Low Noon Showdown Part 3

"Charge, you mongrel dogs! For our King!" The roar of a strigoi howled above the storm and thunderous stampede before him.

Like the rest of the line, ghouls, bats and wolves surged forward with blood thirsty abandon. On the other side of the flank before, these lighter forces' role was to sweep around the distracted line and encircle them. The young vampire, pleased with his cunning plan, would revel in the slaughter and the praise of his blood sire. As the horde surged forward with seemingly no resistance, the day-dreaming bloodsucker failed to question why they would leave their flank so exposed and use the tightly packed residential quarters to be their flank.

They realized too little too late what was going on when they turned down a side alley as glints of light in the darkness became visible for a moment while the horde charged towards the exit to an alleyway. Not realizing too late, the beasts were shredded into chunks of gory salsa by a web of garrote wire. Seeing what happened to his troops, the vampire turned his attention back down the alleyway towards the opposite end of the way they went.

"Right, that one's cursed. To the next one on the right! Forward!" He barked, his face merely in annoyance at such a minor setback.

As they turned down the right path, the horde failed to notice a glint of light near the ground until it was too late. When the first member of the horde tripped the tripwire, a barrage of kunai and shuriken burst from the walls and impaled and shredded the ghouls, bats, and wolves in the path. Slowed down but not quite dead yet, the beasts and vampire then heard a hissing sound. Looking at the sharp implements, their eyes widened when they saw that each one had an exploding tag attached to them by a thread of wire. The realization came too little too late as the tags prepared to go off.

"What the hell…" Was all the vampires got to say before he was violently cut off.

Every tag in the path exploded violently, cutting him off. Every one of his minions in the path was blown into pieces in a fiery shower of burning guts, gore, and shrapnel that covered the rest of the horde in the melted metal-coated remains of their comrades. And they were the lucky ones. The front of the horde, the vampire at the head, were mostly blown to pieces as the strigoi was blown back into a wall, cracking it on impact.

"Grrr… that's it! To the left, you mongrels!" He roared, now becoming irritated, his soulless eyes burning with fires of indignant vengeance, "And get flying you winged rats! Hunt down whatever is doing this and tear them apart!"

As soon as he said this, once the horde stepped out into the middle of the final alleyway, a loud hissing sound was heard. Raising eyebrows, the ghouls began looking around for the source of the hissing. To their shock, they saw that the walls were covered in painted over exploding tags. As the ghouls each let out a shocked monstrous groan, the tags exploded violently.

Those inside the alleyway were reduced to burning corpses and smoldering ash as the blast weakened the integrity of the walls of the buildings surrounding the alleyway. The walls and buildings began to crumble as the rubble began falling. Seeing no choice and seeing bats be crushed by the falling rubble, the strigoi growled out in frustrated rage as he called out his next command.

"Fall back! Fall back!" The vampire yelled but was stopped when he tripped a wire he swore wasn't there before.

From a high belltower, they saw a great cast iron cauldron. Slowly it began to tip from the line being tripped, to reveal thick, black oil. The worst part was as it came down, it revealed itself to be heavy, thick, sludge-like oil, and quickly ran down the side of the tower in a torrent. Some wolves and ghouls drowned in the initial deluge, being completely swamped in the stuff. For most, even if they avoided it, the worst had yet to come as many were coated in it. They then heard something being called in the distance.

"Peekaboo!" A chipper female voice said.

They all instinctively looked in that direction, to see Sakura and Sasuke standing on opposite buildings next to the belltower with some tools. Sakura then gave a smirk.

"NOW, Sasuke-kun!" She yelled out to her comrade.

With a smirk of his own, Sasuke made hand seals for one of his signature fire jutsu. 'Fire Release: Dragon Fire Jutsu!' He mentally called out as he breathed out a stream of white-hot flames towards the oil covered horde like a dragon.

While the genin had planned out what course of action they would use to chunk down the horde and stall it, nothing in their training could have prepared them for the sight before them. The street and buildings on the entire city block were turned into an inferno. Towering wood structures were rapidly engulfed in the ever increasing, hungry flames. The air warped and twisted from the sudden but rapid changes in temperature. The force was so great, the two were forced to flinch as the heat and hot-aired back blast hit them. Then the screaming started.

The wolves howled in agony as oil-stained fur lit ablaze, turning them into braying racks of scorched meat trying to flee, only for the fire to drag them down. Ghouls roared and bellowed in pain as their skin peeled off, fat boiled, sinew snapped, and flesh melted from the bone as if they were hit by acid. Bats dropped from the sky in droves, the heat rising and knocking them off balance or outright knocking them out, plunging them helplessly to be incinerated in the flames. And the fires only grew. Even their enhanced shinobi sense couldn't get through the sickly, black choking smoke. To their horror however, something emerged from the flames.

A humanoid figure hobbled out, beyond torched and mauled in some places, but others somehow were recognizable. Two volcanic orange eyes, fueled by rage and wrath, stared back. Lines that were once lips curled back to bare ivory fangs, the lips making a noticeable crunch as they split up the face to reveal the jaw. Somehow, the vampire survived.

"Sasuke-kun… that wasn't part of the plan…" Sakura nervously, indeed fearfully said.

"Sakura… run to where Naruto is…" Sasuke quietly told her, a bit of his own fear leaking out.

"What about you? We can't leave you…" She asked before Sasuke covered her mouth with his hand.

"I'm not going to watch another friend die in front of me. Now go." The Uchiha Avenger told her solemnly.

"Yes, run girl. It will make your death all the sweeter." The vampire growled, not so much speaking, but forcing pain into words.

Sakura glared as defiantly as she could at the vampire before turning back to address her teammate and crush. "I'll be right back with Naruto to help you. We're a team. That means that we fight together, train together, and, if necessary, die together." She told the raven-haired avenger.

"Yes, bring the orange monkey to me girl. It will save me the trouble." It answered, showing a disturbingly snake-like tongue as the thrill of the hunt mixed with its unyielding pain.

Glaring at the vampire with hate in her eyes, Sakura fired back with a response of her own. "That 'orange monkey' is going to help us take you down, Barbecued Bat! Don't underestimate Team Seven! Especially not our village's Show-Off, Number One Unpredictable, Noisy Ninja!" She replied viciously before taking off to go get Naruto.

"Tell me, boy. How does it feel to know your blood will be the downfall of your team?" It asked, slowly beginning to circle Sasuke, akin to a shark with blood in the water.

Drawing two kunai, Sasuke glared back at the vampire while circling back to keep it within his sight while blocking it from going after Sakura. "I'm not dying here, Rat Roast. None of us are. Like Sakura said, don't underestimate us." He shot back as he prepared to fight the injured strigoi and hold it off for as long as he could, activating his Sharingan due to knowing that he couldn't afford to hold back.

"Very well, morsel. Show me what you can do then." It growled, his widening grin showing more and more of his skull from his charred, opening up its face like fissures.

The two combatants then charged in at each other, Sasuke's Sharingan allowing him to, if only barely, track the blood sucking brute's speed. The strigoi swung at the Last Uchiha with the claws of its blackened hand, dead and roasted skin flaking off of it from the skin and exposing muscle and bone. Barely dodging the swing, Sasuke slashed with his kunai in an attempt to cut through the arm. More skin and burnt muscle tore off from the vampiric monstrosity as it growled in pain and swung down with the claws of its other hand, more blackened skin and roasted muscle came flying off to expose more bone.

"Stay still and die, meat!" The vampire called out with a mad cackle.

"You said you wanted me to show me what you can do. Not my fault you can't keep up." Sasuke responded, before throwing a hail of shuriken at it.

The throwing stars embedded themselves into the vampire's body, drawing black blood. However, the strigoi simply laughed with mad glee as it slashed at Sasuke again. In shock at its lack of any other reaction, Sasuke barely dodged as he slashed at the walking burnt corpse's arm to draw more blood.

"Heheheheh… Hahahahahahah! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH! Now THAT'S more like it, meat! This is great! NOW we're having fun!" The deranged vampire roared with laughter as it slashed at Sasuke's side.

'Sakura, please hurry up… I don't want to die like this…' Sasuke thought as he prepared a jutsu.

"Fire Release: Phoenix Sage Fire Jutsu!" Was uttered as the beast was blinded by a sudden burst of light.

The beast was then pelted by a barrage of small fireballs. However, it just laughed and kept moving forward, walking through the rain of fireballs like it was nothing. Like it felt no pain at all.

'By the great sages of heaven…' Sasuke thought in fear. It was impossible for it to feel nothing. It was weak to fire.

The beast began closing in on the young Uchiha with greater speed, blackened skin flaking off of its body to expose roasted, scorched muscle underneath. With that same roaring, demonic laughter, it rushed at Sasuke as fast as its damaged legs could carry it while Sasuke prepared another fire jutsu.

"Fire Release: Great Fireball Jutsu!" Sasuke roared as he poured everything he had left into it.

Shooting out a large orb of fire at the beast, the fireball roared across the battlefield at his foe. As soon as the fireball connected with his undead enemy, it exploded on contact with it. As the smoke cleared, a figure shot out of the black cloud of smog towards the Uchiha Avenger. Despite that, as the smoke settled, Sasuke's face lost all its color.

The creature, now as much bone as flayed and burnt flesh and skin, stood there, its eyes now orb of orange. Aside from the muscles and skin on the side of its face alongside those eyes, Sasuke now stood looking at its blackened, shorn skull. Its fangs now equally blackened, yet dripping in saliva, allowing the perceptive shinobi to see them glistening in the firelight.

"Fire Release: Dragon Fire-" Sasuke tried to say as he prepared one last desperate fire jutsu in a panic, but the words were snuffed out of his throat like a weak candle in the breeze.

The beast grabbed him by his face and slammed him into the wall of a nearby building. The wall cracked upon the impact of Sasuke's head hitting it, nearly making him black out from the pain caused by the force of the impact. The beast held him aloft by the face as it pushed his head further into the wall viciously.

"Aw what's wrong, meat! Finished already? You're no fun! Oh well… TIME TO FEAST!" It growled out in a ferocious, mad glee with a bony smile as it opened its jaws to bite down on Sasuke's throat.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you." A voice rang out, somehow echoing through the ravaged streets and alleys.

The creature turned to look at the source, to see Naruto standing before him, a look of determination on his face.

"Oh, and what are you going to do, talk me to death?" The vampire chuckled.

"As much as I'd like to try, I don't even think I'll need that." Naruto answered.

"HAH! And what does an orange, little puffball like you think they can do to ME?!" The vampire cackled.

Naruto pulled a kunai from his belt and lifted his hand up. Like the others had seen him do several weeks before, Naruto jammed it into his hand. Holding and steeling himself against the pain, he sent it in such an angle to allow blood to quickly stream from it. Fresh, red blood.

"Naruto… What are you doing!?" Sasuke choked through the iron grip of the torched monster.

"Keeping his eyes on the prize." Naruto said with a smirk.

For longer than they had expected, it just stood there, staring. Seeing Naruto's blood slowly leak out, run down his palm, before dripping down to the dirt below. Each one torturously dripping and soaking in. Its head twitched to the side, as if something snapped in what was left of its mind, and it robotically dropped Sasuke, who began to gasp in air. It turned to him; clawed hands brandished. Its target was now clear to it, and it would feed now… or never.

Naruto closed his eyes and gathered his thoughts. 'What was that weird feeling? That strange feeling, I had when I went berserk…'

To his shock, a deep, growling voice answered, 'Do you want to know?'

Naruto's eyes almost went wide open as he heard the voice. However, he kept them closed as he mentally spoke back to the voice. 'Who are you…? Are you…?' He asked it mentally.

'Do you want power…? The power to destroy this creature… before it can take your precious "friends" away from you…?' The voice asked the orange clad ninja.

'What do you know about power?' Naruto asked, hesitant to listen to a strange voice in his head.

'I know much about power, boy… Let me SHOW YOU!' The voice rang out as a rush of power flowed through Naruto from his stomach.

Naruto braced as he felt the power course through him. The world around him, his senses overwhelmed. He felt anger, hatred, primeval might coursing through him. His sense of control being lost. He felt this before but remembered the spell the ghoul cast on him. How he wasn't in control. How he can't remember what happened. He thought back to Iruka and Oda, two men who saw something in him that he didn't.

On instinct, he clenched his fist and, using every bit of knowledge of chakra control he had learned, he resisted, forcing back the power, diverting it. Whatever was inside him tried to force back, but Naruto resisted harder, and slowly gained ground. And it voiced its displeasure.

'Why do you resist? You can't defeat it without me. You know that, boy…' It told him in a silver-tongued tone.

'A leader doesn't lose control.' Naruto sternly answered, his voice echoing like a hammer blow through his mind.

Whatever was in there clearly was surprised, giving Naruto a moment to use his chakra control to grab hold of this power and begin coursing it through his chakra system properly. Clearly shocked by this development, it spoke up.

'What the hell are you doing, whelp!?' It called out in disbelief.

'A leader… a king… a Hokage doesn't go berserk and nearly kill his friends. A Hokage doesn't turn into a beast! A Hokage only uses their strength to protect the village, protect its people! YOU will never again make me lose control! DO YOU HEAR ME!?' Naruto bellowed inside his mind, sending great thunder down into the depths, and clearly perturbing this other occupant in his mind.

The voice was silent for a moment before chuckling. 'Very well then, child. Once… just this once… we shall do this your way. However, next time… I won't let this humiliation stand…!' The voice growled out as it allowed Naruto to take more power, just enough for the boy to maintain control and win.

'Then let's take this beast down… partner.' Naruto responded.

As Naruto seemingly battled with his inner demons, to the outside world it was much more of a surreal experience. Naruto had closed his eyes, and for a moment, it looked as if the deranged scorched demon before them would cut him to ribbons. Then it lurched to a stop as a pressure built around him following an orange-red aura. His chakra system, normally hidden to the naked eye, popped like overexerted veins as an almost alien chakra ran through them now like fiery blood. His teammates looked on in stunned horror, while the beast could not comprehend what was happening.

Naruto then opened his eyes, and unlike the last time his teammates saw this strange chakra, his eyes were the same blue they always were. No fangs grew, no sharpened nails, no fierce face or fiery red eyes. Instead, those same blue, kind eyes, and a face of stern determination, staring directly back into the orange orbs of malice of the monster before him.

For the first time since being roasted alive by Sasuke and Sakura, the beast had a look of fear on what was left of its face. "Wh-What did you just do, meat!?" It yelled out in terror.

"Let's put it like this: You will wish I tried to talk you to death." Naruto answered, as he reared his arm back for a punch.

The beast let out a fearful battle roar as it rushed in, its clawed fingers in a spear hand position as it tried to run Naruto's head through with its claws. However, to Naruto's eyes, its speed looked like it was standing still. Moving slightly out of the way, Naruto dodged the spear hand thrust and punched forward with his fist with all of his newly enhanced might. The result of the blow was incredible.

The fist sunk deep into the vampire's gut, making the beast cough up blood as there was a momentary delay, as if the world was moving in slow motion. However, things quickly sped up dramatically as the strigoi was sent flying from the force of the blow, smashing through the walls of three nearby buildings. Naruto, however, was not spared from the recoil of his own hit. The recoil force of his own punch sent Naruto skidding back into a wall, as he'd failed to brace himself for the force of the impact.

"What the…" Sasuke said in disbelief, now using Sakura to help support his weight.

"That's… that's stronger than when he went berserk. W-Where did this power come from…?" Sakura asked, accidently dropping the poor Uchiha from her shoulder.

"Owww…" Sasuke said stoically.

"Oh gods, I'm so sorry!" Sakura shrieked, quickly helping him back up.

"Huh… That's almost like what Kakashi sensei could do…" Naruto mused, clenching his fist a bit as the monster removed itself from the rubble.

"Lucky… hit…" It growled, its eyes practically on fire from hatred.

Naruto grinned a bit ferally at that. "If it was so lucky, why don't you try again? Maybe you'll be less lucky and actually get killed this time." He snarkily replied, trying to make the beast angry. It worked.

"Gladly!" It roared and surged forward with unnatural speed.

Dust was kicked up as the beast rushed at the blonde, its body slowly being torn apart from its inability to keep it up. It reared back a fist as it threw a punch at Naruto. However, Naruto simply moved his head aside a bit as he caught the punch by the wrist with his hand. The force of the blow kept going, kicking up a gust of wind that blew up a dust storm behind them. The beast was so shocked by this result that it didn't see Naruto's foot coming up and nailing it in the gut. The force of the blow knocked the wind out of it as the beast was sent soaring sky high like a rocket.

Naruto clenched his hand into a tightly balled fist as the force of gravity brought the beast sailing back down. His knuckles cracked slightly as he clenched his fist before punching forward with all his might. As the strigoi fell back down to terra firma, the punch connected with its face with such force that its jaw nearly snapped off and its skull began to crack and break, splattering black blood and undead brain matter on Naruto's body and face. The power behind the punch sent the beast crashing through five buildings before smashing through the sixth, bringing the sixth building crumbling down around the strigoi.

"Sasuke-kun… how is this possible? Wh-What is this?" Sakura asked, hints of fear in her voice of her teammate's power.

"I… I don't know… Wh-When did Naruto get this strong…?" Sasuke replied in sheer disbelief and slight fear.

With a groan, the strigoi began to forcibly climb its way out of the rubble. In disbelief, it tried to look at Naruto. "Y… You… you can't… defeat me…! You're just… a blonde… orange… brat…!" The beast said as it tried to punch Naruto only for him to easily catch its fist in his hand.

"No true shinobi gives up. No Hokage gives in. And you?" Naruto said, before rearing his hand back in an imitation of a claw that the strigoi had used.

With his own supernatural speed, he slammed his hand through its ribcage, sending shards of bone, scorched flesh and flakes of crispy skin flying. Then with a powerful rearward yank, he pulled out its heart while covered in blackened gore. It gasped, and, as if on cue, it lost all strength to stand, feebly falling to the ground. A pool of black ooze pooling under it.

"You're just a tortured dog that needs to meet its end." Naruto said, crushing its heart as if it were a plucked fruit.

With a single, final unearthly gasp, it arched its spine and lurched upwards before it crumbled to the floor. Its life force finally snuffed out, and it was a threat to anyone no more.

"Are you two okay!?" Naruto yelled to his teammates as the orange chakra dissipated with the threat.

"... WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT!?" His two teammates called out to the blonde in sheer disbelief.

"I'll explain later!" Naruto yelled.

Soon, however, they were rocked by the force of a titanic explosion coming far from the battleline. Their ears were ringing, balance rocked, confusion took hold. Yet Naruto sensed something. Whether it was from the voice or his own he wasn't sure, nor did he care as he looked up.

"Oda!?" Naruto yelled out in concern.

Sorry for the delay to today. Storms rocked my place like two thunder gods clashing. Regardless, I'm alright, and wanted to give you guys some gothic horror injected in as an apology. Our passion for this hasn't waned, but our schedules certainly are making it hard sometimes to get to it. Annoyingly so. Now to my friend and co-writer.

Uzumaki Ricky: Well, that was one hell of a ride! I'll be honest… this chapter was darker than either of us was expecting it to be. Still, it was fun to write, and I hope you all enjoyed reading it as much as we enjoyed writing it! Aloha and good night, everyone!

Next time we reach the climax, as the titans finally clash. Over one thousand years in the making, we have the Strigoi Abhorrent Targos Vs the King of Seaheart Oda Shang, clashing in a grudge settler! Tune in next time and we see how this rivalry gets put to bed! Cause one shall stand, and one shall fall!