This was a dumb idea. This was such a fucking dumb idea, and yet, it was her dumbass that talked Neji into going along with it. Following the group that went after Sasuke was their first mistake, as the search had gone to hell in a handbasket as soon as they caught up with the squad that Sasuke had left with. The idiot rookies had wandered right into a trap and were surrounded, so she and Neji leaped into the fray to back them up. That was their next mistake, one that sealed their fates with this supremely stupid idea.
Okay, perhaps that was a tab dramatic, or perhaps it was entirely justified. She couldn't really tell at the moment with her brain scattered in so many different directions. For one, the adrenaline was wearing off, so she was finally feeling the exhaustion and soreness from the morning's training (on top of her relentless regiment that week).
Her biggest worry, however, was Neji. She had begrudgingly left him behind to face the freaky spider guy because he was the only one equipped to combat a sharpshooter with chakra-reinforced webbing. She initially refused, and Neji fought her on it for 5 continuous minutes while the two narrowly dodged flurries of arrows until she had no more arguments for him to rebut and it was clear that her presence would become an active hindrance to his performance against that specific kind of combatant.
That jackass better survive. It was Neji, so of course, he would survive, but still…
That jackass better fucking survive.
This led her to their current situation of facing down some pale weirdo that took off with the coffin containing Sasuke during the most recent fracas. Standing alongside her was Sasuke's teammate; Sakura, she believed her name was. She really felt for the girl. One of her teammates had apparently been killed in the invasion by Gaara while trying to protect her (even more reason to stay far away from that freak of nature), and the other was trying to go rogue. If they survived after this ordeal, she'd have to force the girl into training with her.
At the moment, that was a big "if". The pale, white-haired teen in front of them looked no older than Naruto, but like Naruto, he was far outclassing the two of them in every conceivable fashion. He was faster, stronger, and appeared to have a kekkei genkai of some sort that allowed him to weaponize his already enhanced bones. He was brushing them off with very little effort, and his dismissive commentary about them being "less than trash" was really beginning to grate on her. The problem was that they could do next to nothing about it, so it wasn't like they were proving him wrong.
"I do not wish to waste any more time on trash like you," he scoffed before a bone protruded from his palm and fashioned into a sword. "I have a task to complete, and I will not delay Lord Orochimaru any further."
'Wait, Orochimaru? Didn't Naruto kill him not even a week ago? What the hell is going on here??' Tenten frantically thought.
"What does Orochimaru even want with Sasuke?!" the bruised and scuffed Sakura shouted from beside her, knocking her out of her descent.
Kimimaro, still the picture of impassivity, silently mused for a moment on whether or not he should explain his master's plans for the Uchiha. He figured that it wouldn't matter one way or the other in a few minutes when they were dead, so he supposed that he'd do them the courtesy of at least satiating their curiosity before killing them.
"Just because he's immortal doesn't mean his body can maintain itself forever," Kimimaro began to explain. "As a result, before his flesh decays, he must transport his soul into a new body to act as his vessel. That is the purpose Sasuke will hold."
Sakura was rendered speechless, horrified at the thought of the evil man taking over the body of her teammate and love for his own sick kicks. Tenten, on the other hand, was hung up on one particular detail.
"How is Orochimaru even alive??" Tenten demanded. "I literally watched his corpse burn. I know who killed him!"
"Physical death is merely a hindrance for Lord Orochimaru," Kimimaro replied with a scowl. "So long as fragments of his soul exist within these cursed seals, Orochimaru can return to glory. Though, I will take great pleasure in flaying the identity of the one who dared attack him out of you."
Tenten gritted her teeth and readied into a stance with two handfuls of shuriken. The time for talking was over. In her periphery, she spotted Sakura trying her damndest to prepare for what was next, but it was clear that the revelation of Orochimaru's plans for Sasuke had rattled her. Tenten would have absolutely none of it.
"Hey, snap out of it!" she yelled to the girl beside her. "You wanna get your teammate back, right? Then let's take him down and get him back!"
She wasn't sure if that pep talk was more for Sakura or herself given the circumstances, but it did its job, as after a deep breath, Sakura's expression hardened with resolve to do just that.
"Let's go; I'll support," Sakura resolutely replied, and Tenten nodded with a satisfied smirk.
"Foolish," was all that left Kimimaro's sneer before he dashed toward the duo intent on mincing them.
Tenten launched the two handfuls of shuriken at him and jumped backward, but he merely cut right through all of them with his bone sword and continued his advance. Sakura tossed another volley of shuriken at him, and he predictably sliced right through those, as well. However, he wasn't anticipating a plume of smoke to explode right in his face from the smoke bomb that was hidden amongst the volley. Momentarily stunned, he leaped back in time to avoid the shower of weapons that pelted the grass where he once stood. Now a bit irritated, a few more bone spikes grew from each arm before he dashed for Tenten once again, only much faster this time around. Closing the distance between them in an instant was child's play, but his irritation grew when she narrowly avoided decapitation and answered with a swipe to his eyes with a kunai.
However, he felt a sharp pain beside his right eye mere moments before the kunai even struck true, and he quickly created space to investigate what was happening. Upon inspection, he was bleeding from the clear beginnings of a slash that would have annihilated both of his eyes. The kunai never hit him, though, so how could he have been hurt?
It didn't matter. These annoyances had existed for long enough. He dashed back at the smirking girl and took another swipe, but she just narrowly ducked once again and thrusted her kunai towards his chest. Again, he felt a stab before the kunai even hit, and bones instinctively grew out of his midsection to combat the phantom threat and skewer the girl in front of him. Yet again, she dodged, but she couldn't escape injury this time around, earning herself several gashes from the attack.
Tenten was counting her lucky stars that she was used to dodging quick jabs from her training with Neji, otherwise she would have been significantly worse off than the assortment of cuts and gashes along her arms and abdomen that she now had. Her victorious smirk remained, though, as their plan seemed to be working, and he hadn't yet caught on. She flashed a thumbs-up to Sakura off to the side, and she readied for yet another angry charge from Kimimaro.
On and on it went, Tenten baiting him into attacking as Sakura lied in wait, layering genjutsu upon genjutsu to keep him disoriented and create openings for her to land fatal strikes. Each time, though, the millisecond of pain was enough to return him to his senses and lash back with a violent swing of his bones. The final instance of this saw Tenten attempt to thrust a kunai into his throat, but she was taken by surprise when Kimimaro sliced through the kunai and almost took her hand off with it. She dodged the following slash and slammed her hands to the ground below him as she dashed back to a safe distance.
"I will give you credit; it took me a minute to figure out your strategy," Kimimaro began in a cold, clinical tone. "You used yourself as bait while she cast genjutsu on me as I was distracted to minutely affect my perception of your attacks. Not enough that I'd notice something was amiss right away, but just enough to give you a razor's edge of breathing room. A commendable effort, but it only served to delay the inevitable."
Kimimaro shifted to prepare a final attack now that he knew their game, but his legs wouldn't move from their spot. Looking down, he found that he was knee-deep in a brown, viscus sludge. "What in the world…"
"You really should pay more attention to where you land," Tenten sniped with a shit-eating grin. "I hope you like the Swamp of the Underworld, because it's time I send you to it!"
She unsealed two large scrolls and stood them up on either side of her, then the scrolls exploded into long, dragon-shaped plumes of smoke. Tenten leaped as high as she could into the air as the scrolls unraveled and twirled around her in a draconic helix. On the ground, Sakura cast another genjutsu on the trapped Kimimaro and readied even more smoke bombs for a quick escape just to be safe.
"Twin Rising Dragons!" Tenten shouted, and steely chaos erupted from all around her.
Her hands were like lightning, unsealing and pelting an entire armory's worth of weapons at her stuck opponent. The shower of steel was a glorious sight to behold; the budding weapons mistress was launching anything and everything in her arsenal at Kimimaro. If it was sharp enough to pierce, she threw it. If it was heavy enough to cause blunt force trauma, it was thrown. If it was small enough to choke a small child, the tool was yeeted with reckless abandon. She spared nothing in her attempt to finish off this foe with her ultimate technique, her magnum opus, her tribute to bukijutsu and fuinjutsu alike.
So, it was rather unfortunate that Kimimaro simply huffed at the oncoming death storm and casually hardened the bones under his skin as well as growing several more bone spikes on his body to shield himself from the attack. The weapon shower harmlessly bounced off of him, sending the discarded weapons piling around him in the sludge, removing any practical chance of Tenten reeling them back in with the wires they were attached to. Kimimaro's bored gaze followed the flabbergasted girl on her theatric, painfully slow descent back to Earth.
Well, fuck.
Her ultimate technique had just been rendered null for the second goddamn time in a battle, and that wasn't even counting the spars with Neji when he was perfecting the Palm Rotation. The guttural yell of frustration she unleashed complimented the messy state her hair was thrown into after she yanked on the buns in her hair. That mess was further exacerbated when she was tackled to the ground by Sakura as bone bullets from Kimimaro's Digital Shrapnel Jutsu sailed overhead, all the while another smoke bomb blew up right in Kimimaro's face courtesy of Sakura.
"You two are becoming entirely too bothersome," Kimimaro growled from within the smoke, neglecting to notice a paper bomb fluttering beside him amongst the chaos with his vision so obscured.
The two girls ignored the explosion and the following string of profanity in the background and took the brief moment to gather themselves.
"Thanks for that," Tenten begrudgingly offered, upset with the fact that she lost her focus in the middle of a fight.
"No problem," Sakura exhaled. "Any other ideas?"
That was the million ryo question, wasn't it? What else did she even have in her arsenal? The Twin Rising Dragons was supposed to end things, but plenty good that ended up doing. With that jutsu exhausted, she was effectively out of any significant options.
Well, that wasn't entirely true. She wasn't completely devoid of significant options… not yet, at least.
She turned to Sakura and faced her with an unnervingly serious expression. "Can you buy me some time?"
"How much?" Sakura cautiously asked back, hoping it wouldn't be a lot of time.
"About 10 seconds," Tenten answered, and she flinched when Sakura's face fell. "Yeah, I know, that's a lot of time, but we're running out of options, and I might have a Hail Mary."
"Might??"
"It's better than nothing!"
Sakura sighed. "It'll be tough, but I'll do my best-"
As she was speaking, the coffin containing Sasuke began sizzling and emitting a dark purple smoke. Just as quickly, the coffin exploded in a bright purple flash, and Sasuke violently erupted from the sealed container. Except…
"Sasuke…?" Sakura questioned with her voice full of worry once the shock wore off.
He was hunched over, but Sakura would remember the sight for the rest of her life. A wild mane of long, pale blue hair shortened and reverted back to its familiar jet black in tandem with his grey reverting from the sickly grey it had been when he emerged.
"Sasuke!" she shouted to his back, finally finding her voice.
Sasuke did not respond. He didn't even look back at her. The only thing that left his lips was a maniacal laugh, one so foreign to the pink-haired genin. It was haunting.
Kimimaro, having finally escaped the swampy trap, landed beside Sasuke. "Go, Sasuke. There is another squad waiting for you at the border."
Not needing to be prompted any further, Sasuke jumped away without a word, leaving his teammate alone to whatever fate might befall her. Sakura was planted in place, wide-eyed in a myriad of emotions violently storming within her. She almost catatonically watched him leave, shrinking further and further in the distance as he attempted to sever his bonds for good.
She hardly noticed the deep rumble that reverberated through the clearing following a thick pulse of chakra. She didn't notice Kimimaro flicker behind her with a bone sword ready to spill her blood. She just barely registered Kimimaro getting tackled by a bun-haired cannonball.
When she did finally come to her senses, her tear-streamed face was greeted by the sight of a visibly straining Tenten standing between her and Kimimaro, brandishing a strange, faintly glowing sword.
"Go," Tenten sternly ordered. "I'll keep him busy. You go after your teammate."
It took a second for Sakura to process what she had said, but when she did, she had gone even paler. "Are you sure?"
"We did not come out all this way for nothing," she heatedly insisted. "Go after him, grab him by the nape of his neck, and drag his ass back to Konoha if you have to. I'll handle things here."
Sakura hesitated, not wanting to leave Tenten alone to fend for herself. They had been doing way too much of that today as it was. However, a hard glare from the bun-haired weapons mistress brought her to her feet and hurrying in the direction that Sasuke had scampered away in.
Tenten sighed, and that simple action sent a shockwave of the most excruciating pain she had ever felt in her life throughout her entire body. Such were the consequences of opening the first of the Eight Inner Gates, the Gate of Opening, without even a fraction of the prerequisite training and conditioning that her teammate and sensei had. She held on, though, fighting through the self-imposed torment for the Hail Mary she needed to take on Kimimaro.
She idly wondered who would win in a fight between this guy and Naruto…
At a tea house near the coast of Hi no Kuni, the Uzumaki duo sat at a table and rested with a plate of dango for Karin and a massive bowl of miso ramen for Naruto. Having finished her dango, Karin was currently busy with a rather impressive house of cards while Naruto worked through his 14th bowl. Suddenly, Naruto sneezed, completely collapsing the house of cards just as she was putting on the finishing touches.
"Damnit, Naruto!" Karin complained and threw her hands up.
"Sorry, sorry!" Naruto hastily apologized as he futilely attempted to restart the house of cards with her.
Oh, who was she kidding? Naruto would wipe the floor with him. She, on the other hand, had absolutely no illusions that she wouldn't end up dying here for the sake of allowing Sakura to catch up to Sasuke. If Kimimaro didn't kill her, then the aftermath of forcing open the Gate of Opening probably would. However, that was a sacrifice she was willing to make. If she couldn't become an apprentice of Jiraiya of the Sannin, then she'd at least go out as honorably as any kunoichi could. She just hoped that the rest of her team would survive her.
Returning her stony gaze to Kimimaro showed that he was glaring bloody murder at her. The way his aghast gaze kept flickering between her and the sword told her that he did, indeed, recognize the blade.
"Get your filthy paws off of Lord Orochimaru's Sword of Kusanagi, trash!" Kimimaro nearly snarled.
"No," Tenten refused, leaning into it to make him even angrier and hopefully sloppier. "It was gifted to me, and I like it, so I'm keeping it."
"Then I'll pry it off of your corpse," Kimimaro seethed and closed the distance, intent on cleaning up the trash before him.
Without even thinking, Tenten brought the Kusanagi up to defend from the slash, and it cleaved right through Kimimaro's bone sword and nearly took the man's head off with it. Undeterred, he grew yet another sword and dashed in again, and Tenten met the charge head-on. She met his lightning-fast swing with a strong, albeit much slower swing with the same result of cutting right through the bone like butter. The bone wielder ducked the followthrough and shot out another spike from his other arm to impale her kidney, but that spike was met with the glowing blade in an absurdly fast block.
A tense and furious dance of death followed that saw Kimimaro trying to liberate the teenage girl of her head with every fiber of his being, only to be thwarted at every opportunity by a last-second parry from his master's blade or a narrow evasion from the trembling girl that was usually followed by an unsteady yet deadly swing of her own. It was absolutely maddening to him. There was no conceivable way that she could have been keeping pace with him or defending against his attacks even as narrowly as she was.
He growled and jumped backward to reassess his continually confounding opponent. "Your swordsmanship is unnaturally competent yet still so very sloppy. I do not understand."
Tenten shrugged. She didn't really understand it either, to be frank. She had always been naturally prodigious with weapons of all kinds (people often joked that it was some latent kekkei genkai that no one had ever heard of), but that really only extended to being able to wield the tool with a good bit of base competency. It was good enough to make her better than any novice, which was a huge advantage in the field, but it didn't automatically make her a master or even a decently skilled user of the weapon.
With that in mind, as the two reengaged in their dance of death, her almost thoughtless proficiency of the Kusanagi was all the more incomprehensible to her. Even with the chakra boost granted by the Gate of Opening, she shouldn't have been able to keep pace with him, and she wasn't, at least not really. The first gate only blocked all mental inhibitions to allow the user to push past the pain and go beyond 100% with reckless abandon. It didn't provide a significant boost in strength or speed like the other gates would, so she wasn't surprised that she could only consciously limit the fatal strikes to merely being cuts and gashes.
Still, there were at least 8 unique instances where she should have been outright killed or mortally wounded by Kimimaro, yet the sword practically willed her body into positions to block and counter as if it had a mind of its own-
Wait, what did Naruto say when he gave her the sword??
"Just be careful with it. It's apparently coated in a deadly toxin that probably only Tsunade could treat if you cut yourself or anyone else. It's also sentient, but that's less important."
"Son of a bitch…" Tenten muttered as she dodged a certainly fatal swipe by the skin of her teeth and thrusted for Kimimaro's throat without thinking, smashing through the rib cage sprouts he created to defend and driving him away to create space once again.
Was the sword legitimately sentient? Was it reacting with her chakra or something? Or was it possibly syncing with her and guiding her movements to where she needed to be in order to survive? So many questions, so little time to ponder it all-
"Do not get distracted!" Kimimaro furiously scolded as he flickered in front of her to capitalize on her momentary lapse.
In her panic, Tenten wanted to thrust outward to keep him at arm's length, but the boosts granted by opening the first gate were beginning to wear thin, and the already excruciating pain she was ignoring was radiating to absurd levels. She viciously tried to continue fighting through it, but Kimimaro was already swinging for the fences, and she wouldn't have enough time to effectively protect herself from certain death.
So, it was rather fortunate that the Kusanagi glowed even brighter and extended like a power pole right into Kimimaro's abdomen, carrying him away as it grew to an absurd length. Tenten looked on, completely befuddled and trembling like mad. The sword had acted on its own again… or had it responded to her tumultuous intentions of thrusting? It was tough to say, especially given how addled her brain was becoming with the adrenaline of the gate finally dying down.
Kimimaro hacked up a fountain of blood, both from the injury and his illness flaring up in all of the excitement. The curved, contorting pattern of his Cursed Seal of Earth's activation began to spread across his skin, and he grabbed the blade, forcing it out of himself with his enhanced might.
"This has gone on for long enough!" Kimimaro spat (alongside even more blood).
With that, he practically teleported to her with the boost granted by his cursed seal. His arm had become a monstrous amalgam of bone spears and serrated edges, and it was primed to stab right through Tenten and finish her off for good. Tenten didn't even have the time to lift the Kusanagi in order to put up any sort of defense, but even if she did, she just didn't have the strength to do so anymore. All she could do was watch the bone protrusions inch their way to her brain and pray for a swift death.
Suddenly, her vision was flooded with a weakly saturated, reddish-yellow blanket, and the violent grinding of sand filled her ears. Before she could turn her head, she fell backwards into a hard, grainy cloud, and when she finally turned to see what had happened, her brown eyes widened in a tug-of-war of relief and fear that was being refereed by shock.
"Y-you…" Tenten strained as the wear and tear of opening the first gate slammed into her, enveloping her into blissful unconsciousness.
Guren huffed as she gazed dispassionately at the unfolding scene with her hands on her hips. She was getting rather bored with watching the Uchiha smack his teammate around, and she just wanted to get going and get back to Yukimaru. The incessant whining from the other 5 mooks about completing an actual mission had long since started to grate on her, and her earlier traitorous thoughts about her place in Orochimaru's fold weren't helping matters.
It was after Sasuke drove a hard knee into the pink-haired girl's jaw, creating a loud crack that echoed through the Valley of the End that Guren finally reached her limit. "Alright, Uchiha, you had your fun. Either kill her or don't, but just be done with this, already."
The Uchiha in question paused in his assault and sent the woman a cold glare from the corner of his eye, but he nonetheless complied. He felt so incredibly powerful after the forced development of his cursed seal, but something about her screamed to him that he shouldn't push his luck with testing her patience. Regardless, it didn't matter. He had hopefully made his point to Sakura for her to stop this useless pursuit and return to the village, so it was officially time to walk his path to gaining the power he needed to avenge his clan.
"S-Sasuke… please…" Sakura spoke up while weakly trying to climb back to her feet. "Don't do this…"
Sasuke paused again, and he sent her a cold, blank glance before continuing on his way without any further thought. Guren would have felt sorry for the girl who had been fighting so hard to reclaim her teammate, but she couldn't in good conscience spare any sympathy for someone so weak and pathetic. The girl was better off dead, in her opinion.
In fact…
Sakura had no time to anticipate the long, thick crystal shard coming her way before it shot into her stomach like a javelin. She looked down in shock at the pink crystal protruding from her abdomen, but her attention was snapped back to the space in front of her when Guren appeared before her and kicked her as hard as she could, rocketing her backward and over the edge of the cliff.
Sasuke stopped in his tracks and snapped back around in time to see Guren send Sakura tumbling down the cliff face, shattering the crystal shard lodged within her along the way, and plummeting into the river below. His first instinct was to rush back over the edge and jump to the rescue, but he strangled that down as hard as he could and forced himself to turn right around and keep moving. His bonds were severed, and that was the end of it. He made his decision. She made hers. He told her to go, and she wouldn't. That was on her. This was all on her.
He did his best to ignore the burning sensation in the back of his eyes. He could worry about it later.
Guren made a show of dusting her hands off after a proper garbage disposal, and she turned around to finally finish this stupid escort mission-
No, she shouldn't be calling it stupid. It wasn't stupid; it was Lord Orochimaru's desire to have the Uchiha as a vessel, so she'd honor and abide by that. It was as her master commanded, regardless of how she felt about it. She'll do her duty and return to Yukimaru. She didn't know how she ended up becoming so fond of the little twerp, but she'd kill the world for him-
"Look out!" shouted Gozu, the largest of the group, as he hurried in front of Guren, transforming his body into a dense wall of mud with his Mud Body Jutsu.
Just as he did, a large, flaming orb sailed through the air and slammed into the human mud wall. The effects were instantaneous; the wall immediately dried up and became dangerously brittle, meanwhile, Gozu's face protruding out from the wall was overtaken with horrific petrification, both figuratively and literally. The wall crumbled into a pile of pale dirt, and with it fell a blackened, mummified head frozen in a state of perpetual agony. The assembled group of Oto-nin and rogue Uchiha stared at the pile of dirt that used to be a human in stupefaction until the unmistakable scuffle of footsteps made themselves known.
"Sorry, that was meant for you. He just kinda got in the way."
Guren's gaze was drawn from the freshly baked minion to the new arrival, and her eyes landed on a woman wearing a long, black cloak with red clouds emblazoned all over. It was a pretty sick cloak in her opinion, but she didn't delve any deeper into that thought as the woman's words to her finally sank in. "Who the hell are you?"
"Pakura," she answered with an unnerving nonchalance as if she hadn't just murdered a person completely unprompted. "Konoha is paying me a pretty fat lump sum to bring the Uchiha back, and I'd really like to get paid, so could you hand him over?"
The casualness of her tone put Guren on edge far more than anyone she had ever encountered save for Lord Orochimaru himself. She almost instinctively readied a blade of crystal on her forearm and tensed, her eyes narrowing dangerously. "Absolutely not."
"Ugh, really? We're doing this?" Pakura bemoaned in clear exasperation.
When Guren didn't respond and the 4 other Oto-nin surrounded her, Pakura huffed and flew through a set of seals so quickly that her hands were a blur, and before any of the 4 others could blink, a fiery orb slammed into each one, instantly vaporizing all of the liquid in their bodies and sentencing them to the same grizzly fate as their other mummified comrade. Guren didn't flinch, keeping her eyes locked onto Pakura and ready to strike at a moment's notice.
Sasuke, meanwhile, was going into a tailspin. He did not recognize the woman at all, and he knew she wasn't from the village given her slashed Suna headband, so that could only mean that the village had really hired a mercenary to hunt him down. The way she so quickly and mercilessly slaughtered 5 people in rapid succession while barely even lifting a finger was a clear indicator that she wasn't fucking around. To kill so easily and brutally… it reminded him of that night.
Compounding that was her cloak. He didn't recognize her, but he did remember that cloud-patterned cloak; it was the same one on the blonde from Nami that summarily slaughtered all of Gato's men in one fell swoop before bisecting the pudgy man at the waist with a strange chain jutsu. Such casual slaughter made to look like child's play from someone almost as young as himself…
"Look, I'm cutting my vacation short for this, and I'm really not in the mood," Pakura spoke up again, her unbothered tone slowly vanishing into one that was somehow even more menacing. "So, let's try a different tact. I'm no longer asking; give me the Uchiha, and you'll walk away from this. Force me to take him from you, and you'll die the most agonizing death you'll ever be able to fathom. The choice is yours."
They were all so much like him.
Sasuke's Cursed Seal of Heaven glowed a deep orange and began to spread as the loud chirping of the Chidori filled the air, lightning crackling violently in his palm. With a furious snarl and no rational thought to speak of, he dashed forward to drive his arm through the mercenary's heart and rid the world of another monstrous scourge that was so much like his brother. When he was within range, he thrusted his palm, intent on impaling right through her, but Pakura snatched his arm before he could make contact and snapped his wrist in two. Before any wails of pain could rip themselves from his throat, she slammed her fist into his gut, damn near folding the boy over her hand, and she finished off by chopping the back of his neck to knock him unconscious. Once the boy was as limp as a sack of potatoes, she hoisted him over her shoulder and turned to leave.
"Good talk," she called out to Guren with a lazy wave over her shoulder.
She didn't make it two steps to the cliff's edge before a wave of jade crystals was sent careening toward her, not that she really expected any differently. Things were never that easy. She jumped to avoid being torn to shreds by the onslaught, and she landed on a large, crystal spire with the unconscious Sasuke still in her grasp. Just then, two Gurens appeared in the reflection of the crystal and reached out to attack, one swiping at Pakura with the blade on her forearm while the other snatched Sasuke from her and escaped back down to the original Guren. Flying through a set of one-handed seals and whipping a kunai out of her sleeve, Pakura parried the crystal blade with a wind-enhanced kunai and eventually dispatched of the clone.
"So, the hard way it is, then," Pakura muttered, glaring down at the blue-haired woman on the ground.
"Crystal Style: Crystal Fruit," Guren muttered after making a half-ram seal with her right hand while placing her left palm on the still unconscious Sasuke, encasing him in a thick chamber of pink crystal to keep her master's next vessel out of harm's way.
Returning the glare full force, Guren knew in her bones that this battle was not going to be an easy one by any means. Still, she wouldn't fail Lord Orochimaru, and she would do whatever it took to get him his desired vessel and get back home to Yukimaru.
The tension in the air was blanketing the valley like a thick fog. Down in the ravine, Sakura weakly broke through the surface and pulled herself out of the water and back onto shore, doing her best to not aggravate the large chunk of crystal lodged within her alongside the smaller shards embedded within her, as well. Still, as she crawled beside a large rock and felt her grasp on the conscious world slipping away, even she could feel the mounting tension back on the clifftop.
Without a word, the battle initiated with the two women closing the distance and engaging in a deadly dance of kunai against crystal blade. Guren had initially been assured of her kenjutsu dominance, but she was surprised and irritated to be having quite a bit of trouble against Pakura with only a kunai to speak of. Deciding to create space, she disengaged and backflipped away, flying into another set of hand seals and firing a barrage of crystal needles at Pakura.
The former Suna-nin expertly evaded the projectiles, deflecting and weaving through them as she bounced past the danger. Along the way, she performed a set of hand seals of her own and spawned several more flaming orbs, launching them at Guren in return. Much to Pakura's surprise, Guren didn't even attempt to dodge them, and she was nothing short of shocked when the woman was completely unaffected after they all hit their mark.
"Crystal Style: Growing Crystal Thorns," Guren announced with a mocking smirk at her, and a wave of razor-sharp crystal shards spawned from her position and snaked their way toward Pakura.
Pakura deftly leaped out of the way and continued evading as the shards tailed her like heat-seeking missiles, all the while racking her brain to determine why Guren wasn't currently a decrepit mummy. It was only after a few long glances at Guren did she finally notice something peculiar: the woman was glimmering at certain angles as if she was covered by a layer of transparent armor…
"Of course," Pakura finally muttered. "Crystal armor."
She continued her evasion of the increasingly bothersome thorns until she somersaulted her way back up to higher ground. Once she was back atop the spire from earlier, she planted her feet and flew through a new set of hand seals. "If a small blast won't work, perhaps I'll try a prolonged inferno. Scorch Style: Hellfire!"
As the thorns finally converged upon her, she exhaled a massive, white-hot stream of fire that all but torched the encroaching attack and shot towards the grounded crystal user like a literal bat out of hell. Guren, in a brief bout of arrogance, tentatively tanked the attack with the belief that her armor would protect her from harm once again. However, she quickly felt the obscene heat even through the sheet of crystal, and her defense started to work against her by trapping the heat and cooking her skin underneath. She hurriedly disengaged and shattered her newly glowing armor, and she ignored the painful blistering of her skin to stomp her feet and create a massive, impenetrable wall made of giant, crimson crystals. The stream of sweltering, white flames intensified, bombarding the massive barrier in an attempt to cook the Oto-nin alive.
Luckily for Guren, the wall was self-repairing, so any damage done by Pakura's jutsu would be mitigated rather quickly. Unluckily for Guren, the wall naturally obscured her vision, so she wasn't anticipating a shadow clone of Pakura to circumvent the wall and level a bone-shattering kick to her jaw that rocketed her backward toward the ledge. The clone wasn't finished, however, as she followed up with a powerful Great Breakthrough to blow the woman off of the cliff entirely, sending her plummeting into the unforgiving valley below. The original Pakura dived over the ledge after her, and the shadow clone latched onto her and launched her down towards the falling Guren as hard as she could before dispelling.
Flying through yet another set of hand seals, Pakura's fist erupted into a violent inferno, and she winded back to prepare a devastating punch as she neared Guren in their shared descent. "Fire Style: Jet Burn!"
Guren regained her bearings just in time to see Pakura throw a flaming fist at her, and she braced herself while growing a thin layer of crystal armor across the front of her body as a violent burst a flame blasted from the woman's fist and slammed into Guren, torpedoing her into the bank of the river below with a loud, unforgiving crash.
Gracefully landing on the water, she stood atop the river's surface and surveyed the damage. Guren was planted in a crater, and her body was lightly smoking, but she was still moving. That just wouldn't do, so Pakura took the opportunity to spawn a larger, denser orb than the previous ones and lobbed it at her. "Scorch Style: Steaming Murder."
The ball of compressed, fiery death sailed through the air on a direct, parabolic course for the still recovering Guren, but she wasn't unaware. Before the ball could hit its intended target, a small yet thick Crystal Encampment Wall sprouted and intercepted the attack, protecting Guren as she rose back to her feet and stepped onto the water's surface opposite Pakura with a furious scowl.
"I will kill you," Guren growled at the Akatsuki mercenary.
"Get in line," Pakura dismissed. "Many have tried."
"I'm not just anyone!" Guren heatedly bit back as she performed more hand seals and pink crystal shards collected vertically around her, forming a wheel that sat on top of the water's surface. A long, blue lance developed around her right arm, and she set off at super speed toward Pakura.
Responding in kind, Pakura met her charge head on with two kunai in hand, each sporting a razor-sharp wind blade. She narrowly sidestepped the furious joust from Guren and swiped at her kidney, carving a deep gash into her body as the Oto-nin sped by. Guren did her best to ignore the pain and shattered the wheel, instead launching the thousands of shards at Pakura to overwhelm her as she made her way back to impale the woman. Pakura was completely undeterred, slashing through the barrage of shards with practiced ease until the ripples in the water alerted her of Guren's quick approach. She struck one of the wind-enhanced kunai out to intercept her before she made it within piercing distance with her Crystal Lance, but Guren moved her head mere inches out of range of the blade, sacrificing a lock of hair in her pursuit to kill the other woman.
It was all for naught, though, as Pakura capitalized by twisting the kunai and cutting a line across her jaw with the intent of dragging it towards the base of her brainstem, but Guren just barely pushed away in time to escape a swift death. Creating even more space, she paused to reassess her deteriorating situation. However, Pakura wouldn't afford her any breathing room, spawning two clones beside her to continue the onslaught. Her hand forced, Guren jumped back into the fray with nothing but finally skewering Pakura on her mind. One of the clones attacked first, but Guren quickly decapitated her with a Jade Crystal Blade on her left arm, and she bum-rushed through the second Pakura's attack and flipped her over her shoulder to continue her advance. A wicked grin found purchase on her face as she finally got within range, and she stabbed her lance right through Pakura's chest before the woman could do anything to stop it.
"I told you that I wasn't just anyone," Guren lorded over her, taking great pleasure in the shock and horror dressing the other woman's face. At least, she was doing so until Pakura started chuckling.
"Is death really so amusing to you?" Guren derisively spat as the woman continued chuckling.
"You're right," Pakura coughed. "You're not just anyone; you're dumber."
Within an instant, the Pakura that Guren had stabbed through glowed and exploded, blasting her back and skipping her across the river until she slipped under the surface. When she finally regained herself and climbed back up to the surface, she was greeted by the original Pakura closing in on her with her two kunai primed to snuff her out for good. In a panic, she poured all of her chakra into her arms and slammed them to the water's surface, crystallizing the water in a near instant and momentarily halting Pakura's advance. Capitalizing on the added second of breathing room, she flew through 5 hand seals and slammed her palms to the crystallized surface. "Crystal Style: Jade Crystal Labyrinth!"
Red spires began to rise from the water and connect, converging into a massive, flower-like construct that enclosed into a huge, impenetrable barrier that trapped Pakura within. Guren watched with short breaths as Pakura fired flaming orb after orb at the barrier to no avail. As the orbs increased in size and luminosity, small cracks began to develop within the structure, and Guren knew that it wouldn't hold the likely pissed off woman for very long. Struggling to her feet, she continued ignoring the pain shooting up her side from the gash as well as the exhaustion she was feeling from both the chakra expenditure and the blood loss.
Quickly scaling the length of the cliff amidst the booming explosions emanating from the labyrinth, she returned to the edge where she stashed Sasuke in the protective crystal cocoon. Hardening her arm, she smashed the cocoon, freeing the Uchiha, who had regained consciousness at some point during the battle. He blinked at her, two Sharingan glaring indignantly at the woman.
Before he could say a word, she slapped him. "Go. Run. Get to Orochimaru!"
Sasuke was rendered confusedly silent and even more irritated at the command to flee, but as a massive explosion rocked the valley and a bright, pale orange flame shot into the air over the cliff, she wouldn't have any of it. "Get out of here! I can only hold her off for so much longer. You need to go while either of us still has any energy left!"
Sasuke, now fully understanding the urgency of the situation, swallowed his pride and got up to leave. Before he could go too far, though, Guren called out to him again.
"Hey!" she shouted, earning his attention once more. "Tell Yukimaru… tell Yukimaru that it was me, and that I'm sorry."
Sasuke had no idea what the hell she was waffling about, but she nodded if for no other reason than to get her to stop talking so he could leave. Once he did, Guren slammed her hand to the ground and erected another wall of crystal to obscure any view of Sasuke's departure, and she turned back around as she felt the heat in the area rise to ungodly levels.
"Those cloaks are expensive," Pakura growled as her flaming form stepped onto the cliff's edge.
Gone was her Akatsuki cloak, having been burned away in her escape, and all that remained was the sleeveless, black top, purple tights and arm warmers, white obi, and bandages she typically wore underneath. Scorching flames blanketed her and trailed behind her with every step, crafting an image of a demon emerging from the fires of hell to reap Guren of her soul for all of her past transgressions.
She refused to go down like this. She refused to fail Lord Orochimaru. She refused to leave Yukimaru behind!
"Die, already!" Guren bellowed, furiously running through even more hand seals and growing a plethora of crystal shards around her, fashioning them into shuriken, and pelting them at Pakura.
Pakura merely narrowed her eyes and darted through the onslaught, slashing through any shuriken that wandered too close with her kunai until she reached Guren and clamped down on her throat, slamming her into the crystal wall. Channeling her chakra to her palm, her hand began to glow as her grip tightened, heating up the thin layer of crystal on Guren's skin in order to either cook her throat or force her to abandon the armor, leaving her vulnerable to being mummified.
However, Guren did neither, instead performing the boar and ram seals with one hand and slamming her palm to the wall. The wall began to rumble, and a pink dragon with glowing, green eyes emerged from the wall and struck down at Pakura. Pakura narrowly let go and fled just before the dragon could annihilate her as several more dragons emerged from the crystal wall and gave chase. Pakura left back down to the valley below with both the dragons and Guren in hot pursuit, and Pakura retrieved 5 kunai, each with an explosive tag attached to the ring. She threw them into the mouths of each dragon alongside 5 Scorch Release orbs to amplify the destructive potential of the explosions, and amplify they did.
Guren was yeeted away from the dragon she was riding as they all exploded into a fiery blaze, but she wouldn't go down without a fight, lashing back with an even deadlier barrage of crystal shuriken, this one much too fast for Pakura to safely weave through. Instead, she poured as much chakra as she could into a Great Breakthrough to combat the storm, killing much of the barrage's momentum and expediting Guren's descent.
Pakura was beginning to feel the effects of her diminishing chakra, so she knew she had to finish this sooner rather than later. As Guren slammed to the ground and struggled to return to her feet, Pakura leaped backward and scaled the statue of Hashirama Senju until she stood horizontally on the man's waist. She had enough chakra for two more jutsu of her kekkei genkai, so she'd make them count. Flying through a long string of hand seals, she pooled her chakra into her mouth and kneaded it into her saliva.
"Scorch Style: Molotov," she spat (literally) alongside a small, pale-orange glob that rocketed in an arc towards the area where Guren landed. She didn't need a direct hit, she just needed to hit the vicinity.
Guren had no idea what was coming, she just knew that when she spotted an orange glob sailing through the air towards her general area, she didn't want to see what sort of destruction it would almost certainly cause. Still, it was small, so she created a small crystal wall in front of her with the dregs of chakra she had remaining, not expecting the attack to be as massive as the previous ones.
When the glob landed near her barrier, she was not prepared for a mosaic of orange, yellow, and white flames to splash out in a considerable radius around her, the flames even circumventing the barrier and setting her lone sleeve alight. She frantically tried to put out the flames before they could reach her skin and do considerable damage to her, even dunking it in the adjacent river to douse the flames.
Meanwhile, Pakura had scaled the top of the statue, now standing atop Hashirama's head. With a single tiger seal, a plethora of flaming orbs developed around her, then they began to converge and collect into a white-hot mini sun. She raised her arms and fed the massive ball even more chakra, expanding it further into a foreboding ball of fiery death. When she was finally satisfied with the absurd size of it, she stepped forward to the edge of the statue.
"Scorch Style: Supernova."
Without another word, she threw the ball down into the valley right at Guren. Almost completely bereft of energy, Guren could only helplessly gape in despair at her incoming doom. She desperately tried to draw up enough chakra to shield herself from the impact, but even the fumes she was running on were running on fumes themselves. She tried to stand up to hobble away, but the shooting pain in her kidney sent her crashing back down to the cold, unforgiving ground.
It was over. She was dead. The giant ball of flame hurtling toward her would extinguish her from this world, both figuratively and literally. In the moments before the ball struck, a tear streamed down her cheek. She could take solace in the fact that she was able to get Lord Orochimaru his vessel, but that was such cold, hollow comfort in the face of never returning to Yukimaru.
Well, perhaps that wasn't true. Maybe they would get to see each other again…
Then again, they'd almost certainly end up in different places.
The giant jutsu slammed down into Guren and promptly exploded, engulfing the surrounding area in a fiery dome of unrelenting heat. Much of the water within the bounds of the dome was instantly vaporized and only added to the insane heat within. The blast was so bright that it could be seen far and wide, and even Pakura herself had to shield her eyes from the aftermath.
Once the light show died down and the dried portion of the riverbed slowly refilled itself from the flow of the waterfall, Pakura hopped down to the ground and approached the carnage. Every crystal structure had either been destroyed in the blast or disintegrated with Guren's death, so it was a straight, unhindered path to the charred, mangled corpse of the blue-haired woman. Her pitch-black skin stretched with great difficulty around her skeleton and under her shredded clothing. It was a truly horrific sight, one that Pakura could at least lament that she attempted to spare the woman from. Unfortunately, it just couldn't be helped.
Drawing her gaze away from the dead woman, her eyes landed on a flash of pink a good distance away from the blast zone. She wandered over to inspect it, nearly brushing it off as just remains of Guren's crystals. However, that immediately changed upon closer inspection, and she realized that it was a person. Hurrying over, she stopped and kneeled down, raking her eyes over the pink-haired girl littered with crystal shards in her abdomen. Checking her pulse, a bit of relief entered Pakura's system at the revelation that she was still breathing, albeit faintly.
Putting a pin in that for the moment, she turned around and dashed back up the cliff face to where she last remembered the Uchiha to be. However, there was nothing awaiting her upon her arrival. The crystal structures had all disintegrated, so there was nothing for him to hide behind. She supposed the boy had woken up during the fight and was freed of his cocoon before vanishing in the confusion.
Pakura sighed; she could probably hunt him down and retrieve him before he made it to his destination, but she wasn't sure how long that would take. Then, there was the issue of the girl on the riverbank. Pakura knew that the girl probably didn't have long if left in that state; she certainly wouldn't last as long as it would take her to hunt Sasuke down, come back to collect her, and then transport them both to Konoha.
Another sigh ripped itself from her throat, and she looked back down at the girl in question. She couldn't drag her gaze away from her. She counted the numerous shards sticking out of her abdomen every which way, and a faint image of herself laying in the dirt with her back riddled with kunai layered itself over the girl.
"Fucking hell," Pakura begrudgingly moaned. "No one deserves to die like this."
Leaping down to the river once again, she made her way to the girl and carefully lifted her into her arms, making sure not to jostle the shards embedded within and avoid doing any further damage.
"Pain will understand," she muttered before taking off back towards Konoha.
Unseen by Pakura, a two-toned head emerged from the ground a little ways away from the battlefield. Two golden eyes were wide in shock, even disregarding the fact that one of them was always wide by nature.
"Holy shit, dude," White Zetsu commented.
"Holy shit, indeed," Black Zetsu agreed.
Tenten groaned as she blearily came to. The last thing she remembered was falling backward into a hard, grainy cloud, and she currently felt the same sensation. Feeling around, she found that she was sitting atop a floating sand cloud. That was odd; why was she on a sand cloud of all things?
"You're awake," a low, raspy voice intoned beside her, jolting her out of her thoughts.
Looking over, Tenten's heart fell to the pit of her stomach as she saw someone she never expected to see; someone she never wanted to see again.
"Gaara?!" Tenten panicked, immediately going into high alert. "What are you doing?? Where are you taking me??"
"There is no need to fear," Gaara plainly assured. "I am here as an ally, not an enemy."
Tenten regarded him warily, looking over his blank, ringed visage extensively before speaking. "You'll have to understand if I'm a little dubious of that after what you did to my teammate."
"…I do," Gaara lowly replied. "I am sorry for that."
…Okay, Tenten was expecting a lot of things from the redhead, but an apology was nowhere in the stratosphere of that list.
"You're… sorry?" she confusedly and indignantly questioned.
"I did not yet understand what existence truly meant," Gaara continued. "My idea of proving my existence revolved around the pain and death of others. Those who were unworthy were culled, and those who were worthy were slaughtered to prove my strength and reason to be. I know now that this is not the ideal path to find validation in my existence, and I am learning what the true path for myself is."
Tenten was rendered silent at the explanation. Trauma dumping was one thing, but this was a new level of odd, especially given the circumstances. She didn't know how to reply to any of that, but it would likely stick around in her brain. In the meantime, she looked around, taking in the passing landscape. She idly noticed that a section of the forest seemed to have been completely cut down before she realized that there was a third sand cloud alongside them, and that cloud was ferrying a grotesque, grey dinosaur creature with bones sticking out of his body-
"What the hell?!" Tenten shouted when it finally dawned on her what she was looking at.
"What is it?" Gaara asked.
"That," Tenten began, pointing at the corpse of Kimimaro. "What happened to him?"
"Oh," Gaara responded. "He perished before he could deliver a killing blow."
That wasn't exactly what she was asking, and the wording only raised more questions than answers.
"Why are you carrying him with us?" Tenten hesitantly questioned, opting to take it in stride.
"He was your kill, so I figured you had the right to determine what to do with him," Gaara answered matter-of-factly.
"Wait, my kill? He was still alive when I was unconscious. Didn't you fight him?"
"Yes, but he was noticeably hampered with violent and bloody coughing fits during our battle. I assumed that whatever damage you levied onto him was significant enough to kill him after a delay. Ergo, he is your kill."
Tenten didn't quite know if that was accurate, but she also couldn't really dispute it, either.
"I sealed your sword into a scroll for you, by the way," Gaara spoke again, handing her a storage scroll that presumably contained the Kusanagi.
"…Thanks," Tenten responded, completely flummoxed with every part of this interaction.
At least she didn't lose the sword; that was something to think positively on during this venture that was fucked six ways to Sunday. She was also alive, and that was always a plus. She really hoped to be able to walk back into Konoha and say the same for Neji.
Please, let her be able to say the same for Neji.
Jiraiya's smile was bright enough to aluminate the entirety of Hi no Kuni as he set foot back in Konoha. The meeting with his old students that he had been initially agonizing over had gone much better than he could have expected. There was understandably some tension and mistrust, but he was able to confirm that they were not only alive, but they were also well-adjusted enough to not want to plunge the world into chaos in the name of peace. That alone was worth a celebration in his humble opinion. He'd have to grab Tsunade and go out for a drink; she'd never turn that down.
Having sensed her chakra in the Hokage Tower rather than the hospital, Jiraiya made his way through the village and toward his future office… he'd really need to get used to that thought. He was still a little sore at how he landed the position in the first place, but he'd get over it.
Eventually.
Hopping up to the ledge of the office and entering through the open window, Jiraiya was greeted to Shizune looking forlorn at the desk brimming with paperwork, Tsunade taking a swig of some kind of alcohol on the couch, and Pakura stewing in a mixture of irritation and exhaustion in the corner.
"…Uh, did I miss anything?" Jiraiya asked the tense group, earning their attention.
"Well, welcome back, Lord Hokage," Tsunade tiredly mocked.
"Ugh, enough of that," Jiraiya groaned. "What's got the mood so sour?"
"Where to begin," Tsunade snorted. "The Uchiha brat ditched the village, a group of dumbass genin chased after him in an unauthorized rescue effort, and not all of them came back alive."
Jiraiya was silent, as was the rest of the room. He looked down at Shizune face-planted at the desk, and then he looked at the 4 portraits of the previous Hokages on the wall. Both his sensei's and his student's gazes cut right through him, as if welcoming him to the sordid realities that came with the hat. Jiraiya walked around the desk and sat down beside Tsunade, taking the offered bottle of alcohol and downing it all at once.
"Anything else?" he asked, tossing the newly empty bottle in the trash can as Tsunade pulled a new one from… somewhere.
"Orochimaru is still alive, apparently," she answered, cracking open the new bottle and taking a long swig.
Whatever wisps of ease that Jiraiya might have retained from before he received the news of the deaths instantly vanished, and he just about sank into the couch in despair. Just when they thought they were finally past that dark, tumultuous saga of their lives, the snake somehow found a way to slither back in to wreak more havoc. His head snapped to Pakura, and she defiantly met his gaze.
"Don't even think about it; the bounty is nonrefundable," Pakura declared before Jiraiya could even say a word.
Tayuya really fucking hated her life. She didn't even know why or how she was still alive; that stuck-up bitch with the fan literally dropped the whole fucking forest on her after she interrupted her fight with that annoying, shadowy prick. Maybe it was only because she was in Stage 2 that she was able to survive all the weight, but she wasn't in Stage 2 anymore, and she could swear that she was shitting out her gallbladder. Honestly, she was in way too much goddamn pain to tell.
This was a pretty fitting death for her, all things considered. She spent her early years hiding out with her parents because apparently the entire world wanted to kill them for some fucking reason, then some cockwaffle sold them out and got her parents killed in front of her before she was captured and held prisoner in some backwater village in bumblefuck Iwa, and that only lasted until that pale piece of shit, Orochimaru, came along and slaughtered the whole village just to take her prisoner somewhere else.
She hated her existence, she hated what she eventually sold her humanity to become, she hated everyone and everything she was forced to interact with, and she sincerely fucking hated whatever fucked up deity got his kicks out of dooming people to suffer from birth. Even saying that made her a hypocrite given how much suffering she willfully spread to all sorts of innocent people under Orochimaru's thumb, and for what? Power? The ability to defend herself? To never, ever have to feel vulnerable, exploited, or at anyone's mercy ever again?
Well, a lot of good that ended up fucking doing. She was always exploited, always vulnerable, and always at someone's mercy under Orochimaru. She traded one torturous servitude for another, and all she got for it was enough impotent rage to last her several lifetimes alongside a bunch of trees pinning her to the ground and liquifying her internal organs.
A slow, painful, and pathetic death for a slow, painful, and pathetic existence. She deserved nothing less.
"Come on, I sensed them over here!"
Great, now she was fucking hearing things. The least her brain could do was let her enjoy her death in silence.
"Yes, I'm sure! I'd recognize that kind of chakra anywhere!"
…Okay, was she actually hallucinating, or was someone approaching her location? She couldn't really look too far in any direction but up given her predicament, so she simply had to wait for whatever or whoever was passing by to enter her field of vision.
"Now that you mention it, I do kind of sense it, too. You might be on to something."
Alright, two different people. One guy and one girl. Just great; more annoyances to deprive her of a peaceful death.
"They're right over there, by the pile of trees!"
"Speaking of which, what the fuck happened out here?"
Tayuya groaned (and boy, that was a mistake) as the two completed their approach, and Tayuya finally got a good look at them. Both of the new arrivals were wearing the same style of cloak; black with red clouds on it, although one was hooded and the other wasn't. On her left was a girl that looked to be around her age with glasses and long, red hair in a weird hairdo. On her right was a blonde with bright, blue eyes and…
Holy shit, were those fucking whiskers? That was honestly fucking adorable, but she'd disembowel anyone that ever heard her even think such a thing.
"See, I told you!" the redhead spoke up. "There's no mistaking her chakra. She's an Uzumaki like us!"
…What?
"Eh, you sure?" The whiskered blonde asked in reply. "Her hair doesn't really fit the bill…"
The girl sent the teenage boy the most deadpan glare that Tayuya had ever seen on anyone; she had to give her credit for that.
"Yeah, yeah, I know; pot, meet kettle," the blonde conceded. "So, we're rescuing her, right?"
"Obviously," the girl responded, and Tayuya had quite enough of being talked about right in her presence.
"You two dipshits know that I'm both conscious and can fucking hear you, right?" she questioned.
"Yeah, I'm aware," the blonde nodded. "Just wanted to see how long it would take for you to speak up for yourself. Now, hold still; I'm gonna get these trees off of you."
"And just how the fuck are you gonna do that-" Tayuya began to mock but stopped in her tracks when a dark, malevolent chakra began emanating from the blonde. His blue eyes bled crimson, and his pupils narrowed into slits. His already spiky hair became wilder, and his whiskers boldened, becoming much more pronounced and jagged.
With a heave, the blonde hefted two of the logs and flipped them off of her, meanwhile, the three bubbly tails behind him sank under the remaining wood and hefted them away from her mangled legs. Just as quickly as it arrived, the malevolent aura vanished, and the blonde reverted back to his previous state.
"…Exactly what in the fuck are you??" Tayuya sputtered, and the blonde chuckled.
"Some people call me Naruto," he joked, and Tayuya found her astonishment quickly becoming annoyance.
"Here, bite down on me," the girl instructed, lifting her sleeve to expose her arm that was covered in healing bite marks.
"Are you sure about this, Karin?" Naruto worriedly questioned.
"We don't have enough time to treat her normally," Karin replied. "I could try to stabilize her with medical ninjutsu, but I can't promise that she'd survive long enough to get any significant work done in her state. This will be simpler and more effective."
"I suppose," Naruto sighed. "As long as you're comfortable with doing this."
Tayuya certainly fucking wasn't! She didn't know what kind of kinky shit this bitch got down with, but she wanted absolutely no part of it.
"It's not what you think, I swear!" Karin hurriedly assured with a frantic wave of her hands. "My chakra has really strong medicinal properties. If you bite me, it'll heal your wounds considerably."
"…Were you reading my fucking mind or something?" Tayuya questioned with narrowed eyes, suspicious about how the girl knew her concerns without her even having to vocalize them.
"She's a really powerful sensor," Naruto supplied, answering her question. "Picking out strong feelings by proximity is something she's capable of.
Tayuya's gaze returned to the redhead, who was lightly blushing and bashfully looking away at the minimal amount of praise. Weird.
"Whatever, fine, give it here," Tayuya conceded, and Karin lowered her arm and placed it in between Tayuya's teeth, allowing her to bite down.
She pointedly ignored the soft moaning she definitely wasn't hearing and focused on the vitality she could feel traveling into her body. In a matter of seconds, the majority of the pain she was feeling had been eased away, and she could almost feel her bones resetting within. Not only that, she felt her chakra reserves start to refill, as well, filling her tank back up to what it was prior to her activating her cursed seal.
In other words, she felt fan-fucking-tastic!
"Holy shit," she muttered as she gingerly sat up, still terribly sore from the ordeal but not feeling especially injured.
"See?" Karin beamed with pride. Tayuya, however, did not miss how quickly she hid her arm back under her sleeve after she was done.
"Awesome," Naruto declared and stood back up. "Let's get going to Ame. I'm a little over being a side character in my own story."
"…What?" Karin questioned with a quirked eyebrow.
"Nothing, let's just get her on my back," Naruto quickly insisted.
"The hell? I'm not riding piggyback on anyone!" Tayuya fiercely declared, barely regaining her footing on wobbly legs.
"I wouldn't recommend you try to walk or move very much at all," Naruto suggested. "You'll be sore for a pretty long while; your body is still tender and primed to re-injuring itself. It's for the better if you let me carry you."
"Absolutely not," she firmly denied.
"It's cute that you think you have a choice," Naruto chuckled darkly, and several silver chains shot out of his body, wrapping around the startled girl and forming a tight cocoon around her.
"Goddamnit, shithead, put me down!" Tayuya demanded, struggling within the chains.
"I'll put you down when there's food in front of us," Naruto responded as he and Karin took off in the direction of Ame. "I don't know how long you've been out here, but I know that you're hungry."
The struggling within the chains died down to about 50% capacity after the promise of food.
"Besides, there's another Uzumaki you'd probably like to meet," Naruto finished.
Again, there was that word; what the fuck was an Uzumaki?
I took a few liberties with Pakura's Scorch Release jutsu repertoire. Canonically, there are only two of them, and their names kinda suck. So, I had to get a bit creative (I also may have channeled a bit too much of my MHA fic in the process; check that out if you're interested).
The inspiration for the Konoha scene was that meme from Community where Troy walks in with pizza and the building is on fire.
Thanks for reading. You're all wonderful.
