Chapter 28: Sasuke Retrieval Mission: Part 2
"Here, Karin. Take some of these."
"What are they, Naruto-sama?"
"Electrifying tags. Just finished them last night. When they activate, they'll zap whatever they're in contact with with a thousand volts of electricity."
Kiba shuddered at the conversation behind him. Naruto and Karin had been quietly exchanging tips the whole way about the best places to hit with poison senbon on a shinobi's body; every one of them was surely fatal. Of course, as a shinobi he was no stranger to the idea of death- but the way they spoke about it so casually, as if they'd had to kill hundreds of people before this and the Sound nin were just targets to be brutally mowed down, was unnerving.
He snuck another glance at the bite marks covering Karin's arms. He wanted to ask about what the hell they were, but he didn't think it was an appropriate time when he was leading the squad through the forest.
"Let's see…" Naruto muttered. There was a quiet poof, and then he let out a noise of satisfaction. "Glad to see that seal works."
"Did you summon it from your home, Naruto-sama?"
"Yep. Been working on that for a while."
"Ugh…what a drag. I bet you got that from that Suna kunoichi."
"She recommended a crafter, yes."
Naruto placed the fan he'd summoned on his back. "You'll want to stop right about now. There are traps ahead," he called.
Kiba halted his progress and landed in a crouch on a tree branch, with his squad mates landing in a line beside him. "Good eye," he said, eyeing a barrier tag on a tree.
"There are wire traps below. Triple layer." Naruto was staring at the ground below with a strange telescope held up to one eye. "Be careful in how you proceed."
Kiba leapt onto a tree branch and started going around the barrier, keeping an eye out for any wires like Naruto had mentioned.
"I see them in the distance. It appears they're resting," Neji called from behind. "I see a strange coffin."
"Coffin?" Naruto asked sharply.
"I can see Sasuke inside, but it's difficult to see through it. But I believe he is alive."
Naruto breathed a small sigh of relief. Shikamaru paused in a crouch on the forest floor, looking thoughtful. "What's the plan?" Kiba asked.
"Hmm…all right, here's what we'll do."
Naruto slithered through the trees and chose a branch to wrap his ankles around, hanging upside down as he examined the shinobi below. Four of them. They look a bit haggard. His eyes narrowed.
He glanced at the coffin, reaching out with his sensing. Sasuke's chakra was a steady rhythm inside, even if it was much weaker than usual.
After a moment, he paused, frowning. Closing his eyes, he concentrated further, trying to grasp the tiny tendrils of chakra he could feel-
All around them.
"Crap."
The ground rocked with an explosion. Shikamaru and Neji burst from the underbrush at the same time Kiba lunged out to deter Sakon's attack. Unbothered, Naruto let himself drop down, dropkicking the Sound nin back towards his team before the two could meet.
Karin landed on his other side, scowling. "You felt them too, yeah?"
"Too late. But I guess it's four-on-six."
"Make that four-on-seven. I like those odds," Kiba said with a feral grin.
"Oh, you've gotta be kidding me," the redhead muttered. "They send the preschool kids to catch us? Konoha must be going down in quality."
"Look, we're here for Sasuke. Hand him over and there doesn't have to be a fight," Shikamaru said.
Kidomaru picked up the barrel with two sets of arms, transferring it to his back. "Sorry, kiddo. You're out of your league. Jirobo, why don't you show them some common courtesy?" A chuckle escaped his lips.
"They won't be much of a meal," the orange-haired one snorted. He clapped his hands together, making the group go tense. "Earth Dome!"
The hell? Naruto leapt back a pace as the earth rose up around them, mentally cursing. Darkness closed in around them as the wall closed them in, blotting out the sun.
"What the hell is this?" Kiba demanded, dropping Akamaru to the ground so he could beat on the wall with his fist. It didn't budge an inch, cold and hard beneath his fingers.
Karin formed a hand seal and closed her eyes. "They're fleeing," she said urgently, giving Shikamaru a pointed glance.
Naruto knelt down and brushed the floor with his fingers. What's the point of just trapping us in here? Unless… "Hey, Karin, you feel that?"
"Yes, Naruto-sama."
"Feel what?" Kiba asked, glancing between them.
"As we speak, this dome is absorbing our chakra like a sponge," Neji explained. He glanced down at his hand, watching his energy seep out of it and towards the dome walls.
"What? No way! I'm not gonna let that guy steal my chakra! Akamaru, let's go- Gatsuga!"
Naruto rolled his eyes and started feeling along the wall. It rumbled as Kiba burrowed into it, but he knew his friend wouldn't be able to break through. If he could just find the spot where Jirobo was absorbing their chakra…
"This sucks," Kiba complained, twitching when he caught sight of Choji. "What're you eating for at a time like this?!"
"Quiet! Can't you see Naruto-sama is trying to do something?"
"All right, that's enough," Shikamaru interrupted. Rubbing his forehead, he knelt down, folding his hands together before raising his voice so the shinobi outside could hear. The rest watched him curiously. "Hey, let us out already! You can have Sasuke. We'll just go on back."
"As if I would fall for that! Even if you were telling the truth, I'd feast on your chakra anyway," Jirobo yelled back.
"Fine, then just let me out."
"What are you doing?" Kiba hissed.
Jirobo started laughing. With a smirk, Naruto stepped in front of the wall where he knew he was, placing one hand directly over where he estimated Jirobo's hand would lie. Closing his eyes, he formed a hand sign with one hand, blocking out the others' noise.
"Uh, Naruto, what're you doing?" Kiba raised an eyebrow, yelping when Karin elbowed him and shushed him with a hiss.
Shikamaru just narrowed his eyes at him. He glanced at Neji, only to find him watching Naruto like a hawk, Byakugan active.
Thirty seconds passed. A dark chuckle emanated from Naruto's chest. "He wants chakra? Let's see him feast on this chakra."
"Shikamaru, shouldn't we-" Choji began. He was cut off by a scream from outside, making everyone but Naruto and Neji jump.
Shikamaru glanced at Neji's widened eyes before grabbing Naruto's shoulder. "What did you do?"
Naruto ignored him, rearing back his fist. Shikamaru leapt back to avoid the rubble as the blond slammed it into the wall, shattering it like a house of cards.
The genin coughed on smoke and dust as it settled, gaping at the dome's remains that had crumbled around them. "L-look!" Karin exclaimed, pointing at the figure of Jirobo where it had been blown back.
Kiba's mouth fell open. Jirobo was on the ground, face twisted in pain as he favored one arm- or lack thereof. His whole forearm was gone, leaving only a stump; his arm had turned to stone and snapped clear off, lying at his feet.
"W-what did you do?" the teen stammered, backing up until his back hit a tree. "Your idiot of a leader couldn't have come up with something like this!"
"Senjutsu chakra," Naruto explained, throwing said idiot leader a wink. "Absorb too much, your body turns to stone." There was an orange tint over his eyes, which had gone yellow with horizontal bar pupils. "Really shouldn't try and trap a sage in a chakra absorption technique."
Kiba squinted at him. "How many weird transformations does your face have, man?"
"It's sage mode. I'm mixing the nature chakra I drew into my body with my own."
Kiba yelped, backing up a step while he flailed comically. "A-aren't you gonna turn to stone?!"
"No," Naruto snorted. "I perfected it training with ero-sensei."
"Smart," said Shikamaru. He watched Jirobo out of the corner of his eye as he stood up, glowing black marks spreading all over his body. "This might still be a little time-consuming, though."
Naruto reached around to the hilt of his tantō and began sliding it from its sheath. "No, Naruto." A hand landed on his, halting its progress. "I'll take care of this guy. You guys go on ahead."
Naruto turned and blinked at Choji, glancing in between him and Jirobo with narrowed eyes. "You sure? I mean…you're one of the strongest genin in the village, but this guy is…he isn't using normal shinobi arts anymore. He's a freak of nature."
"Don't worry." Choji grinned, feeling something flutter in his chest. One of the strongest genin in the village. "I've got this. I've got my trump card, too." He held up a small plastic box with three different colored pills inside.
"All right, then. You catch up to us, you hear?"
"Got it."
"Be careful, Choji."
"When am I not, Shikamaru?" With a grim smile, Choji turned to his opponent, watching his body morph and twist before his eyes as his friends fled into the trees.
Naruto dropped down from the trees, landing directly between the six-armed nin and the redhead. Some part of him was mildly curious as to whether or not she had any Uzumaki blood in her, but her life force didn't feel as strong as his own or Karin's- plus she was already so deep in Orochimaru's clutches he doubted anyone could pull her out. He was lucky and had caught Karin early, before she became so devoted she wouldn't listen to reason.
Besides, there were plenty of redheads that weren't Uzumaki. Just look at Gaara. (Why couldn't he have gotten beautiful red hair like Gaara's? Blood was an awesome color. Instead of getting his mother's amazing, wonderful hair, he'd ended up with his father's scruffy bird's nest. Screw genes.)
He lunged for the eight-armed one, making him toss the coffin overhead to the redhead. "Go on ahead, Tayuya. I'm itching to gut these annoying brats."
"Whatever. Tell Jirobo to hurry his fat ass up when you see him."
Naruto spun on his heel and went after Tayuya, cursing when Kidomaru cut him off. He darted back before any of his six arms could grab him, smirking when Kiba barreled down from above and crashed into him.
Kidomaru spiraled towards the forest floor. At the last second, he flipped over and shot spider web from his mouth, plastering a startled Kiba to a tree. Shikamaru grunted in surprise when another glob cut him off, while Naruto flipped over onto a higher branch and slipped the Raijin no Ken from its holster.
The blade buzzed into existence as the next glob shot towards him, cutting through it like a knife through butter. "What the hell?" Kidomaru exclaimed from below.
Karin flipped down from the branch above Kiba, standing upside down on it, and began hacking at the threads binding him. Naruto leapt down to engage Kidomaru close-quarters, slicing through the webs sent his way.
"What the hell is that thing?" Kidomaru yelled, hastily dodging backwards away from a swipe. "Nothing can cut through my thread!"
"Evidently it's just your day to be wrong," Neji's amused voice said from behind him. Kidomaru whirled around with wide eyes, quickly shooting off a wad of web; the Hyuuga's Gentle Fist cut through the net in one slice, while Naruto went for the Sound nin's neck.
Gritting his teeth, Kidomaru dropped to the ground, rolling with the hardened spikes in his hands pointed outwards. Naruto raised an eyebrow and simply summoned a vertical pentagram to stop his progress through the air; before he could do much else, Kidomaru opened his hands and released a volley of thread. Neji cut through it easily, twisting to the side to avoid a mad lunge with a long spear of wax- but Kidomaru's intention hadn't been to cut him, only knock him into Naruto behind him.
"Ack!" Naruto flailed when Neji barreled through his pentagram and took him to the ground. I really need to remember to make those things solid from both sides.
"Apologies, Naruto. Please stay down." Naruto's forehead crinkled in confusion as Neji shot up off him, falling into a rotation just as a barrage of wax spikes shot towards them.
It was weird being in a Hyuuga's rotation, although not altogether unpleasant. He rolled into a crouch close enough he was just outside Neji's radius of movement to avoid the chakra himself, leaping up again when the rotation died down.
Kidomaru glared at them, twitching. "Please leave this to me," Neji said as Shikamaru and Kiba dropped from the trees with Karin close behind. "My Byakugan and Gentle Fist are the perfect counter to his technique. I'm the best suited to fight him, and Sasuke is still getting closer to the border."
"All right, then. Let's go, guys." Shikamaru squinted at Kidomaru once before leaping into a tree, while Naruto paused to clap a hand on his friend's shoulder.
"Don't die, all right?"
Neji smirked at him. "I do not think it is my destiny to die here."
Naruto grinned at the joke and went onwards.
"You sure this is the best strategy?" Naruto asked, glancing at the forest behind as the now four-man squad plus a ninken rushed through the trees. The midday sun was beginning to sink into the horizon, marking the hours they'd spent tracking the Sound Four.
"As of right now we outnumber them by two. We'll wait for dawn to break, and while you and I distract them, Kiba and Karin will jump in and grab that coffin," Shikamaru replied.
Naruto frowned. "You sure we should wait until night has passed? That will only give Orochimaru time to send more shinobi."
"We can't go in attacking blindly in the dark. After the first moment of contact, we'll lose the advantage, and they'll double back into a defensive position. If we had Neji with us it'd be different, but…"
"We should reach a good distance from them in about ten minutes," Karin said. "Close enough we shouldn't lose them. Choji and Neji should catch up by morning."
Shikamaru nodded. He glanced back in the direction they'd come from, an odd look in his eye. "Yeah. They should."
There was a strange feeling in the air. Everything was tense- and not just because it was Sasuke he was rescuing. That fact already had him on edge, but Naruto had been on a few higher-ranked missions with stakes as high.
Grimacing, he dropped to a lower tree branch, breathing in deeply. His sense of smell wasn't as potent as an Inuzuka's, but he caught traces of their scents on the wind, Sasuke in particular.
He only hoped Tsunade sent a backup squad sooner rather than later. He knew the amount of missions brought to Konoha's doorstep had increased- not just because they'd shown their strength in fending off Oto and Suna's invasion, but because word had gotten around the Uzumaki were rebuilding there. Uzushiogakure had probably been one of the strongest villages- hence why the others took the time to so thoroughly destroy it.
Fortunately for diplomatic relations, Suna's wealth had finally increased as well, due to much better trade agreements Tsunade had helped forge. Naruto didn't particularly want to have to face Gaara on the battlefield anyway.
"Still the same distance ahead?" Shikamaru called behind him.
"Affirmative," Karin replied.
There weren't any traps. Naruto thought it was the pinnacle of arrogance to not even set any traps for them. They must really think we're weak.
He'd show them how weak he was when he slammed their heads through a tree.
No one messed with his family and got away with it.
"All right, let's move in," Shikamaru said.
Finally. Naruto picked up his pace, leaping up to fall into step beside their leader.
Sasuke was coming home, even if it was the last thing he did.
Uzumaki Databook
[Book 2: Spirits and the Supernatural]
[Section 2: Removing Spirits, Subsection 2: Purification]
Purification is a much more difficult method of removing a spirit. Basically anyone can perform an exorcism, even if they can't see the spirit itself. It's actually safer to do so if you can't see it, as spirits can affect you more if you can see them- it's something about how you operate more in their plane of existence than someone who's oblivious to them. However, not everyone can perform purification.
Purification operates under one principle: a poltergeist's soul is trapped in negative energy that can be countered by using positive energy. Think of it like this: let's say you have a murky, dirty pond. If you filter out all the muck and filth, you're left with a clean pond. In the same way, when you purify a spirit, you must use your own spiritual energy as a filter to remove the negative energy from the spirit's soul. Now, I'm not talking about yin chakra. I'm talking about…let's say, your force of will. The power that comes from your very soul. This method relies entirely on strength of will and emotional and mental strength. Although trying to purify an especially strong poltergeist can sometimes have physical side effects on the body, physical strength plays a miniscule role outside of how much punishment you can take with a particularly nasty spirit.
Purifying A Spirit:
First, trap the spirit. It is exceedingly difficult to do this without trapping it. You need to have a single point of focus to work with.
Second, reach out with your mind- "heart" or "soul", whatever you want to call it; your spiritual presence. There is little way to explain this with words- it has to be experienced. Therefore, the only thing I will say is you must use your own energy as a weapon- it's like using your chakra outside your body, like the Hyuuga do with their Gentle Fist. At the same time, however, your intent must not be to harm.
Thirdly, press forward with the intent to heal or help. What can counteract hatred? Love may be a cliché, cheesy answer, but the kindness of the heart is the only thing that can pierce darkness; more darkness can't.
Success: If you're successful, the poltergeist will either be freed from the shackles of its hatred and move on to the afterlife or become a mere ghost again. Think of water boiling away from a water/salt mixture and leaving only the salt behind.
Side Effects: There is an inherent danger in trying to purify a poltergeist. If you aren't strong enough, its hatred can overwhelm and damage you. Because you are opening a connection between it and yourself, it can even take the chance to possess you. There are normally ways you can fight off a possession, but a failed purifying attempt makes them all the more difficult.