I don't own Naruto, but it means a lot to me.
To put it mildly, the situation was deteriorating. Naruto, Temari, and Kankuro stood at the edge of what could only be described as a 'new desert'. Trees and wind swirled, a near constant stream of sand pouring from the surrounding area and burrowing itself into the creature as it howled. The creature was well over 50m tall, now, and growing fast.
"And you're absolutely sure of this plan?" Kankuro's neck craned back, a mixture of fear and awe washing over his nerves like rain. Next to him, Naruto ran his thumb up and down the seal.
"Oh yeah." He lied. "Just gotta get it done. Smack seal, save the city, get some ramen."
Temari turned back and tilted her head, appraising the leaf genin with a glance that conveyed neither support nor doubt.
"You are not what I expected, Uzumaki." She said. Naruto grinned and positioned a hirashin kunai between his teeth.
"Most unpredictable ninja in history, my old academy teacher used to call me." He offered. "Guess some things don't change."
The creature roared, taking particular offense to a large group of boulders and grinding them to dust with a concentrated blast of air. Naruto turned to his impromptu team.
"Ready?" He asked. The duo nodded, and Temari set into a low stance while Kankuro began flying through hand-seals.
"When this is over, you owe me a new puppet, Uzumaki!"
The black haired puppet Kankuro had wrapped to his back bulged, its wooden parts turning in on themselves as the puppet folded and contorted. As Kankuro summoned more than two dozen kunai and swords and spears, the weapons were pulled to ports on the puppet like magnets. At the side of each weapon, Naruto could spot the flitter of an explosive tag wrapped with wire and recklessness.
"You didn't use this during the exam?" Naruto wondered. Kankuro snorted.
"Large scale explosions have been banned in the Chunin exams since the last exams in Iwa." Kankuro rolled his shoulders as he unwound strings of tags. "But, we weren't exactly coming prepared to follow the rules of the chunin exams."
As he finished the final wrapping, Kankuro's hand lingered on the wood of his puppet's chest.
"Sorry about this, Karasu." He tilted his head, his voice dropped with something distant that Naruto didn't understand but made him sad. When he turned back to Naruto, the blond could have sworn he saw the tiniest smudge beneath the paint on his eyes. "Listen, blondie. You'd better have its attention before I try. This move takes two months to get armed and you only get one shot."
Naruto managed a smile, making sure he used his eyes. If he'd have seen it, maybe Kakashi would have finally been proud of him.
"Don't miss your chance to blow, face paint!" He offered, voice sounding more positive than he felt inside. If Kankuro had a retort, Naruto wasn't paying attention to hear it as he clasped his hands in the familiar cross of kage bushin. Two dozen Naruto sprung to existence, bounding out of the trees and rocketing to the clearing.
The wind was a hurricane and the sand a grater. Each clone gave a scowl as four of their brethren popped out of existence, met with the same fate as a food put in a blender.
"Hey, you big fucking raccoon!" The Naruto's yelled, as un-eloquent as ever. He never had been any good with honorifics, and Iruka hadn't covered speaking to tailed-beasts 101 in class.
"Why don't you turn around and pick on someone your own size!"
The sandstorm paused - paused, not receded - out of what appeared sheer disbelief. Like a mountain craning its neck, the Ichibi twisted its body and two, black and gold starred eyes stared at the small army of orange genin running towards it.
"Is that an ant?" It boomed. "Did an ant just have the audacity to speak in my presence?"
Naruto didn't answer, opting to throw a small flurry of shuriken at the beast. The metal stars sunk with dull thunks, crashing into the sand body of the creature and being absorbed into its mass. The Ichibi, for its part, howled.
"YeeeehahahahahahahahaIncredible!" Its laughs rippled in the air, and another six clones were blown from existence. "I sit locked in this pathetic child for years, and now I face more children! Are the sons of men all that remain of mortals?"
"You're the one taking over people's bodies!" The remaining Naruto's retorted as two more were swallowed in coffins of sand.
"Let Gaara go!"
It was hard to tell if the creature was laughing or screaming with rage, any noise coming from its mouth made Naruto's ears want to split.
"FUN ENOUGH, LITTLE ANT."
The taunt he heard, but his mind could only focus on the tsunami of sand stretching out to wrap his clones. "BUT I AM IN NO MOOD FOR GAMES."
Clone after cone, pop after pop. The Ichibi's sand didn't as much strike or attack; it consumed. Any of the Naruto clones running on pure sand are swallowed with a crunch of earth and forrest. Naruto's are laid to waste in another five attacks until a single blond haired ninja is wrapped, trapped by insurmountable pressure as Naruto was raised like a rag doll to eye level with the beast.
"I will give you one thing, human." the Ichibi hissed, teeth and sand churning in the creature's maw. Up close, Naruto was able to get a full dose of the crazy and it felt like taking a shot of lighter fluid and jumping into a volcano. "You are as amusing as you are suicidal."
The sand surrounding Naruto crunched, and Naruto could feel coffin walls closing in as sand ascended to encircle his head. His vision blurred with little spots of darkness growing. The Ichibi crackled with malice and madness.
"Any last words insect?"
"Yeah." Naruto rasped, each breath bringing a stream of sand sliding down his throat. "Didn't anyone ever tell you not to play with your food?"
There's a poof. The last Naruto clone popped out of existence in the prison of sand. Rage and fury and raw chakra explode from the creature as its eyes darted the nearby battle field.
"INSECT!" The Ichibi screeches. "When I find you, I'll tear you limb from limb. I'll flay your body and rip your brains out and feed them to everyone you know and love and -"
"Hey Shukaku!" A new voice, Kankuro's, erupted from the forest. "Let go of my brother you douche!"
The cool factor, or lack there of, of calling a bijou's avatar a 'douche' was something that Naruto wouldn't let Kankuro live down for decades to come. Regardless, the immediate effect is achieved. The creature's blinding fury exposed its face to the tree line, and a black haired missile exploded like a catapult towards the creature's face. Karuso rattled, skeleton bones of wood, as it arced through the sky. The wisps of blue chakra wires severed as the puppet left controllable range and entered a free fall towards Shukaku. A defensive wall of sand erupted out from the creature's face, but the real danger was in the hands of a young Suna genin as he held his hands into a familiar yet enormously fun seal.
"Kai."
A blossom of fire and heat erupted, the dozens of explosive tags strapped to the puppet igniting like fireworks. The Ichibi shrieked, shaking the earth as its lumbering body staggered.
From the nearby trees, Temari's eye's narrowed like a hawk through the forrest. The Ichibi's face crumbled, sand either blown off its visage or slags of molten glass from the heat of the fire. Through the falling sand, Temari's hands whitened on the hilt of her fan as a tuft of red hair emerged from the creature.
"Naruto!" She cried. "Now!"
In a flash of yellow and orange, Naruto zapped from existence, reappearing crouched with his final hirashin kunai flipped in his hands.
"Do it!"
Temari growled, channeling chakra and every ounce of muscle in her arms into swinging. The wood of the fan groaned, and Naruto could feel a brutal snap as the arms shattered just moments after the force and a burst of wind sent him, for the second time today, rocketing into the sky.
The wind howled, but Naruto's heart felt silence.
"Hey Gaara!" Naruto's bravado and adrenaline moving his tongue more than his mind. "Time to wake the fuck up!"
Naruto's voice was a whisper in an avalanche, but the Ichibi's fractured and broken and rapidly reforming face still turned. The creature lacked eyes, but its chakra hit Naruto like a tidal wave.
"KILL. KILL. KILL." Even without a mouth, the creatures lust for carnage and destruction felt like a physical wall. His body reached the top of the arc, but his throat was closing. The ground looked so far and the Ichibi so tall and Naruto could feel his courage and breath and grip leaving him. The Ichibi's madness gripped his body like a rag doll. What was he doing? Why was he up here? What the hell was he thinking and why would he...
It was thunder. A crimson heat burst inside his naval, swirling and burning and something snarled. The Ichibi's pressure, so looming and crushing, dissipated and didn't just stop - it fled. Naruto's vision blurred red, his muscles pulsing under a strength beyond his own as his eyes honed in on the slumped form of Gaara of the Sand.
"Hey, you shit!" Naruto cried, his voice crackling the red chakra surging around his body. "I said it was time to wake up!"
Naruto's arm sizzled, fabric and skin burning away under a cloak of crimson and maroon chakra. With a howl, Naruto surged forward and flung his final hirashin kunai like a missile. A sand wall rose to block the projectile, but the red chakra etched into the weapon burst through the barricade with prejudice. The dagger made its own mini-explosion as it lodged itself into the sand directly next to the unconscious genin.
Naruto flickered, and a blinding flash of red and yellow filled the skies. Before sand could react, Naruto re-appeared next to Gaara and slammed the five point seal directly onto the genin's forehead. Gaara screamed, eyes flying wide. The scream was a wail, anger and rage and promise of future retribution coated in the Ichibi's essence, but faltered and dissolved into nothing more than the nightmare fueled cries of a scared child.
The colossal sand body of the Ichibi's avatar shifted, the source of its structure gone and the tower of sand falling aimlessly to the forrest floor. Naruto, heaved, stomach churning and muscles fried. He tumbled, clinging to a barely conscious and stunned Gaara. Neither had the energy to scream as they slid down a collapsing mountain of sand.
Sand was a shitty cushion. The afterburner still racked through his veins, but sand and bruises and pain covered every inch of Naruto's body as he and Gaara came to rest on the ground.
"Holy shit." He hissed, a rush of fresh pain mixing with vacuum left after the red chakra twisted and burrowed back behind his naval. "I am never, ever getting in the air, again."
Naruto forced his body to a semi-risen position, his eyes turning to the still shaking red haired genin beside him.
"Hey." Naruto said, whipping his leg a little to nudge Gaara's arm. "You alright?"
The contact sent Gaara into a frozen panic, the boy scrambling and flailing as he looked, desperate to the sea of sand surrounding them.
"Shukaku?" Gaara rasped, his voice broken and distant. Wide, bloodshot eyes outlined by deep and heavy circles met Naruto's own, and it was hard to believe this was the same stare that had crippled Lee.
"What..." The boy continued. A tiny raccoon, lost and shaking in the middle of a desert storm. "Where is Shukaku? I can't hear it I can't -"
"Gaara!"
Both Naruto and Gaara turned to the voice, Temari and Kankuro slid down the newly formed dunes to stop meters from the two. Gaara shuffled, his arms and legs pulling him back as his eyes met his siblings. For their part, Kankuro and Temari seemed just as lost.
"Gaara?" Temari was the first to extend, first to reach out. Maybe it was the older sister in her, but the desperate claw in her mind to stay away gnawed at her throat. For the first time in her whole life, she felt like she could see Gaara's eyes.
"Te...mari?" His voice wavered and the world seemed to spin. "Kan...kuro."
Temari said nothing, but her heart made its own decisions. One step at a time, she approached. Each step pressing into sand, her mind calculated the thousands of ways for Gaara's all present, ever consuming protection to grab her. Pull her down and just keep pulling until everything was dark and she was breathing dirt.
Another step forward, the sand never moved.
"Temari..." Kankuro warned, but it was halfhearted and distant. His mind felt the same pull, the same hesitation, but he was always the cautious one.
He didn't start moving until Temari had collapsed to her knees in the sand, just outside Gaara's reach. Her hand reached out, and it occurred to her this was the closest to Gaara she had ever been.
"Gaara." She whispered. Her hand was so close. When her skin finally met the boy's face, his body went stiff at the touch. Temari held up another hand, cupping the opposite side of Gaara's face as he stared, frozen in shock.
"Gaara." She whispered, words turning into tears turning into total collapse of her everything. "Gaara. Gaara. Gaara"
She repeated his name like it was the first time she'd ever said it, and by the time Kankuro made it to the two he's crying as well. Both sets of arms wrap around Gaara's frame and the boy can do nothing but stare and shake.
"We thought..." Kankuro sobbed. "We thought you were gone." Temari said nothing, repeating her brothers name as her arms wrap around his frame. From beside the scene, Naruto gave a hacking cough.
"Gentle hugs." He suggested, his own ribs seeming to experience the pain through pure proximity. "That fall hurt like hell."
The blond's comments were ignored, but Gaara recovered enough from the exhaustion and shock to mumble a question.
"What..." He began. "has happened?"
The words, even saying them, left Gaara breathless. His whole life, every moment and every waking hell, spent alongside the howling and wailing of a half-captured monster. Whispering and screaming and threatening to kill any and everything he ever loved if he fell asleep. It was constant. It was all consuming. It was...it was...
"It's gone." Gaara said. The silence in his mind left a booming echo that shook his soul. "I can't hear it."
Temari reeled, face a cascade of hope and relief and tears.
"You're here." She whispered. Gaara could barely process. It was gone. It was gone and his sister - who he had never held in his life - was wrapped around him like he'd collapse into sand if she let go and saying that he was here.
"My existence..." Gaara shook. "My existence was buried by Shukaku." Kankuro gave a wracking cough, shaking his head so hard his hood fell back and buried his head into his brothers.
"Not buried, Gaara. You're safe, now."
Safe. Did he even know what that word meant?
There was a moment of quiet and still, an image of two arms and a brown haired woman wrapped around Gaara's body.
Safe.
He buried his head forward, and the sand parted. By the time Gaara tilted his head to gaze to the left, Naruto had risen to his feet and was shakily standing.
"How?" He asked. Naruto wheezed, giving a mild shrug and trying to be cool but the wheeze turned into a hacking cough of blood and sand.
"It's a really long story, dude." He said. It was both the truth, and he felt like he had a bruised rib and it hurt to say anything.
"I cut a deal with your brother and sister. Once I find my sensei we can talk - he knows how to make what I did permanent."
Gaara said nothing, but his head nodded - as though any of this made sense at all. Temari turned her head, eyes red with tears and refusing to let go of her brother.
"Thank you." She whispered. Naruto smirked, but it reached well beyond his eyes and spread a warmth even through his aching bones.
"We followed the plan." He smiled, but a memory pulled at the line on his lips. Turning to Gaara, he took a rattled step forward.
"I know this is a lot for you all." He said to the trio. No sand leapt to attack him, but Gaara's blank and confused gaze left Naruto anxious, unable to read the meaning. "But I need to find my team. Pink hair and blue shirt. Do you know where they are?"
Looking more pointedly at the still shell-shocked Jinchūriki, Naruto gulped.
"He was supposed to be your opponent."
Gaara blinked, shaking his head.
"I...never fought." He answered. Naruto's concern morphed to confusion.
"Never fought?"
"Disqualified." Kankuro added between trying to find his voice again. "The Uchiha showed late and the attack started early"
There was a race of emotions crossing Naruto's face, but chief among them were that Sasuke hadn't fought the literal demon and that meant he and Sakura were somewhere back at the stadium.
"You didn't fight." Naruto repeated, excitement and hope arcing like lightning through his voice. "Then, I still have time!"
He wasn't too late. They hadn't fought Gaara and it wasn't too late and he could still do something! Now all he had to do was get back to the stadium and find them. If he could just muster the strength to...
It was like a gong. Like a silent gong ringing throughout the
The hairs on Naruto's back surged, a single pulse echoing through his mind.
"What..." He whispered, turning from the sand trio and gazing back to the city. He could feel it, like a single needle pushed into the back. A signal. A beacon. A call.
The Hirashin.
It wasn't something Naruto could describe, and Jiraiya had told him to just stop trying, but when the Hirashin seal was active and within range, Naruto could *feel* it. Like closing your eyes and walking through the house he'd lived in his entire life. He knew exactly where the pulse was coming from and could feel it calling out, ready to receive.
There was only one problem. Naruto looked down into the nearby sand, the only shimmer being the hilt of his last hirashin kunai, lying in the sand only meters away.
This wasn't right.
Naruto picked up the blade, ignoring the burning pain in his movement. He could feel the call. Far away. Up high. Not here.
"Jiraiya?" He wondered, but the pulse didn't respond. It just hummed, like a ring in the back of his head only he could hear. It had to be Jiraiya, calling him or checking on him. Maybe he had found Sasuke and Sakura? Maybe all of this was over and he could just go to Ichiraku and relax.
The pulse hit him again, and his gut twisted.
This was wrong.
Something was...
There was a blinding yellow flash, and Naruto was gone.
He wasn't flying through the air, but Naruto didn't land on his feet when he reappeared.
Pain and impact, blood, blond, and orange skidded into existence against a semi-collapsed roof. Tiles shattered and clattered like glass as the blond rolled, only just digging a hand into the tile to slow his roll before he reached the edge. Naruto's eyes flared open to look around only to see...
"Purple?"
The words left his mouth and something pulled. A coil of rope that slithered bound his ankles and arms before he could process what was happening.
"What the hell!" Naruto squirmed against the bond, but whatever was wrapping him felt like fighting steel.
"What the—" Naruto cried out as he was lifted, suspended in air by serpentine bonds. There was a blur, a white shimmer, and a figure appeared next to him as though from air.
"Well, well, well."
The dark chill that sunk into his ears made his blood turn to stone. A fear, like an anchor tied to your foot and throwing it overboard, took hold.
"Naruto Uzumaki, in the flesh."
Slitted eyes leered, piercing. The voice was like honey and poison. There was a pressure pushing down on him, a force. It wasn't the all encompassing, raging storm that the Ichibi's presence had leveled. This one was smaller but so much more pointed. So much more focused. If Gaara possessed was an avalanche, this was an icicle already pushed against your throat. Naruto felt like he'd forgotten how to breathe.
"When Kabuto shared that he had made the most interesting acquaintance before the exams, imagine my surprise when it turned out to be you."
The words twisted in the air, like oil spilling through a placid lake. Naruto's mouth opened and closed, but only a crackle of dry air escaped. The black haired ninja, like a twisted version of that Stange attacker from the forbidden forrest.
"Who..." Naruto rasped. "...are you?"
The figure smiled like poison felt. Yellow slitted eyes and pale white skin. He continued without answering.
"The Forrest, of course. A taste of your rather curious abilities." The figure raised a single eyebrow. "From the looks of it, you didn't care for my parting gift?"
A cackle.
"But then you arrive in the arena and…" Pale hands trace an elaborate path through air as the Sannin bent, deftly swiping a three pronged kunai from the ground.
"And now this."
The man's laugh was dark and hollow, but filled with such a tangible hate it coiled like moisture in the air and stuck to Naruto's skin like sweat. Naruto watched as the man gripped the kunai. His hand paled, squeezing the metal knife so tight his fingers shook. Naruto couldn't even follow the hand signs, but a stream of fire erupted from their mouth and engulfed the kunai. Steel and fabric glowed in the heat, wobbling and wavering and melting in a steaming puddle of molten metal to the ground.
"You can't possible know, Naruto-kun." The ninja was almost whimsical. Amused. A snake coiling around a mouse.
"How deep the water beneath your feet is."
"Orochimaru!"
Naruto's eyes flew open as a second figure shambled out of a nearby crater. Blood and black cloth draping off his body, Hiruzen Sarutobi stumbled forward with a broken hand covering a hole in his lower torso.
"Get the hell away from him."
"Old man!" Naruto's blood boiling from ice to fire and back. The Hokage's presence was so diminished, so broken, it was like nothing the boy had ever seen.
With his lone free hand, the Kage blasted through hand signs faster than Naruto had ever seen. Pillars of earth erupted from the roof, eruptions of mud and rock. With a speed Naruto could barely follow they blasted towards the snake sannin.
Orochimaru.
The betrayer.
Naruto hadn't been a good student, but stories of the sannin were like comic books. He knew all the characters. All the heroes.
All the villains.
Orochimaru's body broke, twisting and contorting like a corpse as he dodged each projectile. The only thing Naruto could see was the smirk that never left the sannin's face.
"Even on death's door, such ferocity, sensei." Orochimaru's hands flashed, and the ground near Hiruzen rumbled.
"But you're getting sloppy."
The holes where the pillars of earth had erupted shimmered and expanded, a pool of mud and water coiling along the rooftop beneath the Hokage's feet. Hiruzen crouched to jump away, but Orochimaru was above him like a missile. A kick crashed into the Hokage's guard like a meteor, and the roof buckled under the strain. Steel and mud and debris exploded through the area as a crater formed two stories deep.
"Old man!" Naruto cried, as helpless as before. Hiruzen was pinned, body pressed and bleeding beneath beams and rubble. From above the crater, Orochimaru gave a laugh. It felt like spit. Turning back to Naruto, the sannin waved his hand, fingers trailing in the breeze. It felt like cold sandpaper against his skin as the prison squirmed, thousands of snakes moving in unison as the blond was drug closer to the crater.
"Naruto." The snake said, and Naruto hated the way his own name sounded. "I'm actually so glad you could join us."
Orochimaru's eyes turned to the crater, and Hiruzen squirmed beneath the rubble.
"There's someone that I'd like for you to meet."
"Don't do this." The kage rumbled. Pleading. "Don't do this, Orochimaru."
The snake sannin didn't respond, only giving a vague wave as he pulled yet another hirashin kunai from his robes.
"Tell me child," Orochimaru twisted the blade between his fingers. A cold pounding, like drums and thunder and promises of pain, started echoing behind Naruto's ears.
"Have you ever wanted to meet the fourth Hokage?"
There was a blinding flash. Tattered white cloak swaying in the wind.
The man before him crumbled and shifted, a constant state of decay and repair. His eyes were blank, hollow, but the tufts of blond hair swaying across his brow was like looking in a mirror. Naruto's body shook. Orochimaru drank in the fear like wine.
"Uzumaki Naruto." Orochimaru bent, a mocking bow. "I'd like you to meet the fourth Hokage."
Naruto barely processed as the bonds around him loosened. His eyes were transfixed. His feet slid back to the floor with a slump, legs so numb it didn't even register. Orochimaru stepped behind the blond, a slender hand sliding against Naruto's shoulders.
"Never met and yet…" The apprentice gave a pointed glare to his bleeding, broken teacher. "I think you might find you have so, so much in common."
Naruto tried to run. To scream. Nothing. He couldn't take his eyes off the face, greeting lifeless eyes with a white hot tremor. The man's lips didn't move, no indication of life.
"Yes, the resemblance is just uncanny, isn't it?" Orochimaru was almost cackling. "Like staring into a mirror. What a peculiar thing - for two supposed strangers to favor so much."
A wicked grin.
"Familiar - in every sense of the word - don't you think?"
The crumbling man shook. His foot inched, crept and shambled as his legs pushed forward. Naruto was frozen.
"In truth, it pains me to end this reunion." Orochimaru lamented. "So many years missed, so much lost time."
The Sannin's eyes rolled back to the Hokage as Hiruzen attempted to struggle to his feet.
"Another one of your secrets leading to a tragic outcome, sensei." He hissed. "How terribly fitting."
"Orochi-" Hiruzen wheezed. The Kage's mind screamed and shouted for his arms to move, to do anything, but the nerves and bones fell silent. "You can't…don't do this. He doesn't deserve…"
"Doesn't deserve?" Orochimaru spat. The man's presence seemed to swell, arrogance and pride giving way to a wave of hatred that flooded the clearing.
"You would presume to know what other people deserve, wouldn't you."
The shambling man took another step. Naruto's body refused to move. Unblinking eyes stared into blue, and a decaying hand reached and wrapped itself around the genin's neck.
"But I'm afraid there's no time for moral lessons, today." No sooner had the sannin's rage appeared, it receded, the momentary lapse giving way to cold commands.
"The fourth Hokage. Namikaze Minato." Orochimaru's eyes flashed as he ordered.
"Kill your son."
Recognition. Understanding. Confusion. Horror. Each passed through and left Naruto as immobile as if his arms had been buried and dried in cement. The fourth Hokage's hand lunged, and Naruto didn't try and dodge. He couldn't move at all. All he could do was stare, transfixed, in the blue eyes of…of…
Namikaze Minato's features shuddered. His hand stopped a breath from Naruto's neck.
"N…" the body choked, like speaking through drowning. Minato's grip neither loosened nor tightened, but his arm shook as the man fought words on his lips.
"No."
Naruto's throat went dry, the man's voice echoing through his mind.
"My, my." Orochimaru cackled, raising an eyebrow in almost amusement. "A will so strong, it defies me even in death."
Naruto just stared. Minato's eyes didn't shift or his face change, but his hand continued to tremble. Orochimaru's eyes narrowed, a complex calculus flashing behind face as he witnessed the struggle.
"Now this is something truly unexpected." He said. His voice was clinical, the scientist within unable to overlook the anomaly.
"An Edo Tensei bond, even without a soul?" Orochimaru approached the duo, eyeing the Homage with a mixture of fascination and annoyance.
"This is quite unexpected." With a cold and calculated precision, Orochimaru's eyes roamed around the walking corpse. "This shouldn't even be possible. The body is here, but your poor father's soul is still trapped in the belly of the Death God."
The scientist disappeared. The monster returned, scowling. Sickening. His eyes met Naruto's.
"You do know your father's in eternal torment, don't you?"
With the same callous apathy, the scientist returned.
"But the Shinigami isn't as picky on bodies, so I managed to make a deal to let just his body out." Orochimaru took a kunai, slowly pressing it into the side of the Hokage's skull. There was no blood, no flinch or even blink as the blade was buried in the man's skull. When he released the blade, it slid out of the gaping hole without a sound.
Naruto watched, eyes wide as the wound shifted and ruffled like peeling paint. Not quite healing, but disappearing into shifting skin.
"And yet here his body stands, acting like it has a soul." Orochimaru made a low clicking sound and shook his head.
"That simply won't do."
"Naruto-kun." The snake called. "It seems I must thank you again for this most fascinating new information. I never imagined such a reaction could occur, but clearly improvements are required."
The mad Sannin rolled his shoulders with a careless sigh.
"But, alas, there just isn't time." He announced, taking a step forward and reaching across to his hip.
"I'll just kill you, burn Konoha to the ground, and then I'll pull your father's out of death for real and see what's going on."
In a flourish, the Kusanagi was drawn. Cold steel shimmered as it slid through the air, wind through clearings. The sannin's arm shifted, and the blade raised above Naruto's head, pointing directly into his neck.. Naruto didn't even notice. All he could do was stare into the eyes before him as the stared, empty, back.
"Goodbye, Uzumaki Naruto."
BOOM.
An explosion, deep and raw and loud swept through the clearing. The Sannin's blade steadied as his eyes snapped to the left. The purple of the barrier shimmered, a prismatic rainbow as it shuddered at the blow. Again.
BOOM.
This time, Orochimaru shifted. Flowing like a wave, his stance turned to face a single point in the barrier wall. A crack, hair-line and stretching had erupted from the light.
BOOM.
"Kid!"
It was only the combo, a voice and a thunder that snapped Naruto's attention from the body trapping him.
"Ero-sennin!" He rasped. His hands clawed up and into the hand around his neck. Naruto pulled at the grip, but it was like scraping at a steel chain.
"The scroll!" Jiraiya roared, glowing with a chakra aura Naruto had never seen before as he slammed another fist into the barrier. It was like the trees were…breathing? Like every strike Jiraiya levied at the wall had the weight of the forrest itself. The resounding gong shook the field, and Orochimaru surged towards the weakening border.
"Two birds…" He snarled as the snake prepared to fight the new intrusion.
"Use the scroll, Naruto!"
"Na-"
The blond's body went still, his eyes shifting like sand to the voice.
"Na…" the animated body of the Fourth Hokage whispered. His voice was lost. So lost but so desperate to find…
"Naruto?"
The scroll tumbled, slipping through the genin's fingers and clattered to the ground. There was an eruption of smoke, like a firecracker, and a massive blob of…hair?
Razor sharp spines of hair punctured the husk of the fourth Hokage with so much force his body was sent flying into the nearby buildings. Naruto collapsed, gasping at the sudden return of air to his lungs.
"You alright?" Jiraiya's voice asked, but Naruto was too busy heaving into the dirt. He raised a weary look, exhaustion. Confusion. Pain. Jiraiya's lips hardened to a single line.
"We'll talk more later." The man said, but Naruto's vision was starting to blur. The sudden rush of oxygen and movement. The world started shifting, fading in and out of color.
"Sensei…" his voice a whisper. "Was that my…"
But the question never came. Naruto's vision blurred, and his body collapsed in its next step.
If anyone is concerned about the rules to Edo Tensei, please know that I do understand how the soul bit works in the manga. I just think this is an interesting change, so bear with me and we'll learn more about these rules next chapter! Really felt it had some cool implications this way for a lot of characters.
- Silly Walk
