Hello!
I want to give a big thank you to everyone that's been with this story so far. Those that favourited, followed, and reviewed. I appreciate you all so much.
This week was hectic. The good kind of hectic, and your reviews pushed me through.
Note: Mei has a rinnegan eye. The other one was with Ao, but he's dead. When he was alive, Ao showed that he could use the Deva and Preta paths, meanwhile, Mei showed she could use the Asura path. Both of them can use the Seventh path.
We've come a long way :)
Enjoy…
CHAPTER 26
Mei had gotten better at using her eye, Naruto realized.
The woman pushed down Naruto's knee to her stomach, stepped away from an elbow and raised her forearms to her face to block a back fist, pushing the blocked blow away and ducking from another fist to her face, all the while, the teasing smirk plastered on her face only lifted.
Bent down, she buried two punches into Naruto's midsection, shooting up with an uppercut that the boy barely leaned back from but was not able to dodge the straight kick to his chest.
Naruto cursed and slammed into a tree, firing chakra to his limbs and vanishing from the tree mere seconds later, dodging a blistering beam of chakra blasting from Mei's open palms.
Mei's rinnegan thrummed and cut off the chakra beam pouring from her hands, catching Naruto's kick, whipping him around and planting him into the ground, where the Hokage dispersed as a clone and the real Naruto returned with a punting kick to the side of Mei's head.
The blow cracked like thunder.
To Naruto's amazement, the kick only shuffled the woman back two steps. There was not so much as a bruise on her face. The woman's rinnegan tracked him, right down to his minute movements, and the eye amplified her already remarkable body.
Naruto got to the ground and fell into a crouch, flashing through hand seals and utilizing a jutsu he had copied from his father a very long time ago.
Earth Style: Swamp of the Underworld.
The jutsu rippled outwards from Naruto's feet and covered a large area of the forest in swampland. Nothing could move, and Mei's composure broke into a hard growl as her feet couldn't find purchase on the swampy ground, either sinking or slipping on the surface.
Rockets blasted under her feet, taking off from the ground.
Naruto's Mangekyo burned in his eyes and he immediately pushed through another set of hand seals.
The next thing that happened occurred quickly.
So fast, it seemed not to have happened.
A ghostly, red skeletal Susanno ribcage manifested around Naruto, although this one resembled the middle section of an insect—its thorax—. Then more of the Susanno formed, six spindly insectoid legs pushed the skeletal frame off the ground, lifting Naruto into the air as a result, where a pair of arms and hooked claws manifested on each side of the ribcage. Lastly, a ghoulish praying mantis head materialized at the top of the ribcage, with its evilly gleaming red eyes and its snapping, hissing mandibles.
This ghastly, incomplete Susanno towered over the forest, reaching Mei's altitude as quickly as she had shot up into the sky, destabilizing her as the rockets at her feet violently swerved to avoid the praying mantis Susanno.
It moved its right arm, swiping to the left with jarring speed, and the woman plummeted to the ground.
Her feet had been severed from her knees.
Naruto leapt out of the Susanno and it crumpled to nothing, falling from the sky and closing in on Mei as she fell. She flailed, righting herself in the air and turning onto her back, only for the Hokage to land on her with a dropkick to her throat, smacking into the swampy ground with a vibrating thud.
The force of the impact tore Mei's head off her neck and tossed a handful of feet from her body.
Naruto breathed a sigh of relief, only for Mei's headless body to begin to writhe while sinking into that swampy ground. Her hands latched onto Naruto's legs.
"The hell?" he swore.
"This isn't over, pretty boy," Mei's decapitated trilled. "We're both going to hell!"
The woman's mechanized torso flung open, displaying organs and blood. As well as a grey, sphere with blinking red lights counting down to zero.
One…zero.
Naruto's sharingan worked a mile a second and his bloodline burned through his body, slowing down the fiery explosion as it erupted from the woman's chest. The impending shockwaves of air and heat reduced to a sluggish crawl, pulsing from Mei's torso.
Red mist ebbed from the boy's pores as his movements broke the sound barrier.
The Hokage whipped out a ninjato from a seal on his wrist and cut Mei's hands from his ankles, plunging the blade into the exploding device, all in one smooth motion.
At that point, Naruto was a red fog.
His chilling Mangekyo hung where his eyes were supposed to be, whirling hypnotically down at the suppressed explosion.
A skeletal thorax formed around the blast, and the flow of time continued.
Not a lick of fire or shockwave escaped the Susanno, and the bonfire of red illuminated the forest as the sun set over the horizon.
The Red Demon loomed over Mei's head, his body being made entirely of hatefully red mist.
The mist gathered back together, forming Naruto's body. His emotionless expression regarded the woman as she paled, her mouth hanging open in sheer horror at what she had just witnessed. He lifted his leg and brought it down on Mei's head, smashing clean through and killing the woman.
All the while, the bonfire inside the Susanno crackled as stars covered the night sky.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
An impromptu wide berth was formed to give the mother and daughter space to fight, meanwhile, the calamity of bloodshed and death waged around the pair as they performed a synchrony of blades and blows.
The pair were a hypnotic flurry of motion, dizzying to watch their instinctive actions.
Gripping their swords with both hands, Rin and Kushina brought their blades together, Samehada meeting Kushina's katana, and were pushed back by the pressure of the collision, shooting back together a split second later and slamming their blades together twice more, stepping to the right and intercepting sideways hacks. Rin pushed against her mother's monstrous strength, pulled away and spun around in a circle, forcing Kushina to lean back to dodge the shredding scales of the girl's sentient sword.
Kushina backflipped once, missing another snap at her face by Samehada, slashing her katana upwards to deflect the third swipe for her head, jerking Rin's arms up and leaving her torso wide open for Kushina to plant a kick into Rin's stomach. Though, with a brief shower of light, Rin forced her body to the side, grating her teeth in an effort of regaining control of Samehada's monumental weight while dodging the straight kick.
With a mental command, the shrieking sword grew to eight times its normal size and Rin smashed it down on her mother, eliciting harsh tremors to rock the island nation, distracting more than a few other combatants as they warred around them.
Remarkably, Kushina guarded the heavy blow, holding her katana horizontally with both hands over her head and gnashing, grinding her teeth under the strain of the restless Kiri sword. The muscles of her arms tensed visibly and the vein on her neck pulsed until her eyes reddened and she roared, pushing up in a mighty display of strength, once again leaving Rin's middle vulnerable.
This time, as Kushina bore a fiery punch to her daughter's stomach, Rin let go of her sword and flattened her palms, layering them with chakra and batting Kushina's smouldering fist down, impacting the sand and following this achievement with a hard knee to Kushina's face.
The sound from the contact was like lightning striking a rock.
The blow reverberated in violent waves, indiscriminately discarding any Kiri or Konoha fighter to the wayside with the resulting tidal wave of air pressure.
Neither mother nor daughter slowed, despite the bruise forming on Kushina's left cheek and the slight shudder of Rin's knee.
Kushina discarded her katana's handle, its blade had broken from blocking Rin's previous downward smash. She cracked her fists and grit her teeth into an elated grin, swinging a punch that was slapped to the side by Rin. The girl ducked under an elbow and slid to her mother's other side, catching Samehada as the sword finally fell and holding it across her body, blocking Kushina's high kick to her chin. The scales flailed and Rin fought to hold her position against the attack.
The soreness in her arms was getting more and more evident.
Holding Samehada and fighting with it was a different, lesser strain than using her sword against her mother, Rin admitted in her mind.
"I'm letting go," Rin hissed to her sword, and Samehada thrashed. It wriggled from Rin's hand and Kushina backtracked several steps from the erratic sword. A row of teeth opened at its tip and a pointed tongue curled out, lapping at its non-existent lips. Writhing on the sandy beach, the sword resembled a purple snake, spitting madly in Kushina's direction but never venturing further than a single pace from its wielder, who heaved and panted with slumped shoulders, standing with a slouch and warily watching her mother. "You're way better than the stories Dad tells us."
Despite her wild appearance, Kushina smirked. "You're not so bad yourself." Her purple eyes wandered down Rin's haggard appearance, to Rin's lower abdomen. There was a deep cut in the jounin vest, where Tobirama had plunged his sword into Rin's back. The medic had said that a kidney or her womb could have been affected by the stab. Either way, Rin knew something was amiss in her body, but she would rather power through and follow her brother to war than helplessly stay in Konoha. Still, the stitches had torn and the wound bled freely, staining Rin's vest once again. "That looks…painful."
"Psh." Rin scoffed, rolling her shoulders and grinning cheekily. "I've had periods more painful than this. I'm fine."
Kushina spat out a laugh, forgetting herself and where they were, tumbling back into a flushed laugh.
Rin smiled proudly.
"God, Rin," Kushina chuckled, pinching the bridge of her nose and shaking her head.
The calamity around them continued, not noticing the light-hearted atmosphere between mother and daughter. The tide seemed to be in favour of the Konoha ninjas, who were slashing and putting aside the Kiri ninjas, either confirming enemy ninjas laying on the beach were dead or overcoming Kiri stragglers with sheer numbers.
The Kiri ninjas had initially been more in number than their Konoha counterparts, but they rushed in with thoughtless and reckless abandon, not caring if they lived or died.
The Konoha ninjas began to take stock of their dead and injured.
They worked under the cover of the starlit sky. Some moved diligently, helping the injured and moving them off the red-stained sand, and some wept inconsolably over dead bodies.
"You know this isn't over, right?" Kushina remarked in an offhand way. "That kid that reincarnated me is still pushing me to fight." As she spoke, Kushina settled into a taijutsu stance and Rin's head flopped forward, tired. "You did great, honey, but I need you to try again, ok? Remember, go for the head. You can do it—"
Kushina faltered.
She blinked once.
An unfamiliar sensation vibrated through her head, lasting less than a second but somehow imprinting in her mind. Her brow furrowed and she flicked her eyes to her right, spotting a fog of red gathering there in the vague shape of a human with a sharp ninjato pointed down at its side. Its red stare held the mystified woman captive, only for a second.
The woman stayed in her fighting position, frozen and still unable to come to terms with what had happened.
The red mist collected together, compacting at an easy pace; first the hand holding the ninjato solidified back to a pale complexion, rippling up the arm and forming Naruto's shoulders, descending the torso and up the neck, compressing to form Naruto's body and legs, as well as his head and face.
Naruto's impassive eyes turned down apologetically and his expression became slanted.
"Sorry about that."
Half of Kushina's head—from the right side of her temple to the left side of her chin—slightly slid off her neck but it didn't fall onto the ground. Rather, it hung there, misaligned and asymmetrical.
"Buh…" the woman stammered, realizing she couldn't form proper words and that she couldn't breathe properly. "Huh?"
Kushina wasn't used to being decapitation, as outlandish as that sounded.
It was an odd, empty sensation. As if she wasn't in her body, but rather looking down on herself from a high perch.
The sharp click of Naruto's ninjato as he sheathed it brought her back to the present, and half of Kushina's head slid off her neck.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
On the Kiri ship commandeered by Konoha reinforcements, Itachi watched the battle from afar. He and his appointed subordinates held back orders to charge onto the Uzumaki beach.
Itachi's hands curled into a fist and relaxed, curling again and relaxing, repeating this action as the tenseness of not participating in the fray rattled through his chest.
He was a pacifist, and would always be a pacifist, but there were still many things Itachi was ready to fight and die for.
His village, his family, and his friends.
It was a sentiment he had learnt from his cousin and rival, Naruto.
The Uchiha felt a twitch in his right eye when he realized he had acknowledged Naruto as his rival. Then Itachi felt a steady calm wash over him and his fists opened, releasing a cool breath despite the clamour of warfare some dozens of kilometres from the ship, on the island nation's beach.
Before their fifth birthday, Itachi and Naruto clashed more times than they could count, entering childish scraps and scrapes for seemingly no reason.
Naruto's chipper attitude and positive inclinations boiled Itachi to his very core, and the pacifist always felt a violent spark in his chest whenever his eyes set on his cousin, a boy who had a sister that loved him, parents that adored him, and relatives that showered him with praise.
Itachi's parents weren't on the best terms for years since Itachi was born and the Uchiha clan, though simmering down due to the appointment of their Namikaze cousin to the position of Hokage, were too stuck in their ways to fully cooperate with the village. Itachi always woke up in a frigid house to parents that ignored each other, somehow never noticing their child for long enough to properly raise him. It was a mystery how they could tolerate themselves for Sasuke to be conceived.
Things weren't going well for Itachi and the opposite was the case for Naruto, and Itachi hated him for that.
Then Sasuke was born, the Kyuubi attacked and Kushina Uzumaki died.
Itachi watched his cousin self-destruct. Rin kept the pieces of her brother and father together, all by herself, but life still leaked out from the cracks in Naruto's being and loathing overcame Minato.
He saw how much Naruto loved his family, and summarily how hard Naruto bloodied himself to become better to protect them. The sunny boy was replaced by a hateful shadow.
Things turned around for Itachi's parents after Sasuke was born, finding love for their family and their clan. The clan recognized Itachi's efforts in protecting the clan compound and his brother during the Kyuubi attack. The Uchiha clan realized their increased role in rebuilding the village after the attack and dove headfirst into it.
Itachi didn't have the will to be jealous of Naruto anymore.
He and his cousin finally made up when they became genin—
His train of thought halted when he felt a prickle at the back of his neck.
Standing at the bow of the ship, Itachi's face scrunched up and his sharingan activated, peering into the distance at Whirlpool Country.
The air around the island vibrated for a moment, and then a translucent shell ascended from the shores of the island, rising and curving hundreds of kilometres till it formed a dome. The ravenous battle occurring continued uninterrupted and the dome shimmered invisible.
"Shit," Itachi cursed, his eyes wide at what he had just witnessed. He took out a two-way radio from his jounin vest and pressed a button at the side, speaking into it. "Naruto, they've boxed you in. What are your orders?"
His only response was vacant static.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Bunker 0
Konoha
The underground medical room was still, except for the shallow breathing of the Hokage, blissfully unaware of the chaos taking place aboveground and around the village. The man was laid flat on the bed, life-sustaining tubes and wires had been pushed into his wrists and chest, plying him with medicine to slow down the rapid erosion of Yagura's poison.
It was a more deadly concoction than the one used on Naruto. The same precautions used on Naruto were also used on the teen's father; they put him into a coma and took care of him until Tsunade finished finding a cure in the nearby laboratory.
Minato's heart monitor beeped slowly.
The brown, dreary room was vacant except for two civilian nurses; the male counterpart busied himself with arranging the Hokage's blankets and the other watched the television hanging on the wall before the bed. Televisions were an essential item Minato had ordered to be installed in all of Konoha's bunkers to serve as a distraction to the frightened citizens.
The channel the lady was watching was Fire Country's News Station. The newscaster, a man with dark hair, pink eyes, and wearing a fitting blazer, reported to the camera the current state of the war.
"We are still on the first day of the war, and although the Mizukage did not send a formal declaration of war to the Hokage, reports have arrived that Konoha has just successfully managed to defend their borders from incursion by the Mizukage's forces. Konoha's Lord Ambassador to the Fire Capital had this to say," A video of Konoha's ambassador to the Fire Capital played on the screen, showing a portly woman with pink hair, bright green eyes and in a red and black kimono, dabbing her brow of sweat with a handkerchief and waving for the reporters that had swarmed her office door to calm down. She was seated behind an ornate desk, "Yes, I am in contact with my superiors in Konoha, and they have permitted me to report that everyone in the village is safe and fine. Aside from a few casualties in the southern border, there have been no more lives lost, thankfully."
The ambassador touched her chin with her handkerchief, mopping up a few beads of sweat, and pointed at a reporter.
"Akira Ito, The Wind Chronicles," he identified himself, wearing Suna's symbol on a bandanna around his neck, "We have received news on the passing of Lord Kazekage as a direct result of the happenings during the Five Kage Summit. Do you have anything to say on that?"
The ambassador cleared her throat and sat up straighter. "I will have to withhold my statement until I'm cleared by my superiors in Konoha, and my Suna counterparts. But I will confirm that a full investigation is being conducted, on the dealings of the Mizukage, the Tsuchikage, and the Raikage." She looked at the flashing cameras with a stern frown. "These atrocities will not go unpunished."
She pointed at another reporter; this one wore a scarf with the Fire Country emblem. "My sources have confirmed the succession of Lord Naruto Namikaze, Lord Minato Namikaze's son, to the position of Fifth Hokage. Any comments?"
The Haruno woman paused reflectively, glancing to her right, where her assistant stood. The assistant bent down and whispered into her ear. Soon after that, the ambassador nodded. "Yes, Konoha's Fifth Hokage is Lord Naruto. A statement from the Hokage's Tower has confirmed this, and that the new Hokage has decided that his occupation of the role is temporary. After the war and after agreeable concessions have been reached on the part of the other nations involved in this senseless war, Lord Naruto wishes to either find a worthy successor to his office or give his father his position once again." The assistant whispered into the ambassador's ear again, and the woman said, "This is not to say that Lord Minato Namikaze is deceased. He was gravely injured during the Five Kage Summit by the Mizukage, but I've been told he is making a quick recovery. Last question," she said, nodding to a reporter brazenly showing her affiliation with Hidden Rock Village. "You."
The was a momentary hush that spread in the office as the reporter cleared her throat, flicking an uncaring eye to everyone around her as the snapping of cameras turned onto her. She tapped her notepad with her pencil and said, "Where are Konoha's allies?" she simply asked. "From all indications, Konoha is fighting alone."
The ambassador's lips tightened into a straight line, staring at the unnervingly cool Iwa reporter. There was another pause, this one tenser than the last, before Konoha's esteemed representative answered, "They're on their way as we speak."
The assistant stepped to the front of the ambassador's desk and waved her arms, shouting over the din of yelled questions and snapping cameras, "No more questions!"
The broadcast returned to the newscaster, and the man released a slow breath, saying, "Stay tuned as we bring you the latest updates on the war."
The television chimed with the outro of the news station and the female nurse rubbed her hands down her face. "This is depressing."
"Then change it," the other nurse said, checking the IV drip connected to the Fourth Hokage's left wrist. "We're going through enough as it is. We don't need anything else bringing us down."
There was a knock on the door, then it opened. Hana Inuzuka walked into the medical room and the two nurses snapped to their feet, standing at attention at the senior medic's arrival. She was the Hokage's medic and confidante, after all; for someone in her early twenties, it was a position that deserved respect.
The medic took out a pen from a pocket of her jounin vest, reaching the foot of the Hokage's bed and taking out a clipboard from there, scanning it with her eyes as she idly clicked the end of her pen. She murmured to the rigid nurses, who used this valued treatment by other medical staff.
"How is he?"
"Stable," the male nurse promptly answered. "Nothing to report, ma'am."
"Is he responding to any of the medication?"
There was a delay, where Hana looked up from the clipboard and raised an eyebrow at the nurse that had spoken, looking at the other nurse for an answer. The woman bowed her head. "No, ma'am."
Hana sniffed once, turning her eyes back to the clipboard.
"Ma'am," the male nurse called, standing with a stiff back and speaking in a hesitant tone, "Has Lady Tsunade found a cure?"
"She's close." Hana placed the clipboard back at the foot of Minato's bed, tucking her pen into her pocket and crossing her arms, staring at the Hokage with a slim frown. "The nerve agent they used on Lord Minato is something that isn't even written in Orochimaru's notes, so it's taking longer than I'm comfortable to admit."
The man looked so frail.
So weak.
So tired.
It was an image none of them were used to seeing.
Hana was brought out of her musings with a jolt as she felt the air shift. The hairs at the back of her arm prickled and a shallow growl rose from her gut, gnashing her teeth and snarling with slightly visible fangs.
"Don't leave this room," she ordered and sped out of the room in a blur.
The Haimaru triplets dashed in her wake as she barrelled down the hallway, racing up several flights of stairs and clambering up a ladder. She burst out of a manhole in the evacuated Aburame clan compound, immediately dashing to her right and running up the front of two storeys residential apartment, pulling out a small pair of binoculars from her jounin vest and peering through into the sky.
There, hovering hundreds of kilometres in the sky and above Konoha's fuinjutsu barrier, were two people, both wearing plain brown robes.
One had wings made of paper and the other possessed a pair of ringed purple eyes, staring down at the Hidden Leaf village with unbridled rage.
"This is the end, Konoha." The one with the ringed eyes spread his arms wide and proclaimed to the heavens the jutsu that spelt doom for all life in the Hidden Leaf village.
"Planetary Devastation."
Authors note
That's it for this chapter.
Thoughts on the story so far?
I'll see you when I see you.
Foy.
