At the ripe age of 32 years old, Kakashi Hatake had spent over 80% of his life as a shinobi. To survive that long, especially as someone of his caliber with his reputation, one must not be a stranger to strategic retreats. Picking your battles was important, and even someone like Mr. Worldwide himself knew when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em. Granted, he wasn't often put in a position in which he had to, but when he was…
A monumental explosion in the direction the Konoha group was fleeing from rocked the area, nearly sending Sakura (and Kakashi by extension) to the ground alongside Lee with Might Guy on his back. If that wasn't enough, a furious, "god-fucking-damnit!" from Orochimaru was carried to their ears by the wind, making certain just who was responsible for that explosion.
"Yeah, retreating was the best option," Kakashi absently confirmed aloud.
"Such youthful exuberance…" Lee marveled with Guy weakly nodding his head while on Lee's back. "I can feel it from here!"
"Let's not get distracted," Tenten spoke up from in front as she led the charge back toward Konoha. "It's only a little farther to Tenchi Bridge, then we rest at that onsen we passed on the-"
Tenten stopped mid-sentence, and Kakashi weakly turned his head to her to see what got her attention, as had the rest of the squad.
"What is it, Tenten?" Lee asked after she trailed off.
"There's someone up ahead," Tenten said, pointing toward a small gap in the trees where a woman indeed stood scribbling something on a tree with her finger.
Given that Kakashi was already exhausted, he almost chalked the curtain of vibrant, crimson hair as a hallucination, even more so when the woman turned to look at them as they carefully approached. Kakashi turned his uncovered eye to Guy, and his eternal rival's developing shock indicated that Kakashi wasn't the only one seeing this shit. That could only mean…
"K-Kushina??" Kakashi sputtered, shock finally overtaking his initial skepticism.
The redhead curiously turned to Sakura, and then she locked eyes with him. He wasn't sure if it was how quickly recognition bloomed across her face or the fact that she lit up when it did that warmed his old, ice-cold heart the most.
"Kakashi!" Kushina joyfully exclaimed, stepping away from whatever she was doing and bouncing toward him and Sakura. "Oh wow, you've really grown up!"
"Eh, roughly eighteen years will do that to you," Kakashi shrugged, maintaining a cool facade despite freaking out internally.
"Speaking of," Kushina said before slamming her fist onto Kakashi's cranium faster than Sakura could react. "Where the hell were you for the first eight years of Naruto's life?! I should beat you to death with your kneecaps, y'know!"
Despite the sudden impact to his skull, Kakashi maintained enough wherewithal to quickly stay Sakura's hand before she could immediately jump to his defense from this (to her) unknown attacker. A forlorn sigh escaped him, and even though Kushina's demeanor softened immediately after she hit him, he still felt the weight of his decisions all those years ago return to their summer home on his shoulders.
"I was a selfish coward," he plainly lamented.
"You're being unfair to yourself, Kakashi," Might Guy spoke up from Lee's back. "You were deeply depressed."
"What's the difference?" Kakashi rebutted.
"There's a world of difference…" Sakura softly commented.
"There is," Kushina agreed with a sigh of her own. "It's not like Naruto blames you, anyway. You were undoubtedly going through far too much at that age."
Kushina then ruffled his hair, an action Kakashi hadn't experienced in two decades. "It's great to see that you found the strength to keep going. Many others in your position wouldn't have."
Kakashi didn't have the heart to tell her that he spent years going on suicide missions specifically because he did not have the strength to keep going. Instead, once he was finished reeling from the foreign sensation of physical intimacy, he simply nodded and addressed the elephant in the room.
"How exactly are you alive right now?" Kakashi finally asked, and her smile returned.
"I'm not," Kushina chuckled. "I'm still very dead, I'm just a reanimation, or rather a shadow clone of one. The original is back with Naruto while we set up a Five-Seal Barrier to keep Orochimaru from escaping death again."
"Ah, so Naruto must have summoned you, then," Kakashi mused. That certainly explained the faint cracks on her paler-than-normal skin and her sunken, black sclera that he wouldn't admit mildly disturbed him.
"Damn right!" she grinned. "I get to fight alongside my son! I never imagined that would happen when I was skewered on the claw of the Kyubi, y'know!"
Rolling right along as if that wasn't a ludicrously macabre joke, Kushina's face straightened back into that of a stern parent. "Now, you all get going before you're trapped in this barrier with us. Once it's up, absolutely nothing gets in or out until it's disabled-"
She was cut off by another large explosion in the distance, followed by a pained and furious, "FUCK!" from Orochimaru. "Second explosion is the signal. Go, go, go!"
Kushina ushered them along, past the seal she was etching into the tree with her chakra, and continuing on their way toward what remained of Tenchi Bridge following their earlier encounter with Orochimaru. Kakashi felt a mixture of warmth and indigestion after being faced with Kushina again. He was content to silently wrestle with the storm of memories and the pain he had been carrying for the duration of the journey back to Konoha, but he knew that his most loyal student would have questions later. Luckily for him, dodging uncomfortable conversations was a useful skill he copied with his Sharingan.
"Damn it, would you stay still?!" Kabuto growled as he drove his kunai into the ground where Karin's head had just been, narrowly missing his target once again before her head popped up from the ground behind him and blew him a raspberry.
"Fucking stop it!" Kabuto hollered, finally losing it amidst the game of whack-a-mole that Karin was forcing him to play. He flew through a sequence of hand seals and then slammed his palms to the ground, summoning a plethora of earth spikes around him and consequently causing a spat of poofs from the shadow clones that were impaled by the jutsu.
Still, he wouldn't be Orochimaru's righthand if he ever let his guard down, and that showed when he jumped away from his spot just before a final pair of hands emerged from the ground below to grab him, and out came Karin to engage him in hand-to-hand. Chakra scalpels flared to life over his hands as Kabuto readied himself for her charge, but to his surprise, she did the same over her own hands, thrusting them into a heated exchange of deceptively deadly palms.
Glowing strike met glowing strike in a flurry that appeared to be dead even; all of Kabuto's attempts to kill her were relentlessly blocked and parried by Karin, and the reverse was just as true, as Kabuto wouldn't allow her into his guard for a single moment. This intense dance of death kept up for several grueling minutes before Kabuto grew irritated at the unending stalemate. They had been doing battle atop the unearthed dirt from their previous game of whack-a-mole and the now crumbled earth spears that ended it, so Kabuto simply kicked some of the dirt into the air between them. It wasn't enough to obscure either of their vision, but it was sufficient to momentarily throw Karin off, and a single moment was all he needed to pepper her chest with palm strikes, allowing the chakra scalpels to work their magic.
The instant look of shock on her face filled his heart with immense joy, but that joy soured just as quickly when she exploded into a toxic, purple mist. Reflexes sharpened by years of being a deep cover operative for ROOT and later as Orochimaru's second in command were what kept him from gasping and instantly inhaling the violet concoction. However, the burning he immediately felt on his skin compelled him to backpedal and create some space, stepping right into position for five golden chains to sprout from the ground and accost him. With his arms, legs, and torso bound, he was helpless when yet another Karin emerged from the cloud of poison and slammed her glowing palm into his chest, violently severing his aorta from his heart and sending him skidding across the ground once the chains dispersed.
The Karin that struck him smiled victoriously and vanished in a puff of smoke, and the real Karin finally emerged from the ground where the chains had sprouted.
"That poison should kill you by the end of the day, but I doubt you even have a few minutes anyway," Karin remarked with a smile, exceptionally proud of herself for once as she morbidly stood triumphant over a gasping, panicked Kabuto. "You know the rules about how combat medics are supposed to stay out of the fight until absolutely necessary? Well, why fight your opponent at all? Why not just let them tire themselves out on clones, and then you strike?"
Her smile fell when the only response she received was more blood sputtering out of Kabuto's mouth. She didn't really know what she was expecting from this. Deciding to leave him to his fate, she flickered away in the direction of the main battle.
Meanwhile, Kabuto was having flashbacks to Tsunade punching him into the tenth dimension three years prior. He had pooled his chakra in his chest to immediately begin healing whatever damage that Tsunade's punch did to him, and even then, he barely survived it. He did the same the moment he saw the shadow clone emerge from the poison cloud, but the problem was that whatever infernal concoction she whipped up and molded a clone out of (how the fuck she even managed that, he had no clue) was an aggressive and fast-acting toxin. That meant that he couldn't dedicate his healing to mending his severed aorta before he went into shock and died without leaving himself vulnerable to the poison, and vice versa. He was trapped between an asteroid and a biju.
"Fucking fuck," Kabuto coughed before he fished in his pouch, retrieving a food pill and a few special, white capsules. The food pill would supercharge his chakra to allow him to better fight off both ailments at once, whereas the capsules were a substance he had been secretly cooking up made out of Orochimaru's chakra and DNA from his discarded, shedded skins.
"I really hope this works," he said before slamming his palm to his mouth and wolfing down the pill cocktail, immediately feeling the effects course through his body.
He really didn't want to ingest the capsules just yet; he was waiting for when the time came to finally consume his master and assimilate him, kicking off his transformation into a newer, better Orochimaru. However, he didn't exactly have too many other options at this point, so he bit the bullet. Hopefully, the bullet wouldn't bite back too hard.
Kushina was having the time of her life. Being dead was just so… boring. Nothing interesting ever happened in the Pure World, they didn't even have decent cable, and time was irrelevant there, so it was impossible to gauge if she was dead for twenty minutes or twenty years before she was reanimated despite being perfectly sentient and aware through it all. To make matters worse, she didn't even have Minato alongside her to enjoy eternity with. A glorious, back-and-forth fight to get the absent blood pumping through her ash-filled veins was exactly what she needed.
So, it was no surprise that her excited grin while her chains cleaved through both Rasa's Gold Dust and the Sandaime Kazekage's Iron Sand unnerved the two other reanimations. She didn't care, though; the fact that she was already dead meant that she could fight with as much tenacity (read: reckless abandon) as she desired, and that was fucking exhilarating. Any attempt by Rasa to grab and crush her in his Gold Dust was rebuffed by her chains zapping it of the chakra holding it together, allowing her to blitz through the gaps and tank the iron constructs that were rained down upon her by his predecessor.
Not a second was wasted once she closed the gap between her and Rasa, a kunai in hand that was already fashioned into a razor-sharp wind blade to decapitate him. He wasn't a Kage for nothing, however, as he brought his hand up to intercept the blade and deflected her attack with his arm wreathed with wind chakra. Undeterred, Kushina's chains fired back out to stem the golden wall that struck from behind her, but she had to disengage and leap away to escape the large, iron spike that slammed into the ground she had previously occupied. Not having to worry about grievous bodily harm was nice, but she still didn't want to have to waste precious time regenerating from a jutsu like that.
While the two former Kazekage regrouped and readied another joint wave, she took a moment to analyze her options. She really didn't need to do anything extravagant to beat them. She knew how Edo Tensei worked, so all she had to do was destroy those talismans in their heads and free them of Orochimaru's control. No biggie; she'd just capitalize on their propensity to stand still during battle, and she still had more than a few tricks up her sleeve.
As expected, an overwhelming wave of Gold Dust came at her courtesy of Rasa in an attempt to overwhelm her with a quantity she couldn't possibly disrupt all at once, meanwhile, another rain shower of black lances began pouring down on the area. Using her chains to assist in launching into the air above the golden wave, she gritted through the Iron Sand as much as she could until flying through three seals and blasting the golden ground with a powerful Water Trumpet Jutsu. The deadly jet of water slammed into the Gold Dust and scattered Iron Sand with a vengeance, carving out a crater on impact and splashing a wide area that reached all the way to both Rasa and the Sandaime. That part complete, she refocused her chakra and performed a few seals before spitting a concentrated beam of lightning at the waterlogged Gold Dust. The two Kage realized just a moment too late their mistake, and Kushina watched in triumphant satisfaction as the False Darkness Jutsu weaponized the conductivity of wet gold and electrocuted her two opponents.
Then came the hard part. As gravity brought her back down to Earth, she spawned a single shadow clone to land on the electrified ground and quickly launch her into the air on a direct arc toward the stunned Rasa. On her path, she intensely refocused her chakra once again, this time in her palm until the familiar whirlwind of rotating chakra entered her ears. A small yet no less dangerous ball of fiercely blue chakra shredded into her palm, but she remained focused on her steadily approaching target. Rasa jerkily brought his gaze up to lock with Kushina's, but his Gold Dust wasn't fast enough to shield him from his fate. Kushina slammed the Rasengan directly into Rasa's cranium, grinding straight through it and slamming the rest of his body into the ground with a loud crash.
Whatever dust was still in the air fell limply to the ground as Kushina stood over Rasa's body in the small crater she had just created. She wasn't nearly as good at the Rasengan as Minato or even Jiraiya, but it was still a ridiculously useful trump card to have, especially since the usual damage she'd do to her palm by even attempting the jutsu was quickly undone by virtue of being a reanimation.
In any event, the annihilated remains of the talisman indicated that her plan had succeeded, but the massive, black cube hurtling toward her from above indicated that the job wasn't yet finished. Golden chains shot out en masse and formed a protective dome over her as the cube landed on them, flattening the terrain around the crater like it was paper maché.
From the Sandaime's vantage point, he had crushed both Kushina and Rasa, and even though neither would be down for good, they also wouldn't be able to reconstitute with his cube sitting atop them. Kushina was effectively removed from the battle, so he could return to Orochimaru and begrudgingly assist in disposing of the rest so long as he maintained that cube.
Seeing no reason to linger, he turned around and began walking toward the other battle, but he was accosted by the Gold Dust below him and locked into its tight grasp. His confusion didn't last for very long before golden chains shot out of every face of the cube like a macabrely ornate mausoleum. Slowly, the cube was reduced back to limp, black sand, and emerging from the center was an untouched Kushina and a freshly rejuvenated Rasa.
"Thank you, Uzumaki," Rasa grunted. "If I had blood, it would be boiling for being under that snake's control."
"Thank me later, we have your predecessor to free," Kushina replied, and Rasa simply nodded.
Iron Sand spikes emerged from the gold dust, bursting through Rasa's hold and launching toward the newly formed team. A much thicker wall of Gold Dust emerged in front of them to block the onslaught, but that wall quickly became a canopy when the World Order Jutsu turned the area into a cobweb of iron, needly death. Darting into the shade cast by the golden blanket, Kushina weaved through the few lances that happened to make it through and struck at the new projectiles heading her way with her chains until she was well on her way to closing the distance between them. By now, the canopy had cleared up, and all around her were dueling masses of gold and black that split the Sandaime's attention in more ways than he was comfortable with.
"Perfect," Kushina grinned as several chains shot out to impale the barrier of Iron Sand that sprouted in front of him. However, since he had already allocated so much of his sand and focus already, the chains were able to puncture straight through his defense and skewer the Sandaime in six places. With him in her clutches, he was helpless to stop the wind-enhanced kunai and lobbed off the top half of his head, exposing the damaged talisman within. She ripped it and destroyed it in her palm, finally cutting Orochimaru off from them.
"And that's that," Kushina remarked with a sigh, dusting her hands off in a show of victory.
"His mind was wrenched away from the snake, as well?" Rasa questioned as he approached, and Kushina nodded. "Excellent. I have a score to go settle."
By then, the Sandaime's head had reformed, and he returned to his feet, blinking away the lingering fog of being controlled. After shaking the remaining cobwebs from his mind, he flexed, finally exerting his own control over his kekkei genkai. "Back within my grasp. I am no longer someone's marionette."
"Indeed, Sandaime Kazekage," Rasa nodded.
"So formal," Kushina joked at Rasa, but Rasa only sent her a quirked eyebrow.
"That is indeed my name, though," the Sandaime spoke, earning her attention.
"Wait, what?" she asked.
"Both of my parents failed to show up to my birth," Sandaime shrugged. "I was the third child born that day, so I was simply given the name Sandaime. When I took office, I adopted Kazekage as my surname since I had none."
Kushina stared at him for a lengthy moment, silently trying to make sense of what the hell she had just heard… to no avail whatsoever. Finally, she simply threw her arms in the air and walked away, resolving to just accept it and move on. Nothing in the ninja world made sense, and she should have been well aware of that by now.
Sasuke was not having a great day. Sasuke having to deal with the annoyances of his old team and village was one thing, but fighting Akatsuki was proving to be a task he refused to admit that he wasn't entirely prepared for. The blonde was a monster in his own right, one that manhandled him, Yukimaru, and Orochimaru with seemingly minimal effort (and wasn't that just a frightening thought?), but the redhead with the flute was just as if not even more frustrating. She clearly wasn't as powerful as her comrade, but she could coordinate attacks with her summons immaculately. Sasuke would either have to dodge or contend with earth-shattering blows from the giant creatures as the flying Tengu attempted to bisect him with arrows even taller than he was, all the while she was either spattering the battlefield with ninjutsu and ensnaring them with complex genjutsu.
If there was one thing Sasuke absolutely loathed, it was being trapped in complex genjutsu, and this fucking scoundrel was going to pay in blood for the attempts. And why the hell did she look so familiar?
"Don't lose focus, Sasuke!" Yukimaru called out from beside him as a horde of water dragons emerged from behind them to subdue the Doki.
"You should talk!" Sasuke snarled back, ducking out of the way of a giant arrow on one side and a spat of fireballs from a Phoenix Flower Jutsu on the other.
The fireballs collided with several of the water dragons, quickly filling the area with steam that obscured their vision. Fortunately, the passive sensory prowess gifted by the Cursed Seal worked in his favor by allowing him to gauge approximately where his opponent was in relation to the summons, and he'd seize that opportunity. His left hand crackled to life with a Chidori, and Sasuke rushed through the cloud of steam, strafing around the massive creatures with practiced ease and letting the genjutsu being peppered at him roll off him like water off a duck's back on his path to ending his target. When he finally reached her, he expected to punch through her chest like butter, but what met him instead was sharp steel shattering on impact with his Chidori as the wind of the battle cleared away the steam.
Finally able to see what was in front of him, Sasuke gawked at the sight of the smirking redhead covered by the unmistakable marks of a cursed seal, and in her hand was a shattered kusarigama that she had apparently used to divert his path just enough to safely dodge the Chidori.
"Gotta thank that old fuck, Seidai, for introducing me to these when I see him again," she snickered. "Guess those punk ass eyes of yours are useless when you can't see shit, huh?"
It finally hit Sasuke who he was fighting: this woman was one of the Sound Four who escorted him to Orochimaru. He had just assumed she died with the rest of them, but apparently not. It didn't matter anyway; the fact that she still had a cursed seal and could use it meant that he had to go all out.
Sasuke disengaged from Tayuya, deftly dodging attacks from her Doki all the while. Upon rendezvousing with Yukimaru, Sasuke's cursed seal burned orange, and his skin became a sickly grey while his hair grew out, and two large hands shot out of his back. Yukimaru was surprised that Sasuke was going this far, but it only meant that Yukimaru finally had the go-ahead to unleash his more destructive ninjutsu since Sasuke could fly out of harm's way.
On the other side, Tayuya took the invitation to go into her second stage, as well. Several horns grew out of her, capping the long head of dull pink hair flowing down her newly browned skin. She placed her flute to her mouth and played a single note, and two more ethereal arms protruded from her spine and took hold of the flute, keeping it pressed to her mouth as she unsealed her shamisen and bachi from a scroll.
Yukimaru kept his gaze locked on her all the while. So far, she primarily used her flute to direct traffic amongst the Doki, giving them directions and coordinating their attacks, so it stood to reason that any other musical instrument would be used to greater effect in that regard. Therefore, when she strummed the shamisen, he was expecting the Doki to react in a similar vein, if not employing more elaborate formations entirely. Instead, the world around him melted away like ice cream on a sweltering summer afternoon, and with it went his limbs. Before his very eyes, he was literally sinking into a boneless mass, unable to move anything below the neck as panic began to envelop him.
He bit his lip as hard as he could to dispel the illusion, but the sky only shattered to reveal the same thing underneath. He chomped down again even harder, and he kept doing so again and again to the same effect happening each time. There were so many layers to this genjutsu that his mind just could not wrap around it, and the further he broke through, the clearer Tayuya's face became in the horrific sky above, grinning maliciously down upon him as his sanity began to slip away into the puddle that he once called his body.
Then, a jolt of electricity shot through his body, and the nightmarish eternity was over just as quickly as it began. Yukimaru hyperventilated as he frantically patted his body, ensuring he was no longer a psychotic puddle in the pool of oblivion, nearly missing Sasuke spark up again and shoot a Chidori Spear that cleaved through the arrow from one of the Tengu that was about to bestow the title of "Honored One" upon Yukimaru.
"Don't lose focus," Sasuke commented, and Yukimaru could just hear the smarmy smirk in his voice.
"Bite me," Yukimaru muttered. "Thanks."
"Don't mention it-" Sasuke began to say before a third massive explosion and a cry of, "FUCKING SHIT!" from Orochimaru rocked the area. Orochimaru's charged and beaten body bounced along the ground and came to a skidding halt in the clearing with them. Within moments, another Orochimaru emerged from the mouth of the defeated Sannin, and both Sasuke and Yukimaru could see that he was absolutely livid.
Following him was Naruto, who was having a fantastic day, by the way, and he had no qualms with showing it via a beaming grin, one that juxtaposed the murderous rage pouring off of Orochimaru beautifully. Naruto landed beside Tayuya with her Doki standing protectively around her. As if on cue, Karin's head popped out of the ground on the other side of Naruto while Orochimaru, Sasuke, and Yukimaru dodged out of the way of a wave of Gold Dust, only to have to defend from the shower of Iron Sand lances from above.
"What is this?!" Orochimaru snarled. "How were they removed from my control?!"
As if to answer his question, Kushina emerged from within the golden wave and swiped at Orochimaru, just barely missing his throat as he dodged by the skin of his teeth. Kushina leaped back to stand alongside her son while Orochimaru retreated nearest to Sasuke and Yukimaru, dispelling the Edo Tensei and banishing them back to the Shadow Realm. Only then did Orochimaru notice the distinct lack of Kabuto among them, and the implications of that brought him to the brink. However, he also took note of Sasuke still hovering above them in his second stage and Yukimaru building up a significant amount of chakra, and he smirked. Leveling an evil leer at the Akatsuki group, Orochimaru took several steps back and allowed Yukimaru and Sasuke to take the reins.
"Water Style: Exploding Water Shockwave!" Yukimaru bellowed before a massive torrent of water exploded from his mouth, rivaling that of even Kisame.
The wave swelled into a gargantuan tsunami that crashed through the battlefield toward them, but Yukimaru wasn't finished. Flying through even more seals, an army of water clones emerged from the depths, and each flew through sequences of seals, as well, calling forth a dozen, roaring water dragons each. That still wasn't enough, though, as Sasuke shot a Chidori Spear into the wave and then disrupted the flow of lightning, discharging it within the water and electrifying both the wave and the water dragons riding along with it. It was a truly awe-inspiring sight that would have struck fear into the hearts of some of the most battle-hardened jonin.
Unfortunately for them, Uzumakis did not feel fear.
In unison, Naruto and Karin bit their thumbs and mirrored each other's motions before emphatically slamming their palms to the ground. "Summoning Jutsu!"
Two titanic puffs of smoke revealed Karin standing atop Kenji and Naruto standing atop Ibuse, the chief of the Salamanders and former familiar of Hanzo. No words needed to be said once they saw the electrified hydra bulldozing a path toward them. Even Ibuse, who was famously not a fan of Naruto, put his disgruntlement aside to stand on business. Kenji heated up while Ibuse minutely vibrated, and the two Salamanders burst into action, a gargantuan Majestic Destroyer Flame belching out of Kenji and a storm of wind blades flying out of Ibuse's mouth from his vibrating tongue. Meanwhile, a dragon's head nearly the size of Tayuya's Doki emerged from the dirt beside them and opened its monstrous maw. Finally, Naruto finished it off with a Majestic Demolisher that ignited the Earth Dragon and superheated any mud bullets it fired into molten balls of death.
The collaborative fire, wind, and earth jutsu slammed into the lightning hydra, and the effects were immediate. Another steam cloud enveloped the area as the two murder parties collided and canceled each other out, the wind blades and molten mud bullets slicing through the dragons and the water clones maintaining them. Still, golden chains and arrows from the Tengu entering the fray were visible, as there was no way that Kushina and Tayuya were going to remain idle. Tayuya hopped atop Kenji to get a better vantage point, while Kushina ran into the fracas to undercut the Oto-nin at the source, not having to worry about taking any damage.
As the battle raged on the ground, Sasuke peered up to see the formation of storm clouds above, and he smirked. He fired a massive Grand Fireball into the sky to accelerate the process, and then flew a little higher into the air. It was time for the battle to come to an end.
Yukimaru and Orochimaru noticed the fireball above and quickly put together what Sasuke was planning. Yukimaru dutifully got the fuck out of dodge, thankful for the warning from his comrade, whereas Orochimaru scowled but sank underground, nonetheless. Even Sai knew it was time to create some distance, so that's exactly what he did to remain out of the crossfire while still observing the battle.
With them out of the way, Sasuke prepared for what was to come. The first few droplets of rain came down without preamble, and that drizzle slowly crescendoed into a rain shower. Lightning illuminated his devilish form as thunder boomed throughout the region, and a final Chidori formed in his palm. Opening his palm and dispersing the Chidori into the cloud, a heart-stopping dragon made of natural lightning emerged from the cloud, roaring so loud that any remaining action on the ground ceased completely. The steam from the jutsu clash was still present, so Sasuke couldn't really make out his targets, but he felt their presence thanks to the cursed seal, and they wouldn't be able to escape regardless.
"Begone with the thunderclap," Sasuke coldly intoned.
He brought his hand down right as smoke billowed from the steam, and Kirin struck with an unfathomable boom. A tower of lightning emerged from ground zero, illuminating the area for miles as the ground shook from the impact. A crater that absolutely dwarfed the one he created in the hideout earlier was all that remained. There was no trace of any Akatsuki nor their summons, all except a collection of paper and ash coalescing in the center of the crater. Sasuke lowered himself to the ground, doing his best to maintain his second stage so that he didn't drop out of the air like a dead bird and end up much the same.
Kushina, meanwhile, finally reconstituted and stared at the devastation mouth agape. It was absolutely surreal. The only thing that matched such succinct, total devastation was a bijudama, and it came at the hands of a boy maybe a few years younger than Naruto. What the hell were they feeding this generation??
Her thoughts were halted when Orochimaru's mad cackling filled the still silence of the crater, and she looked to see him emerging from the ground with the most manic, triumphant smile one could have.
"MAGNIFICENT, SASUKE!" Orochimaru enthusiastically cheered, his cackling growing even more wicked. "I would have preferred to leave remains to keep as trophies, but this is certainly nothing to complain over! That blonde wretch and his filthy cohorts were vaporized before they even knew what hit them, and the maraschino cherry on top of it all is that his undead mother got to witness the whole thing!"
Orochimaru was so far on cloud nine that he didn't even care about the unsettled stares he was receiving from Sasuke and Yukimaru, nor did he even register the quizzical look he got from Kushina that was devoid of any worry, rage, or even despair.
"How does it feel, Kushina?!" Orochimaru continued unabated. "How does it feel to watch not only that son of a bitch Minato die in your arms, but to also be brought back by your son just to watch him perish so violently?! How does it feel to know that you're doomed to walk the planet for eternity, never able to reunite with your family in the Pure World?! Perhaps none of this would have ever happened had that dumbass monkey chosen me over your fucking doofus husband to be the Yondaime!"
Yukimaru blinked, and he and Sasuke turned to each other, a silent conversation happening between them about whether Orochimaru had finally lost it and if it was time to cut their losses and kill him. Kushina, on the other hand, just silently watched him laugh maniacally in a mixture of confusion, indignation, and pity.
Suddenly, two massive puffs of smoke entered the crater, and before them stood Kenji, Ibuse, and the Uzumaki Trio completely unharmed… physically, at least. Karin and Tayuya were still wide-eyed and damn near catatonic at having come so close to such a spectacular death, and understandably so. Naruto on the other hand…
"Holy shit, dude, that jutsu was fucking crazy!" Naruto exclaimed with the brightest grin Sasuke had ever seen. "I don't have any lightning jutsu that insane! The best I can do is this, see?"
A Raikiri crackled to life in Naruto's palm before chains wrapped around his arm, and the lightning jutsu crawled up his arm to his shoulder to present his Lightning Cleaver.
"Yeah, it's nothing that wicked," Naruto chuckled. "Not nearly as insane as yours. You gotta teach me that! I will trade you whatever you want for just the concept behind the jutsu. You look like a Pocky man…"
Naruto paused and examined Sasuke a little longer. "Nah, not Pocky, Hi-Chew. Definitely Hi-Chew. I can get you as much Hi-Chew as you want for this jutsu."
Naruto was receiving a myriad of reactions from everyone in the crater. Karin and Tayuya were staring at him like he had grown a second head, Kenji and Kushina were struggling to hold back their laughter, Ibuse merely shook his head, and Yukimaru was stuck in a mental boot-up loop. Sasuke, however, was staring at him with the most incredulity of the group, though he wouldn't admit that he was silently considering the deal. He hadn't had any Hi-Chew since the massacre because it wasn't sold in Konoha outside of the Uchiha district for some reason, and but he probably wouldn't have had any if they had been given that sweets just reminded him of his brother murdering his clan.
"No, no, no no no no NO!!" Orochimaru fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on Sasuke's repressed sweet tooth) interrupted, finally losing his shit. "WHY WON'T YOU DIE- OW!"
A rock had slammed into Orochimaru's nose, breaking it and cutting his rant short all the while. On top of Ibuse, Naruto was glaring heatedly at him.
"Wait your fucking turn, I will kill you in a minute!" Naruto scolded him like a child. "I'm in the middle of conducting business!"
That did it, and the last vestige of Orochimaru's sanity snapped. His body bulged and contorted, swelling up until he burst into a writhing ball of massive, white serpents. The mass steadily grew larger and larger until eight colossal snake heads emerged from a biju-sized creature with eight tails flared behind it. Towering over even the two Salamanders was Orochimaru's Eight-Headed Serpent Jutsu, and out from one of the mouths emerged the slimy, criminally pale man himself. Any joviality in Naruto's expression vanished, and remaining in its place was the cold, focused glare that was such a facsimile of Minato Namikaze that Orochimaru genuinely believed that he was in front of the man once again. Orochimaru would kill Minato once and for all.
Naruto, meanwhile, jumped off of Ibuse and stepped forward ahead of the group. Before him was Orochimaru in biju form. That was surprising, but it was neither unnerving nor unfamiliar. Naruto knew all about biju.
"Kurama…"
Within the seal, Kurama's eyes shot open, and his chakra exploded out of Naruto. The chakra immediately condensed into a blood-red coat over him with five swinging tails. At Kuromizu Swamp, he had finally been able to get a solid handle over four tails, and even five tails were doable. Six, though, was where it got a bit hairy, but he could keep working on that later. Now, it was time to finally rid the world of a roach masquerading as a snake.
Settling onto all fours, Naruto growled, steam rising out of the pure white void that was his mouth. The fabled Yamata no Orochi leered dangerously over him, but Naruto stood firm, ready to rush the beast head-on with nothing but his two hands… and claws, teeth, and five tails. However, he wasn't alone, as when a hand placed itself on his back, he looked up to see Kushina smiling at him with more pride than Naruto could even fathom.
"You think you're taking him on alone?" Kushina laughed. "I held down the Kyubi after giving birth and being impaled. I can hold Orochimaru down no problem."
Naruto hadn't quite mastered speaking while channeling so much of Kurama's chakra, so he simply nodded and shot her a thumbs-up. He needn't put his thumb down, either, as Karin and Tayuya both stepped up on his other side with Kenji and Ibuse flanking them from behind. The message was clear: they were taking Orochimaru down together.
Orochimaru got tired of waiting for them to strike, so he took the initiative and sent his masses of snakeheads to rush them. Merely scraping across the ground with their scales crumbled the terrain, digging an even bigger crater along the way. Golden chains struck from either side and ensnared several of the snakes, meanwhile, the returning Doki launched themselves at the creature from above while Ibuse and Kenji pincered from the front and back respectively. The attempt to overwhelm him failed, as this form wasn't referred to as the Dragon God for nothing. Orochimaru pushed and batted them away with relative ease, simultaneously smacking Ibuse and Kenji with its heads and sending them rolling painfully away to the edges of the crater.
The Doki were easily dispatched of next, but the chains remained locked onto them. Tayuya tried casting a genjutsu on it with the shamisen, but it had no effect and only served to turn several of its heads' attention to her. One of them attempted to slam the ground where she stood and crush her, but a long, red chakra arm sliced through the head like butter. Climbing like a wild animal up the eight-headed monster was Naruto on a steady course for the head that contained Orochimaru's body.
Dodging multiple strikes at a time from the heads that tried to swallow him on his way wasn't difficult, but remaining attached to the main head as it wriggled about was tedious. Still, he was undeterred in his pursuit and finally reached his target, clamping down on the bottom jaw of the snake before hoisting himself into Orochimaru's face. The man's smirk was crazed but no less serpentine, and Naruto didn't flinch when he spat a sword at him to stab him in the head. The sword, clearly not the Kusanagi, shattered on impact with the Kyubi's chakra, and Naruto took the opportunity to plant his feet on the snake's bottom jaw and snap its mouth all the way open with his right hand. With Orochimaru fully exposed, Naruto stabbed right through his chest with his left hand, but Orochimaru simply chuckled, and then he coiled around Naruto's arm to bite him on the neck.
What exactly he was hoping to accomplish in his addled state, Naruto wasn't quite sure, but all he did achieve was setting his mouth ablaze on Kurama's chakra and not making a dent in Naruto's skin. Naruto tried to rip him out of the creature, but several other heads came to his defense just in time to bat Naruto away. However, it allowed for Karin and Kushina's chains to capture even more of its body, finally resulting in the main head being wrapped in chains with the rest of them. With its chakra being suppressed, they were finally able to bring the creature down to the ground and hold it in place.
Naruto stared at the writhing monstrosity for a long moment before shakily bringing his hands up into the cross seal, spawning two shadow clones that thankfully only had a single tail's cloak each. They vanished in the directions of Karin and Kushina respectively, and Naruto unleashed another steamy sigh. Then, his mouth snapped open, and a dark, dense ball of chakra began to coalesce over his mouth. He concentrated, allowing the fiery essence of the Kyubi to breathe into the developing bijudama. All the while, he was simultaneously molding it with his own chakra into a fire-natured concoction to imbue the bijudama with. The bijudama began to glow a bright red, then it caught fire, and a spinning ring of hellfire orbited the dense ball until Naruto finally took it into his hand. Almost instantly, his arm ballooned in size and his fist slammed into the ground, but a red-hot inferno was burning in his fist and slowly traveling up his arm.
Sensing the two salamanders return to Kuromizu and Tayuya getting as far away from the crater as she could, Naruto waited until the two clones grabbed Karin and Kushina and booked it before he finally leaped into the air as high as he could. Orochimaru furiously reemerged from the ground now that he was free, but all it amounted to was getting a closer view of his demise. Sailing toward him in the shadow of the sun was an almost black figure with white eyes shining like portals to hell and a flaming, red-hot fist primed to escort him there. If Orochimaru had any reasonable thoughts left, they were drowned out by the insatiable desire to murder and vanished with a whimper when Naruto's fist finally collided with him. Naruto slammed his fiery, bijudama fist straight into Orochimaru's face and plowed into the mouth of the snake, slamming the entire creature down on his path to the ground and unleashing hell upon him.
The explosion that followed was titanic. Kirin rocked the area for miles, but the vibrations of this jutsu could be felt nations over. The Konoha group nearly fell over from the tremor, and they were transfixed by the fiery mushroom cloud that towered over the horizon. On the border of Tsuchi, Han's gaze ripped itself from the nest of birds in the tree he was sitting in to gawk in the direction of the explosion. Danzo, just outside of the bounds of Taki with a few ROOT operatives, stopped and turned toward the disturbance with a frown. Within his office in Ame, even Pain briefly stopped filling out the paperwork on his desk, and after figuring that Naruto had just blown someone up, he continued his work with a faint smile.
At ground zero, Tayuya hesitantly poked her head out from behind a blast shield she constructed out of a few hundred Mud Walls, and even then, only the last one was standing (and barely at that). Nearby was Karin emerging from an underground burrow and Kushina waiting for her lower body to reform after she forced the shadow clone to stop and watch the explosion with her.
"Holy fuck…" Tayuya exhaled, a bit of color in her cheeks. "He's single, right?"
"What?" Karin asked, her gaze firmly planted on Tayuya.
"What?" Tayuya questioned back, moving on as if nothing had been said while Kushina did her very best to hide her giggle fit.
High above the ground, Sai stared down at the carnage with an expression that wasn't quite as impassive as was typical for him. Beside him were Sasuke and Yukimaru, who he had quickly collected once the Akatsuki dogpiled onto Orochimaru's snake form. No one said a word as they flew away from the battlefield. There was nothing to be said.
Within the new-new crater, Naruto crawled out of a charred mass of snake remains with only the use of his left arm. His cloak was in tatters, his legs were wobbly, and his right arm was fucked beyond belief, but he made it to his feet, nonetheless. Karin, Tayuya, and Kushina emerged from the edge of the crater and rushed toward him. Surprisingly enough, it was Tayuya who was the most enthusiastic.
"Shithead, we did it!" she was practically vibrating. "We fucking did it! We killed that sick, pasty sack of fucking Yankee dankie doodle shit! He's fucking DEAD!"
"Karin?" Naruto prompted, and she quickly nodded before closing her eyes.
"…I don't sense a trace of him," she eventually remarked. "I don't sense him anywhere at all. I think he's gone for good this time!"
"Awesome," Naruto sighed in contentment. "It would really suck to have to do this a third time."
Before he could say anymore, Karin gingerly grabbed his arm and inspected the damage: physical burns, chakra burns, and broken everything as far as the eye could see.
"You seriously need to stop being so reckless, Naruto," Karin chided. "I know you're a tank that can withstand and heal from things that most people couldn't imagine, but you're not invincible."
"I functionally am," Naruto shrugged. "I'm the protagonist."
The glare he got from Karin shut his mouth, and he surrendered to her treatment while his mom smirked knowingly at him and ran her hand through his hair.
"You were absolutely phenomenal, Naruto," Kushina said with pride and sincerity dripping off of every word. "I know for a fact that your father would be so proud of you if he could see you right now."
"Eh, we can tell him all about it when we see him," Naruto shrugged as Karin gingerly prodded his arm with a chain and funneled her chakra through it into him to accelerate his healing. "We're heading to the Uzumaki Temple next. It's high time I get the other half of Kurama from him."
Kushina was doubly surprised. Firstly, what Karin was doing with her chains was absolutely ingenious, and secondly, it sounded like Naruto was implying that they were going to free Minato's soul from the Shinigami using the mask.
"That ritual requires a sacrifice, y'know," Kushina warily commented.
"So did you," Naruto responded with a quirked eyebrow.
"…Fair," Kushina conceded, "but it's a little more involved than resurrecting me. You have to put on the mask and carve into your stomach to mirror the actions of the Shinigami, then you'll need a living vessel for Minato to inhabit. Most people wouldn't even be able to survive wearing the mask in general, let alone mutilating themselves to free the spirits within."
"Mom, what did I say about being the protagonist?"
"Naruto."
"Alright, fine, we'll get two people," Naruto finally conceded, and Kushina sighed but knew that was the best she was gonna get out of him.
"All done," Karin said, presenting his much less destroyed arm to him, and he sent her a warm smile.
"You're a godsend, Karin," he complimented, and she managed to not bashfully look away and actually accepted the praise.
"Now, someone please carry me to the nearest tea house," Naruto requested as he fell forward, confident that at least one of them was going to catch him.
…Why weren't they catching him?
I'm alive. Sorry for the wait. Life comes at you faster than an Olympic crackhead sometimes. There were some other things I wanted to do in this chapter, but it had been long enough since the last update, and I didn't want to prolong it any further, so I figured a chapter dedicated solely to Orochimaru's demise would be a tighter, better-paced experience.
Also, this website has been falling apart for the better part of a decade at this point, and while I'm almost confident that FFN will outlive humanity in the same almost-functional state it has been in for 20 years, if not, everything I post is also on AO3. I ain't going down with the ship if it's actually going down lol
Thanks for reading.