"I don't understand why these people would protect Sasuke Uchiha but… Make them talk." The freaky baldy littered with Sharingan eyes turned to his sons who covered the rooftops of the Uchiha district like a small army.
The kids all moved their hands to the side as if waiting for something to happen. Kiyomi's ear tingled, she thought she heard something so she turned her eyes at the side for a moment. The metallic clangs turned louder and louder while traditional weaponry located inside the Uchiha district and donning the walls of every museum and every house of this clan bred and polished in conflict found a new owner in the shape of a pale child with spiky, streamlined, white hair.
"Hey hey… These are some wicked odds…" Meiko smirked while reaching for her forearm at about the same time as the weapons found their wielders amongst the children of the freaky Uchiha man. "I was looking for a chance to use this…"
"A new jutsu perhaps?" Kiyomi looked to her friend with a mumble that only the three of Team Hokage who were standing back to back could pick up on.
"Nope, just a level-up of an old one. I call it Chakra Coating: Level Two." Meiko replied while blazing-orange chakra coating covered her short sword, however, where the steel ended in length, the coating did not. The coating exceeded the limitations of the weapon it coated in both length and width, creating a far larger weapon that merely used the irrelevant blade as a channeling device.
"That's kind of like Asuma's jutsu, you know…" Naruto observed. The young man allowed a moment of awe for his friend's accomplishments to replace the utter distaste for the faux Uchiha and his sons in front of him who wished harm upon his best friend.
"At this point, why even use a sword at all?" Kawaki pouted his lips and raised an eyebrow, trying to appear unimpressed as, judging from his expression, he only saw Meiko's selected method of fighting as showing off.
"Nah, I need it for channeling, plus, I never was the best with the technical side of molding chakra so if I don't stay on focus, the light show will end pretty quick," Meiko replied before swinging her blazing sword around and entering a high fighting stance by raising her sword overhead.
"Hmph… You choose to confront me with swords and pipes? That will prove to be your undoing…" the abominable man declared. As he closed his eyes, the scarred tissue covering his face where the numerous Sharingan were transplanted stretched out to where it looked like it had to have caused him pain. The nastiest feature of the man by far was the botched Sharingan transplant on his right eye, where the tissue was already dead but the transplant was completed afterward regardless, leaving the man with a numbed and half-responsive left side of his face.
The sons took off, covering the sky and making the ground beneath them dimmer as if they brought the evening itself with them. The red sun no longer reached the ground after their ascension but given how their flight was temporary, soon once again breached through the black, just like streaks of blood from a wound would have.
It was not an entirely inapt comparison, the army of sons laid an onslaught on the Team Hokage. Kiyomi took a dash backward to avoid the downward thrust of a katana-wielding brat. With this clash not being her first day on the battlefield, she immediately vaulted backward again with a flip that left the heavy swing of a tekkan miss her too. A blow that might have shaken her spine had it connected for tekkan was a heavy weapon meant to crush through one's armor, designed to excel in an era where ninja still donned heavy armor since they spent most of their time in active battlefields and breathers of peace were as special of an occurrence as war was these days.
A gust of wind sent Kiyomi flying the same direction she parried the attack of one enemy as a gunbai-wielding son of the mysterious Uchiha swung his fan from a further range. Feeling the uncomfortable grazing of the paved in cobblestone streets that tore her clothes and left irksome irritations over her skin, Kiyomi completed her odd journey with a backward roll and stood on her knees with a pair of kunai in her hands. It was safe to say these chumps won't give her any time whatsoever so it was better if she played their own game until their overwhelming, country-taking numbers were reduced.
A myriad of annoying pops came from Naruto's direction as the future Hokage confronted the numbers of the enemy with ones of his own. If the enemy chose to come at him with multiple versions of the same opponent, Naruto would confront him as multiple versions of himself too. Yet there was something unnatural about Naruto and his moves. Just a brief glance at his crimson, glowing and feral eyes would have told the story of the rage that burned within the young man's heart.
The manner in which Naruto swung, kicked and rampaged across the battlefield, appeared almost primal and brutal in a way. It was nothing like when Naruto lost control but something demonic and something quite dangerous fueled the emotions behind each strike forcing Naruto to main, cripple and decimate his opponents with unseen ferocity and primal efficiency. At one point Kiyomi could have sworn she saw Naruto throw groups of his opponents away with a mere roar as if they got ragdolled by the soundwaves of his yell.
Meiko had little to no trouble sustaining swordfights and ending them with any of her opponents. Her new and improved chakra-coated sword bust right through the weapons of the enemies, be they gunsen, tessen, kama or kusarigama. At one point Meiko just went wild and her sword began sending long-range projectiles where her blade had swung as if they were shockwaves of pure chakra left over from ill-controlled swings of the sword. Kiyomi didn't even want to know how Meiko discovered she could do that or how much she had to work to repair whatever it was she totaled with one of those projectile slashes.
One eye on Kiyomi's side always stayed fixated on Kawaki. Only half of the reason being the fact that the boy was a hunter when they first met him, the other half being the fact that he wasn't an actual ninja, by his own admission, and therefore his scuffling contained mostly just swinging his pipe around and throwing punches and kicks like some delinquent. Surprisingly enough, that fighting style proved quite effective as Kawaki, through unnatural methods, managed to wreak all sorts of havoc through the massive group of albino Uchiha boys.
Be it stomping their feet with remorseless, nothing held back savagery, simply beatdowns, shoulder-tackles or slams against the ground by pulling the enemy down by their lower jaw, Kawaki was delivering his best three 'o clock school square beatdown and as long as not a hair fell off of his head, Kiyomi decided to worry about her own significantly poorer performance than those of either of her peers.
"As I've said, a pointless struggle…" the man extended his hand as if demanding the universe he was in to provide him with a weapon and, surprisingly enough, it did – Meiko's own two-edged short sword left her hand, making the chakra-coating around it dissipate like snuffed out flames while the fingers of the ringleader of this clone army wrapped around its hilt and toyed around with it.
"Hey! Not fair!" Meiko grunted before being body piled by clones while more of them took their place over their own kind and pointed whatever they could stab with downward, where Meiko was, right underneath layers upon layers of their own siblings.
"Fair and unfair are just excuses the weak use to justify their defeat to the strong." The scarred Uchiha declared with triumphant glee in his eyes. It was self-evident that he was practicing his speeches in front of one of these clone boys for a while and just looking for an occasion to put his public manifesto stating skills to test. "In war, there is no fairness or unfairness, there is only life or death. If you're strong you live, if you're weak - you die. Human beings can become strong only through evolution and they only evolve through struggle, through battle. That is why the Akatsuki had it all figured out and why what Sasuke Uchiha did by killing Uchiha Itachi is unforgivable."
The clones wielding spears and naginata thrust their blades through their own kin, just to skewer Meiko underneath. Kiyomi desperately tried to weave some hand seals, ninjutsu was the only way to clean up around her and get to Meiko. She was right underneath, what if one of those bastards hit her? What if one of them got lucky, what if…
Everything turned purple, Kiyomi tried shutting her breathing off but she felt a burning tingle down her airways all the way from her throat to her chest. It was like she breathed in the fire that didn't just burn her, the pain it spread felt artificial, chemical. An urge to give into it and go to sleep began shrugging all the other thoughts away, that way Kiyomi would have died for certain but that would have been fine because that burning feeling in her lungs would have gone away.
With a curious stare at the cloud of smoke he had just puffed from his battle pipe, a clone stared with those infernal, dotted, red eyes of his into the haze before a kunai flew its way and disappeared into a whirling rift in space that sent it away somewhere else. With another kunai still clutched in her hand, coughing up that blasted substance that still caused her pain and weariness as if coursed through her body, Kiyomi charged out from the poisonous smoke and took wild slashes at the clones standing between her and Meiko.
"What's wrong with those albino-freaks? They're stabbing through their own folks!" Kawaki grumbled while doing the same, pushing through walls of clones unarmed, through stout headbutts, punches, and kicks that the worrisome and unwavering numbers of clones took head-on, thinking they surely could overpower a mere human, but then fell on their backs without a hint of consciousness once something inside Kawaki's noggin proved to be made of sturdier stuff than the clones could have handled to take. "Aren't they like brothers or something? Aren't those Uchiha shits supposed to be all rare and elite-like?"
"Silly boy," the leader of the albino clone army chuckled. "That's what defines an elite. Ultimate power. That's what power is – the ability to defeat any opponent and if you must sacrifice someone or something for that goal, that's just the cost of that power. Those you sacrifice weren't strong enough, otherwise, they wouldn't have let you sacrifice them and you, the weaker one, would have ended up on the altar. Sasuke Uchiha might have been scum but he understood it, he attacked and killed his own brother too. It's only natural for Uchiha to behave this way."
The clones over the dead body pile over Meiko began stabbing, again and again, looking to skewer Meiko and get her even if they didn't get her before. Something snapped in Kiyomi, each and every stab was just another roll of the dice and one of the walls of the dice had the paled out, dead expression of the young woman she considered special. The Yamanaka heiress squished the flash bomb in her hand out of rage, letting out a burst of light that blinded the Uchiha clones around her. Interrupted them just long enough for one jutsu to flip the table and get to Meiko.
"Wind Style: Great Breakthrough!" Kiyomi chanted out, blasting the enemies out of her way and sending the crazed kids atop of the pile of their own dead siblings flying off of the body pile and leaving Meiko alone. Before long, Meiko's hand emerged from underneath the pile and wriggled through the crawlspace in between the enemies, using just a speck of augmented strength to kick some bothersome stiffs aside where her natural strength wasn't cutting it.
"Shit… You're okay… You're okay!" Kiyomi ran up to Meiko and helped her comrade pull herself up and whip herself back into shape. "Why didn't you get back up sooner? I thought…" even Kiyomi herself could feel her voice tremble.
"Don't sweat it, those guys are just suicidal… This is nothing…" Meiko waved her hand before looking at her bloodied gauntlet. "He can rip weapons out of our grasp though, that jutsu's a real drag… I like my weapons."
"I said…" a low-pitched voice slashed through the relative silence that took over Kiyomi's artificial gale of wind. The whole handful of the Team Hokage directed their stares at Naruto who, surrounded by his clones, hung over the head of the enemy with a Great Ball Rasengan in his hand, ready to settle this conflict with the would-be Sasuke's killer in one attack. "Don't talk that way about Sasuke!" he roared out before all of his clones helped guide the supersized version of his signature jutsu to the enemy's position.
A sphere of azure blue encompassed the traditional building, razing it all to just shreds and bits of wood and surrounding it with a localized typhoon that reduced it to rubble, reducing the entire roof to just busted wooden frame, surrounded by the dislodged and scattered tiles that covered it before the devastation took place. Naruto landed beside the battered and beaten Uchiha ringleader and grabbed him by his torn up clothes. With the previously furled up rage now giving way to his normal, cerulean eyes, Naruto pulled the upper body of the enemy in for a punch to the face.
"Attack him…" the man grunted in pain, spitting up blood by the mouthfuls due to extensive internal organ damage that Naruto's massive Rasengan left him with. "What are… You waiting for…?" he addressed his clones.
"He has beaten you. He is strong, you are weak." One of the clones spoke up, the row behind him followed with the same words, soon this declaration found its way to the mouths of every clone like a devilish mantra. Nevertheless, it was a declaration of Team Hokage's victory.
The man coughed up again, this time lacking the strength in his lungs to throw his blood anywhere near Naruto, only managing to spit up like a baby spat up food and further mess his own appearance up.
"Hmph… Despite being covered with all those Sharingan, he really does look pathetic, doesn't he?" Kiyomi breathed out a sigh of relief, it was also a breath of desperation as she wasn't entirely sure if the clones would just play nice now that their ringleader was all broken.
"Re-Retreat… We… We must operate… At once…" the man declared as a vortex of bending space-time appeared behind him, picking him up and dragging him out of Naruto's hands but it faded away as soon as it had appeared. "Wh-What's the… Meaning of this? Why… Would you cancel my technique?" the freaky Uchiha looked at the creepy, wide-eyed stare of his albino sons.
"You are old and weak. An inferior version. It doesn't make sense to sacrifice one of us younger and stronger, more complete versions for you." The most rebellious clone in the middle declared. "Nor does it make any sense to continue cloning us in your image, father. You are outdated. This fight was proof that we do not become stronger from following your genetic make-up. The next batch of clones will be based on us."
"Wh…What are you…" the man wriggled in pain. He grunted when Naruto let him slip out from his grasp and slam against the ground in the entirety of his battered and broken image. "How dare you betray me? Your… Progenitor… You are just back-ups… You hear me? Containers of my organs, my genes... My cells! My organs! This… This won't end like this… The world… Cannot forget… Uchiha Shin… Like… This…"
Naruto looked up in surprise after seeing all of Uchiha Shin's Sharingan close at once. Every single eye on the man's body rolled up and whited out. The clones that still littered the battlefield and undoubtedly were still a problem began looking down as if staring at their own bodies in disgust and panic. One by one they all pulled their weapons and thrust them down to their own chests, stabbing over and over and over again until they collapsed and colored the Uchiha district streets red with their artificial blood.
"Die! Sasuke… Uchiha… Die!" the clone muttered until their dying breaths, cursing that which they saw appear from their bodies, festering like a tumor due to an illusion cast by a figure that had not yet made itself known, not until a murder of crows flocked together, revealing the upper half of a man with short, black hair and a worn-out face that looked aged beyond its early years. A pair of Mangekyou Sharingan eyes that oversaw the battlefield at first now pointed their attention straight at Naruto.
"You… You killed them, you know!" Naruto threw his hand back, in objection to the actions of Itachi Uchiha.
"Technically they killed themselves. Though is it really that difficult to believe I, of all people, would do such a thing? One who has slain his entire clan just to test the extent of his abilities?" Itachi closed his eyes, his Mangekyou Sharingan had reverted back to the ordinary Sharingan after his field-wide Ephemeral had concluded.
"This guy's the real deal, I've seen enough of those eyes to tell an Uchiha from a genetic experiment." Kiyomi declared.
"Yeah… This is Itachi Uchiha. Sasuke's brother. It's because of him that Sasuke's this way." Naruto clenched his hands into fists, preparing himself for a battle with yet another opponent, it appeared as if though Team Hokage's troubles scaled up in severity with each passing encounter.
"I wanted to meet you, Uzumaki Naruto, but before we did talk, that misguided and dangerous fake had to disappear." Itachi excused his own actions before directing his attention all to Naruto again. "Don't confuse the fake blood of these clones for tears that won't be shed over their deaths. People that chase after somebody else's glory in bottomless delusion are never someone anyone cares about or remembers after it's all said and done."
