Yo, what's up?
GIGANTIC shout out to WOLF-GOST, Spark681, and champblaze. And everyone that's reading, favouriting and following this story. Thank you :))
Remember my warning from Chapter 1?
Enjoy…
CHAPTER 4
03:40 PM
The train screeched to a stop at the Fuyu-Inazuma train station, billowing hot smoke from its tracks as it shortly skidded on the cold railway track.
"Please, mind the gap," the speakers situated in corners of the station droned loudly, echoing across the stifling station. The feminine voice repeated mechanically, "Please, mind the gap."
Inside the train, Junior stood up and held out his hand for his puppet, who graciously took it while swiping the handkerchief off her face, tucking it into a pocket of her long skirt. Junior reached up to the luggage compartment and deftly hefted off a large, green, rectangular suitcase.
He lifted it and waited for the other second-class passengers to leave the train, sparing a look at his puppet.
The puppet maid's dull grey eyes were half-lidded, feigning sleep, but he saw the rapt and attentive flicker as she looked at each person that bumped past her master, watching for weapons or any kind of attack. Her pale expression looked similar to that of a delicate ice sculpture, and her soft yawn looked far too convincing for Junior.
When the small crowd in their train car had lessened, Junior easily carried the suitcase in his gloved right hand and his brown overcoat ruffled as he marched to the door, glancing down and safely stepping over the gap.
The train station was illuminated by soft orange lights, making the air warm and festive.
The people boarding and leaving the train wore warm colourful sweaters and coats to beat the cold, and the staff of the train station bore festive pins on the breasts of their uniforms. The station was swept clean of trash and the pearly tiles were scrubbed till they shone, making the place look more spacious than it actually was.
The First Raikage's birthday was in a week, and it was an important affair in Lightning country.
"Master," Kira mumbled behind Junior, and the boy's shoulders sagged.
"Yeah, I know." He waved off her warning, walking onwards. A glance to his right, and he saw two casually dressed people duck out from a third-class train car, exhaling into their palms and rubbing their hands together, moving with their chins down into their scarfs and nonchalantly converging at a souvenir kiosk a short walk from their train car.
They didn't look awkward or out of place, even as one was a Yamanaka and the other was an Aburame.
Konoha spies are getting better. Junior nodded, acknowledging them when two of them calmly looked at him, watching the boy coolly trot up the stairs and leave the underground train station.
Exiting the station, soft snow fell from the sky. The glass skyscrapers reflected the weak rays of the afternoon sun that pushed against the thick clouds that blotted out the sky. On the sidewalk, pedestrians went about their business, unmindful of the young-looking boy with the large briefcase.
Junior took off his top hat and gave it to his maid, who flattened it with a flick of her wrist and folded it into her skirt pocket. For a moment, he stood at the top of the stairs, eyes closed and inhaling a soothing breath, letting in the clear, cold air into his lungs and releasing the breath from his mouth.
The horns of carriages and the bustle of the streets faded into the background.
His hands tightened on the handle of his suitcase and he opened his eyes.
Jiraiya melted out from the dull drone of pedestrians stalking the sidewalk, standing barely three feet away with his powerful arms crossed and his hard expression boring down on the unimpressed teenager. The man's face was tipped down and Junior craned his neck back to meet the man's fiery eyes.
The man looked like he hadn't taken a bath in months.
Junior's puppet hung behind her master, fingers twitching at the ready.
The world seeped into the background as godfather and godson glared hatred at each other.
Until Jiraiya opened his mouth and said, "You look just like your father—"
Junior's chakra flared, he flickered on the spot and vanished, leaving behind a bewildered puppet and his suitcase, only to reappear a quarter of a second later with his fist implanted into Jiraiya's face, shattering the air with a hellish right hook.
The thud of the blow sounded far and wide, smashing building windows and cracking the ground where Jiraiya stood, but the man didn't shift back. His head was turned to his right in the direction of the punch and a small bruise was formed on his cheek. The shock of the impact dropped anyone within a mile radius, shaken quiet by the reverberating shockwaves and gaping at what had just happened at the mouth of the underground train station.
Jiraiya's hand snapped out and grabbed Junior by his neck, lifting the boy clear off his feet and scowling at him. The red veins in his eyes throbbed madly and he gnashed his teeth. "But you're nothing like him, brat."
"Ack!" Junior clawed the hand gripping on his throat, flailing his legs. He coughed raggedly, clenching his teeth and chuckling breathily. "Jackass. Cut…your…nails."
A burst of white chakra smoke covered Junior and he was replaced by Kira, who deftly slammed her shin into Jiraiya's chin, and a shockwave of heavy chakra flooded after the blow, shrouding them both inside a sudden bonfire of red flames.
Meanwhile, Junior clawed his gloved hands into the concrete ground to slow down his flickering body switch, looking up to the bellowing fire and the screaming civilians fleeing the battle. He tore off his gloves and splayed his fingers; blue chakra threads extended from his fingers and dug into the keyhole of his large suitcase. The box opened with a thud to reveal a large scroll that encompassed the entirety of the big suitcase.
Junior's chakra stringers yanked the scroll towards him and unravelled it.
Suddenly, he spared his left hand and the chakra strings pouring out from his fingers, extending them forward and latching the strings into Kira as she hurtled toward him, forcing her body to a hard stop before she could crash into him; her clothes were scorched off, revealing a fireproof black jumpsuit, with red shin guards connected to her shinobi heels and a pair of forearm guards that linked to her red gloves.
Junior twitched his middle finger and her dislocated arms popped back into their sockets with a grisly click, and her broken neck mended with a snap. A few chakra strings threaded her disconnected head to her neck.
"Save it," Junior hissed when Kira made to apologise for getting injured. "He's a Sannin. He's not any normal jounin."
Gradually, the scroll fully opened up behind the boy, revealing a scroll that was ten feet long and engraved with hundreds of seals. Two larger seals were at the very centre of the sealing scroll and four other somewhat smaller seals were on each corner of the scroll. Each of the four corner seals crackled with a blue glow.
Kira fully tore off the last burnt pieces of her former garment, dimming her expression and sending a look around her master.
"The spies could be rallying more reinforcements." She entered a Strong Fist fighting stance, her hands oozing red heat and fire, and steam ebbing off her fireproof shinobi uniform. "Orders?"
Junior grinned, his right hand holding the scroll of seals in the air behind him and disconnecting his left chakra strings from his maid-puppet. "Make it flashy."
Kira vaulted over her master's scroll and dove into the underground station. A dragon made of molten fire bellowed after her.
Junior's left hand curled up and he held up a ram hand seal under his chin. He unsealed a puppet from his arsenal, rolling up his scroll and bringing it toward himself.
After which, Jiraiya blazed out of the fire, Ma and Pa seated on his shoulders and his features resembling a toad.
The puppet, a cloud of black veils and twin swords, raced and met Jiraiya's fist with a solid cross of its blades. This bugged out Ma's eyes but Jiraiya snarled, pushing harder only for the puppet to divert the blow to its right and race a hard kick into Jiraiya's chest with a foot that hadn't been there before, slicing down the back of the Sannin's neck, only for the sword to shatter on Jiraiya's neck.
Junior scoffed.
He twitched his left pinkie and the puppet retracted its leg back into the folds of its veils, dipping down when Jiraiya whirled around and exhaled a column of oil-fuelled flames, nearly burning the puppet to a crisp.
"Forget the puppet!" Pa roared, cutting off the jutsu. It wound its head to Junior and threw out his tongue. Junior leapt aside, dragging his scroll with him and cursing, wiggling his ring finger and pinkie as he scaled the side of the building, running from the doggedly chasing toad tongue.
The puppet tossed up the veil covering its face, exposing a skull with sunken yellow eyes and a tongue of exploding seal tags rolling out from its open jaw. This forced Pa to retract his tongue and for Ma to lace her fingers into a different set of seals, a nanosecond before Jiraiya cancelled his fireball.
Its toneless, hollow voice boomed. "Katsu!"
Jiraiya jumped back and crossed his arms over his face as the explosion pushed him away, shutting his eyes before it could blind him.
Ma called her jutsu. "Water Release: Great Waterfall Technique!"
She blasted water from her mouth, focusing it on the rapid explosions that thrust them backwards. This doused the flames a bit, surprising them at how little the explosion was compared to the number of exploding tags they saw coming from the puppet's mouth.
Jiraiya landed with a crouch and got up, looking around for his godson and absentmindedly charging Ma to extinguish the fire.
"Shit, damn it." Jiraiya cursed, punching his left hand into his right palm. His senses flared at the dozens of dots of chakra blinking to life in the sky, on the ground, and stuck to the buildings. "He's all around us."
"Calm yourself, boy." Pa spat, gritting his teeth in apprehension at the dozens of puppets that Junior had unsealed. "Your emotions are overcoming you. Focus!"
The puppets were a diverse mix of the veiled puppets that had self-imploded seconds ago, wearing layers of tattered black veils with arms bearing a wide range of weapons, like scythes, axes, and bow staffs. Some had centipede-like torsos spooling from the veils, clinging to the walls with their sharp legs, some were burly and buff, hefting muscular arms wrapped with sealing papers riddled with fuinjutsu, and some bore numerous arms with poisoned spikes protruding from them, leaking drops of poison that melted the concrete.
Jiraiya couldn't say he had sparred against Junior before, but he had heard from his Suna informants that the boy carried an arsenal of abominations that could rival Sasori of the Red Sands and Chiyo.
All of them had their faces covered by veils, and their yellow eyes glowed menacingly from their hoods. The puppets brandished their weapons.
Junior's voice echoed from their hidden mouths, resounding as one of the techniques Jiraiya had never seen before.
"Veiled Secret Technique: Dance of the Fifty Spirits."
Jiraiya inhaled deeply and his body settled into the Toad stance, releasing a blast of smoke from his nose.
The hail of puppets fell with chaos, fluidity and blades.
Jiraiya slammed his fist into an incoming battle axe, shattering it and winding around with a kick, nailing a puppet and sending it into another, though this only resulted in the puppets merging and splitting apart, similar to cells but completely different. The puppets rattled madly and converged on Jiraiya, so the Sannin slapped his hands together.
"Spiked Buddha."
His spikey hair lengthened and covered him, shielding him from the frantic stabs, slashed and crushing blows of the puppets, until Jiraiya tore his hands apart and the spikes of his hair frilled up, shooting out in breathless waves and peppering the puppets. The needles battered the buildings and punctured the concrete, and the Lightning Country Police that had come to interrupt the battle were forced to take cover.
The spikes impacted the puppets and some went down, struck hard in the primary chakra point connecting them to Junior, but most swept around, dodging and writhing away from the needles, like spirits in the wind. Five of the puppets with sealing paper wrapped around their arms threw up their veil, exposing their ghastly faces and their unhinged jaw, where a pipe extended from their mouths and the seals on their arms burned. They fired chakra from their cores to their mouths, ignoring the ruthless battering of needles on their bodies.
"Wind Release: Great Breakthrough!"
A focused tunnel of wind shot from the puppets' mouths, and the puppets that hadn't been brought down by needles flew out of the path of the wind tunnel and broke through the needles, smashing into Jiraiya and uprooting the man even as he fixed himself to the concrete.
This stopped Jiraiya's onslaught and sent him careening into the twelfth-floor window of a skyscraper window.
There was a brief lull in the battlefield after this, with the five wind-style puppets stopping their attack, until two more puppets with arms bound with sealing paper flew up the area Jiraiya had broken through and opened their arms.
The sealing papers on their arms burned and their veils lifted off their faces.
Lightning cracked from the muzzles in their mouths and blasted into the twelfth floor, decimating the building to the extent that it threatened to fall, but they didn't stop, firing shot after shot of lightning into the building.
The other puppets spectated, helping those who had fallen by removing Jiraiya's needles from their cores.
Electrical fires burst from several parts of the building and patches of the structure crumbled off. The screams of people who hadn't evacuated from the building rend the air, and the puppets continued breathing out bolt after bolt of relentless lightning into where Jiraiya had been tossed.
A hard thud rocked the city.
Then another, shuddering through the earth.
The building groaned and slouched on one side.
The panicked wail of civilians intensified and the Police ignored their basic instincts, speeding into the building, no doubt hoping to save as many people as possible.
But it was too late.
The puppets stopped their rapid attacks and flew back, covering their faces with their veils and lifting their yellow stares to the falling glass and metal of the building, keeping a good distance away as the building swayed a little, tipping further into its slouch.
Junior watched from his hidden perch. His electric blue eyes were devoid of emotion and his face set into a neutral frown, looking on as the foundations of the building gave up and the main pillars of the building could no longer keep it upright.
Quietly, Junior plugged his ears.
The building fell with a deafening boom, erupting in a blaze of fire and dust as it went down, taking a handful of other buildings with it.
Lightning Country wept.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
In the underground station, Kira's ears pricked up and she looked to her right.
The train station around her burned, falling apart at the seams due to the earthquakes caused by the falling building aboveground.
Her pointer and middle fingers were punched into both of a blonde ninja's eyes and hooked. Four other ninjas panted raggedly a long distance away, clutching their chests and necks, where hand imprints had been burned into their flesh. Their deep burns marred their bodies and scorched their uniforms.
The tiles were broken and the pillars, the ones left, were in bad shape. Soot stained the walls and the ceiling like scars, and sections of the train tracks were uprooted with the train bearing a gaping, smouldering hole in its side with several bodies burning inside.
Dead.
Everyone on the train was dead.
One of the ninjas, an Aburame, visibly strained to unleash another attack, but he collapsed onto his face and a comrade limped to him, warily looking at the now unmoving fire demon. He checked for a pulse and sighed in relief when he found one, struggling with his one good arm to help his unconscious comrade onto his feet.
All the while, Kira watched with a curious look.
A section of the train station collapsed inwards, stoking the flames with more air.
Kira unhooked her fingers and the Yamanaka ninja slumped to the ground, long dead. She looked at the blood on her fingers, tilting her head to the side and furrowing her eyebrows. Her eyes flicked open and closed, and then she touched her bloodied fingers to her lips, drawing red parallel lines to her collar. She then shook her head and blinked, wiping the blood on her fingers on her jumpsuit and turning to the hole in the ceiling, taking a moment to listen to the devastation occurring above the ground.
Moments later, she hopped through the hole and returned to her master.
Authors note
Next time on Things Get Dark…
"Lord Jiraiya, sir." The man panted. Hinata left the office, the man took a hand from the sheet of paper and gripped his chest, pushing the note to the Hokage and saying, winded, "He's gone AWOL. Disaster in Lightning. Hundreds dead."
The more Hiashi read the transmitted report from his spies in Lightning, the larger Hiashi's eyes got and the harder he grit his teeth. "…Fuck. Get me Shikaku."
"He went to Grass Country." The man shrank back when the Hyuuga Hokage's pale eyes burned. Hiashi swelled up and his normally even face contorted madly, purple and red, as if he was going to open his mouth and exhale molten lava on his secretary. The secretary stepped back, quietly adding, "You…permitted him to go, Lord Hokage, sir."
"That…conniving bastard," Hiashi swore, visibly holding back from grabbing his secretary by the neck. His heated mind went to the next person who was most definitely complicit in Jiraiya freely attacking Junior in Lightning Country, instead of following till they reached a less populated area for the retrieval to happen, like his spies—Fuu Yamanaka and Torune Aburame—had been doing. After a year of silence, the Sannin were becoming active, and Hiashi didn't permit it. "Then get me Tsunade. Now!"
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Gai blasted a punch into her stomach, and Tsunade hissed, tightening her abs and resisting the urge to grip her gut.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
I want you in Lightning. Get here now.
Shizune slowly put down the letter. Her hands trembled with nervousness.
A war of emotions twisted her face and glazed her eyes with tears; the low mumble of the radio didn't help, reporting on the casualties of the event in Lightning.
They were calling Junior a terrorist.
The girl's eyes blinked down, focusing her wavering gaze on the dismissively messy loop of her crush's handwritten letter.
Get. Here. Now.
Shizune got up, folding the paper into her pocket and dug into her wardrobe, packing up for the journey while searching her mind for a reasonable excuse to tell her mentor.
Done
Tell me what you think of this chapter, would you so kindly. Drink plenty of water, find time to relax, and hug that demon in your broom closet.
I'll see you when I see you.
Foy.