Chapter Six: Fight of the Vagabonds(1)

From within a shadowed treeline, a slender man in a loose kimono stepped forth, thin eyes narrowed in hatred, burning with a visceral urge to destroy a great enemy—and those eyes were killers chasing Naruto specifically.

"Can I help you?" Naruto condescended, hands clapped together, two pairs of praying arms above, firm and statue-still.

The stranger stepped forward from the tree line, marching silently, pulling out an interesting-looking pipe from his waist. His kimono was a couple of sizes too big and brightly colored, open at the chest. His smooth hair was longer than Naruto's but styled flat and smooth, framing his face with one side almost completely covered by thick bangs.

The way he walked towards Naruto set him on edge. It was like he knew who he was on a personal level, yet he had no idea who this was.

"Afraid I haven't seen you before. Is it too late to ask for introductions?" Naruto kept his tone casual, despite his readiness to kill the man in a heartbeat if he proved a threat to himself or, more importantly, to Tayuya. But, seeing as his attention was locked on him, it seemed she was completely irreverent.

With three steps taken and nothing given, Naruto moved his right hand. The top right arm mirrored his motions. Their stalker froze, his odd pipe raised, ready to defend against an attack. With two fingers, he drew a line in the air, so the arms did the same, but on the ground, thirty feet in front, the same amount in width as well. Upon completing the mark, the topmost pair of red arms dissolved into something that was neither sand nor dust.

"I'm warning you right now: cross that line and I will show no mercy." Naruto spoke with the authority of an executor, holding the rope of a guillotine suspended over an exposed neck. "Before things get out of hand, why don't you tell me what this is all about?" With the way his exposed eye was knifing him, it was personal, that was for sure.

"I've finally managed to get my hands on you," the guy said. "Don't you dare try and underplay what you've done! Take me to Gengo, now!"

"Never heard of him." His response was calm yet stern. "Seems like you know me, but I'm afraid it's not mutual. How about you tell me your name?"

"Utakata," he sneered. "I know the two of you are working together. You were there when he ransacked the town; you fled from me—don't you dare act as if you have nothing to do with this!" He started walking again.

Naruto separated his hands, holding them up defensively. The disembodied pair stayed, unmoving. "Hey now, just wait for a second! Something's not adding up here!" He pleaded. "At any point, when you've seen me, has she been around?" Naruto stepped aside just long enough to show his wife; the top of her head barely even touched his shoulders.

He stepped back in front of her. "It's been months since me and her have spent more than a day apart. If you've seen me at all this year without her, it wasn't me."

Tayuya was dumbfounded. Everything Naruto said was true—hell, for over seven whole months, the two of them had spent all of their time in the ruins of the Uzumaki's destroyed village. They hadn't even touched the Land of Water until a few months ago. The hell was this guy going on about?

It was an unimaginable effort on her part to not start yelling obscenities. Deescalation had always been a skill she lacked.

Utakata swiped his baggy sleeve, the one in which he held his odd pipe. Two skull-sized bubbles flew out with a speed they shouldn't have had; it was like they had actual weight behind them. Naruto clapped his hands together again instinctually, this time making a dome with his interlaced fingers.

A second later, explosions rocked the plain. The area where they had been standing became a plume of smoke and mulched dirt. Utakata didn't move and didn't drop his guard. This was little more than a warning.

It only took a minute for the smoke to disappear. Two red hands protectively clutched them, the hands of a goddess cradling her delicate children, barring all who would see them harmed. The fingers began splaying, spreading wide enough for Naruto to once again look Utakata in the eye.

"Want to make up for what you've done?" Utakata taunted. "You can start by telling me where Gengo is."

"I'm not repeating myself." Naruto growled, his patience on the verge of boiling away. "This is your last chance; turn around and walk away."

Utakata looked to the ground. That line in the dirt was just a few paces away now. Motivated by blistering spite, he steps across the line.

He's flying a second later.

With the first step, a great red hand appeared, big enough to completely eclipse his field of vision with plenty to spare, ramming into his body with force equally spread throughout his entire body. The speed was so absolute that, if this scene had been recorded, the hand would have existed for just a single, still frame.

Utakata was ragdolled into the forest like a discordant firecracker, randomly crashing into the ground and trees, ripping branches off, and shearing off portions of bushes and leaves—bouncing across the ground like a pebble skipping across a lake. Dirt plumes trailed his ripping body through the forest.

The hands protecting them dissolved. Naruto looked in the direction his attacker had been batted away, following the trail of destruction through the forest until it was swallowed by shadow. Unfortunately for Utakata, that line in the dirt was more than just theatrics. Naruto had imbued a rudimentary barrier ninjutsu into the fingertips, one that automatically attacked anyone who would step over that line.

But he knew this wouldn't be enough. Something was off about this stranger; he couldn't put his finger on it yet, but he knew the anxious pit in his gut was from him.

"I don't suppose we're lucky enough for that to get the message across?" Tayuya asked in a monotone manner, crossing her arms under her chest, the backpack and flute case strapped to her back slightly adjusting along with her motion.

He slid his backpack off and handed it to her. She took the baggage in her hands with surprise. "We're never that lucky."

As they talked in the forest, Utakata pulled himself from a mound of dug-up dirt. An arm twisted at the elbow was cracking back into place, and a single rib poking from his chest was being sucked back into place. He grunted in pain. This cursed life had a few minor benefits.

"Should we book it?" Tayuya asked, looking up to her husband. The flaps of his jacket fell open with a quick zip, and he handed that to her as well. His undershirt was thin and bland, a field of white speckled with orange streaks.

He raised his hand while folding his arms. "Nah, we won't have time. Besides, this type of vendetta won't stop just by us leaving. This needs to be dealt with now; otherwise, this is going to be a big problem down the line."

She thought for a moment. "Ever heard of this 'Gengo' before?"

"Nope." His head slightly tilted in annoyance. "But it sounds like someone is using my image for nefarious stuff. The Land of Snow might have to wait until I get this all sorted out."

Utakata suddenly fell from the sky in front of them, landing on his knees, this time already past the line. It was a smart precaution, but unfortunately, that line barrier only has a single shot in it. Anything more complex would require more obvious motions and larger amounts of chakra. For what it is, it does its job perfectly.

Utakata's kimono was battered and stained with grassy smears and dirt splotches, but otherwise he seemed fine. He stood, murder still glinting in his eyes. "Out of your system yet? Take me to Gengo—this is my final warning."

Being so close, Tayuya could almost feel Naruto's chakra begin pooling at his feet; whenever he concentrated his chakra, the air around him became thick and heavy to the point you could choke on it. Gripping his backpack, she took two steps back, stuffing his mom's momento inside.

Naruto pinched the bridge of his nose. "Look, I'm telling you, there's been some misunderstandings here—someone's gotta be impersonating me. Let's just talk this out; fill me in, and I might even be able to help!"

There was an awkward pause. The emotions on Utakata's face morphed back and forth between one unreadable expression to another. It seemed he was actually considering it, but something pulled him out of it—some horrible reality dragging him from a fantastical dream that could never be. He looked almost sad. "Time is a luxury I do not have." He declared it in somber mourning.

"Fine then." Naruto's voice was colder than normal, like sharpened steel ready for the kill. "Just tell me when you feel like sharing."

Naruto suddenly shot forward in an inhuman dash, the ground underneath his feet spewing dirt in the opposite direction. A blast of wind violently whipped Tayuya's red hair.

Naruto wasted no time and charged at Utakata, throwing a flurry of punches and kicks at his opponent. Utakata met him with equal force, blocking and parrying Naruto's blows with his arms and legs. The sound of their fists and feet clashing echoed in the air, creating a rhythm of violence.

Impressive taijutsu, Naruto thought. Despite his lanky body, the guy had muscle and quick reflexes. However, he lacked Sakura's agility and raw power. Compared to his sparring matches with her, this was nothing. He increased his speed and intensity, unleashing a barrage of fits and kicks, each aiming for a vital spot.

Utakata remained calm and composed in movements but not expression, countering Naruto's jabs and kicks with precise and elegant moves with a face scrunched in concentration. He dodged, dove, and weaved, avoiding Naruto's strikes with minimal movements, but they were anything but easy. Naruto's fist was parried by a bent elbow and swiped away, giving Utakata his first opening. A kick was aimed for his head, but with a quick sidestep, Naruto dodged the blow by a hair's breadth. From his new position at his side, Naruto threw a punch at Utakata's face.

The man went to duck but failed to notice the swipe coming for his legs. With a distracted guard, Naruto sweeped his feet—for a split second, Utakata was off the ground. He stumbled, trying to keep himself from falling over. Naruto gave no respite, following up with a jump and a spin, kicking Utakata's head.

His neck snapped. The sound of bone crunching was audible across the plain as Utakata's head spun a full rotation and then some. His neck looked more like bruised meat twisted into a spring.

He should've died.

His foot jabbed out into the air and kicked Naruto's gut, sending the shocked man back a few feet, now breathless. He watched with disturbed fascination as Utakata's head sprung back, unwinding into place.

"Understand now?" Utakata proclaimed. If he felt any pain, he gave no signs. "You were right to flee the first time. Now, do the smart thing and take me to Genjo."

Tayuya could barely keep track of the fight. Her skills in taijutsu were chunin at best. She wasn't an up-front fighter—it simply wasn't her nature. This guy's regeneration was unbelievable. Not even Sakura or the old Hokage could heal themselves that quickly and effortlessly, especially something that should have killed him. Still, as impressive as the healing was, he would need more than that to win against her husband.

Naruto was having similar thoughts. He gave a lopsided smirk at Utakata's confidence. "C'mon now, don't think just because you got some fancy regeneration means you have this fight." Their eyes battled for dominance just as their bodies did. "After all, a ripped-off head ain't worth much!"

Naruto charged once again.

It was then that Utakata raised his pipe to his lips.

Naruto's fists never made contact with the man. As it sprang forward in the air, something congealed around it, a thin membrane warping under the power of his punch. A translucent bubble protected Utakata, slight shimmers of rainbows at the edges being the only thing distinguishing its otherwise borderless clarity. The bubble suddenly snapped back into shape, blowing Naruto's arm away with the same force but inverted outward, flinging him backwards off his feet.

In the air, a disembodied arm catches his feet—magnetized with chakra, he stands horizontal in the air, attached to his limbs like a toy glued to the palm of a hand.

By this point, Tayuya was darting around the perimeter of the battlefield through the trees, leaping from branch to branch both to keep out of the way and to get a better vantage point. She watched the stranger with mild impress. The guy was holding his own pretty well, but so far it didn't seem like she needed to get involved, but something seemed off about her husband. It seemed like Naruto was actually taking this seriously—he normally had shockingly lax attitudes when in battle. Either something about this guy was putting him on edge, or he was more off-kilter than she originally thought. Was he really that sleep-deprived? Maybe a combination of both?

A concentration of chakra envelops the entirety of Naruto's fist and forearm, thick enough to become visible in the form of whispered flames licking at the edges. He wasn't as good as Sakura at this technique, but he didn't have to be for this purpose. All he needed was enough force to pop that barrier.

The red arm Naruto is attached to suddenly springs back and throws him at Utakata, even faster than he had darted at the beginning of their fight, before disappearing. Utakata made no moves to dodge, not even to reinforce his barrier. He let Naruto hit for all it was worth.

When this punch hit, the whole thing warped, first ballooning outward, then squeezing in, but it did not implode or burst. A second after the punch, Utakata snapped his fingers. The bubble popped.

Naruto's own power hit back point-blank like an explosion, but all concentrated on his face. His head snapped back, lips splitting, his nose now broken and trailing blood. He did not lose his composure. Still recovering from the blow, Naruto slapped his hands together in prayer.

Two great hands, more solid-looking than the one that had thrown him seconds ago, mirrored the action, but with Utakata between them, crushing him between two solid surfaces sturdier than stone but softer than marble.

Naruto catches his feet, barely stopping himself from keeling over, all the while keeping his hands together. The blood from his nose had progressed from a trail into a rapid flood, rushing down his lips only to fall off his chin like crimson rain.

Utakata suddenly jumps out from behind his hands, mouth against his pipe again. Naruto wonders if he used a substation or a clone. With a puff, a stream of hundreds of bubbles flows outward like the white foam of roaring rapids.

Three heartbeats later, they popped, but there were no explosions. Vicious smoke erupted from each and every one, smothering the battlefield and the nearby forest in a dense plume so thick you couldn't even see your fingers held in front of your face. It clung to the body like oil and smeared the surrounding area like a blotch of white on an otherwise great painting.

There were a few seconds of eerie calmness before phantom hands in the sky swatted away the smoke, whipping the air with stormy winds strong enough to disperse it all. Naruto was running towards his foe, even before the smoke had dispersed and before the roaring winds subsided.

With how close he was, Utakata, already caught off guard, had no choice but to respond physically. His pipe was glowing with an aura of chakra, honing itself to a knifing point at the end, tightly clutched in his hand. He dove under a sloppy punch and rammed his makeshift weapon up into Naruto's chest, plunging a hole into his ribs.

Naruto grunted in pain. Utakata closed the gap between their heads. "I. Warned. You!" He sneered. "If you still want to repent, tell me what you know!"

Naruto suddenly smiled, the tail of blood leaking from his nose dyeing a couple teeth red. "Alright then, I'll tell you this: thanks for the smoke screen!" Naruto suddenly poofed into smoke.

Utakata whips around, a single thought screaming in his head: Shadow Clone!

Already darting from behind one of the trees, Naruto was running at him from the side—chewing ground to the amount of two full-grown men per stride. Hurriedly, Utakata aimed his head at the charging man, dipping his pipe in the solution strapped around his waist and—!

Two shuriken interrupted him. With two simple swipes, Utakata deflected the metal aimed at his head reflexively with his pipe. It wasn't Naruto. The shrunken had come from elsewhere. For an instant, his eyes looked at his surroundings.

The redhead! She was off to the side, sitting on a tree limb, no doubt having changed her position in the smoke. No, even without the smoke, he wouldn't have paid her any mind. She had the biggest shit-eating grin Utakata had ever seen. That's when he noticed something else. Up, higher into the sky, those hands had not disappeared like the rest—and they were weaving hand signs.

Could those things use ninjutsu?

In that instant, Utakata realized his mistake.

Naruto was too close now; his right hand extended outward. Burning at his fingertips were candle-like flames of chakra, each one containing the same ancient symbol: Manipura, the spiritual name of the navel chakra gate.

The five burning fingers jammed into Utakata's gut.

Tantric Art: Apavarga's Paradox!*

Utakata's scream pierced the air as he collapsed to the ground, curling into a ball like a frightened child. His world, his very sense of self was being turned upside down. He could feel his pipe in his hands, but it felt like icy shards slicing into his flesh. He could breathe, but it felt like he was suffocating. He could feel his heart beating, but it felt hollow and empty. He could summon his will, but it was overwhelmed by this endless void of apathy.

To protect what you hate and destroy what you love, for pride to become despair, for joy to become pain, and for purpose to become listlessness, the Paradox inverts the responses of the emotional spectrum while still keeping the target cognizant of the contradictions. Utakata was a mess of contradictory emotional responses. He loved Naruto, wanted to protect him, even though he was an enemy attacking his home. No, he hated Naruto and needed to destroy his home so he couldn't—

"No!" He shouted to the sky.

The chakra flickered away from Naruto's fingertips before he wiped the blood from his lips with a thumb. His face was stern; a man taking no pleasure in this. "You should still have enough clarity in that head to answer a basic proposition: agree to back off, and I'll undo the jutsu."

There was no answer. Instead, something in the air began to change—something about the man's chakra that set Naruto's teeth on edge—an oddly familiar feeling of dread. It reminded him of the days when he was training with his mother, and traces of the Nine-Tails power would smother the land like extra gravity. Poor Tayuya had been around for only one of those training sessions, and that had been more than enough. The Nine-Tails chakra, a cloak around Kushina not even sprouting a single tail, had strangled her throat and crushed her chest for sitting too close on the sidelines, blacking out seconds after that moment.

Naruto's face fell, worry breaking his commanding image. If his screaming instincts were right, then the two of them needed to be away from this man quickly. Just as that thought passed, as Utakata writhed on the ground, cracks like the weathering of ancient stone split his face.

It was too late.

Ethereal arms manifested, reaching downward to grab the now-rabid man. A hand smothered in a baggy sleeve swiped out. The arms shattered, a sculpture of sand bashed into countless ethereal particles. The thing that was once Utakata closed the distance between the two in a blink, eyes whited out, a monstrous smile hooked to a single side, splitting from cheek to ear to expose jagged stalagmites passing for teeth.

Naruto was in pain before he knew why, tumbling across the field they occupied like a boulder crashing down the side of a mountain, only coming to a stop when hitting the trunk of a tree with his back. A scream like the drowning of a thousand innocent souls shattered the air, billowing out across the forest as a warning to all living creatures—the horror of a rumbling earthquake before the tsunami breached the horizon.

Tayuya was adrift in that horror, desperately swimming through the sea of primordial terror sinking her thoughts—but she couldn't move. Something was reaching up from that abyss, tangling any sense of hope or fighting instinct she had and pulling them down, drowning them like tendrils from the deep, pulling a victim to a blackened void no human could understand. Her legs gave out; she fell from the tree, but she still couldn't move. Even as she hit the floor, the pain was nothing, swallowed by the reddish chakra now leaking from the stranger—stranger, because it was not the man once known as Utakata anymore.

She cried—for herself, for her husband, for the world itself—even though she was too scared to let the sobs choke her.

The thing pretending to be human rushed at Naruto on all fours with the eagerness of a rabid dog lunging for a meal, its laughter ringing with the hollowness of a ship left underneath the waves.

Naruto pushes off the ground with one hand before bashing his opposite shoulder into a tree, snapping it back into place with a yell of pain. An instant later, he catches a downward fist aiming for his face. Even with both hands infused with chakra to brace it, his bones groan under the stress; several in his hands and wrists creak and pop as his feet are pushed into the dirt, sinking his form by half his head. His hands started to feel the burn of the red chakra, sizzling the skin of his palms.

Naruto stared at the man, mouth twitching at the sheer effort he was heaving into his limbs, but it was like those eyes didn't see him. They were featureless, sure, but that wasn't accurate enough. It was like whatever was piloting this flesh suit couldn't understand whatever was around him and was lashing out more out of childish impulse than any cognitive thought.

Naruto saw a single tail swing back and forth, made from the red chakra now cloaking his body. "Don't think sprouting some tails is enough to intimidate me!" He declared with thunder in his voice, cracking their foreheads together suddenly. His eyes watered at the pain, but he pushed through, creating just enough space to adjust the leverage.

With this split second opening, he savaged the man. With a twitch and a yank, the stranger's arm broke. A thumb gouged into the eye normally hidden by bangs, and a swipe of fingernails stiffened into claws ripped the soft center of his throat out. As the thing gurgled thick blood, Naruto's bloody right hand reaches out and rams into his open neck, gripping tight enough to feel the ridges of his spine undeath flesh and muscles, before lifting the skinny man to the air, feet dangling, tail whipping back and forth like a headless snake.

Naruto slams him into the ground with augmented power, ramming him into a hole deep enough for a grave.

There was no moment of victory, no second for a calming breath to plan carefully. Naruto jumps back at an angle, more towards Tayuya's direction, and slams his hands into the ground. A prison of four iron walls and a ceiling, each several times thicker than a tree, entrapped the cratered figure in a tar-black cube bigger than a house.

For a second, he was allowed to breathe again. His head was pounding like a gong, his nose broken, his hands burned, his bottom lip split, he was pretty sure one or two of his fingers were broken, and, judging by how painful his breathing was, at least a couple of ribs had to be cracked. He cursed his luck. Of all the people to use the Paradox on, a Jinchuriki was by far the worst possible target. The jutsu was a mental attack, damaging without physically hurting, but the turmoil it caused to the mind was enough to practically give the sealed beasts a dozen different openings to take control, to push through any barrier or control the host may have had and dominate their will.

Motion behind him brought him back to what was most important. Tayuya was slumped on her knees, shivering like she had been doused in water and left for a snowy night to claim. She started at Naruto with a level of fear and indecision he had never seen from her before. He ran towards her, snatching her off the ground, their bags forgotten, quickly scurrying behind a nearby tree to hide.

Naruto held his trembling wife to his chest, cradling her in his arms to calm her down. He didn't blame her for this reaction—he was the strange one here. In fact, this time last year, he probably wouldn't be much better than Tayuya right now.

"He-he's like… Kushina… wha-w-what do we do?" She was barely able to get that out.

Despite the nerves of his hands being burned raw, Naruto forced fingers to drift up and down her back and the exposed portion of her legs—his attempt at comforting her. He had to bite down the pain. "Nah," he tried to play it off. "Mom's in a league of her own. This guy ain't nothing compared to her."

The screaming beast suddenly got louder. Its roar pierced through the cube to send shivers down their souls; Tayuya jumped. Peeking out from the tree, Naruto could see person-sized bulges jutting out, like the thing was trying to wildly punch its way out. He returned his attention to the woman gripping his shirt, her eyes beseeching what her mouth could not say: We need to leave!

He gently cradled her cheek. "You need to go," Naruto softly ordered. "I'll try to hold him back enough to create some distance." It would be pointless for both of them to run. A possessed Jinchuriki was more spirit than man; thinking you could outrun one intent on killing you was arrogance at best and utter madness the rest of the time.

Something about that statement was like electricity, shocking her back into something more normal. She sounded offended. "Absolutely not!" She pushed back, her voice firm but on shaky foundations. "I don't do this chivalry 'man has to die first' shit! If you're fighting this guy, then we're fighting this guy, you dick!"

"And what can you do?" He countered, frustrated with adrenaline but not genuine anger. "Jinchuriki are immune to genjutsu; you're a bad matchup against any of 'em, and you still haven't mastered your sound waves yet—a single jutsu would kill me long before it!"

It would not be incorrect to say Tayuya has made herself into one of the most powerful forces in the ninja world. The thing so few people appreciate when it comes to sound is that it's little more than vibrations through the air. Magnify the sound of snapping fingers, and it could shatter windows, knock air from the lungs, or even burst eyeballs. Tayuya, however, took it a step further. With access to his chakra, she could turn each note of her flute into an explosive wave of obliteration that could flatten concrete buildings and shake the ground itself like an earthquake.

But that was the problem. Her jutsus were waves, indiscriminate; she has not refined her techniques to the point of being able to focus such unimaginable energy reliably. His dad, his mentors, and himself—if they were too close to Tayuya, they would all die. Even if they were a thousand paces away, it was still possible for their eardrums to rupture or their organs to pop. Mother aside, she was the most destructive thing the Hidden Leaf Village had.

Tayuya, aware of all of this, was still defiant, touching their foreheads together like a challenge. "Not without me, dumbass!" She almost growled. "Without me, your powers are cut in half!"

That part was also true, much to Naruto's chagrin. There were only a few ways to tune oneself into natural energy. The vast majority of them nowadays do so through senjutsu, mixing the principles of ninja arts with nature's energy to become powerful sages. There were other roads a sage could take, however. Depending on how loose your definitions of senjutsu and sages are, the oldest method of tapping into nature's energy predates Ninshu, from which modern ninjutsu came.

Tantra is the oldest method humanity has to access the ubiquitous life energy that flows through the universe, much like blood through the veins of a physical body. When two bodies of opposition connect, be they male and female, passive and aggressive, positive and negative, or even opposite chakra natures, the imbalance between their engines tries to self-correct, flowing into the other—creating a pathway for those with experience to access nature's energy in a far more efficient and potent way. Those who reached the peak of Tantra were called either Bodhisattvas or Sages of the Void.

Void or emptiness—these describe the Nirvana the Bodhisattvas praised. They preached that it was only at the very crest of a synchronized climax between two souls that, for that instant, they had a peek into Nirvana, momentarily creating a path to harnessing energy from the Pure Lands. For that one second, their individualities melt away, much like how drops of water merge with a lake; their bodies become empty shells as their true selves become one with all for that single moment.

These Bodhisattvas were said to have harnessed the power of chakra long before the Sage of the Six Paths ever taught Ninshu; from manipulating the weather to altering the topography of a whole continent or even reshaping the constellations, they were revered as gods by ancient men and women.

Naruto wasn't a true Sage of the Void yet; he was an imperfect Bodhisattva, but he was well-versed in Tantric teachings.

Naruto gently cradled his wife's cheeks, hoping to ease both of their raging emotions. "Listen, the only way you can help me right now is to perform a ritual." The look on her face told him her thoughts before she could say them. "No. I know how you'd feel about a Yab-Yum here; I'm not asking for that. Just look into my eyes, and I'll do the rest. Just enough to tap into some senjutsu."

Behind them, the crunch of metal got louder and louder, as did the thousand voices strangled into a single, horrifying scream. Naruto took a quick glance out from the tree. The cube was deformed at every face, a collection of lumpy metal welded into some butchered form—if they were lucky, they had a minute left. He cursed under his breath and turned back to the woman on his lap.

Tayuya looked downcast. Tantric sagecraft had one major downside: it required a willing partner to complete the union. Techniques existed to skirt this limitation, but even the strongest Bodhisattvas could never reach their full potential without a partner. This is why Tantric Sages were always depicted in pairs and why no Sage of the Void ascended without a counterpart.

"Just tell me no, and I'll think of another way to get us out of here," he affirmed.

There was still some hesitancy on her face. Tayuya was still new to Tantric teachings. She saw their intimacy as something special, closer to her heart than almost anything else. Using it specifically for the purpose of gaining power instilled a great sense of unease. Their Yab-Yum was sacred to her, so much so that, even though that was the only way for Naruto to briefly achieve a perfect sage form, she couldn't give it her all, which meant it was doomed to fail in the first place. But he wasn't asking for participation in their most intense ritual; what he wanted was smaller scale, doable. A slight twinge of pain hurt her heart at her own reluctance, but she affirmed her decision to help in any other way she could.

There was no vocal response. Instead, after a few teeth-clenching seconds, their eyes seemed pulled together, as if magnetized to the other. Over the course of a few seconds, their huffing breaths became synced in a relaxed series of ins and outs, as if one mind split in two. The world seemed to fade away; the snarls of a gnashing beast were drowned out by the presence of the one they loved the most.

Their kiss was a slow, tender thing, but passion still dripped from their lips. Chakra begins passing through their bodies in circular motions, flowing from one to the other and back in an endless cycle, carrying sensations and feelings. The old texts Naruto read during his stay at the monastery described this practice as waves being bounced back and forth between two stone structures. Each push and pull slapping against the stone imparts a little extra force, causing the water to slowly rise each time, eventually creating a powerful wave. This principle applied to chakra as well; one pushes chakra into the other, back and forth, each time adding a little more into circulation, increasing the potency exponentially. During this circulation, this back-and-forth union, someone like Naruto could use it as a way to draw in nature energy, mixing it in with otherwise normal chakra.

The harmony it took for two to perform this practice was servere. Physically, their breaths and heartbeats have to be in perfect unison, and mentally, the requirements were even harsher. There could be no doubt in the other, not the slightest question of their love or intentions; otherwise, the chakra gates would lock out the foreign chakra flowing through their system, possibly even attack it.

Tayuya groaned as Naruto became a bit more aggressive, yet his hands were delicate feathers, stroking and tenderly groping various parts of her tingling body. Her legs started trembling. It was no longer just physical pleasure; instead, there was something transcendent occurring—an act of spiritual communion. There was no separation of the two in this moment—the rhythm of breaths synchronized perfectly, their hands moving over each other's body without need for instruction, as if their minds spoke wordlessly through touch alone.

Their mouths met again and again, sharing kiss after hungry kiss, leaving each part of their bodies wanting more. She wrapped her arms around his neck in an effort to keep herself steady, her eyes fluttering even when closed. Normally, this would empower both of them, but he was taking all of it, which she eagerly allowed. The mark on her neck reacted involuntarily, spreading out in a spiraling web across her face—he was even taking that back.

Above them, an ethereal figure sanctioned their union—a red woman, both divine and monstrous. Slowly, one of her three closed eyes began to flutter open.

As Tayuya nestled her quivering body into Naruto's protective embrace, he lifted his face to the sky. Strange markings were now cut around his glowing eyes, originating from a fake Eye of Kagura at the center of his head. He looked like an anachronistic god some primitive people would have worshiped in ancient times, ripped from time and summoned into the modern era.

Though this transformation was half-baked and already running out of time, it would need to be enough.

He would make sure of it.

(End of Chapter Six)

Original Jutsus:

*Apavarga's Paradox: A Tantric Art placed by physical contact with burring chakra symbols, initiated by his Yidam forming the hand signs instead of himself, causing someone's mind to replace all positive signals in the brain with pain and/or discomfort. From food, to sex, to the joy of a family evening, to the sound of music—all things that generate pleasure signals are inverted a proportional amount. Even abstract things like ambition can be inverted into an empty, nauseous feeling of apathy, or turn hope into doubt.

Author's Notes: Not gonna lie, fights are the most intimidating thing for me to write. I can picture a fight perfectly in my head with all the wonderful fluidity of something like Chainsaw Man or some of the fights I've seen from Jujutsu Kaisen (haven't actually watched the show yet and don't plan to, but damn the fights look cool), but actually describing them is a bitch to do. Not only that, but shit just runs away from me. For example, I had this whole fight in my head before posting the last chapter and I had planned for it to be all in one chapter, but I ended up having to split it into two because, when I started flushing out the details my mind glossed over, all of a sudden I'm at a 6K long chapter and only halfway through, and that's no good. One of the biggest appeals of Spiraling to me is the chapter length, specifically because Undivided has gotten to the point of having 10-15K word chapters, which is why I only post like once, maybe twice in a year.

Meh, that aside, I hope it's not as bad as I think—lol, I have no confidence when it comes to big battle scenes.