I would have imagined. The only way for you to escape this hell is-"
"You're right, of course." Kisame cut him off, slowly getting to his feet. "The only way to escape this world is to go to your world of truth. The one you would create for me."
Madara paused, cocking his head. "Then, why-?"
"Because that world would just be a bigger lie than this one is," Kisame said flatly. Madara rocked back.
"That-"
Kisame cut him off, pushing forward with brutal seriousness. "It would be a comfortable lie. The most comfortable lie I'd ever know." His lips curled back into a vicious sneer. "But it would still just be a lie. An illusionary world, lulling me to sleep while the real one, the one we're in right now, rotted away."
Kisame took a step forward, pulling Samehada from the ground. The sword shook, anticipating blood, but Kisame calmed it with a single tap as he continued. "If I wanted comfort, Madara, I would have just killed myself. I have no doubt death is a much sweeter place than this flawed earth. But I don't want comfort. I don't want to be happy."
Kisame hefted the sword over his shoulder, with a look of genuine cheer on his face. "I just wanted truth. I just wanted something I knew, with absolute certainty, to be true. And Itachi gave that to me."
"Gave you truth?" Madara asked, his tone lowering to a mocking baritone. "Itachi's lied all his life. To his brother, to his village, to me… what makes you think you're so special?"
"Because I trust him."
Madara blinked. "You trust him?"
He laughed, a deep, booming cackle that eventually hollowed out into something genuinely amused. "You trust him?"
"Yeah." Kisame laughed with him. "Pretty stupid, huh?"
"Monumentally so!" Madara chuckled.
"I thought he might have brainwashed me at first," Kisame admitted with a smile. "He's got pretty fierce genjutsu, after all. But after a while, I got over it."
The blue man sighed. "I'm sorry, Madara. You came to me when I had noting else, and you gave me what I craved most at the time. A way out: an easy escape." He snorted. "I have to thank you for that. You were a true savior to me. You kept me alive in a world without hope."
Kisame's smile faded. His face flattened out, and he leveled Samehada at the Akatsuki's true leader. "But I can't bring myself to agree with your plan anymore. It just isn't what I want, and Itachi offered me something you couldn't."
"That's why I'm following him."
Madara stared at the sword. "I'm sorry to hear that. Truly."
"Eh." Kisame shrugged, withdrawing Samehada, who whined in frustration. "Probably just gonna leave me in here now, right?" He looked around at the endless abyss of impossible geometry. "Might take me a little while to break out…"
"Unfortunately, I can't risk leaving you in here," Madara said, walking forward. Kisame tensed for a moment. "I'll be needing this dimension soon, and I having you interfere while I'm in it would be… unfortunate."
The ancient Uchiha held out his hand. Kisame stared at it, then up at the mask that hid the man's face from the world.
"Thank you for the answer, Kisame," Madara said slowly. Kisame took his hand, and for a moment, it wasn't two destined enemies alone in the dark, but just two very tired shinobi, clasping hands. "It was… illuminating."
"Anytime," Kisame said, and then the world swirled away.
Madara and his abyss vanished. The dark melted into to a muted gray, the not-quite-stone beneath Kisame's feet gave way to soft grass, and the utter, sound-devouring silence warped into a series of quiet chirps and rustling trees.
Kisame looked around at the small stretch of woods he had found himself in.
He had no idea where he was.
Samehada spat, and Kisame glanced at it, before staring up at the star-filled sky.
"Damn."
"What do we do?"
"Do?"
Kiba stopped staring at the monster that was tearing Amegakure apart, and started staring at Ino instead. The Kyuubi wrecking Pain's sealing technique had woken her up with a sharp yelp.
Now, she was watching him with cold eyes. Kiba didn't know what to think of that. You never knew how someone was going to react to death: he certainly hadn't expected himself to clam up, for his mind to go as blank as a sheet of untouched glass.
He would have thought Ino would have cried, or screamed, or just shut down. The Yamanaka had always struck him as… 'girly', for lack of a better term.
But Ino hadn't done any of those things. Instead, she'd just grown truly, incredibly, terrifyingly angry. 'Anger' wasn't the proper word, either: anger was something that dulled with time. Anger wasn't something, by itself, that could kill you. But right now, Chōji couldn't even look at Ino: the killing intent she was unconsciously radiating was barely a drop against the Kyuubi's presence, but it still felt like a knife pressed against the back of a neck.
Ino wasn't angry. Ino was furious.
"What do we do?" she asked again, more sharply. She stayed on ground, propped against the wall, barely moving an inch as she spoke: her internal damage was still keeping her down. But now, she hardly seemed to notice the blood that accompanied every word from her mouth.
"I…" Kiba looked around helplessly. "Nothing." He shook his head. "Nothing. Naruto's gone. And Pain…"
He spun back around to look at the monster, and the god losing to it.
"Pain will be gone too," he declared, and a flash of something primal and satisfied flashed across his face. Shino's body drove it away a moment later.
"And this?" Ino hissed, her whole body trembling. There was a green glow in her left hand: she raised it towards Kiba, unclenching her fist. Naruto's necklace was there, jittering in her palm and emanating the eerie light.
Kiba looked at it for a moment, taking in the strange way light played across the crystal's surface.
"No idea," he said.
"It only started doing this when the Kyuubi came out," Ino gritted out, her pupil-less eyes piercing Kiba. "It must mean something. It might be a warning, or a detection jutsu."
"Or a seal."
Chōji, Kiba, and Ino all turned towards the voice. It was female; Kiba had only heard it once before, two weeks before, and only briefly, but he remembered it like it was yesterday.
The redhead that had been on Sasuke's Team Hebi stepped around the corner of the shattered building, watching them carefully.
"That's not just a necklace," she said slowly, approaching them with gentle, cautious steps. Her left eye twitched. "That's crystallized chakra."
"You-!" Ino tried to sit up and failed, slumping back down with another cough.
"Jeez. You look pretty bad," the redhead murmured, unsteadily stepping closer to Ino. Chōji stepped in front of her, swelling up to his full size.
"Who are you?" he rumbled. Akamaru, coming up behind him, growled at the newcomer.
"My name is Karin," Karin said, keeping her hands clearly visible. They were shaking violently. "I'm a medic. I can help your friend-"
"Wait a minute." Kiba cut her off, and both Chōji and Karin glanced at him. "You were with Sasuke, right?" He took a step forward. "Why are you here?"
"We came to get Sasuke," she said, stepping around Chōji. The Akimichi watched her go with a huff, following closely behind. Karin bent down over Ino, ignoring the girl's glare. She stuck out her arm.
"Bite me," she said, rapidly blinking twice. Ino made a disgusted face.
"What?"
"Just… do it," Karin said, shaking. "It'll make you better, I swear." She bit her lip. "Please, quickly. Being near that thing is…" She trailed off, jerking her head a tad to the left.
Ino glanced at Chōji, who shrugged. She turned back to Karin and bit down on her arm.
The redhead let out a groan muffled by her other arm, and Ino's eyes went wide.
"What…" she panted, before shaking her head. Steam poured from all her exposed skin for a moment, and then she rolled over, carefully pulling herself to her feet. Karin fell back on her rear, and Chōji neglected to catch her.
Kiba stared at the revived Yamanaka. Her skin was suddenly a much healthier color, and she was moving like she'd never been injured at all. "How-"
"You said something," Ino cut him off, and Kiba shut his mouth. The blonde looked down at Karin, who was trying to even out her breathing. She let the necklace in her hand slid down, until it was hanging from her fingers by the cord.
"'Crystallized chakra'," Ino said. "What did you mean by that?"
"It's…" Karin gasped, trying to get to her feet. Chōji finally reached down and took hold of her arm, gently dragging her back up. "It's very potent, solidified chakra. From someone long gone, no doubt. But it's reacting to the Kyuubi." She indicated the glow. "I'm a sensor. I can feel it reaching out: it's trying to grab the thing." She shuddered. "It's almost as frightening as the thing it's trying to snare."
"So…" Ino raised her hand, staring at the glowing necklace. "We could use this to seal it?"
Karin shook her head. "No, no," she muttered, trying not to tremble. "It's not nearly enough. The Kyuubi could break it in less than a minute: it wouldn't keep it down long enough to make a difference."
"A minute, huh?"
Everyone but Karin froze at the voice, looking around for the source. They found it right behind them, looking away from them towards the monster destroying Amegakure.
"That's really Naruto?" Sasuke murmured, before looking away from the Kyuubi and back at the frozen group. He drew himself up.
"A minute would be more than enough."
He strode forward. Ino stumbled back in shock. The fact that Sasuke was covered from his left arm to his forehead in dried blood, his hair sticking up with static charge in every direction, and shirtless, with a naked sword was in his right hand, somewhat contributed to the decision.
Kiba just stared. "There's no way." Chōji nodded dumbly.
Sasuke ignored them. "Ino," he said tiredly. "Give me the necklace. And Karin," he turned to his teammate. "Take care of them."
"Sasuke?" The Yamanaka blinked, unable to believe he was there. She handed over the necklace as though she was in a trance, and it fell into Sasuke's hands with a clink. He closed his fingers over it, muffling the glow. The Uchiha's eyes spiraled out, the familiar onyx replaced by a whirling starburst pattern, and Ino took another step back. "What… what are you going to do?"
Sasuke turned away from her, back towards the Bijuu. He sighed, his left hand dropping bonelessly to his side, and his sword coming up.
"Something stupid," he muttered, and then he took off at a high enough speed that his passage ruffled his watcher's clothes and kicked up a trail of dust and loose concrete behind him. He sprinted into the village, becoming smaller and smaller.
And headed right for the Kyuubi.
Kiba watched him go with eyes like dinner plates.
"He's fucking nuts," he declared after a frozen moment. Akamaru barked in agreement.
"Probably," Karin said, sounding like she was trying not to throw up. "But it might be your friend's only chance."
Nine.
The Kyuubi swept around its tails once more, and an Asura Path was mowed down, crushed beneath the Bijuu's bulk.
Eight.
A Preta Path landed just behind the beast's ear, driving both its hands into the bristling fur. The Fox shook, slashing at the man draining its chakra, but the Preta Path stubbornly stuck to it, dodging the claws. There was a puff of smoke, and a rhino charged out of the sudden cloud, its horn set for the Kyuubi's chest. An Animal Path rode atop it, piercing Rinnegan watching the monster contemptuously.
The Kyuubi screamed and rolled over, crushing its head against the ground and barely ducking under the rhino's horn. The Preta Path died with an unheard squish, and then the Kyuubi came up in what could only be called an uppercut, its claws opening the summon it had dodged from tail to throat. The rhino reared back, and the Animal Path fell from its head.
The Kyuubi snatched it out of the air before it could reach the ground, devouring it in a single bite. Its man-sized teeth ground the Animal Path to pieces.
Six.
Pain blankly watched his Paths fall.
Six. He was down to six bodies, three of which were currently active, out of the original thirty-six. He would have called it unbelievable, but only if he weren't faced with the Kyuubi.
The beast couldn't be fought conventionally. Nothing Pain did was more than an inconvenience to it: his Preta Path could nip at it, his Naraka Path futilely strike it, his Animal Paths distract it, his Human Path stall it, his Asura Paths irritate it, and the Deva Path could push it back. But the monster was only ever slowed, never even close to being stopped. It simply came on, roaring louder and louder, crushing and melting everything around it.
Five. Pain's last Human Path was destroyed as it misjudged a dodge, and the Kyuubi's paw flattened it to paste underneath it. The Fox was impossibly fast for its size.
Four. The last Animal Path died a gruesome death as the Kyuubi speared it with one of its claws, lifting the woman into the air and tearing her apart by simply spreading its digits.
The Fox roared, lifting its head to the sky. Pain watched it warily as his other Paths retreated: with so few bodies left, he had to be extraordinarily careful if he wanted to stall the beast much longer. As soon as the Fox moved, the Naraka Path would have to retrieve the two bodies it had just slaughtered. But he was already low on chakra (another impossibility). Was it even worth it to-
The Kyuubi's mouth spread impossible wide, revealing its too-far-back teeth once more. Something started gather above the teeth.
Pain blinked, peering closer. Multicolored pearls of chakra, dancing with deep blue and red and the occasional flash of black, swirled above the Kyuubi's mouth. They began to drift towards each other, fusing into a whirling dark orb hovering above the beast's mouth.
The orb suddenly doubled in size, and the Kyuubi sunk, the ground under it cratering and sending out a shockwave of displaced air that ruffled Pain's hair and rolled rubble away from the monster like leaves in a storm. The Rinnegan went wide.
'Bijuudama.'
Pain took a deep breath, gathering himself. The Kyuubi's jaw snapped out, swallowing the orb, and then its head dropped. Its crimson-slit eyes glared out, boiling with something beyond simple hate.
Then it opened its mouth with an ear-bursting scream, and the super-compressed ball of deadly chakra shot out, right at the Deva Path. It tore away everything before it, creating a long rift ten meters deep in the concrete it passed over.
It loomed before Pain, filling his vision, and he felt the tiny gravitational pull the incredibly dense ball was putting out tug minutely at him. He punched out at it with his single arm, a simple symbol of defiance.
"Ha!" he shouted. Gravity convulsed, the very air wracking itself with invisible force, and the Tailed Beast Bomb rebounded, shooting straight up into the sky. Both Pain and the Kyuubi watched it go.
Then, it detonated, and for about three seconds it was as if the sun had risen on Amegakure.
The Kyuubi was there before the light was gone. Pain didn't have time to jump back: he could only brace himself as the Fox hammered a paw at him. It was barely more than a slap, compared to what the monster had been putting out, but it send Pain spiraling threw the air, his entire body becoming an enormous bruise. He crashed to the ground and tumbled head over heels as the other Paths scattered, putting distance between themselves and the Bijuu.
Pain pulled himself up, watching the Kyuubi stalk towards him. He struggled to his feet: The connection with Nagato was growing tenuous. He barely had enough energy left to coherently direct his remaining bodies. Another Shinra Tensei like the one he had just used was out of the question.
But of course, if the Kyuubi used another Bijuudama, that would be the end of that. There was no dodging an attack like that.
"Come on, then!" he shouted, leaping to his feet. The Kyuubi stopped in its tracks, and Pain bared Yahiko's teeth. "If you want me-!" he started, before the monster snorted and turned away from him, batting at something behind it. Pain blinked again.
That was then he noticed the vibrant green band of energy wrapped around the Kyuubi's hind leg, slowly worming its way up its body.
'What?'
Sasuke gritted his teeth. He held the necklace Ino had given out before him like a priest would a holy object, pointing it at the Kyuubi. Green snarls of chakra lashed from the crystal, wrapping themselves around the Fox. The beast roared, shaking itself and snapping some of the bonds, but more slipped out, settling over its legs.
The necklace was shaking in his hand, and almost hot enough to burn him. Sasuke was pretty sure that was a bad thing.
"Kyuubi!" he shouted as loud as he could, the sound carrying itself clear across the village. The Fox snapped its head toward him, baring its teeth. There was no intelligence in its eyes: just merciless, blinding hatred and rage. Sasuke didn't flinch, meeting the thing's gaze fearlessly.
The Susano'o flickered around him, the ghostly purple ribs rising once more. Fresh blood trickled from both of his eyes, and was swiftly ignored.
"You have something…" Sasuke paused, his voice temporarily failing him in the face of the Kyuubi's sheer presence. The Fox moved closer, and Sasuke shook himself. "You have someone important to me!"
He planted his feet, the Susano'o finally fully rising. The skull-mask stared out, leering at the Kyuubi. The Bijuu bristled at it, and let loose a deafening roar. The Susano'o shook, but Sasuke stared exactly where he was.
Sasuke shouted at the Fox, pouring all the pain of the last hour into his voice, and then he shoved his hand, and the necklace it held, into the Susano'o's ribs. "He is not yours!"
Sasuke squeezed.
There was a flash of light, and the necklace shattered. Green highlights burst out from it, racing through the purple of the Susano'o and leaving traces of a violent viridian wherever it went. The guardian shifted, the color mingling with its natural violet, and then settled.
Sasuke panted. Mixing an unfamiliar chakra into the Susano'o was difficult, but not impossible. And now, if Karin were correct…
The Kyuubi attacked, lashing out with a single paw in an attempt to crush the Uchiha. Sasuke stood his ground, and the Susano'o flashed out, its left hand catching the Kyuubi's incoming claw and slamming it to the ground in a cloud of dust. The Fox roared as tendrils of green light began to encase its hand, squirming out from the Susano'o steady grip and tightening its hold.
The Bijuu struck with its other claw, and the Susano'o caught that one too. Green swirled from that hand as well, ensnaring the Fox's hand, and then both of the Susano'o's arms pulled.
The Fox came down, its chin crashing to the ground with a tremendous shattering sound. Chips of destroyed concrete ricocheted from the Susano'o as it floated forward, following Sasuke's steady stride. Its hands remained clasped around the Kyuubi's arms, the green chakra still pouring from them. Most of the highlights running through the guardian were gone. It was as Karin had said: the chakra had burned itself to death against the Kyuubi's fiercer flame.
But it had given the Sasuke the minute he had needed.
Now, Sasuke and the Kyuubi were eye to eye. The Fox snarled at him, snapping its jaws and slamming its tails against the ground in frustration, shaking the whole village.
Sasuke stared into the monster's mindless red eyes, and Itachi's gift whirled.
"Give Naruto back," he whispered, and the world rushed away.
AN: It's about damn time.