AN: Chapter title: God
"W-What are you? You can't be human!"
"We are not." A black rod pierced the heart of the man who had spoken his disbelief, just one of many who had been killed so far. One of countless who would die today. "We are Pain. We are God." Another victim fell to the ground.
So many more remained.
The body of Pain pulled away, the black rod snapping off from beneath the sleeve. It was one of the many left behind by now, a crude marker for each corpse of those foolish enough to face the cult's attacker.
"There's no use in hiding." Pain spoke the words without emotion, continued down the halls of the cult's compound. "None of you are leaving here alive."
One cultist chose to scream and launch a maddened attack on him, a truly massive stream of flames courtesy of the Dark Chakra he wielded, that was twisting him into a monstrous image for the few moments left of his life. Pain didn't show fear, merely stopped long enough to lay a hand on the ground, to consume the hall in smoke.
A powerful wave of water promptly roared forward, consumed the hall and much further beyond it to not only smother the flames but to drown a handful of the cultists as it washed them down the hall with crushing and relentless pressure. Those not killed by the force of the wave found their lives ended when they slammed into the walls with enough force to shatter them, to drop what was left of their bodies to the ground outside. The giant crustacean responsible for the wave of water was dismissed with its task completed, Pain continuing forward.
An ambush was undone when a black rod was thrown out from beneath a sleeve, jettisoned more than thrown. It pierced the heart of another cultist who attempted to attack from above, dropped her dead to the floor before she could even launch her attack.
Pain only continued on.
The occupants of the compound had been reduced to a third of their original numbers but they still posed a threat, would need to be dealt with.
A pair of cultists wielding blades broke through the sides of the hall, screamed out their fury as lightning consumed them, as the Dark Chakra infesting them turned them into little more than living bombs. They had mutated horribly, had gained nightmarish visages fitting of those who worshipped a demon. They screamed its name even now, swore that the defiler that stood before them would fall.
Pain held a hand out towards each, black rods emerging from sleeves and stopping the two in the midst of their attacks.
"Your efforts are futile. Do you not understand you fight a God?" The lightning that had consumed them was quick to fade away, their dying expressions one of confusion as their suicidal attacks failed, as their bodies were no longer their own to command. When they had dared to raise their hands against Pain, they lost such a thing. Pain tossed them aside as the rods broke off, left them to die out of the sight of a God.
On the other side of the currently flooded compound, a pack of snarling winged dogs rampaged without end. They were summons of Pain, aimed to kill every living thing in the building. Every strike proved futile, every attack launched only made the situation worse as each blow made the dogs only continue to multiple, one beast swiftly spawning into dozens if not outright a hundred.
Annihilation was assured.
It was their fate for daring to raise their arms against God.
"Their Dark Chakra will need to be dealt with when we attack." Far from the compound under siege, Pain spoke with the Missing-nin from the Hidden Mist. "Will Samehada be a problem?"
At the question, Kisame only gave a shark-like grin.
"If those assassins I killed had this Dark Chakra you were talking about, not at all. Samehada's getting hungry, is craving another taste." He lifted the sword up, let Pain see how it moved beneath the bandages wrapped around it. "Think it's about time for me to head out there and join the fight?"
"Not yet." One of Pain's purple gazes was focused on the compound down below, as a vortex of flames erupted into the air, began demolishing the building in full as it raged out of control. It would need to be dealt with soon or it would become a problem. "As I expected. The Dark Chakra they use is still too unstable for combat." Purple ringed eyes turned to Kisame. "There is no need to join the attack. I will finish this."
Kisame's eager grin dropped from his face like a bolt of lightning, the Missing-nin clearly disappointed at Pain's command.
"…Why'd you even bring me here if you were going to handle everything by yourself?"
"This is merely the first part of our duty here. Once I eliminate the current threat to the priestess and her daughter, we will move on to the next step and exterminate the rest. Be ready to leave by tonight." Without giving the Missing-nin a chance to speak in response, Pain vanished in a cloud of smoke.
All six of the bodies that had taken up the identity of Pain converged on a single point, the Animal Path responsible for such a prompt gathering of those who shared the moniker of Pain. The remains of the cultists would need to be dealt with before they could launch another attack on the priestess or her daughter, before any of them could spread word of the Akatsuki's arrival to the Land of Demons.
The secrecy of their presence would serve their mission well.
All present here would need to die to preserve such a thing.
Words were not needed, all six simply acting.
The Animal Path summoned a bird to take to the air, survey the battle from high above with two pairs of eyes. In addition to the myriad of summons already present, there was little Pain could not see with the Rinnegan. The dogs already called forth continued their attack, their relentless slaughter the ever-dwindling number of those who remained alive.
The Asura Path grabbed onto a wrist that was no longer flesh, twisted and pulled to draw the hand there away from the arm to unveil a string of missiles that launched into the rubble. If any survivors remained, they would die in the cascade of devastating blasts unleashed on impact.
The Preta Path stepped forward to stop the flaming twister unleashed in a last desperate attack before it could grow any larger, spread any further and threaten the Land of Demons in its uncontrolled state. Such a task was accomplished by the barrier summoned by raised hands, working quickly to drain the entirety of the Dark Chakra that powered the out-of-control technique until not even a single spark was left.
The Human Path found the crippled and mauled leader of the compound, intentionally left alive by the pack of dogs during their attack, dragged to where Pain had gathered to recover the information Akatsuki needed. No matter his state, that he was, at best, minutes from death, there was no need to worry once a hand was laid on his bloody head.
The Deva Path merely observed, the Naraka Path positioned nearby.
With the attack from the Asura Path, the continuing slaughter by the winged dogs, none of the searching Rinnegan found any notable resistance.
All here had either fallen or were dying before the might of God.
"Finish things here." Pain spoke to three in particular. The Asura, Preta, and Human Paths would remain. The Animal and Naraka would depart with the Deva Path.
Kisame only shouldered Samehade, as annoyed as he allowed himself to be as Pain took the bulk of the fun parts of the mission. As boring as his job was now, he knew he'd have a chance to "stretch his legs" later. He was patient enough to wait until then. He headed back down to the latest compound the priestess and her daughter had been sequestered within. The latest attack by the cult had left a majority of their guards dead, cleanup still underway as corpses were moved, as attendants to the priestess continued to try and wash all the blood away.
"Guess they're not moving you for a while." One of the assassins, the one to get the closest to the priestess, wasn't getting moved anytime soon. Pain had been the one to catch him, had impaled him to the ground with six black rods, had left him alive only long enough to interrogate him for the cult's latest location. Kisame jostled one of said rod as he passed by, couldn't help but whistle at just how deep it was in the ground. "Wonder if I could get him to give me some of those…"
He was always curious about how the metal would work as a blade, the unique ways it seemed to react to Chakra.
A pair of large pandas blocked his destination at the end of the hall. Both were identical in appearance with black fur covering their limbs and white fur on the body, a black sash worn over its stomach, piercings spread across the body, and something close enough to a topknot on top of its head.
Both also had the Rinnegan.
The summons let him pass without issue.
Unlike the pair of attendants who had tried before. Neither of them would be of much use to anyone after getting turned into…it was pushing it to call them smears.
"Hoshigaki-san." The woman Pain had come to protect, had brought Kisame along to do the same, was in the same spot from when Kisame had been here the first time:
Holding her, sleeping, daughter. Her wounds had been rebandaged since the last time he had bothered with stepping inside, not one of her attendants having entered the room since the two of them had arrived.
"Miroku." He took a seat across from her. He could still smell blood but that could be from any number of sources at this point. From how she looked, her wounds weren't bothering her, weren't bleeding again. "How you holding up?"
"I am…as well as I can be." The woman looked down to her daughter, her sleep anything but natural. Kisame had a feeling Pain was behind it. It was hard to say if it had been enacted as an act of mercy after what happened when they arrived or as a measure for quiet. The girl's screams had gotten annoying after all. "I try to accept my fate but…I fear for her if I do. She doesn't deserve this. She's such a gentle girl, so caring, so compassionate. I wished so dearly for her to be spared this life, that I could somehow spare her from the fate of our line. I thought I was keeping her safe when I forbade her instruction in any of our arts save the seal, would keep her from harm if I sheltered her from the world, from power. But I was a foolish woman. I left her unprepared, not ready for what will assuredly be her fate now. If her visions hold true, I can't even correct my mistakes."
Her tears, the ones she had shed since her daughter's broken sobs had begun, fell anew.
She did her best to wipe them away.
With how ceaseless they were, it was an exercise in futility.
She still tried, endless lessons in decorum and such driving her to struggle against the grief Shion's words had gifted her.
"I'm going to leave her all alone, leave her with nothing but memories, sadness. I wish I could do something, could change this, but my time in her life is…" She could only hold her daughter, hold her as tight as she dared.
"I just wish I had more time."
Her eyes finally lifted.
"I-I became so desperate that I called you here. I begged for God's aid and he came. Pain answered my prayers even after all this time."
"If anyone could break our fate, could end this once and for all, it would be God himself."
"Hmm." The swordsmen only had bits and pieces concerning everything that had happened. Pain knew far more than he did, part of whatever reason he had brought them here concerned the Priestess Miroku. Although, he didn't need to be a genius to guess the current despairing state of the woman and her quietly sobbing daughter had something to do with the predictive ability the line of the Priestess possessed.
Silence was preferable to speaking. He wasn't much for conversation with a woman trapped in her own head.
"Hoshigaki-san, may I ask a question?"
She didn't actually wait for an answer.
"What brought you to Pain? Why do you follow him?"
She, also, didn't let him speak, kept going.
"You're a rogue Shinobi. Even in a land as isolated as this, word reached us of a man so powerless, the Tailless Tailed Beast as they call you. You left your village as a murderer, they branded you as a traitor. And you carry that stigma now. Most people call you a monster, a butcher, and the worst of the worst."
Miroku's eyes didn't leave the pained face of her daughter, tried to ease the nightmares plaguing her with her presence. It hardly helped, the pained whimpers, the gasps for air, the shivers of her body, failed to end. She looked close to tears that she could do nothing for her daughter, nothing but watch her suffer as all Priestesses did.
"Even now, my people speak nothing but ill of you when you've come to save us. Call you a monster, a beast."
She didn't give up no matter how much it pained her, tried to bring some comfort to her daughter in so much pain.
"But you've arrived here in our darkest hour, came to us with God when I asked for help. Why? Why not abandon it all?"
He had no reason to answer her with the truth.
"A Shinobi is a tool. I was simply a tool who became too dangerous to keep around. So I found someone else to offer my service too. That's the way of life for us. Insults, calling me trash, the words from weaklings don't bother me." He was impressed it wasn't even a full lie.
He didn't have the time to waste on the hurt from words, didn't need to waste his mind on it either.
Besides, they weren't wrong. He had earned the title of monster.
The Hidden Mist truly had a talent for creating Shinobi who carried such a title, who thrived on spilling blood and taking lives.
"Is that the fate of all Shinobi? Or do you deny it? Is that why you follow the path Pain has set for you? Were you lost before you met him, adrift like so many others?" A sad smile crossed her face as she spoke. "Or do tools deny such ideas, that they could ever be anything but useful? Or is that a trait of us all? A cruelty of the lives we lead: To serve another, to never live for oneself." She spoke but not to the mercenary in the room. "To be bound by such duty…is it as heavy a weight as I feel now?"
Pale eyes focused on him, torn away from her daughter for the moment.
She was looking for an answer.
She was looking for anything.
'Isn't this one chatty.' A part of him itched to leave but Pain had been rather clear in his orders since they arrived: He was to personally guard the Priestess if he wasn't present.
"That kind of weight is only as heavy as you make it. If you care little for what you do, the weight, and your life, is easy. If you consider it worth something, that what you do matters, that weight becomes indescribable."
It was the one truth his once master revealed to him.
A traitor could betray all he knew simply because loyalty meant nothing.
A Shinobi could kill his own comrades because loyalty to another, the idea of a greater goal, mattered above anything else.
"I see…" She didn't sound happy, her voice empty of anything but resignation. "Thank you for answering Hoshigaki-san." She looked away, did an admirable job of hiding her tears, as she wiped them away with her sleeve.