A ring of blue flames rose up from Kabuto's feet to his head and a little bit beyond before burning out to azure cinders. With the fall of ashes, the geeky man sealed his freedom with a lazy rub of his numb wrist and then focused his attention on the woman that gifted him this origami imprisonment. His eyes weren't filled with enmity or stress, they were beaming with excitement instead.
"What are you so shiny about?" Sasuke turned back to Kabuto.
"But Sasuke-kun, don't you understand?" Kabuto's eyes turned to almost familiar warmth as if they were staring at his own family while speaking those words. Sasuke might have had the ability to be freaked out by this odd man like the rest of the world was if he still remembered how that sensation felt. "The enemy removes from the battlefield that which they deem their biggest threat first…"
Konan tilted her hand over her head, a flurry of paper tags riding the wind that blew in the village district all scurried together into one, long and pointy shape of a spear, before the woman waved her hand onward. The origami spear blasted right at Kabuto like a bolt of lightning, it did not move like a projectile thrown by someone, it moved with near-instantaneous vigor, living up to the implication of someone being judged by divine beings and sentenced with a lightning bolt.
Even with his Sharingan active, Sasuke found the spear tough to track. Had he not identified the angle and calculated the spear's trajectory beforehand, had he not seen the brief semblances of sweat on Konan's face and subtle facial ticks that betrayed the woman to be greatly vexed by the geeky associate of Orochimaru's, the Uchiha avenger would have found the spear tougher to deal with than most attacks whereas now he just stood in absolute apathy and a healthy sense of wonder about if Kabuto would end up skewered or not.
Purposefully too late, Sasuke turned to the partner he never asked for, as if to warn him about the impending doom that has impaled him through the chest and pinned him to the ground before violently exploding into a stream of paper sheets. Normally, paper could not have handled such violence, but the subtle coating of chakra over each sheet allowed it to not only withstand the speedy thump through the enemy and the pinning of him to the paved village street but also to cause an overwhelming pain in the ass when the spear dissolved into a raging storm of paper cuts.
Kabuto's cut up and impaled body began turning pale, then faint brown. By the time that Kabuto's hair fell out from his head, his eyes slumped into the holes of the skull and the entire skin shriveled up into dirty and mushy membrane, both Sasuke and Konan realized something to be off. A sharp, paper shredding sound came from Konan's direction while the upper half of the woman's body slumped downward a tiny bit at a half-static angle. A blue, crescent-shaped light came from the shadows behind the woman and only after her form dissolved into a shower of chakra-coated paper tags did Kabuto with a flaring chakra scalpel in his hand reveal himself having moved in behind Konan in the instant he was caught unaware.
"What an unfair technique…" Kabuto fixed his glasses with a light motion of his hand. "Here to think that a common man such as myself needs forethought, setup of my Dead Soul Technique and resource management of my precious stiffs in synchrony with the Substitution Jutsu to pull myself out of a tough spot and someone with innate talent, such as yourself, Konan-san, can just escape demise with such grace and almost elegant ease."
"Is that how you've come to survive this long?" Konan muttered while the swarming paper tags reformed her image on a rooftop higher up. "By making your opponent underestimate your prodigy skills while you act like an average ninja?"
"He has a talent for survival…" Sasuke replied. "It's one thing he's uncanny at. That being said…"
The avenger's body flickered into faint traces, mere static of vision that blurred before appearing by Orochimaru's side with a hand on his sword's hilt and an apathetic stare matching glares with Pain's Rinnegan.
"Sasuke-kun…" Orochimaru glanced at the Uchiha with an inquisitive glare, questioning what the youth was doing by his side instead of fighting Konan.
"That woman is useless to me. She has no idea where Itachi is. This man is the leader of the Akatsuki, isn't he?" Sasuke said. "Even if he says he knows nothing, he must know something, even if he doesn't – he can find out enough with those eyes of his."
"You wish to see with the eyes of a God?" Pain bent his head with a curious inquiry. "None are meant for the Rinnegan but those born with it. You are a talent for a decade, a young man with the Sharingan is rare and treasured to be certain, but a God is one for a millennium. The eyes which you seek are out of your reach."
"If we fight him together, we will shut him up quicker," Sasuke muttered for Orochimaru to hear. The reptilian man snickered before transitioning into a passionate fit of laughter.
"Sasuke-kun… Just when I thought I knew how much I wanted you, the chick takes his first flight and shows how his young and lively feathers glisten in the canyon sunlight." Orochimaru licked his lips with his prolonged tongue.
With the same, blinding speed, Sasuke charged onward at his opponent. His one-track-minded, avenging mindset didn't know fear for the powers of the man described as a God and he felt no respect for anyone because such trivial feelings didn't further his goal in any way whatsoever. A twin slash, one from the standard, hammer grip while the second swiped upward from the reverse grip position, in between the two, Sasuke found the time to disrupt his opponent's defenses with a kick as well. The Uchiha transitioned into a following blitz of strikes that appeared to carry one, obvious slash but just when Pain thought he had avoided it, something else, coming from somewhere else shed his blood, almost as if the sword slashed once but delivered multiple strikes.
Sasuke slid down, preparing to deliver a kick to his opponent's chin that would send him flying but Pain jumped over it, seeing that it was coming. What he did not see coming was Orochimaru's telekinetically controlled Kusanagi whirling in from somewhere by the side and slamming in over his head with enough strength to cut Pain into two, had he not blocked the legendary blade with his crossed black rods. The strength of Orochimaru's slash sent Pain right back down into Sasuke's upward kick, however, the contrast of conflicting forces caused great emanating shock over Pain's body, forcing a spit of blood to spray from the mouth of the would-be God.
Sasuke's body blurred once more as he appeared over Pain's head up above and kicked the leader of Akatsuki back down into the ground with a jumping windmill kick. Pain slammed into the ground head-first and his body disappeared halfway into the ground. Sasuke landed by his downed opponent and just sneered at him with indifference.
"This man is the leader of Akatsuki? He's nearly dead already…" Sasuke muttered. "Are you sure he's not playing us?"
"Oh… So you've noticed it too, Sasuke-kun?" Orochimaru chuckled.
"Yes. His skillset seems unbalanced. He seems to be a one-trick pony and his trick isn't particularly frightening, to begin with…" Sasuke spoke his observation.
"That's true. A ninja of his status should possess a more diverse and balanced array of jutsu. This body appears to be focusing entirely on the gravitational techniques, which, while immensely powerful, have a disgusting weakness to them that no self-respecting ninja would allow weigh their skillset without some sort of a counterbalance. And yet this man possesses no defensive techniques to protect him during the cooldown whatsoever…" Orochimaru smirked before dropping the real truth-bomb on Sasuke. "That's because this man isn't the real Pain. He's just a body of Pain, one of several."
Pain's upside body twitched. His arms burst out from underground and bent by the middle, digging into the ruptured ground and pulling the entire body out of the head-splitting predicament he was in, revealing a busted and battered body of a man who could in no way have been the entirety of the Akatsuki leader. A suspicion that Orochimaru has felt for a while now but now that he had Sasuke by his side, together with that impressive pair of eyes of his, he could have felt safer about the potential downfall of Pain's true wrath upon him.
"For you to have figured it out…" Pain spoke. "No man has ever truly pushed Pain, Pain has never lost a fight, however… Sometimes a body is defeated. It is usually a great ace up my sleeve, but then again… As expected from Orochimaru-san…"
"Orochimaru-san…?" Orochimaru repeated slower. Something about the tone in which these words were said, about the voice that spoke those words, it sounded oddly familiar, like reflections of the life he had left behind. Wars he had fought…
"For a genius and a legendary Sannin, you're so slow to catch on…" Pain smirked. "In that case, let God's punishment continue…"
Konan flapped her wings, sending a vortex of rotating, orderly paper tags at Kabuto's direction. The four-eyed Orochimaru's assistant dashed for his life and managed to avoid the hurricane's immediate wrath but then the familiar and dreaded noise of sizzling reached Kabuto's ear and a mighty blast sent him flying aside while the hurricane dissolved into a more hectic downfall of burning paper tags. Ones that continued the chain of explosions.
Orochimaru and Sasuke noticed the origami chain reaction as well, but possibly too late, as Orochimaru caught a handful of paper tags sticking to him shortly before they detonated. Even when the two were parted, an angel still thought about protecting her God at all times, it seemed. Sasuke's feet tapped onto the rooftop of a nearby building, scanning the battlefield. Pain was gone from where he previously stood.
A blitz of black came rushing at Sasuke's direction, diagonally from his position, the young man pulled his sword out halfway and used the edge of his blade to deflect the airborne black rods that would have made his life much more difficult. Now that Sasuke has made his play and opened himself up, a blitz of bright orange, black and crimson coddled up together alerted the Uchiha that Pain has approached him too close for comfort.
A sharp stab came right for Sasuke's core, while Sasuke had already devoted his movement to the motion of deflecting Pain's black rods from before, he still used his halfway-pulled sword to push the stabbing black rod out of the way of his heart to where it only grazed Sasuke's shoulder, dyeing his white shirt red before tearing the right side of it clean off and letting the right side of Sasuke's body feel some light breeze in the evening air.
Pain's transition from the simple forward thrust into a roundhouse kick was effortless, due to how devoted Sasuke felt into each and every move he made, as little as he would have liked to admit it, the kick caught him square in the cheek and sent him tumbling over the edge of the roof he stood on. What was going on? Sasuke had been used to his Sharingan serving as all the advantage he ever needed in close-distance but it seemed like the eyes that Pain possessed were something else entirely. It was like Pain had some external view of the entire battlefield like he wasn't in the heat of the battle himself but was observing it from every direction and writing down a perfect motion for each engagement on a piece of paper and passing it on for his bodies to realize. Something that was performed in an instant.
Something strong and rough came at Sasuke from below. Something larger and heavier than Pain, Sasuke was sure of it but he was too directed upward, worried that Pain would drop down on him with a barrage of his black rod thrusts instead of coming at him from below. An attack from below seemed almost impossible, from where Sasuke was, even more – Sasuke's Sharingan had a lock on Pain being at the top of the building, what was it that struck him from down under and sent him airborne?
Pain slashed with a wide-reaching strike that resembled a slash of a sword drawn from a scabbard, because of that, Sasuke answered with the same manner of attack that his Sharingan tipped him off to coming. His sword and Pain's rod collided one against the other while Pain let Sasuke's Kusanagi skid over his rod igniting hot sparks on its path, while Pain leaped with a rising strike of his rod. It didn't take many corrections for the angle of Sasuke's sword to block this strike as well and now, it seemed, that Sasuke had Pain for the finishing blow, airborne and unable to correct his course too much.
"Chidori Spear!" Sasuke grabbed his arm by the middle and sent a blue beam of concentrated Lightning Release chakra to impale airborne Pain right through the heart but instead, something jumped in its way.
A much fatter version of Pain with slick and licked back hair, matching facial piercings and fashion sense dashed in out of nowhere in the protection of the Akatsuki leader and appeared to take in Chidori Spear all to himself. However, it did not impale the fatso either, instead, the spear met something bubbly and solid, like a barrier in its way that appeared to nullify it entirely, not just that, Sasuke saw the chakra of the fatso swell up instead, as if Sasuke's own jutsu made the fat Pain stronger somehow.
"Well, you wanted to see the true face of Pain, didn't you?" a voice spoke to Sasuke from behind, whispering Sasuke right in the ear. Sasuke was so taken aback by yet another Pain catching him unaware that he couldn't move in time before the towering, robotic-looking Pain with facial piercings over his head that resembled horns grabbed both of his arms and yanked on them hard.
With a gut-wrenching splat, the arms left Sasuke's body, making the poor avenger twitch and wrangle from the shock but all would not be as simple as Pain thought it to be. The arms in the hands of the powerhouse body of Pain turned into black snakes that coiled around the robotic Pain and left his arms tied up and stretched outward. The injured Sasuke dissolved into a fountain of snakes, all of which coiled and wrapped around the tallest avatar of Pain as well.
Orochimaru stood from a kneeling position, his flesh torn off in places and burnt where Konan's technique had caught him, a large, black boa coiled beside his feet and opened its mouth only to spit Sasuke out from its mouth, covered in the contents of its stomach and mouth. As Sasuke wiped the digestive acids and snake-slobber off of himself he gave Orochimaru a wayward glance.
"I thought I told you not to use that on me…" he muttered in discontent.
"Come now, Sasuke-kun, I couldn't stand seeing my precious vessel I've invested two whole years into torn limb from limb by Pain's true power…" Orochimaru smirked with a twisted smile, unbefitting someone that looked as busted and burnt up as he did. It was as if the reptilian Sannin didn't feel any pain at all, or rather, he did feel it, but he enjoyed it as much as he enjoyed the defiance of it. "Plus, the saliva of my Giant Boa will help heal that graze on your shoulder faster."
"You two better play your part and not get in my way…" Sasuke tilted his Kusanagi in a reverse grip position, ready to jump right at the three Pains again despite having just now been rescued from certain death in their hands.
"My, my… Someone's quite cranky…" Orochimaru teased his boy-toy.
Kabuto's shape blurred and landed by Orochimaru's side. The azure chakra scalpels flaring up around Kabuto's hands lit up with a soothing emerald shade as the geeky man placed them over Orochimaru's face and his shoulders and moved the light over wherever he saw wounds. While Orochimaru could have regenerated most injuries with a mere shedding of his injured body and birth of a new one, that process cost far more chakra than a simple patch-up of Kabuto's medical ninjutsu.
"It appears that the battlefields have molded together somewhat. I'll be by your side and pitching in if need be." Kabuto informed Orochimaru who stood back on his two feet, making a full recovery.
"I must say, I had expected you to have gotten rid of the woman at this point, Kabuto…" Orochimaru smirked.
"Konan…" Pain turned to the female Akatsuki member who flew to his side with a few flutters of her wings. The fat Pain and the inhuman-looking, puppet Pain took their side by the more injured Pain that Orochimaru and Sasuke had been fighting for a while now.
"It's not like you to show your other Paths like this. Are you sure we can allow them the knowledge of this information?" Konan turned to her leader, looking for assurance. "They don't appear to be someone we can just freely kill whenever we want, after all."
"It doesn't matter." Pain shook his head. The main body of Pain appeared to have lost his forehead protector after smashing into the ground head-first and blood began dripping slowly from his forehead where the protector failed to do its job for him. "They aren't someone who could use that information, they're not our versions anyway. They will not hinder the Akatsuki's plan back home whatsoever, let them fool around in their own home universe however they like if they can come back, that is."
"Sasuke-kun, you've taken some mean bumps out there. Are you sure you want to keep going like this?" Orochimaru wondered.
"As poetic as two against four would seem, you stand a much better chance of winning with me by your side. Also, I'm still looking for a moment when Pain lets down his guard so I can ask him the questions I need answered with my Sharingan." Sasuke said. "For that reason, I need to be up close and personal with him so spot that moment."
"Like a little pit viper, looking for a chance to strike… They grow up so fast…" Orochimaru mused to himself with an exquisite sense of entertainment lifting his spirits up.
Author's Note: Happy Holidays
